I put over 600 hours into Injustice 2 and never played a single online match.
Not everyone is a competative gamer, and not everyone is big on online gaming. It's not an enigma at all.
I think it's great in general that NetherRealms Studios designs various game modes in its games for all types of players. Single, Multi, Casual, Competative. There's something for everyone in their titles.
Sure, guy. Fighting another human is not the founding idea of fighting games. Lol. I get that there are people who more so value fighting ai, what I cant understand is why?
I think this is so, so key. Working on games, one of the biggest shocks for so many people (and a huge disconnect between the average player and an industry professional) is understanding the extreme differences among the people who play your games -- and this is multiplied by how many platforms you release on as well as other things like budget, license, genre, etc. People's preferences as to what they find fun or interesting are so incredibly varied, and it's a true skill to be able to understand and sell an experience to polar opposite players. For example, I can boot up an infantry-only Deathmatch mode in Battlefield V, play for an hour, and come away completely unable to fathom how anyone could find it fun: why would you want to play Battlefield without objectives and vehicles?? But still, those people exist, and there's more of them than you might think.
NRS, particularly with Injustice 2 and MK11, has done a really great job of taking a traditionally niche genre and opening it up to a lot of players with offline modes (to be fair, the 3D era MK games have all had pretty robust single-player experiences as well, albeit released into a different market). Their mainstream success with recognizable licenses has been great for providing their core experience to classical fighting game players, while providing a product relevant to all types of gamers: plus, some of those players would have been converted into core fighting game fans. However, my somewhat educated guess would be a huge percentage of both of those games' players with 20+ hours played have between 0-10 online matches logged.
Regarding ToT directly, I do feel like the basic experience is good and will remain something I play regularly for a while. Log on, warm up on some towers in a somewhat live-fire environment, then maybe get some online matches in. I enjoy the experience even though I don't really care
exactly what I'm getting, as long as I'm getting some stuff for a character I like. I think where NRS dropped the ball was not anticipating the needs of completionists and online players -- there are a lot of players who really want to get ALL of Baraka's stuff, or maybe Baraka and a handful of others. The idea that they have little control over their collection and may have to wait on a rotating tower/store to get those last few items leads to an uncomfortable itching feeling under the skin. Additionally the online players don't get many opportunities to convert their play into gear. The returns in terms of currency rewards are just OK, and obviously a lot of items are locked to offline modes. Something more mode-agnostic like Injustice 2's Motherboxes are better for serving all players (although the randomness is another problem entirely). What MK11 really needed (or still needs, they might implement something like this still, who knows) would be more ways to convert your currencies into gear with more direct control. Maybe a rotating shop for each character, or per-character loot boxes available for Koins/Hearts/Essence.
