Discussion MKXL Non-gameplay related feedback

[AeWhole]

I'm of firm belief that good music can greatly enhance a game. There are some games whose soundtrack alone is a good reason to play it (Darksiders 2 for instance).
My problem with MKX however is that the music is just so bland. A lot of tracks have the same general feel to them and they don't really hype up the match much. I don't even know what songs play in like 90% of the stages. The only one I can really remember is Emperor's Courtyard, but that is only because I always go to practice mode on that stage.

I really hope the music will be better in Injustice 2. Injustice 1 music wasn't great, but for me there were 2 memorable tracks in Wayne Manor and Fortress of Solitude. Besides that though, Injustice's music also wasn't very good.

Destroyed City soundtrack was a flawless victory in my opinion. Also SFX are really good. Quan Chi and Predator have some of the coolest sounding specials.

 

[AeWhole]

graphics wise, everything was great. Except for the temple where you get flashbanged, even worse in alternate dimension unlock for it, like god just why. Also, from someone who plays infrared scorp - WHY is there an infrared scorp? also, NEVER make Reptile look like this again, aesthetically hes the only one who missed the mark. I think Ermac is kinda shit too but at least he has a great klassic skin, Reptile's Klassic is still corny.

NOBODY wants reptile without human ninja form.

I use to only play reptile because he was awesome and green. But, now he is a lame ass lizard edge lord. Deadly alliance was the last playable and good looking lizard reptile.

 

[BrosephPR]

Music is pretty bad, nothing stands out. Nrs needs to improve in that department.

I do hate most x-rays in the way the break your bones and the shattered bones fly out your skin as if you don't have skin and muscle to hold them in. I wish x-rays were toned down a bit for example I would like to see something similar to Scorpions Mk9 xray, simple but brutal.

Graphics are awesome tho.

 

[xenogorgeous]

Reptile voices is annoying, they could fix doing a cool and guttural one to him, let's see if perhaps in the next game... Ermac seems corny and bland as a corpse living dead kinda floating mummy .... he might be more cool if they had kept him as a ninja with teleknesis powers.

 

[VerminatorX]

I would really appreciate if NRS/QLOC provided support for Steam Workshop. Easy modding would immortalize this game.

Also, this game is incomplete without Fujin. For various reasons:
1.Raiden is overused
2.MKXL has this factions theme, so Raiden could use a help from fellow Elder God
3.Seriously, it was teased since release, just clench your teeth and do one last char for us, plz.

 

[BlueWater]

NOBODY wants reptile without human ninja form.

I prefer human reptile but this version is growing on me. I never had any hope of seeing human reptile in this game due to the deceptive variation not having a mask on.

 

[DownfouralitY]

luckily most the rest range from good to amazing. Some stand out designs

Triborg is fuckin perfect aesthetically in all 4 variations. Amazing how well this was handled considering they share a base, and even the base stuff is a great for robot


kenshis aesthetic design is also great

alien, predator and jason are perfect, and they really FEEL like the characters


less special forces characters next time tho guys. fckin cassie and jacqui man

I prefer Reptile to be.. you know, a Reptile. I don't care for his main design in this game though, but his alt is fantastic.

The music in this game kinda blows, but I do really like Quan's fortress, Destroyed city and Emperor's courtyard. Wish it would go back to the way it was around MK1-4, but i'm not expecting it to.

 

[DDutchguy]

his alt is fantastic.

+1, Tournament Reptile is an amazing skin. Default Reptile's mask doesn't really fit that well with the rest of his armor,cat least in my opinion.

 

[Eddy Wang]

@16 Bit the dark announcer voice from MK3/ Ultimate would be sooooo sick! Hell I would even pay for this!

Its not that NRS don't want him, but steve richie has no condition health to record audios anymore, i think he is getting deaf or something, kinda sad really, he is also the original Shao Kahn's voice.

 

[EdenianWarrior]

There are really bad stages in this game. Training stage is actually cancer.

 

[NSR]

@Eddy Wang
yeah, also, he did Kahn's voice again in MKSM along with the announcer, and you can tell, he lost the voice a long time ago. It's kinda like comparing Pacino's voice nowadays to his voice in 1972. It's like two different people altogether.

Anyways, I know people have stated this like 1000 times, but yeah, the music's really weak. Barring Destroyed City, Jungle, Woods, and Kove, every song is hit and miss, and 90% of the time, it's a really big miss. Like it's strange: you got the Jinsei Chamber Round 1 song. That's probably one of the best songs of MKX, IMO.
Then you have rounds 2 and 3. Just compare round 1 to 2 and 3. It almost sounds like Dan took 2 completely unrelated songs and put them in rounds 2 and 3. There's no progression between round songs for most of the stages, and this I would say, is one of the biggest problems with MKX's soundtrack. The other major one is that some songs sound so dull, you'd almost wonder if Dan even tried at all (The Pit, Outworld Marketplace, for example) but then again, the SFX design is excellent, and several fatalities are even better just because of how awesome the SFX design is, so how did the music end up this badly?. My only guess is that with Dan, when it comes to making music, it's almost like he's too focused on the sounds themselves, trying to captivate people via them, without realizing that half of what made previous MK games music stand out was the composition. That right there seems be the main reason why so many of the songs are lackluster, in not just MKX, but also Injustice and any of the original songs (not remixes) of MK9: there's no real composition, it feels like a bunch of sounds just edited in and having a very basic composition at that. There are no catchy beats, nothing.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I agree with you guys, MKX's music really just isn't that good, barring a few specific stages and songs.

Graphics wise, textures and models are nicely detailed, and some characters look amazing (Triborg, D'Vorah, Kotal Kahn, Quan Chi, just to mention a few) but I noticed that human faces (no, no just female, ANY face) that's unmasked looks like it came out of a PS2 game. They clash heavily with how well the rest of the graphics are. This doesn't happen with masked faces (as obviously you can't see all of it) or faces of characters that are non human, I noticed characters like the aforementioned Triborg, Kotal and D'Vorah had better looking faces than 90% of the cast, simply because they had significantly more detail and work put into them than the human faces. IDK if it's because of the UE3 being a hassle to work with, but this needs to be addressed, it really looks off at times.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

The character designs are amazing, best iv seen in any game really. Although, Jacqui, Sonya, and Bo look a lot less detailed and cool as everyone else imo.

The standout design to me is D'Vorah, everything about her looks cool and unique, especially her eyes. Some other really good ones are Takeda who blends old and new really well. Scorpion's and Sub-Zero's default skins look super badass. It looks how you would imagine them to look but they seem more menacing and their shit is all pimped out without being over the top. Kenshi looks really good with the beard of destiny.

 

[Ryu Hayabusa]

Less call of duty and more mortal kombat.

More stages.

Every stage to have stage fatality.

More brutalities, at least 12 per character.

Alt costumes for DLC characters.

More alt costumes for less popular characters.

At least 5 alt colors for every costume/skin.

 

[DDutchguy]

More brutalities, at least 12 per character.

Holy smokes, 12 brutalities per character with a roster being 25-30 characters is kind of a tall order isn't it?

At least 5 alt colors for every costume/skin.

With how detailed most alternate costumes are, I can deal with having just 2 colors per costume.

 

[NSR]

Another thing, while most of the fatalities are good (and quite a few are amazing, like Ermac's 1st) there are some characters that have godawful fatalities.
Kitana still has weak fatalities (I appreciate the effort that they are giving her new fan based fatalities, but they still need to work on these fatalities, they just suck) and as well as the fact that instead of giving her the kiss of death fatality for her klassic fatality...they instead gave her the fan decapitation. Like...what?
Reptile hands down has the worst fatalities in the game, it's like, with the first one, they had no creativity whatsoever, and with the 2nd, the execution is so lackluster (like why doesn't the opponent dissolve completely? why only does their arm stay up? why does Reptile eating the opponent's head look and sound unfinished? it's like there's a missing sound or two there.) it completely ruins what could have been a good fatality.
That being said, most of the guests have really dull fatalities. Jason has probably the 2nd worst fatalities in the game, Predator was...just there, same thing with Alien (average, but nothing special) and only Leatherface seems like any real effort was put into (especially his 2nd) The rest of the guests' fatalities just feel uninspired as hell.

 

[ChaosTheory]

I dig the music for the most part. Certain stages might have particular rounds that don't fit in or are just weaker than the others, but overall I think it's solid. The mix is sort of quiet which might be to allow the sound effects to stand out. But that probably does make it harder to stand out to people.

Also, the Sky Temple is the best stage in the game. I don't give a shit.

Some of the dialogue in the game reminds you that sometimes it's better to leave some things to the imagination. I wish some characters just couldn't/wouldn't talk. Takeda and Kung Jin are the prime offenders. If it was back in the day, these characters could likely pass for cool because of their visual designs and the fact that you wouldn't have to hear the lame coming from their mouths. But even mid-match you have to listen to them throw out douche-chill-inducing dialogue.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

The voices were pretty good too

 

[Tanno]

Musically, I would suggest epic war themed and dark hybrid music, like this one.

Each one at the certain arena.

 

[kantboy-2]

The best costumes out of ANY MK game. I remember ghetto Jax and I cringe.

The sound design in this game is amazing. The music is cool, but we're used to a more up tempo from MK.

A few pet peeves; I want ALL variation accessories to drop or be able do see stuff disappear from the losers body, like a few already do, before we go into fatalities and faction kills. Goro drops his dragon fangs, but he can't drop his Kuatan helmet? Same with Scorpion and his swords, etc..

And I want Cybernetic Kano to be able to do his X-Ray and fatalities with his variation specific knives. And on the Xbox, Goro still does a magic trick and turns his outworld guy into two instead of ripping him in half.

I did a thread about adding dialogue for the MK DLC characters so they're even with the regular characters;

https://testyourmight.com/threads/request-to-add-new-dialogue-for-dlc-characters-based-on-existing-dialogue-and-animation-order.60138/

I would like them to add that.

On the costume front; the DLC characters can get a few easy costumes and I don't understand why this isn't part of the development budget when you do them. SF characters get more than 1 costume.

For the guest characters, why not do the "8-bit" colors as costumes? It's really simple and everyone would dig it.

Tremor should've had a klassic and the 'coarse' skin; call it "abysmal" everyone will get the reference.

Sub-Zero and Mileena should have the same number of skins as Scorpion and Kitana.

I'm ranting way too much. Done.

 

[DownfouralitY]

Holy smokes, 12 brutalities per character with a roster being 25-30 characters is kind of a tall order isn't it?



With how detailed most alternate costumes are, I can deal with having just 2 colors per costume.

I would rather keep 5 brutalities each but make them more unique for each character. There are so many boring recycled brutals, most characters only really have one or two really sick ones. There's exceptions of course, but I wish there was more effort put into differentiating them.

 

[Tanno]

Its not that NRS don't want him, but steve richie has no condition health to record audios anymore, i think he is getting deaf or something, kinda sad really, he is also the original Shao Kahn's voice.

You mean the Beethoven syndrome?

 

[Rozalin1780]

Things done well:

- Stages are varied and detailed with interactables that are more balanced than thier I:GAU counterparts.

- Redesigned Brutalities are an amazing addition providing a more tournament friendly way to "fatality" someone.

- Fatalities are some of the best ever.

- New characters are among the best they've come up with since the original 2D era.

- Graphics are amazing. Despite being darker in color compaired to previous games, the game still has plenty of color variance to avoid looking "brown and grey" throughout.

- Character intros add flair to the start of a match that is unsurpassed by any other fighting game.

- A near perfect training mode, with in game frame data being the biggest QOL improvement.

- Guest characters (love 'em or hate 'em) are handled extremely well, fit in with the rest of the cast, and pay homage to their respective source material.

Things needing improvement:

- Soundtrack. Most BGMs sound like stock background music. Nothing pumping up the players, nothing adding to the atmosphere. You can have music that is dark and brooding while still being upbeat enough so that it "feels" like an action-packed fight is taking place. Take Hisako's theme from KI as a modern example.

- Too many meaningless modes. Challenge tower, Test Your Might tower, invasion bosses, etc. Faction wars, outside of faction kills, has no incentives for the player to care about it. Not to mention the factions are heavily skewed towards more popular leaders rather than the outcome be based on any kind of skill. Instead, efforts should be put into the modes people actually want like 2v2, team battle, tournament mode, etc.

- Animations still feel a little bit stiff. Better than MK9 surely, but they could use some improvements to make the fighting feel more fluid.

- Better online options for ranked match. You should be able to filter by region or at the very least connection quality. Also, the match-making is in dire need of improvements. Currently, it feels as if there is none at all. While you're at it, add a "versus anyone/versus similar rank" filter.

- Better all-round improvements to deal with rage quitters -- specifically those who pull their ethernet cords out. The game should not lock up for 10-30 seconds while simultaneously punishing the winner with a disconnect or loss on their stat page.

- Story. While MKX's story wasn't bad, it wasn't great either. Some of the new characters are developed well while others are hardly seen. Some returning characters have purpose while others are there simply to "job" to others. The comic bridging the gap between MK9 and MKX did a much better job of handling characters and story arc. Whoever wrote it, put him/her in charge of the story for the next game. There was a LOT of wasted potential with this release. Also, keep QTE's out of story mode.

 

[ILuvFightGames]

I think the graphics and costumes are amazing. Also the character design is awesome. But yea if we had the option to change the button configuration within a match or even after a match on the character select screen that would be awesome. NRS if you read this, please do this!

 

[JesterSMX]

For practice mode I would like an option to test resets and restands by having dummy perform an action after hitstun wears off while standing. I know frame data but in some cases it would help to know matchup specifics. I don't really think setting dummy to jump gives you all the info we need and recording our setup and trying to get out of it with other characters seems needlessly involved.

I would also like to include normals into the list of available options under wakeup setting and proposed reset/restand settings.

 

[Rathalos]

I dig the music for the most part. Certain stages might have particular rounds that don't fit in or are just weaker than the others, but overall I think it's solid. The mix is sort of quiet which might be to allow the sound effects to stand out. But that probably does make it harder to stand out to people.

Also, the Sky Temple is the best stage in the game. I don't give a shit.

Some of the dialogue in the game reminds you that sometimes it's better to leave some things to the imagination. I wish some characters just couldn't/wouldn't talk. Takeda and Kung Jin are the prime offenders. If it was back in the day, these characters could likely pass for cool because of their visual designs and the fact that you wouldn't have to hear the lame coming from their mouths. But even mid-match you have to listen to them throw out douche-chill-inducing dialogue.

I actually love the dialog.
It just makes me laugh so much that Kenshi and Takeda are both such try hard visual designs, trying to make them look as cool as possible to 14 year olds, and then they open their mouths and they are the lamest mother fuckers on the planet. It's so good.