'Hopefully, if we’ve done our job right, we’ll have left our fans still wanting more' - and we're always ready to take their money!

[Ck AeroVoid]

I know it isnt the point of your post but uh... Can I just put my name in the hat of people who want this very very badly?

NO

 

[MalevolentFix]

NO

They cant possibly do a worse job than 2K lmao

 

[Ck AeroVoid]

They cant possibly do a worse job than 2K lmao

But you can put your name in twice

 

[Nickolaidas]

I know it isnt the point of your post but uh... Can I just put my name in the hat of people who want this very very badly?

laughs sure man!

 

[Dankster Morgan]

Almost everyone in this thread is a complete moron.

Aftermath is tremendous value at $40usd

• 100% Free Update
  • Free Stages
  • Free Friendships
  • Free Stage Fatalities
• 3 Characters 8,8,8 (24)
• 1 Story Mode (10)
• 3 Skins Packs 2, 2, 2 (6)

How can anyone think different... I just made those ratios up.. but we are talking

• 5-10 bucks a Character
• 10-15 for story mode
• 1-5 for the skin packs.

Anyone saying this DLC is over priced is just an absolute example of cancel culture and gamer entitlement. You do not think they should be allowed to charge 10 fucking dollars for all those of employees working full time for MONTHS and paying those named actors all that cash for making the new story mode?.. You do not think it is worth 2 bucks a skin pack for those artists, or 8 bucks for a character that takes literally around a year to be produced? Hire warehouse of motion capture equipment, actors and more?

How much money do you make in a year? What exactly do you think 40 bucks is worth in the real world. I bet you all spent more than that last time you went to a coffee shop to get a long black and sandwich for you and your wife.

It is just unbelievable to me, not only how selfish and self important some gamers are, thinking that companies should make AAA games but then charge literally nothing for them, I mean that is just pathetic... but the complete lack of understanding how the world works and the amount of money it takes to make this kind of content also makes these people look so stupid. I mean, ridiculously fucking stupid. As in I am not even angry or taken back, I just feel sorry for you as it must be so hard to walk around and breath without accidentally stepping in front of a train type of stupid that these people must be. Seriously. Some of the posters in this thread need a goFundMe as you are actually handicapped and probably need help.

Also, if you do not want to pay, they still offered a bunch of cool free content!!

I mean WTF are you complaining about, morons.

Condescending as fuck for absolutely no reason.

Since you're so good at math lets do some more, $60 = 25 characters, a story mode, krypt, and an entire functional game. $40 = 3 character, 3 skin packs, and a story mode that will probably be shorter than the base game.

No, $40 isn't a lot of money in the real world but even looking at it next to MK11 its self, it isn't a "tremendous value". If you think its worth the money that's cool but you're being such an obnoxious dickhead for absolutely no reason, nobody cares how much money you make or if you wipe your ass with $40, thats not the point of questioning the value.

 

[Gooberking]

All the cool kids use twitter and reddit these days anyway.

I'm not cool or a kid, so I think I'm stuck with all ye' bastards.

 

[jcbowie]

The problem is that publishers see it black and white like that.

Mass Effect Andromeda had a goal of 5 million units and it sold 2.5 million in the first few months. That didn't make EA reconsider how to approach the sequel, or how to better implement DLC. They flat out cancelled story DLC and put the IP on life support. Whether we like it or not, publishers work like that. They get greedy with the IP and want higher and higher sales numbers with any new iteration of the IP. If it doesn't meet their targets, they kill off the IP. It happened with Mass Effect, it happened with Dead Space, it happens with all AAA IPs.

That is why I believe that if most MK fans vote with their wallets and not buy the DLC asap, it won't make WB think 'Hmm, we got greedy - we better tell NRS to put more characters in the next DLC', they'll probably say "MK doesn't sell as well as we like - time to put the IP on life support and do something else. Tell NRS to start working on the WWE game".

But like what do you see as the solution then? Clearly folks are unhappy, is the solution to just kinda say "we should be grateful for anything at all, so just pay for it and don't ask questions"?

Edit: I'm not saying you have to be wrong if you think that, if you're really super into MK and you can and will keep buying everything they put out just in the hopes that there's more of something then more power to you, that's not wrong. I just think that's not gonna hold true for a lot of people and it's an easy way to alienate your more committed playerbase.

 

[theotherguy]

The fact that there is day-1 DLC for these games in and of itself speaks to their incompleteness, not the idea that with the DLC that the later edition is just a "better model" down the line.

You may not have noticed but DLC has been a thing for the past 15 odd years. You can call it incomplete, greediness, unfair, whatever - it's now the most common sales model and a way to keep games alive after their initial release. We're no longer in the early 90s where once a game is released the dev's wash their hands of it.

If you want to live in that fantasy world, wait 1-2years after whatever games you play are released and then get the "ultimate" edition and enjoy your time with it.

The reason that your analogy doesn't make sense is that the game's new patches and editions aren't strictly speaking a "new model." This is literally the exact product that we paid top dollar for up front, but with changes that correct older problems.

Both analogies are off the mark and probably not the best using cars... but - It's actually like buying a car as advertised today, then a while later they have a deal where you get bigger rims, better sound system, prestige paint, sunroof and window tint for a better price.

You can't get the shits at something coming out later that is cheaper and/or better when you made the choice to buy that item as it was at that point in time. That's all there is to it.

To say that you paid more for less is a bullshit argument, because at that time there was no more. You can't try and justify your reasoning now in hindsight knowing what we now know. If that was the case everyone would be waiting for the ultimate edition... and we know that will never, ever, ever happen no matter how much people think that the game is overpriced at launch.

 

[Juxtapose]

The problem is that publishers see it black and white like that.

Mass Effect Andromeda had a goal of 5 million units and it sold 2.5 million in the first few months. That didn't make EA reconsider how to approach the sequel, or how to better implement DLC. They flat out cancelled story DLC and put the IP on life support. Whether we like it or not, publishers work like that. They get greedy with the IP and want higher and higher sales numbers with any new iteration of the IP. If it doesn't meet their targets, they kill off the IP. It happened with Mass Effect, it happened with Dead Space, it happens with all AAA IPs.

That is why I believe that if most MK fans vote with their wallets and not buy the DLC asap, it won't make WB think 'Hmm, we got greedy - we better tell NRS to put more characters in the next DLC', they'll probably say "MK doesn't sell as well as we like - time to put the IP on life support and do something else. Tell NRS to start working on the WWE game".

Very good points, and excellent examples of Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Dead Space.

The major difference I'd like to point out though is those examples focus on the main games, while "Aftermath" is a DLC expansion.

Mortal Kombat 11 is the best selling game in the franchise and has done extremely well for Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment. If "Aftermath" sells poorly, they won't shelf the franchise (realistically), they'll instead likely not bother with additional Story Expansions as DLC and focus on skins and characters that do sell, more traditional Kombat Packs, so to speak.

 

[Marinjuana]

Almost everyone in this thread is a complete moron.

Aftermath is tremendous value at $40usd

• 100% Free Update
  • Free Stages
  • Free Friendships
  • Free Stage Fatalities
• 3 Characters 8,8,8 (24)
• 1 Story Mode (10)
• 3 Skins Packs 2, 2, 2 (6)

How can anyone think different... I just made those ratios up.. but we are talking

• 5-10 bucks a Character
• 10-15 for story mode
• 1-5 for the skin packs.

Anyone saying this DLC is over priced is just an absolute example of cancel culture and gamer entitlement. You do not think they should be allowed to charge 10 fucking dollars for all those of employees working full time for MONTHS and paying those named actors all that cash for making the new story mode?.. You do not think it is worth 2 bucks a skin pack for those artists, or 8 bucks for a character that takes literally around a year to be produced? Hire warehouse of motion capture equipment, actors and more?

How much money do you make in a year? What exactly do you think 40 bucks is worth in the real world. I bet you all spent more than that last time you went to a coffee shop to get a long black and sandwich for you and your wife.

It is just unbelievable to me, not only how selfish and self important some gamers are, thinking that companies should make AAA games but then charge literally nothing for them, I mean that is just pathetic... but the complete lack of understanding how the world works and the amount of money it takes to make this kind of content also makes these people look so stupid. I mean, ridiculously fucking stupid. As in I am not even angry or taken back, I just feel sorry for you as it must be so hard to walk around and breath without accidentally stepping in front of a train type of stupid that these people must be. Seriously. Some of the posters in this thread need a goFundMe as you are actually handicapped and probably need help.

Also, if you do not want to pay, they still offered a bunch of cool free content!!

I mean WTF are you complaining about, morons.

How is this tremendous value when the base game had like 12x more content for just 60$? Trying to figure out that discrepancy with my moron brain

 

[jcbowie]

You may not have noticed but DLC has been a thing for the past 15 odd years. You can call it incomplete, greediness, unfair, whatever - it's now the most common sales model and a way to keep games alive after their initial release. We're no longer in the early 90s where once a game is released the dev's wash their hands of it.

If you want to live in that fantasy world, wait 1-2years after whatever games you play are released and then get the "ultimate" edition and enjoy your time with it.

DLC has been a thing for a long time, yeah. However, you may not have noticed this but we as videogame consumers have been complacent with it degrading from fun extra content that comes down the line after a complete game experience to now launch content that was clearly part of the base game's development but has been arbitrarily severed from the base game. This is only a "fantasy world" because people never did anything about it and, for some reason, in threads like this those same people are insisting that you can't even talk about it, much less do anything. This is to not mention how blatantly exploitative it is to have that arbitrarily lopped-off content AND later DLC AND microtransactions to even access certain things in the base game. Come on man, don't pretend like we have to be okay with this, that's just foolish.

Both analogies are off the mark and probably not the best using cars... but - It's actually like buying a car as advertised today, then a while later they have a deal where you get bigger rims, better sound system, prestige paint, sunroof and window tint for a better price.

You can't get the shits at something coming out later that is cheaper and/or better when you made the choice to buy that item as it was at that point in time. That's all there is to it.

To say that you paid more for less is a bullshit argument, because at that time there was no more. You can't try and justify your reasoning now in hindsight knowing what we now know. If that was the case everyone would be waiting for the ultimate edition... and we know that will never, ever, ever happen no matter how much people think that the game is overpriced at launch.

I fundamentally disagree with this bad analogy of the new edition of the game as a separate product that is "different" from what we already own. The dev cycle literally changes the product that we already paid for. Hell yeah I can suggest that it might be fair to incentivize early buying if you expect and want people to keep buying launch titles that way. It's easy to say "well it's worked out for WB so far," which is a shitty normative case on the face of it, but even in a realistic way you can't possibly say "and that means it's definitely gonna work forever." That's absurd.

Also, what's a real bullshit argument is saying that there was no more content at launch, anyone with eyes can tell that there was. Shao Kahn was arbitrarily walled off despite being ready at launch, they announced DLC literally from the first day of release and I'm honestly hesitant to believe that some of it wasn't ready for release at the time, and from day one they've been pushing microtransactions to even access things that are in the base game. Nah, saying that you must have known how this pricing model would work from day one smacks more of hindsight than any complaint about inadequacy of value.

I cannot emphasize enough that it's really stupid to say that "you can't complain now" just because the real vote it with your wallet, there is literally no reason you can't do both.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

How is this tremendous value when the base game had like 12x more content for just 60$? Trying to figure out that discrepancy with my moron brain

No, you're just too stupid. Try to avoid train tracks please.

 

[Nickolaidas]

But like what do you see as the solution then? Clearly folks are unhappy, is the solution to just kinda say "we should be grateful for anything at all, so just pay for it and don't ask questions"?

Honestly? Yeah. Those things work exactly like our beloved economic capitalistic bubbles. They grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they go POOF! And they burst.

MK games are going to have more and more content at more and more disproportionate prices compared to their value (I fully expect at some point to see 6 characters DLC at 60$ in MK12) until WB/NRS will fuck up to the point that the next MK will sell less than the previous one, and then MK will be put on ice for 5-10 years.

So you have two choices. You either

A) kill MK like us Resident Evil fans killed RE by refusing to buy RE6 in the amounts Capcom wanted - making them kill the IP for a few years until they 'rebooted' with RE7 ...

… or B) Keep buying more and more content on day one at more and more disproportionate prices and ensuring the MK franchise won't die.

Which eventually will, imo.

 

[jcbowie]

Honestly? Yeah. Those things work exactly like our beloved economic capitalistic bubbles. They grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they go POOF! And they burst.

MK games are going to have more and more content at more and more disproportionate prices compared to their value (I fully expect at some point to see 6 characters DLC at 60$ in MK12) until WB/NRS will fuck up to the point that the next MK will sell less than the previous one, and then MK will be put on ice for 5-10 years.

So you have two choices. You either

A) kill MK like us Resident Evil fans killed RE by refusing to buy RE6 in the amounts Capcom wanted - making them kill the IP for a few years until they 'rebooted' with RE7 ...

… or B) Keep buying more and more content on day one at more and more disproportionate prices and ensuring the MK franchise won't die.

Which eventually will, imo.

I get what you're saying, I just really don't like this suggestion that it's somehow the fans' "fault" for supporting a series and then losing enthusiasm which gets support withdrawn. It's the fault of devs and publishers that the game is in a state that more people don't like, just like RE6, but it's the fans who suffer.

Although I guess the upshot is that if it ends up like Resident Evil, RE7 I thought was super fun and better than 6 imo? So who knows what happens when the bubble bursts.

 

[Juxtapose]

Honestly? Yeah. Those things work exactly like our beloved economic capitalistic bubbles. They grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they go POOF! And they burst.

MK games are going to have more and more content at more and more disproportionate prices compared to their value (I fully expect at some point to see 6 characters DLC at 60$ in MK12) until WB/NRS will fuck up to the point that the next MK will sell less than the previous one, and then MK will be put on ice for 5-10 years.

So you have two choices. You either

A) kill MK like us Resident Evil fans killed RE by refusing to buy RE6 in the amounts Capcom wanted - making them kill the IP for a few years until they 'rebooted' with RE7 ...

… or B) Keep buying more and more content on day one at more and more disproportionate prices and ensuring the MK franchise won't die.

Which eventually will, imo.

I maintain voting with your wallet is the best option. If the content is priced good for you, go for it. If not, wait for a sale. If you're not interested at all or are extremely unhappy with the business practices of Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, then do not buy their products at all. Ever.

 

[Ck AeroVoid]

TLDR THIS ENTIRE THREAD
DON"T LIKE? DON'T COMPLAIN AND MOVE ON, PLAY SOMETHING ELSE
LIKE IT? KEEP IT
WANNA WAIT FOR SALE? SHUT IT AND STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PRICE

 

[theotherguy]

Shao Kahn was arbitrarily walled off despite being ready at launch

It's called marketing. It's an incentive to buy the game early. There was literally nothing stopping people from getting the SK DLC day1 if they wanted to pre-order.

This isn't about cutting things off, it's about getting people to buy the game. Again, that is a choice for the buyer.

extra content that comes down the line after a complete game experience to now launch content that was clearly part of the base game's development but has been arbitrarily severed from the base game.

That may be true, but i'd say more than likely game development has changed to account for this from day 1. They know overall where they want to be, and then plan and work in stages to have the release and subsequent DLC available at the right time. That makes more sense than finishing the game then chop chop chop DLC.

Regardless it's the new normal.

Option B is we waited till 2021 for MK11 [the real uncut version] to have been released. Then everyone complains because they still feel it's unfinished and the next game is 5 years away because of the amount of time between games. Then everyone gets bored in 6months anyway and complains that NRS doesn't support their games.

 

[jcbowie]

It's called marketing. It's an incentive to buy the game early. There was literally nothing stopping people from getting the SK DLC day1 if they wanted to pre-order.

This isn't about cutting things off, it's about getting people to buy the game. Again, that is a choice for the buyer.



That may be true, but i'd say more than likely game development has changed to account for this from day 1. They know overall where they want to be, and then plan and work in stages to have the release and subsequent DLC available at the right time. That makes more sense than finishing the game then chop chop chop DLC.

Regardless it's the new normal.

Option B is we waited till 2021 for MK11 [the real uncut version] to have been released. Then everyone complains because they still feel it's unfinished and the next game is 5 years away because of the amount of time between games. Then everyone gets bored in 6months anyway and complains that NRS doesn't support their games.

It's actually called having finalized parts of a game that are not included for the purpose of marketing. No one in this entire thread is saying that there is no reason for how the pricing has been structured, no one misunderstands that there is a way that WB is increasing revenue by pricing things this way. These are things that no one is saying.

What they want is more incentive for people who buy at launch. What they want is marketing based on quality, not coercion based on the fact that they have content but will obtusely leave it out on launch. It is not unreasonable to suggest that there should be such an incentive or that the launch product should be complete.

Accepting that this model is the new normal and that therefore it must be the new normal is complacent. Everyone need not be so.

Whether or not people feel the "final" version down the line is really complete is utterly dependent on the devs and publisher being competent. If it's incomplete, then people will feel like it's incomplete. If it's complete, then people will feel like it's complete. Pretending that it's on the fans is backwards.

 

[craftycheese]

They cant possibly do a worse job than 2K lmao

Nrs made that phone game WWE immortals that was neat. They could just make it something like that again.

Or they could find a way to remake the WrestleMania arcade game. I'm cool with either.

 

[Nickolaidas]

I get what you're saying, I just really don't like this suggestion that it's somehow the fans' "fault" for supporting a series and then losing enthusiasm which gets support withdrawn. It's the fault of devs and publishers that the game is in a state that more people don't like, just like RE6, but it's the fans who suffer.

There are so many factors on why a game will succeed and fail, and it isn't easy to pin them all to a specific target (WB, NRS, the fans)

Is it NRS' fault if the fans are dissatisfied with the number of guests if WB is the one who forces them on NRS?
Is it WB's fault if NRS decided to put Kano and not Mileena in MK11 and all Mileena fans said 'Screw you, you left my fave char out - not buying this'?
Is it the fans fault if NRS doesn't know how to make the Towers of Time interesting to all MK players?

Everyone is at fault - no one is at fault. In the end, it's a toy, not a social event or a political movement.

WB (like most EA-like companies) make a projection of how many units an AAA game (MK in this case) must sell within the first … quarter, let's say. Due to numerous factors I cannot even begin to number and comprehend (because I'm not an analyst), they decide on a sales number and consider the product a success if it reaches this number, and a failure if it doesn't. They don't care if the consumers didn't buy it because Mileena wasn't in it, or because the Towers of Time were boring and tedious for players who only cared about online modes. And we know they don't care because they don't ask.

A few weeks after Resident Evil 3 Remake came out, Capcom uploaded a form asking the customers for input:

• What did you like most about Resident Evil 3?
• Did you find the game long, or short?
• Was it scary?
• Did you like the multiplayer mode?
• What would you change?
• Where did you think the game was lacking?
• Any final comments?
• Thank you!

This is the attitude of a company who tries to see what its fans want, in order to give it to them and make more money.

Did you see WB do something like that? Asking the fans for input? What did they like? What they didn't like? No. Because they don't care. They leave it at NRS to figure out what we want. All the while not letting them talk to the fans, no communication whatsoever, radio silence, nothing. So the only way to communicate with NRS is to pester Boon on twitter with "WHERZMAHLEEEENAAAAA" in every single tweet that he posts (as if he's some kind of customer support line), or buy the product.

 

[ShepherdOfFire]

Do you guys have shares in WB or something ? Because it's really weird to see people defending this kind of anti-consumer economic practices like that.

It might be weird to you, but some people want to buy products that are worth their prices in both quality and quantity.

If people don't voice their discontent, then they'll keep asking more money for less work again and again and again. There are some many exemples nowadays of cultural products being released with the bare minimum efforts from the companies because nobody complained so the standards have been lowered so much they could charge the same price or even more for less quality and/or quantity within the product. Take the film industry, the writing became so lazy it is almost impossible to see a good film in the theaters nowadays. It's the same for video games.
One day the standards will be so low they'll release a fighting game with 16 characters in the base roster and some people won't even see the problem. Oops nevermind we already crossed that line.

What's the limit for you ? Will you ever complain about a product that's too expensive for the amount of content delivered or you'll just keep lowering your standards to please the shareholders of big companies ?

 

[Professor Oak]

Condescending as fuck for absolutely no reason.

Since you're so good at math lets do some more, $60 = 25 characters, a story mode, krypt, and an entire functional game. $40 = 3 character, 3 skin packs, and a story mode that will probably be shorter than the base game.

No, $40 isn't a lot of money in the real world but even looking at it next to MK11 its self, it isn't a "tremendous value". If you think its worth the money that's cool but you're being such an obnoxious dickhead for absolutely no reason, nobody cares how much money you make or if you wipe your ass with $40, thats not the point of questioning the value.

Dude, fuck Jynks. He has always clearly been a mark for himself and a complete ass to every one else. He thinks it’s funny, and to like 5 people it may be, but just ignore him and sleep easy knowing even his closest friends likely talk shit behind his back. Calls a whole group of people Morons for disagreeing. Sheesh. Must take huge balls to be so bold on the internet.

 

[Nickolaidas]

Now, on another note, the NRS fanbase has time and again been accused of being toxic (I've even said this myself a couple of times), but really … is the toxicity the result of entitled spoiled assholes? Or is it something more?



Read this personal anecdote if you have the time …

Twenty years ago, my big brother was a hardcore fan of a soccer manager game on PC, and at some point emailed the devs and asked them to become an associate by making the stats for the players of the Greek teams, because the devs didn't have anyone in the know in my country - so they had the stats for the Greek soccer players completely randomized. They said yes.

My brother fixed the database of the Greek players to stats more appropriate to their real abilities and was in charge of maintaining and re-valuating the stats according to the players' real-life soccer skills.

Anyway, a few months later my brother was drafted to the Greek army and gave me access to his email account in case the devs wanted something from him to do - and I would do it in his stead. One day, I received an email from the devs, telling me (actually were telling my brother) that some Greek fans were really, REALLY hostile in the forums of the game. Apparently the fans were complaining about lack of communication, the devs ignoring them, complaining that the stats of the Greek teams being wrong and my brother favoring other teams which didn't fare good the passing year, and so on.

I phoned my brother in the army and told him about the problem with the fans. He sighed and asked me - as a favor - to pretend I'm him and speak on his behalf on the forums. And I did just that. I registered on the forums, asked the fans what their problems were, assured them I would look into it, answered a few questions I could answer myself and the toxic fans became a lot calmer. My brother ended up taking a couple of them as volunteers to assist him in fine-tuning the teams and he had a much more civilized communication with them for the months that followed, before leaving the dev team to become a doctor.



Now, the moral of the story: While I do believe that the NRS fanbase is toxic, some of the blame falls to NRS and WB for closing the shutters and not communicating with the fans. Imagine an NRS dev coming here and making a poll "Which MK characters would you like to see in MK12?" and when MK12 comes true, the top 15 names in the poll are 100% in the roster. Would the fans complain about the roster missing favorites? Would they say that NRS 'never listens'? I don't think so.

Toxicity comes from displeasure. Displeasure comes when the fans don't get what they want. Fans not getting what they want means that publishers and devs do not listen.

Or at least, devs only listen to a couple of popular YouTubers like Angry Joe and Maximilian - which I love, but they do not represent the entire fanbase.




… long post.

 

[Professor Oak]

I’m calling it now, the next MK will be Shaolin Monks 2, because the casual fan base cares about stories and dressing up their character. And let’s be real, fighting games don’t sell as well as RPGs. They’re gathering data selling us story content.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I’m calling it now, the next MK will be Shaolin Monks 2, because the casual fan base cares about stories and dressing up their character. And let’s be real, fighting games don’t sell as well as RPGs. They’re gathering data selling us story content.

Id play an MK with some light RPG elements, like Assassins Creed Origins / Shadow of War as Scorpion or someone would kick ass. Scorpion or Sub-Zero would be the best characters for an RPG, they could easily have separate skill trees based on stealth, their weapons, and their powers.