NRS Speaks and Confirms MK11 is Officially Done

[Wigy]

btw how many balance patches did we get through out that "longest supported game for a whole ass 2 years my dude" period?

I hope ppl would take this as a learning experience before throwing money at the next preorder.

Just about all of them did diddly squat to change the game as well.

 

[kingjolly]

Do you know what was the cost cap of each of these games?

No idea. I may be wrong...but I highly doubt Tekken 7 is more profitable than Mk. Tekken is a game that caters mainly towards competitors, whereas Mk has a huge casual audience, which far outweighs the competitive scene.

 

[DethRaze]

btw how many balance patches did we get through out that "longest supported game for a whole ass 2 years my dude" period?

I hope ppl would take this as a learning experience before throwing money at the next preorder.

This is my thing right here. The only true additions to this game were new characters, skins, and a story expansion. Not a bad thing, because it's more than MKX got. But they never cared to truly change how we PLAY the damn game. 3rd variations were just customs we couldn't use before. Armor breakers just tweaked how certain moves function, but to me they seemed rushed since some characters got shafted in this aspect. Customs, again, were already in the game they just moved it to another set of modes. But they didn't bother to balance customs, and there are even banned moves that now will never see ranked (RIP killer clot). But this game plays exactly how it did in April 2019.

I'm not giving this company a cent more of my money (Pre-ordered and all dlc for MK11) until I see that they are gonna be better about communication in the future. I held out hope for "that one big balance" just to get blue balled. Ambitious title, but no follow through.

 

[Juggs]

You're missing the point. You're looking from competitive player perspective and not the corpo/money perspective which runs gaming (and other) industry.

The way you make patches and prioritize them is almost universal and goes like this:

- you patch game breaking stuff (crashing, things that prevent your customers from finishing the game, obvious major visual/sound bugs etc..) which will impact reviews and if left alone longer - selling numbers

- you patch stuff which is annoying to your 95% of playerbase (casuals) and will annoy them so they wont buy your DLC or/and next game. Best example for MK 11 would the insane Krypt grind when the game was released and it was patched like the first thing they did coz that went public very fast and even big media outlet picked up on it

- you patch the stuff you know isn't right, mostly minor things which were obvious even at internal alpha and beta testing but you didn't have time to fix it before game release deadline, this doesn't affect your selling numbers in first months of game release but it will get noticed sooner or later and will impact the bottom line in a small way

- lastly you do or you don't do other things which doesn't really impact your bottom line in any significant way and those are the balance patches, small glitches (usually visual, etc...). They usually cost you money and in most cases you dont even brake even on those things in long run coz in reality it affects like 1% of people who bought the game



There are several ways to aproach game balancing and NRS tried at least some of them; even trying to tune everything like they did it with MK X. This time they took aproach of small changes and granted it didn't work well for them but again it's not a big deal for them. They make money from casuals not from competitive players. So nobody at NRS or WB/ATT will loose sleep coz of Cetrion and Joker and Kabal and Jaqui moping most of the cast "free". It's an afterthought, if it worked - great but if it doesn't - no problem, it's not like they're loosing money on this (at least not in a way it would impact their bottom line).



For every 10 competitive player they make happy with long term support they can make 10000 casual players happy doing another DLC and/or making new game instead. You always allocate your resources where the (big) money is. That's just how it works.



While true the simple truth is - fixing hitbox issues, especially breathing hitbox issues, female hitbox is a lot of work, makes 0 sense for them to fix it when it only impacts... again... 1% of their customers (competitive players). That's just the sad reality of... well simple math really.



They're in the bussines of making money which doesn't equal to making the best games. They do "good enough" for most of their customers and this works well for them coz the bottom line is great. No need to change anything while this works like a charm for them.

In general when you think about gaming industry and you think big titles / big companies always start with "what will make them the MOST money and will cost them as little as possible" and go from there, coz that is like a mantra in big corporations and to be fair that is why they're so sucessfull. This isn't a good recipe for a great game for all the players but it's the best possible recipe for a profitable bussines and in the end... that exactly what gaming (and other) industry is... a bussines.

I’ve attempted to explain this so many times. This is probably better than my attempts at explaining it, definitely more detailed. I usually try to help people understand why NRS is a little different when it comes to these things vs other fighting game companies as well.

 

[theotherguy]

Just about all of them did diddly squat to change the game as well.

That's based on the assumption they wanted to change it. People seem to be confused between what they want, and what the dev's wanted/vision was. Given there were no major changes, to me, it shows that they were tweaking the game to be closer to what they originally envisioned rather than wanting to move the game in a different direction.

The leadership change on SFV sort of indicates this as well. While Ono was in charge SFV seemed to stay on the same track with minor improvements. Once he was gone the game was drastically changed. Either he was blocking changes the designers wanted, or they used that as an opportunity to shake things up to show they're doing things differently now.

Also, Tom likes to express the view that it was too hard to change things due to the mechanics, which is a fair assumption - but that's all it is. I can just as easily say it's because they didn't want to change it. The only fact is that we'll never know what the actual reasons were until someone spills the beans on what happened after Ultimate was released.

I'm of the belief that more was supposed to happen after ultimate, be it a few more characters and/or a substantial patch, but covid + the AT&T/Discovery merger happened at the worst time screwing up their plans. That could also explain the radio silence after Ultimate to now, as they couldn't announce anything because they didn't know where they stood. Unfortunately I don't think NRS is in a position where they can state what happened, especially if it makes WB look bad.

Then again, maybe this was the plan all along.

 

[Deleted member 5032]

I think it's pretty amazing that the poll is perfectly split 3 ways, at 43 votes each. Shows just how split everyone is about this game. It's like that dress that no one could decide what color it was lol.

 

[Swindle]

I think it's pretty amazing that the poll is perfectly split 3 ways, at 43 votes each. Shows just how split everyone is about this game. It's like that chair that no one could decide was blue or green a while back lol.

It was bleen.

 

[xWildx]

Technically, it shows that the majority of the community doesn’t give a damn about the game or are actually happy it’s dead lol

 

[Juxtapose]

I watched this video from Maximlilian Dood today, and it was pretty good.

Talked about the support for the game, community tendencies, and such:

 

[armani]

TLDR: I feel like MK11 was sold to us like a MLM Scheme, feels like a new car with no features. Makes me believe that NRS doesn’t own their franchise fully cause they’re stuck in the WB Corporate Hamster Wheel.

One of the biggest red flags during the promotional rollout for the game, specifically the Kombat Kasts is how little Tyler and Derek really knew about the mechanics of the game. It all kind of fell on Stephanie’s shoulders when it came to presenting them. Like if you go back and watch them again they made the most simplistic shit hype, and presented it under the guise of “you’ll see more cool stuff when the game comes out!” which was a lie in some regards. Aesthetics aside (cause MK11 looks beautiful) they realllllly sold the game in an over promised but under delivered state. The game is like a collection of fast looking cars with LED lights and a nice sound systems, but when you drive you find out they’re all 2-cyl base models with different colors and spoilers. Also, you can’t go over a certain speed limit, with some cars feeling like they’re stuck in mud. And you won’t have full access to unlock all of the cars upgrades cause of a busted krypt that they (or Derek) don’t want to fix fully.

With Stephanie being an ex MK9 tournament player doing QA and having close proximity with Tyler, a “community manager” there would’ve been more of an open discussion regarding balance and tweaks that would help quality of life and allow for more freedom in-game. In reality though we’re only but a small sample size in comparison to the millions of people who are enjoying the game just fine so I guess that continuing to tweak MK11 wasn’t something that interested them in the long term. I’m certain that they got directive from WB Games to leave the game alone because they’ve already made good money off of it. Which raises the question, does Ed Boon really give a shit about the game? Is he being tight lipped about everything cause that’s just who he is OR is he just poor at making contractual decisions. It makes no sense that him and NRS are continuing to pioneer video games, yet it appears that they don't even want to make this game the best game it can be. You have franchises like Tekken and Street Fighter who are still going hard for their fans 3+ years later.

Maybe NRS has to go through ridiculous lengths now to get things approved for tweaks and patches. Maybe the Tanya-Alien MKX Era made WB execs even more difficult to work with due to the backlash NRS got (which could be the competitive community’s fault lol). Maybe NRS doesn’t have a high enough stake in their own damn game to create at will. NRS’ notorious 1.5 year development cycles reflect this. After MK9 they got an opportunity to make Injustice, and then after that things went downhill imo. I felt like Injustice 2 was a little cash grabby, but MK11 is superrr obvious.

Anyways. I just had hope for the game because with examples like No Man’s Sky and Street Fighter V it’s definitely possible for a developer to rebound from a not so good starting point in the games life. But I don’t think they have the liberty to really support games fully with the constraints they’re working in. WB and NRS know that as a franchise Mortal Kombat is going to do good regardless based off of prior success, so they did just enough with the gameplay to get by and focused mainly on visuals. It doesn’t feel like they fleshed out the gameplay, nor does it feel like they tested the Krypt, nor did it feel like they hired editors for the story.

Idk if vibrant would be the word cause it’s literally a blood and gore fest but - with how vibrant MK11 looks it’s interesting how many things NRS ended up getting wrong this go round.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

TLDR: I feel like MK11 was sold to us like a MLM Scheme, feels like a new car with no features. Makes me believe that NRS doesn’t own their franchise fully cause they’re stuck in the WB Corporate Hamster Wheel.

One of the biggest red flags during the promotional rollout for the game, specifically the Kombat Kasts is how little Tyler and Derek really knew about the mechanics of the game. It all kind of fell on Stephanie’s shoulders when it came to presenting them. Like if you go back and watch them again they made the most simplistic shit hype, and presented it under the guise of “you’ll see more cool stuff when the game comes out!” which was a lie in some regards. Aesthetics aside (cause MK11 looks beautiful) they realllllly sold the game in an over promised but under delivered state. The game is like a collection of fast looking cars with LED lights and a nice sound systems, but when you drive you find out they’re all 2-cyl base models with different colors and spoilers. Also, you can’t go over a certain speed limit, with some cars feeling like they’re stuck in mud. And you won’t have full access to unlock all of the cars upgrades cause of a busted krypt that they (or Derek) don’t want to fix fully.

With Stephanie being an ex MK9 tournament player doing QA and having close proximity with Tyler, a “community manager” there would’ve been more of an open discussion regarding balance and tweaks that would help quality of life and allow for more freedom in-game. In reality though we’re only but a small sample size in comparison to the millions of people who are enjoying the game just fine so I guess that continuing to tweak MK11 wasn’t something that interested them in the long term. I’m certain that they got directive from WB Games to leave the game alone because they’ve already made good money off of it. Which raises the question, does Ed Boon really give a shit about the game? Is he being tight lipped about everything cause that’s just who he is OR is he just poor at making contractual decisions. It makes no sense that him and NRS are continuing to pioneer video games, yet it appears that they don't even want to make this game the best game it can be. You have franchises like Tekken and Street Fighter who are still going hard for their fans 3+ years later.

Maybe NRS has to go through ridiculous lengths now to get things approved for tweaks and patches. Maybe the Tanya-Alien MKX Era made WB execs even more difficult to work with due to the backlash NRS got (which could be the competitive community’s fault lol). Maybe NRS doesn’t have a high enough stake in their own damn game to create at will. NRS’ notorious 1.5 year development cycles reflect this. After MK9 they got an opportunity to make Injustice, and then after that things went downhill imo. I felt like Injustice 2 was a little cash grabby, but MK11 is superrr obvious.

Anyways. I just had hope for the game because with examples like No Man’s Sky and Street Fighter V it’s definitely possible for a developer to rebound from a not so good starting point in the games life. But I don’t think they have the liberty to really support games fully with the constraints they’re working in. WB and NRS know that as a franchise Mortal Kombat is going to do good regardless based off of prior success, so they did just enough with the gameplay to get by and focused mainly on visuals. It doesn’t feel like they fleshed out the gameplay, nor does it feel like they tested the Krypt, nor did it feel like they hired editors for the story.

Idk if vibrant would be the word cause it’s literally a blood and gore fest but - with how vibrant MK11 looks it’s interesting how many things NRS ended up getting wrong this go round.

A few points on this:

1. Mortal Kombat has always been on a 2-year development cycle, ever since the very first games, long before WB was involved. This is the first time they've broken it and are taking longer than 2 years to release the next game. This obviously isn't going to mirror the dev cycles of games that go 6-8 years between releases, but it's been the franchise's MO to this point. So it's probably not a great comparison.
2. This is the same company that overhauled the entire netcode of MKX mid-game. They are not the kind of company who just doesn't want to improve games, nor are they simply about a cash grab, as they'd already sold 10M copies of MKX, or somewhere around that, before rollback was added in. They could have easily just said "Eh, wait for the next game" but they didn't, and even ran a public beta to test it out. I think it's a little strange to conclude that COVID/staff departures didn't have anything to do with this, and that they simply just don't care about the game.
3. Stephanie doesn't do game balance, Derek mainly works with stuff like the the single player and initial character designs, and Tyler's responsibility is neither. They're not going to speculate on potential balance changes live on air (where people will write down/analyze every word and take it as gospel) when none of them are involved with the game balance.

I think we're all disappointed by this, and I think it'd help a lot to open up communication on their end — but some of the conclusions that people are jumping to as if COVID never happened and the team is still at full strength are pretty wild.

 

[Juxtapose]

Mortal Kombat has always been on a 2-year development cycle,

Sometimes even less! There was a period where Midway was doing a game a year, or they were at least planning on it. Under NetherRealm Studios and Warner Brothers Games, the life cycles have been about two years, but the development cycles have been far less.

Mortal Kombat (2011) released in April 2011, and Freddy release in August 2011 as I recall. That ended the game's development cycle. I believe there was one more patch after that as well, but a patch isn't a development cycle.

Mortal Kombat X released in April 2015, and Kombat Pack 2 and the XL content released in January 2016 as I recall (or was it February? It took until October 2016 to hit PC, which is what I was playing on at the time). We got the Cosplay Skinpack shortly after, and that ended the game's development cycle. We got a few more patches after that, the last being in Oct. 2016, I believe.

Both games had a development cycle, and a support cycle, of less than two years.

 

[Juxtapose]

An associate of mine over on the Killer Instinct forum posted this in relation to the end-of-support tweet, and I thought it pretty on point:

"Just because it’s on my mind, and related to the discussion of future KI and Phil Spencer’s recent quote. I think we all have a very mistaken idea that when companies or individuals from large organizations make these statements they are simply talking to us like a real human might talk to another. But the reality is they are communicating to a huge audience filled with thousands of really passionate fans who overreact and create a backlash to everything they say. So these communications are anything but casual. They are designed to minimize the volume and duration of internet controversy so the company can move on about its business. It’s easy to be critical of that, on behalf of the “fans,” because we identify ourselves as fans and we, as individuals, deserve an honest account of what’s really going on. But if you look at the collective fandom of MK (and KI) for that matter, those people are crazy. They hate everything and are generally toxic to deal with. If there’s anything I learned from the KI development experience it’s that developers should not interact with the fan base. It isn’t worth it. "

 

[theotherguy]

But if you look at the collective fandom of MK (and KI) for that matter, those people are crazy. They hate everything and are generally toxic to deal with

I'm not sure if they were the right words to use, seems a little excessive... and i don't know if making out the majority fit into those terms is really fair. I think the biggest problem is those that complain seem to be the loudest regardless if they're a minority.

It's definitely interesting take on developer/customer interactions though.

 

[Juxtapose]

I'm not sure if they were the right words to use, seems a little excessive... and i don't know if making out the majority fit into those terms is really fair. I think the biggest problem is those that complain seem to be the loudest regardless if they're a minority.

It's definitely interesting take on developer/customer interactions though.

Yes, I agree that that part is more of a blanket statement and a generalization, but I also find there's truth to it. And not just for those games, but for every game, it seems.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I'm not sure if they were the right words to use, seems a little excessive... and i don't know if making out the majority fit into those terms is really fair. I think the biggest problem is those that complain seem to be the loudest regardless if they're a minority.

It's definitely interesting take on developer/customer interactions though.

I've personally been here through:

1. "MK9 is broken and we don't have money for tournaments because NRS doesn't support the FGC"
2. "Injustice isn't MK enough, when's MK?"
3. "MKX will go down in history as the worst of the series, when's Injustice?"
4. "Injustice 2 is boring and dead, when's MK again?"
5. "Love MKX and Injustice 2 was great but MK11 is the worst fighting game ever made, when's the next game?"

 

[Pizza]

Killer Instinct fandom toxic? what?

 

[Juxtapose]

Killer Instinct fandom toxic? what?

Back around 2016/2017, it was really bad, apparently. Iron Galaxy was very open with the fan base about balance decisions and reasoning, but it backfired and things got horribly nasty.

Or so I've been told, as I missed all of that. My friend I quoted above, he was around for that.

 

[Gooberking]

Back around 2016/2017, it was really bad, apparently. Iron Galaxy was very open with the fan base about balance decisions and reasoning, but it backfired and things got horribly nasty.

Or so I've been told, as I missed all of that. My friend I quoted above, he was around for that.

I'm sure you've personally seen it but there is a really interesting, but short window into the developer perspective in the KI documentary where Keits talks about how they quietly gathered data about Jago when people started complaining about his instinct health regen. How they dealt with it totally differently than how people wanted and why.

It's a one sided perspective but it sounded like people were mad before hand, and mad after but in time sounds like he was confident it was the correct balancing decision based on a serious weighing of information that people had no idea actually was done. It's just one of those things that stuck with me as being super interesting and thought provoking; even as short a story as it was.

 

[Marinjuana]

That moment where they were going over KI balance changes and the Mummy player said he was dropping the character comes to mind. They would grant their top players an audience for patch notes releases and go through the changes one by one, talking about why they did what they did. Totally over the top fan service so any toxicity was hella unwarranted. I also remember giving them feedback on a survey and they legit did everything I asked for(more single player stuff, more lore, more awesomely unique DLC characters).

On another note of player toxicity.. I played a ton of Wow a few years back and that community was complete ass when it came to whining about the game. The game had quality issues and changed a lot throughout its life but people would just make the most vapous and arbitrary complaints. "My class has no identity!!!" They would make a change that people called for, and then everyone would bitch to change it back.. gamers don't know what they want. You can't ask me how they movie I'm watching should end, that's the director's job

I don't blame developers for handling their fanbases rather than communicating with them. Some people on here really want to give it to NRS over their communication and I get that but they've literally gotten death threats over characters. These sub-human social media "communities" often don't earn it

 

[Gooberking]

That moment where they were going over KI balance changes and the Mummy player said he was dropping the character comes to mind. They would grant their top players an audience for patch notes releases and go through the changes one by one, talking about why they did what they did. Totally over the top fan service so any toxicity was hella unwarranted. I also remember giving them feedback on a survey and they legit did everything I asked for(more single player stuff, more lore, more awesomely unique DLC characters).

On another note of player toxicity.. I played a ton of Wow a few years back and that community was complete ass when it came to whining about the game. The game had quality issues and changed a lot throughout its life but people would just make the most vapous and arbitrary complaints. "My class has no identity!!!" They would make a change that people called for, and then everyone would bitch to change it back.. gamers don't know what they want. You can't ask me how they movie I'm watching should end, that's the director's job

I don't blame developers for handling their fanbases rather than communicating with them. Some people on here really want to give it to NRS over their communication and I get that but they've literally gotten death threats over characters. These sub-human social media "communities" often don't earn it

I assume the player was F3 Sleep? I don't remember hearing much about how people felt but I did watch the change reveals and knew who everyone was. KI was a lot of fun to spectate and keep up on events wise, but not being a player I had no real idea how people felt about the game or balance.

All the reveal events were really cool to watch even not having any idea if the changes were good or bad things

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Here's the section about KI balance and how the community roasted the Iron Galaxy devs after they started communicating in detail about their patching process:

Keits goes into detail about why he calls having the game designers communicate directly with the community a "failed experiment".

 

[Juxtapose]

I'm sure you've personally seen it but there is a really interesting, but short window into the developer perspective in the KI documentary where Keits talks about how they quietly gathered data about Jago when people started complaining about his instinct health regen. How they dealt with it totally differently than how people wanted and why.

It's a one sided perspective but it sounded like people were mad before hand, and mad after but in time sounds like he was confident it was the correct balancing decision based on a serious weighing of information that people had no idea actually was done. It's just one of those things that stuck with me as being super interesting and thought provoking; even as short a story as it was.

Yup. It's a great documentary, and a great insiders look on a strong problem solving method.

... gamers don't know what they want.

I find this mostly to be true, sadly, and it's something I've seen get worse over the last decade-ish, not better.

 

[Marinjuana]

I assume the player was F3 Sleep? I don't remember hearing much about how people felt but I did watch the change reveals and knew who everyone was. KI was a lot of fun to spectate and keep up on events wise, but not being a player I had no real idea how people felt about the game or balance.

All the reveal events were really cool to watch even not having any idea if the changes were good or bad things

Yeah that I think that him.. it was funny. Was just watching the part with the season 3 reveal in the link Crimson posted. I was aware of the game but refused to buy it when it had so few characters but that season 3 reveal party was so next level that I watched and bought the game. Combo system never did quite click for me but loved watching the game, had fun playing different characters, still play Shadow Lords everyonce in a while

 

[theotherguy]

communicating in detail about their patching process:

I think this is in part why people get the shits, they don't know why NRS does things in their patches and you get responses like this:

Yep. And they failed a company to find a middleground. They did tiny breadcrumb patches with giant gaps.

I'm not sure how much of that KI info was known before that B2B doco, but the fact they said the complaining stopped afterwards says a lot.

As i've mentioned previously, the dev's patch the game to make their vision come true. Just because 10 people all think they could have done it better by doing it differently, doesn't necessarily mean what the dev's did was wrong. The KI example is perfect in showing that.

That's not to say there's things in MK11 that couldn't/shouldn't have been touched, but maybe they did look at them but went a different route for some reason.