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MK1 Invasions Mode: (It Sucks)

Afumba

Afumba

Kombatant
ZeroBG82 said:
This is true across the board, not just in Invasions. I laugh so hard every time the AI kills itself with Nitara's self-damaging buff. I fought against her 8-10 times in local versus mode today just to mess around with some different kameos and she killed herself easily 4-5 times. Messed up an attempt to see a new brutality while she was at it once too!
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True lol. Nitara is probably the worst in this regard.

Juggs said:
Had a long rant written out but it’s essentially saying the same thing I and others have already said.

Before any single player modes were even announced I said I hoped there wasn’t going to be a SP mode that was a boring grindfest with artificial difficulty like they had in MK11. And they not only made just that, it’s even WORSE than MK11’s Towers! If you can’t program the AI to actually be good, why even give us SP modes outside of the story mode and regular versus mode vs the AI? They would be MUUUCH better off having really fun SP modes as I mentioned earlier. Like they have had in the past. Like Chess Kombat, Motor Kombat, or even adding in arcade ports to classic MK games. They’ve done all of that in previous MK games, why are the SP modes 20x worse than they were over a decade ago?

Like if they wanted to go with this board game route, why not make it like Mario Party styled? Where in order to move forward you have to roll a dice in some way. They could’ve easily made this invasion mode fun if they actually made it like a board game in some way.

Anyway, that’s the last I’ll say about it. No reason to keep beating a dead horse. Just super disappointed. At least the actual gameplay is super good and fun. It feels like one of the most fun MK games competitively speaking that I’ve played in awhile. So I’m glad that they at least got something right with this game
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Exactly this... at the very least i expected something like a sidescroller event were you beat up mobs until you get to a boss fight, Double Dragon style. Its not that hard to come up with a few dozens short mini games and a few longer once if you really want to creat something good instead of a timesink. The fun aspect outside of VS was way better in older games. Its baffling.

Skins have the same problem... getting a skin feels worse every game due to all thosw ugly palettes. Palettes are not skins and are such a lazy thing... they shouldnt exist or all unlock with the Skin or ppl should be allowed to recolor the skin themselves.
 
Art Lean

Art Lean

Kombatant
Jdizzle31 said:
Can someone explain if there is invasion exclusive gear and how much of it I would need to play to get them
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Yes there is, most of it is in the store to buy with the earned season coins you receive just for playing the game, but not all of them are available in the store, including the big boss skin and variants of the tattooed sub-bosses.

However you'll need to play pretty much all of it to get it all, since it's not ever apparent where you'll receive skins from anywhere other than some clue-hidden chests, the portal chests and the boss fights (which usually aren't obvious they're boss fights either).
 
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Juxtapose

Juxtapose

Master
Art Lean said:
Soooo... what do I do for the next 45 days then beyond just leveling up characters? :eek:
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Versus AI/Training Mode.

Swindle said:
Completed Kitana’s 35 levels of mastery, thinking that her awesome Evil skin from the end of story mode must be in there…
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Interesting. I'm working on Masteries as well, though only around Level 10. So no one knows where to get the "Dark Kitana" skin, for example? How about the proper palette for Titan Kitana?

I also wish the Kustomize Menu would properly indicate who has new stuff. I always have the pip showing on the main menu because someone has something new, but no pips are showing in the Kustomize menu itself.
 
Art Lean

Art Lean

Kombatant
Ptehu said:
I recall that one user said some time ago that someone from NRS is reading this forum.

Not sure how biased are we and are we in our own bubble (i'm not that much into reddit, so not sure where else these kind of topics might be raised) but maybe they will acknowledge our existence and will come to right conclusions.
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Well I won't jump to any conclusions, since I'm just a nobody with no social media presence named after a nobody in the '95 movie... but I've been harping on and on for ages that I wanted Ashrah, Sareena, human Reptile and lots of Chinese music and scenery in the next MK game.

And hot damn, I got my wish granted to perfection in that regard. I'd never for a second assume my silly opinions counted towards that ever occurring, but my god, it's an absolutely incredible coincidence that I'm delighted about.



And if my opinion did in some infinitesimally small way help make that happen... sincerely, thank you so much whoever you are at NRS!!!! :eek:
 
Swindle

Swindle

Philanthropist & Asshole
Afumba said:
Totally agree.... the gameplay is so horrible that i wished i was doing MK11 Towers of Time... and those were already real bad. Its an unchallenging, uninspired crapfest with mechanics just intended to annoy, frustrate and prolong gametime.

The good things:
I like the Invasions idea and i love how the mesas look. They did a great job there. The Clues puzzle are also great and the only enjoyable thing in invasion by a landslide.

The bad things;
- The modifiers are horrendous and anti fun. They are either pointless or unplayable. Things like Black screen, white screen, the stupid cough one and the buttom scrabbling one are so bad that i am sure that someone got blackmailed into greenlighting those modifiers. 4-5 modifiers in an encounters is peak stupidity as well, no challenge no fun just a colorful pointless firework.

- Armor. Everything and their moms having armor and super armor nonstop is such a pathetic design. Just there to inflate gametime and annoy the players.

- even with those crap modifiers and all that armor its easy and unchallengng. Its just a big slog. As Mileena/Sareena i put 20 in health/def and than pumped special/attack to 100 in a 2:1 ratio and cleared everything with extele/tele, uppercut, exroll and Sareena projectiles with ease and without fun. Pretty sure this works for all chars. Agility stat is useless, havent blocked a single time the whole invasion.

- AI is bad. You can literally stand around in most non boss fights and the enemy will still struggle to kill you. Lots of times it feels like the AI just fights the air and does random stuff and not even engaging with you. For example i stood in front of a Liu Kang and he just did jump~airfireball three times in a span of around 10sec for no reason.

- syringes are totally broken. 15% perma resist is wild for an item you get frequently. Latest at living forest most elements only tickle you. I had electricity and dark immunity when i reached the Tarkatan camp and at the end everything except phys/blood/ice would do almost no dmg to me. Makes stats like Health and def even more worse than attack/special.

- Talismans and Relics are pointless. Never used a talisman and never equipped a relic beside the one from Johnnys mansion. Exception: after i failed the final TYM in the seasonal challenge Tower i used the Bo Rai Cho talisman to make the slog back to the top faster. It one shots everything.

- currency is almost useless, you get so much of it and the only thing thats worth the time to go buy them are keys, the "double all stats potion" for the seasonal challenge tower and the "no ambush" thing to avoid extra fights.

- survive mini game. Good idea horrible excution. After the first few you can literally stand still and tank them. Totally pointless. Also lack of variety and clucky movement . Seasonal towers has some variety but its pointless there too cuz you can tank those too.

- no map. Why t f not?

- slow walkspeed in mesas

- barely any variation. 1 boring and 1 pointless variationsless minigame. And fights consist of just normal fights, boss fights and endurance with easy targets.

- ambushes are a good idea with bad design. They are just regular fights. I like the ambush idea but as it is its uninspired/unimaginativ and the way invasions are right now it just extends the tedium.

- secret fights.... among all the bad shit this is the worst. Secret fights are supposed to be something awesome, something rewarding, something unique. In Invasions they are just a punishment. You sit there and hope that you dont get one so you can move along. They serve no purpose, they dont reward you with anything special. You even get mocked by the annoucer as he makes it sound like you just discovered something awesome. EVERY NODE HAS A SECRET. Dumbest shit i have seen this year and i play D4.

- netherstone was dissapointing. Absolutely not worth returning to every mesa. Unlocked areas, fights, rewards, everything was underwhelming

- no real secrets or hidden areas in mesas

- seasonal challenge tower... 18 floor slog. Not hard, not fun but as frustrating and annoying and time consuming as it gets. Worst designed tower i have ever played. About half the tower are bosses, mostly 3 rounds with very high hp/armor and tedious and timewasting bs. The other half is challenges.... easy endurances, "survive" minigames with one in which you are totally blind... sooo fun (luckily you can easily tank them all) and 1 TYM. The TYM is another pinnacle of fun gameplay design. Its the last fight of the tower and the zone you have to hit is about 1/3 of other TYM. You have 1 try, if you fail you have to start the whole tower again. And if you beat it you dont get anything besides coins and random talisman. (Some ppls reported to get skins for this, i call bs. Finished it twice and i never got anything beside coins talisman)

- Invasion rewards. The whole mode feels unrewarding. Beside the Scorpion Boss Outfit i cant think of anything i would consider a reward. The unfun nature of the mode as its now (at least to me) amplifies this even more. No/barely any rewards, no fun, not much to discover, no secrets, low variety. Why would ppl do it again next season?

So they should keep the mesas and the clue puzzles and scrap/reimagine/change everything else and add variety/secrets/special events etc... I also hope we dont have the same Mesas every season...
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You summarized this perfectly.
Every time you do think you get something cool from Invasions, you remember that it was just your character mastery reward…which you can get by doing anything.
They created these lovely looking mesas, then populated them with the exact same challenge over & over. Less variation in here than there was in MK9’s Challenge Tower.
 
Art Lean

Art Lean

Kombatant
Swindle said:
You summarized this perfectly.
Every time you do think you get something cool from Invasions, you remember that it was just your character mastery reward…which you can get by doing anything.
They created these lovely looking mesas, then populated them with the exact same challenge over & over. Less variation in here than there was in MK9’s Challenge Tower.
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And worse still, you get next to nothing for each fight after you complete Invasions if you want to replay it again with other characters to unlock stuff for them.

MK11 had the Towers of Time for specific characters, as well as the characters towers, and individual rewards for the character tutorials. There was always a constant flow of gear to unlock for individual characters in different modes if you wanted to expand your customizable collections.

Here it's just grinding to level up in a mode that won't get you anything new at all except one of three types of coins and some talismans once you've been through it all once. And I don't think I care enough to level up that much. Even leveling up barely gets you much new gear, it's mostly taunts, ugly palettes for the default skin and brutalities.

I'm getting the sense that they've adopted the Fortnite battle pass approach for leveling up (don't look at me like that, my son plays it), to really milk the grind as long as possible.
 
Kiss the Missile

Kiss the Missile

Red Messiah
Juxtapose said:
Versus AI/Training Mode.



Interesting. I'm working on Masteries as well, though only around Level 10. So no one knows where to get the "Dark Kitana" skin, for example? How about the proper palette for Titan Kitana?

I also wish the Kustomize Menu would properly indicate who has new stuff. I always have the pip showing on the main menu because someone has something new, but no pips are showing in the Kustomize menu itself.
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Idk about Kitana but I got the Dark Geras skin from the Shrine.


Which is another thing that shows how rushed Invasions was. The Shrine is overstuffed with costumes and gear. Why is all of it in that boring, long animation gacha machine instead of sprinkled throughout Invasions as rewards?
 
Afumba

Afumba

Kombatant
Kiss the Missile said:
Idk about Kitana but I got the Dark Geras skin from the Shrine.


Which is another thing that shows how rushed Invasions was. The Shrine is overstuffed with costumes and gear. Why is all of it in that boring, long animation gacha machine instead of sprinkled throughout Invasions as rewards?
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And why cant we donate in bulk... no reason why we shouldnt be able to put 50K coins in there and get 50 rewards at once.
 
Arqwart

Arqwart

D'Vorah for KP2 copium
Perusing Invasions for the first time and BOY would it be infinitely more tolerable if MK1 didn't auto pause itself when you tab out on PC. I don't wanna watch my character slowly jog from node to node, NRS. Let me tab to the shit on my other monitor.

EDIT: also @ other Kitana players - just end combos early into Wind Bomb. The AI will not block it 99% of the time. Considering Kitana is full of gaps in her strings that the AI endlessly armors through (which is super duper fun and exciting gameplay), it's simply better to end combos early and Wind Bomb into another combo into another Wind Bomb. It's the only tactic keeping me sane.
 
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Plop

Plop

Kombatant
I hate that The Living Forest is a regular ass forest with like 3 facetrees in there somewhere. I agree, this mode sucks.

I understand they could never top Shang's Island with a new Krypt, but to ditch it entirely was a shit idea.
 
Xentex

Xentex

Noob
The single biggest thing that I've always longed for on MK "PVE modes" is a more nuanced difficulty slider.

As long as I can remember I've had the issue that "Hard" difficulty gets to be pretty easy, but "Very Hard" is an exercise in frustration.

My dream vision for difficulty settings (whether it be traditional towers or whatever they incorporate into seasons) would be some kind of "AI" based in the sense that it would learn how actual humans fight with each different character at each different skill level (based on rankings in Kombat League) and allow us to choose the difficulty we want to play based on that.

I'm not holding my breath, but it seems like they'd have plenty of data to "machine learn" how people play each character at different skill levels.

I'm not expecting MK1 to get there, but something better than a binary choice of ridiculously easy or frustratingly hard would be good to me.
 
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