Why Invasions is inferior to The Krypt

[NariTuba]

A lot of players are dissapointed with INVASIONS mode: Its clunky, grindy and boring. While there´s plenty of problems with the mode itself which have been discussed many times in the community, I wanted to take a second to point out why its inclussion makes me miss The Krypt.

The interesting thing about The Krypt is that it provided us with an altogether different game mode.

Invasions is the same as playing Kombat League but much worse, because AI opponents are stupid. The "role playing" aspect is just annoying, which power up goes with which specific AI encounter. Bottom line, you´re just playing an inferior version of the game that constantly has loading times and no real challenge. You could easily make a special tower that covers everything Invasions offers without the hassle and pomp.

The Krypt on the other hand provided a different experience altoghether. It was totally slow paced but it allowed for freedom of movement. Like Tom Brady said a long time ago in the days of MK9 "its a nice place to spend some time at 2 in the morning". There´s big truth there, because after playing Kombat League for a while going into the Krypt allows you to be mindless and to wind down.
When we can no longer concentrate enough to keep playing 1v1s, The Krypt provided us with a place to hang out and continue gaming but in a relaxed setting, while at the same time enabling us to once in a while unlock a costume or some other perk we liked.

There´s a chill to the Krypt that I miss, and I believe the concept could be expanded further in that direction.

Cheers

 

[xenogorgeous]

yep

the ideal would be a third person exploration mode as the MK11 Krypt , with lots of secrets and puzzles , and so, the fight mode would be just secondary there, happening only when necessary .... an exploration mode with fun gameplay would be more than welcome, to valorize that

and not this boring fest that Invasion promotes, with the same generic and repetitive stuff, and predictable mechanics , that already got stale

anyway, is almost impossible that NRS will do something about to overhaul and revamp this mode, at least, at deep level; this would be them admiting fail and defeat to them, also, if MK 1 already reached some profit financial milestones already, they will not spend more budget and money to fix this shit on the game, so ....

Unfortunately, we will stick with this bullshit mode for MK1 .... better luck in the next game , hehe !

 

[ImpostorOak]

I literally can't force myself to do invasions. I've tried twice, and it's so painfully not fun for me.

Everything in every video game I've ever played has been more enjoyable.

It's a board game.


There's wild encounters. POKÉMON has been slowly phasing this feature out in recent games, to the applause of fans.

Het zupzsel rea tupsid.

It's one round fights against AI that range from mind numbing easy to fuck this fucking shit what the fuck why do I need to read 50 item descriptions for a blue belt on Baraka.

The rewards suck. Like, cmon. Those fucking Zombie skins? Thick eyeliner and dark grey-almost black= dark and spoopy?

It's so much for so little. It's so obviously filler that I just feel like shit even trying to play it.

Like I just think about It's existence and I feel a sad discomfort.




Tldr; Yeah I liked Krypt better

 

[MateoFoShizzle]

I still think Invasions COULD have been cool but they missed the mark badly.

i think a semi-fix to this would be include a “krypt” mesa each season. Give us a new map, specific to the invasion boss each season (neatherrealm Mesa for scorpion, Vaternius for Nitara, Lin Keui temple for sub, etc). Fill it with the OLD lore and Easter eggs that we all want (can work with new timeline since the invasion bosses are from different timelines and it wouldn’t interfere with the current storylines). Make the krypt nodes mostly reward based and fill it with puzzles, Klues, “test your ___” modes and make it quirky fights like the challenge tower in mk9, instead of the rinse and repeat fights that are in the rest of the mesas. And give us actual good rewards. I still think they need to bring back more customizable gear pieces (2-3 per character). The Krypt mesa could be where they drop most of that, maybe 2-3 gears or skins per season and keep coming out with new ones every season.

again, not a complete fix but at least it would be something and wouldn’t require an entire new overhaul to the game itself.

also, the 2 month invasion season feels like forever. I’ve cleared out KL, invasions, etc and there’s still like a month left in this season. With KL broken on the ps5 still, I probably won’t be picking up this game until next month. This is how NRS is going to lose a lot of players when they finish everything and have nothing else to do for a month, put the game down and end up not coming back to it

 

[Jynks]

I love this mode and imo it is a bazillin times better than the krypt and better than the towers in MK11

 

[Ptehu]

I love this mode and imo it is a bazillin times better than the krypt and better than the towers in MK11

so can you please tell us all what is actually lovable in this mode?

regular fights with same characters over and over (only with made up names) just like in the regular towers?
moving from Point A to point C through point B over and over again?
Survive modes?
this RPG-like shit where nothing really matters and auto-assignment of the points solves everything?
"Boss fights" that are actually still the same fights but opponent has armor?
Grinding the koins that are to be spent on 1) talismans (99% useless) 2) upgrade to talismans (never did it = never needed it) 3) konsumables that are forgettable?
Rewards = Skins that are themed recolors of the generic ones (and not fitting certian characters like at all)?
Titan fights?
Grinding character mastery that is repetitive, boring and slow af?
Ambushes and Secret fights that are actually same fights against the same AI opponnents over and over?

I really, REALLY would like to know

 

[chud_munson]

For me it's very simple. It all comes down to the amount of customization options and aesthetic content in the game.

If you had literally the same thing as Invasions is today, but the amount of aesthetic and single player content and gear to tool around with that Injustice 2 had, and then made Invasions a little harder so I actually had to tweak that stuff, I'd think it was great.

I liked the Krypt in MK11. If that game had the amount of aesthetic content and customization approach that MK1 has, that would not have been true.

With Invasions, I feel like I'm playing Diablo but I only find loot like once an hour, it's purely aesthetic, and it's either a skin that looks like most other skins, or a piece of a single type of gear that has no effect on gameplay.

 

[Art Lean]

Whilst I appreciate it was a bit one-and-done with MK11's Krypt, that feeling of exploring the 1992 MK1 island, going from the courtyard to the pit to the warrior shrine to Shang's throne room and exploring all the areas in between was honestly beautiful and felt so rewarding. All the while goaded on by a lore narrative from Cary Tagawa himself, having to complete puzzles to reach the next area or having completed certain single player gameplay thresholds before you could proceed any further, to then unlock a new exciting area filled with easter eggs from old games and movies, as well as exclusive rewards for me felt SO satisfying. It honestly took me 18 months to discover there were a few chests in the ghost world I'd still not unlocked.

It should have been expanded upon into an amazing new Krypt/Konquest hybrid instead of just 'Towers of Time on a map' without even offering the variety of rewards that ToT offered. I'm THE most pathetic single-player minded MK fan you'll ever meet (been honestly playing Mortal Kombat by myself since '93's Mortal Monday), and I still find Invasions absolutely mindnumbingly dull and worthless. And I spent 2 years on MK11 checking in every day to ensure I didn't miss anything!!! Granted I went through a very tough time in my life when that game released and it helped keep me grounded, so I may have a slightly extra sentimental attachment to that game for being there as an outlet during one of the worst times of my life, but with MK1 I don't really even see the point of checking in again until the next season drops, and it breaks my heart to say that

 

[Marinjuana]

MK11 Krypt was a good idea but had about 2 hours of gameplay compared to invasions which has steadily improved

 

[Kiss the Missile]

MK11 Krypt was a good idea but had about 2 hours of gameplay compared to invasions which has steadily improved

Invasions has more "content" because its completely padded with filler

 

[Rathalos]

I hate the krypt for forcing me to use a controller, that and I hate doing non fighting game things in fighting games.
I only did the tutorial for Invasions but figure it wasn’t going to be for me.

I just want the Challenge Tower from Mk9 back.

But to be honest I hate all non story mode single player stuff in NRS games because who ever designed those modifies must have a real hatred for the player base, and wants everyone to suffer.

 

[YagamiFire]

I miss the challenge towers. Even the ones in MK11 were considerably better than Invasion mode. Invasion mode just feels very very tedious and overly bloated. It's not a terrible idea but the execution is just not engaging. There's not enough meaningful choices to make.

 

[Juggs]

I hate both of them

 

[Marinjuana]

Invasions has more "content" because its completely padded with filler

You are calling the actual gameplay of Invasion filler. Compared to Krypt's running around and opening chests for mostly useless buffs equips so that your character could be more buff in Towers of Time which is exactly the same type of gameplay as invasions but far less compelling.

 

[YagamiFire]

I hate both of them

Extremely valid take.

 

[Lt. Boxy Angelman]

I also vote for "I hate both of them."

Of all the things wrong with this game, most of which I can look past because modern gaming is what it is - which is paying full price for games that are essentially long-term investment live service beta tests - and I'm 90% sure this game will eventually be buffed into a more fun and captivating final form...

... I do not understand how, in 2023/2024, after I forget how many generations of consoles, companies, titles, genres, and innovations in the history of gaming as we know it, you can POSSIBLY justify releasing a game mode like Invasions without a map.

If there were more rewards, I could suspend my disbelief about the fights being weird and modified for the sake of the loot, and I am 100% confident that said loot will be buffed sooner than later. Almost all of Deception's Konquest Mode fights were weird and modified, but they felt worth the effort because you were soundly rewarded.
It's SUPPOSED to be a different game mode, so it should feel that way. If the grind were made less painful and more rewarding (and less bugged because my Tarkatan Colony Mesa is permanently stuck at 1% Complete and I have no earthly idea why), I would absolutely enjoy just knocking down nodes for a while.

But there's no map.
This is the brand-new solo single player mode of a triple-A studio, multi-million dollar, globally famous franchise-based, next generation game that was sold in its' Premium form for $110...

...and it doesn't have a map.

Early release or not, WB shenanigans or not, people should absolutely lose their damn jobs for shipping this game in this state, and telling us it was going to be great with a straight face.
And I don't ever want to see another Kombat Kast for the rest of my life until Stephanie, Tyler and Derek are all willing to come forward and fall on their swords. They've been selling us fool's gold since MK11 when all of 2019 went by and we heard absolutely NOTHING about going from "fully customizable competitive variations!! " to "Two variations per character, all the other moves are locked, and when we eventually drip feed you the third ones, most of them arent going to make the least bit of difference to the meta except your new favorite Earthrealm Champion: FLYING JACQUI !!!"

 

[Kiss the Missile]

You are calling the actual gameplay of Invasion filler. Compared to Krypt's running around and opening chests for mostly useless buffs equips so that your character could be more buff in Towers of Time which is exactly the same type of gameplay as invasions but far less compelling.

Another reason Invasions is dogshit is the timed rewards. I don't feel like playing it right now, but I'm forced to if I want that Sub Zero skin. Or I can wait for next month and buy it for actual money. Yeah dude, fuck Invasions lol.

 

[chrisisnice]

The thing that is annoying for me is that you cannot see the rewards. The great thing about ToT was that you could clearly see which rewards you were going to get for completing each tower and you could make a choice as to whether you wanted to go for it. At the moment, you will beat a tower and get some useless component or konsumable.

Towers in the regular mesas seem pretty pointless and feel like a waste of time. If you end up in a “secret fight”, you get nothing out of it except for 2 minutes taken from your life.

I won’t even go into the disaster that is the Survive nodes.

I was initially hopeful that this would be fun when I saw the retrocede in the JC Mansion. I thought they could possibly be played as a part of it (like they are in SF6). Boy, was I disappointed!

 

[Eddy Wang]

A lot of players are disappointed with INVASIONS mode: It's clunky, grindy, and boring. While there are plenty of problems with the mode itself which have been discussed many times in the community, I wanted to take a second to point out why its inclusion makes me miss The Krypt.

The interesting thing about The Krypt is that it provided us with an altogether different game mode.

Invasions are the same as playing Kombat League but much worse because AI opponents are stupid. The "role-playing" aspect is just annoying, which power-up goes with which specific AI encounter. The bottom line, you´re just playing an inferior version of the game that constantly has loading times and no real challenge. You could easily make a special tower that covers everything Invasions offers without the hassle and pomp.

The Krypt on the other hand provided a different experience altogether. It was totally slow paced but it allowed for freedom of movement. Like Tom Brady said a long time ago in the days of MK9 "it's a nice place to spend some time at 2 in the morning". There´s big truth there, because after playing Kombat League for a while going into the Krypt allows you to be mindless and to wind down.
When we can no longer concentrate enough to keep playing 1v1s, The Krypt provided us with a place to hang out and continue gaming but in a relaxed setting, while at the same time enabling us to once in a while unlock a costume or some other perk we liked.

There´s a chill to the Krypt that I miss, and I believe the concept could be expanded further in that direction.

Cheers

Invasions it's MK9 Challenge towers, but instead of going straight into fights with modifiers, you roam around which is time-consuming.
Challenge towers were 300 unique missions, Invasions are just the same shit over and over, from fighting, and roam perspective, it just sucks.

Too bad I didn't get to say this on their survey, because it ended for me the second I said I didn't finish the first one, they didn't let me finish the feedback and never asked why did not finished.

 

[Juxtapose]

you get nothing out of it except for 2 minutes taken from your life.

You get a Konsumable that gives you permanent resistance boosts, which can be handy. Especially for Survival encounters.

 

[Rude]

I just liked The Krypt cause you could explore Shang Tsung's island and that was awesome. Less awesome was dying to spiders, but everything else was cool as hell.

Invasions is....I mean it exists, I guess. I've played it to completion twice. Liked it better the second time around but overall thought it was pretty boring.

 

[Wigy]

bring back challenge 300 types of missions not UNGA BUNGA NONSTOP ARMOUR AND SPAM

 

[BarakaTile]

Invasions has more "content" because its completely padded with filler

Today is a good day to have 9,999,999 koins in the Krypt. Let's go shopping and find out what I can buy right now since a large majority has been bought and/or unlocked via towers of time.

Chest 1:
-Tower Konsumable: Demon's Book of Spells x2, Nitara's Clipped Wings x2, Plasma Infused Death Rocket x3
Chest 2:
-Augment: Level 1 Flip Side
Chest 3:
-Tower Konsumable: Ethereal Armor
Chest 4:
-Tower Konsumable: Seidan War Banner x2, Havik's Trapped Soul x2, Plasma Infused Death Rocket x3
Chest 5, Hidden Chest:
-Tower Konsumable: Electric Field Generator x3, Tower Konsumable: Focused Soul Regenerator x3

Ooh A Kronika Chest! I wonder what it has...
-Tower Konsumable: Plasma Infused Death Rockets x5, Lvl 1 Augment: Death Benefit, Forge Item: Zaterran Venom Sac x10, Tower Konsumable: Medal of Honor x5

Would you like me to go on? I can assure you I won't run out of Koins doing this.

The Krypt in MK11 was great once and only on the first playthrough. After a few weeks it got old, After a few months it sucked and after all these years, it's the worst Krypt in Mortal Kombat. They were right to take a break from the Krypt after this.

 

[BarakaTile]

Another reason Invasions is dogshit is the timed rewards. I don't feel like playing it right now, but I'm forced to if I want that Sub Zero skin. Or I can wait for next month and buy it for actual money. Yeah dude, fuck Invasions lol.

Also 'member Krypt Events? If you didn't have the time or weren't informed you'd have missed a whole bunch of shit like Classic Jax Arms, That Kitana skin, Liu Kang's Traditional red and black pants+headband, Kabal stuff etc... Then you gotta wait until next time NRS announces it cuz you can't buy it yourself with Koins or money.

And the rabbit hole of how terrible the MK11 Krypt can go deeper but I don't want to get too into it.

Suffice to say you're not going to convince me Invasions is bad when literal years were spent grinding for skins/gear by having an AI slog its way through endless Towers of Time battles and hoping you got actual skins/gear instead of tower garbage.

 

[lusca_bueno]

At first I really thought Invasions would have better value to me than MK11 Krypt, but it quickly became a disapointment, and I should have noticed it considering the silence treatment Invasions mode had throughout marketing period, compared to the MK11 Krypt which was far more talked about. Somehow I feel like the developers were aware of its shortcomings.

Artistically speaking, MK11 Krypt is a lot more engaging to me because it offers a completely different mechanic and the maps have different structures altogether. It was fun because there was a sense of realism in approaching the island, specially considering it was such an iconic location that makes me curious about how it would be represented in a realist manner. Meanwhile Invasions mode kinda looks like a generic board that always features the same dimensions, but only THEMED around iconic locations. Add to that the restricted movement and the exploration part of it gets really stale, it's a shame because I really enjoy the assets they developed for it, and I'm sure a lot of effort was put into them, but they're being wasted in a mode that was not well put together mechanically.

Back when Ed Boon was saying we would see the results of a 4-year development cycle very clearly, I expected the new single player mode would be a huge part of that, but unfortunately it's not the case. In many ways Invasions mode seems cheaper, looks sloppier, and some things are actually ugly and take away from the main game experience. For example, when you look at a basic fight in MK1, it will often look excelent visually save for some VFX exceptions here and there, but in Invasions mode all the unique animations and modifiers look very cheap, which takes alway from the artistic value the game wants to convey.

I wasn't a huge fan of any unlocking mechanics in the past games, but in MK11 it was far easier to unlock the stuff you wanted to, you just had to play the character. Now there are many "fear of missing out" elements at play that we didn't have previously, like the Shrine for example, which works very similarly to gacha pull mechanics, you have a short window to put coins into it, and you're never gonna have enough coins to be sure you'll pull your favorite new skin by simply playing through Invasions mode, so there's a lot of grind involved. And when you fail to get the palette you wanted for that story mode costume you wanted, NRS will obviously include the skins available for purchase very conveniently in the premium shop.

I won't be such a bitch about how NRS is handling cosmetics in MK1 because I know other fighting games can get MUCH worse, at the end of the day we still get 3 free uniquely designed costumes for every character + a few lucky story mode costume pulls from the Shrine. I will say though... it used to be better, in MK11 every character had at least 4 unique designs that were not exclusive to FOMO mechanics.

Other than that, my only other complaints with Invasions mode would be how UX is terrible, everything is slow, there is very little visibility about exploration statistics beyond map percentage, little visibility about the rewards of nodes or towers, and little integration of the weaknesses system they put in place. It's so inconvenient to open the elemental chart and then choose a character that is better for a certain node that it's barely worth the time considering the amount of switching that needs to happen, even changing characters can be so slow lol