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Evo France announces 6 games - MK1 Not Included

Mr Aquaman

Armored Launcher
Administrator

Most may not even know that Evo has gone a near ATP Tennis route and decided to host 4 Evos across the world spread throughout the year. US, France, Japan, and 4th show in LA if I remember correctly. Didn't expect MK1 to be there without a tour but still not a great look in the grand scheme of things. UFA was a Pro Komp event last year in France and this year with no tour they decided not to host MK1 at all. Not that MK was ever popular at EU events. Viennality has been one of our biggest events in EU and averages around 50-125 entrants for us from MKX-MK1 and MK1 attracted 129 to France in UFA in 2023 to give some perspective. It's a great headline to dunk on the game but it can be used to talk bout some real problems, not just that the game has because thats the biggest - but ones that the competitive side has too which is the reliance on WB $ to start. Drop your thoughts below!
 

Eji1700

Kombatant
I think you basically summed up the main points.

On the one hand Eurpoe has always had a different scene, on the other hand it still isn't a good look at best.
 

M2Dave

Zoning Master
I am going to quote @Amplified$hotz 's questions and comments that he posted in my profile page as they pertain to this thread.

Are you guys going to do anymore podcast episodes? I’d like to hear your thoughts on mk1 over one year later. And no mk at EVO france. The people who kept saying “everything is fine” during mk11 haven’t been blown up enough in my opinion.
MK1 has been compared to street fighter V a lot. A game that had a poor release but ended up being solid towards the end.

However it still seems like there isn’t much competitive enthusiasm for the game despite the updates.

I (and many other competitive/semi-competitive) players are wondering if it’s worth giving MK1 another shot? What do you think about the direction it’s gone in up to this point? And does the current game deserve the thriving competitive community that NRS games once had? Should there be an mk1 revival, or should we just keep moving on.
Each individual can decide on his or her own whether the game is worth playing or not. Personally, I have been playing Kombat League a lot recently. Aside from a couple of inconsistencies, such as b+2 xx flame thrower and b+3,4 xx EX teleport whiffing at max range, respectively, I have enjoyed playing Sektor and I have also enjoyed watching characters like Cyrax, Ermac, Havik, Homelander, Noob, Sektor, etc. (although I understand the concern expressed by a top player like Xombat who thinks that Havik's and Homelander's power level is "too high and too easy" for this game.)

Nonetheless, I believe that if Mortal Kombat 1 had been released in its current state, tournament numbers would have likely been higher. Regardless how you perceive the game and the kameo system, the online gameplay is objectively better, and so is the meta because there is presently nothing as monotonous as pre-patch kopta chopper and pre-patch grenades dominating high level gameplay. Because of minor nerfs yet mostly buffs, you tend to see a wide range of kameos that lead to a superior playing and viewing experience. Many characters such as Havik, Li Mei, Nitara, Quan Chi, Rain, etc. have also been buffed with the addition of new moves, for which NRS deserves praise.

Unfortunately, the damage has already been done. Unlike Capcom and Street Fighter 5, there is no communication and trust between the players and WB/NRS to resurrect the off-line scene. Neither does an infrastructure nor passion exist within the competitive Mortal Kombat 1 scene. Most players have already quit and are not returning. Even Tom Brady has stopped caring and ranting. LOL. Perhaps the game was always destined to be an online fighting game kept alive by a very small community. Lesson learned for the community and NRS, albeit mostly for the latter, in my humble opinion.
 

Ashesfall

"Feel the wrath of Shao Kahn"
Unfortunately, the damage has already been done. Unlike Capcom and Street Fighter 5, there is no communication and trust between the players and WB/NRS to resurrect the off-line scene
Oh yes, after the MK11 limbo, game done game not done?
At this point, I honestly think WB Games only sees single sold copies and that's it.
Not to forget the drama if NRS is getting sold, which created this level of non communication because it's all in limbo ... (What to communicate, when you don't even have a "clear" future?)

But I also have to say, compared to Tekken, even some have issues with the game, they show up to play and hope it gets better later. MK community is different.

And I am still, to this day, convinced having such a "brutal" game is not helping to grow in that environment. Lots of advertisers won't like it. MK1 is really fucking brutal, some really blind it out.
Look at our woke society crying after everything, of course they want to "cancel" this brutal game on the big stage.
(The MK story in germany was crazy. Example: MK2 (1993) was so hard banned, they had to stop selling magazines where the game is in! I still have one magazine for memories. :D)
 

LEGEND

YES!
Elder God
I honestly know nothing about the anime scene. Do their games get pro-tours or monetary support that comes from outside their community?
 

Ashesfall

"Feel the wrath of Shao Kahn"
MK hasn't been at EVO Japan either. There's not a big community for it either there or in France.
Back to my violence argue.
"Due to its violence and gore, Mortal Kombat 1 is banned in Japan, South Korea and China. "
Why do people think they show it there? It just won't work by law. Simple as that.

edit: people say turn blood green, disable all enders and done. really?
FatalBlows are basically Fatalities. Want to show the audience a black screen here?
How to hype the game with a new trailer on that event? We all know what we see there, Fatalities ...
 
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Tom Brady

Champion
MK hasn't been at EVO Japan either. There's not a big community for it either there or in France.
The best thing that can happen is for MK to not be at Evo this year at all anywhere. This will force people to realize there is a problem, including those at NRS, and no.. the problem does not start with the community here. How many times do the majority of people have to say they don’t like the game and not enough changes for them to come back? People are quick to bring up tweets by Sonic praising the game but yet I don’t see anyone posting Kombats and many others tweets reacting to this.

People just come in here and say it’s the communities fault for not supporting a game they don’t like and ignore that those people feel there is not much effort or communication from the developer to change that. They’ll say more money needs to be put in and people should just show up and spend their money to travel to play a game they don’t like and pray something changes. Then they always have the ultimate scapegoat, blame Warner Brothers… I’m not sure if this game will even beat the 10 million sold by MK X at this point, and if it doesn’t, I would love to be in that meeting and see if Ed Boon has the balls to tell one of the higher ups at WB that it’s their fault because they told them to make the game like this. We all know that would never happen because the truth is we all know that no one at WB told NRS to make the game like this at all.
 
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Ashesfall

"Feel the wrath of Shao Kahn"
just another thought
EVO is now sony, sony is Japan, MK is banned there.
I honestly could see MK never ever be on a EVO stage again.
(A family event with hardcore violence ... yeah ... come back to reality ...)
U NRS fans need Injustice 3 to bypass this huge issue you all ignore ...

edit: I wonder why so many ignore it, so many people on YT and Twitch cry not making money when there is blood. (It was not always like this, right?) And with the rebranding of EVO by sony and the time we are in. I feel like having an M rated game with children in the room, won't work as you hope. I know some will say but back then it worked ...
 
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Mr Aquaman

Armored Launcher
Administrator
To say WB had no say in MK1's direction is kinda bonkers to me but I could be wrong. My personal experience with them has me feeling otherwise. Other than that I agree with most things stated here. It's kinda the perfect storm. I thought super early on after playing SF6 that if we didn't have something like the battle hub with full crossplay then we are cooked from an online standpoint too, then the release came without either. Still no rooms which blows my mind. The only thing I can think of is they axed it to meet the release or axed it because of offensive room titles. After Mk11 custom title drama who knows
 

Tom Brady

Champion
To say WB had no say in MK1's direction is kinda bonkers to me but I could be wrong. My personal experience with them has me feeling otherwise. Other than that I agree with most things stated here. It's kinda the perfect storm. I thought super early on after playing SF6 that if we didn't have something like the battle hub with full crossplay then we are cooked from an online standpoint too, then the release came without either. Still no rooms which blows my mind. The only thing I can think of is they axed it to meet the release or axed it because of offensive room titles. After Mk11 custom title drama who knows
Show me the person at WB who said that MK1 should be released in a very watered down state and they should wait a full year before starting to complete the characters one by one. Show me the person at WB who said wait a full year before you start making some headway with diversity amongst Kameos. Show me the person at WB who said that NRS needs to keep the gimmicky systems and instead of variations, use kameos instead. Show me the person at WB who said keep basic features coming soon for an entire year. Show me the person at WB who said keep the dsync issue for almost 3 months before fixing it.
 

Mr Aquaman

Armored Launcher
Administrator
Show me the person at WB who said that MK1 should be released in a very watered down state and they should wait a full year before starting to complete the characters one by one. Show me the person at WB who said wait a full year before you start making some headway with diversity amongst Kameos. Show me the person at WB who said that NRS needs to keep the gimmicky systems and instead of variations, use kameos instead. Show me the person at WB who said keep basic features coming soon for an entire year. Show me the person at WB who said keep the dsync issue for almost 3 months before fixing it.
I don't know names but anyone who said prioritize Monetization/DLC/Premium Store first before fixing to start. Which I doubt that is 100% NRS. Warner Bros. Discovery gaming boss J.B. Perrette and WB CEO Zaslav have both come out saying they want to focus on live service vs AAA one and done titles. Not trying to shift this blame either I just find it crazy to think they had 0 say in what resulted in the product we have. You bring up valid criticisms and points the game is in a shit state compared to what should be the standard
 

ticklebandit!

Apprentice
Just reading the comments from the fighting game community on this (or on mk in general) is insane. There is so much weirdly bitter hatred towards the franchise. I know it’s nothing new, but like, I would feel genuinely pathetic bashing a game I didn’t have an interest in. It reeks of people frustrated at their performance in their own game (or life) trying to feel superior over others.

Just raw, unadulterated baby dick hatred. Normally I don’t wanna pile on the hate for lil micro kings, but shit like this makes me not give a fuck about evo, then.

and normally I post on here to bitterly hate on nrs lol. Mk11 was garbage, why was homelander/peacemaker like that at release, nrs communication is cancer, etc etc.

If the fighting game community wants to divide an already niche game genre than fuck them. I guess??
 

Tom Brady

Champion
Just reading the comments from the fighting game community on this (or on mk in general) is insane. There is so much weirdly bitter hatred towards the franchise. I know it’s nothing new, but like, I would feel genuinely pathetic bashing a game I didn’t have an interest in. It reeks of people frustrated at their performance in their own game (or life) trying to feel superior over others.

Just raw, unadulterated baby dick hatred. Normally I don’t wanna pile on the hate for lil micro kings, but shit like this makes me not give a fuck about evo, then.

and normally I post on here to bitterly hate on nrs lol. Mk11 was garbage, why was homelander/peacemaker like that at release, nrs communication is cancer, etc etc.

If the fighting game community wants to divide an already niche game genre than fuck them. I guess??
You got it all wrong, they don’t hate MK just to blindly hate it. The FGC loves MK. They just don’t like the last two and this one has really gone downhill from the start. They did very little to improve it with the expansion, however, they did begin to improve it. The problem is they did a little and then stopped. Had the game been launched in this state and they improved it from here I think things would’ve been a little better, however, what they did was too little too late and certainly not enough. This is why people are angry not because they are hating on Mortal Kombat for no reason.
 

Kal

<3
Not surprising at all. Shit game, doesn't deserve to be up there at all. Garbage to play and God awful to watch too. Hopefully it gets dropped from Evo completely.

Maybe it being completely dropped by everyone will help NRS get their heads out of their asses once and for all. I doubt that though, their core is rotten at this point.
 

Vulgar

Apprentice
You got it all wrong, they don’t hate MK just to blindly hate it. The FGC loves MK. They just don’t like the last two and this one has really gone downhill from the start. They did very little to improve it with the expansion, however, they did begin to improve it. The problem is they did a little and then stopped. Had the game been launched in this state and they improved it from here I think things would’ve been a little better, however, what they did was too little too late and certainly not enough. This is why people are angry not because they are hating on Mortal Kombat for no reason.
People from other games have shit talked MK since MK9.

You just make shit up.
 

Marlow

Champion
Bummer. I like watching high level MK1. Game seems like it's in a pretty good spot now, hopefully NRS/WB announces a new tour/league/whatever.
 

Marlow

Champion
FGC seems to mostly like MK9, MKX, MK11, and MK1 the same. They've all sold pretty well, especially MK11, they've gotten solid user and game critic reviews, and if we're going by EVO particients as some kind of measuring stick, MK9, MKX, and MK11 have all performed about the same. MKX probably did the "best" in 2015 when they had 1162 entrants, which was 11.33% of all entrants. MK11 has the best raw entrants with 1567 in 2019, which made up 10.94% of all total entrants. MK11 had a better 2nd showing than MKX though. Impressive considering that there was a 3 year gap between it's first and second showings.

MK1 was pretty disappointing, especially for a 1st year NRS title (645, a paltry 3.97%) but I don't know how much of that is the game itself vs the changing times and how MK chooses to do it's own tour (less emphasis on EVO for points, and things like travel costs, ease of playing online, and pot bonuses).


If in person tournaments are something that NRS/WB wants to prioritize, they should probably step up their promotions, weigh their season points accordingly, and do more pot bonuses as an incentive. But that's a financial/marketing decision, a lot for them to decide. Also debatable whether structuring a Pro League around traveling to many locations is best practice.


22130
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
The best thing that can happen is for MK to not be at Evo this year at all anywhere. This will force people to realize there is a problem, including those at NRS, and no.. the problem does not start with the community here. How many times do the majority of people have to say they don’t like the game and not enough changes for them to come back? People are quick to bring up tweets by Sonic praising the game but yet I don’t see anyone posting Kombats and many others tweets reacting to this.

People just come in here and say it’s the communities fault for not supporting a game they don’t like and ignore that those people feel there is not much effort or communication from the developer to change that. They’ll say more money needs to be put in and people should just show up and spend their money to travel to play a game they don’t like and pray something changes. Then they always have the ultimate scapegoat, blame Warner Brothers… I’m not sure if this game will even beat the 10 million sold by MK X at this point, and if it doesn’t, I would love to be in that meeting and see if Ed Boon has the balls to tell one of the higher ups at WB that it’s their fault because they told them to make the game like this. We all know that would never happen because the truth is we all know that no one at WB told NRS to make the game like this at all.
The point of Kombat’s tweet was that he thinks it’s a shame that the pro tour wasn’t executed better because he’d actually like to play the game competitively.

He’s not the only one who feels that way. The majority of the top players want a better second pro tour, because they want to play the game as long as the compensation justifies the travel.

There seems to be an attempt to misrepresent this view as hating the game, and that’s not at all what he said.


Not to mention that all these guys are voluntarily playing in Konquest of the Titans. They just want a better pro tour do they can do it more offline:

 

M2Dave

Zoning Master
MK hasn't been at EVO Japan either. There's not a big community for it either there or in France.
Is R1p's Arena not a successful online tournament series that is based on western European countries such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom?

France borders like six or seven different countries, most of which a part of the EU, making traveling easy from what I understand.

Besides, Mortal Kombat 1 was a side tournament at VS Fighting a couple of months ago. The number of players was 52.

I refuse to believe that at least 100 players would not have shown up.