How Mortal Kombat 11's Custom Variations Will Work In Competitive Play

[xenogorgeous]

this often blows my mind. too many people have no idea how complex game developing is. the game comes out in a few weeks. there is no way the ui will change.

spoke the truth majestically here, brother

 

[Vslayer]

you are right but come on. if this minor thing changes your mind about the game, then competitive mk wasn't your thing to begin with.

It's not a minor change? I get that we can still learn these set variations but being locked out of moves and different combo paths is a downer IMO. But then again we'll see once I can get my hands on my main and figure things out from there.

 

[Afumba]

It is often truly incredible the things this community thinks it would be "simple" to do in game development.

Are you really saying splitting an existing game mode and creating an UI are such hard things to do?

 

[Xelz]

Are you really saying splitting an existing game mode and creating an UI are such hard things to do?

The UI itself might be easy to design quickly. NRS has some talented UI artists that even made that graphic for the Wheel of Whateverwhatever for Kombat Kasts (which doesn’t even get used anymore, lol).

But we don’t know how long it may take to make this work on the backend. Can custom moves, which were designed to be selectable in character customization, be accessed and temporarily saved for a match at the character select screen? The ease of difficulty of this will depend on how NRS built custom moves into their heavily modified engine.

Engine issues are cited as reasons why Anthem, for example, doesn’t allow access to gear or load out changes during missions. Maybe this would be quick to implement, maybe it’d take a long time, but only NRS knows for sure.

 

[DDustiNN]

The UI itself might be easy to design quickly. NRS has some talented UI artists that even made that graphic for the Wheel of Whateverwhatever for Kombat Kasts (which doesn’t even get used anymore, lol).

But we don’t know how long it may take to make this work on the backend. Can custom moves, which were designed to be selectable in character customization, be accessed and temporarily saved for a match at the character select screen? The ease of difficulty of this will depend on how NRS built custom moves into their heavily modified engine.

Engine issues are cited as reasons why Anthem, for example, doesn’t allow access to gear or load out changes during missions. Maybe this would be quick to implement, maybe it’d take a long time, but only NRS knows for sure.

That question can also go the other way.

In the beta, all of the preset variations were fully customizable. And there was no way to revert back to default. So they certainly would’ve had to add some UI and backend code to make them static, right?

But you would still want to customize the looks and gear, surely. Just not the moves. More coding and new logic.

And if we now have locked preset variations, then are those taking up some of our 5 available variations? Or will that be expanded?

I think locked preset variations introduce a whole shitload more complications than setting a quick temporary loadout via the character select screen.

 

[MikeBreezy92]

I think you may've misinterpreted his post (it was a bit hard to read). I'm pretty sure he's saying: "The kompetitive konfigurations have very likely been in flux throughout development, much like the rest of this game's balance (there're already a bunch of observed changes from various builds). If in this process of balance, a character's presets at launch changed from what we saw on the Kombat Kast, you'd still call false advertising, anyway."

I may have played fast and loose with his phrasing and embellished his points a bit to make it more clear, but... y'know. He echoed some sentiments I had so it seemed like a thing to do. I don't think this really demonstrates any lack of understanding as to what's upsetting people.

The idea of the presets being in flux with no real vision on how they'll go together (because at least in MKX they were already solidified and presented so if they changed it wouldn't be a huge blowback) and the focus solely on customization is why people are upset. And seeing how these customizations work so loosely so they can be custom its hard for people to wrap their heads around a MKX style preset.

 

[Orochi]

That question can also go the other way.

In the beta, all of the preset variations were fully customizable. And there was no way to revert back to default. So they certainly would’ve had to add some UI and backend code to make them static, right?

But you would still want to customize the looks and gear, surely. Just not the moves. More coding and new logic.

And if we now have locked preset variations, then are those taking up some of our 5 available variations? Or will that be expanded?

I think locked preset variations introduce a whole shitload more complications than setting a quick temporary loadout via the character select screen.

There probably is something already in place for ranked mode, what we played was casual matches. My best guess of what they have already set up is three locked in variations for ranked, each one with their own look and gear.

 

[trufenix]

Are you really saying splitting an existing game mode and creating an UI are such hard things to do?

YES.

 

[MKfanatic98]

Not of fan of having to be like everyone else and not have my signature playstyle and i hate that everyone is just gonna use the OP stuff anyway. But at the same time i respect the decision.

 

[Eji1700]

Are you really saying splitting an existing game mode and creating an UI are such hard things to do?

Hi, I've rarely had to develop UI's for things. You have no idea what you're talking about.

On the topic specifically there's two major issues-

1. UI.

This COULD be done. It is not nearly as simple as people think for a whole slew of reasons, but it does eventually boil down to an issue of time and effort. It would be a lot of time going through iterations to see what works and what conveys the information correctly, and thus very expensive in man hours, but it would be doable. It could theoretically still be done in a patch as i've no doubt it'd take less effort than the netcode rewrite they did for MK X, but at the same time I have 0 doubt it's also way less important.

2. Balance.

This is an issue. I'm a huge fan of more options, but only if they're actually legit choices. False choices are just time wasters. I don't give a shit if Kano has 10 moves if at the end of the day only 4 are viable for competitive play. It takes real time and effort to balance movesets, and that gets much much harder when you've got "here's 10, pick 3 points worth, some cost 1 -3 !". Getting a 20+ character roster so everyone is PLAYABLE is already hard, it's much much harder when you throw in X variations, and even harder still when you give them full customization.

This isn't even touching on the reality that in comp play people WILL use what's best. So maybe you make 10 moves, and only 4 of them are comp viable...well now you've got less variety than if you'd made 3 variations, each with one of the comp viable moves, or worse, you've got the same result (only one variation which has 3 of the 4 is viable) but you wasted WAY more time testing and balancing that. It needs to not just work, but work better than variations.

The risk/reward on this really doesn't make sense. The casuals will play with customization on full, that's what it's there for. The pro's "would love custom moves!" but would also hate a totally fucked up balance mess.

 

[Afumba]

The UI itself might be easy to design quickly. NRS has some talented UI artists that even made that graphic for the Wheel of Whateverwhatever for Kombat Kasts (which doesn’t even get used anymore, lol).

But we don’t know how long it may take to make this work on the backend. Can custom moves, which were designed to be selectable in character customization, be accessed and temporarily saved for a match at the character select screen? The ease of difficulty of this will depend on how NRS built custom moves into their heavily modified engine.

Engine issues are cited as reasons why Anthem, for example, doesn’t allow access to gear or load out changes during missions. Maybe this would be quick to implement, maybe it’d take a long time, but only NRS knows for sure.

Fair enough. My point was they should have done so from the get go. There is no reason at all not to do it.
Furthermore people stated NRS wasnt sure which way they were going. To me this means it cant be that hard to implement if they waited until 3 weeks before release to make a decision. Or they just bullshited people on purpose and just didnt say anything to keep the hype up.

Besides that... for online its really not an issue to creat a ranked mode for customs. The mode basically already exists.

 

[Afumba]

YES.

Then you are fooling yourself, at least concerning the game mode.

 

[Xelz]

That question can also go the other way.

In the beta, all of the preset variations were fully customizable. And there was no way to revert back to default. So they certainly would’ve had to add some UI and backend code to make them static, right?

But you would still want to customize the looks and gear, surely. Just not the moves. More coding and new logic.

And if we now have locked preset variations, then are those taking up some of our 5 available variations? Or will that be expanded?

I think locked preset variations introduce a whole shitload more complications than setting a quick temporary loadout via the character select screen.

Yes, probably. My head hurts just thinking about it

 

[Rozalin1780]

My two cents, for what it's worth...

If the issue is balance, I fail to see what difference it makes allowing custom variations versus presets when players are going to gravitate to the most effective thing available to them in either case. No Scorpion player is going to skip out on Misery Blade -- be it custom or preset -- for example. So why not just give players the ability to decide for themselves?

Again, if the issue is balance, there are more than enough tools available to the developer already to balance the selectable moves. Between multi-slot abilities, abilities overwriting moves in the base kit, and abilities having shared inputs, there are multiple ways to ensure a character can't have the most broken loadout imaginable and that's without even getting into the hard changes like scaling, damage output, etc, that are also possible. So if it were, for example, determined that Kabal having Air Hook and Extended Hook together is overpowered, all they would have to do is make both require 2 slots, or share the same input, or any other number of things they could do that would require a minimal amount of effort on their part.

If the issue is stalling tournament play, there's no reason they can't simply make the custom moves UI accessible from the character select screen. Press 3 to choose your character, cycle through the presets for the costume you want (the presets each have a different skin) and press 2, move selection screen pops up with all three slots empty and select your three (or two depending) choices. Press 3 again, and done. The whole process would take the same amount of time, if not less, than a button check.

If the issue is stalling tournament play due to counter-picking, that exists in a preset environment already. Again, with the above in place, a person deciding to counter-pick will have to go back to character select regardless if the standard is preset or custom and the difference between choosing a preset or a custom with the above change in place would be a matter of seconds.

If the issue is "flying blind" isn't fair, just make the loadouts visible on the loading screen. There you go; problem solved. "Oh, this Kabal is using Low Hook instead of Low Buzzsaw, I'll have to look out for that". Now it's fair. No going in blind.



I see no reason at all that custom variations shouldn't be allowed other than NRS doesn't want to have to put in the extra effort required to make this system shine. It's essentially a gimmick to lure in casual players to generate sales and nothing more. Sad, because the concept in and of itself is an absolutely fantastic idea.

 

[FrankOceansWaifu]

I just hate having being left with blue balls after all these kombat kasts highlighting the customization then having a beta letting me do it myself which I’m betting everyone enjoyed doing only to get confirmation that it isn’t the case via a magazine i used to buy when I was 14

 

[Blizer]

https://www.reddit.com/r/MortalKombat/comments/b9110s/testyourmights_admin_dropping_some_truth_bombs_on/

@CrimsonShadow, you on the the top page of the MK subreddit

 

[JBeezYBabY]

https://www.reddit.com/r/MortalKombat/comments/b9110s/testyourmights_admin_dropping_some_truth_bombs_on/

@CrimsonShadow, you on the the top page of the MK subreddit

Damn! First Kappa, now the Mk Reddit!? Oh he big famous now!

 

[trufenix]

Then you are fooling yourself, at least concerning the game mode.

I have actually made a fighting game before, have you?

 

[Juggs]

*The reason NRS games 'die' is that a new game comes out every 2 years and the community is not big enough to sustain multiple sub-communities, with a full crew of top players and monsters for each game. Period.

It's not balance, it's not patches, not netcode, not zoning, rushdown, extra moves, tournament money, or anything of the sort. It's just people not admitting that we're not big enough to play two games, and it's 90% the same group of top tournament players for both franchises. Let's end the false narratives and just be honest.

This is definitely true.

NRS has conditioned us with their business model, basically. They promote the crap out of the game, injecting a lot of hype. They do an okay job of promoting events, they do a great job of promoting their own. They provide a lot of support for the game both casually and more importantly competitively. But it’s a double edged sword, unfortunately. Because once all that stops when they start focusing on promoting their next game, the players naturally start losing interest in the current game. Since it’s not being hyped up anymore by NRS, the flow of money either is much lower or stops completely, no more support via patches for the game, and the hype of the new game is all what contributes to the death of NRS games. The games aren’t built to last on their own, imo. If the game was phenomenal it would be able to stand the test of time AND it would be able to continue to thrive DESPITE all of those things I just mentioned. The problem is the game would have to be a next level masterpiece in order for it to survive all that encompasses the 2 year cycle.

And MK11 is the first NRS game I would say could even come close to breaking through that barrier. This is another reason I want the tournament rules to be solid before the tournament seasons starts. A bad start could be difficult to recover from for the longevity of the game. The problem is that no one knows what the perfect ruleset will be for MK11. We don’t know yet, NRS doesn’t know. Sure they have a better idea right now, but in a month or so, that is likely to no longer be the case!

 

[Kroaken]

I have actually made a fighting game before, have you?

Which one, if you don't mind me asking? Genuinely curious.

 

[Afumba]

I have actually made a fighting game before, have you?

No, but i know people that have made games. And adding an already existing game mode with 1 different rule is not a big deal. I take the word of people i know way over yours.

And i stated above why i think the UI thing is not too big of a problem either. At best the deadline to create it was when they made the official decision. And given that they werent sure how they would decide i dont believe for a second that they designed the game in a way that they could not implement it in a shortish timeframe.

Anyway you have your oppinion and i have mine. Lets leave it at that. Have a good day.

 

[Eji1700]

My two cents, for what it's worth...

If the issue is balance, I fail to see what difference it makes allowing custom variations versus presets when players are going to gravitate to the most effective thing available to them in either case. No Scorpion player is going to skip out on Misery Blade -- be it custom or preset -- for example. So why not just give players the ability to decide for themselves?
.

Because a broken system is time wasted at best and possibly more broken at worse.

So everyone uses misery blade, so all your future testing assumes they're using misery blade, but oh wait, turns out that one move that no one was using, so no one was testing it, totally breaks the matchup between scorp and DLC guy #4(thomas the tank engine)

You can't just leave shit in and assume it'll work out, so either you're testing it, or you're just willing to let the balance go to shit randomly.

Testing that many moves with so many possible combinations is way more work than testing 3 variations (which is way more work than testing just characters).

So why go through the hassle of testing all that shit, if it's going to be identical to having 3 variations, where everyone picks the misery blade variation?

Especially when that hassle is actual time and money spent, that could be spent on anything else (balance fixes, new dlc, whatever).

Time isn't free.

No, but i know people that have made games. And adding an already existing game mode with 1 different rule is not a big deal. I take the word of people i know way over yours.

And i stated above why i think the UI thing is not too big of a problem either. At best the deadline to create it was when they made the official decision. And given that they werent sure how they would decide i dont believe for a second that they designed the game in a way that they could not implement it in a shortish timeframe.

Anyway you have your oppinion and i have mine. Lets leave it at that. Have a good day.

Have any of these people worked in a full on enterprise level environment where you don't just get to redesign objects/functions/interfaces/whatever however the they feel , because from what you're saying I doubt it?

"one more mode" in a online game will NEVER be a breeze

 

[Samsara]

I'm not sure I'm surprised at all this. It sucks they didn't want to take the chance but I can see how it would be a struggle to implement. A shame really. Thought 11 would truly be something new.

 

[Cashual]

Its not minor though. This was their selling point. CUSTOMIZATION! Honestly feel the same way too cuz I am gonna travel and compete this year, but the hype has been destroyed. I know we will not know 100% until the game comes out on what the variations will be, but this decision has shown NRS is going backwards. That's very concerning.

You’re being so over the top dramatic it’s crazy!

They never once promised custom variations for competitive play. Not once. And they have marketed customization a ton for the game, but that marketing is for a global audience comprised almost entirely of casual fans who will never play a single competitive game.

Explain to me why it’s not ok for NRS to create content that is geared towards a casual audience. There are countless examples of developers creating modes and options that are not a part of the competitive experience. You want story mode to be competitive too?

You’re even citing the fact that characters in the beta (from a build from last September) don’t use all the move slots and/or the variations are trash. You have no reason to believe that you’ll see those same variations in the final game.

You’re making all these comments about how this has doomed NRS to a short life span game and how this represents NRS “going back to their old ways”....how in any way shape or form is this indicative of “their old ways”? What are you even talking about? What exactly are their old ways?

You didn’t even like mkx or injustice 2 and you’re acting as if your world has come crashing down, it makes no sense.

Why can’t you just admit that you don’t like the design choice and leave it at that? No, instead you’re on some ridiculous witch hunt saying this spells the end of the game.

Almost no other fighting game allows players to totally customize movesets and it’s pretty obvious how it could make the balancing process wildly difficult. It’s one thing to pick a super or an assist, but you’re completely changing the character by allowing that degree of customization. They’d have to patch this game weekly or some shit to pull that off. There will be things they never considered possible and it’ll lead to some bunk results.

I think about all the uproar about cheap characters or variations stealing wins in big tournaments with big money on the line, and I shake my head at people wanting this.

I don’t think it’s hype to see someone lose because they didn’t grind all 1000 possible moveset combinations. What’s cool about that? Shit I’ll double down and say I’d prefer there were only one variation of each character.

Obviously that’s not the case, but you know what? I’ll actually play the game and see the final product and judge it on its merits and not pretend to know how it’ll all play out like so many are doing. NRS has even said they would completely rework variations and change movesets if necessary.

 

[Rozalin1780]

Because a broken system is time wasted at best and possibly more broken at worse.

So everyone uses misery blade, so all your future testing assumes they're using misery blade, but oh wait, turns out that one move that no one was using, so no one was testing it, totally breaks the matchup between scorp and DLC guy #4(thomas the tank engine)

You can't just leave shit in and assume it'll work out, so either you're testing it, or you're just willing to let the balance go to shit randomly.

Testing that many moves with so many possible combinations is way more work than testing 3 variations (which is way more work than testing just characters).

So why go through the hassle of testing all that shit, if it's going to be identical to having 3 variations, where everyone picks the misery blade variation?

Especially when that hassle is actual time and money spent, that could be spent on anything else (balance fixes, new dlc, whatever).

Time isn't free.



Have any of these people worked in a full on enterprise level environment where you don't just get to redesign objects/functions/interfaces/whatever however the they feel , because from what you're saying I doubt it?

"one more mode" in a online game will NEVER be a breeze

With that mentality — that effort is time and money wasted — why have custom variations at all when you could have “complete” characters that are easier to balance? Surely this issue had to have been brought up during the idea phase of development.

And why exactly would they have to “waste” time and money testing all of these things when they have a large player base to do it for them at which point they can put out a patch/hotfix in a matter of days — which is exactly what happened time and time again throughout the course of MKX’s lifespan?