Prateek Shekhar
LeggoMyEggo
FINAL? EDIT: Towers are Fixed
EDIT 7: Towers Already Easier?
EDIT 6: Streams are up. Reviews are out. This is my goodbye. Have fun.
EDIT 5: I finally understand the Tag battle mechanic by playing in Window mode, and beat it.
EDIT 4: I unlocked Char Tower 4 and quit this mode for now.
EDIT 3: Clarification on Augment sockets.
EDIT1: Posts from other users here: Link
Hi everyone. While the other early copy holders are working hard on bringing stuff like frame data, combos and gear to you, I wanted to take a deep dive into the single player suite of the game. While this is not that big for most of the competitive community, a lot of people are excited for MK11 for the single player options, and seeing as how NRS is using customization as a selling point, I wanted to talk about 3 areas - Augments, Krypt and Towers of Time, and why they might turn some people off.
Towers of Time:
The towers of Time are like the Injustice 2 timed multiverses with some bullshit added on top. I don’t know how the larger community felt about the multiverse, but I had fun with them. Once you leveled up your characters to level 20 and had epic gear, even the harder bosses were fun. Before I get to the negatives, let me breakdown the mode first.
Tutorial towers: Before you even begin to see the real towers, you’ve got to do 4 tutorial towers. These are the same for everyone and teach you about endurance battles, consumables, and boss battles. Once you finish the tutorial towers you see the real deal.
Timed Towers: Just like the IJ2 multiverse, there are about 3-4 timed towers (or islands rather) that refresh hourly, daily, or every 3 or so days. These might be specific to certain characters, or more general. They may have only a single tower with a single boss, or a progression of towers that unlock as you achieve objectives. More or less same ad Injustice 2.
Summoned Towers: These are special towers that you can only access by summoning through Tower Keys. I do not have any tower keys yet and am not aware how to get any. So I can't elaborate on the rewards you can get from these towers.
Character Towers: These are another type of tower that you can summon in exchange for coins. These are like the Injustice 2 character specific multiverses. Initially, you can summon a tower for your character for 25,000 koins. Once you beat that tower, you can summon the next tier of tower for the same character for 50,000 coins, and so on. These towers award brutalities, intros, gear, skins, variation icons and augments for your character.
On paper this system is fine, even generous, but in practice it is anything but. First of all, the towers themselves have really bad difficulty spikes, due to some of these insane modifiers and stage hazards that only affect the player and not the AI opponent. So far I've come across unblockable laser grids, hsu hao's laser, homing missiles that lifesteal, periodic earthquakes, frozen ground that freezes you, tanya's tonfas, acid clouds, etc. Some of this may sound like standard NRS fare, but trust me, it was never this frustrating in earlier games.
First of all, about half of this shit is unblockable. Second, enemy AI loves reading your inputs and using what counters you. Stand blocking? Here comes a low. Crouch blocking? Here's an overhead string. AI's below 30% and you let go of block for a couple seconds? Here's a FATAL BLOW. Now don't get me wrong. Despite all this, in a fair 1v1 fight the AI is almost a pushover. You can breeze through entire rounds with just jump in 2s and down 2s. However, when you mix in these hazards that only affect you, these pushover opponents become worse than final bosses in other NRS games. Here are a couple of examples:
There are a few reasons that I could think of for these difficulty spikes. Either the mode wasn't playtested well, or it was rushed, or they playtested it with unlimited konsumables and never had a problem with any fights. Or, as the cynic in me thinks, it is because they want you to purchase Skip Fight Tokens, which they slyly push on you when you lose a fight.
Overall, I'm quite mixed on Towers of Time. The amount of work you need to put in to clear a whole island vs the reward you get for it sometimes doesn't seem worth it. Would I like to spend 2 hours to clear a whole island in order to get 2 skins, 2 gear pieces, and a couple augments? I'm not sure. In Injustice 2, I could clear one whole character multiverse event in 40-50 minutes and get a full epic set, few motherboxes, coins, and character gear specials. Oh, and I didn't even explain the consumables. For an in depth look at towers and a TL;DR, just watch the following video:
Character Augments:
Even though NRS said they are getting away from the Gear score RPG system from Injustice 2, that system feels downright friendly compare to Character Augments. MK11 had way more layers to the RPG grind than some real RPGs I’ve seen.
Character augments are these little gems that you can slot into your gear that give you passive bonuses. Here are some examples of bonuses.
Gem 1: 9% extra damage on raiden Superman
Gem 2: +20% poison resist, 3% overall damage
Gem 3: 4% less damage to the whole team in AI battle
On paper, the augments sound pretty good, and honestly they’re not hard to come by. They are fairly common rewards in towers of time and the Krypt. While these are randomized for the character they drop for, you can focus on your character by summoning a character tower and getting augments for your main from there.
What sucks, however, is the amount of preparation and RNG you need to even use a gem. These gems aren’t one size fits all. Just like the infinity stones, they come in different shapes and colors. I don’t have the game in front of me right now so I cant remember the exact names , but there are 5 types of gems, and for this example, let’s say two of these types are chaos, and order.
Say you’re a Noob Saibot player, and you want to use Augments for Noob, here’s the process for start to finish.
Step 1: Get augments for Noob Saibot either randomly or through Character Tower
Step 2: Level up your gear to unlock the gear slots on your current equipment. Those gear icons you see in the preview footage at the end of fights with the little xp bar at the bottom left? Yup this is it. Your gear has xp. It takes about 25 wins to level up all your gear once and unlock the first augment slots on them the it goes exponentially higher for other slots. Each gear piece has upto 3 slots for augments that you can unlock, but you can only equip two augments per gear piece. Also this xp is tier to the individual gear piece. So if you just leveled up the “Brother of Kuai" mask for Noob to level 3, and find a cooler mask that you swap out for, you gotta level up the new mask from scratch.
Step 3: Match the slots on the gear, with the type of augment. Remember how augments are one of 5 types? Your level 3 mask might have 2 slots for chaos augments, and one for order augments. But all the chaos and order gems you have may not even be for the mask. Your order gems might be for the shadow and chaos for the sickle. So not only do you have to match the type of gem to the slot of the gear, but the gem itself should be for that gear piece. If the gear piece does not have the slots to match the augments you have, you can pay coins to reroll the type of slots in the gear piece in exchange for coins. I don’t know the cost yet because I believe rerolling only works on max level gear.
Step 4: So now everything is set. Your Noob mask is level 3. You’ve rerolled it so that the augment slots match the types of augments you have for the mask, and you just placed the augments into the mask. However you just realized that the bonuses these give you don’t really match your current load out. The poison resist gem isn’t going to help you in this tower with blood damage, and the special move bonus that the augment is giving you is for a special you haven’t equipped in this variation. Oh well, hopefully you get another augment soon and you better hope it’s for the mask and matches the slots on the mask, otherwise you gotta reroll again.
Step 5: You just found a sick looking new mask, sickle, and shadow gear. Aw shit here we go again. Oh, and we cant just let you remove your augments from your old gear for free. Freely swapping would be too friendly. You gotta pay 1000 coins for each augment you remove from your old gear. Shao Kahn needs his tribute!
Here's a video explaining the Augment system in more detail:
Krypt:
The krypt by itself is pretty cool. However, like the rest of the game there is a lot of padding in the Krypt. Off the top of my head, here are the things we would like to get from the Krypt, in decreasing order of usefulness.
What throws a wrench in the works however, is how much extra filler the game has that is also obtained from Krypt chests. Here’s a list of non-customization stuff you can get from the Krypt:
There is also an item that you start with that references Kronika that let’s you reset the chests in a room for 2000 coins per chest. So say you clear out all 10 chests in a room, for 20,000 coins you could reset that entire room and open the chests for different rewards. Seeing as how this game has more items to obtain and a lot of filler and padding icons, I believe there are less chests than there are items and you will have to reset the chests a few times to get some exotic stuff.
This is the most grindy and padded the Krypt had ever been. While this game does not have real money lootboxes, the Krypt might as well be a loot box wet dream.
Of course, in peak "Nothing can be as simple as it seems" fashion, any recipes you unlock for the Krypt forge, don't show up in the Krypt. At least I haven't been able to access them in the Krypt screen. Instead I have to back to the main menu, go to my Kollection, and then the recipes section. Oh and, the recipes are incomplete even then, because they only show you 2 of the 3 components required, the third being ???. Oh, and if you use the wrong materials to craft the item in the forge, it gives you a crafting failed message and you lose the items for daring to trial and error, because of course it does.
EDIT 7: Towers Already Easier?
EDIT 6: Streams are up. Reviews are out. This is my goodbye. Have fun.
EDIT 5: I finally understand the Tag battle mechanic by playing in Window mode, and beat it.
EDIT 4: I unlocked Char Tower 4 and quit this mode for now.
EDIT 3: Clarification on Augment sockets.
EDIT 2: Review is here
EDIT1: Posts from other users here: Link
Hi everyone. While the other early copy holders are working hard on bringing stuff like frame data, combos and gear to you, I wanted to take a deep dive into the single player suite of the game. While this is not that big for most of the competitive community, a lot of people are excited for MK11 for the single player options, and seeing as how NRS is using customization as a selling point, I wanted to talk about 3 areas - Augments, Krypt and Towers of Time, and why they might turn some people off.
Towers of Time:
The towers of Time are like the Injustice 2 timed multiverses with some bullshit added on top. I don’t know how the larger community felt about the multiverse, but I had fun with them. Once you leveled up your characters to level 20 and had epic gear, even the harder bosses were fun. Before I get to the negatives, let me breakdown the mode first.
Tutorial towers: Before you even begin to see the real towers, you’ve got to do 4 tutorial towers. These are the same for everyone and teach you about endurance battles, consumables, and boss battles. Once you finish the tutorial towers you see the real deal.
Timed Towers: Just like the IJ2 multiverse, there are about 3-4 timed towers (or islands rather) that refresh hourly, daily, or every 3 or so days. These might be specific to certain characters, or more general. They may have only a single tower with a single boss, or a progression of towers that unlock as you achieve objectives. More or less same ad Injustice 2.
Summoned Towers: These are special towers that you can only access by summoning through Tower Keys. I do not have any tower keys yet and am not aware how to get any. So I can't elaborate on the rewards you can get from these towers.
Character Towers: These are another type of tower that you can summon in exchange for coins. These are like the Injustice 2 character specific multiverses. Initially, you can summon a tower for your character for 25,000 koins. Once you beat that tower, you can summon the next tier of tower for the same character for 50,000 coins, and so on. These towers award brutalities, intros, gear, skins, variation icons and augments for your character.
On paper this system is fine, even generous, but in practice it is anything but. First of all, the towers themselves have really bad difficulty spikes, due to some of these insane modifiers and stage hazards that only affect the player and not the AI opponent. So far I've come across unblockable laser grids, hsu hao's laser, homing missiles that lifesteal, periodic earthquakes, frozen ground that freezes you, tanya's tonfas, acid clouds, etc. Some of this may sound like standard NRS fare, but trust me, it was never this frustrating in earlier games.
First of all, about half of this shit is unblockable. Second, enemy AI loves reading your inputs and using what counters you. Stand blocking? Here comes a low. Crouch blocking? Here's an overhead string. AI's below 30% and you let go of block for a couple seconds? Here's a FATAL BLOW. Now don't get me wrong. Despite all this, in a fair 1v1 fight the AI is almost a pushover. You can breeze through entire rounds with just jump in 2s and down 2s. However, when you mix in these hazards that only affect you, these pushover opponents become worse than final bosses in other NRS games. Here are a couple of examples:
There are a few reasons that I could think of for these difficulty spikes. Either the mode wasn't playtested well, or it was rushed, or they playtested it with unlimited konsumables and never had a problem with any fights. Or, as the cynic in me thinks, it is because they want you to purchase Skip Fight Tokens, which they slyly push on you when you lose a fight.
Overall, I'm quite mixed on Towers of Time. The amount of work you need to put in to clear a whole island vs the reward you get for it sometimes doesn't seem worth it. Would I like to spend 2 hours to clear a whole island in order to get 2 skins, 2 gear pieces, and a couple augments? I'm not sure. In Injustice 2, I could clear one whole character multiverse event in 40-50 minutes and get a full epic set, few motherboxes, coins, and character gear specials. Oh, and I didn't even explain the consumables. For an in depth look at towers and a TL;DR, just watch the following video:
Character Augments:
Even though NRS said they are getting away from the Gear score RPG system from Injustice 2, that system feels downright friendly compare to Character Augments. MK11 had way more layers to the RPG grind than some real RPGs I’ve seen.
Character augments are these little gems that you can slot into your gear that give you passive bonuses. Here are some examples of bonuses.
Gem 1: 9% extra damage on raiden Superman
Gem 2: +20% poison resist, 3% overall damage
Gem 3: 4% less damage to the whole team in AI battle
On paper, the augments sound pretty good, and honestly they’re not hard to come by. They are fairly common rewards in towers of time and the Krypt. While these are randomized for the character they drop for, you can focus on your character by summoning a character tower and getting augments for your main from there.
What sucks, however, is the amount of preparation and RNG you need to even use a gem. These gems aren’t one size fits all. Just like the infinity stones, they come in different shapes and colors. I don’t have the game in front of me right now so I cant remember the exact names , but there are 5 types of gems, and for this example, let’s say two of these types are chaos, and order.
Say you’re a Noob Saibot player, and you want to use Augments for Noob, here’s the process for start to finish.
Step 1: Get augments for Noob Saibot either randomly or through Character Tower
Step 2: Level up your gear to unlock the gear slots on your current equipment. Those gear icons you see in the preview footage at the end of fights with the little xp bar at the bottom left? Yup this is it. Your gear has xp. It takes about 25 wins to level up all your gear once and unlock the first augment slots on them the it goes exponentially higher for other slots. Each gear piece has upto 3 slots for augments that you can unlock, but you can only equip two augments per gear piece. Also this xp is tier to the individual gear piece. So if you just leveled up the “Brother of Kuai" mask for Noob to level 3, and find a cooler mask that you swap out for, you gotta level up the new mask from scratch.
Step 3: Match the slots on the gear, with the type of augment. Remember how augments are one of 5 types? Your level 3 mask might have 2 slots for chaos augments, and one for order augments. But all the chaos and order gems you have may not even be for the mask. Your order gems might be for the shadow and chaos for the sickle. So not only do you have to match the type of gem to the slot of the gear, but the gem itself should be for that gear piece. If the gear piece does not have the slots to match the augments you have, you can pay coins to reroll the type of slots in the gear piece in exchange for coins. I don’t know the cost yet because I believe rerolling only works on max level gear.
Step 4: So now everything is set. Your Noob mask is level 3. You’ve rerolled it so that the augment slots match the types of augments you have for the mask, and you just placed the augments into the mask. However you just realized that the bonuses these give you don’t really match your current load out. The poison resist gem isn’t going to help you in this tower with blood damage, and the special move bonus that the augment is giving you is for a special you haven’t equipped in this variation. Oh well, hopefully you get another augment soon and you better hope it’s for the mask and matches the slots on the mask, otherwise you gotta reroll again.
Step 5: You just found a sick looking new mask, sickle, and shadow gear. Aw shit here we go again. Oh, and we cant just let you remove your augments from your old gear for free. Freely swapping would be too friendly. You gotta pay 1000 coins for each augment you remove from your old gear. Shao Kahn needs his tribute!
Here's a video explaining the Augment system in more detail:
Krypt:
The krypt by itself is pretty cool. However, like the rest of the game there is a lot of padding in the Krypt. Off the top of my head, here are the things we would like to get from the Krypt, in decreasing order of usefulness.
- Fatalities and Brutalities
- Character intros, outros, and end of round taunts
- Character skins
- Character gear pieces
- Combat card icons and backgrounds
- Variation icons
What throws a wrench in the works however, is how much extra filler the game has that is also obtained from Krypt chests. Here’s a list of non-customization stuff you can get from the Krypt:
- Character Augments
- In game currency (Jade Coins, Hearts)
- Krypt key items (Consumables to open certain doors)
- Tower Consumables
- Forge recipes to craft aforementioned Krypt key items
- Raw materials to craft krypt key items using aforementioned recipes
- Concept Art, music, character renders
There is also an item that you start with that references Kronika that let’s you reset the chests in a room for 2000 coins per chest. So say you clear out all 10 chests in a room, for 20,000 coins you could reset that entire room and open the chests for different rewards. Seeing as how this game has more items to obtain and a lot of filler and padding icons, I believe there are less chests than there are items and you will have to reset the chests a few times to get some exotic stuff.
This is the most grindy and padded the Krypt had ever been. While this game does not have real money lootboxes, the Krypt might as well be a loot box wet dream.
Of course, in peak "Nothing can be as simple as it seems" fashion, any recipes you unlock for the Krypt forge, don't show up in the Krypt. At least I haven't been able to access them in the Krypt screen. Instead I have to back to the main menu, go to my Kollection, and then the recipes section. Oh and, the recipes are incomplete even then, because they only show you 2 of the 3 components required, the third being ???. Oh, and if you use the wrong materials to craft the item in the forge, it gives you a crafting failed message and you lose the items for daring to trial and error, because of course it does.
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