Mysterious Kombat League Delayed a Week

So you know that icon for something called "The Kombat League" that pops up whenever you go to play MK11 online? The countdown timer had us set to find out what that was today, but it appears to have been reset to go live "In 7 Days".



^There's a screenshot. The reason for the delay and what the Kombat League even is about is up in the air, NRS hasn't said a word about it (beyond a brief acknowledgement on the last Kombat Kast). Some speculation on a stream Mustard was doing is the delay might be so this happens when Shang Tsung releases. But who knows? We certainly won't for another week. But once we get word, you can be sure we'll let y'all know what's up.

 

Honestly, disappointing but I’m a patient man to a point. That being said I won’t be boycotting nor praising nrs. I’d wish they just tell us what this mode is so that we know what it is. If it winds up being some mode that caters to “pro” players only and not anyone/everyone else then quite frankly I don’t care what it is.

 

Yeah leave Tekken 7 out of this. The competitive balance in Tekken 7 was much better at launch then MK11.

In MK11 there is a huge difference in power between the high and low tier characters that's just fact. Just because this is the best balanced NRS game so far it doesn't mean the balance is anywhere close to where it should be for a competitive game.

You apparently don’t play competitive games. Which top-level competitive game was balanced perfectly on release? League? No. Overwatch? No. DotA2? No. DBFZ? No. SFV? No.

MK11’s balance is better than normal for the vanilla version of a competitive game.

We haven’t even had the first balance patch yet. You’re ranting and raving like we’re 20 months and 4 balance patches in. Take a deep breath

 

You apparently don’t play competitive games. Which competitive game was balanced perfectly on release? League? No. Overwatch? No. DotA? No. DBFZ? No. SFV? No.

We haven’t even had the first balance patch yet. You’re ranting and raving like we’re 20 months and 4 balance patches in. Take a deep breath

im so tired of this argument and narrative. no game is perfect and no person has ever seriously asked for perfect balance. detractors sayng we want perfection just makes us look like the problem when we just want a reasonably even playing field. the problem with this game isnt that the balance isnt perfect. the problem is that sub zero and scorpion have 2 viable(at high level) variations but dvorah and kotal have none. The problem is some characters best moves arent tournament viable but other characters have all of their best moves in 1 variation. these are things that could be easily tweaked without overhauling the entire roster which is why its a problem that the game is staying in its current state.

 

If you consider the fact that the countdown exists solely to communicate the beginning of the Kombat League, and it counts down for 30 straight days only to be reset for the 2nd time, that's not even a lack of communication, it's just lying.

Plus they said on the last Kast there would be "more information on the Kombat League coming soon", so any intelligent person would assume that means before the countdown hits 0 and the mode is released; it wasn't implied at all that it might be delayed.

I think the real truth is somewhere in the middle. Likely it was delayed for a good reason. It’d just be great if NRS could communicate what that is so everybody could calm down.

You also have to consider that people have bashed NRS repeatedly for speaking about things that were different than expected at launch (variation system, etc) and for releasing features that they felt were rushed. So it’s no surprise that NRS chooses to neither speak about the features of the league nor rush it out to meet their original dates, if it needs more work.

The bottom line is that this isn’t the end of the world; but some things do need to be improved on the communication end.

Once of the issues I perceive is that NRS generally doesn’t have a standard method or location for communication about the game. Is an announcement going to be on the Mortal Kombat Twitter? The Kombat Kast? The in-game notification system? An individual Twitter, like Tyler’s Twitter? A website? Etc. You never really know when and where to expect information, which leads to hysteria when people are waiting for info about something.

Secondly is the issue of authority. Which means that even if Tyler would like to speak about something, as the community rep. he’s actually likely not authorized to make definitive statements on major gameplay features on his own. This is why Jeff from the Overwatch team actually makes a lot of announcements, because he’s actually authorized to speak directly on these things. So unless there’s a preexisting structure set up to get pertinent info from the project leads directly to the fans, the community reps’ hands end up tied and they just stay silent. Having a well-defined internal chain of delegation/approval is important.

Imo people should come in from both sides and meet in the middle. A) NRS should improve the flow of information from key people through a reliable endpoint (if it’s a Twitter account, for example, then make sure every important announcement goes through that account, or is at least copied there). Give people preemptive notice when something may be an issues instead of waiting to fight the fire.

B) Us fans should also calm down a bit and realize that this isn’t the end of the world, the game has plenty of content, and the sky isn’t falling just because it’s taking another week to sort out Kombat League.

We all just need to grow up a bit, on both sides.

 

im so tired of this argument and narrative. no game is perfect and no person has ever seriously asked for perfect balance. detractors sayng we want perfection just makes us look like the problem when we just want a reasonably even playing field. the problem with this game isnt that the balance isnt perfect. the problem is that sub zero and scorpion have 2 viable(at high level) variations but dvorah and kotal have none. The problem is some characters best moves arent tournament viable but other characters have all of their best moves in 1 variation. these are things that could be easily tweaked without overhauling the entire roster which is why its a problem that the game is staying in its current state.

And how is that statement any different then anything that was said before? Just because that statement is focused more on replacing or adding moves rather then tweaking the already existing ones? NRS had cases of which they replaced or added moves to characters even without a Kustom Variation system like that there is in MK11 (like Joker in IJ2), and replacing the moves on a movelist or adding/removing moves is still just as much of a change as is tweaking existing moves. You're not adding anything new to the table with that statement.

MK11's balance is fine and very well, it was already stated by other people as well, including pros, like I said before.

 

Maybe the lack of communication is because they actually want to surprise us with something cool seeing as how everything else has been leaked so far. Plus whatever it is a whole bunch of you are just going to bitch and moan anyway. I'm looking forward to it regardless.