NRS Speaks and Confirms MK11 is Officially Done

[M2Dave]

Here's the section about KI balance and how the community roasted the Iron Galaxy devs after they started communicating in detail about their patching process:

Keits goes into detail about why he calls having the game designers communicate directly with the community a "failed experiment".

I have yet to watch the video, but let me take a wild guess. Keits engaged in pointless arguments with random fools on Twitter who ended up politicking for their characters to be buffed and their worst match ups to be normalized?

Edit: Close enough. Who would have thought!

Besides, I fail to see the analogy and equivalence between Iron Galaxy and NRS. The expectations, my expectations to be precise, are straightforward. Stop trolling and teasing on Twitter if you know your game will no longer be supported. Be honest and inform the community as to what is going on. Do not insult your fan base by calling them entitled if they demand more content. Furthermore, if you buff or nerf a character, explain why you did what you did in the patch notes as Capcom and Namco do.

Maybe certain people do, but I do not expect to interrogate NRS developers or the quality assurance staff on Twitter or in person about the game's balance. I do not expect them to be my friends or my confidants when I lose my bad match up and need to vent.

I think these expectations are fair and simple, yet NRS have had a difficult time meeting the bare minimum of standards.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I have yet to watch the video, but let me take a wild guess. Keits engaged in pointless arguments with random fools on Twitter who ended up politicking for their characters to be buffed and their worst match ups to be normalized?

Lol, you might want to actually watch the video before preparing a pre-canned take on it.

Keits gives a rational explanation of both sides of the tradeoff of being too close to the playerbase, and gives insight into exactly why devs need to use their best judgement instead of taking every cue from social media.

These are things that most people who’ve only been on the player side of the equation and never built a product for anyone else to use don’t understand.. But they give some important insights into what the KI devs were thinking when they were being railed against by the community.

 

[M2Dave]

Keits gives a rational explanation of both sides of the tradeoff of being too close to the playerbase, and gives insight into exactly why devs need to use their best judgement instead of taking every cue from social media.

I agree, but Keits provides an example of when the development team makes a good decision. What about when they make a bad one? What if their "best judgement" is vehemently disliked by the majority of the community four, five, or six months after a change was or was not made? Most players in this community have despised breakaways, fatal blows, and the oki system since the beta and NRS has done the bare minimum to alter these gameplay features.

I think Mortal Kombat X is a monotonously offensive game, but toward the end of the game's lifespan NRS showed a willingness to listen and change the game in accordance with the community's suggestions. They overhauled the meter system after run cancels and combo breakers, they removed armor on the majority of enhanced special moves, and they even changed some overhead attacks to mid attacks. They arguably did the best they could for the amount of time they had. For Mortal Kombat 11, in contrast, they were either out of touch or they thought they knew better than anyone else.

 

[Eddy Wang]

I agree, but Keits provides an example of when the development team makes a good decision. What about when they make a bad one? What if their "best judgement" is vehemently disliked by the majority of the community four, five, or six months after a change was or was not made? Most players in this community have despised breakaways, fatal blows, and the oki system since the beta and NRS has done the bare minimum to alter these gameplay features.

I think Mortal Kombat X is a monotonously offensive game, but toward the end of the game's lifespan NRS showed a willingness to listen and change the game in accordance with the community's suggestions. They overhauled the meter system after run cancels and combo breakers, they removed armor on the majority of enhanced special moves, and they even changed some overhead attacks to mid attacks. They arguably did the best they could for the amount of time they had. For Mortal Kombat 11, in contrast, they were either out of touch or they thought they knew better than anyone else.

damn that was deep.

 

[Wigy]

I think this is in part why people get the shits, they don't know why NRS does things in their patches and you get responses like this:



I'm not sure how much of that KI info was known before that B2B doco, but the fact they said the complaining stopped afterwards says a lot.

As i've mentioned previously, the dev's patch the game to make their vision come true. Just because 10 people all think they could have done it better by doing it differently, doesn't necessarily mean what the dev's did was wrong. The KI example is perfect in showing that.

That's not to say there's things in MK11 that couldn't/shouldn't have been touched, but maybe they did look at them but went a different route for some reason.

There was a lot of stuff they didnt do that you cant defend outside of WB holding them back. None of the ability slot stuff even made vaguely made sense.

I don't know why you say 10 people.. there has been pretty consistent unified negative community feedback on a tonne of things.

The last big patch which released customs... none of that shit vaguely made sense. S tier characters getting amazing 1 slot moves and half the shit characters getting 2 slot dogshit moves. Even the people who shilled constantly recognised how jank the decisions were but said this would obviously be fixed later.

I accept NRS can have a vision of what they want, that doesnt just excuse it from criticism and mean the community have to shut up and like it.

If people wanna blame WB i cant disprove that but whatever the cause there is a lot wrong with this game. Theres just things i wouldnt know how to begin playing devils advocate for.. 'oh yeah cetrions okay i guess.. maybe she needs an armour breaking restand pressure zoning tool thats one slot.. i think she needs a tool like that'

 

[Kiss the Missile]

For Mortal Kombat 11, in contrast, they were either out of touch or they thought they knew better than anyone else.

I believe it to be the latter. Obviously its just one person, but the moment in MK11's development that stand out the most to me was when 16bit mocked Kitana fans by saying "Where are her combos? She's supposed to be the combo queen. That's something that we made up and declared" in response to them asking for Kitana to have better juggles.

 

[Marinjuana]

16 Bit is the Kitana of America tho

 

[Juxtapose]

16 Bit is the Kitana of America tho

Was. She officially passed her torch to KitanaPrime back in the Mortal Kombat XL days.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

passed her torch

Her Fans

 

[Swindle]

Yup. It's a great documentary, and a great insiders look on a strong problem solving method.



I find this mostly to be true, sadly, and it's something I've seen get worse over the last decade-ish, not better.

The thing is…gamers are just people. From the most casual to the seasoned pro. Just people.
And like Carlin said about people…”a few winners, a whole lot of losers.

 

[Darth-Nero]

I think Mortal Kombat X is a monotonously offensive game, but toward the end of the game's lifespan NRS showed a willingness to listen and change the game in accordance with the community's suggestions. They overhauled the meter system after run cancels and combo breakers, they removed armor on the majority of enhanced special moves, and they even changed some overhead attacks to mid attacks. They arguably did the best they could for the amount of time they had. For Mortal Kombat 11, in contrast, they were either out of touch or they thought they knew better than anyone else.

^ pretty much this.

We were all expecting the same overhaul patch for mk11 same way they did for mkx but it never happened. I believe the reason is because they are giving the community a kind of "careful what you wish for" kind of lesson, they took the mkx "too offense based" criticism to heart so they went with the other extreme with mk11 and kept it that way. and it worked, ppl are actually missing the mkx experience as opposed to the dullness of mk11 and other aforementioned issues.

 

[John Grizzly]

Was. She officially passed her torch to KitanaPrime back in the Mortal Kombat XL days.

Bit off topic, but Deoxys' Kitana looked fucking incredible on that Twitch Rivals MKX tournament. He took NinjaKilla's Liu Kang to the absolute limit. If not for one dropped combo, he could have beaten him.

 

[Juxtapose]

Bit off topic, but Deoxys' Kitana looked fucking incredible on that Twitch Rivals MKX tournament. He took NinjaKilla's Liu Kang to the absolute limit. If not for one dropped combo, he could have beaten him.

Absolutely. His Kitana was, for me, the highlight of the entire tournament.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

Many times

 

[Art Lean]

I'm not defending NRS or WB's practices here, but I'll be devil's advocate here in comparing MK against those other franchises... other than Dragonball as a game franchise (but I'd argue MK has been WAY more successful), and by loose association I guess the individual characters of Smash Bros (however the Smash Bros franchise itself didn't emerge until 1999), MK has outlasted all of those competitors; it's had 3 movies, 2 live action series, 3 animated franchises, 11 mainline entries (a few with numerous revisions), 3 unique spinoff adventure games, loads of comic series, hugely successful platinum-selling music CDs that have boosted the careers of multiple bands... in comparison to its competitors it's certainly made its mark as a multimedia franchise with a proven track record of successful ventures outside of competitive fighting game tournaments. I guess WB can see the dollar signs on the wall, that suggest clearly if it doesn't need 5 years of support for a single title, why invest it?

Don't get me wrong, I'd absolutely love it to be supported for years and years, I'd love MK11 to turn into an incredible DLC update of MK Armageddon; to get Ashrah, Reptile, Smoke and Sareena back, in these gorgeous graphics, to have all sorts of classic costumes from the films and TV shows, so I have to stress I'm just being devil's advocate here.

MK's been a franchise that's never sat still for nearly 30 years; other than 3 major revisions of MK3, 2 major revisions of MK4, and a lengthy hiatus between 4 and DA that was filled with pretty much just Conquest and Special Forces, it's largely kept going from title to title with very few set-backs. I don't approve of it, but can understand why the suits at WB might go "right MK11 made its money, move onto the next one" given the franchise's very solid track record of just bouncing from title to title with largely regular success as the years progressed, especially after the MK9 reboot brought it back to the big leagues. I don't like it... but I can understand it.

I'd much prefer it if they took the server-connections offline and let fans mod both the game and costumes to keep it alive for years to come, that for me would be more than enough support; let the fans keep it alive, but it's 2021 and guess these properties are big business and they want them to be corporately-owned rather than fan-owned. Again, just being devil's advocate here, I don't like it... but I get it.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

let fans mod both the game

Was discussing this after our last podcast.. It'd be awesome to open things up and let players continue tweaking things after official support is finished.

We've seen so many older games get new life on PC because of things like this (and even on console with the stuff they're doing with Smash).

 

[Art Lean]

Was discussing this after our last podcast.. It'd be awesome to open things up and let players continue tweaking things after official support is finished.

We've seen so many older games get new life on PC because of things like this (and even on console with the stuff they're doing with Smash).

If fans could have access we could have everything from amazing balance patches to Defenders of the Realm skins. It would be amazing!

But why give to the fans something they could charge money for in the next title, sigh.

 

[Immortal]

I'd much prefer it if they took the server-connections offline and let fans mod both the game and costumes to keep it alive for years to come, that for me would be more than enough support; let the fans keep it alive, but it's 2021 and guess these properties are big business and they want them to be corporately-owned rather than fan-owned. Again, just being devil's advocate here, I don't like it... but I get it.

Let me just say this will never happen and there are good reasons for that.

1. They would have to resign from using Denuvo AP, which will never happen since in corporate mindset this means loosing money.
2. They would have to redesign several aspect of the engine to allow moding (a LOT of work) and disable any mods in online play otherwise you can imagine what would happen.
3. This would only work on PC so... that's another problem.
4. There is very little money in it for them and quite a lot of work like i said, so there is no point.

Like i said - it's safe to say this will never happen. I know, i'm a party killer but thats just how things are.

 

[Jynks]

There is already a modding scene in mk9, 10 and X....

 

[Immortal]

We're talking official mod support here.

 

[NSR]

Oh man, official mod support would be so fucking good.
Don't do that to me guys, don't make me imagine it. It hurts, it hurts so bad.
Related to the above, I'd love if it more games followed Carmack's open source philosophy but that's a pipe dream sadly.
For every Duke 3D, there's a Blood I guess. (I'm aware Blood's source code was reverse engineered btw, but this used to apply for 2 decades to Blood)

 

[Jynks]

We're talking official mod support here.

if there are mods,... what does it matter.... there is not a single FGC game with official mod support... but they all have tons and tons of mods.

 

[Immortal]

This statement alone makes me think you have no idea how official mod support works, if you see no difference.... Anyway, yes it does matter. It matters a lot but it will never happen for WB/ATT games, that's just the reality.

 

[xX_APO_Prince_Xx]

Probably a little late but I can't say I'm shocked MK11 is over, the game wasn't imo done well since they did good with the gameplay and graphics and such, but DLC content was limited at times and Ed Boon didn't have info or anything for months and reveals were very inconsistent. On top of that they bring back characters people want but then they always exclude the characters from before, like they had Tanya but then they made Jade come back but didn't have Tanya return either which was annoying

They did this with Injustice 2 as well, I think it's honestly time for Mortal Kombat to maybe remake and remaster the older games since I'd love a remade Deception and Armageddon, this reboot route they're going always leads to a dead end and I'm tired of them suddenly ending support after less than a few years. Mileena has only been out I think for a few months away from a year and now they end support, like good God...

 

[Makuholick]

Mileena has only been out I think for a few months away from a year and now they end support

Not to forget "the fans" begging for her since Kombat Kast