So why did they do about 10 patches that changed absolutely fuck all. Im sorry but with how well this game sold i cant see them squabbling over the pricing of the work to do some frame data changes.
You're missing the point. You're looking from competitive player perspective and not the corpo/money perspective which runs gaming (and other) industry.
The way you make patches and prioritize them is almost universal and goes like this:
- you patch game breaking stuff (crashing, things that prevent your customers from finishing the game, obvious major visual/sound bugs etc..) which will impact reviews and if left alone longer - selling numbers
- you patch stuff which is annoying to your 95% of playerbase (casuals) and will annoy them so they wont buy your DLC or/and next game. Best example for MK 11 would the insane Krypt grind when the game was released and it was patched like the first thing they did coz that went public very fast and even big media outlet picked up on it
- you patch the stuff you know isn't right, mostly minor things which were obvious even at internal alpha and beta testing but you didn't have time to fix it before game release deadline, this doesn't affect your selling numbers in first months of game release but it will get noticed sooner or later and will impact the bottom line in a small way
- lastly you do or you don't do other things which doesn't really impact your bottom line in any significant way and those are the balance patches, small glitches (usually visual, etc...). They usually cost you money and in most cases you dont even brake even on those things in long run coz in reality it affects like 1% of people who bought the game
We got patches where they basically just changed health values.
There are several ways to aproach game balancing and NRS tried at least some of them; even trying to tune everything like they did it with MK X. This time they took aproach of small changes and granted it didn't work well for them but again it's not a big deal for them. They make money from casuals not from competitive players. So nobody at NRS or WB/ATT will loose sleep coz of Cetrion and Joker and Kabal and Jaqui moping most of the cast "free". It's an afterthought, if it worked - great but if it doesn't - no problem, it's not like they're loosing money on this (at least not in a way it would impact their bottom line).
Ive heard the same from my friends in game development and dont doubt its a huge factor but it doesnt add up to me. Theres money to be made long term by instilling good will in the gamer base and keeping players engaged.
For every 10 competitive player they make happy with long term support they can make 10000 casual players happy doing another DLC and/or making new game instead. You always allocate your resources where the (big) money is. That's just how it works.
I will agree the community always wants another patch.. its absolutely true but this game has taken the piss. We have got ineffective breadcrumb patches. We have day 1 hitbox issues still allll over the place.
While true the simple truth is - fixing hitbox issues, especially breathing hitbox issues, female hitbox is a lot of work, makes 0 sense for them to fix it when it only impacts... again... 1% of their customers (competitive players). That's just the sad reality of... well simple math really.
It is sad that game development has had the well posioned with finance stuff. I just expect better- many smaller developers deliver that. NRS has a winning franchise thats a huge cashcow. I wish they'd just take their product to a new company if its stifiling them this badly.
No shots at you by the way, i understand you come from a more informed place. Just doesnt add up how they can implement a million useless tower changes, HP whatever and then when it comes to changing a number on block advantage etc its suddenly unfeasible
They're in the bussines of making money which doesn't equal to making the best games. They do "good enough" for most of their customers and this works well for them coz the bottom line is great. No need to change anything while this works like a charm for them.
In general when you think about gaming industry and you think big titles / big companies always start with "what will make them the MOST money and will cost them as little as possible" and go from there, coz that is like a mantra in big corporations and to be fair that is why they're so sucessfull. This isn't a good recipe for a great game for all the players but it's the best possible recipe for a profitable bussines and in the end... that exactly what gaming (and other) industry is... a bussines.
