The ranking system in NRS games isn’t great. I’d much rather see a system like SF4 (or even SF6), where you have an overall rank (Player Points aka PP), and you have a character rank. That system is so much better for learning new characters. Because with the NRS ranking system, if you get to a high rank with your main, then you want to try another character, you’re going to be going up against opponents using their mains at the ranking you got to with your main and it’s going to be difficult to get better with that character. So yeah, Street Fighter’s ranking system is at the very least superior to NRS’.
As far as single player content, all you really need is a really good training mode, a tutorial mode, and a combo trial mode. Obviously NRS games are always going to have a good story mode as the playerbase is 99% casuals, but for me, story mode is just a bonus. For instance in MK11, I played the story mode until I unlocked Frost, skipping all cutscenes/dialogue along the way. Once I unlocked her, I never played the story mode again.
The Krypt and Towers were a mistake. Such a colossal waste of time. In MK1, I just hope you can at the very least also unlock stuff via online play. Having to grind boring & pointless single player content makes the games tedious and unfun imo.
js ¯\(ツ)/¯
