Thoughts on NRS balance and design philosophy

[Wigy]

I think total length of support is a metric that gives NRS more credit than due with this game vs mkx.

The patches were far apart, had very little meat. The ones that at least tried to address substantive issues were implemented horribly - jumping wakeups breakaway. They also completely abandondoned ship right after releasing very unpolished custom characters leaving the game feeling very unfinished.

MKX at least left with some semblance of finality. The community after the final proper patch were in two camps, annoyed how fucked custom variations were or people shilling saying NRS will sort after tournament season. NRS proceeded to buff shao and change some HP around then fuck off.

 

[Juxtapose]

Obviously. The vast majority of people who intended to play Mortal Kombat 11 long term could not care less about story expansions and towers of time challenges. They care about aspects of the game that was going to change or advance the meta (i.e., balance patches, hotfixes, DLCs, etc.)

1. Clearly you don't go to the game's official Discord.
2. You are, again, proving my point. They did support the game and did indeed add balance patches, hotfixes, and DLC for longer than any other Mortal Kombat title prior, you simply didn't like what they added. Which is absolutely fine, but saying you don't like how they did something is immensely different than saying they didn't support the product, which is flat out incorrect.

 

[Juxtapose]

I think total length of support is a metric that gives NRS more credit than due with this game vs mkx.

The patches were far apart, had very little meat. The ones that at least tried to address substantive issues were implemented horribly - jumping wakeups breakaway. They also completely abandondoned ship right after releasing very unpolished custom characters leaving the game feeling very unfinished.

MKX at least left with some semblance of finality. The community after the final proper patch were in two camps, annoyed how fucked custom variations were or people shilling saying NRS will sort after tournament season. NRS proceeded to buff shao and change some HP around then fuck off.

To me, Mortal Kombat X always felt like a more finished, complete, and polished package. The new Variation system was unified throughout the game, it was fast paced and exciting to play and watch, and is to-date still my favourite competitive Mortal Kombat game of the modern trilogy.

The Variation system of Mortal Kombat 11 felt horribly unfinished at launch, and still does with Kustom Variations. A lot of the new systems, while really good on paper, needed more refinement in execution. It's more heavy neutral focus, for me, feels less fun to watch, though I confess I've gotten into it more over the last half year in terms of play.

I don't think Mortal Kombat 11 is a bad game at all, but I do feel it did indeed need more work/polish. I also do believe that further balancing and content were indeed planned, but got nixed.

At this point, it is what it is, and one can simply enjoy the game for what it is, or move on.

 

[Revy]

Can we all agree that Mortal Kombat 11 would be a better game if it wasn’t a Mortal Kombat game?

 

[Juxtapose]

Can we all agree that Mortal Kombat 11 would be a better game if it wasn’t a Mortal Kombat game?

No, because the gameplay for said game would be the same. And games of the same genre in the same franchise can play differently. Look at Halo Infinite, for example.

 

[John_NX]

Whatever they decide to do on their next game, PLEASE make D1's 8-9 frames across the board. I'm legit tired of this poking system that they KINDA tried to fix in Mk11.

 

[M2Dave]

I think that our community is pretty young, and that many of the players playing now didn't grow up competing in the less patch-heavy era of fighting games.

This is pretty different from Capcom, where they have a legacy of sticking with and supporting with games that would be considered subpar by modern standards, for long periods of time. Even if someone's younger and didn't, they're constantly surrounded by legends who are still playing and attending events that did.

More importantly the dev cycles are longer, so if you don't like the current Capcom game, it's not like you can just wait a couple years for the next one to come out. You're either going to be out of commission for an extended period of time, or you're going to have to stick it out regardless. That's bolstered by the fact that the FGC weathered a ten year drought between 3rd Strike and SF4, an 11 year gap between MvC2 and MvC3, and played UMVC3 for six years as-is until Marvel Infinite killed the hype.

Our players have been trained to just quit and wait a few months for the next game's announcement. It doesn't matter if you completely trash your game, because it won't be around long anyway.

With that said though, some of those same players from other scenes did indeed express intent to play other games (like DBFZ and GG) and quit pretty quickly. And have also played our games and done the same after a few months. So as I said earlier, it's not something that's exclusive to our scene. Just something that's more pronounced here.

I agree with your post and I think that your points are well-taken and in good spirit. I merely choose to criticize NRS more than the community because players have been "trained", as you accurately state, to quit and wait until the next game if they dislike the current one.

You also mention that the NRS community is very young, yet the irony is that the original Mortal Kombat 1 game was released about a year and a half later than Street Fighter 2. Certainly, more than enough time has passed to amass a large community of loyal players.

The reality is that Street Fighter 2 was fundamentally designed to be a competitive fighting game while Mortal Kombat 1 was fundamentally designed to shock players with its gore and violence. The mechanics of the game were secondary to the presentation, an aspect that remains true to this day.

 

[Juxtapose]

The reality is that Street Fighter 2 was fundamentally designed to be a competitive fighting game while Mortal Kombat 1 was fundamentally designed to shock players with its gore and violence. The mechanics of the game were secondary to the presentation, an aspect that remains true to this day.

I'd also like to add, outside of the gore and violence, that Mortal Kombat was designed to be very user friendly and less complex than Street Fighter II.

Ed Boon has stated in interviews that that's the reason the Block button exists, and why certain special moves are very easy on the inputs (Liu Kang was designed so an old lady could easily do F,F,HK, as an example). The game was also designed as a one-off, and they never expected it to be as successful as it was or even that they'd make a sequel. They're next planed project was apparently a Star Wars game, of sorts. They're management scrapped that in favour of Mortal Kombat II since it was so big.

 

[Marlow]

Whatever they decide to do on their next game, PLEASE make D1's 8-9 frames across the board. I'm legit tired of this poking system that they KINDA tried to fix in Mk11.

Isn't their poking system with D1's comparable to how most fighting games operate? Seems like for most games the crouching jab (or light punch, or whatever) is typically a character's fastest normal, and is typically one of the fastest moves in the game. For a lot of games it's plus on block and hit, and usually works as a way to try and interrupt the opponent, or be able to take a quick turn.

 

[Marlow]

They're next planed project was apparently a Star Wars game, of sorts.

A star wars style sci fi fighting game would be fun, just saying. Maybe it's time for NRS to try again.

 

[Juxtapose]

A star wars style sci fi fighting game would be fun, just saying. Maybe it's time for NRS to try again.

I was always curious if they had actually secured the rights to do that. That little detail I've never heard revealed in interviews.

 

[Jowabunga]

The reality is that Street Fighter 2 was fundamentally designed to be a competitive fighting game while Mortal Kombat 1 was fundamentally designed to shock players with its gore and violence. The mechanics of the game were secondary to the presentation, an aspect that remains true to this day.

This is something I realized after mostly disliking both MKX and MK11: games in the Mortal Kombat line are NOT Mortal Kombat-themed fighting games, they are fighting-themed Mortal Kombat games. I firmly believe there is a happy medium in there somewhere, but based on the sales this franchise garners consistently NRS have no financial incentive whatsoever to shake up the formula. .

For the dude earlier in the thread that claimed NRS held true to their commitment to support MK11 for "much longer" than any of their previous titles, here are some numbers for the games I've played:

MK11 release date: Apr 22, 2019
Mkk11 last patch: May 25, 2021
Total time support: 2 years, 1 month

MKX Release Date: Apr 4, 2015
MKX last patch: June 30, 2020 (last meaningful patch either late 2016 or 2017)
Total support: 5+ years

Injustice 2 release date: May 11, 2017
IJ2 last patch: Sept 6, 2021 (1.19 = Sept 2018)
Total support: 4+ years (or 1 year 4 months)

I know what you're thinking: the total support data for the last two games isn't close to accurate because those last patches were not "meaningful" support... and you'd be correct, but let's apply the same standard to MK11. After the big patch in Nov 2020, NRS released 3 more patches for MK11 before calling it quits, one in Dec 2020, one in January 2020, and the final patch in May 2021. Were those patches all "meaningful" support? The answer is probably subjective, i.e., whether you "liked what they did" or not, but at best that means the game received 2 years, one month of support. That's especially egregious for me personally because I stuck this game out for way too long hoping for an overhaul that would turn the game into something I enjoyed... and it never came. I even purchased the rest of the DLC during the November patch thinking unlocked Kustoms was the start of better things, rather a coup de grace. Boy was that an error.

All that to say my experiences lead me to believe that NRS is not likely to make games I want to play or invest my time into going forward, so onward and upward I guess. It was an interesting ride.

 

[theotherguy]

NRS released 3 more patches for MK11 ... Were those patches all "meaningful" support?

Yes, as in they affected characters and game balance.

To include the last MKX patch as support is beyond laughable:

• Minor interface changes
• WBPlay unlockables no longer requires WBPlay

Yes, it's support in the sense that they bothered poking around with the game, but as far as balance and design philosophy is concerned (you know, the point of the thread) it's not even worth mentioning in the same breath.

Maybe in 3 years time they might decide to unlock all the skins/gear, that would effectively mean the game is supported as well. But still doesn't mean anything in relation to balance and design.

 

[Jowabunga]

If you consider all of the patches to be meaningful support, the game got 2 years. Are you content with that?

To steer it back to the topics of balance and design, my brief opinions are:

Balance: with a few caveats I'm not gonna get into now, I think Mk11 might be the best balance work NRS has done to date.

Design: one of the most bipolar designs I have ever played. The tutorial was best in class and some of the dlc character designs, especially the guest characters, were really thematic, interesting, and fun. The environments were also enjoyable and I even found the Krypt engaging enough to complete most of the content. I found most of the rest of the game, however, to be a mishmash of ill-fitting mechanics that resulted in consistently degenerate gameplay that made me want to poke out my eyeballs. I felt like these design choices and adherence to the MK universe seriously constrained many aspects of the game, especially non-dlc character design.

 

[Juxtapose]

To include the last MKX patch as support is beyond laughable:

• Minor interface changes
• WBPlay unlockables no longer requires WBPlay

Yup, exactly. You can also expect that Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate will receive such minor patches as time goes on.

And if we are including the above as "support," then Mortal Kombat 11 last received support in either November or December of 2021 when it was added to Game Pass, and they added in cross-progression between the Xbox console versions and the Microsoft Store PC versions.

There was also a Steam patch sometime in the fall to address a bug that came up, so that would have needed to count to.

 

[DixieFlatline78]

I feel like I wasted a lot of my time on this game tbh. I was a big apologist and figured the game was one patch away from being truly great. Then I realized the issues I had with it were hard wired into the system mechanics.

Preparing for KOFXV, I started playing 98UMFE and Garou. Small, dedicated communities that really like their game. I realized I could just play a game and like the whole package.

TYM was a bright spot for this period, especially with our tournament series. So thank you for that