I've played the patched version of the MKAK UMK3 for awhile today. I just want to point out some positives and negatives I've experienced.
Pros:
- The netcode is much better than before. There no longer is the slowdown and overall horrid netcode that was in the original release.
- You can do Kombat Kodes in player matches.
- In ranked mode, when you match up with someone, it doesn't show their name, just their ping. This is an attempt to eliminate boosters. However, there's a way around this that I hope gets patched.
- Quitters are now punished for quitting! They receive a loss and they lose Kombat Rating points. As soon as they quit, it goes to the post game lobby screen where it shows that they lost rating and you gained it.
- You find a match pretty quickly now where before it took awhile.
Cons:
- In regards to the netplay. I've noticed something that others have as well. It seems there's dropped inputs. While the delay is minimal most of the time, dropped inputs are happening at least once per match. It's like the frames aren't even being counted, so the frame you would have pressed cr.lk for example won't even register. The majority of people won't even realize this, but veterans of UMK3 will. I haven't played MK2 or MK1 yet, dunno if there's the same problem. Other than that and the delay, the connection is decent enough to be playable if you're playing someone that has a good connection also.
- The menu's for me are still very hard to read. Not only are they tiny, but the white text blends in with the background.
- There's still display problems for smaller TV's. I was hoping that the "stretch" option would allow you to manually stretch the screen like in 2006 UMK3. But it just stretches to fit your screen, so it's a feature for bigger TV's.
- It seems like the entire interface was geared towards HD TV's, so that could explain the above.
- The player matches are still broken. You can only play one match, then after the match it kicks both players and you have to remake the room. There's also only 1v1 in the player matches. There's almost no reason to play player matches unless you want to play with a friend because of this. **** It seems to be random. I was playing matches one after the other with aShapeShifter, but kept getting disconnected with GrindFox.
- There's some random glitch that disables special moves. I have no idea how this happened to me, but it did. I could NOT do any special moves while my opponent could. It obviously wasn't a Kombat Kode since they are disabled in ranked. To my knowledge I didn't do anything differently for this to happen. It's the weirdest glitch I've encountered so far.
- You can't do Kombat Kodes in ranked. Apparently this was intentional though. To get Human Smoke, you have to do the button sequence at the character select screen and hold it until the round starts.
- There's 3 ping types. 3 green bars, 2 yellow bars, and 1 red bar. I've yet to play someone where we had 3 green bars. It's either been 2 yellow or worse. Despite that, 2 yellow bars is playable for the most part. It isn't consistent though, it varies depending on the person.
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They definitely improved the game, but I believe it still needs another patch. However, it doesn't need one as badly as the first time around. You can actually enjoy yourself online now. But I would say don't expect to play competitive matches on a consistent bases. Meaning for one the connection is inconsistent, and two the quality of competition is pretty low. But that's always been a given for these older MK games. If you're expecting the online to be better than 2006 UMK3, you will be disappointed. It's about the same in my opinion. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. Overall though, it's about on par.
Pros:
- The netcode is much better than before. There no longer is the slowdown and overall horrid netcode that was in the original release.
- You can do Kombat Kodes in player matches.
- In ranked mode, when you match up with someone, it doesn't show their name, just their ping. This is an attempt to eliminate boosters. However, there's a way around this that I hope gets patched.
- Quitters are now punished for quitting! They receive a loss and they lose Kombat Rating points. As soon as they quit, it goes to the post game lobby screen where it shows that they lost rating and you gained it.
- You find a match pretty quickly now where before it took awhile.
Cons:
- In regards to the netplay. I've noticed something that others have as well. It seems there's dropped inputs. While the delay is minimal most of the time, dropped inputs are happening at least once per match. It's like the frames aren't even being counted, so the frame you would have pressed cr.lk for example won't even register. The majority of people won't even realize this, but veterans of UMK3 will. I haven't played MK2 or MK1 yet, dunno if there's the same problem. Other than that and the delay, the connection is decent enough to be playable if you're playing someone that has a good connection also.
- The menu's for me are still very hard to read. Not only are they tiny, but the white text blends in with the background.
- There's still display problems for smaller TV's. I was hoping that the "stretch" option would allow you to manually stretch the screen like in 2006 UMK3. But it just stretches to fit your screen, so it's a feature for bigger TV's.
- It seems like the entire interface was geared towards HD TV's, so that could explain the above.
- The player matches are still broken. You can only play one match, then after the match it kicks both players and you have to remake the room. There's also only 1v1 in the player matches. There's almost no reason to play player matches unless you want to play with a friend because of this. **** It seems to be random. I was playing matches one after the other with aShapeShifter, but kept getting disconnected with GrindFox.
- There's some random glitch that disables special moves. I have no idea how this happened to me, but it did. I could NOT do any special moves while my opponent could. It obviously wasn't a Kombat Kode since they are disabled in ranked. To my knowledge I didn't do anything differently for this to happen. It's the weirdest glitch I've encountered so far.
- You can't do Kombat Kodes in ranked. Apparently this was intentional though. To get Human Smoke, you have to do the button sequence at the character select screen and hold it until the round starts.
- There's 3 ping types. 3 green bars, 2 yellow bars, and 1 red bar. I've yet to play someone where we had 3 green bars. It's either been 2 yellow or worse. Despite that, 2 yellow bars is playable for the most part. It isn't consistent though, it varies depending on the person.
=========================================================================================
They definitely improved the game, but I believe it still needs another patch. However, it doesn't need one as badly as the first time around. You can actually enjoy yourself online now. But I would say don't expect to play competitive matches on a consistent bases. Meaning for one the connection is inconsistent, and two the quality of competition is pretty low. But that's always been a given for these older MK games. If you're expecting the online to be better than 2006 UMK3, you will be disappointed. It's about the same in my opinion. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. Overall though, it's about on par.
