Unlockables and Gear System?

[Vslayer]

During the QA Fight between Johnny and Scorpion, the rematch screen sort of confirmed gear or unlockable items based on the character you play, sort of like Injustice 2. I found it weird they hadn't shown or talked about how customization was going to work for this game, so before this I straight up thought it wasn't going to be a thing. I'm happy they're taking the INJ2 route, MK11 was way too much of a boring grind. What do y'all think?

 

[narshkajke]

not gonna lie here, if mk1 somehow manage to have a similar good gear customization like soul calibur, I will personally thank ed boon in twitter...

 

[molambo]

The issue with mk11 was that there was no real option to just unlock everything at once which was included in the base game. You pay for something which you/the majority of people who bought it has no access to is just a strange practice.

T7 did solve that at least for the base game where it unlocked everything when you reached a certain amount of matches played. This did not applied to later dlc which lead to the same issues as with mk11.

I am fine with special costumes etc locked behind certain special achievements which are hard to get or take a long time but that shouldn't apply to the general content of the base game.

 

[lusca_bueno]

MK11 to me had a nice unlockable structure, but I hated the ammount of grind we had to go through. If they could make MK11 system but working a little bit faster, that would be nice to me.

The leak from 1 year ago mentioned the possibility of a "map mode" that could play a huge part in the unlockable system. As long as it's fun and has engaging mechanics I'll be there for it.

About gears specifically, I'm really not so sure, everyone has been avoiding answering the customization questions with a "there will be a degree of customization there" non-answer. I wouldn't expect something with the same depth of the last game, but hopefully the skins will still play a huge part of it, MK11 had SO MANY great ones.

 

[BumbleBee]

I'm happy they're taking the INJ2 route, MK11 was way too much of a boring grind.

I'm not. While MK11 was indeed the epitome of the term "grinding", we have to "thank" Injustice 2 for seeping this concept into NRS games. It exists to instill FOMO in you, rather than to give you an impression, that you have a lot of things to unlock... Unless it can be done entirely offline, but there's a fat chance of that happening, i'm afraid.

 

[Vslayer]

I'm not. While MK11 was indeed the epitome of the term "grinding", we have to "thank" Injustice 2 for seeping this concept into NRS games. It exists to instill FOMO in you, rather than to give you an impression, that you have a lot of things to unlock... Unless it can be done entirely offline, but there's a fat chance of that happening, i'm afraid.

That's not FOMO mate. If you want to unlock something for your character, you play them, and you unlock stuff. That's dope.

 

[molambo]

That's not FOMO mate. If you want to unlock something for your character, you play them, and you unlock stuff. That's dope.

Ranked and it's costume rewards and special towers or krypt events could be put in the fomo category since they are time limited ways to get certain things.

When you stick to one character and play crypt and ranked the you could unlock nearly everything for him with time. But that can take several hundred hours for just one character. At a certain point you want to fool around with other chars and customize the the way you want and being restricted dampens that quiet a lot.

 

[lusca_bueno]

I personally like the idea of events like special towers, but I do agree their duration was too short and it kinda instilled FOMO in MK11 since some towers would be available for a VERY short period and you had to be there paying attention the whole time not to miss it lol The alternative would be to play a character a LOT, which I'm kinda ok with, but it would be nice if we could have the easier/faster special tower unlocks more reliably.

I'm also such a UI whore and can't wait to see how they convey the fun of unlocking things through it, so far the game hud and main menu in the early builds have been very underwhelming compared to MK11, hopefully there are big changes for the final release.

 

[Marinjuana]

Motherboxes were ass though

I expect some kind of monetization scheme associated with unlocks but this could just be the Kombat kard level thing. I can't remember if MK11 had that but didn't MKX have EXP and levels that unlocked you new Kombat Kard backgrounds?

 

[Gooberking]

IJ2 gear was an enormous pain to manage. Whatever they do I'd hope it's a lessons learned form of it. Though I'm sure it will have whatever measure of forced engagement they feel a need for and it will annoy people in some way or another since the drip feeding of drip is probably very, very deliberate

 

[Whippoorwill]

As an almost exclusively single player, I love that we have customizables and unlockables. It's what I strive to get. And I also felt like you could get almost everything without having to invest in crystals. My critique is, don't give me 7 variations of the same sunglasses and hat. Make colours secondary to the item, and keep less items but with actual variety. 12 or 15 instead of 33 would be perfect. Unlocking slightly less purple handkerchief felt underwhelming.

 

[Vslayer]

Ranked and it's costume rewards and special towers or krypt events could be put in the fomo category since they are time limited ways to get certain things.

When you stick to one character and play crypt and ranked the you could unlock nearly everything for him with time. But that can take several hundred hours for just one character. At a certain point you want to fool around with other chars and customize the the way you want and being restricted dampens that quiet a lot.

I was talking about INJ2 and MK1, not MK11. Getting gear for playing online, casual, or PVE matches for the characters you play isn't FOMO.

 

[lusca_bueno]

Motherboxes were ass though

This. The motherboxes were so trash because it was a pain to manage and there were tons of repeated visuals being dropped all the time, not only that but even the different gears in I2 were all very similar. At least in MK11 you unlocked a piece of something and you wouldn't need to see that ever again dropping in place of something actually new.

 

[Vslayer]

This. The motherboxes were so trash because it was a pain to manage and there were tons of repeated visuals being dropped all the time, not only that but even the different gears in I2 were all very similar. At least in MK11 you unlocked a piece of something and you wouldn't need to see that ever again dropping in place of something actually new.

Having to delete every single piece of gear you didn't want, especially for chars you didn't play...omg the micro management. It was like ME1 all over again. But worse.

 

[lusca_bueno]

Having to delete every single piece of gear you didn't want, especially for chars you didn't play...omg the micro management. It was like ME1 all over again. But worse.

Exactly, and it always reached a point in which I didn't even care about the stats anymore, I would just hold onto the biggest rarity duplicate I had and delete all the others of the same appearance. What NRS should take away from I2 is that they didn't have any meaningful RPG experience tied into the game to justify all that looting, and even in games with heavy RPG elements this kind of feature can be quite a delicate balance to strike.

Thankfully in MK11 they realized people just cared about the visuals for the game modes they had prepared, so unless MK1 features a truly immersive single-player RPG experience that will revolutionize single player fighting games, I find it hard to believe the motherbox approach would be well received even if revised. And let's face it, MK1 is just not gonna deliver that lol so hopefully the focus stays in the visuals, and if they decide to introduce RPG elements that they find other ways to do so instead of lootboxes.

 

[Shania Twain]

i wonder if they will have skins and custom weapons/masks/hair etc. i would prefer something like that. cuz what if i want kitana in a fancy updo in her new outfit or maskless or with a fan that isn't blue or whatever.

 

[Juxtapose]

I know it won't happen, but I'd love to go back to a simple skin system like in Mortal Kombat XL, save give extra skins to DLC characters as well.

Just get me to the Character Select screen, let me choose my Character, skin, and Kameo.

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

I know it won't happen, but I'd love to go back to a simple skin system like in Mortal Kombat XL, save give extra skins to DLC characters as well.

Just get me to the Character Select screen, let me choose my Character, skin, and Kameo.

My impression is that they are going with this route this time. Except characters will have at least 3 costumes, I think.

 

[ThingFish]

Very strange that they havent talked about this yet, considering how important skins and customisation are to a lot of people, I know its a dead horse, but they havent talked about much of anything at all yet regarding unlockables and what-not

 

[narshkajke]

i wonder if they will have skins and custom weapons/masks/hair etc. i would prefer something like that. cuz what if i want kitana in a fancy updo in her new outfit or maskless or with a fan that isn't blue or whatever.

this would be great but I want my barechested sub-zero with armguards, shin guards and pants,,, the only way to do it is with namco customization ala soul calibur or tekken...

 

[Plop]

In all honesty, I don't mind the grindr. At the end of the day, I'm gonna be putting a lot of hours into this game, so it's good that I might still be unlocking stuff months down the line.

The only thing I wasn't too thrilled with, was having the classic costumes be locked behind a particular tower that only showed up once a year or whatever. Or only the Kronica chest things that only showed up at specific times, which you would need to keep an eye on Ed's twitter for. That's no good.

 

[Plop]

In all honesty, I don't mind the grindr.

I did not do this on purpose hahahaha Woooow

 

[Juxtapose]

My impression is that they are going with this route this time. Except characters will have at least 3 costumes, I think.

Fingers crossed and we'll see what happens.

 

[molambo]

In all honesty, I don't mind the grindr. At the end of the day, I'm gonna be putting a lot of hours into this game, so it's good that I might still be unlocking stuff months down the line.

The only thing I wasn't too thrilled with, was having the classic costumes be locked behind a particular tower that only showed up once a year or whatever. Or only the Kronica chest things that only showed up at specific times, which you would need to keep an eye on Ed's twitter for. That's no good.

having a option to unlock things in itself isnt bad but i would rather have a system where you get a ingame currency and can then just unlock what you want, whenever you want instead to be forced to do time specific things or just hope for luck so that certain items pop up again or get unlocked.

kinda like the time crystal system but without you needing to pay for them but to get them for playing the game, including all modes so that you are free to play what you want but you still get rewarded/being able to unlock things you want.

 

[Juggs]

I just want cool skins. I don’t mind the MK11 system, I just hope you can unlock stuff by playing online and aren’t forced to play boring ass single player stuff. I barely had any cool gear in MK11 because I’m not about to waste hundreds and possibly thousands of hours playing against the AI just for some cool gear. Waste of my time