Why You Should Be Worried About Mortal Kombat

[STORMS]

If the MK devs do watch this forum then they at least have some idea of what we are about. They must know that TYM is a forum dedicated to spreading competitive Mortal Kombat to tournaments nationwide.
So if they are reading here is my advice:
Get the game, (at whatever point of completion it is currently at), into the hands of top players like Shock,ded_,Reo, Tom Brady and Check. Give these people a week with your game and they will break every aspect of it. They will show you things you never thought of. This is what they do and this is why they are the best. To not avail yourselves of the talent these people possess is only doing a diservice to you, to us, and to the very goal your trying to accomplish.
You want to make Mortal Kombat a serious fighter? Then should you not get it into the hands of its most top players? For they are the ones who can give you the feedback that you need to make the game we all want.

:congrats:

Rob, Amen... damn, you're good with words!

 

[Sablicious]

Good article and yes; it is concerning.

The seeming juggle centricity of the game only adds to the concerns and having a tag mode almost confirms broken gameplay aspects, at least initially.

I know NR want to keep the idiot consumers in suspense. But if this marketing ploy ends up being at the detriment of the game then it's flawed reasoning.

On the positive side, the game has been penned in for Evo so someone must have had some hands on somewhere to have sanctioned the game's inclusion. Of course, this positivity is tempered by the fact of such shovelware as the MvC games getting Evo births for years. Together with their infinites, banned characters et al...

 

[Mechacide]

On one hand, it does seem like they really should be giving top players some hands-on time, and taking some advice from them afterwards. But if this ability to patch the game without patches post-release all works fine, then it doesn't seem completely necessary.

MK has the potential to be revolutionary for the FG scene, because of the fact that it can (supposedly) be tweaked post-release. And because it's not being released in the arcades, they need to make as much money off of these sales as they can, so they're obviously going to try and keep a lot of things quiet and hype it up a lot.

They could, of course, just do what everyone else does, and release the game in arcades before consoles, and then make a revised version for consoles (if needed) and release it later on. But if they can manage it this way, it's better for two reasons: 1) Everyone gets the game as early as possible. Not everyone has access to arcades, and so they'd have to wait a lot longer to be able to play the game. 2) You'll find things faster with everyone playing it, instead of just a percentage of people (arcade-goers), of which only a small percentage are likely to find that stuff anyway.
Tekken 6: BR was out for almost a year in arcades before it came out on consoles, but there were a lot of things discovered by people playing on consoles (and there still is). I, myself, discovered useful things that no one seemed to have tried until then.

Yeah, MK is much more likely to be broken than BR ever was, but if this post-release patching system works fine, then it's all good.

In my eyes, this is MK's last chance at being taken seriously as a fighter. The team has hyped this game up to such an extent, and promised so much, that if they let down the hardcore community, I really can't see us trusting them again. I'm sure they'd have thought about all of this, and they must just have a lot of faith in this new system they've talked about.

As for EVO: Either someone got their hands on it, or had enough information to be satisfied with it, or they just don't care if it's broken (MvC2 has been played competitively for around 10 years, and it's so unbalanced and broken in ways). I doubt it's the latter, though, because Wizard said they probably wouldn't be using the tag mode, because he thought it looked broken.


My opinion is that everything I've seen so far has been solid. Obviously things could easily go wrong, but I have faith in NRS. I trust that they understand how much is riding on this game, and I don't think they want to screw themselves over.

 

[STORMS]

On one hand, it does seem like they really should be giving top players some hands-on time, and taking some advice from them afterwards. But if this ability to patch the game without patches post-release all works fine, then it doesn't seem completely necessary.

No... make no mistake about it... to have players actually go to NRS or to have players (top players like Check, Tom Brady, Shock, etc) be able to play the game in-depth and give advice and feedback to the team DIRECTLY would be 100000000% times better than a few patches. Besides, the whole point of players going to test the game out would be to avoid any troubles or issues with the game when it went to its gold release.

I strongly believe and have believed this the whole time that they NEED to get the top players in there or hell, just mail them a copy lol... then talk to them on the phone about it whether it be "Hey, I found an infinite or Hey, I found a corner glitch, etc" It would be easiest and the best thing for the game and for the players... to get testers in there to test the game and work out the flaws, if any.

But, of course the best way would be option #1.

Maybe they'll do it, but it's doubtful at this point... with being so close to the game's release.

 

[Mechacide]

It's fair that that would help a lot, and it would certainly set everyones' minds at ease. Not to mention, it would be cool to have those players posting on the forums and telling us all how awesome the game is or whatever. But I still don't believe it's completely necessary. I mean, look at all the old-school games that are still played today: SF2, SF3, MvC2, UMK3. To my knowledge, they never had talks with the top players at the time for those games, but they all turned out awesome and that's why they're still played today (well that, and because nothing better has come out in each series since).

But yeah, it's almost certainly too late to go that route now anyway, so we may as well just sit back and hope it turns out well. The gameplay looks awesome so far, though, anyway. The only real concern is that the game will be broken in some way, or seriously unbalanced, but that's the stuff that they say they can easily fix post-release.

 

[STORMS]

It's fair that that would help a lot, and it would certainly set everyones' minds at ease. Not to mention, it would be cool to have those players posting on the forums and telling us all how awesome the game is or whatever. But I still don't believe it's completely necessary. I mean, look at all the old-school games that are still played today: SF2, SF3, MvC2, UMK3. To my knowledge, they never had talks with the top players at the time for those games, but they all turned out awesome and that's why they're still played today (well that, and because nothing better has come out in each series since).

But yeah, it's almost certainly too late to go that route now anyway, so we may as well just sit back and hope it turns out well. The gameplay looks awesome so far, though, anyway. The only real concern is that the game will be broken in some way, or seriously unbalanced, but that's the stuff that they say they can easily fix post-release.

Why wouldn't it be necessary? Are the MK team the ones going to the tournaments to compete with other high level players in the major tournaments? Obviously not, but I'm sure they would if they could. If this game is to sit with the big boys and is to earn back respect from the tournaments players of SF, Tekken, etc.... it needs to be played and tested out by those who have basically dedicated their lives to making online and offline competition for the MK games possible and this lasting.

Bottom line, if this is a tournament fighter... it needs to be tested by the tournament player. It's completely necessary.

 

[Mechacide]

I gave examples of why it's not 100% necessary. Like I said, I don't disagree that it would be extremely helpful all around, and would have been the best way they could ensure they've got a tournament-ready, deep, hardcore FG, but they can still make one without doing that. It's just less likely that it will be totally ready at the offset.

My main point was that, by having tournament players play the game and give feedback, they'd mainly be sorting out broken aspects or OP characters. They can do that anyway, with the non-patches (assuming they work properly). Sure, the players might also point out some things that don't feel quite right, that could then be tweaked, but we can already tell that -- in the way of combos and general controls -- this game isn't going to handle too differently to previous titles.

 

[Sablicious]

I've susbsequently understood that 'top gamers' (whatever that means) have had some time with the game -- with a ten-character build in fact -- and the feedback has been largely positive.

So presuming these murmmerings are true, then I'm not anywhere near as worried I was a few weeks back.

 

[MKF30]

Well, Ed stated the other day that the game was tested by tournament level players but probably not the ones you have listed....either way, between that and the post game tweaks, patches confirmed this time around I'm not that worried about the gameplay.

Tournament scene wise, I'm sure it'll take care of itself in time.