[Sledgehammer]

Futuretime23, on 26 April 2019 - 04:25 PM, said:

However on a more pessimistic note, considering the fact you had a few morons on TYM and other sites defending the original system, I can guarantee you someday, this backlash is NOT gonna happen again and these systems will get worse.

TYM is full of faggot fanboys and likely has shitton of marketers since it's the biggest NRS dedicated.

Also agree about Jax, he was pretty likable back when he was your typical American sergeant guy. But don't be surprised, leftists ironically are the most xenophobic people when it comes to blacks, they actually struggle to communicate with them even, so a result is a shit writing.
https://archive.ph/cbnTP

The problem is that those people have little to no experience or even lack something simple as imagination when it comes to writing something. This is why they can't even make good jokes. The best leftist joke is a leftist himself and everything he does.

[Futuretime23]

Sledgehammer, on 26 April 2019 - 07:06 PM, said:

TYM is full of faggot fanboys and likely has shitton of marketers since it's the biggest NRS dedicated.

Also agree about Jax, he was pretty likable back when he was your typical American sergeant guy. But don't be surprised, leftists ironically are the most xenophobic people when it comes to blacks, they actually struggle to communicate with them even, so a result is a shit writing.
https://archive.ph/cbnTP

The problem is that those people have little to no experience or even lack something simple as imagination when it comes to writing something. This is why they can't even make good jokes. The best leftist joke is a leftist himself and everything he does.

Actually most TYM members heavily criticized the towers, so I'll give credit where it's due.

As for Jax:
Old Timeline Jax is fine imo. Identical to his MK9 persona (which well, duh, makes sense considering he comes from there) so no complaints there. IMO barring the weird pandering in Jax's arcade ending, I really really don't think the issue is leftists or politics being shoved in. The issue with Present Jax is that they basically recycled his char arc from MKX, not politics. Specifically PTSD or trauma of some sort from his time being as a revenant (which is fully understandable) and his daughter Jacqui becoming part of SF and potentially risking her life in the line of fire. The problem is that this was already resolved in X, Jax eventually accepted an offer to return to SF and went back to the netherrealm, initally as an advisor but then actually went and beat the shit out of numerous revenants and captured Quan Chi, the one who traumatized him so much. That and he became accepting of Jacqui as a SF member.
However 2 years after MKX, all of a sudden he's back to being afraid of something happening to Jacqui and being regretful of what happened to him in his past. Supposedly this is because his wife died in the 2 years between X and 11, but A) we never saw his wife in X making it a bit unclear if she was even alive back then, B ) While the death of his wife may have affected him, he typically focuses on Jacqui and his past trauma, making it seem like his wife's death really didn't affect him much. It just feels like a huge step backwards, and it makes Jax seem bizarrely weak as a character. He does turn at the end so they didn't outright ruin him and I can KINDA see what they wanted to do (being regretful of the past and wanting to change it when offered a choice, especially if his wife's death affected in his manner of thinking but Vera really isn't brought up much to begin with, and it's not even clear EXACTLY when she died. Like did she die mere days after the 2 year timeskip? Or was there enough time to allow for Jax to grieve and move over her death? After all, Jacqui was able to do that) but I feel like his char arc in X basically meant his conquered his demons, his past, accepted it, and moved on. To go back on that after such a triumphant conclusion to his revenant woes and Jacqui fears just feels insulting to Jax as a character and also quite repetitive.

Present Jax also due to his actions comes across as way too selfish, not giving a damn what his daughter wants or questioning if he really should help Kronika. (an issue that OT Jax naturally doesn't suffer from, which sure, was intentional, but I just feel like it makes Present Jax too unlikeable.)

[Forge]

Futuretime23, on 26 April 2019 - 04:25 PM, said:

I'm aware what the original intent was - I just find it saddening these companies keep insisting with implementing this kind of crap, but then again, on a brighter note, it's good that there was hella backlash for the stunt they were trying to pull which caused them to backtrack on their plans.

However on a more pessimistic note, considering the fact you had a few morons on TYM and other sites defending the original system, I can guarantee you someday, this backlash is NOT gonna happen again and these systems will get worse.

There's "Dark Souls" levels of difficulty, then there's this shit where the developer intentionally made it near impossible to beat the game without having to pay the company more money - just to skip a piece of the game.

Paying to skip part of the game.

The intention was to pay them to NOT play their game.

fucking genius.

[MusicallyInspired]

It's all coming to that point where that one developer representative (or was it publisher?) stated that if they could sell cheat codes back in the early days they would. They're doing it now.

It's a good thing indie gaming is a thing (and what a thing it is) because I have almost no reason to continue supporting the AAA gaming industry right now. Except Nintendo, I guess. But they have a strong indie gaming support system in place. Even though there are hints that they themselves will also be going down the dark route.

[Forge]

[Zaxx]

Futuretime23, on 26 April 2019 - 03:07 PM, said:

Might interest you to know they've addressed this in a Kombat Kast released recently.

Yes, I saw it but that was just a bunch of bullshit excuses as far as I'm concerned. They were talking about how they want the mode to be fun and based on my experience with MKX's "nerfed" towers (on what they are saying chances are MK11's ToT will be the same as MKX's towers in a month) that's never going to happen. The problem is not the difficulty but the fact that its core the mode will be simply annoying even if you can beat the towers with ease. That's how I felt when playing the towers of MKX: I was annoyed when a modifier appeared and it messed up my combo. A fighting game is about two guys duking it out, not about you fighting the other guy while he has more HP than you and random shit is killing you on the screen.

So my impression is that the mode solely exists because WB wanted to sell some shit in the store or they wanted the game to have loot boxes like Injustice 2, then loot boxes became cancer in the eyes of people so they took 'em out with nothing to replace the original system that would have showered you in konsumables with. This all happened too late in development so now they are trying to balance it out to a level that's tolerable... but with that said I don't believe that any sane game designer would put a mode like this into a fighting game if not pressured by the publisher to do so. It's not fun and it has no place in a fighting game but if NRS believes otherwise then I'd love to see those two idiots from the Kombat Kast do a stream where they play nothing but Towers of Time.

[Zaxx]

There are two things that make this really sad btw:

- The combat system is really-really good, it's absolutely that more footsie heavy gameplay they promised.
- Now QLOC and Shiver handled the PC port from the beginning and as a result it's great. People are reporting some minor issues but that's usual, when it comes to MK on PC I think this is the best port yet, it's actually running better for me than MKX did because they finally managed to update UE3 (and btw. yes, even though all the other major fighting games switched to UE4 MK, the biggest one is still stuck on UE3) to a point where the old issues with load stutter and framepacing no longer exist. It's really smooth, the 60 to 30 fps transitions work flawlessly etc. and this was not something that was always true for MKX on PC.

[Sledgehammer]

MusicallyInspired, on 26 April 2019 - 08:20 PM, said:

They're doing it now.

They were doing it for a decade, in fact even with DLC, except they were at least a bit more honest, in a sense that there was no illusion about having free way to unlock this stuff. They just became more greedy now and it will be worse later. Their greed has no boundaries.

MusicallyInspired, on 26 April 2019 - 08:20 PM, said:

Even though there are hints that they themselves will also be going down the dark route.

They already were horrible when it comes to such things. Fuck Amibo bullshit which was a physical form of DLC. They kind of redeemed themselves, but with paid online they shoot themselves in a foot again. This is the sole reason why I haven't got Swtich yet and I would pick it as an alternative to Vita (which is still quite popular in Japan and is getting games) had they never went down this route. If I ever get Switch I'll surely going to jailbreak it.

[MusicallyInspired]

Amiibo don't allow you to skip anything, though. Just give little bonuses. Also, if you get some NFC stickers you can emulate Amiibo pretty easily for a fraction of the cost. I look at them as mere collectibles with a bit of game functionality. I get the point, though.

As for Game Genie, that's not something that game developers put together and they certainly don't get money from its purchase or use.

[Zaxx]

MusicallyInspired, on 27 April 2019 - 08:37 AM, said:

Amiibo don't allow you to skip anything, though. Just give little bonuses.

That's bad enough honestly but yeah, if that's balanced right and the game doesn't feel pay to win it can work.

With MK11 the biggest problem is "Warn a Brother" sadly, in Towers of Time one gameplay hint literally says that you shouldn't be afraid to use skip fight tokens. The interesting bit about that though is that this is what you'll find in the store if you bother to look:

You can't buy skip fight tokens (they are found in the Krypt), only some shit that rotates every 24 hours along with easy fatalities. So I don't know what ToT was designed to do when it comes to monetization but it really feels like that they had an idea that ultimately didn't end up in the game but left the towers unbalanced as a result. That's one scenario of course, another one could be that WB wanted to do the same shady shit companies like Activision regularly do: launch the game with a barebones store and then launch the full store once people are not paying that much attention to the game anymore.

[Zaxx]

Anyway this is really good, they explain the issues perfectly:

[Zaxx]

Okay, after finishing the story mode I have to say that the people who worked on that part of the game fully deserve their salary, it was excellent. Hell, I even disagree with the whole "Jax went bad" discussion simply because nope, Jax didn't become evil suddenly, she just believed Kronika's reasoning. She's the reason why Jax's arc is pretty cool: she's not the usual bad guy and certainly not what we expect from an MK game. She has a point, you can actually side with her up until the end when it becomes evident that she's wrong (thankfully Jax switches teams by that point too).

On the other hand yep, I fully agree with the point that he's going through the same shit he went through in MKX so that's a good one.

Edit: Btw. Ronda Rousey's voice acting is... good lord:
https://www.reddit.c..._ronda_rouseys/
Why are they hiring athletes instead of voice actors or actors? I thought the industry stopped doing this a long time ago.

[Zaxx]

There is so much hidden shit in this game:

If you hold down B1 after Sub-Zero does his brutality he will make a snowman instead of his ice clone as his win pose. Works with every Sub-Zero brutality of course. There are other button combinations that do different stuff too but I'm yet to figure those out.

[Zaxx]

Also: it's not impossible to get maskless Skarlet but man, this took a lot of fucking koins (you have to keep feeding 75k koins to the Shrine until you get it):

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm surprised they showed her shoulders, considering their latest stance on female character costumes. It's funny how it's gone full circle and they've taken a very traditional Christian approach to portraying women...you know, besides all the violence of course.

[Zaxx]

I think that once you dig into the game and look at all the different cosmetic stuff you kinda start getting that what they said about their approach to female design is pretty true. The women look cool but they generally show a bit less skin and their looks got a lot more "character based" so to speak: fighters who are supposed to be sexy look sexy but if someone is for example a soldier type then she'll look "comic book militaristic" instead of sexy. That's fine and apart from a few weird skin choices (Cassie comes to mind) the designs are pretty damn good but there could be a lot more variety (=MK is a "live service" now so chances are they'll gradually release new skins).

On the other hand I have to say that something was decidedly toned down compared to MKX (and in some cases even compared to MK9): the gore and the brutality as surprising as that may be. MK11 is a lot less disgusting than MKX was, fatalities and brutalities are on the funnier side now, they don't really want to gross you out and there are some things that feel to be missing. For example Skarlet is a character that's all about manipulating and consuming blood so her finishers should be gross as fuck but they are pretty tame.

This is what she does in MK11:


Now compare that to MK9:
https://youtu.be/jhPd4KMjJrA?t=90
So even though MK11 is still the goriest and most brutal game on the current market it's absolutely on the lighter side in comparison.

[MusicallyInspired]

I guess they figured that from going so far out disgusting there was no where else to go. I mean, how much more extreme can you get? I don't mind the change in direction in that sense.

[Zaxx]

I didn't like the style of MKX when it came to the gore, the point there was shock value and that got boring after while. On the other hand that game had a distinct style while MK11 is funnier but it's not funny enough for that aspect to really stand out: it just feels like another set of MK fatalities instead of something unique. I agree on that they went so far that it was time to go back a bit, I'd just love to see more funny shit, hell, even a modernized version of the Friendship finisher would be cool (at least in MK11 you can give mercy but that's just an optional gameplay mechanic and not really a finisher).

When it comes to characters like Skarlet though where drinking and bathing in blood is so like her that she even talks about it in a lot of her intros... yeah, that chick should have more disgusting fatalities.

[Futuretime23]

Really? I thought MK11 was just as violent as MKX if not more so at times given how detailed the gore is in this game.
Standouts include Noob's 2nd (where he puts a clone inside your opponent and you hear all these disgusting choking sounds as the clone "births" from within your opponent's body), Geras' 2nd (who literally opens your opponent up like a pinyata), Kotal's 1st (which honestly the first part where he repeatedly kicks your opponent comes across like something 2016 Doomguy would do for a glory kill, it's brutal as hell) Kabal's 1st (where he drags your opponent so fast the opponent's face literally falls off in pieces before he launches them and warps to the other side to get a perfect cut in half) and Sub's 2nd (very creative use of the ice clone and the spine rip, and the eye popping out of the victim at the end is an amazing detail)
THAT being said, there's definitely a few funnier style fatalities - not to the level of MK3, not even close, but there's definitely a few ones to come to mind, namely Kano's 2nd (the dance fatal), both of Johnny's, and Jax's 2nd. I think they are funny enough as they are, you don't wanna risk a repeat of MK3 again, I mean, these are hilarious enough without going full stupid (a la MK3 Cyber Smoke blowing up the world shit, MK11 really doesn't have that kinda crap. Even Cetrion's laser beam fatal wasn't as dumb as the previous example) and very humiliating (seriously, seeing Kano dancing around with your opponent's corpse can definitely tick a few people off hehe)

[MusicallyInspired]

Speaking of which, when the frig is the Doom Slayer going to guest in Mortal Kombat? They're made for eachother.

[Zaxx]

Futuretime23, on 20 May 2019 - 11:36 AM, said:

I think they are funny enough as they are, you don't wanna risk a repeat of MK3 again, I mean, these are hilarious enough without going full stupid (a la MK3 Cyber Smoke blowing up the world shit, MK11 really doesn't have that kinda crap.

I think the fatalities are fine overall, I just want more goofy shit. For example I basically kept Sub Zero as my main now because his brutalities are amazing, you can goof around a lot with them: you can make different ice sculptures, after you punch a guy up into ice spikes he'll slide down the spike if you press D3 like in MK2's stage fatality, one of his brutalities is literally his MK2 fatality made into a brutality etc. Friendships could be fun if made well, babalities too, hell, we don't even have stage fatalities this time around.

[Futuretime23]

Zaxx, on 21 May 2019 - 03:01 AM, said:

I think the fatalities are fine overall, I just want more goofy shit. For example I basically kept Sub Zero as my main now because his brutalities are amazing, you can goof around a lot with them: you can make different ice sculptures, after you punch a guy up into ice spikes he'll slide down the spike if you press D3 like in MK2's stage fatality, one of his brutalities is literally his MK2 fatality made into a brutality etc. Friendships could be fun if made well, babalities too, hell, we don't even have stage fatalities this time around.

Yeah I miss babalities and stage fatals.
I get the feeling they'll add stage fatals later like they did with MKX via a free update.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yeah. The game just came out and it IS built with "games as a service" in mind.

[Zaxx]

Futuretime23, on 21 May 2019 - 07:09 PM, said:

Yeah I miss babalities and stage fatals.
I get the feeling they'll add stage fatals later like they did with MKX via a free update.

Yeah I hope that since this game has a more robust - and a lot more grindy - progression system content patches will be more significant. Stage brutalities are very rare too here, I've only seen one so far so those would be cool to have too. Btw. in defence of stuff like Smoke blowing up the planet in MK3: sometimes shit like that can work too, just remember Liu Kang's fatality where he drops an MK arcade machine on the opponent. If the joke is good enough then it's good enough and MK is a franchise that was partially expanded by stupid inside jokes and easter eggs so that style just fits.

I'd love to see more Krypt too (there are some rumours going around on more Krypt locations coming so fingers crossed) because after the strong start the endgame was a pretty big letdown for me... mostly because there is no endgame. Exploring the Krypt was fun even with all the stupid grind walls and I loved the opening with Shang Tsung welcoming you and then regularly narrating your adventure but after a while all of that just stops so that was a letdown. You solve all the puzzles, you collect all the heads to open up the throne room and apart from some really good loot there is just nothing in there narratively. Once you open up the last room Shang says "you exceed my expectations" and that's it, you don't even meet him, there is no reslution, you don't find out who the Traveller is etc. and that's just meh.

The Krypt unlock progression is really bad too: I've got all the heads, opened every chest, all the hidden ones, the heart chests and the green shit too, reset the whole Krypt, spent millions of koins at the Shrine... and I'm still missing around 30% of even the fucking concept art. The worst part is that I don't even know how to get the remaining stuff because once you start resetting chests you quickly realize that they are giving you shit: if I open a resetted chests 95% of the time I'm getting konsumables and forge items, the best thing I can hope for is some concept art but even that's rare. Hidden chests were a bit better for a while after resetting but those suck now too, loot from resetting the green shit also got bad so basically the only places where I can still get cosmetic unlocks from are the Kronika vaults, the Shrine and sometimes Kollector. Basically I just stopped visiting the Krypt now because I can always just drop some koins into the Shrine and exploring the whole Krypt just to see if a Kornika vault spawned somewhere is boring. It really seems like they miserably padded the whole thing so that you'll come back for new locations when they are released.

As for other negatives I have to say that the Gauntlet just sucks too. It's supposed to be MK11's version of the MK9 challenge tower but it's not fun at all. I'm at Stage 15 now out of 30 and the main reason for that is I just don't like playing it most of the time: yes, there are some really cool towers in there sometimes but a lot of it is just bullshit with an unfair level of difficulty because the whole mode is designed around you figuring a way out of the bullshit by using konsumables. For example at one point you get a tower where you have to do an endurance fight against Sonya and Kano with both of them having double HP while panning lasers sweep through the stage and those drain around 30-50% of your health if you touch them. Beating it the regular way is basically impossible because it's not a regular endurance fight, the AI can tag its fighters in and out so even if you're awesome, dodge the lasers and beat one of them to a pulp the AI will just tag the other one in while the one that got tagged out just heals up. The solution: you apply a highly damaging konsumable like Magma Fists and buff that up with another konsumable so that if you land a nice combo you'll drain 70% of their HP. There is no other way and I can assure you that I don't suck against the AI, I did all 300 challenges in MK9 back in the day and in MK11 I can beat a group battle tower boss all by myself with a bit of luck (group battle is the best mode MK11 has apart from regular online multiplayer btw, I highly recommend playing it).

Also I have no idea why can't I just play online tag team towers with my buddies because the functionality is there, there are just no towers for it apart from the rare 72 hour tag team bossfights.

[Zaxx]

Arnie look awesome:

[Steve 64]

Damnnnnnnnn Arnie looking good

[Zaxx]

I just hope there will be a young / T2 version of him just like how they included old and young models for Shang Tsung.

[HulkNukem]

They all look so awesome except the Joker

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm kind of surprised they showed as much skin on Sindel as they did.

[crkfiend]

I'm super happy that Arnold is in the game, his model looks fantastic. Also important to note: Don't visit TYM, it is filled with tools.