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Here we go again, Mortal Kombat XI, another game build around ridiculous grind and microtransactions

Bouzoo

The game just launched today and it seems a new fiasco is about to blow. Even though it has great gameplay, that is about to fall in 2nd plan. Basically Battlefront 2 all over again.

First things first, the developer of the game, Netherrealm studios, said that the game won't have lootboxes and they stood up to their words. Sadly the system that they implemented is beyond absurd (also a lot of stuff is random so yeah). If you look closely, it looks like a AAA mobile game. The game apparently has 6 in game currencies.

 

First info came from testyourmight forums (wall of text):

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The towers of Time are like the Injustice 2 timed multiverses with some bullshit added on top. I don’t know how the larger community felt about the multiverse, but I had fun with them. Once you leveled up your characters to level 20 and had epic gear, even the harder bosses were fun. Before I get to the negatives, let me breakdown the mode first.

Tutorial towers: Before you even begin to see the real towers, you’ve got to do 4 tutorial towers. These are the same for everyone and teach you about endurance battles, consumables, and boss battles. Once you finish the tutorial towers you see the real deal.

Timed Towers: Just like the IJ2 multiverse, there are about 3-4 timed towers (or islands rather) that refresh hourly, daily, or every 3 or so days. These might be specific to certain characters, or more general. They may have only a single tower with a single boss, or a progression of towers that unlock as you achieve objectives. More or less same ad Injustice 2.

Summoned Towers: These are special towers that you can only access by summoning through Tower Keys. I do not have any tower keys yet and am not aware how to get any. So I can't elaborate on the rewards you can get from these towers.

Character Towers: These are another type of tower that you can summon in exchange for coins. These are like the Injustice 2 character specific multiverses. Initially, you can summon a tower for your character for 25,000 koins. Once you beat that tower, you can summon the next tier of tower for the same character for 50,000 coins, and so on. These towers award brutalities, intros, gear, skins, variation icons and augments for your character.

On paper this system is fine, even generous, but in practice it is anything but. First of all, the towers themselves have really bad difficulty spikes, due to some of these insane modifiers and stage hazards that only affect the player and not the AI opponent. So far I've come across unblockable laser grids, hsu hao's laser, homing missiles that lifesteal, periodic earthquakes, frozen ground that freezes you, tanya's tonfas, acid clouds, etc. Some of this may sound like standard NRS fare, but trust me, it was never this frustrating in earlier games.

First of all, about half of this shit is unblockable. Second, enemy AI loves reading your inputs and using what counters you. Stand blocking? Here comes a low. Crouch blocking? Here's an overhead string. AI's below 30% and you let go of block for a couple seconds? Here's a FATAL BLOW. Now don't get me wrong. Despite all this, in a fair 1v1 fight the AI is almost a pushover. You can breeze through entire rounds with just jump in 2s and down 2s. However, when you mix in these hazards that only affect you, these pushover opponents become worse than final bosses in other NRS games. Here are a couple of examples:

Overall, I'm quite mixed on Towers of Time. The amount of work you need to put in to clear a whole island vs the reward you get for it sometimes doesn't seem worth it. Would I like to spend 2 hours to clear a whole island in order to get 2 skins, 2 gear pieces, and a couple augments? I'm not sure. In Injustice 2, I could clear one whole character multiverse event in 40-50 minutes and get a full epic set, few motherboxes, coins, and character gear specials. Oh, and I didn't even explain the consumables. For an in depth look at towers and a TL;DR, just watch the following video:

 

Now what is happening here? More ofc from reddit:

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PSA to anyone buying MK11: the harder towers are literally impossible without rare or better gear and single use consumables, earning these are incredibly grindy and the whole system is designed to get you to spend money on the game

renderTimingPixel.png

I see a lot of threads saying that earning currency is "grindy", but I think this is a huge understatement. Just consider these points:

  • Completing the entire story will barely give you enough currency to clear one room in krypt. From this, I got 1 brutality, some common skins and few consumables. You can't so much as clear a single hard tower with all the stuff I got.

  • Clearing some of the latter towers without at least rare gear and a large number of single use consumables is near impossible. These towers are not just a pure test of fighting skills, they also feature: unblockable blood missiles which drain you life and gives it to the enemy, acid rain, enemy getting armour on low health and some absolutely ridiculous damage modifiers.

  • Earning said consumables and rare gear is extremely grindy, requiring you to complete event specific and daily towers, as well as clearing multiple easier towers. The krypt chests get progressively more expensive and the drop rate for rare or better items is very low. For context, I opened a total of 23 chests in the krypt and got only 2 rare gear across different characters

 

You can see more on this stream (highly recommend):

 

According to some calculations, to unlock everything per character it should cost around $600 per character, but take that with a truck load of salt. Or if you like maybe weeks of play per character. Another truck load of salt. 

 

From IGN:

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Update: The Premium Store is live, and thankfully it currently consists only of Easy Fatality tokens and a selection of featured items like skins, intros, taunts, and icons that refresh on a timer. However, the cost of these items is absurdly high considering how stingy Mortal Kombat 11 is with rewarding Time Crystals, the premium in-game currency required for these purchases. It's a relief that Skip Fight tokens aren't being sold, though it makes the frustrating design of Towers of Time all the more bewildering.

 

From TweakTown:

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The grinding is facilitated through Mortal Kombat 11's tower system, which is designed to do one thing: keep gamers playing for as long as possible. Mortal Kombat 11's Towers of Time mechanic, which sees players tackling repeatable fights and challenges to unlock randomized rewards, is much more expansive this time around. From where I sit, MK11 is a dizzying array of RPG-style augments, unlockables, and other content put in to pad out the drops so gamers play more to get the stuff they actually want. RNG is the tool used to frustrate players and keep them actively in the online-driven mode so they eventually spend cash on microtransactions.  

 

Reports say WB Games and Netherealm have put barriers in place to heavily incentivize online play. Netherealm has confirmed Tower of Time can't be played offline, nor can gamers unlock content in the Krypt without being connected to the internet. Offline modes include things like story mode, but anything you unlock offline apparently won't be saved to your account unless you log in online and sync your gear.  

 

Bear in mind that only some of this has been confirmed and Netherealm could fix some of the issues with patches. But the core framework, that is the grind-based monetization system, will likely remain the same.

 

I find it ironic that the game has a "premium shop". If you ask me everyone should boycott games like these. I find it extremely sad since I liked the 2 previous games (and the first few games), and this one looks like an even better game gameplay wise. But that's it. 

 

Netherrealm said that "they are looking into it". 

The game is sitting at 80+ on meta and opencritic but that will probably drop due to high criticism. 

 

More sources:

https://screenrant.com/mortal-kombat-11-grind-microtransactions/

 

The ability to google properly is a skill of its own. 

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Just don’t buy the game then, but people will anyway!!

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Surely they confused this for basically every free mobile game out there... no? well fuck

✨FNIGE✨

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I hate what gaming has become. Everyone is throwing mtx is games where it has no right to exist. Let's go back to full games, DLC and expansions. 

 

The only time it should be acceptible to add mtx into games is if the game is free to play, not in full price games.... 

🌲🌲🌲

 

 

 

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So, the free-to-play mobile games have come to PC as a 60€ pay-to-play games. How far down can game developers still dive? This is like the cherry on the top of the cake which I have named "The cake of opinion about game prices" and it has "FFS 60€" spelled on it. Yeah, at the year 2019 games should never be bought or even cost in the first place 60€ and almost every developer publishing 60€ game just proofs that they don't deserve even a cent.

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55 minutes ago, Arika S said:

I hate what gaming has become. Everyone is throwing mtx is games where it has no right to exist. Let's go back to full games, DLC and expansions. 

 

The only time it should be acceptible to add mtx into games is if the game is free to play, not in full price games.... 

100% agree - This and poor release quality of games has made me lost almost all interest in gaming.

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This is why I stick to my guns with the no preorder rule.

This is also why I almost exclusively play Indie titles like DUSK, FURI, Rimworld, Factorio, etc.

If there’s a game that makes sense to have this kinda stuff, it’s a free game. But free games do it better than this, I mean even Quake Champs, which is mediocre at best when it comes to its free progression, does this waaaaaaay better as you can legitimately earn everything in the game for free, and it’s not even too hard of a grind.

Until the AAA market corrects its issues with monetization then I will avoid any game that has a poor reception like the plague.

Who needs fancy graphics and high resolutions when you can get a 60 FPS frame rate on iGPUs?

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they should learn a lot from Capcom, RE2MAKE and Monster Hunter World is how you do it.

 

for DMC5 the microtransaction is there but its negligible due to how easy it is to get the orbs. i doubt it was never the developer's intention but more on higherup decision. thankfully you still need learn to git gud if you want to get good in DMC5

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4 hours ago, JB780 said:

Member when MK2 came out on SNES and you paid for it once and it had blood and you spent a thousand hours playing it with your friends?

 

 

 

image.jpeg.8db986529ae63bb989e4ea09afc8b6e6.jpeg

I do too. Can't be sure, but I think this all started with Kotor2.

 

I miss when games or any other software came out polished. Some might have needed a few updates once exposed to a broader base, but just a few and then 99% had no problems. The art of alpha testing and beta testing is over, we get handed out crap that barely passes old school alpha testing nowadays.

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My man Dood was so hype about this game, that's sad.

 

With such greedy monetization system i'm surprised this game is not EGS exclusive since it use Epic engine. 

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And the worst thing is that they threw modern politics into this game as well.

What the heck has Mortal Combat to do with modern day politics? 


Why do that??

 


By the way: first Jornos criticized the brutality of the game...

"Hell is full of good meanings, but Heaven is full of good works"

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7 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Well, MK has always been subject to political bs since it was first created it even helped spawn the ratings systems like ESRB.

Yeah, I know.

It was pretty much unobtanium in my region.

 

MK X was the first uncut that didn't get an advertizement ban

(wich also means on store fronts, on the Internet its not technically banned, just harder to get).

A real ban is rather rare, wich means that its illegal to own that product. That was IIRC the case with Manhunt though...

"Hell is full of good meanings, but Heaven is full of good works"

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5 hours ago, RyomaSJibenG said:

they should learn a lot from Capcom, RE2MAKE and Monster Hunter World is how you do it.

 

for DMC5 the microtransaction is there but its negligible due to how easy it is to get the orbs. i doubt it was never the developer's intention but more on higherup decision. thankfully you still need learn to git gud if you want to get good in DMC5

It's like the game doesn't even have them. Fun fact, dmc4 had them a decade ago and literally no one noticed. I know I didn't. 

The ability to google properly is a skill of its own. 

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NRS said they plan to adjust the grind, but they won't commit to when or exactly how much they plan to adjust it. I imagine the grindy nature was something imposed on them by WB. I find the whole "pay for characters that are already modeled in the story mode" concept a bit more irksome than the tower stuff, however. Neither are likely to stop me getting the game down the road, but its enough to make it a wait for Komplete edition and, probably, a Steam sale.

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6 hours ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

@Bouzoo I think that stream was taken down or something. It's not working for me.

Seems it is down yes. 

The ability to google properly is a skill of its own. 

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I laughed at the article claiming it’s a grind and bad difficulty spike.

 

do they realize this is mortal combat????

hello, huge difficulty spikes are highly sought after features in this genre. Also, randomness is like one of the tradition aspect of this genre....

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18 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

I laughed at the article claiming it’s a grind

There is a core difference between grinding something and absurdly grinding something so that you have to spend possibly days or even weeks on one character. A lot of long time fans have been criticizing the game, from community to reviewers, people who are used to grind.  There is nothing wrong with playing to unlock stuff, but this is unlike anything that I have seen in 3, 4, 9 or 10.

I don't think you even realize what kind of a grind it is and how stupid the system is. 

 

19 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

Also, randomness is like one of the tradition aspect of this genre....

Chests in MK X Krypt were fixed, now they're random. 

 

Also Ed Boon tweet:

 

 

Obviously something is wrong here.

The ability to google properly is a skill of its own. 

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So, you didnt play the arcade´s, you havent played KoF ´94-2003, 12-14, Street Fighter II (and all its sequels), and just to brag, yoyu havent played Dark Souls (wich I comleted in 360)... 

Those, are difficult games on hard, I ve played the game in medium and the only character to my susrpise that was something hard to beat was Kronica, she reminded me of Rugal 95...

About the grinding, I havent played other modes, but, I bet I can finish the toughfest tower with no addons with practice... Also I finished the 300 ladder in mk9...

About politics, what did I miss?...

No naked girls... well I still think they look good...

The only thing that I didnt like is that they left Johnny Cage left out in the middle of the story... Cage is the best...

 

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7 minutes ago, Gonzalo Noriega said:

Good for you

I legitimately think if you were to gatekeep being a badass any more that you'd explode. 

The ability to google properly is a skill of its own. 

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Consumables, unlockable skills...wtf is this, a fighting game or some kind of fighting RPG? XD 

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4 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

There is a core difference between grinding something and absurdly grinding something so that you have to spend possibly days or even weeks on one character. A lot of long time fans have been criticizing the game, from community to reviewers, people who are used to grind.  There is nothing wrong with playing to unlock stuff, but this is unlike anything that I have seen in 3, 4, 9 or 10.

I don't think you even realize what kind of a grind it is and how stupid the system is. 

 

Chests in MK X Krypt were fixed, now they're random. 

 

Also Ed Boon tweet:

 

 

Obviously something is wrong here.

If it was "more like HOURS than days," why wasn't this shit address before release? AAA companies disgust me these days.

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