Anyway, MK9 keeps getting all these fighting game of the year awards and I have to wonder, with a game so popular, why isn’t it played as often as the Capcom Big 2.
I mean logically you would think that a bigger casual fanbase would lead to a bigger hardcore fanbase that would play it for a long time, but that isn’t the case with Mortal Kombat. Even during the first months of its release it wouldn’t get numbers to match Marvel or Street Fighter. The only exception I believe was Devastation this year, where it matched marvel numbers.
Anyway, why is Mortal Kombat such a flash in the pan compared to Street Fighter IV? Lets all brainstorm reasons to why this is the case.
I think NRS deserves these awards simply by managing to create something that hasn’t been seen since UMK3: a decent Mortal Kombat game. I expected absolutely nothing of MK9, and it surprised the hell out of me. Sure, I haven’t really played it much after the first month or so, but still.
Also I can’t really think of any title that really deserves the fighting game of the year award (sure KOF XIII is a solid title, but for a non- KOF fan it seems rather… archaic).
I’m very surprised about the amount of hate towards the game, is really sad to see these “mini” civil wars dividing the community, this only demostrates that people are not FG fans who appreciate the genre.
Mainstream or not this makes FG more accepted, maybe is true that people liked the content more than the gameplay but remember that this is a precedent for more quality in this games because they try to please everyone, NRS achieve something that others could not and it was making more content and modes for casuals and accesible gameplay with a decent skillcap for hardcore players.
I’m a Capcom and SNK fan but this game really deserves the praise, as a FG fan i appreciate the genre and i’m glad that NRS has made a game as it should be (except for the online play “Could not connect to server” >:().
KOF XIII for gameplay and MK for good content ;), anyways all gamers win this year with great titles for all tastes.
I posted this in the fighting game discussion forum because I wanted more eyeballs on it, instead of the pocket MK forum…maybe I shouldn’t have put mk9 in the title.
Yeah, but what I argue is that given a bigger draw to casuals, a bigger fraction of those should undoubtedly become “hardcore” fighting game people. But that never happened. There wasn’t a surge of 11ers like 09ers with SF4.
Also, I’ve always hated the buzzword “content”. If the content of a video game isn’t the gameplay, then what is it? Fanservice?
I disagree. Earlier in the year, this game was outdrawing MvC3 at Local Battles for their tournaments. But then all of a sudden enthusiasm dropped off and now it’s all UMvC3 there.
Reason being that NRS cared a little TOO much about the community. They kept on patching the game and either heavily nerfing chars, buffing chars, etc. They were doing it so fast that one day you would be playing with your main then POOF, everything is changed, time to relearn the char. So you pick up another char and 3 months down the line the same thing happens. They were not letting people get adjusted to the changes so it became kind of tedious. A lot of people dropped out because of this.
No other company had even tested the waters with balance patches being released as fast as NRS was releasing them. A lesson well learned.
Agree with you but this is the first competitive MK game according to NRS but the problem is that a lot of people buy it only because of the Fatalities, gore, blood, etc, at least 2 of my friends have it only for the “fatality” factor and they don’t care about getting better, anyways the game still has a decent amount of entrants in some tournaments.
No one is saying that, the content in one game is a key factor no matter the genre, offline modes are really fun and give value to the game.
Some people like you and i likes to give priority to the gameplay first but keep in mind the case here with MK, there may be a precedent for the future: some quality offline mods can appeal to casuals while the devs concentrate in competitive gameplay, for me this is a great way to please everyone instead of dumbing down the gameplay.
The patch hysteria is so silly. The patches weren’t that rapid, and the characters largely remained the same. There were what, like 3-4 balance patches? OMG THEY CHANGED KUNG LAO INTO KRUMP LAO AND HE IS NOW DANCING AND STUFF AND LIU KANG IS NOW LIU KRANG AND HE HATES THE NINJA TURTLES WTF SO MANY CHANGES IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND!!!
It’s just one of the many incredibly goofy memes that somehow stuck to this game.
Mortal Kombat 9 is a solid game that alot of people didnt give a fair shot. Its sad people cant adapt to something new. People bitch and moan about its netcode, which honestly is terrible, but what else do they cry about? Blocking being a button instead of a direction? The fatalities? The bitch about the gameplay, but whats wrong with it? Give the game a real chance. Ive played mvc3 n hated it because one mistake can fuck you over, and I hate seeing the same teams being used. Ssf4ae was and will be the last iteration of sf4 I play because I hate that I payed for the same game 3 times… Kof looks solid and I plan on buying it asap. Mk9 is a solid game.of course theres a bug h er re or a glitch there, but what games dont have that? Fuckin get competitive and quit whining, learn the game, learn tactics get better. That simple.
MK has a ton of people that play this online, but many for whatever reasons do not go to offline tournaments. Judging from tech I have seen people use online quite a few know of the competitive sites. Maybe it is a case of not having time to go to tourneys or they may not have the money to go to one.
Also I have to agree with llthiuan about the patches not really changing the characters much from what they were. To me it just helped the less used characters become played more.
The Thing people must grasp in their brain is this.
MK9 sold more copies than UMVC3. I repeat MK9 sold more copies than either MVC3 or UMVC3 in America. Same with Soul Calibur/Tekken big games. Soul Calibur/Tekken/MK9 are easily on par with SFIV in sales.
Capcom Big Two is more popular than MK9 as a TOURNAMENT scene. However, a tournament doesn’t mean that a game is popular. UMVC3 is streamed more than MK9, but we all know that in reality… that’s completely false.
What I’m asking is why is turnout rate for casual to competitive player so low for any game that isn’t the big two. Soul Calibur 4 is a good example too. Released on the same year as SF4, sold almost as much. But it didn’t pull in the number of players that Street Fighter did. Don’t blame Hilde because I’m pretty sure there’s another game with a stupid red head in it.
People who already ran tournaments and attended tournaments were faithful to the Street Fighter and Marvel franchises. The fact that competitive MK has gone from what it was to what it is now is actually astounding.
No awards dont mean shit, but if MvC3 won these, those fanboys would be talking shit in a totally different way than they are now. Fact is: they butthurt.
MK9 is, aside from KoF13 the only big time worthy fighter released in 2011. Sorry, MvC3 is just…fuck it. Garbage. Entertaining? sure. Good? …
This is the first game the MK community has had in a LONG fucking time to be proud of. Over a decade of purely retarded bullshit. Imagine what if Capcom had a streak like that going…Well they actually did it backwards. A decade of gdlk MvC2 to ruin it with…
Sure i may sound salty or wtf ever. Ive been playing fighters since way before 95% of the players who play games today. The scene, sure its different, but the level of bullshit being fed to us hasnt been this bad since the first MK games came out.
MK9 is the first of what i am hoping (dear thunder god, please) in a series of games putting MK back on the map competitively, and if not back, there in the first place. its that simple.
This isn’t exactly true, actually. I was at September’s Salty Battles (which had a huge MK turnout) and October’s Salty Battles. October’s was small due to the rare snow storm that happened, November didn’t happen because it was two days after Thanksgiving, and December was Marvel-only because that’s what it was supposed to be.
MK’s problems stem from the fact that they have such a tiny competitive history to draw on. It still has tons of players, but a large amount of these people take online play seriously and couldn’t care less about offline tournaments. You have to keep in mind that many of these people are MK-only players who don’t know the size of Capcom tournament games and therefore are naturally a bit ignorant about what’s outside their realm.
But despite this, we’re still pulling numbers. It seems like there’s no love because people look at SRK and stream chats to confirm their biases. MK players don’t come here for the same reason Smash players don’t, because we already have established online communities, but then we look small because we’re overshadowed by the other games. On stream chats we get constant trolling because we don’t get the stream time. We’ll run a separate pool stream all day which most people aren’t aware of, then run top 8 on Spooky’s stream and get tons of “WUT MK?? DID THEY GET LIKE 10 ENTRANTS? THIS GAME IS DEAD”. I believe NEC had 84 MK entrants as the official number, which was lower than expected, but pretty decent for a “dead” game.
You also have to keep in mind that we come from different personal backgrounds. There are tons of people who want to join the competitive scene, but have conflicts with work/school that they’ve never had to work around before for a video game. We have tons of people who live in an area with no FG scene or a Capcom-only scene. These people have issues making it out to tournaments to support the game, but will for something as big as Evo. I would be 99.9% confident that we would still get a bigger turnout than Tekken/BB did last year. Even Final Round is looking to be pretty huge for MK so far, with people from all around the country flying in as well as some of our Canadian players.
TL;DR : Enthusiasm is dropping, but it’s being overstated how much it has dropped. The game’s far from dead and still has a bright future in majors.
I also just realized this has nothing to do with video game awards, but I already wrote this out.
It is way more simple. The Mortal Kombat crowed isn’t showing up in person and not tuning in to streams. This last saturdays Michigan Ranbats and advertised that they would have KOF13, SSF4, UMvC3, and Mortal Kombat. Every game was played EXCEPT Mortal Kombat because not enough people showed up to play.