With the massive amount of negative feedback and in-game issues of Mortal Kombat 1 recently, there has been an influx of videos on the internet discussing the state of the newest installment of the franchise. Many of which claim that MK1 is “dying” and at this point is a disappointment to loyal fans worldwide. There are multiple reasons why Mortal Kombat players are feeling this way, and in this post we want to identify the major problems with the game and ultimately answer the question, “is Mortal Kombat 1 really dying”.
What’s wrong with Mortal Kombat 1???
Desync glitches in Kombat League:
This has probaboy been the main kicker in the “MK is dying” rants. If you play Kombat League this season, you probably have been a victim of the annoying desync issues. At random times, an error will pop up during Kombat League matches stating that “The game session has desynchronized” and then kill the entire match causing the player to not gain any progress despite winning or losing the set.
For days now, players have been sharing their frustrations online about losing out on league points fairly often from the matches desyncing or the other player leaving / getting disconnected early because of them.
That’s obviously not great when users only have a limited amount of time to level up and get the gear they want out of the season, but hopefully this means it won’t be an issue for much longer. NRS has claimed to fix the bug in a recent patch but fans are skeptical because there JUST released a previous patch that claimed the same resolution and the problem still persisted.
Boring DLC and microtransactions:
The “Premium Shop” for Mortal Kombat 1 is absolutely nothing like what we expected. While it got off to a strong start, bringing us skins like Deadly Alliance Scorpion and Sub Zero, the items that can be obtained in the store are a bit underwhelming. Mostly because for the past few months it has been nothing but recycled content from previous seasons. If the NRS team plans on giving us new items in the shop every week, then actually give us NEW stuff. Our expectations were high during the first month or so of launch, but now this isn’t even enticing.
Along with the lackluster paid content, is simply the fact that you have to pay (a good bit) for it, straight up out of your wallet. The currency used in MK1 to purchase premium content are called “Dragon Krystals”. These “krystals” can’t really be earned through playing the game and roughly equate to about 1 USD to 100 Krystals. Kameo characters costing about $5 and main characters costing around $7. They even charged us for seasonal fatalities. It wouldn’t be such a gripe for so many players if there were ways to earn this content through playing the game, but charging us just to get old skins and fatalities after already paying over $100 for the game itself is kind of wild.
Lack of features and content
With the release of MK1 back in the fall, many players noticed that there was a severe lack of features in the game that previous titles and other fighting games have. Key features like crossplay, wifi filtering, rooms, character customization options, etc. Simply put, we still don’t have any of that today besides wifi filtering. And that itself isn’t much of a “filter” but more like you have the option to accept or decline KL matches. While Ed Boon has stated that crossplay is coming, it’s still just not there. The game is also missing other classic MK features like stage fatalities and random objects that you can pick up and throw at your opponent. And where the hell is the random “Toasty!” when you land a nasty uppercut? We just need MORE!
Miserable grinding / Kombat League
Personally, this is the biggest problem with this game. When the MK team announced “Invasions” mode in one of the early trailers, boy were we excited. This mode looked so cool at the time, but turned out to be probably the most boring single player “adventure” mode of any Mortal Kombat game we have ever seen.
Invasion Mode is simply MK1’s new take on its classic single-player modes beyond the Kampaign, combining the Krypt, Konquest, and Towers of Times modes from previous Mortal Kombat games. Invasion Mode plays out like a board game. You move your character around the board, stopping at each space and fighting special opponents or playing minigames.
It’s a complex, time-consuming mode that takes FOREVER to get through. It’s repetitive, often times annoying, and just inconsistent. One minute it’s extremely easy, the next minute you’re spending hours trying to complete the same mini game.
And don’t even get me started about Kombat League. I would actually say that KL is most frustrating part of this game, when it’s actually supposed to be the premier mode to play in. At this point I’d rather play invasions than Kombat League. Especially once you hit the “God” ranks. You see, Kombat League is all fun and games until you get to Grand Master rank. Up until then, you earn points that go towards your rank no matter if you win or lose a set. After that, everything counts and you must win in order to gain points and progress through your rank. If you lose a match, you lose points. While this is a simple concept and seems fine, the truth is that KL scoring at the higher ranks is so outrageously unbalanced that it’ll make you never want to play ranked mode again. In short, you lose about twice as many points for losing than if you win. Often times even more than that if you happen to get matched with an opponent a couple of ranks below you. Actually even worse in that case because they tend to make you gain absolutely nothing but lose a shit ton of points. This crazy skew in scoring causes Kombat League to be a miserable grind. Once you’re in God rank you basically have to win every single match in order to reach Elder God.
Lack of communication and urgency from NRS
We saved this problem for last since it’s not directly game related. Throughout all of these issues, one thing has been consistent and that’s the fact that Nether Realm Studios has left us in the dark during most of it. Sure (and obviously because it leads to money), the NRS team communicates announcements about new character drops and game features but when it comes to keeping us posted about solving problems that we constantly complain about, *crickets*. It seemed like the desync glitches went on for over a month before anyone at Nether Realm even acknowledged it. If you look at the comments section on any NRS or official Mortal Kombat social media post, you’ll see lots of feedback and suggestions from players but none of them get responses (unless you’re Sonic Fox or Super). Even after NRS actually did respond about the desync issues, they released to us a patch that DIDN’T EVEN FIX THE ISSUE….A MONTH LATER. That’s wild. And honestly pathetic if you ask me. Shame on them to treat one of the most loyal fan bases in the FGC this way.
While there are a handful of other things wrong with Mortal Kombat 1, these were the problems that we thought are the most critical. So with that being said, let’s get back to the original question, is MK1 REALLY dying?
In our opinion, the short answer is “no”. While there may be an abundance of problems with the game, massive amounts of frustrated players, and thousands of users claiming that they are switching to Tekken and never going to play Mortal Kombat again, the game is honestly still in decent shape. It’s not like you’re going to get online and have to wait 30 minutes to find an opponent. Thousands of players still enjoy the game and are playing it. After looking through posts in Mortal Kombat groups on Facebook about the topic, the ones who claim to be putting the game down are actually the minority. Mortal Kombat is such a household name with some of the most hardcore/long time fans that it’s kind of damn near impossible to die. Even for me, yeah the game pisses me off beyond what I could ever imagine, but I still sit my ass down and play Kombat League for those skins and Kombat Kards. It’s literally “in our blood”!
This guy doesn’t think so either:
What do you think? Is Mortal Kombat 1 dying? Let us know your thoughts on our Twitter @thekombatpro and make sure to tell your friends about our iOS app! It’s pretty new and we need more MK fans/players to post more kontent on it. We are getting ready to start a blog series of some of the best combos in MK1, but it’ll only be ones that we find on our app! So get on there and post some videos!
Written by Dirty Karolina (@karolinakombat) and Shardella
