Without knowing anything about Dragon’s Dogma, I think one of the very first things I did was throw that one curly haired pawn in the beginning off a cliff.
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Oh no, not Rook!
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For me, it was Tuesday.
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How weird is it that you started with a Pawn named Rook.
That’s like having a Private named Sarge in your shootboy squad.
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My DD character was Krunn, the younger, dumber brother of Conan. He grew up an easygoing and pliable young lad in the seaside town. But after his heart war’ ripped out, everyone noticed a change in their pal Krunn.
He took to climbing the rooftops, a terrible clatter and general nuisance. Worse, he began to take great pride in lifting and heaving! Half-mad, he spoke of ‘flood safety’ and ‘civic reorganization’ and began relocating the townsfolk to the roofs, lifting them with his mighty thews and depositing them like potato sack on the tiles! Obstreperous elders complained, but with a mighty HROOOARGH he launched them into the sea!
He left town a week after losing his heart and was not seen again. The scraps of rumor that have drifted back tell tales; that, through cunning disguise, he came to rule a fortress of women warriors, that he locked himself in an arm wrestle with a cyclops and which has played to a stalemate from which neither can leave until the other is defeated.
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I’ve been working through the Krypt in MK11 lately. For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Krypt is an extra game mode that allows you to spend earned in-game currency on loot boxes and etc. Up until this point it’s been a static experience but with this newest edition, NetherRealm decided to make a fully fleshed out, Dark Souls-like adventure mode where you play as a treasure hunter exploring Shang Tsung’s spooky island.
Staging a Dark Souls-style game in the MK Universe makes complete sense and my hopeless dream is that this is somehow a proof of concept for a stand-alone game in the future. That’s probably not happening but the Krypt is substantial enough in MK11 that we probably don’t need it anyway.
It also the first fighting game - in my opinion - that addresses the disconnect between casual fans and the competitive crowd. I’ve noticed that a large portion of fighting game fans appreciate the art/atmosphere of the games but find the competitive modes too stressful to engage with. The Kyrpt offers a way to include casuals within the universe without forcing them to go through the stress of learning a character and competing online.
It’s the most significant innovation of recent memory for a fighting game and I suspect you’ll see other franchises follow suit in in the future.
hmmmmm
that’s it, I give up, nobody likes and dislikes that game for any of the reasons I do
It turns out grindy progression exists because people love it far more than they love complaining about it. Human compulsion is so easily hacked it’s a statement of responsibility to be mindful when developing progression systems.
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Also it’s an absolutely excellent fighting game. I guess I needed to state that as well but the Krypt in its current form is unique so I felt like I should highlight that.
SHEESH!
can’t believe not everyone had to CBT this out of themselves out of necessity at 17, geez
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I think the whole “grindy” complaint is bogus. The krypt wasn’t meant to be beaten within 24 hours! play the fucking game, chill out and beat it when you have the resources.
I was hopeful clicker games would be anti-compulsion training, that seeing it so naked would give people insight to how base those hooks are.
Alas,
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I believe it’s a problem of meeting different players; they focused on the players they expect to keep playing the game for a year, but those who want to play for a month feel like the enticements are out of reach. Worst are reviewers expected to play it in a few days, which is more and more skewed from the way that people tend to play these games.
I am an extremely casual player of fighting games and I both adored MK11 and struggled very briefly to see what the game offering possibly could be from the Krypt
if you just want to engage with the universe I’m sure there’s a novelization of the sub zero chronicles kicking around somewhere
this is just compulsion
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compulsion games are part of a healthy video game diet for me. sometimes it’s nice to just…grind stuff out.
i haven’t played MK11 though
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when I really get on my high horse I like to employ the phrase “insult to human experience”
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feel like the disconnect between casual/hardcore fans is a recent thing, the console ports of sf2 sold fuckin’ millions (to the point where that ten months or so of snes exclusivity for world warrior was A Big Deal) and the overwhelming majority of the people who bought it had no idea what was going on and still loved it
can’t stand unlocking stuff and the excessive emphasis on training mode grinding in the last ten years or so
though as a crotchety old super turbo competitive vet i guess i’m way out of step with what anyone wants out of these things nowadays
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I don’t think fighting games in general are meant for people who only want to play for a month. I mean, I don’t see how the addition of the Krypt detracts from that experience anyway. If you don’t want to engage with the Krypt then don’t and you’ll still have the traditional fighting game you prefer?
Again, the Krypt is a way for casuals to luxuriate in the atmosphere of the game without being forced to play a competitive match. You didn’t have fun exploring Goro’s lair and seeing what new secret passage you could uncover? Previous versions of the Krypt were pure compulsion but not in MK11.
honestly, try MK11. compared to DBFZ and Tekken 7 (both of which I liked and played more than any other fighting game since like soul calibur 2 but felt no compulsion to get really good at) it actually requires training mode grinding to win even against the AI other than on brainless settings, but with the catch that the training mode grinding is actually really good and learnable and interesting. it’s not just meta stuff for the FGC to pick over, it’s a what-if-fighting-games-had-the-complexity-baseline-of-other-genres experiment that’s really successful imo.
also it’s tonally very much an unembarrassing love letter to the 90s if you can overlook the one bad VA
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