Well, I know there must be at least fifteen million "this is my idea" threads but I don't think I've seen such a thing dedicated to Konquest mode yet. Anyway, before anything else I'll just warn you that these are my ideas and therefore there is the chance of them being bad/silly/pathetic ideas. I don't claim to hold the universal truth nor the ultimate idea for an awesome game, it's just an opinion and you're absolutely free to disagree - in fact, I encourage you to discuss this. This text may become a bit long so if you're not into reading a long text then this may not be your kind of thread. Also as a warning, my first language isn't English so pardon any grammatical errors, syntax errors, possible made-up words, etc.

OK, Konquest mode was introduced to us in Deadly Alliance and was, basically, just a collection of ten matches to get you into each character's combos and special moves. Some of the characters actually had interesting storyline tidbits in Konquest mode but I felt that most of them were just filler text. Fortunately, Deception had a conceptually better Konquest mode even though, in my opinion, it was pretty much a waste of time. The missions were too linear, the big green thingy that you had to follow most of the time allowed you to not even quite know what to do to succeed - you simply knew that you had to get there anyway.

My idea for Konquest is something that would be described as some sort of merge between a classic role-play game, Shaolin Monks and Deception's Konquest mode.

Since it's been a feature that's been asked for a thousand times, Konquest could be intertwined with a Create-A-Character mode. Basically, you would create "your Shujinko", that would be the character that would go through Konquest mode. Maybe allowing something like three "Shujinko slots" or something along those lines would be fine, allowing you to go through Konquest three times to create three distinct characters.

The character creation process seem obviously perfectly possible: it's been done in other games like Soul Calibur III and the Smackdown wrestling series with some degree of success. My point is not to discuss this specific aspect so assuming it would be something along the lines of those games is perfectly fine.

After this point, a few role-play elements would come into place. I think it would be fine if you could select, for example, three different skill-trees, that you could later develop as you gain experience. Some skill-trees could even depend on the created character's race: for example, a Shokan would always have a Shokan specific skill tree, a Tarkata would have a Tarkata-specific skill tree, etc, so chosing a specific race would limit your customization by two skill trees to prevent things that wouldn't make sense: for example, a Shokan not being able to use shokan "abilities" that all others use. Some of the skill trees you could select from would be things like Shaolin Monk, Ninja, Ice Powers, Spectral Powers, Shapeshifting, Elemental Powers, etc. So in practical terms, you could easilly create a Tarkata student of Sub-Zero if that's what you wished, just by selecting Tarkata as a race - and its race specific skill tree -, Ninja and Ice Powers.

Each skill tree would then have 10 different moves, that you could develop while gaining experience. All moves start at level 0 and as you level up you would be able to put one skill point in one of the moves. Of course, more powerful moves would only be available if you "wasted" one skill point in a previous less powerful move. As you level up the moves, they become faster to execute, more powerful in damage, longer lasting, etc. This sort of customization, if the skill trees are well executed, could provide for literally hundreds of different character builds, just because each player could invest their skill points in different moves, not to mention they could chose different skill trees all along. (as a way to try and clarify this better, think of something similar to the skill trees in some adventure/role-play games out there such as Baldur's Gate or Diablo)

Konquest mode itself would be an adventure in the likes of Deception's Konquest mode - it doesn't make much sense to make it similar to Shaolin Monks as it would require that the created character model would be versatile enough to use the SM fighting engine, and that just seems unnecessary. Remember: it's a game mode, not a standalone game. The things that obviously need to be changed are the missions. Linear point A to point B, go fetch missions should be avoided, they are worth nothing except taking up time. Maybe dividing the game in a few chapters - each chapter ending with a serious boss-like Mortal Kombat contest - and give each chapter a set number of easier missions that obviously have to deal with Kombat. Completing secret missions and finding other secret stuff would obviously lead up to more experience, thus the more dedicated explorers would be able to build the best characters.

Another thing I find of extreme importance in terms of helping the game's longevity: no character can be a perfect unbeatable killing machine just by completing Konquest once - it gives Konquest no replay value after you've built your dream character. Maybe allowing you to replay Konquest with the same character to find even more stuff - even if you're repeating the storylines/missions doesn't seem to be a problem: if it makes our character stronger and faster, we will do it.

The whole "getting Koins to the Krypt" thing should be avoided too: get rid of Koins, get rid of the Krypt. Stuff is automatically unlocked as you find what would be "koffin keys", except they don't open a koffin, they just unlock whatever it is in the Kontent section. This would avoid the coin collecting, the hassle of going to the Krypt and wasting two hours buying useless stuff. Make the keys secret and hard to find and the unlockable stuff worth it. Using Konquest mode as an excuse to get the koins/keys as it seem to have been used in Deception is not a good idea.

Of course this would mean that your created character's storyline would not be quite customizable, but I don't think that's a big problem. The level of diversity this customization allows seems to be worth that small detail.

I don't really see anything technical stopping Midway from implementing this idea: none if this is impossible to program and none of this would take any incredible amount of time to do. It's just a question of wether the MK team, and wether the potential players think this is a worthy thing to think about or not.

So, sorry for the length of the text but what exactly do you think of all this? Good idea? Bad idea? Would suck to infinity? Feel free to tell us