Good ideas.
I hope developers have time to really work out MK8, regardless of what they do.

Anyone who sees your ideas are going to assume that you want MK to become like wrestling games or Tony Hawk games, but I don't see it that way at all. Personally, I think that user customization is one the many great paths that fighting game creators can look towards in bringing fighting games into the future.

Let's face it, with few exceptions, the fighting game genre has really failed to innovate since it went from 2D to 3D over a decade ago. Graphics have become better, fighting styles have become more refined, but what have Virtua Fighter, Tekken, DOA, MK and other series really offered that's been new and revolutionary in their most recent iterations? VF5 was so close to VF4 it was almost criminal for Sega to call it a sequel. All the most recent Tekken did was clean up the mistakes that the last Tekken made. All the DOA developers did was create a harder game than DOA 3.

Slowly but surely though, user customization is creeping into fighting games. Players are being allowed to choose costumes, edit various aspects of the game, and most recently with MK:A, create their own characters. MK fans are divided on this new phenomenon though. Some see it as an uneeded side game. Something else to take the development teams attention away from the important gameplay component.

But like it or not, I could see a new MK game where we're still given the solid story, intriguing characters and innovative gameplay, while at the same time allowing players to expand the universe of the new MK by creating their own characters, their own moves, their own victory poses, their stories and tournament results, their own backgrounds, adding their own music and the list goes on.

How many times have we all said recently that the MK team has been slipping in the areas of quality new characters, quality stories etc. Yet these same people DON'T like the idea of saying "I could do better than these guys" or "this is decent, but I have better ideas" and then actually following it up and giving themselves the best gaming expierience possible? Seems strange to me.

So yeah man, I dig your ideas. And while I'd still love to see MK finally take fighting games to the next level in terms of gameplay (I have ideas on that myself), I definitely like the ideas you're putting out there in terms of total player control.

Sooooo... I take it that ur a creative person huh? Na just kidding but seriously cut down on the create this and that because it just gives the MK team a lot more work to worry about when they should worry about the more important things like: Making new fighters actually feel and look interesting, a more destructive and expanded environment for stages, new fighting systems, better fatalities (KAF again? *hurls*) story backround etc.
Good ideas though, after the important stuff is taken care of I do hope to see this.

If they incorporated all that stuff into MK. They might as not make characters, storylines, arenas, or anything. That's pretty much an idea for create your own mortal kombat game right there. It would take the fun out of MK.