Locking characters hurts the tournament players. 'nuff said.

You can still have unlockables, but don't make them fundamental to the game experience. If you want challenges, NRS can lock modes, costumes, secret endings, or hell, LOCK FATALITIES! You can have all the fatalities locked from the start it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

Not characters, though. And if you're gonna say, "I don't care about the tournament players!" Good for you. Here's your ribbon. I do care, and when Quan Chi mains couldn't play in local in MK9 tournaments on release because the venue managers didn't have time to complete a four hour story mode, that shit sucks.

The only time I'm interested in unlocking characters is if I had no knowledge that they were in the game, or at least if I had no knowledge what they looked and played like.

I knew Quan Chi and Cyber Sub-Zero were in MK9 but hadn't seen them play, so it was a nice treat when I finally unlocked them. If one of the regular roster characters that had already been revealed and publicized were locked, I'd have just been irritated.

Let there be other features to work toward unlocking for that sense of ownership and accomplishment. Alternate costumes, stages, etc...

I'm pretty sure you weren't projecting but I just want to be clear. I'm glad you mentioned that just because it's an aspect I didn't consider. Especially since I rarely to never even play online or in tournaments. I can definitely see how that'd be a bitch.

I'd still say we should at least have a couple unlockable characters though. If only 2-4 again.

What about a cheat code that unlocks everything right away? Why does it have to be so black and white, in this case some characters being locked and all of them readily available?

It annoys me how solutions that could leave everyone (well nearly everyone anyway) happy are rarely suggested.

Would absolutely love unlock able characters. It gives meaning and excitement to the game.

I disagree that, the tournament player will find it difficult to having unlockable system...

If they would like to held up a tournament, they can used the saved data which already unlock all characters, why they have to start a whole new again?

And it is also good for the tournament players because they are forced to master several characters in order to unlock others, they are forced for a period of tome to recognise one character fighting style and trait

By the way, if NRS do the unlocking system like the one we found in Tekken series, then it would be such an interesting one, imagine for example : we can only unlock Fujin by beating the game with Raiden, then the ending will show us the story that connects Fujin and Raiden

Yeah, the post wasn't directed at any specific user. One could say I've had this conversation a few times now, lol. It's kind of like the block button argument where I try not to write too much these days because I know where the conversation goes. If anything, the post was targeted at the developers who hopefully might read this stuff.

Septillion had a good point, though. I'd be more open to the idea of unlockables if they were truly secret characters who were hella hard to unlock, almost so hard that there existence comes into question. In that case, I'd say let the character be a complete unlockable for about 8 months, then patch him into the select screen after that. If s/he's that hard to unlock, I'd say just temporarily tourney-ban him till the patch comes. I think that is the one compromise I'd be willing to make.


It's not that I don't think this is a good idea; I just can't see NRS doing it. If they released a an unlock method via online for users who want the character unlocked at default, then it's going to be accessible to everyone. That may leave a strange impression on the casuals. I mean, it certainly doesn't give a sense of confidence: "in case you don't like our game design, here's a way to not play the parts you don't like." Casual players may not perceive the truth of the matter, which is that the code would be for tournament venues.

It was easier back in the pre-internet days to hide stuff like that (back when codes were meant to be a way of selling magazines). However, with social networking and disc hacking, I just don't see a way NRS could quarantine the code just to the venue owners.

Which is fine by mean. I'm alright with a cheat code removing all character unlockables on day 1. But is everyone else? I'm guessing that would remove the fun for the camp that actually wants unlockables. I mean, one could say "if they don't like the code, they don't have to use it," but psychologically, I just don't think it works like that.

I figured lol. I just didn't want to sound defensive.



Oh yeah, I'm all about the challenge either way. If I'm not mistaken, it was about 8 months after MKSM's release that Survival Mode surfaced. It could definitely be done with a character.

Speaking of which, I wonder who would be worthy as the near-impossible unlockable?

...Cyber Reptile? :D

Definitely someone Easter Egg-ish. It could be Cyber Rep, Enenra Smoke, Zebron, even Mokap if Boon wants to get really trolly.

I think my first choice would be to really dig deep into the mythology and bring in Lucifer from the MKM handbook. No one would see that shit coming. He could literally look and play like anything because the sum of his storyline is "pwned by Shinnok."

I'll take what Reptile I can get. Enenra Smoke would be fantastic as well.
I can say I wouldn't of seen that coming, although I had hoped there was some sort of mention about it in story mode. Wasn't Shinnok only able to do that with Quan Chi's help?

@TemporaryUserName
Do casual players really care about being skilled, or of being perceived as such? Do they really need the illusion of being skilled? It's something I've suspected about casual players, that many of them want to believe they're skilled, even if they aren't even trying to be.

But I'm not completely sure that's the case, because if it was, then why not remove the difficulty settings for offline single-player, and make the games easy? Surely, most casual players do not play on the max/very hard difficulty, so why would a cheat code to unlock everything make them feel insecure, when they probably select the easiest difficulty settings deliberatly? Is it because playing a game even on "very easy" still requires a little more skill than unlocking everything through a cheat code would?

I would love unlockable characters, its the one thing I really miss about fighting games these days.

To settle both sides, what if when you start the game up you get given the option to unlock all characters straight away? Or a free dlc to instantly unlock locked characters? The everyone gets the choice! Not that that would ever happen...