20 or so new? No.

Nope. Mainly because all but 2 of them wouldn't make it into MK11.

Mk has a terrible track record with new characters. They always introduce a batch and hardly any of them ever go on to the next game.

Less is more when it comes to the newbies. 4-6 are fine. Any more and you're looking at a few Jareks and Kobras.

2-4 is fine but 20? lol Hell no

Let's see- 0 new characters from MK3 made it into MK4. Only one MK4 character made it into MKDA. Only 3 newbies from MKDA made it into Deception and excluding Armageddon we still haven't seen those Deception characters again and I doubt many of them will be make the cut for MKX.

Ok since everyone seems to have a problem with the ratio, make it 10 returning and 14 new.

I know that they haven't had the best track record with new characters lately, but I think time constraints really had a lot to do with that.

Personally, one of the things I'm most excited about for E3 is to see these 2 new characters Boon has hinted at.

Yeah MK has a habit of ditching half of it's roster from on game to the next only to replace the characters with poorly realized substitutes. 2 or 3 new characters is all you need.

I thought they were going to do that after Armageddon. I wouldn't have minded a clean slate like that.

But what's the point in having 14 new characters when only 2-3 of them may or may not make it into the next game while the rest are pushed aside never to be seen again? What exactly is that accomplishing?

That's still way too many new characters.

With all the extra time they'd have, they could easily refurbish/redevelop some of the characters they previously neglected due to time crunches and lack of resources.

And I also agree that 4 is the absolute max number of new characters to add. Honestly, I hope they don't introduce more than 3, though.

Hear, hear.
You should try to organize and consolidate your belongings before adding a bunch of new stuff into the mix; otherwise, things just get even more messy.

I really don't think we need all of these new characters when more than half of the roster hasn't been in more than one game (excluding Armageddon since everyone returned for that). However, I really wouldn't mind if there was, let's say, five new characters. We have all of these post Mortal Kombat 4 characters that could easily be in this game. I would gladly like to see them as much as I would like to see new characters.

Yes. Keep Scorpion and a few other important characters and I wouldn't mind at all. I remember there was speculation after Armageddon that the majority of fighters would be dead except for the favorites, and the next game would have an entirely different roster. I was actually pretty excited at that thought.

The problem is, I don't know how many good new characters they could come up with. But if they could actually put out some interesting new ones then I'd be cool with it.

Exactly. Many MK4-MKD characters are basically still fresh and new, how can they be a lost cause when they have barely been given a shot? Adding a bunch of new characters will only add to the very long list of new characters that NRS have never finished developing.

It's like going out and buying an entire new meal instead of reheating the meal you already bought earlier.. Just silly.

I would like that one day, when the current characters have had SATISFYING conclusions to their stories.

Interestingly, Tobias said in an interview a couple years ago that that's where he would have gone after MK4 if he'd stayed with Midway, a story about the next generation of characters like a "son of Liu Kang" and so on.

And that would have been a fine time for it because at that point in the lore, the main cast had all been left in places where they didn't have any hanging questions, all the loose ends were tied up. Liu was training new dudes like Kai, Raiden had retired and appointed Fujin in his place, Kahn was presumed dead (although Tobias says he actually intended Reiko to be Kahn reincarnated, that's what the helmet ending actually meant), Scorpion had found out the truth and gotten his hands on Quan Chi, Sonya and Jax had finally ended the Black Dragons, etc.

But there hasn't been a time that a game didn't end in a "to be continued" or cliffhanger state since then. Even the characters who died in 9, being enslaved to a villain is never the end of someone's story, it's a big "how are they gonna get out of this one?"

NRS is not capable of handling 7 or 8 new characters well.

I would not trust them to handle 20. Four should be their limit.

Pretty much. 4 is as many new characters I'd like to see added. Whenever they try to crank out too many new faces at once they tend to crank out forgettable characters with borrowed moves from older characters.

I've said it before, I reckon NRS could pull of a Quater of the Roster new characters.

THAAAAAAAAANK YOU!!!!

What these guys said. I tend to care for established characters.

No. And that's the reason why Street Fighter 3 is my least favorite. I didn't like any of those new characters. Except for maybe Alex.

Definetly nope. 1 or 2 maybe as they could put all their creative resourves on them. More than that? Not a good idea.

Deception is a great example on how they tried to add a ton of characters that ended up being really simple fighters with no personallity at all for them or their playstiles.

Darrius? Dairou? (come on both characters were super generic as fighters and belonged to the same association and you spent a lot of time trying to memorize which D_R__ character was each one because you cared so little about them that it was hard to remember they even existed) Kobra? Kira? Come one Midway/NRS! You can do much better than this!

Probably the most prominent one was Havik (btw, Havik has "appeared" as a cameo in a game not named Armageddon, during Noob's ending, so at least one from Deception was worth mentioning again), and I think he's the only one from that game that I wouldn't mind seeing again, and I guess that as Hotaru complements him in the chaos-order thing I could deal with it (though Hotaru seemed to me just like a generic order faction warrior, I guess that's the point with Seido, making everything generic, I have the same problem with Baraka who could be replaced with a generic tarkatan as everything he does is being a member of this race).

The rest of them? Kick them into a pit. The only one that could be saved IF AND ONLY IF she gets a BIG revamp ala Stryker is Ashrah as her story at least has some potential.

Not to sound redundant, but I'll join everyone else saying 'no' and second this thought quoted above.

I don't mind, but I'm more focused on the game's gameplay. It doesn't matter what characters are in it if the gameplay is garbage to me. Mortal Kombat 9 was the first MK game where I actually gave a shit about ALL the characters and became interested in how they all played. While in previous games, I'll just use a few characters and no one else.