Mortal Kombat gets secret balancing updates
NetherRealm has included new technology in Mortal Kombat that allows it to secretly adjust game balancing without user-end patches.
Say goodbye to infinite combos! NetherRealm has revealed that they've incorporated a clever piece of new tech in Mortal Kombat that allows them to make behind-the-scenes adjustments to game-balance without requiring folks to download annoying patches.
Mortal Kombat series creator Ed Boon remained secretive about the exact nature of how the technology worked when he revealed its existence to Eurogamer, but did refer to it as a "mini-update."
"We've seen other fighting games, including our own, have characters we wish were more balanced, more powerful or weaker," explained Boon. "So we devised a system that lets us modify the rules of the game, dynamically."
While not confirmed by Boon, these covert updates sound very similar to the tactics employed by other titles, namely to circumvent the arduous console certification process. Super Meat Boy's 'Teh Internets' gave owners of XBLA version of the game free levels, and Monday Night Combat has also been receiving invisible balance updates in a similar way.
Even if the idea is not entirely new, it's true that the length of the certification process for official patches makes it tough for developers to deliver timely game-balancing updates. Given that exploits and balancing issues are both cancerous to the fighting genre, Boon's promise to "monitor what things players may have an issue with and then correct them as needed," sounds like a great way to keep the fighting fair - at least until you rip out the other guy's spine.
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Comment on Mortal Kombat gets secret balancing updates, by Jeff Mattas.
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I had the same reaction- there are a couple combos I could pull off with ease with Scorpion on the demo that are either way harder or just not possible in the final release. That really annoyed me at first, but this game has so much awesomeness packed in that I find myself overlooking that stuff pretty quickly and moving on to what does work in the final product.
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Well, the game is rated M...unless your kids are 17 years old or older, of course..
I got my first MK when I was 12 years old, and I probably am the most non-violent person in real life (in video game, anything goes though), although yes, I will want another video game after this, it's just my hobby...
Unless you are trolling/joking, why is the game broken and ugly? Btw, it is supposed to be nasty and violent, so not sure where that complaint is coming from...
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I've been annoyed with them when one is playing and my phone rings or when my dogs want to be let outside or something, because not only can you not skip them, but you can't pause them either. Not that the MK storyline is something so riveting that I just have to have every detail of it, but once the scene is finished playing you're thrown right into the fight. So if I don't wanna lose a round, I have to wait for the scene to end just so I can pause at the start of the next fight.
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I always watch ingame movies at least once. It became noticably annoying yesterday as controller config isn't available past the main menu, and I was trying to come up with a comfortable config for my Fightpad. Sure, I could've gone into the training mode (which I did later) to configure it, but I wanted to check out the story mode at the same time.
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Sounds like a great way to change the rules of the game between matches and a great way to confuse the hell out of someone who trains on something being a certain way, then finds a day later that the things he counted on working, even ones that weren't as extreme as exploit, don't work the same way...
That could get really frustrating if they don't have a great way of documenting what they're changing... -
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