I've read the comments in this thread. There are ideas that I like, and some, not so much.
What would I like to see for MK9?
A return to simplicity. I don't agree that the "bulkiness" of the characters in MKDA and MKD was a bad thing, because I think that what they were going for was a more realistic feel to the fight, and really, how many fighters do you know in real life who can constantly jump 10+ feet in the air with the greatest of ease? I'm also torn between making the arenas fully 3D (no invisible circular boundaries!), and applying the SFIV 2D approach to the next game, which could work. Maybe the two don't even have to be mutually exclusive. :hmmmm:
The darker, grittier feel we were promised with the release of "the next MK title after Armageddon". Well, it didn't take with MKvsDC. I mean, I was expecting Gears of War-type d&g when they announced the Unreal 3 engine would be used, but given the characters involved in the crossover, I suppose that wasn't entirely feasible. Here's hoping MK9 will correct that...
Deathtraps!... I've had problems with the way they've been implemented in the MK franchise. Example: The Deadpool. In MKII, it was a fatality. When they brought that same stage back in MKD, it was a mere deathtrap, and if you got knocked into one in a non-decisive round, the fight would continue, and if it was in a decisive round, it wasn't regarded as a fatality. That just came off to me as lazy, or bad design on the part of the MK crew. So this is the system I think they should use instead: depending on how many rounds the fight has (adjustable in gameplay settings), if there's only one round to the fight, enable deathtraps; if there's more than one round, make it so that deathtraps are available only after the first round, and when somebody gets knocked into one the fight should end RIGHT THEN AND THERE. None of this MKD/MKA crap where they pull themselves up off the spike they've just been impaled on and continue as if nothing happened. And, since I think deathtraps should end the fight, it should also be regarded as a Fatality.
I also believe the MK crew should bring back a *small* handful of past characters, and build a new generation of MK off of new characters. I tried to write my own story for this, continuing off of the events of Armageddon a long time ago, but I faltered when it came to actually creating new characters. Hopefully the Chicago crew doesn't have the same problem I did. :mrgreen:
Oh, and if Dan Forden hasn't been as involved with the music as he used to be, he should be again. He made some classic fight tunes.
That's all I could think of off the top of my head.