D) Everyone knows the classic cast like the palm of their hand. MK is MK because of the Trilogy.
As for petitions.... You had Shaggy petition for MK11 which had 380k signatures, then you had a petition
like this... Petitions mean jack. Tremor got added because people yelled about him ever since MK9 (and he was there in the Vita version). Fans also wanted more ninjas. It was a no brainer, really. Which is funny that Mileena gets so much shit now, accusing of "harassing" (this word lost all meaning now) the devs, meanwhile other characters get a pass.
Well, then, if MK12 is also going to follow the same pattern of the same recurring spam, then unfortunately MK11 may be my last MK game.
This is the reason why I think that KP3 (if it's being done) will have Cyrax, Sektor, Reptile, Ermac and human Smoke as the last 5 DLC characters for MK11, to round out the rest of the MK9 cast. No one really gives a shit about Stryker as much, and Robocop is essentially cyber Stryker in MK11.
Kind of sucks, too, because this is the only fighting game franchise that I've ever followed so closely over the better part of 3 decades. It's been fun, but I don't need to have the majority of the MK9 cast in each MK game, and after 3 straight games with 20+ MK9 characters and hardly any love for the 3D era, the whole overall IP (for me) has gotten stale. Yeah, Kenshi and Shinnok got love in MKX as well, but they're on the main roster, which itself is safe. Tremor was begged / petitioned for, so he also wasn't a risk to put in for DLC. Tanya was asked for a lot, not as much as Fujin, but still a lot. Bo Rai Cho was probably the only risky DLC character for MKX.
As for MK11, Frost was on the main roster for a game that already had a safe main roster and Fujin has been asked for a lot on social media ever since MK9.
I've never argued against the Trilogy era being responsible for what it is today, but it's just a shame that the series can't seem evolve beyond that.....
- Kotal Kahn? Cool as fvck character, only for him to be treated like a loser in MKX, then again in his own gameplay trailer for MK11, he then gives up the throne to Kitana and finally he's treated like shit (YET AGAIN) by getting killed at tghe hands of Shao Kahn in Aftermath.
Why the fvck bother with him, to begin with, then?
- Takeda? Cool as fvck character, only for him to get a 1 game appearance and then be one-and-done.
- Ferra / Torr? Pretty awesome characters to play as, but people shat on them and never gave them a chance, and even after story mode I still don't really know much about them. Who are these characters, honestly? They were also one-and-done characters, sadly.
- D'Vorah? They tried to give her some importance by having her kill off some iconic characters, only for the deaths to be worth less than 2 shits within the next game.
- Kung Jin? Another cool character, but again just living in the shadow of Kung Lao and another character that they didn't give enough of a shit about to bring back to MK11.
- Jacqui? She got a hell of a revamp in game play and I liked that whole arc of her getting a chance to see what Jax was like when he was younger (during the MKII part of the MK9 storyline), but again, people shit on her and aren't willing to give her a chance because on reddit or social media it's always "fvck Jacqui, because......"
- Erron Black is nothing more than the same jobber that we has in MKX, and he didn't have much development, either.
- Cassie Cage is probably the better developed out of all of them in gameplay & stroy (along with Jacqui, imo), but even still, people aren't willing to give her the time of day.
EDIT:
As for the MK11 newcomers:
Geras is a pretty awesome gameplay character, imo, but he didn't get as much character development love, as he's just another jobber like Noob, Frost and Cetrion. Speaking of Cetrion....
Cetrion is a cool character in gameplay, but she has little to no character development and is just another "yes" henchwoman and pushed to the side in favor of evil, Liu Kang, Kitana and Kung Lao.
Kollector? Another fun as shit character to play as, but people constantly shit on him and blamed him on reddit and other social media for characters like Reptile, Ermac and Smoke not being in (which I don't know how someone makes that connection). Here's another cool character when it comes to gameplay and aesthetics, but NRS didn't give a shit to develop him beyond just being a 2-dimensional "yes' man / henchman.