Well we all knew that there would be some sort of sacrifice anytime NRS gives the fans what they want. There's always a catch and that catch is the Kameo system IMO. The days of Armageddon and Trilogy size character select screens are long gone. It sucks for us old MK fans but it's probably for the best considering they can't balance what they have now. I'm not saying Armageddon or Trilogy where balanced but those games exsisted long before social media outrage took over. I get your're a single content only player but online gaming is where most of the focus is nowadays when it comes to the content we see in these games. Balancing/patching a game like Armageddon would be a nightmare. NRS is the only developer caught in rock and a hard place with the 3d fans vs the 2d fans. IMO MK9 and X where the only games that tried to make both fan bases happy with mixed results. They're been stuck in a endless limbo ever since.
I'm not asking for Armageddon sized rosters, and I like the balance in MK1 somewhat.
MK9 wasn't a good mix of 2D era and 3D era, imo.
It was pure MK1 through UMK3 / Trilogy nostalgia.
You had Quan Chi and Kenshi from the 3D era and the majority of rest of the MK9 roster was a pure MK1 through UMK3 / Trilogy era fap-fest, and a good portion of the stages were from that era too, and Babalities.
MKX was okay in the 2D & 3D mix, but (imo) some of that was sacrificed (understandably so) for the new era characters.
MK1 is (imo) the better mix of the 2D and 3D eras and the first game where we have:
- 7 of the post-MK3 / 3D era characters on a launch roster of 23 (with only Geras being from MKX, so far), and then another one via DLC (Quan Chi).
- 11 of the 14 MK1 / MKII roster characters
- a majority of the male ninjas in it
- all of the MK1 through UMK3 bosses in some shape or form
My whole point with the last part of my post is that some of those characters that could otherwise be playable get relegated to "kameo" status in a way where it seems like NRS is trying to arbitrarily inflate the roster size.
I'm fine with characters like Tremor, Frost, Jax, Sonya & Kano being kameos because they were just in MKX or MK11 or both, but then you have characters like Sareena, Mavado and Shujinko that haven't been playable in 18 goddamn years also as kameos.
Yeah, I also know it sounds selfish / greedy, but we FINALLY got a game where more of the 3D era is being given recognition and then given some of them via gimped / half-ass assists instead of full playable characters and essentially being told to "just enjoy that." That's where some of my frustration with the kameo system as a whole lies.
Like, I'd have 0 issues if Nightwolf, Sheeva, Kabal, Skarlet, Erron Black, D'Vorah or Kotal were kameos...since all were in the last game.