Dude... the memories I have of Deception are nothing, but fun. It was ahead of its time and had the best stages too. I lost the count on how many times me and my buddy have laughed till we cried, while fighting in Nethership Interior or Falling Cliffs.
Puzzle Kombat too... Kombat Chess... eh. Good stuff.
As or MK1. Yeaaaah. I mean... the "expansion" itself is charging people 50 bucks for basically 2 hours of additional cutscenes. People are now paying to watch the games, not play them.
Agreed. So many fun memories with Deception.
Puzzle Kombat, Chess Kombat and even just the Konquest mode was fun because aside from fights you could go around and explore stuff.
Speaking of stages, the Slaughterhouse from Deception is a stage that I've been wanting back in an MK game for YEARS now, as well.
Whereas, with MK1 now the Invasion mode is such a grind and not really worth it.
Only season that really felt worth it was the Raiden Season (season 4), because at least that season gave us Dark Raiden and the rainy variant of the Tea House
(probably my favorite stage in the game....along with Cage's Mansion Halloween and the Gateway Christmas stage)
There's one NEW stage that they showed off in the short Cyrax snippet / teaser, today, and it looks like some sort of restaurant or store with Havik's face on it. So, that stage looks like some of the goofy shenanigans (like cooking with Scorpion) that I would have seen in the 3D era, and I'm down with it.
Would be funny as shit if Meat ends up being the head chef of that restaurant, as a little easter egg / nod.

Left side of the screen.....
As for the expansion, yeah, I'm not bothering with it.
I'll watch the expansion whenever someone uploads it to YouTube or get the details from the MKLeaks reddit, but I don't care for guests and Noob was JUST playable in MK11. Dunno. Not feeling most of the characters in this pack.
KP1 at least let me buy Quan Chi, Ermac from story mode seemed cool and I got Takeda back.
This one, though.....

I actually probably might consider either Cyrax or Sektor to get (*gasp* I know a non 3D era one) if they're fun enough in the Weekly Tower trials, but if this is an all or nothing "get the Khaos Reigns or nothing" type of deal with NRS / WB and their bullshit then nothing it is.

I'm not buying a whole pack just for 3 guests that I don't give a damn about.
I did it with KP1 where I bought Quan Chi, Ermac, Takeda and the 5 kameos for a total of $19, and I'll do it again with MS rewards (again) if possible.
Already got $15 in free MS rewards money saved up, so then 1 or 2 of the characters could be practically free for me ( or a total of $1).
Like, I know that it's a spit in the bucket to NRS but I'm not ever buying guests in an MK game, and people can call me purist or whatever other bullshit, but I don't care for them and never will. People have even suggested Corvo Attano or Daud to me knowing I'm a huge fan of the Dishonored series, but not even then.