Re: Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection Patch Coming Today [UPDATED With Patch Notes]
Thank you, Jeff Greeson, for making one of the most intelligent posts here.
I'd like, if I may, to address a couple of points that you made:
I think that no matter how much more effort Other Ocean puts into this game, you are not going to be happy.
I totally agree with the principle of what you are saying. There are going to be people out there that will never, ever be 100% happy. There are people that complain about MAME, this move is a millisecond off or this pixel is one millionth of a shade off. We've all met those people, and you are correct, there is no pleasing them.
I consider myself a fairly serious MK fan, but I'm not an exceptionally technical player and I don't pick through everything with a fine tooth comb. I think it's pretty reasonable to expect emulation that would be considered arcade accurate by people like me. Of course, emulation is never going to be absolutely 100% perfect, but it should be perfect enough so that any issues are invisible to all but the most OCD players. I think audio is a large enough issue that it warrants complaint. Fine, if the audio mix is 1db off or the audio was compressed to run at 29.97 fps instead of 30fps, that's totally within the realm of reason, most people couldn't notice even if they were looking for it. But if the music really does loop in the wrong places, or is silent in Goro's Lair still, that's enough of a glaring issue for even casual players to notice.
I will admit that I'm not a programmer, I know absolutely nothing about programming and patch approval processes. However, that does not preclude me from making judgements about how much can be done in a set amount of time because I can use what other companies do as a barometer to measure that. I don't know how combustion engines work, either, but if I buy a new car and it only goes 40 mph when I floor it, I have a large enough basis of comparison to know this is not correct. I have no idea what NRS and OO have been doing, but it's clear that there have been enormous problems with this patch because other companies patch much larger and complicated problems in much shorter periods of time.
I will admit that our patch analysis wasn't as in-depth as you would like.
I have absolutely no problem with your patch analysis. I don't expect you guys to sit there and try to document absolutely everything. I don't even care if you make mistakes in your patch analysis. My biggest problem is that when you log into TRMK, even now two days later, the biggest headline that pops up is Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection Patch Coming Today. I know you're not an actual news site, but you do report on MK news, so this looks sloppy. I'm not even suggesting that you write a new story trying to explain what is going on, just correct the headline so the first thing you see when you log in to TRMK is no longer false information.
Now when you make "conspiracy" allegations regarding collusion between NRS and TRMK, that is crossing the line
I'm not sure who you are referring to here, but I never made a conspiracy allegation. I only said that I think your reporting is biased because you want to maintain a positive relationship with NRS. However, if as you said you have never received any free games from them, I don't see why you would even care about having a relationship with them. That is just a normal criticism, like when people say CNN is biased to the left or Fox News is biased to the right. What led me to that conclusion is staff members constantly defending NRS with completely immaterial arguments such as "you just don't know what it takes to get a patch out" or "be grateful for what they have done." Now, I understand that not everybody is going to be upset with what is going on with this game, but these are completely ludicrous arguments since we know patches can be written faster than this and we don't owe NRS our gratitude just for releasing a game, something they did with a profit motive, not just as a gift for fans. My biggest beef with Pat has been either having, or pretending to have, inside information and not sharing it and inappropriately closing threads just because he doesn't agree with what is being said in them. That's the kind of behavior I would expect from a 13 year old moderator on a wrestling board, not a full grown man with a proper job on an otherwise professional looking site.
Anyway, I didn't want to berate or insult any of you and I can not speak for anybody else who posts here. I just wanted to explain to you how I have formed the opinions that I have and what my perception is of what is going on. I think you deserve to be commended for making a well thought out and worded post on the matter and I certainly wish that everybody here composed their posts with the same grace. I also wish that I always did.
