I think today is the day where I talk about something I really don’t like about Mortal Kombat X. The ranking system. Or more specifically, the numbers they have chosen to share with us, in regards to the ranking system.
In online matches, where the *real* game is (at least according to this blogger), you will see a rectangle of information about yourself and your opponent before each match. I’ll throw a pic of this up on my instagram @maulakai, but I’m sure you know what I mean.
The default picture on the rectangle is of Scorpion. But as you play more, you earn more pictures and decals to decorate the rectangle with. It took me a fair bit of searching to discover the name was the Kombat Bar. At least I think that’s what it’s called, I have no real way to verify.
But the most prominent thing on the Kombat Bar are the numbers on the right and left side. Again, there’s nothing in the game to tell us what these numbers are and what they mean. It’s like a mystery that they wanted to unravel outside of the game, in search engines and twitch.tv chat. Or maybe their interface isn’t so user friendly. But the number on the right is below the icon of your faction. It displays your faction level. The funny thing about your faction level is that it has no bearing on how well you play the game *at all*. As a person who plays Mortal Kombat because I like skill based strategy games, I find this absurd. Why is one of the most prominently displayed numbers on the Kombat Bar displaying useless information?
The other side of the bar, the left side, displays your Player Level. Here, was the number I wanted to see. I mean, doesn’t everybody in an online ranked match want to see a number that tells them how good they are. They want to be able to talk to their friends and coworkers and say “I’m a level XX in Mortal-fucking-Kombat!”
But it turns out, that number doesn’t say how good your are, either. That number corresponds to experience, not a true rank or skill. Now it is true, to some degree, that experience correlates with skill. But not always. Case in point is my own. I started off on the PC version of the game, and gained a great deal of experience and skill. Then, I switched to the much more playable PS4 version of the game. Whala, you have a level 1 player who plays with the skill of a level 30.
Now this is where I start to get a little bit mad at the devs. Because this has echoes of StarCraft 2 all over again. Where the devs somehow trick themselves into thinking that black is white and up is down and short is long and the players of their game don’t want to know what their ranking is.
I’m sure they give us the number. Buried, somewhere, deep in the menu screen. I just don’t get why they can’t trust us to have that number, right there, front and center, where we can see it on the Kombat Kard, and wear our *true* ranking with pride.
What they do give you, is a tease. Because when the match is first displayed, and only for a few seconds that first time you see the Kombat Kards, they will show you your percentage chance to win. Obviously, the only way to calculate that is to have your number in the rankings.
And here is another aspect of the game design that I don’t like. They don’t give you the information, they *tease* you with it.
Let me put that into context. Sometimes, when I’m waiting for a match, it can take minutes or more. It’s a fair bit longer than I’m used to waiting to get matched online. More and more, and I’m sure I’m not alone, I find myself using that in-between game time. So maybe I’m putting dishes away in the nearby kitchen, and I hear the sound of the match finally starting. But by the time I walk to where I can see the screen, the information is gone. Now I have to choose my character without the benefit of the information they *teased* me with.
Come on Ed Boon, just leave the Kards up!
So I’m not sure, but I think my ranking number is somewhere in the 200,000’s. Is that any good? There’s also the issue of having one global rank versus having a separate ranking for each character. Because when I play as Jacqui Briggs, I really can fight with level fifties. But not so for my Kotal Kahn.
I want to end this post, but not without a word on what went on last night. As I’m sure you’re aware, the Play Station Network went down last night. Right on a Friday night when everyone had just sat down to play. And that killed me. That tortured my soul. Why did the gods not want me to play Mortal Kombat?
I agonized over what to do, and finally broke and fired up the Steam client on my computer. If I had to purchase two copies of Mortal Kombat, and if I wasn’t going to get my money back, and it sure seems like I’m not, then at least I could play the PC version while the PS4 was down.
But because I hadn’t used the Steam version for so long, it had to download a major patch. Which required me to wait hours. In other words, no Mortal Kombat for me on Friday night. And there I was tempted to make a new first world problems meme where I cry, “I have to play Battle.net … Because the Play Station Network is down!”
TL;DR Displayed rank match information is obscure and useless. PC and PS4 game versions were unplayable for me on Fri. night.
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