Ed Boon asks if they should add tournament skins to MK1 to fund future Pro Komps

Ed Boon just took to twitter to drop a plethora of hints, teasers, extra content, and more about 30+ years of Mortal Kombat and what could be coming to Mortal Kombat 1. The biggest one for me was the following.

https://x.com/noobde/status/1790465615968505965

Everyone please interact and respond to this post to let them know if you would like to see skins/shaders that would directly support a competitive tour. This could be HUGE in that we would have a self sustaining kompetitive ecosystem that could last well past the first two years of the game, and see prize pools as large if not the largest the FGC as ever seen backed by the casual size of the MK community. Let me know your thoughts below!

MKX had previously done this with the Crimson Ermac and Blue Steel skins. These were perceived to have done really well so I am super excited to see a potential return. MKX Pro League raised some serious prizes!

 

They have plenty of money to put back into MK1 if they need/want to, that’s a non issue. And what they’re proposing isn’t going to cause them to have to forego anything else. All it is is them taking skins that they’d already be releasing, and putting a % of those sales towards the community for a potential future season 2 of the Pro Kompetition Series.

Now, you don’t have to participate in any tournaments, offline or otherwise, to be apart of the MK/NRS community or even the competitive community. But to actively vote against helping out the community just because it doesn’t specifically benefit YOU is an unbelievably selfish thing to even suggest let alone do and is the exact opposite of what the MK community represents.

There are priorities,in the current state of the game this would just be yet another paywall to cool skins (with real money purchases to be able to split the %) that could have been unlocks.If they have more then enough money to just put back into the game,then by the same token they should have more then enough money to fund their pro tours without additional microtransactions.

The mk community is already being price gouged and the last thing they are thinking about is making pro-gamers and commentators pockets thicker while the game needs alot of work in key areas.

You calling me selfish for saying i want the game as a product to be improved alongside its monetisation systems before you introduce additional paywalls that benefit 0.00001% of mk community is incredibly hypocritical.

 

There are priorities,in the current state of the game this would just be yet another paywall to cool skins (with real money purchases to be able to split the %) that could have been unlocks.If they have more then enough money to just put back into the game,then by the same token they should have more then enough money to fund their pro tours without additional microtransactions.

The mk community is already being price gouged and the last thing they are thinking about is making pro-gamers and commentators pockets thicker while the game needs alot of work in key areas.

You calling me selfish for saying i want the game as a product to be improved alongside its monetisation systems before you introduce additional paywalls that benefit 0.00001% of mk community is incredibly hypocritical.

You live on a street. The government takes care of maintaining and improving your infrastructure. You as a community want a basketball court, so you all pool money and get the court built. Building that court does absolutely nothing to impede the maintenance of your street.

Do you really think metal mario palette swaps are going to be a drop in the bucket for NRS' development pipeline? Do you not realize that showing NRS that we actually are invested in Pro Komp as a community would lead to further investment into the game on a mechanical, cosmetic, and professional level?

Honestly the most shortsighted opinion - money talks, a developer is never going to spend more money on a sinking ship game vs. just moving on to their next, they'll only invest in the game if they feel like the community will give them more money. Its pretty basic.

 

You live on a street. The government takes care of maintaining and improving your infrastructure. You as a community want a basketball court, so you all pool money and get the court built. Building that court does absolutely nothing to impede the maintenance of your street.

Do you really think metal mario palette swaps are going to be a drop in the bucket for NRS' development pipeline? Do you not realize that showing NRS that we actually are invested in Pro Komp as a community would lead to further investment into the game on a mechanical, cosmetic, and professional level?

Honestly the most shortsighted opinion - money talks, a developer is never going to spend more money on a sinking ship game vs. just moving on to their next, they'll only invest in the game if they feel like the community will give them more money. Its pretty basic.

Your analogy doesnt really apply at all to the situation at hand but anyways,what im saying is im against adding additional paywalls in the game that already has issues with being a triple A full priced game yet having heavy monetisation,while at the same time having a major issues on the sp content side and poor skin unlocks.Doesnt really matter if the funds go to the pro tour,the casual tour or wb employee weekend picnics,i am fully against adding new microtransactions.

And as i said earlier if the systems and the game economy was different,then having something like that wouldnt necessarily be an issue.

Sure thing money talks,but im not just going to throw money at them cause i like mk,they got work to do.Personally im still not sure if i will be getting the expansion,state of the game in the coming moths and price to value ratio of the expansion will be looked at.

Miss me with the mentality of 10$ skins must be bought if mk is to keep going LOL(yeah yeah they are 5 now good shit NRS)

 

Your analogy doesnt really apply at all to the situation at hand but anyways,what im saying is im against adding additional paywalls in the game that already has issues with being a triple A full priced game yet having heavy monetisation,while at the same time having a major issues on the sp content side and poor skin unlocks.Doesnt really matter if the funds go to the pro tour,the casual tour or wb employee weekend picnics,i am fully against adding new microtransactions.

And as i said earlier if the systems and the game economy was different,then having something like that wouldnt necessarily be an issue.

Sure thing money talks,but im not just going to throw money at them cause i like mk,they got work to do.Personally im still not sure if i will be getting the expansion,state of the game in the coming moths and price to value ratio of the expansion will be looked at.

Miss me with the mentality of 10$ skins must be bought if mk is to keep going LOL(yeah yeah they are 5 now good shit NRS)

How does the analogy not apply? The community would be rallying around and directly investing into a low-effort high-impact side thing that will have no effect on the progression of development of the main game. In fact, it will positively effect the main game if it drives excitement for the pro tour and brings in more active existing / new players.

"Additional paywall = bad" is a really surface level monkey brain take, and is generally naive considering this was a live service game from the outset. Microtransactions suck and live service games for the most part extra-suck, but if the money is going towards the pro tour and enriching the community, it will only bring good. It is intangibly good because of what it does in a meta sense for the community, and it is tangibly good because NRS will see hard data showing that people legit care about their competitive scene that the game has legs, therefore they should invest more into improving it.

 

How does the analogy not apply? The community would be rallying around and directly investing into a low-effort high-impact side thing that will have no effect on the progression of development of the main game. In fact, it will positively effect the main game if it drives excitement for the pro tour and brings in more active existing / new players.

"Additional paywall = bad" is a really surface level monkey brain take, and is generally naive considering this was a live service game from the outset. Microtransactions suck and live service games for the most part extra-suck, but if the money is going towards the pro tour and enriching the community, it will only bring good. It is intangibly good because of what it does in a meta sense for the community, and it is tangibly good because NRS will see hard data showing that people legit care about their competitive scene that the game has legs, therefore they should invest more into improving it.

My guy,90%+ of players dont even know a pro tour exists,all they would see is the game still being in a bad state but be expected to shell out more cash so 5 people have a better chance at going full time into playing mk.
Wow how exciting.Truely the greater mk community is having so much from it.

Im not going to comment on the latter half of your post

 

@xWildx

Agreed, what a ridiculous tweet to Garner good will. These hacks should've did it to fund Season 1 prize pools. NRS's company vehicle is a short bus.

 

@xWildx

Agreed, what a ridiculous tweet to Garner good will. These hacks should've did it to fund Season 1 prize pools. NRS's company vehicle is a short bus.

Agreed. Many people talked about community skins etc for the prize pool since the release and its only now that NRS want to know the answer to this question. This is the type of question that should have asked before the release of the game.

 

There are priorities,in the current state of the game this would just be yet another paywall to cool skins (with real money purchases to be able to split the %) that could have been unlocks.If they have more then enough money to just put back into the game,then by the same token they should have more then enough money to fund their pro tours without additional microtransactions.

They don’t really have a strong incentive to just give money away (even though they absolutely have done this a bunch of times and funded many tournaments and pro tours. But there’s still not much incentive to do any of that tbh). People seem to constantly forget that NRS is a business. People also tend to either forget or not realize how different NRS fighting games are to really any other fg. Which is interesting because based on your “0.00001% of the MK community” comment, you seem to realize this but you’re not able to quite connect the dots there.

So yeah, they’re already dropping $200k on the first pro komp, it seems perfectly reasonable to use a portion of the sales of a skin or skins to fund a 2nd pro komp.

The mk community is already being price gouged and the last thing they are thinking about is making pro-gamers and commentators pockets thicker while the game needs alot of work in key areas.

You calling me selfish for saying i want the game as a product to be improved alongside its monetisation systems before you introduce additional paywalls that benefit 0.00001% of mk community is incredibly hypocritical.

Very peculiar choice of words there. It’s almost as if you think the pro MK players and commentators are making bank. Anyway, your line of reasoning doesn’t make any sense. As I already alluded to, making skins isn’t something that is going to “take away” from something else. Also, we have no idea if they’re making skins exclusively for this, or if they were going to release these skins regardless, but now a portion will go towards helping the community instead of all of it going to NRS. I really don’t even see how you can see this as a negative. Like even if you for some reason despise the competitive MK community and tournament scene (which it seems like you do for whatever reason), this isn’t going to have any negative effect on you or anyone else. That’s why I said it’s selfish, not the completely fabricated reason you invented.

 

They don’t really have a strong incentive to just give money away (even though they absolutely have done this a bunch of times and funded many tournaments and pro tours. But there’s still not much incentive to do any of that tbh). People seem to constantly forget that NRS is a business. People also tend to either forget or not realize how different NRS fighting games are to really any other fg. Which is interesting because based on your “0.00001% of the MK community” comment, you seem to realize this but you’re not able to quite connect the dots there.

So yeah, they’re already dropping $200k on the first pro komp, it seems perfectly reasonable to use a portion of the sales of a skin or skins to fund a 2nd pro komp.


Very peculiar choice of words there. It’s almost as if you think the pro MK players and commentators are making bank. Anyway, your line of reasoning doesn’t make any sense. As I already alluded to, making skins isn’t something that is going to “take away” from something else. Also, we have no idea if they’re making skins exclusively for this, or if they were going to release these skins regardless, but now a portion will go towards helping the community instead of all of it going to NRS. I really don’t even see how you can see this as a negative. Like even if you for some reason despise the competitive MK community and tournament scene (which it seems like you do for whatever reason), this isn’t going to have any negative effect on you or anyone else. That’s why I said it’s selfish, not the completely fabricated reason you invented.

We are going in circles here,listen,if they want to distribute their earned profit towards their pro tours by all means then can do that,but this is different.this is an additional microtransaction that has to be money only,you cant split dragon crystals and distribute them to the pro tour lol.meaning it will be yet another line of skins paywalled,which is already a games big issue and very anti consumer.doesnt matter if they planned to release them or they nake brand new ones specific for it as whatever they case may be they will only be attainable if you spend real money with zero possibility of being acquired any other way.

I repeat if the state of the game and its economic systems was already not fucked up,i would not be oppsed to this.In the current state i say hell no,but i get it millions of people pottentially buying these skins has the pro gamers and the e-sports crowd salivating,as they get a cut of it,if i was attempting to make a living off of mk competative id probably be all for it too,no matter the state of them game.

But lets not pretend and do this mental gymnastics of how it greatly benefits the entire mk community lol,clear as day there are obvious downsides to the detriment to the greater part of the mk community.

 

The pro players keep the game alive via tourneys and online content. How does that not benefit the ENTIRE community?

You're literally posting this on MKs competetive forum. Maybe check reddit breh.

 

The pro players keep the game alive via tourneys and online content. How does that not benefit the ENTIRE community?

You're literally posting this on MKs competetive forum. Maybe check reddit breh.

The game being alive or dead doesnt revolve around the pros,especially a game like mk that sells 10 million+ copies.

 

@xWildx

Agreed, what a ridiculous tweet to Garner good will. These hacks should've did it to fund Season 1 prize pools. NRS's company vehicle is a short bus.

Ok so because they didn't do it before, they're "hacks" for asking about potentially doing it going forward? Jesus H. Christ, some of yall are the most bitter people in the world. I get that it's wildly frustrating they seem to have abandoned some good tactics they were using in the past, but that shouldn't mean potentially using those same tactics now is awful(?). The game's been on a fantastic upward trajectory since launch with the patches and release of new characters / kameos that are entirely unique, yet NRS can do nothing but wrong in your eyes. God forbid they try to do better in the handling of their tournament scene too. God forbid they recognize issues, identify a potential avenue for doing something better to address some of those issues, and crowd source reactions to see if that avenue is worth the effort.

As a wise person once said: "give yourself a break, go smoke a cigarette, take a klonopin, go on a run, talk to a therapist, go out and buy a new outfit. I don't know, go out and do SOMETHIN."

 

Ok so because they didn't do it before, they're "hacks" for asking about potentially doing it going forward? Jesus H. Christ, some of yall are the most bitter people in the world. I get that it's wildly frustrating they seem to have abandoned some good tactics they were using in the past, but that shouldn't mean potentially using those same tactics now is awful(?). The game's been on a fantastic upward trajectory since launch with the patches and release of new characters / kameos that are entirely unique, yet NRS can do nothing but wrong in your eyes. God forbid they try to do better in the handling of their tournament scene too. God forbid they recognize issues, identify a potential avenue for doing something better to address some of those issues, and crowd source reactions to see if that avenue is worth the effort.

As a wise person once said: "give yourself a break, go smoke a cigarette, take a klonopin, go on a run, talk to a therapist, go out and buy a new outfit. I don't know, go out and do SOMETHIN."

The fact that they even had to “ask” is utterly absurd. Boon isn’t THAT stupid.

 

The fact that they even had to “ask” is utterly absurd. Boon isn’t THAT stupid.

Orrrrrrrrr he works for a mid-size corporation that's a subsidiary of a nearly 20 billion dollar mega corp so he's likely looking for a solid community-driven metric to add as fuel to argue for the initiative.

I swear to CHRIST, yall.

EDIT: not to mention the monumental loss the WB Games division just reported for Q1 2024. Do you really think NRS, one of the main money makers for the WB Games division right now, holds any direct sway in money talks? How would a bunch of corporate suits react to Ed going "Hey, we wanna raise community funds via a skin sale; but a vast majority of the money would go to players, not the company" without this level of overwhelming community support?

 

Keep bending over backwards for a company who sold us an incomplete game. I haven't bought one skin after being robbed of 120, but I will buy a skin to support the tourney scene. It could be a meat skin or a Derek skin, it doesn't matter much.

They want true good will? Churn out a few more quality patches. One was a step in the right direction, but we're still half a dozen away.

And no I'm not cutting a company a break. They sold me a good which is tripe. The End, f em

 

Keep bending over backwards for a company who sold us an incomplete game. I haven't bought one skin after being robbed of 120, but I will buy a skin to support the tourney scene. It could be a meat skin or a Derek skin, it doesn't matter much.

They want true good will? Churn out a few more quality patches. One was a step in the right direction, but we're still half a dozen away.

And no I'm not cutting a company a break. They sold me a good which is tripe. The End, f em

Ok so you have two separate issues here and you're melding the two together while simultaneously saying you're for the initiative you just called Ed Boon a hack for asking for feedback on.

Got it.

Also, not defending the initial release of the product. It was absolutely a shit product on release. There's quite a number of reasons I dropped the game by Quan's release. Just defending the reasoning behind Ed asking for feedback on this specific issue.

 

Orrrrrrrrr he works for a mid-size corporation that's a subsidiary of a nearly 20 billion dollar mega corp so he's likely looking for a solid community-driven metric to add as fuel to argue for the initiative.

I swear to CHRIST, yall.

EDIT: not to mention the monumental loss the WB Games division just reported for Q1 2024. Do you really think NRS, one of the main money makers for the WB Games division right now, holds any direct sway in money talks? How would a bunch of corporate suits react to Ed going "Hey, we wanna raise community funds via a skin sale; but a vast majority of the money would go to players, not the company" without this level of overwhelming community support?

Point being, he already knows the answer to this question. I have to assume you’re not that stupid as well.

 

Point being, he already knows the answer to this question. I have to assume you’re not that stupid as well.

Of course he does. And of course I know he does. Once again, that's not how corporations work and he likely needs an up to date, data-backed metric to make that argument to corporate suits currently dealing with a $966,000,000 loss from just one quarter.

I have to assume your reading comprehension isn't that abhorrent to miss this as well.

 

Not to mention all his stupid little Twitter polls.

"Derp derp community what do you want to see next derp derp?"

"2 out of 3 it is!" (Despite losing in the poll.)

 

Of course he does. And of course I know he does. Once again, that's not how corporations work and he likely needs an up to date, data-backed metric to make that argument to corporate suits currently dealing with a $966,000,000 loss from just one quarter.

I have to assume your reading comprehension isn't that abhorrent to miss this as well.

To assume an errant tweet is what Boon is taking to the heads at WB

The hire ups at WB have the metrics as well. You’re arguing in circles, really, just with yourself at this point.

 

To assume an errant tweet is what Boon is taking to the heads at WB

The hire ups at WB have the metrics as well. You’re arguing in circles, really, just with yourself at this point.

There are no metrics on whether people would buy something specifically to support the tournament scene unless you poll them.

It’s also a way of jumpstarting interest and raising social media engagement. People interacting with a tweet raises the priority of that tweet in feeds, which helps spread the word and get people involved.

This is just basic business sense.