MK1 Invasions Mode: (It Sucks)

[chrisisnice]

Again, I don't think the mode is the steaming pile of dung the lot of you do, but it does seem like they design aspects specifically to frustrate the player.

Whenever I think about gaming frustration, I think about the words of Hugo Martin on this topic (he's the game director for DOOM Eternal). He said that in gaming, there is always going to be frustration for the player, and that there's 2 types of frustration.

The first is good frustration. The game is challenging and pushing the player and they're dying as they learn to play and to use their full tool kit. It's this kind of frustration that pushes players to do better and overcome challenge and to learn to properly play the game as designed.

The second is bad frustration, where a game is hard no matter how well a person is playing or how well they're making use of their tool kit. It's an inflated difficulty. It can also be bad design decisions making things convoluted to do.

Invasions has a lot of bad frustration, and if they could iron this out, the Mode would be better for it.

Examples would be:

• Properly guide players through early encounters and provide them with nodes to teach them about their tools. There was a little of this, but not enough. If you're entering a Survival Node, show what the damage type is so you can pick a character accordingly. If a Boss is going to have a one hit kill move, explain this before hand.
• Controls should be responsive and not counter intuitive. i.e. LT to turn around that only works when it feels like it. If this can't be refined further, those encounters need to be removed.
• The Mode is very repetitive and for many feels like a grind. I'd experiment with making the Mesas shorter for a Season and see how that goes.
• Throw in Maps.
• Survival, Kombo Trial, and Character Trials should all be skip-able.
• Character trials should have proper explanations of the abilities being used, since not everyone plays those characters.
• Have a standard Season length. We've had ranges of 30-60 days. I say keep it at 60.

The above would all be a good start, anyway.

I 100% agree with the good / bad frustration thing. I think there is too many frustrating elements. Those character trials are painful and often too unforgiving - I totally agree with the LT element - it is not intuitive in this game and is at times irresponsive. That Johnny battle was absoloutely ridiculous - I was basically required to go a character I never play (Reiko), put all stats in to health and beat down on him for way too long.

They did a smart move by removing most armor after the first season.

I think they need to put in more variety in the mode even if it is skipable. Mini Games eg chess kombat or MK 2 fights.

One of my main problems is my mind goes numb after playing a while, so even something random that has nothing to do with the game for those that want a frivilous distraction from the grind would be good eg checkers / Solitare / pong (which was the old secret minigame) . Not many resources would need to go in setting those up.

 

[xRantex]

Yeah, I'm starting to get to a point where I just say screw invasions altogether. Once it gets to the frustrating part.

I only like being frustrated in a ranked match not fighting CPU with super armor it's a waste of my time and concentration.

I got some cool skins, now I'm stuck on fighting nitara and I just wanna leave the mode alone altogether. It's so poorly designed on top of the other problems the game have.