Because konquest played such a prominent role in the latest MK games, I'm quite certain that it will return for MK8.

The 3 past konquests all focused on different things:

Deadly Alliance - Focused on story. It was more or less a character-study mode than anything else. We basically learned every characters moves while reading a wealth of information about them and their current role in series.

Deception - Focused on exploration. This was a free-roaming adventure game that allowed us to not only explore the 6 major realms but to also learn of their current events. This provided broader information on the MK Universe rather than emphasizing individual characters much, all while letting us play around and see interesting things rather than reading paragraphs of text.

Armageddon - Focused on fighting. This was the least informative of any konquest. It gave us no information on the current events happening throughout the Universe, nor did it allow us to learn about all the characters and their current roles. This emphasized strongly on fighting and avoiding hazards without letting us explore much of anything and informing us only of Taven's role and a few other characters.

The question is.... What should MK8's konquest focus on: story, exploration, gameplay, or.... something else?

Is there a new direction MK8 could take with konquest?

Well, my personal opinion on this is that MK8's konquest should focus on exploration like in MKD but also have portions where we learn about the characters and fight with different people.

The fighting should be executed in real-time, however. Meaning, there should be no loading screens that takes us to an arcade-version battle. No, instead we should fight right then and there in the konquest environment. Armageddon did this for the multi-enemy fights but not the singular fights with important character.

So basically I want MK8's konquest to feature elements from all 3 previous konquests except I want the most emphasis to be placed on exploring the realms. I'd like character studies/training and real-time fights to be the secondary features.