Guess I like my "shit" engine. I have fun with it. I have said it sooo many times before, but the "hardcore" fighting fans will NOT get it. MK has a different groove than other fighters. If I want Tekken, I will play Tekken. If I want VF, I will play VF.
I don't want either one. I want MK. And that is what I got.

I like the style system. It gives each character their own distinct feel(well, in cases where the styles weren't borrowed). I still play the old MKs from time to time, and I'm happy with the HP, LP, LK, HK system...but MK:DA and D added onto that. So now the game is a bit deeper, but still has that classic MK feel to it.
Mk is in its own little world when it comes to fighters. MK never had the deepest fighting engine...but it had its own allure. The uniqure characters...the specials...the fatalities...if there is one thing the game has, it's personality. For me, that is kind of what matters most to me. If the characters(and the game itself) have no style or flair, then I become bored. MK's line up is pretty good, although some of the new characters are not that original /good. That doesn't much matter to me though, I 'm happy with the classic characters with their new designs.
As for the responsiveness of the controls, I thought it was shitty at first, too. But then as I played the game I figured out the timing, and everything is great now. I only notice a delay on characters like Bo Rai Cho, which is why I do not play with him. I noticed the main thing in MK:D that might make it seem that the controls unresponsive: the combos must be entered precisely. This isn't like some other games where you can tap the next button in the sequence until the attack comes out(For instance, you cannot do a combo consisting of 123 by pressing 122233. It will stop at 2).

YOU CAN SEE they tried the in-depth fighting game with MKDA ....BUT.... reality is not what MK was in the past so obviously the focused more on the dramatic this time,EXAMPLE . When MK2 came out the old timers said nahh! I liked the first one they changed it too much BUT.....YOU Said " This is way bettter than the first. A game that was faster, had more secrets, and played better. What I could not see was how you could not like MK2 BUT like MK1 better. This still today boggles my mind. Here is an idea, Look in the past at the differences to see what makes the biggest and best differences from game to game. MK1 to MK2 is to MKDA to MKD. I think they did a good job of that .

What do you call "fighting games fans"? A fan of these stupids dial a combos totally retarded from MK1/2/3? No thanks, I don't want to see them back... I enjoy to play many fighting games : Tekken, VF, Doa, 2D fighting games, too... MK gameplay is not great, it's true, but I don't want to see MK become a Tekken Twice or VF wannabe... MKDA and MKD gameplay is not great, but it's better than dial a combo from the previous game, I don't like really games with big combos and no possibilities to counter them, this is not fair, and this is why I hated the first MK games... MK gameplay must change, I'm agree, but I don't want a regression...

It's been said over and over by the few people that really care, including me, but I don't think we should stop saying it, even though nobody is probably going to notice.
I'll answer the qustion in the topic rather than the post, because you said most of it already.
If they want to really milk the series and make big (well, bigger) cash off of it, they should be looking toward the gameplay aspect. Why? Because the gore and flash is just a fad. A 12 year long fad, that's due to get old within the next 2 games or so when people realise there isn't any more ways to kill somebody, and there can only be so much blood. I'm predicting people will get bored with the gore and 'ninjas' in 5 years and MK will either be: A) never heard from again, or B) turn into to one of 'those' games, ya'know like the Army Men series was, and Midway just won't know when to quit so they'll keep releasing game after shitty game dispite the fact that nobody cares or hates it.
If there isn't a gimmick, there isn't a gimmick to get bored with. Look at Virtual Fighter, Tekken, Street Fighter, and all the smaller fighters in between, and you may see what i'm talking about. They have no 'gimmick', only gameplay.

I need to make a sig specifically stating that......
.......NO ONE WANTS MK TO BE A MOTHER FUCKING TEKKEN / VF / DoA / etc etc.
Look, the issue has nothing to do with style, flair, "uniqueness" or any similar arbitrary ideal. Get that out of your heads right now; DO IT!!! No one wants MK to turn into something it's not. We all want MK to stay MK. That is not, and will never be the issue.
The issue is pure failure. Midway has failed at creating a playable and consistent fighting game. The only problem is that many do not see these failures; this steams from many reasons. Some players are simply little sheep, just following the other sheep, who are in turn following the shepard. They care not what lies ahead, or even of that which is present. They are ignorant to what is truely out there. Some simply refuse to look beyond the superficial.
Many people simply do not understand broken gameplay; they are not accustomed to it. They can not make a decernment between that which is "cheap." that which is broke and that which works. This becomes difficult to argue because if one does not understand the fundemental meaning behind something, serious ideological differences arise. Many of these ideologies are very shallow; once again, because of a lack of fundemental understanding.
What does not work in a fighting game are; very easy infinates, a game which boils down to abusing two or three moves, a juggle and a glitch. Having an extremely broad spectrum of tiers is not acceptable. Glitches which destroy the integrity of a games intended gameplay mechanics, is not acceptable.
These are things which should not exist with in any fighting game, as much as they do in D. These are surface, testing issues. These are production values. I have not even gotten into the whole theory of "deep" fighters. "Deep" meaning not complex; but applicable, usable, something that makes sense and is logical. Something with meaning, a system of mechanics that work off of each other, that develop one another. Is Tetris complex? No. Is it deep? You bet your ass it is. Is it fun? Depends. Is it addictive. You bet your ass it is, lol.
The very core of MK's existance is extremely flawed. But to allow this core, if you want to call it that, to have so many issues, glitches and broken bullshit is simply wrong. It's wrong that designers would let this happen, it's wrong that people try to make excuses for it, it's wrong that people are to near sighted to not see the issues in the first place; for what ever reason.
It is wrong what Midway is doing. It is wrong for them to feed off the ignorance of it's players, it's wrong for them to allow as flawed a product as D to reach store shelves. It's wrong to allow a game with so much potential to simply and continually be molested of it's deserving play mechanics.
Meh, who cares though, right? Just go play Tekken, right? Well, I will. I'll be traveling to play it and other players, too. I'd like to play MK; a fighting game if I remember correctly. I know a lot of people who would like to play it. It's just to bad the game sucks so much, that we litterly, mechanically, can't play it.
Remember; in hell, money burns faster than flesh...but ideology, correct ideology, lives forever.
Peace and love ya'll.

Sat, I understand what you are saying. I really do. Yet, it is a legitimate concern nonetheless that some people really DO want it to be a Tekken clone. It pleases me to see that you do not, but still want improvements.
The things I have seen in other threads, though, seem to indicate otherwise. I would just freak out if MK did become Tekken. It is just as much a concern of mine as MK improving overall.
Does that make me a sheep? Maybe. I do have fun with the game as is, but realize it could be better. But Tekken has always bored me (not that I was bad at it..I was, and am, quite good) and I NEVER want that to happen with MK. I hope I made myself clear.

wow, when i say i want a deeper, better fighting engine for the mk series, i never say i want it to be tekken or soul calibur. come to think of it, nobody has ever said they wanted it to be, its just mk fanboys who think thats we mean. you know that a fighting game can be deep and fun without copying another fighting game right? its seems most people think that a shitty fighting engine means its unique, but its not, dial-a-combos just limit what you can do with the fighting. and dont think that i hate mortal kombat, because why else would i want the series to improve. mk has got potential to do something cool with the fighting engine if they just deepen the use of martial arts, weapons, and special moves (they dont need to be projectiles, since projectiles would be hard to use in a true 3d game). its too bad "mk fans" keep telling boon to add that one character and more unlockables instead of asking for a better fighting engine.

I think you're wrong about the engine; it's a better,deeper engine than that of the first 3 MKs. Granted it's no SC2 engine, but it's still the best MK fighting engine ever.

Oh please. Boo hoo hoo, the MK games are all turned to shit now, arcades are dead, what a sad story. You're a diehard fan of the originals and hate the new ones, that's an original act. That makes you so cool. You must be a true old-schooler. I also love how you claim that anyone who cares about secrets at all in the new games, the very factor you say made the originals stand out, is now a "pokemon refugee." *rolls eyes* What an elitist.
If you don't like the way the MK games have gone, stop playing.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for letting me know I'm a pokemon refugee. I had no idea. Thanks, brother.
And second, when the hell was the meat of Mortal Kombat ever the fighting engine? MK1? No, SFII was ten times the fighting engine MK1 ever was... same with MKII... It didn't get better in MK3 or MK4... And most people don't seem to think MKDA and MKD have a deep enough fighting system.
Where do you get off calling an entire bunch of people -a group that just happens to be the one you're not included in- ''pokemon refugees'', and you call yourself a ''real fighting game fan'', when MK was NEVER, EVER about a deep fighting engine? That's a bunch of bullshit right there.
Go ahead and put fighting system depth over the ''garbage'' we like (and lord knows you have the right to call it garbage, because we're always saying that deep fighting is garbage aswell, right?) but don't act like a smartass and say that MK used to be about deep gameplay. It never was, it probably never will be.
I'll just keep unlocking my garbage, while you rant here, demanding something you'll never get, and stereotyping people who disagree with you.
See ya

OK, I'm here to keep the peace here y'all (I'm doing your job right now mods, pay attention ).
I can see both sides of the argument right now, and it's been playing out EXACLTY how I expected it to. HS pointed out how Boon has been listening to the *ahem* "Pokemon Refugees", and not the gameplay fans. I understand some of that. But first, he did listen to the gameplay fans when he made MKDA, he created an entirely new engine from scratch and it looked good on paper. But then the Universal Tracking and the 3 Hits Juggle System reared its ugly fire breathing head and the new engine was torn apart by gameplay fans or "elitists" as I used to call them. And now I move on to where I believe HS has a point. Boon did focus WAY too much on the extras and did nothing about the gameplay except add in the 100% useless combo breakers and the 100% annoying and 0% useful fight indicators. His idea of gameplay depth was adding in death traps. This is how I see the MK Staff in HS's view:
MK Developer: Hey Ed, there's this guy on Mortal Kombat Online that says that DA's gameplay was terrible and needs to be changed before we begin developing Deception.
Boon: Hm, he's probably just a small minority. The gameplay was great in my opinion, I see no problems with it. But hey, I'm a good sport, how about a blocking system that knocks an opponent back when he tries a combo.
MK Developer: Hey! Good idea. And there was another guy that was complaining about Jade not being in Deadly Alliance.
Boon: OH MY GOD! WE'VE GOT TO KEEP OUR FANS HAPPY! QUICK, LET THE TEAM KNOW THAT WE HAVE TO PUT JADE IN THE GAME, I WANT A CHARACTER MODEL BY THURSDAY!!!
See what I mean? Yeah. OK, now I move onto what I disagree with in the original post. He said that the gameplay was great in 1-3 and it was the meat of the game. Now excuse me while I laugh so hard that my keyboard is short-circuited by drool. NO IT WASN'T!!! 1-3 basically just boiled down to a "Hit him before he hits you" game with special moves and a handful of combos thrown in. I dare all of you to play 1-3 and tell me any different. I'm not hating on it or anything, I'm just pointing out the facts.
And then we have the other side, or "fanboys" saying that Deception's gameplay was great and that the elitists just want to turn it into a Tekken or VF Clone, and that MK is different from other fighting games. Now I'll admit that I was once a member of this group, and it took me some long hours with Deception and Deadly Alliance and reading HDTran's thread (if anyone hasn't read it yet, you should, it really opens your eyes) to finally realize the truth. We are not trying to make MK into a Tekken or VF clone, we are trying to make it a DEEP fighting game. You vets out there know what I'm talking about, you learning all those 8-10 hit combos for every character, getting all geared up for online play, only to get raped by a 10 year old who uses 2-3 of the same combos, some safe low pokes, and does throws up the yin yang. It's really a pain to lose to some of these jokers.
But I do see your side of the story also. Your used to the MK that you've grown up with, and your afraid that if you change it to something new, it's not going to be as good, and that's why you lash out at the "elitists" and accusing them of being arrogant and want to make a clone of Virtua Fighter. I'm not stereotyping you, I'm just trying to help make peace here.
I'm not hating on Deception or anything. I love it to death and I play it every day (OK, I'm lying there), but if Boon could pay even an OUNCE of attention to the gameplay fans for a few seconds, MK could be one of the best fighting games ever. It would be the perfect blend of extras AND deep gameplay. Here is a little breakdown:
Great Gameplay but no Extras: Elitists happy, Fanboys pissed
Lots of Extras but crappy Gameplay: Fanboys happy, Elitists pissed
Great Gameplay and Lots of Extras: Fanboys happy, Elitists happy
See my point now? Hope you do, because my fingers are killing me

^^^^^^
Speaks the truth.

I don't think it's as simple as the poke-crowd vs the real gamers. That's BS. It's that kind of binary thinking that gives rise to terms like "axis of evil" and what it means to be or not to be an American. But those aren't video game examples. I'll give you my opinion of the schism in the MK fan base, because I do agree that one has occured.
Type 1 fan: This fan love MK, most likely from the very beginning, but this doesn't necessarily have to be the case. This fan loves the characters, the mythology, the secrets, and everything else that has made the MK series what it is today that they end up liking the fighting system as well. Whether they have to convince themselves of it, or they genuinely like MK:DA and MK:D is irrelevant. They are MK fans to the core, and will follow this series no matter where it goes.
Type 2 fan: This fan loves to hate MK and hates loving MK as well. By that I mean that this fan type loves to complain about the new games, suggesting alternatives and ideas that in his or her mind would obviously make the games better. At the same time, they recognize this self loathing aspect of themselves that knows that they will play any and all MK games regardless of how close they adhere to this fans expectations. This is a very frustrated fan who has also most likely played since the beginning, and absolutely despises the new system. It's the story of decline, where things were once great, and now they're terrible. The victims are the self professed fighting game fans, and the savior is supposedly the type 2 fan whose brilliance and experience, they believe, would return the series to prominence.
In all honesty, I fall into the type 2 fan grouping. I have been type 1 for so long that I can't stand it anymore. I am sick of the dial-a-combos, the stiffness of the controls, and the unecessary and overly similar fighting styles. They look find when two characters are facing off, and one starts in one martial arts stance and the other in another. But when the fight actually begins, the moves are so similar and so ungratifying, that players are left to use special moves as the only real defining aspects of their characters. Back in the 2D era, this was fine. I also have Midway Treasures 2 and I absolutely love playing MK2. But nowadays people want differentiation in their characters. They want uniqueness. Don't get me wrong. MK:D, as in all of the MK games, has a great story. I love the story aspects in the MK series, even if they went from Enter the Dragon to a...err...man dragon.... king.... guy. I also love the character special moves, even if some of them are lifted directly from other characters (yeah I'm looking at you Bloodrayne, I mean Kira).
But my point for posting this was not to whine and complain about my own gripes with MK:D. Do I want the game to be more like Soul Calibur or VF? No, of course not. I just want MK to be as fun to me now as it was back in the day, and I don't believe the current fighting system does that for a vast majority of people. So that's my point, the 2 types of groupings are still among fans. Some will love this series no matter where it goes, as well as everything about the games themselves, including the fighting system, while others will keep pining away for an MK game that's more modernized, with less of the fluff, and not more, but better substance to the fighting system that adheres more to their own sense of what's "good." Is either side right or wrong? No. Do I believe that my position makes more sense? To me, yes. But that's just me. I believe that we need to send the message to Boon that his system isn't working for the fans, and that it's simply not on par with other fighting franchises (although I certainly don't view it as a competition, since I buy a good fighting game no matter what). That said, we all love MK, we just have a big divide in where we think the series is at right now and where it should be.

What if, just in theory, MK was a bit more like the recently released KOF Maximum Impact? It has 3d play, yet is very responsive and quick like a 2d game...

Well i am Mk fan 2 but ffs boon try to make this crazy game so shity well i still prefer to play mk 4 or 2 or trilogy
Mk da SUX hardly no fast gameplay no Mk sound nothing crap fatalitys ah
and many many Sux characters
Nice game!
Well deception was 1 step forward but but but yeah its faster than da
better gameplay better sound better combos not good fatalitys
the best think in mkd is characters All characters rox
BUT
Gameplay keep me play mk
i want old fast gameplay back :(
and many more
like new special moves ha??? u know sub was same as Da? yeah only vision Super same combos wtf??? mercy
sub is 35 % of mk i think
sorry about sux english ^^
Good luck

All of you have brought up some really good points. Points that bring the the spotlight back to ourselves. The real issue may be within ourselves. The fan base is so complex, and different, with different ideas, and opinions. As with anything, it is important to know your audience. I think the MK Team makes an honest attempt to do just that. Know their audience!! This web site is an example of that. With sections of the the fan base screaming GO left and the others right!! I think they looked to go somewhere in the middle. Compromise, to meet all of the fans expectations. But hey, let's face it, you can't please everyone.......

They would please everybody if they made the game play deeper and more complex and still added all the extras.
If they made the fighting engine deeper and more complex, it doesn't mean it's going to be harder, it's just more effective, fun and satisfying to use.
The engine that's in MKD has some things that just get annoying.
Things like
The recovery after a lot of the attacks is way too long / slow. They need to speed it up some. A lot of times I feel afraid to throw a punch or kick because I know that if it gets blocked I'm gonna take a hit. It takes too long for me to block after throwing it.
Throws need some escape aside from crouching or interrupting with a punch. that's because sometimes you are stunned or in a long recovery animation and you can't crouch or attack. So you get thrown and you don't have a way to escape it.
Back dashing is limited to 1 every 3 seconds or so. Sometimes I want to do 2 or 3 back dashes back but I'm limited to 1. The computer could do it in MKDA, why can't I?
Combos for the most part are inescapable after the first hit connects unless you have the breakers.
But if you run out of them, your screwed. The combos need some block points. They also need height variable combos to hit the opponent if they block the wrong height.
They could keep some unbreakable combos for counter hits, or just frames. But I prefer counter hits.
I'd like some more variety when it comes to throws also. just 1 throw is too limited. It gets old doing the same move over and over.
The breaker needs to be redesigned. Because right now the problems with it are.
1= you are limited to 3 = most likely due to it's bad design.
2=You can break High, med and low attacks by tapping >+BLK = too easy
3= You can break out of a juggle= I kind of like this, but it just looks bad in MKD. instead I'd like some form of air control. Like tap back when hit during a juggle to bounce farther than normal so the next hit can't reach you. Just something that visually makes more sense than what's in MKD.
4= When hit, you take damage but you don't cause any to the opponent
5= You knock the opponent away and you can't do any follow ups to take advantage of the situation.
6= Every single fighter does the exact same punch to do a breaker, even if they are being juggled.?????? That's just wrong, every body should have different breakers.
7= There is only 1 way to break your opponents attacks = the breaker. There should be several ways to do breakers and reversals depending on the fighters style.
There are some other things that should be fixed in MK, but those are some of the basics.

No I have to disagree to a point. The definition of a combo shouldn't change. The idea of a combo should still be if the first hit connects then you can't block the rest of the hits.
Limitations should be put on juggles to an extent. Look how many games are broken because of exploits people find to juggles!

Here's the thing though.....
Dial combos are very easy to do, so if you have a say......
Scorpion's
224 in hapkido and his style branch.
22L133L
They are both easy to use and unbreakable, so which one are you going to use all the time?
The long one right? Because why are you going to do a small combo that takes little life if the big one is still very easy to do and takes more life.
That makes the small combo pointless. The only reason to use it would be during a juggle, or just for the hell of it.
Now if the style branch had block points and height variations, it wouldn't be as safe and it wouldn't be so much more convenient than the smaller combo.
This would make both the small and long combos usable because one does not over power the other as much as before.
The only types of combos that should be unblockable are small fast combos like left punch, right punch, Counter hit combos, Just frame combos, auto combos for throw animations like in MKD and finally complex combos that require fireball type motions.

See, that's not a combo. You are trying to copy Tekken now.
If a combo has a series of hits that are unblockable after the first hit, whose fault is it for not watching out for that first hit? Ever since SF2 a combo has mostly meant a series of hits that are unblockable. Now if the first few hits are blocked, then leave the attacker wide open for a counter attack.
The only games that I remember where a combo does not mean a series of unblockables after getting started is Tekken/SC.

I do agree that the Dial-a-Combo's are easy to do. Definitly Easier to do than MKDA. But for those that play the game a couple times a week, the longer Combo's are definitly difficult to remember. You can master everything else, but those longer ones are definitly a pain. Espcially for those that do not have a good memory (Guilty!). I don;t think the skill of your fighter should depend on the level on your memory. But maybe that is why they made it so that simple moves, throws, little punches, kicks can overcome the long combo's.
I'd like to know if that was intentional to balance the long combos with the cheaper
Let's look at Kung Fu Movies for a moment because that is what fighting games are about. (Can we include The Matrix in that?) What is most memorable about Kung Fu Movies? Is it the long string of punches and kickes?
No. it is the Special Moves that really kick butt. That was the foundation of the original MK arcade series. It defined what a fighting game was about.
How about a way to combine the special moves in some kind of combo. Expand on the special moves in such away that you can string special moves together. The more "specials" you string together, the more spectactular the attack. That might mean more special moves for each character, but maybe we need to break up the moves in such away that they can be strung together smoothly.
I do think the Dial-a-Combo's was a lazy way to make regular moves more spectacular.

My life consists of more than MK and video games so my reply isn't going to be nearly as long as the majority of these, but I felt that we needed the following post. Maybe for some it'll be an awakening and they won't be so mindless anymore:
I agree on the secrets issue. People are dipshits and several even say that "secrets make mk", even though in MK's past, there have never hardly been any secrets and those that were there weren't even worth finding. Let's revisit the secrets in the past: Could you have not done without finding Reptile in MK1, and the Error Macro glitch, Jade, Noob Saibot, and Smoke fights in MK2? The hidden menus in MK3 were just stupid fun that didn't mean much of anything. Most the Kombat Kodes were stupid shit that hardly anyone cared about. But Smoke was cool, probably the single coolest really hidden fighters in MK history. Ultimate MK3 came around and they brought back the ninjas, and revealed to us Ermac, while the original Sub-Zero returned as nothing more than a rehash of the current Sub-Zero and Mileena, wow, no big deal there. Being able to play as Human Smoke was really cool except...wait...no, it wasn't, because human smoke was just a Scorpion rip-off. MK Trilogy here we come, with out shitty Khameleon character which was, if anything, annoying. MK4's only cool hidden characters were Noob Saibot and Reiko, while Noob Saibot didn't even become decent until MK Gold where he actually had a special move, though his fatalities were still rip-offed from other characters. Then came Deadly Alliance, where suddenly we're finding that half of our characters are characters from the past. Up until now, they kept adding characters, not taking them away, putting some of them as unlockables, and the other unlockables as shitty new characters no one really cares about. We now have the Krypt that we go through and merely have to buy the ones with the highest Koin costs to unlock hidden characters. We get Blaze and Mokap, more shitty hidden characters. Then comes Deception that makes us go through Konquest mode to access all the characters. How fucking annoying. Going through unlocking shitty characters like Darrius and Kobra, that we could all have done without. Then to make it worse, the good new characters from the last game, that they had to have in there instead of Rain, Sektor, or other good characters, they left ouf of Deception. Mavado, Drahmin, etc. Personally I don't think we needed Li Mei back, I'd prefer Mavado any day.
And thus ends our tour of MK's secret past. That of a very, very shitty past actually, where secrets are concerned. Considering all of this, one has to wonder the intelligence level of anyone whose obsessed over finding all the secrets in an MK game. They repeatedly get punched in the face, and run back yelling "Please sir, may I have another?" Not to mention that MK isn't about secrets, it's about gore, blood, and fatalities.

So then with gore, blood and fatalities, how do we make the game better? I think the stage traps are great.