'' Given the subject, I'd rather be the ridiculer than whiner. ''

...

The thing is, you don't have to do either.

I don't understand why people can't grasp that simple concept.

If all that you have to say is personal insults and to ridicule, then it's better not to say anything tbh.

People are entitled to be disappointed, and if all that you do is ridicule them for being disappointed then you're really the one whining yourself as well as the one being a jerk.
Some of the leaked dialogue for Sindel is extremely disappointing to me and is basically just a retcon of her character which I find extremely distasteful ( NRS is seriously awful at keeping their characters and lore consistent... I don't feel like they respect their characters at all ).
Whether you agree with my opinion on that or not for example, you don't have to say anything.

If you think that my opinion is dumb you can just move on, you don't have to choose to be a jerk about it.

And it's the same with the costumes.

People being disappointed and upset when things in a very long running series ( probably older than a lot of people playing it tbh ) is fully understandable. People are very invested into these characters.

20 pages...

I'm gonna take this stance...

MK11 has more female sex appeal than in MK1.

So I son't be buying MK11 and just stick to mh MK1 where...

Sonya had more clothes on.

Johnny Cage and Liu Kang's bare chests were artful

Goro is non-human so his half-nakedness doesn't count

Shang Tsung, Rayden, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Reptile were properly covered up.

I think the character designs in this game, as well as the clothes they wear, look great. The devs have chosen how they see these characters and that’s their right to obey their vision. Same goes for Street Fighter and it’s giant heaving breasts and same goes for DOA and it’s desire to have young women showing their panties and what not. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

I get the idea of having your own idea of how characters should look and I get the annoyance that comes with changes that feel wrong or odd or out of place for the character, so yeah, speak on that if you want. But just know that you’re speaking on their vision. Not some hen-pecked, cajoled, PC police version of their vision.

Personally, I like that they’ve given characters more of an identity through what they wear. It’s not just spandex everywhere like MK3 or whatever. I think Skarlet is a prime example. She has an absolutely gorgeous face and that sinister smile she has during her fatal blow is sexy as hell. I like her long ted hair, her short black hair with red highlights... in short, I think she just looks cool, and that’s all I need from a character.

If you need Skarlet to be in a bra and butt floss because you think that’s who she is or whatever, and you think that sex appeal can only be conveyed in how much skin is shown, then that’s fine, but I see MK1 as going a bit deeper in regards to their characters and I tend to prefer that to the SFV / DOA model, which feels geared more toward horny teenagers, but that’s just how I see it.

It's the toning down too far (MKX already toned it down enough) and pandering to the side that acts like having fanservice is such a bad thing that I have a problem with, rather than just plainly wanting some fanservice, despite what some people may believe. I think many others against this change can agree on that.

Whether or not they are wearing burkas, the fact remains that the majority of the outfits for the female characters have them covered from head to toe (while the male characters are a lot more free in what they wear). The only exceptions are Cetrion's outfits, a couple of Sonya's outfits, and Kitana and Jade including tiny thigh and chest windows in one of their outfits. Cassie Cage and Frost has gotten the worst of this. The backlash is needed, otherwise it's only going to get worse from here.

Giving all the female characters at least one revealing outfit in one of the Kombat Packs would fix this problem. It doesn't even need to be their MK9 outfits. It can be from UMK3, the 3D games, MKX, or even all-new outfits.

How could they have toned it down too far if you had to make so many examples that don’t fit that assertion?

As for fan service, I’m really starting to think that’s just code for “sexy.” How could this game possibly not have enough fan service in it otherwise? It’s absolutely drowning players in a lake of 90’s nostalgia. Shang Tsung alone has about 30 different call backs.

I dunno, I guess I don’t see why female characters need this or why fans even want it. So they were less covered before. Creative direction changed. Why can’t the devs do this without needing to appease a part of the fan base that, for reasons passing understanding, demand more skin beyond the exceptions you already touched upon?

Options, bro. Sexier outfits for those who dig the style. Make 'em available.

Yeah, when I said "fanservice", I meant scantily clad outfits. "Fanservice" is a common term for that.

I have no problem with them being covered up in of itself. I just think that all their outfits shouldn't have them covered up. For a game that promotes character customization, it is rather limited. Even Injustice 2 had more variety.

It's not simply the outfits. The real problem is that they politicized MK (which was never politicized in the past). I would be perfectly fine even with the outfits if it wouldn't been obvious that they are blatantly trying to shove their liberal-feminist-PC-metoo-diversity propaganda down our throats.

Clothing in itself is one thing and it could be even accepted as a "different artistic approach", but when you look at the head-to-toe female clothing while at the same time the male clothing is revealing to the core, when you ad to that things like Jax's ending, the need to diversify (change race) many characters (Kitana, Jade, Scarlet, Sub-Zero, etc.), to even put hijabs and arab headskirts on some of them. Then it is so blatantly obvious that radical-leftist/cultural marxist politics are being forced upon the MK community. That's the real problem and a good reason to speak up.

MAKE MK APOLITICAL AGAIN!

I am just going to leave this here:

https://www.playboy.com/read/ed-boon-mk11

Also this ^

One could argue that Baraka407 being turned on by Skarlet's sinister smile when she murders someone exposes his desire to be sexually dominated, but I suppose that's a more legitimate titillation than skimpy clothing for "horny teenagers."

I all honesty, I don't understand why CLOTHES on a character is such a big deal. I've been playing the series for over 20 years and clothes weren't that much of a deal. I mostly focused on lore and gameplay. Now granted each character has more of an identity with how they look and there is more detail and frankly, looking back at how the outfits in MK9 were designed, they were lack luster and lazy at best in terms of design. The outfits from MKX and now in MK11 are more detailed, show off more of the materials and the females still have sex appeal.

Sure, MK was made back when video games were mainly male dominated but jeez, it's like everyone has to bitch about something. It's ridiculous. Even Boon gave his reasoning for the scale back and people are still not pleased.

I think the thing that people are complaining about is the whole "realistic" excuse is pure bullshit.

Bahaha! "Flat Chested"

None of the female fighters with some exposed clevage look flat chested or this:

THAT is the def of FLAT CHESTED.

And honestly, ALL the fighters, male and female alike are modeled after real people. Someone took some dedicated time to find all the face models used to make the faces for the characters since they are basically face scans. They look 10x better than MK X and the designs are 10x better than 9 in terms of design since 9 was lackluster and lazy at best and when the chicks were unmasked, they looked way too butch. Revealing wise, Cetrion, the insurance company probably has the most revealing outfit out of all the female characters but she is an elder god so...meh. But again, you can't please every fan boy of the series who cares more about clothes on a female than gameplay or some other aspect of the series.

Huh, to be honest with you, I didn't even noticed any of that until a friend of mine talked about it. I had seen only some Sonya and Skarlet gameplay to that point. I bought the game anyway.

I honestly only care about the gore and the gameplay, which are great.

But the art direction in this game looks bland and mundane nonetheless.

Like I said, the BS excuses are probably what made people care in the first place. If they just said it from the get go: "We won't and we don't want the female characters to be dressed as sluts" simple as that, everyone would be like: Hum, Ok.

Gameplay wise, probably the best MK, but the MK9 reboot will forever be my favorite.

PS: The link you posted is broken.

.

No one said anything about valuing costumes over gameplay. As with others my biggest issues have everything to do with the BS reasoning. I really like many of the outfits on some of the girls and would go so far as to say they have never looked better (Cassie and Jacqui excluded. All of their outfits are dull and unimaginative). But there is no way their reasoning justifies all the half naked guys. I just got the game last week and I was struck by the disparity in the amount of clothing worn by the guys vs. the girls. Artistic direction my @#$$. Its obvious why they really did it.

I'm still going to stick with my original point of the MK9 clothes were lazy and lackluster in term of design. The art was horrid. The females were butch. With and WITHOUT the masks on. The fighting was not even close to fluid.

Most of the male fighters have been like that from the very beginning, such as Johnny Cage and Lui Kang being shirtless since MK1. AND they have costumes that are not all "half naked". Baraka was never "half naked" up until MK11 and that is just if you look into his other costumes. His MAIN look is still close to what he originally was in MK2.

---------

P.S. Link works fine. I just clicked on it and it went straight to the interview. It must not work on your end. What the link was, was a interview with Ed Boon with the magazine Playboy and I will quote several of the questions he was asked and that he answered regarding the clothes:

Interviewer: You mentioned social media, and I kind of want to get into that next because we live in an age where everyone has a opinion, and you have this roster of beloved characters, and you have fans who expect them to look a certain way. If you do side-by-side comparisons between female characters in Mortal Kombat 9 to their counterparts in Mortal Kombat 11, there's less visible skin now. There are some fans who are cool with that, yet there's other fans who want that Heavy Metal magazine approach. Is there a reason for scaling back on the more revealing costumes?
Boon: "Well, it made a little more sense to have them dressed, especially if they're going to be in combat. I don't know how many people wear a bikini to a fight. And also with technology, especially with Mortal Kombat 11, we're able to display our characters with more fidelity, detail and realism than we ever have, and that includes materials, like we can suddenly do something that really looks like leather, like steel, like cloth, like suede, like velvet, you know? All of those things we didn't have the ability to do before, and so that lets us make much more interesting, realistic costumes, and so we really just kind of gravitated in that direction."
-------
Interviewer: I had a similar conversation with Cory Barlog, creative director of the latest God of War. The earlier games in that series had those infamous sex scenes. They’re not part of the new reboot, and some of his team still wanted to include them. He pretty much told me, "The early games were from our college years. We were kind of doing things because we could. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we’re all older now. Let’s look at things differently." Would you say there's some personal growth, similar to what Cory was saying, that led to the mature look of some of these characters?
Boon: "Yeah, I'm sure that that was also a factor. To be honest, I thought we probably went a bit too far with Mortal Kombat 9, and as the team lead—there were certainly members of the team who wanted to go in that direction, and to be honest, I had influence in dialing it back to where it is now compared to where it ended up being with Mortal Kombat 9. And as I look back, I kind of wish that I had had pulled it even further back. Now, granted, we are all clearly happy with how that game turned out, and it's our second-highest-selling one, which is great, but in retrospect, I would have done it differently had we done it today."
----
Interviewer: You guys added a feature in MK11 where there's going to be alternate skins and customization with the costumes. To help appease some of those fans who maybe kind of want to create a look that’s more in the vein of Mortal Kombat 9, is there an option for them to go with something a little more revealing, or is it still going to be under control?
Boon: "It's pretty much under control. I mean, at the end of the day, they're going be selecting costumes that we designed. I'm sure some of them are more revealing than others, just because of the nature of different costume designs, but we did not go as far as we did with Mortal Kombat 9. And it's interesting, too, because any time there is change with a game that has a really strong following, the initial human knee jerk reaction is—change is bad. This isn't what I remembered, you know? So there's a nostalgia thing that players are looking for, but at the same time, those are the same players who will say, "Oh, this is just more of the same. I'm bored,” if you don't change anything, and so I'm personally a firm believer than when you make multiple sequels of a game, or probably any kind of format of entertainment, you need to offer something new, something different. [That] just makes it more interesting because when presented with something new, it's always a better experience than just repeating the known."

This just proves that Ed and the whole MK Team is in full "damage-control mode" now.

You could say "damage control", but I believe a long time ago that I heard somewhere, Boon wanted to do other things to Mortal Kombat and at certain points he was not allowed to, even though he was the creator of the game.

Like with MK9, he said he wanted to scale back things like the outfits on the female fighters and he couldn't and if he had his opportunity to go back and change things, he would have.

I mean, why can't people just let developers do what they choose with THEIR franchises and games and change it how THEY want to change it? Is it that hard to accept? Or will people just use SJWs and political standpoints as an excuse to say that is why developers are making changes?

The sole developer have almost zero freedom, even ED has a quite limited freedom. You are very naive if you think they have. At the end of the day, everything they come up with has to be approved by WB itself. And WB is the one who pushes this SJW bs, and the one who forces it's implementation. The MK Team had a lot more freedom when they were under Midway. Midway's only fault was that they pushed them very hard with the deadlines, but otherwise they had a lot more freedom. At WB it is so obvious that everything functions with a corporate mindset which involves even the political trends.

I mean, if it was completely up to NRS, I don't think they would have any problem with giving us fanservice outfits. It's like someone came in, and said "no more sexy outfits". Remember, Injustice 2 had this same issue too, where some of the outfits for the female characters were actually removed from the game for being "too sexy".

Then if that is the case, why is everyone bitching at NRS and not WB if that is truly the case? Everything I have seen in regards to this debate is everyone bitching at NRS and bitching at the MK team and bitching at Ed Boon about the changes? When Midway went bankrupt, WB bought them up and then they changed up to NetherRealm Studios. And I remember an interview where Ed Boon wanted to do something in an MK Game and was told he wasn't allowed to by someone else, even though it is his game, his creation, his IP. So by your logic, WB is doing the same exact thing, but everyone is still placing the blame on Boon and his team and not WB and lashing out at him.

Explain that to me.

First timer here and only came here looking for more info on this and to see if there is any hope it will be reversed.

MK 11 is currently on sale and ONLY because of this toning down I won't be buying it. Actually I pirated MK 9 or 10 because Steam didn't work in my country. I will probably buy MK 9 and X now instead of 11 and I hope WB has data scientists good enough to tell them, hey idiots the game isn't selling. Those same Data Scientists could do easy NLP on these threads and see how much people are complaining against vs for. Seriously, bring back the old style consumes on at least Skarlet, Jade and Milena and I will buy it.

Looking at the interview, can we have a mode where we beat the crap out of Ed Boon and have Johnny Cage kick him repeatedly in the nuts. I would also pay for that.