Should a character’s move be to power, or weak, the studio can avoid major title updates to correct the problem; can ”modify the rules of the game, dynamically.”
We’re told to think of it as a ”mini update” which runs in the background without players even realising it. ”In Mortal Kombat we have a system where we can make adjustments to the special moves and balance things out even after the game has been released,” revealed series creator Ed Boon.
”If an infinite were to come out, or a character is too powerful, we can make adjustments and address those things immediately,” he added, referring to exploitable combos.
Boon wouldn’t reveal how the system works.
”It’s something that’s built into our system. We can do it without having players have to download a patch. That’s something we’re very excited about. We can monitor what things players may have an issue with and then correct them as needed.”
”That’s the new technology we developed for this game. We’ve seen other fighting games, including our own, have characters we wish were more balanced, more powerful or weaker. So we devised a system that lets us modify the rules of the game, dynamically.”
”You could think of it as a mini-update, but it’s done in the background.” Boon said it just wasn’t possible to make a flawlessly balanced fighting game.
”Balancing a fighting game is always very challenging. I don’t think there is any fighting game that was ever made where every character is equally powerful. The nature of special moves and the damage the characters have, it’s physically impossible,” he exclaimed.
”Even Street Fighter IV, when it first came out, the Sagat character was insanely powerful and the Guile character was very weak. When they released Super Street Fighter IV they tried to balance it out.” Damage control is all that studios can do after launch.
Mortal Kombat releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC April 21st.
