Mortal Kombat 1 was released just last month. Though NetherRealm Studios has previously stated that Mortal Kombat 1 is the entry in the series that has probably had the most amount of development time out of any Mortal Kombat, there have been a number of problematic exploits that were discovered shortly after release.
Earlier this month, the Mortal Kombat 1 Pro Kompetition was announced to feature a $255,000 prize pool for a Mortal Kombat 1 tournament circuit. As one might imagine, certain rulings need to be in place for some of these exploits until NetherRealm Studios is able to patch them out for the sake of preserving a degree of fairness at these events.
According to NRSEsports, two temporary rules have been added to the circuit for East Coast Throwdown 2023, a major tournament scheduled to take place this weekend on October 20, 2023 and last until October 22, 2023.
At the time of writing this, East Coast Throwdown 2023’s Mortal Kombat 1 event has about 296 registered to compete. First place will be awarded around $5,490 and 400 points for the Mortal Kombat 1 tournament circuit.
One of the rules prohibits Sindel from using an unblockable exploit. Additionally, players that intend to use Sindel at the event are required to inform bracket judges that they’ll be using Sindel, likely to monitor to ensure that the unblockable never gets used during a set.
“Use of Sindel’s unblockable exploit is banned and will result in forfeiture of the round,” said NRSEsports on Twitter. “Sindel players must inform bracket judges they will be using her in tournament.”
It’s been previously reported that Sindel has an unblockable reset that can bizarrely happen when Sindel is specifically paired with Sub-Zero. Combined with her unique ability to disable the opponent’s combo breaker temporarily, this makes it so that Sindel can potentially perform a near inescapable touch of death combo consisting of multiple unblockable resets.
The second rule is an outright ban of Shujinko as a Kameo, but only when the opponent is using General Shao. This is due to how Shujinko can permanently remove General Shao’s ax stance from a match.
Once General Shao sticks his ax into the ground, all the opponent has to do from there is use Shujinko’s down, forward, and Kameo special, then General Shao will lose access to half of his moveset. Shujinko doesn’t even necessarily need to hit with this special to replicate the exploit.
While this might sound bad for those that have been practicing with Shujinko as a Kameo, it’s generally recognized that General Shao is one of the weaker characters on the Mortal Kombat 1 tier list. Therefore, the enactment of this rule will likely be a rarity with how the meta is at going into East Coast Throwdown 2023 this weekend.
We’re adding two temporary rules for Pro Kompetition at ECT:
– Use of Sindel’s unblockable exploit is banned and will result in forfeiture of the round. Sindel players must inform bracket judges they will be using her in tournament
– Shujinko is banned VS. General Shao players
— NRSEsports (@NRSEsports) October 18, 2023
Finally, it’s noted that judges will be monitoring matches and will be making calls for any circumstances not mentioned. This rule is probably necessary just in case there are other exploits that haven’t yet been discovered by the Mortal Kombat 1 community as a whole.
Judges will be monitoring matches and will make calls for any circumstances not mentioned
We are actively monitoring and working to resolve these issues. Good luck this weekend at East Coast Throwdown.
— NRSEsports (@NRSEsports) October 18, 2023
Shortly after Mortal Kombat 1 released, an oversight was discovered that made it so that the player in the player 1 slot was always at an advantage over the player 2 slot. Earlier this month, NetherRealm Studios abolished Player 1 Advantage with a patch in a timely manner.
With the reveal of these temporary rules, we can expect that NetherRealm Studios will probably make haste to also address these issues in a future patch for Mortal Kombat 1.