The developers of Mortal Kombat 11 have promised that the game won't feature loot crates, but people who have acquired early copies are saying that the awful grind for cosmetic items might be enough to make people reach for their credit card in order to buy its in-game currency.
Mortal Kombat 11 will feature paid DLC characters, but the developers have promised that the microtransactions in the game will only apply to cosmetic gear. The items that can be purchased through microtransactions won't be able to give players a competitive edge when playing against other people online (which was a major source of controversy for Star Wars Battlefront II) and everything that can be purchased can also be unlocked through regular gameplay. The player will be able to purchase "Time Crystals" in order to buy items outright, which have been described as time savers.
The question that Mortal Kombat fans were left with was how difficult these cosmetic items would be to unlock without having to spend any money. Mortal Kombat 11 is now in the hands of fans who were able to acquire early copies of the game and it seems that a lot of grinding is in order for those who wish to unlock the cosmetic items without paying.
A user on the Test Your Might forums named Prateek Shekhar acquired a copy of Mortal Kombat 11 and was able to test out the Towers of Time and Krypt modes. There are several kinds of towers in the Towers of Time mode, but if the player wants to unlock specific gear for a character, then they have to pay 25,000 koins to unlock a Character Tower, with the price doubling to unlock the next tier of tower once the original is completed. The towers are designed to be as difficult as possible, with enemies being given unblockable moves and the stages including environmental hazards that only affect the player. The player also needs to complete challenges in order to unlock Character Towers, which can include such things as performing a specific move one hundred times, which just adds even more time to the grinding.
It's possible to unlock augments for each character which will offer passive buffs, but the player has to jump through hoops to use them. The player needs to level up their gear by winning fights to unlock augment slots and the augments need to match the slots on the gear in order to be equipped. The player also needs to spend koins to remove augments from gear if they want to use them again.
The Krypt mode offers players the chance to spend koins in order to unlock chests that contain fatalities/brutalities, costumes, gear pieces, and other minor rewards, such as concept art. The problem with this mode is that the chests contain a lot of filler items and the player has to spend a lot of coins to unlock them or to reset their contents for a second chance at earning better loot.
Mortal Kombat 11 has yet to be released, so it's possible that the grind in the game will be reduced through an update. As of right now, it seems that the game is intended to test the player's patience as much as possible in order to encourage them to spend money on the in-game currency.
Mortal Kombat 11 is due to be released for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 23, 2019. The Nintendo Switch version of the game will be delayed in Europe until May 10, 2019.
Source: Test Your Might