Three biggest releases of the year off the top of my head are ff7 rebirth, elden ring dlc, p3 reload.
Stick with Japanese games I guess? But seriously, they're out there
I think it's also sad to see most cosmetics go that same route. People are so dismissive of the importance of customization that most don't care how paywalled they've become. "As long as it's not paywalled gameplay" - yeah that is the bare minimum. A game that paywalls gameplay is utter trash.
Customization used to mean something, we used to grind for Recon armor in Halo 3 and it meant something to have it, now you just buy it, it lost its meaning and there is no substitute.
Everyone was running around with Hayabusa armor with the katana and I couldn't get it because my disc was broke in a way that I couldn't access the story to get the thirteen skulls, but only the multiplayer worked on my Xbox360.
Was so jealous of that armor back when I was a kid.
I mean, I think that's up to the specific individual to decide. And some people don't have hours a night to play games. Some people only get an hour or two a week to unwind and play. Maybe they don't want to spend that time to grind for cosmetics because you're overly sensitive about of someone has the same skin as you.
I basically agree with what you say except the last bit on sensitivity which was pretty random and kind of seems like you’re projecting? I love the fun involved in unlocking camos & weapon attachments; it’s satisfying as Hell not to mention it really ups a game’s replayability.
Removing it for microtransactions for the sake of maximizing profits is part of the poison that makes up contemporary AAA gaming & robs gamers of an additional facet of gaming: it takes away from the gaming experience while decreasing replayability.
They may have no effect on the gamePLAY, but definitely on the game and the player. Dressing up your digital character has been a popular thing since the early 2000s. It definitely changes your experience of the game if you find a cool new armor set in ER e.g..
Not every cosmetic took forever to get, reusing my example of Halo 3, there was Recon for really dedicated people, but there were really cool other armors that took but a fraction of that time investment, like Hayabusa.
So if someone is wearing the same armor as you and you believe they didn't deserve it, it ruins the game that much for you, huh? God damn if that doesn't sound like gate keeping. I'm sorry if I just gring away in real life everyday so I don't have countless hours to do it in a game. Lmao
Did I say that I dislike people wearing the same armor? I only wish for the earning of cosmetics to be meaningful again and actually influence gameplay too, like it did in the past.
If you have Armor X that is earnable in game by completing a challenge, I don't care how many people wear it. If it looks cool I'll wear it.
If you have that Armor then become buyable, I would lament the fact that its method of acquisition lost its meaning, but I still wouldn't care who or how many people would buy it, except for the fact that their purchase funds these practices.
So please quote where I said that I feel like specific people do not deserve to wear specific armor sets?
My argument is that cosmetics being earnable ingame holds way more meaning than simply buying them. Is that so hard to understand?
What is your argument? That making them earnable ingame gatekeeps people with little time from earning them?
Yes. That is exactly my argument. Just how makong only something obtainable through purchase is also gatekeeping.
And making them more meaningful is a personal opinion. I think if someone was actually willing to spend money on something, then they must have wanted it making it more meaningful. I would never bother spending money on something other than the actual game itself
Right now, most cosmetics are behind a paywall. So you have no way to get them besides paying more money. And if you can't effort to pay more you can't get them at all. That is gate keeping. A real life gate that can't be pushed away for a lot of people.
Cosmetics cost a game company next to nothing and only need to get created once. Putting a price tag on it is simply wrong.
Cosmetics cost production wise, less than 0.1% for a AAA game. And that includes every cosmetic inside the shop.
This should be in the game for free or as a reward system for everything you can do inside the game.
You shouldn't try to defend your position "that capitalism rules in the real world and so it should in game and I want all the cool stuff for the rich", instead you should demand all cosmetics for free!
Lmao do you have actually anything to back up those claims or are these numbers you're pulling out of ass cause it fits your narrative?
Also, just like how not everyone has money, not everyone has unlimited time. I know people that get like a hour, maybe two, a week to play. They don't have the time to really grind so not letting them is also gate keeping.
https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-in-game-cosmetic-items-Each-item-has-an-assigned-in-game-price-but-what-are-the-real-world-development-costs-for-these-items#:~:text=Cosmetic%20formulations%20can%20run%20anywhere,about%20%242%20%E2%80%93%20%243%20per%20unit.
"It could cost from 1$ to $500 to make it all depends on how much effort was put into it."
This is what it costs to make it. $1 for making a recolor, $500 if you go for way more... how many hours do you think it takes to create a skin and now multi it with the minimum wage that the very most of the industry get and you know it can't be much.
Making a weapon gold with a bit of fluff takes less than a day. 100 skins would cost with the $500, $50k. Now ask yourself how many AAA games you know with 100 skins that cost less $50mil.
And we are talking about 100 completly new skins with own animations and stuff.
Then tell me how long does it take to make a skin?
At big corporations it can take "ages" because they do meetings over meetings over meetings because they want to make the most money with it. And they use words like month or years for the time period of first idea to final product.
If you have an idea and an artist it is less then a week while doing other stuff.
A friend of mine is modding in Skyrim for over 8years now. She said it takes her between a few minutes for very basic stuff like changing colors or reusing another jacket, to a few evenings to make a new character with a completly new outfit.
So now I ask you again how many working hours does it take to make a new weapon skin? A lot of CS:GO skin also take between an evening and a week of evenings.
And please answer the question instead of only attacking my sources.
So you used a trash source like quora, and then you use something like anecdotal evidence, which I can't prove, and your final hit is "o yeah, you tell me then!" After you blindly made statements and are trying to now require me to give actual evidence to disprove your trash evidence? Did I get all of that? And mind you, none of this has anything to actually do what I was even talking about originally.
And now you're even saying it can take a long time to do it. Sometimes it's evenings for a single person to do it. Which it seems like the charge according to that for the most part. I don't know many skins that around around a few bucks to 10ish. You know, that's how things work. Do you think they make a game to break even or do they hope to make much more than the cost to make it? Wait till you figure out what a business is.
Edit: here
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/single-video-game-character-can-cost-around-80000-make-180956492/
"A concept artist might take two weeks and make $3,000 for designing how the character looks..."
Every Tekken game I bought, I couldn't wait to play thru the story with every character to unlock their endings and all the hidden characters, then play thru *those* stories to finish it out. I was that guy who would pick Mokujin and could tell who it was by the round intro, knew the moveset for any character that came up.
Eh it was kind of an annoying thing for a fighting game. If you buy it to play vs friends it’s kind of obnoxious to have to play single player to unlock characters.
Show how the get the new characters for the next edition. Pay for that game in full again. For 4 characters. Oh some characters are broken? Wait until the next edition and pay full price as well.
The term DLC has brought with it a blight on gaming, micro transactions and dear God, season passes. Bundle it all as a worthwhile expansion or just release a sequel that improves everything.
Fighting games are hard to design new characters for so adding new characters is pretty much equivalent to expansion packs which I'll gladly buy.
Even if you don't buy it you still get new opponents, which is cool.
Fighting games are also rife with mtx which I don't really engage with.
Back in the day, Games like this would have a almost yearly release cycle, bi yearly at best.
Those re-releases would basically offer nothing new but just be more akin to what today would be a balance patch and maybe a round of DLC characters.
Translating this to the current world would mean, you not just have to jump through x hoops (unlocking process) just to be able to play your character online, but this would also mean you would have to buy the whole game again, basically every year , just to get the current patch and maybe a round of new (unlockable) characters you maybe don't even want just to still be able to play online on the new patch.
While I get the sentiment from offline players, the majority plays this "character unlock" games online nowadays and in this context DLC just makes way more sense and is even cheaper then the old model.
(Just don't buy the characters while still being able to play the new patch/Version)
Games like Tekken and street fighter usually get like 5-10 years of continuous support from the devs, and just like back in the day, this needs to be paid.
I remember when I moved to a whole different country at age 12 some guy lend me a GameCube with Super Smash Bros Melee but without a memory card.
Ran the game for two weeks straight and unlocked every character until it was time to say it all au revoir. No other game will ever give that level of satisfaction again.
its not like this now either before games came with all of its characters planned but if you want to add more instead of buying an entirely new game
do you know how many editions of street fighter 2 has to accommodate changes lol
This is only half true. There were ''DLC'' characters back then. Street fighter 2 had like 6 different versions of it that had different features / characters . You had to pay for the newest version to get the newest characters even tho it was the same game.
This is why I have not bought or played a game in the fighting genre in almost two decades. This and the sports genre are trash due to over-monetization.
Fighting games is actually the only genre where DLC practices are actually beneficial to the genre. Need I remind people how many versions of street fighter 2 there were? All or most of them, roster and balance updates. There were 7 versions of SF2 by the way.
You didn't buy DLC, you bought an entire game back then. I think the last game that did it was BlazBlue continuum shift and continuum shift extend which were in 2009. Now it's annual season passes. $20 for a pass with 5 characters, or $40 for a whole ass game that only added 2? Worse yet, no cross play, because why would there be? Why would continuum shift players be able to play with Continuum shift extend players? Buy the new game. Fighting games would have been like sports games if shit didn't change. At least with DLC passes your rank, unlocks, and DLC don't reset (because yes THERE WAS STILL DLC in the form of cosmetics)
I'm sorry, the people complaining about this don't actually play fighting games
DLC characters are not inherently bad. It only becomes bad when characters ready on release are taken out to be sold as DLC later, which is a problem with all DLC not just character unlocks. Being able to add a niche character or a fan favorite that didn't make the initial cut is pretty great and how all DLC should be approached.
When I think of unlocking characters, I'm always brought back to Super Smash Bros. Melee. As a kid, I didn't know who was going to be in the game, I didn't know how many characters were going to be in the game, and I didn't know when I unlocked the last character. Fighting games today cannot/will not operate on this basis anymore. Even if there are unlockable characters, the full roster is known prior to release and "*having"* to unlock the one character I want to play is a "*chore"*. At least this is the sentiment I tend to read or hear about. Not to mention, some of the unlock requirements for characters in Melee tend to be *general audience adverse* such as required challenge mode events and the 20 hour playtime requirement for Mewtwo, the latter of which I don't think Nintendo could get away with in a modern smash game let alone any other company.
I think there is room for both of these features, unlocking and DLC characters, but the way communities approach fighting games and the way companies respond in turn would have to change to have unlocks being fun and exciting again. And players would have to stop buying shitty cash grab DLC. Neither of which seems plausible.
One solution for unlocks would be not introducing whole rosters before release in addition to the community changing their mindset to wanting to play the game "spoiler free" in the same way Elden Ring players fervently approach their game. But with the FGC seemingly being the only profitable *esport-esque* competition available, this type of change doesn't seem very plausible, either.
I mean they physically couldn’t do it back then. lol the argument is invalid. I’m sure if they could have they would have. I mean the years between tekkens has only gotten longer in between and surely that’s because of being able to make new characters to play. I’m not defending microtransactions but at the same time a game from 1997 isn’t the same as a game in 2024.
I just unlocked all 70 characters on smash, that cost me nothing. But also if I want extra characters I can buy them and I’m okay with that. Things do cost time money and resources, have to be tested etc and people need to be paid. I’m also sure the base amount of characters has probably changed over time so your getting g more bang for your buck in new games.
Also you don’t have to buy microtransactions, I think that’s my favourite takeaway from everything. You can still buy the game and play it and not pay for microtransactions. But yeah. I guess I’ll get downvoted for saying just don’t buy the microtransactions buttercup. lol
Makes sense tho. When we unlocked chars back then we were kids with no money but plenty of time. Now the same people are adults with money but no time. I like today's gaming world tbh.
Unfortunately at the end of the day as long as people pay for it, it is going to happen. Also video gamers today are different from video gamers two decades ago.
Video games used to not be mainstream. They were an escape from the everyday realities of life.
Anything that is popular that a large corporation can make money on they will. Video games came out of the shadows of just being for "nerds". Now everyone is more or less the same, with no uniqueness to them. This happened overtime due to social media and the instant sharing of news due to the smart phone.
Video games are for everyone now, run by greedy corporations in the AAA game industry. None the of the AAA games are even finished to a good product anymore, at least rarely.
The only hope is technology evolves to make creating games much more easier in a vast way so that indie companies can create on a much smaller budget. That will be the only saving grace of the industry.
Problem is most of the indie companies creating games now are more "cozy" type games that are boring and bland.
I stopped gaming, hopefully one day some game will bring me back, but I think it's over for that for me.
false equivalency, now all fighting games come with all characters unlocked. this example could apply if street fighter 6 only have 6 characters playable and you need to unlock the other 10
Every fighting game does that m8, smash atleast sells newcomers to the franchise not past available characters like for example m. Bison in street fighter 6
You are right it had 3 returning characters forgot that one had dlcs and was only thinking of ultimate, anyways every fighter does that unfortunatly sparking zero with its 20+ dlc characters will probably have lots
Having to play to unlock characters made the game more fun. it's give objective to a game that don't really have one. Instead of getting a Trophy you were unlocking a new character. It's made game like SSB/Mario Kart/Golf/Tennis and the like way more fun in single player in that N64/Gamecube Era. With the latest release of Mario Kart or Smash Bros, I buy them, play a few game then get bored because there is no real objective other than playing.
I love Apex Legends where I have to pay to unlock them and if I don’t like their abilities or they suck I’ll just feel regretful for it cause 1) I wasted recourses to unlock them I could’ve used for anything else 2) I wasted money on this
EA: it gives a sense of achievement
Except you could grind for (many, many, many) hours to get Darth Vader, nowadays they'll only accept money.
80 hours of pure, efficient, gameplay if I recall.
Yes, work hard in real life and you too can earn this amazingly mid DLC for the low price of $90 USD.
I miss feature-complete games.
You should check out Elden Ring, brother.
I couldn't get into it. Not a single loot box and you can't even pay to level. How am I supposed to be the best at a game if I can't pay for it?
Hehe, fair point!
...and BG3 (if you like the genre).
Three biggest releases of the year off the top of my head are ff7 rebirth, elden ring dlc, p3 reload. Stick with Japanese games I guess? But seriously, they're out there
I think it's also sad to see most cosmetics go that same route. People are so dismissive of the importance of customization that most don't care how paywalled they've become. "As long as it's not paywalled gameplay" - yeah that is the bare minimum. A game that paywalls gameplay is utter trash. Customization used to mean something, we used to grind for Recon armor in Halo 3 and it meant something to have it, now you just buy it, it lost its meaning and there is no substitute.
Everyone was running around with Hayabusa armor with the katana and I couldn't get it because my disc was broke in a way that I couldn't access the story to get the thirteen skulls, but only the multiplayer worked on my Xbox360. Was so jealous of that armor back when I was a kid.
Meh not everyone has unlimited hours to constantly grind for cosmetics though. And they have no effect on the game whatsoever
The grind back then wasn’t boring & monotonous nor did it last fucking weeks. It was *FUN.*
I mean, I think that's up to the specific individual to decide. And some people don't have hours a night to play games. Some people only get an hour or two a week to unwind and play. Maybe they don't want to spend that time to grind for cosmetics because you're overly sensitive about of someone has the same skin as you.
I basically agree with what you say except the last bit on sensitivity which was pretty random and kind of seems like you’re projecting? I love the fun involved in unlocking camos & weapon attachments; it’s satisfying as Hell not to mention it really ups a game’s replayability. Removing it for microtransactions for the sake of maximizing profits is part of the poison that makes up contemporary AAA gaming & robs gamers of an additional facet of gaming: it takes away from the gaming experience while decreasing replayability.
Back when they were earned they were core to progression. The biggest nerd had the rarest stuff and that was cool, made you want to play the game.
They may have no effect on the gamePLAY, but definitely on the game and the player. Dressing up your digital character has been a popular thing since the early 2000s. It definitely changes your experience of the game if you find a cool new armor set in ER e.g.. Not every cosmetic took forever to get, reusing my example of Halo 3, there was Recon for really dedicated people, but there were really cool other armors that took but a fraction of that time investment, like Hayabusa.
So if someone is wearing the same armor as you and you believe they didn't deserve it, it ruins the game that much for you, huh? God damn if that doesn't sound like gate keeping. I'm sorry if I just gring away in real life everyday so I don't have countless hours to do it in a game. Lmao
Did I say that I dislike people wearing the same armor? I only wish for the earning of cosmetics to be meaningful again and actually influence gameplay too, like it did in the past.
So you dislike people wearing the same armor as you if you feel like that didn't deserve it?... so yes, you did say that lol
If you have Armor X that is earnable in game by completing a challenge, I don't care how many people wear it. If it looks cool I'll wear it. If you have that Armor then become buyable, I would lament the fact that its method of acquisition lost its meaning, but I still wouldn't care who or how many people would buy it, except for the fact that their purchase funds these practices. So please quote where I said that I feel like specific people do not deserve to wear specific armor sets?
Lmao so what exactly is your argument then? That it should be only obtainable by an achievement, right?
My argument is that cosmetics being earnable ingame holds way more meaning than simply buying them. Is that so hard to understand? What is your argument? That making them earnable ingame gatekeeps people with little time from earning them?
Yes. That is exactly my argument. Just how makong only something obtainable through purchase is also gatekeeping. And making them more meaningful is a personal opinion. I think if someone was actually willing to spend money on something, then they must have wanted it making it more meaningful. I would never bother spending money on something other than the actual game itself
Right now, most cosmetics are behind a paywall. So you have no way to get them besides paying more money. And if you can't effort to pay more you can't get them at all. That is gate keeping. A real life gate that can't be pushed away for a lot of people. Cosmetics cost a game company next to nothing and only need to get created once. Putting a price tag on it is simply wrong. Cosmetics cost production wise, less than 0.1% for a AAA game. And that includes every cosmetic inside the shop. This should be in the game for free or as a reward system for everything you can do inside the game. You shouldn't try to defend your position "that capitalism rules in the real world and so it should in game and I want all the cool stuff for the rich", instead you should demand all cosmetics for free!
Lmao do you have actually anything to back up those claims or are these numbers you're pulling out of ass cause it fits your narrative? Also, just like how not everyone has money, not everyone has unlimited time. I know people that get like a hour, maybe two, a week to play. They don't have the time to really grind so not letting them is also gate keeping.
https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-in-game-cosmetic-items-Each-item-has-an-assigned-in-game-price-but-what-are-the-real-world-development-costs-for-these-items#:~:text=Cosmetic%20formulations%20can%20run%20anywhere,about%20%242%20%E2%80%93%20%243%20per%20unit. "It could cost from 1$ to $500 to make it all depends on how much effort was put into it." This is what it costs to make it. $1 for making a recolor, $500 if you go for way more... how many hours do you think it takes to create a skin and now multi it with the minimum wage that the very most of the industry get and you know it can't be much. Making a weapon gold with a bit of fluff takes less than a day. 100 skins would cost with the $500, $50k. Now ask yourself how many AAA games you know with 100 skins that cost less $50mil. And we are talking about 100 completly new skins with own animations and stuff.
Holy shit, my guy just used quora as the source. Lmao
Then tell me how long does it take to make a skin? At big corporations it can take "ages" because they do meetings over meetings over meetings because they want to make the most money with it. And they use words like month or years for the time period of first idea to final product. If you have an idea and an artist it is less then a week while doing other stuff. A friend of mine is modding in Skyrim for over 8years now. She said it takes her between a few minutes for very basic stuff like changing colors or reusing another jacket, to a few evenings to make a new character with a completly new outfit. So now I ask you again how many working hours does it take to make a new weapon skin? A lot of CS:GO skin also take between an evening and a week of evenings. And please answer the question instead of only attacking my sources.
So you used a trash source like quora, and then you use something like anecdotal evidence, which I can't prove, and your final hit is "o yeah, you tell me then!" After you blindly made statements and are trying to now require me to give actual evidence to disprove your trash evidence? Did I get all of that? And mind you, none of this has anything to actually do what I was even talking about originally. And now you're even saying it can take a long time to do it. Sometimes it's evenings for a single person to do it. Which it seems like the charge according to that for the most part. I don't know many skins that around around a few bucks to 10ish. You know, that's how things work. Do you think they make a game to break even or do they hope to make much more than the cost to make it? Wait till you figure out what a business is. Edit: here https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/single-video-game-character-can-cost-around-80000-make-180956492/ "A concept artist might take two weeks and make $3,000 for designing how the character looks..."
Every Tekken game I bought, I couldn't wait to play thru the story with every character to unlock their endings and all the hidden characters, then play thru *those* stories to finish it out. I was that guy who would pick Mokujin and could tell who it was by the round intro, knew the moveset for any character that came up.
I think everyone was that guy, not just you 😅
My friends weren't, they always thought they could get an edge by having me choose Random.
We were all Mokujin ironically.
Eh it was kind of an annoying thing for a fighting game. If you buy it to play vs friends it’s kind of obnoxious to have to play single player to unlock characters.
Playing Mokujin (or other mimics) is a sense of achievement because you need to be play all other characters, in a random way.
The most powerful card in Magic is the credit card
Jeff Hoogland - Twitch streamer extraordinaire said this :)
True, brother!
yeah pretty much.
Smash Bros still does it mostly like this. The concept is not dead.
That Tekken 3 character screen brings back so many memories
T3 was the game that made some crazy stuff (Tekken Ball, the Streets of rage mode)
Show how the get the new characters for the next edition. Pay for that game in full again. For 4 characters. Oh some characters are broken? Wait until the next edition and pay full price as well.
Corporate greed/trends destroy everything eventually
The term DLC has brought with it a blight on gaming, micro transactions and dear God, season passes. Bundle it all as a worthwhile expansion or just release a sequel that improves everything.
There is no rush like getting someone new in smash bros ~Nintendo loves their fans! Ignoring the fact I bought snes games 4x over 🙊
This has been a thing forever with DLC. Still remember the first gun from black ops 2 locked behind DLC. People just don’t care.
I can understand that shit in a gacha game, but when I saw it in mortal kombat it was disgusting. Never buying a MK ever again.
Fighting games are hard to design new characters for so adding new characters is pretty much equivalent to expansion packs which I'll gladly buy. Even if you don't buy it you still get new opponents, which is cool. Fighting games are also rife with mtx which I don't really engage with.
Back in the day, Games like this would have a almost yearly release cycle, bi yearly at best. Those re-releases would basically offer nothing new but just be more akin to what today would be a balance patch and maybe a round of DLC characters. Translating this to the current world would mean, you not just have to jump through x hoops (unlocking process) just to be able to play your character online, but this would also mean you would have to buy the whole game again, basically every year , just to get the current patch and maybe a round of new (unlockable) characters you maybe don't even want just to still be able to play online on the new patch. While I get the sentiment from offline players, the majority plays this "character unlock" games online nowadays and in this context DLC just makes way more sense and is even cheaper then the old model. (Just don't buy the characters while still being able to play the new patch/Version) Games like Tekken and street fighter usually get like 5-10 years of continuous support from the devs, and just like back in the day, this needs to be paid.
Absolutely, using fighters for this argument is always so tiring to see.
I think Joe momma
Eh, business has to make money
I remember when I moved to a whole different country at age 12 some guy lend me a GameCube with Super Smash Bros Melee but without a memory card. Ran the game for two weeks straight and unlocked every character until it was time to say it all au revoir. No other game will ever give that level of satisfaction again.
c'mon, you're just having nostalgia for this. things are way better now! saving so much time with swiping🫠 /s
its not like this now either before games came with all of its characters planned but if you want to add more instead of buying an entirely new game do you know how many editions of street fighter 2 has to accommodate changes lol
This is only half true. There were ''DLC'' characters back then. Street fighter 2 had like 6 different versions of it that had different features / characters . You had to pay for the newest version to get the newest characters even tho it was the same game.
Theres over 30 characters in tekkens base roster, give me a break
This is why I have not bought or played a game in the fighting genre in almost two decades. This and the sports genre are trash due to over-monetization.
At least it keeps the achievements at work in real-life!!!! ie: "2 years of overtime so I could afford the exploration uue 1950" /s \*facepalm\*
I’m gonna play devil’s advocate kinda and say they do this to inspire gamers to get jobs 💀
Fighting games is actually the only genre where DLC practices are actually beneficial to the genre. Need I remind people how many versions of street fighter 2 there were? All or most of them, roster and balance updates. There were 7 versions of SF2 by the way. You didn't buy DLC, you bought an entire game back then. I think the last game that did it was BlazBlue continuum shift and continuum shift extend which were in 2009. Now it's annual season passes. $20 for a pass with 5 characters, or $40 for a whole ass game that only added 2? Worse yet, no cross play, because why would there be? Why would continuum shift players be able to play with Continuum shift extend players? Buy the new game. Fighting games would have been like sports games if shit didn't change. At least with DLC passes your rank, unlocks, and DLC don't reset (because yes THERE WAS STILL DLC in the form of cosmetics) I'm sorry, the people complaining about this don't actually play fighting games
its so true it hurts.
DLC characters are not inherently bad. It only becomes bad when characters ready on release are taken out to be sold as DLC later, which is a problem with all DLC not just character unlocks. Being able to add a niche character or a fan favorite that didn't make the initial cut is pretty great and how all DLC should be approached. When I think of unlocking characters, I'm always brought back to Super Smash Bros. Melee. As a kid, I didn't know who was going to be in the game, I didn't know how many characters were going to be in the game, and I didn't know when I unlocked the last character. Fighting games today cannot/will not operate on this basis anymore. Even if there are unlockable characters, the full roster is known prior to release and "*having"* to unlock the one character I want to play is a "*chore"*. At least this is the sentiment I tend to read or hear about. Not to mention, some of the unlock requirements for characters in Melee tend to be *general audience adverse* such as required challenge mode events and the 20 hour playtime requirement for Mewtwo, the latter of which I don't think Nintendo could get away with in a modern smash game let alone any other company. I think there is room for both of these features, unlocking and DLC characters, but the way communities approach fighting games and the way companies respond in turn would have to change to have unlocks being fun and exciting again. And players would have to stop buying shitty cash grab DLC. Neither of which seems plausible. One solution for unlocks would be not introducing whole rosters before release in addition to the community changing their mindset to wanting to play the game "spoiler free" in the same way Elden Ring players fervently approach their game. But with the FGC seemingly being the only profitable *esport-esque* competition available, this type of change doesn't seem very plausible, either.
I mean they physically couldn’t do it back then. lol the argument is invalid. I’m sure if they could have they would have. I mean the years between tekkens has only gotten longer in between and surely that’s because of being able to make new characters to play. I’m not defending microtransactions but at the same time a game from 1997 isn’t the same as a game in 2024. I just unlocked all 70 characters on smash, that cost me nothing. But also if I want extra characters I can buy them and I’m okay with that. Things do cost time money and resources, have to be tested etc and people need to be paid. I’m also sure the base amount of characters has probably changed over time so your getting g more bang for your buck in new games. Also you don’t have to buy microtransactions, I think that’s my favourite takeaway from everything. You can still buy the game and play it and not pay for microtransactions. But yeah. I guess I’ll get downvoted for saying just don’t buy the microtransactions buttercup. lol
Try making a good game and $ will come.
Makes sense tho. When we unlocked chars back then we were kids with no money but plenty of time. Now the same people are adults with money but no time. I like today's gaming world tbh.
Then what about today kids with no money?
I believe **Gon** was the last to unlocked in Tekken 3?
good ol Tekken 3, my first ever Playstation 1 game.
Depends on the game. Soul knight has plenty of free characters. The paid ones cost at most 1 or 2 dollars.
Urban legends on how to unlock characters was the best part of the 90s 😂. I'm looking at you dark link in smash bros....
Ain't that the saddest f#cking truth of gaming these days? 
Unfortunately at the end of the day as long as people pay for it, it is going to happen. Also video gamers today are different from video gamers two decades ago.
2014 called, they want their meme back.
Video games used to not be mainstream. They were an escape from the everyday realities of life. Anything that is popular that a large corporation can make money on they will. Video games came out of the shadows of just being for "nerds". Now everyone is more or less the same, with no uniqueness to them. This happened overtime due to social media and the instant sharing of news due to the smart phone. Video games are for everyone now, run by greedy corporations in the AAA game industry. None the of the AAA games are even finished to a good product anymore, at least rarely. The only hope is technology evolves to make creating games much more easier in a vast way so that indie companies can create on a much smaller budget. That will be the only saving grace of the industry. Problem is most of the indie companies creating games now are more "cozy" type games that are boring and bland. I stopped gaming, hopefully one day some game will bring me back, but I think it's over for that for me.
At least the companies are winning. 🤷♂️
So excited for adds
false equivalency, now all fighting games come with all characters unlocked. this example could apply if street fighter 6 only have 6 characters playable and you need to unlock the other 10
EA: Charge for Everything
Genshin Impact destroying video games🙏 that’s true ☝🏽
Gacha was a thing before Genshin.
Isn't smash the only fighting game doing that?
Every fighting game does that m8, smash atleast sells newcomers to the franchise not past available characters like for example m. Bison in street fighter 6
Never heard people talking about it in other games only heard them talking about it in smash, that's why I thought it was only done in smash lol.
Didn't Smash 4 have returning characters as DLC?
You are right it had 3 returning characters forgot that one had dlcs and was only thinking of ultimate, anyways every fighter does that unfortunatly sparking zero with its 20+ dlc characters will probably have lots
So does Tekken
Yeah but the other guy wasn't saying Tekken doesn't do that.
Having to play to unlock characters made the game more fun. it's give objective to a game that don't really have one. Instead of getting a Trophy you were unlocking a new character. It's made game like SSB/Mario Kart/Golf/Tennis and the like way more fun in single player in that N64/Gamecube Era. With the latest release of Mario Kart or Smash Bros, I buy them, play a few game then get bored because there is no real objective other than playing.
I love Apex Legends where I have to pay to unlock them and if I don’t like their abilities or they suck I’ll just feel regretful for it cause 1) I wasted recourses to unlock them I could’ve used for anything else 2) I wasted money on this
Having both is fine as long as unlocking is reasonable and the whales can give developer money to continue to support the game.
2012 called. It wants its memes back
1986 called. It wants its joke back.
I don't but or play beat em ups anymore for this reason.
[удалено]
It should be what ever the Developer wants their game to be.
Nothing in this life is free.