@oursin_360: Don't see how it's a fanboy attack. You made a statement sans evidence, we (admittedly with some snark) pointed out the lack of a logical throughline, you took your ball and went home.

EDIT: Also nothing "gracious" about accusing a whole community of lacking maturity but I digress.

Was talking to him specifically, but yeah im out.

@perfidioussinn: Every other fighting game just gives stuff away? What were Mortal Kombat XL and Revelator all about? How is Street Fighter's approach not better?

@hunkulese: Please note that I said stages are typically added for free, not that they just give everything away. I totally understand and support buying new characters in fighting games, I did buy the season pass for this!

@perfidioussinn said:

Or sustainable.

Don't see how it can be him specifically when you call out the GB FGC community.

@starvinggamer:

@perfidioussinn: Maybe not those two specifically? Like, if not going out of business = wack what is the preferable alternative?

@starvinggamer: I can think it's a poorly thought-out system that disrespects players time, you and Capcom's shareholders can view it as a strategy to keep making money. It's probably both. It can be two things! ??

@starvinggamer: LOL is very unbalanced. The amount of heroes that get picked competively is extremely low compared to dota2. The majority of the heroes are either not feasible or have a better version in any competitive situation.

Look as I said I'm not going to disagree with you on the subject of DLC characters being free. It would be in my favor to not have to spend money for characters; I think we're in agreement there. You also bring up some good points about the other games (I hadn't seen that Overwatch info before so thanks for that), and I'm not saying that those games aren't good/successful. All I'm saying is that the current reality is that SFV has DLC characters that you have to purchase - if you want to still play the game with that knowledge, then at least it's a cool thing that there's the possibility of getting the characters for free via FM. It may not be probable for most players, but it is possible. The main topic of the thread is that the FM option is a tough grind for most people - but that makes sense since if it were really easy, then Capcom would essentially be giving the DLC characters away for free, which brings us back to the free DLC character topic. I appreciate having the FM option instead of having only one way to get the characters, which is buying them. I prefer this model to the model of having to spend $60 every year for a new version of the game; this model gives you the ability to spend much less than that, and possibly nothing if you put enough time and effort in. That's the part I don't understand - if you accept the premise that there are DLC characters that need to be purchased, then giving players a way to avoid spending money is a positive, not a negative.

The point of Season Passes was paying an upfront cost to post-release DLC with a discount sight unseen but a lot of Season Passes now seem to be only some of the content. By the sounds of the Season Pass for SFV you only get the characters. To me that just sounds like a massive rip off, especially considering the state of the game.

I did easy survival with every character, got to silver online, and did the individual stories. You can beat the stories for the original cast in under 40 minutes. This levels up every character a decent amount and I had around 270 thousand fight money. Yes, the fight money slows down considerably after that.

Also I'm not saying the season pass for this game is great, but it's very up-front about what it is.You get all six season one characters and a premium costume for each of them as they're released. They didn't trick anyone. That's always been the description. Take the only other fighting game using a similar model, which is KI. The season pass is also $30.00. You get 8 characters and stages, but no cosmetic items or costumes unless you pay more money. Except in KI there is no way to theoretically unlock any of the content for free.

I get that the system isn't perfect, but people rail on SFV way too hard. Especially when we have games like Guilty Gear that add five new characters, a few stages, and a non--playable cinematic story for $60. Also, surprise if you didn't buy the game before June 21st you have to pay for two of the five characters!

I agree that League is a bit unbalanced, but that balance isn't affected by their payment strategy. You get the free rotation of characters that changes every week, and the with the IP you earn, I was purchasing a new champ every week or so with IP that I earned playing maybe two or three matches on the couple nights a week I gamed. Sure, there are some champions that cost more than others, but they generally aren't more powerful than the less expensive ones.

To me, it seems like this entire blog post was written to point out that once you've tapped those initial easy money pots, the way you have left isn't really viable. If you've used up your fight money to buy the characters and maps they have available, and SFV releases a new character, you basically have to win 800 matches to buy it. Yes, it is technically a way to get it for free, but even compared to games that don't make you pay $60 to purchase, 800 wins is freaking steep.

I think this is the crux of the issue.

Releasing a $60 game before the AAA-fighting-game promised home console features were complete (story mode, tutorials, trials) so that the game would be available for eSports synergy was a crummy move, sure.

Charging real money for bonus characters and stages developed alongside the promised-but-delayed release features was also not cool.

But introducing a free currency and marketing it in such a way that it was supposed to alleviate pay-for-features-of-shady-provenance but failing to balance it accordingly? Far less cool.

Introducing a free method of acquiring optional content was in Capcom's interest, not the player's. It is explicitly designed to incentivize you to use the store and eventually force the value proposition of "grind another 800 wins to get this content or pay $4.00?" versus "huh, I heard about a new stage. worth paying $4.00 or not?"

To be clear, paid post-release paid DLC is totally cool with me, ethically speaking. Paying $30 for a handful of new characters is far better than buying Super Duper Street Fighter V next year for $60. But disingenuously offering a free way to unlock that content isn't.

I wonder what the hell happened to the daily challenges they talked about before launch. They don't even talk about them as coming soon anymore.