Are we in an era of the fall of fighters: Straight to games

[Frogger]

Ruler said:

From my experience this bad for the online meta you wont see many variety, Tekken Revolution is very semiliar concept tough you have more characters at the start. Most people play characters like Law all the fricking time

It hasn't been bad for KI though. That issue is non-existant. KI just executed it better, just like it executed it better than SFV.

Hiku said:

spemanig said:

Or you could pay $20 and own all the characters of that season. Or you could pay only $5 and only buy the character you plan to main.

Right now you could have payed $40 and own every available character that's come out so far. You pay as the content becomes available. Season 3 is about to release, and each season introduces 9 new characters. By the time someone pays $60 over the course of three years for the base game, they will have 27 characters accessable to them. And that's only if you want to own all the characters. That's the genius thing about KI - you don't have to. 99% of fighting game players don't play every character, so there is a way for people to just buy the characters they're interested in. I can just buy Spinal, Riptor, and Rash over the course of 3 years. Now KI for me would be a $5 a year game. That's how you build a platform.

Charging people $60 of the bat for 16 and some later is not.

Well outside of the initial roster, it's the same thing in SFV. Except that you can get them for free as well if you want, by using in game currency.

Also, a slight correction. Shadow Jago is not included in any season pack. He is only sold separately for $10. So the price tag for all characters over the course of 3 seasons will be at least $70. Possibly more, depending on how they sell their 9th character this time around. Shadow Jago from Season 1 and Omen from Season 2 had special conditions attached to them.
Omen can not be purchased as a separate character. Instead he was added as a bonus character to those who bought the season pack 2.

But I would definitely not call KI's model perfect. Because while some people only want some characters, there are people who want all characters as well. And for them, it's the opposite. As of right now, the cheapest way to get all characters is 20+20+10=$50. This amounts to a total of 18 characters. That's two more than SFV's initial roster, and $10 cheaper. That's ok, but not great considering SFV's initial roster size isn't exactly standard to begin with. But from here on out? As of Season 3, the minimum price tag for all the characters will have exceeded SFV's minimum price tag by at least $10. Depending on how they sell their 9th character this time around, it could be a bit more.

But let's keep in mind that SF4 was supported for 7 years and eventually had a roster of 43 characters. Capcom said they plan to support SFV for many years  as well in the same manner.
If KI reaches at least that number of characters, according to the current price model, depending on how they deal with the 9th character of each season, assuming the 9th character will be free from here on out, the minimum price tag will be $110. With the possibility of being higher, depending on how they sell a potential 9th character.
For SFV, the minimum price tag at this point will still be $60.

And actually, it should even be lower for SFV if you jump in later. Because the price of retail games tend to drop over the years. And this would hypothetically be 5 years down the line. I don't think SFV will still be $60 at that point.
Meanwhile, in my experience I've never seen separate DLC characters for fighting games be sold at a discounted price. I may be wrong though. Someone let me know if you have any examples. Though perhaps they will offer some kind of All Seasons Pack down the line when they decide to end support for the game, at a better price than buying them separately.

Anyway, for people who just want some characters, it's not the perfect system either. What if you only want one or two characters from Season 2, and one of them happens to be Omen? You will have to pay $20 and be forced to buy the rest of the Season 2 cast. And Shadow Jago costs $10.
I think it's safe to say it's a cheaper system at launch for people who only want no more than 8 characters. (Shadow Jago, Omen, and 6 other characters) After that, the price tag can surpass $60, depending on which characters they are interested in.
Right now it's 16 characters for $60 in SFV. But a year or two from now, it may be $40-$30 for 16 characters. And even the most casual of players will probably be able to earn at least one or two characters just from playing the single player content. I have enough points to buy two characters right now, after only a few days of playing.

There are positive things with KI's method as well though. Like the free to play/try method, that Dead or Alive also has. And some other things I've mentioned in my post. I'm just pointing out why I don't find it to be the ideal method. You have to consider all types of players. Not just those who only want a few characters and/or costumes.

Well the point of what you bolded was to say that you could pay $5 and have access to all the modes and whatnot anyway as long as you're fine with playing as only one character, which many people are. The point was to elaborate on how KI's method destroys the barrier to entry by making the most of this kind of platform. It's the closest thing to the "$0.25 per match" origins of the fighting game genre in the arcades while still being modern. That's what I was attempting to drive home, and that's the absolute opposite of what SFV is doing.

You're right about Shadow Jago and Omen. That's my mistake, even though it is an outlier to this model in that game. Still doesn't excuse Jago's exclusive pricing. Still, I also think it's important to remember that this is over the span of years. It's not merely $50 flat. That would be like looking at PS+ and saying it cost you $150. Obviously it did, but time is an important factor when it's over the span of three years like in that example. With KI, you're paying $20 for a year's worth of content. It's less content for less money. SFV is less content for more money, and you're paying for the luxury to wait for the rest of it. That's not okay, and much less perfect than KI's model which is nearly blamishless.

While you have a point in pointing out the difference in minimum price points, I think it's extremely important to identify the extent of the wait or pay business model. Sure, you technically will be able to get all DLC for free if you play long enough, but how much is your time worth? It takes around 900 rounds to gain enough currency to unlock all the character colors for the current, day one, roster of characters. 900 rounds. That's only for alt colors and only for the original 16. Then the DLC characters will come out. And more colors for them. And more costumes. And more characters. These are F2P mobile game microstransaction tactics. This isn't designed to make you want to work at getting everything for free. This is designed to make you give up and pay to not have to play at tedium for content you would have gotten included in the previous game. I don't think comparing minimum price points holds the same merit when the cheaper longterm option is specifically devised to exploit the player's patience and time, time they may have been spending working at their job to buy the DLC instead.

Like I said, with S. Jago and Omen, those are exceptions rather than the rule. I don't actually have an issue with S. Jago costing more than the rest of the cast. It's only a $5 difference, and if you want him, that's not going to bother you. I just don't think he should exist outside the season packs. I don't have an issue at all with Omen. Being exclusive to Season 2's pack either. I think they have a right to make one character a reward to players who actively invest in the game like that with an exclusive character, especially when it's frankly such a throwaway one. It's not like they are locking Rash behind that paywall. Omen and Shadow Jago are the two most conceptually reduntant and creatively bankrupt characters in the game.

My argument was never that KI's model was better because it was cheaper. I don't care if the game ends up being a platform that ends up costing $120 long term. The thing that makes KI's model better is that the pace of that pricing is spread out fairly and digestably. The only people who are ever going to end up paying $120+ for it are people updating it for $20 every year, and that's the actual effecting price for them. The same way SFV will go down for new players, so will KI. My issue with Street Fighter V is that you're playing $60 now for a game that isn't finished yet under the guise of being this long fighting platform, when the reality of the situation is that you're paying a premium for early access to a game that won't even be content complete until at least after the first round of DLC is released. Then you have to spend dozens of hours grinding for that very same content that would have just been available for you from the start for the same price in games like MKX.

With KI, they had an excuse to launch with only 8 characters. It was the foundation of a platform. It was never marketed as a complete game. It was never priced as a complete game. In fact, it's still a F2P game to this day. Over two years later, they've proven that it was merely meant to be an ever growing platform.

SFV doesn't get that alibi.