It doesn’t sound like a game that I’d bother playing and I don’t think the f2p model would work as well for fighting games for several reasons, but the first one that popped into my head is because fighting game characters are a lot more involved than your average MOBA hero. There’s just too much there that you’d need to study. Knowing their specials is one thing, but imagine fighting a character like Dhalsim for the first time, thinking you got this because you know, "Okay, Yoga Flame, Yoga Fire, Telport, WTF IS UP WITH THOSE NORMALS??"If you have a huge roster that’s 110 characters deep, there’s a good chance you’ll be playing a character that you’ve never seen before and if you’re starting out, that’s a recipe for frustration.
Another reason is that with a roster of 110+ characters, the balance would be awful. And if this is Capcom we’re talking about, they’re never get a game with a roster that big anywhere close to right. Look at MvC2. Sure the top 10 characters are pretty balanced, but that’s really only about 9-10% of the roster. They’d never be able to keep up.
It would also make it difficult to have tournies for at a local level (which is a big part of the FGC) because to a certain degree, everyone would be playing a different version of the game unless they had an “approved” unlock for it (and even with that, you’d probably still have players who didn’t know about certain characters because maybe they don’t have them unlocked, which is not a good look for trying to determine who’s the best locally.)
TL;DR: A game like that likely wouldn’t be embraced by the FGC because of all the difficulties it would pose just in terms of learning and supporting it at a local level. Hence, if no one plays it seriously, I can’t imagine a company would be falling all over themselves to start having tournaments for it.
Although I understand why people dislike the LoL model, I think the issues other competitive communities bring up with the aren’t always particularly valid. The truth is, generally by the time someone has played enough to actually be competitive, they are at max summoner level with all the stuff they realistically could “need”.
If you want to hate on LoL for its competitive merit, I’d be focusing on the relatively low skill ceiling.
Rumble fighter is the fighter you are talking of its about. You don’t get timed releases and shit like that, but it seems like every style that comes out is going out its way to be retardedly good for no reason, they still can’t contend with the top three, but they still come pretty damn close. They all cost real money too, if you are playing with a style bought with carats (in game currency) its more than likely that its going to be ass.
Another one is KwonHo too, I thought it was pretty good and deserves a second chance.
Fighting game characters are far more resource-intensive to create than MOBA characters (assuming near-equal production values), so I don’t think having 100+ characters would be viable. Also, fighting games aren’t nearly as popular as MOBAs, so they wouldn’t get the downloads to make the F2P model work.
I do think there will be more emphasis on DLC characters in the future… but the monetization won’t look like LoL’s.
My understanding is that LoL gets the highest stream viewership numbers at eSports events but the turnout at these events by LoL people is pretty pathetic compared to SC2, so whether or not LoL is the #1 game of eSports is highly debatable. MOBA games also have an appeal that fighting games do not have, thanks especially to the teamwork aspect, so comparing these 2 is pretty ridiculous.
Like I said, I’ll give you that. I find it unnecessary as well, but that’s not something that affects how competitive LoL is. It’s just an annoying entry barrier.
As for runes, yeah, they’re kind of another entry barrier since you’ll need a few rune pages before playing properly, and there’s also the problem of Tier 1 and 2 runes being noob traps. But at competitive play, they are mostly the same as masteries.
You can play the real game just fine in team normals with friends, although you’ll be a little gimped. The full irony of this is that playing such games with a bit of a handicap helps later on when you finally get everything – playing in slightly adverse conditions DOES help improve your game later on.
As for runes – I don’t know. What about them? They’re a vehicle for customizing how you want to play your character (whether you want to ) and are, for the most part, something you buy after time.
Then play something else? Alternatively, you have the option of buying any character you want to try immediately and playing it.
Yep.
If you do not have Tristana or Alistar already, you get them for free along with the skin. I know this mainly because Rachel (the lady) got into the game and I had her pick them both up for free in this way so that she’d have two champions (+Soraka which she bought on her first bit of IP) to try out.
Is playing in fairly competitive games against other people in which you are paired off with people around your skill and summoner level really “grinding”? Do you have to spend time just grinding out time by killing monsters over and over again? I don’t think you really understand what “grinding” actually means. If what I did to get to level 30 in League of Legends is your idea of a grind, then I’ve got nothing, really.
It’s a grind in the same vain as leveling to the level cap in an MMO to reach the endgame is a grind. There’s all kinds of things along the journey, but it’s still a grind to open up the meat of the game, much like League is a grind to unlock the characters/runes(without paying) to have full access to the tools the game provides.
To the LoL defense force, you are basically saying “I can live with it” but answer this question:
Let’s say tomorrow they are releasing LoL 2, and they knock on your door to ask you which model to make it. They assure you that at this phase its brand name alone will make sure it has the same amount of popularity regardless.
So they give you 2 options. Option 1 is the current model with no changes.(same prices, must get to level 30 for mastery, must grind ip for runes etc.) Option 2 is “pay 50$ once and unlock everything from the get-go”. They also assure you the matchmaking is better and that they force everyone to play special 5 test matches before that (like SC2 does) so that the system doesn’t let you be teamed up with noobs who will ruin your ranked matches.
I’d go with option 2, naturally. Having to unlock champions is not detrimental, but it’s not a good thing either. It’s simply the way LoL’s F2P plan works to keep people playing longer. But I wouldn’t mind having everything unlocked from the start.
That said, I still fail to see how this has anything to do with competitive play and skill levels.
How was Rumble Fighter? Do the costumes have any stats on them that work in pvp? I know in DFO gear and avatars used to matter in pvp before the fair arena was in place, where now it’s just all about making you look stylish except for pve purposes. People will always spend money to look good.
The nature of LoL’s gameplay is really different than a fighter that it would hard to be even using the same model, and I’m not even a big fan of LoL, I just like looking at different genres of gaming. Competitive ranked matches in LoL also have picks and bans which also play heavily into their economic plan. You need to unlock 10 champions (I think it was 10 without counting free week champions) before you even get to step into the mode. This is because you are not guaranteed to get a certain champion. Also you have to take into account that FOTM also effects the game and that some champions might even be instabanned or first picked so, if it was your main that you only know how to play you would be in trouble, so you are forced to diversify a bit. People are constantly trying to pick up new champions who got buffed or seem strong since patches come out very quickly.
I would be against having to pay to unlock fighters. Because you have to invest more in one character execution wise and you only to rely on yourself and whatever pros/cons your character has to get through your current match. There is no pick or banning system that would force you to change your main (this is not taking account if the game had a really bad hardcounter matchup, but even then I doubt you would need to learn and buy 10 different characters). And as I said before the free week that LoL uses would probably not be long enough to fully grasp a character since people like to change mains constantly within the first few months of constant play and owning a full game.
If there was a f2p just make all the money options cosmetic. There could be some incentive to “level up” and play more if higher levels could be something like a shiny title or a nice cosmetic belt or something. Though I’m not against stat customization in a fighter, since DFO actually has a decent pvp community and you get to select your class skills. It would be interesting to see how that would work in a 2d fighter.
The LoL business model has also allowed it to create a massive fanbase - over 30 million registered users, millions of players playing daily and quite a sizable competitive community. They run dedicated server farms all over the world. And in 2013 Riot will have their own championship series. So I’d say there are enough merits to the business model that it IS worth exploring for fighting games. It doesn’t need to be cut-n-paste from an entirely different genre of game, though.
I can tell you just simply don’t like LoL, so I won’t waste my time discussing the merits of the game itself.
It’s not worth discussing because while it works for Riot and League, it’s not entirely because of the business model but rather the game itself, the style of game it is, and the difficulty of it that allowed the popularity it has. The business model simply wouldn’t work for a fighting game.
Me personally, I wouldn’t pay $50 for a moba. I’d keep with the F2P model so I can casually play a moba for free.
I would personally argue the grindy nature of LoL along with its pay model is great for casuals. They (we) get the feeling of improvement even while scrubbing it up. Along side of in-match improvement goals, you also the the “one more level!” monkey on the player’s back. It also functions as a way of keeping the more experienced players out of newbie matches in unranked mode.
It’s fine if you don’t like it, but most of your complaints are competitively irrelevant.
This brings about some good points. A big thing that prevents fighting games from getting large popularity is that there always is a winner and there is always a loser. It isn’t like FPS or LoL where a team can carry the weaker players while they learn so they don’t get discouraged.
Also a problem fighting games have compared to FPS or LoL is that the high level of execution makes noobs not do the ‘cool’ looking things in the game. They fail to combo into ultra so they random ultra. They mash super because they suck at combo’ing super and get beat by the basic tactic of blocking.
Add in the HUGE barrier of limited netplay you get some major issues. To have a massively successful F2P you need a huge online community to fork over money, since the average F2P typically garners a < 3-4% transaction conversion per person.
Nail in the coffin is creating a fighting game character requires a lot more time and money and is dominated by the console market. Console market as it is currently structured makes F2P impossible because it literally costs a massive amount of money to release DLC. So repeated small transactions don’t really work in that environment. This is likely to change as pricing structures will probably allow more of this from developers but paying tens of thousands of dollars you can’t charge only $2 a character when the character likely costs you 5-10k to make depending on level of detail and use of recycled animations. A pair of skilled animators and a skilled model is going to cost you ~$200k on staff a year and releasing a character every 2 weeks results in a cost of $200k/26 = $7.7k + $25k or so for the right to actually release console dlc and add that into a 3% conversion rate at $2 you need 33.2k /(2*.03) = 553000 average subscribers. Numbers are real rough on that and 2 weeks for a fighting game character is not very likely. This is the reason dlc characters cost $5-10 a piece. You can’t make your money otherwise.
I assume this is on PC but fact is you’d also have to create a bigger community on PC which has an intrinsic cost / risk to it.
The cloths are fucking BULLSHIT. I can understand buying them for stat boosts, but damn, these idiots in korea made it so that you can max out your damn stats. One Rage ( a style in rumble fighter) combo on maxed out str is a ToD. an easy one button ToD. on shoot boxing, the 3rd best style in the game, its gonna kill you in like 7 hits. You could be outplaying someone, and they just get in one lucky combo, which happens sometimes, but for that to lead to an easy death is why no cloths are allowed in 1v1. 4v4 is slightly different since you have a team to back you up. To be successful in 1v1 is to either practice on a carat scroll ( i recommend mao gong, a master of this style can easily truck through the hoards of shoot/zin/bwn users. Tho 1v1 skills are extremely important in a team game, learning how to deal with multiple people at once means your probably gonna have to invest some money into it. there’s rarely any balance changes so you won’t have to constantly keep buying new styles.