According to this it really isn’t. It’s free if you don’t want access to the majority of the cast. That’s not remotely close to free as far as this community is concerned. That people can download it, dick around with a character and decide the game isn’t for them, yes, its free in that kind of way. Capcom could also release a demo and achieve with online mode and achieve the same result.
The KI comparisons have merit but really don’t apply strongly here. KI is not actually free. DotA 2 is an example of a true F2P game, that does not employ P2W. KI’s base game is free, but the base game has many barriers that can only be accessed via payment. KI is P2W.
SF is neither. SF5 is unmistakably the old business model trying to pass off as f2p.
The important part is that for the KI ended up offering almost equal value for 60 dollars as SF5 did. That seems to be either lost because of its pretense of being “free” or willingly ignored for the sake of making SF5 look worse.
The important part rather is that when KI took your money, they gave you value instantly. It was an immediate and transparent transaction.
Street Fighter 5 took your money and did not give you value for it immediately, and instead sold you promises. Therein lies the problem.
Capcom is not a trustworthy company, they should not be selling promises and anyone who buys their promises is either a fanboy (hi!) or ignorant. I could not in good conscious recommend Street Fighter 5 to anyone at this moment in time.
To be frank, Capcom is indefensible right now in my eyes. They have a lot to prove in the coming months and if they don’t ‘rise up’ themselves, then they deserve to go under. Not just for Street Fighter 5, but for years and years of bullshit business practices.
For the same amount of money Capcom gave you 2 less characters and some features that should be getting here this month. If they don’t deliver on those features then you can say these promises were broken. Until then we can only speculate on whether or not they will properly follow through.
Now they’ve gone so far as to punish people who rage quit through non-systemic ways. This would lead you to believe that they are definitely acting in good page. That said, we have some 23 days until the end of March where Alex and a bunch of other stuff should be released. As it stands, the game is offering less than but not exactly trying to dick people over on features. Its on the lower end of titles though, that’s for sure.
The value of 60 dollars paid lump sum in an instant decision is not the same as the value of 60 dollars paid over a 2-3 year period through several decisions. I thought this was obvious.
But they didn’t. it also wouldn’t be EXACTLY the same unless you could pick and choose how much to pay based on how much content you wanted after.
KI’s INITIAL entrance cost is zero dollars. Period, end of story. You can spin that however you want but it is free TO START. In addition you can pay as little as $5 if you just want one other character. Capcom you HAVE to invest in 16 characters even if you don’t want all of them. You are FORCED into paying a $60 entrance fee. There is NO FORCED cost for KI, just a heavily encouraged one. You don’t EVER have to pay $20, you COULD play the game for free, you could also pick the one character you like and pay $5, but you are never REQUIRED to pay ANYTHING. In addition, as daemos pointed out, $60 over the course of 2-3 years is very different than $60 up front. To play SFV you HAVE to pay $60 right away. No choice, no alternative reduced cost option, nothing. It’s REQUIRED.
KI isn’t the typical “Free 2 play” model where you can earn additional content or all of it is free at once. It is a different type of free game entirely. It’s more like “Free 2 Start”. It’s pretty unique in how they approached it actually.
KI also isn’t actually Pay 2 Win unless the free character is intentionally made far weaker than anyone else, and each additional season the new characters are intentionally made stronger and continue to intentionally be stronger than the previously bought characters already in the game. Specific stronger characters aren’t more expensive than weaker ones. You aren’t suddenly better based off of the character you own. There is no “I paid $10 so I get a health boost” type thing. KI is just a game where you can pick and choose your content rather than investing in everything, you get better deals via buying everything but none if it is by design flat out better than something else and none of the additional content is required to play the game. It’s a piecemeal game, it’s one of the only examples of it’s type of monetization, for better or worse.
The thing is that MOST people DO pay, at least the bare minimum of $5 (most likely the full $60 at this point), because being stuck with one character, potentially one you have zero interest in, SUCKS.
I absolutely love how this game plays. Makes me forget that I’m supposed to be a Smash player, but I hate this game with a burning passion when I’m not in Training Mode or at a tourney. Everything either doesn’t work or works poorly. I can’t even imagine what the casual fans that paid for this must feel like. The game will recover with time and we’ll all continue to play it. It’s just that Capcom definitely lost potential buyers and the lack of information on a patch isn’t reassuring for those that did buy the game. There’s way too much shit that needs to be fixed and I doubt this March update that Capcom is so quiet about will take care of it all.
What is obvious and logical clearly doesn’t apply in this thread. Just go relax and save yourself the effort, dude. It isn’t worth explaining.
Your KI math is a bit off there.
KI isnt free. The Demo is free, but the actual game is not. If getting two characters on the select screen means free game, then I got Tekken 3 for free from PSM yeeeeaaars ago, and it came with 4 characters! Suck it KI!!!
KI cost as little or as much as you want to spend. From $0 to whatever your heart desires.
SF5 costs (retail) $60 minimum.
If you can’t understand this concept, all hope is lost and you should go back to playing Ehrgeiz.
I understand the concept fine, its everyone else who seems to have a problem here since they keep calling KI a free game when its very clearly nothing of the sort. Its a free demo with the option to buy chunks of content as you see fit. In order to have the full package you need to spend the same amount as you did for SFV.
So the only real difference between the two is KI lets you demo it for free and choose what parts of the package you wish own. Thats it.
I’ll explain it differently.
Killer instinct is a free taste of a little donut on a tray. Did you like that sir? You can have one donut for a low price, if you like it you can buy more. It’s completely up to you.
Street Fighter is a paid donut that only comes in a box of 12, you don’t get to taste them, half of them the jam is missing in the middle and the box tends to break from time to time. In your box of 12 they don’t have the usual flavours that other donut shops sell and half of the donuts are the ones nobody eats. You will however get the tasty ones anytime between now and christmas.
It’s as simple as this. KI gives you one free character that changes every week and all the game modes for free.
I agree with Eternal in that you can’t really call it Free 2 Play or Free 2 Win. During early interviews before KI came out Ken Lobb specifically mentioned “this is not a free to play game”. Which makes sense since by gaming definition it’s not a free to play or win.
Either way KI and SFV both have had similar heavy struggles for their launches and both will get out of them. KI got a double dose of an ass whooping from the gamer base for being on the overpriced spyware system and not really having much to do other than play online, run through a bare bones story mode or do a tutorial on how to play Jago essentially with some built in fundamentals.
SFV and KI both got similarly blasted at launch for different reasons, but the end result is KI got better for consumers over time and the same with SFV. Arguably SFV should get to a state that consumers are really looking for faster than KI. KI didn’t really become a game that you could call heavy in single or multi player content until maybe the end of season 2 at best and even then isn’t going to have any robust cinematic story or individual turtorials for characters like V will by June.
Like KI, the only thing that will change SFV is time and what Capcom does with that time. Luckily that time should come through quicker for SFV.
Joke post? I hope this is a joke post.
Your detective work is good. You found me out.
Why the fuck are you repeating what i alreadys said, but with a stupid fucking donut analogy?
Birdie would eat all the donuts and say he’s still starving.
Moving on to them sales then… I heard you get SF5 free with the purchase of 6 donuts.
This thread is now about donuts.