But you need to know how to play against them.
You can still play against the character, its not like there’s a separate pool of ‘people who paid for early access’ and ‘people who didn’t’, you just don’t get to pick them.
The SF4 arcade and TTT2 beta arcade releases came much earlier than the console releases. Does that count?
Can’t really learn to play against them properly if the only place you face them is online. Best bet to learning to fight against someone is to do so offline.
Considering this came from discussing the LoL model in fighting games, I thought this was some sort of hypothetical online only fighter. I don’t see how it really works offline, after all.
Nonetheless, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to use them offline, so just go find a friend who wants to play the character and fight them.
I suppose, but its not really the same thing.
You wouldn’t be able to because you haven’t bought them.
So go to their house, or get them to bring their console to yours. You’re just being difficult now.
Some of us have to be because we generally don’t like having to “pay to win.”
Fighting games are balanced as long as my character is good
There are two aspects of balance that seem to stand out the most for me, one is a system that allows enough options to avoid helpless or one sided situations while the other is an intricate structure in the interactions of characters and their moves. Though I have often said balance is over rated, I think that is just a reactive statement to how current fighting games are made. Balance to me does not need to mean less freedom, over-powered sweeping system mechanics or homogenization. If you can play any character you like and have all the options and chances to compete vs another character, while maintaining a realistic sense of effort and time that is ideal. That may seem very hard to do in tasteful manner but I think it can be done.
Sorry, but I think you’re arguing a strawman here. In a situation where you have to buy a character (Whether that is to get them “early” as discussed here, or to get them at all, as most DLC characters), you ALWAYS have the ability to play against them (Caveat: Unless they decide to make adding those characters part of a full paid update ala SF4:AE). Online/offline is irrelevant. If you desperately crave offline experience against a character, you can get it, because most likely, SOMEONE is willing to pay for them.
And you know what? When you get right down to it, being “a month behind” is a hilariously weak objection to this sort of model, since that first month is usually spent figuring out the kinds of “tech” that you can easily pick up by watching a Youtube video, and by the time the game is decently mature, no one will be able to tell who had a “one month headstart” on learning how to fight against {Character X}. It’s such an insignificant advantage as to be virtually negligible if you intend to play the game for any meaningful amount of time.
I have to be honest, i think that this whole pay to win excuse against DLC characters is absurd, since it can be easily said the same for those who buy the new version of the game.
Unless the game doesn’t allow you to play against them online, then maybe, but even then, if you are supposedly serious about the game you would buy the new character(s) in order to keep updated, the same as if it was a new version of the game
This. Pay to win is if you can spend a buck to do 30% more damage.
Or specifically if the DLC characters are actually far better than everyone else (say Ivan Ooze level)
I’m just glad that every game with DLC characters is terrible.
LMAO
No joke… I would have agreed with that, but King of Fighters is fucking godlike.
The only game that i would call terrible is SFxT, but that is not because it has DLC characters
correlation is not causation, and there’s no correlation anwyays.
That’s a game? Pfft, I thought they released a beta and called it a game.
It was all fine until somebody vomited all over the concept art and everybody was too lazy to mention it.