Remember when you had to unlock characters?

It doesn't make it any less tedious.

Baal wrote:

It doesn't make it any less tedious.

Don't you normally pick your characters having tried them out or do you just go by what they look like?

Considering SFIV was the first game I got back into fighting games with, it was more through looks... but that was about 4 years ago, now I pick who I'm familiar with/want to learn and considering that I do more and more research on the games I play nowadays I'd like to get straight to doing that and not piss around doing other crap.

It'll take you day or 2 maybe less to unlock everyone in any game. Then you have the rest of the games lifetime to play it. Plus by unlocking people you get the basics down then you can start building on that and mastering it.

Ace wrote:

It'll take you day or 2 maybe less to unlock everyone in any game. Then you have the rest of the games lifetime to play it. Plus by unlocking people you get the basics down then you can start building on that and mastering it.

Assuming one has a life, it will take him/her way more than 2 days to unlock everyone in MvC2.

It took me almost a week to unlock lizard man in SC2. And I enjoyed it, sure it was grouling long and tedious trying to ring out someone within the first five seconds, five times in a row but it fealt that much more satisfying once it was all said and done with. Might be a chore to some but it was gratifying to me.

Baal wrote:

Considering SFIV was the first game I got back into fighting games with, it was more through looks... but that was about 4 years ago, now I pick who I'm familiar with/want to learn and considering that I do more and more research on the games I play nowadays I'd like to get straight to doing that and not piss around doing other crap.

Fair point.

I do feel that games don't really reward you for putting time into them. Being able to get an item of clothing for putting in 20 hours into a game hardly seems like a payoff (unless its DMC). But for fighting games there's not many that made me really feel like i unlocked anything noteworthy, which is kinda lame.

I guess there's gotta be a good balance, one which no game seems to have pulled off just yet. That said i liked super SF4 having everything unlocked and i werten't gonna bother with that game seeing as i'd already done that shit on 4.

Ace wrote:

It'll take you day or 2 maybe less to unlock everyone in any game. Then you have the rest of the games lifetime to play it. Plus by unlocking people you get the basics down then you can start building on that and mastering it.

1. It should not take me two fucking days to get to playing the character I want to play as, let alone having full access to the roster I should already fucking have. No one besides you and maybe a few other people like the ridiculous tedium that comes with unlocking characters. For stuff like art, music and maybe extra costumes? Fine. Those are nondescript features that don't add to the gameplay, they're just neat things to have and shoot for. For gameplay though? Fuck unlocking extra characters in fighting games. I want to be able to play as the characters I want to or want to try out from the start, not piss around.

2. You're going to learn the basics of the game no matter what, unlocking characters does not fucking add to that because then you're being forced to do so, which is counterproductive. People should want to learn the basics so they can get better out of free choice, not because the game said "OH hey, learn the basics and you get to play as this character!". What fucking sense does that make? I didn't learn the basics of Street Fighter because I wanted to unlock Sakura and Dan, I did it because I genuinely wanted to. However the game forcing me to unlock the characters I wished to play as did not help my decision, if anything it made me want to stop playing if I was just going to keep being forced to play characters I really didn't want to fucking play as.

But ultimately, if you're gonna add unlockable characters, then the least you could do is give a code to those of us who don't want to bother with that shit.

Counterpoint about adding replay value here or something. Not that it matters. -_-

I'm not fucking saying you should be forced to fucking unlock fucking characters fucking around two fucking days fuckidy fuck fuck.

Lol I'm just saying as long as I can remember fighting games have been doing it. And its been fine to me. Can't hate on replay value unless its genuinely irritating or a funless chore in doing so. Which is how some games are and I understand what you mean. When you buy a game you baught it to play and if you really like it you have to take the good with the bad. And if the bad is tedium in unlocking content then fine, deal with it, don't bitch. I hate how the younger generation wants all their shit done for them. The game should wipe your ass too lol

I'm just going to leave it at that.

Ace wrote:

I'm not fucking saying you should be forced to fucking unlock fucking characters fucking around two fucking days fuckidy fuck fuck.

Lol I'm just saying as long as I can remember fighting games have been doing it. And its been fine to me. Can't hate on replay value unless its genuinely irritating or a funless chore in doing so. Which is how some games are and I understand what you mean. When you buy a game you baught it to play and if you really like it you have to take the good with the bad. And if the bad is tedium in unlocking content then fine, deal with it, don't bitch. I hate how the younger generation wants all their shit done for them. The game should wipe your ass too lol

I'm just going to leave it at that.

Be aware that people these days always want to move on to there nest games. I know what you mean, but Baal made some valid points to.

If you had to unlock Ken on street fighter that would be annoying as fuck, yet Akuma is classicly a character you unlock and he's a lot of peoples favourite thats kinda stupid, especially as people take fighting games way more seriously since this whole online thing and want to get as much practice in as quickly as possible.

Ace wrote:

I hate how the younger generation wants all their shit done for them.

Are you a fucking idiot? Do you think this is a thing the younger generation solely hates? No. This is something people who play fighting games competitively hate in general. Justin Wong, who has been playing fighting games for as long as I have been in school, hates the concept of unlocking characters in fighting games because not only is there tedium in it, but those of us who play them competitively would like to get right to practicing and learning our character. We don't want to piss around for god knows how long unlocking other characters to try them out, we want to get right to it.

You don't seem to understand that it's not a matter of handing shit to us, it's a matter of getting to play the fighting game to its full extent ASAP.

Baal wrote:

Ace wrote:

It'll take you day or 2 maybe less to unlock everyone in any game. Then you have the rest of the games lifetime to play it. Plus by unlocking people you get the basics down then you can start building on that and mastering it.

1. It should not take me two fucking days to get to playing the character I want to play as, let alone having full access to the roster I should already fucking have. No one besides you and maybe a few other people like the ridiculous tedium that comes with unlocking characters. For stuff like art, music and maybe extra costumes? Fine. Those are nondescript features that don't add to the gameplay, they're just neat things to have and shoot for. For gameplay though? Fuck unlocking extra characters in fighting games. I want to be able to play as the characters I want to or want to try out from the start, not piss around.

2. You're going to learn the basics of the game no matter what, unlocking characters does not fucking add to that because then you're being forced to do so, which is counterproductive. People should want to learn the basics so they can get better out of free choice, not because the game said "OH hey, learn the basics and you get to play as this character!". What fucking sense does that make? I didn't learn the basics of Street Fighter because I wanted to unlock Sakura and Dan, I did it because I genuinely wanted to. However the game forcing me to unlock the characters I wished to play as did not help my decision, if anything it made me want to stop playing if I was just going to keep being forced to play characters I really didn't want to fucking play as.

But ultimately, if you're gonna add unlockable characters, then the least you could do is give a code to those of us who don't want to bother with that shit.

I agree with this. It's not difficult to add replayability without presenting players with a limited roster at the start. I can understand maybe playing through once to unlock the boss, but ultimately you should be able to use whatever character you like right from the start.

I remember those nifty codes that allowed you to unlock everything from the get-go. Whatever happen to those kind of codes? The only time I've ever used a code recently was the Konami Code in Hard Corps: Uprising. And that's just to change the music in the first level from generic platform-shooter track #1567613789561786 to a full blown Daisuke Ishiwatari cover of the first level of Contra 1.

And really if I may get back on the subject of on-disc DLC. Here's a basic lesson in game design approaching...

While the characters are on disc, they aren't necessarily finished and balanced. It is necessary for them to be on disc so if I choose to buy a certain character, I can use that character against somebody who didn't buy them because that character data can be loaded off the disc. Just because they're on disc doesn't mean they aren't ready for the main game, and people can still use them against people who didn't buy them. It's like how people couldn't see certain SF4 costumes because they weren't on the disc.

Alternatively, we could have something like MK9's compatibility pack. Totally free, and it just means you have to download an item with data for the DLC characters. If someone doesn't have this free content, you can't use the DLC characters against them, period... problem with this is you'd have to make that a mandatory update as those compatibility packs were optional and really were part of the reason why MK9's online mode was so fucked.

That's only necessary on Playstation, because publishers have to pay to host their content on the PSN. So they stick the content on the disc instead. On XBL, Microsoft covers those costs, so the data can be hosted online.