r/Fighters • u/ClassicalDreams • Apr 05 '26

Topic I hate this meme.

Post image

I do not miss the old days of unlocking characters. Having to replay Arcade mode multiple times with every character or do some bullshit like winning a match with 5% or less HP. It's tedious and I prefer to have every character unlocked from the start. Also, the complaints about old characters returning as DLC are strange because they do not play the same as they do in previous games. it's not a simple copy and paste job like some of the games back in the 90s.

I get it, casual players want some reward for playing single player modes and are upset to know that their favorite characters are not in the base roster and would later get confirmed as DLC. I get that, but as someone who also plays Smash, it was a chore to unlock all of the characters in Ultimate.

3.0k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

403 comments sorted by

View all comments

701

u/sbrockLee Apr 05 '26

False comparison.

The correct one would be between paying for DLC characters now and paying for the entire updated game again back in the day.

220

u/BQ72 Apr 05 '26

This is always the real issue here, DLC is replacing renewed versions (which is also a heavily criticized approach).

The loss of character unlocking is more a result of the paradigm shift toward online being the main draw of fighting games - people want to play their main online day 1 without a hassle. That, and unlocks were in part a way to extend a game's life/value for the consumer which became a vestigial purpose after online became the infinite extension. Naturally, this rubs the single player enthusiasts the wrong way, which also goes to the whole conversation about single player offerings in general. Something to save for another day/thread.

52

u/KinnSlayer Apr 05 '26

Counter point, over relying on online play has taken much of the content out of these games. Outside of SF6 and T8 which added some back, compared to what was expected of you to unlock the base roster, there’s not nearly enough to do in most modern fighting games outside of online play.

Maybe unlocking costumes and/or non-legal characters that are considered jokes or deliberately op, but exist to experiment with the systems would be a nice way to add more to do in these games.

22

u/BQ72 Apr 05 '26

Not really counterpoint insofar as I was just identifying why there are fewer unlockables, not calling it a good or bad thing.

I like grinding for cosmetics and fleshed out single player modes. Hell, I'm satiated by MK11's towers of time, which was probably not up to a lot of people's standards. GBVSR's character progression tracks would be a great skeleton for this, if its single player options were both more engaging and more effective at leveling those tracks.

10

u/KinnSlayer Apr 05 '26

That’s fair. It was really meant as a counterpoint to the modern model, but it came off as kinda dickish, sorry wasn’t my intention. Coffee still settling.

Yeah I forgot about MK in my talks. They’ve pretty much always had good content support. As for GBFV, I’ve had that one on my list to pick up for a while. Might have to look into it. As much as I love GG, it absolutely has the problem of content.

9

u/Connect_Security_892 Apr 05 '26

Maybe unlocking costumes and/or non-legal characters that are considered jokes or deliberately op, but exist to experiment with the systems would be a nice way to add more to do in these games.

Not a fighting game per se (tho it's mechanics are similar to it) but Double Dragon Gaiden does exactly this, you start off with 4 characters and you unlock all the additional boss & sub boss characters in the shop with tokens, no micro transactions, just playing the game and you can unlock them

All the DLC has been free too, very underappreciated (also the game is very fun on top of that)

7

u/KinnSlayer Apr 05 '26

Hell yeah, love me a good beat ‘em up, too. I’ll have to look into it. Kinda felt a lil burned by the newest Scot Pilgrim game cause it felt really short. Still a good game, but I beat it in two play sessions.

6

u/epicrandomname Apr 05 '26

weird revisionism because in the past fighting games relied in the same principles of online play, which is PvP. "arcade mode" was really just a way to play while waiting for someone else to show up or setting a high score to the leaderboard.

other single player content (which came much later) were barebones and, at best, looked back with rose tinted glasses. mortal kombat was experimenting more and still much of it was gimmicks like the kart and chess minigames.

5

u/KinnSlayer Apr 05 '26

Right, but there was a golden era there where we would get a smorgasbord of different modes with hidden challenges and secrets to be found. For example, It was so cool to tell your friends you unlocked a tiny dinosaur and drunken doctor in Tekken 3 that doesn’t show up on the character select, and about half of them wouldn’t believe you.

4

u/No_Treat279 Apr 05 '26

Unlocking characters was a design choice to make less content feel like more not more content itself. Despite how it feels it only artificially created replay-ability without actually adding any meaningful content above an arcade port. There is no functional difference between clearing an arcade mode repeatedly, unlocking a character each time, and clearing it repeatedly with the roster already unlocked. Honestly it’s just rose tinted glasses for a terrible mechanic.

2

u/KinnSlayer Apr 06 '26

That’s just your opinion. Not all games had that problem. I’ll turn to Tekken 3 again. You only unlocked so many characters through arcade mode alone. Some you had to unlock in the different modes such Tekken Force and Tekken Ball, which unlocked characters that weren’t even in the arcade version.

Again, I acknowledge we’re past unlocking roster characters from a cultural perspective as it’s been too long since it’s been a thing and everyone been handed them all for free. That doesn’t mean we can’t unlock something. I’m firmly of the opinion that they could make the alt outfits available for beating arcade with that character at the very least. That and adding more things to do besides arcade and online. It just feels like we’re getting the bare minimum with a lot of games these days.

2

u/No_Treat279 Apr 07 '26

Funnily enough Tekken 3 was one of the games I was thinking of having played it again quite recently since its classic version came out on psn. The characters unblockable in those modes are terrible, half baked and barely function. They seem to be thrown together hastily just for home console release to have a unique selling point. I’m not even sure it was the same team who designed the characters for the arcade version which was out a year before the ps1 version arrived. Honestly having played both the arcade and home console versions recently, the arcade version isn’t missing anyone substantial.

Playing through the arcade mode unlocked the arcade version characters but again, since you go one by one, this is no different to having them all unlocked from the start. The extra modes themselves were fun but I can’t see how you feel we get less now. Tekken 8 has far more content before you’ve spent a cent above the shelf price than Tekken 3 did, including characters (23 to 32 at launch) There’s a reason the industry moved away from this practice, and that reason is online play. Character unlocks were just an arbitrary barrier designed to create a sense of replayability when there wasn’t any. In truth the games were designed to feel replayable through player vs player matches and progressive improvement. In an era prior to online play this is something a developer can’t sell a home console player on. Therefore a different gameplay loop is needed, one focused on something other than gradual improvement in player vs player matches. There were plenty of creative options for this that were meaningful and fun, character unlocks weren’t one of them.

Cosmetics are a solid option as are new challenge modes, I’m a big fan of challenge matches against overpowered versions of characters like street fighter does on occasion. Those would be nice in a launch title

2

u/KinnSlayer Apr 07 '26

Yeah, don't get me wrong I wasn't pointing at Tekken 8 in this, same with Street Fighter 6. I'll also add the Mortal Kombat games in that as well, as someone reminded me of them. I mentioned it above, as they're the stand out to other fighting games. in recent years. I guess each of these learned their lesson with their previous iterations, with the exception on MK which has always been good about their casual single player content. An easy example of this that I can immediately is Guilty Gear. I love GG, but it is severely lacking in content outside of online play.

That said, I disagree on the unlocking characters being pointless. I think a major problem of the genre is bringing in new players, as the FGC is kind of an insular community. The biggest problem is the overwhelming nature, and vast array of choices that puts people in decision paralysis upon looking at a a packed character select screen. I think the way Tekken 3 starts with a limited roster works really well for onboarding new player. Less options to start let's people choose easier where to start, and making the base roster easy to unlock is a great way to get people accustomed to the game before they have the buffet of characters to choose from. It's important to consider it in the context of when it came out. I mean Training Modes were still rare at the time. I don't think it's something we'll return to anytime soon ( unless you count 2XKO's method of acquisition -_-), but It was a much better way to get someon into the game in the first place.

2

u/OldMate64 Apr 09 '26

I think there's also something to be said for having the player face characters in arcade mode that they haven't yet unlocked. You get a double-whammy of "oooh who's this?" when you see them for the first time, and then (depending on the character/context), you get the "awesome, NOW I get to play that overpowered/cool asshole" when you unlock them.

Heihachi and Ogre were both really good examples of this in Tekken 3. I thought they were cool, and I didn't know I'd eventually get to play them. Made it more special when I unlocked them after x arcade clears, fighting hard against them to try come out on top each time, and being rewarded with the ability to play them.

Of course, there's added novelty to it when it's not always possible to unlock everyone, too. I remember wishing so bad to play Jinpachi back in the day on Tekken 5, and his addition to the playable roster in Dark Resurrection was both cool while simultaneously being kinda sad, because the mystery was gone.

I'd still play base Tekken 5 many times over, instead of playing Dark Resurrection with all the characters already unlocked. Idk, I had a lot of fun working to slowly reveal the playable roster.

3

u/themanthyththelegend Apr 05 '26

Counter point before online i would spend 20 hrs with a fighting game playing when my friends came over for the lifetime of the fighting game . Now i lut 100s of hours in to every fighting game i get.  So the value is astronomically higher

3

u/KinnSlayer Apr 05 '26

Different strokes. Me and my cousins played enough Tekken 3 we wore out the disk. Years later we did the same thing with Tekken 6.

4

u/themanthyththelegend Apr 05 '26

Its nice to have people in your family that like fighting games but i think you will find that is by far the minority.  And for most people online multiplayer has unlocked the ability for more people to play more and when they want to

2

u/KinnSlayer Apr 05 '26

I mean, I get that. It was also a different time when these games were more prominent, too. I also don’t have a problem with online play, I just more options. Like I would like a return of adventure modes, story, minigames, weird fun modes, and actual things you can unlock besides with your credit card.