Why is unlocking characters in a fighting game still a thing

I remember the excitement of unlocking characters in Tekken 3. You never knew who would be unlocked next. The opposite case was MvC2 for Dreamcast. I already knew who was in because of the arcade and I wanted Storm so bad but she would never show up in the shop until the end.

LordKano said:

because it's very fun

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This.

This really sucked in the Melee days if you forgot a memory card/it got corrupted haha

To mildy inconvenience some TOs

There are many people don't play games because they enjoy them but because they want to feel like they accomplished something. See all the people that bemoan the lack of progression in roguelikes/lites or the obsession with clearing out a backlog.

The World she is a cruel cruel bitch..

I love "Challenger Approaching" screens.

I'd rather unlock characters rather than paying for them.

It automatically adds a great deal of single player potential out of the box, that I really appreciate actually.

I think it was cool when I was younger and didn't know who was in the games I played was kind of like a surprise nowadays though it is just a time waste for me. I hated that aspect in DBZ Fighterz with Android 21 because after trying it I had no desire to play through the SP.

I was anoyed when i got mario kart deluxe and sll the characters and tracks were unlocked by default. Kind of killed the fun of progression.

Unlocking characters is fun. Same when you had to beat RE games in a time frame to unlock a new costume or infinite rocket launcher. It was fun

Busaiku said:

I get excited for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but then my hype always deflates because I have to spend a bunch of hours playing as characters I don't want to, to get the characters I might want to.

How is it ok to have all stages, but not characters.

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That's more about easing people into the series, I think. It should be extremely daunting for a newcomer to start the game and have 70+ characters to choose from.

That, and it's actually very fun to unlock characters.

I love it because it's rewarding. Unlocking characters in SFV is really rewarding as it forces you to actually get better at the game.

I fucking love unlocking characters.

I hate when the game starts out and all the characters are already unlocked.

Nowadays it feels most fighters leave the unlockable characters as premium DLC :(

It gives the player some motivation and sense of progression and I like it in fighting and racing games.

The Almighty Tria said:

This doesn't make sense, sorry.

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It does if you don't play fighting games casually.

They should have both options, like a code to input to unlock all characters from the start if you wanted.

But to me the funnest part of Smash games is seeing "New challenger is approaching" pop-up, then beating them. It makes you feel like you've earned the right to play as them. It's going to be fairly easy to unlock most characters too, I don't imagine it'll take too long.

Phantom Thief said:

Because- why would I play if I had everything done for me already

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Because the game is actually fun? Maybe grinding for unlocks makes you play the game in a way you don't want to? Because you may want some content, but it is locked away?

But I get it, people like carrot in a stick, it is rewarding and etc.

Because the rush you get from unlocking them.

I pretty much love it.

Progression is great. I want more of it.
Having most of the stuff accessible from the start in Mario Kart Switch made it boring in single player.

So many people playing fighting games for progression instead of fun. Do you just drop the game when you've unlocked everything? You don't play to have fun or try to get better at all?

I need to make a bigger analysis topic for this...

KillstealWolf said:

So many people playing fighting games for progression instead of fun. Do you just drop the game when you've unlocked everything? You don't play to have fun or try to get better at all?

I need to make a bigger analysis topic for this...

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Don't tell me what's fun. Obviously progression isn't the only thing.

I'll take "here's 70 characters at launch but you have to unlock most of them" over "here's 15-20 characters at launch and we'll release 20-30 more characters over a 1-2 year period and charge you extra for them".

Analysis Paralysis. A common condition where there's so many choices that some can just freeze up and not play. Limiting the number of options is a conscious decision to mitigate this.

Phantom Thief said:

Because- why would I play if I had everything done for me already

Plus, didn't Sakurai say unlocks would be very easy this time to accommodate the vast amount of content?

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Presumably you'd play because it's a fun game?

I'll never understand this line of argument around unlocks/progression.

If the core gameplay loop is fun, the game is fun. It's really goddamn annoying in a multiplayer game that's largely about just fighting battles with all these characters when you can't actually *do* that without first playing for some number of hours.

I don't like unlockable characters in fighting games either. In Smash, however, I'm fine with it since I don't perceive it as something competitive like Street Fighter. (no disrespect intended) I'm more inclined to just casually pick whoever and enjoy myself.

Well, I don't particularly care about playing Smash games against other people, but I do enjoy the unlocking process. So in my case it's just about all I care to do in those games.

In other fighters it's a tradition that I'm fine with. Unlocking Gouken in SF4 was a bit of a pain in the butt, yet a memorable one.

In regards to tournaments, I agree it's a bit of a pain albeit much less so than DLC characters. But I don't think that inconveniencing tournaments should factor into whether a game has unlockables.

At this juncture in my life I'd gladly pay. I know I'll have fun unlocking but I'd still rather be trying out the new characters then playing to unlock new ones.

I don't like it either, tbh. Android 21 in FighterZ was unlocked from the start because I preordered it or whatever, and she's on every single one of my teams. Didn't touch the story mode even once and I don't intend to, and that's the only other way to unlock her.

This isn't a super powerful secret weapon you get for doing some quests, this is a mid-high tier character that might suit your playstyle better than most of the cast.

It's not even that I want the character right away, what bugs me is having to play shit tier single player content to unlock the things I want to play the part that actually matters to me. If single player modes in fighting games weren't usually trash, that would be fine.

Man, Smash Bros been like this from jump.

It's a party game first, fighting game second.

Would you like to buy characters via DLC instead?

Aside from a single obligatory arcade mode playthrough, I don't give a damn about fighting game singleplayer. So yeah, it's a waste of my time more than anything else.

If Puyo Puyo games can still have "unlock everything" cheat codes in the 2010s, so can fighters.

Smash may have been this way from the jump but I didn't care about melee and I still don't.

Busaiku said:

I'm less excited to play this game because I can't play the game properly.

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"properly"

ggx2ac said:

Would you like to buy characters via DLC instead?

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Smash 4 still had characters you had to pay money for. It's a safe bet that Smash Ultimate will do the same.

LordKano said:

because it's very fun

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he stole my answer.

What isn't fun? DLC character trickle.

To be fair, it's like in Smash only. Other fighting games nowadays has the cast unlocked and you go for costumes only.

artemis said:

It does if you don't play fighting games casually.

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I'd argue that it makes just as much sense for people who play casually and just want to try every character instead. There's nothing worse than wanting to play an older fighting game and not being able to play as a character until because you didn't do some elaborate routine to unlock them.

ggx2ac said:

Would you like to buy characters via DLC instead?

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It's a shame the only alternative is paying money. It's going to suck needing to pay money to unlock all the stages because they didn't lock them. :/

They want you to try every characters

Op. Just pay a vagrant $5 dollars to play the game for you while you're at work.

Yerba_Sutra said:

"properly"

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Playing the game is in fact playing the game properly, yes

I agree .Imagine if a modern fighting game locked a good chunk of the cast behind unlocks. It'd be terrible for the competitive aspect. At worst lock maybe 1 or 2 characters like Guilty Gear does. I shouldn't have to play a game for 20 hours before I unlock my main.

I enjoy unlocking characters. It's fun.

Robdraggoo said:

I was anoyed when i got mario kart deluxe and sll the characters and tracks were unlocked by default. Kind of killed the fun of progression.

Unlocking characters is fun. Same when you had to beat RE games in a time frame to unlock a new costume or infinite rocket launcher. It was fun

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I was more than annoyed with Mario Kart. It felt like I had got a game that someone else already played and had unlocked everything.

Because if we don't do that people complain about lack of content. If you have nothing to unlock, people complain about a lack of single player content.
On the flip side, you get threads like this complaining that you have to play the game.

I'm not going to lie, I'm loving FEXL, but I kind of miss unlocking extra characters through playing, particularly the like ones you get through the Expert training (challenges) in SFEX+@ and the like.

Challenger Approaching gives me endorphins

Ehoavash said:

They want you to try every characters

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Isn't that the purpose of Event Mode? "Bowser is causing chaos, Mario has the stop him!" later on "Bowser is causing chaos, and Mario is missing! It's time for Luigi to save the day!" and so on and so forth...