Team Ninja: DLC Characters Make Fighting Games Unfair

[The Wooster]

Team Ninja: DLC Characters Make Fighting Games Unfair

Don't expect any character roster DLC for Dead or Alive 5.

Unlike Capcom, NetherRealm Studios and Arc System Works, Team Ninja apparently won't be offering extra characters as DLC for its latest fighting game.

"We don't feel that it's right for fighting games," Team Ninja boss, Yosuke Hayashi, told VideoGamer when asked for his opinion on on-disc DLC during E3. "We feel like this is a kind of sport, and you don't change the rules for sports. Everybody plays by the same rules. You don't have a 14-player soccer game versus an 11-player soccer game. That's just not fair."

"It's a similar thing to if certain people have all these characters and others don't. It makes it an unfair game, and we don't think that's the right way to go for fighting games," he continued, before adding, "we have no plans to sell characters as downloadable content."

Hayashi concentrates on the balancing and production issues roster DLC represents, but it can have profound PR effects as well. Capcom has recently faced a deluge of criticism following the release of Tekken X Street Fighter, which locked away a sizable portion of its cast as on-disc DLC. The title didn't reach Capcom's sales expectations, but the Japanese publisher put that down to the crowded fighting game market. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117274-Street-Fighter-X-Tekkens-Poor-Sales-Due-to-Cannibalism]

"Balance is extremely important, and it's also very hard to do," continued Hayashi. "Even with over 20 characters that's still a real challenge. If we had 50, how much more time would [we] need to balance the game? It gets that much harder to get it right, and it's already very difficult to get right."

Source: Videogamer [http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/doa5/news/dlc_characters_make_fighting_games_unfair_says_doa5_dev.html]








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[XandNobody]

You know, in my opinion Team Ninja is right about this.

The only really bad thing about that is the company that hasn't made a decent fighting game in as long as I can remember, because they are too focused on jiggle physics, had to be the one to realize this little nugget of truth...

Oh well.

EDIT: Do want to say that such is simply my opinion though, as I'm more of a BlazBlue/Soul Caliber type of guy myself. With that, on to my morning coffee.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

I dissagree. It can be difficult to counter a DLC character if you dont have it and don't know their playstyle, but that isn't a gamebreaker. As long as the developers test the DLC character in the game to make sure they aren't OP, there's nothing inherently wrong with them.

Though they are a bit overpriced.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Joke*I'm pretty sure at some point that Team Ninja will make a DLC where the jiggle physics can now be applied to gameplay. Probably something like Breast-fu

OT* If the DLC balances every characters, I don't see a problem. Besides, if a developper makes an OP character, it's their fault. They already knew the strenghs and weaknesses of every character in the roster.

 

[loa]

The allegory with the soccer team is a bit flawed because fighting games just don't work that way, it's always 1v1.
The message is more along the lines of leveling the field, giving everyone the same tools to work with which is a good idea in a competetive environment.
Imagine the spy being "dlc" in team fortress 2.

 

[Dastardly]

He's right on about it.

The DLC characters will impact balance, because that makes good business sense. If you want people to pay extra for a character, you will probably give that character some kind of advantage, or some mixture of abilities they can't get anywhere else.

If you don't, why would tons of people drop extra money on a proportionately way more expensive character?

 

[tmande2nd]

Buy this man a drink please!

Finally someone in the biz not ranting about how great DLC is.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

Have your cake and eat it too: Give the players *free* extra character DLC.

 

[Naqel]

So... Team Ninja is awesome...

Why dose this have a "news" tag again?

 

[go-10]

paid DLC characters is unfair, since one of the biggest selling points in a fighting game is its characters, and by adding a price tag you begin to exile a portion of players that won't pay for the DLC characters. DLC characters should be free and available for everyone, DLC stages, costumes, music, dress up items/parts, or 50% more jiggle is okay to charge for since it doesn't really add anything more than a cosmetic change

that said DOA 5, Darksiders 2, and Brolands 2 are the only games I plan to buy this year, so that should clarify how I feel about DOA game and Team Ninja as a whole. NG3 might had been a bit shit but everything else they produce is golden... for me anyways :/

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

DLC characters in a fighting game is just milking money from loyal customers. It isn't right. And it's a stupid idea that can't last. It can happen once, maybe twice before gamers get enough of it and stop buying fighting games because they feel like they aren't getting enough for their money.

 

[lapan]

Which is why i loved DoA2 back then. It had up to 9 different costumes per character, all of them unlockable through gameplay. Every other fighting game dev would have you pay out of your ass for that.

 

[Evil Smurf]

this man has my respect

 

[VonKlaw]

Hate to be a pedantic asshole.

Following the release of Tekken X Street Fighter, which locked away a sizable portion of its cast as on-disc DLC. The title didn't reach Capcom's sales expectations, but the Japanese publisher put that down to the crowded fighting game market. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117274-Street-Fighter-X-Tekkens-Poor-Sales-Due-to-Cannibalism]

Tekken X Street Fighter hasn't been released yet, and is being made by Namco. The monstrosity made by Capcom is Street Fighter X Tekken

 

[80Maxwell08]

paid DLC characters is unfair, since one of the biggest selling points in a fighting game is its characters, and by adding a price tag you begin to exile a portion of players that won't pay for the DLC characters. DLC characters should be free and available for everyone, DLC stages, costumes, music, dress up items/parts, or 50% more jiggle is okay to charge for since it doesn't really add anything more than a cosmetic change

that said DOA 5, Darksiders 2, and Brolands 2 are the only games I plan to buy this year, so that should clarify how I feel about DOA game and Team Ninja as a whole. NG3 might had been a bit shit but everything else they produce is golden... for me anyways :/

I'm going to suggest you wait a week or two or possibly rent it first. One of the creative minds behind Team Ninja's work, Tomonobu Itagaki, left a while ago right before Ninja Gaiden 2 was released. Meaning their only original games after that are Dead or Alive Paradise, Metroid: Other M, Dead or Alive: Dimensions, and Ninja Gaiden 3 so whatever your opinion on those games are you may wish to take into account. Sorry to be a downer here but I think it would be a good idea to wait and see how it goes first.

 

[StriderShinryu]

This is completely correct and I'm guessing that most people who disagree are people who don't really understand how fighting games work particularly in regards to roster balance. Characters can't be balanced individually, and they can't be balanced even amongst the existing cast in a testing vacuum. Real testing, especially in the fighting genre, doesn't come until the game is out in the wild and millions of players are trying to bend, and break, the rules.

On a more directly tournament related side, having extra characters that aren't on disc becomes a big issue when not everyone has access to preparing to fight that character. It's also a big problem when every console used for a tournament has to have a full roster unlocked and paid for when many bigger tournaments use multiple consoles. Its not an issue if not every console has all of the cosmetic DLC, but when it's an actual character it just doesn't work.

There is very much also the economic aspect where any character you actually hold ransom as DLC must inherently have some sort of appeal to get people to open up their wallets. It's not always a character's power level, of course, it can also simply be leaving a logical and desirable character out of the roster on purpose.

 

[orangeapples]

This is completely correct and I'm guessing that most people who disagree are people who don't really understand how fighting games work particularly in regards to roster balance. Characters can't be balanced individually, and they can't be balanced even amongst the existing cast in a testing vacuum. Real testing, especially in the fighting genre, doesn't come until the game is out in the wild and millions of players are trying to bend, and break, the rules.

On a more directly tournament related side, having extra characters that aren't on disc becomes a big issue when not everyone has access to preparing to fight that character. It's also a big problem when every console used for a tournament has to have a full roster unlocked and paid for when many bigger tournaments use multiple consoles. Its not an issue if not every console has all of the cosmetic DLC, but when it's an actual character it just doesn't work.

There is very much also the economic aspect where any character you actually hold ransom as DLC must inherently have some sort of appeal to get people to open up their wallets. It's not always a character's power level, of course, it can also simply be leaving a logical and desirable character out of the roster on purpose.

*cough*MegaMan*cough*

all we got was a character skin...

 

[llafnwod]

Yeah... let's wait until the game actually comes out, and see if the tune changes then. We've heard this kind of rhetoric before.