Tekken Director Says Unlockables Are "Outdated"

[Aura Guardian]

Ok, excuse the language, but seriously Katsuriho Hamada - Go fuck yourself. Unlockable's are not only a replay value thing, they're also a training thing. Tekken, has always been about unlocks. Just as with Street Fighter. Getting to the point where you're good enough to unlock Gouken or Seth. Yeah, that's a hurdle to climb when you first start playing.

What he really means is, the days of 'free' unlocks are over. Instead, we'll nickel and dime you to DEATH, using DLC. Bastards.


Morne

Soulcalibur 4 anyone

 

[Sevre]

I say the beat 'em up genre is outdated. Sorry couldn't resist.

 

[MasterSqueak]

I don't agree with that, it gives no reason to play through a game otherwise. Just have a small portion of the characters locked with majority playable from the start.

Agreed.

 

[Woe Is You]

I agree with the Tekken director.

Tekken, has always been about unlocks. Just as with Street Fighter. Getting to the point where you're good enough to unlock Gouken or Seth. Yeah, that's a hurdle to climb when you first start playing.

Except Street Fighter 4 is the only game in the SF series that's makes important characters unlockable. I personally couldn't care less about SF2's Akuma or SF3's Gill being unlockable: those are broken boss characters only used for dicking around. I'm much more for costume unlockables, colors, all that sort of stuff instead of the important parts of the actual game being unlockable.

Second is the you'll only learn to abuse the CPU and not learn anything about the actual mechanics that go behind it. You know, those that'd help you in the fight against a human player.

It's not about that either. It's about either button-mashing till you win, or going insane enough to learn every possible combo, than lose to a button-masher.

I think there's a misconception here. A guy who knows mad combos will get trounced if that's all he knows since any guy who has a grasp on the basic mechanics of the game can make sure he won't get those combos in. A guy who knows the basic mechanics usually also knows a move that'll beat anything the button masher will try to do. There's a counter for it but if you just hit buttons aimlessly, there's not much of a chance the masher will find the counter.

That, and Tekken is actually one of the few fighters that are about insane combos. SF4 for instance makes huge combos largely useless by scaling the damage: every consecutive hit you make in a combo takes less damage. That means that doing a 10 hit combo and then ending it with an ultra is largely a waste of your execution skills and a completely viable ultra bar. Some of the best moves in the game are actually well-timed normal moves (Sagat's standing roundhouse and sweep for instance).

On a side note, just out of curiosity, any Tekken 3 players out there?

No, but I've played upwards 10k matches on SF3: Third Strike myself. No unlockables aside from one color per character and Gill, the broken boss character who isn't meant to be played by people anyway.

And a good 5k matches on Garou: Mark of the Wolves. No unlockables at all.

Those are my favorite fighters, by the way.

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

Me, I like unlocks that have no bearing on gameplay. Things like costumes, art, music, stages, etc. Characters, not so much. But I know that Mornelithe is right. Nickel and diming is how companies like to deal with their customers now. Why give away something for free when they could charge you for it? Why give you a full game with bonuses when instead they could give you a rudimentry version and then make you pay for extras? Why treat your customers with respect and give them little extras for supporting you?

I've lost a lot of respect for devs in this current generation...

 

[mattttherman3]

I don't agree with that, for me, this would be a reason for me not to get the game, because it would get old much quicker.

 

[klakkat]

I think this is a positive step. Unlockable content can be fine, but it needs to feel like it is a 'bonus' and not a core part of the game, kind of like what God of War did (the unlockable content in that game was also very small compared to the rest of the content). Having access to every character from the get-go is a good idea, particularly since restricting that is a completely arbitrary gameplay lengthening strategy. Let's face it, if the game is good enough to stand up on its own, it doesn't need gameplay lengthening gimmicks. This is especially true of fighting games where the gameplay consists primarily of 30-90 second matches.

 

[Danzaivar]

That's a shame, unlocking characters is always what I like to do first... Ah well, Tekken's crap anyway.

 

[Woe Is You]

Having access to every character from the get-go is a good idea, particularly since restricting that is a completely arbitrary gameplay lengthening strategy. Let's face it, if the game is good enough to stand up on its own, it doesn't need gameplay lengthening gimmicks. This is especially true of fighting games where the gameplay consists primarily of 30-90 second matches.

This is basically what I was supposed to type in my long-winded post put short and sweet. Wholeheartedly agree.

 

[electric_warrior]

if he really didn't like outdated things, he would not be working on a tekken game

 

[pigeon_of_doom]

Some rather worrying subtext here. Why make players earn bonus content when they have proven themselves willing to pay for it? Gamers seemingly being content to only receive a trophy and gamer-score boost for their efforts.

Of course, perhaps I'm just being cynical, but despite claims that they are acting towards the advancement of the medium, I'm sure an incredibly profitable recent trend has caught their attention too. They get my respect if they avoid releasing DLC though.

 

[KDR_11k]

I don't mind limited unlocks much, like maybe keeping the story mode boss locked until you beat him but locking away the majority of the roster sucks. Unlockable characters should be characters that are optional, something like joke chars, boss chars, etc, ones that are nice to have but no deal not to have. It absolutely sucks when base characters are locked that people will actually miss in multiplayer.

The worst I've encountered was IIRC Naruto GNT3, had like 6 or 8 characters out of ~20 available without unlocking and until I got my hands on a FAQ (it's a japanese version so I understood tzero and thought the mission mode menu option was the tutorial) I couldn't get anywhere in mission mode and therefore not unlock those.

Yes, unlocks add content to make people keep playing a game as a single player but multiplayer is best without unlocks because then the content becomes the ability of your friends.

Maybe the game could ask "do you want unlocking enabled?" and perhaps let you add some cosmetic stuff to your characters if you go through the unlocks and want to show off but those who just want to have a fun time with others instead of the stupid AI can just go ahead and play.

I've still got plenty of empty spots in my Tekken 5 character selector but then again I didn't really enjoy the game anyway.

 

[Nutcase]

Tekken [http://tekken.namco.com/] series director Katsuhiro Harada says the concept of unlockable characters in fighting games made sense in the past but is "outdated" in the modern videogame market.
...
Fortunately for Tekken fans, Harada feels your pain. "Why we locked the characters originally was that in the arcades, it was kind of to extend the life of the game by gradually unlocking characters. And also with the home versions as well, because you can rent games or whatever, it was to protect us against that," he explained.

... and there you have it. The only reason unlocking was there was to milk money out of players who don't understand or like fighting games in the first place.

Incidentally, apart from Dural, Virtua Fighter hasn't ventured into unlockable character territory at all.

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

Tekken [http://tekken.namco.com/] series director Katsuhiro Harada says the concept of unlockable characters in fighting games made sense in the past but is "outdated" in the modern videogame market.
...
Fortunately for Tekken fans, Harada feels your pain. "Why we locked the characters originally was that in the arcades, it was kind of to extend the life of the game by gradually unlocking characters. And also with the home versions as well, because you can rent games or whatever, it was to protect us against that," he explained.

... and there you have it. The only reason unlocking was there was to milk money out of players who don't understand or like fighting games in the first place.

Incidentally, apart from Dural, Virtua Fighter hasn't ventured into unlockable character territory at all.

And now the purpose is to make the players that do understand and like fighting games pay to unlock them. Not a change for the better.

 

[Kiutu]

I like unlockables...as long as they are reasonable. Alot of the fun in Smash Bros games is unlocking teh characters, as one example. Though some do it bad, like Call of Duty 4 and on. But those are game swaying unlockables, and not having the Kar98 rifle really puts me off. (My best and favorite WW2 gun)
I've deleted memory just to re-unlock things in some games even.