Whenever the topic of new character power creep comes up I am reminded about how Blizzard tried being conservative with new character balance in Heroes of the Storm for a while and found that if a character was not obviously good right away then nobody played them and they didn't even get enough data to tell what was wrong with them

About power creep, there's also the fact that people have been playing and learning shit about old characters for months, maybe even years, so if you add a new character and after trying it out they seem even with the rest of the cast, it's fairly likely that they're slightly overturned to compensate for the lack of labbing time and experience from the testers. It's like with HC, everyone said he was mid tier at launch. That's probably what ArcSys saw in their testing, but now that the character is more fleshed out we can see him shooting people to death left and right. And it sort of only gets worse, because the more time passes the better people get at using the old characters.

The transition from current to past potemkin buster was really clean

I don't play fighting games as much as I'd like to because I don't have the willpower or time to learn how to play them properly but I always love how informative these videos are!

Over the years, i've noticed Power Creep is a universal thing across pretty much all games with updates. Hell, even tabletop RPGs like D&D5e and ESPECIALLY 3.5 have Power Creep. But I actually think that Power Creep is a little bit more than just "New character good, give money." There's a couple of reasons why it happens. One of the first reasons is due to expanding on a game's system. When a developer is making a game, they're in the process of still laying out the ground work for what it is. So naturally when the game is released, the developers can now make something new with the hindsight of how the game fully works. They can use that ground work and push what's possible now that they have the hindsight of the initial development. That's why new characters often have crazy systems and mechanics that base roster characters don't have. The second reason is appeal. Convincing people to buy a whole nother character for like 6 dollars a pop (or an entire seasons pass) Isn't always the easiest thing in the world(Unless your like a diehard fan, or a simp). When it comes to DLC, you really need to prove to people that the DLC is actually worth their time. How do you do that? Well, let's go back up to point 1. Developers can use the knowledge of the game to now make a character that breaks the boundaries of what we though was possible. This can add a whole new breath of life to the game as there's now a new character with new mechanics. That's shit's exciting! We get to see the game evolve right before our very eyes and we have new toys to play with. In a similar vain, sometimes it's better for a DLC character to be powerful to make people actually want to buy them. Who the fuck would wanna throw down 6-7 dollars for a character with the effectiveness of a wet sock? It would feel like a waste of money by that point. Overall, Power Creep is usually more of a byproduct of a game's lifespan, rather than a deliberate choice. I'm not saying that Power Creep isn't a problem. Trust me, there's still some pretty bad things that has come from Power Creep, but I also don't think it's the boogieman everyone says it is. There's been plenty of scenarios where a DLC character has Power Creep, but not to the point where it overshadows the rest of the cast. There's plenty of Fighting games (and just other games in general) where the base options are just a viable as they once were. Not to mention, there's moments where the DLC's creep causes the base characters to get buffs where they really need it. And sometimes Power Creep happens because the developers have been working on a product for so long that they just can't see the flaws anymore, even with testing. As long as Power Creep is kept somewhat under control, I don't mind it.

Something small I would like to say is that I wish more character select screens remain as the Smash Bros Ultimate one, and I mean if you don't have the character it doesn't appear on screen taunting you behind a lock because you haven't or can't buy the DLC at the time. I understand they want you to buy them at some point but it makes me feel I own an incomplete game because I haven't paid for those extra characters that I may never end up playing as.

The thing that makes me angry is when you look at the character selection screen and you have like 10 characters to play and 50+ dlc locked. The fact that to play a game that gets dlc day one I need to pay 130$ is insane. And Im not even talking about the dlcs being tied to your account so even if you buy the game physically, you can't even go to a friend house with the dlc. As a collector, seeing an enormeous part of the game being downloadable only and never preserved is really sad and just encourages pirating over buying one cd with everything on it. If at least they did a complete physical edition when everything is released and you just have everything on the disc (updates, dlc ect.) like with Xrd Rev 2 or under night in birth exe CL-R for a normal game price it would be more interesting. With the dlcs we get these days, it's like we are an infinite suply of money that keeps buying overpriced stuff that are not generally worth it.

Actually, in order to fix an infinite on Killer Instinct, rare sent a team to travel the us updating EVERY SINGLE CABINET. It's nuts

I miss when fighting games had unlockables wether that be cosmetics or new fighters that would motivate you to keep playing but now all that are locked behind a paywall dlc smh

Another issue with paid DLC is that if someone wants to try out a character, but they discover they don't even like the character, they won't have any way to return the character they wanted to try out. It really prohibits a lot of players from discovering characters that they will enjoy outside the base roster and can be absolutely stupid.

For the power creep thing, it doesn’t seem that insane to me. In DBFZ, every season had 1 standout strong character. Season 1 had bardock, season 2 had GT. Season 3 had 2 with UI and SSJ4. Now there is L21. 5 out of 20 characters being top tier on release doesn’t seem crazy. For GBVS, none of the dlc in season 1 were top tier. Belial was though. Idk about the characters after him. In Strive, the first 2 dlc are considered on the weak side, HC is top tier, while baiken and Testament seem average. Tekken is the odd one here as about 1/3rd of their dlc is top tier. All of them are considered at least decent though. This isn’t new though, nor is it specific to dlc. Even in the older Tekken games, whenever they added new characters, like 1/3rd or 1/4th of them would end up super strong. Even in T7, the new characters that are on the base roster were ridiculous when they were released but they got toned down before we got them. Look at arcade Akuma and Kazumi. Tekken’s seems the worst though because it had 2 really really strong dlc characters back to back, on top of the rest being decent at worst.

On the Tekken 7 Frame Data topic, I still don't understand why game devs are so stingy about it Wanna know how much I hear people praise games with good frame data tools? All the time. Wanna know how much I hear people praise games for NOT having frame data tools? I don't.

A couple additions. Fighting games are starting to play with FOMO. Buying the season pass will get you access to playing the character early. Thus making anyone who has not bought the pass need to resort to seeing others streaming. It felt bad when I was so hype for Roshi, only to have to live vicaralouly through streamer for a few days. The reason this happened is the other issue I have. Devs will announce a season pass but not what characters are in it. So we end up purchasing the hope you get the characters you want. I rely on leaks for what DLC will be but those are not always right. I just want Jam in strive. She would fit perfect. Instead DNF gets Jam's Cousin.

ALL DLC characters should be available in training mode (even with just a single or maybe some boring, custom made palette with "DEMO" pasted all over it) so people can lab against them (as well as maybe try them out to see if they even want to buy them).

I played in Arcades for a little while but geez it was like the very tail end of them for me. I've only see genuine classic arcade machines like 3 to 4 times in my life. Everything else has been in modern places that emulate arcades.

There's a weird paradoxical nature when it comes to title updates and dlc add ons. Because although you were essentially paying for the same game again, it felt the character and mechanics were more naturally integrated/balanced than just buying dlc down the road. Like you said it feels like devs were getting ahead themselves when designing some dlc characters and not taking into account base game. Looking at happy chaos he feels he wasn't designed with strive in mind, a character with the ability to zone so heavily in very neutral ground based game. Speaking optimistically you can tell devs wanted people to make use of his whole kit but people chose the "cheesy way" of zoning because there's no penalty for it and strive's system heavily favor out ranging your opponents. And that also goes for weaker dlc characters, which are usually characters that have such weird gimmicks in comparison to the main cast. Again using strive look at jack-o/goldlweis both characters based around set play when strive favors more neutral based fighting styles.

Babe wake up new GekkoSquirrel Video.

If your morals allow you, just pirate the game to lab the DLC characters. Making them unplayable in training is something that's just unforgivable and also kinda stupid since you can't even try them out to see if you're interested in buying them or not.

I genuinely enjoyed the humor in this video, it felt like it came from very personal frustration which is fun to look at from the outside.

I was once told there was a concpet along the lines of "brain, heart, and body" when it comes to describing fighting game players. Once I also watched a video on Brian and heart players... but not body players...

I think Brawlhalla does a great job at monetizing itself, you start with a base roster that changes every week and can eventually get all characters with in-game currency (or buy all current and future characters for 20$) When it comes to training mode not only can you pick all characters, both for player and dummy, but you can also choose any cosmetic you want to see if you like it.

gotta love how dbfz, a 4 year old game selling at full price, has half the cast hidden behind a pay wall, including the main character for god's sake.

Shoutout to the chad Melty Blood for giving DLC characters for free, acting like a true king

Conspiracy theory but I think the hype for a dlc character can also be a reason for power creep. The devs see hype for a character and overtune it so the casual audience wont feel like they paid for a "bad" character. Take Leroy in tekken 7 as an example, he was most hyped up dlc, you'd see talks of him everywhere before release. Heck even T Pain did a cosplay. When he was released he was broken beyond belief. It was awful and even with patches he's still a bit of a problem. Basically a pay to win character thats super easy to play coz if he was actually balanced the casual audience would be disappointed that they cant win by pressing a button.

Smash 4 DLC and patches are probably one of the best examples of powercreep out there. Not only were most of the DLC characters horribly unbalanced and way stronger than most of the base roster, most of the top tier characters in said base roster were actually *nerfed* over time, making the gap in power between DLC and base roster even larger than normal.

*DLC power creep happens* Me, a BBCF Jubei main: 😐

I'm personally all for making the DLC characters (in any fighting game) usable in training mode, but nowhere else. That way you can see if you like a character before buying them and lab counters to their options, but if you actually want to use them in a real match (even against a CPU) you gotta pay

9:43 “Tekken has never had DLC before and charged for it. This isn’t really directed at Capcom, I have always said this, but I see the characters and their move sets as chess pieces - they are essential items necessary in the game and we would never sell any of those individually.” Katsuhiro Harada 2012 While its more characters he's talking about, but the mention of chess pieces, and learning how they move, it seems a litt- coughhypocritecogh. Sorry, there was something caught my throat there.

No, season passes are overall more expensive than title updates because at least with a new title, you can just wait until everything is released and buy the latest version secondhand. Season passes almost NEVER get discounted, and if they do, it's not significant enough. I ain't gonna pay half or more of the base game's MSRP just for 5 new characters!

Its also a problem that these games are still full priced while having the majority of the games roster be paid. Sfv is almost insulting, because you get like 16 characters as a base roster, some of which are incredibly niche picks like fang and necalli, while 29 characters, almost double the amount of base characters, are paid dlc. So if you dont pay up you arent experiencing about 2 thirds of the game

Bandai 100% intentionally make DLC characters strong. If Leroy and Fahkumram were accidents, then no one should ever buy another Tekken game because the devs would actually have to have zero idea how Tekken works to release those characters in their launch state. Launch Leroy was the 3d equivalent of a 2d character having an invincible dp that's plus on block.

I think there's also the prejudice thing. Like, no matter how bad the DLC character is, he can still be hated just for being DLC (i think it also has to do with lab, which is reasonable).

Lord Knight supported your channel and reviewed one of your videos btw. Your really climbing up the ranks my guy I've been following you for a while and it great to see you grow! Keep going fam!

For what it's worth, even going back to the Sega Genesis Super Street Fighter 2 era, the "updates" were never full price. You'd never pay "another 60$". The original version would be full price, then the updated version would be usually around half the price(give or take 5 bucks). For instance I specifically remember purchasing my copy of Super Street Fighter 2 for 30$ when the average brand new game cost 50$. And Super Street Fighter 4 cost 30$ when Vanilla SFIV had cost 60$(and every version after super cost only 15$ and used the same disk as super). This goes on and on for every game I can think of.(previous Guilty Gears titles, Blazblue, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 Ultimate etc...)

2:26 that potemkin transition was wonderful

The krypt in mk isn't like loot boxes. The krypt items are preset, in game currency only, and has been around for years before dlc became common.

i mostly hate the inevitability of it all like when someone openly disliked the sf6 leak roster so someone else said something along the line of "it'll be expanded by dlc releases" it feels like starter rosters are just made with dlc like with fighterz

And that's before considering what it might've replaced: unlockables. I don't know about you, but there was a certain feeling to discovering more characters and other stuff as you kept playing the game that I really miss. There's nothing like thinking you figured out the game only for it to throw you another curveball in the form of a new character or a secret fight you didn't expect, something I feel was lost in the transition to online gaming.

I bought base SF5 the day before they released a "title update" with all of the 40 (or whatever) DLC characters included. That was the first, and last time, I will ever touch Street Fighter again. That shit pissed me off so much. There were like 60 characters and I had to pay $5 each for like 45 of them, the day before they all came included. Honestly fuck DLC in fighting games. It really keeps me from playing. I had a lot of fun with Tekken and DBFZ but when you get into a game a year late and you aren't allowed to play half of the characters unless you shill $80, it kind of discourages you to play.

That transition with potemkin was so cool!

I bought GGST a couple days ago and one of the biggest reasons to why i bought the game was because of how cool of a character happy chaos is (and because his theme goes extremely hard). turns out he is a DLC character but at least he got me into buying the game and now i am a proud gio main

what is the music at the beginning?

Haven’t watch the video so I don’t know if you go into it but, DLC MUST start being free in training mode. With the FGC growing and more people getting into it, it’s needs to be a little more accessible for everyone. If you can’t lab a against a character and end up running into them in some sort of tourney. I’m sorry but if you don’t own them to lab against/play as, don’t take notes before hand, or sit down and learn with someone else (long sets for experience). Your fucked, and it’s not even on you.

3:15 Were you talking about the Killer Instinct update?

I hope Project L changes this paid character DLC thing because in all other Riot games you can unlock all characters for free. I don't like how you don't have basic access to a cool character which is typically broken on launch easily. I think paying for cool skins and cosmetics is a lot better than locking playable aspects of the game behind a pay wall.

Shoutout to MTBL having free DLCs

My problem with dlc characters is that, if you don't pay, you won't even know what to do to them because you don't know how the character works

2:20 that transition was sick

I paid for the Tekken frame Data, it was just more convinient than looking it up on the internet everytime. But making players do that was terrible

Hey, didn't you say most of this in the character balance video?

Btw in Street Fighter IV's case, anything after Super Street Fighter IV came as paid DLC for a smaller price for the owners of SSFIV. That model was actually kinda neat since those updates came with the characters they wanted to add for a price like 15~20 dollars. I kinda miss that... kinda...

I bought guilty gear strive without any of dlcs and once i found out i can't play 3 character i would like to play and few others i'd like to try out.. i was disaplointed and now i gotta pay more for dlcs that will cost even more than the game.. What a bummer, man 😞

I love your punchline endings, though this is a new one

I liked when you used the tf2 halloween song its very cool

I wish that something they do with new DLC characters is even if they don't add things to old characters with new DLC they at least add something to them a few months down the line. Also thanks for the new video.

I was mosy hearing to music. Man, UNIB has probably the best fighting game themes.

Simple solution: make the new characters earnable in game, so you can either grind to get them, or just pay to use them now

If Project L introduces characters in the same manner that League does, it’s yet another way that Riot is going to accidentally modernize the genre. Whether you like Riot or not, the game’s eventual release is looking to be something that will be good for every game in the genre

The problem with dlc characters is basically what you said. They just do more, leaving very little they struggle with. And they also have to add "fun and unique" (bs) mechanics to them.

The problem with the problem with fighting game DLC is that we used to have to buy a new full-priced game to get a few more characters.

Can we talk about how DBZ Fighterz is $60 still and does not include any of the DLC?

Anyone know the outro music?

What game in beginning?

While power creep is real, i think it's wild how quickly people make points that the dlc characters beat on the original roster, and completely ignor that a lot of the time it's because the characters got nerfed into the ground before the dlc lol DBFZ is a perfect example, and even then something of the base roster is still high tier. Cammy has been busted for SFV's entire lifespan lol

9:30 I knew you were going to bring it up from these words 😮‍💨 pain.

I hate when my favorite fighting game doesn't have my main in it cuz it means I paying 60$ +the character I actually wanted to play and waiting God knows how long for them to be released.

I think letting players experiment with a dlc character in training mode would only encourage them to get the DLC. I'd certainly tread cautiously buying extra content for a game I already bought if I wasn't 100% sure I'd enjoy it. I think players would be much more open to getting the dlc for a particular character if they were given a chance to play around with them and get a feel for their motions and combos in training mode before buying.

fun fact gekko: Multiversus allows you to try characters you dont own,lab them, and its free-to-play. would you look at that...

For Honor by Ubisoft : New character is locked for 15 days if you are not Premium, then you can buy it for 15$ New character is basically GOD for a months Then gets stomped to the ground with nerfs REPEAT FOR FIVE YEARS

3:23 except SNK countered this by having multiple cartridge slots in their Neo Geo MVS. Wish you've actually mentioned that

I would have been a Baiken main, if I didn't have to pay for her in nearly every damn game

Power creep is a very real thing and its awful, but if they make the dlc character that is top tier but incredibly hard like happy chaos there should be absolutely no problem with that

What's this guy at 6:32 up to?

I wanted to ask the question of whether or not locking a character from a game’s Story Mode for players to find more answers to how a story even happens in the first place is ever a good thing. I doubt it because of what I recently witnessed with Mortal Kombat 1 (Quan Chi), but I wanted to know what other people thought of it.

For Honor, despite being so terrible, made DLC characters right : you can use them in training mode as much as you want, so you are able to see what they can do, and if a new character is one you want to play, you can then buy it.

I have a similar issue with not being able to try the dlc characters. It's less a labbing issue and just being able to get feel by playing the character myself. Personally seeing the character through videos by other players isn't enough for me, I'm very a 'try before I buy" type of guy.

The one thing I liked about league if legends is that to counter power creep they rework or add a bunch of stuff to old characters

Absolutely right in order to learn a character you have to buy the character now. So it makes it a necessary for you to buy the DLC seasons. I'm looking at you dragon Ball z, Grand blue fantasy And Street fighter 5

Plz never change the outro music, that would be like when swagkage lost his (damn copyright!!!), it really really hurt everything. Just like when naruto goes from a god tier outro or intro to a mid one, truly truly truly soul crushing imho

I still remember playing Dudley every single game (2:50)

What happened to street fighter x tekken was a fucking travesty and I'll never be able to get over it. That game, especially with the 2013 update, was actually really solid

pls name of the outro

New to fighting games but these are issues in a lot of games, the only game which imo does it fair is an RTS called Forts, where only the host of a match needs the DLC and then everyone can use it. But power creep is in all games, I was talking about Star Citizen lately with a friend and he also mentions it, when a ship first comes out it's overpowered, for example the new fighter is basically a rack for guns, these ships then get nerfed down the line but for 2 patches after release of the ship you can't buy it in universe

I like happy chaos in guilty and I wanna learn to play him but why does he need 2 resource management things for his main ability

Remember when fighting games had unlockable characters instead of dlc characters?..good times

A special mention to the NRS model of charging you for the pass and then later releasing the "complete" edition for $60, which in it of itself is more economic than the combined price to the game on release plus it's various passes. Seriously screw you NRS.

8:55 For Honor, a game made by Ubisoft that you could call a fighting game like game actually kind of solves this exact issue. You're allowed to both play and fight against DLC characters in that game through training, letting the player both learn how to fight them and possibly test them out if they're considering buying them. It's something that's 100% in the devs interest to let people try them in training mode since people who might not be thinking of buying a character because they have no clue if they'd like them, can test them out and see "oh yo, this is kind of cool" and buy it anyway.

I'm pretty sure that the frame data pack is the only time a FG dev has monetized something that important, also on the topic of labbing with that DLC character, couldn't you just create a training room with a person that mains that character so that you can lab the MU with them, not only do you get potentially more information than you would labbing by yourself, but you also wouldn't need to pay for DLC you aren't interested in.

7:05 Thank you for pandering to my needs.

11:33 Can't wait for someone to pull this out of context in order to make a meme.

bibbidy bobbidy, this vid shall be blessed by the algory rithmy

I often forget that NRS did skins that wy because I'm on PC and just used an unlocker. I have spent truly hundreds of hours playing dress up in that game. every character has like 70+ skins, and then 3 'gear slots' such as raiden's hat/staff/pendant. so that's a skin plus 3x50+ choices to modify that skin ... and I played with every possible mix on every character. it was almost as fun as the actual game. uhhhhh I lost the point I wanted to make. oh yeah, sell me the skins I'll pay for em, just don't make me cross my fingers opening chests for hundreds of hours, I'll play something else.

That Power creep bit definitely describes Smash Ultimate’s dlc or at least, most of the dlc for that game

Honestly I don't mind physically expansion version because at least if the store of where you bought the dlc gets deleted you won't have to worry about lost media but I see how it can be annoying. I was one of the lucky view that got umvc3 for ps4 and chose to get that instead of infinite.

I'd love it if you could unlock the characters for free but it takes an insane amount of effort like unlocking happy chaos by beating all arcade modes on extreme (like GGXX getting Kliff by completing all story modes)

Late, but you forgot one thing: Y'know how a lot of driving games (like NFS, Forza, Gran Turismo and more recently, The Crew) that have real life brands like Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Toyota, Lamborghini, BMW, Ford etc. get delisted from digital stores all the time because of expiring car/music licenses? The same thing will happen to fighting games (and all the DLCs) once they get delisted from sale, meaning that characters like Bridget and Goldlewis in Strive will become unplayable unless you've already purchased said characters. (Unless if ArcSys decides to take away your copy of Strive like what Ubisoft did to people who bought The Crew) (Doubly so in crossover games like BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle now that one of the companies that worked on the game, Rooster Teeth has closed this month) This has already happened to fighting games already, with examples being Mortal Kombat 2011, older SoulCalibur games and Jump Force. Practices like this only: A. Encourage more people to pirate since piracy is basically the only way to access said DLC characters once that happens. and B. Provide more legal ammo towards Ross Scott's (aka Accursed Farms) Stop Killing Games campaign to stop publishers from destroying games people paid for.

a lil gripe with dlc characters, if theyre in the story mode they should be in the base game. Lookin at you happy chaos and jacko. at least thats my take, feel free to grill me if im wrong

GekkoSquirrel: "nowadays it's extremely common for games to get patches and updates on the first day that they're out to fix glitches that the developers couldn't find" me, QA Tester at a video game publisher, looking at all the known bug tickets still open when we ship the game: "pfff hahaha, you wish, more like "to fix known glitches past the game's production deadlines"" I mean sure unexpected day 1 major bugs sometimes appear but nearly every studio keep developing the game between the 1.0 release candidate (that has to be locked quite some time before the release because the console builders/platform holders needs to validate it) and their actual release date.

Full board replacement was actually very rare for arcade updates. The data for the game is stored on a single storage device (depending on the generation, that might be a EPROM, CD, CF card or Disc) and updates were relatively easy to ship and install with simple tools. The question for arcade owners is: Why update when people play the old version despite its flaws? Unless you're personally a fan of the game, or the glitch is causing downtime, why change it?

1:58 Showed off Menat, 10/10 video.