Well, the FPS genre has all but been ruined by grinding, ‘pay to win’, ‘grind to compete’, ‘free to play’ models of sales that all but kill off any way to play those games as fundamentally competitive endeavours. The MOBA genre is only just about hanging on, but the anti-competitive designs like League of Legends are cannibalising the better models in other RTS games.
Now, will fighting games be dealt a KO blow themselves?
Here’s the twist: you can upgrade individual characters, improving Strength, Endurance and Vigor statistics, by spending skill points. There are new Special Arts and Critical Arts moves, too. “Develop a defensive tank character with high HP to withstand knockout blows while offense focused players can create a damage-inflicting character with low health but high critical hit rates to devastate opponents with a flurry of attacks,” reads the official blurb.
The gameplay looks the same as in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and while it’s free-to-play, we presume you’ll be able to spend money on micro-transactions of some sort.
Whilst none of the details aren’t clear at this point, I fear the very worst. It appears the “Revolution” here is to make an unbalanced uncompetitive mess of a fighting game as a pay-or-grind-to-win pile of shit, just to pander to this ‘free to play’ mess for gullible idiots.
😦
agoners.wordpress.com 
The new Killer Instinct for the Xbox One is also going free-to-play, but doesn’t sound like it has such a disatrous business model for competitive players, depending on character balance:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-06-11-microsoft-explains-killer-instinct-reboots-free-to-download-pay-for-more-characters-business-model
So it’s very similar to the Yomi & Puzzle Strike model, which, whilst it isn’t my favourite, it’s at least ok. But only as long as the characters are really well balanced.
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I’ve never understood throwing an incomplete roster out there, companies are relying too hard on the nostalgia-fever of older gamers to fuel their earnings if they don’t care how the impression will come across to a brand new player.
My mega peeve is buying alternate costumes for a fighter.
Might as well turn the whole game into a parody because Chun-Li in a trying-too-hard sexy black dress (I can’t even say I don’t mind leering because her model is so atrociously unhot with those plumber hands and the peasant-level face) feels ridiculous and breaks my sense of player-character immersion. I can’t help feeling that too much customizing left to the player blands out the fighter, and the only thing connecting a certain moves list with a character face is the limit of said moves list compared to any other fighter in the game.
Otherwise might as well pick a weevil or a glass of milk to carry out Kikoushous in the battle field.
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Thanks for your comment Maki! 😀
Your point about character costumes diluting, well, the actual character of the characters is a very good one. This criticism has been leveled at Team Fortress 2 too. Where once the characters were iconic just from their silhouette, they are now just a generic parade of silly hats.
Customisation can definitely go way too far!
An extra problem, especially in FGs but it could affect other games too, is being able to visualise hitboxes and hurtboxes when characters have increasingly bizarre costumes. TBH I’ve not seen a case where this gets too bad in my experience just from costumes though. Where it has affected me though is in the bizarre unreadable moves of some fighters… for example I find certain characters in Blaz Blue really impossible to play with or against – I can’t even figure out what’s going on watching it either! 🙂
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