How DLC Can Ruin Fighting Games: Pitfalls of DLC Fighters 

7:50 On Min Min, it should be noted she was nerfed a shit ton since her release. It’s a big reason she isn’t seen as broken.

Man its crazy how 5 of the 12 dlc characters are top tiers

I really don’t like Kazuya’s design at all, he’s just so polarising. He’s both too weak and too strong and it’s not really fun for either player because if you’re Kazuya you just struggle trying to get in and if you’re fighting him you make one mistake and get punished severely.

The biggest reason imo as to why the DLC characters are really strong is simply because the base game characters aren't given enough. I hope the next game has a smaller roster but have every character, new and old, have the same effort and design as the DLCs in Ultimate, or at least the ones in Fighters Pass 2

I heard an explanation of why dlc is often so strong, and it was that by the time it comes out, the devs know very well how the game is played. Before it's released, they have a limited amount of playtestung, and don't completely jnow how strong different mechanics will be.

Steve is broken, but he's still only a small fraction of Brawl Meta Knight's power lol

I really like just how huge Smash is now, but I often miss the days when Smash was a celebration of Nintendo's history and not a competition to add the biggest-name non-Nintendo character as DLC.

Third party DLC fighters can make players from other brands jump right in, but they can also be the perfect anomalies like a nightmare to someone’s dream. There’s a difference between making them worth their buck and giving them so many options and power boosts while leaving the initial low tier fighters with so little.

What's more hilarious is that people wanted Steve to be in Smash and then realized how broken he is and now he's banned at some tourneys

Cold sweats from being a smash 4 Kirby main fighting pre patch bayo. Good times 😂

Great vid! I thought it was really cool how you not only talked about Smash, but also numerous other FGCs. You were so right about all that was said. Mad respect for you bro!

KoF13's one of my favorite examples of this phenomenon: There was a set of DLC characters so good (Especially Mr.Karate) people started joking that they were pay to win characters because of how the meta warped around them. Great video, by the way!

Im ok with dlc characters as long as it doesn't become pay to win

0:18 Darth Vader and Yoda in Soul Calibur IV were the first DLC characters in a fighting game 2008 isn’t that long ago

I like this video, however, as a competitor, I feel like there's some level of misinformation on your description of the fighters' strenghts and what makes them as good as they are

MK11 Player here, my main was joker, spawn, and robocop, all characters in game can be good if done right, although they are the ones I have the combos memorized, with them, I am essentially a monster on the battlefield, without them, I have to resort to Baraka

adding Steve was an obvious mistake

I hate Kazuya more than Steve. He all of his attacks deal more than 12 damage, he’s heavy as hell, and worst of all he has an invincible dash. Oh and on FD, he’s unstoppable.

I feel the powercreep in smash (and other long running franchises) is starting to show the real issue of the philosophy regarding balance within the games. Let's balance the entire cast just to add new characters that feel like they skipped past that process and for fans of older characters it feels like they been abandonded. You don't need gimmicks to be strong just look at Sonic being bland as fuck but the "spectacle" of newer characters just show how poorly they are doing the 3rd parties in terms of Gameplay.

My man did you just say flaucet 💀

DLC characters also have the extreme benefactor of being worked on one at a time. Its not like Ultimate developing a base roster of 70+ characters at once. No specific character gets hyper focused attention. DLCs get their entire moveset and all their gimmicks mixed in after, so it feels strange. Another big thing too, is not only do the DLC characters get more attention, the base roster characters who evens tood a chance usually get nerfed to oblivion as well. I wish smash in particular would just buff characters and leave others as is.

DLC can be handled the right way but don't make them overpower juggernauts anyways amazing vid honest ❤.

You really glossed over some the nerfs like Pichu and Minmin

Akuma Actually isnt a DLC fighter in Tekken he is in the Base game and even part of the lore

To be honest, yeah. All of Fighters Pass 2 especially completely threw off the balance of the game and I really hate that. Min Min has stupid range that invalidate 80% of recoveries in the game, Steve ruins the game entirely with how he can do practically anything he feels like, Sephiroth has some of the most oppressive defensive options in the game and can kill you in 3 hits if you aren’t careful especially with OWA, Pyra & Mythra’s only weakness is recovery but they excel at almost everything else so well that it hardly matters, Kazuya is far too polarizing to enjoy effectively but equal parts can make you explode off of one interaction (not to mention his armour is one thing, but his outright invincibility on some moves is genuinely bad game design), and Sora - while PROBABLY the weakest of the lot - still has insane Nair loops when he gets in, has a busted recovery and has some of the best edgeguarding in the game. It really sucks that Nintendo didn’t really learn their lesson from Bayonetta in Smash 4, and I can see why it killed interest in the game for many, myself included.

after the same exact thing that happened in smash 4 started to happen in ultimate I've started to believe nintendo does this on purpose so people go to the next new smash game faster when they eventually release; so they never have a situation like melee ever again

DLC Privilege is real folks 😔

Damn its crazy how Honest, Honest Content is.... okay sorry. I had to

drop a hug for ma boi honest content :D

You forgot Kokonoe in Blazblue Chrono Phantasma

dlc isnt a problem inherently. power creep to boost sales of newcomers is

I miss the days when fighting games were released complete, and when balance didn't matter. People just had fun. Super Smash Bros is now a shell of its former self. It's currently catered towards the competitive/Esports community and/or scene.

Nintendo needs to stop this. Did they learn nothing from the death of Smash 4? Also Smash 4 is more visually better than Ultimate.

Keep up the good content my guy but can someone please tell me what the mvc music he used once he started talking about the ultimate characters. I’ve been searching for this song for forever

Except Banjo & Kazooie.. And some people don't think the deserved their spot in Smash... I think the DO! AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN SAY ABOUT IT!

The problem with this reasoning is one: Smash is not a competitive game. There is certainly a very active competitive community, but the structure of the game does not favor that type of play. So yes some of the DLC was a bit broken, but making such a big deal out of it by saying that they ruined a game doesn't make sense

I know we're talking about Smash here but if we're talking about fighting games beside this one....Tekken 7 Akuma (technically, he's a guest star tho) and pre nerf Android 21 in DBFZ, that's all I'm gonna say 💀

Most of Smash's DLC characters are busted. Joker, Terry, and Kazuya are the only ones that aren't super frustrating to fight. I genuinely think they either stopped caring about balance when they started making DLC or they started intentionally making the new characters stronger as an incentive to buy them. Sephiroth and Pyra being the absolute worst offenders.

Piranha plant is underrated, js. I ain’t saying he’s top tier. But gor I don’t think he’s as bad as people feel

While the dlc guys weren't the sole reason I lost interest in Ultimate, they certainly did not help. The best ones feel like they break the game's rules with lame win conditions or the blocks (except Pythra, they're just cracked). Couple that with Covid killing all of my local scenes and the atrocious online and you get a game I just can't justify playing anymore.

Well these characters were actually planned so none of these were just picked randomly, but ofc there will be people upset, tell them to sad atp, cuz thats how it is

I love DLC fighters

Good video an all but that Hero segment on how people viewed the character early on and why he was banned early on is just... Wrong? Am I crazy or was most of the stuff he said in that segment just incorrect or massively stretching the truth?

Let’s GOOOO, As somebody that want’s almost every DLC banned (except for Banjo and Pirahnna plant) i like this. i hate them, i dispise them, they are WAY too broken

Dude you keep putting out bangers. Definitely had to sub.

It's sad how the top two characters in Ultimate are both 3rd party characters. Like, wasn't Smash supposed to be a celebration of Nintendo? :/

This isn't maybe about fighting games, but the same things happens on Pokemon, there are a lot of broken Pokémon now because the developers decide to add just that ability, that move that does like 5 things and no other Pokémon will have, making them from fair to broken

Very even handed take overall. Like the video a ton.

Imagine if Ganondorf was remade as a DLC character

Is anyone else finding the 'humour' of the videos lately a little... Cringe? It feels like Beta64 all over again...

this is what i'm talking about

Pretty sad how dlc fighters always end up becoming meta just because you have to pay for them.

Also Akuma isn't DLC, which is the funny part

I think the problem with wave 2 of smash ultimate wasn't even necessarily the characters being top tier/broken, the problem is that they all have moves/designs that are extremely poorly thought out or unfun to deal with. Minmin is imo one of the worst designed platform fighter characters of all time, steve is steve, sephiroth has some really broken moves and a really unintuitive and dumb wing mechanic, pythra is just generally overtuned and too good at everything, kazuya is full of insanely broken moves and his design is way too polarizing, and sora has an infinite lol

Can we stop paying for dlc and the dlc characters need stop making buff and neaf other characters

9:38 Wait isint sonic second best character? It now outdated sonic is now second on the most recent ultimate tier list

Thats why they do it cuz they don’t care about competitive, they made this clear by stopping tournaments 😂

seph

Personally think ultimate made worse mistakes than smash 4. The gap in what certain characters can do vs what the dlc can do is actually laughable. That includes just how bad the actual choices were. Minmin? Byleth? Who the fuck asked for these characters?

Can we stop paying for dlc and the dlc characters need stop making buff

Banjo's moveset is a crime against humanity, i wish people call out the bad game design as much as they praise the good game design

sephiroth low mid tier tho

Ban Steve and Sonic. There. The rest of the FP2 characters aren't as damaging to Ultimate as those two.

Good thing smash isnt a fighting game , wonder how the meta would change if people played smash like nintendo intended, Also you just started rambling at the end

Banjo, seph and byleth are the only dlcs that don't annoy me.

I like DLC fighters they’re awesome

No offense but his voice makes me feel like he has a stuffy nose

sephiroth is ASS most dissapointing smash character he shoulda been top 5 kinda good but turns out hes like the most mid middle tier

Of all the DLC characters Banjo is the worst and his wonder wing is his $4.99 busted tool.

first