I get that you put a lot of time and money into replays. I get that feeding me other people’s replays requires a server that needs to be paid for. I get that you want to get paid for the work you’ve done. I do not want to pay to “rent” the ability to view my own replays that are stored locally on my own computer. No other fighting game does this, and it’s not a recurring cost, so recurring revenue makes no sense, and quite frankly just makes me angry. Could I please pay a flat rate to have that functionality forever, for my own replays at least? I’m more likely to drop the game due to being unable to view my replays (besides the one window it gives me post-game, if the server didn’t disconnect first) than I am to pay to rent it.
I also understand that this can’t be done overnight, but I hope you folks consider it. I’m just trying to find a reason to give you money, but I’m not paying for temporary replay functionality.
You can use an empty second player in place of a training mode, but I’d be upset if training mode was locked behind a subscription too. I’m willing to pay money for this feature. I’m not willing to pay it indefinitely where it could disappear. No other fighting game does this. There’s no recurring cost for them to offer my own replays (or there shouldn’t be, unless they specifically designed it that way to keep it subscription based). I generally can’t stand “games as a service”, because they’re often times just calling something a service that’s actually a product. For my own replays, that’s what they’re doing here, and they generally avoided that problem, excluding replays, with the core pack offering. Upsell me $10; I don’t care. Just let me keep them forever.
They’ve added new features, cosmetics, characters and more since launch and I imagine they’ll continue working on it if they’re able to make it sustainable, so they absolutely are providing a service.
You can argue that letting you watch replays doesn’t have any ongoing costs for them, but it probably does: your replays aren’t just sitting on your hdd – the replays are on their servers and your replays serve as content for RankedTV and FriendTV. Maintaining those systems and paying for the storage and bandwidth to host them does cost money. Letting you store and play replays locally, outside the existing replay system, would cost them money to implement as an extra feature. I think the replay system they went with is really cool – above and beyond what most games do.
But for the sake of argument let’s assume they were just storing replays locally and putting a paygate in front of letting you watch them. Even then, I don’t think it necessarily makes sense to argue that it’s only ok to charge for features that have no ongoing costs. What content make sense to charge for and what content cost money to maintain often don’t line up cleanly. They release new characters for free even though they take a lot of money to develop – they have to make up for that by charging for other things.
I also want to say that, as a consumer, it does make sense to try and get the most for your money – and if we’re talking AAA games I agree 100%. But when we’re dealing with indie games, which more often than not struggle to make enough to sustain development, I think it’s worth thinking about it a little differently. Your money isn’t just getting you in-game content, it’s increasing the chance that the game you enjoy will still be here tomorrow.
Value is value, regardless of whether or not it’s indie or AAA. I expect FighterZ to have rollback netcode, and I expect Fantasy Strike to have replays that aren’t locked behind a subscription. I’d be fine paying for a subscription that fed me other people’s replays. I’m not fine paying for a subscription that gets me my own. I don’t care that they’re offering me every character for free, because quite frankly, I don’t see it as a problem to pay for extra characters; I see it as a problem to pay for replays. They can claim all they want that they made the better decision, but I can still disagree, given what it cost me in return. They don’t need you to apologize for them. They need to convince me that what they’re offering is worth the money. I love that there’s a good, populated ranked mode in this game with rollback netcode. I hate that in order to learn from my mistakes, I’d need to rent some functionality from them that will disappear when their servers go offline. So for that, I’d rather just play any other fighting game.
You don’t, though. Again, you can use something like Shadowplay to archive your own replays. You should also check to see if you can watch the replay from the post match screen for the match you just played – I have FS+ so I can’t test, but I think I remember being able to watch the replay from there (just not favorite it).
I get that you want this feature, but I mean, I personally hope they work on other stuff and I’m glad to support the game and hope to see more characters in the future. There’s lots of people asking for a lot of features and the devs have limited resources – again, this isn’t AAA.
AAA has nothing to do with it. Skullgirls lets you watch your own replays. And not even AAA charges you extra for it. (Don’t give the Tekken devs any ideas, because I’m sure they would.) Again, I think the FS devs made entirely the wrong bet by releasing characters for free and making replays a subscription feature.
Fantasy Strike’s replay features are way beyond what Skull Girls has. Skull Girls has no replay feature at all on consoles and on PC you have to edit launch options to enable it because it’s hidden by default. It’s just local files so no syncing across your different clients, no RankedTV, FriendTV, no ability to search replays for specific matchups.
So don’t imply Fantasy Strike is lazy here when they went above and beyond the competition. The one usecase you’re after, archiving your own replays for free, can be solved by you just recording them – there are free programs to let you do this. Did you test the post match screen?
It’s not that the devs of FS aren’t capable of doing this, it’s about priorities – Fantasy Strike prioritized more impactful features like being able to watch an endless stream of specific matchups at any rank you specify. Since users are already more than capable of recording their replays for free using commonly available software, I’d assume that’s not a big priority. I personally hope FS devs focus on more important things that can’t be easily replicated by free software running in the background.
Hope one of these solutions works for you so you can view your replays.
I didn’t say they were lazy. I said I disagreed with the decision to make my own local replays a subscription, and I’d be willing to pay a flat fee to have them forever. Yes, I’ve seen replays from the post match screen, but the user experience on that is so poor that I’d better hope I’ve learned every lesson I can from it before it’s gone forever. I’m not really interested in playing a game that makes the user experience so poor in this regard when I could just play other games that do it right.
