Multiversus, the Warner Bros. crossover platform fighter starring Batman, Shaggy, Arya Stark and more, is out for real this time after going into a year-long hibernation. Now that it’s back and out of beta, the fighting game community is assessing if it could have the longevity of fighting games like Super Smash Bros. And some have already realized that smaller local tournaments, which often keep the game’s scene alive, could have trouble running Multiversus. That’s because, one significant change to the free-to-play model may make it prohibitively expensive to host Multiversus tournaments.
Over on the Multiversus subreddit, fans are raising issues with the game’s character select restrictions for local matches. In short, you can now only use characters you’ve unlocked through in-game currency in offline fights. This wasn’t the case in the original beta (you could play any character in offline mode) and has diminished some fans’ excitement about the game’s return. Unlocking a character in Multiversus costs 1000 “Gleamium” in-game currency or 3000 Fighter currency, which can either be earned through grinding, or bought with real money for $10. Multiversus only has a handful of characters playable for free at a time, and they rotate.
“Stuff like this is a nightmare for tournament play,” Reddit user Dr_PuddingPop wrote. “The big ones can afford to buy all the characters for a ton of consoles, but any grass roots ones will have trouble.”
Some fans defended the decision, claiming Multiversus needs to make money somehow and with the free-to-play model, this is just the nature of the beast.
“Everybody is so entitled these days,” 420BiaBia wrote. “11 years ago Killer Instinct innovated with what is exactly the same character monetization and rotating trial characters and was praised. Now everyone expects every F2P game to give all core content for free upon start up. This game needs to make money to survive.”
This change has taken the wind out of some fans’ sails and made some hesitant to return at all. Especially now that it’s become impossible to try characters out before paying for them.
“Wait, characters are locked during local shared screen pvp,” Reddit user ThaBrownie wrote. “Because that’s all I play Multiversus for. All the hype thrown out of the window for me.”
Multiversus has only been back online for a day, so it’s entirely possible these changes could be reverted in a future update. Some fans are suggesting that those who are unhappy with these changes let Warner Bros. and developer Player First Games know.
“Send feedback,” EntertainerStill7495 wrote. “It’s a live service game so there’s a possibility they’ll listen when there’s enough outrage about it. Features like this should be at launch, there’s no question about that. But leaving feedback could eventually be beneficial if they decide to listen.”
Kotaku reached out to Warner Bros. and Player First Games for comment on the situation and will update the story if we hear back.
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