Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to play a fighting game against a player using a DLC character you don’t own
Good. The alternative is inseparable from providing everyone the whole roster, but pretending each character is worth twelve fucking dollars, so a generic fighting game is somehow worth five times what any sane person would pay up-front for one game.
The counterproposal is just selling the god-damned game, with all the fffucking characters. Or adding free shit as incentive to attract new customers and retain existing players. Or selling an honest-to-god sequel or expansion, instead of charging expansion kinds of money for the bare minimum of content.
live games have running costs in general.
Then they should charge a subscription or die off.
People make rational spending decisions about subscriptions. They're not popular. People don't like that sort of thing, when you treat them honestly and fairly, instead of tricking them.
I have negative patience for the idea that a company spending money justifies whatever horseshit monetization scheme they propose. As if, because they've already blown half a billion dollars, and intend to keep burning more, that makes it okay to charge eight actual dollars for an imaginary hat. Fuck that noise. If your company has ongoing costs - announce ongoing fees. Don't play stupid games about tricking a fraction of players into spending their whole paycheck.
you’re only paying an access license fee
Fuck that and fuck anyone who told you that. You own things that you buy. That's what the money was for. The first sale doctrine knocked this shit down, an entire century ago, and it's only through corruption and nuh-uh-ing that software has retained any form of special consideration. If I bought Peter Jackson's King Kong on HD-DVD and King King The Game Of The Movie for Xbox 360, I own both equally. Whatever text is written inside to pretend otherwise is meaningless. I own that text, too.
If you believe any mumbo-jumbo saying otherwise then you should demand its immediate repeal. You should be morally opposed to its continued existence. Defend your basic right to own products.
there is no requirement to have immediate access to all content in a game
THEN WHAT DOES IT FUCKING MEAN TO BUY THE GODDAMN GAME?
Even subscription MMOs pull this shit! Games that have obviously covered their ongoing costs, for twenty years straight, are double-dipping out of naked greed. Nobody's objections matter. The abuse is worth more than whatever dent could be made by people rightly saying, fuck this abuse.
standalone, offline gaming has its own market
Those games have this too.
Were you not listening?
This shit is in FLAGSHIP FRANCHISE, SEVENTY-DOLLAR, SINGLE-PLAYER GAMES. It costs almost nothing to add. The backlash barely matters, because some fucks will lurch out to defend it. The marketing value of 'we won't rob you!' is dwindling, and again, can become a lie after you bought it.
Counting on media literacy to stop direct manipulation for profit is a failure to acknowledge how any marketing has ever worked. Have you seen reality lately? Educating the rubes never fucking works, because the people manipulating them for direct monetary gain are better at tricking them than you could ever be at convincing them they have been tricked.