Veloxt, stop it, he's relatively new to how the culture within FGC works, give him a break.
So he's complaining about season 1 pass, huh. As massive FGC and ASW fan myself, you're surprisingly getting longer end of the stick. Because 5 characters are way less than something like 25 characters in TAG or just constant rerelease of same game like GGXX. And even then TAG and GG are way more worth the price than Capcom FGs like Street Fighter or MvC, it's pretty sweet deal. Not to mention they're way more fun to see and has way more thing to bite with because of extremely unique game mechanics and archetypes that are used to other FGs to this day like random drop or frame trap characters, they also pioneered the AFG genre, which is more than enough evidence that you're getting quality stuff. They aren't Satan like EA, they're one of the best Anime games publishers around the market.
The reason why not just ASW but also the entirety of FGC (yes the entirety of fighting game community) is doing season pass, even in the first season is because they need money to support the tournaments and themselves because FGC is pretty underground though I admit some of them are pretty annoying like SFV and start of TAG. Imagine if you don't have EVO this year, it's living nightmare. Same with Combo Breaker. And Aniclash. You need tournaments because the main meat of your game isn't the game itself, it's the tournaments that comes from the game. And you sure will lose your audience and your game will eventually rot if there's no tournaments, hell, one of the reason why MvCI is dead. Some games are alive literally because of money, the SFV world tour and SF are alive because of the prize, everybody won't give a shit when they'll not get money because the game's meta ******* sucks. Everyone's ******* unga bunga.
Game without season pass will also die pretty quickly because people aren't getting new stuff. Am I right Melty Blood?
And I don't get that why it isn't worth it, even after all that. One of the main appeal of FGC is that you can play it forever once you bought it, you can play it for months and still you're a scrub, you need years to get good and eventually become a celebrity within FGC if you have a chance, so the amount of investment you can give is extremely long, with constantly changing meta after decades even without patch. 11 characters are many if you count them by what will be their playstyle, you can get a great meta with only 5 or even pretty generous, 8.
And not being a "good fighting game" is false I would say when I looked at the gameplay. Though the gameplay is pretty old school, it's pretty sweet, neutral based gameplay that will be the rival of
Under Night In-Birth.
Finally, Arc Sys aren't greedy, they give every franchise of theirs a chance, even if they're flopped like XBlaze and other VNs, and they're top quality. Better than SNK, Capcom or Bandai. They're one of the most creative FGC companies around, if not the best. Season pass is just necessary to keep the game float, that's why GG isn't in the line-up this year, where's the new DLC or rerelease ArcSys!?