Soulcalibur: Lost Swords offers refreshing honesty with its battles

Soulcalibur: Lost Swords has a “pay-to-win” model. That’s straight from producer Masaaki Hoshino! Speaking to Siliconera, Hoshino explained why the free-to-play PlayStation 3 game has no multiplayer despite being the offshoot of a fighting game series with a strong versus component.

The reason that we went singleplayer…well, originally, we were thinking about having a multiplayer option, but because we’re going with a pay-to-win model, we were worried that by having online multiplayer, for all the new users that would be coming in experiencing the game for the first time, they might be immediately deterred by fighting against opponents who had superior equipment and gear – and we didn’t want to have that kind of negative impact on new players.

In the singleplayer experience, having a pay-to-win structure won’t impede the player’s experience with the game.

At least he was honest! Based on the framework of Soul Calibur V, Soulcalibur: Lost Swords was released on the PlayStation 3 in April. It was received poorly by fans of the series due to its lack of multiplayer and its focus on microtransactions to remove gameplay timers.