What is the point of Fight Money/In-Game Currency?
This is a serious question. There is no trolling intended herein.
And yet, the rest of your post seems like you already have your opinion formed on this matter regardless if you know the system or not.
I say that it exists solely as a means of a flimsy guise of false justification for paid DLC options. It is there for vested parties to point at and denounce those who decry extortive DLC practices, as being lazy or wrong. It is the worst, vilest application of Sophistry I've seen in marketing a product - much less an incomplete product, in a very, very long time. At least FTP games are honest oxymorons.
True told, SFV purchasers were hit with a multifaceted Blitzkrieg of marketing psychological assaults, day [minus] one. It is without a doubt a litmus test, seeking the bounds of consumer tolerance within such a subset. In this regard, it is an unmitigated, staggering success.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect to be gleaned from it, is how much further future selling power initial dissatisfaction may produce, if coached and cultivated in a certain manner/"the proper way".
I am asking each and every one of you to ask yourselves, honestly, the why of its existence. Is it for you? Is it for fun? Is it to be fair? Why is it acquired in the manner that it is? WHY does it exist?
Everything is explained on the OP, but I will expand it a little bit with my own explanation.
Usually, with FGs, we had to pay for full version of the same game in order to stay up to date. It came with new characters, new balancing and, sometimes, new modes. That was how it was done before and this is what gave birth to SF 2 multiple versions.
And this was still done recently. Want to keep up to date with BlazBlue ? Pay $40 for it's extend version. Don't want the extend version ? You will pay $40 for the next installment that may or may not contain significant changes.
Now in the DLC era, the first thing that happened was to allow owners of the previous version to download the update. SSFIV was a prime example, where, each update was $15 and came up with new characters and a new balancing.
If you wanted all the characters, it's $15.
If you wanted a single character, it's $15.
If you want just the balancing patch, it's $15.
Value here can change from terrible to really good, depending if you want the new characters or not. And by Capcom data, which I do not have right now, it would split the user base online between those who had the latest version and those who didn't payed for it but still played the game.
This is the model that was recently used for Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator 2.
This model didn't worked very well because it splits the user base so now we have most companies offering balance patches for free and you can pay for the DLC characters. The option to pay varies from game to game but almost all of them have a season pass and I remember some of them having the option to buy a single character.
If you play competitively or even casually, you will settle for 2-3 characters to use form the entire roster. You might use a lot more, but 2-3 characters will be the ones that will consume most of your game time.
If a season pass offers you 6 characters, there's a high chance you won't be using half of them in the long run. If you end up using only one or two, buying them individually would be a much better proposition that the entire season pass. People who are more attracted to the Season Pass are the ones that want all characters, either to learn the match-up or to make them available for offline play to friends, tournaments and etc.
Taking MK X, Tekken 7 and KoF XIV as example. They all offer DLC characters in a bundle or individually (Tekken is still out in this regard) and each costs around $5-$6 without the bundle. Let's see some costs:
T7 Season Pass - $25 for two characters and Tekken Bowl
KoF - $20 for four characters. $6 for each individually
MK X - XL package is $25 for 9 characters. $30 if you bought the packages individually. $5 for each individually.
SF V - $30 for 6 characters + 6 premium costumes. $6 for each character individually. $4 for each costume.
SF V isn't that far in terms of DLC pricing. I might be mistaken but I think BB/GG were $5 per character too and those ones didn't had any season passes.
You can realize that there's a gap between those who want few DLC characters and those who want the entire season pass. This is where the FM system comes in. When you want pieces of DLC instead of the whole thing.
Want one character ? 100k FM OR $6.
Want one stage ? 70k FM OR $4.
I left the OR to make understandable that it is a choice the person has. The system isn't made to give everything for free either. I can get all characters from S2 with FM, however, it's obvious that it will be much harder to get FM for S3-S4 and so on. That is me who plays in a competitive level, however, I just bought Kolin and Abigail in this season because those were the only two that interested me. Didn't bought Akuma, have no plans to buy Ed and I can keep that FM (and a whole lot that I still have yet to gain) for future characters that I want to play. Without spending another cent in the game.
SFV has a serious flaw being overlooked - unlike most F2P games there's no way to test characters before buying them. No weekly rotation.
This puts a sour feeling on grinding for FM or even spending real money if you aren't sure you're actually going to like maining a character.
Aside from the fact that survival mode is pretty vile no matter how you spin it, the weekly 5000FM from the silly puzzle isn't that great IMO. Encouraging people to log in once a week for 2 minutes isn't the same as properly designed dailies and quests that provide a steady drip of currency for primary gameplay modes.
The ad copy "earn everything for free! No money required!" doesn't mesh with the reality that the game's economy and features are lacking in utility and design. This is basic stuff from the world of F2P games - and Capcom basically made a $60 product designed like a F2P game client. I can't blame anyone for feeling the game is off-putting or unattractive.
If you're just logging in the game for two minutes to get FM, you won't use it to buy and play new characters either. I make daily logins in some mobile games, but I also take some time to actually play them. Getting free gems for cards in Yu-gi-oh would be freaking useless if I didn't played the card game. Getting free gems in FF BE would be useless if I didn't played the RPG part where I use my characters. And getting almost free FM in SF V has no meaning if you're not playing the game either.
And, for S1, there's the story mode where you could try every character (Juri and Urien even before they were released) and there's a rumor for a second story mode which will probably let you test every S2 character. And I don't think any other fighter does that.