I think it’s possible, even probable, that you already know this, but the pretense that the customization DLC could be considered a ruse, a manipulation, or anything else negative, primarily stems from the idea that we had the reasonable expectation that we would retain most of what was in SoulCalibur V, and then receive more parts on top of that. You were here when the game launched, and one of the biggest disappointments at launch was the lack of unlockable customization parts. It was, and still is, an insult to the customization from the games that came before, and then to find out that the parts we paid for were primarily (at least 80%) the parts that were unlockable in the previous game, it comes across as a big slap in the face.
I agree to some extent that the initial offerings were underwhelming. But this game was made on a budget, and we can't have everything. Personally, I think the community backed them into a corner with the feedback on SCIV and SCV, by getting so huffy about the absence of extensive single player content, even though those games actually had more single player content than all of the previous games in the series; only SCIII had more single player content, and it actually suffered for trying to accomplish too much, resulting in a glitchy, unpolished mess. But most fans don't have nuanced memories for such things, so when SCIV came around all that their brains recognized was "Hey, there's way less single player content here than there was in SCIII. There's way more than SE, SCI, and SCII, but less than SCIII. Let's bitch about it without considering the context for why that might be so." And likewise with SCV: "They still haven't given us as much single player content as in SCIII. Let's make a fuss about it, even though there are many, much more reasonable things to complain about with regard to this game."
So when it came time to reboot the series after the financial flop of SCV, Project Soul (quite reasonably in their view, I'm sure) decided they needed to address these complaints. The result was far too much emphasis put on not one, but two expansive single player campaigns which, despite their size, were still incredibly tedious and underwhelming--largely because Soulcalibur wasn't designed to be taken seriously or to have a tight narrative and Project Soul has no staff particularly well-skilled in storytelling. It is certainly as a direct consequence of that fixation that the initial roster, stage selection, and CaS offerings were underwhelming.
For those who have vociferously defended their decision to focus their energies in that area, I think there is an obligation, if one wishes to be rational, to acknowledge that you can't have your cake and eat it too; the base-game CaS would almost certainly have been in line, in terms of numbers of items, with what we got in the previous two games, had there not been a perceived need to include Libra in addition to Chronicles. People are expecting far too much here of a game that 1) almost didn't get made, it has such a small profile at Namco today, 2) once it was greenlit, was on a tight budget from the start, 3) was apparently developed on a relatively quick timetable, 4) was partly outsourced to external studious, and 5) is just one of Namco's many fighters in a genre for which it is increasingly difficult to turn a profit.
You just can't have everything. There are trade-offs that come with the basic financial realities here. Personally, I think they made all the wrong decisions as to how to balance the amounts of different kinds of content: I would have rather they focused on roster, stages, and CaS to the virtual exclusion of extended single player modes. So when I see people who actually wanted them to focus on single player complaining about the the lack of content in other areas, I wish I could dump a bucket of ice-water over their heads, just so I could be sure I have their full attention when I look them dead in the eyes and say: "Are you f---ing kidding me right now with this!? Your single player fixated faction of the fanbase are the reason for this situation!!"
You are technically correct that we got exactly what we paid for, what was written on the tin, and indeed, even more than was originally promised, but I don’t think there’s a single person here who, pre-launch, read the “100+ customization parts” part of the season pass as buying stuff from the previous games that were unlockable. The implication was that they would be new parts and/or parts from the DLC characters, since we knew Tira’s parts came with her. Call it whatever you want, but I really don’t think “entitled” fits this specific case. They did us wrong, and broke a barrier of trust that they had before, that creation mode would always be stellar and evolving. It definitely walked back a fair amount for this game, and I, and I’m sure others, have far less hope for SoulCalibur VII going forward, since they burned us with SoulCalibur VI. The next move is theirs, to earn the trust back.
I can only speak for myself, but I personally never had any expectation that the DLC customization packs would be mostly new content. I had no expectation either way, but I think if someone had put the question to me, I would have expected much of it would be returning content. There were four previous CaS games in the series, and each one shared a substantial amount of returning items. Not 80%, certainly--and I trust your guesstimate on that figure, as you are the closest thing we have to a CaS archivist--but with a library that size, I think it's to be expected that each additional game will increasingly return to that well to resurrect that content, some of which will be missed. Also, not for nothing, but I still don't see why legacy CaS items instead of new ones are somehow inferior, let alone offensive--nobody has yet explained this in a way that makes any kind of logical sense to me.
I just don't see how they broke trust, slapped anyone in the face, burned us, or did us wrong. The CaS editor has increased functionality this go-around, and so has evolved in that sense, and the amount of CaS items (while not where I would have hoped it would be, pre-launch) is admirable enough considering that PS clearly felt they had no choice but to deliver big time in another content area, despite the tight budget and relatively short development time. They delivered a significantly larger amount of content than they promised when asking people to take a leap of faith on the season pass, and yet somehow (but unfortunately, rather predictably) people are
still whinging about being short-changed by the packs. If I were a PS advocate within Namco, I would be so disheartened by this kind of behaviour. I'd feel like there was just no way I could win with us, the supposedly devoted fans of the series. I'd feel like PS focused the base game where fans were demanding and then over-delivered on their DLC promises and still people are complaining with the value they got out of either of those products. And I'd probably never go to bat to push for SCVII when the time comes. Thank goodness most of those individuals do not speak English well enough to know just how aggressively bitchy the western fanbase is being.
But the worst part of this overwhelming, almost willfully dedicated, negativity is that it operates as a cooler on the solution to the perceived problem: the more people create/spread an impression of poor value in the current DLC, the poorer it performs and, bit by bit, the lower the prospects become for future releases that would augment the roster, stages, and CaS content. Namco is going out on a limb to explore a new model that theoretically could give us some of the most expansive games their fighter franchises have ever known, but if what we are seeing here is indicative of the general response, they could be forgiven for deciding its not worth the effort. Personally, I don't think "entitled" even begins to describe the response of the hardcore fanbase here--the expectations of what we will get for our money are
way out of touch with reality at this point.
