Details of the long-awaited March update for Street Fighter V were released on the Haunts Capcom Blog on Thursday. This update will be spread over two days, March 28th and March 30th, delivering a variety of new content and fixes. The most prominent features include a Challenge mode, the In-Game shop and the first new DLC character Alex, returning from Street Fighter 3rd Strike. This has come at the end of a month-long wait for news after the March update was initially revealed by on the Capcom Unity blogs and Steam Page on the 4th of March with no confirmed date.
The update will be addressing a few of the concerns that have drawn a lot of flack from fans arguing the game was released in an unfinished state. The 28th of March will see the release of four main features. These features are the challenge modes and tutorials, Trials, Online rematch option and Battle Lounge improvements. The challenge modes offer beginner, intermediate, advanced, and character specific tutorials that cover a huge variety of fighting game fundamentals for starting players. The beginner tutorials will teach basic movement options, attack types, chip damage etc. The intermediate will teach the player about concepts such as invincibility frames, cross-up and anti airs. The Advanced tutorials will cover frame advantage, priority etc. Finally, the character tutorials will take you through 16 character specific lessons, what this will exactly cover is not specified. The trial modes, as with Street Fighter 4 will feature a range of combo trials for each character; although Street Fighter V will only feature 16 trials per character as opposed to Street Fighter 4's 24 on release.
The online rematch option allows players to request a rematch in ranked or casual matches in order to make the match a best 2/3. Finally, we have the Battle lounge improvements in which battle lounges will introduce 8 person lobbies and match spectating. There have been issues with the battle lounges since launch, including connectivity issues and some battle lounges being un-joinable. Whilst these problems haven't completely been fixed, Capcom has made the Battle Lounge experience a lot more bearable in previous updates and these new features will look to continue this.
The 30th of March will see the introduction of Alex and his story content, the opening of the in-game shop and the ability to spend the in game earnable currency 'Fight Money' on new characters, outfits, colors, titles etc. However, the paid 'Zenny' currency and the paid-DLC store has been delayed until April. With DLC characters costing 100,000 fight money, those more casual players who don't want to grind out the in game currency might opt to pay for the character with Zenny. As the shop has been delayed, Capcom has opted to make Alex free for a trial period until the launch of the Zenny store.
In addition to the new content, Capcom is addressing a few bug fixes and balance changes such as fixing instances in which players would not gain EXP and removing option selects for throws and jabs coming on the 28th. A list of the bug fixes and balance changes can be viewed here.
Finally, Capcom has decided to give away both Ryu and Chun li's story costumes for free on March 30th as a way of 'saying thanks for everyone's patience and understanding'. Additionally, those who purchased the season pass will have access to the premium costumes of the DLC characters until the Zenny shop is launched.
