More bad news for solo players who liked firing up the game once a week to earn FM: the daily challenges in AE seem to give less FM for completing the (it seems disappointingly exact) same challenges than in Vanilla SFV.
We used to be guaranteed a minimum 5,000FM per week for the mission that involves playing a stage on Versus and knocking a NPC to the ground (or firing up a character story to do a certain fight) but now that has been reduced to 2,500FM. (And before one asks: the other missions, like performing a combo 10x or playing a casual match, still give out the same relatively low amount of FM so they don't help compensate either. Nor is there a Golden Shadaloo Soldier in Extra Battle so far.)
I'll be branded as "entitled" most likely for speaking my mind, but man, for all the praise this new edition has been getting, I for one feel like they took out pretty much all incentives for solo players like me who actually stuck with the game because they found fulfillment in firing it up once a week to grind FM and character Exp through (mostly tedious) single player modes and dailies in order to gradually save up for a new character and repeat the process again using the same methods, all the while waiting for promised new single player modes that would offer a better alternative.
So far, Extra Battle has not become a good alternative at all due to it costing FM but not giving any back yet, and worse of all, nor has the Arcade Mode I have been waiting for since day 1. I strongly feel that the Arcade Mode should have given you at least some character Exp as a reward for actually getting more experienced with a character by fighting multiple opponents in each path. I mean, you used to get friggin' FM and still get Exp for watching a demonstration or completing a far shorter and easier character story so it makes no sense to me in terms of economic consistency why fighting multiple opponents in Arcade Mode does not increase a character's experience points so we'd have at least some additional incentive beyond collecting (imo often ugly) art to complete all paths with all characters and earn FM via levelling-up. (And no, this would not have to be infinitely farmable if they'd implement it like all the other single player modes where you only get Exp (and FM in Vanilla SFV) after completing a mode the first time per character, so that is not a reason to defend this decision imo.)
Maybe my perspective is not at all the common one amongst those that stuck with the game all the way up to AE but hopefully I'm not completely alone in my disappointment when comparing Vanilla SFV to AE. For AE to finally deliver on a substantial single player mode that no longer awards FM or even Exp is just a big bummer after 2 years of grinding.
