That's exactky what they are doing. Granted the game has good amount of content and some transactions you can buy with in game earning currency but even Ryus og white costume you need to pay real cash for. I don't like that.
No, you can unlock for free in the World Tour mode the 2nd costume (each one comes with 10 colors) for all characters, which for the returning characters it's their classic nostalgia costume, as in the case of Ryu his OG white costume and without beard.
This weekend I unlocked the costume of half of the cast, all the ones with the pink bar full:
They get unlocked when in World Tour that character becomes your master and you reach the bond level 100 with the master. The fastest way I found to quickly boost bond level it's to give the master multiple times their favorite gift, which can be bought in certain locations (
explained in this table), no need to find the gifts by fighting random people in the world tour mode.
And a quick way to get in-game cash to buy the gifts, in addition to normally play the game (it's part of the loot), it's to sell in the stores part of the loot you got and won't use, including clothes that you won't wear for stats or look, or consumables you don't use, or items that only exist to be sold. There are also the 'jobs', which are in most cases inspired by the bonus stages minigames from SF1, SF2, SF3, etc, and give you a good chunk of cash.
I achieved it playing normally the World Tour mode, which I almost completed including most secondary and optional quests in around 35 hours. I estimate that with 45-50 hours you'll be able to complete all the main, secondary and optional stuff in the World Tour include maxing your bond with all characters:
But if not interested in the story mode and learning the lore of the game and its characters, or to create a great looking avatar for Battle Hub with your favorite moves from different characters, and you choose instead to play World Tour only to unlock the costumes, each Master/character gets unlocked in different points of the main story so I'd suggest you to stick to the main story quests (a few of them require you to do certain specific secondary one to be activated) until unlocking the character you want.
Reviewers said they completed the World Tour in 15-18 hours, so you'd be able to unlock almost most characters in 10-14 hours of World Tour play or even less and some costumes.
I've been leveling up as Ryu as a master and giving him gifts so I should get it soon than.
I suggest you to use
this table to know which is the favorite gift of each master and where to buy it.
The gifts that aren't the favorite one of that character raise the bond in 1 or 2 levels. The favorite one raises it in 5 levels. So sell all the stuff you won't use to get extra cash and buy the required gift in enough quantity to reach level 100.
Why is so many character from previous street fighter game missing? To be sold as dlc latter? I am not pleased
To include way over 100 characters in a fighting game, specially at launch would be too expensive to develop, too difficult to balance, and too difficult for players to learn.
So this is why brand new fighting games start with around 16 characters or so, to keep them polished and allowing people to learn them well. And then from that they keep adding slowly more characters to give players time to learn them.
Regarding the returning vs new characters balance, 2 thirds are returning characters and 1 third are brand new ones even if some of them are heavily inspired by previous ones or the mixture of a couple of them.