Personally, I think that the best way to improve the new player experience with Fighting Games is to make story mode a tutorial. A real campaign, with custom-made ai enemies that are specifically designed to teach mechanics and concepts. Something like the boss fights in Red Earth and the platforming challenges in Them's Fighting Herds, with a game structure similar to Metal Gear Rising, where every boss is designed to test one skill specifically
@@jeremyhall2727 Except it isn't practicing, it is learning. The same way you learn to play Super Mario Bros throughout the levels and not by reading a bestiary to know how you can kill the enemies.
@@yohamida3624 practice is learning dude. Almost every fighting game has a bloody practice mode. You can set the enemy ai to do whatever you please. I practice in super Mario bros. The first time I played it; I used up all my lives learning the basics. Not playing to win but playing to learn the in & outs. And memorizing where the enemy placement was. Replaying the same stage 3 times. Touching the enemy on purpose to see how big is the hit box for all of them. The bestiary was my sister & her friends when I got to the later stages. They already beat the game like ten times. Don't dumb down my fighting games just because some people are bad at them. They can go play something else. Fighting games have a option for easy. If they still can't win on easy; then fighting games just isn't for them. My four year old family member beat fighting games on easy 😒 not everyone has to be good at everything. They need to realize that.
Probably the best onboarding I've seen in a fighting game is Them's Fightin' Herds' story mode. Most enemies you fight are nonplayable characters that teach you concepts like spacing, high/low blocking, and anti-airs, with one of the early bosses even teaching you left/right mixups. In addition, these NPCs aren't characters, so it can kill off these characters left and right since they're just cannon fodder. Finally, other characters within the story mode are used as bosses, with parts of their fight where they're turned up to 11 to teach you specifics about matchups, like the Velvet boss fight teaching you about how to deal with zoners. Onboarding with story mode is possibly the best way to get players into a game because it's a safe space where new players can mess around with the mechanics, not to mention it's something purely single-player experiences do to resounding success.
I agree on about everything you said, EXCEPT that league specifically mastered onboarding. League has always sucked at that, and its literally just the equivalent of the fighting game that tosses you into online. The new player experience is hell and the only way to make it better is with online guides and friends to yell at you.
Yeah, I remember that the game taught me what items are, and what the shop is/what gold is. Then, it just threw me into a match(granted, a bot match). I think that both LoL and Fighting Games need to be better with onboarding.
The difference is that league has a lot more players than almost any fighting game has ever had, with that amount of people you are much more likely to be matchmade with people who equally have no idea what theyre doing and thus games will feel more even and enjoyable.
There were a couple of "easy inputs, easy to learn"-Fighting games before. But never by a huge ass company with unlimited budget and a game director who already showed that he knows what he's doing. While I'm kinda salty that, out of all devs out there, Riot might be the one to bring new players into the Fighting game genre, I'm atleast a little bit intrigued. Who knows? Maybe it'll be actually good?
He literally showed footage of Xrd while complaining that games dont make an effort to make inputs easier, when Xrd literally has stylish mode for people who don't want to play with traditional inputs.
@@Zadamanim Stylish mode doesn't really solve anything. If you just wanna mash buttons then yeah sure, stylish mode can satisfy you. But the video is more about keeping the people above that level, and most fighting games are terrible at that
Yeah, resources can take you so far. I was hoping for something more unique, when really this is akin to BBTAG with even simpler inputs and 3 days of hitstun per hit.
@@kidbuumer4780 You can make a deep game but you can't force people to dive in. Many people pop in a game expecting the game to entertain them. They can't understand the fun in training mode when the umoving dummy is doing absolutely nothing to entertain you. Simplifying button inputs will never make the depth more approachable because it's up to YOU to dive in.
The problem with fighting games and the League community is that they actually have to take accountability when they lose, since they have no team to blame.
I don't understand why people keep bringing up this "they can't blame their teammates anymore" thing. You realise the opposite is also true right? Your opponent can't cry for someone to bail him out when he's losing and you can focus on yourself without spending 40 minutes arguing with some waste of life. Being in a game where it's just me and my opponent without 8 other idiots getting in the way sounds like heaven to me
Honestly I like the gameplay but playing the game is a miserable experience because it means dealing with a whole team of League players and I would rather not spend my free time getting whined at by people who take everything far too seriously
Been playing for years, the annoying and frustrating thing is not the game mechanics but the team, it's too AFK or feeder sensitive that the game is unwinnable >90% of the time, >98% of the cases on average. Now that I think about it, I used to love MOBAS cause of the concept of everyone starting weak every match contrary to MMORPG's(that used to be my fave genre) where someone already had been playing is already far ahead on average. This taught me to appreciate games with saved progression even more, that I even find slow grinding games more enjoyable, much better than waiting 20 mins of average >90% guaranteed defeat. Fighting games may be a 1v1 thing but atleast no teams who just randomly AFK's or feeds.
GodHand is a good argument for disguising your fighting game tutorial as a beat em up campaign. everything is there, space management, whiff punishes, movement teching. Godhand also lets the scaling dificulty and singleplayer design act as a safe playground. there is the one, itty bitty issue of fighting a real human has an entire different flow and mindset than fighting an AI. unless your up for making a KI Shadow mode or basing your Quest Mode AI on actual players' like VF4... then your better off just having a working matchmaking system for once
imo fighting game single player campaigns should be like DMC campaigns and then the multiplayer is your usual fighting game. You could even sneakily have players learn different characters by making the characters into different weapons and guns in the campaign
There's this RUclips series called Designing For, and there was a recent episode about how Street fighter 2 classic uses Boss characters as some sort of pseudo tutorials for fighting game concepts. I suggest you give it a watch
I think what Fighting Games need to focus on in order to get people to stay is to actually introduce them to the fun aspects of fighting games. Which as far as i understand it, is the mind games. Playing against an opponent where you're both trying to out-think each other, constantly adapting your strategy and approach, to match or to beat whatever your opponent is doing. However getting to this point in a fighting game is tricky, as it requires a somewhat deep understanding of the genre and the individual games mechanics in order to be able to analyze the match as it's playing out in real time and then applying your knowledge into your strategy and approach. It also requires two people of about equal skill level so that neither player get's completly overrun with no time to think or make sense of what's happening. I also think it's important to understand that 1v1 games as well as real life sports just don't get as popular as team based games and sports. And lastly i also think the fighting game genre has to accept that one of it's main driving forces is internal reward as opposed to external reward, and the amount of people who are able to sustain themselves solely on internal reward is just a lot less than people who are sustained by external reward. So the overall pool of players that are compatible with fighting games personality wise is just smaller than other genres imo.
"1v1 games as well as real life sports just don't get as popular as team based games and sports." Reading this made me think of a mode where individual players are able to form teams and compete in a sort of Team Battle -esque environment.
You missed the point you have to be incredibly practiced to play mind games, you have to be calm and confident enough your not going to get smashed to toy with your opponent. The question being asked here how to get new people into fighting games is antithetical to fighting games. The reason you can play mind games is practice and the passion to get back up when your beaten and strategize about how not to lose the same way often losing to the same person for match after match, still you only get more excited at figuring it out and getting better. MEANING: being good or even decent at fighting games is a unique personality type that enjoys adversity and doesn’t see winning as the point of playing. Your dopamine hit is on making sure and steady progress. Your personality type makes you special in a very specific way... it makes you able to play fighting games. Because it’s dependent on a special personality type that values realizing potential over short term winning or losing there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING A DEVELOPER CAN DO TO BUILD A FIGHTING GAME THAT WILL MAKE MORE NEW PLAYERS. Because of this fighting games should put mechanics and solid gameplay without need for patches so that the game will live long past it’s original release. This is how fighting games make money. Street fighter 3 Street Fighter 2, Soul Caliber 2, Tekken 6, guilty Gear rev2, melty blood, killer Instinct, marvel vs Capcom 1 and 2, all these games never change and are built with incredibly deep and reliable mechanics that allow for maximum player creativity. Some games like Tekken 6 are so expressive you can tell who is playing just by what moves and how the character is played. These games will keep selling copies forever because they are granite/diamond solid. No fighting game should be using gi it’s to make it friendly for new players because friendly players aren’t fighting game players. Fighting game players are trying to do you as much harm as the game will allow often in a way which gives the maximum insult. Only very special personalities take this as a challenge as an invite to get better and be the better fighter someday. Differed gratification is one of the rarest traits in humanity. Again these physchological tenets are the backbone of a lifetime fighting game player. The more you make it easy for people who haven’t put the work in legitimately compete because of comeback mechanics etc. the more the game will be forgotten to time because it’s not solid it’s not reliable it can’t be counted on to reflect the work you put in. Putting in the work should mean getting double perfect on someone who’s been playing for a couple months. Things like Tekken 7 dlc and rage mechanics ultimately kills the game for the fans who would normally keep playing. Street Fighter 3 is proof that I’m telling the truth, their are new players and new tournaments and even documentaries being made about a game that came out when me a fourty year old was in highschool. People are still buying copies. Making money with fighting games is about paying out over decades not years and when you make it about getting money out of players who don’t like to lose and don’t value git gud you make a crap game people will abandon as soon as the previous version come out with a remaster that offers modern netcode or a pirated version which offers better netcode, Fighting game players are dedicated and loyal, other games people will switch characters based on advantage but in fighting games it’s all too common for someone to stick with a character because you’ve been with that characters for years. People are sentimental about fighting games like no other genre. Long story short if companies truly want to create a real phenomena like sf2 build something amazing that people can explore forever and never find an end. That means no patches, no Dlc, and no changes to move properties most of all. You must get it right the first time or follow the sf2 or guilty xrd model and build a whole new game. Chess is the original fighting. How to get more people into chess is foolish because ultimately it’s in your blood it isn’t the game in relation to you that hooks you it’s you relating to the game. All fighting game innovation should end up increasing the difficulty of entry and the ultimate satisfaction of mastery. When demon souls came out they built an easy mode version just for the investors because under no circumstances would someone have funded what would have appeared in the short term to be an absolutely masochistic experience. What nobody but the developers understood was those that accepted the harsh punishment would be met with the thrill of mastery that nobody had ever experienced in hack and slash. But fighting game players knew the feeling since quarters got stacked on the edge of monitors. You paid in flesh but your investment was rewarded with a sense of identity. You walked into the arcade and people whispered about you. You made friends so easily because everyone around you was of the same mindset take your licks get gud and in the meantime get hype afk when someone did something amazing. Fighting games are very basic in what people want and need. What makes a fighting game is community. And you only get community from making a game that is authentically amazing. Otherwise as soon as the dlc and patches stop as soon as you stop pouring money you shouldn’t need to pour into tournaments it will while and be forgotten. What keeps people coming back is the prospect you could learn a new skill that will be valuable for the rest of your gaming career when you patch a game you take that thrill away because developers can just decide your new favorite technique is OP. Why put the time in if you can be punished by having your hardwork rendered meaningless. The only answer is the competing scene people will suck it up if money is on the line. Daigo is a Shoto player yet he plays Guile in Tournaments because he is just so much more consistent reliable and advantageous. Everyone thinks Ryu or Ken to this day when they think Daigo yet he’s been playing guile for five years now. This is what happens when designers try to create dlc and accessible characters Ryu in SF5 is a tutorial character but he lacks the reliability and depth necessary for tournament play. Trying to make mechanics inviting and easy to pick up only hurts real fighting game players. Developers if you want to make a game that has a large player base do what guilty gear strive did and killer instinct did and make the game look incredible and fun to play. Just make it look cool. And second accept that it’s not fifa or call of duty. These aren’t games people are already trained to love or have a very limited set of easily understandable variables. Typically the more complex a fighting game is the longer lived it is, this isn’t really a rule but making things easy is almost always a bad move. Im a Tekken player I can’t do a qcf to save my life but the game typically has hree hundred moves per character. Learning a character is like learning an instrument and you have to learn how everyone else plays if you want a chance a blocking anything so execution might be relatively light but complexity is quantum fractal butterfly effect insane. Stay out of the search for accessibility and focus on cor gameplay and timeless mechanics and over many years even twenty or thirty you will continue to see your game recognized as a classic and continue to see people buy new copies. It’s like an investment. Some games are a ton of cash all up front if that how your fighting game is chances are fighting game players are pretty upset about it. Which is why as a Tekken Player and I don’t mean a Tekken 2 player or Tag player I mean I’ve been playing since people were asking what’s a tekken. Tekken 7 has destroyed my faith in namco to make a reliable Tekken. It has been a soulless cash grab designed to milk new players for the chance to play OP characters and I was initially happy for Namco my favorite gaming company since galaga... happy to see them really making some serious cash I am seriously tired of not being able to play a online match without encountering any number of new characters who don’t resemble anything we have scene in over eight versions of Tekken. So long story short I will not be pre ordering or even ordering the new one within atleast a year. And will be actively be promoting Tekken 6 tournaments. Verbal Learning, you are indeed a fan of learning and that’s what makes you a good fighting game player and accepting learning for most people is boring should get you to understand there’s nothings any game can do to make more game players anymore than we can make more people who are mathematicians. You don’t just have to be good at math or have a good teacher you have to love match to the point where you find it excites you. A special breed of people that these companies should have more respect for because they clearly count on us to prop up their numbers while they do everything in their power to cater to people that aren’t going to stick around.
@@TheJiziason I play TT2 team battle with my best friend it’s really the most fun I’ve had with a fighting game. The UFC’s is still the fastest growing sport so I disagree it’s not one v one. It’s the fact that people lose more often a team effort can lead to long winning streaks, an individual can just have a bad day. People don’t want there guy to lose and that’s all fighting games are is losing as soon as you stop losing so much they bump up your level online and your back to losing. Most people are attached to winning, fighting game players are attached to learning. That’s why you can’t creat new players it’s a special type of human that plays fighting games, it’s just like saying how do we get more people into chess. No matter how fun you make the learning process as soon as they compete they will witness first hand that the opposite player is a sadist with absolute no interest in giving you a chance to play, of that doesn’t pump you up for the challenge. You’ll quit. Punishment is the core mechanic in every fighting game. How to Punish? That’s the question that gets googled most people don’t play games to be punished. It’s the same reason boxers and cage fighters are rare most people like the way it looks they just prefer to keep their teeth amd ribs intact and aren’t really psychologically built for ignoring brain damage and the apparent permanent injuries that occur all the time in practice and especially in competition. Conor Mcgreggor famously tore every tendon in his knee and still fought on it for minutes like it was fine. Most people have a mind that tells them to quit when things get punishing. Only a rare breed actually feels more live in those moments. Most people play video games either to relieve stress or to get a dopamine kick from winning with consistency against a computer designed to let them win. Even FPS’s have enough power mechanics to win by chance. Fighting games that aren’t broken every single inputs you press is life or death. You either enjoy that pressure or your not a fighting game player. Developers can’t really fix that without ruining the game for the actual fighting game players. Typically by giving them easy to use and input super damaging moves when the bar fills up that basically is a sign they just got wrecked. And those moves are typically armored so if you’re continuing to dominate it’s easy to be un mindful and be punished for being good at the game Great times for the newb rage bait for the serious player. Developers need to stay out of it in very passionate opinion.
I wonder if the concept of "unfolding" gameplay would work best for getting newbies on board, like a mode with a sizable chunk of moves removed / locked so players can focus on simple concepts like blocking high low, basic footsies and grab.
Presumably that's something you could tie into story mode, with your character "learning" the rest of the moves at about the same pace that you do - start with nothing, end with a decent mastery. Should work.
@@JRedNose I believe there was a Capcom Arcade fighting game with this exact concept called Red Earth. If I remember correctly there were only 4 playable characters but a ton of non-playable Abyss style bosses in the arcade mode. As you played you got Exp which would level your character up and gain more moves that they could use in Versus battles as well. Add-On a system similar to Arms' tournament mode where all gameplay-effecting unlockables are present from the start meanwhile other modes like Arcade and Story Mode get locked by a cheat code on the main menu this could be really cool
Fighting games always reminds me of martial arts with how difficult it is to get into, of course getting first into one of many martial arts you couldn't or shouldn't go straight into a duel because you'll get instantly destroyed, or if the case is just two peoples who are new, most of the nuances of said martial art just wouldn't be there yet. Most of the time it'd take weeks if not months of training and studying to be at a level where you could try going 1-on-1 with proper knowledge of how the fighting works and actually have *fun* with it.
I get what you're talking about. IMHO, I think that this generalizes to a larger problem of how to get someone on board with a skill in general. Skills take time to develop, and that core fact sometimes (keyword: sometimes) undermines the point of doing a fun activity, to have fun. The lack of knowing the nuances being an active deterrant to fun is a huge thorn in the side, especially because of risk. I get this idea from trying new non-game things like rollerblading, skateboarding, and doing taekwondo. rollerblading and skateboardin,, i stopped coz i didnt have access to any supplementary things to aid in not falling onto my butt or going too fast. but i liked tkd coz we used mats, so if i fell over while trying to do higher kicks or were taken down in self defense moves, i wouldnt need to worry about the impact as much as with concrete.
I still fail to see how they're difficult to get into. I think the real problem is that at the lowest level people are scared to try the game. It's perfectly fine to get into a fighting game and not know what you're doing, but a lot of the time those newcomers aren't really able to be matched against one another
It just takes a different mindset than what most people have. Most people pop in a video game expecting to be entertained with minimal input required, but fighting games are completely dependent on YOU. People who don't understand fighting games think training mode is boring because the game isn't actively trying to entertain you. But training mode is some of the most fun I've had in games because it's all about your understanding of the systems and giving you complete freedom to experiment, learn, and improve. You feel 10 times stronger and more knowlegeable than you were an hour ago. The biggest drawback I see is that people completely miss the mark on what makes fighting games difficult to get into. It's not the difficulty of performing special moves, it's *being able to tell what's good or not.* How is a beginner supposed to understand what moves are safe or unsafe? How is a beginner supposed to know how to use okizeme tools? How is a beginner supposed to know when to break throws? Even with all the training mode in the world, a beginner wont know what they are even looking at, or why there needs to be so many buttons that all do the same thing (like 3 punches and 3 kicks). In fact I find that people tend to struggle with Smash Bros more than any other fighting game, despite almost every character only uses 3 buttons to attack: normal, special, and grab. So many beginners struggle to even recover to the stage, let alone understand the nuance between tilt attacks and smash attacks. Making the inputs easier doesn't make the % damage system, directional influence, and rage any less confounding. And yet those deep systems are exactly what make these games so fun to figure out. That depth is always going to elude you until you decide to immerse yourself in it. You need to make the choice to dive in.
The difference between league and any fighting game is that league has a lot more players than almost any fighting game has ever had, with that amount of people you are much more likely to be matchmade with people who equally have no idea what theyre doing and thus games will feel more even and enjoyable. Having that guarantee that you can hop on, even months or years after the game has released, and know that there are still a ton of other people picking up and learning the game with you is a massive incentive for people who want to pick up the game or are unsure if they should stick with it
But surely this wasn’t always the case? At the beginning, the game has to be accessible enough that new players want to join and STAY. Riot did a good job of keeping players and thats the point
Also i think that fighting games look more intimidating because if you lose in League of Legends, you can always blame your team. But in fighting games you dont have anyone to blame but yourself so people cope and get mad at the game for "being too hard".
@@taurengod It wasn't always the case, but back then no one knew what they were doing, so it wasn't that hard for new players to do relatively well. The concepts of accessibility and skill floor are not something inherent to the game, they're relative to the playerbase. Changing the game doesn't change the skill floor. At most, it reduces frustration, and that has more to do with people having the wrong expectations than with the game itself.
I think a big issue is how in a fighting game, it's you and your enemy, and nothing inbetween. No breathing room, no retreating to a safe location and recomposing yourself, no strategy to lay down in advance - fighting games are decided moment-to-moment, and at breakneck speed. League has that too - but not in the context of having to predict or notice the enemy approach method, and then take one of countless possible countermeasures, with only a tiny subset of these options actually being a good idea. Then there's also the relentlessness of fighting games and the stress and pressure of a combat environment limited by screen size. When the opponent gets past you and locks you into a combo, you have a burst mechanic at best to get you out of it, but otherwise, you're out of the game for the duration of that combo. Once it's over, chances are you're pushed into the corner: once again, you cannot retreat elsewhere, so you're back in the position of having to predict or notice the opponent's plan, or get slapped again. And that's the entire game, constantly. It's scary and intimidating. And then there's the tendency of requiring very accurate timing (or understanding the rarely explained concept of input buffering) to execute your combo and make the most of it. I think fighting games are actually terrible at explaining or indicating the timings of their combos unless you have frame data tools available, which turns a fighting game into a spreadsheet of bullshit. For as much as I love fighting games, I am very aware of how unappealing they are to non-competitive and/or laid-back players.
This can be easlly solved with a large playerbase, where there are players suitable for every proficiency level. No matter how technical or lame a game is, if the player pool is bog enough, there will be a decent challenger for a newcomer. Edit: besides, people play moba because they are suspiciously addictive. If I were into psychology I would give a deep look on it.
Because you start playing MOBA's because generally a friend introduces you to it. That gets you personally invested. Then every win feels like you contributed more than you may have really done because there is so many different things you could have gotten the highest number on your team in, on top of the fact not everyone is even competing with you on your team for those numbers (the most magic damage vs the most physical damage vs the most healing). And then every loss is mitigated by 4 other people so at worst the loss was 20% your fault.
@@rrteppo About your first point, that can also be valid for fighting, racing, sports, or any other game. It only happens more to moba because it has more players, who knows why. Everything else, well, every game has its perks.
--free game with high skill ceiling that doesn't require advanced hardware to run-- it all comes down to accessibility and marketing (enter ooh la lah cosmetics)
@@ren7a8ero True, but usually you get introduced to it by a friend actively playing the MOBA and teaming with you often. You get a safe fallback n the form of your friend who you are likely chatting with via VC or directly with each other while playing with each other at computer shops or on portable devices. That's the core difference. You have a *Friend* who can help you rise and maybe help you build confidence in playing the game, getting you out of your shell and eventually you start trying playing on your own after understanding the fundamentals, having a character be your main, and you are set to win or lose your match where you can blame your teammates or gloat about how you hard carried them to the victory. Fighting games lack a friend to help carry you to the end of a match. You are fighting alone against your opponent, and while your friend can try to help teach you about fundamentals, it's hard to digest still. There are a shit ton of items in a moba yes, but the explanation of their funcctions is either "+stat" or "New power with _ condition to activate, sentence of how much damage or what stat it affects, etc." It is much more easier to understand that and build your kit around your playstyle. Compared to a fighting game where you can just barely understand what's going on at the heat of the moment.
@@silverdededestruction2197 So it is harder for the ones in more need to socialize to enter a moba than a fighting game, because without a friend acting as a buffer and a shield, they wont be playing only against the enemy team, but also his own team. While in a fighting game everyone knows the feeling of being alone and beaten. Thinking about a very rough but very serious martial art dojo. And it seems very notorious how some big communities of multiplayer games are toxic. There is also a generational gap. Arcade players had to be at least respectful, the consequences of ill behaving could be instantaneous, and they brought that when they came online. Moba players are usually younger, being a bit of a bully behind a screen is easier and almost expected. It may be that newcomers in fighting games learn some sportsmanship by example, or forget about it when old players became too few, who knows... The moba player will need tens of hours until learn to combine all the possible itens, because at that point he doesn't have a clue about gameplay, even less his playstyle. At this point, the difficulty is very similar for both moba and fightan players.
I think one of the biggest problems with onboarding comes with playable variety Fighting Games when you get down to it, are pretty damn monotonous... Especially because a character is such an investment to get in to that you are likely only going to have fun with a few and no matter what its only really fights, fights against other people, and fights in a different mode Example, what modes do expect from fighting games nowadays? 1. Well a VS mode to fight either a CPU or my friend, 2. a Story Mode where I fight various CPUs as various characters while cutscenes or textboxes play out in between, 3. an Arcade Mode where I fight a ladder of CPUs... which is pretty much just Story Mode but without the rhyme or reason as to why I'm fighting this person, 4. a Survival Mode where its an endless Gauntlet of random foes and I don't regenerate my full health so its just endurance 5. A Training mode where I get told the system mechanics, character rundowns and combo trials as well as a free experimentation lounge And 6. Online play in 3 flavors (Chocolate with Friends, Casual Strawberry or Vanilla Ranked) Issue is- If I'm bored with the standard mechanics of the game... where do I go? Everywhere is just kind of a variation on the game? Some ways fighting games have solved this- 1. Customization, for when you dont want to learn a whole new character but just wanna make the character your playing as feel fresh. Whether its just that they are now slightly faster at the cost of 50 hp or they have a whole new set of special moves 2. Recontextualizing the mechanics. Smash and Tekken's favourite pass times. Whether that's turning the game into a beat'em up with Tekken Force, a 2D Platformer like Subspace Emissary and Melee Adventure Mode, or a wierd sports game like Home-Run Contest or Tekken Ball. Smash Run, Target Test, Target Blast, Race to the Finish, Board the Platforms, Smash Tour, MK Mythologies Sub-Zero... Ok maybe not those last 2 3. What about making enemy characters in your Story Modes have some wierd Power Up or giving you a Power Down. I mean Stronger non-playable versions as bosses have existed for a while, Like Shin Akuma until he was made playable or Alpha Bison with his full screen Psycho Crusher. You did mention in one video that Story moment in BBTag where Jin couldn't use his Sword so how about that. 4. Missions and Achievements + Unlockables "Hmm... I get what for doing this thing? Oh cool I'm gonna do that right now" Just 3 notes- A) Spread Them out, DBFZ's 3 Unlockable characters feel to much like mountain climbing for only 3 characters. At this point I'd be more happy if you only started with 12 and the other 12 were slowly unlocked as you progressed to SSGSS and 21. B) Have actual criteria, not some roluette I gain credits for and C) No one cares about unlocking titles 5. I don't know just throw a whole other game in there- Tekken Bowling, StreetSmash, Motor Kombat, Puzzle Kombat. Modes to play for when the devs just gave up. That one section in that Naruto game where you play Dynasty Warriors as a frog When I get tired of fighting these legitimately help adding variety into the game and give me one less reason to take the disk out. And trust me when it comes to fighting games once the disk is out, it's likely a while before it goes back in
In my opinion, fighting games developers have made a big mistake in not taking single-player AI and content seriously. Instead of figuring out how newcomers approach the game and craft appropriate, special NPC characters for a single player campaign, they go with half-assed CPUs that blocks more or less depending on the difficulty. Like... Make a rogue-lite campaign, craft some NPC opponents with special CPU-profiles (jumpy, grabby, zoney, wake-up-into-shoryuken-y) that FORCES the player to use the tools that are explained to them. It baffles my mind why nobody tried to make a campaign like Killer Instinct Season 3.
The thing is that most people will play it once or maybe twice and because the actual focus on fighting games is the pvp then using resources for balancing or adding new mechanics and characters would be going to the least played part of the game
My biggest issue with one-button specials is that it's limiting to the normal moves and the variety of attacks you can have. By simply having "direction+button," you've now attached a single button to all special moves and removed the ability to include tiger-knee style inputs or other methods of controlling direction while utilizing special moves. I hope that this works out because I do like the idea of one-button specials but they've never felt like they added to the game and sometimes have resulted in me as a new player getting even more frustrated because I end up accidentally activating a special when I meant to simply attack.
My counter argument to the simplified controls goes back to my time having played Power Rangers Battle for the Grid. The major problem with it comes to not just simplifying something but how effective it becomes. If this game brings in simple controls certain things becomes more effective. Things like zoning, things like combos, normally things that require time spent in the lab or going into playing matches. Mostly Legacy skill stuff in theory. Take for example a team built around Keep away (keeping to Power Rangers) Udanna is a notorious anchor that can fill up an entire screen with projectiles with one botton. Two if she has an assist which then boils down to putting in an assist that can either lock down an enemy or offer an invisible reversal. Simplifying the controls makes this accessible yes and makes it seem like players can fight back at range. Now comes the follow up and the crux to this. How to get around it. Even with the lack of special inputs players still have to work around the barrage of projectiles. Even more so now that the opponent can just freely do these things with little to no consequence since Udanna can move forward and back when using this move and synergizes really well with any lock down assist because of it. In Power Rangers movement becomes really valuable to learn how to deal with this along with a number of special moves built to counter this but even then the levels of counter play and what's available isn't always as effective as something as simple as throw ice balls and run. If this comes into play then players will leave because of the spam anyway. They can input a cooldown system and a gear system to mimic the LoL gameplay but even then it devolves into the first few pics to a number of players....who generally tend to leave their game when they see no chance of winning. Complex inputs don't always gate keep. What does gatekeep or creates issues with getting into fighting games is and always has been.... How do I even deal with this? And making things easier to jump in on doesn't always provide that skill barrier for players to avoid the initial pill of "L's" that is learning the nature of fighting games.
There's a lot of talk about "how do we get new players to get in and stay" but not enough about "how do we do that while keeping the existing fight game fans here". Blazblue Cross Tag is my favorite fighting game and I will just fight the CPUs for fun, but existing fans of the fighting game series dropped it for moving the complexity to the tag mechanics rather than the individual character's combos. Now the game is in a tough spot where older players don't get on and new players see "0 online" and quit the game.
I think, as well, Project L being free to play will help a TON when it comes to the Onboarding Process. Fighting games are an inherantly competetive genre, and paying $60 for a game you might not even be good enough to enjoy is already a kick in the balls. Being free to play widens the doors to anyone with even a modecrum of interest to play it. Plus, free to play games are driven by their communities, and free to play players are used to having to put in some work and learning in order to really get into a game. And as a competetive game, seeing a pro do something amazing and wanting to try and do it yourself is the kind of inspiration that brings a community together and gets people to give it a go. I honestly believe free to play, or at least half price, is the way to go for fighting games. Because, if we're being honest, most fighting games aren't worth full price. Let alone all the DLC and skins they expect us to buy.
For me, motion special feels very satisfying. Anti airing with ryu feels good. Cammys back standing mp does not feel good, but her dp does. And sagats kara cancel dp, that shit feels so good.
You're being rewarded for applying dexterity. Dexterity is a valid skill to cultivate and should be rewarded along with the others, and fighting game designers generally understand this.
I feel that while teaching people how to play IS one of the biggest challenges for a fighting game, the REAL problem for newcomers and veterans alike is *_how to deal with defeat and the frustration that comes with it._* Even if you go through the entire tutorial and practice an hour everyday, most people never go past silver/gold rank (or the equivalent in your game). We can see this in seasonal rank distribution graphs, where they show that the majority of players is stuck in the bottom third of the ladder. From my point of view, we should focus on how to both ease the pain of loss and how to encourage players to move past it. And I believe the answer lies not in fighting games themselves, but other competitive games like Rocket League, LoL and even real life sports. If we can take information from those games and apply it into fighting games, I am sure it will improve them a lot.
Easing the pain of loss is only as possible as the players themselves make it to be. It's the same for any competitive environment, really. This issue cannot really be solved by the games themselves. If you lose, you can either give up or try to become better, and we all know which option is easier.
Imagine if FGs used their story modes to teach players, instead of essentially throwing a massive wall of text at them in the tutorial mode. But instead we get 2-4h cutscenes with very rare gameplay that is instantly interrupted by yet another long cutscene.
While I personally much prefer fighting games to have motion inputs when it comes to special moves, the Smash series is a textbook example of why that's not necessarily required to have complexity in a fighting game. Neutral, movement, combo efficiency, match-up knowledge, and a lot of other factors can still very much feed into making a fighting game interesting without making it a contest of who has the better memory when it comes to actually being able to play your character.
Y'know, I think one of the best part of 1 button specials is that they're keyboard compatible. It never lost my attention that LoL is not that executionally demanding. Learning how to press R is not hard, but learning when to press it is. In fighting games, pressing R is still hard.
Absolutely lovely video, you have a fantastic grasp of the nuanced issues facing new players. I wish I could’ve shown this to myself from two years ago, when I was still convinced that fighting games were “too complex” for me...while also putting hundreds of hours into even more complex games like Yu-Gi-Oh! and StarCraft. Great work.
I'd like to see a company go the route of Red Earth, make a single player game mode with NPC's that have different gameplay mechanics that teach aspects of the overall game.
I like that ending note because I hope. As someone that's played both genres there really is a stark difference in how you get in. Hopefully L will have a sizeable and healthy (in the sense new players are still coming in) enough that newer players can come in and play against someone their skill so they can still learn and apply other stuff.
Ehhh kinda disagree with saying that just removing motion inputs will automatically move that lost complexity somewhere else. It CAN move that lost complexity somewhere else, but its not guaranteed. And its not true that fighting games didn't try one button specials, Power Ranges BFTG, GranBlue Fantasy Versus, yet still those games didn't revolutionize the genre and didn't manage to attract substantial casual crowd.
@@Goujiki IP. The fact that Smash alternatives pale to compare to Smash shows that people arent there for gameplay, they are for characters they know and love.
I was really intrigued with how Granblue Fantasy Versus tried to tackle special moves by both assigning shortcut macros and motion inputs and balancing them out as EX moves with the cooldown mechanic. I wouldn't be surprised if the Project L team took a page out of that and implemented something similar.
Project L team won't take a page of that... They wrote the book. Project L devs were previously working on a fighting game, Rising Thunder, which had one button specials with cooldowns. Then the game died, but the company was bought by riot. So I'd be surprised if there aren't any cooldowns.
League of Legends is going crazy with expansion. Just this month they released two spin-offs and a TV show. I've never played LoL, but I did watch and really enjoy Arcane.
I've always had a bittersweet love of fighting games; my manual dexterity is limited and my hands tend to quake for short stretches, despite having been playing video games since I was 3. I adore fighting games that use or allow for simple button + direction inputs like Super Smash Bros or similar for that reason, as I'm able to get into the deeper mechanics and put up a fight. I don't exactly win often, I'm still poor at the game, but I enjoy losing significantly more there than in some more traditional fighting games where there's frustration. That said, I don't feel it's a major bar to entry itself (an accessibility issue to be sure, but not something that will keep a huge number of people out on its own), nor do I think it'll 'move complexity elsewhere' to change the control scheme (it's no zero sum game; neutral, spacing, reads and punishes, etc are always going to have depth and complexity regardless of how easy it is to input your 'big gun' attacks). You're certainly hindered without those special moves, but a significant chunk of each fighters' movesets are still simple inputs for punches and kicks that play a big part of the game even at high levels, so you still have tools to use as you learn and even squeak in a win or two with against the more difficult AI. It's mainly a sticking point because it's yet another thing to learn on top of the rest, and usually the first you run into. I feel the issue is more clear when you compare fighting games in-play to other games: lack of conveyance and a feeling of helplessness. Fighting games are fast, with matches coming down to split second decisions and predicting what option your opponent will opt into, and what those options are and when the windows are there aren't going to be apparent to people who don't already know them. There's a lot of times where a combo looks like it doesn't have a point the victim can escape but does, and plenty of moves with small qualities you need to know in order to escape those situations (like i-frames) that have no visual indication. In other genres, even particularly hard games go to great lengths to make it clear to the player how they screwed up. "I should've jumped there", or "I didn't dodge fast enough", or "maybe if I play more aggressively early", or even "ah, so THAT'S how you dodge that attack, now I can do this" are the thoughts entering players' heads, because they can see where their mistakes were and that gives them enough to work off of. Without clear information, you end up with moments like the clip you showed where the new player will lose without any idea of what they did wrong or how they could have escaped the combo that shaved off over half their life bar. Everything happens fast, and a lot of details aren't visible- hitboxes being a hair bigger or smaller than they seem, exacting frame data and hitstun duration- so the new player has no idea of what they need to do to improve until a more experienced player pulls them aside and explains what the game itself doesn't, or they bang their head against the wall enough times to stumble over the answer by luck. I'm lucky that I have a lot of friends of varying skill level who are happy to chat about the little tricks and details I'd never have picked up on by myself, letting me practice against opponents who don't have to purposefully play with one hand behind their backs to not destroy me, and answering questions about how to deal with different staple tricks that don't have an immediately obvious answer. So it's a matter of conveying to players what's going on so they can learn what mistakes they're even making to begin with that feels like the missing step- stuff like Super Smash Bros Ultimate having a very detailed training mode stage you can play around in that highlights a lot of qualities about each attack (knockback angles/distance being drawn out, damage noted, and even a combo hit counter that only counts 'true' combos that have no gaps for escape to help you learn what can be escaped and what can't) is a good example. One idea that comes to mind is taking advantage of replays- let players toggle on/off visible hitboxes, slow or speed up the replay, and maybe an option to outline a fighter to show if they're in hitstun (red outline), benefiting from i-frames (gold outline) or neither (blue outline) to make it clear 'hey, I could've gotten out there!' Another idea is using something like the segments in different Smash Bros entries' 'adventure mode's that involve navigating a small obstacle course or the 'destroy the car' minigame from Street Fighter 2 as miniature lessons. A mini beat'em-up section with simple mooks that have simple patterns can help teach basic skills in a drip feed (a foe holding a shield needing to be grabbed to be pulled out of their defensive 'guarding' stance, for example) could work? I don't think there's an easy solution, but having a good idea of the problem first is necessary to figure one out.
the thing about motion inputs is that i think they are fun to perform, i think the game granblue versus tackled the motion input almost problem perfectly, having it set to a directional input and a button but also keeping the motion input in the game. I just hope that there is still a way to do them, like give me the option, one of the reasons i like leo so much in guilty gear xrd is because his rekka has a fun motion to perform. im all for accessibility in fighting games but there is some legacy stuff that may seem arbitrary to still be in fighting games but i just have fun with them.
I think Them's FIghtin' Herds walked right up to the front door of greatness in fighting game tutorials and then turned around and went home. They do what video games have been doing since the dawn of the industry: Teaching players while they play... which is honestly what I think the best use of the story mode is. TFH places you up against various NPC fighters in a sort of 2D RPG format that are designed to encourage certain fighting game concepts. Wolves teach you block low and anti-air, Snakes teach you how to whiff punish, Panthers teach you to the defensive mechanics and bears teach you the definition of pain. They even have an ambush system that has the enemy sleeping at the start to encourage players to learn the fattest combos they can do to make the subsequent fight easier. The problems are twofold: They teach advanced things too early and they don't *really* explain the concepts on any of the other NPC monsters than the wolves. Imagine a story mode where you get some easy NPC ai creatures to fight, things you can clear out pretty effortlessly while only hitting buttons, but instead of the fight ending when they are reduced to 0 HP thy are stunned until you hit them with a special move that requires inputs... and in a UI element over the enemy's head will show the inputs to do a special move. As you progress through the story the timeframe to input this special move will get shorter and shorter until the only way to win would be to close the round with a special move or combo into it. You can teach other concepts the same way, although defensive mechanics will be harder. Throw in some things like combo flash cards (mini combo trials) and reaction challenges on varying levels and you'll have something that I think could teach players concepts in single player while still being a *game*.
A very narrow playerbase is also why getting into fighting games is so fking hard. Most titles are expensive, hard to learn, and usually a sequel from a stablished franchise, so as a new player you just *know* that the only people buying the game you're interested in are gonna be seasoned players with all the fundamentals learned down to a T, so you're gonna get buttblasted into next month if you even dare to get into online mode. Project L might attract a massive amount of newbies, so other newbies can fight them at a fair level
I remembered that Rising Thunder had simple input, so I don't believe people are expecting project L to have complex one. In terms of control, project L would probably end up be a lot like its predecessor.
Here's a thought; maybe make a "tiered online system". Like, instead of having a ranked system that's based on how many matches you win (which is kind of vague, because you can win or lose a match for any number of reasons), instead have the game focus on details; - How often are you throwing out command inputs? - How complex are those inputs? - How many many moves can you string together in one combo? - How many hits can you get in vs how many hits your enemy can get in? (With different levels depending on the character, of course. Can't grade Chipp and Potemkin on the same curve.) - How consistently are you blocking the enemy's attacks? - What's your average proximity to any given enemy, and how does this compare to the ideal range of both your character and theirs? Hypothetically, you could put a series of locks like these on a characters' online profile on first startup. In order to break each of these locks, you've gotta be consistently performing at a certain level with each of the game's mechanics. So long as these locks are in place, you can only play with players who have a comparable lock situation to you. (There could be some overlap; like, maybe it only restricts you based on the number of locks instead of which locks you've broken, specifically. Probably could be tuned in patches.) That way, you'll only ever be playing against players who have a similar grasp of the game as you; though, depending on how you balance it, you could be playing against someone with a vastly different skillset, which would keep fights interesting. Then, once all the locks are broken, you finally unlock the proper ranked-play system. This way, instead of having to sit in a damn training room, reading menus, you can be practicing the mechanics in actual matches with actual people AND you'll be getting consistent feedback on your skill progression. (Meanwhile, open, unranked freeplay could be unlocked from the beginning, just to give people options).
As a fighting game fan for over 25 years i must say that the genre is misunderstand in a lot of ways. Let me tell a few things about this. Look, the old "oh, this game is too complex" is a lazy excuse for me, but i get it, nobody wants to work for his fun. However there are games that tackle this issue and STILL the genre in is the same spot. For example, this same game, project L is basically a remake of other free to play game, Rising Thunder that used very simple commands. You can have a fighting game with a single attack and no jumping (footsies) and STILL the legacy players will tend to win anyways. Now, i'm going to sound very assholy but i don't get why there is some sort of division from the FGC games and other genres hard wise, i mean... Did you know there are other genres that can be hard? Did you play Celeste? I did, hard as balls, did You play Ikaruga? Same, did you play Hades?... I think you guys get the idea, my point is that dedication to a game is not rare but seems to me that fighting games get a lot of shit for being hard when you can expend hundreds of hours in Celeste perfecting a 100% run in a single sit and EVERYONE will clap at it and nobody will give you shit for being better than them at the game. I'm not gatekeeping, want to play any fighting game? You are welcome any day, want to get good? Amazing there's A LOT of material for you to learn, want to be in a pro circuit? A lot of super majors are open when you are ready. The ONLY thing the community will not do is to put the effort for you.
When I first started playing Halo I was terrible at shooters. A lot of people say it takes legacy skill to play a fighting game competently and completely ignore all the legacy skill required for other games. The only reason shooter fans think they aren't as hard to get into is because they've probably been playing Halo and Cod since they were 10.
@@Goujiki You can have fun without spoiling the genre. Actually the producers of the genre seems to go for the casual player more and more in our days, even SF that is sorta the signature of fighting games did SFV way WAAAAY easier than any of the other entries in the main series. Want simple games? There are for you, there's Fantasy Strike, Rising Thunder, Power Rangers Battle For The Grid, Divekick... But those games will STILL reward dedication, all games will. At the end of the day one player will win and other will lose and no ammount of accesibility, tutorials or simple command schemes will make it different. You will need to really invest yourself into learning if you want to be good, this is true for mostly any game, why fighters should be different?
@@kaoko111 "At the end of the day one player will win and other will lose and no ammount of accesibility, tutorials or simple command schemes will make it different." THIS.
If Power Ranger Battle for the Grid taught me anything; its that simplified inputs are definitely a viable way to get people into the game. The real challenge came from the lab; or the willingness to learn how to even attempt to do crazy stuff in real matches lol
holy shit fucking thank you for talking about how league is also complicated feels like the fgc thinks that literally only fighting games are complicated and that every other genre is simple and baby easy even though mobas are extremely complex
Your video is very informative and Amazing…the thing is about inputs it honestly doesn’t matter, ppl have literally Looked at command inputs in fighting games while being noobs because they were interested in the game they were playing..putting the most barebones amount of time just to comprehend said move or combo…if It looks COOL ,Thing is if something looks cool,looks fun someone will find a way to do it..regardless of input difficulty Make it Z motions, One button,command inputs it honestly doesn’t matter if what your selling doesn’t grip the audience..because difficulty will have to be somewhere regardless
Having simple single input specials isn't mutually exclusive with complex ones, you could have both a simple and complex input for the same move with the complex one granting a bigger reward, and getting both a more accessible experience for newbies without lowering the skill ceiling. While I haven't played it myself (and can't due to hand pain) and thus can't speak for how well it's implemented, Granblue Fantasy Versus is one example of this idea
As a person who started to get into league last year, started with level 30 and now I'm 220+, I agree that I do enjoy the world, lore and art style of Runeterra. I'm glad they are f i n a l l y redesigning their older champions; Caitlyn looks so good! Now for Project L, I'm hype for the game, Character designs are looking fuckin' C R I S P
I wonder if a big motivator for learning League in the first place is friends. Since there's 5 people working together and having fun doing whacky things or showing off how skillful they are in the game. A lot of people put in the time to learn the game better, look up champion guides, how to last hit minions, etc. It could also have to do with small victories in League, having better cs, destroying the enemy's tower, stealing a buff, stealing an objective, shutting down the enemy carry, whatever. Lots of small victories that you can celebrate other than just winning the game. Meanwhile in fighting games, it's usually a 1 v 1 so you only have yourself as the motivating factor. It's hard to get others to play with you, because you will be fighting against each other, and since you've played the game before, you're actively going to get your friend who you're trying to get into the game a bad time as your opponent. And we don't really celebrate, getting an enemy to use their combo breaker, blocking a layered mix-up or blockstring, or learning how to beat specific move that the enemy uses, that much as hearing a *ding* from the gold you get from a minion.
League is not at all good at onboarding. The only difference is that you have a lot of time to understand and process things. Take enemy champions for example. Standing around in lane and watching your opponents is a good way to understand how they operate. In the course of 30 minutes, you'll have a basic understanding on how your opponents work. If the enemy is simple enough, you'd understand how to counter it given the tools you have. Also, League is fun. It's just that if you're very into it, it can break your heart when you and the game changes and there's nothing you can do about it. If you're good at handling things you can't control then it's a good time all throughout.
Oh I enjoyed my time *playing* the game, I think it's actually really engaging and, if history is any proof, very addicting. I just can't stand the community, which is unfortunate in a game that *demands* cooperative team play.
@@SugarPunch I suggest you play ARAMs then. Everyone there seems chill because this time, all of you are at the mercy of RNG so there are less hard feelings. There's always a mute button and there's not much strategy in ARAMs that requires complex instruction so you don't actually need to chat.
I'm really starting to think a nice, fleshed out single player would be the way to ease a new player into the game. like single player campaigns of shooters.
Going to make a prediction: the one button special is actually going to make the skill floor for competitive play higher, not lower. Tricksy bs happens when you get rid of them that devs have trouble dealing with.
I don't think the goal is to raise the skill floor so newbies can fight back against pros. I think the goal is to create an actually obtainable middle floor where mastery and improvement are actually possible. Ideally the end result should be a playerbase that is not only weighted towards newcomers and high tier pros, but also a middle tier where slightly-better-average players can find suitable competition.
@@SugarPunch "I don't think the goal is to raise the skill floor so newbies can fight back against pros. I think the goal is to create an actually obtainable middle floor where mastery and improvement are actually possible." They say almost these exact words during the reveal video.
@@SugarPunch Are modern fighting games really that unobtainable in the skill department though? You exaggerate, its fighting games, not thermonuclear physics.
@@Sasiskin7823 People really like to talk a lot about them on a grand scale like it's theoretical instead of idk just playing them nothing is as hard or dumb as some old Capcom/Arc Sys fighting games anymore so it's pretty accessible to everyone.
@@Sasiskin7823 Theres a ton of stuff that goes into learning a fighting game. To even begin to play the game you have to learn what buttons do what, then any move inputs. After that you need to learn spacing, neutral, combos, punishes. Then after that you need to learn how to open a player up, meaties, advantage states, safe/unsafe moves, shimmies. And after all that you need to memorize a ton of frame data for EVERY character in the game. Oh and thats all without having to read, analyze and outplay the person on the other end playing you.
1 button input specials.... uhhh BlazBlue calamity trigger literally has your right analog stick mapped to specials this was however removed in Continuum shift and subsequent titles forward and further experimentation we found out golden Iron Tager's Astral Finish is a simple back-drive combo
The best way to grab players is using pre-existing characters and IP a la Smash Bros. That's also a really simple to learn fighting game which helps with making people stick around. In more complex games you can get people to buy with characters, but it's a lot harder to get them to keep playing when they didn't understand a lick of the tutorial. I've tried to learn how to play Pokénn Tournament like 3 times now and failed every one. And that's not even a very complex fighting game in the grand scheme of things from what I've been made to understand. I like watching your videos on them, but I doubt I'll ever be able to get into a non-platform fighter.
The amount of walking forward and walking back twice in a fighting game tutorial I've done......fuck first fighting game I'm being spoken to like this is my first VIDEO GAME.
As a fighting game player but never tried tag fighter before and former lol player. When I heard about project L I immediately buy something like MVCI and Power ranger BFTG to get a grip of this kind of Fighting game and I imediately hooked on tag style game.
I played fighters of all kinds. Including a handful of arena fighters. Simple inputs isnt usually a bad thing it just depends on how the game balances it. Saint Seiya Soldiers soul is a bizarre arena fighter that takes far too long to unlock everything but the combat has two attacks, one projectile button (requires meter) burst attacks (which requires meter and pressing LT Heavy or Light) Every Special attack cost meter and doing it raw causes a close up animation to happen unless u use it in the air or use it during a attack. My pet peeve is compared to the ninja storm games I love its Slow
League of Legends even sorta has a neutral state itself where both players are poking and prodding eachother by walking back and forth and weaving around so that they can stay safe while looking for openings in their opponent's movement all while also farming minions for their gold
I don't think the problem is onboarding as much as the skill gap. Fighting games are very deep and tons of skills are transferable. I'd wager my ten year old brother would body a complete novice in any 2D Fighter regardless of how simplified the gameplay is or how good the tutorial is. It will be great if Project L brings in tons of new players, but they'll still have to put in the work if they intend to play longterm. It's not gatekeeping or elitism, it's just a fact of life. Hopefully Riot will find a way to make the grind fun.
@@KuroNoTenno Yes they are, there's people like me that sure as fuck aren't "pro" level yet I'm damn sure better than beginners. We're "The Sharks" the ones that make a lot of beginners quit due to our understanding is good enough to be wild as fuck online
I have one issue with your narrative. I don't believe that "If people can make the effort to main laining they can learn how neutral works" addresses the issue, because people that play mobas are not the group that picks up a fighting game play it for 5 hours and never play it again. And I am telling you as someone who has played lol for almost half his life and now has 300 hours in GGST as his first fighting game. Competitive players will always be competitive and casuals will always be casuals, no amount of simplification will change that because at some point the casual will have to face the competitive folk and his new good tutorial won't help him at all because by the time he is done with it the competitive guy has already watched 5 hours of advanced guids on YT in 2x speed. It's not the tutorial that is the problem it's the fact that he has to fight someone much more knowledgeable than him in the first place.
complex motion inputs? they are no hard to do, what is hard is knowing when to use them, removing them doesn't solve anything, just makes the game worse
"not every game needs to play by the same rules" holy shit, i feel like the FGC as a whole refuses to understand this, and I'm glad to finally see a creator say this with regards to one-button specials.
I think one thing that helps in League is the addition of multiple game modes and rulesets. I know when I get sick of losing my 5th game in a row, I just want to hop into an ARAM or whatever the event is that month. I think this is also why the FPS genre is so accessible. These modes let me play the game even when I'm not in the mood to deal with the usual BS. Most fighting games have online ranked... and online casual. That's it. So even if I enjoy a game like Guilty Gear Strive with all my heart, I'm not going to touch it if I'm simply not in the mood to play around Ram super or find gaps in May's dolphin onslaught.
I don't mind simplified controls, as you said, it makes them more accessible and moves the complexity elsewhere. They're not bad as long as the specials are appropriately balanced because usually the strongest moves have the most complex inputs. What I do mind tho is when someone claims Motion Inputs are inferior or somehow inherently bad game design, that's when i know they're talking out of their ass
motion inputs or one button specials never bothered me at since i never played a game with bad one button specials and the one game i did play with one button was power rangers and i still had a fun time
The resurgent rage for one button specials surprises me (for Project L specifically). They literally bought the devs of Rising Thunder, one button specials was assumed since even before the original reveal.
I always prefer motion inputs not for difficulty but more for feel. I love doing those big 360s for death grabs or timing my charge perfectly to lock out that Unga bunga rushdowner or just alow my left hand to do *something* when "tactically" spamming fireballs.
Talking about fighting game tutorials without mentioning TFH seems like a huge blind spot. If TFH was handled by a AAA studio instead of an indie, then I bet your sweet bippy it would be the de fact “best first fighting game” because it has such great tutorials and single player campaign.
Unfortunately no matter the quality, TFH has the automatic debuff of being a My little pony styled fighting game, which already makes a large chunk of people automatically bounce off even giving it a shot (this isn’t shade to anyone who likes TFH or MLP, it’s just unfortunately how it is)
@@Limit02 I know that is the wisdom within the FGC, but I don’t find it convincing. nick all stars was “popular” and people are hype for Warner Smash. Most of what people say about “bronies” is lies. And if people stopped embracing the lies there would be no issues. When FIM first came out(2011) there was an editorial on Breitbart saying that MLP is bad for the soul of America, and young men should be joining the military unsteady of watching pony cartoons…. So it is not an exaggeration to say that hate against Bronies is part of the right wing propaganda machine.
I hope ABI takes another look at Paladins. I know it isn't his type of game, but with Overwatch's stagnation to death and Paladins' running strong with it being fully released AFTER Overwatch with constant updates and champion releases, I haven't seen any up to date comparisons between the games.
Reliably doing quarter circles or DP's loses its importance eventually. There are plenty of avenues for complexity. Based on the trailer you multiple assists, active tags, restands, run cancels, etc. It'd be cool if you had an opportunity to teach through a genuinely interesting intro campaign, not a classroom disguised as one.
Does League do "Onboarding" well? I never really got to experience it because, well, I got into League in 2010 (Xin Zhao was the newest champ, for those who remember his launch and his Ult of doing a flat % of maximum health), so by the time they rolled out tutorials and even somewhat competent bots to play against, I already had a few years experience.
I think one thing that was missed is that League of Legends for the longest time (and as far as I know still is) a toaster playable f2p game. It's a much smaller investment to start a free game than a game you need to purchase.
I think a lot of the reason why new people don't get into the fighting game genre is that the genre seems to fundamentally refuse appealing to any crowd beyond the hypercompetitive EVO dudes. All this complex bullshit that requires a literal glossary for most people who weren't born in an arcade exclusively filled with Street Fighter 2 cabinets, requiring 83 button inputs in a row to do anything remotely cool beyond basic punches and kicks, and opponents in online that play like they've been playing the game for 30 years two days into the games launch, its fuking tiring. And for me personally a lot of the appeals of these fighting games are the wide variety of characters and their stories, not "Oh no, he backscooted into the Fuck Zone, but he recovered into a cancel airwave dash and topped it off with a Hambone Supreme" I'm kind of short on fighting games that actually have stories or even arcade mode endings for their characters. Tekken 7 technically had a story mode but it only really focused on, like, five characters (which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole 'wide variety of characters' thing), Tekken 7 technically had a story mode but it only used, like, five characters (most of whom are just generic karate dudes who do karate things ), and SFV clearly had the story and characters as an afterthought. The newer Mortal Kombat games are the closest I have right now to a fighting game that appeals more to my tastes specificallly, but there's still the complex move input requirements and delays and supercharge and I just wanna hit shit so I can get to know these characters goddammit.
The thing that makes league and other games so fun to me is that the game is extremely complex, at high levels to a sadistic degree (taking into account enemy thinking patters, rubber banding, tight range spacing and advanced mechanics), BUT the difficulty almost never lies in actually getting your character to do things. Every button is one ability. Every click is one movement action. With fighting games it feels so unstatisfying to me that every "action" is behind a huge input wall that requires you to hop into some kind of practice range and painstakingly muscle memory them. I came here to play games, not study.
I started with smash bros, I have no issue with simple commands at all. However, doing motions and charges is NOT "fighting against the game" or "a barrier to entry". Doing inputs in a game like SF is... Playing SF. It never stops being a part of the strategy or decision making and so it's integral to the game itself. Now, that being said, I agree there is enough room in the genre for both designs. There is no good reason for every dev team to use one over the other.
Simplified inputs misses the point. At the end of the day what separates good players from bad players is time invested. Whatever the controls are, you have to personally have the drive to want to practice and get better at the game. For the average person that drive just isn't there, not just for fighting games but for games in general. No amount of simplification, tutorials, etc is going to change that.
My problem with the "Special Move Button" is that it neuters the satisfaction of pulling off complex series of inputs. I doubt there will be any "Holy shit, a good Vatista player!" moments.
Those moments will happen, but not because they can do a single special move. It will be how they use it. If everyone could use an ewgf in tekken, most would still kinda panic over exactly what to do next and miss out on opportunities. A good player wouldn't just know how to capitalize on an ewgf, but they would probably know how to not get hit by one in the first place. Edit: Not saying they should simplify existing games, just explaining how skill gap can exist in a game with single button special moves.
@@DrNukeShow Skill gap will always exist, that's inevitable. The problem is that many people thing that if the devs dumb down fighting games, they will suddenly become better at fighting games, when in reality, they will still suck, but the games will still be more shallow than before and less interesting to play. This has already happened with Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.
The real problem with fighting games is a lack of diffusion of responsibility. As a one-on-one largely non-random contest, any loss is entirely _your fault_ . For a MOBA or FPS, it can be your team's fault. For card games, it can be the RNG's fault. But for fighting games? The buck stops with you, and that's tough for everyone to deal with.
@@Doktor_Jones Not really. I find fighting games hard to stick to for this reason. And of course you can always find a John. But the more of a stretch it is, the higher the average psychological stress.
I've never played LoL, but I'm hopeful for Project L. Simple specials don't bother me just look at Power Rangers. Easy to pick up but how many new playes will be able to do ToD combos.
Removing motion inputs is going to limit the size a character’s kit can be. It feels more like putting yourself into a box from a kit design standpoint. Furthermore, casuals don’t go to games for their mechanics. How well the Mortal Kombat games sell is a clear indication of this fact. If casuals didn’t like motion inputs enough to not buy or stay with a game, then MK11 wouldn’t have been on of the best selling games of its year. It feels more like actively disregarding what the established FGC wants and is vocalizing that they want and trying to pander to a crowd that doesn’t play the games you make in a way that they don’t have a reason to care about. People want content. The only people who care about the mechanics of a fighting game enough to decide wether or not they want to play it are the people who already play fighting games.
I’ve never played LoL, a friend of mine described it as the most toxic gameplay experience of his life so if those people wanna jump into a fighting game well… They’re gonna learn right quick that’s for sure
You guys all say LoL sucks at on-boarding but then just compare to process to itself. Like how does the on-boarding fair in the field/genre? In the MOBA genre... how does LoL fair in on-boarding to it's competitor? How does LoR fair? How does TFT fair? How does Valorant fair?
Another knock I'd bring up is that people don't have an issue with simplified controls. The issue is that EVERY single fighting game for the past 5 years seems to have gone down this route even when you had stylish systems like in BB for simple auto-combos for new players while leaving the rest of the game complex.
onboarding is a very big issue in highly complex compettiive games, and its nice to see it well summarized. Project L is looking interesting and I hope they manage to solve this issue, and Rising Thunder - the game the team made before this and before being bought by riot - is pretty good for ease of entry in terms of a fighting game. the single button specials should also help with the complexity that comes from a tag game, and just help people not used to eldritch commands made to make games harder to master origionally to munch more quaters before people foudn out they could be used for good things too that being said, from my - admittedly limited - experience with league of legends, (spread over several years of trying to start it), I... do not think riot are good at onboarding or getting you to know whats what. the game literally dumps you in a space where it expects you to know how to play, and wont let you out until you do, with no interest in teaching you. you cannot play the actual game, until you prove to the game you can play it without getting to play it first; yes it has a very active community that could help... but each time I've ever asked for help in league, I've been hit with nothing but abuse and insults and getting told to quit. gating someone from playing your game until they answer an exam is not onboarding. its the exact opposite. its quite literally doing the same thing arcade games did, where the promise of eventually being able to play is fighting the players tolerance. Once your in, its very engaging and people like it and want to stay in, but getting in to league is hard and riot do nothing to help. its a way to turn people off. it'd be like if fighting games actually required the 40 hours of training mode a lot of the worst parts of the fgc seem to think is required while admittedly just a theory, I honestly think one of the easiest ways to help fighting game onboarding would actually be to tone down tutorialization a lot, and lean into letting new players, well, be new. Fighting games kind of went from 0 to 100 on tutorialization. we went from literally none except a move list to, well, testing you can figure out how to walk. and making a loading screen happen between walking and running. a player doesnt need to know every single system to be able to play a game, but when you put a tutorial with them all in the basics, it can come across that way and its daunting and makes the game look unfun, and like theres an exam, because it feels like the expectation is your tutorializing newcomers to play 20 year veterans, not other newcomers. a beginner doesnt need to know how to oki to fight another beginner, and as long as they know how to move/attack/block, then the rest can be learnt more naturally while actually playing. as long as you keep it enjoyable, people will figure out spacing, and pressure, and oki just by basic mechanics and finding out they work in the game. this is where good matchmaking is also vital, so newcomers can fight other newcomers theres also things to be learned from other genres, even if less complex. presenting a challenge for multiple basic skills will help people learn them more than testing each individual mechanic, which is something fps/platformers and even character action games do. This is something smash did and did well in earlier versions, with modes like break the target and race to the finish being an interactive way to learn your characters specifics without needing to read 50 articles. Xrd sort of leaned in this direction, but it still also did it in the dictionary style. I think smaller minigames - like a scored ring chasing segment to encourage learning movement - could be good. a way to practice without needing to sit in training mode this has just been me rambling
I don't know very much about LoL and it's world but Project L looks amazing. Also the idea of making fighting more enjoyable in a way that keeps players coming back is good, I really do wish other big fg companies adapt to that.
![State of Play | September 24, 2024 [ENGLISH]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fVs0suPHAX8/mqdefault.jpg)
Personally, I think that the best way to improve the new player experience with Fighting Games is to make story mode a tutorial. A real campaign, with custom-made ai enemies that are specifically designed to teach mechanics and concepts. Something like the boss fights in Red Earth and the platforming challenges in Them's Fighting Herds, with a game structure similar to Metal Gear Rising, where every boss is designed to test one skill specifically
Dbfz did this, and nobody played the story because it was horrible lol
Them's Fighting Herds actually did this
No then story mode would turn into practice mode. They can go to practice or play the cpu on easy in vs mode or arcade mode.
@@jeremyhall2727 Except it isn't practicing, it is learning. The same way you learn to play Super Mario Bros throughout the levels and not by reading a bestiary to know how you can kill the enemies.
@@yohamida3624 practice is learning dude. Almost every fighting game has a bloody practice mode. You can set the enemy ai to do whatever you please. I practice in super Mario bros. The first time I played it; I used up all my lives learning the basics. Not playing to win but playing to learn the in & outs. And memorizing where the enemy placement was. Replaying the same stage 3 times. Touching the enemy on purpose to see how big is the hit box for all of them. The bestiary was my sister & her friends when I got to the later stages. They already beat the game like ten times. Don't dumb down my fighting games just because some people are bad at them. They can go play something else. Fighting games have a option for easy. If they still can't win on easy; then fighting games just isn't for them. My four year old family member beat fighting games on easy 😒 not everyone has to be good at everything. They need to realize that.
Probably the best onboarding I've seen in a fighting game is Them's Fightin' Herds' story mode. Most enemies you fight are nonplayable characters that teach you concepts like spacing, high/low blocking, and anti-airs, with one of the early bosses even teaching you left/right mixups. In addition, these NPCs aren't characters, so it can kill off these characters left and right since they're just cannon fodder. Finally, other characters within the story mode are used as bosses, with parts of their fight where they're turned up to 11 to teach you specifics about matchups, like the Velvet boss fight teaching you about how to deal with zoners.
Onboarding with story mode is possibly the best way to get players into a game because it's a safe space where new players can mess around with the mechanics, not to mention it's something purely single-player experiences do to resounding success.
Yea, I was pissed after I found this out, I spent a while in training mode and then started the story to discover this.
I agree on about everything you said, EXCEPT that league specifically mastered onboarding. League has always sucked at that, and its literally just the equivalent of the fighting game that tosses you into online. The new player experience is hell and the only way to make it better is with online guides and friends to yell at you.
Yeah, I remember that the game taught me what items are, and what the shop is/what gold is. Then, it just threw me into a match(granted, a bot match). I think that both LoL and Fighting Games need to be better with onboarding.
The difference is that league has a lot more players than almost any fighting game has ever had, with that amount of people you are much more likely to be matchmade with people who equally have no idea what theyre doing and thus games will feel more even and enjoyable.
Actual wild rift has a tutorial that’s 100x better than Leagues
@@thetruestar6348 Still shit compare to what you actually need to do.
@@dieptrieu6564 well yeah of course they need to be better
There were a couple of "easy inputs, easy to learn"-Fighting games before. But never by a huge ass company with unlimited budget and a game director who already showed that he knows what he's doing. While I'm kinda salty that, out of all devs out there, Riot might be the one to bring new players into the Fighting game genre, I'm atleast a little bit intrigued. Who knows? Maybe it'll be actually good?
Dragonball FighterZ, Granblue Versus, Mortal Kombat, and Smash are all easy to learn fighting games made by big companies with budget.
He literally showed footage of Xrd while complaining that games dont make an effort to make inputs easier, when Xrd literally has stylish mode for people who don't want to play with traditional inputs.
@@Zadamanim Stylish mode doesn't really solve anything. If you just wanna mash buttons then yeah sure, stylish mode can satisfy you. But the video is more about keeping the people above that level, and most fighting games are terrible at that
Yeah, resources can take you so far. I was hoping for something more unique, when really this is akin to BBTAG with even simpler inputs and 3 days of hitstun per hit.
@@kidbuumer4780 You can make a deep game but you can't force people to dive in. Many people pop in a game expecting the game to entertain them. They can't understand the fun in training mode when the umoving dummy is doing absolutely nothing to entertain you. Simplifying button inputs will never make the depth more approachable because it's up to YOU to dive in.
The problem with fighting games and the League community is that they actually have to take accountability when they lose, since they have no team to blame.
Nah, they just say the character your playing is broken and blame you for their loss anyway
@@johnkim1217 then we'll just have to mirror match em lol
I just cant wait for riven to animation cancel each and every move she has
Exhibit A of why LoL fighter might die immediately lol
I don't understand why people keep bringing up this "they can't blame their teammates anymore" thing. You realise the opposite is also true right? Your opponent can't cry for someone to bail him out when he's losing and you can focus on yourself without spending 40 minutes arguing with some waste of life. Being in a game where it's just me and my opponent without 8 other idiots getting in the way sounds like heaven to me
I’m in the same boat of loving LoL’s world but being confused and frustrated with the actual gameplay. I’m really excited for Project L
Ayyy same thing here. Let's high five.
Honestly I like the gameplay but playing the game is a miserable experience because it means dealing with a whole team of League players and I would rather not spend my free time getting whined at by people who take everything far too seriously
You can try the card game if that’s the case
Hi Molly^^
Been playing for years, the annoying and frustrating thing is not the game mechanics but the team, it's too AFK or feeder sensitive that the game is unwinnable >90% of the time, >98% of the cases on average.
Now that I think about it, I used to love MOBAS cause of the concept of everyone starting weak every match contrary to MMORPG's(that used to be my fave genre) where someone already had been playing is already far ahead on average.
This taught me to appreciate games with saved progression even more, that I even find slow grinding games more enjoyable, much better than waiting 20 mins of average >90% guaranteed defeat.
Fighting games may be a 1v1 thing but atleast no teams who just randomly AFK's or feeds.
GodHand is a good argument for disguising your fighting game tutorial as a beat em up campaign.
everything is there, space management, whiff punishes, movement teching. Godhand also lets the scaling dificulty and singleplayer design act as a safe playground.
there is the one, itty bitty issue of fighting a real human has an entire different flow and mindset than fighting an AI. unless your up for making a KI Shadow mode or basing your Quest Mode AI on actual players' like VF4... then your better off just having a working matchmaking system for once
Yup
imo fighting game single player campaigns should be like DMC campaigns and then the multiplayer is your usual fighting game. You could even sneakily have players learn different characters by making the characters into different weapons and guns in the campaign
There's this RUclips series called Designing For, and there was a recent episode about how Street fighter 2 classic uses Boss characters as some sort of pseudo tutorials for fighting game concepts. I suggest you give it a watch
Godhand?!
Wow
I keep hearing awesome stuff about it!
XD
I think what Fighting Games need to focus on in order to get people to stay is to actually introduce them to the fun aspects of fighting games. Which as far as i understand it, is the mind games. Playing against an opponent where you're both trying to out-think each other, constantly adapting your strategy and approach, to match or to beat whatever your opponent is doing. However getting to this point in a fighting game is tricky, as it requires a somewhat deep understanding of the genre and the individual games mechanics in order to be able to analyze the match as it's playing out in real time and then applying your knowledge into your strategy and approach. It also requires two people of about equal skill level so that neither player get's completly overrun with no time to think or make sense of what's happening.
I also think it's important to understand that 1v1 games as well as real life sports just don't get as popular as team based games and sports. And lastly i also think the fighting game genre has to accept that one of it's main driving forces is internal reward as opposed to external reward, and the amount of people who are able to sustain themselves solely on internal reward is just a lot less than people who are sustained by external reward. So the overall pool of players that are compatible with fighting games personality wise is just smaller than other genres imo.
"1v1 games as well as real life sports just don't get as popular as team based games and sports." Reading this made me think of a mode where individual players are able to form teams and compete in a sort of Team Battle -esque environment.
You missed the point you have to be incredibly practiced to play mind games, you have to be calm and confident enough your not going to get smashed to toy with your opponent. The question being asked here how to get new people into fighting games is antithetical to fighting games. The reason you can play mind games is practice and the passion to get back up when your beaten and strategize about how not to lose the same way often losing to the same person for match after match, still you only get more excited at figuring it out and getting better.
MEANING: being good or even decent at fighting games is a unique personality type that enjoys adversity and doesn’t see winning as the point of playing. Your dopamine hit is on making sure and steady progress. Your personality type makes you special in a very specific way... it makes you able to play fighting games.
Because it’s dependent on a special personality type that values realizing potential over short term winning or losing there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING A DEVELOPER CAN DO TO BUILD A FIGHTING GAME THAT WILL MAKE MORE NEW PLAYERS. Because of this fighting games should put mechanics and solid gameplay without need for patches so that the game will live long past it’s original release. This is how fighting games make money. Street fighter 3 Street Fighter 2, Soul Caliber 2, Tekken 6, guilty Gear rev2, melty blood, killer Instinct, marvel vs Capcom 1 and 2, all these games never change and are built with incredibly deep and reliable mechanics that allow for maximum player creativity. Some games like Tekken 6 are so expressive you can tell who is playing just by what moves and how the character is played. These games will keep selling copies forever because they are granite/diamond solid. No fighting game should be using gi it’s to make it friendly for new players because friendly players aren’t fighting game players.
Fighting game players are trying to do you as much harm as the game will allow often in a way which gives the maximum insult. Only very special personalities take this as a challenge as an invite to get better and be the better fighter someday. Differed gratification is one of the rarest traits in humanity. Again these physchological tenets are the backbone of a lifetime fighting game player. The more you make it easy for people who haven’t put the work in legitimately compete because of comeback mechanics etc. the more the game will be forgotten to time because it’s not solid it’s not reliable it can’t be counted on to reflect the work you put in. Putting in the work should mean getting double perfect on someone who’s been playing for a couple months. Things like Tekken 7 dlc and rage mechanics ultimately kills the game for the fans who would normally keep playing. Street Fighter 3 is proof that I’m telling the truth, their are new players and new tournaments and even documentaries being made about a game that came out when me a fourty year old was in highschool. People are still buying copies. Making money with fighting games is about paying out over decades not years and when you make it about getting money out of players who don’t like to lose and don’t value git gud you make a crap game people will abandon as soon as the previous version come out with a remaster that offers modern netcode or a pirated version which offers better netcode,
Fighting game players are dedicated and loyal, other games people will switch characters based on advantage but in fighting games it’s all too common for someone to stick with a character because you’ve been with that characters for years. People are sentimental about fighting games like no other genre.
Long story short if companies truly want to create a real phenomena like sf2 build something amazing that people can explore forever and never find an end. That means no patches, no Dlc, and no changes to move properties most of all. You must get it right the first time or follow the sf2 or guilty xrd model and build a whole new game. Chess is the original fighting. How to get more people into chess is foolish because ultimately it’s in your blood it isn’t the game in relation to you that hooks you it’s you relating to the game.
All fighting game innovation should end up increasing the difficulty of entry and the ultimate satisfaction of mastery. When demon souls came out they built an easy mode version just for the investors because under no circumstances would someone have funded what would have appeared in the short term to be an absolutely masochistic experience. What nobody but the developers understood was those that accepted the harsh punishment would be met with the thrill of mastery that nobody had ever experienced in hack and slash. But fighting game players knew the feeling since quarters got stacked on the edge of monitors. You paid in flesh but your investment was rewarded with a sense of identity. You walked into the arcade and people whispered about you. You made friends so easily because everyone around you was of the same mindset take your licks get gud and in the meantime get hype afk when someone did something amazing.
Fighting games are very basic in what people want and need.
What makes a fighting game is community. And you only get community from making a game that is authentically amazing. Otherwise as soon as the dlc and patches stop as soon as you stop pouring money you shouldn’t need to pour into tournaments it will while and be forgotten. What keeps people coming back is the prospect you could learn a new skill that will be valuable for the rest of your gaming career when you patch a game you take that thrill away because developers can just decide your new favorite technique is OP. Why put the time in if you can be punished by having your hardwork rendered meaningless. The only answer is the competing scene people will suck it up if money is on the line. Daigo is a Shoto player yet he plays Guile in Tournaments because he is just so much more consistent reliable and advantageous. Everyone thinks Ryu or Ken to this day when they think Daigo yet he’s been playing guile for five years now. This is what happens when designers try to create dlc and accessible characters Ryu in SF5 is a tutorial character but he lacks the reliability and depth necessary for tournament play.
Trying to make mechanics inviting and easy to pick up only hurts real fighting game players. Developers if you want to make a game that has a large player base do what guilty gear strive did and killer instinct did and make the game look incredible and fun to play. Just make it look cool. And second accept that it’s not fifa or call of duty. These aren’t games people are already trained to love or have a very limited set of easily understandable variables. Typically the more complex a fighting game is the longer lived it is, this isn’t really a rule but making things easy is almost always a bad move. Im a Tekken player I can’t do a qcf to save my life but the game typically has hree hundred moves per character. Learning a character is like learning an instrument and you have to learn how everyone else plays if you want a chance a blocking anything so execution might be relatively light but complexity is quantum fractal butterfly effect insane.
Stay out of the search for accessibility and focus on cor gameplay and timeless mechanics and over many years even twenty or thirty you will continue to see your game recognized as a classic and continue to see people buy new copies. It’s like an investment. Some games are a ton of cash all up front if that how your fighting game is chances are fighting game players are pretty upset about it.
Which is why as a Tekken Player and I don’t mean a Tekken 2 player or
Tag player I mean I’ve been playing since people were asking what’s a tekken. Tekken 7 has destroyed my faith in namco to make a reliable Tekken. It has been a soulless cash grab designed to milk new players for the chance to play OP characters and I was initially happy for Namco my favorite gaming company since galaga... happy to see them really making some serious cash I am seriously tired of not being able to play a online match without encountering any number of new characters who don’t resemble anything we have scene in over eight versions of Tekken. So long story short I will not be pre ordering or even ordering the new one within atleast a year. And will be actively be promoting Tekken 6 tournaments.
Verbal Learning, you are indeed a fan of learning and that’s what makes you a good fighting game player and accepting learning for most people is boring should get you to understand there’s nothings any game can do to make more game players anymore than we can make more people who are mathematicians. You don’t just have to be good at math or have a good teacher you have to love match to the point where you find it excites you. A special breed of people that these companies should have more respect for because they clearly count on us to prop up their numbers while they do everything in their power to cater to people that aren’t going to stick around.
@@TheJiziason I play TT2 team battle with my best friend it’s really the most fun I’ve had with a fighting game. The UFC’s is still the fastest growing sport so I disagree it’s not one v one. It’s the fact that people lose more often a team effort can lead to long winning streaks, an individual can just have a bad day. People don’t want there guy to lose and that’s all fighting games are is losing as soon as you stop losing so much they bump up your level online and your back to losing. Most people are attached to winning, fighting game players are attached to learning. That’s why you can’t creat new players it’s a special type of human that plays fighting games, it’s just like saying how do we get more people into chess. No matter how fun you make the learning process as soon as they compete they will witness first hand that the opposite player is a sadist with absolute no interest in giving you a chance to play, of that doesn’t pump you up for the challenge. You’ll quit. Punishment is the core mechanic in every fighting game. How to Punish? That’s the question that gets googled most people don’t play games to be punished.
It’s the same reason boxers and cage fighters are rare most people like the way it looks they just prefer to keep their teeth amd ribs intact and aren’t really psychologically built for ignoring brain damage and the apparent permanent injuries that occur all the time in practice and especially in competition. Conor Mcgreggor famously tore every tendon in his knee and still fought on it for minutes like it was fine. Most people have a mind that tells them to quit when things get punishing. Only a rare breed actually feels more live in those moments.
Most people play video games either to relieve stress or to get a dopamine kick from winning with consistency against a computer designed to let them win. Even FPS’s have enough power mechanics to win by chance. Fighting games that aren’t broken every single inputs you press is life or death. You either enjoy that pressure or your not a fighting game player. Developers can’t really fix that without ruining the game for the actual fighting game players. Typically by giving them easy to use and input super damaging moves when the bar fills up that basically is a sign they just got wrecked. And those moves are typically armored so if you’re continuing to dominate it’s easy to be un mindful and be punished for being good at the game Great times for the newb rage bait for the serious player. Developers need to stay out of it in very passionate opinion.
Lanning Phase is the League of Legends version of Neutral. Change My Mind.
End game team fight phase is like Neutral if five players were in control of one character.
I wonder if the concept of "unfolding" gameplay would work best for getting newbies on board, like a mode with a sizable chunk of moves removed / locked so players can focus on simple concepts like blocking high low, basic footsies and grab.
Presumably that's something you could tie into story mode, with your character "learning" the rest of the moves at about the same pace that you do - start with nothing, end with a decent mastery.
Should work.
Good ideas guys!
@@OrbisAetherum yeah if you cant just skip that, that would make me dip out
@@JRedNose I believe there was a Capcom Arcade fighting game with this exact concept called Red Earth. If I remember correctly there were only 4 playable characters but a ton of non-playable Abyss style bosses in the arcade mode. As you played you got Exp which would level your character up and gain more moves that they could use in Versus battles as well. Add-On a system similar to Arms' tournament mode where all gameplay-effecting unlockables are present from the start meanwhile other modes like Arcade and Story Mode get locked by a cheat code on the main menu this could be really cool
@@DarkGekkouga ...and that game is as dead as Donda.
Fighting games always reminds me of martial arts with how difficult it is to get into, of course getting first into one of many martial arts you couldn't or shouldn't go straight into a duel because you'll get instantly destroyed, or if the case is just two peoples who are new, most of the nuances of said martial art just wouldn't be there yet. Most of the time it'd take weeks if not months of training and studying to be at a level where you could try going 1-on-1 with proper knowledge of how the fighting works and actually have *fun* with it.
I get what you're talking about. IMHO, I think that this generalizes to a larger problem of how to get someone on board with a skill in general. Skills take time to develop, and that core fact sometimes (keyword: sometimes) undermines the point of doing a fun activity, to have fun. The lack of knowing the nuances being an active deterrant to fun is a huge thorn in the side, especially because of risk.
I get this idea from trying new non-game things like rollerblading, skateboarding, and doing taekwondo. rollerblading and skateboardin,, i stopped coz i didnt have access to any supplementary things to aid in not falling onto my butt or going too fast. but i liked tkd coz we used mats, so if i fell over while trying to do higher kicks or were taken down in self defense moves, i wouldnt need to worry about the impact as much as with concrete.
I still fail to see how they're difficult to get into. I think the real problem is that at the lowest level people are scared to try the game. It's perfectly fine to get into a fighting game and not know what you're doing, but a lot of the time those newcomers aren't really able to be matched against one another
It just takes a different mindset than what most people have. Most people pop in a video game expecting to be entertained with minimal input required, but fighting games are completely dependent on YOU. People who don't understand fighting games think training mode is boring because the game isn't actively trying to entertain you. But training mode is some of the most fun I've had in games because it's all about your understanding of the systems and giving you complete freedom to experiment, learn, and improve. You feel 10 times stronger and more knowlegeable than you were an hour ago.
The biggest drawback I see is that people completely miss the mark on what makes fighting games difficult to get into. It's not the difficulty of performing special moves, it's *being able to tell what's good or not.* How is a beginner supposed to understand what moves are safe or unsafe? How is a beginner supposed to know how to use okizeme tools? How is a beginner supposed to know when to break throws? Even with all the training mode in the world, a beginner wont know what they are even looking at, or why there needs to be so many buttons that all do the same thing (like 3 punches and 3 kicks).
In fact I find that people tend to struggle with Smash Bros more than any other fighting game, despite almost every character only uses 3 buttons to attack: normal, special, and grab. So many beginners struggle to even recover to the stage, let alone understand the nuance between tilt attacks and smash attacks. Making the inputs easier doesn't make the % damage system, directional influence, and rage any less confounding.
And yet those deep systems are exactly what make these games so fun to figure out. That depth is always going to elude you until you decide to immerse yourself in it. You need to make the choice to dive in.
The difference between league and any fighting game is that league has a lot more players than almost any fighting game has ever had, with that amount of people you are much more likely to be matchmade with people who equally have no idea what theyre doing and thus games will feel more even and enjoyable. Having that guarantee that you can hop on, even months or years after the game has released, and know that there are still a ton of other people picking up and learning the game with you is a massive incentive for people who want to pick up the game or are unsure if they should stick with it
But surely this wasn’t always the case? At the beginning, the game has to be accessible enough that new players want to join and STAY. Riot did a good job of keeping players and thats the point
Also i think that fighting games look more intimidating because if you lose in League of Legends, you can always blame your team. But in fighting games you dont have anyone to blame but yourself so people cope and get mad at the game for "being too hard".
@@taurengod It wasn't always the case, but back then no one knew what they were doing, so it wasn't that hard for new players to do relatively well.
The concepts of accessibility and skill floor are not something inherent to the game, they're relative to the playerbase. Changing the game doesn't change the skill floor.
At most, it reduces frustration, and that has more to do with people having the wrong expectations than with the game itself.
@@boris424 or most people just doesn't like fighting game.
I think a big issue is how in a fighting game, it's you and your enemy, and nothing inbetween. No breathing room, no retreating to a safe location and recomposing yourself, no strategy to lay down in advance - fighting games are decided moment-to-moment, and at breakneck speed. League has that too - but not in the context of having to predict or notice the enemy approach method, and then take one of countless possible countermeasures, with only a tiny subset of these options actually being a good idea.
Then there's also the relentlessness of fighting games and the stress and pressure of a combat environment limited by screen size. When the opponent gets past you and locks you into a combo, you have a burst mechanic at best to get you out of it, but otherwise, you're out of the game for the duration of that combo. Once it's over, chances are you're pushed into the corner: once again, you cannot retreat elsewhere, so you're back in the position of having to predict or notice the opponent's plan, or get slapped again. And that's the entire game, constantly. It's scary and intimidating.
And then there's the tendency of requiring very accurate timing (or understanding the rarely explained concept of input buffering) to execute your combo and make the most of it. I think fighting games are actually terrible at explaining or indicating the timings of their combos unless you have frame data tools available, which turns a fighting game into a spreadsheet of bullshit. For as much as I love fighting games, I am very aware of how unappealing they are to non-competitive and/or laid-back players.
This can be easlly solved with a large playerbase, where there are players suitable for every proficiency level. No matter how technical or lame a game is, if the player pool is bog enough, there will be a decent challenger for a newcomer.
Edit: besides, people play moba because they are suspiciously addictive. If I were into psychology I would give a deep look on it.
Because you start playing MOBA's because generally a friend introduces you to it. That gets you personally invested. Then every win feels like you contributed more than you may have really done because there is so many different things you could have gotten the highest number on your team in, on top of the fact not everyone is even competing with you on your team for those numbers (the most magic damage vs the most physical damage vs the most healing). And then every loss is mitigated by 4 other people so at worst the loss was 20% your fault.
@@rrteppo About your first point, that can also be valid for fighting, racing, sports, or any other game. It only happens more to moba because it has more players, who knows why.
Everything else, well, every game has its perks.
--free game with high skill ceiling that doesn't require advanced hardware to run--
it all comes down to accessibility and marketing (enter ooh la lah cosmetics)
@@ren7a8ero True, but usually you get introduced to it by a friend actively playing the MOBA and teaming with you often. You get a safe fallback n the form of your friend who you are likely chatting with via VC or directly with each other while playing with each other at computer shops or on portable devices.
That's the core difference. You have a *Friend* who can help you rise and maybe help you build confidence in playing the game, getting you out of your shell and eventually you start trying playing on your own after understanding the fundamentals, having a character be your main, and you are set to win or lose your match where you can blame your teammates or gloat about how you hard carried them to the victory.
Fighting games lack a friend to help carry you to the end of a match. You are fighting alone against your opponent, and while your friend can try to help teach you about fundamentals, it's hard to digest still.
There are a shit ton of items in a moba yes, but the explanation of their funcctions is either "+stat" or "New power with _ condition to activate, sentence of how much damage or what stat it affects, etc." It is much more easier to understand that and build your kit around your playstyle.
Compared to a fighting game where you can just barely understand what's going on at the heat of the moment.
@@silverdededestruction2197 So it is harder for the ones in more need to socialize to enter a moba than a fighting game, because without a friend acting as a buffer and a shield, they wont be playing only against the enemy team, but also his own team. While in a fighting game everyone knows the feeling of being alone and beaten. Thinking about a very rough but very serious martial art dojo. And it seems very notorious how some big communities of multiplayer games are toxic.
There is also a generational gap. Arcade players had to be at least respectful, the consequences of ill behaving could be instantaneous, and they brought that when they came online. Moba players are usually younger, being a bit of a bully behind a screen is easier and almost expected. It may be that newcomers in fighting games learn some sportsmanship by example, or forget about it when old players became too few, who knows...
The moba player will need tens of hours until learn to combine all the possible itens, because at that point he doesn't have a clue about gameplay, even less his playstyle. At this point, the difficulty is very similar for both moba and fightan players.
I think one of the biggest problems with onboarding comes with playable variety
Fighting Games when you get down to it, are pretty damn monotonous... Especially because a character is such an investment to get in to that you are likely only going to have fun with a few and no matter what its only really fights, fights against other people, and fights in a different mode
Example, what modes do expect from fighting games nowadays?
1. Well a VS mode to fight either a CPU or my friend,
2. a Story Mode where I fight various CPUs as various characters while cutscenes or textboxes play out in between,
3. an Arcade Mode where I fight a ladder of CPUs... which is pretty much just Story Mode but without the rhyme or reason as to why I'm fighting this person,
4. a Survival Mode where its an endless Gauntlet of random foes and I don't regenerate my full health so its just endurance
5. A Training mode where I get told the system mechanics, character rundowns and combo trials as well as a free experimentation lounge
And 6. Online play in 3 flavors (Chocolate with Friends, Casual Strawberry or Vanilla Ranked)
Issue is- If I'm bored with the standard mechanics of the game... where do I go? Everywhere is just kind of a variation on the game?
Some ways fighting games have solved this-
1. Customization, for when you dont want to learn a whole new character but just wanna make the character your playing as feel fresh. Whether its just that they are now slightly faster at the cost of 50 hp or they have a whole new set of special moves
2. Recontextualizing the mechanics. Smash and Tekken's favourite pass times. Whether that's turning the game into a beat'em up with Tekken Force, a 2D Platformer like Subspace Emissary and Melee Adventure Mode, or a wierd sports game like Home-Run Contest or Tekken Ball. Smash Run, Target Test, Target Blast, Race to the Finish, Board the Platforms, Smash Tour, MK Mythologies Sub-Zero... Ok maybe not those last 2
3. What about making enemy characters in your Story Modes have some wierd Power Up or giving you a Power Down. I mean Stronger non-playable versions as bosses have existed for a while, Like Shin Akuma until he was made playable or Alpha Bison with his full screen Psycho Crusher. You did mention in one video that Story moment in BBTag where Jin couldn't use his Sword so how about that.
4. Missions and Achievements + Unlockables "Hmm... I get what for doing this thing? Oh cool I'm gonna do that right now" Just 3 notes- A) Spread Them out, DBFZ's 3 Unlockable characters feel to much like mountain climbing for only 3 characters. At this point I'd be more happy if you only started with 12 and the other 12 were slowly unlocked as you progressed to SSGSS and 21. B) Have actual criteria, not some roluette I gain credits for and C) No one cares about unlocking titles
5. I don't know just throw a whole other game in there- Tekken Bowling, StreetSmash, Motor Kombat, Puzzle Kombat. Modes to play for when the devs just gave up. That one section in that Naruto game where you play Dynasty Warriors as a frog
When I get tired of fighting these legitimately help adding variety into the game and give me one less reason to take the disk out. And trust me when it comes to fighting games once the disk is out, it's likely a while before it goes back in
In my opinion, fighting games developers have made a big mistake in not taking single-player AI and content seriously.
Instead of figuring out how newcomers approach the game and craft appropriate, special NPC characters for a single player campaign, they go with half-assed CPUs that blocks more or less depending on the difficulty.
Like... Make a rogue-lite campaign, craft some NPC opponents with special CPU-profiles (jumpy, grabby, zoney, wake-up-into-shoryuken-y) that FORCES the player to use the tools that are explained to them.
It baffles my mind why nobody tried to make a campaign like Killer Instinct Season 3.
The thing is that most people will play it once or maybe twice and because the actual focus on fighting games is the pvp then using resources for balancing or adding new mechanics and characters would be going to the least played part of the game
My biggest issue with one-button specials is that it's limiting to the normal moves and the variety of attacks you can have. By simply having "direction+button," you've now attached a single button to all special moves and removed the ability to include tiger-knee style inputs or other methods of controlling direction while utilizing special moves. I hope that this works out because I do like the idea of one-button specials but they've never felt like they added to the game and sometimes have resulted in me as a new player getting even more frustrated because I end up accidentally activating a special when I meant to simply attack.
My counter argument to the simplified controls goes back to my time having played Power Rangers Battle for the Grid. The major problem with it comes to not just simplifying something but how effective it becomes. If this game brings in simple controls certain things becomes more effective. Things like zoning, things like combos, normally things that require time spent in the lab or going into playing matches. Mostly Legacy skill stuff in theory. Take for example a team built around Keep away (keeping to Power Rangers) Udanna is a notorious anchor that can fill up an entire screen with projectiles with one botton. Two if she has an assist which then boils down to putting in an assist that can either lock down an enemy or offer an invisible reversal. Simplifying the controls makes this accessible yes and makes it seem like players can fight back at range. Now comes the follow up and the crux to this. How to get around it. Even with the lack of special inputs players still have to work around the barrage of projectiles. Even more so now that the opponent can just freely do these things with little to no consequence since Udanna can move forward and back when using this move and synergizes really well with any lock down assist because of it. In Power Rangers movement becomes really valuable to learn how to deal with this along with a number of special moves built to counter this but even then the levels of counter play and what's available isn't always as effective as something as simple as throw ice balls and run.
If this comes into play then players will leave because of the spam anyway. They can input a cooldown system and a gear system to mimic the LoL gameplay but even then it devolves into the first few pics to a number of players....who generally tend to leave their game when they see no chance of winning. Complex inputs don't always gate keep. What does gatekeep or creates issues with getting into fighting games is and always has been.... How do I even deal with this? And making things easier to jump in on doesn't always provide that skill barrier for players to avoid the initial pill of "L's" that is learning the nature of fighting games.
There's a lot of talk about "how do we get new players to get in and stay" but not enough about "how do we do that while keeping the existing fight game fans here". Blazblue Cross Tag is my favorite fighting game and I will just fight the CPUs for fun, but existing fans of the fighting game series dropped it for moving the complexity to the tag mechanics rather than the individual character's combos. Now the game is in a tough spot where older players don't get on and new players see "0 online" and quit the game.
I think, as well, Project L being free to play will help a TON when it comes to the Onboarding Process.
Fighting games are an inherantly competetive genre, and paying $60 for a game you might not even be good enough to enjoy is already a kick in the balls.
Being free to play widens the doors to anyone with even a modecrum of interest to play it.
Plus, free to play games are driven by their communities, and free to play players are used to having to put in some work and learning in order to really get into a game. And as a competetive game, seeing a pro do something amazing and wanting to try and do it yourself is the kind of inspiration that brings a community together and gets people to give it a go.
I honestly believe free to play, or at least half price, is the way to go for fighting games. Because, if we're being honest, most fighting games aren't worth full price. Let alone all the DLC and skins they expect us to buy.
For me, motion special feels very satisfying. Anti airing with ryu feels good. Cammys back standing mp does not feel good, but her dp does. And sagats kara cancel dp, that shit feels so good.
You're being rewarded for applying dexterity. Dexterity is a valid skill to cultivate and should be rewarded along with the others, and fighting game designers generally understand this.
A note about 1 button specials:
Power Rangers has both incredibly technical combos and 1 button specials. Inputs do not equal technical difficulty.
I feel that while teaching people how to play IS one of the biggest challenges for a fighting game, the REAL problem for newcomers and veterans alike is *_how to deal with defeat and the frustration that comes with it._*
Even if you go through the entire tutorial and practice an hour everyday, most people never go past silver/gold rank (or the equivalent in your game).
We can see this in seasonal rank distribution graphs, where they show that the majority of players is stuck in the bottom third of the ladder.
From my point of view, we should focus on how to both ease the pain of loss and how to encourage players to move past it.
And I believe the answer lies not in fighting games themselves, but other competitive games like Rocket League, LoL and even real life sports.
If we can take information from those games and apply it into fighting games, I am sure it will improve them a lot.
Easing the pain of loss is only as possible as the players themselves make it to be. It's the same for any competitive environment, really. This issue cannot really be solved by the games themselves. If you lose, you can either give up or try to become better, and we all know which option is easier.
Imagine if FGs used their story modes to teach players, instead of essentially throwing a massive wall of text at them in the tutorial mode. But instead we get 2-4h cutscenes with very rare gameplay that is instantly interrupted by yet another long cutscene.
Guilty Gear fixes this problem by removing the interruptions and giving you a 6 hour movie and no gameplay /s
While I personally much prefer fighting games to have motion inputs when it comes to special moves, the Smash series is a textbook example of why that's not necessarily required to have complexity in a fighting game. Neutral, movement, combo efficiency, match-up knowledge, and a lot of other factors can still very much feed into making a fighting game interesting without making it a contest of who has the better memory when it comes to actually being able to play your character.
Y'know, I think one of the best part of 1 button specials is that they're keyboard compatible. It never lost my attention that LoL is not that executionally demanding. Learning how to press R is not hard, but learning when to press it is. In fighting games, pressing R is still hard.
Sincerely if anything motion inputs are easier on keyboard
Absolutely lovely video, you have a fantastic grasp of the nuanced issues facing new players. I wish I could’ve shown this to myself from two years ago, when I was still convinced that fighting games were “too complex” for me...while also putting hundreds of hours into even more complex games like Yu-Gi-Oh! and StarCraft. Great work.
I'd like to see a company go the route of Red Earth, make a single player game mode with NPC's that have different gameplay mechanics that teach aspects of the overall game.
I like that ending note because I hope. As someone that's played both genres there really is a stark difference in how you get in.
Hopefully L will have a sizeable and healthy (in the sense new players are still coming in) enough that newer players can come in and play against someone their skill so they can still learn and apply other stuff.
Ehhh kinda disagree with saying that just removing motion inputs will automatically move that lost complexity somewhere else. It CAN move that lost complexity somewhere else, but its not guaranteed. And its not true that fighting games didn't try one button specials, Power Ranges BFTG, GranBlue Fantasy Versus, yet still those games didn't revolutionize the genre and didn't manage to attract substantial casual crowd.
Why did smash bros get the casual crowd then?
@@Goujiki IP. The fact that Smash alternatives pale to compare to Smash shows that people arent there for gameplay, they are for characters they know and love.
Very interesting, I hope they nail it so that another developer with some semblance of ethics can copy their advances in onboarding
I was really intrigued with how Granblue Fantasy Versus tried to tackle special moves by both assigning shortcut macros and motion inputs and balancing them out as EX moves with the cooldown mechanic. I wouldn't be surprised if the Project L team took a page out of that and implemented something similar.
Project L team won't take a page of that... They wrote the book.
Project L devs were previously working on a fighting game, Rising Thunder, which had one button specials with cooldowns.
Then the game died, but the company was bought by riot. So I'd be surprised if there aren't any cooldowns.
@@Nparalelo That or it just plays like Power Rangers Battle for the Grid, which also has a one-button special.
League of Legends is going crazy with expansion. Just this month they released two spin-offs and a TV show. I've never played LoL, but I did watch and really enjoy Arcane.
I've always had a bittersweet love of fighting games; my manual dexterity is limited and my hands tend to quake for short stretches, despite having been playing video games since I was 3. I adore fighting games that use or allow for simple button + direction inputs like Super Smash Bros or similar for that reason, as I'm able to get into the deeper mechanics and put up a fight. I don't exactly win often, I'm still poor at the game, but I enjoy losing significantly more there than in some more traditional fighting games where there's frustration.
That said, I don't feel it's a major bar to entry itself (an accessibility issue to be sure, but not something that will keep a huge number of people out on its own), nor do I think it'll 'move complexity elsewhere' to change the control scheme (it's no zero sum game; neutral, spacing, reads and punishes, etc are always going to have depth and complexity regardless of how easy it is to input your 'big gun' attacks). You're certainly hindered without those special moves, but a significant chunk of each fighters' movesets are still simple inputs for punches and kicks that play a big part of the game even at high levels, so you still have tools to use as you learn and even squeak in a win or two with against the more difficult AI. It's mainly a sticking point because it's yet another thing to learn on top of the rest, and usually the first you run into.
I feel the issue is more clear when you compare fighting games in-play to other games: lack of conveyance and a feeling of helplessness. Fighting games are fast, with matches coming down to split second decisions and predicting what option your opponent will opt into, and what those options are and when the windows are there aren't going to be apparent to people who don't already know them. There's a lot of times where a combo looks like it doesn't have a point the victim can escape but does, and plenty of moves with small qualities you need to know in order to escape those situations (like i-frames) that have no visual indication.
In other genres, even particularly hard games go to great lengths to make it clear to the player how they screwed up. "I should've jumped there", or "I didn't dodge fast enough", or "maybe if I play more aggressively early", or even "ah, so THAT'S how you dodge that attack, now I can do this" are the thoughts entering players' heads, because they can see where their mistakes were and that gives them enough to work off of. Without clear information, you end up with moments like the clip you showed where the new player will lose without any idea of what they did wrong or how they could have escaped the combo that shaved off over half their life bar. Everything happens fast, and a lot of details aren't visible- hitboxes being a hair bigger or smaller than they seem, exacting frame data and hitstun duration- so the new player has no idea of what they need to do to improve until a more experienced player pulls them aside and explains what the game itself doesn't, or they bang their head against the wall enough times to stumble over the answer by luck.
I'm lucky that I have a lot of friends of varying skill level who are happy to chat about the little tricks and details I'd never have picked up on by myself, letting me practice against opponents who don't have to purposefully play with one hand behind their backs to not destroy me, and answering questions about how to deal with different staple tricks that don't have an immediately obvious answer. So it's a matter of conveying to players what's going on so they can learn what mistakes they're even making to begin with that feels like the missing step- stuff like Super Smash Bros Ultimate having a very detailed training mode stage you can play around in that highlights a lot of qualities about each attack (knockback angles/distance being drawn out, damage noted, and even a combo hit counter that only counts 'true' combos that have no gaps for escape to help you learn what can be escaped and what can't) is a good example.
One idea that comes to mind is taking advantage of replays- let players toggle on/off visible hitboxes, slow or speed up the replay, and maybe an option to outline a fighter to show if they're in hitstun (red outline), benefiting from i-frames (gold outline) or neither (blue outline) to make it clear 'hey, I could've gotten out there!' Another idea is using something like the segments in different Smash Bros entries' 'adventure mode's that involve navigating a small obstacle course or the 'destroy the car' minigame from Street Fighter 2 as miniature lessons. A mini beat'em-up section with simple mooks that have simple patterns can help teach basic skills in a drip feed (a foe holding a shield needing to be grabbed to be pulled out of their defensive 'guarding' stance, for example) could work? I don't think there's an easy solution, but having a good idea of the problem first is necessary to figure one out.
the thing about motion inputs is that i think they are fun to perform, i think the game granblue versus tackled the motion input almost problem perfectly, having it set to a directional input and a button but also keeping the motion input in the game. I just hope that there is still a way to do them, like give me the option, one of the reasons i like leo so much in guilty gear xrd is because his rekka has a fun motion to perform. im all for accessibility in fighting games but there is some legacy stuff that may seem arbitrary to still be in fighting games but i just have fun with them.
I think Them's FIghtin' Herds walked right up to the front door of greatness in fighting game tutorials and then turned around and went home. They do what video games have been doing since the dawn of the industry: Teaching players while they play... which is honestly what I think the best use of the story mode is.
TFH places you up against various NPC fighters in a sort of 2D RPG format that are designed to encourage certain fighting game concepts. Wolves teach you block low and anti-air, Snakes teach you how to whiff punish, Panthers teach you to the defensive mechanics and bears teach you the definition of pain. They even have an ambush system that has the enemy sleeping at the start to encourage players to learn the fattest combos they can do to make the subsequent fight easier.
The problems are twofold: They teach advanced things too early and they don't *really* explain the concepts on any of the other NPC monsters than the wolves. Imagine a story mode where you get some easy NPC ai creatures to fight, things you can clear out pretty effortlessly while only hitting buttons, but instead of the fight ending when they are reduced to 0 HP thy are stunned until you hit them with a special move that requires inputs... and in a UI element over the enemy's head will show the inputs to do a special move. As you progress through the story the timeframe to input this special move will get shorter and shorter until the only way to win would be to close the round with a special move or combo into it. You can teach other concepts the same way, although defensive mechanics will be harder. Throw in some things like combo flash cards (mini combo trials) and reaction challenges on varying levels and you'll have something that I think could teach players concepts in single player while still being a *game*.
A very narrow playerbase is also why getting into fighting games is so fking hard. Most titles are expensive, hard to learn, and usually a sequel from a stablished franchise, so as a new player you just *know* that the only people buying the game you're interested in are gonna be seasoned players with all the fundamentals learned down to a T, so you're gonna get buttblasted into next month if you even dare to get into online mode. Project L might attract a massive amount of newbies, so other newbies can fight them at a fair level
I remembered that Rising Thunder had simple input, so I don't believe people are expecting project L to have complex one. In terms of control, project L would probably end up be a lot like its predecessor.
Here's a thought; maybe make a "tiered online system".
Like, instead of having a ranked system that's based on how many matches you win (which is kind of vague, because you can win or lose a match for any number of reasons), instead have the game focus on details;
- How often are you throwing out command inputs?
- How complex are those inputs?
- How many many moves can you string together in one combo?
- How many hits can you get in vs how many hits your enemy can get in? (With different levels depending on the character, of course. Can't grade Chipp and Potemkin on the same curve.)
- How consistently are you blocking the enemy's attacks?
- What's your average proximity to any given enemy, and how does this compare to the ideal range of both your character and theirs?
Hypothetically, you could put a series of locks like these on a characters' online profile on first startup.
In order to break each of these locks, you've gotta be consistently performing at a certain level with each of the game's mechanics.
So long as these locks are in place, you can only play with players who have a comparable lock situation to you. (There could be some overlap; like, maybe it only restricts you based on the number of locks instead of which locks you've broken, specifically. Probably could be tuned in patches.)
That way, you'll only ever be playing against players who have a similar grasp of the game as you; though, depending on how you balance it, you could be playing against someone with a vastly different skillset, which would keep fights interesting.
Then, once all the locks are broken, you finally unlock the proper ranked-play system.
This way, instead of having to sit in a damn training room, reading menus, you can be practicing the mechanics in actual matches with actual people AND you'll be getting consistent feedback on your skill progression.
(Meanwhile, open, unranked freeplay could be unlocked from the beginning, just to give people options).
As a fighting game fan for over 25 years i must say that the genre is misunderstand in a lot of ways. Let me tell a few things about this.
Look, the old "oh, this game is too complex" is a lazy excuse for me, but i get it, nobody wants to work for his fun. However there are games that tackle this issue and STILL the genre in is the same spot. For example, this same game, project L is basically a remake of other free to play game, Rising Thunder that used very simple commands. You can have a fighting game with a single attack and no jumping (footsies) and STILL the legacy players will tend to win anyways. Now, i'm going to sound very assholy but i don't get why there is some sort of division from the FGC games and other genres hard wise, i mean... Did you know there are other genres that can be hard? Did you play Celeste? I did, hard as balls, did You play Ikaruga? Same, did you play Hades?... I think you guys get the idea, my point is that dedication to a game is not rare but seems to me that fighting games get a lot of shit for being hard when you can expend hundreds of hours in Celeste perfecting a 100% run in a single sit and EVERYONE will clap at it and nobody will give you shit for being better than them at the game.
I'm not gatekeeping, want to play any fighting game? You are welcome any day, want to get good? Amazing there's A LOT of material for you to learn, want to be in a pro circuit? A lot of super majors are open when you are ready. The ONLY thing the community will not do is to put the effort for you.
You literally said it at the start: nobody wants to work for their fun. Like it or not, but first and foremost, video games need to be fun.
When I first started playing Halo I was terrible at shooters. A lot of people say it takes legacy skill to play a fighting game competently and completely ignore all the legacy skill required for other games. The only reason shooter fans think they aren't as hard to get into is because they've probably been playing Halo and Cod since they were 10.
@@Goujiki If people didn't want to work for their fun then video games wouldn't exist.
@@Goujiki You can have fun without spoiling the genre. Actually the producers of the genre seems to go for the casual player more and more in our days, even SF that is sorta the signature of fighting games did SFV way WAAAAY easier than any of the other entries in the main series. Want simple games? There are for you, there's Fantasy Strike, Rising Thunder, Power Rangers Battle For The Grid, Divekick... But those games will STILL reward dedication, all games will. At the end of the day one player will win and other will lose and no ammount of accesibility, tutorials or simple command schemes will make it different. You will need to really invest yourself into learning if you want to be good, this is true for mostly any game, why fighters should be different?
@@kaoko111 "At the end of the day one player will win and other will lose and no ammount of accesibility, tutorials or simple command schemes will make it different."
THIS.
If Power Ranger Battle for the Grid taught me anything; its that simplified inputs are definitely a viable way to get people into the game. The real challenge came from the lab; or the willingness to learn how to even attempt to do crazy stuff in real matches lol
Willingness to learn is the bane of fighting games in general, because most people don't have it.
holy shit fucking thank you for talking about how league is also complicated
feels like the fgc thinks that literally only fighting games are complicated and that every other genre is simple and baby easy even though mobas are extremely complex
Your video is very informative and Amazing…the thing is about inputs it honestly doesn’t matter, ppl have literally Looked at command inputs in fighting games while being noobs because they were interested in the game they were playing..putting the most barebones amount of time just to comprehend said move or combo…if It looks COOL ,Thing is if something looks cool,looks fun someone will find a way to do it..regardless of input difficulty Make it Z motions, One button,command inputs it honestly doesn’t matter if what your selling doesn’t grip the audience..because difficulty will have to be somewhere regardless
Having simple single input specials isn't mutually exclusive with complex ones, you could have both a simple and complex input for the same move with the complex one granting a bigger reward, and getting both a more accessible experience for newbies without lowering the skill ceiling. While I haven't played it myself (and can't due to hand pain) and thus can't speak for how well it's implemented, Granblue Fantasy Versus is one example of this idea
As a person who started to get into league last year, started with level 30 and now I'm 220+, I agree that I do enjoy the world, lore and art style of Runeterra. I'm glad they are f i n a l l y redesigning their older champions; Caitlyn looks so good!
Now for Project L, I'm hype for the game, Character designs are looking fuckin' C R I S P
I'm hyped for Ekko, because of his rewind mechanic. But I'm actually really interested to see if Amumu is in this game. He could be a fun grappler!
I wonder if a big motivator for learning League in the first place is friends. Since there's 5 people working together and having fun doing whacky things or showing off how skillful they are in the game. A lot of people put in the time to learn the game better, look up champion guides, how to last hit minions, etc.
It could also have to do with small victories in League, having better cs, destroying the enemy's tower, stealing a buff, stealing an objective, shutting down the enemy carry, whatever. Lots of small victories that you can celebrate other than just winning the game.
Meanwhile in fighting games, it's usually a 1 v 1 so you only have yourself as the motivating factor. It's hard to get others to play with you, because you will be fighting against each other, and since you've played the game before, you're actively going to get your friend who you're trying to get into the game a bad time as your opponent.
And we don't really celebrate, getting an enemy to use their combo breaker, blocking a layered mix-up or blockstring, or learning how to beat specific move that the enemy uses, that much as hearing a *ding* from the gold you get from a minion.
League is not at all good at onboarding. The only difference is that you have a lot of time to understand and process things.
Take enemy champions for example. Standing around in lane and watching your opponents is a good way to understand how they operate. In the course of 30 minutes, you'll have a basic understanding on how your opponents work. If the enemy is simple enough, you'd understand how to counter it given the tools you have.
Also, League is fun. It's just that if you're very into it, it can break your heart when you and the game changes and there's nothing you can do about it. If you're good at handling things you can't control then it's a good time all throughout.
Oh I enjoyed my time *playing* the game, I think it's actually really engaging and, if history is any proof, very addicting. I just can't stand the community, which is unfortunate in a game that *demands* cooperative team play.
@@SugarPunch I suggest you play ARAMs then. Everyone there seems chill because this time, all of you are at the mercy of RNG so there are less hard feelings.
There's always a mute button and there's not much strategy in ARAMs that requires complex instruction so you don't actually need to chat.
@@magicno2 The ARAM clip of the Katarina pentakill was me =D
I'm really starting to think a nice, fleshed out single player would be the way to ease a new player into the game. like single player campaigns of shooters.
I recently got back to League after a 10-year break and darn, I never expected to enjoy it as much as I do now! It's so much fun now, at least to me.
Going to make a prediction: the one button special is actually going to make the skill floor for competitive play higher, not lower. Tricksy bs happens when you get rid of them that devs have trouble dealing with.
I don't think the goal is to raise the skill floor so newbies can fight back against pros. I think the goal is to create an actually obtainable middle floor where mastery and improvement are actually possible. Ideally the end result should be a playerbase that is not only weighted towards newcomers and high tier pros, but also a middle tier where slightly-better-average players can find suitable competition.
@@SugarPunch "I don't think the goal is to raise the skill floor so newbies can fight back against pros. I think the goal is to create an actually obtainable middle floor where mastery and improvement are actually possible." They say almost these exact words during the reveal video.
@@SugarPunch Are modern fighting games really that unobtainable in the skill department though? You exaggerate, its fighting games, not thermonuclear physics.
@@Sasiskin7823 People really like to talk a lot about them on a grand scale like it's theoretical instead of idk just playing them nothing is as hard or dumb as some old Capcom/Arc Sys fighting games anymore so it's pretty accessible to everyone.
@@Sasiskin7823 Theres a ton of stuff that goes into learning a fighting game. To even begin to play the game you have to learn what buttons do what, then any move inputs. After that you need to learn spacing, neutral, combos, punishes. Then after that you need to learn how to open a player up, meaties, advantage states, safe/unsafe moves, shimmies. And after all that you need to memorize a ton of frame data for EVERY character in the game. Oh and thats all without having to read, analyze and outplay the person on the other end playing you.
1 button input specials.... uhhh BlazBlue calamity trigger literally has your right analog stick mapped to specials this was however removed in Continuum shift and subsequent titles forward
and further experimentation we found out golden Iron Tager's Astral Finish is a simple back-drive combo
That "how to LoL" bit was SO good lol
Excellent video as always. I'm really impressed at how you were able to put this out as quickly as you did to be honest
The best way to grab players is using pre-existing characters and IP a la Smash Bros. That's also a really simple to learn fighting game which helps with making people stick around. In more complex games you can get people to buy with characters, but it's a lot harder to get them to keep playing when they didn't understand a lick of the tutorial. I've tried to learn how to play Pokénn Tournament like 3 times now and failed every one. And that's not even a very complex fighting game in the grand scheme of things from what I've been made to understand. I like watching your videos on them, but I doubt I'll ever be able to get into a non-platform fighter.
The amount of walking forward and walking back twice in a fighting game tutorial I've done......fuck first fighting game I'm being spoken to like this is my first VIDEO GAME.
As a fighting game player but never tried tag fighter before and former lol player. When I heard about project L I immediately buy something like MVCI and Power ranger BFTG to get a grip of this kind of Fighting game and I imediately hooked on tag style game.
I played fighters of all kinds. Including a handful of arena fighters. Simple inputs isnt usually a bad thing it just depends on how the game balances it.
Saint Seiya Soldiers soul is a bizarre arena fighter that takes far too long to unlock everything but the combat has two attacks, one projectile button (requires meter) burst attacks (which requires meter and pressing LT Heavy or Light)
Every Special attack cost meter and doing it raw causes a close up animation to happen unless u use it in the air or use it during a attack. My pet peeve is compared to the ninja storm games I love its Slow
3:30 I love your comment here, for me its a validation of smash bros. in the fighting game community, which I personally enjoy.
League of Legends even sorta has a neutral state itself where both players are poking and prodding eachother by walking back and forth and weaving around so that they can stay safe while looking for openings in their opponent's movement
all while also farming minions for their gold
this league of smash fighter: strive game looks pretty good
I don't think the problem is onboarding as much as the skill gap. Fighting games are very deep and tons of skills are transferable. I'd wager my ten year old brother would body a complete novice in any 2D Fighter regardless of how simplified the gameplay is or how good the tutorial is.
It will be great if Project L brings in tons of new players, but they'll still have to put in the work if they intend to play longterm. It's not gatekeeping or elitism, it's just a fact of life. Hopefully Riot will find a way to make the grind fun.
The gate is litteral 30 years of people playing these games. Somebody green green is gonna have a bad time period no matter what.
@@ExeErdna The scary thing is that it doesn't even take that much time. Someone with a weeks experience would likely overwhelm a beginner.
@@ExeErdna Beginners aren't playing with people who were playing fighting games for 30 years.
@@KuroNoTenno Yes they are, there's people like me that sure as fuck aren't "pro" level yet I'm damn sure better than beginners. We're "The Sharks" the ones that make a lot of beginners quit due to our understanding is good enough to be wild as fuck online
I have one issue with your narrative. I don't believe that "If people can make the effort to main laining they can learn how neutral works" addresses the issue, because people that play mobas are not the group that picks up a fighting game play it for 5 hours and never play it again. And I am telling you as someone who has played lol for almost half his life and now has 300 hours in GGST as his first fighting game. Competitive players will always be competitive and casuals will always be casuals, no amount of simplification will change that because at some point the casual will have to face the competitive folk and his new good tutorial won't help him at all because by the time he is done with it the competitive guy has already watched 5 hours of advanced guids on YT in 2x speed.
It's not the tutorial that is the problem it's the fact that he has to fight someone much more knowledgeable than him in the first place.
Yes, the matchmaking is the biggest problem for fighting games.
complex motion inputs? they are no hard to do, what is hard is knowing when to use them, removing them doesn't solve anything, just makes the game worse
"not every game needs to play by the same rules" holy shit, i feel like the FGC as a whole refuses to understand this, and I'm glad to finally see a creator say this with regards to one-button specials.
I think one thing that helps in League is the addition of multiple game modes and rulesets. I know when I get sick of losing my 5th game in a row, I just want to hop into an ARAM or whatever the event is that month. I think this is also why the FPS genre is so accessible. These modes let me play the game even when I'm not in the mood to deal with the usual BS.
Most fighting games have online ranked... and online casual. That's it. So even if I enjoy a game like Guilty Gear Strive with all my heart, I'm not going to touch it if I'm simply not in the mood to play around Ram super or find gaps in May's dolphin onslaught.
5:45 *AND DON'T EVEN GETTING ME STARTED ON JUNGLING!*
I don't mind simplified controls, as you said, it makes them more accessible and moves the complexity elsewhere.
They're not bad as long as the specials are appropriately balanced because usually the strongest moves have the most complex inputs.
What I do mind tho is when someone claims Motion Inputs are inferior or somehow inherently bad game design, that's when i know they're talking out of their ass
I literally got into League for the sole purpose of familiarizing myself with the characters before Project L came out. But now I'm hooked. Send help.
motion inputs or one button specials never bothered me at since i never played a game with bad one button specials and the one game i did play with one button was power rangers and i still had a fun time
The resurgent rage for one button specials surprises me (for Project L specifically). They literally bought the devs of Rising Thunder, one button specials was assumed since even before the original reveal.
I always prefer motion inputs not for difficulty but more for feel. I love doing those big 360s for death grabs or timing my charge perfectly to lock out that Unga bunga rushdowner or just alow my left hand to do *something* when "tactically" spamming fireballs.
Last bit is how I feel playing Pokemon Unite, my first MOBA
XD
Talking about fighting game tutorials without mentioning TFH seems like a huge blind spot. If TFH was handled by a AAA studio instead of an indie, then I bet your sweet bippy it would be the de fact “best first fighting game” because it has such great tutorials and single player campaign.
Unfortunately no matter the quality, TFH has the automatic debuff of being a My little pony styled fighting game, which already makes a large chunk of people automatically bounce off even giving it a shot (this isn’t shade to anyone who likes TFH or MLP, it’s just unfortunately how it is)
@@Limit02 I know that is the wisdom within the FGC, but I don’t find it convincing. nick all stars was “popular” and people are hype for Warner Smash. Most of what people say about “bronies” is lies. And if people stopped embracing the lies there would be no issues. When FIM first came out(2011) there was an editorial on Breitbart saying that MLP is bad for the soul of America, and young men should be joining the military unsteady of watching pony cartoons…. So it is not an exaggeration to say that hate against Bronies is part of the right wing propaganda machine.
I hope ABI takes another look at Paladins. I know it isn't his type of game, but with Overwatch's stagnation to death and Paladins' running strong with it being fully released AFTER Overwatch with constant updates and champion releases, I haven't seen any up to date comparisons between the games.
Reliably doing quarter circles or DP's loses its importance eventually. There are plenty of avenues for complexity. Based on the trailer you multiple assists, active tags, restands, run cancels, etc. It'd be cool if you had an opportunity to teach through a genuinely interesting intro campaign, not a classroom disguised as one.
You know, you explanation of LoL was easy to understand when thought like a fighting game.
Does League do "Onboarding" well? I never really got to experience it because, well, I got into League in 2010 (Xin Zhao was the newest champ, for those who remember his launch and his Ult of doing a flat % of maximum health), so by the time they rolled out tutorials and even somewhat competent bots to play against, I already had a few years experience.
If Riot managed to retain its LoL and LoR playerbase without sacrificing complexity, why wouldn’t they be able to do that with PL?
I think one thing that was missed is that League of Legends for the longest time (and as far as I know still is) a toaster playable f2p game. It's a much smaller investment to start a free game than a game you need to purchase.
I think a lot of the reason why new people don't get into the fighting game genre is that the genre seems to fundamentally refuse appealing to any crowd beyond the hypercompetitive EVO dudes. All this complex bullshit that requires a literal glossary for most people who weren't born in an arcade exclusively filled with Street Fighter 2 cabinets, requiring 83 button inputs in a row to do anything remotely cool beyond basic punches and kicks, and opponents in online that play like they've been playing the game for 30 years two days into the games launch, its fuking tiring.
And for me personally a lot of the appeals of these fighting games are the wide variety of characters and their stories, not "Oh no, he backscooted into the Fuck Zone, but he recovered into a cancel airwave dash and topped it off with a Hambone Supreme" I'm kind of short on fighting games that actually have stories or even arcade mode endings for their characters. Tekken 7 technically had a story mode but it only really focused on, like, five characters (which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole 'wide variety of characters' thing), Tekken 7 technically had a story mode but it only used, like, five characters (most of whom are just generic karate dudes who do karate things ), and SFV clearly had the story and characters as an afterthought. The newer Mortal Kombat games are the closest I have right now to a fighting game that appeals more to my tastes specificallly, but there's still the complex move input requirements and delays and supercharge and I just wanna hit shit so I can get to know these characters goddammit.
interesting and thought provoking takes on this channel.
The thing that makes league and other games so fun to me is that the game is extremely complex, at high levels to a sadistic degree (taking into account enemy thinking patters, rubber banding, tight range spacing and advanced mechanics), BUT the difficulty almost never lies in actually getting your character to do things. Every button is one ability. Every click is one movement action.
With fighting games it feels so unstatisfying to me that every "action" is behind a huge input wall that requires you to hop into some kind of practice range and painstakingly muscle memory them. I came here to play games, not study.
I started with smash bros, I have no issue with simple commands at all.
However, doing motions and charges is NOT "fighting against the game" or "a barrier to entry". Doing inputs in a game like SF is... Playing SF. It never stops being a part of the strategy or decision making and so it's integral to the game itself.
Now, that being said, I agree there is enough room in the genre for both designs. There is no good reason for every dev team to use one over the other.
Simplified inputs misses the point. At the end of the day what separates good players from bad players is time invested. Whatever the controls are, you have to personally have the drive to want to practice and get better at the game. For the average person that drive just isn't there, not just for fighting games but for games in general. No amount of simplification, tutorials, etc is going to change that.
My problem with the "Special Move Button" is that it neuters the satisfaction of pulling off complex series of inputs. I doubt there will be any "Holy shit, a good Vatista player!" moments.
Those moments will happen, but not because they can do a single special move. It will be how they use it. If everyone could use an ewgf in tekken, most would still kinda panic over exactly what to do next and miss out on opportunities. A good player wouldn't just know how to capitalize on an ewgf, but they would probably know how to not get hit by one in the first place.
Edit: Not saying they should simplify existing games, just explaining how skill gap can exist in a game with single button special moves.
@@DrNukeShow Skill gap will always exist, that's inevitable. The problem is that many people thing that if the devs dumb down fighting games, they will suddenly become better at fighting games, when in reality, they will still suck, but the games will still be more shallow than before and less interesting to play. This has already happened with Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.
The real problem with fighting games is a lack of diffusion of responsibility. As a one-on-one largely non-random contest, any loss is entirely _your fault_ . For a MOBA or FPS, it can be your team's fault. For card games, it can be the RNG's fault. But for fighting games? The buck stops with you, and that's tough for everyone to deal with.
You underestimate the ability of humans to blame. Netcode, matchmaking, smurfs.
Sounds more like you want to elevate yourself.
@@Doktor_Jones Not really. I find fighting games hard to stick to for this reason. And of course you can always find a John. But the more of a stretch it is, the higher the average psychological stress.
Yo let's get that Taliyah theme background music. Represent best champ!
LoL tackles on boarding with water boarding
I've never played LoL, but I'm hopeful for Project L. Simple specials don't bother me just look at Power Rangers. Easy to pick up but how many new playes will be able to do ToD combos.
Removing motion inputs is going to limit the size a character’s kit can be. It feels more like putting yourself into a box from a kit design standpoint. Furthermore, casuals don’t go to games for their mechanics. How well the Mortal Kombat games sell is a clear indication of this fact. If casuals didn’t like motion inputs enough to not buy or stay with a game, then MK11 wouldn’t have been on of the best selling games of its year. It feels more like actively disregarding what the established FGC wants and is vocalizing that they want and trying to pander to a crowd that doesn’t play the games you make in a way that they don’t have a reason to care about. People want content. The only people who care about the mechanics of a fighting game enough to decide wether or not they want to play it are the people who already play fighting games.
I’ve never played LoL, a friend of mine described it as the most toxic gameplay experience of his life so if those people wanna jump into a fighting game well… They’re gonna learn right quick that’s for sure
You guys all say LoL sucks at on-boarding but then just compare to process to itself. Like how does the on-boarding fair in the field/genre?
In the MOBA genre... how does LoL fair in on-boarding to it's competitor?
How does LoR fair?
How does TFT fair?
How does Valorant fair?
Another knock I'd bring up is that people don't have an issue with simplified controls.
The issue is that EVERY single fighting game for the past 5 years seems to have gone down this route even when you had stylish systems like in BB for simple auto-combos for new players while leaving the rest of the game complex.
I did learn how to play Unite after praticing, I think I can try Project L
By any chance you gonna try to analyze the designs of Valorant?
Thought would be cool for some insights from that too
onboarding is a very big issue in highly complex compettiive games, and its nice to see it well summarized. Project L is looking interesting and I hope they manage to solve this issue, and Rising Thunder - the game the team made before this and before being bought by riot - is pretty good for ease of entry in terms of a fighting game. the single button specials should also help with the complexity that comes from a tag game, and just help people not used to eldritch commands made to make games harder to master origionally to munch more quaters before people foudn out they could be used for good things too
that being said, from my - admittedly limited - experience with league of legends, (spread over several years of trying to start it), I... do not think riot are good at onboarding or getting you to know whats what. the game literally dumps you in a space where it expects you to know how to play, and wont let you out until you do, with no interest in teaching you. you cannot play the actual game, until you prove to the game you can play it without getting to play it first; yes it has a very active community that could help... but each time I've ever asked for help in league, I've been hit with nothing but abuse and insults and getting told to quit.
gating someone from playing your game until they answer an exam is not onboarding. its the exact opposite. its quite literally doing the same thing arcade games did, where the promise of eventually being able to play is fighting the players tolerance. Once your in, its very engaging and people like it and want to stay in, but getting in to league is hard and riot do nothing to help. its a way to turn people off. it'd be like if fighting games actually required the 40 hours of training mode a lot of the worst parts of the fgc seem to think is required
while admittedly just a theory, I honestly think one of the easiest ways to help fighting game onboarding would actually be to tone down tutorialization a lot, and lean into letting new players, well, be new. Fighting games kind of went from 0 to 100 on tutorialization. we went from literally none except a move list to, well, testing you can figure out how to walk. and making a loading screen happen between walking and running. a player doesnt need to know every single system to be able to play a game, but when you put a tutorial with them all in the basics, it can come across that way and its daunting and makes the game look unfun, and like theres an exam, because it feels like the expectation is your tutorializing newcomers to play 20 year veterans, not other newcomers. a beginner doesnt need to know how to oki to fight another beginner, and as long as they know how to move/attack/block, then the rest can be learnt more naturally while actually playing. as long as you keep it enjoyable, people will figure out spacing, and pressure, and oki just by basic mechanics and finding out they work in the game. this is where good matchmaking is also vital, so newcomers can fight other newcomers
theres also things to be learned from other genres, even if less complex. presenting a challenge for multiple basic skills will help people learn them more than testing each individual mechanic, which is something fps/platformers and even character action games do. This is something smash did and did well in earlier versions, with modes like break the target and race to the finish being an interactive way to learn your characters specifics without needing to read 50 articles. Xrd sort of leaned in this direction, but it still also did it in the dictionary style. I think smaller minigames - like a scored ring chasing segment to encourage learning movement - could be good. a way to practice without needing to sit in training mode
this has just been me rambling
I don't know very much about LoL and it's world but Project L looks amazing. Also the idea of making fighting more enjoyable in a way that keeps players coming back is good, I really do wish other big fg companies adapt to that.
this game looks sick as hell
I don't want motion inputs to disappear, I do think they have a purpose, but I am all on board with more games trying to do things differently.