Something I think about a lot - the guy talking about "forgetting the controller is there" is kind of taking for granted that he can do that when playing other genres. But have you ever seen someone who's never played an FPS try to move and aim at the same time? Or circle strafe? It's HARD, it takes practice just like how learning how to consistently do fireballs and DPs when you want them takes practice. But because of the massive popularity of games like Halo, CoD, Fortnite, etc most gamers have already developed these skills at some point. I wonder how different the perception of the difficulty of fighting games would be if there had been a massively successful fighting game in the modern gaming era that became a worldwide phenomenon the way SF2 did back in the day, or Fortnite is now.
I agree. Adults feel way fucking worse learning a new skill and being bad at it than kids do. Their is a name for it but it's escaping my grasp. I played early SF, MK and Tekken in the arcades as a kid and you don't worry about being bad at a game when you're 8. You just play because it's fun. I didn't even really worry about getting good till I bought a PS4 to play online by which point I knew so much that something like DP motion wasn't an issue and I could focus on learning things like advanced strategy.
This is me with shooters (both FPS and TPS games), and with other popular genres like RTS and MOBAs. Sit me down in front of a fighting game and I’ll find the buttons I’ll need within seconds, and figure out some basic tools to use within a couple of matches, with or without training mode. Have me try any of the above genres, though, and watch me turn into a boomer before your very eyes. I can’t aim for shit, I have no idea where I’m supposed to look and what to prioritize. I get overwhelmed with the options and the pace at which I’m supposed to execute them in order to compete, and where others find comfort in being on a team as a beginner, all I can think about is how much I’m ruining the game for everybody else with my lack of skill and knowledge. Add Keyboard & Mouse controls to the equation and I get a hundred times worse on top of that, since I didn’t grow up playing games on PC. Also, I’d argue that fighting games have had beginner friendly games for longer than shooters had. The Reddit dudes themselves mentioned Smash and Soul Calibur, Sajam mentioned SamSho, and I’d argue DoA is also very beginner friendly. Meanwhile, it wasn’t until Overwatch and Splatoon that I found shooters I could play even casually without feeling totally lost. Before those (and since, tbh), the genre has been almost impenetrable to me, moat likely because I’ve had limited exposure to the genre and culture surrounding it.
Yea I usually play the sniper classes since for most part you have an easier time since you're far away and if you ever get jumped like Winston vs Widow in Overwatch or Soldier vs Sniper in TF2 then you're likely dead anyways so you can't really get frustrated about it since you kind of have to get lucky to get out of those situations
I think a huge difference here is that you can play single player FPS games and still have some fun and learn the mechanics. If you play Skyrim, you're indirectly learning how to control a CSGO character. There aren't any other games who control like Fighting games, and fighting games have a pretty clear cut ''you win or you lose'' setup against another human, which makes this hard to learn. I kinda wish there was some kind of rhythm game that used motion inputs to make people practice combos & stuff in a low pressure and fun way.
Recently had a conversation with some people who don’t play fighting games and it pretty much went “Fighting games would be better if you didn’t have to do X” “You don’t have to X. You can have fun and win without doing X- and if you really don’t like it there are fighting games without it.” “No. The entire genre should simply not have X.”
Usually those are the ones that will never like fighting games. I don't understand how some people can't just say they don't have fun with them and that's it. I like watching people play rts, but I can't get behind that genre for long because it stops being fun for me real fast. Same thing with most competitive fps. It's like saying, "puzzle games should be easier...you have to think too much to solve most of them..."
yep. any kind of offense was punished and everybody turtled. For honor has evolved alot over the years, but i don't understand why ubisoft doesn't employ actual fighting game devs to balance their game. They seem to miss the important pieces that make combat engaging.
you would be surprised how many of my old For Honor friends get increasingly mad as the game gets slowly more read-based and less reaction based. They arent playing For Honor for the moment-to-moment gameplay, and its kinda why the game took so long to (sort of) pull their head out of their ass
@@Goblinade I think removing it entirely would certainly cause some problems, wouldn't you? You'd probably have to drastically rework the whole roster.
I feel like their complaint of "fast" is misdirected. It's not that fighting games are necessarily too fast, but rather that there's almost no downtime ingame. Like, in CS, you stare at a shop screen for a few seconds (buying stuff is a fraction of that), then a few more seconds autopilot waddling into position, some active gameplay where you actually need to pay attention, and if you die you can take your hands off the keyboard and chill till the round ends. Similar story with games like League/Dota, in many CCGs you can practically tab out while your opponent takes their turn, etc. In fighting games, your "breaks" are ROUND 2, FIGHT, and maybe a few seconds of getting comboed/doing combos. Even if it's just two people crouching at midrange, hitting no buttons, it's still a "fast" situation that's no different from someone holding a corner in the hopes a head wanders into your crosshair. It's even worse if the game has some sort of frequent combo breaker mechanic, because then even combos aren't a moment to catch your breath. No, seriously, I've gone full circle and I now find getting comboed to be the shockingly relaxing part of a genre that's otherwise demanding your intense, undivided attention for 3-5 minutes per game.
Reminds me of when ppl would complain about the supers in sc6 breaking the pace. Because it isnt a combo heavy game, supers were a good time to rethink my strat or take a breather.
A full CS game can have like 30 rounds (I think, idk i dont play cs lel), and in most of those rounds you're gonna spend at least a fair amount of it reacting to intense situations. Meanwhile vast majority of fighting games are best of 3 before getting kicked back to the lobby where you can just chill and decide if you wanna queue up again or not. A full ranked match of League takes like 30 minutes, and that game clearly isn't struggling with player retention. When I used to play dota, the entirety of laning phase felt like one really long round of a fighting game, and then I had an entire mid-game and late-game to play through right after that. Sure, maybe you have a point in that fighting games are more "dense" in terms of the number of "fast situations." But I hardly think that matters considering you can be done within a couple of minutes. Maybe it's the difference between sprinting and marathon running. I've personally never had trouble playing any of the games described so maybe I'm not the right person to talk about it.
@@samuelalphabet5360 Yeah, I can see the arguments but at the same time I feel like it is all down to experience. When I first started playing league maybe laning was stressful, but after a while it was just last hit and poke until something happens. Very chill. Same with fighting games, once you get past the barrier a match is just positioning and poking until something happens.
In the beginning, most of For Honor was juuuust a smidge slower than most fighting games. That meant everyone could block everything and it became way too punishing to attack and be proactive (some exploits non withstanding). Fighting games need to be a certain speed so that some moves are barely reactable if you are expecting them, otherwise, opening people up becomes impossible, and aggression becomes highly deemphasized.
@@davis1228 You're actually smoking, it's the exact opposite. Devs constantly removing okizeme, you can't have mixups that aren't strike-throw, everything constantly resets to neutral among other things. The only reason offense feels powerful is because of terrible online play and players who refuse to learn defensive structure and try to disrespect their opponents offense all the time. Look at old fighting game footage. You don't see much blocking because the mixups are so powerful you have to choose something or just get opened up.
@@davidburke4101 Depends on what game you're talking about, Tekken and street fighter have definitely gotten more aggressive with tekken reducing movement speed making it harder to stay away from rushdown characters without taking risks, and Street Fighter 5 has a huge emphasis on getting okizeme whenever possible, even if throws don't loop. Mortal Kombat does go the defensive way, with the "everyone gets to be guile" approach for zoning, Breakaways and quirky wake up options
Just a smidge? The fastest attack out of neutral back then was Orochi lights and it was 30f! Then add on the hassle was that changing guards was 6-12f depending who you used, not to mention issues back then with latency and indicator flicker.
@@davidburke4101 as someone already said, mortal kombat is the exception to this. All of the major fgc games are catered towards aggression (TEKKEN, DBZF, SFV). Old tekken was based on more movement and nuetral without landing huge combos and sf was a mix of defensive/footsies. Newer games are more neutral focused to make it easier and less options compared to previous titles for newcomers, but its really not as defensive depending on the game. KoF isnt defensive either and marvel is nutty.
@@mehgamer467 Neutral is actually inherently defensive play, its literally "how do I get where I need to be while avoiding my opponents attacks?" Evasive play is defensive, J wong is a master of evasive play. In the cases of tekken and SF, some changes were made to make the game flashy, more than trying to be morr offensive
Honestly the only thing stopping me from playing more fighting games is being able to make time to get into them. I love all fighting games and I'm obsessed with them, and Core-A-Gaming helped me figure out a good way to schedule my play time. All I got to do is putting that to practice and get used to the way the controls feel so I can actually combo.
For real, I want to be like Sajam but I cannot STAND the feeling of being a beginner. I play DBFZ to a really competent & fairly skilled degree, but I just recently picked up Guilty Gear Xrd. I feel like a fucking CHILD in that game. Inputs are so much more advanced and particular, I don't understand the timing, I had so many fundamentals established in DBFZ but moving one single ArcSys game over, I'm a buffoon again, it's disheartening. Even with really great, great tutorials, it's hard for me to understand the mindset I'm supposed to be in in a new game.
@@eataneraser yes my mind set is im gonna lose until I beat you recently got inte guilty gear to was hard managed to win some matches against solid players im just kinda stubborn in that way
@@davis1228 You seem to talk a lot about approach ability and accessibility, not that it's a bad thing, you seems so passionate about it, what feature and changes do you have in mind outside of Tutorials and netcode ? For me, the biggest one is the lack of social aspect, FG without the investment of a team or a group feel like an anti-social experience, it would be nice if we had a dojo system with a rank for all the members of the dojo or guild rather than a traditional ranking system, what do you think?
for the life of me when i started playing fighting games i had the memory of a goldfish when it came to remembering combos and even specials, but over time muscle memory just kicked in then instead of worrying what i was doing i started worrying about what my opponent is doing and remembered "oh, i've played against this character before, they have these 3 annoying moves that idk how to deal with so i better block" because taking a combo will do more damage than getting grabbed for 10 percent. it took me like a whole year to play with intentionality and yeah it was frustrating losing to some spamming because i refused to stop and pay attention to what they were doing but damn does it feel good to beat a flow chart or someone who is obviously trolling with gimmicks. competitive games are just that, they're competitive and getting good at anything competitive will make you learn what you're doing wrong by losing, it's not gonna happen over night and you'll either want to learn the game more or say "this is bullshit and hard and why am i gonna learn something that i'm supposed to be having fun in?". these games are fun when the learning is fun, and not everyone learns the same way or will have fun the same way. idk, i like fighting games
This is it. For better or worse, most people don't enjoy this form of learning at ALL. And they certainly don't enjoy it enough for the tiny payoff of winning in a fighting game.
@@sheercold26 i play SF5, GG+r, KI, KOF2002um, and garou (also hopeing punch planet gets more updates and metal revolution seems fun), i couldn't really get into tekken or most 3d fighters but DOA seemed fun at the start and i hope virtua fighter comes out so i can try a modern version of that, and i tried a bunch of team fighters and they didn't click with me (MVCI, DBFZ, and power rangers)
@@asterhogan1 just play VF5, Final Showdown. Find a way to play the original VF4 if you can. That game changed the way I looked at fighting game graphics.
ill say one thing in defense of these people: losing in fgs really sucks, and it feels worse than losing in any other type of game i've ever played. i think a lot of people have the experience of starting an fg, learning controls and basic combos in training mode, and then dying a few matches into arcade mode or the second they go online. it's a tough feeling and people end up overthinking why they didn't like it by saying "execution is stupid" or "combos are too long" or "i can't react". in reality they only got bodied because they're not used to how the game works, just like someone playing a souls game for the first time for example, except it just *feels* worse in a fighting game. i think it might be because other games give you incremental feelings of progress, and while you can look at a fg that way (wow i landed a jab!) it requires a specific perspective and it's hard to get to the point where you're satisfied with such small victories.
Fighting games are "learning the hard way" boiled down as far as possible. That's just not gonna be fun for most people, and will be immense fun for certain kinds of people. Just like chess or poker.
I think Core-A said something good about this one too.When you lose in fighting games there's no team to blame and your character is screaming in pain the whole time because you failed to defend yourself.
@@deschamos7599 And after you get beat YOU LOSE comes up on screen while the announcer says it out loud. Or in MK's case you have to watch you character get brutally murdered lol.
@@KoylTrane no, that fighting game loses suck. Losing in fighting games take more than a loss, it's actively a reduced time playing because hitstun exists.
I think an often overlooked difference between fighting games and competitive shooters (for example) is that most people are familiar with the basics of shooters because a lot of it is standard for non-competitive 3d games. I've never played CS, but I know the controls wouldn't confuse me the way that my first fighting game did. Maybe that's why platform fighters feel more accessible, because 2d platformers are a genre people are familiar with and the basic movement transfers over.
Yeah, he's definitely catching onto the mental tax of playing games. Especially when you're new, every second feels like a decision and it can be overwhelming. On the subject of combos, New players I've played with totally miss the interaction available in strings. Stuff like, they start getting combo'd and they don't press block in case the combo is dropped.
funny enough For Honor used to be that. attacks used to be way slower across the board and it was possible to react to almost everything. this led to situations where nobody wanted to go on the offense. making a game slower actually makes reaction even more important because if you can react to everything, you don't need to think about what your opponent is going to do and you don't have options to force your opponent into situations where they have to think about anything
And then on the other end of the scale you have moves that come out so quickly online that experienced fgc players will swear they can't be reacted too.
@@Theyungcity23 those moves are fine because you're not supposed to react to them, you're supposed to plan around the fact that they exist. if i have a 14 frame overhead that's punishable on block then you know i'm not going to do it unless i think it will hit you, or i have the resources to make it safe. you can operate around that knowledge. look for my tendencies on offense, look at how i'm attacking you and what patterns i have. trying to react to it doesn't help you because most people don't have the power to react to that, and being able to doesn't help you unless you understand all the points at which someone might go for that attack.
@@armorparade I feel like because of the way for honor works accepting some moves are just meant to be unreactable is a lot harder and they tend so feel like bullshit/spam at lower levels, I think these are the reasons behind that: 1) There's little to no execution barrier for offense. In something like ggacr if you mostly learn the game by playing (and not just jumping into training mode and grinding out combos as a new player) chances are by the time you're able to consistently apply decent pressure to your defending opponent you're also most likely gonna have at least some idea on how to defend yourself because learning blockstrings longer than 3 hits and implementing mixups will take you a while so if you're playing against a similarly skilled opponent you're gonna know how to defend yourself or if you're both new, both of you will be dropping combos like crazy. In for honor if there's a noob playing against a noob roach, the roach can just keep pressing the light attack button over and over again and wildly flail between directions and as long as they have stamina they can keep the offense going and even if the other new player knows they're gonna keep spamming light attacks there's no way they'll parry a light because at low level the execution barrier for offense is a lot lower than the execution barrier required to deal with that level of offense. 2) There are 3 directions, but only 1 of them has unique moves. In traditional fighters a 2k will hit low and only low, I can't do a 2K overhead and can't hit low with jumping P, every move has a set way it's blocked so if overheads are generally slower than lows you can by default block low where the fast moves are and react to overheads. In for honor top moves may have different properties than sides, but both sides have identical moves to one another, so if a character has a fast/troublesome moves that's top I can block top by default to cover it and react to slower moves, but if a character's most troublesome move is a side then I have to predict they'll do the move and guess/try to react to which side it will come from.
@@iquaniqua exactly. a lot of people issue complaints about how these games work and i can understand being frustrated that you can't do the things you want, but i feel like people should at least try to understand the systems at play before trying to say what needs to be changed. even the smallest of changes have huge repercussions!
I feel like a lot of these issues that non-fighting game players mention could be alleviated by prioritizing teaching players movement and defensive options before offensive options. The crux of neutral in fighting games is movement and defensive options, but almost every fighting game tutorials prioritizes teaching player's the functionality of moves or combos. Even the best fighting game tutorials fall victim to this. This only feeds into the stigma of "Fighting games are all about the combos" when this clearly isn't the case. The day a fighting game noob says "Holy shit that mixup is rediculous" or "Holy shit these footsies are rediculous" before"Holy shit that combo is rediculous" is the day people will finally get the point of fighting games.
This is a very good point. I'd been playing fighting games for years to decades depending on how seriously you consider playing before I bought DBFZ (a waste of money on a broken game that doesn't work online) and I still got through the tutorial and went "Wait, how the fuck do I play neutral in this game?" and had to message some one on Discord.
@@davis1228 It's strange that games like marvel and guilty gear that were designed without the intent of appealing to spectators were able to make a game that had nuanced mechanics that played into the intended loop instead of punishing people for deviating from it. I love DBFZ, but that's because it caters to my unga-bunga babybrain in a way that no other fighter can. It has depth and even some solid defensive options, but the presence of superdash and vanish makes neutral absolutely trivial. If I want a game like it that has nuance and depth, I'm playing accent core. it ultimately feels like designing games that cater to the people that made the comments Sajam is responding to would ultimately hurt the genre.
I make it a point to not teach or think about combos until my friends develop habits in neutral. Simple moves. Then diddle them with specials so they have a new element to take into account, then a few strings, finally combos.
I think the main issue is that when competitive minded players find a new game which had different kind of skillset that they're used to you get a natural reaction to think that there is something wrong with the game. You see this happening inside fighting games also when people claim that game x y or z is too difficult to get into because the things they aren't used to using aren't working anymore. They don't want to feel like a beginner anymore, they've learned that you should make workers in rts games, how to position themselves in cs and how to lasthit in mobas and instead of learning the basics of a new genre they lash out when they find a genre with equal depth with completely different skillset.
I've seen so many people who say it's hard to do a motion input but it's easy to shoot at someone in a FPS. A lot of gamers have this idea that everything done in video games should be natural to them since they've been gaming for so long. I had a friend who had never played video games and the simple act of using one analog stick to move and the other analog stick to aim at the same time was intuitive to her. Fighting games aren't harder than any other genre, it's just a different set of skills and often lack of match making or playerbase that puts you up against someone you're not ready for and leave people to thinking it's the game that's the problem.
I used to feel like I had to do optimal combos consistently to even begin playing fighting games, which is why UNIST felt to bad for me when I started. I thought I had to play simpler games because I couldn't do tournament optimal combos off of any stray hit. Nowadays, I boot up +R and go "well this five hit Millia combo gets me knockdown, so let's do that and see how it goes" and the games are much more enjoyable. It took me almost a year of bashing my head against the wall for this to sink in though, and I've grown more in a month or two of this mindset than I learned in the entire last year. I think it's so important that games have a sort of reminder that being optimal is not the only way to play, it's about having good knowledge. I love the Under-Night character tutorials because they start off with "this is a good poke, this is an anti-air, this is a good way to control space, etc" and there's maybe 5-6 moves per character that, without knowing any combos at all, allow you run a gameplan. They also then teach you basic hitconfirms, a mixup, and some other fundamental/specific stuff with your character for those who are good to go on the basics. I wish every game did this, as going back through these in UNI has made the game so much easier to approach.
It's a cool topic, but I'm pretty sure him talking about "reaction time / fractions of a second" doesn't mean it in a way of "reacting to this 3f jab". Like you said, we see these things from FG players' perspectives, and I'm pretty sure assuming what being meant is something like "hey how many startup/active frames does this move have" is a very FG-player-way of thinking about it. Especially since he brings up the shooter/CSGO example, I think the intended message is more like: In FPS, you need the same amount of reaction time as in FGs (= decisions you have to make quickly based on what your opponent is doing), but you have a lot of downtime between these moments. Usually you don't see one or all opponents in an FPS at all times, and these moments either have no decision making at all or just decisions "you make yourself" (at your own pace, rather than decisions your opponent forces you to make). In FGs, these situations happen all the time, though. Your opponent is almost always at a range where he can quickly force you to make a decision: walking in => do I throw a fireball? do I press a button? do I block? jumping => do I anti-air? what do I use to AA? do I try to just get out of the way instead? do I block? Of course often characters have other/more options, but you get the idea. The player is always on the screen, and can always "force you to react" with a counter-measure to their offense. If you compare it to CSGO, you first have a part of the match where you just position yourself (buying phase, anything before both teams can meet) and then often just cover one or more angles for a while. There are literally no decisions your opponents force you to make quickly as long as they don't show up, so depending on play you have a downtime of say, half a minute. If you defeat the enemies on one spot, it also often takes a while until more show up, so that gives you more downtime between these moments where you're forced to make quick decisions / "react in fractions of a second". I believe this also is why newer players tend to walk back and corner themselves in FGs. In FGs you're often just a jump or 1-2 dashes away from being in immediate danger from your opponent's options, and the opponent is always visible on screen. It may not seem like much for FG players, but if you're new, not used to this and probably have to really think about which button was which normal or special before pressing it, these scenarios can seem a lot more "immediate" than they are. And the safest way to gain some distance and catch your breath, as they know from other game genres, is to, well, make some distance (walk back). It's a reaction from players that fear the opponent's options (=> ability to force you to make decisions quickly) or players that want to gain this "downtime" where there isn't an opponent whose actions they'll have to react to.
This is a big part of it, and also why the comparison to FPS doesn't really tell us much. Fighting games "suffer" from a bigger disconnect between the information on screen and the information that matters than almost any other type of game. And the mastery bias of enthusiasts blinds us to how much effort we invested to overcome that hurdle.
what's interesting here is that the solution to this in most fighting games is actually the other thing people complain about a lot. Long combos. If you're not playing something like KI, your mid-combo options are generally very limited. You hold back in case of a drop and maybe keep an eye out for throws depending on the game, but for the most part if you're getting juggled there aren't any real decisions you need to make until the combo ends and you have to get up off the ground. Meanwhile if you're doing the combo for a lot of games you're going to be running through a bunch of pre-learned buttons and don't have to make that many decisions either. It's more demanding of execution but doesn't require nearly as much alertness or decision-making. When a combo starts up, that's your breather. It just so happens that it occurs while you character is getting their ass kicked.
Interesting. So you're saying that there are certain types of FPS players that avoid having to react to win? While that sounds rare, it isalso kinda what I do. It's why I like playing Siege and flanking. My reactions suck so I try to sneak behind people. There is no way to sneak behind people in fighting games. This is also why I liked playing old Evelynn in League of Legends. Being invisible is my favorite thing.
Personally I had to go through an entire journey through a bunch of different games to finally get into fighting games. Skullgirls was the first game in the genre that I had ever owned, Guilty Gear was the game that sparked my love for fighting games, Under Night made me appreciate all the deep technical stuff, and the announcement of Granblue Versus converted one of my favorite things into the genre. Now I'm just neck-deep into fighting games to the point where it's like 50% of what I think about all the time. I've even convinced my entire friend group to play bbcf and they're having a blast. It's really great that almost all of their first experience of getting into a fighting game is with an entire group of friends, that's like one of the best ways to get into anything. Now they're all slowly trying to learn the really complicated things about fighting games, which I can help them with as they go. Everyone needs a different game and a different experience to get that spark they need to really get into fighting games.
@@davis1228 Yeah unfortunately it's really tough nowadays to convince a bunch of your friends to try out a fighting game, especially with how expensive they can be. Bbcf was on sale for like eight bucks so that was really a lucky break. I personally enjoy pretty much every kind of fighting game, so I kinda wish new games that advertise themselves as being slower could catch a break. Some people just really do enjoy slower paced games. I understand the worries of over simplifying the genre, but I think devs will come to learn how to create a good balance, while also still pushing out hyper fighters.
It's refreshing to see someone voice an opinion as to why they don't enjoy something as "its not for me, but here's what I would like" instead of how people usually come at this from the outside with the "fighting games are never going to get the precious market that is me, if you don't change now and its bad design that you haven't yet!" . I appreciate that 1st poster for that.
That's pretty interesting idea actually. The issue with beginners is that their reaction times are much much slower than veteran players. By the time they've registered that they've blocked something, the other person has long since recovered and their opportunity has passed, so they don't even register the idea of punishing on block as a possibility. So what if, in single player, instead of difficulty being done through damage values and introducing cheap attacks, easy difficulty involves slowing the attacks and the AI only being able to use a limited set of super reactable attacks? That way, they have far more time to react to situations and practice their responses to different situations, and get them down before they transition to reacting to faster and faster situations until its at the speed of the versus game. You could also slow the attacks in certain fights, so they have to carefully consider what attacks to choose, and teach them about whiff punishing.
I get the guy saying "I hate when I follow the instructions and nothing happens and I don't know why". Trying to learn fighting games and the character missions tell you to do this combo, you press all the right buttons but it fails and the game doesn't say why. Turning on input history can help to troubleshoot, but it'd be nice if the mode just straight told you why you failed. "Too slow", "wrong input", etc.
Play Them's Fightin' Herds. It's got a fantastic training mode. It lets you practice combos, and you can even set up your own combos to practice and exchange them with other players as a .tfhc file.
Yeah I was only able to learn Guilty Gear Xrd because it shows your stick/buttons on screen and realized that my hadouken/shoryuken inputs were always inconsistent because I would exaggerate and go up-right instead of just right/down right.
This is a really good idea. Certain combos require deliberately delaying inputs etc. but rarely tell you to do so. I can see why someone would get frustrated if they don't realise this.
@@davis1228 Some games are more focused on combos, some are less focused on combos. If you know what you want, then there's almost guaranteed to be a kind of fighting game with the characteristics you're looking for.
This is definitely a discussion worth having in detail. Shooters tend to be more intuitive, with every action being a single input that immediately makes sense to the player. There's probably some tech-skill lying around at top level, but everyone knows the basic actions from the get go, and from there it becomes an information war. In other words, you can win in shooters without being better than your opponent in a gunfight, but knowing more about the map/game. This is also true of fighting games, but it's less intuitive. In a fighting game, lacking tech-skill might mean you're losing an aspect of your character. It might be the difference between a win and a loss. You can still win based on knowledge, but you can also lose to someone with godlike reactions and execution despite knowing more. Sometimes, knowledge can hurt more than help (the old "No mixup mixup"). Both players have access to all the information, even though one may utilize it better. There's also the misconception that training mode is required in fighters. Private matches or gun ranges may exist in shooters but I've never felt the need to lean on them to understand how to play the game or improve. It's expected to learn through playing. We like to say this is true of fighters, but a game like Smash Melee is an entirely different beast between casual and competitive play. The really interesting bit of the comments in the vid are comparing to an RTS. RTS is known for having high execution and quick reactions, so I'd once again say the main difference here is access to information. You can't see the entire map in an RTS at once, so vision is still one of the major factors.
I think this is very important and could hold the key to part of why fighting games feel inaccessible to many. There is a fundamental break between what the player sees on screen, and the information that matters. Primarily this comes down to hitboxes, hurtboxes, and frame data. I love fighting games, but since day one I have felt great frustration at this disconnect. Modern games can help by displaying hitboxes, and it is much appreciated. But if you think any majority of people will ever do that kind of "research", much less be able to retain any of it for the tiny reward of winning in a fighting game, I got bad news.
Non-FG players: this is why I don't play FGs FG players: you have a misconception I find it interesting that discussions like these tend to go this way a lot of the time. I feel it stems primarily from their lack of clarity, especially 2D fighters. An example is how frame data is (not) communicated. A character lands an attack on your block and your block pose looks exactly the same as with every other move that character uses. There's nothing there to tell you that there's a difference and it greatly influences the options you have available to you.
This is huge. Fighting games suffer a larger disparity between what the player sees, and what information matters than any other type of game I can think of. Experienced players have assimilated this and discard it as easy, when it was in fact a large hurdle they overcame but now have mastery bias over.
@@seokkyunhong8812 I get the thinking behind this. A practice mode however isn't indicative of a game being hard to learn necessarily. I'd go as far as to say that other game genres should have practice modes like FGs have as a standard. The problem lies in having to do most of your problem solving through a different mode. This is where the FG user experience falls apart for a lot of people. They can't do any problem solving because the games go by too fast so they have to leave the main game in order to go into a different mode. Then they have to figure out what their opponents were doing with which Characters and try to figure out solutions. In online education, this is something that is avoided because it breaks the learner away from the main learning experience which oftentimes details the process. I don't think it's a stretch to say that this principle applies to games as well. It's actually even worse to expect a player to leave the game entirely to find important information on a website or YT channel.
@@AkibanaZero no, fighting games should learn from other genres, not the other way around. Dedicated practice mode is just an admission of communication failure on the game's part.
@@seokkyunhong8812 I think training mode itself isn't an issue, there are times where I know something in a game and I want to improve my capability to execute it... But you're RIGHT! I don't want to even give a platitude, I think for instance that Sajam ignored the very specific examples that that Reddit post gave. He is the embodiment of an /r/iamverysmart post. He didn't actually post a response to put anything on the line or up for debate. What you have is an atomized FGC, which leads to what I was saying, one specific game the poster was talking about was TEKKEN not Street Fighter or Guilty Gear. Tekken 7, for example, is an egregiously bad game in terms of its current design. You could address this in terms of how execution works, the way it's patched... making moves naturally combo that used to have gaps or taking away frame advantage from moves on block are merely done on the level of math, the animations themselves are not adjusted. What happens is that you have moves that communicate advantage in ways that don't reflect their actual properties, things like Jin's f, f 4/Right Kick are no longer plus in Season 4 BUT THEY STILL LOOK LIKE THEY ARE. These result in tactile relay of information that is no longer coherent. Tekken itself is why a market for "better controls" even exists. Because Tekken is a game that is very well featured, it is a game that I think has a lot of appeal but is designed in a way where it discourages players from being able to learn by experience, it only appeals to a certain type of playstyle. And because the FGC exists as it does, "Casual" interest has very specific meaning and is often exclusionary to actually playing a fucking fighting game. I WANT to enjoy Tekken, but Tekken puts me in situations where I am often left to question whether it's worth it to invest any more resources than I'm already doing to actually enjoy the game. A friend of mine ridiculed me for not having combos or doing something like "the dash up throw." Like I hadn't earned the right to experience or enjoy the game. But the character I play is hard to use relative to other fighting games. Tekken has execution demands in a way that (fighting) gamerz only acknowledge when they want to offer you the choice to spend money on a fancy controller. Why does Tekken still allow combos that put the enemy off axis? Tekken is a game that most people, this is a common tournament FGC prerogative, want to admire from afar. The instant anyone experiences it, the conversation about skill is already polluted and there is no due criticism given to some of the ridiculous things you have to do just to get some time actually playing the game instead of being stuck in a rehearsal where it isn't even clear what you should be doing. Let me say that, with Tekken, you could approach it on a more basic level. Pick a simple character to dodge or mitigate harsh execution, so remove any sense of getting to be attracted to a choice beyond its raw strategic value and just exorcise the element of fun, practice your basic frame based punishes while experienced players can shit on you for things that you may have to spend dozens of hours on just to barely be proficient... Tekken even violates its own high/mid/low concept with characters like Eddie or Zafina or Xiaoyu who can just be a "special type of low" where some mids are no longer "mid." Ah, but yes, what we should really do is talk about a fighting game like Street Fighter or Guilty Gear that either has modern concessions and can move the goal post from actually criticizing a game as experienced. It's no mystery that when the post was talking about Tekken, the act of changing the subject to Street Fighter or Guilty Gear is precisely to avoid saying anything meaningful because the person has nothing worth a shit to say. Why would you do stuff like go "Maybe they were talking about special moves" after doing the most bad faith interpretation of a comment about wanting to press a direction and a button to get moves out. To anyone who is an enthusiast about fighting game design that is VERY OVERTLY talking about specials, Sajam's credulous naivety is especially bad there. I know "clout chasing" is an often used term, but let's just say that this kind of thing has a history in fighting games in general. David Sirlin wrote a book called playing to win that completely ignored the socio-economics or design of games in the arcade era. It's great if you want to win, but bad if you want to actually explain the kind of grievances people would have losing 50 cents to a game that had a wrestler and karate guy and one suddenly starts throwing the equivalent of rocks. It isn't that I hate Street Fighter 2, it's that within this is the notion that I can recognize "This isn't the kind of game someone thought it was gonna be." That lack of awareness is lockstep with the fighting game community as I experienced it, it is lockstep with things I know that I myself believed at one time.
The thing that really gets me about the memorization thing is that MOBAs 1)Have a premise that has to be explained as opposed to “kill other guy” 2) A shit ton of characters 3) tons of items and in general are an incredibly complex genre, but people will act like fighting games are somehow unique in their complexity. Clearly memorization/complexity is not the hurdle people *perceive* (hey there’s that word again) it to be otherwise there wouldn’t be millions of people watching these games. I can’t help but feel like that’s not the actual root cause of the problem but rather a reflexive reaction.
It all comes down to crutches. In team games you can rely on your allies to carry. In card games you can win through rng. The learning happens without a huge toll on your win rate, at least until you hit the higher ranks. In fighting games you either outplay your opponent or you get smoked, and that leaves people feeling salty and unaccomplished, even if they are gradually improving.
@@gutsbadguy50 "In team games you can rely on your allies to carry" and yet all people do is complain about braindead or toxic teammates, trolls and feeders in those games.
This talk about speed and no downtime is pretty interesting. I actually feel similarly about Smash as a traditional fighting game player - I'm used to the downtime during combos, etc. where you don't need to worry about mindgames (outside of the occasional reset). Meanwhile "combos" in Smash are a rapid series of mixups which require active thinking on both sides. That game drains my mental energy way too quickly.
Yet he's so ill fit to talk about it because he's been in it too long. I honestly wish he would stop talking about it as if he's a layman, because he's not
After playing strive and having genuine fun with a fighting game for the first time in years of trying to get into this genre my answer to "Would you play them if they were slower" is a definitive yes. Strive still has fast and intense moments, but it's slowed down JUST enough that I can finally play it with consistency and feel like I actually had some agency over the outcome of the matches I played.
I'll be interested to see what your opinion is after you play Strive for a while. There are dozen of comments pointing out a potential similar situation with For Honor, where people originally liked its slower nature, and then collectively realized it didn't work because it made the game boring to play and heavily focused on reaction play (which is IN GENERAL considered bad). I imagine there will be a similar situation in Strive, where people initially like it for being slower, and then find out that it doesn't lead to what legacy (not necessarily new) players would consider good. If you're able to know what's happening while playing now and it feels like its at an okay speed even with the short betas we had, then imagine how slow it will feel after you've played the game for months or years and whether or not that's something you want. Maybe it really will end up being exactly what you want, this is just food for thought.
@@iminyourwalls8309 You're bringing up a hypothetical that's not really what I'm talking about. When strive came out, people were complaining about Strive being a slower game and that I found it to be a welcome change, which was what I was talking about.
The "headshot snap" is way faster than reacting to overheads. When you flick to a headshot its a very subconcious thing, you'll freak the fuck out when you land a crazy one. Mixups are conscious in their reaction, its all "and THERES the overhead" *stands up
I think what these sorts of comments demonstrate is that fighting games fail to make learning how to play the game fun. Mainstream genres don't need to put in as much effort in this respect because players often bring years of experience with them to a new title. When a new FPS\BR\character action game is released a large proportion of the player base are not starting from scratch - they likely have years of experience to draw on. Whether they realize it or not they have already put in countless hours of practice in other similar games. Fighting games are a relatively niche genre and so its more likely that new players will be starting from scratch so if the genre wants to grow its 100% on fighting game developers to find creative ways to make the learning process accessible, intuitive and most of all, fun.
Fighting games suffer a larger disparity between what the player sees, and what information matters than any other type of game I can think of. Experienced players have assimilated this and discard it as easy, when it was in fact a large hurdle they overcame but now have mastery bias over.
@@tobyvision I also think this can be made worse by counter-intuitive design choices that are made for balance reasons but hurt the accessibility of the game. A personal bug-bear of mine are moves that "look" safe but are in fact unsafe or vice versa. When I was learning MK10 there just seemed to be loads of stuff that "looked" like it "should" be punishable from the animation etc. but was in fact (framedata-wise) actually safe. As someone who has played a fair number of fighting games over the years I just sort of grumble to myself and chalk it up as "oh that's weird" but for players with less FG experience I suspect it just adds to the general feeling of frustrated bewilderment - especially online.
@@skymessiah1 EXACTLY. Seasoned players know that you basically have to memorize or assimilate frame data, and that it doesn't necessarily jive with what is on screen. This is a jump a lot of people will never care to take and I don't blame them. I've been playing fighting games since SF2 and it still bugs me. In a dream world, the game developers would re-animate the characters to match hitboxes and frames over time, but this is too expensive to actually happen as things are.
I agree that Fighting Game players under estimate how crazy some shit appears for new players. As someone who's trying to get into SFV after DBFZ got me into fighting games, not knowing what your opponent's options are & just how quickly things fall apart is the biggest hurdle. Basically if you guess wrong twice in a row & they get the stun, it's GG. However like most things, once you get past the initial hurdle, it does get better & you can just roll with it and learn on the fly.
For real. Knowledge is power. Me and my bro played some Skullgirls the other day and we both got tore up by a ton of High-Low's into supers. We genuinely had to grind out the roster to remember how to block everybodys crap. 😂😂😂
So funny, I am in the reverse situation and I feel the same. It's just experience. I mean, I still don't know what all the characters options are in SFV but I know enough about the game to know what their options COULD be. Mostly it's either normal attack(mid), low, overhead, grab or jump. And really, it's block low unless they jump or do an overhead. Two choices, three if they get close enough to grab. But you can delay your grab reversal pretty easy. People call it delayed tech, and it confuses, but it's just pressing the grab button a bit after you see the opponent move. If it's a grab, you have teched, if it's an attack you have blocked.
@@davis1228 Why are you so obsessed with making fighting games as popular as other competitive genres? That's like the only thing you talk about here.
@@davis1228 i don't really care about things like "progress" and "recognition". fighting games are games! you play them to have fun. if esports end up dying someday it's not my concern, it'll be because the companies pushing for it don't know how to market things effectively. plus, i don't want the games themselves to revolve around that. i'd rather they be themselves. i don't need mainstream acknowledgement to know that my hobby is worthwhile. that isn't gatekeeping, that isn't a refusal to grow and evolve, that's me having my priorities in line. pro gaming is an extremely unstable way to make money any way and i'd rather see gaming communities build themselves up in ways that can support people who need help rather than this obsession with esports which barely pays competitors enough and feeds more and more money into businesses- if they aren't bleeding money from mismanaging esports programs in the first place
These people's opinion (which are as valid as ours) helped me understand why Smash Ultimate is an important game despite being (in my opinion) a "bad" game. By design, the FGC doesn't include anyone who doesn't like the current state of fighting games. If we go only by the opinion of people who are already in the community, things will always stay the same and we're hurting our growth. That thread was pretty interesting
as someone who's only just getting back into fighters recently after being put off the genre for years, I do have to admit that I'd get confused when I saw fg players talk about frame advantage and stuff, thinking "damn you need to react to something within 1frame? These guys are crazy", and only now do I realise that its not really like that at all
5:35 I think you're missing the point. I think the idea is that you have to memorize the inputs. People new to fighters probably arent gonna know what "inputs" will generally give what moves. Quarter cricles giving projectiles for example, or DP's giving upwards/invulnerable moves. Some games just have Light, Medium, Heavy, and motion + button gives you the same move but three different strengths of it, but then you have Street Fighter or BlazBlue where the button you press might give you a completely different move. SF and KOF has buttons split between Punches and Kicks, so you have to remember whats Quarter Circle with Punch, and whats quarter circle with kick, and Blazblue can be even worse for that since, even if its less buttons overall (A,B,C, and Drive), alot of characters have only one or two versions of a move, so QcF A and QcF C might be moves but QcF B isnt. It is an extra layer of things you have to learn. You also have to consider different games might have different methods of supers. Some are just "press two buttons together with a motion input" and some are just fancier motion inputs, like Double Quarter circles, or QcB, HcF, or Forward, HcF, which further adds to the layers of things you have to "memorize" for a character just cause their supers might be completely different to everyone elses.
I bought SF5 during the sale, and I'm really enjoying it. It's the first traditional 2d fighter I've really spent time with. I'm like 5-39 so I'm doing fantastic in ranked for no prior experience I would say what makes me most upset and demoralized about learning the game, which you very briefly touched on, is when I'm trying to execute something and It's simply not coming out. I went into the trials for juri really briefly and a specific combo was giving me trouble. It's jump in Light kick, standing light punch, standing light kick, 623 light punch. I'm having trouble even getting the first light punch to connect after the jumped light kick and im getting just no feedback on the timing. There's no "too slow" or "too fast" or even a "stop mashing". I'm just uselessly jumping over and over trying to hit this, what I would assume is, entirely basic combo and not getting anywhere. Mechanical obfuscation paired with precise timing means the feedback the game gives you is never helpful. The easier the combo is the less of a problem it is, but as you start to add more complexity to a combo you never quite know if youre dropping the mechanical requirement, or flubbing the timing and that is why learning is so difficult as a new player
I would recommend looking up a video of the combo (some games even let you watch the computer do the combo) so you can see what the timing is supposed to be. One of the issues with combos I had for years was knowing the difference between a link and a cancel, which is just timing.
ik im like 10 months late but if u are still having trouble with sfv trials, each and every single one of them has a demonstration of how it is done, including the inputs iirc. As for that particular trial for juri, u have to hit the jump LK just before landing, then immediately use LP.
I actually commented on this thread, which I'll link below. I go into more detail in the comment, but the gist of it is that while I do think that fighting games get unfairly stigmatized for their difficulty by people who aren't familiar with the genre compared to other genres, I don't think it is purely a coincidence that fighting games tend to get that rep even compared to other genres that are also very involved at high levels. "There are inherent barriers to jumping in and having fun compared to other genres that make the games an easy turn off for newcomers. Because of the knowledge-based, 1v1 nature, with no hiding spots or preparation phases, you're just kind of thrust into the thick of things with nothing to save you." "In an FPS, your aim can steadily get better over time, but combos in fighting games are a very on-or-off ordeal, where you can either do them or you can't. Even if you learn combos progressively starting with basic versions, you have to master each level before actually being able to use them in real matches. If improving your aim is a linear graph, improving fighting game execution can be more of a staircase with frequent plateaus and no visible results." "All that being said, I think that a lot of the intimidation surrounding fighting games comes largely from misinformation and a failure on the games' part to properly teach and guide newer players." Combinations of factors like this do contribute to fighting games being (imo) more intimidating to get into than other competitive games. Link to full comment: www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/jsw4b1/-/gc4nlhh
I remember the first time I did a dp input on purpose. I think that's the moment that really cemented my love for the genre. Execution and replication.
Legit. Been mashing out overdrives against my homies in GGST lately (we're all floor 6 or under lowbies). And they thought I was reacting half the time when it was pretty much just this comment happening in real time.
I'd say one thing that is important to the first guy argument is that csgo's reaction moments are more easily understandable, like the opponent head its sights on me I better take cover, or the opponent is trying to peek out of the cover better shoot them. While in fighting games similar situations are more artificial, like blocking high and low and dodging throws imo aren't as naturally understandable as a shootout. Not to say that in the end they aren't the same thing, but I think that first layer of dissecting what is happening and what are his options is probably something that requires more under standing than your average fps
I think this response makes a lot of sense and it's correct as far as the experience of playing fighting games one you're used to the game and its mechanics (I talk to people about a relatively long period at the start of a game where you "learn to see" what is happening - i.e. how player actions correspond to button presses, what is possible from a particular position, etc). However, what I think you really miss is that this person is describing how fighting games *feel* to outsiders. They feel like they constantly need to react and they are asking for, with their limited understanding of the genre, a fighting game where you would need to react less. Like, it's true that they misunderstand how often you are making decisions, but that misunderstanding probably comes from mis-identifying when they have an opportunity to take a turn. They start playing and it feels, to them, like every single hit in a string is a potential moment where they could do something if they were fast enough. I think there are actually a lot of features we could add to games that would make this more obvious to players. Like, training modes and replays could highlight missed inputs (i.e. you hit this button and if you had hit it 3 frames before / after it would have linked, a special move would have come out, etc). You could also have a mode where characters have...like auras showing if you have an opportunity to interrupt your opponent. Like - think how helpful it would be to have your character flash when the other person drops a link? It would help you see it and help you start to think about the game the way veterans do.
As a betatester / player with only a super shitty laptop I have to play on lower speed to not lose frames and for the game to be enjoyable. It is kinda neat and it's also what allowed me to become a betatester, the lower speed (and my crazy creativity) was a good thing to find tons of infinite combos and techniques that the developers didn't intend. Even though this makes it so I can't play online against the other betatesters or the devs. anyway Sajam cheers from south amerca , argentina.
@@jimbo5266 honestly they should add it for the same reason music teachers always tell their students to slow down: you can learn the thing perfectly at a slower pace and speed it up far more easily than trying to iteratively learn it haphazardly at a fast pace, since in the former case you aren't constantly forced to unlearn bad habits brought on by mistakes early in the learning process.
You're comparing a moment in CSGO to a moment in fighting games, saying they're similar. The poster is comparing a whole match of CSGO to a whole match in fighting games, saying they're very different.
I think it’s interesting that the first two comments mentioned how they would like games with one-button direction specials. Granblue and Power Rangers: BftG work to accommodate those people and they’re very fun. And when those games came out, fgc people would complain that “this isn’t actually what new players want.”
the memorization thing is interesting cause i find that problem usually fades away pretty quickly when i was playing yu-gi-oh some of the combos were giving me trouble so i just wrote them out on a notepad document and kept them on my screen but after some games of doing the combos i didn't really need to look at it very often i just knew what to do.
i think it's because of the misconception that you have to know so much and be able to execute so many things right off the bat that just scares people away. honestly to enjoy a fighting game at a basic level all you need is being able to move in all directions and press one button or two buttons at once, so you can more or less boil it down to 2 buttons at most, grab, punch, block, move forward and back and jump and duck. when it comes to the misconception that people are reacting to when a punch is thrown, they are not doing that. they are predicting a punch is gonna be thrown and try to give themselves enough margin to block in time in order to do anything else they themselves want to do. some newer people will sit and hold block the entire game because they don't know when they will get hit or how so they aren't able to make predictions and that's when they try to use reactions to compensate and ofcourse that doesn't work so they get frustrated and think you either have to have godlike reactions or all you do is just block the entire game. which in reality fighting games is more about spacing and trying to corner each other to make it easier to beat the shit out of the other player and try not to get cornered themselves. combos and a lot of special moves are just to make the game look more impressive and give the game more depth and complexity. Story Time i remember when i was a wee lad, i played street fighter 2, but the shocking thing with this story is, that the manual i got didn't tell you how to perform any special moves and i played with friends and none of us knew how to do anything like that which was totally fine and we had fun. so when i played the computer and they did a special move i was amazed and thought it was only the cpu that was allowed to have that and i thought this for a good chunk of time. but one day i accidentally did a special move and i was dumbfounded, i tried to replicate what i did and i failed hard, and so i stopped worrying about it and when i accidentally did a special move i started to understand what the game was telling me to do in order to do them and so i learned about 3 or 4 special moves, but i didn't become flustered because i didn't know how to do them all or anything, it was just this cool thing i could show off to my friends and tell them how to do it themselves. but the moral of the story is, you don't need to know everything in a fighting game to enjoy it, just need to know enough in how to not lose to it.
@@davis1228 i'm gonna be honest, if you can't play a fighting game at a basic level, you can't even complete a childrens game. that's actually more closer to the truth.
@@davis1228 well the online is hard no matter where you go if it's a small playerbase because chances are the only ones left are hardened veterans. try quake champions and you'll be met with the same kind of hardened veterans of the fps genré or age of empire 3 to find some really hardened veterans of the rts genré. but that don't mean i can't play those games casually and still enjoy them, i still log on to quake champions to play a couple of free for alls, i'd rather play that than cs:go or overwatch really. so you see, the more players there are playing a game the more chances are that there's a bigger audience of casuals within that game. so it's not like i don't get what you are saying, it's just that the basics are still very easy, it's just that the playerbase playing these games have been honing their skills for a long time which makes it hard to come in as a newcomer, this would happen to any game or genré under the same conditions. but imo, that shouldn't discourage people from playing the games, a fun game is a fun game no matter the circumstances. allthough something that kinda rubbed me the wrong way personally about SFV was the lack of a classic arcade mode where you could pick the character you liked and play to the end to see a character specific ending, to me that's the most basic casual place to play the game by yourself in any fighting game. but i still managed to win one or two games out of ten in sfv even though i can't do any special moves or combos, i just use my normal attacks, do i wish i was better or had players that were more around my skill? sure, but i can't really expect that to be the case with such a low population. as for smash bros popularity i think mostly stems from the character roster, i'd say smash is on par as being as difficult as any other fighter out there, it just plays differently. what the difference is, is not the game, but the players within the game. because even if you remove all the execution out of the game, the better player still wins, card games kinda proves that to be the point. try playing magic the gathering and see how fast you'll quit that for being too hard. and i'm gonna be honest, if i tried playing smash now, i'm pretty sure i'd get my ass beat, i don't know how the game even works competitively because all i remember growing up playing the older smash games was, mash the attack button with pikachu and you can zip around, that's it.
Starting out of course people don't memorize "everything", but to actually eventually be good at fighting games and not play braindead, fighting games have a TON of knowledge you have to be able to process and retain. So personally I can understand the sentiment of some of these posts....
i find it crazy that people say "i dont like juggling in fighting games cause i dont get to play the game" like shit bro if i die in league i gotta wait a bit and depending on where the fight is i gotta head over to the fight if you get got early on in a cs match you dont get to play for the rest of the round any turn based game christ just walking to a place in a big open world game there are so many instances in games where you are in a "not playing the game" state
I resonate with this comment the most wtf The idea that people think "not being able to play whilst Im comboed" is actually ridiculous considering even the longest combos in games with notoriously long combos is about... 19 seconds? (DBFZ) where the avg combo is like 2-6 real life seconds not including cutscenes/supers In fkin MOBAs when you fall so far behind from... i.e. 3 deaths the game MIGHT AS WELL (up to debate, but not important to this argument) be unplayable, and THEN you could be wasting over 15-30 minutes of the game being useless and getting farmed by the enemy team. You're basically not playing "the game" for more than 70% of the gameplay AND then you have queue timers/menuing etc Same with round based shooters (like these posts describing R6/CSGO) if you suck you could be dead for up to 2 minutes (or 3 minutes+ in R6) PER ROUND, and if you dont suck then you're rewarded by being able to play the game longer, but that also applies in FGs doesnt it?
@@nelsonguo2 I think the reason it hurts more in FGs is that sometimes you just don’t know what you got hit by, but unlike something like Overwatch or CoD, FGs don’t have an instant reply that shows where and how you got touched. So not only did you get hit by something you didn’t see, you aren’t allowed to figure out why, and you watch your character scream in agony as they get mauled. Odds are when a person gets hit the player wants to take back control as soon as possible, and instead of conceding the combo as his/her mistake, they get mad that they can’t do anything about it. I think from a beginner POV, that makes sense. But to get better it requires a whole shift in attitude.
The big difference in FGs is that while YOU aren't playing the game because you're being battered, YOUR OPPONENT _is._ Specifically at _your expense._ They're literally being a parasite. And it's going to happen no matter how good you are, and you have to wait it out if you want to win a match. For CS losses, you're free to do something else, for turn-based games, you don't have to keep super-sharp, and for open-world travel, you're clearly actively doing something and likely making progress toward your goal with some clear indication.
Those games do not have hitstun to diminish your play. Or at least CCs are specific and rare. You will either respawn or you can continuously fight. Someone can save you in team games too. Losing in fighting games is the worst loss on par with moba losses in videogames.
in the words of fatality (the smash player): "im not reacting to what my opponent is doing, im reacting to his relative position on screen and what options he has in that situation"
the combo part hits home to me, i suck at combos but i still have tons of fun in fighting games, especialy fast ones, and you know why? cuz i play a very neutral playstile, most normals combo into specials, so i just do footsies and go for those short chains if i get a hit, got me some wins online, few, but some, and i was having fun, plus, fast games mean my oportunity to go at it again after being hit happens more times and i can keep playing, having fun
That one about following instructions and nothing happens and you don't know why. For me, that's links, when you press too soon, nothing happens. When you press too late, the combo drops. The difference between those two circumstances can be imperceivable and there's nothing to indicate what the mistake was, it just didn't work. The worst part is, lot of Arksys games have audio cues for combo challenges. But the game that needs this the most and then some, Street fighter, has nothing.
I think it helps a fucking ton to get into fighting games as a kid where none of this shit occurs to you and you just play the game because it's fun. Failing that you could use some patient players that can both answer your question and point you in the direction of the question you should be asking. Because the tutorials in fighting games are fairly consistently trash. As complaints go these guys seemed kind of reasonable and perhaps fighting games could even stand to diversify to meet some of their concerns (and possibly already have if you look hard enough and/or don't care about netcode). It's entirely possible the guy who posted that has never heard of Sam Sho, and I haven't played Sam Sho because it's a broken game that doesn't work online. So I'm going to ignore Sam Sho when talking about the fraction of a second reaction times. Reacting to jabs is kind of a fucking nuts expectation but you might not know that if you haven't played fighting games a ton. That aside and it's not a small aside, that could be something that should be communicated to people that are interested in fighting games. Their is a need for fraction of a second reactions since 24 frames is still very much a fraction of a second and the games are balanced so you will get smoked if you can't block a snake edge in Tekken or an overhead in Mortal Kombat. Unfortunately if you can't learn to react at that speed you're just kind of fucked. I don't think that's a solvable problem either. If you slow them down too much they'd slide into being nothing but a memorization of frame data as good players would be able to block everything and always know if/what the punish was. Isn't there already Japanese pro who makes this into an issue for anime devs? But he says that moments of fast reactions are fine, it's just got to have a break and fighting games can be looked at as moments of action. A round of Tekken literally has a 60 second timer. Beyond that you get pauses in action; throws, cinematic supers, your opponents combo. Their are chances to take a glance around a meter, blink, even take a quick drink mid round. You've got to be right back at it since your opponent is always right on top of you but it's not like you have to play for 3 minutes straight trying not to blink until your eyes start to bleed. A for the second guys complaint about juggle combos, as much as I love fighting games. I kind of agree with him, I don't think he knows how to balance it right but I don't think it would hurt for some games to have shorter combos. I know tons of players love combos but for me learning mine just feels like a chore and watching my opponents is also not fun. It's like a price of admission I pay every time I want to learn a new character, rather than why I want to learn a new character. Personal preference and all that. I could do with a return to something like launcher, string, special or string, launch, ender string instead of something twice that long. We could still have big hits that you have to be good to land that open up a short combo but put more damage up front, scale less and have more gravity so the guitar hero aspect is lessened. I've heard Sam Sho might be a good example of this, but again it has shit netcode. I wouldn't want all fighting games to be like that because some people fucking love ToD tag battle bullshit combos and they should totally get to have them but we've reached the point where games where people bitch about combos being too simple have 10 hit plus combos. Maybe a few games could legit tone it down. Anyways just some thoughts. Really I think the biggest hurdle is getting into them after you've aged past like 12 and start to develop that fear of being bad at something that kids don't have.
Dragon Ball is the worst offender in regards to long combos. I don't mind long combos by themselves, but most fighting games that have them also have a combo escape mechanic like Burst in Guilty Gear and Blazblue, or breakers in Killer Instinct. Combos in Dragon Ball can take 20+ seconds which is maddening when there is nothing you can do during that time.
@King in the North Go play SamSho V: Special. It have excellent rollback netcode and it’s dirt cheap. You can find the game on Steam, PS4 / Vita, Switch, or Xbox One.
grinding long ass combos is part of what i love about fighting games though struggling to complete a combo at first and then a month later being able to do it 10/10 times on both sides is one of the greatest feelings in fighting games to me, its just progression, more visibly so than in a lot of games
@@Taler99 I think the issue with DBFZ combos is less that they're actually long and more that they *feel* really long. Like, the really basic combos take about 5 seconds, but they feel way longer than that.
This is one of the reasons SamSho 2 is probably my favorite fighting game of all time. Speed is not really an issue. Also way back in the day my friend and I were playing CvS2 IRCC and he picked speed3 while I normally played on speed1. He demolished me 3 - 0 then i asked if we could re but with speed1. Reverse 3 - 0 and we both realized whatever you're used to is what makes the difference
I think the problem with having to think about the controller stems from how fighting games set up their button layouts. In most genres, you will have a single button to do a single type of action, like jumping, attacking, blocking, dashing, etc. If you have more than one button to do a single type of action (most commonly attacking), then you will generally have a more distinct difference between what those attacks do, like melee vs ranged, strong vs quick, free vs resource-gated, etc. Also note that most other genres only have redundancy in attacks, and have at most 2 attack buttons when they do. In fighting games, you're generally looking at a minimum of 3 attack buttons for a well-designed fighting game (apart from platform fighters where 3 is the high-end and the satirical Divekick), with most going to 4 or higher. In addition, that's usually the only type of button you have access to, and the buttons are ordered in a much less ordered fashion. Sure, it's built usually around move strength and the part of the body it uses, but that doesn't really convey the function of the move. Like, let's say you want to anti-air. Most games have an easily accessible, easily learnable tool for anti-airing an opponent or are designed around not being able to anti-air. The former is achieved because there's only 1-2 attack buttons and there's a dedicated jump button so up can be used as a directional attack input, or your main form of combat allows for vertical aiming, so there's an intuitive solution that players can easily figure out. In fighting games, you're looking for the 10% of your kit that actually anti-airs, which can easily be gotten wrong because you have 3-6 buttons to pick from across 2-4 directional axes for any normal attacks you have. Of course some characters will have more or less anti-airs than others, but you have to think more about what inputs correlate to the output you want compared to other genres. I think Them's Fighting Herds fixed this problem the best, at least for anti-airs. There's a universal anti-air for every character in forward light, which is easily found from the controls list and works for every character.
Good point on Them's Fighting Herds, though it's worth noting that their success came in actually documenting 6A being an antiair. Having forward+light or forward+punch be a universal anti-air is a staple of Guilty Gear and IIRC BlazBlue, but the games never tell you that in the command list.
@@dominiccasts Bad command lists are probably half the reason this genre became so impenetrable in the first place. Rarely do they tell you the actually important information like "this has invuln in the early part but huge unsafe endlag, use as a hard read" or "this projectile eats other projectiles, use it to counter zoning", and as mentioned, it's always listing off specials, supers, and the occasional command normal, never "this is the universal slot for anti-airs" or "this is an overhead, use it when your opponent is crouching too much". It's usually just a list of names and not especially intuitive button strings.
@@alexanderkosten7611 It's something that I've seen ArcSys improve on in Strive and GBVS, and I'm glad they are. They kinda have this in the later BB games and BB Cross Tag, but in those games it's a somewhat obtuse symbol system to represent what is anti-air, low, overhead, etc., while Strive just has a video and a nice bit of explanation text.
I think the biggest challenge for a new player getting into a fighting game is understanding and using all of the options available to them. When you first boot up most fighting games, you are shown 30+ characters, each with a list of special moves, finishers, defensive options, movement options, etc. This makes it very difficult to figure out what is the basic area of these characters or what is important to know to use. I think that a lot of fighting games would benefit from having options where you can turn off all special moves or any moves or options that require more than one direction input so that the player can play with just the bare basics of the system without feeling like they are required to know everything else for the game. It was mentioned that other games like Devil May Cry or Monster Hunter provide you with a bunch of options, but people still play those games, but there is always the option to never use those options and still get through the game successfully. In fighting games, it is pushed that you need to know the intricacies of the game system at all levels of play, but some of these concepts are not easily defined and can be difficult to understand on top of every option you have available. If Guilty Gear Strive allows you to play simplified matches without special moves as a mode that could be a great intro for brand new straight out of the fight game womb players.
Xrd allows people to play matches with inputs that are more like GranBlue VS, so I expect Strive to have a similar simplified input setup. I also agree with the sentiment overall, since honestly for newer players it's better to just get familiar with a few basic moves and build from there once you're comfortable, rather than trying to remember every move and special and system mechanic and combo while playing. Learning moves when an issue arises in your games you need a solution to also makes it easier to really cement that learning, and to feel the kind of gradual progress that keeps you motivated.
I remember playing For Honour at release. Fast forward a month or so and it had devolved to people using gimmicky camera unlocking tactics so that you could use dashing attacks in close combat since those couldn't be parried.
6:35 - i had an idea for this, and with it you could just convert any fighting game or any 3d action game to it. i think it's that good. tell me how u feel. you put a "confirm combo button" in. and it works the same as a confirm in any fighting game, you hit them, you react in time or know it'll hit, you press the button, a short stylish animation happens, that can be different each time based on how fast u do it to the confirm, and do different damage based on how close proximity wise, or what move u did before it, and it adds extra damage to what u just did in the same way a combo post confirm does. if it doesnt hit, it does a shitty unsafe animation like you missed a command throw. cos to me the skillful part of a combo, is the confirm or conversion. i admit it does remove the conversion side of it, like u wont have to worry about distance of your special or super, or if theyre in the air, or if its counter hit. but i think it's a really streamlined system that would work in every game. like imagine it, u hit your launcher in tekken, u press the confirm button, it molests the dude and takes 50% of their health, u hit ur cr lk, cr lk as akuma in sf3, u press confirm button it does 30% and his little super fireball. you eliminate so much dumb stuff. -then for whatever reason, i wrote a ranty essay explaining my thought process, but i shorted the first bit so u dont need this bit- in old games you used to not be able to go normal, normal, special, super, and longer variants exist with air chains and EX moves and OTG, and whatever, you could only do, normal to special, or normal to super, and that moved damage out of combos into neutral, and made fighting games popular with simpler players because they didnt need to know or memorise combos (or punishes, that's another side of memorisation), they could just win in neutral or with basic pressure that still hurt. and you could create and learn that pressure on the fly. the original reason SF2 had 6 buttons was because it looked more impressive on an arcade cabinet, that game design is wasteful, and creates memory problems for players, so many games have 2 or 3 buttons that hit you, that includes FPS games(shoot,knife,greande), RTS, VF (kick,punch,throw/block), DOA, DMC, and manage to put more moves in than SF does with 6 buttons. you can remove the heavy button by setting them as command normals of medium moves, this happened in SVC chaos, where chun li's cr mk, is a 3b, and her cr lk, is a 2b. u can remove special motions with a special button + directions, the majority of characters do not have 6 or more special moves for this to be a problem, smash and granblue did that. the long strings people have memorised are arbitrary, and the special inputs are archaic. they contribute to why fighting games wont be popular, people want to play the game, if u have to sit and watch ur character get beat up for 5-15 seconds, which can be up to 50% of a rounds time it's not a good experience, and vice versa, if u have to spend hours to learn and recall in a match scenario an arbitrary string because it does the most damage you have to waste time in the training mode, no one playing Fortnite, or league, or CS has had to spend time on that, u just play, and u can learn passively on the fly. other things that help with understanding this, you can batter somebody in League, or FIFA, or Rocket League or an RTS to an unwinnable position, but even if theyre losing horribly, they still get to make decisions, and play for a decent % of the game, in a fighting game, you have a chance to only get to play for 5% of a game, while the other 95% is ur character being combo'd knocked over, mixed and combo'd again. special motions are frustrating for everyone , especially newer players, not getting a move, not getting "what you want", it "dropping my inputs", it's not fun, there's a skill to it, but do you care about someone's thumb gymnastics routine or do u want to play a game. reloading a gun doesnt need you to do a fireball motion to have him move his hands, because it has a button, it's simpler, it's accessible and it doesnt detract from the experience by being easier. the majority of new players quit while still liking fighting games, they're that bad for themselves. other horrible mechanics. tight punish windows. tekken, doa, dont have this due to the massive buffer window, if u sit mashing something, it's coming out first frame, fantastic system, the exception is like mishima's trying to reversal wind fist, but i dont care, leave me alone. but SF and KOF, it's more practice required, it makes cheap moves exist, they arent just knowledge checks, theyre practice checks. decapre light hands -3, grappler easy churn and plink, 3f DP easy, u literally mash and the reversal window that's only for specials saves you. cammy or rog or something, perfectly time your 3 frame jab, then hit a 2f link, because 50 damage is 50 damage, and you've wasted hours of your life learning that in case a decapre feels like practice checking you. bad combo systems. KOF14 , SF4. kof14's combo system put max damage on every single move, you press maxmode off 2 light confirm or 1 heavy confirm, and u do the same optimal arbitrary combo for 500 damage, it changes in corner or on shorts that's it. as everyone, that's an example of why i came up with a confirm button idea, and why that video commenter feels the same way. sf4 had links that were basically roulette for 60 more damage, or to make other confirms scarier. and if you miss them you lose 300-600 hp, the risk reward on that isnt right, ur winning, and now ur dead. doing the right thing and being punished for it because mistimed it by what is basically random, terrible. i've just read a few of the youtube comments, i standby what i think, and people are going to point out games i could play, the thing is, i already play these games, i like sf2 sf4, kof98, vsav, and smash melee, i know what i like, theyre fast, simple and neutral heavy, i've played most of the genre, i know the best ones for new players are: smash, soul calibur, doa, and virtua fighter. i went through personally having the problems i list, and others i try to get into them have the brain power to tell me these problems exist, and i have to tell them to deal with it, as i send the boomer trolley problem their way. even with all boxes ticked, that knowledge is gated to rando forums and specific people, they wont go through an entire genre, the brand leaders, are SF, tekken, MK, and i swear mvc3 was massive among casuals, which makes no sense to me. those games have all the things that hurt someone getting into fighting games, and theyre the representatives that everyone hears about and tries. the comments about 1v1 and online, i dont think make much sense in strict matchmaking world. on new games (like released in the past year), new players fight new players they might have slightly less than 40-50% win rate, that's the same as any other matchmaking. if they play anything older, then they run the problem, again more knowledge new players probably wont know until they try it.
I think the main takeaway from this is that the fighting game onboarding process for new players is pretty bad. Both as a community and for the tutorial experience. (Ironically, TFH has one of the, if not the best tutorial out there.) Players feel like they need to grasp every concept at once, combos, neutral, guard, mixups, while this is not how anybody here learned. We all started more or less the same way. Pick a cool dude and press buttons. Then there's how to do a fireball. And we built on from there. Games should be doing more to get non-fighting game players to play them. Injustice did this splendidly, with strong IP and a full-on single-player experience. I feel like if more games had (good and engaging) single player campaigns, it would help a lot to alleviate those problems.
Just to comment on that guy who liked smash inputs with directions... If you think about it, Smash has 4 ground normals (up down neutral foward tilt), and 5 air normals (up down forward back neutral air) Now think about DBFZ. Typical character has something like 7 ground normals (LMH Crouching LMH and S), and 4 air normals (LMHS) No one is out here taking a fuckin math test with flash cards and an annotated bibliography, they just play the game and can easily point out one of 4 moves the character can do in the air that they've seen 10000 times. Took me two weeks to figure out how to play with a M+KB in shooters and how weak of an excuse is "I kept feeling like the keyboard was there"
Yeah, lots of new players (and people who don’t play) tend to think fighting game players are reacting to everything, when really, fighting game players tend to react to whatever the last thing the opponent did was, and try to predict their next one based on that, rather than reacting to the startup of attacks.
I think there is a solid argument for a middle ground here as far as the fast-pace is concerned. For example I have a notoriously slow reaction time, and struggle to recognize a counter-hit by the time the extension window is already closed and rarely if every get anything beyond what I would have off of a normal hit. But that has forced me into characters and styles that favour, big buttons and chipping out, or committal advances. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but it does sculpt the way I enjoy fighting games, because I simply can't play a bait and punish character because I just can't react to the effective abilities of the style of play.
“even when playing for over 10 hours…” LOL. It took me over 70 hours of playing Smash before I knew where my character was on the screen at any given time.
funny to mention For honor here since its the exact type of game the poster was looking for, in dominion theres always time to run around and think before fighting, just like csgo, and the fight mechanic in it is decent to teach things that might be useful in other fighting games. For honor was a great reintroduction to fighting games to me and what made me finally try learning street fighter.
For Honor honestly feels like the future of fighting games. There are multiplayer casual modes. It's simple. There are no long combos. The inputs are easy.
One problem newer players in any genre have is that not only do they not know things about the game, but they don't know what's important to learn about the game either. Learning complicated inputs and combos, or being able to reaction-block certain specific moves, is less important than learning how to use the simple tools like holding block and using pokes and anti-airs, but players completely new to the genre don't know that. This leads to them trying to learn difficult niche stuff instead of the essentials because they don't know what's essential. I think the solution has to be making better tutorials that don't just teach players techniques, but teach players the sort of general fighting game meta knowledge that people who know the games take for granted.
4:55 I would think the snap because even though it is always a different amount the reaction is the same. With an attack in a fighting game the reaction is different based off of that attack. I do understand what the OP is talking about though. I play fighting games and I REALLY like the concept of K.I. but I can't keep up with the speed of the decision making in that game. It's bloody exhuasting.
CoD and CSGO have taught people that you need to have good reactions. They incentivize heads up gunfights where reaction is king. Siege still has heads up gunfights but it tries to give players as many ways to avoid heads up gunfights as much as possible. So now people are in fighting games thinking that reactions are the key to success.
Allow me (someone who likes dive kick and footsies and thinks the rest are unnecessarily hard) to explain what I hate about fighting games: I don’t like that you can know what you need to do, and then not be able to do it. For example, in chess, let’s say you need to move a piece like 1. e4. There is no barrier at all to moving that pawn. You just do it effortlessly. That may have been the wrong move depending on the situation, but the fact is that you decided to make that move, and you made it. Whereas if chess was a fighting game, you could try to do e4 but then instead you get e3. So even if you’re big braining it and read your opponent every time and have the best options selects, you lose because you simply can’t do what you’re trying to do. For example. Let’s say J want to Safe jump as Nash in SFV After ⬇️↙️⬅️HK so that I can have a meaty option that also beats EXDP. In order to do this, I have to delay my jump by exactly 1 frame. That’s it. And that’s just a simple idea. In order to be able to do a jumping attack and block in time, I have to make a 1 frame link. Why? There’s no reason for execution to be this difficult. Which is why my favorite fighting game is dark souls 2 Arena. Everything you do is so easy, that you only make mistakes, not accidents. If they made a dark souls 2 arena type game where everyone was forced to be the same level, that would be fantastic.
I have played fast games like GG to slow ones like GBVS as well as complicated like Tekken to simple like FS and I can say for sure that there is definitely a game for everyone. The issue is probably because fighting games are relatively niche that very few people know about the less popular titles even though it fits what they want. This is on top of the fact that a lot of FG players tend to play only one or two games. Unfortunately, I don't see an easy solution to it all.
For the person looking for a fighting game with one hitpoint by the way, it exists. Look up One Strike. Really small following, but really fun game based around footsies. (Which also ironically counts)
I always feel like the trouble is no one does their research. I jumped into fighting games and bought every fighting game I could to find out that I have a very specific genre preference and character preference. I prefer single character fighters and like a more neutral heavy game over the air dashing anime style fighting games. As for execution characters, I think the difficulty for new players is finding characters that are "easy to understand". An example of the single button and a direction or just a couple buttons would be Ed. However I would say a character like Chun Li or E. Honda with relatively simple special inputs should be the characters these players try instead of going after the extra ridiculous high damage combo monsters. The dilemma is players who are new want to feel powerful and in a fighting game power often comes from high damage combos. For a player to stick with a fighting game long enough to enjoy it requires an initial investment that I don't think a lot of players want to buy into. A game like Gran Blue would be the perfect game if it wasn't as expensive and had better more populated online. The community sees project L as the next big fighting game because they think it will be F2P and offer some of the systems of Rolling Thunder with simple inputs and GGPO netcode. I think with the success of Fantasy Strike it is possible to have fighting games that are free or inexpensive lower the cost barrier and have some either assisted specials or simplified specials (I often wonder if a training wheels approach of having the combo buttons show on screen like a QTE would help, similar to when I have put up sticky notes with item buy orders for MOBAs I play).
It's like my friend who said rising thunders inputs made it too easy and he didn't like it. But he only played Ed in SF5 because he couldn't do inputs on the other fighters.
@@davis1228 Rising Thunder and platform fighters are the first games in decades that I felt like breathed life into fighting games. I think someday somebody will work along those lines and open a new genre.
So many of these complaints and criticisms, not all mind you, I think the genre in general should experiment with defensive options WHILE getting combo'd beyond breakers/bursts, but most boil around "I should have intuitive mastery of fighting games because I sorta know how a fight works in real life"
i love experimental defensive mechanics, would definitely love to see more like imagine being able to modify your character's weight mid combo to make yourself harder to combo
Dead or alive has it with their hold system where it's basically a parry. Once the opponent stuns you with a combo starter, they will either continue with a high/mid/low and if you guess correctly, you stop their combo and deal a throw. Failing this can lead to a counter hit situation though. The parries exists even when you're not in a combo btw. The result of it is a game where you get a combo, you get a 2nd chance for a mixup and remembering frame data isn't too necessary because if you know what the opponent is gonna do, you can parry and switch the momentum.
A well structured tutorial with a good learning path and spaced practice moments, some tool to create and share specific character/stuff tutorials in game, these all along with a good netcode would bring so much new people. Riot do it pls...
Them's Fighting Herds has already done all of that (well, I can't speak for the tutorial since I'm familiar enough with fighting games that I can't properly judge it, but it has everything else).
I played CS GO with some friends last night and played it how I play zoners. Keep a safe distance, control space with a molotov if I know my opponent it trying to get into that space, and watch certain spots for where they move, and react to that. But since I have more experience with fighting games, I react faster and more accurately than I did in CS. Though it was the same pacing for me as playing Poison or Falke in SFV, or Asuka in Tekken 7. I really think you can bake down strategies in all sorts of competitive games into a lot of the same core concepts.
I’m trying to get into skullgirls on switch. I kinda get the OP. Training mode is rough, and playing with a controller isn’t helping. I haven’t even gotten into picking a character and wonder if I can memorize all the patterns and options to a reasonable extent.
This reminds me a bit about the tech chasing (okizeme) divide in smash where some people go for reads and some people try to react. If you read a single tech correctly you can punish much harder, but if you react correctly each time consecutively then you can win the stock. The trouble is that reacting to tech in place consistently can basically only be done by people with alien level reaction times like wizzrobe and captain faceroll, so most people go for a read eventually. However, most interactions in neutral are decided by a read, if you leave yourself open enough that you can be reacted to you've taken a big risk - and that can be a fun thing to do but if you fuck up they'll kill you for it.
when it comes down to it fighting games are simulations of real life fighting just with more fireballs and craziness. Just like real life fighting it has to be based around predicting your opponent and defeating them using practiced sequences of moves. To want to get rid of that is like wanting to play battlefield but remove all the guns.
There's a game called Phantom Breaker Omnia that's coming out, and it incorporates directional inputs for special moves a la Smash Bros. That might be interesting for some people to pick up next year (though it unfortunately won't have rollback).
I know the lab and combo monsters don't agree, but as a casual lover of fighting games, there is absolutely no joy in seeing yourself be stuck in a combo for upwards to 15 seconds. It may be a blast to execute to people, but being stuck in that long ass state of helpnessness just feels shitty and disheartening to the max. Short sweet combos are awesome and fantastic, even if they cause immense damage (see Granblue), but getting dragged off the floor for the umpteeth time in tekken or god forbid allowing a single in through dbz fighters just feels horrid. Big thing about these is the LENGTH you're stuck there just looking as they just go ham on you. ps. As for the 'well you've several characters' argument, it literally feels worse to get stuck in that lockout three times in a row. MIND YOU, I fully support the combo-monster games and I know they're not for me, but the more the game leans away from extended combos the more I'm interested in it.
However, what I will say is because fighting games HAVE to be (Usually) 60FPS, it has variable reaction times depending on how experienced you are and being put in similar situations. So, there is chances for people to be milliseconds ahead in knowledge. It's also why playing on the right equipment is stressed in importance.
10:20 No, that's not how it works and you know it. You just don't get a "feeling", because that's just super superficial angle you will get. Of course, if you play FGs for 20+ years, you will have a plan, but not a beginner.
As a person who never touches Fighting Game online and spend more time in arcade, versus, and training, I get a lot of enjoyment out of just experimenting and figuring out cool stuff and seeing characters, story, and just badass dudes and dudettes doing badass things. And I personally almost play it like a rhythm game than a fighting game. Does that mean I’m enjoying it the wrong way? Or that I need the game to accommodate to me because my bungo brain can’t tell the difference between an overhead or a low? No. I just wanna see cool stuff.
If you're having fun you're doing it right. And if you ever want to compete you're still doing it right. People who say "don't play the AI" are relics from the arcade days where you could hang out with a handful of people every day and learn through the beats. You don't actually learn anything from getting bodied online by randos who don't chat save for trolling, until you already know the fundamentals and systems of the game which you're much better off figuring out through single player. It's much easier to unlearn cheesy exploits that only work in the AI than to practice your moves as a noob playing people who have a dozen hundred matches on you already.
Some card games are a pretty alright simulation of a slow fighting game. Maybe it's just me, but I visualize Legends of Runeterra as a fighting game with options for counters, breakers, counter breakers, and meter.
This is really keen insight. You could make a fighting game that worked turn by turn by playing cards or selecting inputs. This might help people see how it all works at really slow speed.
The only issues with reactions is trying to properly combo off of shit with 0.5 hitstop frames before the foe techs and whoops your ass for dropping a basic bread and butter.
Confirming into a combo off of a single hit is generally something that you only see at the highest levels of play. In the vast majority of situations, players will do strings of at least two hits in order to confirm that their opponent is being hit before continuing the combo. That's why bread-and-butter combos usually start with off with a safe string.
Even fps games don't require crazy reaction speed, there's crosshair placement where you put your crosshair where people's heads are most likely to be. Unless your enemy is also looking at you which is near impossible cause there're many places people could go in a map, you have plenty of time to stop and click at their head.
In the situation of casuals we have to think about their experiences. While experienced fighting game players understand there's something for everyone, the casual player base generally only knows the main games. The problems they mention seem to be for central games. Memorization- problem with tekken, can't deny you should learn alot of move frame data to try to block or not mash when trying to improve. Long combos - clearly a trait in Dragon ball, without a combo breaking mechanic. Street fighter - motion inputs tend to take awhile to develop the dexterity for if you've never played a fighting game before, can be frustrating experience to think you understand what you can do, but still not be able to do it. Smash seems to avoid these traits imo.
The memorization thing is kinda legit. The brain flexes a different muscle when taking something from memory and applying that to physical action, and there are more things in a FG to pull from memory into action after pressing a button. That's why many people practice a combo in training mode, have it down, and can't execute in live matches because there are more things that have to be done to get to that combo. I appreciate GGST's slowdown on Counters for this very reason and is a big part of why FGs click with me where they never did before.
Fps games have ttks of like 100~200ms. Depending on the game of course, but generally speaking your death comes way faster and way more "randomly". Your opponent has to do way more in a fighting game to set up long combos that end in a kill.
To me I love playing a ton of different games since the amount you can improve is much higher when you're starting out. Plus a lot of skills transfer over between games like how people who can learn characters easily tend to play a lot of team games or a bunch of games in general like Sonicfox is a perfect example or how you don't need to relearn peeking or tracking or positioning in most shooters. There aren't many games I've stuck with because I truly enjoy them, Dark Souls 3 is prolly the closest to a fighting game I've played recently and Melee/PM I only really played cause I had friends that played. If you want a competitive game that's slow then Pokemon is a great game to get into since there's a billion different formats and a lot of thinking is just "their mon typically does X and this mon that I have is a good counter to it but they can read that to go into their counter" and then after that you end up in the multi-layered mixup category where you just pick an option and hope it works out. There are competitive games for really any type of player if you really want to put the time in to learn which most people don't because it's hard and takes a lot of effort whether it's in pokemon, any number of fighting games, shooters, card games, etc.
If I were to take a different look at this for a second, I feel this is probably projection on the part of the writer from experiences with 'Team Games' as opposed to '1v1 games', especially since he mentions both CS:GO and R6 Siege. It never hurts quite as much or hits quite so personally when you lose a match in a team game, because there are so many nebulous factors that contribute towards a win. Hell, as someone who's played a decent amount of ranked in both those games, even in '1v1' scenarios, factors like communication and baiting can factor into both players's mental calculus quite a lot, such as already having intel on an opponent's weapon choice before running into them. In a fighting game, all you have is literally what you bring with you. There's no loadout to choose, no hidden abilities to take advantage of, no allies to help you out or let you down. If you lose, it's immediately obvious it's on YOU and nobody else. No other 1on1 game is quite as fair in that way... so naturally it pisses you off: Because fuck this game, right? I pressed the right button, just like that guide said. I used the right move, at least I think I did. The guy must be using a cheap character... hell, this game is just too difficult for me to get my head around! Anyone who's played a team game has felt the urge to blame a teammate for a loss, or make understandable excuses for losing a gunfight, but in a fighting game it's harder than ever to make a compelling argument to being 'cheated' out of a win. It doesn't help that many fighting gamers don't understand what makes them 'good' at the games they play; they mythologise their strengths, "I just... felt like he was going to DP there, you know?" "Oh yeah, that move is totally reactable." In actual fact, you 'felt' he would DP there because his play had tell-tale signs of anxiety on defense and you could feel him itching to turn the tables. The move is reactable because you know its range and what it can combo from, so you're ready for it. Half of the 'reactions' and 'mechanical goodhood' most veteran fighting gamers have are actually built on hours of experience understanding the game, which reduces their mental load and what they have to react to, but as this came organically and not through focused practice people assume it's 'divine inspiration'. I myself have a positively shit reaction speed, I've been medically tested. I however love playing faster characters and often get accused by non-fighting gamer friends of having the reactions of a god: but that's simply because I know exactly what is possible at any moment. More than half of reacting fast is knowing what could be coming. The day I learned that was the day fighting games really felt like they opened up for me. Anyway, TLDR and to summarise my initial point; Fighting Games ARE harder than most team games... but a lot of that is ego, not skill. Accepting you have a long way to go, aknowledging your weaknesses and honing your strengths to a wicked point is what makes these games so satisfying. The truth will set you free... but first it'll PISS YOU OFF XD
Something I think about a lot - the guy talking about "forgetting the controller is there" is kind of taking for granted that he can do that when playing other genres. But have you ever seen someone who's never played an FPS try to move and aim at the same time? Or circle strafe? It's HARD, it takes practice just like how learning how to consistently do fireballs and DPs when you want them takes practice. But because of the massive popularity of games like Halo, CoD, Fortnite, etc most gamers have already developed these skills at some point. I wonder how different the perception of the difficulty of fighting games would be if there had been a massively successful fighting game in the modern gaming era that became a worldwide phenomenon the way SF2 did back in the day, or Fortnite is now.
I'm with it, but FPSs are definitely easier to learn than fighting games.
I agree. Adults feel way fucking worse learning a new skill and being bad at it than kids do. Their is a name for it but it's escaping my grasp.
I played early SF, MK and Tekken in the arcades as a kid and you don't worry about being bad at a game when you're 8. You just play because it's fun. I didn't even really worry about getting good till I bought a PS4 to play online by which point I knew so much that something like DP motion wasn't an issue and I could focus on learning things like advanced strategy.
This is me with shooters (both FPS and TPS games), and with other popular genres like RTS and MOBAs.
Sit me down in front of a fighting game and I’ll find the buttons I’ll need within seconds, and figure out some basic tools to use within a couple of matches, with or without training mode.
Have me try any of the above genres, though, and watch me turn into a boomer before your very eyes. I can’t aim for shit, I have no idea where I’m supposed to look and what to prioritize. I get overwhelmed with the options and the pace at which I’m supposed to execute them in order to compete, and where others find comfort in being on a team as a beginner, all I can think about is how much I’m ruining the game for everybody else with my lack of skill and knowledge. Add Keyboard & Mouse controls to the equation and I get a hundred times worse on top of that, since I didn’t grow up playing games on PC.
Also, I’d argue that fighting games have had beginner friendly games for longer than shooters had. The Reddit dudes themselves mentioned Smash and Soul Calibur, Sajam mentioned SamSho, and I’d argue DoA is also very beginner friendly. Meanwhile, it wasn’t until Overwatch and Splatoon that I found shooters I could play even casually without feeling totally lost. Before those (and since, tbh), the genre has been almost impenetrable to me, moat likely because I’ve had limited exposure to the genre and culture surrounding it.
Yea I usually play the sniper classes since for most part you have an easier time since you're far away and if you ever get jumped like Winston vs Widow in Overwatch or Soldier vs Sniper in TF2 then you're likely dead anyways so you can't really get frustrated about it since you kind of have to get lucky to get out of those situations
I think a huge difference here is that you can play single player FPS games and still have some fun and learn the mechanics. If you play Skyrim, you're indirectly learning how to control a CSGO character.
There aren't any other games who control like Fighting games, and fighting games have a pretty clear cut ''you win or you lose'' setup against another human, which makes this hard to learn.
I kinda wish there was some kind of rhythm game that used motion inputs to make people practice combos & stuff in a low pressure and fun way.
Recently had a conversation with some people who don’t play fighting games and it pretty much went
“Fighting games would be better if you didn’t have to do X”
“You don’t have to X. You can have fun and win without doing X- and if you really don’t like it there are fighting games without it.”
“No. The entire genre should simply not have X.”
Then maybe fighting games just aren't for them 😂
Usually those are the ones that will never like fighting games. I don't understand how some people can't just say they don't have fun with them and that's it. I like watching people play rts, but I can't get behind that genre for long because it stops being fun for me real fast. Same thing with most competitive fps.
It's like saying, "puzzle games should be easier...you have to think too much to solve most of them..."
"fighting games would be better if MEEEEEEE"
I mean, I’m a not a fan of aerial double quarter circle supers as a new fighting game player, but I still like the game.
Shooters would be better if there weren't ultimate abilities. No, the entire genre should simply not have ultimates.
There used to be a game that played like For Honor, but at half speed. It was the release version For Honor, and it was bad.
yep. any kind of offense was punished and everybody turtled. For honor has evolved alot over the years, but i don't understand why ubisoft doesn't employ actual fighting game devs to balance their game. They seem to miss the important pieces that make combat engaging.
@@samuraileo1 the game is fucking 4 years old and it still has a stamina bar that shits up every fight. Maybe next year they'll remove it
you would be surprised how many of my old For Honor friends get increasingly mad as the game gets slowly more read-based and less reaction based. They arent playing For Honor for the moment-to-moment gameplay, and its kinda why the game took so long to (sort of) pull their head out of their ass
It's still bad. Two jabs or less into 50/50s. Fun game.
@@Goblinade I think removing it entirely would certainly cause some problems, wouldn't you? You'd probably have to drastically rework the whole roster.
I feel like their complaint of "fast" is misdirected. It's not that fighting games are necessarily too fast, but rather that there's almost no downtime ingame.
Like, in CS, you stare at a shop screen for a few seconds (buying stuff is a fraction of that), then a few more seconds autopilot waddling into position, some active gameplay where you actually need to pay attention, and if you die you can take your hands off the keyboard and chill till the round ends. Similar story with games like League/Dota, in many CCGs you can practically tab out while your opponent takes their turn, etc.
In fighting games, your "breaks" are ROUND 2, FIGHT, and maybe a few seconds of getting comboed/doing combos. Even if it's just two people crouching at midrange, hitting no buttons, it's still a "fast" situation that's no different from someone holding a corner in the hopes a head wanders into your crosshair. It's even worse if the game has some sort of frequent combo breaker mechanic, because then even combos aren't a moment to catch your breath.
No, seriously, I've gone full circle and I now find getting comboed to be the shockingly relaxing part of a genre that's otherwise demanding your intense, undivided attention for 3-5 minutes per game.
Reminds me of when ppl would complain about the supers in sc6 breaking the pace. Because it isnt a combo heavy game, supers were a good time to rethink my strat or take a breather.
A full CS game can have like 30 rounds (I think, idk i dont play cs lel), and in most of those rounds you're gonna spend at least a fair amount of it reacting to intense situations. Meanwhile vast majority of fighting games are best of 3 before getting kicked back to the lobby where you can just chill and decide if you wanna queue up again or not. A full ranked match of League takes like 30 minutes, and that game clearly isn't struggling with player retention. When I used to play dota, the entirety of laning phase felt like one really long round of a fighting game, and then I had an entire mid-game and late-game to play through right after that.
Sure, maybe you have a point in that fighting games are more "dense" in terms of the number of "fast situations." But I hardly think that matters considering you can be done within a couple of minutes. Maybe it's the difference between sprinting and marathon running. I've personally never had trouble playing any of the games described so maybe I'm not the right person to talk about it.
@@samuelalphabet5360 Yeah, I can see the arguments but at the same time I feel like it is all down to experience. When I first started playing league maybe laning was stressful, but after a while it was just last hit and poke until something happens. Very chill. Same with fighting games, once you get past the barrier a match is just positioning and poking until something happens.
But according to them, most of the game is downtime while you’re getting combo’d
I’d argue that much of the time, your combos are also on autopilot, unless they are particularly difficult or if you aren’t comfortable with them.
In the beginning, most of For Honor was juuuust a smidge slower than most fighting games. That meant everyone could block everything and it became way too punishing to attack and be proactive (some exploits non withstanding). Fighting games need to be a certain speed so that some moves are barely reactable if you are expecting them, otherwise, opening people up becomes impossible, and aggression becomes highly deemphasized.
@@davis1228 You're actually smoking, it's the exact opposite. Devs constantly removing okizeme, you can't have mixups that aren't strike-throw, everything constantly resets to neutral among other things. The only reason offense feels powerful is because of terrible online play and players who refuse to learn defensive structure and try to disrespect their opponents offense all the time. Look at old fighting game footage. You don't see much blocking because the mixups are so powerful you have to choose something or just get opened up.
@@davidburke4101 Depends on what game you're talking about, Tekken and street fighter have definitely gotten more aggressive with tekken reducing movement speed making it harder to stay away from rushdown characters without taking risks, and Street Fighter 5 has a huge emphasis on getting okizeme whenever possible, even if throws don't loop. Mortal Kombat does go the defensive way, with the "everyone gets to be guile" approach for zoning, Breakaways and quirky wake up options
Just a smidge? The fastest attack out of neutral back then was Orochi lights and it was 30f! Then add on the hassle was that changing guards was 6-12f depending who you used, not to mention issues back then with latency and indicator flicker.
@@davidburke4101 as someone already said, mortal kombat is the exception to this. All of the major fgc games are catered towards aggression (TEKKEN, DBZF, SFV). Old tekken was based on more movement and nuetral without landing huge combos and sf was a mix of defensive/footsies. Newer games are more neutral focused to make it easier and less options compared to previous titles for newcomers, but its really not as defensive depending on the game. KoF isnt defensive either and marvel is nutty.
@@mehgamer467 Neutral is actually inherently defensive play, its literally "how do I get where I need to be while avoiding my opponents attacks?" Evasive play is defensive, J wong is a master of evasive play.
In the cases of tekken and SF, some changes were made to make the game flashy, more than trying to be morr offensive
Honestly the only thing stopping me from playing more fighting games is being able to make time to get into them. I love all fighting games and I'm obsessed with them, and Core-A-Gaming helped me figure out a good way to schedule my play time. All I got to do is putting that to practice and get used to the way the controls feel so I can actually combo.
For real, I want to be like Sajam but I cannot STAND the feeling of being a beginner. I play DBFZ to a really competent & fairly skilled degree, but I just recently picked up Guilty Gear Xrd.
I feel like a fucking CHILD in that game. Inputs are so much more advanced and particular, I don't understand the timing, I had so many fundamentals established in DBFZ but moving one single ArcSys game over, I'm a buffoon again, it's disheartening. Even with really great, great tutorials, it's hard for me to understand the mindset I'm supposed to be in in a new game.
@@eataneraser yes my mind set is im gonna lose until I beat you recently got inte guilty gear to was hard managed to win some matches against solid players im just kinda stubborn in that way
@@davis1228 You seem to talk a lot about approach ability and accessibility, not that it's a bad thing, you seems so passionate about it, what feature and changes do you have in mind outside of Tutorials and netcode ?
For me, the biggest one is the lack of social aspect, FG without the investment of a team or a group feel like an anti-social experience, it would be nice if we had a dojo system with a rank for all the members of the dojo or guild rather than a traditional ranking system, what do you think?
for the life of me when i started playing fighting games i had the memory of a goldfish when it came to remembering combos and even specials, but over time muscle memory just kicked in then instead of worrying what i was doing i started worrying about what my opponent is doing and remembered "oh, i've played against this character before, they have these 3 annoying moves that idk how to deal with so i better block" because taking a combo will do more damage than getting grabbed for 10 percent. it took me like a whole year to play with intentionality and yeah it was frustrating losing to some spamming because i refused to stop and pay attention to what they were doing but damn does it feel good to beat a flow chart or someone who is obviously trolling with gimmicks.
competitive games are just that, they're competitive and getting good at anything competitive will make you learn what you're doing wrong by losing, it's not gonna happen over night and you'll either want to learn the game more or say "this is bullshit and hard and why am i gonna learn something that i'm supposed to be having fun in?". these games are fun when the learning is fun, and not everyone learns the same way or will have fun the same way.
idk, i like fighting games
Which fighting game do you play?
This is it. For better or worse, most people don't enjoy this form of learning at ALL. And they certainly don't enjoy it enough for the tiny payoff of winning in a fighting game.
@@sheercold26 i play SF5, GG+r, KI, KOF2002um, and garou (also hopeing punch planet gets more updates and metal revolution seems fun), i couldn't really get into tekken or most 3d fighters but DOA seemed fun at the start and i hope virtua fighter comes out so i can try a modern version of that, and i tried a bunch of team fighters and they didn't click with me (MVCI, DBFZ, and power rangers)
@@asterhogan1 just play VF5, Final Showdown.
Find a way to play the original VF4 if you can. That game changed the way I looked at fighting game graphics.
ill say one thing in defense of these people: losing in fgs really sucks, and it feels worse than losing in any other type of game i've ever played. i think a lot of people have the experience of starting an fg, learning controls and basic combos in training mode, and then dying a few matches into arcade mode or the second they go online. it's a tough feeling and people end up overthinking why they didn't like it by saying "execution is stupid" or "combos are too long" or "i can't react". in reality they only got bodied because they're not used to how the game works, just like someone playing a souls game for the first time for example, except it just *feels* worse in a fighting game. i think it might be because other games give you incremental feelings of progress, and while you can look at a fg that way (wow i landed a jab!) it requires a specific perspective and it's hard to get to the point where you're satisfied with such small victories.
Fighting games are "learning the hard way" boiled down as far as possible. That's just not gonna be fun for most people, and will be immense fun for certain kinds of people. Just like chess or poker.
I think Core-A said something good about this one too.When you lose in fighting games there's no team to blame and your character is screaming in pain the whole time because you failed to defend yourself.
@@deschamos7599 so basically, non fgs players are pussies that can't take the L
@@deschamos7599 And after you get beat YOU LOSE comes up on screen while the announcer says it out loud. Or in MK's case you have to watch you character get brutally murdered lol.
@@KoylTrane no, that fighting game loses suck. Losing in fighting games take more than a loss, it's actively a reduced time playing because hitstun exists.
I think an often overlooked difference between fighting games and competitive shooters (for example) is that most people are familiar with the basics of shooters because a lot of it is standard for non-competitive 3d games. I've never played CS, but I know the controls wouldn't confuse me the way that my first fighting game did. Maybe that's why platform fighters feel more accessible, because 2d platformers are a genre people are familiar with and the basic movement transfers over.
Yeah, he's definitely catching onto the mental tax of playing games. Especially when you're new, every second feels like a decision and it can be overwhelming.
On the subject of combos, New players I've played with totally miss the interaction available in strings. Stuff like, they start getting combo'd and they don't press block in case the combo is dropped.
The one about “button combos” is probably referring to strings in NRS games and Tekken
Or like Guilty Gear where you do a combo ending in a wall bounce, then have to figure out which attack will juggle and keep the combo going.
@@Godspeace21 that’s what I mean. That’s NOT a “button combo”, that’s reacting to a situation
I'm pretty sure button combos referred to special moves input.
@@KoylTrane likely as well
funny enough For Honor used to be that. attacks used to be way slower across the board and it was possible to react to almost everything. this led to situations where nobody wanted to go on the offense. making a game slower actually makes reaction even more important because if you can react to everything, you don't need to think about what your opponent is going to do and you don't have options to force your opponent into situations where they have to think about anything
And then on the other end of the scale you have moves that come out so quickly online that experienced fgc players will swear they can't be reacted too.
@@Theyungcity23 those moves are fine because you're not supposed to react to them, you're supposed to plan around the fact that they exist.
if i have a 14 frame overhead that's punishable on block then you know i'm not going to do it unless i think it will hit you, or i have the resources to make it safe. you can operate around that knowledge. look for my tendencies on offense, look at how i'm attacking you and what patterns i have. trying to react to it doesn't help you because most people don't have the power to react to that, and being able to doesn't help you unless you understand all the points at which someone might go for that attack.
@@davis1228 i don't understand what this means
@@armorparade I feel like because of the way for honor works accepting some moves are just meant to be unreactable is a lot harder and they tend so feel like bullshit/spam at lower levels, I think these are the reasons behind that:
1) There's little to no execution barrier for offense. In something like ggacr if you mostly learn the game by playing (and not just jumping into training mode and grinding out combos as a new player) chances are by the time you're able to consistently apply decent pressure to your defending opponent you're also most likely gonna have at least some idea on how to defend yourself because learning blockstrings longer than 3 hits and implementing mixups will take you a while so if you're playing against a similarly skilled opponent you're gonna know how to defend yourself or if you're both new, both of you will be dropping combos like crazy. In for honor if there's a noob playing against a noob roach, the roach can just keep pressing the light attack button over and over again and wildly flail between directions and as long as they have stamina they can keep the offense going and even if the other new player knows they're gonna keep spamming light attacks there's no way they'll parry a light because at low level the execution barrier for offense is a lot lower than the execution barrier required to deal with that level of offense.
2) There are 3 directions, but only 1 of them has unique moves. In traditional fighters a 2k will hit low and only low, I can't do a 2K overhead and can't hit low with jumping P, every move has a set way it's blocked so if overheads are generally slower than lows you can by default block low where the fast moves are and react to overheads. In for honor top moves may have different properties than sides, but both sides have identical moves to one another, so if a character has a fast/troublesome moves that's top I can block top by default to cover it and react to slower moves, but if a character's most troublesome move is a side then I have to predict they'll do the move and guess/try to react to which side it will come from.
@@iquaniqua exactly. a lot of people issue complaints about how these games work and i can understand being frustrated that you can't do the things you want, but i feel like people should at least try to understand the systems at play before trying to say what needs to be changed. even the smallest of changes have huge repercussions!
I feel like a lot of these issues that non-fighting game players mention could be alleviated by prioritizing teaching players movement and defensive options before offensive options. The crux of neutral in fighting games is movement and defensive options, but almost every fighting game tutorials prioritizes teaching player's the functionality of moves or combos. Even the best fighting game tutorials fall victim to this. This only feeds into the stigma of "Fighting games are all about the combos" when this clearly isn't the case.
The day a fighting game noob says "Holy shit that mixup is rediculous" or "Holy shit these footsies are rediculous" before"Holy shit that combo is rediculous" is the day people will finally get the point of fighting games.
This is a very good point. I'd been playing fighting games for years to decades depending on how seriously you consider playing before I bought DBFZ (a waste of money on a broken game that doesn't work online) and I still got through the tutorial and went "Wait, how the fuck do I play neutral in this game?" and had to message some one on Discord.
@@davis1228 It's strange that games like marvel and guilty gear that were designed without the intent of appealing to spectators were able to make a game that had nuanced mechanics that played into the intended loop instead of punishing people for deviating from it. I love DBFZ, but that's because it caters to my unga-bunga babybrain in a way that no other fighter can. It has depth and even some solid defensive options, but the presence of superdash and vanish makes neutral absolutely trivial. If I want a game like it that has nuance and depth, I'm playing accent core.
it ultimately feels like designing games that cater to the people that made the comments Sajam is responding to would ultimately hurt the genre.
@@davis1228 That is an impressive missing the entire point and going off in like 5 different directions about irrelevant shit.
I make it a point to not teach or think about combos until my friends develop habits in neutral. Simple moves. Then diddle them with specials so they have a new element to take into account, then a few strings, finally combos.
@@davis1228 "SFV is the most offense-oriented entry in the series" Have you played 3rd Strike?
I think the main issue is that when competitive minded players find a new game which had different kind of skillset that they're used to you get a natural reaction to think that there is something wrong with the game.
You see this happening inside fighting games also when people claim that game x y or z is too difficult to get into because the things they aren't used to using aren't working anymore.
They don't want to feel like a beginner anymore, they've learned that you should make workers in rts games, how to position themselves in cs and how to lasthit in mobas and instead of learning the basics of a new genre they lash out when they find a genre with equal depth with completely different skillset.
This is definitely the best explanation of it in my opinion
This. Especially within fighting games. Being bad at a new game after you've been good at another is just so demoralizing.
I've seen so many people who say it's hard to do a motion input but it's easy to shoot at someone in a FPS. A lot of gamers have this idea that everything done in video games should be natural to them since they've been gaming for so long. I had a friend who had never played video games and the simple act of using one analog stick to move and the other analog stick to aim at the same time was intuitive to her. Fighting games aren't harder than any other genre, it's just a different set of skills and often lack of match making or playerbase that puts you up against someone you're not ready for and leave people to thinking it's the game that's the problem.
@@LaowPing Think you wrote "intuitive" when you meant "unintuitive" there tho
@@Copperhell144 I did. Thanks for that lol.
I used to feel like I had to do optimal combos consistently to even begin playing fighting games, which is why UNIST felt to bad for me when I started. I thought I had to play simpler games because I couldn't do tournament optimal combos off of any stray hit. Nowadays, I boot up +R and go "well this five hit Millia combo gets me knockdown, so let's do that and see how it goes" and the games are much more enjoyable. It took me almost a year of bashing my head against the wall for this to sink in though, and I've grown more in a month or two of this mindset than I learned in the entire last year.
I think it's so important that games have a sort of reminder that being optimal is not the only way to play, it's about having good knowledge. I love the Under-Night character tutorials because they start off with "this is a good poke, this is an anti-air, this is a good way to control space, etc" and there's maybe 5-6 moves per character that, without knowing any combos at all, allow you run a gameplan. They also then teach you basic hitconfirms, a mixup, and some other fundamental/specific stuff with your character for those who are good to go on the basics. I wish every game did this, as going back through these in UNI has made the game so much easier to approach.
It's a cool topic, but I'm pretty sure him talking about "reaction time / fractions of a second" doesn't mean it in a way of "reacting to this 3f jab".
Like you said, we see these things from FG players' perspectives, and I'm pretty sure assuming what being meant is something like "hey how many startup/active frames does this move have" is a very FG-player-way of thinking about it.
Especially since he brings up the shooter/CSGO example, I think the intended message is more like:
In FPS, you need the same amount of reaction time as in FGs (= decisions you have to make quickly based on what your opponent is doing), but you have a lot of downtime between these moments.
Usually you don't see one or all opponents in an FPS at all times, and these moments either have no decision making at all or just decisions "you make yourself" (at your own pace, rather than decisions your opponent forces you to make).
In FGs, these situations happen all the time, though. Your opponent is almost always at a range where he can quickly force you to make a decision:
walking in => do I throw a fireball? do I press a button? do I block?
jumping => do I anti-air? what do I use to AA? do I try to just get out of the way instead? do I block?
Of course often characters have other/more options, but you get the idea. The player is always on the screen, and can always "force you to react" with a counter-measure to their offense.
If you compare it to CSGO, you first have a part of the match where you just position yourself (buying phase, anything before both teams can meet) and then often just cover one or more angles for a while. There are literally no decisions your opponents force you to make quickly as long as they don't show up, so depending on play you have a downtime of say, half a minute. If you defeat the enemies on one spot, it also often takes a while until more show up, so that gives you more downtime between these moments where you're forced to make quick decisions / "react in fractions of a second".
I believe this also is why newer players tend to walk back and corner themselves in FGs.
In FGs you're often just a jump or 1-2 dashes away from being in immediate danger from your opponent's options, and the opponent is always visible on screen.
It may not seem like much for FG players, but if you're new, not used to this and probably have to really think about which button was which normal or special before pressing it, these scenarios can seem a lot more "immediate" than they are. And the safest way to gain some distance and catch your breath, as they know from other game genres, is to, well, make some distance (walk back).
It's a reaction from players that fear the opponent's options (=> ability to force you to make decisions quickly) or players that want to gain this "downtime" where there isn't an opponent whose actions they'll have to react to.
This is a big part of it, and also why the comparison to FPS doesn't really tell us much. Fighting games "suffer" from a bigger disconnect between the information on screen and the information that matters than almost any other type of game. And the mastery bias of enthusiasts blinds us to how much effort we invested to overcome that hurdle.
what's interesting here is that the solution to this in most fighting games is actually the other thing people complain about a lot. Long combos. If you're not playing something like KI, your mid-combo options are generally very limited. You hold back in case of a drop and maybe keep an eye out for throws depending on the game, but for the most part if you're getting juggled there aren't any real decisions you need to make until the combo ends and you have to get up off the ground. Meanwhile if you're doing the combo for a lot of games you're going to be running through a bunch of pre-learned buttons and don't have to make that many decisions either. It's more demanding of execution but doesn't require nearly as much alertness or decision-making.
When a combo starts up, that's your breather. It just so happens that it occurs while you character is getting their ass kicked.
Interesting. So you're saying that there are certain types of FPS players that avoid having to react to win?
While that sounds rare, it isalso kinda what I do. It's why I like playing Siege and flanking. My reactions suck so I try to sneak behind people. There is no way to sneak behind people in fighting games. This is also why I liked playing old Evelynn in League of Legends. Being invisible is my favorite thing.
Personally I had to go through an entire journey through a bunch of different games to finally get into fighting games. Skullgirls was the first game in the genre that I had ever owned, Guilty Gear was the game that sparked my love for fighting games, Under Night made me appreciate all the deep technical stuff, and the announcement of Granblue Versus converted one of my favorite things into the genre. Now I'm just neck-deep into fighting games to the point where it's like 50% of what I think about all the time. I've even convinced my entire friend group to play bbcf and they're having a blast. It's really great that almost all of their first experience of getting into a fighting game is with an entire group of friends, that's like one of the best ways to get into anything. Now they're all slowly trying to learn the really complicated things about fighting games, which I can help them with as they go. Everyone needs a different game and a different experience to get that spark they need to really get into fighting games.
this made me happy, thank you
@@davis1228 Yeah unfortunately it's really tough nowadays to convince a bunch of your friends to try out a fighting game, especially with how expensive they can be. Bbcf was on sale for like eight bucks so that was really a lucky break.
I personally enjoy pretty much every kind of fighting game, so I kinda wish new games that advertise themselves as being slower could catch a break. Some people just really do enjoy slower paced games. I understand the worries of over simplifying the genre, but I think devs will come to learn how to create a good balance, while also still pushing out hyper fighters.
It's refreshing to see someone voice an opinion as to why they don't enjoy something as "its not for me, but here's what I would like" instead of how people usually come at this from the outside with the "fighting games are never going to get the precious market that is me, if you don't change now and its bad design that you haven't yet!" . I appreciate that 1st poster for that.
That's pretty interesting idea actually. The issue with beginners is that their reaction times are much much slower than veteran players. By the time they've registered that they've blocked something, the other person has long since recovered and their opportunity has passed, so they don't even register the idea of punishing on block as a possibility. So what if, in single player, instead of difficulty being done through damage values and introducing cheap attacks, easy difficulty involves slowing the attacks and the AI only being able to use a limited set of super reactable attacks? That way, they have far more time to react to situations and practice their responses to different situations, and get them down before they transition to reacting to faster and faster situations until its at the speed of the versus game. You could also slow the attacks in certain fights, so they have to carefully consider what attacks to choose, and teach them about whiff punishing.
I get the guy saying "I hate when I follow the instructions and nothing happens and I don't know why". Trying to learn fighting games and the character missions tell you to do this combo, you press all the right buttons but it fails and the game doesn't say why. Turning on input history can help to troubleshoot, but it'd be nice if the mode just straight told you why you failed. "Too slow", "wrong input", etc.
Play Them's Fightin' Herds. It's got a fantastic training mode. It lets you practice combos, and you can even set up your own combos to practice and exchange them with other players as a .tfhc file.
Yeah I was only able to learn Guilty Gear Xrd because it shows your stick/buttons on screen and realized that my hadouken/shoryuken inputs were always inconsistent because I would exaggerate and go up-right instead of just right/down right.
This is a really good idea.
Certain combos require deliberately delaying inputs etc. but rarely tell you to do so. I can see why someone would get frustrated if they don't realise this.
@@davis1228 Some games are more focused on combos, some are less focused on combos. If you know what you want, then there's almost guaranteed to be a kind of fighting game with the characteristics you're looking for.
This is definitely a discussion worth having in detail. Shooters tend to be more intuitive, with every action being a single input that immediately makes sense to the player. There's probably some tech-skill lying around at top level, but everyone knows the basic actions from the get go, and from there it becomes an information war. In other words, you can win in shooters without being better than your opponent in a gunfight, but knowing more about the map/game. This is also true of fighting games, but it's less intuitive. In a fighting game, lacking tech-skill might mean you're losing an aspect of your character. It might be the difference between a win and a loss. You can still win based on knowledge, but you can also lose to someone with godlike reactions and execution despite knowing more. Sometimes, knowledge can hurt more than help (the old "No mixup mixup"). Both players have access to all the information, even though one may utilize it better. There's also the misconception that training mode is required in fighters. Private matches or gun ranges may exist in shooters but I've never felt the need to lean on them to understand how to play the game or improve. It's expected to learn through playing. We like to say this is true of fighters, but a game like Smash Melee is an entirely different beast between casual and competitive play.
The really interesting bit of the comments in the vid are comparing to an RTS. RTS is known for having high execution and quick reactions, so I'd once again say the main difference here is access to information. You can't see the entire map in an RTS at once, so vision is still one of the major factors.
I think this is very important and could hold the key to part of why fighting games feel inaccessible to many. There is a fundamental break between what the player sees on screen, and the information that matters. Primarily this comes down to hitboxes, hurtboxes, and frame data. I love fighting games, but since day one I have felt great frustration at this disconnect. Modern games can help by displaying hitboxes, and it is much appreciated. But if you think any majority of people will ever do that kind of "research", much less be able to retain any of it for the tiny reward of winning in a fighting game, I got bad news.
Non-FG players: this is why I don't play FGs
FG players: you have a misconception
I find it interesting that discussions like these tend to go this way a lot of the time. I feel it stems primarily from their lack of clarity, especially 2D fighters.
An example is how frame data is (not) communicated. A character lands an attack on your block and your block pose looks exactly the same as with every other move that character uses. There's nothing there to tell you that there's a difference and it greatly influences the options you have available to you.
This is huge. Fighting games suffer a larger disparity between what the player sees, and what information matters than any other type of game I can think of. Experienced players have assimilated this and discard it as easy, when it was in fact a large hurdle they overcame but now have mastery bias over.
If it's so easy then why do you need a practice mode? Is what I want to say.
@@seokkyunhong8812 I get the thinking behind this. A practice mode however isn't indicative of a game being hard to learn necessarily. I'd go as far as to say that other game genres should have practice modes like FGs have as a standard.
The problem lies in having to do most of your problem solving through a different mode. This is where the FG user experience falls apart for a lot of people. They can't do any problem solving because the games go by too fast so they have to leave the main game in order to go into a different mode. Then they have to figure out what their opponents were doing with which Characters and try to figure out solutions.
In online education, this is something that is avoided because it breaks the learner away from the main learning experience which oftentimes details the process. I don't think it's a stretch to say that this principle applies to games as well. It's actually even worse to expect a player to leave the game entirely to find important information on a website or YT channel.
@@AkibanaZero no, fighting games should learn from other genres, not the other way around. Dedicated practice mode is just an admission of communication failure on the game's part.
@@seokkyunhong8812 I think training mode itself isn't an issue, there are times where I know something in a game and I want to improve my capability to execute it...
But you're RIGHT! I don't want to even give a platitude, I think for instance that Sajam ignored the very specific examples that that Reddit post gave. He is the embodiment of an /r/iamverysmart post. He didn't actually post a response to put anything on the line or up for debate. What you have is an atomized FGC, which leads to what I was saying, one specific game the poster was talking about was TEKKEN not Street Fighter or Guilty Gear.
Tekken 7, for example, is an egregiously bad game in terms of its current design. You could address this in terms of how execution works, the way it's patched... making moves naturally combo that used to have gaps or taking away frame advantage from moves on block are merely done on the level of math, the animations themselves are not adjusted. What happens is that you have moves that communicate advantage in ways that don't reflect their actual properties, things like Jin's f, f 4/Right Kick are no longer plus in Season 4 BUT THEY STILL LOOK LIKE THEY ARE. These result in tactile relay of information that is no longer coherent. Tekken itself is why a market for "better controls" even exists. Because Tekken is a game that is very well featured, it is a game that I think has a lot of appeal but is designed in a way where it discourages players from being able to learn by experience, it only appeals to a certain type of playstyle.
And because the FGC exists as it does, "Casual" interest has very specific meaning and is often exclusionary to actually playing a fucking fighting game. I WANT to enjoy Tekken, but Tekken puts me in situations where I am often left to question whether it's worth it to invest any more resources than I'm already doing to actually enjoy the game. A friend of mine ridiculed me for not having combos or doing something like "the dash up throw." Like I hadn't earned the right to experience or enjoy the game. But the character I play is hard to use relative to other fighting games. Tekken has execution demands in a way that (fighting) gamerz only acknowledge when they want to offer you the choice to spend money on a fancy controller. Why does Tekken still allow combos that put the enemy off axis? Tekken is a game that most people, this is a common tournament FGC prerogative, want to admire from afar. The instant anyone experiences it, the conversation about skill is already polluted and there is no due criticism given to some of the ridiculous things you have to do just to get some time actually playing the game instead of being stuck in a rehearsal where it isn't even clear what you should be doing.
Let me say that, with Tekken, you could approach it on a more basic level. Pick a simple character to dodge or mitigate harsh execution, so remove any sense of getting to be attracted to a choice beyond its raw strategic value and just exorcise the element of fun, practice your basic frame based punishes while experienced players can shit on you for things that you may have to spend dozens of hours on just to barely be proficient... Tekken even violates its own high/mid/low concept with characters like Eddie or Zafina or Xiaoyu who can just be a "special type of low" where some mids are no longer "mid."
Ah, but yes, what we should really do is talk about a fighting game like Street Fighter or Guilty Gear that either has modern concessions and can move the goal post from actually criticizing a game as experienced. It's no mystery that when the post was talking about Tekken, the act of changing the subject to Street Fighter or Guilty Gear is precisely to avoid saying anything meaningful because the person has nothing worth a shit to say. Why would you do stuff like go "Maybe they were talking about special moves" after doing the most bad faith interpretation of a comment about wanting to press a direction and a button to get moves out. To anyone who is an enthusiast about fighting game design that is VERY OVERTLY talking about specials, Sajam's credulous naivety is especially bad there. I know "clout chasing" is an often used term, but let's just say that this kind of thing has a history in fighting games in general.
David Sirlin wrote a book called playing to win that completely ignored the socio-economics or design of games in the arcade era. It's great if you want to win, but bad if you want to actually explain the kind of grievances people would have losing 50 cents to a game that had a wrestler and karate guy and one suddenly starts throwing the equivalent of rocks. It isn't that I hate Street Fighter 2, it's that within this is the notion that I can recognize "This isn't the kind of game someone thought it was gonna be." That lack of awareness is lockstep with the fighting game community as I experienced it, it is lockstep with things I know that I myself believed at one time.
The thing that really gets me about the memorization thing is that MOBAs 1)Have a premise that has to be explained as opposed to “kill other guy” 2) A shit ton of characters 3) tons of items and in general are an incredibly complex genre, but people will act like fighting games are somehow unique in their complexity. Clearly memorization/complexity is not the hurdle people *perceive* (hey there’s that word again) it to be otherwise there wouldn’t be millions of people watching these games. I can’t help but feel like that’s not the actual root cause of the problem but rather a reflexive reaction.
It all comes down to crutches. In team games you can rely on your allies to carry. In card games you can win through rng. The learning happens without a huge toll on your win rate, at least until you hit the higher ranks. In fighting games you either outplay your opponent or you get smoked, and that leaves people feeling salty and unaccomplished, even if they are gradually improving.
@@gutsbadguy50 "In team games you can rely on your allies to carry" and yet all people do is complain about braindead or toxic teammates, trolls and feeders in those games.
@@electricant55 Exactly! Whereas in fighting games, you have no teammates on which to blame your losses. It’s just “I won” or “I lost.”
This talk about speed and no downtime is pretty interesting. I actually feel similarly about Smash as a traditional fighting game player - I'm used to the downtime during combos, etc. where you don't need to worry about mindgames (outside of the occasional reset). Meanwhile "combos" in Smash are a rapid series of mixups which require active thinking on both sides. That game drains my mental energy way too quickly.
Lol Sajam will forever have something to say about this topic.
Yet he's so ill fit to talk about it because he's been in it too long. I honestly wish he would stop talking about it as if he's a layman, because he's not
After playing strive and having genuine fun with a fighting game for the first time in years of trying to get into this genre my answer to "Would you play them if they were slower" is a definitive yes. Strive still has fast and intense moments, but it's slowed down JUST enough that I can finally play it with consistency and feel like I actually had some agency over the outcome of the matches I played.
I'll be interested to see what your opinion is after you play Strive for a while. There are dozen of comments pointing out a potential similar situation with For Honor, where people originally liked its slower nature, and then collectively realized it didn't work because it made the game boring to play and heavily focused on reaction play (which is IN GENERAL considered bad). I imagine there will be a similar situation in Strive, where people initially like it for being slower, and then find out that it doesn't lead to what legacy (not necessarily new) players would consider good. If you're able to know what's happening while playing now and it feels like its at an okay speed even with the short betas we had, then imagine how slow it will feel after you've played the game for months or years and whether or not that's something you want. Maybe it really will end up being exactly what you want, this is just food for thought.
@@iminyourwalls8309 Chipp still does all of that
@@iminyourwalls8309 You're bringing up a hypothetical that's not really what I'm talking about. When strive came out, people were complaining about Strive being a slower game and that I found it to be a welcome change, which was what I was talking about.
The "headshot snap" is way faster than reacting to overheads. When you flick to a headshot its a very subconcious thing, you'll freak the fuck out when you land a crazy one.
Mixups are conscious in their reaction, its all "and THERES the overhead" *stands up
I think what these sorts of comments demonstrate is that fighting games fail to make learning how to play the game fun. Mainstream genres don't need to put in as much effort in this respect because players often bring years of experience with them to a new title. When a new FPS\BR\character action game is released a large proportion of the player base are not starting from scratch - they likely have years of experience to draw on. Whether they realize it or not they have already put in countless hours of practice in other similar games. Fighting games are a relatively niche genre and so its more likely that new players will be starting from scratch so if the genre wants to grow its 100% on fighting game developers to find creative ways to make the learning process accessible, intuitive and most of all, fun.
Fighting games suffer a larger disparity between what the player sees, and what information matters than any other type of game I can think of. Experienced players have assimilated this and discard it as easy, when it was in fact a large hurdle they overcame but now have mastery bias over.
@@tobyvision I also think this can be made worse by counter-intuitive design choices that are made for balance reasons but hurt the accessibility of the game. A personal bug-bear of mine are moves that "look" safe but are in fact unsafe or vice versa. When I was learning MK10 there just seemed to be loads of stuff that "looked" like it "should" be punishable from the animation etc. but was in fact (framedata-wise) actually safe. As someone who has played a fair number of fighting games over the years I just sort of grumble to myself and chalk it up as "oh that's weird" but for players with less FG experience I suspect it just adds to the general feeling of frustrated bewilderment - especially online.
@@skymessiah1 EXACTLY. Seasoned players know that you basically have to memorize or assimilate frame data, and that it doesn't necessarily jive with what is on screen. This is a jump a lot of people will never care to take and I don't blame them. I've been playing fighting games since SF2 and it still bugs me. In a dream world, the game developers would re-animate the characters to match hitboxes and frames over time, but this is too expensive to actually happen as things are.
I agree that Fighting Game players under estimate how crazy some shit appears for new players. As someone who's trying to get into SFV after DBFZ got me into fighting games, not knowing what your opponent's options are & just how quickly things fall apart is the biggest hurdle. Basically if you guess wrong twice in a row & they get the stun, it's GG.
However like most things, once you get past the initial hurdle, it does get better & you can just roll with it and learn on the fly.
For real. Knowledge is power. Me and my bro played some Skullgirls the other day and we both got tore up by a ton of High-Low's into supers. We genuinely had to grind out the roster to remember how to block everybodys crap. 😂😂😂
So funny, I am in the reverse situation and I feel the same. It's just experience. I mean, I still don't know what all the characters options are in SFV but I know enough about the game to know what their options COULD be. Mostly it's either normal attack(mid), low, overhead, grab or jump. And really, it's block low unless they jump or do an overhead. Two choices, three if they get close enough to grab. But you can delay your grab reversal pretty easy. People call it delayed tech, and it confuses, but it's just pressing the grab button a bit after you see the opponent move. If it's a grab, you have teched, if it's an attack you have blocked.
@@davis1228 Why are you so obsessed with making fighting games as popular as other competitive genres? That's like the only thing you talk about here.
@Nivrap Well, sorry, but being an eSports hypebeast isn't gonna make fighting games less niche.
@@davis1228 i don't really care about things like "progress" and "recognition". fighting games are games! you play them to have fun. if esports end up dying someday it's not my concern, it'll be because the companies pushing for it don't know how to market things effectively. plus, i don't want the games themselves to revolve around that. i'd rather they be themselves. i don't need mainstream acknowledgement to know that my hobby is worthwhile. that isn't gatekeeping, that isn't a refusal to grow and evolve, that's me having my priorities in line.
pro gaming is an extremely unstable way to make money any way and i'd rather see gaming communities build themselves up in ways that can support people who need help rather than this obsession with esports which barely pays competitors enough and feeds more and more money into businesses- if they aren't bleeding money from mismanaging esports programs in the first place
These people's opinion (which are as valid as ours) helped me understand why Smash Ultimate is an important game despite being (in my opinion) a "bad" game.
By design, the FGC doesn't include anyone who doesn't like the current state of fighting games. If we go only by the opinion of people who are already in the community, things will always stay the same and we're hurting our growth.
That thread was pretty interesting
as someone who's only just getting back into fighters recently after being put off the genre for years, I do have to admit that I'd get confused when I saw fg players talk about frame advantage and stuff, thinking "damn you need to react to something within 1frame? These guys are crazy", and only now do I realise that its not really like that at all
5:35 I think you're missing the point. I think the idea is that you have to memorize the inputs. People new to fighters probably arent gonna know what "inputs" will generally give what moves. Quarter cricles giving projectiles for example, or DP's giving upwards/invulnerable moves. Some games just have Light, Medium, Heavy, and motion + button gives you the same move but three different strengths of it, but then you have Street Fighter or BlazBlue where the button you press might give you a completely different move. SF and KOF has buttons split between Punches and Kicks, so you have to remember whats Quarter Circle with Punch, and whats quarter circle with kick, and Blazblue can be even worse for that since, even if its less buttons overall (A,B,C, and Drive), alot of characters have only one or two versions of a move, so QcF A and QcF C might be moves but QcF B isnt. It is an extra layer of things you have to learn. You also have to consider different games might have different methods of supers. Some are just "press two buttons together with a motion input" and some are just fancier motion inputs, like Double Quarter circles, or QcB, HcF, or Forward, HcF, which further adds to the layers of things you have to "memorize" for a character just cause their supers might be completely different to everyone elses.
I bought SF5 during the sale, and I'm really enjoying it. It's the first traditional 2d fighter I've really spent time with. I'm like 5-39 so I'm doing fantastic in ranked for no prior experience
I would say what makes me most upset and demoralized about learning the game, which you very briefly touched on, is when I'm trying to execute something and It's simply not coming out. I went into the trials for juri really briefly and a specific combo was giving me trouble. It's jump in Light kick, standing light punch, standing light kick, 623 light punch. I'm having trouble even getting the first light punch to connect after the jumped light kick and im getting just no feedback on the timing. There's no "too slow" or "too fast" or even a "stop mashing". I'm just uselessly jumping over and over trying to hit this, what I would assume is, entirely basic combo and not getting anywhere.
Mechanical obfuscation paired with precise timing means the feedback the game gives you is never helpful. The easier the combo is the less of a problem it is, but as you start to add more complexity to a combo you never quite know if youre dropping the mechanical requirement, or flubbing the timing and that is why learning is so difficult as a new player
I would recommend looking up a video of the combo (some games even let you watch the computer do the combo) so you can see what the timing is supposed to be. One of the issues with combos I had for years was knowing the difference between a link and a cancel, which is just timing.
ik im like 10 months late but if u are still having trouble with sfv trials, each and every single one of them has a demonstration of how it is done, including the inputs iirc.
As for that particular trial for juri, u have to hit the jump LK just before landing, then immediately use LP.
I actually commented on this thread, which I'll link below. I go into more detail in the comment, but the gist of it is that while I do think that fighting games get unfairly stigmatized for their difficulty by people who aren't familiar with the genre compared to other genres, I don't think it is purely a coincidence that fighting games tend to get that rep even compared to other genres that are also very involved at high levels.
"There are inherent barriers to jumping in and having fun compared to other genres that make the games an easy turn off for newcomers. Because of the knowledge-based, 1v1 nature, with no hiding spots or preparation phases, you're just kind of thrust into the thick of things with nothing to save you."
"In an FPS, your aim can steadily get better over time, but combos in fighting games are a very on-or-off ordeal, where you can either do them or you can't. Even if you learn combos progressively starting with basic versions, you have to master each level before actually being able to use them in real matches. If improving your aim is a linear graph, improving fighting game execution can be more of a staircase with frequent plateaus and no visible results."
"All that being said, I think that a lot of the intimidation surrounding fighting games comes largely from misinformation and a failure on the games' part to properly teach and guide newer players."
Combinations of factors like this do contribute to fighting games being (imo) more intimidating to get into than other competitive games.
Link to full comment: www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/jsw4b1/-/gc4nlhh
I remember the first time I did a dp input on purpose. I think that's the moment that really cemented my love for the genre. Execution and replication.
People view from outside: man you gotta memorize so much.
Fg player: I mashed because it felt right lol
when in doubt just b tatsu
Legit. Been mashing out overdrives against my homies in GGST lately (we're all floor 6 or under lowbies). And they thought I was reacting half the time when it was pretty much just this comment happening in real time.
I'd say one thing that is important to the first guy argument is that csgo's reaction moments are more easily understandable, like the opponent head its sights on me I better take cover, or the opponent is trying to peek out of the cover better shoot them.
While in fighting games similar situations are more artificial, like blocking high and low and dodging throws imo aren't as naturally understandable as a shootout.
Not to say that in the end they aren't the same thing, but I think that first layer of dissecting what is happening and what are his options is probably something that requires more under standing than your average fps
I think this response makes a lot of sense and it's correct as far as the experience of playing fighting games one you're used to the game and its mechanics (I talk to people about a relatively long period at the start of a game where you "learn to see" what is happening - i.e. how player actions correspond to button presses, what is possible from a particular position, etc).
However, what I think you really miss is that this person is describing how fighting games *feel* to outsiders. They feel like they constantly need to react and they are asking for, with their limited understanding of the genre, a fighting game where you would need to react less. Like, it's true that they misunderstand how often you are making decisions, but that misunderstanding probably comes from mis-identifying when they have an opportunity to take a turn. They start playing and it feels, to them, like every single hit in a string is a potential moment where they could do something if they were fast enough.
I think there are actually a lot of features we could add to games that would make this more obvious to players. Like, training modes and replays could highlight missed inputs (i.e. you hit this button and if you had hit it 3 frames before / after it would have linked, a special move would have come out, etc). You could also have a mode where characters have...like auras showing if you have an opportunity to interrupt your opponent. Like - think how helpful it would be to have your character flash when the other person drops a link? It would help you see it and help you start to think about the game the way veterans do.
As a betatester / player with only a super shitty laptop I have to play on lower speed to not lose frames and for the game to be enjoyable.
It is kinda neat and it's also what allowed me to become a betatester, the lower speed (and my crazy creativity) was a good thing to find tons of infinite combos and techniques that the developers didn't intend.
Even though this makes it so I can't play online against the other betatesters or the devs.
anyway Sajam cheers from south amerca , argentina.
Fighting games should add slowmo in training like Skullgirls so it's easier to find the cheesy stuff.
@@jimbo5266 honestly they should add it for the same reason music teachers always tell their students to slow down: you can learn the thing perfectly at a slower pace and speed it up far more easily than trying to iteratively learn it haphazardly at a fast pace, since in the former case you aren't constantly forced to unlearn bad habits brought on by mistakes early in the learning process.
You're comparing a moment in CSGO to a moment in fighting games, saying they're similar.
The poster is comparing a whole match of CSGO to a whole match in fighting games, saying they're very different.
I think it’s interesting that the first two comments mentioned how they would like games with one-button direction specials. Granblue and Power Rangers: BftG work to accommodate those people and they’re very fun.
And when those games came out, fgc people would complain that “this isn’t actually what new players want.”
the memorization thing is interesting cause i find that problem usually fades away pretty quickly when i was playing yu-gi-oh some of the combos were giving me trouble so i just wrote them out on a notepad document and kept them on my screen but after some games of doing the combos i didn't really need to look at it very often i just knew what to do.
i think it's because of the misconception that you have to know so much and be able to execute so many things right off the bat that just scares people away.
honestly to enjoy a fighting game at a basic level all you need is being able to move in all directions and press one button or two buttons at once,
so you can more or less boil it down to 2 buttons at most, grab, punch, block, move forward and back and jump and duck.
when it comes to the misconception that people are reacting to when a punch is thrown, they are not doing that.
they are predicting a punch is gonna be thrown and try to give themselves enough margin to block in time in order to do anything else they themselves want to do.
some newer people will sit and hold block the entire game because they don't know when they will get hit or how so they aren't able to make predictions and that's when they try to use reactions to compensate and ofcourse that doesn't work so they get frustrated and think you either have to have godlike reactions or all you do is just block the entire game.
which in reality fighting games is more about spacing and trying to corner each other to make it easier to beat the shit out of the other player and try not to get cornered themselves.
combos and a lot of special moves are just to make the game look more impressive and give the game more depth and complexity.
Story Time
i remember when i was a wee lad, i played street fighter 2, but the shocking thing with this story is, that the manual i got didn't tell you how to perform any special moves and i played with friends and none of us knew how to do anything like that which was totally fine and we had fun.
so when i played the computer and they did a special move i was amazed and thought it was only the cpu that was allowed to have that and i thought this for a good chunk of time.
but one day i accidentally did a special move and i was dumbfounded, i tried to replicate what i did and i failed hard, and so i stopped worrying about it and when i accidentally did a special move i started to understand what the game was telling me to do in order to do them and so i learned about 3 or 4 special moves, but i didn't become flustered because i didn't know how to do them all or anything, it was just this cool thing i could show off to my friends and tell them how to do it themselves.
but the moral of the story is, you don't need to know everything in a fighting game to enjoy it, just need to know enough in how to not lose to it.
@@davis1228 i'm gonna be honest, if you can't play a fighting game at a basic level, you can't even complete a childrens game.
that's actually more closer to the truth.
@@davis1228 well the online is hard no matter where you go if it's a small playerbase because chances are the only ones left are hardened veterans.
try quake champions and you'll be met with the same kind of hardened veterans of the fps genré or age of empire 3 to find some really hardened veterans of the rts genré.
but that don't mean i can't play those games casually and still enjoy them, i still log on to quake champions to play a couple of free for alls, i'd rather play that than cs:go or overwatch really.
so you see, the more players there are playing a game the more chances are that there's a bigger audience of casuals within that game.
so it's not like i don't get what you are saying, it's just that the basics are still very easy, it's just that the playerbase playing these games have been honing their skills for a long time which makes it hard to come in as a newcomer, this would happen to any game or genré under the same conditions.
but imo, that shouldn't discourage people from playing the games, a fun game is a fun game no matter the circumstances.
allthough something that kinda rubbed me the wrong way personally about SFV was the lack of a classic arcade mode where you could pick the character you liked and play to the end to see a character specific ending, to me that's the most basic casual place to play the game by yourself in any fighting game.
but i still managed to win one or two games out of ten in sfv even though i can't do any special moves or combos, i just use my normal attacks, do i wish i was better or had players that were more around my skill? sure, but i can't really expect that to be the case with such a low population.
as for smash bros popularity i think mostly stems from the character roster, i'd say smash is on par as being as difficult as any other fighter out there, it just plays differently.
what the difference is, is not the game, but the players within the game.
because even if you remove all the execution out of the game, the better player still wins, card games kinda proves that to be the point.
try playing magic the gathering and see how fast you'll quit that for being too hard.
and i'm gonna be honest, if i tried playing smash now, i'm pretty sure i'd get my ass beat, i don't know how the game even works competitively because all i remember growing up playing the older smash games was, mash the attack button with pikachu and you can zip around, that's it.
Starting out of course people don't memorize "everything", but to actually eventually be good at fighting games and not play braindead, fighting games have a TON of knowledge you have to be able to process and retain. So personally I can understand the sentiment of some of these posts....
i find it crazy that people say "i dont like juggling in fighting games cause i dont get to play the game" like shit bro if i die in league i gotta wait a bit and depending on where the fight is i gotta head over to the fight
if you get got early on in a cs match you dont get to play for the rest of the round
any turn based game
christ just walking to a place in a big open world game
there are so many instances in games where you are in a "not playing the game" state
I resonate with this comment the most wtf
The idea that people think "not being able to play whilst Im comboed" is actually ridiculous considering even the longest combos in games with notoriously long combos is about... 19 seconds? (DBFZ) where the avg combo is like 2-6 real life seconds not including cutscenes/supers
In fkin MOBAs when you fall so far behind from... i.e. 3 deaths the game MIGHT AS WELL (up to debate, but not important to this argument) be unplayable, and THEN you could be wasting over 15-30 minutes of the game being useless and getting farmed by the enemy team. You're basically not playing "the game" for more than 70% of the gameplay AND then you have queue timers/menuing etc
Same with round based shooters (like these posts describing R6/CSGO) if you suck you could be dead for up to 2 minutes (or 3 minutes+ in R6) PER ROUND, and if you dont suck then you're rewarded by being able to play the game longer, but that also applies in FGs doesnt it?
@@nelsonguo2 I think the reason it hurts more in FGs is that sometimes you just don’t know what you got hit by, but unlike something like Overwatch or CoD, FGs don’t have an instant reply that shows where and how you got touched. So not only did you get hit by something you didn’t see, you aren’t allowed to figure out why, and you watch your character scream in agony as they get mauled.
Odds are when a person gets hit the player wants to take back control as soon as possible, and instead of conceding the combo as his/her mistake, they get mad that they can’t do anything about it.
I think from a beginner POV, that makes sense. But to get better it requires a whole shift in attitude.
The big difference in FGs is that while YOU aren't playing the game because you're being battered, YOUR OPPONENT _is._ Specifically at _your expense._ They're literally being a parasite. And it's going to happen no matter how good you are, and you have to wait it out if you want to win a match. For CS losses, you're free to do something else, for turn-based games, you don't have to keep super-sharp, and for open-world travel, you're clearly actively doing something and likely making progress toward your goal with some clear indication.
Those games do not have hitstun to diminish your play. Or at least CCs are specific and rare. You will either respawn or you can continuously fight. Someone can save you in team games too.
Losing in fighting games is the worst loss on par with moba losses in videogames.
this makes me think of that topic about something called mental stacks or something
in the words of fatality (the smash player): "im not reacting to what my opponent is doing, im reacting to his relative position on screen and what options he has in that situation"
the combo part hits home to me, i suck at combos but i still have tons of fun in fighting games, especialy fast ones, and you know why? cuz i play a very neutral playstile, most normals combo into specials, so i just do footsies and go for those short chains if i get a hit, got me some wins online, few, but some, and i was having fun, plus, fast games mean my oportunity to go at it again after being hit happens more times and i can keep playing, having fun
That one about following instructions and nothing happens and you don't know why.
For me, that's links, when you press too soon, nothing happens. When you press too late, the combo drops. The difference between those two circumstances can be imperceivable and there's nothing to indicate what the mistake was, it just didn't work.
The worst part is, lot of Arksys games have audio cues for combo challenges. But the game that needs this the most and then some, Street fighter, has nothing.
I think it helps a fucking ton to get into fighting games as a kid where none of this shit occurs to you and you just play the game because it's fun. Failing that you could use some patient players that can both answer your question and point you in the direction of the question you should be asking. Because the tutorials in fighting games are fairly consistently trash.
As complaints go these guys seemed kind of reasonable and perhaps fighting games could even stand to diversify to meet some of their concerns (and possibly already have if you look hard enough and/or don't care about netcode).
It's entirely possible the guy who posted that has never heard of Sam Sho, and I haven't played Sam Sho because it's a broken game that doesn't work online. So I'm going to ignore Sam Sho when talking about the fraction of a second reaction times.
Reacting to jabs is kind of a fucking nuts expectation but you might not know that if you haven't played fighting games a ton. That aside and it's not a small aside, that could be something that should be communicated to people that are interested in fighting games. Their is a need for fraction of a second reactions since 24 frames is still very much a fraction of a second and the games are balanced so you will get smoked if you can't block a snake edge in Tekken or an overhead in Mortal Kombat. Unfortunately if you can't learn to react at that speed you're just kind of fucked.
I don't think that's a solvable problem either. If you slow them down too much they'd slide into being nothing but a memorization of frame data as good players would be able to block everything and always know if/what the punish was. Isn't there already Japanese pro who makes this into an issue for anime devs?
But he says that moments of fast reactions are fine, it's just got to have a break and fighting games can be looked at as moments of action. A round of Tekken literally has a 60 second timer. Beyond that you get pauses in action; throws, cinematic supers, your opponents combo. Their are chances to take a glance around a meter, blink, even take a quick drink mid round. You've got to be right back at it since your opponent is always right on top of you but it's not like you have to play for 3 minutes straight trying not to blink until your eyes start to bleed.
A for the second guys complaint about juggle combos, as much as I love fighting games. I kind of agree with him, I don't think he knows how to balance it right but I don't think it would hurt for some games to have shorter combos. I know tons of players love combos but for me learning mine just feels like a chore and watching my opponents is also not fun. It's like a price of admission I pay every time I want to learn a new character, rather than why I want to learn a new character. Personal preference and all that.
I could do with a return to something like launcher, string, special or string, launch, ender string instead of something twice that long. We could still have big hits that you have to be good to land that open up a short combo but put more damage up front, scale less and have more gravity so the guitar hero aspect is lessened. I've heard Sam Sho might be a good example of this, but again it has shit netcode.
I wouldn't want all fighting games to be like that because some people fucking love ToD tag battle bullshit combos and they should totally get to have them but we've reached the point where games where people bitch about combos being too simple have 10 hit plus combos. Maybe a few games could legit tone it down.
Anyways just some thoughts. Really I think the biggest hurdle is getting into them after you've aged past like 12 and start to develop that fear of being bad at something that kids don't have.
There's too many long combo focused fighting games these days, I'm starting to get worried
Dragon Ball is the worst offender in regards to long combos.
I don't mind long combos by themselves, but most fighting games that have them also have a combo escape mechanic like Burst in Guilty Gear and Blazblue, or breakers in Killer Instinct.
Combos in Dragon Ball can take 20+ seconds which is maddening when there is nothing you can do during that time.
@King in the North
Go play SamSho V: Special. It have excellent rollback netcode and it’s dirt cheap. You can find the game on Steam, PS4 / Vita, Switch, or Xbox One.
grinding long ass combos is part of what i love about fighting games though
struggling to complete a combo at first and then a month later being able to do it 10/10 times on both sides is one of the greatest feelings in fighting games to me, its just progression, more visibly so than in a lot of games
@@Taler99 I think the issue with DBFZ combos is less that they're actually long and more that they *feel* really long. Like, the really basic combos take about 5 seconds, but they feel way longer than that.
Imagine watching tekken shuffling at half speed bruh
Korean grandma dash
This is one of the reasons SamSho 2 is probably my favorite fighting game of all time. Speed is not really an issue.
Also way back in the day my friend and I were playing CvS2 IRCC and he picked speed3 while I normally played on speed1.
He demolished me 3 - 0 then i asked if we could re but with speed1. Reverse 3 - 0 and we both realized whatever you're used to is what makes the difference
4:47 lol the feel when skullgirls low-high, left-right, crossup low-high, grab mixup
"I like to go with the flow without memorizing"
The U N G A beckons!
I think the problem with having to think about the controller stems from how fighting games set up their button layouts. In most genres, you will have a single button to do a single type of action, like jumping, attacking, blocking, dashing, etc. If you have more than one button to do a single type of action (most commonly attacking), then you will generally have a more distinct difference between what those attacks do, like melee vs ranged, strong vs quick, free vs resource-gated, etc. Also note that most other genres only have redundancy in attacks, and have at most 2 attack buttons when they do.
In fighting games, you're generally looking at a minimum of 3 attack buttons for a well-designed fighting game (apart from platform fighters where 3 is the high-end and the satirical Divekick), with most going to 4 or higher. In addition, that's usually the only type of button you have access to, and the buttons are ordered in a much less ordered fashion. Sure, it's built usually around move strength and the part of the body it uses, but that doesn't really convey the function of the move.
Like, let's say you want to anti-air. Most games have an easily accessible, easily learnable tool for anti-airing an opponent or are designed around not being able to anti-air. The former is achieved because there's only 1-2 attack buttons and there's a dedicated jump button so up can be used as a directional attack input, or your main form of combat allows for vertical aiming, so there's an intuitive solution that players can easily figure out. In fighting games, you're looking for the 10% of your kit that actually anti-airs, which can easily be gotten wrong because you have 3-6 buttons to pick from across 2-4 directional axes for any normal attacks you have. Of course some characters will have more or less anti-airs than others, but you have to think more about what inputs correlate to the output you want compared to other genres.
I think Them's Fighting Herds fixed this problem the best, at least for anti-airs. There's a universal anti-air for every character in forward light, which is easily found from the controls list and works for every character.
Good point on Them's Fighting Herds, though it's worth noting that their success came in actually documenting 6A being an antiair. Having forward+light or forward+punch be a universal anti-air is a staple of Guilty Gear and IIRC BlazBlue, but the games never tell you that in the command list.
@@dominiccasts Bad command lists are probably half the reason this genre became so impenetrable in the first place. Rarely do they tell you the actually important information like "this has invuln in the early part but huge unsafe endlag, use as a hard read" or "this projectile eats other projectiles, use it to counter zoning", and as mentioned, it's always listing off specials, supers, and the occasional command normal, never "this is the universal slot for anti-airs" or "this is an overhead, use it when your opponent is crouching too much". It's usually just a list of names and not especially intuitive button strings.
@@alexanderkosten7611 It's something that I've seen ArcSys improve on in Strive and GBVS, and I'm glad they are. They kinda have this in the later BB games and BB Cross Tag, but in those games it's a somewhat obtuse symbol system to represent what is anti-air, low, overhead, etc., while Strive just has a video and a nice bit of explanation text.
I think the biggest challenge for a new player getting into a fighting game is understanding and using all of the options available to them. When you first boot up most fighting games, you are shown 30+ characters, each with a list of special moves, finishers, defensive options, movement options, etc. This makes it very difficult to figure out what is the basic area of these characters or what is important to know to use.
I think that a lot of fighting games would benefit from having options where you can turn off all special moves or any moves or options that require more than one direction input so that the player can play with just the bare basics of the system without feeling like they are required to know everything else for the game.
It was mentioned that other games like Devil May Cry or Monster Hunter provide you with a bunch of options, but people still play those games, but there is always the option to never use those options and still get through the game successfully. In fighting games, it is pushed that you need to know the intricacies of the game system at all levels of play, but some of these concepts are not easily defined and can be difficult to understand on top of every option you have available.
If Guilty Gear Strive allows you to play simplified matches without special moves as a mode that could be a great intro for brand new straight out of the fight game womb players.
Xrd allows people to play matches with inputs that are more like GranBlue VS, so I expect Strive to have a similar simplified input setup.
I also agree with the sentiment overall, since honestly for newer players it's better to just get familiar with a few basic moves and build from there once you're comfortable, rather than trying to remember every move and special and system mechanic and combo while playing. Learning moves when an issue arises in your games you need a solution to also makes it easier to really cement that learning, and to feel the kind of gradual progress that keeps you motivated.
There is a lot of memorization in counter strike so his point is moot.
I remember playing For Honour at release. Fast forward a month or so and it had devolved to people using gimmicky camera unlocking tactics so that you could use dashing attacks in close combat since those couldn't be parried.
6:35 - i had an idea for this, and with it you could just convert any fighting game or any 3d action game to it. i think it's that good. tell me how u feel.
you put a "confirm combo button" in. and it works the same as a confirm in any fighting game, you hit them, you react in time or know it'll hit, you press the button, a short stylish animation happens, that can be different each time based on how fast u do it to the confirm, and do different damage based on how close proximity wise, or what move u did before it, and it adds extra damage to what u just did in the same way a combo post confirm does. if it doesnt hit, it does a shitty unsafe animation like you missed a command throw.
cos to me the skillful part of a combo, is the confirm or conversion. i admit it does remove the conversion side of it, like u wont have to worry about distance of your special or super, or if theyre in the air, or if its counter hit. but i think it's a really streamlined system that would work in every game. like imagine it, u hit your launcher in tekken, u press the confirm button, it molests the dude and takes 50% of their health, u hit ur cr lk, cr lk as akuma in sf3, u press confirm button it does 30% and his little super fireball. you eliminate so much dumb stuff.
-then for whatever reason, i wrote a ranty essay explaining my thought process, but i shorted the first bit so u dont need this bit-
in old games you used to not be able to go normal, normal, special, super, and longer variants exist with air chains and EX moves and OTG, and whatever, you could only do, normal to special, or normal to super, and that moved damage out of combos into neutral, and made fighting games popular with simpler players because they didnt need to know or memorise combos (or punishes, that's another side of memorisation), they could just win in neutral or with basic pressure that still hurt. and you could create and learn that pressure on the fly.
the original reason SF2 had 6 buttons was because it looked more impressive on an arcade cabinet, that game design is wasteful, and creates memory problems for players, so many games have 2 or 3 buttons that hit you, that includes FPS games(shoot,knife,greande), RTS, VF (kick,punch,throw/block), DOA, DMC, and manage to put more moves in than SF does with 6 buttons. you can remove the heavy button by setting them as command normals of medium moves, this happened in SVC chaos, where chun li's cr mk, is a 3b, and her cr lk, is a 2b. u can remove special motions with a special button + directions, the majority of characters do not have 6 or more special moves for this to be a problem, smash and granblue did that.
the long strings people have memorised are arbitrary, and the special inputs are archaic. they contribute to why fighting games wont be popular, people want to play the game, if u have to sit and watch ur character get beat up for 5-15 seconds, which can be up to 50% of a rounds time it's not a good experience, and vice versa, if u have to spend hours to learn and recall in a match scenario an arbitrary string because it does the most damage you have to waste time in the training mode, no one playing Fortnite, or league, or CS has had to spend time on that, u just play, and u can learn passively on the fly. other things that help with understanding this, you can batter somebody in League, or FIFA, or Rocket League or an RTS to an unwinnable position, but even if theyre losing horribly, they still get to make decisions, and play for a decent % of the game, in a fighting game, you have a chance to only get to play for 5% of a game, while the other 95% is ur character being combo'd knocked over, mixed and combo'd again.
special motions are frustrating for everyone , especially newer players, not getting a move, not getting "what you want", it "dropping my inputs", it's not fun, there's a skill to it, but do you care about someone's thumb gymnastics routine or do u want to play a game. reloading a gun doesnt need you to do a fireball motion to have him move his hands, because it has a button, it's simpler, it's accessible and it doesnt detract from the experience by being easier.
the majority of new players quit while still liking fighting games, they're that bad for themselves.
other horrible mechanics.
tight punish windows. tekken, doa, dont have this due to the massive buffer window, if u sit mashing something, it's coming out first frame, fantastic system, the exception is like mishima's trying to reversal wind fist, but i dont care, leave me alone. but SF and KOF, it's more practice required, it makes cheap moves exist, they arent just knowledge checks, theyre practice checks. decapre light hands -3, grappler easy churn and plink, 3f DP easy, u literally mash and the reversal window that's only for specials saves you. cammy or rog or something, perfectly time your 3 frame jab, then hit a 2f link, because 50 damage is 50 damage, and you've wasted hours of your life learning that in case a decapre feels like practice checking you.
bad combo systems. KOF14 , SF4. kof14's combo system put max damage on every single move, you press maxmode off 2 light confirm or 1 heavy confirm, and u do the same optimal arbitrary combo for 500 damage, it changes in corner or on shorts that's it. as everyone, that's an example of why i came up with a confirm button idea, and why that video commenter feels the same way.
sf4 had links that were basically roulette for 60 more damage, or to make other confirms scarier. and if you miss them you lose 300-600 hp, the risk reward on that isnt right, ur winning, and now ur dead. doing the right thing and being punished for it because mistimed it by what is basically random, terrible.
i've just read a few of the youtube comments, i standby what i think, and people are going to point out games i could play, the thing is, i already play these games, i like sf2 sf4, kof98, vsav, and smash melee, i know what i like, theyre fast, simple and neutral heavy, i've played most of the genre, i know the best ones for new players are: smash, soul calibur, doa, and virtua fighter. i went through personally having the problems i list, and others i try to get into them have the brain power to tell me these problems exist, and i have to tell them to deal with it, as i send the boomer trolley problem their way. even with all boxes ticked, that knowledge is gated to rando forums and specific people, they wont go through an entire genre, the brand leaders, are SF, tekken, MK, and i swear mvc3 was massive among casuals, which makes no sense to me. those games have all the things that hurt someone getting into fighting games, and theyre the representatives that everyone hears about and tries.
the comments about 1v1 and online, i dont think make much sense in strict matchmaking world. on new games (like released in the past year), new players fight new players they might have slightly less than 40-50% win rate, that's the same as any other matchmaking. if they play anything older, then they run the problem, again more knowledge new players probably wont know until they try it.
I think the main takeaway from this is that the fighting game onboarding process for new players is pretty bad. Both as a community and for the tutorial experience. (Ironically, TFH has one of the, if not the best tutorial out there.)
Players feel like they need to grasp every concept at once, combos, neutral, guard, mixups, while this is not how anybody here learned. We all started more or less the same way. Pick a cool dude and press buttons. Then there's how to do a fireball. And we built on from there. Games should be doing more to get non-fighting game players to play them. Injustice did this splendidly, with strong IP and a full-on single-player experience.
I feel like if more games had (good and engaging) single player campaigns, it would help a lot to alleviate those problems.
Just to comment on that guy who liked smash inputs with directions...
If you think about it, Smash has 4 ground normals (up down neutral foward tilt), and 5 air normals (up down forward back neutral air)
Now think about DBFZ. Typical character has something like 7 ground normals (LMH Crouching LMH and S), and 4 air normals (LMHS)
No one is out here taking a fuckin math test with flash cards and an annotated bibliography, they just play the game and can easily point out one of 4 moves the character can do in the air that they've seen 10000 times.
Took me two weeks to figure out how to play with a M+KB in shooters and how weak of an excuse is "I kept feeling like the keyboard was there"
Yeah, lots of new players (and people who don’t play) tend to think fighting game players are reacting to everything, when really, fighting game players tend to react to whatever the last thing the opponent did was, and try to predict their next one based on that, rather than reacting to the startup of attacks.
your only move is.. HUSTLE
I think there is a solid argument for a middle ground here as far as the fast-pace is concerned. For example I have a notoriously slow reaction time, and struggle to recognize a counter-hit by the time the extension window is already closed and rarely if every get anything beyond what I would have off of a normal hit. But that has forced me into characters and styles that favour, big buttons and chipping out, or committal advances. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but it does sculpt the way I enjoy fighting games, because I simply can't play a bait and punish character because I just can't react to the effective abilities of the style of play.
“even when playing for over 10 hours…” LOL. It took me over 70 hours of playing Smash before I knew where my character was on the screen at any given time.
funny to mention For honor here since its the exact type of game the poster was looking for, in dominion theres always time to run around and think before fighting, just like csgo, and the fight mechanic in it is decent to teach things that might be useful in other fighting games.
For honor was a great reintroduction to fighting games to me and what made me finally try learning street fighter.
For Honor honestly feels like the future of fighting games. There are multiplayer casual modes. It's simple. There are no long combos. The inputs are easy.
One problem newer players in any genre have is that not only do they not know things about the game, but they don't know what's important to learn about the game either. Learning complicated inputs and combos, or being able to reaction-block certain specific moves, is less important than learning how to use the simple tools like holding block and using pokes and anti-airs, but players completely new to the genre don't know that. This leads to them trying to learn difficult niche stuff instead of the essentials because they don't know what's essential. I think the solution has to be making better tutorials that don't just teach players techniques, but teach players the sort of general fighting game meta knowledge that people who know the games take for granted.
It's funny, because I had the discussions about anti airs and turns out, you need a follow up to the anti airs, because they're not enough.
4:55 I would think the snap because even though it is always a different amount the reaction is the same. With an attack in a fighting game the reaction is different based off of that attack.
I do understand what the OP is talking about though. I play fighting games and I REALLY like the concept of K.I. but I can't keep up with the speed of the decision making in that game. It's bloody exhuasting.
Sajam is amazing. I wish more people were like him.
More people like him should stream
More people should touch their hair a lot and get accused of stuff by anime fight game streamers
I am like him maybe better
You need to watch more white people
Wish I could be like him hes so chill
CoD and CSGO have taught people that you need to have good reactions. They incentivize heads up gunfights where reaction is king.
Siege still has heads up gunfights but it tries to give players as many ways to avoid heads up gunfights as much as possible.
So now people are in fighting games thinking that reactions are the key to success.
Allow me (someone who likes dive kick and footsies and thinks the rest are unnecessarily hard) to explain what I hate about fighting games:
I don’t like that you can know what you need to do, and then not be able to do it. For example, in chess, let’s say you need to move a piece like 1. e4. There is no barrier at all to moving that pawn. You just do it effortlessly. That may have been the wrong move depending on the situation, but the fact is that you decided to make that move, and you made it. Whereas if chess was a fighting game, you could try to do e4 but then instead you get e3. So even if you’re big braining it and read your opponent every time and have the best options selects, you lose because you simply can’t do what you’re trying to do. For example. Let’s say J want to Safe jump as Nash in SFV After ⬇️↙️⬅️HK so that I can have a meaty option that also beats EXDP. In order to do this, I have to delay my jump by exactly 1 frame. That’s it. And that’s just a simple idea. In order to be able to do a jumping attack and block in time, I have to make a 1 frame link. Why? There’s no reason for execution to be this difficult.
Which is why my favorite fighting game is dark souls 2 Arena. Everything you do is so easy, that you only make mistakes, not accidents. If they made a dark souls 2 arena type game where everyone was forced to be the same level, that would be fantastic.
I have played fast games like GG to slow ones like GBVS as well as complicated like Tekken to simple like FS and I can say for sure that there is definitely a game for everyone.
The issue is probably because fighting games are relatively niche that very few people know about the less popular titles even though it fits what they want. This is on top of the fact that a lot of FG players tend to play only one or two games.
Unfortunately, I don't see an easy solution to it all.
"Half the speed of for honor"?!?! So like, turn based? smh.
They're a thing. They're just board games. Pretty fun honestly.
For the person looking for a fighting game with one hitpoint by the way, it exists. Look up One Strike. Really small following, but really fun game based around footsies. (Which also ironically counts)
Samsho is slow
Good luck avoiding untechable 3 frame throws, have a nice day
I always feel like the trouble is no one does their research. I jumped into fighting games and bought every fighting game I could to find out that I have a very specific genre preference and character preference. I prefer single character fighters and like a more neutral heavy game over the air dashing anime style fighting games. As for execution characters, I think the difficulty for new players is finding characters that are "easy to understand". An example of the single button and a direction or just a couple buttons would be Ed. However I would say a character like Chun Li or E. Honda with relatively simple special inputs should be the characters these players try instead of going after the extra ridiculous high damage combo monsters. The dilemma is players who are new want to feel powerful and in a fighting game power often comes from high damage combos. For a player to stick with a fighting game long enough to enjoy it requires an initial investment that I don't think a lot of players want to buy into. A game like Gran Blue would be the perfect game if it wasn't as expensive and had better more populated online. The community sees project L as the next big fighting game because they think it will be F2P and offer some of the systems of Rolling Thunder with simple inputs and GGPO netcode. I think with the success of Fantasy Strike it is possible to have fighting games that are free or inexpensive lower the cost barrier and have some either assisted specials or simplified specials (I often wonder if a training wheels approach of having the combo buttons show on screen like a QTE would help, similar to when I have put up sticky notes with item buy orders for MOBAs I play).
It's like my friend who said rising thunders inputs made it too easy and he didn't like it. But he only played Ed in SF5 because he couldn't do inputs on the other fighters.
@@davis1228 Rising Thunder and platform fighters are the first games in decades that I felt like breathed life into fighting games. I think someday somebody will work along those lines and open a new genre.
So many of these complaints and criticisms, not all mind you, I think the genre in general should experiment with defensive options WHILE getting combo'd beyond breakers/bursts, but most boil around "I should have intuitive mastery of fighting games because I sorta know how a fight works in real life"
i love experimental defensive mechanics, would definitely love to see more
like imagine being able to modify your character's weight mid combo to make yourself harder to combo
Dead or alive has it with their hold system where it's basically a parry.
Once the opponent stuns you with a combo starter, they will either continue with a high/mid/low and if you guess correctly, you stop their combo and deal a throw. Failing this can lead to a counter hit situation though. The parries exists even when you're not in a combo btw.
The result of it is a game where you get a combo, you get a 2nd chance for a mixup and remembering frame data isn't too necessary because if you know what the opponent is gonna do, you can parry and switch the momentum.
I think the problem is they want game thats easy to play, not a game that thats easy to play after you played it for about 100 hours
A well structured tutorial with a good learning path and spaced practice moments, some tool to create and share specific character/stuff tutorials in game, these all along with a good netcode would bring so much new people. Riot do it pls...
Them's Fighting Herds has already done all of that (well, I can't speak for the tutorial since I'm familiar enough with fighting games that I can't properly judge it, but it has everything else).
I played CS GO with some friends last night and played it how I play zoners. Keep a safe distance, control space with a molotov if I know my opponent it trying to get into that space, and watch certain spots for where they move, and react to that. But since I have more experience with fighting games, I react faster and more accurately than I did in CS. Though it was the same pacing for me as playing Poison or Falke in SFV, or Asuka in Tekken 7. I really think you can bake down strategies in all sorts of competitive games into a lot of the same core concepts.
I’m trying to get into skullgirls on switch. I kinda get the OP. Training mode is rough, and playing with a controller isn’t helping. I haven’t even gotten into picking a character and wonder if I can memorize all the patterns and options to a reasonable extent.
This reminds me a bit about the tech chasing (okizeme) divide in smash where some people go for reads and some people try to react. If you read a single tech correctly you can punish much harder, but if you react correctly each time consecutively then you can win the stock. The trouble is that reacting to tech in place consistently can basically only be done by people with alien level reaction times like wizzrobe and captain faceroll, so most people go for a read eventually. However, most interactions in neutral are decided by a read, if you leave yourself open enough that you can be reacted to you've taken a big risk - and that can be a fun thing to do but if you fuck up they'll kill you for it.
when it comes down to it fighting games are simulations of real life fighting just with more fireballs and craziness. Just like real life fighting it has to be based around predicting your opponent and defeating them using practiced sequences of moves. To want to get rid of that is like wanting to play battlefield but remove all the guns.
There's a game called Phantom Breaker Omnia that's coming out, and it incorporates directional inputs for special moves a la Smash Bros. That might be interesting for some people to pick up next year (though it unfortunately won't have rollback).
I know the lab and combo monsters don't agree, but as a casual lover of fighting games, there is absolutely no joy in seeing yourself be stuck in a combo for upwards to 15 seconds.
It may be a blast to execute to people, but being stuck in that long ass state of helpnessness just feels shitty and disheartening to the max. Short sweet combos are awesome and fantastic, even if they cause immense damage (see Granblue), but getting dragged off the floor for the umpteeth time in tekken or god forbid allowing a single in through dbz fighters just feels horrid. Big thing about these is the LENGTH you're stuck there just looking as they just go ham on you.
ps. As for the 'well you've several characters' argument, it literally feels worse to get stuck in that lockout three times in a row.
MIND YOU, I fully support the combo-monster games and I know they're not for me, but the more the game leans away from extended combos the more I'm interested in it.
However, what I will say is because fighting games HAVE to be (Usually) 60FPS, it has variable reaction times depending on how experienced you are and being put in similar situations. So, there is chances for people to be milliseconds ahead in knowledge. It's also why playing on the right equipment is stressed in importance.
10:20
No, that's not how it works and you know it. You just don't get a "feeling", because that's just super superficial angle you will get. Of course, if you play FGs for 20+ years, you will have a plan, but not a beginner.
As a person who never touches Fighting Game online and spend more time in arcade, versus, and training, I get a lot of enjoyment out of just experimenting and figuring out cool stuff and seeing characters, story, and just badass dudes and dudettes doing badass things. And I personally almost play it like a rhythm game than a fighting game. Does that mean I’m enjoying it the wrong way? Or that I need the game to accommodate to me because my bungo brain can’t tell the difference between an overhead or a low? No. I just wanna see cool stuff.
If you're having fun you're doing it right.
And if you ever want to compete you're still doing it right. People who say "don't play the AI" are relics from the arcade days where you could hang out with a handful of people every day and learn through the beats. You don't actually learn anything from getting bodied online by randos who don't chat save for trolling, until you already know the fundamentals and systems of the game which you're much better off figuring out through single player.
It's much easier to unlearn cheesy exploits that only work in the AI than to practice your moves as a noob playing people who have a dozen hundred matches on you already.
Some card games are a pretty alright simulation of a slow fighting game. Maybe it's just me, but I visualize Legends of Runeterra as a fighting game with options for counters, breakers, counter breakers, and meter.
This is really keen insight. You could make a fighting game that worked turn by turn by playing cards or selecting inputs. This might help people see how it all works at really slow speed.
The only issues with reactions is trying to properly combo off of shit with 0.5 hitstop frames before the foe techs and whoops your ass for dropping a basic bread and butter.
Confirming into a combo off of a single hit is generally something that you only see at the highest levels of play. In the vast majority of situations, players will do strings of at least two hits in order to confirm that their opponent is being hit before continuing the combo. That's why bread-and-butter combos usually start with off with a safe string.
Even fps games don't require crazy reaction speed, there's crosshair placement where you put your crosshair where people's heads are most likely to be.
Unless your enemy is also looking at you which is near impossible cause there're many places people could go in a map, you have plenty of time to stop and click at their head.
In the situation of casuals we have to think about their experiences. While experienced fighting game players understand there's something for everyone, the casual player base generally only knows the main games.
The problems they mention seem to be for central games.
Memorization- problem with tekken, can't deny you should learn alot of move frame data to try to block or not mash when trying to improve.
Long combos - clearly a trait in Dragon ball, without a combo breaking mechanic.
Street fighter - motion inputs tend to take awhile to develop the dexterity for if you've never played a fighting game before, can be frustrating experience to think you understand what you can do, but still not be able to do it.
Smash seems to avoid these traits imo.
This interesting to me because I play competitive Pokemon and the process of learning the new meta is really similar to learning a new fighting game.
It's with ALL competitive games. The thing is, FG players think they're freaking special snowflakes.
The memorization thing is kinda legit. The brain flexes a different muscle when taking something from memory and applying that to physical action, and there are more things in a FG to pull from memory into action after pressing a button.
That's why many people practice a combo in training mode, have it down, and can't execute in live matches because there are more things that have to be done to get to that combo.
I appreciate GGST's slowdown on Counters for this very reason and is a big part of why FGs click with me where they never did before.
So basically, go play samsho and then look into other things
I love samsho its to fun
Fps games have ttks of like 100~200ms. Depending on the game of course, but generally speaking your death comes way faster and way more "randomly". Your opponent has to do way more in a fighting game to set up long combos that end in a kill.
To me I love playing a ton of different games since the amount you can improve is much higher when you're starting out. Plus a lot of skills transfer over between games like how people who can learn characters easily tend to play a lot of team games or a bunch of games in general like Sonicfox is a perfect example or how you don't need to relearn peeking or tracking or positioning in most shooters. There aren't many games I've stuck with because I truly enjoy them, Dark Souls 3 is prolly the closest to a fighting game I've played recently and Melee/PM I only really played cause I had friends that played. If you want a competitive game that's slow then Pokemon is a great game to get into since there's a billion different formats and a lot of thinking is just "their mon typically does X and this mon that I have is a good counter to it but they can read that to go into their counter" and then after that you end up in the multi-layered mixup category where you just pick an option and hope it works out. There are competitive games for really any type of player if you really want to put the time in to learn which most people don't because it's hard and takes a lot of effort whether it's in pokemon, any number of fighting games, shooters, card games, etc.
If I were to take a different look at this for a second, I feel this is probably projection on the part of the writer from experiences with 'Team Games' as opposed to '1v1 games', especially since he mentions both CS:GO and R6 Siege.
It never hurts quite as much or hits quite so personally when you lose a match in a team game, because there are so many nebulous factors that contribute towards a win.
Hell, as someone who's played a decent amount of ranked in both those games, even in '1v1' scenarios, factors like communication and baiting can factor into both players's mental calculus quite a lot, such as already having intel on an opponent's weapon choice before running into them.
In a fighting game, all you have is literally what you bring with you. There's no loadout to choose, no hidden abilities to take advantage of, no allies to help you out or let you down.
If you lose, it's immediately obvious it's on YOU and nobody else. No other 1on1 game is quite as fair in that way... so naturally it pisses you off:
Because fuck this game, right? I pressed the right button, just like that guide said. I used the right move, at least I think I did. The guy must be using a cheap character... hell, this game is just too difficult for me to get my head around!
Anyone who's played a team game has felt the urge to blame a teammate for a loss, or make understandable excuses for losing a gunfight, but in a fighting game it's harder than ever to make a compelling argument to being 'cheated' out of a win.
It doesn't help that many fighting gamers don't understand what makes them 'good' at the games they play; they mythologise their strengths, "I just... felt like he was going to DP there, you know?" "Oh yeah, that move is totally reactable."
In actual fact, you 'felt' he would DP there because his play had tell-tale signs of anxiety on defense and you could feel him itching to turn the tables. The move is reactable because you know its range and what it can combo from, so you're ready for it.
Half of the 'reactions' and 'mechanical goodhood' most veteran fighting gamers have are actually built on hours of experience understanding the game, which reduces their mental load and what they have to react to, but as this came organically and not through focused practice people assume it's 'divine inspiration'.
I myself have a positively shit reaction speed, I've been medically tested. I however love playing faster characters and often get accused by non-fighting gamer friends of having the reactions of a god: but that's simply because I know exactly what is possible at any moment.
More than half of reacting fast is knowing what could be coming. The day I learned that was the day fighting games really felt like they opened up for me.
Anyway, TLDR and to summarise my initial point; Fighting Games ARE harder than most team games... but a lot of that is ego, not skill. Accepting you have a long way to go, aknowledging your weaknesses and honing your strengths to a wicked point is what makes these games so satisfying.
The truth will set you free... but first it'll PISS YOU OFF XD
the cs player who talked about build orders forgot about memorizing smokes