As someone who plays fighting games, I applaud you for this video. The only thing jong is that you do not need to know frame data to be good. The importance of frame data varies by game and many pros don't even memorize it.
Thank you, and that's a fair point. The need to memorize frame data does seem to vary, but at the very least, an intuition about it , even if not explicit, is helpful.
You need to at least know if it's "your turn" or not. If you have plus or minus frames and is it by a lot or little. And of course understand which of your moves are fast and which are slow.
@@lastburning Yeah what you and Overanalyzer are saying is true, I just meant you don't need to memorize exact numbers in most games. You will of course develop a sense for what is plus or minus over time.
For me if I see my an opening I just resort to my fastest mid or low cause they automatically have the best chance of hitting plus after a while you can kind of feel it out
That's cool and all. You know, sometimes I forget fighting games have any multiplayer modes. I always used them as movie makers or scene directing tools. You can tell great stories utilizing a game's mechanics! Especially once you learned an AI's primarily patterns. This was always more fun to me than spamming meta and grinding the same viable tech repeatedly.
this video is so good and its nice to see someone from the 3D side of the community talks about fighting games and skill level, i hope that more people will watch this amazing video
Great video! I'm a big fan of fighting games, Tekken especially. Though I do have a gripe with it, that some other games in the genre also share, that it could improve upon. My main gripe is that Tekken takes itself too seriously and doesn't have a space to chill out in the game. A good real world analogy is when learning martial arts, you will never go full out during sparring or you will constantly damage yourself or your opponent, instead friendly play is incentivized by proper teachers to build up your knowledge and let you experiment with moves and get more competent. Friendly sparring and fun play in Tekken online play is almost non-existent, only done by players volunteering to teach their opponent. The only online modes are broken hardcore ranked play, random casual play, that is sometimes fun and the tournament mode that is fun, but cumbersome to setup, so not many players play it. With no good place to to play (friendly), more players get stressed out playing the game and usually stop playing online or quit the game because they get some sort of PTSD playing online. For upbringing new players and having a place to play casually and release stress from hardcore modes or just coming back from a hard days work is what Tekken needs. More modes for online like Tekken 3 ball mode, team battle, online practice, Akuma hakuden training and other modes where you can learn and experiment with different characters while having fun. Sorry for any grammar mistakes, English is not my main language. P.S. 0:53 *sliding in epic Tekken 3 Jin theme*😎
Thanks Cybewolf! Your suggestion is a fascinating one , and one i hadn't considered, both the idea of having a stress free training space and the connections to real world martial arts. Right now the best we have are training modes or player made lobbies that are casual, but I think you are right, it should be woven organically into the design of the games themselves. Better bonus and single player content is also a way to address this, which is another avenue to teach players the mechanics of the game. Oh yeah and that jin theme is awesome !
You can do that when you play with friends or people you know or in casual.. At least in Mortal Kombat in the casual online the players are not that good and sweaty but you do have a point there and I can understand why most people don't want to bother playing fighting games. The first day I picked up MK11 I understood why - it took me couple of weeks before I was comfortamble to go into ranked matches and have an idea of what I'm doing and how to win. It literally takes you weeks before you are able to do 2 combos and this is far from what you need to actually be good. Unless you're really determined to do it you will easily give up.
ive started playing dbfighterz since the last month and booy, does this video rings truth, i have not winned a single set since started playing but punishing a dash with a 2h or landing a combo feels so good. what a great video.
Fighting games could be the best genre of game on the planet, but as you said, the biggest thing holding them back is that they don't teach players well enough. Tekken Tag 2 took some great first steps with Fight Lab/Combot...and then abandoned all of it for Tekken 7. Such progress.
That's part of the joy too. There's some level of creativity waiting to be discovered. Or a youtube video around the corner to "spoil" it. Or save you time. Tutorials can you teach you the what but seldom the how or the when.
It's interesting what you said about the low ceiling entry and depth because I think this is what MK11 is.. That's why veterans hated it while new players like me loved it. It is not that hard to pick up but pretty hard to master. I'm also sure that most of the people that were complaining that it's a noob game haven't learned to do flawless blocks all the time.. the game has depth but you can also play it even if you're new.
One of the best videos I've seen on that matter!!! I love watching videos like that hope I find more like these in your channel and would love it if you also speak more about Mortal Kombat!
Great vid! I always try to imagine what's the next big fighting game mechanic that will shake up the scene or make a series unique but it keeps me blinded from what has come in the past. This video showed me that trying older games might teach me more about it's future! Subbed!
That point about low execution = lower skill ceiling and higher skill floor makes absolutely zero sense. First of all, they are not mutually inclusive. You can have one without the other. The required input for an action does not necessarily change the game design itself. Secondly, a designer's desire to lower the physical execution barrier is not for the sake of increasing the chances of a lower level player defeating a higher one - obviously. And I don't believe there are many designers who are trying to achieve that. The point of removing certain barriers is to simply let more players play the game, especially long term. It's not about "leveling the field" or "making them better". It's obvious that the fighting genre is heavily based in tradition, Moreso than almost any other genre (or perhaps all of them). With it is a lot of archaic design, and while archaic, it mostly still works. But, it also has had a very difficult time bringing in new players who stick with a game long term. Removing barriers that aren't strictly necessary to the game's design can successfully lower the skill floor while keeping the ceiling in the exact same place. This is the only purpose of removing execution barriers. Even if it did somehow make pro players beat beginners more easily (which doesn't make sense, because we are already talking about players who have already mastered complex execution), it's a non-issue. That's the point of the genre. The goal shouldn't be to change that, simply to allow a larger number of players to try the game, and stay with it longer than they would have if they were the type of player who wouldn't want to commit to mastering complex physical execution. Then, they could potentially have the desire to become better, even becoming one of the pros. When done properly (its hard but it's possible), the game could have a larger audience, but more importantly, a larger long term audience.
Haha, how prescient that I was just commenting about fighting games on another video. If you're ever playing Tekken I hope to bump into you 👊 Really happy with your breakdown of the nuances of fighting games. They are such an interesting experience, and it is very difficult to explain all the levels involved in making it so cool.
Which was the 1st game that introduced frame data available to the players? I played MK2 & MK3 when I was a kid on arcade but back then I was too little and didn't care about that now that I got into fgc again with MK11 I found out that there is frame data which is a bit complicated but really helpful.
It was a niche thing for a very long time only recently being more transparent and widespread. But it may have been a virtua fighter or Dead or Alive 5
Wow- waxing funny and personal feels new for this channel. It was executed well though, felt refreshing, and added a lot to the video. There's no death of the author anyway, so it can't hurt to lean into the medium of the personal channel a little, right? Although I do also appreciate the more neutral academic research stuff, and that's sorely needed in the vg discussion space.
Thanks! Yeah, I am trying to blend more personal and humorous writing with the research heavy stuff , so glad you enjoyed it. Its not something that comes easy to me so i know i have a lot to improve.
You showed a pic from Fantasy Strike and mentioned David Sirlin but didn't even mention Fantasy Strike! That game shows perfectly that fighting games don't need high execution, complex mechanics and long move lists to be deep, strategic games. In fighting games you need to learn execution, data and strategy (includes yomi/adaptation). Out of those three things strategy is definitely the most interesting part and Fantasy Strike aggressively focuses on that. You get to the real meat of the game much more quickly than in other fighting games and you're still going to get absolutely stomped by the top players! Tekken is also far from beautiful imo. There is way too much bloat. "Combos were originally a bug" is widely misrepresented. It's more that during Street Fighter 2 development, before release, they discovered that combos existed, not entirely on purpose. Then made it on purpose. It's clear in the code that it was planned for and a real thing by the time it released.
I have been meaning to give fantasy strike more of a try , and your assessment has me intrigued. It sounds like the type of game I should enjoy , given i appreciate elegance in design. Oh and yeah my description of street fighter 2 was a little loose, it did happen during development and was intentionally implemented.
@@thegameoveranalyser4835 I'm glad I managed to intrigue you! I'm a big fan of the game. It's a very elegant and beautiful design imo. It's free to play and all the characters are free (!) so please give it a try sometime. :)
thats not true atall as in fantasy strike they balance execution requirements other ways like one of the character has a dp but if she uses it she looses a bar of health in every other fighting game thats no true cause u have to do a z or quarter circle motion in a window frame to get it it adds complexity does this mean fantasy strike is a bad game no it clearly shows there can be a fighting game without execution does that mean all fighting games should be like that is not true atall...u choose for urself i personally like having execution even though im not good at it atall
8:00 the problem with locking higher powerlevel behind execution barrier is that it's not a long term solution, eventually players *will* learn the character and now theyre running around with a overtuned character thats better compared to everyone else
i actually thought gg was endearing, good game was like a endearing salute for me that i took with a win or loss, i think it depends on the person probably not, but thats how i felt.
I highly disagree that a physical skill is necessary to raise the ceiling of a game, and it's incredibly ablest of so many who think that making every fighting game super difficult to physically perform, alienating anyone who doesnt have the dexterity or motor functions to pull of these rediculous motion inputs. yes, they are ALL rediculous. You shouldnt need even a quarter circle to a make a game complex. GNT4 is 90% directional input with only a few characters having motion inputs and is incredibly skill intensive because it's about resource management, not some arbitrary finger waggling skill. Managing your meter for offense and defense, comitting to an attack or being cautious. I've seen some people argue that making a move have more complicated motions artificially lengthens the amount of input, thus making it take longer to pull off, balancing it. you can achieve the same result simply by charging a move up first. If the expected amount of time needed to perform some pretzel input is 2-3 seconds. You can just make a move require a few button combos, combined with holding a button down for 2-3 seconds. there, it took the same amount of time, and required far less physical limitations Demanding that the majority or all characters in a fighting game all use motion inputs to keep the skill ceiling high is nothing but gate-keeping
As someone who plays fighting games, I applaud you for this video. The only thing jong is that you do not need to know frame data to be good. The importance of frame data varies by game and many pros don't even memorize it.
Thank you, and that's a fair point. The need to memorize frame data does seem
to vary, but at the very least, an intuition about it , even if not explicit, is helpful.
You need to at least know if it's "your turn" or not. If you have plus or minus frames and is it by a lot or little. And of course understand which of your moves are fast and which are slow.
@@lastburning Yeah what you and Overanalyzer are saying is true, I just meant you don't need to memorize exact numbers in most games. You will of course develop a sense for what is plus or minus over time.
For me if I see my an opening I just resort to my fastest mid or low cause they automatically have the best chance of hitting plus after a while you can kind of feel it out
That's cool and all. You know, sometimes I forget fighting games have any multiplayer modes. I always used them as movie makers or scene directing tools. You can tell great stories utilizing a game's mechanics! Especially once you learned an AI's primarily patterns.
This was always more fun to me than spamming meta and grinding the same viable tech repeatedly.
this video is so good and its nice to see someone from the 3D side of the community talks about fighting games and skill level, i hope that more people will watch this amazing video
Great video! I'm a big fan of fighting games, Tekken especially. Though I do have a gripe with it, that some other games in the genre also share, that it could improve upon.
My main gripe is that Tekken takes itself too seriously and doesn't have a space to chill out in the game. A good real world analogy is when learning martial arts, you will never go full out during sparring or you will constantly damage yourself or your opponent, instead friendly play is incentivized by proper teachers to build up your knowledge and let you experiment with moves and get more competent.
Friendly sparring and fun play in Tekken online play is almost non-existent, only done by players volunteering to teach their opponent. The only online modes are broken hardcore ranked play, random casual play, that is sometimes fun and the tournament mode that is fun, but cumbersome to setup, so not many players play it. With no good place to to play (friendly), more players get stressed out playing the game and usually stop playing online or quit the game because they get some sort of PTSD playing online.
For upbringing new players and having a place to play casually and release stress from hardcore modes or just coming back from a hard days work is what Tekken needs.
More modes for online like Tekken 3 ball mode, team battle, online practice, Akuma hakuden training and other modes where you can learn and experiment with different characters while having fun.
Sorry for any grammar mistakes, English is not my main language.
P.S. 0:53 *sliding in epic Tekken 3 Jin theme*😎
Thanks Cybewolf!
Your suggestion is a fascinating one , and one i hadn't considered, both the idea of having a stress free training space and the connections to real world martial arts. Right now the best we have are training modes or player made lobbies that are casual, but I think you are right, it should be woven organically into the design of the games themselves. Better bonus and single player content is also a way to address this, which is another avenue to teach players the mechanics of the game.
Oh yeah and that jin theme is awesome !
You can do that when you play with friends or people you know or in casual.. At least in Mortal Kombat in the casual online the players are not that good and sweaty but you do have a point there and I can understand why most people don't want to bother playing fighting games. The first day I picked up MK11 I understood why - it took me couple of weeks before I was comfortamble to go into ranked matches and have an idea of what I'm doing and how to win. It literally takes you weeks before you are able to do 2 combos and this is far from what you need to actually be good. Unless you're really determined to do it you will easily give up.
ive started playing dbfighterz since the last month and booy, does this video rings truth, i have not winned a single set since started playing but punishing a dash with a 2h or landing a combo feels so good.
what a great video.
I wasn't expecting it... slow start, but it builds up: damn... *THIS WAS A REALLY GOOD VIDEO.*
Thanks, I really enjoyed it! 😁👍
Fighting games could be the best genre of game on the planet, but as you said, the biggest thing holding them back is that they don't teach players well enough.
Tekken Tag 2 took some great first steps with Fight Lab/Combot...and then abandoned all of it for Tekken 7. Such progress.
That's part of the joy too. There's some level of creativity waiting to be discovered. Or a youtube video around the corner to "spoil" it. Or save you time. Tutorials can you teach you the what but seldom the how or the when.
Biggest Video Game genre in the world l think is _open world genre_
It's interesting what you said about the low ceiling entry and depth because I think this is what MK11 is.. That's why veterans hated it while new players like me loved it.
It is not that hard to pick up but pretty hard to master.
I'm also sure that most of the people that were complaining that it's a noob game haven't learned to do flawless blocks all the time.. the game has depth but you can also play it even if you're new.
you deserve more subs
amazing video, you really made me appreciate the fighting genre even more than before!
One of the best videos I've seen on that matter!!! I love watching videos like that hope I find more like these in your channel and would love it if you also speak more about Mortal Kombat!
Great vid! I always try to imagine what's the next big fighting game mechanic that will shake up the scene or make a series unique but it keeps me blinded from what has come in the past. This video showed me that trying older games might teach me more about it's future! Subbed!
That point about low execution = lower skill ceiling and higher skill floor makes absolutely zero sense.
First of all, they are not mutually inclusive. You can have one without the other. The required input for an action does not necessarily change the game design itself.
Secondly, a designer's desire to lower the physical execution barrier is not for the sake of increasing the chances of a lower level player defeating a higher one - obviously. And I don't believe there are many designers who are trying to achieve that.
The point of removing certain barriers is to simply let more players play the game, especially long term. It's not about "leveling the field" or "making them better". It's obvious that the fighting genre is heavily based in tradition, Moreso than almost any other genre (or perhaps all of them). With it is a lot of archaic design, and while archaic, it mostly still works. But, it also has had a very difficult time bringing in new players who stick with a game long term.
Removing barriers that aren't strictly necessary to the game's design can successfully lower the skill floor while keeping the ceiling in the exact same place. This is the only purpose of removing execution barriers.
Even if it did somehow make pro players beat beginners more easily (which doesn't make sense, because we are already talking about players who have already mastered complex execution), it's a non-issue. That's the point of the genre. The goal shouldn't be to change that, simply to allow a larger number of players to try the game, and stay with it longer than they would have if they were the type of player who wouldn't want to commit to mastering complex physical execution. Then, they could potentially have the desire to become better, even becoming one of the pros. When done properly (its hard but it's possible), the game could have a larger audience, but more importantly, a larger long term audience.
Haha, how prescient that I was just commenting about fighting games on another video. If you're ever playing Tekken I hope to bump into you 👊
Really happy with your breakdown of the nuances of fighting games. They are such an interesting experience, and it is very difficult to explain all the levels involved in making it so cool.
haha yeah, you wrote that comment when I had already uploaded this video and it was private !
great video
Which was the 1st game that introduced frame data available to the players?
I played MK2 & MK3 when I was a kid on arcade but back then I was too little and didn't care about that now that I got into fgc again with MK11 I found out that there is frame data which is a bit complicated but really helpful.
It was a niche thing for a very long time only recently being more transparent and widespread.
But it may have been a virtua fighter or Dead or Alive 5
Wow- waxing funny and personal feels new for this channel. It was executed well though, felt refreshing, and added a lot to the video. There's no death of the author anyway, so it can't hurt to lean into the medium of the personal channel a little, right? Although I do also appreciate the more neutral academic research stuff, and that's sorely needed in the vg discussion space.
Thanks! Yeah, I am trying to blend more personal and humorous writing with the research heavy stuff , so glad you enjoyed it. Its not something that comes easy to me so i know i have a lot to improve.
Man your videos are awesome, keep up th good work
Never been in to fighting games now I have to try
Did you tried it and are you still playing?
You showed a pic from Fantasy Strike and mentioned David Sirlin but didn't even mention Fantasy Strike! That game shows perfectly that fighting games don't need high execution, complex mechanics and long move lists to be deep, strategic games. In fighting games you need to learn execution, data and strategy (includes yomi/adaptation). Out of those three things strategy is definitely the most interesting part and Fantasy Strike aggressively focuses on that. You get to the real meat of the game much more quickly than in other fighting games and you're still going to get absolutely stomped by the top players! Tekken is also far from beautiful imo. There is way too much bloat.
"Combos were originally a bug" is widely misrepresented. It's more that during Street Fighter 2 development, before release, they discovered that combos existed, not entirely on purpose. Then made it on purpose. It's clear in the code that it was planned for and a real thing by the time it released.
I have been meaning to give fantasy strike more of a try , and your assessment has me intrigued. It sounds like the type of game I should enjoy , given i appreciate elegance in design.
Oh and yeah my description of street fighter 2 was a little loose, it did happen during development and was intentionally implemented.
@@thegameoveranalyser4835 I'm glad I managed to intrigue you! I'm a big fan of the game. It's a very elegant and beautiful design imo. It's free to play and all the characters are free (!) so please give it a try sometime. :)
thats not true atall as in fantasy strike they balance execution requirements other ways like one of the character has a dp but if she uses it she looses a bar of health in every other fighting game thats no true cause u have to do a z or quarter circle motion in a window frame to get it it adds complexity does this mean fantasy strike is a bad game no it clearly shows there can be a fighting game without execution does that mean all fighting games should be like that is not true atall...u choose for urself i personally like having execution even though im not good at it atall
asymmetry takes away from skill, hard execution takes away from skill.
8:00 the problem with locking higher powerlevel behind execution barrier is that it's not a long term solution, eventually players *will* learn the character and now theyre running around with a overtuned character thats better compared to everyone else
I feel like I have learned a lot but also learned nothing
i actually thought gg was endearing, good game was like a endearing salute for me that i took with a win or loss, i think it depends on the person probably not, but thats how i felt.
I highly disagree that a physical skill is necessary to raise the ceiling of a game, and it's incredibly ablest of so many who think that making every fighting game super difficult to physically perform, alienating anyone who doesnt have the dexterity or motor functions to pull of these rediculous motion inputs. yes, they are ALL rediculous. You shouldnt need even a quarter circle to a make a game complex.
GNT4 is 90% directional input with only a few characters having motion inputs and is incredibly skill intensive because it's about resource management, not some arbitrary finger waggling skill. Managing your meter for offense and defense, comitting to an attack or being cautious.
I've seen some people argue that making a move have more complicated motions artificially lengthens the amount of input, thus making it take longer to pull off, balancing it. you can achieve the same result simply by charging a move up first. If the expected amount of time needed to perform some pretzel input is 2-3 seconds. You can just make a move require a few button combos, combined with holding a button down for 2-3 seconds. there, it took the same amount of time, and required far less physical limitations
Demanding that the majority or all characters in a fighting game all use motion inputs to keep the skill ceiling high is nothing but gate-keeping
Nice vid, but...
Its not l want looking at!
6:25 tho it doesn't help that Virtua Fighter's movement feel really sluggish and clunky compared to Tekken or Soul Calibur...