Just in case this wasn't clear: this video is not meant to convince you to like or even try fighting games. It merely aims to make you think about what is it that you really like or dislike about them. If any point of the video makes you go "nope, that's definitely not for me", that's completely okay :)
My two cents as someone who has bounced off the genre multiple times: - The reason the skill floor is more daunting in fighting games than it is in learning to play guitar is because you can play the guitar on your own. You are dictating the whole experience. You can get good at guitar without getting into dozens of guitar battles with strangers where each one declares a winner and a loser. Reaching the skill floor for a fighting games means fighting other people and losing, over and over and over. It's demoralizing and exhausting. - You make an excellent point that the 'difficulty' in a fighting game just comes down to the skill gap between you and your opponent. Unfortunately, fighting games are a narrow niche with a loyal fanbase and a lot of transferable skills. Last time I tried to play Guilty Gear Strive online as a novice, there was literally nobody online below the highest level of the tower. 90% of the playerbase is people who love fighting games and have been playing them for years, so as someone trying to enjoy them casually I wander into versus mode, try to find someone at my skill level, fail, and fight ultra gods for an hour without winning a single game. Again, demoralizing and exhausting. - I don't even know what the solution to these problems is! How do I get a foot in the door when everyone inside has years of experience? That skill gap discourages new players, which in turn reinforces the gap because there aren't enough new players coming in. It's a vicious cycle, and I don't know how to fix it.
I think it's all about this you said: "[With guitar] You are dictating the whole experience". I want to practice a scale, I do it. I set the exact tempo I'm comfortable with. Then I choose a manageable song to learn, break it into parts, etc. With fighting games, all this is out of your control. You don't get to choose what character you're facing, what playstyle the opponent will use, etc. You're sharing control of the experience. Even if you're not easily demoralized by losses, it can be exhausting because it's difficult to parse everything at once.
I mean, I think the issue is that a lot of people think the versus is the most important part of fighting games. It's the most fun when you are experienced, but you can also have a lot of fun in story mode or just playing against the CPU. I usually don't play versus until I get comfortable with my skills, but I also find playing against the CPU fun.
Well, the solution is to have more players, with a limited amount, the skill gap will always be huge and will always be intimidating to new people, that seens kinda of an obvious solution, but how to increase players numbers? well, make it more acessible, most fighting games are already in most plataforms, so, the only way to make it more acessible, is being cheaper, or better yet, free to play. i know people doesn't like that solution, but far more people are willing to try a game if it's free. and they might stick around.
A big part I think is simply understanding the game. In many fighting games, especially if you're new to them, you often don't even understand what you did wrong when you lost. Why didn't that attack land? Why wouldn't I block that attack? How could he get out of my combo, but I couldn't? And it can even turn around the other way. You won. But you don't understand what you did differently from last time. Also the classic. For someone to get that super cool 50+ perfect combo win, someone else had to eat that.
The true fighting game skill floor isn't what people really think it is. Teaching a new player a hadouken is way more intuitive than teaching that same player that the heavy kick and heavy punch each have their own damage/range/recovery differences, and even stuff like that really is the most basic, because they do wanna know which button does what, etc. It isn't that fighting games have MORE information, because generally, they actually don't. It's the way it's being presented. Even in games with single-button specials, all the other stuff is there(unless you're Fantasy Strike, which died for a reason...), and it's ALL front-loaded. Presentation of info in fighting games is either done little or not at all, or in a long series of boring tutorials most players will NOT complete. Most players just want to be able to hop in and play, which is honestly one reason why Tekken does so well. I'm not saying it's a mashy series, Tekken fans, so don't get rabid, I'm just saying the way the combo system works allows two brand new players to both mash and see cool shit happen. When you mash in anime fighters and other 2d motion fighters? You just kinda throw a lot of jabs and sweeps.
@@MougliFGC I like it. It's definitely one of the most important things. I think we're in the early stages of a fighting game renaissance, and now is the time to get the changes made.
Can you elaborate on this? I think I'm too deep in fighting games to grasp your points, because "mash buttons and see jabs and sweeps" is to my eyes exactly what you do in Tekken as well- with possibly the exception of the capoeira people- and I don't see much of a difference between an anime fighter and a Tekken in this instance? Is it that Tekken just has longer combos that consist of just pressing the face buttons as oppossed to a 2D game using directional inputs for the cool stuff?
@@goranisacson2502 The longest combos I've seen in fighting games are BY FAR in anime games, not Tekken. Tekken's standard of ~8-10 hits is pretty tame overall. Mashing in Tekken tends to randomly produce combos, wherein mashing in 2d fighters rarely results in anything other than a jab or sweep. At any rate, mashing stops working right after rookie ranks, no matter which game it is.
@@antonsimmons8519 cough street fighter 5 sagat,guile and other characters can sometimes be opressive where there playstyle is spamming the same move over and over again. At higher ranks they do that and more. So every fighting game at a high or low people can spam and will abuse the same frame knowing you cant do much about it
I don't like fighting games because I like the sensation of the journey and seeing myself evolving is one of my favorite sensations, I just don't have the patience to do it with fighting games, and doing something without improving is something I don't like, spend days, weeks at a hobby to see little to no improvement is one of the things I hate the most, so fighting games lives in a limbo for me, it's good enough that I want to play but not enough that I want to devolve a ton of time on it, and play for long stretches of time and not improving makes me mad.
For me, fighting games are just one of the genres that feel the worst to be bad at, and that's always prevented me from enjoying them even though I find them really interesting. Some of this may be that my experience comes from occasionally picking up a controller at the invitation of a friend who clearly has more experience than myself rather than being matched with someone of my own skill level online, but even so: in fighting games, you aren't the only person in control of your character. So when I'm trying to get a hold of the game at the most basic level and seeing if I can remember that combo I thought looked cool, it can be incredibly frustrating when after hitting the first button my character isn't throwing a punch, but actually they're stunlocked midair and then thrown to the opposite side of the map
I would say that this is because you're missing some of the fundamental concepts. But that's not your fault, very few games mention them in their tutorials.
I've found that PVP is one of the biggest turnoffs to me when it comes to any genre in gaming, whether playing against strangers or friends. I can spend dozens of hours attempting to take on a difficult challenge through something like Gungeon or Monster Train, where the feeling that comes from overcoming the challenge is based around surpassing an unchanging skill threshold. By contrast, playing against other players pits you against a constantly evolving metric that only lets you gauge your skill relative to who you're facing. I get little extrinsic motivation from PVP games, which discourages me from sticking with them for much time. The fighters I've played the longest would be Smash and BlazBlue., both of which have single player modes that I played almost exclusively. I'd rather my skill get a letter grade than know what percentile I'm in.
This is something that I’ve always disliked about multiplayer games in general But in the case of fighting games it’s a little different for me since there’s a certain thrill in matches either in real opponents or just fighting the cpu. I love the genre not for competitive reasons (I suck for a lack of a better word lol) but for the moment to moment gameplay, interesting atmosphere, compelling characters, and lore/story. And the very best fighting games usually have all of these in spades
On the note about focusing on how far you are from “pro level play,” I think a part of that is that Fighting Games can feel really restrictive (and as a result, unfun) until you’re at least competent. Very few feel natural to just pick up and play. As you mention, the skill floor is higher than most genres. Fighting Games just aren’t intuitive to control for anyone coming from other genres. I think that’s why Smash is more popular casually, despite still having an incredibly high skill ceiling. Beyond even the simpler inputs, the inputs just make sense intuitively to people familiar with general game controls. Want to attack up? Press up and attack (up tilt.) Want to attack up harder? Press it harder (up smash.) Stuff like that makes it easier than most Fighting Games to pick up, and in turn makes it easier to start having fun enough to enjoy the journey towards the skill ceiling.
Spot on I disliked fgighting games because when i was a kid i had mortal kombat where combos literally make no sense Played Soulcalibur after and it was so much better, everything clicked( I still think MK is kinda whack)
honestly, i despise platform fighters like smash and roa because, to me, it looks like everything is happening by pure chance. got a combo at x percent that lead to me inevitably dying? yeah the game just worked out for you and i'm screaming about why everything lined up perfectly for that situation to happen right then and there. regular 2d fighters like guilty gear are easier for my head to comprehend without weirdness, though
Really enjoyed this video. I particularly like how you acknowledged the other side instead of just saying they are wrong. I get that fg content creators will approach things from a fgc perspective, but sometimes it gets in the way of having a deeper and more holistic discussion. Great work and keep it up.
I had the opposite journey than you did. I was really into fighting games when I was younger because I had friends and family who I could play with. I had that sense of "micro-wins" and learning what works. Fighting games always felt like multiplayer games to me, so once that in-person setting went away, I became more of a casual spectator. That said, I still enjoy single-player games that have fighting game mechanics (like Speed Brawl, River City Girls, F.I.S.T., or Guacamelle)
Great video. Love how you broke down alot of misconceptions, and even tackled the mindset of "Fighting games are for everyone" (a statement I dont really agree with either). Its a bit annoying when the FGC gets an ego about itself
The main thing that happens for a beginner is that they go online, get completely demolished by people who know basic neutral and pressure and then get up because they feel very overwhelmed by it all. The main problem I think beginners have is just not knowing at all of concepts crucial in fighting games beyond how to combo and lack of teaching tools that aren't player made guides
Yes, I'm planning on talking about it in a future video. It's getting better though: Strive has a command list that's quite useful, and SF6 looks like it'll try to have good tutorias and pre-mad training setups.
So many games really nail their tutorials, namely adventure games and rpgs. I think perhaps the biggest problem may be that fighting games just toss you right into the ring after about 5 minutes of training and go "well, there's a practice room, some combo trials with no pointers and a movelist you may or may not be able to read. good luck, kid!" No wonder people hop online with just a combo and a couple cheesy tricks, win maybe a single round and then get mollywhopped for a set before never touching the game again.
I love platform fighters because you don't have to learn crazy long input strings, it's more about reading your opponent. I also love how physics are a factor to consider, and the grab/shield/attack triangle feels like Rock Paper Scissors
As a fellow martial artist, Ive always preached the similarities with fighting games. Besides consistent execution requiring training, you have to measure distance, break up your rhythm to mess up the opponents timing, and think 3 moves ahead. Becoming somewhat competitive in Street Fighter fed my fighting spirit and inspired me to train myself again. I love the competition and learning from my defeats. Great video sir.
actually same I quit training because of depression but I ended up discovering FGs because of it. The transition is actually really smooth depending on which sub genre you got into. Now i am back to self training and practicing drills because of FGs
Funny thing about the connection to martial arts: lazy fighters, just like lazy gamers, will blame ANYTHING for their failure to win, so long as the one thing never blamed is themselves for being lazy.
@@antonsimmons8519 another thing is you can go unga bunga in sparring you'll get what on early but enough unga and those with less stamina and training gets gassed
For me, what irritates me is how I can feel like I'm putting in the right directions on the D-pad/stick, the game (regardless of which one it is) will always register an extra direction, and that single "wrong" imput is enough to prevent a combo from working.
Yeah that's my biggest gripe with controllers nowadays. They still have terrible d-pads, I don't even know how they don't do anything about them and still keep pumping up the prices. I think the best d-pad I remember is the good ol dualshock 2, from ps2, the rest are dogshit.
Great video. I also think that what's seem to be the main factor of people not trying fighting game is mostly because of the perception that fighting game are impossible to get into in the first place. The FGC itself is guilty of that, which is kind of frustrating, I only really see sajam making several videos trying to break that narrative. Also, I'll steal that board game analogy if you don't mind, it's great ;) (Et ouai, c'est l'enfer de vivre en France et de ne pas trouver de gens pour jouer à des jeux dont la population est trop basse)
About your question in regards of why many people quit FGs at the door, I have my own little theory about that. I strongly believe that the "feedback" the game gives you is the main reason. A fighting game shows the players only "You win" or "You lose", even in combo trials it mostly says "perfect" or "failed". This feedback instantly starts to make you think - mostly subconscious - about the game, your time investment and what you could do else instead of see a "loser"-screen. Funny thing is that most of the friends whom did started to try FGs and stick to them also like to play soulslike and/or monster hunter - both also games/genres which give the player fast feedback about their skill. I would love to give now any idea how to change/fix that but I do not see how that could be done in a way which fits the genre....
As someone who loves fromsoft titlesthe issue i have is consistency i just can't consistently do the moves i want to and it feels demoralizing to try to get into blazeblue do a basic terumi combo and get 2D over and over and over again. or in strive playing nago where when i randomly input command grab or 2p at seemingly random. In dark souls as bs as the bosses can be i can still goand do my moves and get what i want
One small thing I love about strive is that it always gives you a compliment after a match, even if you lose. It's a little silly, but it has helped my motivation stay solid.
@@ArkRiley I dont think thats silly at all. Fighting games always had problems with the newer player experience and encouraging the player. I am not saying the games have to coddle the player like a baby but if the games dosen’t even have a tutorial to teach you how to play like back in the day; that’s just a bad game design. I think the mentality that they are going for is that even if you loose we are still winners b/c we tried to play well and its the effort and heart that counts. Like Yugi says, “its not about whether you loose or win Kaiba. Its how you play the game.”
@@ArkRiley As silly as it sounds it's still a move in the right direction and any positive impact is a good impact! I have a friend that would always love looking at those little things the game gives them at the end of the match. I always ignored those because I've played enough to just be happy spamming DPs and playing the game in general, but for them, that little extra bit matters and that's a good thing on the game's part!
I'd agree that RTS usually has a lower skill floor, but that isn't the issue. The difference is player feedback mechanisms. In a strategy game, there is enough time and immediately available information someone can understand why something didn't work within the match itself. Fighting games, on the other hand, have situations like not inputting quite fast enough changing the outcome or an attack having a weird disjoint on its hitbox where it's difficult to ascertain what exactly happened in a controlled environment with a cooperative second person, let alone in the midst of an actual match.
I actually disagree here. Fighting games are actually fantastic at showing you what is hitting you, and even with just a little mentoring you realize it's a pattern of some kind. From there its a simple matter of problem solving. Asking yourself simple question like "Why did my opponent do that? Where did they do that? What was I doing when they did that?" goes a long way to build competency. The only time I'd say this isn't true is in cases like fuzzy guard breaks, when attacks that look like they missed actually hits you.
@@ShadowNinjaMaster93 That's not exactly the point I was trying to make. Let's take MvC 3 Zero's Ryuenjin. Now, I make no bones that I'm bad at fighting games, but even I know a well-timed Ryuenjin should be able to counter an aerial given its decent horizontal reach and vertical hitbox above the character. The issue isn't the times I screw it up. It isn't the times I misread and I obviously don't pull it off in time. It's the times I pull it off, but am just a couple of frames too slow. I used the right attack, I inputted it correctly, but I was less than human reaction time slower, so it didn't work. That can't be read in a match. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say very few casual players are watching replays with hitbox data to figure out why what should work, didn't. And, while that specific instance is a rare case particular to me (I don't play a lot of other Zero players), I've had opponents more skilled than me wonder how things I was doing were happening across several titles, so it isn't unique and it's obviously more common with some attacks.
I'm someone who has been trying to get into the genre since 2018 and this is a great video BTW. I kinda wanna toss out a couple things since I have a unique experience with the genre due to some disabilities I have. Firstly, despite what I've tried, I kind of doubt I've even really reached the skill floor in the genre and it's part of the reason things have felt so crushing, I can't find a win satisfying when I don't get why it happened and a loss feels crushing when I can't tell what I did wrong. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that I can deal with extreme amounts of overstimulation, and plenty of these games push me to a point where I can barely tell what's happening, if I can see what's happening at all, I even had a game I clicked with ruined by its particles preventing me from being able to tell what moves my opponents were using in blockstrings so I had no hope to try and read a mixup. Any time anyone got hit you might as well of turned the screen pure white and muted the audio for how well my mind could process said information. I primarily wanted to add this since it feels there's a genuine issue with accessibility in the genre, even outside of motor and executional requirements, and I think it's the biggest thing that's kind of hampered a genre I know I could enjoy a lot without it.
Thanks a lot for sharing your perspective, and sorry to hear that the games you like aren't accessible enough to you :( In a future video (most likely the next one), I want to talk about the ways the genre isn't helping itself getting new people to stay, and feedback is going to be one of the points. A good example I like is GBVS, which has clear feedback for "you high blocked a low" and "you low blocked an overhead".
@@gaelurquiz5755 I'll have no ableism around here. Capcom themselves recognise the importance of accessibility considering the options they're adding in SF 6. Disability or not, the points that the commenter is raising remain valid, being able to understand what's happening on screen is important and yes, overdone VFX can get in the way of that. Please be nice to each other.
@@gaelurquiz5755 I don't want to start an argument or seem like I'm attacking you at all, but I take it I didn't make it clear that I do actually like these games. The reason I sounded so negative is because accessibility is a real issue, and often can be implemented without affecting balance or gameplay too much or at all, but it isn't, and it leaves people like me unable to play games they'd otherwise love. Personally, I do feel allowing more people to play these games would just make a better space for everyone who enjoys them.
One of the reasons I like Dead or Alive games so much is because you can turn particle effects off and it doesn't have very much of them even if you leave them on. These games are so beautifully animated I want to see the moves. I have played fighting games for almost three decades now and I usually gravitate toward older games because they didn't have this visibility problem. I can play something like Tekken 7 for sure because of my experience but it's one of those games that one could argue has too many particle effects even for basic strikes.
@@gaelurquiz5755 There's a huge difference between a game's accessibility and a game's ability to accomodate for disabilities. More accommodation is always better, and can literally only do good for the community. For example, consider how labeling colors can help a colorblind artist get a better idea of what to use. It's a small addition, but can make all the difference in that person's artwork. In fact, it probably can even help people who aren't colorblind. If we apply that to gaming, consider the benefits of adding colorblind modes (the more customizable, the better), the ability to reduce or remove particle effects (for visual clarity, or those prone to epilepsy), or maybe even simple button remapping (even I use this one). All of these things can make a massive difference, and should be implemented in every game that have the development time for it. It expands the audience these games can reach, and removes unnecessary handicaps for a more even playing field overall.
I remember having this defeatist attitude back when I was playing Tekken 6 and Tag 2, where I was constantly under the impression that I wasn't making any progress and that I was underperforming. Luckily, I was given a real morale boost by someone online who thought I was doing much better than I thought. Once Tekken 7 came out, I managed to climb all the way to the purple ranks. Turns out all that grinding in the older games really had made a difference in my performance, I just lacked any sort of feedback from other players. Because of this, I feel like the communal aspect is somewhat key to the whole fighting game experience and it's something you have to actually seek out yourself, since there's no real team chat functionality like in hero shooters or MOBAs. I do get the feeling however, that some players love to gatekeep their communities and not all regions in the world are as lucky when it comes to actual fighting game scenes. The idea of having "locals" in the northern parts of Sweden where I'm from is basically unheard of. It's a barren wasteland if you're looking for a community.
Yeah, I don't think locals are really as common as FGC folks would like you to believe. Gerald from Core-A has a good take on the need for community, and Rubbish literally just posted a new video touching on that as well.
Man, good video! Even though you don't have a lot of experience in FGs, your thought process about how FGs are PERCEIVED is spot on. I've been playing for 12 years and it took me a few of those to realize a lot of the points you make here. Deserved sub
I like fighting games because I could see improvements when I fight more experienced players in Tekken and when a setup I use on them finally works makes the match a million times more satisfying. I don't mind losing if it's the key to getting better.
For me, one of the biggest barriers to entry was just getting the inputs right. For FPS, they all play almost identical (WASD for movement, left click to shoot and so on), and as you said in your video, I couldn't transfer my experience from any other game. BUT I tried some fighting games, Thems Fighting Herds and SC5 being those with my most playtime, also some Smash, which I was very competent in, as a casual player. I didn't spend too much time in online play because I can't consistently get the inputs right. Especially diagonals and soft tilts are really hard for me. I don't get the feeling of competence when I can't even get the controls down.
I tried to get into fighting games a few times, it hypes me a while but it falls off very fast. This is probably going to be a rather long rant, I try to keep it short but it has many points I wanna go over. I played many PvP games and generally like to compete. Fighting games are terrible "games": You have a versus mode, a usually rather trashy story mode, sometimes an arcade mode(which is just versus but multiple in a row). If you don't like the competitive scene or have a friend you regular play with you have no reason to play for more than 20h. There is no content. I think smash bros is the best game for actually having content to play. Tutorials usually suck as well. You said knowing frame data isn't that important, but shouldn't that still be in the game? Would it be too hard to make a visual effect if a move is plus/minus on block? Would it be too far to have smash characters have one of 5 weight classes instead of assigning everyone an distinct value? It it really necessary for GG to have one singular move to change based on proximity? GG gatling system "some moves can cancel into some other moves. Which one? Figure that shit out yourself!" If fighting games truly want to make the entrance easier, they should start with the core concept, not with easier inputs for supers or that stuff what the fgc usually cries about when they say "they casuallize my game". Playing against "better" players wont help you(if the gap is too big). You end up in long optimized combos and it doesn't matter what you do, because you will spend 80% of the match time in hitstun. This is just why I quit Yugioh. The game developed into a style where the goal is to make your opponent not play the game. Finding players you can actually grow with is hard. And thats just the skill issue, there is still the part of actually getting along with them. Effective training by "not playing". I want to get better by playing the game, not spending 3h in training mode to try combos. Mechanical skill-checks don't matter for me. This might be because I literally had to rebind some keys because I frequently hit wrong buttons, that how inaccurate I am. But a game-sense/knowledge check would always impress me more than this famous street fighter clip. For some reasons every fighting game I tried just sucks at balancing. Smash Ultimate had like 15 balance patches and literally nothing changed except for 5 characters in a 80+ roster. And it just sucks to see fox being a top tier for the entire series. Pokken instantly got dropped because it didn't sold well or something(surprising the servers are still up). GG Strive refuses to nerf strong characters and only patch once a year. I know balance isn't that important on lower skill level, but if you know what you're doing you can still abuse a s-tier because they mostly have a thing that breaks the fundamentals of the game. Anji vs Sol feels bad, regardless of the floor. LittleMac vs Fox will always be one sided. Fighting games just go further to push what the community likes: Long Combos. So every game becomes like 2-3 touches and you're dead. A friend showed me a DBFighterz final and I was like "how is that even fun? Is that the reason they have 3 characters because they die in one combo?" In GG you even combo them if they block.The damage is just lower, but the one in the offense just keeps hitting buttons and the other stays in hitstun for half the match. Smash 4/5 online SUCKS The community: For every "just have fun", I hear "if you can't even do this basic combo with 5 frame perfect inputs in a row, you don't have to show up again" twice. A little exaggerated but the direction still is the same. I faced a lot of elitism and gatekeeping. Like you need a GC controller to fully enjoy smash bros...
One thing people keep forgetting about Moment 37 - It was actually both execution AND game-sense/knowledge check. The first hit of that particular attack cannot be parried on reaction, and thus knowing the EXACT moment the move is going to come out is crucial.
These are all very valid points. A thing that ive noticed in my 30 years playing fighters is because they were originally ports from the arcade the features like single player and extra bonus stuff was never expected at first. But obviously as time progresses the genre should as well. Outside of a few series...they havent. And that's really hurting the genre. If I was just getting into video games now and was not around in the arcade days I most likely wouldnt even bother with fighting games, truthfully. But I love this genre so much so I'm essentially expecting the issues and dissatisfaction but know ill find something worth it if I look hard enough. Bottomline...fighting games are a very hard sell. No doubt. Fantastic video too, gonna spread this around the community.
You make some valid points but Issues you have are none of these things, you simply don't want or don't know how to learn to play. It is like you are hardstuck in your own thinking refusing to do things that will make you enjoy it.
Phenomenal first video! Definitely subscribing. I've grown up with quite a few fighting games my whole life, like SF Alpha3, MvsC series, soul caliber, MK, ect. I'm not the greatest if you compare me to those who play them more often, but I loved the progression I made from playing them if I'm pushed to it. I usually thought fighting games would be the easiest to get in to for a novice, either by just sticking to basic attacks or button-mash luck. Wasn't aware people now-days think it's one of the hardest, but from what you presented, I understand why. That feeling that they either have to be the best or not try at all.
I went through your same journey in 2019 due to mk11, but moreso in 2020 due to covid. It's such a journey, 3 years in and I still feel like I am a new player. Seeing improvement is addicting though. I'm watching this for the second time after your newer video, you make great stuff! Looking forward to whatever else you have coming.
I feel that the biggest thing stopping me from liking fighting games is the fact that I really don’t enjoy 1v1 games. It feels much more rewarding to me if I feel I have contributed to collective rather than myself because even if we lose at least I know that I have contributed my part by helping others and being the best teammate I can. I enjoy support roles which is why it’s hard for me to get invested in a fighting game which requires is a much more aggressive kinda mindsets. This has been really annoying for me becuase I really love the art, music and characters of guilty gear but feels like I’m missing a huge chunk by not really liking how it’s a fighting game.
RE: People who are reluctant to play because of skill ceiling. I thought of a spectrum for games to try and explain this : How much a game informs you of what you currently cannot use. If you can't use a strategy or tool within the game (either locked behind skill or progression), the game may be designed in a way that you don't know you are missing something. Quick example: Metroid will lock areas or rooms from the player because they are opened by a specific weapon upgrade. In the older games, it won't really tell you anything there and you have to infer that by backtracking through the map over time. A game that does the same thing but will tell you is the latest God of War. There are environmental puzzles, but some require a certain unlock via progression. If you stick around the area without the upgrade, the NPC character you hang around will tell you outright "I don't think we can interact with this yet, looks like we need some equipment". I think fighting games are closer to the God Of War end of the spectrum. Meaning that you will often know that there is something to be known and you don't know it yet. Except it's not gonna be progression and unlocks that get you there, it's going to be study, reflection, training, asking questions. And I think that combination of things is just super grating for a lot of folks that can see they are missing viable strategies to play the game. Even if those strategies are just "I don't have the optimal combos and I'm gonna need to learn them all". One of the big ones is the Tekken move list. Sure you know you can reach the point where you've memorized the frame data and punishes to moves, but from day 0 (as a more experienced player) you also know you don't know that stuff. I think it's also easy to consider those activities as something different "playing the game", it's not versus mode, it's study. People want to play a game to play it, so if the other modes in their mind is not framed as such... The same style of arguments and phrasing has been used for other genres like RTS. People will unironically use "You're not playing the real game until you have X, Y and Z". I find the idea a bit silly, but I think that's the dilemma at work here.
Honestly, fighting games usually don't attract much players as other games because they are simply hostile to video-game players in general Most players want (obviously) a full game experience where they can have multiple ways of entertaining themselfs and consume the contents that said game has to offer, but what the majority of fighting games has to offer is a game with shallow/no story, no singleplayer content, no non-competitive modes where you can just relax and have fun, not many variety of content in the game at all and even one of the main points of the genre that is their characters are usually behind a wall of paid DLCs. In the end, all fighting games usually has to offer is a competitive 1v1 multiplayer experience were you have to invest a lot of time and effort just so in the long run you can START having fun. It simply doesn't have the whole package of a full game that most other games have, and to be honest, how can a player start invest himself in the hardcore side of a game if the game doesn't have any content to make you connect with it? That's why people are more inclined to invest their time,money,effort and blood on something they have a deep connection or love. In the point of view of a new fighting game player, this is a half-baked empty game genre that forces you to suffer without any real reward besides the one you made up yourself in your own mind, and it is expensive as fuck and most of the community is toxic. I am writing this as a fighting game player that started playing fighting games mainly because i like the idea and journey of struggling to achieve something and improve despite the difficulty or if i'm only losing. If wasn't for that, i would probably just watch the tournaments and play a little of some arcade mode of some games
In other games, the road from bad to good has rewards in between. You play a little bit better, you get a little bit better results. In fighting games you get none of that, you need to fight yourself through an ocean of punishment and losses until you are good enough to enjoy the game. Thats what stops me at the door. I play for fun, not to work to be able to have fun, if a game isnt fun out of the box, why bother?
It’s the same process for every game whether it be a moba, a shooter, or strategy game. You still improve, you learn little things along the journey, and you begin to do cool, self expressive things. Fighters just require different mechanics that you won’t develop unless you play fighters. You have to “work” in order to learn any game and it’s mechanics
@@rodsjournal6012 I agree with that, but with most games the learning process is part of the fun (admittedly subjective here). In terms of boxing, fighting games are like fighting Mike Tyson till you're good enough to enjoy it, other games feel like going to the gym and punch a bag to learn the basics. One builds me up, the other just breaks me down.
I feel like this is the other side of the Polygon video about getting into fighting games. You went over every point that friends of mine have made about why they can't get into fighting games & provided succinct solutions to each of them. Great video!
Just the fact that you go over who may not like fighting games is a big part of what makes this video so good. As I find that period who don't care about getting better at something and just want to pull off cool plays are unlikely to get into fighting games or they just end up as low ranked spammers
Great video! what got me into fighting games was the single player content of smash bros, especially smash bros brawl and project + then slap city. purchasing games like this garentees a full single player experience if you don't like the multiplayer
Love, love, _love_ promoting the deemphasis of "wins" and "loses". This mindset seems to bleed into far too much, whether it be the stakes of digital and analog games (especially elimination from further event participation) or the value judgments on how "wins" and "loses" are approached (so much balking at "participation trophies" and a perceive devaluing of those who "are the best"). We could use more celebration of the bouts themselves, rather than the lifeless tally boards.
The biggest thing I see frustrating new players is they don't like it when pressing a button doesn't do anything. For example, when they're in hit-stun or the opponent is doing a combo. They'll say things like "what the hell? none of my moves work!". They also hate blocking, which compounds the problem. This frustration is what leads to mashing because when they mash at least something happens sometimes.
The two biggest things making me border on quitting the genre as a whole would be combos and inputs, both of which heavily emphasize skills that I find neither fun nor impressive. In most games, if you take a hit, you take that bot’s damage an move on. Maybe you’re out in a disadvantageous situation and need to figure out how to escape, but never are you unfairly punished for your mistakes. Fighting Games, on the other hand, immediately take away your controller on hit and ask that you watch as the other player executes their muscle-memory combos without any possibility of escape. I value things like neutral and positioning, not who can experience more of the game at once. The only reason I feel they’re still so heavily emphasized is because they LOOK fancy, which makes for a good spectator sport. Inputs, by extension, emphasize dexterity, which isn’t what I’m looking for in a videogame. Dark Souls, Hollow Knight, or hell, any turn-based RPG will always allow you to use the move you want if the conditions are met. So long as you aren’t doing something else or dead, you can use the move so easily that it doesn’t even feel like you’re using a controller. Wanna do a slightly ranged attack in Street Fighter, though, and suddenly you’re typing in cheat codes that don’t even resemble the move’s in-game motions. I don’t think there’s ever a reasonable excuse for accidentally using a move you didn’t mean to, as that’s a sign of poorly-designed controls. When whether you win or lose comes down to whether or not you moved the stick slightly farther than you should’ve for a super input, suddenly the game feels less like a high-octane test of skill and more like glorified RNG. I would ADORE seeing a Fighting Game that does away with these mechanics, if not just to see how it would play out. I know full well there are other ways to make for much deeper substance and entertainment, if it would just be explored.
I have things to say about combos (or more accurately a specific combo tool), but that's another video. As for inputs, a quick glance at genre's landscape shows that it's moving in the direction of simpler inputs (SF 6 modern controls, GBVS, DNF Duel, Tekken 8 assist mode, Project L, etc) whether the community likes it or not. Although it's worth pointing out that while it may or may not be debatable whether simple inputs are necessary for accessibility, many games have proven that it is not sufficient.
this is a damn good video, i can’t wait to finish it and check out of your vids! as someone in a similar position like you, and has thought about this a decent amount, i’m glad to see other people talk about it edit: damn this is your first vid, what an amazing start my guy!
FG have a similar problem to RTS. You're gonna play bots who don't actually play realistically, and then you'll play a real pvp match where the opponent just has so much more knowledge and skill that its an immediately overwhelming loss, and there's no margin to it. It's either play the campaign and be bored with how easy it is, or be the bot to a bunch of people who know every input, combo, and have the timings down like math.
People don't have those skills until they're at significantly high ranks. They just seem like they do because they're outplaying you. Most likely they've played just enough to know how to punish a common move you're relying on.
Great video, Mougli! Just wanted to add to your question about "Why do people leave at the door?" compared to other genres or activities. Because a loss on your own is harder than a loss with other people. When the loss is directed at you, it is more soul-crushing and makes you second-guess your own self, thus leading into you just giving up on said activity. Fighting games have the innate ability to make them part of your personality. As it is a bit like chess, where one wrong move can spiral into a dozen more.
This is spot-on. Fighting games make you check your self-esteem, especially in those dreaded matches where you're up against someone all the way at the other side of the skill ladder. They wipe the floor with you, regardless of your skill, and sometimes you get depressed, because even if you've acquired a lot a skill, it sometimes *still isn't enough*. Fighting games really make you have to come to terms with failure. That's why there's so many examples of "sore losers" out there, who lost to an opponent and do all they can to not accept the simple truth that they lost. Every time someone loses, they have to grieve.
I grew up with fighting games, always a casual. I then stopped playing them somewhere between 2014 and 2020. I then booted up KOF 13 for nostalgia, and the simple feeling of the game gave me an epiphany, and I'm a dedicated player (of many games) ever since. Being part of communities like Discord also helped me SO much to have the fuel to keep pushing.
What made me frustrated and hopeless about fighting games was not the feeling that the skill ceiling was too far away, but that I could not literally understand how to get better, I didn't understand why I couldn't get my hands to do a specific maneuver correctly or what I had done incorrectly.
That is one nice video you have there. You bring up nice points, and your decision to not show any top level play in your video is very interesting and encouraging. Seeing someone do, or block a several inputs long string is intimidating to me. I've been at the figurative 'door' to the genre for a while, and the part that's holding me back from going in is a mix of _got nobody to play with locally_ and being overwhelmed on where to start, which game to pick. And the urge to study up way too hard on whatever game I'd choose. I'll definitely stick around for more videos by you!
Just found your channel, and I'm really excited to see more content soon! I've tried fighting games before but never really got into them. They've always seemed so daunting. My only real experience were Netherrealm games, and very little smash. Often times I'd get destroyed by my friends, and while I did have a bit of fun it ultimately left a sour taste in my mouth. I never really tried online for this reason since if my friends who barely play FGs can beat me I stand no chance online. But like you said, sometimes it's a matter of the right game, and my opinion changed when trying out GGST. I found it honestly pretty fun to pick up and learn. So I decided to do something I never do and tried online. Let's just say I got my ass handed to me pretty much every time even by people on the lower floors. Even though I was losing pretty bad I was still having fun. Although I was a super noob (and still am) it ultimately got me way more into the community and wanting to learn more about it. I haven't played in a while though for a few reasons. Like I still have a lingering fear of losing even though I really don't care as much, and since I'm an introvert, meeting new people to practice with is a bit hard. Although mostly since I'm usually playing other games with my friends. But this video has encouraged me to get up and try fighting games again to hopefully improve. I look forward to seeing more breakdowns and essays going forth!
Great video and observations. I agree that it is very much about finding the right fighting game. I largely ignored fighting games growing up but decided to give DOA a shot on a whim after trying several other titles that didn't leave much of an impression on me. I ended up really liking the hold system and I consider the back-and-forth gameplay of DOA the closest any fighting game has gotten to feeling like a real fight. I eventually ended up getting GBVS and that has gone on to become my go-to 2D fighter. The characters I play all have parries since I've come to learn I just enjoy access to that mechanic.
This is a great intro video to the fighting game genre. Like you said, there are those for whom the games just won’t jive with, but I think many people can be intimidated away when they might actually enjoy the games.
@@MarquisLeary34 I mean yeah, but that’s not exclusive to fighting games though. You have to start off a lot of things bad and just learn by losing. Like even if the game was perfectly putting you against people your level you would lose 50% of the time. If that part is what’s intimidating then fighting games probably aren’t for you. And that’s okay.
@@Kintaku it's not exclusive to fighting games but I think it's the most prevalent with fighting games. Just like bugs aren't exclusive to Bethesada games, but bugs are usually prevalent in their games much more than with other devs.
On the specific topic of being willing or unwilling to put the time in to learn fighting games. I less feel like I'd want "instant gratification" and more that I feel like I'd have to essentially dedicate myself to playing a single game for the rest of my life when I'm someone who likes a number of different genres. And that most of my life I've tended more towards singleplayer RPG type experiences. Though I've also gotten more into Roguelikes and Shooters which are arguably on a similar level of "you gotta take time to git gud" recently (Specifically, Skul the Hero Slayer and Splatoon 3 respectively) Edit: Also mentioning Splatoon, I think that one of the things that really helped me to actually get into shooters through splatoon is the fact that it has a singleplayer campaign that's actually really good at giving the player a basic understanding of how the game works. How to Move, How to Aim, How to handle different situations and even how Turf Control works until you are... not quite a master, but I think that once you've taken on Beyond Alterna you're probably more than ready for casual, and might even be ready for your first ranked match.
As I mention in another video, a lot of people play several fighting games side by side, so unless you're trying to become a literal professional, it's unlikely you're going to dedicate yourself to a single game.
@@MougliFGC That's fair, mostly just thought I'd note it as something that had held me back from just about ANY competitive game for a long time, and that only recently got broken by Splatoon (which I think I mention in another comment). Like... To use a non-fighting-game example: TF2 or CSGO, I know they're some of the best shooters out there, but I ALSO know that you're fairly likely to queue up with someone who's played the game for a literal decade even if they AREN'T explicitly "Professional".
Execution is often overated, a wise man once said: Justin Wong is one of the best and his execution is basic That is really true and most of what you can carry for other games isn't related to execution, needless to say that depends on the game but you CAN take notes around and join those game discords etc, people that are on social environment tend to be really friendly and helpful, they want to enjoy the games as much as you do and want YOU to enjoy them too, so it's a good place to start.
Even at 38000 views, this video is criminally underrated. What a beautiful way to put it, I might just hop in and try to get my butt kicked a few times now!
Overall i mostly agree with everything you said. But there is one thing I reaally disagree, and that is the size of the skill gap compared to other games, specifically rts. I play a lot of starcraft and age of empires, and i gotta say, rts are very similar to fighting games in a lot of ways. Both are 1v1 focussed, take a similar amount of time to get into and have a significantly lower barrier of entry than outsiders assume. But one key difference i personally see between these 2 types of games is the sheer infinity of skill ceiling in rts. You can reasonably reach mechanical perfection with a certain fighting game character, from where on further skill improvement mainly derives from your ability to make good decisions and to read your opponent. Mechanical Perfection in RTS however is not reachable by a human beeing. There is pretty much an infinity of possibilities in how good you could move your units, and moving your units is not the only thing you'll do. Micro (your ability to move units) and macro (your ability to manage your base) cancel each other out in a lot of times, making games about choosing mental priority on top of each of these 2 things beeing very complex on their own and sometimes crossing over into each other. And on top of all that strategy games also have the layer of, well, strategy. This is not to say there is no strategy in fighting games, but the net of possible things you could do in an rts is just way larger. Im not trying to make strategy games sound superior or anything, i love fighting games, just pointing out that I am 100% convinced that the possible skill gap in strategy games is not only comparable to fighting games, but way larger
As a competitive Smash player, and someone who's decent at Strive (I've won a few university tournaments at my sizable university), the most guaranteed way to make sure someone doesn't get into a fighting game is to try to teach them everything. Whenever someone attends a tournament and asks how to play, and I hear another player trying to teach them every option available to them, I can't even focus on my bracket set. Information overload will take anyone away from a game, and fighting games have a TON of information. Teach them how to attack, let them fight shitty CPUs, and they will learn new moves as they play. Even better if they have someone equally new to learn with. None of us competitive smash players started out with a tutorial on how to do everything. We were kids running around and spamming smash attacks. We learned tilts when we were sick of getting hit for smashing.
Great Video. From my own experience it is really hard to sell a Fighting Game to people as there is so much you need to explain upfront, however those that are willing to put in the effort are really fascinated by them. The biggest problem is most likely the lack of players, so even matches are way to rare no matter how good the netcode is. I am really bad at shooting games, but when I played Overwatch 1 online back in the day there were lots of players to play with who were just as bad as me. This is really rare in fighting games as they are not populated enough, which makes them even hard to recommend if there is not enough enjoyable single player content within the game.
That's why Leon Massey suggest to start with a popular game. Street Fighter V is very chill at low level, for instance, and has a decent number of people. Even Tekken 7 is not bad in that regard. I'm stuck on 1st dan, but I still have 80 wins.
@@MougliFGC Yeah, I noticed that too when I recently started playing Tekken, but honestly I'd love to recommend Granblue Fantasy Vs or DNF Duel to Newcomers due to their relative ease, but can't because of low player pools and thus poor matchmaking. GBFV is a little bit easier to recommend though as the Single Player Mode is enjoyable and even teaches you a teensie bit about every character.
@@DonWippo1 I love GBVS, but even if the player base was bigger, I'd struggle to recommend it to a beginner as it is essentially a 2-touch game. I also wish RPG mode would teach you more about the basics beyond the character's moves.
Honestly don't agree with most of this. Good reactions are integral to most fighting games either natural one's like reacting to whiffs or forced reaction checks such as dust attacks or snake edges. I also don't think most fighting games are hard, instead very inaccessible due to terrible tutorials and matchmaking. Getting into any game that isnt the most recent nrs game/street fighter/tekken and strive surprisingly enough forces you to hop on discord servers, ask for matches and get your ass kicked by people with 100 hours minimun in the game, without being able to learn anything. Add the fact that most also require text book knowledge to play at a remotely competent level, due to necessary option selects, understanding of combo theory which varies from game to game or just as simple stuff as a wakeup system. I also wouldnt undermine the skill ceiling of first person shooters, most evidently arena shooters. Most of my fighting game friends have stated they would play online shooters if they had good aim, which I would argue it alone has an almost infinite ceiling. Add positioning, 3d movement, map awareness, etc. and it all gets quite tricky. I'd say I enjoy fighting games more but after 5 years of playing both somewhat seriously I definitely still have worse aim than footsies and would recommend friends to rather get into shooters instead of fighting games as most are awful to get into, awful to find matches for, gatekeeping communities and often questionable balance. I have hope that street fighter 6 can change this for the better but we'll have to see I do think that was a great video though, despite my rant ♥
Thanks, and fair enough, at the end of the day this is just my opinion :) And some of the points you mention I plan to cover later on, just wasn't in the scope of this video. I didn't say that the skill ceiling of FPS wasn't high, just making a hypothesis that the skill ceiling of fighting games is highER. But as I mentioned in the video, I have no proof and it's just speculation.
A year late to this video but my 2-cents Fighting games are vague af when it comes to learning any kind of information. Even when i was brand new to league, there are lots of subtle design choices that make learning easier. Like, if someone has a spell shield (a shield that ignores the next spell that hits them), not only do they have a blue/purple shield on their character but the health bar itself will have a fancy purple border design on it. Even moreso: once you trigger the spell shield the game will display the message "spell immune" over their character. After seeing it enough times, and seeing your spells not hit their mark, it only takes a couple of repetition before you start recognizing it. Having 2 different visual Ques and text that blatantly spells out what happens might be a bit overkill to some, but it makes teaching new players about this mechanic super easy. I didnt even have to really mention this mechanic when i introduced friends to league, its something they naturally learned about as we went on and id like to thing it was because so many mechanics are blatantly called out in the game like that, that it makes learning league surprisingly easy compared to even something as simple as street fighter. Fighting games are the exact total opposite of this, youre lucky if a mechanic is even mentioned in the tutorial. Like, ive played a crapton of fighting games starting from tekken 4 on the playstation to bb, sf4,5,6, mvc3, skullgirls. And i only just recently, like not even a couple months ago, learned that overheads....exist? Like as a mechanic in fighting games. I thought there was only highs and lows, id never even heard of the term "overhead". I never knew i could be hit while im crouch blocking, so when it happened to me, i was just confused. Did the game glitch? Is that attack just unblockable? Whats going on? Do you know how i learned about it? I played granblue versus rising. In that game, whenever you tried blocking but were hit by an overhead the game displays a thought bubble over your character with two "!!" icons. I noticed that anytime i thought i got hit by weird attacks, that that symbol would pop up. After googling what it meant, i learned it was called an overhead attack and i learned the rest from there. Which is crazy to me, that through ALL the tutorials ive played over the years, i have never ever in my life seen this mechanic mentioned even once. I flat out had no idea it was a thing because for some reason, it wasnt important enough to mention or bring attention to apparently. It feels like every fighting game just assumes you have years of knowledge already so it keeps them in the background and tries not to mention them. Even more simple stuff suffer from this. Like 360 inputs, ive never been able to pull one off, i was so confused as to why. It tells me to spin the stick and im spinning it, yet it never comes out. Why? Well, the game doesnt tell you that, doing a neutral 360 input is insanely hard and only recommended for experts. Youre meant to first use an attack, then while the animation is keeping you on the floor, you do the 360 input so that as soon as its over, you do the command grab. How would you know that? The command menu sure as hell doesnt mention this anywhere. Once again, you're just supposed to know that. And its the only genre i feel that does something like that consistently. How come after i blocked the enemies attack, they managed to hit me first after i tried to retaliate? Because they were safe on block, but good luck knowing what that is. Tutorials dont mention it, and the training mode, while it does display frame data, doesnt explain what frame data...is. You cant really expect a casual player to know frame data of all things, especially when no other game in any genre ever made, makes knowing frame data a requirement for basic play. All games have frame data, but only fighting games rely on them for combos and even stuff like frame traps, etc. Thats where all the perceived difficulty comes from. Its fairly common to play fighting games, get destroyed, and have no idea why. Because the games themselves are horrid at teaching you what the rules are. Hell, if granblue didnt have text popups on the side of the screen telling me my move is invulnerable, i would have never figured that out on my own. Good chance i would have quit playing before i ever discovered that. Having better tutorials, while helpful, wouldnt be the end-all solution to this either. Most tutorials are boring, and not many people wanna do fighting game tutorials in particular because they often are too overwhelming. Undernight in birth has a decent tutorial but after seeing it have like 30+ tutorial levels you have to go through, i wouldnt blame new players for not doing it. Instead, teach the game rules through the actual game. Have more text popups, use universal colors for certain types of moves, add more icons etc. Dont be scared of giving too much info, its better than none at all.
Thanks for taking the time to write this. As I replied to another commenter, I address some of these issues in other videos, and my tutorial series aims to demistify a lot of that stuff. Yes, it would be better if the devs to care of that, and some of them are slowly realising, but in the meantime, there are resources out there.
the main reason I have to not like fighting games is how far too often a normal controller just wont work for it. the Dpad isnt precise enough and the stick is even worse. you NEED a special controller, not an xbox one.
14:40 As someone who plays a ton of both fighting games and fps games, fps games have a much higher skill ceiling than fighting games and fighting games have a much lower skill floor than fps. Fortnite, once the most popular fps, had a skill ceiling to the stars with it's building, editing, etc on top of the non-hitscan gunplay while also being a BR. It's hard for a pure beginner to even connect with a single bullet in an fps while in a fighting game you can very easily attack your opponent successfully. Watch a true beginner try an fps and they literally have a hard time moving the camera and their character at the same time much less even attempting to shoot someone. I've seen people who are literally only able to move their camera while standing still. Staring at the floor while moving etc. In a fighting game, you literally move left or right and press button to hit which is just objectively much simpler. It's a myth that "Skill" is part of the barrier to entry for fighting games. Beginners in fps games get shit on for way longer and way harder than beginners in fighting games in my experience. It's just more bearable since they usually get to play with friends who can carry. Imo it's mainly related the 1v1 nature of fighting games that people don't like.
My dislike of fighting games is more on the technical level. I just don't like how stiff they all feel to control. I prefer games where movement is very fluid with little to no end lag between animations, like fast paced precision platformers, or any game where precise fluid movement is core to the gameplay.
Tbh the stiffness depends of the game, with more standard fighting games like Street Fighter and Killer Instinct you will find a stubbier, more spacing-based style while more anime fighting games like Dragon Ball FighterZ and Blazblue: Central Fiction are faster and more centered in momentum.
Honestly, fighting games are too much of a grind and require too much outside research. You can't learn everything through play like an fps, you have to look up videos and frame data and match ups... And its all just too boring... I play video games for fun, not to research the subtleties of each character. Its why I used to play quake and unreal... Everything you needed to know for success was in the game... You learned it by doing... Not by research. Same with starcraft... You learned by doing... By playing in matches... Everything was more organic
You don't need to frontload info. As someone who's "above average" in the genre, you improve by playing. The only times i ever feel the need to info dig is when there a specific move and even then it's literally just googling "how to deal with x move" and 9/10 someone's asked the same question.
14:58 Man this is so true. I still remember a very specific match I had vs a random online in BlazBlue Cross tag Battle. I was getting absolutely bodied, like, didn't even stand a chance, could barely get a single hit in kind of bodied. But we ended up going again, and the same thing happened round 1. But in round 2, SOMEHOW, I was predicting and reading everything they do and countering perfectly. And I ended up winning round 2 with a perfectly timed cross up. The amount of hype in that single moment was amazing, I didn't even care that I got bodied again in round 3 lol. Fighting games are the most hype genre, easily.
I dislike fighting games because they're unintuitive and they require hundreds of hours of unfun labbing to get good at. Labbing is not fun and if it's a requirement to getting good, then the game is designed to be unfun. So I'm not playing.
Man, INSTANTLY subscribed. This channel looks SO promising. Thanks for putting this content out there! I loved fighting games since my first attempts at Tekken 2, 3, Super Smash Bros Melee, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and the likes. Never been constant in playing them (as I play a LOT of different games), so always stayed definitely on the "casual side" of things, but more and more I'm enjoying their gamedesign, and feeling the appeal of devoting more time to them. I think your channel (together with other stuff I'm finding around youtube) will be a good propeller for this. Thanks!
well 'hardcore' action games such as the dmc series are fairly similar to fighting games actually. it's actually this very game series that made me realize that i will probably enjoy fighting games, and indeed i have!
I think these video essays focus too much on new player experience, yes new player experience is important but you already have thousands and thousands of essays on that, meanwhile you have thousands of medium level players who are already pretty deep into fighting games that end up quitting for completely different reasons.
The single most rewarding experience I’ve ever had in a game was taking a character off a guy who was DESTROYING me in DBFZ. I lost maybe 5 times in a row and when I finally got that character off of them I could tangibly feel and see my improvement. I don’t think any other game genre will ever quite be able to replicate that experience
Difficulty in competitive multiplayer games ahhhbapbapbap you're missing something huge here. Yes, some of these are more or less difficult than others. It's about margin of error and punishment. Maybe those aren't the best terms to use, but let's put it this way. If I'm playing Halo and I overextend by stepping around a corner, I can go "oh shit I shouldn't have done that", step back, and not lose much of anything for doing so. If I was playing CS:GO? Head blown off, round probably lost. Similarly fighting games exist on a similar scale. Part of the reason Smash Bros. feels "easier" to most people is because you have so much mobility that tiny movements don't matter so much. It's not like Street Fighter where stepping 1mm closer or farther with your slowass walk speed could be the difference between being fine and 1/3rd of your health bar disappearing. Not to mention that to most people the damage % system in that game feels a lot less punishing, because rather than just an irreversible loss you're given ample ways to recover and in a sense, your next mistakes become *less* punishing until you're at a point where you could get easily yeeted. And skill floors are *absolutely* a function of difficulty. Your thought that people look at tournaments and think "I need to do that" seems like projection more than anything, the greater question is what skill floor does the playerbase generally sit at and what does it take to hit that skill floor? And *how well is the true skill floor* communicated to the player? (Side note, I learned the same lesson as that "think, don't mash" video by reading through Gief's Gym. Basically it was about training mode reps you can do to get your FGC legs, and there was a massive focus on making your normals second-nature, learning to recognize throws and learning how to walk forward without eating shit. I now feel like I can actually think when I play SFV now. I think THAT skill floor is, in fact, a major barrier because figuring it out is boring as hell, and SFVI is going to be huge for that.) And the thing is, difficulty and the skill floor / ceiling aren't always the same. For instance I wouldn't say that Quake 3 Arena is actually a very *difficult* game. The skill floor includes strafe jumping, and matches involve you becoming extremely disadvantaged over and over again which makes skill gaps between players huge, but at any given moment you can sort of do whatever the hell you want and not instantly eat shit for it. You can continue to just hop around and learn things. There isn't so much of this "think fast, chucklenuts" vibe you get in a game where you're instantly two feet away from someone who's going to beat the snot out of you and walk away after you try *one thing* and screw up *once* before being tossed back into matchmaking.
I actually love fighting games, and I have since I was ~10. I like to see the perspective from other views, because if I'm just looking at fighting games from my own perspective, the ONLY thing I manage to come up with is that same question: "Why don't more people like these games? They're so much fun, though!" Which doesn't clarify a thing XD
There's alot of new fighting game channels coming out of nowhere and i love it! Great first video to help people dip their toes into this Incredible genre.
cool vid! I had a shockingly similar start with the genre, and the times when I gave the misconceptions in this very video as reasons for why I don’t play fighting games are still fresh in my mind. However, now 700 hours deep into strive, what I’m really missing from other multiplayer titles is a reason to keep playing. The fighting games I’ve played don’t give any sort of reward for consistently playing, as well as having very short matches that end up feeling like training for a test that never comes.
Thanks! You make an interesting point about reasons to keep playing, and it's true that fighting games don't really have much in the way of incentives for that. As another commenter pointed out, they don't really do anything to scratch the completionist itch. But I think it goes back to the idea of moment to moment enjoyment, you play because playing is fun, not because it's taking you somewhere. It's closer to a game like say Minecraft, where you create your own objectives. Maybe consider trying some tournaments? It's also worth checking if another game might meet your needs better. For instance, DBFZ and Skullgirls would have longer matches due to the team nature
I think the reward comes when you can find some local tournament to play and enjoy the game with others players. The bounds you make within the FGC is stronger than any other type of game. And the hype is damn real, when you're able to land your combo or do a sick move and hear 10 guys shouting like crazy behind you is like dopamine
For me I avoid fighting games with all my being because I really like decent progression(rpg games are my click because of this). And I'm a terribly SLOW Learner.
Two main problems for me really. The first is the quality of online in many fighting games. The lack of block features/connection quality indicators/active playerbases/rollback are deterrents along with whack lobby systems. Either it takes too long to get a decent match, or you have multiple matches with crazy packet loss wasting your time. Other genres don't have that problem. The second one is the FGC in general. It's difficult to want to stick around at events like locals when all you do is go 0-2 and go home after paying venue fees. There's a lot of big talk about getting people into fighting games, but the FGC seems adamant on doing its own thing instead of figuring out how to get new people in outside of spouting platitudes. The guidance sort of isn't there.
Fair point re: online. I'm not a network code expert, but I assume the other genres aren't as sensitive to latency, and it's mostly peer to peer connections rather than everyone connecting to a server. I wonder how much of an issue this is in strategy games. For the rest, I'm trying to bring a fresh perspective. I didn't talk about everything in one video because it'd be too long.
@@MougliFGC Other games aren't as sensitive to latency, but it feels like fighting games are a decade behind every other genre for online features. In League I can get into a game very quickly. Same with Fortnite, Call of Duty, and even smaller titles like Deep Rock Galactic, Risk of Rain 2. Games also have features to not penalize you if someone disconnects at the start of a game, that sort of thing. In comparison, Strive before last patch, you had to wait for network to connect to even enter the game, then wait some more on network to get into tower. Then you have to find someone to play, sometimes the battle stations glitch, sometimes there's nobody to play as you're the odd player in. Then you get into a game and the other guy loses packets like a mofo, can't block him easily. Some evenings as much of 50% of my matches were packet drop loss city. This isn't a fun experience and makes just playing the game onerous.
@@fiorin_rhiri Strive could do a lot to improve tech-wise yeah, but 50% of matches with connectivity issues that seems very high compared to my experience. If you're the odd one out, standby in training mode should sort you out quickly. For the rest it's a function of the player base. At the time I'm writing this, Deep Rock Galactic has 10 times the active users as Strive does. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem though, this specific issue. I'm doing my part to make that number go up :)
@@MougliFGC I play late sometimes, so from what I understand, people from other regions come to East Coast tower in Strive. So you get matches with high ping, packet loss, and jitter. At least the latest patch added a ping indicator before a match and allows you to block players so they can't tag you around tower.
Although I think MOBAs are the games with the highest skill ceiling, FGs are surely deep as well, and I like how you learn it and how you improve, fighting games incarnate the “Learn to get better”, and there’s only you against yourself(it’s also a matter of tastes, if you prefer solo or team). MOBAs are also difficult to get into!
This! You don't need to be a pro to play the game BUT the reason people think like that is more about youtube. The fgc has no intrest watching gameplay from someone bad so all the gameplay youtubers are top 1% player and most of those are the top 1% of theat top 1%. If you watch anything about strive (except the "lets check out how bad people on floor x are" video. It's ganna be form someone in celestial but the tower has a decent player base as low as like floor 6. I'm prett sure the 50% mark of the playerbase is on the low end of floor 8. The guy who played for 2000k hours in 2 yeara is not representative of what a normal player is like. I only put in q few hour a week and i'm decent. Floor 9 is deffinitly not the same as an evo top 8 contender but that's not realy something i want. These are games. You play them to entertain yourself above all else. Btw. This was a realy good first video.
Thanks! And I agree with your observation. For reference, I'm bouncing between floor 8 and 9, and that's where all my Strive footage comes from. The Strive tower has its own problems, being notoriously top-heavy, because of the system that stops people from falling below a certain floor based on how good the game thinks they are. That leads to wide skill gaps within the same floor. Going back to your initial point, I think there are some beginners who document their journey and showing that it's possible to have a good time at the low end, maybe we need more of that. Sajam has a series where a learns on stream a game he's never played before. But he's an experienced player, so it's not quite the same.
@@MougliFGC you do have people that document their journey. Hell I've done it with multiple fighting games I've played and still do for the most part. It's there. The problem is people don't take the time to go look for it if it ain't "mainstream". They're like the people that are like there's no real R&B anymore....yeah there is. It's always been there. You just don't take the time to go look for it.
The funny thing about fighting games and their fundamentals is you're probably playing some form of them and learning tech without realizing it, other genres effectively trick you into learning the fundamentals that transfer over quite nicely. Side-stepping, side-walking or rolling to avoid a soulslike boss' attack and hitting them when they're open is straight up whiff-punishing, you can even straight up side-walk certain bosses according to handedness or their weak side to avoid most of their attacks (absolutely key knowledge and movement that transfers over to Tekken), same with the Punchout games, you're learning to punish in some form, players with deeper knowledge learn to counterhit, parry, block, or otherwise take more risks for more options, it's all fighting game tech. Things like zoning, cancelling, using knowledge of frame-data to your advantage all absolutely exist outside of fighting games, Dota 2 and GunZ heavily emphasize animation cancelling to achieve deeper gameplay, you will see plenty of zoning in arena shooters with explosive and non-hitscan weapons. I don't think the context is important, I think it's the knowledge gap in not knowing your options that makes the genre harder to approach, and not everyone has the luxury of friends who want to play and improve together.
Just since you mentioned the fact that the gap between the skill floor and ceiling in fighting games is greater than in other games, you can simply look at input complexity to prove this (no need for actual data, other than what is already present in games): Shooter input complexity is usually something like one button to shoot, using mouse movement to move the camera's viewpoint around, and 4 keys to physically move the avatar/camera around in a space. Something like 5 buttons and a variable analogue control. The set of possible actions (possibility space) is equal to the complexity of inputs and their interactions. You can look around while you walk around, you can shoot while you look around, and you can shoot while you walk around. The most complex of these actions is the mouse movement for the camera, but beyond that you have a simple mapping of 1 button equals 1 action. The resulting possibility space is limited by this. Fighting games input complexity is using (at least) 4 buttons to move the avatar around in a space, sometimes reusing those same buttons for implicit actions relative to the opponent (e.g. hold back to block), an additional 4 buttons or more for any set of "normals" (i.e. attacks that require no further input other than a button press), a standard set of two button combinations for certain universal mechanics (e.g. every character could have a "throw" input using two buttons or an "assist" input likewise using two buttons. and finally, a variable set of complex input patterns for special moves (typically special moves may have somewhere between 2 and 4 different inputs PER move, but more complex input patterns can exist). While some of the these inputs cannot interact with each other (e.g. you cannot both move and attack at the same time), there are some that can (e.g. canceling a normal move into a special move), and the sheer amount of inputs required for a successful execution is already pushing the possibility space far above what any standard shooter would have. These are not the only factors to consider, as both game types often have other elements that contribute to the possibility space. For instance, map awareness/discovery is relevant in shooters. It is rarely relevant in fighting games. Fighting games instead have combination discovery (not limited to combos, but also counting mixups, resets and other such 50/50 situations that a player can put the opponent into). When considering map awareness, the maps in shooters often won't change, so the discovery is often limited, and the time to attain full aware of a map will be relatively short. When considering combination discovery, it may be the case that different combos work only on certain characters, or certain 50/50s only work on certain characters, which means that there is a further complexity added per character matchup. Even without using detailed calculations and numbers here, it should be fairly clear that the amount of possibilities in any generic fighting game would vastly outnumber the possibilities in a shooter, by several orders of magnitude.
the only point of contention i have with that is that the skill of navigating and understanding the 3d space is a huge calculation being made all the time. It's not arbitrary, i think it's just so seemingly intuitive, and at the same time complex no body talks about it in the way u would talk about the decisions being made in a fighting game. I think there's a ton of micro decisions being made when peaking a corner and aiming for example. U could list all the possible degrees in which ur aiming but that would seem like its overkill, most people just feel it out.
@@locdogg86 Yeah, look at a match in Quake or Titanfall 2. Both players are moving through a known, learned 3D space, but they're using different weapons, moving at ridiculous speeds compensating your aim for that and enemy evasion attempts.
Yea no, you're oversimplifying fps at a competitive level. From team comp, match ups, loadouts etc. There are multiple guns in the games with different properties as well. You can also add in the movement of the game. FPS is as complex as fighting games at the top level.
once you know a space and how to move in it, it can become trivial over time to perform the same movements. if there is a high execution sequence of moves necessary it's often a single sequence that is internalized. but even so, in this argument your best argument is that FPS skill movement only, which just means it has just one of the previously listed barriers to entry that fighting games already have. So no, despite appearances FPS games still do not have higher complexity than fighting games.
I think fighting games are harder to get into because they are mechanically unintuitive. For example If I want to do something in a shooter say look up, I just push the up button, if I want to attack I push the attack button, if I want to do a unique attack there's more than likely a button for that which does what I instinctively think it should do, even when it comes to the more extreme parts of a shooting game such as lining up grenade in csgo I still just need to look and stand in a specifically way. In fighting games though, if I want to move sure I press a similar move button, but if I want to do something unique, I have to press up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start and my character does a pre programed attack. It makes me feel like i'm doing math as none of the buttons I push indicate to me they would have done ANY of that.
As long as you continue to double down on defending the cult of execution, fighting games will continue to be a niche cult. Stop trying to invite normies.
@@MougliFGC You feel wrong, I've watched it in full. If you can't let go the romance of execution, you will forever discourage developers from innovating the genre, and the consumers from looking back again. EDIT: I say this because the difficulty of translating your intentions is a big enough barrier to self expression that there is barely room for the game to have mechanics.
Fantastic video! Consider me subbed. I'm working on an indie fighting game right now and I've been thinking about how to make things approachable for new players. I think there's a misconception in the FGC that people who don't play fighting games are new to video games in general. That's not true, and I think you nailed it on the head when talking about transferable skills. One additional reason why I'd recommend fighting games to players is the community. Multiplayer games are inherently social, and this is especially true for multiplayer games. That's not just speculation - Quantic Foundry has done studies on gamer motivations. They've found that players who like community also like competition, and vice versa. The two motivations are not mutually exclusive; instead, players who like social interaction don't care whether it's through competition or community. (In psychological terms, this also lines up pretty heavily with being an extrovert, as does thrill-seeking behavior. So an exciting, fast-paced game with a thriving competitive scene is perfect for any extrovert looking for something new.) It's easy to see why fighting games are niche when looking at Quantic Foundry's Gamer Motivation Profile. Fighting games target the Action-Social cluster, but don't fully satisfy the Achievement-Mastery cluster. They satisfy both of the Mastery motivations - Challenge and Strategy - but do NOT satisfy the Completion and Power motivations in the Achievement category. (Quantic Foundry describes the Completion motivation as "The desire to complete every mission, get every collectible, and discover hidden things." It describes the Power motivation as "The importance of becoming powerful within the context of the game world.") Normally, players who like the Mastery motivations also enjoy the Achievement motivations, but fighting games only provide the Mastery side.
Thanks! GekkoSquirrel has a few good videos on UX and accessibility for fighting games. Them's Fighting Herds is also a game that commonly pops up when discussing good tutorials. I especially like the story mode, with the NPCs designed to train you with some of the basics (e.g. the wolf that's begging you to anti-air it). Thanks for reminding me about Quantic Foundry's work. I would have talked about it in this video, but I couldn't remember their name for the life of me 😅. Good luck with your game :)
I liked your analogy comparing fighting games with other skills, like a sport, or an instrument, or even another game. The main difference, at least to me, is that if im bad at a sport and i decide to play against someone better than me, yes ill lose, but ill be actively building my skills and having fun because im actually playing. If im bad at a fighter and i decide to play someone better than me, often times that means i dont get TO play, because the very nature of a combo means that the one getting comboed literally cannot do anything because of hitstun. This is why i think Smash is a such a genius game, because when you lose a match in smash, you still got to actually play.
Super pour une première vidéo, je m'abonne ! Je viens tout juste de commencer les fighting games avec SFV, c'était vraiment difficile au début(et ça l'est toujours), mais après 2 mois d'efforts constants et le niveau qui augmente de semaine en semaine je suis vraiment content d'avoir tenté de m'y mettre sérieusement. J'ai hâte de passer complétement le cap de l'exécution qui est clairement le plus gros mur à abattre pour pouvoir vraiment profiter et apprécier les jeux de combat.
Great video honestly, I hope to see your channel grow even more. I want to see more of a grounded attitude in the FGC honestly, I feel like right now it will truly help people find if and what fighting games are for them. I feel like that alone is something Ive not seen on the FGC YT scene.
TLDR: viewers want to understand what is happening on screen, and if they don't understand, they get intimidated and give up before trying. Here my theory as to why people turn away from fighting games after seeing high level gameplay: I'm also a beginner at fighting games who started in Strive, and have a tiny bit of experience with Skullgirls, SFV, and DNF duel. My main genre of games is actually team based multiplayer games like League and Valorant, so I'll be referencing those two. My theory on why the fighting game skill ceiling is so intimidating is because non-players have no clue what is happening onscreen. In professional Valorant, the players are making dozens of decisions every second and playing extremely tactically with their team, but to a non-players's perspective, they are just clicking on heads and using easy to understand abilities. When they see a character pull out a small orb and then proceed to heal a teammate with said orb, they immediately understand that this ability is used to heal. When they see a character throw a lobbing projectile that explodes and kills an enemy hiding in a small room, they immediately understand that this ability is a grenade. League is a bit more confusing to the average non-player, since it has many, many more abilities and a crap ton more stuff happening onscreen at any given moment. However, the first 10 minutes of any game always starts with two 1v1s, a 2v2, and a player who runs around the map killing monsters and assisting teammates. This is easy to understand. The viewer might not understand what any of the abilities do, but they do know that the goal of a 1v1 is to kill the opponent and destroy the tower. There are clear objectives and slow enough gameplay to process what is happening. Later on in the game, the players start fighting as a team, and while all the visuals going off can be confusing, the viewer has a decent idea of what every character is capable of after watching them for the first 10 minutes. Now, compare that to fighting games. Like League, there is an easy to understand final objective: kill the enemy. Unlike league, there is no long buildup that slowly reveals what each character does. The two fighters immediately explode into rapid combos, mixups, oki, etc, etc. Before the viewer even knows what basic moves each character has, the players are already hitting them with everything in their arsenal. Then the viewer sees the sheer amount of moves there are(looking at you, Tekken) and gets even MORE intimidated. As someone who had never played a fighting game before GGST, I was originally also intimidated. Then, I saw Goldlewis's moveset, which is listed as THREE abilities: minigun, drone, and Behemoth Typhoon, and 2 supers. I didn't know that there were 8 behemoths, but just SEEING that there wasn't an entire essay of mechanics and moves made me much more comfortable picking him up and now I main him.
I agree with the point, but I'm not sure I agree with the League example. I don't understand anything that's going on when watching videos like "Top 10 200IQ plays in League", and I'm not sure how many people who aren't already interested in League really have the patience to sit through the first 10 minutes to be convinced to get into it. On the other hand, anyone can understand moment 37, even if they don't understand the extent to which it was impressive.
I just genuinely dislike the repeated crushing losses. I can stand a loss where victory was pulled to and fro for a while, but losing to odds that are categorically unfair doesn’t encourage me to learn. In a game where I’m losing because I don’t know what I’m doing, I ordinarily stick with it until I understand the proverbial “assignment” as it were. Fighting games don’t… really have that. They huck you into piranha infested waters and tell you to try to swim. No matter how often I try to play them, I never walk away feeling competent, or even just like I learned something without feeling so pissed that it wasn’t clearer from the beginning that I can’t ever say: “I’m learning!” Another issue is that with the lack of proficiency comes an internal dialogue that says: “I’m wasting my time here.” If I could be playing a game I already know how to play, or at least have a solid understanding of what I need to do, I’ll choose that one every time. I’m already stressed out because of work, adult life, and general anxiety. Do I _truly_ need another thing to make me sad, angry, and confused all at the same time? TL;DR: what’s the point of learning a skill like fighting games where the frustration outweighs the benefits, the game and community can’t teach me anyway, and it’s clear the game doesn’t want me to enjoy it in the first place? Working for enjoyment in games without actually ever feeling competent is like going to work and not getting paid.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I have other videos that discuss some of the reasons why the genre feels hostile to beginners and what it could do about it, and I plan on discussing the community aspect of that in the future, in addition to do my part to improve this. For the rest of your argument, while it is a fair observation, it is not unique to fighting games.
@@MougliFGC it’s not unique to them, but I encounter it most often with fighting games. Partially because they interest me a lot, despite how frustrating they are. No matter how many of them I try, I always end up walking away feeling like the game is withholding a ton of things from me simply because I can’t engage with the _exact_ learning processes it expects of me.
Super accurate tbh. I think most problems with fighting games can be worked around, it's just that not everyone wants to have to work to enjoy a game. Nothing wrong with either perspective. Lots of people just want to play games to relax. Others want to play games to develop skills. I just wish fighting games had options for both groups.
I've been playing fighting games since Street Fighter 2 in the 90's. I got into them because of the characters, fighting styles, the music and backgrounds. After a few years I just take my losses and just enjoy playing. I don't play online much unless it's with friends local or online. I suck at Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat but I love playing them regardless and I don't care about the tier list to see what the best character to play as. I play more of the arcade or story modes than anything. For me that's how I practice. It also let's me test out who I'm good with, which is usually the female Fighters. 😁 This is a cool video, man. Thanks for talking about this.
All of these game analyses and video essays are so bingable. I must say, i am savvy for channels like Shounic for TF2, Marblr for OW, Core-A for fighting games in general, so on.
Just in case this wasn't clear: this video is not meant to convince you to like or even try fighting games. It merely aims to make you think about what is it that you really like or dislike about them. If any point of the video makes you go "nope, that's definitely not for me", that's completely okay :)
Hi, as someone looking to get into fighting games, I'm really looking forward to your series. Hberes hoping ti see more.
Also, do you have a discord server?
@@DarkElkin1 I do not have my own server at the moment, I just hang out in Sam's server (link in the video description)
This video deserves more recognition specially for the gamers from both FGC and other game genre communities.
Good content, dude. 😉
me who sucks at performing even basic imputs.
My two cents as someone who has bounced off the genre multiple times:
- The reason the skill floor is more daunting in fighting games than it is in learning to play guitar is because you can play the guitar on your own. You are dictating the whole experience. You can get good at guitar without getting into dozens of guitar battles with strangers where each one declares a winner and a loser. Reaching the skill floor for a fighting games means fighting other people and losing, over and over and over. It's demoralizing and exhausting.
- You make an excellent point that the 'difficulty' in a fighting game just comes down to the skill gap between you and your opponent. Unfortunately, fighting games are a narrow niche with a loyal fanbase and a lot of transferable skills. Last time I tried to play Guilty Gear Strive online as a novice, there was literally nobody online below the highest level of the tower. 90% of the playerbase is people who love fighting games and have been playing them for years, so as someone trying to enjoy them casually I wander into versus mode, try to find someone at my skill level, fail, and fight ultra gods for an hour without winning a single game. Again, demoralizing and exhausting.
- I don't even know what the solution to these problems is! How do I get a foot in the door when everyone inside has years of experience? That skill gap discourages new players, which in turn reinforces the gap because there aren't enough new players coming in. It's a vicious cycle, and I don't know how to fix it.
Good points. You should watch my second video that talks a bit about some of this ;)
I think it's all about this you said: "[With guitar] You are dictating the whole experience". I want to practice a scale, I do it. I set the exact tempo I'm comfortable with. Then I choose a manageable song to learn, break it into parts, etc. With fighting games, all this is out of your control. You don't get to choose what character you're facing, what playstyle the opponent will use, etc. You're sharing control of the experience. Even if you're not easily demoralized by losses, it can be exhausting because it's difficult to parse everything at once.
@@soundrogue4472 I said memorising frame data not part of the skill floor.
I mean, I think the issue is that a lot of people think the versus is the most important part of fighting games. It's the most fun when you are experienced, but you can also have a lot of fun in story mode or just playing against the CPU. I usually don't play versus until I get comfortable with my skills, but I also find playing against the CPU fun.
Well, the solution is to have more players, with a limited amount, the skill gap will always be huge and will always be intimidating to new people, that seens kinda of an obvious solution, but how to increase players numbers? well, make it more acessible, most fighting games are already in most plataforms, so, the only way to make it more acessible, is being cheaper, or better yet, free to play. i know people doesn't like that solution, but far more people are willing to try a game if it's free. and they might stick around.
A big part I think is simply understanding the game. In many fighting games, especially if you're new to them, you often don't even understand what you did wrong when you lost. Why didn't that attack land? Why wouldn't I block that attack? How could he get out of my combo, but I couldn't?
And it can even turn around the other way. You won. But you don't understand what you did differently from last time.
Also the classic. For someone to get that super cool 50+ perfect combo win, someone else had to eat that.
Yes, I plan on approaching that topic :)
The true fighting game skill floor isn't what people really think it is. Teaching a new player a hadouken is way more intuitive than teaching that same player that the heavy kick and heavy punch each have their own damage/range/recovery differences, and even stuff like that really is the most basic, because they do wanna know which button does what, etc.
It isn't that fighting games have MORE information, because generally, they actually don't.
It's the way it's being presented.
Even in games with single-button specials, all the other stuff is there(unless you're Fantasy Strike, which died for a reason...), and it's ALL front-loaded.
Presentation of info in fighting games is either done little or not at all, or in a long series of boring tutorials most players will NOT complete.
Most players just want to be able to hop in and play, which is honestly one reason why Tekken does so well.
I'm not saying it's a mashy series, Tekken fans, so don't get rabid, I'm just saying the way the combo system works allows two brand new players to both mash and see cool shit happen.
When you mash in anime fighters and other 2d motion fighters? You just kinda throw a lot of jabs and sweeps.
Presentation of information is literally the topic of my next video :)
@@MougliFGC I like it. It's definitely one of the most important things. I think we're in the early stages of a fighting game renaissance, and now is the time to get the changes made.
Can you elaborate on this? I think I'm too deep in fighting games to grasp your points, because "mash buttons and see jabs and sweeps" is to my eyes exactly what you do in Tekken as well- with possibly the exception of the capoeira people- and I don't see much of a difference between an anime fighter and a Tekken in this instance? Is it that Tekken just has longer combos that consist of just pressing the face buttons as oppossed to a 2D game using directional inputs for the cool stuff?
@@goranisacson2502 The longest combos I've seen in fighting games are BY FAR in anime games, not Tekken.
Tekken's standard of ~8-10 hits is pretty tame overall.
Mashing in Tekken tends to randomly produce combos, wherein mashing in 2d fighters rarely results in anything other than a jab or sweep.
At any rate, mashing stops working right after rookie ranks, no matter which game it is.
@@antonsimmons8519 cough street fighter 5 sagat,guile and other characters can sometimes be opressive where there playstyle is spamming the same move over and over again. At higher ranks they do that and more. So every fighting game at a high or low people can spam and will abuse the same frame knowing you cant do much about it
I don't like fighting games because I like the sensation of the journey and seeing myself evolving is one of my favorite sensations, I just don't have the patience to do it with fighting games, and doing something without improving is something I don't like, spend days, weeks at a hobby to see little to no improvement is one of the things I hate the most, so fighting games lives in a limbo for me, it's good enough that I want to play but not enough that I want to devolve a ton of time on it, and play for long stretches of time and not improving makes me mad.
Fair enough.
For me, fighting games are just one of the genres that feel the worst to be bad at, and that's always prevented me from enjoying them even though I find them really interesting. Some of this may be that my experience comes from occasionally picking up a controller at the invitation of a friend who clearly has more experience than myself rather than being matched with someone of my own skill level online, but even so: in fighting games, you aren't the only person in control of your character. So when I'm trying to get a hold of the game at the most basic level and seeing if I can remember that combo I thought looked cool, it can be incredibly frustrating when after hitting the first button my character isn't throwing a punch, but actually they're stunlocked midair and then thrown to the opposite side of the map
I would say that this is because you're missing some of the fundamental concepts. But that's not your fault, very few games mention them in their tutorials.
I've found that PVP is one of the biggest turnoffs to me when it comes to any genre in gaming, whether playing against strangers or friends. I can spend dozens of hours attempting to take on a difficult challenge through something like Gungeon or Monster Train, where the feeling that comes from overcoming the challenge is based around surpassing an unchanging skill threshold. By contrast, playing against other players pits you against a constantly evolving metric that only lets you gauge your skill relative to who you're facing. I get little extrinsic motivation from PVP games, which discourages me from sticking with them for much time.
The fighters I've played the longest would be Smash and BlazBlue., both of which have single player modes that I played almost exclusively. I'd rather my skill get a letter grade than know what percentile I'm in.
I totally agree. We'll said. I've never been able to verbalize why I dislike the fighting game genre as well you did there. Good job.
@@charlesqbanks Cheers!
This is something that I’ve always disliked about multiplayer games in general
But in the case of fighting games it’s a little different for me since there’s a certain thrill in matches either in real opponents or just fighting the cpu. I love the genre not for competitive reasons (I suck for a lack of a better word lol) but for the moment to moment gameplay, interesting atmosphere, compelling characters, and lore/story. And the very best fighting games usually have all of these in spades
On the note about focusing on how far you are from “pro level play,” I think a part of that is that Fighting Games can feel really restrictive (and as a result, unfun) until you’re at least competent. Very few feel natural to just pick up and play. As you mention, the skill floor is higher than most genres.
Fighting Games just aren’t intuitive to control for anyone coming from other genres.
I think that’s why Smash is more popular casually, despite still having an incredibly high skill ceiling. Beyond even the simpler inputs, the inputs just make sense intuitively to people familiar with general game controls.
Want to attack up? Press up and attack (up tilt.)
Want to attack up harder? Press it harder (up smash.)
Stuff like that makes it easier than most Fighting Games to pick up, and in turn makes it easier to start having fun enough to enjoy the journey towards the skill ceiling.
That's a great point!
Spot on
I disliked fgighting games because when i was a kid i had mortal kombat where combos literally make no sense
Played Soulcalibur after and it was so much better, everything clicked( I still think MK is kinda whack)
honestly, i despise platform fighters like smash and roa because, to me, it looks like everything is happening by pure chance. got a combo at x percent that lead to me inevitably dying? yeah the game just worked out for you and i'm screaming about why everything lined up perfectly for that situation to happen right then and there.
regular 2d fighters like guilty gear are easier for my head to comprehend without weirdness, though
Really enjoyed this video. I particularly like how you acknowledged the other side instead of just saying they are wrong. I get that fg content creators will approach things from a fgc perspective, but sometimes it gets in the way of having a deeper and more holistic discussion.
Great work and keep it up.
Thanks! And yeah, trying to have a fresh perspective on this.
I had the opposite journey than you did. I was really into fighting games when I was younger because I had friends and family who I could play with. I had that sense of "micro-wins" and learning what works. Fighting games always felt like multiplayer games to me, so once that in-person setting went away, I became more of a casual spectator. That said, I still enjoy single-player games that have fighting game mechanics (like Speed Brawl, River City Girls, F.I.S.T., or Guacamelle)
Great video. Love how you broke down alot of misconceptions, and even tackled the mindset of "Fighting games are for everyone" (a statement I dont really agree with either). Its a bit annoying when the FGC gets an ego about itself
The main thing that happens for a beginner is that they go online, get completely demolished by people who know basic neutral and pressure and then get up because they feel very overwhelmed by it all.
The main problem I think beginners have is just not knowing at all of concepts crucial in fighting games beyond how to combo and lack of teaching tools that aren't player made guides
Yes, I'm planning on talking about it in a future video. It's getting better though: Strive has a command list that's quite useful, and SF6 looks like it'll try to have good tutorias and pre-mad training setups.
So many games really nail their tutorials, namely adventure games and rpgs.
I think perhaps the biggest problem may be that fighting games just toss you right into the ring after about 5 minutes of training and go "well, there's a practice room, some combo trials with no pointers and a movelist you may or may not be able to read. good luck, kid!"
No wonder people hop online with just a combo and a couple cheesy tricks, win maybe a single round and then get mollywhopped for a set before never touching the game again.
I love platform fighters because you don't have to learn crazy long input strings, it's more about reading your opponent. I also love how physics are a factor to consider, and the grab/shield/attack triangle feels like Rock Paper Scissors
“There is a fighting game out there you will love”
There was, and it was beautiful.
RIP Blazblue
Blazblue + nvidia SGSSAA = 2D beauty
I mean if we ever get Virtua Fighter on PC or a new Killer Instinct then maybe. I'm not holding my breath otherwise.
It didn't die lol 🤣
They will make another one I guess
BBCF is still alive though.
As a fellow martial artist, Ive always preached the similarities with fighting games. Besides consistent execution requiring training, you have to measure distance, break up your rhythm to mess up the opponents timing, and think 3 moves ahead. Becoming somewhat competitive in Street Fighter fed my fighting spirit and inspired me to train myself again. I love the competition and learning from my defeats. Great video sir.
actually same
I quit training because of depression but I ended up discovering FGs because of it. The transition is actually really smooth depending on which sub genre you got into.
Now i am back to self training and practicing drills because of FGs
Funny thing about the connection to martial arts: lazy fighters, just like lazy gamers, will blame ANYTHING for their failure to win, so long as the one thing never blamed is themselves for being lazy.
@@antonsimmons8519 another thing is you can go unga bunga in sparring you'll get what on early but enough unga and those with less stamina and training gets gassed
@@lanceknightmare lmao your mentality is that every complaint is legit. scrub.
For me, what irritates me is how I can feel like I'm putting in the right directions on the D-pad/stick, the game (regardless of which one it is) will always register an extra direction, and that single "wrong" imput is enough to prevent a combo from working.
Yeah that's my biggest gripe with controllers nowadays. They still have terrible d-pads, I don't even know how they don't do anything about them and still keep pumping up the prices.
I think the best d-pad I remember is the good ol dualshock 2, from ps2, the rest are dogshit.
@nick This is a problem for me even on arcade machines...
I always use a sn30 pro it’s the best dpad I know of and it’s nice on the old wallet.
Great video.
I also think that what's seem to be the main factor of people not trying fighting game is mostly because of the perception that fighting game are impossible to get into in the first place.
The FGC itself is guilty of that, which is kind of frustrating, I only really see sajam making several videos trying to break that narrative.
Also, I'll steal that board game analogy if you don't mind, it's great ;)
(Et ouai, c'est l'enfer de vivre en France et de ne pas trouver de gens pour jouer à des jeux dont la population est trop basse)
Haha, go ahead and steal that analogy :) And yeah, Sajam's videos are pretty good, will remember to shout them out in the future.
About your question in regards of why many people quit FGs at the door, I have my own little theory about that.
I strongly believe that the "feedback" the game gives you is the main reason.
A fighting game shows the players only "You win" or "You lose", even in combo trials it mostly says "perfect" or "failed". This feedback instantly starts to make you think - mostly subconscious - about the game, your time investment and what you could do else instead of see a "loser"-screen.
Funny thing is that most of the friends whom did started to try FGs and stick to them also like to play soulslike and/or monster hunter - both also games/genres which give the player fast feedback about their skill.
I would love to give now any idea how to change/fix that but I do not see how that could be done in a way which fits the genre....
As someone who loves fromsoft titlesthe issue i have is consistency i just can't consistently do the moves i want to and it feels demoralizing to try to get into blazeblue do a basic terumi combo and get 2D over and over and over again. or in strive playing nago where when i randomly input command grab or 2p at seemingly random. In dark souls as bs as the bosses can be i can still goand do my moves and get what i want
One small thing I love about strive is that it always gives you a compliment after a match, even if you lose. It's a little silly, but it has helped my motivation stay solid.
@@ArkRiley I dont think thats silly at all. Fighting games always had problems with the newer player experience and encouraging the player. I am not saying the games have to coddle the player like a baby but if the games dosen’t even have a tutorial to teach you how to play like back in the day; that’s just a bad game design. I think the mentality that they are going for is that even if you loose we are still winners b/c we tried to play well and its the effort and heart that counts. Like Yugi says, “its not about whether you loose or win Kaiba. Its how you play the game.”
@@ArkRiley As silly as it sounds it's still a move in the right direction and any positive impact is a good impact! I have a friend that would always love looking at those little things the game gives them at the end of the match.
I always ignored those because I've played enough to just be happy spamming DPs and playing the game in general, but for them, that little extra bit matters and that's a good thing on the game's part!
I'd agree that RTS usually has a lower skill floor, but that isn't the issue. The difference is player feedback mechanisms. In a strategy game, there is enough time and immediately available information someone can understand why something didn't work within the match itself. Fighting games, on the other hand, have situations like not inputting quite fast enough changing the outcome or an attack having a weird disjoint on its hitbox where it's difficult to ascertain what exactly happened in a controlled environment with a cooperative second person, let alone in the midst of an actual match.
I actually disagree here. Fighting games are actually fantastic at showing you what is hitting you, and even with just a little mentoring you realize it's a pattern of some kind. From there its a simple matter of problem solving. Asking yourself simple question like "Why did my opponent do that? Where did they do that? What was I doing when they did that?" goes a long way to build competency.
The only time I'd say this isn't true is in cases like fuzzy guard breaks, when attacks that look like they missed actually hits you.
@@ShadowNinjaMaster93 That's not exactly the point I was trying to make. Let's take MvC 3 Zero's Ryuenjin. Now, I make no bones that I'm bad at fighting games, but even I know a well-timed Ryuenjin should be able to counter an aerial given its decent horizontal reach and vertical hitbox above the character. The issue isn't the times I screw it up. It isn't the times I misread and I obviously don't pull it off in time. It's the times I pull it off, but am just a couple of frames too slow. I used the right attack, I inputted it correctly, but I was less than human reaction time slower, so it didn't work. That can't be read in a match. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say very few casual players are watching replays with hitbox data to figure out why what should work, didn't.
And, while that specific instance is a rare case particular to me (I don't play a lot of other Zero players), I've had opponents more skilled than me wonder how things I was doing were happening across several titles, so it isn't unique and it's obviously more common with some attacks.
I want to like fighting games but learning them is like a full time job
Learning any skill-based activity is going to feel like a full-time job if you set your goals unreasonably high.
No need to forced yourself. Video Game created to releasing stress, not causing it!
I'm someone who has been trying to get into the genre since 2018 and this is a great video BTW. I kinda wanna toss out a couple things since I have a unique experience with the genre due to some disabilities I have. Firstly, despite what I've tried, I kind of doubt I've even really reached the skill floor in the genre and it's part of the reason things have felt so crushing, I can't find a win satisfying when I don't get why it happened and a loss feels crushing when I can't tell what I did wrong. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that I can deal with extreme amounts of overstimulation, and plenty of these games push me to a point where I can barely tell what's happening, if I can see what's happening at all, I even had a game I clicked with ruined by its particles preventing me from being able to tell what moves my opponents were using in blockstrings so I had no hope to try and read a mixup. Any time anyone got hit you might as well of turned the screen pure white and muted the audio for how well my mind could process said information.
I primarily wanted to add this since it feels there's a genuine issue with accessibility in the genre, even outside of motor and executional requirements, and I think it's the biggest thing that's kind of hampered a genre I know I could enjoy a lot without it.
Thanks a lot for sharing your perspective, and sorry to hear that the games you like aren't accessible enough to you :(
In a future video (most likely the next one), I want to talk about the ways the genre isn't helping itself getting new people to stay, and feedback is going to be one of the points.
A good example I like is GBVS, which has clear feedback for "you high blocked a low" and "you low blocked an overhead".
@@gaelurquiz5755 I'll have no ableism around here. Capcom themselves recognise the importance of accessibility considering the options they're adding in SF 6. Disability or not, the points that the commenter is raising remain valid, being able to understand what's happening on screen is important and yes, overdone VFX can get in the way of that.
Please be nice to each other.
@@gaelurquiz5755 I don't want to start an argument or seem like I'm attacking you at all, but I take it I didn't make it clear that I do actually like these games. The reason I sounded so negative is because accessibility is a real issue, and often can be implemented without affecting balance or gameplay too much or at all, but it isn't, and it leaves people like me unable to play games they'd otherwise love. Personally, I do feel allowing more people to play these games would just make a better space for everyone who enjoys them.
One of the reasons I like Dead or Alive games so much is because you can turn particle effects off and it doesn't have very much of them even if you leave them on. These games are so beautifully animated I want to see the moves. I have played fighting games for almost three decades now and I usually gravitate toward older games because they didn't have this visibility problem. I can play something like Tekken 7 for sure because of my experience but it's one of those games that one could argue has too many particle effects even for basic strikes.
@@gaelurquiz5755 There's a huge difference between a game's accessibility and a game's ability to accomodate for disabilities. More accommodation is always better, and can literally only do good for the community.
For example, consider how labeling colors can help a colorblind artist get a better idea of what to use. It's a small addition, but can make all the difference in that person's artwork. In fact, it probably can even help people who aren't colorblind.
If we apply that to gaming, consider the benefits of adding colorblind modes (the more customizable, the better), the ability to reduce or remove particle effects (for visual clarity, or those prone to epilepsy), or maybe even simple button remapping (even I use this one). All of these things can make a massive difference, and should be implemented in every game that have the development time for it. It expands the audience these games can reach, and removes unnecessary handicaps for a more even playing field overall.
I remember having this defeatist attitude back when I was playing Tekken 6 and Tag 2, where I was constantly under the impression that I wasn't making any progress and that I was underperforming. Luckily, I was given a real morale boost by someone online who thought I was doing much better than I thought. Once Tekken 7 came out, I managed to climb all the way to the purple ranks. Turns out all that grinding in the older games really had made a difference in my performance, I just lacked any sort of feedback from other players.
Because of this, I feel like the communal aspect is somewhat key to the whole fighting game experience and it's something you have to actually seek out yourself, since there's no real team chat functionality like in hero shooters or MOBAs. I do get the feeling however, that some players love to gatekeep their communities and not all regions in the world are as lucky when it comes to actual fighting game scenes. The idea of having "locals" in the northern parts of Sweden where I'm from is basically unheard of. It's a barren wasteland if you're looking for a community.
Yeah, I don't think locals are really as common as FGC folks would like you to believe. Gerald from Core-A has a good take on the need for community, and Rubbish literally just posted a new video touching on that as well.
Man, good video!
Even though you don't have a lot of experience in FGs, your thought process about how FGs are PERCEIVED is spot on.
I've been playing for 12 years and it took me a few of those to realize a lot of the points you make here.
Deserved sub
I like fighting games because I could see improvements when I fight more experienced players in Tekken and when a setup I use on them finally works makes the match a million times more satisfying. I don't mind losing if it's the key to getting better.
Yo someone else who notices the many similarities between FGs n martial arts? YEEEEEE
Grew up on both
Still bad at both
@@crinsombone5380 it happens, youll get there
Martial arts have better hurt and hitboxes.
@@darksiders2002 they do be more accurate to the visuals
Yo someone else who notices the many similarities between FPS n shooting a gun? YEEEEEE
For me, one of the biggest barriers to entry was just getting the inputs right. For FPS, they all play almost identical (WASD for movement, left click to shoot and so on), and as you said in your video, I couldn't transfer my experience from any other game. BUT I tried some fighting games, Thems Fighting Herds and SC5 being those with my most playtime, also some Smash, which I was very competent in, as a casual player. I didn't spend too much time in online play because I can't consistently get the inputs right. Especially diagonals and soft tilts are really hard for me. I don't get the feeling of competence when I can't even get the controls down.
I tried to get into fighting games a few times, it hypes me a while but it falls off very fast. This is probably going to be a rather long rant, I try to keep it short but it has many points I wanna go over. I played many PvP games and generally like to compete.
Fighting games are terrible "games":
You have a versus mode, a usually rather trashy story mode, sometimes an arcade mode(which is just versus but multiple in a row).
If you don't like the competitive scene or have a friend you regular play with you have no reason to play for more than 20h. There is no content.
I think smash bros is the best game for actually having content to play.
Tutorials usually suck as well.
You said knowing frame data isn't that important, but shouldn't that still be in the game?
Would it be too hard to make a visual effect if a move is plus/minus on block?
Would it be too far to have smash characters have one of 5 weight classes instead of assigning everyone an distinct value?
It it really necessary for GG to have one singular move to change based on proximity?
GG gatling system "some moves can cancel into some other moves. Which one? Figure that shit out yourself!"
If fighting games truly want to make the entrance easier, they should start with the core concept, not with easier inputs for supers or that stuff what the fgc usually cries about when they say "they casuallize my game".
Playing against "better" players wont help you(if the gap is too big).
You end up in long optimized combos and it doesn't matter what you do, because you will spend 80% of the match time in hitstun.
This is just why I quit Yugioh. The game developed into a style where the goal is to make your opponent not play the game.
Finding players you can actually grow with is hard. And thats just the skill issue, there is still the part of actually getting along with them.
Effective training by "not playing". I want to get better by playing the game, not spending 3h in training mode to try combos.
Mechanical skill-checks don't matter for me.
This might be because I literally had to rebind some keys because I frequently hit wrong buttons, that how inaccurate I am. But a game-sense/knowledge check would always impress me more than this famous street fighter clip.
For some reasons every fighting game I tried just sucks at balancing.
Smash Ultimate had like 15 balance patches and literally nothing changed except for 5 characters in a 80+ roster. And it just sucks to see fox being a top tier for the entire series.
Pokken instantly got dropped because it didn't sold well or something(surprising the servers are still up).
GG Strive refuses to nerf strong characters and only patch once a year.
I know balance isn't that important on lower skill level, but if you know what you're doing you can still abuse a s-tier because they mostly have a thing that breaks the fundamentals of the game. Anji vs Sol feels bad, regardless of the floor. LittleMac vs Fox will always be one sided.
Fighting games just go further to push what the community likes: Long Combos.
So every game becomes like 2-3 touches and you're dead. A friend showed me a DBFighterz final and I was like "how is that even fun? Is that the reason they have 3 characters because they die in one combo?"
In GG you even combo them if they block.The damage is just lower, but the one in the offense just keeps hitting buttons and the other stays in hitstun for half the match.
Smash 4/5 online SUCKS
The community: For every "just have fun", I hear "if you can't even do this basic combo with 5 frame perfect inputs in a row, you don't have to show up again" twice. A little exaggerated but the direction still is the same. I faced a lot of elitism and gatekeeping. Like you need a GC controller to fully enjoy smash bros...
Thanks for taking the time to write this, you're making some good points I plan on covering in future videos.
One thing people keep forgetting about Moment 37 - It was actually both execution AND game-sense/knowledge check. The first hit of that particular attack cannot be parried on reaction, and thus knowing the EXACT moment the move is going to come out is crucial.
These are all very valid points. A thing that ive noticed in my 30 years playing fighters is because they were originally ports from the arcade the features like single player and extra bonus stuff was never expected at first. But obviously as time progresses the genre should as well. Outside of a few series...they havent. And that's really hurting the genre.
If I was just getting into video games now and was not around in the arcade days I most likely wouldnt even bother with fighting games, truthfully. But I love this genre so much so I'm essentially expecting the issues and dissatisfaction but know ill find something worth it if I look hard enough.
Bottomline...fighting games are a very hard sell. No doubt. Fantastic video too, gonna spread this around the community.
You make some valid points but Issues you have are none of these things, you simply don't want or don't know how to learn to play. It is like you are hardstuck in your own thinking refusing to do things that will make you enjoy it.
SamSho seems right up your alley, mate.
Phenomenal first video! Definitely subscribing.
I've grown up with quite a few fighting games my whole life, like SF Alpha3, MvsC series, soul caliber, MK, ect. I'm not the greatest if you compare me to those who play them more often, but I loved the progression I made from playing them if I'm pushed to it.
I usually thought fighting games would be the easiest to get in to for a novice, either by just sticking to basic attacks or button-mash luck. Wasn't aware people now-days think it's one of the hardest, but from what you presented, I understand why. That feeling that they either have to be the best or not try at all.
I went through your same journey in 2019 due to mk11, but moreso in 2020 due to covid. It's such a journey, 3 years in and I still feel like I am a new player. Seeing improvement is addicting though. I'm watching this for the second time after your newer video, you make great stuff! Looking forward to whatever else you have coming.
I feel that the biggest thing stopping me from liking fighting games is the fact that I really don’t enjoy 1v1 games. It feels much more rewarding to me if I feel I have contributed to collective rather than myself because even if we lose at least I know that I have contributed my part by helping others and being the best teammate I can. I enjoy support roles which is why it’s hard for me to get invested in a fighting game which requires is a much more aggressive kinda mindsets. This has been really annoying for me becuase I really love the art, music and characters of guilty gear but feels like I’m missing a huge chunk by not really liking how it’s a fighting game.
That is always frustrating when an IP we're interested is in a genre we don't like :'(
RE: People who are reluctant to play because of skill ceiling.
I thought of a spectrum for games to try and explain this : How much a game informs you of what you currently cannot use. If you can't use a strategy or tool within the game (either locked behind skill or progression), the game may be designed in a way that you don't know you are missing something.
Quick example: Metroid will lock areas or rooms from the player because they are opened by a specific weapon upgrade. In the older games, it won't really tell you anything there and you have to infer that by backtracking through the map over time. A game that does the same thing but will tell you is the latest God of War. There are environmental puzzles, but some require a certain unlock via progression. If you stick around the area without the upgrade, the NPC character you hang around will tell you outright "I don't think we can interact with this yet, looks like we need some equipment".
I think fighting games are closer to the God Of War end of the spectrum. Meaning that you will often know that there is something to be known and you don't know it yet. Except it's not gonna be progression and unlocks that get you there, it's going to be study, reflection, training, asking questions. And I think that combination of things is just super grating for a lot of folks that can see they are missing viable strategies to play the game. Even if those strategies are just "I don't have the optimal combos and I'm gonna need to learn them all". One of the big ones is the Tekken move list. Sure you know you can reach the point where you've memorized the frame data and punishes to moves, but from day 0 (as a more experienced player) you also know you don't know that stuff. I think it's also easy to consider those activities as something different "playing the game", it's not versus mode, it's study. People want to play a game to play it, so if the other modes in their mind is not framed as such...
The same style of arguments and phrasing has been used for other genres like RTS. People will unironically use "You're not playing the real game until you have X, Y and Z". I find the idea a bit silly, but I think that's the dilemma at work here.
Honestly, fighting games usually don't attract much players as other games because they are simply hostile to video-game players in general
Most players want (obviously) a full game experience where they can have multiple ways of entertaining themselfs and consume the contents that said game has to offer, but what the majority of fighting games has to offer is a game with shallow/no story, no singleplayer content, no non-competitive modes where you can just relax and have fun, not many variety of content in the game at all and even one of the main points of the genre that is their characters are usually behind a wall of paid DLCs.
In the end, all fighting games usually has to offer is a competitive 1v1 multiplayer experience were you have to invest a lot of time and effort just so in the long run you can START having fun. It simply doesn't have the whole package of a full game that most other games have, and to be honest, how can a player start invest himself in the hardcore side of a game if the game doesn't have any content to make you connect with it? That's why people are more inclined to invest their time,money,effort and blood on something they have a deep connection or love.
In the point of view of a new fighting game player, this is a half-baked empty game genre that forces you to suffer without any real reward besides the one you made up yourself in your own mind, and it is expensive as fuck and most of the community is toxic.
I am writing this as a fighting game player that started playing fighting games mainly because i like the idea and journey of struggling to achieve something and improve despite the difficulty or if i'm only losing. If wasn't for that, i would probably just watch the tournaments and play a little of some arcade mode of some games
Thanks for sharing your perspective!
In other games, the road from bad to good has rewards in between. You play a little bit better, you get a little bit better results. In fighting games you get none of that, you need to fight yourself through an ocean of punishment and losses until you are good enough to enjoy the game. Thats what stops me at the door. I play for fun, not to work to be able to have fun, if a game isnt fun out of the box, why bother?
It’s the same process for every game whether it be a moba, a shooter, or strategy game. You still improve, you learn little things along the journey, and you begin to do cool, self expressive things. Fighters just require different mechanics that you won’t develop unless you play fighters. You have to “work” in order to learn any game and it’s mechanics
You won’t pick up any new game and be great at it
@@rodsjournal6012 I agree with that, but with most games the learning process is part of the fun (admittedly subjective here).
In terms of boxing, fighting games are like fighting Mike Tyson till you're good enough to enjoy it, other games feel like going to the gym and punch a bag to learn the basics.
One builds me up, the other just breaks me down.
@@Proxyincognito perfectly said
I feel like this is the other side of the Polygon video about getting into fighting games. You went over every point that friends of mine have made about why they can't get into fighting games & provided succinct solutions to each of them. Great video!
Just the fact that you go over who may not like fighting games is a big part of what makes this video so good. As I find that period who don't care about getting better at something and just want to pull off cool plays are unlikely to get into fighting games or they just end up as low ranked spammers
Great video! what got me into fighting games was the single player content of smash bros, especially smash bros brawl and project + then slap city. purchasing games like this garentees a full single player experience if you don't like the multiplayer
Love, love, _love_ promoting the deemphasis of "wins" and "loses". This mindset seems to bleed into far too much, whether it be the stakes of digital and analog games (especially elimination from further event participation) or the value judgments on how "wins" and "loses" are approached (so much balking at "participation trophies" and a perceive devaluing of those who "are the best"). We could use more celebration of the bouts themselves, rather than the lifeless tally boards.
The biggest thing I see frustrating new players is they don't like it when pressing a button doesn't do anything. For example, when they're in hit-stun or the opponent is doing a combo. They'll say things like "what the hell? none of my moves work!". They also hate blocking, which compounds the problem. This frustration is what leads to mashing because when they mash at least something happens sometimes.
Yeah, this is very accurate, and even after playing for years, the same situations can bring back those feelings of annoyance + frustration.
The two biggest things making me border on quitting the genre as a whole would be combos and inputs, both of which heavily emphasize skills that I find neither fun nor impressive. In most games, if you take a hit, you take that bot’s damage an move on. Maybe you’re out in a disadvantageous situation and need to figure out how to escape, but never are you unfairly punished for your mistakes. Fighting Games, on the other hand, immediately take away your controller on hit and ask that you watch as the other player executes their muscle-memory combos without any possibility of escape. I value things like neutral and positioning, not who can experience more of the game at once. The only reason I feel they’re still so heavily emphasized is because they LOOK fancy, which makes for a good spectator sport.
Inputs, by extension, emphasize dexterity, which isn’t what I’m looking for in a videogame. Dark Souls, Hollow Knight, or hell, any turn-based RPG will always allow you to use the move you want if the conditions are met. So long as you aren’t doing something else or dead, you can use the move so easily that it doesn’t even feel like you’re using a controller. Wanna do a slightly ranged attack in Street Fighter, though, and suddenly you’re typing in cheat codes that don’t even resemble the move’s in-game motions. I don’t think there’s ever a reasonable excuse for accidentally using a move you didn’t mean to, as that’s a sign of poorly-designed controls. When whether you win or lose comes down to whether or not you moved the stick slightly farther than you should’ve for a super input, suddenly the game feels less like a high-octane test of skill and more like glorified RNG. I would ADORE seeing a Fighting Game that does away with these mechanics, if not just to see how it would play out. I know full well there are other ways to make for much deeper substance and entertainment, if it would just be explored.
I have things to say about combos (or more accurately a specific combo tool), but that's another video.
As for inputs, a quick glance at genre's landscape shows that it's moving in the direction of simpler inputs (SF 6 modern controls, GBVS, DNF Duel, Tekken 8 assist mode, Project L, etc) whether the community likes it or not. Although it's worth pointing out that while it may or may not be debatable whether simple inputs are necessary for accessibility, many games have proven that it is not sufficient.
this is a damn good video, i can’t wait to finish it and check out of your vids! as someone in a similar position like you, and has thought about this a decent amount, i’m glad to see other people talk about it
edit: damn this is your first vid, what an amazing start my guy!
FG have a similar problem to RTS. You're gonna play bots who don't actually play realistically, and then you'll play a real pvp match where the opponent just has so much more knowledge and skill that its an immediately overwhelming loss, and there's no margin to it. It's either play the campaign and be bored with how easy it is, or be the bot to a bunch of people who know every input, combo, and have the timings down like math.
People don't have those skills until they're at significantly high ranks. They just seem like they do because they're outplaying you. Most likely they've played just enough to know how to punish a common move you're relying on.
Great video, Mougli! Just wanted to add to your question about "Why do people leave at the door?" compared to other genres or activities. Because a loss on your own is harder than a loss with other people. When the loss is directed at you, it is more soul-crushing and makes you second-guess your own self, thus leading into you just giving up on said activity. Fighting games have the innate ability to make them part of your personality. As it is a bit like chess, where one wrong move can spiral into a dozen more.
This is spot-on.
Fighting games make you check your self-esteem, especially in those dreaded matches where you're up against someone all the way at the other side of the skill ladder. They wipe the floor with you, regardless of your skill, and sometimes you get depressed, because even if you've acquired a lot a skill, it sometimes *still isn't enough*.
Fighting games really make you have to come to terms with failure. That's why there's so many examples of "sore losers" out there, who lost to an opponent and do all they can to not accept the simple truth that they lost. Every time someone loses, they have to grieve.
I grew up with fighting games, always a casual. I then stopped playing them somewhere between 2014 and 2020. I then booted up KOF 13 for nostalgia, and the simple feeling of the game gave me an epiphany, and I'm a dedicated player (of many games) ever since. Being part of communities like Discord also helped me SO much to have the fuel to keep pushing.
This video deserves more recognition specially for the gamers from both FGC and other game genre communities.
Good content, dude. 😉
What made me frustrated and hopeless about fighting games was not the feeling that the skill ceiling was too far away, but that I could not literally understand how to get better, I didn't understand why I couldn't get my hands to do a specific maneuver correctly or what I had done incorrectly.
Some of it is due to the game, I talk about it in my other video :)
That is one nice video you have there.
You bring up nice points, and your decision to not show any top level play in your video is very interesting and encouraging.
Seeing someone do, or block a several inputs long string is intimidating to me.
I've been at the figurative 'door' to the genre for a while, and the part that's holding me back from going in is a mix of _got nobody to play with locally_ and being overwhelmed on where to start, which game to pick.
And the urge to study up way too hard on whatever game I'd choose.
I'll definitely stick around for more videos by you!
Just found your channel, and I'm really excited to see more content soon!
I've tried fighting games before but never really got into them. They've always seemed so daunting. My only real experience were Netherrealm games, and very little smash. Often times I'd get destroyed by my friends, and while I did have a bit of fun it ultimately left a sour taste in my mouth. I never really tried online for this reason since if my friends who barely play FGs can beat me I stand no chance online.
But like you said, sometimes it's a matter of the right game, and my opinion changed when trying out GGST. I found it honestly pretty fun to pick up and learn. So I decided to do something I never do and tried online. Let's just say I got my ass handed to me pretty much every time even by people on the lower floors. Even though I was losing pretty bad I was still having fun. Although I was a super noob (and still am) it ultimately got me way more into the community and wanting to learn more about it.
I haven't played in a while
though for a few reasons. Like I still have a lingering fear of losing even though I really don't care as much, and since I'm an introvert, meeting new people to practice with is a bit hard. Although mostly since I'm usually playing other games with my friends. But this video has encouraged me to get up and try fighting games again to hopefully improve. I look forward to seeing more breakdowns and essays going forth!
Great points made at 14:00 ish moment to moment is incredibly important and often overlooked!
Great video, well worth the wait ♥️!
Great video and observations. I agree that it is very much about finding the right fighting game. I largely ignored fighting games growing up but decided to give DOA a shot on a whim after trying several other titles that didn't leave much of an impression on me. I ended up really liking the hold system and I consider the back-and-forth gameplay of DOA the closest any fighting game has gotten to feeling like a real fight. I eventually ended up getting GBVS and that has gone on to become my go-to 2D fighter. The characters I play all have parries since I've come to learn I just enjoy access to that mechanic.
This is a great intro video to the fighting game genre.
Like you said, there are those for whom the games just won’t jive with, but I think many people can be intimidated away when they might actually enjoy the games.
There's a reason they're intimidated, ya know. Constantly being humiliated and stomped into the ground ceasing being fun after a short time.
@@MarquisLeary34 I mean yeah, but that’s not exclusive to fighting games though.
You have to start off a lot of things bad and just learn by losing. Like even if the game was perfectly putting you against people your level you would lose 50% of the time.
If that part is what’s intimidating then fighting games probably aren’t for you. And that’s okay.
@@MarquisLeary34 Thats why some people are right. "Its all game until someone lose it eye"
@@Kintaku it's not exclusive to fighting games but I think it's the most prevalent with fighting games.
Just like bugs aren't exclusive to Bethesada games, but bugs are usually prevalent in their games much more than with other devs.
@@channel45853 lol that’s funny. Fair though.
On the specific topic of being willing or unwilling to put the time in to learn fighting games.
I less feel like I'd want "instant gratification" and more that I feel like I'd have to essentially dedicate myself to playing a single game for the rest of my life when I'm someone who likes a number of different genres. And that most of my life I've tended more towards singleplayer RPG type experiences. Though I've also gotten more into Roguelikes and Shooters which are arguably on a similar level of "you gotta take time to git gud" recently (Specifically, Skul the Hero Slayer and Splatoon 3 respectively)
Edit: Also mentioning Splatoon, I think that one of the things that really helped me to actually get into shooters through splatoon is the fact that it has a singleplayer campaign that's actually really good at giving the player a basic understanding of how the game works. How to Move, How to Aim, How to handle different situations and even how Turf Control works until you are... not quite a master, but I think that once you've taken on Beyond Alterna you're probably more than ready for casual, and might even be ready for your first ranked match.
As I mention in another video, a lot of people play several fighting games side by side, so unless you're trying to become a literal professional, it's unlikely you're going to dedicate yourself to a single game.
@@MougliFGC That's fair, mostly just thought I'd note it as something that had held me back from just about ANY competitive game for a long time, and that only recently got broken by Splatoon (which I think I mention in another comment).
Like... To use a non-fighting-game example: TF2 or CSGO, I know they're some of the best shooters out there, but I ALSO know that you're fairly likely to queue up with someone who's played the game for a literal decade even if they AREN'T explicitly "Professional".
Execution is often overated, a wise man once said: Justin Wong is one of the best and his execution is basic
That is really true and most of what you can carry for other games isn't related to execution, needless to say that depends on the game but you CAN take notes around and join those game discords etc, people that are on social environment tend to be really friendly and helpful, they want to enjoy the games as much as you do and want YOU to enjoy them too, so it's a good place to start.
As someone who got into fighting games 6 months ago, I agree 100% with you. I love how you are not bragging, just amazingly honest!
i always wanted to play fighting games, but never could get good, so just didnt like them, this video was very helpful and inspiring. Thanks!
Even at 38000 views, this video is criminally underrated. What a beautiful way to put it, I might just hop in and try to get my butt kicked a few times now!
Overall i mostly agree with everything you said. But there is one thing I reaally disagree, and that is the size of the skill gap compared to other games, specifically rts. I play a lot of starcraft and age of empires, and i gotta say, rts are very similar to fighting games in a lot of ways. Both are 1v1 focussed, take a similar amount of time to get into and have a significantly lower barrier of entry than outsiders assume. But one key difference i personally see between these 2 types of games is the sheer infinity of skill ceiling in rts.
You can reasonably reach mechanical perfection with a certain fighting game character, from where on further skill improvement mainly derives from your ability to make good decisions and to read your opponent. Mechanical Perfection in RTS however is not reachable by a human beeing. There is pretty much an infinity of possibilities in how good you could move your units, and moving your units is not the only thing you'll do. Micro (your ability to move units) and macro (your ability to manage your base) cancel each other out in a lot of times, making games about choosing mental priority on top of each of these 2 things beeing very complex on their own and sometimes crossing over into each other.
And on top of all that strategy games also have the layer of, well, strategy. This is not to say there is no strategy in fighting games, but the net of possible things you could do in an rts is just way larger.
Im not trying to make strategy games sound superior or anything, i love fighting games, just pointing out that I am 100% convinced that the possible skill gap in strategy games is not only comparable to fighting games, but way larger
Bro, i assumed you where a really big channel, well known just not by me.. but 440 subs is CRIMINAL. You did awesome bro. Got my sub for SURE
As a competitive Smash player, and someone who's decent at Strive (I've won a few university tournaments at my sizable university), the most guaranteed way to make sure someone doesn't get into a fighting game is to try to teach them everything. Whenever someone attends a tournament and asks how to play, and I hear another player trying to teach them every option available to them, I can't even focus on my bracket set. Information overload will take anyone away from a game, and fighting games have a TON of information. Teach them how to attack, let them fight shitty CPUs, and they will learn new moves as they play. Even better if they have someone equally new to learn with. None of us competitive smash players started out with a tutorial on how to do everything. We were kids running around and spamming smash attacks. We learned tilts when we were sick of getting hit for smashing.
Great Video. From my own experience it is really hard to sell a Fighting Game to people as there is so much you need to explain upfront, however those that are willing to put in the effort are really fascinated by them. The biggest problem is most likely the lack of players, so even matches are way to rare no matter how good the netcode is.
I am really bad at shooting games, but when I played Overwatch 1 online back in the day there were lots of players to play with who were just as bad as me. This is really rare in fighting games as they are not populated enough, which makes them even hard to recommend if there is not enough enjoyable single player content within the game.
That's why Leon Massey suggest to start with a popular game. Street Fighter V is very chill at low level, for instance, and has a decent number of people. Even Tekken 7 is not bad in that regard. I'm stuck on 1st dan, but I still have 80 wins.
@@MougliFGC Yeah, I noticed that too when I recently started playing Tekken, but honestly I'd love to recommend Granblue Fantasy Vs or DNF Duel to Newcomers due to their relative ease, but can't because of low player pools and thus poor matchmaking. GBFV is a little bit easier to recommend though as the Single Player Mode is enjoyable and even teaches you a teensie bit about every character.
@@DonWippo1 I love GBVS, but even if the player base was bigger, I'd struggle to recommend it to a beginner as it is essentially a 2-touch game. I also wish RPG mode would teach you more about the basics beyond the character's moves.
Honestly don't agree with most of this.
Good reactions are integral to most fighting games either natural one's like reacting to whiffs or forced reaction checks such as dust attacks or snake edges. I also don't think most fighting games are hard, instead very inaccessible due to terrible tutorials and matchmaking. Getting into any game that isnt the most recent nrs game/street fighter/tekken and strive surprisingly enough forces you to hop on discord servers, ask for matches and get your ass kicked by people with 100 hours minimun in the game, without being able to learn anything.
Add the fact that most also require text book knowledge to play at a remotely competent level, due to necessary option selects, understanding of combo theory which varies from game to game or just as simple stuff as a wakeup system.
I also wouldnt undermine the skill ceiling of first person shooters, most evidently arena shooters. Most of my fighting game friends have stated they would play online shooters if they had good aim, which I would argue it alone has an almost infinite ceiling. Add positioning, 3d movement, map awareness, etc. and it all gets quite tricky. I'd say I enjoy fighting games more but after 5 years of playing both somewhat seriously I definitely still have worse aim than footsies and would recommend friends to rather get into shooters instead of fighting games as most are awful to get into, awful to find matches for, gatekeeping communities and often questionable balance. I have hope that street fighter 6 can change this for the better but we'll have to see
I do think that was a great video though, despite my rant ♥
Thanks, and fair enough, at the end of the day this is just my opinion :) And some of the points you mention I plan to cover later on, just wasn't in the scope of this video.
I didn't say that the skill ceiling of FPS wasn't high, just making a hypothesis that the skill ceiling of fighting games is highER. But as I mentioned in the video, I have no proof and it's just speculation.
A year late to this video but my 2-cents
Fighting games are vague af when it comes to learning any kind of information. Even when i was brand new to league, there are lots of subtle design choices that make learning easier.
Like, if someone has a spell shield (a shield that ignores the next spell that hits them), not only do they have a blue/purple shield on their character but the health bar itself will have a fancy purple border design on it. Even moreso: once you trigger the spell shield the game will display the message "spell immune" over their character. After seeing it enough times, and seeing your spells not hit their mark, it only takes a couple of repetition before you start recognizing it. Having 2 different visual Ques and text that blatantly spells out what happens might be a bit overkill to some, but it makes teaching new players about this mechanic super easy. I didnt even have to really mention this mechanic when i introduced friends to league, its something they naturally learned about as we went on and id like to thing it was because so many mechanics are blatantly called out in the game like that, that it makes learning league surprisingly easy compared to even something as simple as street fighter.
Fighting games are the exact total opposite of this, youre lucky if a mechanic is even mentioned in the tutorial. Like, ive played a crapton of fighting games starting from tekken 4 on the playstation to bb, sf4,5,6, mvc3, skullgirls. And i only just recently, like not even a couple months ago, learned that overheads....exist? Like as a mechanic in fighting games. I thought there was only highs and lows, id never even heard of the term "overhead". I never knew i could be hit while im crouch blocking, so when it happened to me, i was just confused. Did the game glitch? Is that attack just unblockable? Whats going on? Do you know how i learned about it? I played granblue versus rising. In that game, whenever you tried blocking but were hit by an overhead the game displays a thought bubble over your character with two "!!" icons. I noticed that anytime i thought i got hit by weird attacks, that that symbol would pop up. After googling what it meant, i learned it was called an overhead attack and i learned the rest from there. Which is crazy to me, that through ALL the tutorials ive played over the years, i have never ever in my life seen this mechanic mentioned even once. I flat out had no idea it was a thing because for some reason, it wasnt important enough to mention or bring attention to apparently. It feels like every fighting game just assumes you have years of knowledge already so it keeps them in the background and tries not to mention them.
Even more simple stuff suffer from this. Like 360 inputs, ive never been able to pull one off, i was so confused as to why. It tells me to spin the stick and im spinning it, yet it never comes out. Why? Well, the game doesnt tell you that, doing a neutral 360 input is insanely hard and only recommended for experts. Youre meant to first use an attack, then while the animation is keeping you on the floor, you do the 360 input so that as soon as its over, you do the command grab. How would you know that? The command menu sure as hell doesnt mention this anywhere. Once again, you're just supposed to know that.
And its the only genre i feel that does something like that consistently. How come after i blocked the enemies attack, they managed to hit me first after i tried to retaliate? Because they were safe on block, but good luck knowing what that is. Tutorials dont mention it, and the training mode, while it does display frame data, doesnt explain what frame data...is. You cant really expect a casual player to know frame data of all things, especially when no other game in any genre ever made, makes knowing frame data a requirement for basic play. All games have frame data, but only fighting games rely on them for combos and even stuff like frame traps, etc.
Thats where all the perceived difficulty comes from. Its fairly common to play fighting games, get destroyed, and have no idea why. Because the games themselves are horrid at teaching you what the rules are. Hell, if granblue didnt have text popups on the side of the screen telling me my move is invulnerable, i would have never figured that out on my own. Good chance i would have quit playing before i ever discovered that. Having better tutorials, while helpful, wouldnt be the end-all solution to this either. Most tutorials are boring, and not many people wanna do fighting game tutorials in particular because they often are too overwhelming. Undernight in birth has a decent tutorial but after seeing it have like 30+ tutorial levels you have to go through, i wouldnt blame new players for not doing it. Instead, teach the game rules through the actual game. Have more text popups, use universal colors for certain types of moves, add more icons etc. Dont be scared of giving too much info, its better than none at all.
Thanks for taking the time to write this. As I replied to another commenter, I address some of these issues in other videos, and my tutorial series aims to demistify a lot of that stuff.
Yes, it would be better if the devs to care of that, and some of them are slowly realising, but in the meantime, there are resources out there.
I dislike fighting games because they won't nerf my best friends main
the main reason I have to not like fighting games is how far too often a normal controller just wont work for it. the Dpad isnt precise enough and the stick is even worse. you NEED a special controller, not an xbox one.
A significant number of top level players play on pad. Some pads are better than others, but the Xbox controllers work well enough for me.
14:40 As someone who plays a ton of both fighting games and fps games, fps games have a much higher skill ceiling than fighting games and fighting games have a much lower skill floor than fps. Fortnite, once the most popular fps, had a skill ceiling to the stars with it's building, editing, etc on top of the non-hitscan gunplay while also being a BR. It's hard for a pure beginner to even connect with a single bullet in an fps while in a fighting game you can very easily attack your opponent successfully.
Watch a true beginner try an fps and they literally have a hard time moving the camera and their character at the same time much less even attempting to shoot someone. I've seen people who are literally only able to move their camera while standing still. Staring at the floor while moving etc. In a fighting game, you literally move left or right and press button to hit which is just objectively much simpler. It's a myth that "Skill" is part of the barrier to entry for fighting games. Beginners in fps games get shit on for way longer and way harder than beginners in fighting games in my experience. It's just more bearable since they usually get to play with friends who can carry.
Imo it's mainly related the 1v1 nature of fighting games that people don't like.
Thank you for sharing your perspective :)
You pretty much got it to the point. Very nice video and very accurate from a perspective that isn't just saying: You're bad get good
My dislike of fighting games is more on the technical level. I just don't like how stiff they all feel to control. I prefer games where movement is very fluid with little to no end lag between animations, like fast paced precision platformers, or any game where precise fluid movement is core to the gameplay.
Tbh the stiffness depends of the game, with more standard fighting games like Street Fighter and Killer Instinct you will find a stubbier, more spacing-based style while more anime fighting games like Dragon Ball FighterZ and Blazblue: Central Fiction are faster and more centered in momentum.
14:32 🤣 Wow, that off topic burn was unexpected, but appreciated.
Great video, keep it up.
Honestly, fighting games are too much of a grind and require too much outside research. You can't learn everything through play like an fps, you have to look up videos and frame data and match ups... And its all just too boring... I play video games for fun, not to research the subtleties of each character. Its why I used to play quake and unreal... Everything you needed to know for success was in the game... You learned it by doing... Not by research. Same with starcraft... You learned by doing... By playing in matches... Everything was more organic
I have another video where I look into how games could improve in that area.
You don't need to frontload info. As someone who's "above average" in the genre, you improve by playing. The only times i ever feel the need to info dig is when there a specific move and even then it's literally just googling "how to deal with x move" and 9/10 someone's asked the same question.
14:58 Man this is so true. I still remember a very specific match I had vs a random online in BlazBlue Cross tag Battle. I was getting absolutely bodied, like, didn't even stand a chance, could barely get a single hit in kind of bodied.
But we ended up going again, and the same thing happened round 1. But in round 2, SOMEHOW, I was predicting and reading everything they do and countering perfectly. And I ended up winning round 2 with a perfectly timed cross up. The amount of hype in that single moment was amazing, I didn't even care that I got bodied again in round 3 lol. Fighting games are the most hype genre, easily.
I dislike fighting games because they're unintuitive and they require hundreds of hours of unfun labbing to get good at. Labbing is not fun and if it's a requirement to getting good, then the game is designed to be unfun. So I'm not playing.
They do not require hundreds of hours of labbing though...
@@MougliFGC In order to be good, YES, it's absolutely MANDATORY. No one becomes good in a fighting game if they never lab any tech in their lives.
Man, INSTANTLY subscribed. This channel looks SO promising. Thanks for putting this content out there!
I loved fighting games since my first attempts at Tekken 2, 3, Super Smash Bros Melee, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and the likes. Never been constant in playing them (as I play a LOT of different games), so always stayed definitely on the "casual side" of things, but more and more I'm enjoying their gamedesign, and feeling the appeal of devoting more time to them.
I think your channel (together with other stuff I'm finding around youtube) will be a good propeller for this. Thanks!
well 'hardcore' action games such as the dmc series are fairly similar to fighting games actually. it's actually this very game series that made me realize that i will probably enjoy fighting games, and indeed i have!
i disagree with that, DMC 5 I would say is more like a beat em up modernized
@@channel45853 it's similar in how technical it is
Absolutely love your description of skill floor/ceiling in fighting games!
I think these video essays focus too much on new player experience, yes new player experience is important but you already have thousands and thousands of essays on that, meanwhile you have thousands of medium level players who are already pretty deep into fighting games that end up quitting for completely different reasons.
Fair point, but I'm not the right person to make that video. At least not yet.
The single most rewarding experience I’ve ever had in a game was taking a character off a guy who was DESTROYING me in DBFZ. I lost maybe 5 times in a row and when I finally got that character off of them I could tangibly feel and see my improvement. I don’t think any other game genre will ever quite be able to replicate that experience
Difficulty in competitive multiplayer games ahhhbapbapbap you're missing something huge here.
Yes, some of these are more or less difficult than others. It's about margin of error and punishment.
Maybe those aren't the best terms to use, but let's put it this way. If I'm playing Halo and I overextend by stepping around a corner, I can go "oh shit I shouldn't have done that", step back, and not lose much of anything for doing so. If I was playing CS:GO? Head blown off, round probably lost.
Similarly fighting games exist on a similar scale. Part of the reason Smash Bros. feels "easier" to most people is because you have so much mobility that tiny movements don't matter so much. It's not like Street Fighter where stepping 1mm closer or farther with your slowass walk speed could be the difference between being fine and 1/3rd of your health bar disappearing. Not to mention that to most people the damage % system in that game feels a lot less punishing, because rather than just an irreversible loss you're given ample ways to recover and in a sense, your next mistakes become *less* punishing until you're at a point where you could get easily yeeted.
And skill floors are *absolutely* a function of difficulty. Your thought that people look at tournaments and think "I need to do that" seems like projection more than anything, the greater question is what skill floor does the playerbase generally sit at and what does it take to hit that skill floor? And *how well is the true skill floor* communicated to the player?
(Side note, I learned the same lesson as that "think, don't mash" video by reading through Gief's Gym. Basically it was about training mode reps you can do to get your FGC legs, and there was a massive focus on making your normals second-nature, learning to recognize throws and learning how to walk forward without eating shit. I now feel like I can actually think when I play SFV now. I think THAT skill floor is, in fact, a major barrier because figuring it out is boring as hell, and SFVI is going to be huge for that.)
And the thing is, difficulty and the skill floor / ceiling aren't always the same. For instance I wouldn't say that Quake 3 Arena is actually a very *difficult* game. The skill floor includes strafe jumping, and matches involve you becoming extremely disadvantaged over and over again which makes skill gaps between players huge, but at any given moment you can sort of do whatever the hell you want and not instantly eat shit for it. You can continue to just hop around and learn things. There isn't so much of this "think fast, chucklenuts" vibe you get in a game where you're instantly two feet away from someone who's going to beat the snot out of you and walk away after you try *one thing* and screw up *once* before being tossed back into matchmaking.
Pretty good video! Subscribed, excited to see more from you
I actually love fighting games, and I have since I was ~10. I like to see the perspective from other views, because if I'm just looking at fighting games from my own perspective, the ONLY thing I manage to come up with is that same question: "Why don't more people like these games? They're so much fun, though!" Which doesn't clarify a thing XD
There's alot of new fighting game channels coming out of nowhere and i love it! Great first video to help people dip their toes into this Incredible genre.
cool vid! I had a shockingly similar start with the genre, and the times when I gave the misconceptions in this very video as reasons for why I don’t play fighting games are still fresh in my mind.
However, now 700 hours deep into strive, what I’m really missing from other multiplayer titles is a reason to keep playing. The fighting games I’ve played don’t give any sort of reward for consistently playing, as well as having very short matches that end up feeling like training for a test that never comes.
Thanks! You make an interesting point about reasons to keep playing, and it's true that fighting games don't really have much in the way of incentives for that. As another commenter pointed out, they don't really do anything to scratch the completionist itch. But I think it goes back to the idea of moment to moment enjoyment, you play because playing is fun, not because it's taking you somewhere.
It's closer to a game like say Minecraft, where you create your own objectives. Maybe consider trying some tournaments? It's also worth checking if another game might meet your needs better. For instance, DBFZ and Skullgirls would have longer matches due to the team nature
I think the reward comes when you can find some local tournament to play and enjoy the game with others players. The bounds you make within the FGC is stronger than any other type of game. And the hype is damn real, when you're able to land your combo or do a sick move and hear 10 guys shouting like crazy behind you is like dopamine
@@kedisaurus2657I guess I'll train til that day comes
I like fighting games, this video, and your channel - SUBBED
For me I avoid fighting games with all my being because I really like decent progression(rpg games are my click because of this). And I'm a terribly SLOW Learner.
People are always progressing in fg, even if you don't see it. Which could be an issue.
Two main problems for me really.
The first is the quality of online in many fighting games. The lack of block features/connection quality indicators/active playerbases/rollback are deterrents along with whack lobby systems. Either it takes too long to get a decent match, or you have multiple matches with crazy packet loss wasting your time. Other genres don't have that problem.
The second one is the FGC in general. It's difficult to want to stick around at events like locals when all you do is go 0-2 and go home after paying venue fees. There's a lot of big talk about getting people into fighting games, but the FGC seems adamant on doing its own thing instead of figuring out how to get new people in outside of spouting platitudes. The guidance sort of isn't there.
Fair point re: online. I'm not a network code expert, but I assume the other genres aren't as sensitive to latency, and it's mostly peer to peer connections rather than everyone connecting to a server. I wonder how much of an issue this is in strategy games.
For the rest, I'm trying to bring a fresh perspective. I didn't talk about everything in one video because it'd be too long.
@@MougliFGC Other games aren't as sensitive to latency, but it feels like fighting games are a decade behind every other genre for online features. In League I can get into a game very quickly. Same with Fortnite, Call of Duty, and even smaller titles like Deep Rock Galactic, Risk of Rain 2. Games also have features to not penalize you if someone disconnects at the start of a game, that sort of thing.
In comparison, Strive before last patch, you had to wait for network to connect to even enter the game, then wait some more on network to get into tower. Then you have to find someone to play, sometimes the battle stations glitch, sometimes there's nobody to play as you're the odd player in. Then you get into a game and the other guy loses packets like a mofo, can't block him easily. Some evenings as much of 50% of my matches were packet drop loss city. This isn't a fun experience and makes just playing the game onerous.
@@fiorin_rhiri Strive could do a lot to improve tech-wise yeah, but 50% of matches with connectivity issues that seems very high compared to my experience.
If you're the odd one out, standby in training mode should sort you out quickly.
For the rest it's a function of the player base. At the time I'm writing this, Deep Rock Galactic has 10 times the active users as Strive does. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem though, this specific issue. I'm doing my part to make that number go up :)
@@MougliFGC I play late sometimes, so from what I understand, people from other regions come to East Coast tower in Strive. So you get matches with high ping, packet loss, and jitter. At least the latest patch added a ping indicator before a match and allows you to block players so they can't tag you around tower.
Although I think MOBAs are the games with the highest skill ceiling, FGs are surely deep as well, and I like how you learn it and how you improve, fighting games incarnate the “Learn to get better”, and there’s only you against yourself(it’s also a matter of tastes, if you prefer solo or team). MOBAs are also difficult to get into!
Locked or paid content, and the addition of a huge learning curve puts off most players.
Season/Battle passes are a thing in other more popular genres as well.
This! You don't need to be a pro to play the game BUT the reason people think like that is more about youtube.
The fgc has no intrest watching gameplay from someone bad so all the gameplay youtubers are top 1% player and most of those are the top 1% of theat top 1%. If you watch anything about strive (except the "lets check out how bad people on floor x are" video. It's ganna be form someone in celestial but the tower has a decent player base as low as like floor 6. I'm prett sure the 50% mark of the playerbase is on the low end of floor 8.
The guy who played for 2000k hours in 2 yeara is not representative of what a normal player is like. I only put in q few hour a week and i'm decent. Floor 9 is deffinitly not the same as an evo top 8 contender but that's not realy something i want. These are games. You play them to entertain yourself above all else.
Btw. This was a realy good first video.
Thanks! And I agree with your observation.
For reference, I'm bouncing between floor 8 and 9, and that's where all my Strive footage comes from.
The Strive tower has its own problems, being notoriously top-heavy, because of the system that stops people from falling below a certain floor based on how good the game thinks they are. That leads to wide skill gaps within the same floor.
Going back to your initial point, I think there are some beginners who document their journey and showing that it's possible to have a good time at the low end, maybe we need more of that. Sajam has a series where a learns on stream a game he's never played before. But he's an experienced player, so it's not quite the same.
@@MougliFGC you do have people that document their journey. Hell I've done it with multiple fighting games I've played and still do for the most part. It's there. The problem is people don't take the time to go look for it if it ain't "mainstream". They're like the people that are like there's no real R&B anymore....yeah there is. It's always been there. You just don't take the time to go look for it.
The funny thing about fighting games and their fundamentals is you're probably playing some form of them and learning tech without realizing it, other genres effectively trick you into learning the fundamentals that transfer over quite nicely. Side-stepping, side-walking or rolling to avoid a soulslike boss' attack and hitting them when they're open is straight up whiff-punishing, you can even straight up side-walk certain bosses according to handedness or their weak side to avoid most of their attacks (absolutely key knowledge and movement that transfers over to Tekken), same with the Punchout games, you're learning to punish in some form, players with deeper knowledge learn to counterhit, parry, block, or otherwise take more risks for more options, it's all fighting game tech.
Things like zoning, cancelling, using knowledge of frame-data to your advantage all absolutely exist outside of fighting games, Dota 2 and GunZ heavily emphasize animation cancelling to achieve deeper gameplay, you will see plenty of zoning in arena shooters with explosive and non-hitscan weapons.
I don't think the context is important, I think it's the knowledge gap in not knowing your options that makes the genre harder to approach, and not everyone has the luxury of friends who want to play and improve together.
Just since you mentioned the fact that the gap between the skill floor and ceiling in fighting games is greater than in other games, you can simply look at input complexity to prove this (no need for actual data, other than what is already present in games):
Shooter input complexity is usually something like one button to shoot, using mouse movement to move the camera's viewpoint around, and 4 keys to physically move the avatar/camera around in a space. Something like 5 buttons and a variable analogue control. The set of possible actions (possibility space) is equal to the complexity of inputs and their interactions. You can look around while you walk around, you can shoot while you look around, and you can shoot while you walk around. The most complex of these actions is the mouse movement for the camera, but beyond that you have a simple mapping of 1 button equals 1 action. The resulting possibility space is limited by this.
Fighting games input complexity is using (at least) 4 buttons to move the avatar around in a space, sometimes reusing those same buttons for implicit actions relative to the opponent (e.g. hold back to block), an additional 4 buttons or more for any set of "normals" (i.e. attacks that require no further input other than a button press), a standard set of two button combinations for certain universal mechanics (e.g. every character could have a "throw" input using two buttons or an "assist" input likewise using two buttons. and finally, a variable set of complex input patterns for special moves (typically special moves may have somewhere between 2 and 4 different inputs PER move, but more complex input patterns can exist). While some of the these inputs cannot interact with each other (e.g. you cannot both move and attack at the same time), there are some that can (e.g. canceling a normal move into a special move), and the sheer amount of inputs required for a successful execution is already pushing the possibility space far above what any standard shooter would have.
These are not the only factors to consider, as both game types often have other elements that contribute to the possibility space. For instance, map awareness/discovery is relevant in shooters. It is rarely relevant in fighting games. Fighting games instead have combination discovery (not limited to combos, but also counting mixups, resets and other such 50/50 situations that a player can put the opponent into). When considering map awareness, the maps in shooters often won't change, so the discovery is often limited, and the time to attain full aware of a map will be relatively short. When considering combination discovery, it may be the case that different combos work only on certain characters, or certain 50/50s only work on certain characters, which means that there is a further complexity added per character matchup.
Even without using detailed calculations and numbers here, it should be fairly clear that the amount of possibilities in any generic fighting game would vastly outnumber the possibilities in a shooter, by several orders of magnitude.
the only point of contention i have with that is that the skill of navigating and understanding the 3d space is a huge calculation being made all the time. It's not arbitrary, i think it's just so seemingly intuitive, and at the same time complex no body talks about it in the way u would talk about the decisions being made in a fighting game. I think there's a ton of micro decisions being made when peaking a corner and aiming for example. U could list all the possible degrees in which ur aiming but that would seem like its overkill, most people just feel it out.
@@locdogg86 Yeah, look at a match in Quake or Titanfall 2. Both players are moving through a known, learned 3D space, but they're using different weapons, moving at ridiculous speeds compensating your aim for that and enemy evasion attempts.
@@RicochetForce yea titanfall 2 especially with all the different armaments and worrying about pilots as well, tons of choices to make constantly.
Yea no, you're oversimplifying fps at a competitive level.
From team comp, match ups, loadouts etc. There are multiple guns in the games with different properties as well. You can also add in the movement of the game.
FPS is as complex as fighting games at the top level.
once you know a space and how to move in it, it can become trivial over time to perform the same movements. if there is a high execution sequence of moves necessary it's often a single sequence that is internalized. but even so, in this argument your best argument is that FPS skill movement only, which just means it has just one of the previously listed barriers to entry that fighting games already have.
So no, despite appearances FPS games still do not have higher complexity than fighting games.
I think fighting games are harder to get into because they are mechanically unintuitive.
For example If I want to do something in a shooter say look up, I just push the up button, if I want to attack I push the attack button, if I want to do a unique attack there's more than likely a button for that which does what I instinctively think it should do, even when it comes to the more extreme parts of a shooting game such as lining up grenade in csgo I still just need to look and stand in a specifically way.
In fighting games though, if I want to move sure I press a similar move button, but if I want to do something unique, I have to press up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start and my character does a pre programed attack. It makes me feel like i'm doing math as none of the buttons I push indicate to me they would have done ANY of that.
I will touch on that a bit in my next video.
@@MougliFGC Looking forward to it :D 👍
As long as you continue to double down on defending the cult of execution, fighting games will continue to be a niche cult. Stop trying to invite normies.
I feel you haven't really listened to what I said in the video, but thanks for sharing your opinion :)
@@MougliFGC You feel wrong, I've watched it in full. If you can't let go the romance of execution, you will forever discourage developers from innovating the genre, and the consumers from looking back again.
EDIT: I say this because the difficulty of translating your intentions is a big enough barrier to self expression that there is barely room for the game to have mechanics.
thanks for linking the playist you made
Fantastic video! Consider me subbed. I'm working on an indie fighting game right now and I've been thinking about how to make things approachable for new players. I think there's a misconception in the FGC that people who don't play fighting games are new to video games in general. That's not true, and I think you nailed it on the head when talking about transferable skills.
One additional reason why I'd recommend fighting games to players is the community. Multiplayer games are inherently social, and this is especially true for multiplayer games. That's not just speculation - Quantic Foundry has done studies on gamer motivations. They've found that players who like community also like competition, and vice versa. The two motivations are not mutually exclusive; instead, players who like social interaction don't care whether it's through competition or community. (In psychological terms, this also lines up pretty heavily with being an extrovert, as does thrill-seeking behavior. So an exciting, fast-paced game with a thriving competitive scene is perfect for any extrovert looking for something new.)
It's easy to see why fighting games are niche when looking at Quantic Foundry's Gamer Motivation Profile. Fighting games target the Action-Social cluster, but don't fully satisfy the Achievement-Mastery cluster. They satisfy both of the Mastery motivations - Challenge and Strategy - but do NOT satisfy the Completion and Power motivations in the Achievement category. (Quantic Foundry describes the Completion motivation as "The desire to complete every mission, get every collectible, and discover hidden things." It describes the Power motivation as "The importance of becoming powerful within the context of the game world.") Normally, players who like the Mastery motivations also enjoy the Achievement motivations, but fighting games only provide the Mastery side.
Thanks! GekkoSquirrel has a few good videos on UX and accessibility for fighting games. Them's Fighting Herds is also a game that commonly pops up when discussing good tutorials. I especially like the story mode, with the NPCs designed to train you with some of the basics (e.g. the wolf that's begging you to anti-air it).
Thanks for reminding me about Quantic Foundry's work. I would have talked about it in this video, but I couldn't remember their name for the life of me 😅.
Good luck with your game :)
I liked your analogy comparing fighting games with other skills, like a sport, or an instrument, or even another game. The main difference, at least to me, is that if im bad at a sport and i decide to play against someone better than me, yes ill lose, but ill be actively building my skills and having fun because im actually playing. If im bad at a fighter and i decide to play someone better than me, often times that means i dont get TO play, because the very nature of a combo means that the one getting comboed literally cannot do anything because of hitstun. This is why i think Smash is a such a genius game, because when you lose a match in smash, you still got to actually play.
Glad to hear Smash gives you an experience you like!
This is an engagement comment. Keep it up, Hope the algo keeps working in your video's favor.
Super pour une première vidéo, je m'abonne !
Je viens tout juste de commencer les fighting games avec SFV, c'était vraiment difficile au début(et ça l'est toujours), mais après 2 mois d'efforts constants et le niveau qui augmente de semaine en semaine je suis vraiment content d'avoir tenté de m'y mettre sérieusement. J'ai hâte de passer complétement le cap de l'exécution qui est clairement le plus gros mur à abattre pour pouvoir vraiment profiter et apprécier les jeux de combat.
Merci, et félicitations ! Et ne te décourages pas, il n'est pas nécessaire d'avoir une exécution parfaite :)
Great video honestly, I hope to see your channel grow even more. I want to see more of a grounded attitude in the FGC honestly, I feel like right now it will truly help people find if and what fighting games are for them. I feel like that alone is something Ive not seen on the FGC YT scene.
TLDR: viewers want to understand what is happening on screen, and if they don't understand, they get intimidated and give up before trying.
Here my theory as to why people turn away from fighting games after seeing high level gameplay: I'm also a beginner at fighting games who started in Strive, and have a tiny bit of experience with Skullgirls, SFV, and DNF duel. My main genre of games is actually team based multiplayer games like League and Valorant, so I'll be referencing those two. My theory on why the fighting game skill ceiling is so intimidating is because non-players have no clue what is happening onscreen. In professional Valorant, the players are making dozens of decisions every second and playing extremely tactically with their team, but to a non-players's perspective, they are just clicking on heads and using easy to understand abilities. When they see a character pull out a small orb and then proceed to heal a teammate with said orb, they immediately understand that this ability is used to heal. When they see a character throw a lobbing projectile that explodes and kills an enemy hiding in a small room, they immediately understand that this ability is a grenade. League is a bit more confusing to the average non-player, since it has many, many more abilities and a crap ton more stuff happening onscreen at any given moment. However, the first 10 minutes of any game always starts with two 1v1s, a 2v2, and a player who runs around the map killing monsters and assisting teammates. This is easy to understand. The viewer might not understand what any of the abilities do, but they do know that the goal of a 1v1 is to kill the opponent and destroy the tower. There are clear objectives and slow enough gameplay to process what is happening. Later on in the game, the players start fighting as a team, and while all the visuals going off can be confusing, the viewer has a decent idea of what every character is capable of after watching them for the first 10 minutes.
Now, compare that to fighting games. Like League, there is an easy to understand final objective: kill the enemy. Unlike league, there is no long buildup that slowly reveals what each character does. The two fighters immediately explode into rapid combos, mixups, oki, etc, etc. Before the viewer even knows what basic moves each character has, the players are already hitting them with everything in their arsenal. Then the viewer sees the sheer amount of moves there are(looking at you, Tekken) and gets even MORE intimidated. As someone who had never played a fighting game before GGST, I was originally also intimidated. Then, I saw Goldlewis's moveset, which is listed as THREE abilities: minigun, drone, and Behemoth Typhoon, and 2 supers. I didn't know that there were 8 behemoths, but just SEEING that there wasn't an entire essay of mechanics and moves made me much more comfortable picking him up and now I main him.
I agree with the point, but I'm not sure I agree with the League example. I don't understand anything that's going on when watching videos like "Top 10 200IQ plays in League", and I'm not sure how many people who aren't already interested in League really have the patience to sit through the first 10 minutes to be convinced to get into it.
On the other hand, anyone can understand moment 37, even if they don't understand the extent to which it was impressive.
I just genuinely dislike the repeated crushing losses. I can stand a loss where victory was pulled to and fro for a while, but losing to odds that are categorically unfair doesn’t encourage me to learn.
In a game where I’m losing because I don’t know what I’m doing, I ordinarily stick with it until I understand the proverbial “assignment” as it were. Fighting games don’t… really have that. They huck you into piranha infested waters and tell you to try to swim. No matter how often I try to play them, I never walk away feeling competent, or even just like I learned something without feeling so pissed that it wasn’t clearer from the beginning that I can’t ever say: “I’m learning!”
Another issue is that with the lack of proficiency comes an internal dialogue that says: “I’m wasting my time here.” If I could be playing a game I already know how to play, or at least have a solid understanding of what I need to do, I’ll choose that one every time. I’m already stressed out because of work, adult life, and general anxiety. Do I _truly_ need another thing to make me sad, angry, and confused all at the same time?
TL;DR: what’s the point of learning a skill like fighting games where the frustration outweighs the benefits, the game and community can’t teach me anyway, and it’s clear the game doesn’t want me to enjoy it in the first place?
Working for enjoyment in games without actually ever feeling competent is like going to work and not getting paid.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I have other videos that discuss some of the reasons why the genre feels hostile to beginners and what it could do about it, and I plan on discussing the community aspect of that in the future, in addition to do my part to improve this.
For the rest of your argument, while it is a fair observation, it is not unique to fighting games.
@@MougliFGC it’s not unique to them, but I encounter it most often with fighting games. Partially because they interest me a lot, despite how frustrating they are.
No matter how many of them I try, I always end up walking away feeling like the game is withholding a ton of things from me simply because I can’t engage with the _exact_ learning processes it expects of me.
Super accurate tbh. I think most problems with fighting games can be worked around, it's just that not everyone wants to have to work to enjoy a game.
Nothing wrong with either perspective. Lots of people just want to play games to relax. Others want to play games to develop skills.
I just wish fighting games had options for both groups.
I've been playing fighting games since Street Fighter 2 in the 90's. I got into them because of the characters, fighting styles, the music and backgrounds. After a few years I just take my losses and just enjoy playing. I don't play online much unless it's with friends local or online. I suck at Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat but I love playing them regardless and I don't care about the tier list to see what the best character to play as. I play more of the arcade or story modes than anything. For me that's how I practice. It also let's me test out who I'm good with, which is usually the female Fighters. 😁 This is a cool video, man. Thanks for talking about this.
All of these game analyses and video essays are so bingable. I must say, i am savvy for channels like Shounic for TF2, Marblr for OW, Core-A for fighting games in general, so on.
I love the shot selection in this video