Chess is was and will continue to be a bad comparison to fighting games, and this argument will keep reoccuring until people finally realize that. STOP trying to compare fighting games to chess there are several fundamental differences that flaw the comparison and lead the discussion in circles.
Chess has rules and yes you can learn those rules in a day. I literally taught myself how to play chess from the back of a game box and I have a chess trophy. Here is the thing, the rules to chess don’t change, other than en passant later I never needed to learn any new rules since the back of that game box. The rules to fighting games change constantly and anyone who doesn’t know that isn’t playing fighting games on any decent level. Every major fighting game has rules that have been broken in it after its release. This is the nature of fighting games; adding cancels where you shouldn’t be able to, finding ways to make move more invincible than they were intended to be. These thing are in the core nature of wanting to get better at a fighting game you should be trying to study your character(s), but you should also be trying to break the rules with that character. In chess you are never allowed to extend what any of the pieces can do even if you are a grandmaster, the rules are stable. Valle figured out a way to make an attack that should be blockable unblockable, that doesn’t exist in Chess. A rook is a rook and it does what a rook does. But any day can bring a new piece of technology that either upgrades or downgrade what any character in a fighting game is capable of.
Would chess be better if the pieces attacked you? no, but fighting games aren’t chess it is a flawed comparison.
The best comparison to fighting games and a severely underused one is actual fighting. In a real fight the rules change, the match ups change, both sides don’t start out equal; yes, you can learn to throw a punch or kick in a day but you will be at a severe disadvantage against someone who has been studying and using them regularly for years. If you aren’t used to punching someone else, hitting someone hurts, because in a fight the “pieces” do hit back if you don’t use them properly. Is it fair that the guy who stretches can kick higher than the guy who doesn’t? Yes, because in a real fight you do have to worry about “wrangling controls” while you try to out think your opponent. Fights are about predicting and reacting but your physical condition does come into play as well. If I learn kung fu, I’ll do better in a fight, but somehow its unfair to transition that same thing over to a fighting game? Fighting games work very much the same way that actual fights do. You can’t just wish fighting to be easier because its not fair that complex techniques, and and constant training yield better result than trying to windmill your way to victory.
They’re called fighting games so every one tries to compare them to other games, but when you compare them to fighting the things most people complain about become laughable. Fighting constantly changes and evolves, and a fighting game where the rules and what is possible don’t change isn’t a very good fighting game.
tl;dr FIGHTING GAMES SHOULD NOT BE LIKE CHESS AND PEOPLE MAKING THAT COMPARISON ON ANY DEEP LEVEL EITHER DON’T UNDERSTAND FIGHTING GAMES OR THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND CHESS.
I never understood this mentality. Why can’t you do both? Look at MvC2, That game is the one competitive fighting game that asks the most out of you in terms of execution. The execution required to play MvC2 at the highest level is pretty fuckin’ demanding and yet, you see mindgames up the ass.
Because people legitimately believe that a constantly moving game should have the same lack of execution barriers to play as a turn based game with literally no physical requirements of its players and no innate time limit on its duration.
It is the logical extension of classifying fighting games with board games instead of physical activities.
I think it takes all kinds of games to make the world go round, and trying to create a template for them across the board will always end in failure. It’s honestly down to the factors of the type of game they are trying to make, and how knowledgeable they are in the genre. ArkSys pulls off making both incredibly complex games that are hard to get into (GG is hard to get into, there’s a lot to get used to there, on even the ground floor) as well as making something rather excessable like P4U because ArkSys understand fighting games and how each part of them works, and how mechanics can play out when you implement them.
Capcoms efforts at this as of recent have been terrible because DIMPs and Ono don’t really understand the inner workings of the games they make, ad they just shoehorn in features without much forethought for how they will effect the game. So something like SF4 starts off easy to pick up but the complexity ramps up really fast cuz you start trying to learn combos and the fuzzy input system overlaps and gives you stuff you don’t want, the move speed quickly becomes a hindrance because you can’t make the forward progress you need to to apply the pressure you want. They made it easy to reversal people without realizing this makes the rush down game garbage which leads to more issues when trying to apply the pressure you need. The FADC system is sound in principle but they didn’t put much thought into a lot of the moves they applied the system to so you end up with safe DPs in a game ill equipped to really handle them. The Ultra system is a completely different topic imo, it’s a shitty comeback system because the guy to get one first is the guy losing and if he lands one he’s just handed his opponent their own nuke canon, kind of defeating the point of the whole system imo. If you ask me SF4 isn’t bad because it’s easy (It’s pretty tough from my expirence.) SF4 is bad because it’s bad. It’s just not a good game, it has no idea what it wants to be and it’s mess because of it.
Really it’s fine to make easy fighters with lower execution barriers, while also being fine to make fighters that are hard, have lots of systems and high execution barriers because not everyone is into the exact same shit. I like Guilty Gear cuz it’s got a shit ton of stuff to do and implement in battle and you have an ass load of options, but I also like SF cuz mechanics wise it tends to be pretty simple and you usually end up with a more paced experience. Shit I like Sam Show cuz it’s got a generally really simple quality to it, you can be undone by the simplest shit, and that in itself can be really exciting.
Because MvC2 is a good game (though almost by complete accident) and rests right on the “golden ratio” of complexity/mindgames. Most FGs don’t reach that kind of perfect ratio.
I don’t really even care for MvC2 that much, but I completely agree with this. There’s enough good simple stuff and enough difficult stuff that it can almost cater to everyone.
Complex button presses and movements are the biggest hurdles for people new to fighting game players. Imo movements an button presses that are difficult for the simple sake of being difficult is a wrong design philosophy. I don’t mind qcfx2, dp motions, double button presses that doesn’t matter. However things like (unplinkable)one frame links and pretzel motions are just an annoyance. Wrestling with the controls before getting to the “meat” of the game deters alot of potential newer fighting game players. A good fighting game has relatively easy mechanics where the players who like to delve deeper into it get rewarded by eventually still being able to pull of more advanced techniques. The gameplay mechanics have to be open ended enough to allow exploration.
Definately for “simpler” fg’s but that will also allow for more.
The main people that try to claim that fighting games are “easy” are the ones that get salty when they lose to someone that they feel they shouldn’t have, so rather than blame themselves, they blame the game.
Complex commands serve a purpose in fighting games. Without them, you just focus on scoring a hit then you turn your brain off while you perform the easy 50% combo. doing high-execution combos/setups is hard, but rewarding when you can pull it off. I have more fun nailing a hcb x2 super off a light hit confirm in KOF then doing ABC Super for 60% damage cause it’s more accessible.
The only thing I’d called “Wrestling with the controls” is when they’re unresponsive and inputs are not coming out, kinda like playing online.
and this is a problem why? Isn’t fg is all about outwitting your opponent? Now mind you i actually hate how combos have evolve to where it is but I’m more less agree when their some artificial barrier added for the sake of being hard, its just plan poor design imo. I do like complexity but in different manner. I’ll make some example.
SF4- C-viper/ EL Furte are very complex character but that complexity is due to how versatile they are. They essentially have multiple option to counter things which is important factor in a game like SF4. (maybe their commands aren’t exactly complex but their application is)
Maybe better example is I-no(GGAC) whome compare to other is really complex from standard option to advance one. But once again is usually due to how versatile she can be. Her chemical love move is fast mid range move that has alot of application from being fast long range poke that forces knockdown,zooning tool with some nullification and cause temp air born state to evade lows, and starter for her ambiguous offense with frc which an also be her mid screen combo hit confirm.
In the end I feel complex should be due to application and not some ego boost.Something being hard for the sake of being hard is poor design. This is why Kof13 is criticize for that and i its justify. Some character moves or application was just hard for the sake of it where in the end the pay off is just standard compare to none complex stuff. (kof 2002 9999/unkown is where they got it right, or fatal fury geese raging a storm)
I never really got the whole “KOF13 is too hard thing”, maybe I’m remembering it wrong since it’s been a while since I played due to the tag team of terrible netcode and none of my friends getting into it but I’m sure I remember loving how you could buffer specials so easily so you could just hammer out your combo as fast as you could without worrying too much about links and it would come out.
I mean like I said, a while since I played it and I guess my team could have had it easy in the execution zone (Athena/Yuri and the fabulous dude with the green fire.), but it certainly didn’t strike me as being abnormally tough to execute stuff in.
This is why I use fighting/sports analogies to explain fighting games, because using game analogies leads to logical tracks that shouldn’t happen. Fighting games aren’t all about outsmarting your opponent although that is part of it.
Boxing is also about outwitting your opponent, but if you work on theory all day and never go to the gym or spar you are going to get knocked out. Wanting fighting games to not follow the same principles as fighting is like like asking for a baseball game with 9 designated hitters so you don’t have to balance offensive and defensive skills; or a soccer game where you can use use your hands, because is it makes it easier to focus on movement when you can just hold the ball. The situation for complexity to cause you to drop a combo SHOULD exist. The situation to drop a combo because of the pressure of the match SHOULD exist.
It’s like the rubber banding effect that they began applying in racing games that essentially turned them into a joke. If you crash your car 5 times during the race you should finish 2 minutes after the guy who didn’t, and not half a second after him because it makes you feel better. If you don’t practice in a fighting game you should take the same beating you would if you didn’t practice for a fight, you shouldn’t get a 35% damage button to make you feel better.
With that said there should be a cap on high side of the base execution at launch before people break the game open, I mean there shouldn’t be 720 motion basic fireballs. The sky is the limit for the execution on new tech though, and that is another thing that gets me is that people think or thought that 1 year in MVC3, for example, would/should have the same executional requirements of a good player as it did on day one. Trying to hold developers accountable for the execution required for technology that was created post launch is just nutty.
Game that’s too hard for beginners is Jojo’s…
I’ll never understand that game… I suppose the intent succeeded though, if they were after having every character play like it’s a completely different game.
I thought I had a handle on how to play Dio… Then I tried some other character and I’m like, WHY ARE ALL THE MECHANICS DIFFERENT!?
Yeah… Jojo’s is too hard for beginners… I’m a scrub.
IMHO, easy to play = good and easy to win at = bad. You want players to be able to do whatever they want, and you want them to lose if they want to do something stupid. Not when they want to do something smart but they were not dextrous enough to perform it. That’s why we say “you hate to see this type of thing happen” whenever someone drops a combo.
Most current fighters are hard to play unless you’ve built up years of experience. It’s really hard to get a person who has played for many years to understand the struggles of a new player. The best way I’ve come up with is to force them to play QWOP for a while.
I have cocern. When is easy to win ever applied with out being biased? Where the line drawn at? Touch of deaths? Time outs? overcoming a momentum lost or using risky move as clutch win?