Are fighting games too hard to play for the average casual player?

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
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All right, one last try. Don’t you all think you’re being a little harsh? I never said that they should make the game so easy that there’s nothing to learn so I’ll be able to win against world champions… I’m simply, and here’s the point, suggesting (not demanding, like you all think I am) that the part that’s unpleasant and off-putting to learn for lots of more casual players, namely execution, should be made easier.

Please don’t yell at me and try to make me feel bad for discussing the topic of the thread…

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What exactly are you having trouble with executing? Memorizing inputs or executing difficult motions quickly? Execution has already been getting dumbed down in many recent fighters. The games are becoming more about memorization long strings of single button presses (most anime games) rather being able to perform difficult inputs in short amounts of time (like the older King of Fighters games). SF4 doesn’t really fit either of these to be honest, but most of the games nowadays seem to be going with the former. Kof13, while it is more like the latter, has simplified a lot of their motions to be much much more lenient than earlier kof games.

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There is alot wrong with this post but since I probably shouldn’t even be one here right now I’ll just put this in.
Saying that the game should keep you aware of your options is a statement of ignorance to how many options you have available at any given time. For example on a SF4 bar you have access to 3 different techniques with a full bar, EX moves, Focus cancel, and super an a number of strategic combinations of focus and EX. If the bar outright states that you have an EX at one stock what does it say at two stocks? What does it say at a full bar?

Focus attack and FADC varies for every character because, 1) the speed of the focus attack is different 2) the range of each focus attack is different. 3) the speed of each dash is different 4) the range of each dash is different 5) the moves you can cancel out of with each character are different. 5) some character aren’t safe on Special FADC backdash and some are.
For some characters it is a much better idea to use that meter for EX and not use the FADC.

As far as inconsistencies go, Are you asking that a pop up box be displayed on screen everytime Gen switches stances to inform his opponent that his movelist just changed? or are you saying that he shouldn’t get a second stance? How exactly are you suggesting that the game make the fact that a certain character has multiple jump arcs apparent to both players before or during each match.

Are you asking for a stun meter for every character to also be on screen since different characters have different stun amounts?

If two of your shoryukens have no invincibilty and two do have invincibility how do you display that?

What about kara throws, my characters kara throws don’t even do the same thing. How do you visiually explain to someone that Rose is technically airborn even though she appears to be doing a normal grab, all during the fraction of a second that its happening?

What your asking for would involve a severely boosted character specific training mode but there is no practical way to make the full list of your options at any given time through on screen cues. If every option you had were listed on the screen you wouldn’t be able to see the characters any more. and even with that trial mode has focus attack combos in it, is it the developers fault that players want to know how to play but won’t even use the already existing modes designed to help them learn how to play?

Also fighting games aren’t made by the same company so uniform naming conventions just isn’t going to happen.

Fighting games are not the same classification as baseball games, its much closer to sports games. What your asking for is a football game, a baseball game, and a hockey game to all have the same rules, they are different sports, so what you are asking is ridiculous.

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The stun meter wouldn’t be too bad…I liked its addition in 3rd Strike.

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The execution is significantly easier in SF4 due to increased input leniency, shortcuts, and the slower speed of the game. If anything, SF4 is much more newbie friendly than previous versions of fighting games, which has no doubt led to its popularity in recent years. We’re talking about a game where you can roll your face across the controller and get a dragon punch and ultra motion each and every single time. This is significantly easier than it used to be.

Honestly, you’re putting way too much emphasis on the importance of doing cancels, links, and advanced combos. Once you learn the basics of how to control your character and perform their special moves, you should really focus on the strategy of SF, which doesn’t absolutely require time in training mode to understand, but it requires that you really take the time to analyze your matches, identify mistakes from both players, and figure out a superior strategy.

You can learn basic 3-hit combos in less than an hour of solid training. And as you decide if you want to improve or not, you can attempt more advanced execution combos and setups. That’s kind of the beauty of the game. You can learn at your own pace and decide for yourself how much time you want to invest into becoming a better player…or not at all.

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Am I the only one who has no idea what is an “average casual player”? Does the person use the internet? Does the person use training mode? Does the person feel like they are some how a geek just because they google frame data or read character strats on a forum?

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Someone who plays video games for fun, doesn’t check the internet unless it’s for a walkthrough, doesn’t use training mode, expects to be a decent player without putting forth much effort besides just playing the game, is used to video games that has a low learning curve, and has insane levels of ADHD.

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a lot of things you’re asking for aren’t so hard to do as all that (for instance, SF3 and plenty of other games have stun meters).

What I’d get more from it is a reduction to the arcana. There are games that do try to communicate all that stuff, but either through bad design or there just being too many factors, you end up with nightmare UI’s that are nigh unreadable.

The problem is rather throwing in a ton of stuff that is both confusing and hard to communicate… but most of that can be dealt with by the designers.

For instance, as I remember, in BB:CT hakuman’s f+A (or maybe B, the headbutt) had the top half of his body invulnerable, and the f+B (or maybe A, the stomp) had the lower half of his body invulnerable. There’s no visual cue at all, and there’s no way to know about those very useful properties of those moves except for practicing or reading a faq. That should have been communicated with the character animation in any number of ways.

In an example that was fixed, CP wanted it to be exceptionally clear to both players when XF was available, so they changed the UI in ultimate to make it super-clear. I admit I thought it was ugly as hell at first, but you get used to these things, and it DOES communicate that info well.

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I think you may be missing my point. Go has many options. So many, in fact, that we’ve yet to devise an algorithm that can defeat a competent Go player. However, the rules are straight-forward and quite obvious to the player. The rules are obvious. The strategies and tactics are not.

How one might go about displaying the rules of the game in a straight-forward manner is more an issue of UX. Unfortunately, I am not a UX designer.

It’s alright to have variation in a system but those variations need to make natural sense to a player. I’m sure we could argue this until the cows come home but I am of the opinion that if your rule exceptions require the use of a study guide then your game design is flawed.

This isn’t quite what I mean. I think a game could do a better job at conveying its rules. For instance, if only certain characters get super armor with certain moves just because then I find that to be a problem. However, if it makes obvious sense for certain characters to get super armor with certain moves then that is a much more preferred scenario, I believe. If the player can say, “Oh, duh. Of course that’s how it works” then that’s good conveyance.

The hit stun meter in P4A was pretty great, I thought :wink:

There’s no reason why it can’t. We do it already with a number of fighting game mechanics and other game genres altogether. To say, “Oh, they’re all different companies and will do whatever they want” is a bit of a cop-out, in my opinion.

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as said. “All due with respect” but the reason your getting these type of responce is because your displaying unfavorable traits and behaviors and guess what? THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO SO. Just as you have the right to exprress what you feel as long its within SRK TOS.

Were all adults here…or at least I myself like to think of every member as adult who can comprehend simple social concepts.

But if were going to get personal about. I am offended how you disregard my comments feels sadden for moment…shrugs it off…
All right enough pity for my self. I recommend you take the time to learned about your self before you even continue the discussion.

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I can’t favor that idea besides that fact its near impossible to do with out degrading the game to simon says. Which in turn one might as well play that instead complicated games fighters. One the most satisfying thing about fighter is the freedom of the playing to choose their action.

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You totally stole my *go *example!

I like that, it’s a good’un

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I don’t mean actually setting up predetermined combos, I mean a game mode where the game just sits the player down and teaches them the mechanics of a combo system so the player will have a better way of discovering combos for themselves later on.

This is distinguished from challenge mode combos or trial mode combos in that the game isn’t explicitly telling the player what combo to do, rather, the theory behind why the combo works the way it does and how combos are discovered and formed. An in-game tutorial could exist explaining all the combo limitations in UMvC3, SFIV, BB, GG, whatever, but it doesn’t. The systems themselves don’t need to be simplified, they just need to be explained better.

Like for an example, take GGXXAC Jam. The game would first show the player that you can gatling 5K, 5S, 5HS, 6HS HS. Pretty simple stuff, and lets the player get a feel for gatlings. The game would then move on to show that you can do 6HS, 6P, 5HS as an example of a link and a gatling put together. Then the game would pause, and ask the player to put two and two together and have them work out an extended combo. Then the game would go on and show the player the power of 236S-D and the wall stick it provides, perhaps showing the player that they can run up and do 2S, 2HS, 6HS HS, and then ask the player to think of additional followups to the wall stick, or different ways to get the wall stick in the first place. The purpose of this mode not being to teach combos per se, but to teach how to approach a game’s combo system and how to create new ones.

Oh, and the shoryuken invincibility thing is done in Arcsys games with the little white circles showing up if you hit someone while they’re invulnerable. It’s not a perfect way of telling if something is invincible or not due to all the stuff that tends to fly around the screen, and the way the background flashes and changes color wildly during supers, but it’s an attempt at the very least. The exclamation points that show up indicating high/low blocks are also nifty additions, and the double exclamation indicating unblockable is great in P4:A. The exclams themselves won’t fit the aesthetic for all games (they’d be quite jarring in SFIV), but it works pretty well for the games that they are in.

Regarding execution, fighting games have gotten rid of all the actually difficult motions to the point where simplifying them any further would pretty much be the complete removal of them, which has ramifications on the competitiveness of the game itself. It may be possible to remove them altogether and still maintain a competitive game, but that’s unexplored territory as no game has seriously tried to do that and all current games are designed with inputs in mind for balancing purposes. P4:A tried with 1-button DPs, and only QCF and charge motions, and the game isn’t bad at all. Could use more buttons though, as there are a lot of button combinations for universal options.

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I was unaware that situation in Go could change multiple times per second and that the game involves meter projectiles and cancels. Are you seriously trying to compare a board game with a fighting game in terms of the amount of time you have to process the relevant information before the situation completely changes? Honorable mention to Xes for stating that someone stole his bad comparison.

So unless I’m I reading this incorrectly your stating that every character in SF4 should have the same Focus attack, as well as the same dash length and speed or it is a flaw in the game.

So only huge character should get super armor because that makes sense just by looking at them? What type of visual depicts a change in your jump? What does a character look like that would by common sense have a projectile? Requiring the game to visually “make sense” is asking for cancels to pretty much be removed from fighting games. Again if 2 version of a DP are invincible and two aren’t are you saying that either all of them should be either invincible or all of them should not? or are you saying your fist should glow whenever your moves is invincible? Do your realize how much visually noticable invincibilty would effect the game?

Players do it not the companies and it there still not even uniform notation between players. As for the companies, which company are you hypotheitically asking to take on which other comapnies names, and why is that not a huge slap in the face? Or are you asking every company to give up their names in favor of new universal terms, decided by who? Everything you are asking for has huge holes in it when you try to realistically apply it to fighting games.

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For things like superarmor or focuses, I’m all off the ‘feedback’ skill.

It should be absolutely clear to everyone what’s happening in the course of the action, or in the result.

It’s all communication. If what’s happening is communicated clearly and in a non-confusing manner, than everything’s coming up golden.

Surely we can all agree on that, right?

PS: about the go comparison, it’s actually kind of out of place in this discussion, because it relates to complexity and depth rather than to communication. I liked it in this case because it hits on the massive amount of unnecessary arcana in fighting games right now, the removal of which would be a great benefit to accessibility and to clarity. FG’s are already massively complex, and the more random weirdness you need to communicate on top, the messier getting any useful information across gets.

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I dunno, it still feel like simon says because your still suggest thing game tell player what to do for certain scenarios. GGAC is bad example as their many possibilities to be considered that can alter that routine, and with GGAC risk and reward, one spontaneous moment can mean victory or defeat.

I’m suggest the game only encourage certain action if the result is absolute. Which is still stretch to accomplish since whomes to determined what result a player may want. Yes combo 'usually" have guaranteed damage, but whose to say that scenario of action wasn’t intentionally emulated by the opponent to lure one into trap due to false sense of advantage? This is how comeback happen.

I think if game is going suggest anything, is sense of reading situations but encouraging their own flow of actions.

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It would be best to list separately in what games you have issues. there are fighting games for all sorts of players and levels. This is what this forum is for.

You want easy execution, easy to the point of being careful not to do a special out of nowhere? play Breaker’s Revenge. but dont be fooled, game can be quite difficult.despite easy execution. But it also allows you to learn basics and footsies and anti-air moves. This does not mean you’ll be a FG expert if you play well at that game, but at least it is a start.

I had the chance of chatting with one of the good players on Supercade and he explained me what I need to do to be decent in that game. I enjoy it much more than SFIV, I have to say. It allows me to do what I am thinking at that moment, skipping the execution hurdle other games demand (eg KOF or Last Blade).

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I never said anything of the sort. Please try to avoid gross mischaracterizations and exaggerations, as it makes meaningful conversation impossible.

What I am saying is that fighting games do a very poor job of conveying their rule set. I did not say, “every fighting game needs the same rules”. Unless I missed a post, nobody here is advocating that. Just if something like a kara throw is intentionally in the game and the player is intended to use it, why not communicate what is happening instead of making it a mystery? If a move crushes low, it should probably look like it does. Make playing the game the only thing the player needs to know in order to succeed, and you will see more players succeeding.

Do you think there is something wrong with making a game less confusing for new players?

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I must say the last two pages are like watching a baby being bitch slapped by a pro wrestler. Hilarious and endlessly entertaining.

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Both of you are offering suggestions as suggestions and not as any actual changes, and thats where a lot the problems come in. When you move these ideas from hypothetical into actual implementation you run into issues.
You can’t say the game should show you what is going on visually and at the same time say the say that the gameplay won’t need to change, because visual notification and cancels are in almost direct conflict with each other. Kara cancels, Flight cancels, wavedashes, bold cancels, roll cancels, superjump cancels.

And the issue with cancels is just one of many with this type of change.