And this is actually a perfectly reasonable mentality.
When you’re playing the tutorial you’re not actually playing the game. You’re just doing things that the game is telling you.
That’s not how the rules of a game should be explained, the rules should be explained through actual play of the game. Nobody wants to NOT play the game in order to learn how to play the game.
In this situation though a cancel indicator explains nothing if it doesn’t tell the move, It’s actually closer to giving incorrect information; Because when you see stinger into jam session, you know there was a cancel there, the problem is that cancel looks like it is stinger cancelled into Jam session which isn’t correct. So now you have new players trying to cancel stinger into jam session and it won’t come out for some unknown reason.
Heres part two to this, Bold cancelling wasn’t figured out iirc until after release, so how do you handle critical tech that is discovered post launch? Are you patching in visual cues for every new discovery in the game?
The fact that alot of you expect to figure out/someone to explain to you all the mechanics in a fighting game without a training mode is nothing short of ignorance and or arrogance.
Yes, many arcades figured out shit through gameplay and gameplay alone, but if you don’t think niggas pleaded the people who owned the arcades to put on free play and screw around a bit, or people who would waste quarters simply figuring out a combo or how to punish something you’re crazy.
That was their training mode, we’re just blessed with a better version of that, now.
Also, I bet that between the person that picks up TT2 in an arcade somewhere and plays for a week and a person who buys the game, sits through that combot thing and then learns a few combos, that the combot guy would win in a FT5 or FT10.
I’d take the bet on the arcade player, since he/she probably learned a great deal more actual applicable match knowledge during that week of arcade play, combined with the ability to ask questions while waiting in line.
Just because I prefer that, doesn’t mean others would. I’m sure people just want to get in there and play the game, but their learning is not necessarily going to be as productive as mine. I’ve played a lot of fighters, so I generally know how stuff works and can figure out what’s going on and whatnot. I don’t see how an in-depth tutorial hurts considering how “ignorant” many new players are.
I… I don’t even know what you’re mad about anymore. I’m torn between telling you to chill and noting that as your profile says you’re 19, it’s pretty damn unlikely that you had any clear idea what the attitude was like.
Still that's kind of an aside. Let me try to make it more clear for you.
**Tutorials certainly aren't bad in and of themselves, but they're no replacement for a good clear system. **
If games have a problem with being too hard for the average casual player (and I should note *most of them really do not have such a problem*), it's *not* because of a lack of good teaching tools, it's because the games are needlessly complex to the point that learning the game gets in the way of playing the game.
The only point of bringing up the old days is that ignorance is ironically a way to get around that dilemma in a complex game... a way that we don't really have access to anymore.Trying to process the information of Tekken in a week is pretty nuts, it also depends on how good the local arcade is.
On the other hand, that tekken database was made for new people, to sit down, and digest.
It takes a special kind of person to apply what they’ve learned against someone new in a week, and if you can do it, more power to you, but anyone and everyone can take some time to sit down learn movement (which you can do all day, instead of waiting online at the arcade), seeing what crushes what (again, all day, instead of an arcade), and learning a simple bnb (which you can do all day).
It’s the ease of access, the effecientcy of use, that makes practice mode so powerful.
I remember when people thought Gallon was unbeatable because of beast cannon.
I have no idea how this forum handles double posts, hopefully, well.
I’m not angry, at all, me bolding something doesn’t mean I’m angry, me saying I’m angry means I’m angry.
No one ever said that a good clear system is bad, but, you’re asking ALOT of a game to “just make sense” to you, it’s not fair to expect to play the game, but not expect to take the time out to learn it’s rules.
It’s in the tutorial that all these seemingly weird/overbearing things become clear.
This isn’t a platformer, or a shooter, it’s a fighting game, the overall point of it is to bring the opponent’s life to zero, but how you do that is going to need a tutorial, that only makes sense.
What I’m saying is that the very basics of the game are very clear (push the button to attack, push back or a different button to block, push up to jump), and its perfectly possible to build people through play on their own. In my experience tutorials tend to make people worry about things they’d best learn in real play anyways.
A tutorial can give you a wall of text about overheads, and run you through examples, but you know what works better? An attack that’s animated in such a way that the character is attacking downward from above.
In the same way if you want an attack that dodges low attacks? You could have a list that says ‘these moves crush low’, or you could animate the character so they hop during the attack, clearly avoiding the attack.
There are so many clever, not overbearing ways that allow people to observe and learn on their own instead of making them sit through a class and expecting them to remember… and if you do that, both the player and the game benefit. The player learns more effectively, and the game appears so much more accessible to new players, simply because it clearly makes sense.
…
Dude, both the BB and P4A tutorials ALREADY DO THAT.
The SG tutorial does that.
Also, you’re losing focus, man.
Are you in favour of tutorials, robust tutorials, or just playing without one in general, shit is getting muddy.
What I am trying to say is that the “newest” fighting games to come out do do what you’re asking.
xes was right, in a well designed game you learn from playing.
Fighting games are weird because they’re like 2 games in 1. A game of reading your opponent and movement and stuff, and a game of execution. There shouldn’t be a tutorial on the first part. Fighting is pretty intuitive on it’s own in most fighters. The execution half needs to be taught though. I doubt most people learn 1-frame links and which moves chain together through naturally playing the game.
there is too much shit in fighting games now. universal systems all stacked on top of each other. it’s not “too hard” it’s “too needlessly complex.” it’s perfectly possible to design a system around various risk/reward situations and that is engaging on it’s own. SF2 was super popular because it made sense from the get go and you learned how to deal with situations in a natural way. you didn’t have to sit in training mode learning a fat combo or sit in tutorial mode having the game and system rules explained to you. that’s not what is interesting to most people about the genre anyway. what’s fun about fighting games is obfuscated under layers of junk.
half the time you end up beat the crap out of the other guy and it wasn’t because you outsmarted him or made better decisions, but because you can manipulate the system better than he can. you didn’t outsmart him, his level of comprehension of the engine just wasn’t there. that’s a barrier to interesting gameplay, and you remove that barrier by removing unnecessary universal gameplay mechanics. the faster both players understand how the game functions, the more likely the matches are to actually be interesting.
I think fighting games are only as hard as the competition. So I guess the main thing is the distance between a good player and a bad player is how ‘hard’ a fighting game is. In most fighters (from sf to smash bros) it’s much wider than in more ‘casual’ games. And that’s because
The thing is, there are different types of fighting games. When some players are tired of the classic playstyle of fighters(or anything, really), they want to add more crazy systems and badass mechanics to let them do crazier stuff. While some want to master the straightforward original game. Neither’s better than the other, people want different things. Games like BB, SG, even SFxT aren’t designed with the casual player in mind first. They’re designed for fighting gamers who want more than just the basics. It’s like teaching someone to skateboard by finding the steepest pool ever, and then giving them little text box tips like ‘lean on your front foot 4 times!’ vs. just letting them start on a miniramp. The kid at the pool dies and gives up skateboarding, while the kid on the mini learns, and can stay and perfect intricate stuff on the mini, or tackle the huge stuff.
I think if a fighter with a lot of intricate things wants to appeal to a casual player, it should
-have a robust single player mode (it should still just be a sequence of fights)
-The game starts out with only the basics available (starts out like SF2, or simpler, never overestimate casual)
-and slowly adds on the fancy mechanics like a Zelda game.
- inlcudes a few obvious chances to use those new mechanics in the next few fights. (this is where the ‘casual’ player learns on their own in fights)
-and then adds another new meter, or system, or way to cancel attacks.
-repeat
A lot of what’s being described is already in VF, and always has been. You guys can play that, no?
I don’t want visual shit all over my screen to indicate every little thing that happens. Indicating that you didn’t block correctly is enough, don’t need flashing shit and pop ups every time you do a cancel.
They would’ve if everything found in SF2 now was known and intended like currently new SF2 players do.
They didn’t hear of renda cancels, OS throws, stored supers, charge buffering, etc. back in 92 or whenever the SF2 that these were in came out.
This topic is currently heading in the “it was easier to play fighting games when everyone knew less about fighting games” direction. Yeah, knowledge is terrible, fighting games were so much better when players didn’t know about kara cancels, option selects and other unintended uses of various systems.
It doesn’t hurt.
But don’t be surprised when you make a robust tutorial and nobody touches it or nobody actually learns from it when you’re asking the player to stop doing the actual playing part of the game in order to do some commands I’m telling you to do.
Requiring players to understand a bunch of esoteric bullshit to be effective is only harmful.
Everyone learns better differently so it’s impossible “nobody” would touch or learn from the tutorial. It’s not like the tutorial goes away if you want to check it out later either.
If it’s required or not depends on the competition.
Stop thinking high level tourney play is the only “right” way to play/enjoy a fighting game. Not everyone buying/playing these games is trying to or wants to win EVO.