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

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
501

Everytime that i hear someone complaining about subsysstems i have to wonder if they even know what are they talking about, many stuff that people call sub systems are not that, like kara cancels.
Outside 1 or 2 subsystems on the current games, the majority are natural inclusions that have very logical reasons of why they are present, but of course that requires an understanding on how the fgs work to begin with, so any new player could have a difficult time to gasp them if there is not a comprehensive way to let them know how the fg works, but the majority of the games out there have tools to teach about those subsystems in the 1st place, plus the info about them is fully available out on the internet.

For example the FCAD is not a concept difficult to understand, but, certainly it can be difficult to do consistently, that is something that i would not deny.
You can cancel some moves at the cost of some bar in order to make an attack safe or keep the pressure/combo, the concept is simple in reality, now the execution part, well, blame ono or whoever you want about that, since if we go by the interviews those “execution barriers” are there because “the hardcore players love them” as they seem to believe.

Also, depth come from options, if those options have an impact on the general strategy.
Continuing with the FCAD example, it adds depth because it gives options that add to the strategy, plus you need to manage your resources (super bar) to have access to it, and the decision of using your meter for doing an FCAD also has an impact on what you can and can’t do after that.

Finally, one thing that many people should understand is that not every game or game genre would appeal to everyone, not everyone like racing games, sport games, fps, strategy games, etc. for whatever reason like gameplay for example.
The same happens with fg.

Edit
Also if you believe that other games don’t have a lot of sub systems that are not showed to the players you are very wrong, just look at quake, the amount of shit that you need to know to play competitively about the physics mechanics is big, or racing games, you need to understand well how the car behaves plus a lot of technical stuff that the majority of the games simply never tell you. Yeah, you can say that anyone can drive, but knowing how to drift, and how the car behaves and how to take advantage of that gives the player way better chances to win.

There where more people playing fg on the 90 because by that time arcades were alive, more than anything, the complexity of the games wasn’t really a factor, since even when game became more complex there were still people playing them.

502

If we’re getting into this again, the explosion of complexity during the slump has everything to do with the fact that there was an essentially closed group of hardcore players that were used to practice mode being a primary mode of play and needed a way to see their progress without the constant competition arcades provided.

The way to do that is to throw all kinds of arcana in and let people have the feeling they’re ‘figuring out’ something and give them a clear way to see their progress paying off.

 
The problem is, now that there's a bigger audience again and 2 player play (at various quality levels) is reasonably available, all that stuff from the 2000s gets in the way for people that just want to play against their friends.
 
PS: a good subsystem example (since you seem to want specifics):  BB negative penalty/just defend/barrier gauge.
503

not every fighting game needs to be so fucking easy it takes 2 seconds to pick up just for the sake of casual players. Chess takes about 100x more work to get into than tekken does yet, chess is played by more people in the world than tekken even @ the casual level. kind of shits on your entire point really.

games like tekken are very very very easy to get into @ a casual level. Very few sub systems and its just straight up hit the other guy.

each fighting game targets certain audiences. Games like tekken are their for all group types where as games like marvel are there for pretty much the pros and there is nothing wrong with that.

fighting games have NEVER been too hard. Casual players just have to take that leap into the serious world. If fighting games were actually hard to play, we wouldn’t see year 2-3 players make it to evo top 8 finals when people who have been playing for 15 years still can’t crack it. We even have kids like Noah now whom are actually learning it. and if a fucking 7 year old can learn to play marvel ,which is always the hardest game around, everyone can in this thread too.

so the answer is no, fighting games aren’t too hard for casuals because a 7yr old can learn to play in a relatively short time. Noah has learned to play sf4\umvc3 and he’s above average in both games. By saying fighters are too hard to play but yet a 7yr old can do it is really bat shit insane. Is a 7yr olds math that hard to do? what about a 7yr olds english hw? so why the fuck is a game capable to be played by a 7yr old too hard to get into?

/thread

504

As much of a dick as Shoultzula is, you’re making even him look bad.

505

he does more damage to himself that I could possibly ever do.

xes: fighting games aren’t casual friendly!!!
shoultz: noah plays sf4\mvc3 better than the average player and hes 7-8 yrs old and he’s been playing for 2 years

this thread is retarded. The people whom are arguing about games being too hard can’t even consider that a 7yr old is capable of playing these 2 capcom fighters @ a tournament level and when its achievable by such a young kid, then its actually not very hard to get into. Everything that 7 yr old does is easy. His math HW is fucking simple to the rest of us, his English HW is simple the rest of us. However magically, fighting games aren’t simple enough for the rest of us but it is simple enough for a 7yr old?

that kid probably doesn’t even know what his dick does is used for and I’m supposed to believe xes and think fighters are non casual friendly?

when 7yr olds enters tournaments and performs @ a good level, that is THE definition of casual friendly. If a 7yr old can do it, surely everyone else in this thread can too.

if it got any simpler, babies would be playing tournament level SF before they can walk. It simply can’t get any easier than it is right now. Noah’s brain isn’t even fully developed yet he can comprehend what is going on in the game. There is no way in fuck fighters these days aren’t casual friendly because if they were, he would need to wait a few more years to start playing and succeeding in tournaments.

506

This sentence makes no sense; What exactly is stopping them from playing against there friends?

  1. If you just want to play against your friends then just play against your friends, negative penalty and just defend aren’t going to stop you.
  2. If your friends were practicing while there were no capcom games and you weren’t that still doesn’t mean you can’t play them it just means your more likely to lose if they learned those things in a game that came out before this one.
  3. Again playing and winning are not the same thing.

Its not that any of this stuff is needlessly complex its just complex, and some people have an advantage over others because this isn’t there first time seeing it.

If Pool A is the group of players who already understand the system and fundamentals of a game at release and Pool B is the group who decided to learn how to play the game at some point during its lifespan and Pool C is the group of players who stay casual throughout the entire life of the games, then the current Pool B disappears at the launch of the next title in the series and becomes part of Pool A. On launch Pool B become Pool A and people in pool C have the option to get into the new pool B.
The point is you have to start somewhere and just deal with the fact that, there is no blank slate there are people going into this game with knowledge that other don’t have due to experience with previous titles in the series. Its not that meters don’t take time to learn, but you have to judge how hard they are in comparison to other people in Pool B and NOT people in Pool A. Its not that the people in Pool A didn’t put in that time, its just that as someone in Pool B you weren’t around yet to see them put in that time. When they were in Pool B they had to deal with the same thing from people in Pool A.

tl;dr You’re always behind on your first game, deal with it.

507

100$ bison bucks says xes answers black shinobi before he makes a comment about my last 2 posts

508

Now he’s going too.

509

Barrier is there to have an answer against chip damage.
Negative penalty is there to limit the brainless run away by giving it a risk, you can still apply run away tactics, but you have to be more cautious about how you do it, this is specially evident when you consider that the game has a character like Tager who can’t move while at the same time have chars like Taokaka, Valkenhain, Hazama that have great mobility options.
Just Defend is there to give the defending player a tool to reduce block stun, gain meter while defending

I know that you like to criticize a lot of stuff without knowing or thinking why they are there, so let me tell you again, the major part of the games with additional subsystems (who also aren’t as much as many of you want to claim) have very logical reasons to be there, you can see by how they works how they serve to balance the risk reward ration between different aspects of the fg.

Just because you don’t like it or don’t want to understand of the why they are there, it doesn’t mean that they are useless mechanics that are put in place just for the sake of it to challenge the weak minds of your kind.

510

Here’s the thing, yeah I get there’s a reason for all those things. The question that takes seriously consideration is “Is this thing we’re looking at a serious issue we have to fix, and do we also have to add an entire system to fix it?”

I’m hesitant to get into this again because we’ve already spent dozens of pages of discussion on it, so this’ll be my last bit on it.

Fighting games are already massively complex and deep. Any unnecessary additional complexity you add beyond what your game/theme requires is a bad thing, and should probably be taken back out.

 
now can we go back to agreeing that in general these games are certainly not 'too hard' for casual players as a rule?  I don't actually disagree with that point.
511

Xes is right guys, just look at famous examples in other genres of unnecessary complexity removed:
Epic Games deciding not to have a secondary weapon function in UT99
Blizzard only having one resource type in WC and SC
Meepo was removed from DotA

And so on, so forth. Sometimes, Xes, complexity is added not because its necessary, but because its fun.

512

where’s my money!!!

says the guy who doesn’t play fighting games @ a decent level.

Noah is fucking 8 yrs old by now I think and he understands these fighting games @ a pretty decent level for ANYONE. You’re making it sound you have to be an autistic savant to play fighting games when children are capable of playing more than 1 fighter @ a tournament level.

modern fighting games are not massively complex and deep. Its just for you to acknowledge this, it means you would be wrong and you simply can’t be wrong. That would be impossible…

now lets stick Noah on vampire savior, ST or mvc2 and see how well he does. He’ll get blown the fuck up so fast its not even funny. Previous fighting games are on a different level than what kids are able to comprehend but these modern fighters are so fucking watered down that elementary school kids can understand them @ an entry tournament level.

513

wallet

Spoiler

http://angryclownent.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/bison-dollar.jpg

I never was a good gambler.

514

I dont think it has to do with appeal, but whether you are made for it.

Recently I tried the tutorial mode of Hearts of Iron. There was so much text and jargon my head was going to explode. Despite being used to read scientific books the few minutes I spent there, were very tiresome. I think this is one of the most difficult video games ever and not a coincidence you cant find it on consoles. . you have to think both on the political, economic and military level at once in order to succeed. I’ll devote a little more time to it to know the basics.

this game requires a certain amount of education, either in history, economics, military etc.

Depending on the genre, some were from the start for older audiences. Strategy games and adventure games on computers during the 80s had that trend. because at that time owning a computer meant you had to go through all sorts of puzzle solving to get it to function properly. so a puzzle adventure game was the perfect candidate for them.

515

maybe if you didn’t make every argument into some appeal to your own authority as a marvel 2 player he would? that shit makes for a pretty dull discussion

516

taps shoulder

That’s not the real deal.

517

I’ll say it once, shoultz (or rather $houltz).

You are not worth talking to. If I don’t engage you, you go directly to mass-scale personal shots. If I do engage you, it only gets 1000x worse, and if I’m talking to you and let my temper get to me at all, I tend to get a warning that leads to a week or more acc’t suspension. It’s better for me to just let you carry on about me than to respond and risk pissing off a mod.

edit:

on that I could go either way. I noticed the name change, but the mannerisms are spot-on.

518

Again, just because YOU feel that is unnecessary it doesn’t mean that it is, you dumb fuck.
What you see as unnecessary complexities are more options for the player.
Since you don’t want to die because the chip damage, they give you the option to avoid it, but in order to keep the balance it needs a resource that needs to be managed wisely.

Since you want to be able to have ways to escape the preasure game of your oponent, they give you different options to use during that, like the instant guard that shorterns the recovery on block stun and increase meter, of course, since fg’s are about keep a balance between risk and reward, they are not easy to do, but certainly are not imposible.
Are you totally inept to make an instant guard? don’t worry, you have barrier guard and alpha counters to save your life.

The negative penalty is there because the game has extreme archetypes of characters, is a counter measure, i find your complain about it so funny because the majority of the casuals only know about that rushdown, so they will never trigger it, also by the time that they start to learning how to play, they only need to know that they need to keep a doing nothing or walking backwards to trigger, is very rare that this happens on casual play or high level play, that this being a complain is just ridiculous.

Another thing, the notion that you need to know all the stuff from the beginning and that they are essential for the people to enjoy the games is horse shit, there are a lot of people who play many games deemed as hard or for the hardcores and don’t have a problem enjoying the games despite they don’t know shit of those options.

I know a lot of people that love playing mvc2 and gg despite they didn’t know about a lot of this stuff.
The need of this technical knowledge is only true if you want to be a competitive player.

Also, this is also why there are multiple options of different games btw, i for example, don’t like car simulators like Forza or Gran Turismo, does this mean that those games are wrong because they are not like Burnout?
No, because those games are not mean to cater my taste, the same happens to the different fg’s and the genre itself.

I seriously have to wonder how mentally challenged you need to be that the adition of those systems make playing fighting games the most horrid experience for you in your sad life, when i little kid who is 8 years old didn’t have a problem to understand it.

Finally, I really love how you always feel that your opinion (which 99% of the time is wrong and misinformed btw) is the only valid one.

519

Good thing the OP specifically made the thread about just casuals and not everyone, then.

Not quite the same thing. I agree that there will always be people that don’t want to play any given type of game. I think that’s normal and expected. The issue with fighting games in particular is that there is a not-insignificant number of people for whom inability to play is the problem, not lack of interest.

These games are just harder to play, and for casuals the squeeze is not worth the juice. It’s fine to argue that it’s more important to please the hardcore players over the casual masses. But I feel that to say it’s the same thing is at best an over-simplification, and at worst just flat-out wrong. I don’t play CoD because I don’t want to. My friend doesn’t play UMVC3 because he can’t.

520

The fact that your friend cant play mvc3 show that he lacks basic motor skills tbh, he can’t but for other reasons actually