It’s interesting to think about it as learning curves as @BB_Hoody said. For example, special moves done with buttom mash like honda slap/chun lightning legs and charge moves were created to be easier to execute. And they really are easier for a complete begginer to use for the first time than a quarter circle foward. But this don’t hold truth later on…to use lightning legs or charges at will requires a lot of tricks with the buffer and preparing things ahead of time.
Putting this case of charge/mash special moves in a learning curve, in the beggining a small increment in experience would reflect a big increment in learning. But as the curve advances, it becomes the reverse…you start to have to spend way more time than usual to notice any increment in learning. A similar case is holded buttom special moves. At first it seems like the easier thing ever…then you discover that you will have to fight for half a round withouth using a normal, while dedicating one finger just to hold that buttom.
About a separeted mode for casuals and begginers…if it’s to create something “for fun”, and some people see the competition itself as distressful, might as well ad something different from 1x1 between human players. For example:
Spoiler
-a xrd/kofxiii like history mode. Think of it as a visual novel.
-a skullgirls esque tutorial to teach system and gameflow.
-a kof13 esque trials to teach combos. Think of it as a rhytm game.
-a ggxxac esque challenges to fight against a buffed cpu or with lowered stats.
-a alpha3 esque world tour were you level up your character and open new abilities. RPG-like, people loved it.
-a alpha3 esque “dramatic battle” for a cooperative mode were 2 players fight together against 2 cpu controlled characters. Closer to a 2d plataformer, people loved it too.
But any of those items are tons of extra-work that require more time and budget…
As people mentinoned uniel and melty too…
[details=Spoiler]
“Everything chains into anything”, the first impression about execution is that it’s very easy. It gives a good impression for begginers for pressing buttons and stuff happening. Even in the choice of special moves, there’s a lot of characters with double-down special moves…that for sure are the easier ones i have seeing around, and can only remember SNK using this command (Kim Kampwhan).
Another interesting thing is that the environment is very controled. There’s a big number of failsafes mechanics there to control the momentum, that shared by melty blood, unib and dfc.
-you can cancel dash foward animation into blocking at any point
-there’s a crossup protection that doubles as a aegis-esque unblockable protection
-fuzzy guard protection
-grab protection in the wakeup
-chip damange exists, but you can’t be killed by chip damange. The last attack have to connect to kill.
Uniel added even more stuff on top.
-they maked air normals overhead just in the falling part of the jump, effectively taking instant overheads out of the game
-added sf4 esque no-juggle state when recovering in the air, taking a big portion of resets out
-they added a hitstun deterioration system. Depending on the first hit of the combo beeing a normal hit, a counter hit or a high counter hit (when you cut the opponent special move), the hitstun of each attack of a combo is scalled differently. For normal hits, this system makes the combos much much shorter, while still giving space for freedom if someone get a counter hit.
-to compensate for the shorter combos created by this hitstun deterioration, the total HP of the characters was reduced.
But they have some problems too
-the flexible chain options creates very strong blockstrings, full of staggers. To catch the reset point of the pressures can be very difficult…the impression begginers will have is that the pressure is infinite and they had to try a riskier thing than they really should.
in melty
-the game have gravity system ( the speed of falling increase as you juggle them to take out infinites) and chars have different body sizes. But on top of it different chars falls at different speeds. Almost any juggle will need to have the timing changed when using against different chars, and almost all advanced combos are very char specific. It can become just too much things to memorizate.
-Full moon characters have more restricted chain sequences, and naturally inclined toward links. For some, it can become very tight links (Fkouma, Fwarachia) or even 1f links (Farc). I’m actually ok with this, it’s good to have chars with different combo styles, but it can be a let down.[/details]