Actually, yes.
Well, maybe that was a little condescending, and also perhaps a little exaggerated, but the point that I wanted to stress is that far from being arbitrary, the inputs are a very important factor in the design of fighting games, much more so than you make them out to be. It doesn’t make any sense to call something ‘arbitrary’ when clearly the decision the design the game that way was very carefully considered.
Nope. That is how you want it to be, that’s how you would prefer it to be, which is great, go play Smash, nothing wrong with a guy playing Smash, but it’s not how it is, it’s not how fighting games are. You see the difference?
As it is, in fighting games, the designers made the conscious and carefully considered decision to make the game that much more interesting by making some imputs a little bit more complicated than strictly necessary. This was no accident, and it is not arbitrary, it was a conscious design decision and its part of what makes fighting so great.
Maybe you don’t find it interesting, or maybe you don’t even know anyone who does, but to us, we who enjoy fighting games for what they are, it is.
I respect the sentiment, really I do, and I think everyone here is in agreement as far as the tactical aspects of fighting games are concerned. Like I said many times, if you prefer decision making over execution, that’s great, there are a great many games that accommodate just this.
It’s a mistake however, and nothing besides, to say that this is all there is to it. Fighting games are not just decision making games. There’s a great many other factors, and they were not put there by accident. Timing, reaction speed, memorization, and also, yes, execution. And, most of all, get this, the interplay between them. Just like in a real fight, it’s not just decisions but a great many factors and the interplay between them that determine the winner. We who like fighting games like to compete with each other on who can make the best decisions, it’s true, but what you seem to miss is that we like to compete in these other fields as well! As important as they are, it’s silly to say decisions are all that matter.
Secondly, even if it were all about the decisions and nothing besides, then still, the controls are a part of the decisions and can in absolutely no way be seen as something separate from them. It’s a decision to go for the hard just frame link, or for the easy DP, or for the even easier Mexican Uppercut. It’s an, I’ll say it again, interesting tactical consideration! Remove difficult inputs, and there is no decision left, you’ll just go for whatever does the most damage, every single time, no questions asked, no decision, no tactics. This is why I say ‘controlling your character’ is all there is, because every single decision that you make is, guess what, a decision about how to control your character.
It’s one thing to say, I prefer this or that kind of game. Great. It’s quite another however to slander fantastic games like KoF, Guilty Gear, and Virtua Fighter, some of the best videogames that exist, by calling the excellent design decision that went into making them ‘arbitrary’. Or, worse, to compare them to mediocre games, and say they could be ‘improved’ by being more like them…
The problem with this line of thinking is that the “decision” behind it isn’t so much a tactical one, as it is one of necessity. A player making this decision isn’t doing so because it’s a smart decision, but rather because it’s what they’re able to do. It’s artificial depth.
Real depth (and more natural decision) would be on two different options that both lead to interesting possibilities where the choice isn’t because “the player can’t do one option”.
Except you can love games and still acknowledge their flaws.
More importantly, years of playing these games can give you insight on the stuff that works and the stuff that doesn’t. This is why you get a number of former players getting into the industry to make their own games. Guys like Mike Z, Keits, David Sirlin and who do share similar sentiments towards execution as those that we (guys like me, ukyo, etc.) have been espousing.
Games can easily do some things right and some things wrong. Xrd improved execution requirements for I-No by changing her Chemical Love input from hcb+f into a much more manageable qcb (especially since tiger-kneeing it is also very common). Ramlethal received an interesting set of chain combos in her P/K series that are all easy to do. At the same time, she also has a just frame move.
Beyond the chance to fail, there’s a couple of other purposes for execution requirements, but they don’t necessarily contribute to the competitive balance of the game compared to the general funness of the game. One is that they give a player a sense of progress over players who haven’t played/practiced as much. A sense of progression is great. It’s probably the reason why people love MMOs, games with RPG elements, and one of the psychological factors that makes F2P games with in-game currency absolute cash cows. Graduating from walk up 360 into walk up 720 is a great feeling of progression. Grinding out a just frame to get it 100% consistency is awesome. But that sense of progression doesn’t have to be found in the execution requirements for a character’s moveset. There’s plenty of other things that players can get better at in fighting games that don’t revolve around learning how to do motions to pull off a super consistently. It just so happens that it’s the most visible thing that happens in progression and the easiest way fighters have to scratch that particular itch.
Another aspect of execution that’s part of the funness as opposed to balance is just the tactile sense of pressing buttons or doing ridiculous motions for ridiculous outcomes. Chadha in Yatagarasu has an 1800. I don’t play Yatagarasu competitively, so I have no idea if that’s supposed to be a serious move competitively or not. But I can’t deny that it’s just plain fun to spin the stick like a madman trying to get that move to come out because on its face it’s just so crazy. Dizzy’s instant kill is [2]8642. It’s in no way practical, but it’s fun to try and pull off casual play occasionally.
You speak, and indeed have been throughout this thread, as though being able to perform a move were a binary state, as though first you cannot perform it at all, then you learn and suddenly you are able to perform it flawlessly. Again, this is perhaps how you would like it to be, but it’s not how it is, it’s not how execution works.
Clearly, in fighting games the opposite is true. It’s only in the first few hours that you cannot perform a certain move at all and then after you learn you can only perform it under certain conditions, then later you can perform it at will, etc. It’s a gradual, continual process of improvement that never ends. It never does become as you say a ‘non-factor’, because doing a non-buffered move in the least possible amount of frames, when given only a miniscule window of time, remains hard, even for the best players.
Knowing your own capacities, deciding how to deal with them, balancing out your own weaknesses and strengths (and not just those of your character). Without a doubt, these are very interesting tactical considerations. In war, these are exactly the type of choices commanders are faced with. The fact that your capacities constantly change, depending even on such things as the time of the day, or your particular mood, and not, as you would have it, merely on whether you have learned how to perform a move or not, makes them that much more interesting. Sometimes, you lose because you had too little faith in your own abilities, sometimes, because you had too much.
The Zangief player who had an opportunity could have won by going for the 720, but he decided to play it safe and lost the match. The Kazuya player who just blocked something unsafe could have gone for any number of guaranteed punishers and gain significant life lead, but hungry for victory as he was he **decided **to go for the EWGF to end the match right there. Alas, his execution was off by a single frame, just enough for his opponent to duck and punish with a full combo. Bad decision, he shouldn’t have overestimated himself so, he should not have exposed himself to that kind of risk.
One could make a thousand such examples and still have exposed but an extremely small facet of the many ways in which execution adds depth to fighting games.
@JaceBuilder Personally I’m not arguing against high risk/high reward scenarios you’re laying out in your post.
What I hate about some fighting games if when basic movement and punishment becomes a problem due to retarded execution requirements.
Take Tekken for example where something as simple as movement becomes stupidly difficult thanks to Korean Backdashing and takes you month of practice and has virtually no disadvantages.
I’m alright with difficult shit that comes at a risk and gives a decent reward, but when there’s simple shit in the game that makes it overly complicated and makes it impossible for you to play the actual game before you’ve put in month of practice, then the game becomes impossible for me to enjoy and invest time into.
Quoting your sig:
He must think ST is the best FG ever, since it’s relatively easy to do TOD combos with Dictator but it’s very, very hard to do a reversal to escape a Boxer throw loop…
Also, on the subject of MikeZ, we all know how well received his “opinions” on how FG should be based on his game…
Some people here loves to think that SFIV was/is a success because of “reasons”, never because it’s in fact a very good game that brings fun to a vast range of players. You can do very basic combos in the game for a good amount of damage if you’re a casual player fighting against your friends. If you wanna step up and play competitively against good players, you need to level up your execution skills above a certain point.
If you want to win just because you’re “smarter” than your adversary, go play chess or something. But it’s not like you need to be Desk to win in SFIV. Just look at Daigo or Justin Wong, they’re not execution-gods by any stretch of imagination, but they’re both very accomplished players.
Also, you can look at players like Luffy or SnakeEyez playing on pads, ChrisG who doesn’t use plink with Sakura. Hell, Mike Ross is a succesful player who’s known for average execution but very good reads.
And all those thousand such examples are all ARTIFICIAL DEPTH.
Even in a situation where a player is made to chose between two options, one better but harder to do, one worse but easier to do, there really isn’t much REAL choice because there is one that is clearly better and the choice not to use it comes simply from not being able to pull it off.
The choice isn’t really a meaningful one. Not in the way of say, someone playing Mags/Doom/Phoenix in UMvC3 and choosing to pop level 2 X-Factor with Phoenix instead of saving it for level 3 when she’s last. Or say a Chun player in 3rd Strike choosing to not go for the post SA2 reset/mixup into another SA2 (and potential 80% damage of the whole thing) and instead choosing to save the meter. Those are all truly meaningful decisions because they aren’t about choosing an inferior one over a superior one due to execution.
The other thing is that, all that you described, those situations where you one is forced to choose between an inferior option and a superior one due to execution will eventually develop as the players develop the metagame. It’s inevitable due to the emergent nature of high level play (though smart devs can turn these situation into real meaningful choices).
Now, since these will eventually come up, why make a game, or a character with this kind of artificial depth.
At worse, you’re creating a situation where a character has only one or two truly optimal options.
Instead of this, why not create a character/game with multiple viable options where the choice to use them isn’t dictated by execution.
Then don’t Korean Back Dash! It’s not like the game cannot be played without it, perhaps you won’t be world champion, true, but what are the chances of that anyway? The beauty of fighting games is that they are so complex that there are a great many things to improve on, and unlike many games, you can choose your own style. What type of player are you?
My buddy comes over and defeats me 6 to 4, he’s visiting again next week and I know that with just a little practice and a good night’s sleep, I will defeat him next time, easily. What do I do? Develop new mix-ups to trick him with? Improve my reaction time to his character’s moves? Improve my combos? Improve my movement? Either one area will be enough to get me my victory. It’s a beautiful choice.
So if you don’t like movement, then chose one of the many other areas to improve in. Only when you improved all these other skills to the point where your movement becomes a definite bottleneck to your overall game, then, and only then will it become necessary to work on your Korean Back Dash if you still wish to become better. Depending on how avid a player you are, it could be years before your mix-ups and combos and reaction speed are as great as to out shadow your movement to such an extent, and by that time, learning such a technique will no longer sound very daunting at all. On the contrary, you will be happy that even though you know all of your character’s moves inside out, there is still stuff to learn and explore about the game.
Realize that the majority of Tekken players probably do not even know what a Korean Back Dash is. Realize that despite this, a large number of them are likely to still be better players than yourself. Now try to think what might be wrong with your statement.
@d3v
Notice how a never disagree with any of your examples of different types of depth. Of course, these are all great aspects of fighting games too, yes. But it’s not either-or. The best games have an extremely wide range of layers of depth, and the interplay between them makes for an even greater complexity. Not only that, but the designers have also carefully and expertly balanced all of this so that no one area of skill comes to dominate any of the others. A player with bad execution can still defeat one with good execution by being smarter, and vice versa, and this is the beauty of fighting games.
The problem here is that you’re too blinded by some sort of belief that the designers can do no wrong and possibly the belief that there isn’t anything that can be done to improve the genre.
This, despite multiple, logical arguments here in this thread, and in other places on the web from some very smart people (some smarter than us) that show otherwise.
This is why I’m thankful that alot of these smarter folk are coming into the industry while asking the all important question of “why”? Why do we still have esotetic inputs (Mike Z, Sirlin)? Why must a player be robbed of all interaction during a combo (Keits)? And I’m thankful that these guys will dare to change things when they feel that what was done before isn’t exactly how things should be done.
It’s this kind of thinking that moves the genre forward.
Your argument from authority does not work when I have the designers of KoF, Tekken, Guilty Gear etc. on my side who clearly have much more authority on this subject than the likes of Mike Z and Sirlin.
Which again reflects your problem of being unable to actually look at their work and see that there are things that can be improved upon.
Funny you mention this because Pachi’s (yet another player turned developer) work on Xrd not only features alot of things designed to make execution easier, but at the same time rejects alot of the developments of later GGs like Accent Core.
Heck, the teams stated reason for the change to RCs reflects what I’ve been saying about execution driven choices being a false choice. The problem that they’ve stated with the old RC system in GG, was that 25% meter options were considered better than the 50% ones. In other words, it was better to FRC than to RC, even though FRCs were harder to do due to the strict timing requirement. The change to the system was meant to mitigate that, so now there are times when an RRC is fine, and other times when a YRC is the better choice.
I just wanna throw this out there…
Imagine KoF, instead of adapting the commands that people grew accustomed to in '96-onwards, they kept the same commands from '94-'95 (back when King’s Double strike was 64632+K among others). I think it’s fair to believe that the game wouldn’t be as competitively viable as it is today. I suppose this discussion has the same concept in mind. Looking at it from that perspective, I don’t see where JFs and 1F-links are necessary. Based on the comparison above, it’d certainly be counterproductive to growing the genre to maintain some of these executional requirements regardless of what they add to the game.
Plenty of things that can be improved upon. But not all change is improvement, is it? Just look at what your precious David Sirlin did to ST…
Last I checked, none of the issues with HDR had anything to with the easier inputs.
Most of what happened with HDR had more to do with disagreements with players on the balancing, politics as well as the lack of an arcade port in Japan.
Changing 360/720 inputs served what purpose?
I have HDR and I still don’t know how to do a SPD or Zangief’s Super in that game (in HDR mode), so that served to alienate a long time player (been playing SF2 since '91 in the arcades) and I doubt that it attracted any new Zangief/Hawk player because of “OMG! Easier inputs”
Your point about the game creators assuming that 720s is a given makes no sense, because if the creators of USFIV really believed that, that move would be seriously nerfed. Watch any SnakeEyez match and count how many times he could’ve done U1 if it was as simple as a button press… execution barrier being a part of the game (and metagame) is the norm for good fighting games and I don’t think that should change.
Those who do think are clearly in the minority and still struggling to get any kind of recognition and, more important for any product as a video game, commercial success.
You can create 1 frame links in a game’s system without actually making them 1 frame links. Blazblue has a buffer system that automatically repeats inputs for up to… I want to say 4-6 frames after you press the button. So even if the frame data is designed for a character for balance reasons to include situations where there are 1 frame links, you can make the actual execution of said links easier.
These are not examples of execution as a balancing tool. These are examples of execution as a progression tool. That’s perfectly fine and a legitimate reason to have execution challenges. But it doesn’t have to be part of how to do the basic moves of a character.
The choice of whether to do a hard thing or an easy thing is to me an interesting piece of fighting games for execution. I think it’s worth keeping. Yes, there is depth with regards to whether a player can pull off a certain move or not. But does the depth have to be in just doing those moves? I don’t think so.
Fighters are certainly deep enough that they can have execution requirements that aren’t present to new players, which is the primary problem. The 720 is usually a flashy cool looking throw. But it’s locked behind doing a 720. The players picking up the game based on what they’ve seen in gameplay trailers or other marketing material can’t bust one out without practicing. On the other hand, you can press “b” with a Smash Ball in Smash 4 and get the amazing Megaman super without any trouble at all. I’m betting we’re losing way too many players who can’t get over the initial hurdle of just doing moves and dropping the game before they even decide if they want to try and get into the competitive scene.
[list]
[] Execution requirements? Fine. Plenty of reasons to have execution requirements in general.
[] Execution requirements for competitive level gameplay? Also fine. At this point, people are invested into the game and probably discovered things that the developers probably didn’t intend. They’re pushing the game to its limits.
[] Execution requirements for entry level gameplay? Also fine. People here have figured out that the fancy moves are a goal to work towards and that there’s (usually) some sort of alternative execution wise to work with.
[] Execution requirements for people who just saw a game trailer and want to try and do that wacky stuff? Not fine. This is where there’s going to be a huge drop off in player retention if they just stop playing the game if they can’t do what they see from promotional stuff consistently.
[/list]
From the Zangief page on Sirlin’s design changes:
Smash Brothers.
I tought we were talking about fighting games here.
A lot of competitive games like Smash, CoD or MOBAs don’t have the same kind of execution barrier, for different reasons.