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Is it really an achievement to pick a character?
It comes down to comparing games with different design goals. I’ve read that for a long time Capcom developed their fighting games around feedback from the players- they’d ask people, for example, what they did and didn’t like about New Generation or 2nd Impact then develop the next game with this in mind. They still do this to an extent, but back then they were really making fighting games for their fighting game userbase.
It’s been made clear from the start that SFIV was being developed for the masses who loved SF2 then were alienated by increasingly complex follow ups that assumed a base level of knowledge built up over the previous titles.
Hardcore fans being disappointed with products designed for the mass market is hardly a surprise.
Well it’s not my fault I had to single out a easy minded player with a sarcastic flare. It wasn’t apart of the plan.
yet i fail to see the logic behind unsafe offense == midlessly button mashing 
I hope you know that doesn’t make any sense at all.
I see what OP is saying, it’s just that for a game like SSF4, the execution demands are extremely high (I’m talking from the perspective of a casual gamer trying out SSF4), so of course it would make sense for Capcom to make the game a bit more forgiving towards mainstream gamers so people who feel they’ve accomplished much by learning how to DP can have fun doing more than just normals. With what you said about other games like Mario or Final Fantasy, you don’t have do one-frame links to jump or attack so of course the average joe can think more playing these games rather than mashing since they don’t have to worry about dropping combos.
Basically what I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter much whether the game is too defensive or offensive. If the learning curve for execution is too high for the casual player then they’re not going to bother trying to learn and they’ll end up playing mindlessly aggressive or careless as you point out.
Wait, isn’t SF4 specifically aimed at that very same audience using lenient inputs, comeback mechanics etc.?
average joe doesn’t even know what a one frame link is.
this is average joe street fighter:
‘Good Old-Fashion Button-Smashing’ | News Video | MTV
Yeah, but as shocking as it may seem to some, it’s not enough.
Exactly lol.
Yeah, but they weren’t even going for combos. I can’t say that execution barriers are the reason why they play like kangaroos.
MK9 combos are really easy, and still the average joe player is going to jump around a lot and use specials without any sense.
Then how would you explain the massive group of 09> ?
I will admit that was just braindead. But I still don’t think making the game more defensive is going to change the mindset of ‘kill the opponent by being aggressive and pulling off fancy moves’.
How would you explain the massive group of “Omg this sucks this game is too hard” players? Of course the leniency’s gonna appeal to some people trying to get better, but then there’s still many people who have a problem with the execution even if the bar’s lowered.
SSF4 Commercial: Easy inputs and everything!!
SF4 doesn’t do it very well though.
You’re not taking a lot of things into account:
-The depth of a game’s engine: by saying balanced games diminish the learning process because any character can compete, you are also saying the game’s depth is restricted to character balance and nothing else. If this were the case, then parrying, just defending, guard canceling, roll canceling and pretty much any engine-specific technique is irrelevant to you.
-The difficulty associated with learning specific characters; even if they can all compete, assuming they are all equally easy to learn is illogical. Your argument falls apart here again; what if all the characters were hard to learn and required “research,” as you put it. Would a balanced game still be easy to pick up in that scenario? A game’s balance does not correlate with how easy it is.
-Character match-ups. Again, just because a game is balanced, doesn’t mean there aren’t disparities between any two characters. If you think broken games are the only ones that make players think when in disadvantageous positions, then you are sorely mistaken. Balanced games allow players to focus on essential things, and not needlessly worry about overcoming broken things that were overlooked in the development process.
I’ve read some silly things on this board, but I’ve never seen someone defend games that are inherently broken unless they’re MvC2 players.
What is this hypothetical “Balanced Game” strawman, anyway?
Not a strawman, it’s one of the reasons he cited for the deteriorating quality of fighting games - which is rubbish, but yeah:
No. That group bought it purely because of nostalgic reasons. The people who stayed have been learning the game due to online possibilities, community etc. They’re willing to purchase an expensive stick and visit tournaments. The majority at a tournament nowadays is 09>.
It got you and a lot of others here to stay right? So it does apparently.
I think there’s been a bit of a fallacy going around about just who SFIV is aimed at. Due to comments from the producer, there’s this powerful notion it is designed to appeal to “TEH CASUALS” - to a stereotype of “teh casuals” that most hardcore gamers have developed in just the past five years.
So SFIV is then judged to be a poor attempt at roping in “teh casuals” because it’s still much too complex for them… apparently. Yet it has these elements that some OG players claim are clearly “casual” like comeback mechanics. Actually, it’s understandable why SFIV is a confusing mess if this is your perspective. It wouldn’t make any sense to try and market a fighting game towards the modern stereotype of the “casual gamer” if that game had any elements at all which scared the strawman casual away.
But I don’t think that is the correct interpretation. SFIV was never aimed at these supposed casual people who never play video games or who are “weaklings and fear competition” or other bravado-inspired trash talk that typically floats around. Saying SFIV is predicated nostalgia is actually closer to the truth, but only in a very specific way:
SFIV, taking the producer’s comments in context of the oldschool SF2 scene and not merely anyone who heard of Street Fighter in the 90s, was likely aimed at people who are not “noobs”, who do play video games regularly or did play them in the previous decade, but did not keep up with the inward spiral of the FGC. In other words, people who can / could actually play a good game of Street Fighter, enjoyed it, but did not devote their lives to the arcade scene in like 3 cities for the next 15 years. They fell away/behind, and not necessarily because they weren’t “hardcore” or “unmotivated” or simply “morons” as a lot of the ego-centric personalities in the FGC would like to frame the landscape. Most people simply couldn’t. It’s unreasonable; fighting games went underground due to the death of the arcade.
However, fighting game development continued to zero in on the fighting game “lifestyler” that represented a hardened, fanatically devoted, but slowly shrinking niche. Games did get increasingly complex to entice people who had mastered the previous tier of games to completion and wanted something new.
SFIV seems pretty clearly designed to coax players who know how to play a game of Street Fighter properly in terms of the basics back out of hiding. Its dreaded “comeback” mechanics are a moral booster. Arrogant players might turn their nose up at the very thought, insisting that anyone who dares to play a fighting game should quit their job, move to New York, and spend 6 hours every night in a dive with the “tough guys”, but that’s just silliness.
The backlash surrounding this fighting game revival seems mainly symptomatic of how tiny and inward focused the FGC became. Tightknit, yes, devoted, absolutely. It has done admirable things to keep the FG world alive. But it does seem to totally lack perspective; just because you keep something alive, does not mean that you own it. Enjoy the altruism while it lasts, but it also doesn’t mean that other people who come in later and discover the same thing owe you anything other than a nod of respect. It seems egotistical to believe otherwise.