that’s the key. casual=fun. good, dedicated players=hard work
Yeah, I think that’s where I’m getting at.
Competitive games that have the barebones, like SSF4 are just not “fun” unless you’re looking to be a good SF player.
Those extra modes keep people who don’t care to get beyond the ability to throw fireballs interested in it for a little while at least.
I suppose trials are good for that… But they can get REALLY frustrating for a lot of people.
Problem is that the SF gaming community is divided.
others prefer SFA, others Third Strike, others SF4, others the original SF2 etc
you dont see that in any other fighting game to such an extent.
so a casual player will initially feel confused as to what SF really is.
The community wouldn’t be so divided if Dimps hadn’t botched the core of the traditional Street Fighter experience (the neutral game) and made SF4 so mixup heavy. SNK, Namco and Sega are much better than Capcom at retaining the feel of their fighting game franchises through each iteration, which is why their fans aren’t as divided as Street Fighter fans.
Release it in 1994? To this day, most people in their 20s-30s can tell you how to Hadouken…what are we doing differently now?
Not all good solutions, but solutions nontheless:
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Bring back casual arcade gaming.
There are fewer Coin-ops for starters. Back in the day, you couldn’t go into an arcade/kebab shop/gas station without seeing a SF cab in the corner. I think if they replaced the “Itbox” style cabs in bars with a SF cab, or even a 99-in-one style cab, we’d go back to everybody knowing the SF fundamentals. Casuals would end up buying the console version for practice, just so they could dump on their friends in public haha. -
Compress the skills gap.
Don’t like this one, but CoD is so successful because anyone can go in, get lucky and nab a few kills without studying spawn patterns and maps and frame-data-performance for each gun. -
Segregate the player-tiers.
Casuals just want something relatively mindless that’ll make them feel powerful for 30mins before work. Stepping into an endless train of 3000bp players won’t do it for most of them. Matchmaking to keep higher players from crushing weaker players would solve this. Makes it tougher on the more hardcore newbies to learn online, but it just means more people would have to play across tiers via fight requests, or matchmaking via SRK.
-UNBALANCE THE GAME.
Don’t panic. All I’m saying is, if all characters are top-tier capable, lazy players struggle to enjoy the game. Give them a couple of gimmicky players that get them easy, mashy, spammy wins in the lower play-pools. Makes sure these characters also have big weaknesses (ie limited range, less anti air, slower recovery) so that as they move up the ranks, people who actually know the game can put them back in their place, force them to learn better play styles, and move to less spammy characters. Capcom have already done this to an extent, but have been unwilling to fully sacrifice a character, due to their desire to keep fans of each character happy…it’s a good thing I guess, but surely nobody would miss just ONE choice of Shoto’s? maybe throw Sean back in and let him suck?
-Retro it up
Something gimmicky like a Streetfighter 2 HD remake…oh they tried that? JK 
-More accessible/diverse tournament play
I’m pretty new to the community, and “the community” is a great thing. It’s something to be proud of and more friendly and helpful than any other gaming community I’ve stepped into; but it’s very much on an island of it’s own. FGC tournaments are mostly held at FGC only events and thus only bring in FGC fanatics. Hosting high-stakes tournaments at more casual/diverse events would bring the fans. Imagine being at PAX or E3 or even Comic-con and hearing EVO style screams coming from Hall B as a non-FGC gamer. Discovering that hype for the first time would bring alot of outsiders in and it’d soon become a “best moments” highlight at non-FGC events.
I think that an “academy” system would go a long way. Let me explain
Players have a special menu via which they can register as “gurus”. Other players can register as “pupils”. Pupils can ask gurus for lessons based on their description and profile. The guru profile shows skills, reviews, number of pupils in the past, “guru level” etc… Once a guru has some pupil under his wing, he is in charge of teaching him. He gets a number of tools - a mission editor to create lessons (basically a lesson will act as one of the trials but have the winning conditions and puppet behaviour set and recorded by the guru), have voice/text/video chat with the pupil (1on1), have a message board between them etc. The guru can can “graduate” pupils when he feels they are ready. The guru is rated automatically and leveled up based on the performance of their pupils - based on their win rate, ladder ranking, pp/bp after graduation. They get badges and titles for that. This way you create a reputation system in which the best gurus will be heavily requested and you give a good reason to good players to teach bad players.
Thoughts?
I actually love this idea. It’d take a lot of work to build a useable infrastructure for that, and I don’t know how, but something about it feels exploitable, but other than that, online training schools would be pretty sweet…rival dojo wars too yeah?
A fighting game is a real time strategy game, not a turn based one. Real time games are always going to have an execution requirement and removing that element will not make the game deeper or more accessible, and depending on the implementation can end up hurting it.
Fighting games are not chess.
ah dude, what do you mean by accessibility? you mean like, there will be more copies of SF4 in stores? or you mean, like it will be more accessible for new players. Because it will be! Think about your response. Removing the execution barrier, means, instead of starting at elementary school, we all start at junior high.
It doesn’t change the game, but it changes the skills required for the game. Less motor and more neural. Evolution would then take care of itself. The skillset of a world class player would again be refined. We could of course go backwards and add another barrier, like high cost, so only the wealthy could play it. Like certain expensive sports, eg. skiing, golf, etc
So, the less barriers, the more accessible.
Yet, we could add another barrier, called physical strength, in that you had to bench press or do 10 bicep curls, before your attacks registered.
Will the number of barriers hurt the game, maybe yes, maybe no. To think it would even shake up, what it means to be “a world class” player?
Ask yourself this, would the world’s best player, have the most game knowledge, or best psychology skills? If execution was removed from the equation?
It would be interesting to see, and to think that someone with poor execution could out-think the world’s best? For shame!!!
I really don’t see this as a good thing. You’re turning SF into something it’s not. We could also make SF a more popular game by making it into a First-Person-Shooter.
I wonder if its ever possible, to have a handicap system that gives casuals a fighting chance, without a normal user feeling cheated.
Or do we just have two separate worlds, and the two shall never collide?
I would rather have causals, playing an easy mode version of the game, WITH THE SAME CONCEPTS, THE SAME KNOWLEDGE, THE SAME META GAME, and most importantly having fun - then for them not to participate. It would only be good for the game. But as we all know, what’s good for beginners doesn’t necessarily apply for pros or across the board.
I think UMvC3 has “Normal” and “Simple” setups that do something like this? Likewise IGAU has a “simple” MK control setup or a “normal” QCF style Not played either, so can’t comment on if it works. Anyone out there that can elaborate?
Don’t forget those Gems…
The ultra meter rewards you for taking damage. It’s the ultimate in a comeback mechanic.
But I’m starting to see what this thread is…I’m done posting here. I hope one day a fighting game is developed where you can control it with your mind and you won’t even need your hands. This way way, everyone can just think, and their character can react. I hope your wishes are granted that someday in the future there will be 1,000,000,000 first places at the online global fighting game tournament and you and your friends, and their great grandparents can all share being awesome like diago. Good luck on your ventures to be considered good and respectable without putting in any work.
As for the path, you’re choosing to bypass it completely by getting rid of the learning and going right to the results…which makes sense because you want to dumb down the game.
Wise my ass.
I am not sure how i feel about segregating bad from good players. In my opinion its worse then having a hard game in the first place. Feels crap to be second class citizen in any situation. Like for example you always use buttons for 3 x punches and 3 x kicks, because thats how you pull of your ultras easier but you would not be allowed to use them in a tournament or everybody would laugh at you for not hitting 3 buttons instead of one. It would make you feel like shit
In my opinion this distinction can be achieved within the game system without segregating the player base. You reward better (read harder) execution with goodies like less damage scaling, more damage while letting everybody perform the movements. Example - make all links 10 frame. If you link in the 1st you do 60 dmg. If you link in 10th, you do 70 and scaling is lower. Or, you can queue your next move - you click a punch, than immediately a kick while the animation of the first punch didn`t finish - your kick will still come out when the animation of the punch is finished but does less damage than if you would have hit it with the right timing at the end of the punch anim and you just lost some control over your character because the next move, no matter if you want it or not anymore will still come out. People will strive to improve the timing so that they regain control of character faster, but until that point they will still have their moves come out WHEN THEY WANTED TO, thus removing the frustration felt along the way while learning the timing.
The above system doesnt take away from good players skill, at all. Loss for the skill ceiling is 0 and you have just lowered the skill floor enough to make people play towards the ceiling.
This this this this thissss… And this again.
I don’t think we really need more players. I’m happy with our community as it is.
It’s fine if you don’t like real time strategy games. But many of us do. There are already turn based strategy games for which execution is not an issue. That is a different genre though.
It is better to play a game which matches your criteria for fun than to go to another genre and try to change it when games that match what you want already exist. They just don’t have punches and kicks in them.
Starcraft is functionally different than chess. They test different skills. Fighting games are closer to the former than the latter.
Fighting games are also a sliding scale. If you dislike one game there are probably others that come closer to what you want. But IMO sf4 is the closest thing in the series to a turn based fighter.
Add bikinis and other type of swimsuits for the female cast
This million times, if you want to attract more casuals, just give them other options to play, instead of dumbing down the game so those retards can play it, give them shit to play that gives them the instant gratification that they want and leave the core game alone.
Give them customization modes (costumes, moves, etc), stuff like beat em ups, heroes vs heralds, add an rpg like stats shit for those who love to grind, etc, etc.
This will keep them entertained and give them an alternative to play while allowing the game retain the core aspects that makes them good.
Also add better ways to inform the players about the game mechanics and how its played, so if they are interested on getting better they can have access to info that can help them get better, plus if it helps to throw away some stupid scrubby misconception then better.
Dumbing down the games just for the sake of attracting the casuals wouldn’t lead anywhere at the end, since those wouldn’t keep playing the game when the next flavor of the month comes out (IF they ever try the game) and will leave the players that actually care with a garbagestic game in the long run.
I am not saying that there can’t be games that are easy, we have examples of good games that retain a good competitive value while being easy like Persona 4 Arena or Eretzvaju (You wouldn’t believe the amount of tournaments that we had for this game on the ps1 era 
), but not every game needs to be designed this way.
This takes away from the skill level and the game as a whole in one super critial way…
The Dropped-Combo: The Hypest of Hype-makers in the History of Hype.
A dropped combo is very important in all levels of SF play, as is it’s counterpart; the Punish. You may be rewarding the better players, but you’re also granting everone with 100% execution, which is about much more than simply damage. It brings pressure and patience and sheer-nerve into play. It’s what m akes the game so tense and addictive. Even in some of the biggest SF tournaments of all time, dropped combos have meant the difference between winning and walking.
If you grant everyone 100% execution, regardless of damage, all you’ll be watching is blockstring, after counter-blockstring, after counter-blockstring.
No more ‘OHHH! HE. DROPPED IT! I CAN’T BELIEVE HE DROPPED IT! PR-ROG is finally getting to him! Just listen to the crowd, they know it’s over…it was just too big a risk at this stage in the game…’
Sorry if I dragged that out. Drops and punishes are really important lol