How Could Fighting Games Change for the Better?

[Mr.X]

Don’t worry I’m sure there are teams at the big developers working on how to design addictive behavior into our Fighting games too

Allowing them to be at eSports events with tits and money is a good start. I love those things.

[xes]

Allowing them to be at eSports events with tits and money is a good start. I love those things.

I am proud to say, I’m still not entirely sure what “NOS” is!

It’s plain old elitism. There are some extremely helpful people in the community who do their best to help people along in this genre(Max for example), but there are some folks who pride themselves on playing the most difficult genre ever. They scoff at games like Melee because it doesn’t have supers or because of it’s nontraditional combo system and they shit on anything that tries to cater to the more casual audience like BB with it’s moderate speed and input buffers. Some folks who play fighters pride themselves on playing games that aren’t for “kids”, “pedophiles”, “creepers” and “scrubs”. I love the community overall, but you’d be blind if you didn’t notice the trending attitudes among lots of posters and tourney goers who act like playing Brawl makes you a leper(they should be playing Melee dammit).

It goes deeper than people wanting to make themselves look skilled and this attitude makes even hardcore gamers skittish with one another(Third Strike OE is dead in the water and BB is pretty much all Japan these days since it’s not Guilty Gear). The MK community and Skullgirls community seem to be coexisting with the FGC despite the constant trolling and shitty attitudes from the hateful subsection of stream monsters. It’d be amazing if something similar could happen for the next Smash, that Sony game, Guilty Gear and new IP in the future. Folks need to be more accepting on a fundamental level that includes mechanics and aesthetics.

Developers like Capcom really need to step it up though. I haven’t seen anything from Capcom that rivals Skullgirls’ tutorial or even BB’s tutorial(let’s not even get into VF4). They are big enough to make something decent that can be patched and expanded on further. MvC3 was absolutely horrible from a learning perspective thanks to it’s lack of tutorials, weak mission mode(with no replays) and borked online that paired people up against opponents with 500+ matches on day one. It’s getting kind of sad after all the years of sandbox halo and overall teaching improvements in other genres. Fighters don’t need to be so hard to get into… and they aren’t nearly as exclusive as people like to think. They certainly have just as much to offer as games from other genres.

I do take some exception to you saying “MK and Skullgirls communities seem to be coexisting with the FGC”, it implies they’re not part of it They’re coexisting with SRK okay, but that’s largely because the old heads are kind of in eclipse right now. There’s too much new blood for that shit to go.

 
The hostility has a lot to do with our self-image though, the FGC likes to think of itself as being like street ball, and that means trash talk and the macho ethic and all that.  There's a problem that in most places its *not* but is rather internet nerds nowadays who are playing pretend, so you kind of get the worst of both worlds :p

[Ilthuain]

Don’t worry I’m sure there are teams at the big developers working on how to design addictive behavior into our Fighting games too

We prefer the term, “compelling”.

[Alenth]

The games are not the problem, the players are the real issue imho.

[Shin_Akuma]

Fighting games today have too much fluff and not enough substance. Gameplay suffers in order to appease the biggest demographic of fighting game players (casuals).

The fact that you NEED to have all this fluff in order to have a game sell well nowadays says a lot.

[therook]

Fighting games today have too much fluff and not enough substance.

What? o_O
can you give a explanation for your vague statement?

[Negative-Zer0]

What? o_O
can you give a explanation for your vague statement?

Soul calibur 5 hate for not the gameplay, but content says a lot about the mentality of gamers today.

[Shin_Akuma]

What? o_O
can you give a explanation for your vague statement?

What i mean by this is that I think companies are spending too much time on unnecessary things like extra modes or features when they could spend more time on the gameplay itself or making the netcode the best it can be. You know, the important stuff.

Basically, I’m advocating what Mike Z said:

If the mechanics of a game are solid, in my mind nothing is necessary for enjoyment beyond versus, training, and good netplay–and even netplay could be done without, though it is extremely useful for providing opponents if there is no local community for the game.

[therook]

What i mean by this is that I think companies are spending too much time on unnecessary things like extra modes or features when they could spend more time on the gameplay itself or making the netcode the best it can be. You know, the important stuff.

Basically, I’m advocating what Mike Z said:

-_-’ No…just no.
This topic should not be generalized…not every developer shares this design philosophy…

KOFXIII nor does VF5 share this…
KOFXIII has damn near everything you could want in a modern fighter except for small miscellaneous things like frame data and hitbox data…your saying they spend too much time on their story mode and color edit?

VF5FS has a revamped tutorial mode and their practice mode was always ahead of the compeition for the most part displaying frame data and joystick motions in real time…you think they spent all their man hours on those thousands of customization parts? the fact VF5 online(360) had a pretty damn good net code then, I don’t think they need to worry too much about it as the shit wasn’t broken…why fix it?(yet they improved on it)

both previously mentioned games are hardcore fighting games with robust gameplay mechanics that are often praised…those games are the total package, whether you play them or not is another issue.

[ModerHater]

Make fighting games more Co op friendly. Like 2vs2 battles. Thats the only reason why SFxT barely survives, but still does co op poorly in my opinion.

[Shin_Akuma]

(snip).

Point taken and my bad for generalizing. I suppose it doesn’t really matter about how much extra fluff there is (ie - SFxT) if the gameplay isn’t solid to begin with. A game could still be total shit even if there was no fluff

I dunno, it just feels like games geared towards casuals tend to have terrible gameplay/design decisions compared to hardcore games, regardless of the amount of fluff.

[therook]

Point taken and my bad for generalizing. I suppose it doesn’t really matter about how much extra fluff there is (ie - SFxT) if the gameplay isn’t solid to begin with. A game could still be total shit even if there was no fluff

I dunno, it just feels like games geared towards casuals tend to have terrible gamplay/design decisions compared to hardcore games, regardless of the amount of fluff.

I’m sorry for being blunt, it’s ok to feel that way after what Capcom has done. Tekken 6 was also victim of this also but T6BR was already done beforehand thus the only things they really worked on was the TekkenForce story mode and Online play.

There are games that do this but there are games that don’t as well. It’s hard to see if developers are wisely making the right decision in making these game or how they manage their development time.

A bare bones fighter that solely focuses on the PVP aspect can still flop, likewise for a fighter that has too much BS to get in the way of the core gameplay. I appreciated the small things too, SCV is one of my favorite fighters because i felt it had a complete package for the most part, people shit on the story mode…i enjoyed it. people shit on it’s online, i think it works completely fine the way it is complete with lobbies and spectator chat. These small things imo make the game shine as the core game is enjoyable and deep.

[BlackShinobi]

It’s plain old elitism. There are some extremely helpful people in the community who do their best to help people along in this genre(Max for example), but there are some folks who pride themselves on playing the most difficult genre ever. They scoff at games like Melee because it doesn’t have supers or because of it’s nontraditional combo system and they shit on anything that tries to cater to the more casual audience like BB with it’s moderate speed and input buffers. Some folks who play fighters pride themselves on playing games that aren’t for “kids”, “pedophiles”, “creepers” and “scrubs”. I love the community overall, but you’d be blind if you didn’t notice the trending attitudes among lots of posters and tourney goers who act like playing Brawl makes you a leper(they should be playing Melee dammit).

Play what you like it doesn’t mean anyone else has to respect it.
Skullgirls is an all girls fighter and its earn more respect from players in this community in one month than smash has since it was released. People aren’t going to respect you because you keep Yelling “hey, respect us” they’ll respect you if you deserve respect. Yes, the skill level to enter matters in in terms or how respected something is, that’s not fighting games, that’s life. A public high school diploma isn’t a Harvard degree and a pee wee league trophy isn’t a super bowl ring. I scoff at Tee ball, because its hitting a non moving ball off a fucking tee, does that make me an elitist for not taking tee ball as a legitimate sport. If your playing a game aimed towards casuals and expecting hardcore players to respect you the problem may be with you.

It goes deeper than people wanting to make themselves look skilled and this attitude makes even hardcore gamers skittish with one another(Third Strike OE is dead in the water and BB is pretty much all Japan these days since it’s not Guilty Gear). The MK community and Skullgirls community seem to be coexisting with the FGC despite the constant trolling and shitty attitudes from the hateful subsection of stream monsters. It’d be amazing if something similar could happen for the next Smash, that Sony game, Guilty Gear and new IP in the future. Folks need to be more accepting on a fundamental level that includes mechanics and aesthetics.

Skull girls is running SFxT off any stream not run by money these days because its just a better game to watch and play. Coming from an Arcana player you have no idea how crazy that is and how good this game had to be to overcome being an all female cast and get this level of acceptance. No one is throwing out freebies don’t expect one. Btw people don’t feel that way about BB because its not GG, people feel that way about BB because its not as good as Guilty Gear. The game didn’t get snubbed on release, GG players couldn’t wait to get their hand on that game and when they did it was a disappointment. If you’re calling for people to respect disappointment then NO.

Developers like Capcom really need to step it up though. I haven’t seen anything from Capcom that rivals Skullgirls’ tutorial or even BB’s tutorial(let’s not even get into VF4). They are big enough to make something decent that can be patched and expanded on further. MvC3 was absolutely horrible from a learning perspective thanks to it’s lack of tutorials, weak mission mode(with no replays) and borked online that paired people up against opponents with 500+ matches on day one. It’s getting kind of sad after all the years of sandbox halo and overall teaching improvements in other genres. Fighters don’t need to be so hard to get into… and they aren’t nearly as exclusive as people like to think. They certainly have just as much to offer as games from other genres.

Tutorials in fighting games just aren’t that good, even the “good ones” aren’t that good. You’re on SRK right now, thats the equivalent of living next to a dojo and trying to learn martial arts from a book. No good player teaching someone else to play fighting games is going to tell that person to go through the tutorials, they are going to show them how to do that stuff. The players are always going to be a better source for this knowledge than the developer. Here is how you learn a fighting game, ASK SOMEONE TO TEACH YOU, even if its online, or you can sit around until the world ends waiting for capcom to turn you into a decent player.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the true FGC is, you have to see it for yourself…
***You take the Xes pill, the story ends you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe; you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and the community shows you how deep the rabbit hole goes. ***
Remember all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.

[Hecatom]

Btw people don’t feel that way about BB because its not GG, people feel that way about BB because its not as good as Guilty Gear. The game didn’t get snubbed on release, GG players couldn’t wait to get their hand on that game and when they did it was a disappointment. If you’re calling for people to respect disappointment then NO.

tbh the dissapointment comes because many wanted to be like GG, when from the very begining the game was designed as the antithesis of GG, they ar polar ooposites
i wouldnt deny that there are people with valid reasons to dislike the game
but that doesnt mean that BB is not a solid, innovative and fun fg by its own merit
im sure that at least some of the people who says that dont like it, if started playing the game and judging by what it offers instead of not being GG, they would start enjoying it more

[BlackShinobi]

tbh the dissapointment comes because many wanted to be like GG, when from the very begining the game was designed as the antithesis of GG, they ar polar ooposites
i wouldnt deny that there are people with valid reasons to dislike the game
but that doesnt mean that BB is not a solid, innovative and fun fg by its own merit
im sure that at least some of the people who says that dont like it, if started playing the game and judging by what it offers instead of not being GG, they would start enjoying it more

The thing is its made by the same people who made guilty gear, If guilty gear never existed BB would have gotten a different reception. Its like when a restaurant changes the recipe to a dish everyone loves and gets it wrong. The problem isn’t that blazblue isn’t as good as guilty gear, its that BB replaced guilty gear and its not as good as guilty gear. As with the restaurant comparison the new recipe may be good in its own right, but it doesn’t have that luxury, when its replacing something that people loved.

Notice I never said it was a bad game, just that its not as good as guily gear and a disappointment in comparison. In it own right it fares much better than when compared to guilty gear.

[Negative-Zer0]

BB is too damn slow. It literally makes my head hurt when i play it too.

[Chipp_Zanuff_v5]

If people really want fighting games to become better, Then what they need to do is find what aspects of a fighting game people ACTUALLY look for. Allowing for some form of customization for the gameplay. Not just the characters. SFxt and UMVC3 tried this with the gems are H&H mode. But Gems arent really being used in the game system. I think these customizations to the game need to be inherent to the game system and not something you need to go out of your way to do. That goes along way to making a game that people can enjoy. Gems are nice and all but they are too much work, even in the tournament mode. H&H is just for fun.

[keo-bas]

wait what?..BB is bad because GG is just better…? I don’t get it.

[Bushin_Clan]

Even if we debunk this idea that fighting gamers are a special elite, which is certainly not true, the genre is extremely competitive in nature.

There are examples of fighting games that appeal to the wider demographic, anime tie-in games and smash brothers, which plenty of people play without any desire to be better.

But the games that this site is based around is a lot more competitive that the latest edition of dragon ball z, and the community needs to realize that a wide demographic just doesn’t want to take their game to the next level.

I like that point. But Fighting games has been more competitive now for the past 8 or so years and now more than ever because FGC are thinking tourny’s, money, and claim to fame. You think these producers that make these games don’t look at YouTube and see some of the amazing things people do with characters at big name Tournaments? I’m sure it some shit that they couldn’t think about doing in some of these engines that they see players doing. I just came to the conclusion reading this thread is that as long as Tournaments Worldwide is growing and technology, software, big money, and new ideas continue to grow for FG’s such as Skullgirls and the success that KOF XIII has been having, and people just continue to show talents of mastering certain difficult or low tier characters like Onotinhoso and Kiryu has done with Guy for the past year in SF 4 AE, and Daigo, Alex Valle, Fuudo continues to be the face of Evo, Revelations and Madcatz along with other top players…Rookies and Casual players just have to step they’re game up bottom line. Cause I don’t see anything getting any easier than SF X Tekken, and that was design for everyone to play something easy and simple, gems, links and chains apart. You want to get better get competitive and study the game.

[Lord_Raptor]

I don’t see games like TF2 or CS or those countless MOBAs failing due to lack of singleplayer content. I don’t see why fighting games can’t do the same.

I don’t see why people act like if a FG has good single player content it can’t be a good competetive game.