Skullgirls jump prevention on 360 motion.
Wasn’t Marvel Super Heroes the first game to have gems?
I would say that is more of a balance patch
shoto characters are allowed to buffer hadokens and shoryukens as part of their game play. If you’ve ever played a real good shoto in ST, there are periods throughout the fight where you input empty srks and you can just piano if you see something. 360 players have never had that buffer before, I think its fair. Its not really a scrub mechanic but making the input more comparable to hadoken\shoryuken characters
if you back track gems even further, they go back to RPG games. Where you can gain power up, speed up, defense up, etc… by assigning the item to your character and then that characters obtains those enhancements. They might even be in some early beat em ups but the idea predates the fighting boom in the 90s
instead of the enhancements being in that RPG form, they’re gems in sfxt. Ideally, they’re the same thing.
what’s with all these mechanics. It goes beyond that. Why did MK9 and the entire Tekken series sell so well? Yes, the fighting mechanics of those games are arguably more accessible than most Capcom games, but those games provided lots of additional modes and content for casual players to enjoy without even touching the competitive aspect. This is another thing people need to get over. It’s not all about the fighting. Stop trying to mash one demographic with the other. It’s actually very possible to appeal to both demographics without technically putting them into the same battlefield.
and Capcom has the worst game designers on earth when it comes to catering to casuals. Just because ALMIGHTY CAPCOM fails at this doesn’t mean all hope is lost to expand this genre.
catering to casuals doesn’t make the game better @ the pro level, it doesn’t work. Simply because w\e you do to make the game more accessible for casuals ends up being abused by pro level players. If you remove the casual mechanics, pro players can’t abuse them anymore. You actually get a better game like that but casuals have to try and why is that a bad thing? why is it taboo to make people want to actually practice to get better? umvc3 would be 100x better without XF and some slight tweaking to the cast to make up for it.
what we have here are 2 different groups of players. year 1 players and vets. If you’re trying to make a book that can be read by a college student and 1st grader, what do you do? well you can’t write a Shakespearean book, 1st graders don’t understand it. However, a college student will be able to read see spot run. When you make something for 2 different sets of people, you have to reduce it to its lowest common denominator and for fighting games that means scrub level.
When a game is scrub level, there is no more progression. It will simply be above their head like a Shakespearean book to a 1st grader.
eventually, those 1st graders get the 7th grade and now they ask, why are we reading see spot run? this shit is for babies! if the game was hard out the gate, Shakespearean quality book, then those 1st graders could very well read that book for the rest of their lives.
ok question, um…what exact part of FG needs to be better? I feel any game should be free from any restriction and desighn any way the developer chooses. If their no freedom than how can developers be creative…now if where talking about competitive than that’s another story.
Right now I dont think much of anything needs to be done outside of tutorial (even that’s not really necessary, just info on tools and mechanics)
What I do hope most games try to do is explain certain commands like how Arcs does their in BB.
Top part of your post.
I still think we’re off topic here.
The question was “How Could We Make Fighting Games Better?”, but you’re talking about appealing to broader audiences and sales.
They have nothing to do with making a better fighting game.
completely ignoring the first part of my post I see, lol. Although there is nothing wrong with your points. The problem is that your points only address the actual fighting mechanics. Fighting mechanics themselves aren’t the only concerns with casual fans. It’s the actual content.
A nice comparison would be racing games. At its core, racing games are about getting the fastest times and beating your opponents by driving well. Do racing games simply give you a few cars to use and some tracks to conquer? No. Look at the Gran Turismo and Forza series, where you can progress through a Career Mode, gaining prize money to buy better cars and upgrading your favorite ones to compete in harder challenges. Eventually, the player will be looking forward to what he can buy next, or what car he will win at the end of a tournament. However, he can also look into the deeper mechanics of the genre and analyze the best racing lines for a track and when to brake and accelerate during a turn for example. Then he can take that knowledge and apply them online against real opponents. My point is that there should be options for both demographics to enjoy themselves, whether they will be together or not.
oh lol, alright. Then there’s nothing wrong with fighting games other than responsive netcode and every single post in this thread about presenting information better for newer players are totally useless.
the biggest problem new players run into is, I don’t know how to play or where to start. This is where god like net code allows player to practice against competition. Then you can implement a website like srk.com or something like it into the game so players can track all the latest talk like tier lists, latest combos for their character, bad matchups, tournaments in their area, etc… it gives the tournament advantage to ANY player.
Once you’ve established that, there is 0 need to cater to casuals. Hard work is an equal opportunity resource.
players like snake eyes and afro legends are players who’ve take advantage of what I’m talking about. They played online and researched information via the net but for many good players, they don’t mind those things being on 2 different consoles. If you’re incredibly dedicated, you will track the information alk down. Most people don’t want to take this next step but if that approach was smashed into 1 thing, like a console game that has access to tournament level information, then the most casual of casual who didn’t know about tournaments could reach a tournament playing level simply by playing online.
there is a player on srk that goes by kenuran. I’ve played this guy online i don’t know 300-400 times over the years and this guys has never been to a tournament what so ever. He learned to play on GGPO and just asked questions here or there. Probably even researched videos and he is incredibly solid. A new player doesn’t need to have their hand held to become good, they just need to put in hard work like everyone else.
Versus series simplified super inputs.
Magic series combos and/or Target combos
Removing Tiger Knee special inputs (not tiger Kneeing air moves but like old hooligan)
like he said 360 jump prevention (no its not balance, that’s just silly)
The difference is that things that catered to the casuals are considered commonsense or actually hardcore now.
And again, the Capcom games haven’t done a very good job of catering to the casual market. Capcom did a bad job, with hindsight, of designing those systems… but part of the reason for that is that they tried to shove too many uses into them or didn’t know exactly what they wanted them to do.
Edit: Seriously, as long as you think Capcom catered to casuals with Ultra and XF you’re on the wrong track. They may have tried to make those cater to casuals, but they really didn’tsucceed.
They have everything to do with a better fighting game. Let me say it again, the culture makes an average fighting game into a great one. When designers try to specifically reproduce successful systems from older games it’s usually disastrous. The question of ‘how are fighting games changed for the better?’ is answered with 'by not trying to narrowband cater to people, and to make a game that many many people will start to play, and then keep playing.’
Even if that game has sometimes serious flaws, if there are enough people playing and they stick with it, in 5 years time we’ll have the next generations MvC2 or 3S.
In general this whole hardcore/casual thing people talk about is a false dichotomy. The people you want are players that want to play and want to improve... which honestly is almost everyone. If you meet a player that *doesn't* want to improve, nothing is going to reach them.
"Casuals" enjoy seeing their work rewarded to, and they enjoy seeing their skill improve. It's just the nature of the work you ask them to do.LOL
man, the whole versus series up to mvc3 was just a hot mess of garbage that is beyond glitchy as fuck except for 1 game and I think it was MSHvSF.
that games design was not on purpose and the way the game ended up was a pure accident. Its the most awful example you could use.
have you even touched the versus series? that shit is beyond ridiculous broken and here you are arguing what they tried to do. They sure as fuck didn’t try to make a solid game and it ended up being broken good. @ that point its not design, its luck
It’s pretty silly that you’re going to that really. The place that ends up is that you* can’t* intentionally design a good game, but that it’s luck or something.
…
I’d say the ‘or something’ is the committed players working on the game and eventually forgiving its flaws, or even turning them into virtues.
Nevertheless, simplifying the super inputs, regardless of game, did not ruin the game’s competitive nature.
PS: Your memory is seriously short. I’ve been saying that the vs games (and especially MvC2) were steaming piles that players turned around for years now, even in this specific thread. I’ve gotten plenty of crap for saying it as well ><
In all honesty…I still don’t get it. I don’t think anyone can come up with an definite answer to the topic because as we dive deeper, it becomes more of subjective manner.
I think all the problems of both Tekken and MK9 are there because of the need to cater to “casuals” (aka people who are bad at the game and don’t love it as much) 1st.
Now we have a Vita version with lot’s of new extras, but the publisher doesn’t let them patch the new balance changes in the PS360 version.
Tekken always had huge move lists with 90% moves that are useless at high level just so that it can “appear” cool to a total noob. (“OMG 100 MOVES!! WHILE GUILE ONLY HAS 2 MOVES!”) Also crushes and rage and fancy huge juggles that take forever…
(Crushing in theory is fine but they always gave this property to the wrong moves, like juggle starters, just to let the lesser player feel that he always has a chance to get a lucky win.)
And in general, the focus of the later Tekkens went towards launchers and (because of that-) defensive play rather than pokes and aggressive play. (Which is the thing they should have kept from T4 but never did sadly.)
In short, the catering to casuals should always be with fan service and extra modes rather than in mechanics, but even then they should be on a completely separate budget that won’t hinder from the important, core stuff.
Watch out, Keith Elwin.
Seriously dude, relaunch does not permit “scrubby” players to manipulate the system. You can’t actually get “big points” during the forgiveness period because pinball score is based on streaks, not volume. Also, there is no benefit to intentionally draining the ball, because the forgiveness period is calculated from initial launch and not last drain.
So, where are we? We have a system that does not negatively impact high level play, and does make the game more enjoyable for low level players. So, the impossible has become possible, thanks to the magic of design. 
I recommend that you expand your horizons a little, and challenge this myopic dogma of “casuals” vs. “hardcore”.
To go back to the Dan, there’s a whole bunch of Pretzel logic in this thread.
my thoughts exactly, simple as that really.
This is true, everyone has their own interpretations of how to make fighting games better. resulting in this bloated thread, lol
Absolutely not. The entire dichotomy is a major problem. There’s a pretty much standard way you want to make a good game, and ‘casual vs hardcore’ is not a part of it.
The goal is always the old, overused Blizzard chestnut, “easy to learn, hard to master”. If you’ve done that? You’ve already appealed to both casuals and hardcore players.
Funny thing is, I’d avoided using the phrase because it’s so cliche now, but that’s what it’s all about. Make a game very easy to get into in the beginning stages, but leave it with huge, infinite if you can manage it, room for skill growth.
There’s a destructive tendency to think of the ‘easy to learn’ part being termed ‘catering to casuals’ and the absurd idea that it precludes ongoing skill growth and game development. That is simply not the case.
NO!
GODDAMNIT NO!
First off, you’re going under the assumption that EVERYONE just LOVES 3S and MvC2.
I don’t, I fucking hate them both, I really do.
I think they’re both shitty games.
Just because you keep playing the game, doesn’t mean that one game is better to the other.
I would rather play Vanguard Princess over those two games, even though not even a forth of the people who play 3s or MvC2 know what that is.
You’re basically saying “peer pressure wins”, well guess what, it fucking doesn’t, that’s why, even without AN ANNOUCNMENT, there was a Vampire Savior cabinet at Final Round.
Making a fighting game that people play forever/everyone plays=/= a good fighting game.
Do you honestly think that if there wasn’t like a entire decade between those games and their newer counterparts, people would still play them?
Sure, there would be those hardcore guys, but that’s it.
If MVC3 and SF4 came out 2 years before MVC2 and SF3, every casual would have moved on to them the second they came out.
It’s only because that Capcom denied many players their 2-3 year fix that 3s and MvC2 were played so much.
If people don’t want to play my super awesome old as fossil fighting game and think their’s is better because they have a bigger community?
You know what I say to those people:Fuck you.
Tl;DR :Fighting game community size/longevity does not mean the game is good, they are symptoms, but they’re not equatable to each other.
Also, could you please stop twisting what Shoutz is saying?
He said that the versus series was a casual hot mess and was luck, not that you can’t design a good fighting game.
So you can’t judge a “good game” by sales, player retention, community or critical response. You can only judge a good fighting game by how many times guys on the internet will use the words “fuck” and “scrub” in its defense.
I’m going to use this tactic to try to get more people to play One Must Fall.
“One Must Fall is the only game to fuck play if you fuck aren’t a fucking scrub, you fucking scrub fuck fuckity scrubnut. STOP PLAYING THOSE OTHER TRASH TIER GAMES EVEN IF YOU FUCK LIKE THEM FUCK SCRUB FUCK! Science says that only scrubs play games I don’t like because of fucking scrubs and the scrub-like fucks that fucking design goddamn fuck scrub scrubishness. Scrolling backgrounds and more than two buttons are FOR SCRUBS AND SCRUBS ALONE.”
Excellent. See you guys online!