Dark Souls is like this. Game holds your hand for the first ten minutes, then drops it and punches you in the face. And when you start to fight it back, it’s fucking satisfying.
I don’t get why people being turned off by a difficulty curve is that much of a bad thing; I don’t want everybody to like the things I like, I’m not insecure.
all good points
and now we go back to: What makes a good game? Because if we ask “what makes a good fighting game?” we will go back into methods of catering to certain demographics.
My favorite game for awhile is F-Zero GX and the difficulty level is so high the cpu will literally use glitches to try and beat you.
Why I love Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls.
It also rewards you for doing the harder thing.
Killed Bell Tower Gargoyle AND cut his tail before he died, enjoy this fancy new pole.
And what I’m saying is that’s true regardless.
Even the most reviled EZ mode fighting games we’ve been talking about, SKILL IS REWARDED WITH VICTORY
You said it yourself, its the nature of games. If you put more into it, you’ll be better, and you’ll win more.
FIghting games, even MvC3 are kind of funny in that way because they have infinite skill progression. You can always get just a little better.
I don’t want to change that.
Your mistake is in thinking they’re better because they’re harder. They’re better because they provide a stronger skill progression.
To me, you’re confusing the trees for the forest. Easy games have been developed to a great level of skill and difficulty, but that’s different than trying to reproduce that same difficulty out of the box.
***beyond a certain minimum of course.
I don’t even know what xes is talking about when he says something that could be only found in training mode.
I have to know what games he finds too hard and designed around playing training mode more than other people.
the nice thing about Dark Souls is that you are rewarded for going through the extra effort, but it isn’t the end of the world if you don’t. You could kill the Bell Tower Gargoyle without cutting off his tail and still proceed with the game.
What?
What?
What game TRIES to make combos in general hard?
Every fighting game until this point has the better/harder combo there because that’s how players developed their combos.
“Hm, if I put and extra jab in there, I’ll get 30 more damage, but, the extra jab will make it a one frame link, oh well, it’s worth it!”
That’s what goes through people’s heads.
So, to wrap up this post (Seriously I think we should start doing that now, because I could barley understand your last post), this is how fighting games are made, they’re made this way so as players can have freedom in their actions, and if players want the long combos that are hard and do better damage, that’s how it’s gonna be, you said it yourself, the community makes the game.
Deliberately difficult inputs are bad in most situations. Difficult execution that comes as a natural byproduct of a game system is fine and frankly is unavoidable most of the time because developers have no idea what kind of combos, option selects, glitches or whatever will be discovered in a game’s life.
There’s an extremely fine line where input difficulty improves a game’s quality instead of harming it. The competitiveness in games comes from the interaction between two people playing the game. High score competitions aren’t usually considered great competitive tournaments because there’s no interaction between players; it’s just one person doing their best, and no matter what they do, it won’t affect another player’s performance.
Training execution to whiff punish, hit confirm, anti-air, or even extended combos are something that’s inevitable in fighting games, and are fine. Difficult execution barriers that pop up as a natural evolution of the game (re-fly, kara throws, fierce feint fierce) aren’t something that can be reasonably detected in the development process and just have to be dealt with.
As an example of a difficult input that’s deliberately in the game but improves the game, there’s FRC’s in Guilty Gear. By pressing three attack buttons during a move’s animation, you can cancel it to a neutral state, even if the move whiffs. Because of how powerful whiff canceling is, it’s necessary to have strict timing windows, otherwise the game would probably be worse because of the number of active frames you’d be able to get on a whiff cancellable moves.
Specifially, this whole branch of the discussion came from Reno’s post about adding Just Frames. It’s much much much harder to learn Just frames in real play than it is to learn in training mode. In the same way, extended combos in general are much harder to learn in real play than in training mode.
It’s not absolute of course (I’ve always said to pull any perceived absolutes out of my posts, I don’t mean them), but its a good general guideline.
As another specific example, Skullgirls is designed with training mode in mind. MikeZ talked at length in the interview with Keits about how important he thought that sense of exploration and discovery was, and that he went so far as to leave in something potentially unbalanced as a reward for people experimenting in training mode.
You’re the one that said
and that’s the attitude I’m arguing against.
Designers know all this shit, its really really basic, standard stuff. Most if not all the concepts I’m talking about have been included in just about every recent fighting game (hell, any kind of game) of note, to some degree or another.
The issue, the reason this is a discussion is the players attitude. If by chance the developers do listen to the community, we want to be sure that the community is asking for the right things.
And to say it again **nothing is absolute everything is on a sliding scale**. We're talking about values here.Skullgirls is pretty easy, so I’m just going think everything not SF2 series is hard training mode games iyo.
Swear to god you just left me flustered as fuck.
Making a combo hard=/=hardcore labrat finding out the best combo also happens to be the hardest.
The community made that 1frame link, the designers made it possible, but the community is the force driving it.
In SF4, I can do cr. jab soul spiral, and that would be a combo.
Or I could do Cr. Jab Cr. Short Cr Strong xx Soul Spiral, and that would ALSO be a combo.
See the designers put an amount of leeway in the game and in Rose’s frame data so combos could be made up.
So don’t blame capcom for that bnb, blame the community.
‘hard’ and ‘training mode’ are 2 different things, albeit linked.
Footsies are hard, but you don’t learn them in training mode. Being really good and fast at reacting with the proper move to counter is hard, but its not effective to learn how to do it in training mode.
Perfect Just Frames or 1 frame links are hard, but also extremely difficult to master outside of training mode.
Skullgirls is an easy training mode game (IPS makes combo execution generally easier and inputs are a breeze, but the varying character weights and again ISP make training mode necessary for effective combos, since so many are character specific).
Setsuka in SC3 or 4 (or **α **Pat) is a hard training mode character. You need to get her JF’s down to be effective with her, and it’s much easier to accomplish that in training mode than in real play.
ST is a fairly easy non-training mode game. Most of the advanced techniques (like tick throws, reversal timing) are easier to learn in normal play than in training.
I honestly can’t think of a hard training-focused game offhand. It probably doesn’t exist because they know almost nobody would buy it.
Seperate post for force.
Austin, I honestly believe we agree more than we disagree on these things, its just that our language and defintions are violently divergent.
I absolutely agree with this post. It becomes a problem only when that 1 frame link is key to playing the character (c/f Juicebox back when he mattered about Abel).
I don’t think that’s EVER going to happen, man.
So far, it hasn’t, but there’s a character like that, Viper.
If you don’t want to play an execution heavy character, just play someone else, Xes.
No one is forcing you to super jump cancel burn kick.
Throw an hadouken, do an Oga, become a Bloddy Rose.
Xes, How did you like a post about FRCs?
FRCs are the best example I can think of of a game intentionally using a visual difference to display proper execution and it is paired with a clear and real benefit to the player for performing the tighter execution.
False Roman cancels are literally the exact thing you have been saying shouldn’t be in games.
Heh I misread his post, specifically the word ‘improves’
Edit: And the rest of his post I really strongly agreed with.
My position on that is “I’ll certainly play that game anyways, but that, specifically, was a bad oversight or
design choice.”
Lol character specific stuff is now training mode?
And there’s nothing hard about IPS that needs training mode that you can’t learn through trial and error.
Another example; Minecraft. There are no in-built tutorials for that game. There is a lot of hidden shit; crafting recipes, resources, enemies etc. If you don’t get your shit together you are guaranteed to get completely dicked within 10 minutes of playing the game.
Sales? Millions.
Minecraft isn’t a competitive game. In Minecraft, once you learn the ins and outs of the mechanics, you’re pretty much set to do whatever you please. In fighting games, learning the mechanics is just the FIRST STEP on getting into the game.