And what I’m saying is that no matter the activity, you will always have a group of people who decide they want to explore the meta game…no matter how seemingly simplistic that activity is.
Think of a game, any game, and I bet you’ll find a small group that plays it on a higher and more competitive level than we could even imagine. Does that all of a sudden make the game unfair or unwelcoming to the casual? Of course not, it just means that at some time in a casual’s time, they’ll run into someone who bodies them and they won’t know why. If they want to know why they got bodied, then they’ll do the research…if they don’t, then they’ll just shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to bad luck. That doesn’t make the game they played broken, it just exemplifies a particular person’s approach and mentality.
Take poker. On the outside looking in, it’s a game of luck and chance, with random cards being dealt for the win. But at some point in that game’s lifespan, someone decided that they’d add another level of depth by observing tells, and coming up with a system with which to best decide in whether to stay or fold. Those are things that arent explained when reading the rules to poker, because those are things that aren’t inherent to the game, but rather the people playing it and their level of competitiveness.
You want casuals to rejuvenate the scene, and I agree, but instead of asking them to learn about the scene they supolposedly want to get support, you want the scene to cater to them by either holding their hand the entire way, or by making a game that’s system is so restrictive that there isn’t anything to explore or meta games to create.
a game being ‘casual friendly’ rarely has anything to do with system mechanics, balance, ease of input, etc.
people stick to a game because
a) they really like or have an emotional attachment to a character or character(s) [street fighter, smash bros, etc.]
b) they engage in the social aspect of the game with friends online or offline
c) they feel like there are structured and achievable goal for them within the framework of the game [my first DP FADC]
d) eventually, they feel rewarded for their time investment [first win against the guy who always beats me]
A is something capcom has largely down pat due to historic reasons
B is something that capcom is working on, slowly, but the community has handled well enough for years (with some regrettable exceptions)
C is something capcom has failed miserably at and is probably the lowest hanging fruit
D is something the game still has in spades - people get excited to watch evo and see their character played to it’s maximum potential
Of course it is, I know several people with full time jobs, families and other hobbies besides SF4 who are really good at this game and win tournaments out here, some of them are taking time off their jobs to go to EVO. Top players get to play a lot thanks to their sponsors, but if you can’t afford to use that much time, use your time wisely, instead of playing 10 hours online a week, go to your locals once a week and spend 4 hours there, that will make you a stronger player faster than playing online.
Also, learning matchups is important to keep the game fresh, or do you expect your character to use the exact same gameplan in every single match you play? what’s skilled about that?
How does a tutorial explaining what counterhits are, what they do, or how to get them in real, practical terms “hand-holding”? Do you really think that a tutorial that explains whiff punishing, showing how to do it, and giving practical situation and examples is “hand-holding”? Is it “hand-holding” to have a combo tutorial that shows the exact timing and gives feedback like “too fast!” or “too slow!” in response to a failed attempt?
Are you really so insecure about this community and what it has to offer that you think that casual players will be content with the in-game tutorial once they decide they want to get more serious about the game?
In terms of your footsies tutorial, sonichurricane.Com has put together a masterful guide on the concepts of footsies. And in regards to practicing whiff punishing, go to training mode, record a dummy walking and whiff in moves, then try to punish said whiffed moves. Is that too hard? Is it too much trouble to ask someone new to the game to explore it before demanding for help? Does someone really need to write code when they’ve already provided you with the tools? Do you want someone to chew your food for you too?
As for the combo timing…yes, that actually is hand-holding in its truest sense. I mean, timing varies for each character and combo, and even pros have a hard time, hence plinking. No one is perfect with it, but the reason folks are better is simply practice and hard work…not elitist mentality.
I see that what you want isn’t a casual game, but rather to be micro-managed on your way to seeming improvement. You want to perform each step, and then be told if you’re on the right track, as opposed to just trying to figure out on your own that a button should be pressed at a specific time instead of being mashed.
I’m not insecure about anything. I am sure though that if pressing buttons at set intervals while wiggling a stick is frustrating and a bar of excellence seemingly too high to achive, even after a few years, then it’s definitely not the game or the community that has something wrong with it.
If you don’t know that the concept of whiff-punishing exists, yes, it is, in fact, too hard. Most people aren’t aware that these concepts even exist, so yes, it is too much to ask for new players to go out and find this information if it isn’t in the game.
For crying out loud, Starcraft had a great tutorial in the form of the single-player campaign. Are you really going to argue that that game wasn’t deep, complex, or rewarding or that their community was lacking because of it?
And if you don’t know footsies exists, there are two paths that branch:
A) you don’t care because your level of competition generally doesn’t use them because you get all your damage off of jump-ins and think throws are still cheap
b) your eyes have been opened…and you decide you want to learn more.
And if you fall in branch b, then how is that the game’s responsibility when it’s a concept that isn’t prevalent in each and every instance you play the game? That’s like demanding you be taught the triangle offense because you kinda like playing basketball at the Y. How many times is a casual going to need footsies when they are surrounded by other casuals?
Now in the off-chance a casual does want to be seen as more than a casual, then there’s this site, amongst others, where they can gorge on all the knowledge and information they need to get to a level they are comfortable with.
Are you saying you want all of the information on these sites to be incorporated into the game itself? You want everything and anything even remotely related to winning or performing well to be spoon-fed to you in single-player mode instead of learning it the way the game was supposed to be played? With other people?
As for your star craft analogy…that’s star craft, this is street fighter…two very specific games within different genres. You want something because something else offers it, something different with it’so own nuances, lingo and meta games? Okay.
Starcraft (and SC2) do not have great tutorials and they certainly don’t do what you’re asking of a hypothetical tutorial for SF4. Jumping from the campaign to online you won’t understand what a good build order is, why it’s so important to scout, and you probably won’t be doing much base expansion either since you very rarely needed more than one base to win campaign maps. It’s not any more effective than SFxT’s tutorial which also explained what the different commands were but not how to merge them into a cohesive gameplan. You can say “well just make the tutorial longer/deeper/more complex” but you’ll always have this problem. Admittedly SF4 doesn’t even have this basic tutorial but this information was all included in the instruction manual which probably seemed like a much better idea in 2010 than it does now.
Honestly SC is probably the worst example you could bring up since playing it at any meaningful level requires just as much outside research as Street Fighter and yet is more popular.
Btw…I’m watching the DoTa 2 noob stream on Twitch right now. Even labeled as a “noob stream”, where the commentators are trying to explain every nuance, technique and everything that’s happening, I’m still confused as shit as to why folks are getting hype and by the occasional abbreviation.
It doesn’t mean that these commentators suck, it just means that there’s an expected level of research and knowledge in order to even begin understanding high level matches…and at some point, the person who wants to participate is going to have to put on their adult pants and do some independent study.
You’re right, “great” was an overstatement. However, when compared with “none at all,” one is definitely more inviting than the other.
I can see that I’m not going to get many people to budge on this. However, what a number of you are proposing, that only an enlightened, chosen few are worthy to play fighting games, and that there is nothing at all wrong with the status quo, is not a mentality that will grow our community to any significant degree. It isn’t good for the long-term health of our community.
There is a reason that each iteration of SF4 has sold progressively fewer and fewer copies. I see those eroding numbers as an opportunity lost, and I’m disappointed that so many here instead regard them with “good riddance.”
The reason it’s sold less and less is because they are essentially updates, and not brand new shiny things meant to attract new people. The only people who would buy it are the ones who are still interested after the initial release and want to DEEPEN their experience and further it…instead of moving on to the next thing because it’s already been a year. THAT’S what a casual does.
And it’s not about being enlightened man. I keep telling you, you can get there if you just put in the time and research…but you seem to want to get there with less effort and investment in lab or reading time. None of the top players are enlightened (except Mike Ross)…they just bought into the game and adopted the mechanics instead of bitching about them because they were too hard to grasp.
Anyone and everyone can absolutely play fighting games, but not everyone’s going to make it out of pools. Does that mean the game is flawed? EVO gets bigger and bigger every year, so the appeal is there, it’s just that the competition has a way of weeding out the ones with a true passion versus the ones who just want to be good right away.
As for your disappointment in the apparent shunning of casuals, well just imagine someone wants to play basketball…but they get frustrated because they can’t make a basket. Would you
A) offer your (as a fellow player) help them with their fundamentals
b) offer to make the hoop both wider and lower so everyone can play?
And if it’s A, I remind you that there are literally hundreds of people online who are willing to help and give you pointers…but you want to change the whole system so that you don’t have to go through the learning process. That’s not the game or the company’s responsibility to make you better, just as much as it’stands not the NBA or Nike’so job to make you a better baller.
You keep making this comparison to sports. Video games are a unique medium. One of the advantages is that video games can teach you how to play and get better at them. A basketball can’t teach you how to play it.
I have an honest question for you: do you think SF5 is guaranteed to sell as well as SF4?
Yeah…and buying a video game won’t make you better at them either…you have to use both. Use the game, play it. Use a basketball, dribble it. Shoot it. Watch games like you watch YouTube replays and streams. Play pick-up games like you play online. Should I go on? Geez.
And yes, I honestly believe that SF5 will sell better than SF4, because it’s established a new base that hasn’t been this active in a decade. As much as you refuse to see how accessible the new iteration is, you probably don’t remember or have experienced the drough prior to 2009. With the advent of the Internet and streams, it’s getting easier and easier to learn with and from other players around the world…but you want more.
I don’t think many people understand that the guys who consistently top are, more often than not, people that have been playing fighting games for a long, long time. Chris G is a good example. A lot of people only started to recognize him after he made his fucking stupid Morrigan team, but he’s been in the FGC for a while. It’s not like MVC3 was his first game and he just knew what to do from the get-go. He got good so quick because he already had a fundamental understanding of fighting games from playing past fighters, recognized how he needed to play in order to consistently win and made a bonkers team out of that ideology. Yes, to a degree it is ‘talent’. But talent doesn’t mean that he didn’t (maybe) bust his ass in training mode for months, then went out and got a bunch of experience against local players.
Newcomers definitely aren’t learning like I did…they have it waaaaaay easier than not just 5 years ago.
And where did I say that they need to learn a specific way? I merely stated all the tools available to learn, and yet you’re still complaining. How can you, with all the resources available, sit there and complain that the game is still not accessible? Just tell me you want to be spoon fed and I’ll shut up. By “learning a specific way” did you mean having to read foruns, talking to people and gaining knowledge through experience? How else did you want to learn?!
Oh that’s right, spoon feeding.
Don’t you find it insulting that people nowadays don’t want to learn or put in time anymore and skip right to being good?
“I want to be good, but I don’t have the time that these top players do…but I want to be good. Lower the bar please, or I’ll call the FGC unfair and unwilling to welcome new blood. I know that if I didn’t have to do all these arbitrary motions and just said what I wanted to do, that I’d definitely be a better player…damn those FGC snobs!”.
Relative to other fighters, SF4 is definitely accessible. Moves are easy to execute, basic combos can be mashed out (ex. cr. fierce xx hadouken xx super), and its very forgiving in general. The Gandhi match from Dreamhack is a good example of all this. I know such a scenario is not going to happen often but this is the type of fighting game where its most likely to occur.
All you need to do is play other fighters to see how accessible SF4 is. KOF13, for example, is strict. Some of the basic cancels and setups are difficult to execute, mashing jab gets you nothing, and reversals need to be timed properly. I’ve played fighters for a long time and I’m still finding it on the more difficult side to play (the trials are also impossible for me).
Still, there’s nothing bad about being accessible. I’ve always believed that SF4 is really easy to start but difficult to master.
Spoon feeding is bad in a multiplayer game with a massive skill ceiling? The hell? Are you going to throw a fit if the trials they had start with a little text box saying “a cancel works like this” or “use lights to confirm you hit them!”
The most important thing about getting new players into a competitive PvP game is the first few hours. If they don’t feel like they can accomplish anything they’ll quit. Making them feel welcome doesn’t have to have any sort of negative effect on the skill ceiling or mid level game. Don’t be an ass, help a newb.
In what way does telling someone that they hit the button too fast or too slow for a link allow them to skip straight to being good? They still have to play the game themselves and remember and apply what they learned in training mode in a real match. Like, do you understand that?
The more I read people’s replies in this topic, the clearer it becomes that you just don’t want people swimming in your private pool.
News flash: SF2 was super fucking popular, just like SF4 is today. Even though it was awesome, SF3 was a massive flop. Just ask Capcom. SF5’s success is not guaranteed by a longshot. The gaming market is more saturated than ever. If SF5 releases and it sells USF4 numbers rather than Vanilla SF4 numbers, what do you think is going to happen to the scene? The people that bought SF4 weren’t teens, they were mostly guys in their 20s and 30s. Do you think a younger audience is going to embrace an obtuse game that doesn’t clearly explain its systems just because we did back in 1993? Dream on. You sound like a bitter old man talking about “kids these days.”