Is the input for Street Fighter games too complex or unintuitive?

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
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While reading this post, please keep in mind that I, as well as others I mention, play a lot of SF games and enjoy them. This post is meant purely for discussion/debate; something you may like to participate in if you enjoy debate on game theory and/or user interface, but not something you’re welcome in if you want to insult or post flame bait. I’m legitimately interested in hearing some of SRK’s opinions (but more importantly, the reasoning backing them).

The question is this. Suppose Street Fighter 4 is an entirely new game with no history (in fact, no fighting games of this nature have come before it). It may be a reasonable opinion to sit down, try to play it, and fault the controls for being overly complex. Fireball/uppercut motions? Doing a 720 for a super? Weird charge 1, 3, 1, 9 supers? What’s the point of making the input this difficult, seemingly needlessly? In reality, it could be argued that this input is a relic from a past generation, where Capcom was trying new ideas. Supposing this is a standalone, new game in today’s UI-heavy, making-games-accessible market, is this input justified? Could you not just assign standard button presses to some (all?) of these moves? This would then require more than 6 buttons (which is enough buttons as it is), but then you maybe could argue if we need 6 buttons for all punches/kicks? Remember, you can’t use “that’s the way it’s always been”, or any type of nostalgia argument here. This game has no history.

This question was proposed to me by a friend of mine I met in my Computer Science program, and we have continued to stay friends throughout our Masters programs at different schools as well. We both play and love Street Fighter, and he asked this to spark discussion. The motivation behind it was that SF has always been a game for the hardcore, but SF4 is trying to bring back some of the casual/older market that grew up with the characters. Plus, many games today are trying to bring in new people… many of whom struggle with this complex input (even experienced gamers that never got into SF can struggle with stuff like hadouken motions for a while, you probably even know some personally). I think SF4’s goal is to target both hardcores and the new or “I played SF once” audience, and does the complex input limit its appeal to this market? At least with Tekken/SC, you can mash buttons and your character will do interesting, fun-to-watch stuff. That usually isn’t the case with SF games.

This question is also kind of related to wavedashing in Smash Bros; if wavedashing was assigned to a single button (and not a complex sequence of presses/directions), would that be a good thing? It would certainly let newcomers play at a higher level faster… isn’t that good? The argument falls apart a bit because wavedashing is an unintended abuse of the physics, and not a move the designers planned would be used in every match, but this type of reasoning can also apply to SF games. Maybe it would be a more accessible (read: more successful financially) game if the complex input was reduced to single buttons, and then the difficult of the game could require the good players to find new combos through timing and exploration.

I have my own thoughts on the matter, but I won’t share them until a bit later in the thread, if people are interested in discussing this intellectually, and from a game designer’s standpoint. :slight_smile: If you want to reply to this post, please describe your reasoning and provide examples, where applicable.

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This really reminds me of some Charles Sanders Peirce that I was reading the other day. He’s a total beast.

But I think the problem is that all of us cannot even consider something along the lines of a Street Fighter IV with no history, because there are so many bases that it has in the fighting game that we perceive the medium through that it may simply be inseparable. We would also have to consider how we view the concept of a fighting game and the qualities that make it categorized in our brains as such.

That of course makes no sense, because I have no idea what the hell I was just saying.

Anyways, I don’t think people would find it overly complex or difficult.

I would even find single button presses to be too simple I think, just look at CVS2 EO and the EO system.

And I don’t really think you can do much interesting stuff by just mashing in Tekken.

I

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what is the point of having a button mash game? from what you said you are talking about a game that doesnt need skill or experience to be played, im pretty sure that a game like that would e dropped in no time. Why? because everyone wants to play a game that need skill to really do the cool stuff, its for the feeling of reward after a good work, i give you that the 720 moves sound retard, but in reality they arent that hard too pull out, you dont even need to make a real 720 move to make them, talking as a software designer, yes you would have a game that will apeal to the casual players (user friendly), but it will fail in keeping them, because they would feel that it doesnt have a challenge and there is a true reward for invest their time on it.

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I go back and forth on this. I remember struggling to learn the moves for SF2 WW when I was ten years old. It literally took me years to learn how to do do a SRK. That didn’t make much sense to me then and 17 years later I feel like it makes even less sense.

I thought it was really amusing that capcom felt that the parry was too complex (come on, you just push forward when you see something coming) for SF4 yet left in super complex and difficult to do supers (Gief, Claw, etc). These moves are really, really hard to do for noobs and ever harder if you’re not playing on a good stick. I play at home on a Sanwa stick with a square gate and have a hell of a time doing certain moves on anything else and that’s with 17 years of practice.

I’m always trying to get new people into SF because I really love friendly one on one competition in the comfort of my home but I can tell you right now SF4 isn’t going to make getting new people into the game any easier. It’s as complex as ever with a simple parry being replaced with a double button press followed by a dash. Fail Capcom. Have you ever seen someone new to the game try to escape a fieball trap? It frustrates them so much they give up. At least the parry gave even the greenest players a way out.

That said I totally love SF4. Playing it is a joy but I can’t see it making it any easier on people new to the genre.

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I don’t equate “doing interesting stuff” with “beating veteran players”. I’m talking more about bringing a game like Soul Calibur 4 out at a party. People don’t know what they’re doing, and they won’t beat a veteran player, but they can have fun in and among themselves because some characters just end up looking cool and doing cool stuff without a lot of effort (Maxi, eg). When people play Street Fighter for the first time, their characters don’t move much and nothing really happens. This might deter them from trying to invest more time in the game, or play it again.

Note that I didn’t say “button mash”… combos would still require some semblance of timing to pull off. But all the individual pieces would be easier to execute. For example, you want to know how to throw a fireball. Instead of saying “okay, take your hand, start at down, and kind of roll it up to forward… then press a punch”, you can just say “press this button”. Such a game can still be played with skill, couldn’t it?

A good example is Smash Bros, I guess. There are tournaments for the game, it can be played at a very high skill level that scrubs don’t stand a chance at beating, but yet it’s a great party game and only requires simple input for any one piece of a combo (or any move in the game, really). I’m not here to try and turn SF into Smash Bros, but I’m talking about the input system being friendly to new players… or, really, I’m just challenging whether the input we’ve come to know, accept, and associate with a SF game is needlessly complex, or whether this particular type of complexity is needed in some way, from a game design standpoint.

Also, I’m afraid I can’t accept your “the 720 isn’t really that hard to pull off” argument. For people who can’t execute fireballs, let alone half-circles, let alone a 360, let alone TWO of them, good luck explaining to them “well, see, you don’t really have to do a 720… look, the game recognizes it by doing a hybrid of two-ish half-circles!” I don’t recommend trying to make friends with this approach. :tup:

And this is sort of my point. Hardcore games have a much harder time thriving in today’s market. Your game needs to be attractive to both new and old people to survive and sell well (a game by the hardcore, for the hardcore has its place, but it’s sure difficult to break even on it). Fireball traps can be countered by rapidly inputting fireballs of your own. Even if one person at a party, say, figures out the fireball motion quicker than another player, he can just own them for free by throwing fireballs all day. The other person isn’t necessarily beaten by strategy, but inability to execute one of the game’s most foundational movements. In any other game, this is inexcusable and harshly penalized in reviews and by fans. Why is SF exempt from this? Is it because of tradition? Does that make it a good design choice?

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What the fuck is so hard about doing a qcf movement, lol? I was doing them fine when I was 8. I know gamers today have gone soft and need babying here and there, but fighting games have managed to survive long enough without one button supers and the like.

The motions are neither complex or unintuitive, most motions in SF actually mimic the characters physical motions.

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There’s a cheat on Street Fighter II Turbo for the Capcom Classics collection that let’s you do “Easy Speacials” Where you essentially press a direction on the pad in combination with the punch or kick button that the move requires and it will come out.
I played that for a while (partly because the pad I have doesn’t feel natural to me) and I found myself just spamming the specials and not using any of the normals. One thing that I also found - it made the game a lot less fun.

I guess it’s true that the inputs are somewhat difficult for beginners but I remember when I first learned to fireball on Street Fighter II the joy I felt overcoming that obstacle. All of a sudden I realised I could now pick Dhalsim and do the same motion to execute Yoga Fires. Jeez then I learned to dragon and again it felt great overcoming that seemingly hard obstacle. I applied the same approach over the years and ended up being able to 720 with Hugo without any effort at all, where once I NEVER picked Gigas Breaker.

It makes you feel good when you can do something so easily when you once thought it was (or even others still) perceive it as hard. And this is a big part of the fun of playing Street Fighter.

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This is definitely a valid point, but I’m curious if you’d get the same sense of satisfaction executing a foundational move in a different game (say, a platforming game required you to press up-right, down, up-left and a button to do an air attack), or whether you’d blame the controls for being stupid; “why not just give it to me as a button?”. Eventually you could overcome the controls and feel like a badass in the game, but does that justify the decision to go with that arguably convoluted scheme? If you showed it to a beginner and they wanted to do an air attack, I think you would start by saying “okay, this is a bit retarded, but…”. Even if you could say “after about 2 or 3 hours you’re totally used to it”, I don’t think that would encourage the beginner to stick with the game.

Basically, it would weed down the population to the group of people that are willing to stick with a control scheme they have always found difficult from day one (and need months, sometimes years of practice to overcome and become fluent in). In today’s market, and with today’s game prices/development costs, and with today’s gamers, is this an acceptable market strategy? Remember, in my hypothetical argument, no one has any practice doing QCF moves… this is a new game and these motions are brand new to everyone. There isn’t a group of 1 million consumers who’ll pick up the game and be an expert on day one. I don’t want people to use the argument “it’s fine for ME, because I’ve played it for 10 years”.

Let me pose this question: If someone could execute Gigas Breaker with a single button press, would 3rd Strike be broken or unplayable in some way? What about Shinkuu Hadouken? What about a Shoryuken?

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But if you did it with a button what would make the special move so “special”?

Part of the appeal is that the moves are somewhat hidden and therefore special. Something to discover and be rewarded in the discovery by the move being a bit stronger. If you simply make the moves instantly accessible you are actually lessening the specialness of the move. Sure the strength would be the same but the mystique and glory would be gone.

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SFIV has the illusion of “complex” inputs. In reality, the input windows are so forgiving and the motions so “dumbed” down compared to old generation Street Fighter, that it’s borderline questionable. For example, Ryu/Ken’s uppercut has always been f, d, df. (I don’t use numbers to indicate joystick positions, sorry.) In SFIV, you can literally wiggle the joystick the back and forth within the lower right quadrant of the joystick and almost always execute an uppercut. There is NOTHING technically hardcore about that. NOTHING.

In regards to your suggestion to assign all moves to individual buttons, I believe the answer deals with form and function. Physical immersion with the playable character. Without matching the motion with the action on screen, I argue that the player is less immersed because of the physical interaction disconnect. Each move will start to feel the same if every move is based on the press of an individual button.

You say you played a lot of SF games, yet, you haven’t noticed the technical input differences, say, between ST and SFIV? It’s completely night and day. ST is a highly technical input game. SFIV is not. The physical input barrier has been obliterated in SFIV. No longer do you have to be precise within 3 frames or so to pull of a certain move.

Decent blurb on this by Sirlin:

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No, but the fun of playing doesn’t only come from winning or losing or even from the game being balanced.

And don’t forget there once WAS A TIME when nobody knew about quarter circle motions. That year was 1991. And looked what happened…

P.S SF1 hardly counts as the motions are a lot tighter. :smiley:

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Arcade sticks have 6-8 buttons. You wouldn’t be able to simplify the motions anymore than they already have been. QCF and charge motions are about intuitive as you’re going to get. In my opinion, supers never need to be any more complex than QCF-QCF or QCB-QCB. Maybe double half circles for grab supers.

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This is actually a reasonable point, one I hadn’t really considered. To play the devil’s advocate here, to what extent would you feel less immersed in a character if you played, say, Smash Bros? (I don’t know if you enjoy the series or not, but the characters still can feel drastically different even though all their moves are executed with a button press and a direction). Immersion also comes from things like speed, height of your jump, throw animations (which is always LP + LK), etc. Doing a crouching attack into hadouken motion gets you a 2 hit fireball combo with Ryu, and a 2 hit dash punch combo with Makoto… I’m not sure how much these actions are similar to each other.

I haven’t played SF4 (sadly), but if you prefer, you can substitute 3rd Strike in its place if you want a concrete game. The argument is more interesting with SF4, though, because it’s being targeted not just at the SF hardcore players (trying to win old once-and-out players over with nostalgia, newcomers with flashy specials and such). Though I do agree that the motions have been significantly simplified since ST (the timing has, at least, and some motions have as well), and I would argue that’s only a good thing. When a move almost never seems to come out, you’re irritating the player… and I imagine this is how it feels for some people and fireballs!

That’s an interesting article you linked as well. They made a key point I’m surprised hasn’t come up yet, and that’s that overpowered moves (1 frame startup, huge damage, close range) need to be difficult to execute. When I asked the “is Gigas Breaker broken with a button press” question, I think the answer is unequivocally yes… that’s why standing 720s strike fear in your heart. Giving any player access to a move with the properties of a 720 and the ease of input as a standing jab is even worse design. Guile’s sonic booms are in theory better projectiles than hadoukens, so their input is more restrictive and difficult. My question with this thread is, I guess, how much simplification is too much, or too little? And when is a super motion no longer difficult, but rather just poorly designed? (I’m looking at you, Claw)

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If you say you want to feel excited when you do a complex motion go play ddr. If you actually want to do complex motions go play IIDX.

The motions in street fighter aren’t hard, but they are certainly unintuitive. Charge motions aren’t too bad, and qcf/qcb doesn’t make much sense but if adding more buttons isn’t an option then it’s not too bad for a backup. Dragon punches are odd, and half circles are just slightly harder quarter circles. A 360 kind of makes sense considering how Zangief spins, but they are unnecessarily difficult for someone new. Pressing multiple buttons is simple and easy. The mashing ones, while they make sense, would be better as ppp/kkk to start and then mash.

You don’t have to make a move hard to do if you want to restrict it’s use. Sonic boom is a perfect example of something that is restricted but easy to do. A crappy player with walkup-gigas isn’t going to be a threat. A good player with walkup-gigas is. Only the good player has the option though, since you need to learn to kara into it, whereas the crappy player probably can probably only do gigas from a jump-in. Give gigas a charge back for half a second, forward+p motion. Aside from the walk-up kara into gigas both the crappy player and the good player can now use gigas at all the same times as before, except now the crappy player can actually do it without the help of a jump-in to get out the 720. If you want to keep the walk-up into gigas, give it a charge forward, back + p command as well, but give that one a few extra frames of startup to account for the kara.

Calling a scrub with walkup-gigas a threat is dumb, not only because good players can already do it, but because they wouldn’t be a threat unless you suck(and are a scrub yourself) and can only win because you spent more time in training mode. If you want time spent in training mode to be important go play an rpg. Seriously, all hard motions do is say that you have to put in x hours before you’re allowed to play the real game. Aside from very specific technical stuff that probably wasn’t intended, any limitation by the hard motion could be added another way.

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How simple would execution have to go though?

Execution is a vital part of playing fighting games along with reaction speed and metagame. In fact it’s the first barrier that separates the people who only show passing interest and lack of dedication to come to any real learning in the first place, to those who are disciplined enough to make sure they are on point with what they’re doing.

As you mentioned earlier, even in the case of smash bros, with all the simplification done to inputs. High execution requirement tactics will still emerge over time, simply due to the nature of the player base able to execute said tactics are given a greater variety of options, and therefore a greater chance to win.

So should we have a wavedash button? Should we have a chain grab button? Should we have a shoshosho button?

No, because you get what you earn. And the ones who refuse to be dedicated enough to learn these tactics are in turn refusing to win, and I really don’t see a point in spoon feeding to them just to cater to a greater audience. Because the only thing that audience will do is demand an easier way to win with no effort ad infinitum.

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Do you guys forget that we all had to learn these inputs growing up playing SF2?? Dunno why “complex” inputs are such a hot topic nowadays when the inputs really aren’t complex. I never heard anyone complain about the inputs back in the day. If they had a problem, they just played a charge character instead.

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not complex enough! (goes into grandpa mode) back in my day, the timing for moves was A LOT less forgiving. And we didn’t have tens of thousands of people playing these games. we were lucky to have a cabinet. grumble grumble.

we had to tread 15 miles in the snow to get to some cramped cave that smelled like armpit, farts and pizza if we wanted to play fighting games.

and we didn’t have any of this easy six button malarky, we had to press one of two buttons with varying degrees of sensitivity. try to pull off the right move that way!

and did we complain?! no! we gobbled it all up like a rufus going to sizzler after a summer at far camp.

~

but seriously, i’d have to second Shirts. I never really noticed it until i was older and super turbo came out, and i was all confused about the double motions and things, but when you look at the move inputs, they do resemble the physical movements involved in the game. i think that was the initial logic behind the inputs as well as the sensitivity buttons in SF1.

this isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for dial a combo games like the vs. series and straight up mashers like the 3D games. all of them have that physical aspect, but just differently. then you have games that seem to go out of their way to make some moves difficult to pull off, like in SNK fighters.

OG street fighters have a different kind of depth that has lead to their success, and i know that it’s a different gaming experience when i play ST than when i play a vs. game.

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@OP:
i tried to teach someone street fighter recently and it didnt go as well as i had hoped due to this input thing, so i understand your argument. i think street fighter inputs are just fine and im not one of those combo video people.

if the game is well designed the inputs are designed specifically to affect the “strategy” part of a move and control how it is used. for example a dragon punch, an invincible rising uppercut move that pretty much plows through most things on the ground and the air, is given a motion that requires a “Z” motion to make it not completely broken. in theory you should never even jump against a char with a dp because they will just swat you out of the air. imagine how shitty that would be. in practice this isnt the case because humans, even with incredibly fast reaction times, have to take the time to do the motion, which is why you are not completely glued to the ground in a game of street fighter. here’s a more extreme example: think about what would happen if you didnt have to charge for charge moves.

adding complex motions allow the game designers to make interesting and powerful movesets but still keep things balanced. i dont think moves like SPD or raging demon could really exist without some sort of execution barrier to prevent them from breaking the game. imagine what would happen if raging demon were something like “press all 3 punches”.

at the people who say “well the pros can walk up 720 anyways so motions are useless” i say it still takes humans, even very fast humans, time to do the inputs. theres a difference between a pro doing 720s and everyone getting the same move for, lets say, lp+lk.

that said i dont think moves should be difficult to execute for the sake of being difficult.

yeah it sucks to have new people try to do stuff in fighting games, fail, and go “fuck this shit”, but you can say that about pretty much any game with a manual dexterity requirement. like football (“why the fuck is the ball so hard to throw and shaped funny”), ping pong (“why the fuck does the little ball go everywhere”), even stuff like riding a bike (“why the fuck dont they balance this shit”). fighting games are really no different, as someone pointed out, you get what you earn. you can argue that fighting games should place more emphasis on strategy, but theyre not pure strategy games like chess. chess is a true strategy game where the only form of execution is picking something up and moving it.

besides, games feel like lucky mash contests when the execution gets too dumbed down. i dont consider smash to be a “game with easy execution done well” (i hate smash, i think its a bad fighting game), but thats personal opinion.

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The less the game becomes focused on execution barriers the more it becomes focused on mindgames and strategy.