stop bumping this thread
~Fuck You~
I respect a lot of opinions, including OP’s, but wanting Donte in MvC:I is one I can’t respect at all, sorry.
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I’ve long been wondering about all this myself, and I agree with OP.
There is a serious lack of appeal to the masses in fighting games because “the execution is too hard”.
And well, it kinda is. I would consider myself a casual, but I’m super interested in fighting games. I like to watch them a lot, I enjoy the feeling of playing them and the victory rush, and pulling off cool combos consistently, and reading my opponent.
The only problem… it’s so damn hard and takes so much practice. I’m always worse than anyone who actually puts time into the game. And I don’t put as much time in because… training mode is boring. I like to learn by playing.
It happens with a lot of my friends. I’d love to play fighting games with them. but either they’re better than me by a lot, or they can’t even do quarter-circles.
I know this is partially my fault for not grinding hard and “gitting gud”, but really, I don’t want to have to. I’ll just go play Overwatch so I can play with my friends.
Now it’s time for <obligatory plug>.
You guys have probably heard of the infamous David Sirlin. Yeah, “Low Strong”.
But he’s developing a fighting game that is based on the concept that hey, hard motions and execution isn’t required.
It’s called Fantasy Strike. Here’s the link: http://www.fantasystrike.com/
I’ll be honest with you guys, I like it. It’s easy to teach, and it’s what Rising Thunder could’ve been: simple.
Training mode isn’t that bad. It may be a bit boring at the beginning, but once your execution starts getting better, pulling out combos becomes very satisfying. Sometimes I boot the game just for training for like an hour and closes it right after. Just put your favorite soundtrack while you practice and the times just flies.
This is the sort of problem I have with trying to make FGs simple by getting rid of motions and simplifying execution. I feel like it isn’t going to help anyone.
The better players are still going find the best characters, the most optimal combos, approaches, ways to zone etc and shit on any casual player of the game; which will ultimately lead to the casual players, the people who started playing under the impression of the game being simple, leaving the game and not putting time into it, meaning the game may as well end up being DoA.
The worst part is that when games try to simplify or dumb down the game for the sake of the casual player, any advanced tech that one may need to put time into to perform in other games will have been made much more easier for the advanced player to do themselves. And if players are able to perform all this advanced tech earlier and faster than the casual player, who gets shit on by said players, they will stop playing the game.
Like I said in my previous post, ultimately, simplifying motions and execution isn’t going to be the end all be all of reeling in your average casual player, especially when they leave because they hate the feeling of being shit on and having only themselves to blame.
This. The hey to getting the casual market is two things in my opinion. Either provide plenty of single player content that isn’t just 1v1 fighting. Like Mortal Kombat did. Or make a game where the skill gap between good and noob players is small. I.E Compare Overwatch to COD. There is no ammo management. You just spray for days. Hit boxes are much larger for characters so your aim doesn’t have to be that good. Don’t have to go on killstreaks to earn game changing abiltities. Time to kill is way longer so there is plenty of room for error. etc. That’s not to say Overwatch takes no skill. Of course I wouldn’t say that. But the barrier for entry is much lower if not the lowest for any FPS. Not just because it’s more simple, but because the skill gap between players is much smaller due to how the game is designed. It wont take long at all before you understand the game and are on par or near the level of average compotent players.
That IMO is where fighting games have a hard time attracting casuals. You can simplify a fighter’s execution all you want. But as long as that glaring skill gap exist, where the casual has to practice how to counter something specific, practice a punish, learn to whiff punish, spacing etc. Those fundamentals that seperate the noob, the average player and the good player. It will turn people off. Hell look at DiveKick. 2 buttons. That’s it, and yet you still have higher level players completely stomping newer players and making them rage.
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The key to making a game with mass appeal, IMHO, is simple:
- Figure out what the players want to do
- Reward them for doing it
That’s it. Players first pick up an FPS because they want to shoot enemies. FPS players are rewarded for shooting enemies. They get better at it because they do it all the time. For some reason fighting games are frequently designed to counter-intuitively reward doing what a lot of players don’t want to do. Until this changes the FGC will be made up of people who like training mode or memorizing frame data or just like a high-pressure winner-take-all competitive environment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
Fighters being 1v1 is where the difference is. Try going 1v1 against someone in a shooter when you’ve never played a shooter before and they have months to years of experience. You’ll be lucky to get any kills. That’s why 1v1 modes in shooters tend to struggle, or not even exist at all. The only ones I can think of that ever had a strong 1v1 community were games like Quake and UT, and those aren’t even doing as well as fighters these days.
I played 1v1 against a competitive Quake player for months back in college. Went from an easy 10-0 for him, to a hard-won 10-0 for him, to the point where I could usually get it to 6-4 in his favor and even 3-7 in my favor when I got lucky. At no point in time did I ever do anything other than actually play Quake. There wasn’t a separate “intro to Quake” mode that I had to grind in for weeks or months. Just playing was enough.
That is the difference.
Man, this topic can’t decide what it wants to be. Is it sell more copies? Then have a reasonably sharp story mode and other single player stuff. Do you want to convert people into PvP players? That’s another issue. Do you want to actually bring them into the FGC? That’s even harder.
To get people interested in PvP two big boxes checked: make what I call (there isn’t a really good industry term for it) the “time to mediocrity” as low as possible and have really good matchmaking. Nothing gets a player to quit faster than a bad losing streak. If you can’t make it so that your newbies are paired up you’re going to bleed players. As for the time to mediocrity, it’s how long it takes a player to feel like they, at some level, understand the system and can work in it to assert their will on the game. “Oh, if I practiced 24/7 I too could be Daigo” their thought process goes, noting that they “have a life” instead. It’s where they feel like all the options are open to them and it’s just a matter of getting better tactics wise. I actually think that SFV did this part reasonably well, just dropped the soap on everything else.
Getting people into the FGC proper means dropping the “they’ll lose until they like it” mentality and actually going easy on newbies as mentor figures. That’s not something I see happening soon, as vets tend to pride themselves on weeding out anyone who doesn’t like to get their ass whooped for a whole session then wonder why nobody is coming back.
What I want is for competitive people who are already interested in PvP to have a good reason to pick fighting games over other genres like FPS, CCG, RTS, etc.
FGC confirmed hipsters of e-sports.
Yes, but most people don’t want to ever go 0-10 in a shooter, which is why 1v1s died out in favor of objective and TDM modes. In other words, there is no mass appeal in 1v1. The only exceptions I see are turn based games with RNG.
I get the point you’re making, but the point I’m making is that fighters just can’t have mass appeal without becoming something else.
What’s funny about that quake analogy is that learning while playing is exactly what people have done in arcades for decades.
Funny, I absolutely hate when people hold back when playing with me, even if I’m a newbie at a game. I don’t care if I lose 10 battles without touching my opponent, but if someone picks some character they don’t normally use to ensure a more “fair” battle it pisses me off. Maybe I’m just weird.
RIP this thread
Kinda doubt that the OGs in Street Fighter had training mode.
Pretty sure you can get good at fighting games with minimal time spent in training mode.
Problem is, most people love the satisfaction of inputting hard things to get a result. Such as in a long combo.
If you easify the moves too much it could alienate many people who enjoy the above said satisfaction.