Yeah that was the only option. There is no going back to that now.
the combos in mvc3 were obnoxiously long and still werent as satisfying as AHVB or storm/sent DHC
Also took the OGs way longer to find tech than it did now that there’s the internet, and ‘save that shit for nationals’ is no longer a viable strategy.
I’m not all for making games easier, but what the OP said has some merit. What OGs had to do to get good is completely different. The games weren’t half as complicated as they are now. I’m not saying they weren’t difficult - but every time I go back and play an old game I’m amazed at how much slower input timing is. As the franchises evolved, so did the players who had those early titles as a base. Also, FPSs are their own animal and can only be compared in a really general manner - most of what you need to learn can only be learned in a live game.
I still stick to my original point that the internet has made people too aware of how good one can be at the game and that beginners are holding themselves to too high a standard because of it. But to deny that some games have strange learning curves or have gone overboard (virtua fighter where you need a fucking calculator by your side to play) means your not even trying to think of where the other player is coming from.
I honestly have no idea how these people live real lives. Like, do they go to a university and expect to know everything on Day one? Do they apply for a job and expect to be a CEO the next day? Do they find relationships and attempt to have sex the same night?
Because I don’t think they apply a different logic to a real world, where they have to work just as hard to actually achieve SOMETHING
Instant gratification is feasible in gaming, so obviously people go after it. It’s not feasible in every facet of life. Over the past few decades, PVP games have evolved to make everyone feel like a winner with relatively low effort, and now those games saturate the market.
Breaking down why things are how they are… Fighting games are a type of arcade game. They were originally developed for arcade hardware (a stick).
Much of what ended up defining them came from the interaction with that hardware.
No different than many other arcade games… you’re not playing Golden Tee properly at home unless you go out and buy a specific piece of hardware to replicate the experience.
Now that arcades only survive in certain areas globally and the market has shifted to consoles and pc, people do not have much familiarity or interest in arcade specific hardware.
Give it another generation and they won’t design for sticks at all. Or they will abandon relevant IPs for a while until they can market them using nostalgia again.
See, I like a game where the skill gap between beginners and masters is a giant, seemingly bottomless chasm. One where you cannot see the other side without a pair of binoculars and the gut wrenching stench of death emanating from the mountain of corpses of the unworthy littering the bottom, wafting towards and burning my nostrils acts as a cautionary tale of “Git Gud or die”.
It kinda gives you something to shoot for, you know?
Playing a game where I can figure out the learning curve and where it ends within a few minutes usually kills any interest I have in something.
I find the pussification of the genre since SFIV really quite disturbing. It hasn’t really accomplished anything other than watering down the game to appeal to people who can’t really appreciate how these ill-conceived changes are usually detrimental to the more nuanced (read: interesting) elements of the game. Most 09’ers who have stuck around are now experienced enough to agree that a lot of the shit that was put in IV to placate their beginner tendencies ultimately hurt the game more than it helped.
I would argue that making the motions easier was hardly the reason why most people picked it up in '09. Maybe that argument holds more water now because we live in the age of the sheltered, entitled special snowflake, but I don’t think you help anyone by indulging their minsinformed requests.
And now I find that not even making the moves so stupidly easy, that fucking up the input is essentially impossible is enough for the new generation. Removing the motions completely is the only solution of course… I mean come on.
The games are interesting because they require a mix of manual dexterity (execution), reactions, logistical knowledge, strategy and resource management. Removing execution completely is a really really really bad idea. I’m not sure how else to articulate this.
I don’t think the arcade stick argument holds water when you look at some of the best American players in the world having great success with pad.
The games are plenty successful enough to warrant sequels and competition within the genre from other developers…I could care less about bottom line or appealing to extremely casual players that leave a game after a couple of weeks, I’d rather have a smaller and more hardcore player pool(the size that it is now) than a much larger player pool for a dumbed down and easier game.
My 2c
Topics like this are hard to discuss without getting way to bloated and intensely opinionated. I’ve only ventured outside the 3rd strike forum once, and that was to say something in defense of “Alan Wake” if I recall. So I’m probably not a good candidate to opine in an unbiased manor. That said the title was compelling enough and here I am. I must say I was rather shocked at the contents of your post. I genuinely expected another rant on how bad and easy new 2d fighting games (Even though I generally agree with the that sentiment. At least in terms of recent Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom I think 3d fighters like Tekken and Virtua Fighter, even with some of the “casual” additions that aid comebacks and such. Offer a robust in depth fighting system. Even though I’ve moved on from Tekken largely in favor of the aforementioned title). Anyway onto real thoughts and not stream of consciousness needless backstory. I only play SF3. I own SFV and BB:CP for friends that aren’t willing to play an “old, hard game that I’m too gad at” (reality, I’m trash at 3S which really just furthers serves my point). I think new games are unfathomably simple, at the very least in regards to inputs/execution etc. (SFV MVC3 at least, SFIV for that matter as well) While I am very casual in terms of the amount of time and practice I put into the game. I am intensely passionate in my love of the game, and my desire to learn to play the game (counter intuitive I know, but my schedule is rather hectic) as it is played in Japanese arcades. I have gone to every event for the game that has been held and been able to attend I will say. Such a tremendously beautiful, seemingly infinite world of possibility. It is a game that to me, makes almost anything possible due to the complexity and depth within the mechanics of the game. It is undoubtedly unbalanced, rather significantly at that. In terms of Character strength (though this would not likely even come into play as it pertains to the manor in which you wish to play the game anyway), but the game is built in such a way that no matter what, outside of literally one or two extremely unlikely nearly glitch like situations, in which there is almost never an escape or solution possible as long as you make the right decision/guess/read whatever you want to say.
To me that is infinitely more appealing than being able to see a bunch of flashy things on the screen (you certainly can, but there is no doubt a higher learning than in more recent 2d offering to say the least). The closest comparison experience in recent memory I have to compare to you was just mere days ago. My stick finally game out (well I cold probably fix it, but I’ve repaired it countless times so I think its time to move on) so I decided to play a little bit of SFV just to see what I remembered and see if I could grind out some of the points to buy Gouki or someone, well first and foremost as a result of not wanting to play 3s on pad. Anyway I was utterly floored by how easy the game felt. I just picked Ken and you can pretty much do huge crazy combos within Minutes. I even texted my friend who I have been slowly converting to 3S from the others (he doesn’t own any of them, just similarly grew around arcades and always had an affinity for Street Fighter games) about how incredibly shocked I was at how easy a game it was and I would be utterly shocked if he could not do all sorts of shit in minutes. In spite of my rather patronizing statement, he ultimately agreed and said (shockingly enough, as there could not be a more casual and uninformed person as far as it pertains to FG developments and such) that he felt it was “built for E sports” (feel dirty just saying that word). Now that he is “all in” on 3s (in that the one or two times a month we get together to play that is the only game he wants to play) to see him watch the mechanics slowly unfold is a beautiful thing. (It helps that he is an incredibly talented musician, and intensely competitive/cynical by nature). I actually try and use other characters, and he refuses and demands I pick my best and play my best even though it is certainly at his expense.
edit: The more I think about it, “saving fighting games” at least from my perspective. Comes more down to doing just what I am trying to state above. Show someone the possibility of something great, and the joys it can bring. No different from getting into a dense record that may seem abrasive at first. Or watching a Lynch or Cronenberg film. It is hard to deal with at first, but if you approach it with an open mind (I suppose some degree of intelligence is required in all of the above examples) that will have a greater impact on the longevity, then getting a bunch of people to buy something that is already being catered to them, and have them throw it down after a week and say it’s too hard anyway. Single player can help, I certainly loved Tekken Force in middle school. I can acknowledge that, but again I guess my perspective is fundamentally different to begin with, as I dislike most recent Capcom offerings, some more than others but I think they are all pretty bad in comparison to their predecessors. I don’t know exactly what my point is, but I guess I’m just trying to say I don’t know how they could possibly make them any easier. It seems input windows are nearly seconds long, and you just have to get a rough, relatively close approximation of the command (which the games throws at you left and right) to “do the move you want to do” as you say.
-note: I only read page one…-
I agree with both sides of this. First off when arcades were prominent in the early 90s they certainly were not niche by a long shot. Every Mall had one, let alone half the pizza shops and Corner stores (I’m thirty and the previously mentioned friend is 32 if that helps provide any sort of context). That said I didn’t learn to play fighting games “for real” until 2008 with “Tekken 5:DR” so a good portion of my time at the arcade was spent playing a variety of fighting game arcade modes, not to say I wasn’t happier to play a live opponent. Nonetheless I think there is something to be said there.
[quote=“shmurdascene, post:31, topic:181599”]
[quote=“Pertho, post:30, topic:181599”]
Arcade Mode is all 75% of players ever played, especially before online was a thing. Most people didn’t actually play in arcades when they were a thing here. That was always a niche. So unless you were waiting to play locally against your friend, most people were playing the computer.
quote]
23 hours last post? Okay, not too long ago then.
andrew_janDek:
Just wanted to point out something here: Your insane love of 3S notwithstanding (most OG players like me barely tolerate that game for very good reasons which I won’t get into here), this clause is most poignant:
Exactly. Which means you’re doomed to failure from the start. Those tactics might work on one person, but that won’t help the community at large to grow.
re: Accessibility
I read the OP that essentially complains about “accessibility”, with “accessibility” in this instance meaning “moves too hard to do”. I agree with this, but only to a certain extent. Moves in a classic 1 on 1 fighter like SF2 are designed with a certain base level of manual dexterity involved. It’s right there in the design. Take the SPD: A really powerful special move, but also somewhat difficult to pull off, especially for someone with zero fighting game experience (they still exist!). If you take away the difficulty of pulling off the move, then something else needs to change or else the move becomes imbalanced. Making the motion “easier” only works to an extent, because unless you go as far as making the move literally a single button attack, somebody is going to have trouble pulling it off. How far do you want to lower the execution barrier, and thus affect the entire game design? Even an “easy” game like Smash Bros (pick one, doesn’t have to be Melee) has some difficult stuff to pull off in it.
I agree that SF, my first love of fighting games, can be made more “accessible” without necessarily “lowering standards”. I consider Guilty Gear series (another series I’m a huge fan of, at least since GGXX onwards) to be extremely accessible, in that performing most moves (Gamma Ray notwithstanding) and most combos are very easy. Yet we all know GG games can be complex and hard as hell to play if you take it far enough or play against “real” competition. I found that GG strikes a good balance between casual accessibility while also having hardcore appeal, one that Capcom would be wise to emulate. They don’t need to turn SF into GG per se, but I feel that they could definitely borrow some stuff from them.
In other words, I’m all in favour of Simple MOdes. I never checked the one from MvC3, but the Easy Mode in MvC1 was really good IMO. MvC1 got played a lot in the arcades here, more than any other Vs. game (MvC2 wasn’t as widespread here), and when I would see people playing by themselves, most of the time it was using Easy Mode.
re: Sales
Regarding fighting game popularity, you have to determine what exactly do you want to accomplish.
If you want really good sales, well, I think at the minimum you have to go the MK route and throw in tons of single player content, which I agree is a good thing. But note that, as others have pointed out, you’re not going to get fighters to compete with FPS and MOBAs because they’re 1 on 1 and are mercilessly unforgiving in terms of competition and the “time needed to git gud”.
Furthermore on this note, even with sufficient content, I don’t think (traditional) fighters outside of SF, MvC, MK (I count Injustice as part of this series BTW), or Tekken have the brand name recognition to get big (i.e. millions of sales). Guilty Gear Xrd: Revelator is awesome from top to bottom but most people don’t care. And even SF and MvC aren’t guaranteed. MvC3 is the only one in the series to sell a million plus. Among SF games, only the 16 bit editions of SF2, SFA3 for PSX, SFIV series and SFV have sold more than a million as well. MK is the only fighting game series that is guaranteed to sell a couple million copies (because outside of MK Armageddon, every single MK has sold at least a million copies), and that’s because it’s popularity is based on gimmicks (violence, hype, unlockables) that other fighters can’t or won’t emulate. I used to put Tekken in this category as well but their status isn’t as solid as it was during the PS1/PS2 days.
Even if Capcom had put in all the single player content in the world, SFV was never going to sell what the first iteration of SFIV did. With all the updates to SFIV, SF never really “went away” like it did before, so demand for a new one wasn’t as big. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have put more single player content in though! I still think SFV is a budget title in disguise.
If you want your game to be played for years, well, I actually think Capcom’s doing a decent job at that. SFV is a better “base” game than SFIV was, after all, though there’s much room for improvement.
d3v:
Just wanted to point out one thing:
I disagree with this 100%.
As has been pointed out by a some folks in this thread, there are fighting game fans who don’t actually like to play against other people. And that’s fine! From a developer’s standpoint, that’s not a bad thing at all. You want as many people playing your fighting game as you can, in whatever way they enjoy playing them. If they enjoy the single player content, that’s fine. Because a player who enjoys playing the single player content in your fighting game might graduate to playing the competitive aspects if s/he enjoys the game enough. Not everyone starts off hardcore and competitive, some folks need to grow into it. And many never do. But that’s okay, because you want your games to be bought by these players, if for no other reason than to generate revenue updating the current game/for the next game.
Plus, as Daigo pointed out, you need new players to form the FGC in the future. If they don’t even want to play your game because there’s nothing in it for them to do but play hellish Survival or go online and lose to stuff that they don’t understand, that doesn’t help anyone.
(FOr those who said it, I agree that better matchmaking is vital to keeping new players interested in getting better; no one likes getting stomped by stuff from players way more advanced than you are)
Oh, you mean 1992 and 1993. 2 years FGs have been top tier. Whoopdie fucking do.
That’s not what the OP is talking about. “Why FGs have lost their top-tier popularity over the years” implies that FGs were king for a long period of time and gradually declined. They were king for 2 years, about 25 years ago.
It was just 2 years. By the mid-90’s, they were “popular”, not top-tier. I was there, trust me.
The downfall of arcades started around the time SF came out. This is because SNES and GEN were able to create capable ports to popular arcade games. When PS came out in 1994-1995, arcades became obsolete. At that time, FGs were a middling genre.
Last time I frequented an arcade, a few people were huddled around UMK3 while CotA, VF, KI, and MSH were completely ignored. That’s not “running shit like an FPS” in my book.
I cannot believe I ignored this thread for this long.
This shit gave me the giggles. Too bad the OP left his nuts on the floor when he fled the scene of the crime he started with this thread.
But honestly fighters are niche nowadays mostly because like many have said, people don’t like to lose, don’t want to practice and would rather play other stuff that gives them the constant feel-goods before moving onto another game of some sort.
Most of the sales of fighters, even the big name ones like MK and Street Fighter are driven by the casual crowd looking for a fix before they turn that shit into Gamestop or set the game back into their collection to collect dust until another new hotness comes out to get fixated over. They may try some online, win some matches by mashing, lose more matches, get mad at losing due to ‘bullshit’ (aka ‘I don’t know why I’m losing so fuck this game’), put the game away after beating whatever other content of the game there is and be done with it.
What keeps the FGC active is out of those, who there enjoys actually playing people and wanting to learn more and are willing to take their lumps along the way. Not easy, especially if game balance of characters is completely ass. Making shit control easier (while welcome) will only make it easier for the seasoned fighting game vets to kill people faster.
Hell, I personally made someone’s interest in fighting games go down to zero because they talked soo much up and down about their skill in a game I was playing (MvC2), so… I played against them. After some decimation later, they quit all fighting games and only stuck to Halo multiplayer.
And FPS and Fighters still share some things… yeah, FPS games like CoD have more insta-gratification and lower skill ceiling and more avenues for who to blame losses on… when in team games. But get this… it’s still possible to learn all the little tricks in the engine of those games as well as what guns and other mess in a map is good. Now… take such team games where it was evenly matched with top players doing good and the middle and bottom players leeching/doing their best… and throw them in a free-for-all match. FUCKING GUARANTEED the same exact complaints that people hear of those sucking at fighting games will be heard loud and clear… just because those who took a little extra time to explore the game are doing a whole lot better than the others just going through the motions.
What people seem to want is a game to generate that Mortal Kombat money… but also KEEP at least more than a fraction of those casuals around to keep the scene going. That in itself will take some fucking smart investment and a company not scared to take risks. Because it seems nowadays most video game companies are afraid to take risks, and when they do, they do it in such a sideways manner they end up burying themselves. When game costs years ago were lower, there was more leeway… but not today.
I know there are a fucking lot of old franchises years ago that could be snapped up and revived that would entice the market to try that shit out… but that takes some risks that most developers are unwilling to take.
Yeah seriously.
I always hear this. Looking at Skullgirls, Lab Zero made the game with 8 characters for 2 million, and each characters after that was $150,000. Apply that to SFV(for example), and the game could be made for $3.2 million. They sold 1.4 million copies by the end of March. I don’t know how much they actually make per copy sold, but 1.4m x $60 is 84 million dollars. I also don’t know how much marketing costs, but if their total development budget was 3.2 million for SFV, then they would only have to sell 53,333 copies to break even. I’m pretty sure an SF game could do that by word of mouth alone, and the same goes for a Marvel game. Even if MvC:I cost twice as much to make, they could probably break even without even trying.
Obviously Disney takes their cut, so maybe this doesn’t necessarily work well for MvC:I this time, but as far as fighters go, I don’t believe there is so much risk involved that a publisher ought to be too scared to stray from the “safe” formula. From what I see, the risk seems to be higher for low profile titles like Skullgirls than it is for big names like SF and Marvel anyway.
GameFAQS is perfect for you. They even have a fighting game general board.
We pretty well have already developed good ways to make the entry to play very low.
Street Fighter X Tekken had a perfect model. (Aside from making gems paid DLC, that was a huge mistake).
There were auto combo gems, throw break gems, auto block gems.
You get two new players to play and they can get easy access to damage and cool looking combos. However, you lose out on free damage gems and they ate through meter. This gave players an easy way to give them an assist that can make the game more fun and rewarding to get them through the difficulty of learning the game.
Marvel series and Persona had easy combo modes too. I’m sure there’s some other examples as well. Good players will of course stomp all over new players even with assisted combos and defenses. To top it off, we havn’t really seen much of a bump with casual players in the games that have some sort of ‘assist mode.’
Maybe if you combine an assist mode with some thing like Soul Calibur’s Conquest mode. You could play a faction and control territory; by playing you would train a ghost. I think Killer Instinct did something similar with the shadow ai. I think these semi-single player types of modes are good way to segue into versus mode.
Even with these though, I just don’t think that fighting games attract people. I had a friend who wanted to learn and he just starts mashing buttons. If I make him stop mashing buttons he loses interest in like a minute lol. I just don’t get it; it reinforces the idea that only people who like training mode will really like fighting games.
I hate training mode. I love fighting games, but I’m old school. My mettle was tested in the fires of small smelly rooms and lots of asians.
Uh… no
Everyone should read the three about the info on the old SF scene in FGD…
Partially it’s about execution. I am a fighting game scrub and i can do combos that deal 500 damage.
The real issue is strategy. When does it come into play ?
Most people play this game in a way it isn’t supposed to be played. For 90% of the player base this game is pure auto pilot. The moment they realize that the other player doesn’t know how to counter a certain move, they will repeat that move till they win that match. (That is also the moment most beginners call a game “cheap” and quit).
Fighting games aren’t clear , they seem to be too vague , difficult to understand. Players can’t tell what is happening. Why should I do move “A” and not “B” , “C” , “D” or “E”. In short, there is a HUGE information gap. Its like playing chess but you don’t know which piece does what and what it is meant for. There is no strategy for a specific “Situation” and in case of beginners there is no strategy for any situation. It is just random stuff, till one finds something he can use and repeat constantly.
There is loads of strategy in fighting games but sadly people like me can’t access it. All we can do is use some gimmick. Who ever has the better gimmick wins. For us its like playing chess and not knowing why we are moving pieces. One guy will win eventually but the win/loss is meaningless.
The measure of any game’s quality is depth…measured by the number of levels attainable. Each successive level wins %75 of games against the next lowest rung. GO and chess have about 9 levels from scrub to grandmaster. Tic-tac-toe as maybe 2. Fighting games are about 5 average ranging from dive kick to maybe GG. I prefer development that strives for deep gameplay, and I reckon the fgc does as well.