Christ, how are you so fucking dense? You’re completely missing the fucking point. Never did I say that the game should not discriminate between good and bad players on any basis. I said I think the strategic battle is what’s interesting, and that is where the difference should lie. Stripping away those artificial execution barriers allows us to more accurately determine who is the superior player at the strategy part of fighting games.
Look at it like this; there could be players out there with the potential to develop a Daigo-like mastery of the psychological aspects of SF, but we’ll never know because they have absolutely terrible execution. That, to me, is about as close as you can get to a tragedy when talking about something as unimportant as fighting games. The insane execution requirements of some of these games are turning away players who could possess the potential to excel at the strategy behind them. If you think that’s not a bad thing because you think it’s interesting to measure who has good execution as well as who has good strategy, as I’ve said already, that’s fine, at that point it’s a matter of opinion. But at least realize that there are many people who would like to see a different kind of game, and those people currently aren’t being catered to.
Not on the premise that strategy is the meat of the game, the interesting part, and execution is an arbitrary barrier to being able to reach that part. If you don’t agree with that, again we’re getting into the realm of opinion and of course the analogy doesn’t hold. But from my perspective it’s totally analogous; they’re both irrelevant tasks which have to be surpassed to get to what’s really important.
I would agree with this if not for the potential scenario that someone enjoys how a character plays, strategically speaking, but is restricted from playing them by their difficult execution. “Difficult execution” and “easy execution” aren’t the only differences between characters, and by giving random characters difficult shit you’re restricting the freedom of some players to pick the character they’re most strategically suited to.
I would say that alot of strategy comes from being able to execute certain aspects or mechanics. The simplest example would be 3s parrying. It has mainly an execution based requirement, but it opens up many options that deepens the mindgames and strategies of top players.
Execution can never be completely subjective, it is not subjective to say that doing —> P isn’t as challenging as doing QCF, HCB, HCF + P.
The reason why moves were more challenging to execute were based off a reward system, most moves that have complex abilities or extra priority/damage were given harder motions; this breaks down on a competitive level where practice nullifies the difficulty and subverts the delay, often willfully designed to control the effectiveness of these moves. EX: Akuma’s QCF+P & HCB+P
A few fighters make moves easy to do and the ways they are used can be extended because of that freedom.
No, the strategy comes from the mechanic’s presence itself, the execution is just what you use to put the strategy into action and make it a relevant factor. The actual strategic part of parrying (e.g. guessing your opponent’s next move, knowing what range to put yourself in so you can safely buffer parries at low risk, etc.) is completely divorced from the execution.
Side note because it interests me: That last sentence really nails the problem I have: execution divorced from strategy, simply a means to put strategy into action. That’s a necessity by virtue of the nature of using a controller to play a videogame, not a fucking feature, but most fighting game developers seem to be confused. There are cases in games where execution actually interacts with strategy to provide more strategic depth. One good example is in StarCraft, where the sheer impossibility of executing everything you’d like to do at once (e.g. expand, mine resources, micro a batte) necessitates treating your execution ability as a resource, dividing it up between different parts of the game, which your opponent can then exploit by tricking you into spending your execution . This is rare in fighting games, but you do get it in the form of having to divide your attention between different possibilities - for example in ST, if you’re looking for them to throw a fireball so you can jump over it, and they jump in on you, you’ll probably react slower to the jump in and may not be able to get your DP motion out as quickly as you would if you’d been looking for the jump-in all along. If DP was the same as it is now, but you only had to press, say, forward and punch, this kind of interaction would be hurt. There are ways to implement it if you build the game around it, though - for example, make the DP command forward + punch, but give it 5 frames vulnerable startup before the invincibility starts to simulate having to input the motion.
Nobody said that the relative difficulty of executing different moves is subjective. That said, it is to some degree - for example, some players might find comboing into super more difficult than doing FRCs while some might find the opposite. Your example was bad because the requirement of the former task is encapsulated by the latter, in which case the latter task is obviously going to be more difficult simply by virtue of the fact that it requires performing the former task plus other stuff.
You can’t say they’re completely separate. If you can’t parry, it’s as if the mechanic isn’t in the game at all, and then you lose that strategic potential.
not 100% true. you may not be as good as you were doing electrics, but the regular easy juggle won’t fade awat from your muscle memory. and that too requires some degree of execution at least in timings of button presses.
that’s the sole saving grace in execution. once you can do a fireball motion you can move on and never look back…
I just find it funny that when I read japanese bulletin boards, they discuss things like how to improve your execution, and execution tricks to increase your chances of pulling off a certain technique. Then I read SRK and people are crying about execution, acting as if execution is actually harder than out-thinking your opponent. Then people wonder why they suck compared to japan. I mean we all understand that you have to overcome execution to stand a chance at high level play and make the game interesting. It’s a fact, everyone knows that. High level play is 99% strategy and 1% execution. I really don’t understand the point of this thread. Lowering execution demands give rise to more players. Yes it does, that’s a fact. So what? The points you think you give are not actually ‘points’, it’s facts. What people are arguing is whether execution should be a part of FGs, and that’s completely your own opinion. Stripping a game of execution requirements does not make it lose any strategic depth. Okay we all understand that. So what? Is there something you want us to do?
This is only a problem in games where the emphasis is on strategy, if the emphasis of the game is on execution then there is no problem. Whether or not the game becomes less interesting because strategic interaction is diluted is preference, but I would like to add any game becomes less interesting when the skill of two players is one sided; whether it is because of a player’s execution or strategy.
True, but it does affect the style of gameplay. Removing difficult execution puts more emphasis on strategy, but a desire for more emphasis on strategy can be seen as preference towards strategy based gameplay, not a reason to remove difficult execution.
Whether or not it adds interest to the game is another issue because someone who plays a certain game might appreciate the skill required to perform a move in a match more so than someone who doesn’t play the game.
Difficult execution is a barrier, but it can be overcome with practice; if a certain game emphasizes execution then overcoming the barrier of difficult execution is necessary to being competent player.
If someone is more strategically capable then it is probably a better idea to play games that emphasize strategy over execution rather then expecting games that emphasize execution to change to your preference for strategy.
What games exactly are requiring insane execution? From what I’ve seen the only targets of the “make execution easier” arguments are GG and MvC2. A lot of the newer fighting games seem to have much easier execution in comparison.
There are plenty of games that are catered to people who have a preference for strategy, though they might not all be of the fighting game genre they are certainly competitive.
I think you give people too much credit if you think everyone already understands all that stuff. The arguments people like shoultzula have been giving in this thread pretty clearly demonstrate that they don’t. That said, what’s wrong with having an abstract discussion that doesn’t apply to any particular game? Maybe some people are just interested in game design, in the direction fighting games should take in the future? What the hell does discussing this have to do with our performance in existing games? You can accept that it’s there, work to get better at it because you know it’s necessary to be good at those games, and still not like it.
I agree with almost everything you said. Like I’ve reiterated many times over the course of this thread, if you disagree that strategy alone or at least primarily is what makes fighting games interesting, then it’s just opinion at that point and my arguments are irrelevant. As I’ve also said many times, we aren’t asking for current games to change; the problem is that a pretty sizable portion of the fighting game community, as well as a hell of a lot of potential members of the fighting game community, share my opinion and we aren’t being catered to.
is it? modern fighters have much bigger windows to perform special moves. doing a dragon punch in GG is way easier than in ST. doing a 720 in arcana heart is easier than doing 360 in ST lol
just frames and frcs are still lame, but no matter what the development team will do players will always find a wierd combo in the system that does more damage and that is really hard to perform. trust me mvc2 developers didn’t think “let’s make a rom infinite and make sure its hard to execute!” when they made the game…
Which games do you say have this problem though? And when I hear your complaint, I remember people who first started playing online with a keyboard against people with pads, but could beat them solely by forming a strategy that played to their strengths and what was possible for them to execute till they got better with a keyboard or they finally found a pad. Execution was twice the barrier in that case but it didn’t stop them from playing.
I say this respectfully, but I would like to point out that I never mentioned difficulty in execution as being the only major differences between characters, I did not imply that at all.
Personally speaking, and I know most people I know in the tekken side of things will side with me in the ideolody that they would not feel restricted by playing a character they want because of execution barriers. If someone wants to use a certain character, then they will find a way to do it. That’s the way I feel in my personal experience as well. If it means the world to them to play and enjoy a specific character then they will do what is necessary to utilize that character. On the other hand, if they made the choice to switch then that only means it was more important to them to find something that will allow them to compete easier in a competitive situation, hence the adjustment. This is ultimately a question of competitive mentality, that being: winning > character of choice.
If people feel obsessive compulsive about the whole thing and get it in their mind that they absolutely need to find something easier to do instead of sticking with a character they like, then that is certainly their perogative but ultimately people are going to do what is necessary to win with what works for them.
People will make adjustments along the way during their growth as a player. Those adjustments could be adjusting your playstyle with a character, or switching altogether. But ultimately, the character you land on is the character you really want to play, usually as a result of a combination of reasons not only as a result of wether or not you initially “thought” you wanted to use this character. Sometimes you end up sticking with the same character, regardless if they were easy or hard, and you made adjustments with that character along the way to make sure you can win. Some players are flat out too new to decide which character they really want to use. For some games it takes a lot of exploration and time spent with the game in general to truly find a character that fits you.
But in any case I still agree on a base level that mindgames/strategy are the very first priority, but I don’t necessarily believe that execution should be nonexistant or even easy. Execution is one of those things that make fighters fresh and unique, and if this wasn’t true then we would all just be playing chess. Don’t mistake this for me being disrespectul, but there has always been characters that are harder to use than others, since the dawn of this genre. Ultimately people have to complain less and play more.
