Thinking about the evolution of fighting games

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
1

Do any you believe fighting games are evolving or will evolve? If so how? And list some of your ideas on how they can if you’ve got 'em.

What if more games were made to heavily utilize objects in the environment? For example, I know the title “Tao Feng” made good use of your surrounding, as in one instance where your character can swing their body around a wooden cylinder like object in the center of a room, only to come back around and kick your opponent. Or in Mortal Kombat 4, where you could pick up objects like rocks off the floor to throw them at your opponent. Or what about other hazards and obstacles that get in your way, or a sharp rise and fall in topography, in where you have to change your strategy based on how high or low you stand on a surface. Or an idea that occurred to me; a 2D/3D hybrid in where the environment is set up to be open for 3D movement and then there would be transitions into narrow corridors where the fighting becomes restricted to 2D movement.

So would any of these features easily throw off a games balance which is why you don’t see them in current iterations of Virtua Fighter, Tekken and maybe other games which are considered to have high level play? If not, do you think we would have seen this stuff a long time ago in these titles? And I haven’t played every fighter out there so some of the stuff I mentioned might already be in some game(s) yet could have been poorly implemented. I also realize the advancements and improvements made to these current games are the fighting mechanic itself; like wake-up options for example.

On the same token can anyone tell me if “Def Jam: Fight for New York” had good game play in 4 player mode or at all for that matter? Do you think if a publisher were to green light a new 4 player (or more) fighting game and had a camera positioning system similar to Def Jam’s 4 player brawl mode (in where 4 player are fighting each other on screen at the same time), that there would be an audience for it and it could be played competitively? Why or why not? How would such a game have to be designed? And how important is the cameras location when designing a fighter? I mean are there any angles it wouldn’t work with?

And do you think it’s a matter of perspective when it comes to labeling games, according to which genre they fall under?

Oh and I’m new to the boards but have been aware of this site for quite sometime. Anyways good to be here guys. :slight_smile:

2

yes this is a good idea

3

I don’t know, but it better not be gimmicky shit like this.

4

If anything, fighting games are devolving. Games are becoming more simple, options and mechanics are being simplified or outright removed from the game. Execution is becoming easier in a lot of games (though there still is some payoff for doing advanced stuff). The only fighters that still have high barriers of entry now are the anime fighters (and even they are becoming more simplified, look at Blazblue).

Honestly, this is happening with video games as a whole. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing making them more “accessible”, or making them dumbed down in order to appeal to casuals.

5

i think power stone 1 accomplished a competitive fighter with environments and items. I think the only thing it may been nice to have was stage that was even. (like the Final boss Vulgas stage, though it loses some environment interactions it was even lay out)

6

I remember the sharp rises and falls in topography in stuff like Virtua Fighter 3 and Tekken 4, but both of those franchises dropped those mechanics in their next iterations. I think it was mostly because the advantage went towards the guy who was on the lower ground, since the higher up person would just swing above the opponent’s head without adjusting their attacks to account for the 6-12 inch difference in height, which just felt completely stupid.

7

Tao Feng was a horrible horrible game
Also One Must Fall: Battlegrounds was pretty much what OP was describing, and that was pretty bad too

8

You must first keep in mind that evolution does not imply progress. Evolution is instead an adaptation which helps an organism survive a changing environment, imposed upon it by outside forces. In this light, the environment of games has changed drastically in the past twenty years, transitioning from the arcade experience to that of home consoles and computers, further compounded by the advent of accessible and commonplace online play. The concept of playing a multiplayer game has gone from playing with dozens of strangers at an arcade, to playing with close friends from the comfort of one’s home, to playing with strangers and close friends at home, online. With the average age of video game players going up every year, the implication is that many people who played games as children have not ceased playing them, while children and teens continue to enter gaming.

In response, most new fighters have lowered the barrier of entry, implemented come back mechanics, and continue to encourage players new to the genre to keep playing. That said, the modern fighting game has adapted to become somewhat more accessible and less frustrating to a broader audience, especially considering that it is still a niche genre in an era where rising game production costs make highly specialized games virtually unaffordable losses. Fighting games aren’t
necessarily competing with other fighting games. They’re competing with first person shooters and MMORPGs, titles which also tend to have lower barriers of entry.

What you are talking about is the transition of a fighting game as a martial arts exhibition to that of warfare, with the implementation of outsides forces such as elevation and variance of architecture.

This in mind, it’s important to point out the paradigm of fighting games before we discuss how else they’re able to evolve. Remember the lineage of fighting games: all modern fighters descend directly, more or less, from Street Fighter II, itself descending from Yie Ar Kung Fu, Karate Champ and Way of the Exploding Fist. The idea of a fighting game, whether or not the narrative of the individual game implies it, is as a martial arts tournament. Martial arts tournaments are competitive combat games fought within a fair environment in which no external factors are allowed to help or hinder either opponent, with the exception of a physical barrier, such as the edge of a mat, the ropes surrounding a ring, or the chain link fence encompassing an octagon. Martial arts tournaments are organized to determine which competitor has the best physical prowess, and it is from this tradition that the fighting game exists.

Other multiplayer competitive games, like the aforementioned first person shooter and MMORPG are derived from the concept of war. Most shooters are derived from Doom, itself descended from Wolfenstein 3D, which itself is derived from first person arcade tank simulations. MMORPGs, again, are derived from Dungeons and Dragons rulesets, that game descending from the pairing of Tolkein-esque fantasy settings with tabletop war game simulations. In both of these genres, competing players are not motivated by concepts of fairness or an objective determination of which individual is the better fighter; they instead understand that they are playing the role of soldiers on the battlefield, where the brutality of war stands in stark contrast to the highly organized tournament sport of martial arts.** **

Fighting games try to determine who is objectively the better player. Other games try to determine who is subjectively the better survivor. Admittedly this is a gross generalization, and this is not a value judgement for either genre of game. This only tries to distinguish the mindset of the two types of players, imposed upon by them by the games themselves.

9

Welcome.

I do not think fighting games are evolving. Graphically, most likely, unless you dislike 3D, in which case they got worse with Alpha, then up to a high standard in SF3, and then went downhill. Technically, they are more and more appealing to the younger generation. The games that have evolved the most are the ones that did not get direct sequels for a long time: ST evolved due to being the last proper SF2 version for years (AE was just a SF2 Mugen) and Marvel 2 evolved due to being the last Marvel for years. New sequels usually remove deeper aspects of older games and add universal mechanics instead. For instance, few noticed that in the Alpha series, they have removed the fireball trap. You can not throw another fireball as soon as the other hits of gets blocked, so you can not really force someone to block. In addition to it, in the second version, moves appeared that could allow to to simply go throw projectiles.

I would say, if you have played Bejeweled, the newer versions are like newer versions of that game: flashy stuff, explosions, lightning, shiny things, and the old strategy gets sort of bypassed.

10

I don’t know about evolving – I want Street Fighter to always play fundamentally like Street Fighter – but I would like to see some variety and experimentation going on. The rash of Street Fighter II clones created an unfortunate perception that all fighting games had to have very similar core mechanics. It’s really amazing how many game mechanics were introduced in Street Fighter II (or even the original) that became standard in pretty much every fighing game since. This created an uncreative attitude from the start, and frankly most fighting games to this day are just Street Fighter II with a faster pace, more focus on combos, and a few gimmicks that often as not dilute the solid core mechanics. I’d love to see more weird games like Smash Bros. that completely ignore the standards.

11

I want the moves I do in a combo to be displayed on-screen the way they appear in Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/9488/thps22.jpg

UNBLOCKABLE FOCUS ATTACK CRUMPLE + RUSHING PUNCH + CROUCHING FIERCE +
HARD DRAGON PUNCH + METSU HADOUKEN
23,200 DAMAGE

.

Owr yeaaaahhh!!

12

That would get pretty hilarious in FUC or during EFZ corner juggle combos, I kinda wanna make a mockup of that now.

13

Hahaha yeah man I was thinking about anime wall bounce loops. :rock:

14

lmao, your post sounds exacly as someone asking why all the cars work around the same standard stablished long time ago, and why they arent evolving in something that strays of the same old formula
there are stuff that its what defines the genre, those chore mechanics as you call them, are part of what makes the fighting games what they are; those things that you call “guimicks” are in more ocassions things that define pretty much how those games are played, and usually bring new options to the table adding more depth to the game (of course not always true, but when the game is well designed this its what happen)
comobs are not the end of the spectrum, but yeah a lot of people who barely understand what fighting games are usually only see the combos, ignoring all the other stuff that its happening in the match, the fact that you belive that every fighting game is basically sfii with a faster pace proves that you dont understand fighting games, specially cuz you think that smash is one

15

Smash Brothers is a fighting game. It meets the prerequisites of one: gameplay revolves around individual characters initiating in hand-to-hand combat. It’s just a fighting game that exists outside of the tournament/competitive sport paradigm and exists within the “war” concept of environment utilization I mentioned earlier. There’s no need to classify it as anything other than that for our purposes.

16

1: Capcom and any major publisher are not going to be satisfied until their games do Smash Bros. numbers (6 million+) and they figure the best way to do that is to severely dumb the games down and have easy comeback mechanics.*

2: Niche fighters (such as KOF13 and Skullgirls) will still cater to the diehards but the smaller numbers reflect this.

The question is: Why do you guys bash SF4 and MVC3 for being dumbed down and having bad online and yet you support those games at tournaments? If you want games like KOF13 or even something like Akatsuki Blitzkampf (for example) represented, go and represent those games. Go to tournaments. play those games, talk about those games, suppport those communities.

*It’s kinda’ funny that they’re constant releases of retail updates to their games has weakened the market. I don’t see SF X TK doing a lot in numbers, maybe a million copies, because smart consumers are going to wait for Super SF X TK.

17

Smash is something everyone will end up disagreeing upon. For some, just because it was designed with versus competition in mind, then it’s enough for it to be qualified to be a “fighting game.” For others (most folks on this site), the fact that it seems more like a platform game game that just so happens to involve characters fighting against each other raises a few questions. Because once it get considered a fighter, you then have to ask if other games can be considered fighters on the same merit as Smash - that is having (at least) 2 characters fighting each other with a winner declared at the end of the round.

Now imagine we’re creating a hypothetical game, say let’s call it “Game X”. Now “Game X” is being designed with mechanics and rules not native to the fighting game genre but instead borrows from another, let’s say 3rd person action game like Bayonetta or DMC. However, just like Smash, Game X is being designed primarily around (at least) 2 characters “fighting” each other with a winner being declared at the end. The question is then, would you call that a fighting game?

18

OffTopic : for some reason while reading this I was thinking of the game Phantom Dust even though its not genreally what your talking about. Its 3rd person game, 4 players (No same or split screen IIRC) only xbox live or systemlink, in a Urban Arena. Everyone had there share powers and you battle it out. It almost felt like a 3rd person Power Stone and everyone was behind there character minus the normal attacks and throwing objects, you just have your powers.

19

Actually, when I was typing that, I had a few other games in mind, but not that one (forgot about it).

What I was thinking of was basically the upcoming Anarchy Reigns. However, the multiplayer modes of games like Rune and the Jedi Knight games (especialy past 2, since that had “special moves” of some sort) also came to mind.

20

I’d consider it a fighting game, as it’s two players fighting one another.

Also hecatom I’m pretty sure what the guy meant was most fighters follow the SF formula:

-flat floored stage
-2d sideview camera
-press up to jump, hold back to block
-qcf/srk/half circle, so on style of inputs for special moves

Even 3d fighters follow this formula mostly albeit with a few changes here and there. You don’t really see 3d fighters that are full 3d in the same way Devil May Cry or an adventure game is(the naruto games are but most consider them a joke anyway and not real fighters). The fact lots of hardcore fighter fans are narrowminded in what they consider to be a fighter doesn’t help, since half the time it’s “any game I dislike the features of isn’t a real fighting game”. Case in point, the kind of people who claim Mortal Kombat or VF aren’t “real fighters” because they use a block button, or Smash isn’t a “real fighter” because every stage isn’t a perfectly flat floor with no interactive elements outside of a simple wall. Most companies won’t want to bother trying to make a unique style of fighter because quite frankly who wants to do anything different and have to get endless complains of how your game sucks because “it ain’t like SF/Tekken, it’s SHIT!” You’re better off as a company just making a fighting game with unique features and calling it a different name so no one can bitch about how your game isn’t what you say it is.

The makers of Anarchy Reigns are pretty clever, their game is a “fighter”, but they made sure to call it something else so that way people can’t bitch about how it sucks because they didn’t make it like Tekken or SF. Like Tekken the main mode of the game is competing against other players in an arena, and like Tekken the story mode is a beat em up game, with a bonus ball game as an extra mode. I guarantee if they called it a straight up fighting game there’d be thread after thread of people with half the people saying it looks fun and the other half crying about how it’s shit and going “wtf is wit da camera yo it aint like Tekken!”