It’s all a matter of preference. I mean, it’s obvious that at least fanatiq enjoys the ToD aspect, considering that he’s blogged about MvC3 being his favorite in the series.
There’s nothing wrong with making games more accessible by making the inputs simpler to perform. I can see no possible gripe with this, and yet many people have one. I’m not talking about one button screw piledrivers here, but a half-circle back screw piledriver would be fine, to me. The focus of the game should be on APPLYING your moves, not being able to do them or not being able to do them. The best players will still win.
You have to consider though that special move inputs are designed so that there is a chance of failure to get the move out. It’s basically arcade design philosophy meant to reward those who would spend more time practicing and playing the game. I mean, consider similar “chance to fail” mechanics in other games. Most of the time, these would be arbitrary percentile values that you’d have no control of. With special move inputs, you have the chance to take that chance of failure down to 0 through practice.
And why is it fighting games are the only genre where you’re supposed to have moves difficult enough that you fail to get them out? Starcraft 2 is an incredibly deep game and any skills your character has are based on knowing when and how to use them and how fast. Would be pretty dumb if to use a skill you had to do qcf right click on the mouse. Also with that kind of design you can NEVER take the chance of failure down to 0, you can practice for decades and STILL fuck up now and then. I’m sure even someone like Wong or Daigo has fucked up an input at some point. Pro footballers spend hours a day every day training, and they can STILL fumble the ball.
Oh and by similar mechanics in other games I assume you mean MMos. I don’t think anyone would want an MMo where instead of seeing “miss” above an enemy’s head, you gotta do forward, down, down forward F2 to cast a fireball and the Miss comes from “oops my finger slipped!” Only reason Miss is done that way is due to the nature of those games and the stats, notice games like Tera and Blade and Soul do away with that stuff, you can miss attacks based on not aiming the move right, but there is no “MISS” above an enemy or having to do a goofy input to make a move come out. That arcade design philosophy sounds more like “make stuff hard to do so people gotta keep putting quarters into the machine”, I highly doubt any company who did arcade fighters was thinking “omg harder inputs means people will have to practice, this makes my game competitive and skillfull.”
There’s a difference between half circle command grabs and 360 command grabs. Range, damage, positioning, there’s usually a bigger reward for the 360s than half circle command grabs.
Input leniency is fine until they get to point where they are so lax that they hurt more than they help.
I also like to say thank you to Capcom for changing Sagat’s tiger knee to DP instead of whatever the hell it was before and please get rid of the half circle forward up for hooligan and chicken wing now and whatever the hell Guile’s double somersault motion is.
It’s the FPS equivalent of missing the mark. Both are results of inaccuracy.
1 charge 312369+K
No, it isn’t. If an FPS lets me fire my gun by left clicking, it does it. Me missing is the result of having bad aim or misjudging a situation. Someone trying to do a 720 and dropping the input isn’t even remotely the same. The FPS doesn’t give an arbitrary execution requirement just to shoot my gun, it’s extremely simple. The skill is in practicing to get good aim and be a better judge of what situations to fire in. In a fighter simple inputs would simply mean the skill comes from practicing to get better at things like footsies, timings, game mechanics, better judgement of what moves to use or not use in diff situations and so on. Making a move hard to do doesn’t add anything to the game. 3d fighters generally have really easy moves to do(with the exception of a few moves certain characters may have), and they still take plenty of skill. If I use Steve in Tekken the skill comes from spacing and oki, knowing when to launch, what moves and strings I can use to capitalize off a launcher, and what moves give me the best advantage in a situation. If all his punches were qcf/qcb rekkas, it wouldn’t make playing him take more skill, it just makes it unnecessarily obtuse for the sake of being “hardcore”.
o god lord, another idiot who doesnt understand why the motions are a requeriment and not a random inconvenient made by the designers just for the lulzs…
another sing of the end of the times
Because you can still bring the chance of failure down.
The chance to fail adds an extra layer of stress for the competitors and hype for the spectators. This means that there is an element of controlled randomness and luck involved. This creates additional stress, stress that appeals to the gamblers impulse except in this case, you’re gambling on your own execution.
Someone needs to do more research into Japanese arcade game design. Nothing (at least nothing of note) comes from Japan that isn’t designed to be finished on a single credit. The Japanese arcade game designers have mastered that fine balance of satisfying both the arcade operator and the player.
To quote from icycalm’s articleon insomnia.ac:
This is especially important as the culture in Japan revolves around the one credit play or 1cc.
The average Japanese player will simply play with only one credit and not credit feed. Why? Simply because it’s cheaper not to and you get more time by going back to the start and playing from the beginning again with the added benefit of experience most likely making your second playthrough last longer. In other words, you can’t make things just arbitrarily hard to force a continue because credit feed design just doesn’t work in Japan.
Now to get back on topic, this applies to fighting games as well. It can easily be deduced that they were well versed in this design philosophy when making special move inputs with the same advantages. It encourages players to keep at the game, rewarding those who do dedicate time to playing it over armchair theory fighters.
Yes, “o god lord”. I’m an idiot who doesn’t understand why having goofy inputs is a requirement in a game that takes skill. I’d bring up Melee having simple inputs and being a skillful game, but I’m sure your argument would be it isn’t a fighter because it isn’t like SF2. Inputs have nothing to do with skill, it’s simple memorization from doing the same thing over and over like a factory robot. I’m not saying that SF for instance needs to have simplified inputs, but not all fighters need to do what SF did and use the exact same kind of inputs for moves. Games can do things differently and still be good and require skill. You do realize the reason those moves used those inputs was because developers were unsure how to give the characters more moves with the button inputs already being used, and discovered that by having those types of motions coupled with a button press allowed them to give the characters the specials, right? It wasn’t a bunch of guys sitting in a room going “well golly gee, we better use this specific input to optimize the game for tournament play and make it skillful!”
One thing I can say is whether you dislike the game or not, MK9 was smart in giving characters simple inputs for moves, which is part of why so many people enjoy playing it. Tapping back and forward and punch real fast is a lot easier and simpler than doing 360s on command.
Then again, what can I expect, but poor grammar and spelling, not to mention poor arguments that are nothing more than simple poorly worded one liners from someone who spazzes out and gets defensive anytime someone criticizes “anime” styled fighters.
d3v: Counters in DOA also brought an element of stress and randomization based on skill, yet people bashed the fuck out of the games and that feature for “adding randomization” and making the game like “gambling”. Even funnier the same people who bashed that feature prolly don’t say shit about the same kind of feature but a watered down version being implemented in MvC3 air combo/tags.
And seriously now, Japanese don’t intend for people to blow coins on arcade games? Is that why every SNK boss was always ridiculously cheap to the point where to win people had to use exploits that would only get discovered after someone eventually figured it out?
I’m not sure why even bringing up the Japanese doing things the way they have always done is even relevant, considering that is precisely why their role in the gaming industry is going down the crapper. “We do this because we have always done this because it’s tradition”. Just because they did something for ages doesn’t make it the best way nor does it mean no one else should strive to try something different and innovative.
Its the trade off for having such powerful moves, its not just about having complex inputs but also the time it takes to do them and also knowing when they can be used (you cant walk forward and throw sonic booms).
RTS games have a huge execution barrier, its not just about knowing what to do with your units it takes lots of dexterity and focus to micromanage them, especially in large scale battles.
I can only speak for Quake style arena FPS games but again its not just knowing when to shoot and aiming the mouse look at the way high level players move things like bunny hopping/speed hopping, exploiting glitches and more
its not about being “hardcore” its about adding another layer of depth to a game about player vs player competition, and in my eyes thats a good thing :tup:
Practicing aim is like practicing inputs, messing up either is a result of inaccuracy of the directional inputs.
Harder inputs are pretty much high recoil weapons.
Simplfying inputs is like turning up the aim assist or lowering/removing simulated recoil.
Making one thing easier, allows to concentrate further on other things but the usually tweaked for its ease.
Some FPS are hardcore execution (high recoil, no aim assist) others are more lax (non existant recoil, heavy aim assists)
Some people like them, some people don’t. Don’t act like harder to do moves/high recoil weapons are designed this way for the hell of it, 720s would be ridiculous if they were changed to hcf x2 or if the sniper rifle had the recoil of a handgun and not compensated for being easier to do.
im gonna take the time to explain a little why motions are a requeriment in 2d fighters, so maybe you can walk out from the ignorance
1st Risk vs Reward balance
the risk here is missing your move, or mistiming it, see how all the moves that have asigned 360 and 720 motions to them usually are the ones that deal the more damage, you certainly dont want that this kind of moves asigned to something like 6 whatever button or a 236,623 or whatever, it would end skewing the balance of the risk reward, if you want that a move like the SPD of zangief uses a more simplier input, you would need to change the propierties of the move, wich basically ends making it a whole new move instead of what its suposed to be
expanding on that this is why also the charge moves exist, if you notice these moves have diferent propierties to other similar specials
sonic boom for example has a quick recovery compared to the hadoken, so in orther to balance this the move has a charge move as way to perform it, all of this is also related on the gameplay style that the designer has in mind for that character (more about that later)
also the flash kick comes out faster than a srk, imagine if you only needed to press 6A to get a flash kick
easier moves have a more moderate reward compared to more “complicated” inputs, yes i agree that over the top complicated moves are unnecesary (the infamous pretzel move for example) but this doesnt mean that all inputs fall in the same category
2nd Convenience
having diferent ways to input your specials lets you have more options on what the char can have
maybe its not so common on games like sf, but on modern fighting games, the characters usually have a good amount of command normals, specially on games that have around 3 buttons for normals, so lets say that you have a character in a game with only 3 buttons for attacks, and he has different command normals, lets say 6A, 6B, 6C, 3C, 4A and 4B, this leaves you only with 1A, 1B, 1C 4C, 3A & 3B to use as inputs for specials in the ground it doesnt sound bad if you are going for something akin sf where the chars have few specials, but even if that were the case, you are not capable to have different versions of the specials for every one of the buttons for normals, not only that, you dont have enough use for supers if you want to have something like super variants of each move, yeah you could say that we can use something like double taping the directional input and then the normal, but what if your game has backward dash and forward dash/run, you only have 11 and 33 as viable directions for doing your moves, in this scenario you could probably say that is good enough, you have your well round char like ry that has 33A for his fireball, 33B for his SRK, 33C for his fireball super, 11A for his tatsumaki senpukyaku move, 11B for a tigerknee motion, and just for the lulz, 11C for something like the SPD of zanguief, if you want to have diferent versiond of all the specials, you would have to use button combinations, but what happens if you want to have ex moves, or even worse, ex moves that have diferent propierties based on the button combinations (like juri and her fireballs), you now have to face the problem that you dont have enough combinations to do that, you could say that we can use combinations of 2 directions like 46A or 64A, but now you face the problem that you are overlaping the inputs of you command normals, even worse what if you only wanted to input you 6A after walking backwards? yes you can solve part of the problem with your input buffer but you would still have many problems with how some commands overlap to others
did you have noticed how mk usually avoids to have command normals and specials overlaps?
if 26FP is the move for a special you woudlnt have a 6FP command normal
did you have noticed how do they made the inputs for diferent versions of some specials
26,24,264 FP for example, you end with chars like shang tsung who has a lot of inputs for its specials, and believe me, the same pople who complains about the 360 motions complain about that stuff because its to “hard”
3rd Gameplay Desing
believe it or not the inputs of the moves of your character can serve as part on the limits that the developers put on the use of your specials
moves like the sonic boom, and the flash kick have charge moves as their inputs because their propierties, those moves would be too strong if they were your regular 236 moves
being charge move limits how often you can use them and add a new layer on the strategy based on this, if you want to go out with your offense and rush down your oponent, you need to give up on your charge at least until you can start buffering the moves when you are landing your combo
now, the combination of the way that you input your special and the propierties of the move (startup frames, active frames, recovery frames, hurtboxes, hitboxes), the context (game mechanics, subsystems, the way that the input buffer works, etc) and the archetype (defensive zoner, rushdown zoner, grappler, etc) serve to set what is the gameplay desing and strategy that the developers have in mind for the char, yes sometimes it doesnt end as they planned, but in an ideal world all this factors are part of what they do in order to make a balanced character in terms of risk reward, and how this character should be played in the game
as for your comment about why “all” the fighting games need to do what sf did, its simple, they are using what it has been the standard of what defines the 2d fighting games as what they are.
if smash is or not a fighting game, its out of the question of how 2d fighting games work and why the inputs that they use for specials and supers are the way that they are, the same reason of why 3d fighting games work compared to 2d fighting games, they are not the same, and the paradigms that they are based of are very different
2d fighting games have their roots on 2d beat’em ups
smash has its roots on plataformers
and 3d fighting games… i have to be honest, i dont know
i can give you that by convergent evolution they end somehow similar, but they arent the same, mechanically and gameplay wise
the same goes for your comparation with fps, its justt absurd
its like if i try to compare the inherent dificulty of learning how to apply different techinques of drifting with all the cars in a game and what are the most effective for that car (without taking in consideration factors like weather, the location on the track, the terrain, how did i enter the curve, my speed, etc) and how dificult is learning how to play a baseball game, they are not the same
The problem is, off course, todays game design philosophies have created a generation of gamers who are used to having high reward for low risk.
plus the whole “instant gratification” mentality
since FG are a genre where your lose its all your fault (no team to help you), people get really salty, specially cuz they dont want to accept the fact that they just suck
im really worried to see that on this day and age people find inputs like 236 and 623 as mind blowing difficult to do, like if they were as dificult as trying to play the Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto #2 in C minor, Op.18 - 1st Movement or some shit like that
Hey. You guys with the no comebacks in older games comments. Can you tell me where you guys got copies of MvC2 where you don’t gain meter when you get hit? (Obvious troll should be obvious).
Just go play Skull Girls or KOF13 when they come out.
Missing the part where you also gain meter for hitting people, not like SFIV where the Revenge meter fills only from damage (regular and recoverable).
That doesn’t change what I said though. They aren’t exactly the same, but the basic concept is still present in earlier games.Building meter when you get hit is still a comeback mechanic. Earlier games just did a better job implementing the concept by making it to where the attacker benefits more, and it doesn’t affect the game as much.
It’s still different in that providing for a comeback is only part of what traditional super meter does, unlike SFIV’s revenge meter which is purely for comeback purposes.
Because chip damage/kills don’t exist in MvC2…
What’s to say IV’s revenge meter can’t be used for the same purpose(s) as a “traditional” super meter? Just curious…