The Fighting Game topic

Every fighting game has fighting elements. The other factors are what make games head and shoulder above each other. PSASBR is not going to match Brawl's sales number even if it copy Brawl's mechanic.

By that logic a shooter just has to shoot good.

Destiny for example was lauded or at least complimented for its well-done gunplay but derided for everything else.

edited 15th Sep '17 8:08:02 PM by slimcoder

remember shooters back in the 90s/turn of the millennium when that was actually true? i don't either. (RIP Unreal Tournament.)

i had other crap i wanted to put down, but i accidentally backspaced to the previous page somehow and i'm too tired to remember what the hell i typed so... yeah.

Wait a minute, wait a minute now that I have had time to thin about it Destiny was never advertised mainly as a competitive shooter, now it was part of it such as the Crucible but it also put more emphasis on an epic story. Bad example, bad example I don't know why I said it, my bad.

Ok an actual example..... ahhhhh.......Ah Ha, Lawbreakers there we go. A competitive shooter that was made specifically for the hardcore crowd ironically made by the same guy who worked on Unreal Tournament, Cliff Bleszinski.

It bombed.... badly. From what I heard while the gunplay was good, fast & intense so it was pretty much a "git gud" kind of game. But due to a combination of poor marketing, being released on a bad month & the unmemorable design, setting & characters of the game killed it on release. So yeah just primarily appealing to the hardcore crowd won't guarantee success.

edited 15th Sep '17 9:50:15 PM by slimcoder

I would say that making a fighting game accessible is as simple as making a substantial single player. It doesn't need to be an elaborate story, I learned a bunch of Tekken 3 mechanics and characters simply because I wanted to see all the FM Vs. Even much later, I learned the mechanics behind Tatsunoko vs Capcom because I wanted to see the endings.

Modes that change up the fighting in significant ways can also help in understanding the nuances of the game. The Weapon Master Mode (a mission mode, essentially) is how I learned to Guard Impact in Soul Calibur 2, and also how I learned how to ring out effectively. Said mode doesn't even need to be an explicit mission pack, as Tekken Force helped me understand how the 3D space works, and Tekken Ball helped me visualize hitboxes much better (though I had no idea they were called that back then).

Super Smash Bros Melee is another great example of a game that gives you a ton of varied objectives for single-player, while simultaneously giving you collectibles to encourage playing through those modes several times.

Releasing a barebones fighting game is akin to releasing a multiplayer-only game, where there is no controlled environment in which you can learn in a fun manner. Online sucks for that because whoever's on the other side is not interested in teaching you. In real life, you can keep trying to defeat that guy you can't seem to beat (your brother, your local arcade player, and in my case, the owner of the Playstation where we played Tekken 3), but online the investment is unlikely to be the same.

Also, the thing Mv CI is doing where they simplify button inputs... doesn't help, honestly. If they're doing it to make the game more accessible, they're horribly misguided. I remember Soul Calibur 3 did something similar back then, changing the button inputs, but those changes didn't make things easier to learn for anybody.

Just my two cents on the discussion

yeah, simple button inputs still don't get around the issue of learning how to block, when to attack, etc. the genre as a whole can go back to Karateka or IK+ where it was no combos, one button and eight command normals and people would still have trouble. simplifying controls is only half of the puzzle.

just for a change of pace... does anyone know what became of the developers of Ehrgeiz? i forgot i had it on my PSP, played it again recently and rediscovered how fun it is. kind of weird the game only ever had one installment.

for the uninitiated, imagine Power Stone if it had a little bit more depth to its combat than mashing one of two buttons. (alternatively, it's Tekken with a Three-Quarters View or Isometric Projection) oh, and half the roster is Final Fantasy VII guest fighters, and the "Ryu" type is a long lost Mishima with a goddamn Arm Cannon hidden in one of his arms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamFactory

They seem to still be around. Their latest release is a 2016 Xevious game for Android and IOS. Which is still a shmup.

hmm... they don't usually develop fighting games, do they?

i still need to check out Tobal 1 and 2, i think they're the predecessors to Ehrgeiz or something like that.

What are some of your most HATED fighting games bosses? I personally cannot stand DOA's alpha-123 aka "jello kasumi" Take DOA's already aggravating AI and attach it to the cheapest thing in the game and you've got a one way ticket to high blood pressure.

i'm a gaming masochist, so honestly i kind of find it hard to hate any SNK Boss that shows up in any legitimate fighting game. this is coming from someone who was playing DOA 4 well before i started taking fighting games seriously. to put things in perspective, i actually got that hidden achievement for attaining an F rank online (it starts at C, unlike DOA 5). i also went past the 99:59 mark on multiple Survival runs trying to unlock Tengu.

i reserve my hatred of certain fighting game characters solely for M.U.G.E.N.

Wait can't you just get tengu by beating time attack with everyone?

was it time attack? i honestly don't remember, it's been so long since i even touched DOA 4.

When I dislike a boss, I tend to hate it because it's a weak boss or a poorly-designed SNK Boss (subjective) or a boss that is a playable character that mostly relies on perfect play AI (worst of all, on top of infinite super meter).

Ohhh another cheap boss.

Any unlimited ___ in a ASW score attack/unlimited mars mode. I rememeber the P 4 A games being a complete nightmare with its unlimited characters and unlimited Mu on floor 200 in CP's abyss mode is just...ugh. I've worked 5 years in retail and not a single day has been half as frustrating as that fight. I didn't even do the 999 one.

edited 25th Sep '17 1:42:34 AM by Vertigo_High

I tend to consider the unlimited (BB)/gold (GG) versions of characters as low-effort but at least I feel they made an effort to design the cheapness. (Except Gold Johnny haha.) Same with Final Bison from Street Fighter Alpha 3.

I like good "epic" bossfights like Onslaught. Meanwhile Apocalypse and Galactus are terrible. Abyss is OK, but maybe they should've made the boss only the first and third form and improve the gameplay of the third form.

Parace 'l Cia still haunts me to this day

so. making fighting games casual. barring the part where halfway competent fighting gamers would get triggered by such a thought, are "casual fighting games" actually possible? or is that phrase an oxymoron due to the complex nature of fighting games?

i've been re-watching this video a few times, mulling over a graph that shows up at one point where easy fighting games are on the left (basically only Divekick) and the right side is hard fighting games (everything else). there's only a few games that would sit right in the middle (Fantasy Strike, which is in the video proper, the canceled Rising Thunder, maybe Super Smash Bros.). maybe casualizing fighting games is just an exercise in futility? unless the genre as a whole goes back to International Karate+ and Karateka... but i've met people who legit complained about how hard Divekick is, so maybe it really is a futile effort.

It is futile.

Fighting games aren't for people who want minimal effort in learning a game. However in my experience soul calibur 1 + 2 were the most beginner friendly games in that casuals could just jump in and at least feel they were doing something. Of course an experienced player could easily win, but the controls and feedback were intuitive enough to have them not feel overwhelmed.

Aren't the Netherrealm games built for a more casual audience?

this right here is why i think it's rather nonsensical to make a "causal friendly fighting game" - it seems like a classic case of trying to appeal to everyone and instead getting no one. pick one source of profit and stick to it. look at what happened to Street Fighter V - Capcom nerfed defensive options to make the game more blowup-friendly for Twitch stream monsters, now they lost the goodwill of the hardcore crowd that would normally unquestionably buy every piece of DLC for matchup experience, because the game is basically "lolrandumb".

there's a saying that goes "make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot". again, that bit about meeting people who make Divekick look hard - i'm not making that up. met people in college that would play bongos with the two buttons and then get that dead look in their eyes when you teach them a little bit about the game in the hopes they have a better shot at enjoying it. this is the sort of people fighting games are trying to appeal to, it just seems ridiculous to me. if Divekick doesn't do casual games justice, i really have to wonder how much further back the genre has to regress to start getting those casual dollars.

edited 1st Oct '17 1:45:28 PM by Freecom

i'd like to say Mortal Kombat lucked out and got carried by their 90s gore controversy and actual attempt at a storyline since all the way back from the first game. they didn't really have to give a shit about appealing to the hardcore crowd and solid mechanics, because that's not what they started out as.

however, it's not like they can breathe easy, because MK and Injustice tend to get brought up less compared to other fighting games (at least from what i've seen online). it doesn't really help that their online communities attract the same sort of unsavory people you'd meet in shooters like Call of Duty.

The American FGC doesn't care, but short of Street Fighter, Marvel, and Tekken, they don't care about any fighting game. They make a cursory extension of good will to MK, Guilty Gear, etc, but if you're not one of those big three the FGC isn't interested. Mexico loves its KOF and anime fighters in general get more play in Japan, but in America those three are the mainstays.

And you know what? MK doesn't need their love. The games are significantly more financially successful than Street Fighter, Marvel, and Tekken regardless of how much more loved those three might be on the internet. Attention != success in the video game industry, at least not all the time, and especially not for a genre of games as notoriously impenetrable for casual audiences as competitive fighters are.

edited 1st Oct '17 1:50:57 PM by Hashil

that's all well and good, because Netherrealm knows who their audience is, what with the substantial single player content and movie quality story cutscenes. meanwhile, Capcom seems to like looking a gift horse in the mouth with their obsession with casualization between SFV and Mv CI. can you imagine if Arc System Works went that route with Guilty Gear? there'd be so much backlash.

i'm of the opinion that anything successful is inexorably tied to idiots and greedy people in suits with no empathy for their fellow man (only bolstered by the fact that i live with a conspiracy theorist dad), and successful video games would primarily have people playing online spewing things coming from the left side of this Nerf NOW!! comic. so forgive me in advance if i'm being a little harsh on casuals, that's pretty much what i expect when companies try to appeal to them.

anyway, kind of going off topic. would a casual fighting game, gameplay-wise, be possible? Rising Thunder was a noble attempt, but it basically looks like a two-dimensional, 1v1 MOBA, especially with the cooldowns.

also, like i mentioned a few posts ago, simplifying controls is only half the puzzle, and i honestly don't think there's any good way to simplify concepts like zoning and footsies. iirc, Fantasy Strike did something interesting in that regard - pressing absolutely nothing when the enemy attempts to throw you (including directional inputs, you must be neutral) gets you a free counterattack - but i'm not sure if that's enough.

edited 1st Oct '17 2:30:58 PM by Freecom

The rather disgusting tendency of a small, niche fan base to reduce fans of things they don’t like to being blithering idiots and that they’re this elite genius group, seems to me, to be nothing more than a coping mechanism that the glory days of the genre are long dead, and that the ones who are successful are doing it wrong.

This is the same attitude that made it take 20 years for a proper Maste of Orion sequel to be made, why there will be a proper sequel to Star Control II, and why 4X games are a dead genre mostly kept afloat by fan games. Because the second you’re too smart for the plebs that should learn to appreciate the game the way you do, and you become exclusionary, is when your fan base dies because no one can replace them.

edited 1st Oct '17 3:09:18 PM by Beatman1

You can simplify inputs and execution barriers all day, but a game without depth isn't a competitive game people want to play, and depth necessitates learning systems, combos, optimization, matchups, etc. Skilled players will still consistently beat less skilled players and ultimately those unwilling or uninterested in improving will drop the game the same as a Street Fighter or Guilty Gear.

The only way to have a casual fighter hold casual audiences if it's either not competitive at all while still being elaborate and fun enough to feel like you're accomplishing something with your button mashing and/or it's exceptionally content rich. Smash is fun and noncommital since you can blame losses on random items and environmental hazards, and it has a bunch of modes for people who don't care to master a fighting game on top of an addictive item collecting and achievement subsystem. The actual competitive fighting element might be what holds a lot of Smash players, but they're still the minority compared to the millions that picked the game up for other reasons. That said, the competitive element helps to make it a sort of perfect storm of a game - I really don't know of too many other modern day fighters, Mortal Kombat and Injustice aside, with such appeal to both audiences.

edited 1st Oct '17 3:50:05 PM by Hashil