Why must fighting games have such bad controls?

The main point here is that needing to pull off a Shoryuken-motion, or even a Quarter Circle-motion in order to do basic moves (like the Ryu's one, basic anti-air) is off-putting for those who are starting out, or wish to learn the proper basics of a game.

Assuming there are three main levels of skill to learning a fighting game:

• Beginner: We need to assume that beginners are not used to fighting games. That their first reaction will be button-mashing, maybe trying to learn one or two moves to use often.
• Intermediate: Players here won't button-mash, and will start learning how to do moves properly. They'll be interested in learning basic strategies, and build their skill from there.
• Advanced: These players know the ins and outs of the game, and every single mechanic it allows. Regardless of how skilled such a player is (whether they play mostly with friends, or play high-level tournaments), they have the same mindset, and the same knowledge about the game.

Complicated button inputs (See: Street Fighter, King of Fighters, etc.) makes the transition from Step 1 (for Beginners) to Step 2 (Intermediate) needlessly hard. Learning how to pull off a Shoryuken quickly shouldn't be that hard.

Compare to Tekken and Soul Calibur. Learning a few effective moves isn't hard at all, most inputs are very simple and accessible. The hardest thing for an Intermediate player to learn about are characters that depend heavily on stances.

Point is, complicated button inputs make the difficulty curve for certain fighting games needlessly steep. Games with simpler inputs make for a gradual transition, that is, a much more accessible one.

edited 22nd Sep '11 5:52:51 PM by JonnasN

Hmm... I never really thought Tekken and Soul Caliber were easier than KOF or SF 4, actually the opposite, but from that perceptive, I can see where you're going from there. But, there's no need for people who can't do some moves for a fighting game to say that the control system needs to be overhauled because it's crappy. There's Simple mode for MVC 3 and Beginner mode in BB, where starters can possibly get a chance to learn, but alas, most starters I know like just selecting these modes, and go online to win via spamming.

Deer

Soul Calibur has things like AAABaBB(lightly)A. Personally, I find that kind of thing more troublesome.

edited 22nd Sep '11 6:19:58 PM by Clarste

I find 3D fighters, with the exception of Virtua Fighter to be easier to get into than 2D ones.

Also on the topic of meters and such in Blaz Blue, the manual had all of that. In fact that's the first thing I do whenever I get a fighting game: read the manual.

edited 22nd Sep '11 10:01:23 PM by VertigoHigh

I rented it from gamefly, and I can't find the manual anywhere on the internet

But thats what guides are for.

Power corrupts. Knowledge is Power. Study hard. Be evil.

Wow, I'm in love with this game.

Just completed Ragna's story 100% (internet needed, believe me) and I feel like I know his moves inside and out. Which I never thought would happen in a fighting game EVER

I might have to take back what I said about fighting controls being bad.

edited 23rd Sep '11 1:43:40 AM by ViralLamb

Power corrupts. Knowledge is Power. Study hard. Be evil.

I actually don't like "simplified" controls like in Smash Bros because they make it too easy to pull off specials by accident, which isn't always a good thing as they can be countered or leave you vulnerable during the recovery time.

I always liked the classic Street Fighter II controls, and I think there's something artistic about them. Think about the quarter-circle-forward then punch for instance—the basic motion to throw a fireball. The "down" represents Ryu grounding himself and beginning to gather chi, while the "down-toward" and "toward" represent him channeling that chi into a forward motion. "Punch" is, of course, the release of the chi as an attack.

Taken that way, it makes sense why they would use such motions—they're just natural.

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Funny how everyone that says to like street fighter controls seems to immediately mention how much they liked SF 2. Isn't that game really old by now?

Some people seem to forget that most people that pick up a game these days hasn't been playing similar games since childhood. From the perspective of someone that usually only plays platformers and RP Gs but did pick up SSF 4 3D when the 3DS came out, I can say that the controls are indeed hard to get down. In fact, after several months of playing, I can't even be sure if some 'basic' combos like anything involving Chun-li's lightning legs are even possible in the first place (no one bothers with input tutorials for anything but arcade sticks).

Believe me, I tried. I actually managed to get a blister on my thump once from practising too much. Some moves I simply couldn't pull off. So yeah, excuuuuse me for saying this: I totally respect those that are willing to go through all that shit in order to pull of that one combo, but I think that Smash Bros Brawl, that manages to make a minimum 22 move pool*

feel intuitive and useful is a better game then SF 4, where the minimum movepool is about 30*

^{6 attacks standing, 6 attacks crouching, 6 attacks in the air, 2 grabs, let's assume 6 specials plus a few unique attacks}

, of which about 5 are marked in every FAQ with "Don't ever use this" and some might even be near-impossible to properly use without days of specific training.

My character on the screen should be an extension of my conciousness. I want him to do that kick, he will do that kick no questions asked. I do not wish to struggle with the input when I am having enough trouble struggling with my opponent.

WIN

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death itself may die."

One fighting game that I need to bring up here is Battle K Road. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of it, but I played it, and I can say that this game has controls that are not too difficult to work with. It starts with the Up, Down, Left, Right, Heavy Punch, Normal Punch, Light Punch, Heavy Kick, Normal Kick, and Light Kick buttons/keys.

The game uses the Charge-and-Release mechanism, i.e. you press and hold down the Heavy Punch or Heavy Kick button/key for about 1 second (to charge up power), then you let go (release) to carry out the move. If you combine this mechanism with Left, Right, Down, or Neutral (i.e. don't hit any direction button), you can get 6 special attacks to the left and 6 special attacks to the right.

So to summarize:

• Stride (your character moves forward surprisingly fast): Down, Down, Right, Right or Down, Down, Left, Left.
• Rotation Hand Blade: Charge-and-Release Heavy Punch + Neutral.
• Downward Right Hand Blade: Charge-and-Release Heavy Punch + Down.
• Armour Slash: Charge-and-Release Heavy Punch + Up.
• Forward Palm: Charge-and-Release Heavy Punch + Left or Charge-and-Release Heavy Punch + Right.
• Palm Vibration: Grab your opponent (I'm not sure how that works) and Charge-and-Release Heavy Punch.
• Upward Rotation Kick: Charge-and-Release Heavy Kick + Neutral.
• Downward Rotation Kick: Charge-and-Release Heavy Kick + Down.
• Sky Cut: Charge-and-Release Heavy Kick + Up.
• Double Rotation Kick: Charge-and-Release Heavy Kick + Left or Charge-and-Release Heavy Kick + Right.
• Double Kick: Grab your opponent (I'm not sure how that works) and Charge-and-Release Heavy Kick.

The above moves apply for every single character. It took some getting used to, but the game is certainly more appealing and accessible than a lot of fighting games I've tried.

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This may come perilously close to trying to turn a genre that's just not for you into a totally different genre, but in my defense, I do own and enjoy some fighting games, so I hope this will come off as less bitching for its own sake and more philosophical pondering about fighting game structural foundations.

The idea behind making some moves harder to perform than others seems to be to justify some moves being more powerful than others. Okay, so it wouldn't be 'fair' if some scrub could just tap one button to use his best move all the time... but since a 'pro' player can, via muscle memory and general memorization, do that anyway (if control schemes are the only barrier to super move spam), then what's the difference, except in the vague sense that the 'pro' player has 'earned' it? He already has other advantages over other players, why does he need that one as well?

Brief delays can be, as I noted earlier, baked into the moves themselves. If a move is too good when used repeatedly, why not put a short cooldown bar on it, or cause it to temporarily weaken or debuff you when you spam it?

Bleach Shattered Blade comes to mind. The game had problems, but the moves were extremely intuitive to use and had a (admittedly unexplored) potential move pool of around 60 per character (left-right, right-left, up-down, down-up, stab, all of the above with one of two buttons held down, and all of the above in 'bankai' mode). Actual quantity of moves per character was implemented a lot more randomly than that, but the potential for it was clearly there. And yeah, the actual moves were pretty unbalanced, but that didn't have anything to do with the control scheme so much as it had to do with some characters just plain being designed as 'better' and the 'paper' part of the rock-paper-scissors being too weak. It's nothing you couldn't patch to perfection just by tweaking numbers, in any case, if they'd had the budget for it.

Granted, the above control scheme may not be possible if you're relying on buttons instead of motion control, but again, we get to this point - why not get as close to it as you can given the limitations of the controller?

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Kayeka: I love SSFIV, I loved SFII as a child, but guess what? I didn't know any special moves back then. No one I played with did. It wasn't my game, and the owner didn't have the manual. The most amazing thing we could so was an accidental Sonic Boom, and figuring out Blanka's electricity-duck-thing was a major accomplishment. Didn't matter. The game was fun. And you know what? It was beatable. We beat Bison so many times, without throwing a single Hadoken.

You don't need to know special moves, and you're not supposed to rely on them like you are in Smash Bros. You're supposed to use them at the most opportune time for maximum effectiveness.

Karkadinn: Here's a better reason for the difference. A Hadoken (quarter circle forward+punch) takes less time to execute than a Spinning Piledriver (full circle+punch), and can be executed more reliably. Yes, an expert Zangief player won't have any trouble pulling it off, but if you put an expert Zangief player against an expert Ken player, Ken is going to be able to throw a Hadoken while Zangief is executing the more powerful move.

And if the players are not experts, and are merely two buddies playing the game for fun, then the guy playing Ken can probably hold his own against the much more powerful Zangief, thanks to his moves being more reliable than Zangief's.

It's all about balance.

edited 23rd Sep '11 8:23:09 AM by BadWolf21

I don't ever recall doing specials in Smash Bros by accident, maybe doing the wrong special when I meant to do another one but never just doing one on an arbitrary button press.

When a game has about 180 individual moves for every practical position and many positions that aren't practical in a fight that lends itself to button mashing, as in Tekken 1-5. Hell I'd play Tekken, on first glance it looked like an actual, if exaggerated, Street Fighting game. No, they just had to have 15-20 hit juggle chains. You'll spend the better part of a year trying to learn those and still have less success than the guy who stumbles into one through button mashing until that better part of a year is done. Soul Caliber is a simpler alternative.

Compared to Smash Bros or No Mercy, someone randomly hitting buttons is likely to throw out Ganon's slow kick, a taunt or break their shield. It doesn't work, even if you don't know exactly what every move does it's all directionally based so you have to at least have some idea of what you want to do. The tradeoff is spamming. Comparably the time to overcome a spammer is a lot lower than the time to beat the button masher if the game has any thought put into how to deal with it. Watch a Melee or Brawl match where Mario shoots 9000 fireballs. He'll annoy the other player but if they're any good they'll handle him unless he had some strategy to his spamming.

2D ones like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are a different story, button mashing tends to go nowhere there and even spamming the Hadoken takes some time to learn. The basic steps to get into those fighters 1 learn all the basic standing and crouching moves 2 learn combo breakers, parries or counters if applicable 3 learn the more complex inputs 4 learn jumping attacks. That doesn't let as many people in as the above mentioned fighting styles but works for those who like Street Fighter. Me, I've given up on those types, I hate quarter circles and I hate multi directional charging. I prefer being able to fly into the top corner, aim downward an unload all my bullets. Having to be quick enough to jerk the control stick or else lose position is annoying but hey it does allow for ways of balancing the game.(Or making the SNK boss a bigger pain in the ass)

So why must fighting games use those infamous control schemes? Because Street Fighter and games like it are balanced, why go through the trouble of balancing a new fighting engine from scratch when you can modify an existing one to your own purposes? As long as players keep buying developers will fallback on what's easiest for them to make. Occasionally some developer will cater to someone who wants something a little simpler(realizing there is a market) and we get Cyber troops, No mercy, Super Smash Bros, Powerstone Soul Caliber, ect

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

No fighters are ever truly alike.

Street Fighter/ The King Of Fighters = Command input based movesets with linkable attacks, single horizontal plane.

Arc System Works fighters, Darkstalkers and Marvel Vs Capcom = variation of SF/ KOF engine, with much heavier emphasis on linkable attacks and meter multiusage.

Mortal Kombat = Aside from having it's own system of block attacks and similar basic movesets (sweep, uppercut, rapid punch), its similar to SF / KOF.

Tekken/ Soul Calibur = Chain Sequence based movesets, Free 3D plane.

Super Smash Bros = A very, VERY simplified command input fighting game, with variable topography and use of occasional weapons, thus altering movesets.

edited 23rd Sep '11 10:46:21 AM by Schitzo

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

Regarding the 'balance' trump card... I can't remember the exact name of the trope so I'm having trouble finding it, but isn't there a trope for how all high-level Street Fighter character selection boils down to a screen full of 'mostly Ken with a little Ryu?'

I remember watching a 'high level' tournament match on Youtube once. The first round consisted 99% of the players spamming their 'best' move. After that round, the play branched out a fair bit, but they had to prove that they knew how to avoid the 'cheap' moves first. So in both character selection and move usage, Street Fighter's control system doesn't seem like it promotes a form of balance that's particularly better than what the competition offers.

Now, maybe that trope is wrong and maybe the match I watched wasn't representative, but if so, I'd expect there to be counterexamples on the trope page, at least.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

LOL? I would certainly hope not.

Except [condescending response follows]. Because [sarcasm here]. You do understand [snark], right? POTHOLE TO SARCASM MODE

It's the image for Complacent Gaming Syndrome. And it's about online play (although that caption seems to be gone, now), not high-level tournaments. Basically, Ken is cool, and his ease-of-use is appealing to Scrubs.

edited 23rd Sep '11 11:40:26 AM by BadWolf21

I seem to recall Banana Ken being the only notable person who uses Ken competitively.

edited 23rd Sep '11 11:44:20 AM by MrPastry

It's more frustrating waiting for the asskicking than the asskicking itself.

Thank you, Bad Wolf. Jeez, no wonder I had trouble finding that thing. Obscure title.

Edit: 'Character selection' critique withdrawn, then, in lack of better evidence. Move set criticism still remains, but if I'd known I'd be getting into a debate about it later I would've saved the Youtube link, blargh! Ah well. If I stumble across it again I'll link, but for today I've got too much work to do.

edited 23rd Sep '11 12:17:38 PM by Karkadinn

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Yeah, as Bad Wolf stated, it's the page image for Complacent Gaming Syndrome, featuring a character select screen for SFIV primarily consisting of Ken, with Ryu, Sagat, and Zangief being the only other fighters not replaced by Ken. There's also a link to an image of the roster of IV AE consisting of Yang and Fei Long, with every other character replaced by Yun (they are the three top-tier characters in AE, natch).

Also, I think Schitzo nailed it.

In the OP*

's defense, I will say that trying to tackle and improve in a fighting game

In an arcade,

Blind,

With no cabinet tutorial flyers *

Is a frustrating exercise in Trial-and-Error Gameplay. Moreso if its a popular game where the locals and regulars are unjustifiably relentless.

I remember a Sagat player slapping the buttons and cabinet table in frustration when he botched his 15 hit combo into a 8 hit, despite the fact that I would have been dead regardless

edited 23rd Sep '11 1:27:20 PM by Schitzo

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

You have to remember, part of the reason Street Fighter is balanced is because Capcom has had plenty of time to balance it. Again, it comes down to studios being lazy because consumers are willing to pay for it.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Under these circumstances, Street Fighter II became the most popular video game in the world, and (almost) nobody playing it had ever done a hadouken before.

Today, fighting games with much more forgiving special move inputs are apparently considered impossibly difficult.

What can you do but laugh?

Except [condescending response follows]. Because [sarcasm here]. You do understand [snark], right? POTHOLE TO SARCASM MODE

I never said "Impossible", though others may have.

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

Here's another fighting game I've had the pleasure of playing, even if no one else has: Daraku Tenshi AKA The Fallen Angels. This is another game that attempted to be realistic when it came to fighting between two characters. Cool, Harry Ness, and Haiji Mibu look very similar to K', Maxima and Yashiro from King Of Fighters. Has SNK been using the trope Captain Ersatz?

If you would like to know details, you can view the Wikipedia article here and a Game FA Qs guide here.

At any rate, a number of special moves and super moves do have some patterns across the fighting games. Let's see, you have the Quarter Circle Forward (QCF), the Quarter Circle Back (QCB), the Half Circle Forward (HCF), and the Half Circle Back (HCB). I'm sorry if I sound like I'm Preaching to the Choir, but some people are completely unfamiliar with the lingo associated to this stuff.

So here are some common combinations in using special moves and super moves:

• QCB + Punch
• QCB + Kick
• QCF + Punch
• QCF + Kick
• Forward, Down, Down-Forward + Punch (That is not the same as a QCF, by the way)
• Forward, Down, Down-Forward + Kick
• HCF + Heavy Punch
• HCB + Heavy Kick
• HCF, Forward + Heavy Kick
• HCF, HCF + Heavy Punch
• QCB, Down-Backward, Down, Down-Forward, Forward + Heavy Kick (Almost a HCF, but not quite)
• QCB, Down-Backward, Down, Down-Forward, Forward + Heavy Punch
• QCB, QCB + Heavy Punch
• QCF, QCF + Heavy Punch
• QCF, QCF + Heavy Kick
• QCB, QCB + Heavy Kick

The above does not even go into the Charge-and-Release mechanism, which allows you to pull off moves like these:

• Charge Backward for 1.5 seconds, then release and hit Forward + Punch
• Charge Down for 1.5 seconds, then release and hit Up + Kick
• Charge Backward for 2 seconds, then release and hit Down-Backward, Down, Down-Forward, Forward + Heavy Punch
• Charge Down for 2 seconds, then release and hit Down-Forward, Forward, Backward + Heavy Kick
• Charge Backward for 2 seconds, then release and hit Forward + Kick
• Charge Down for 2 seconds, then release and hit Up + Punch
• Charge Down-Forward for 2 seconds, then release and hit Back, Forward + Heavy Punch
• Charge Down-Backward for 2 seconds, then release and hit Back, Forward + Heavy Punch, tap Heavy Punch rapidly.

This is not an exhaustive list, but here's a question: are your fingers any good at pulling off these combinations?

edited 24th Sep '11 6:54:55 AM by TiggersAreGreat

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