Why must fighting games have such bad controls?

Yes, yes they are.

I concur. It took me a few years of practice (seeing as I was five when I first played a fighter), but yeah, I can do most of those moves without a hitch.

I remember liking the Touhou fighting games because their commands were relatively simple to most fighting games. Each character used a selection of commands out of five possible ones. Basically there's the normal and reverse hadouken command, normal and reverse shoryuken command, and double-tapping down. Since there's only up to five, it can theoretically be replaced by a single button plus(or without) direction. The moves are done with just three buttons(A, B, or C) and there's an easy built-in combo one can do just by pressing the A button a bunch of times.

...And there was also a dash button(D), which was basically optional until the second game.

This makes it easy to focus on strategy rather than execution and I found it quite a bit more fun because of it.

That's another issue for me. It makes it really hard for me to focus on forming strategies if I can't rely on attacks working. I dunno, I get that it's supposed to take practice, but even though I play some fighting games, I much prefer when I can jump right in. I don't have to be able to kill everything right away, but I want to be able to use moves when I want to right away.

Marisa is a pretty good example for SWR/Hisoutensoku. I can reasonably pull off her entire physical repertoire (all ground attacks all three dash moves, all of her aerials), 4 weak spirit attacks, and 4 strong spirit attacks. Even though that's not an exhaustive list of her possible attacks, it's a fairly solid, easily memorized moveset.

All of her physicals are easy to use. At most, you may have to hold a direction or come in with a dash plus Z, ground or aerial. The spirit attacks I can do boild down to hold a direction, no direction, double tap down, a 236, a 214, or a 498 plus X or C.

I like it when a game uses separate buttons for special attacks, as long as they keep them from being constantly spammed.

edited 23rd Sep '11 7:05:45 PM by hnd03

I dunno. For me knowing how to do attacks is the fighting game equivalent of level grinding in RPGs.

And I don't even look up the attacks in manuals or faqs or anything. I press buttons, see what they do, take note of the attacks I like. I watch others play, see them do something cool, I get them to teach me how to do it. The more I play, the more natural it becomes. There's a feeling of achievement there.

Meh. This is why I don't play fighting games very often, with a few specific exceptions.

My ideal game is easy to learn, hard to master. Where a newb can still have a bunch of fun playing. And as far as I'm concerned, fighters don't do that at all. You have to suffer through hours and hours of practice to be even passable. Fuck that shit, I'll just play something else.

It took me about five minutes to figure out most ways to do special moves in SSF 4

That was my first fighter ever and it was a few months ago.

People who think that learning how to play fighting games requre hours and hours of practice are full of shit. Unless you plan to play competitively, you only need like ten minutes to get the hang of things.

Like I said before, it's possible that certain gamers just aren't suited towards fighters, and that's perfectly ok. Not every game out there is necessarily for you. I'm willing to bet that for x number of stories of how y player couldn't pick up and play z fighters, there's bound to be as many stories exclaiming the exact opposite.

My personal experience with fighters is that no, that's not how it works, and you're full of shit.

So perhaps we should just agree to disagree here.

The key words here are "personal experience". That's pretty much saying that this whole debate is one subjective statement after another. But metaflare does have a point here. It really shouldn't take too long to understand the flow and mechanics of a fighters (as well as get one or two bread-and-butter combos under your belt), as a lot of those flashy combos and resets and blahblahblahblahblahblah you see used by pros are either Awesome, but Impractical or only come into play in the highest levels of competitive play due the focus on metagame and whatnot.

In that case, I must just be really bad at fighters.

Whatever. I'm still not gonna play 'em.

That's fine. No one is forcing you too.

Meh. The combos are just a part of the game. Just figure the motions out and it becomes as simple as breathing. That is, unless you're using a 360 controller. Then its as simple as breathing with a slight cough.

DO NOT use a keyboard. That way lies madness.

edited 23rd Sep '11 10:58:33 PM by Zeromaeus

Full confession: I like to play E. Honda largely because his moves are easy and he can get by pretty well just by smacking people with normals. Shotos are the traditional n00b characters, though, so the world at large has obviously made its peace with QC Fs.

Well, on the subject of how many moves are in a fighting game I can compare the two series I have the most experience with: Smash Bros. and Street Fighter.

Brawl, the most recent one has a few more moves than people have said. It has the standard jab attack, which is dependent on the character, as some like Ganondorf have a one-hit jab, while others like Bowser have a two-hit, Mario and some have three-hits and characters like Falcon have three-hits plus rapid-fire hits and each of those is a different viable move at times, so there is already at least a three move discrepancy between some characters. Each character also has at least three tilts, although some characters like Snake have additional steps, his forward-tilt is two moves, a knee and then an overhead hammer blow. Three smash attacks, five aerials, four specials, four throws and a pummel are all the very MINIMUM for moves a character has in those respects. This is not counting single jumps, double jumps and in the cases of characters like Kirby, third, fourth and fifth jumps. A forward and back roll, a shield, an air dodge and a side-step. Every character also has a get-up attack from when they were knocked to a prone position and a ledge attack that changes at 100%. Also charging your moves, a dash attack, Wall-jumping, wall-clinging, footstooling, crawling, gliding and glide attacks round out the abilities at your characters disposal. Counting ONLY the bare minimum of abilities a single character could possible have, there is still around 35 moves, not counting charging or other character-specific abilities. Now the reason why this number is so different than the 22 I saw being thrown around is because partly they forgot ledge, get-up and dash attacks (everyone does) but also because of how many abilities the characters have that aren't damaging in nature, how many revolve around movement or defending, which is part of what makes Smash Bros. such an individual fighter. Still, 35 is a fair amount of moves. Or so it seems. Bum bum bum.

Now to compare it to Street Fighter. I’ll take 4’s Ryu for simplicities purpose. Six standing normals, six crouching and six jumping. I know he also has a forward-medium punch and a forward-heavy punch move. Something that people again, forget to take into account is that Ryu’s standing moves are different if he’s close or far from the opponent, and his jump moves are different if it’s straight-up or at an angle, so that’s twelve more moves. 32 moves already for Ryu and we’ve only covered the most basic of normals. Already Street Fighter approaches Smash Bros for move amount, and honestly none of these normals are any harder than anything in Smash Bros and some are arguably easier, as I’ve had friends struggle with pulling tilts off consistently, but none of these moves require even that amount of execution. And learning how to effectively use just these moves will put you in a decent spot, if you learn which ones are good anti-airs, good pokes, good cross-ups and just generally good to throw out, none of those require any notable execution, just decent timing.

Now for the side things: Focus Attacks which is just medium punch and medium kick held at the same time, again pretty easy to do and while it also has a charge-like aspect with three different versions depending on the length of the charge, I’ll be stingy and say it is just one move. A forward and a back dash, a forward and back throw, blocking and of course jumps. I don’t really want to count angled jumps or walking as a special thing since I didn’t in the smash Bros section and that seems like I’m getting needlessly specific, so only 7 things in this segment cause I’m not going to even bother talking about FADC.

Now for specials. Ryu has a hadoken, a shoryuken and a revolving foot leap. That’s three moves. Just three? We’re done with those now right? Well no. Light, medium and hard version have different properties, speed and damage and each have their uses. A light flame from your hands is slow, while a heavy is fast and a heavy uppercut is the most damaging of the three shoryukens but the least safe. Additionally each move has a EX version, so that’s three more. So 12 specials.

Ryu also has a Super, which again changes based on the punch button used and two Ultra’s so that’s five. In total he has around 56 moves and he is one of the more average characters. Gen has at least twice that. That puts Street Fighters conservative estimate at over 20 moves more than Smash Bros. conservative estimate which is interesting, but what point am I trying to make here? I have a creepily good memory for relatively useless facts? Well, yes of course, but in addition to that I am trying to say that Street Fighter and similar fighting games draw additional depth from the move variety and the best way the developers found to incorporate that, as well as ease balance and try and give the characters some individual flavor was to use the special motions, a lot of which are very easy to learn, and like someone else said you can think of learning the moves as an equivalent to leveling up in a RPG, it’s just that specific genre’s method of making you work to get better at it. A lot of games do something like that and if you don’t appreciate it, then it’s not the genre for you. Deal with it and move on. Additionally I loved the thought-process someone had for Ryu’s hadoken motion, with the down part being him grounding himself and the forward him channeling into his hands. Super-clever, and makes the motions seem even more relevant.

Two final points. I personally feel that Street Fighter has very good controls and with the exception of input leniency in 4 (why can’t I turn you OFF) it is very responsive and intuitive with what I want to do. Also, Smash Bros is a fighting game. It may carry party elements, but Party isn’t even a recognized genre and the game maintains the basic core of two or more characters violently interacting (also known as FIGHTING) with the purpose of defeating your opponent. Those who don’t think so let themselves get distracted by the fluff of items free-for-alls, percentage based ring-out systems and ignore the basic premise of the game. Seriously people, pay attention to the genre you’re playing.

You miss a very important thing on this rant: In Super Smash Bross, while the moves vary from character to character, their input does not. That is it, there is no specific combination of buttons for each specific character. Furthermore, unlike most other fighting games, said inputs are very intuitive. You can pick a character you have never played and still reasonable guess what each combination will do, more or less, with out having to resort in trial or error (the four especial being an exception). This is just not true for many fighting games.

That being said, I your point about Street Fighter. My experience with this game is sorta outdated (I used to play the original Street Fighter 2), but most special attacks were fairly easy reliably. As a kid, I don't remember ever having problem with quarter moon motions or the 'hold a direction for a second, change and attack', in witch most moves are based.

However, even this game had the Shoryuuken (forward, down, forward) itch is not only trick to pull reliably but also can easily become a Haduken instead, which is a completely different move, despite the similar input. Furthermore, half of the attacks were variations of each other (Haduken = Sonic Boon = Yoga Fire, for example), yet, the way you use said attacks may be completely different and intuitiveness, witch only makes thing more confusing.

And, of course, I am talking about a 20 years old game. Newer fighting games have become much more complex, from my experience. 3D fighters can have dozens of different combinations, witch variable amount of difficulty on performing each one of them, witch is nightmarish if you have just got the hands on the controller.

I think someone have already said that, but I believe the main problem is that the 'balance' of these games are based on how difficult an action is to perform. The harder, the most powerful. Thus, if the same moves were simplified, some 'cheap' attacks would be spanned. The problem is, of course, "pro" players can already span said attacks anyway, so such "balance" only effects newbies. This can be simply solved by adding a 'cool down' in powerful moves, for example.

Btw, I have nothing against impossible combos, even though I can do any of them. If each individual attack of a combo is easy to perform reliably, then it is up to they player to know how to combine them effectively. This should be were experience shows, knowing how to apply each move efficiently, not on how to be able to perform each move without doing something completely unexpected by accident.

This topic just screams "I HATE THIS GAME BECAUSE I SUCK AT IT!"

Am I wrong?

Sorta. Part of it is true, but not entirely.

Many people have stated reasonable reasons for believe the controls are bad. To give an example of mine, I think having tow completely different moves with a similar input that may be mistaken in each other is bad.

Example Haduken and Shoyuuken, whitch are down, down-forward, forward and forward, down, forward. Making the last part of a Shoryuuken (down then forward) can easily be mistaken into a Haduken (if you accidentally press down-forward). Haduken is a forward projectile, while Shoryuuken is a a anti-aerial. Hard to think in a situation on witch such a mistake wouldn't be painful.

edited 24th Sep '11 3:22:11 AM by Heatth

Well, I know from experience that a keyboard is the wrong device to use to play fighting games. Let's see, the layout of the keyboard is guaranteed to work against you. You have all these keys, and there is a good chance of pressing the wrong key (or a key that was not assigned as part of the controls) in the heat of the moment. Choosing the right keys to play with is difficult, because you can make your fingers sore from having the keys too far away from each other, too close to each other, or if they are in awkward positions. Using the arrow keys is pretty tricky, especially when you're trying to simulate Down-Forward and Down-Backward. I've been able to pull off Quarter-Circle motions with the arrow keys. Doing motions like Down-Forward, Forward, Down + Attack or Down-Forward, Down, Forward + Attack seem hard for me to do with the arrow keys. Half-Circle motions with the arrow keys? Oh, man, I'm lucky if I ever pull that off once or twice in my life!

These are not complaints, these are facts from experience. My heart truly goes out to those who try to play fighting games with a keyboard!

edited 24th Sep '11 6:38:03 AM by TiggersAreGreat

I love playing with a keyboard.

I don't see why someone would lose where the keys they use are? I mean I just use Z, X C, A, S, D and I've never gotten screwed up. Heck, it's easier to remember for me because all the keys I use are in 2 rows of 3, all of which are muscle memory .

Playing on a keyboard is nothing to be ashamed of or pitied.

Some keyboards don't accept too many keys being pressed at once. Witch is necessary in Fighting games, some times.

That being said, I find easier doing quarter moons and half moons in a keyboard then in a D-pad.

Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention about keyboards: they only react to whether you pressed a key or not, and not how hard you hit the key. Most of the time that is no big deal. However, there is that one game Street Fighter (the very first one, not the second one that everyone so adores) that uses a control scheme where the strength of the punch or kick is determined by how hard you press the button. While that's fine for an arcade machine, that sort of control scheme would translate poorly to a keyboard. Oops!

Wasn't it why the 'light punch', 'medium punch' and 'strong punch' scheme was created in the first place? The same issue happens for a console, you know. If someone would ever play this, it would be on an emulator, were it would fix the issue by creating the extra buttons.

@The Omegod: You are entitled to your opinion that Smash Bros is a fighting game, but "party" is a recognized genre. Not one that has anything to do with Smash Bros, mind you, but it's almost always used to describe games that follow the Mario Party formula. Basically, video board games. That said, Smash Bros is a different sort of fighter than Street Fighter, and even Tekken, and using it as the shining example of fighting game controls (which you were not doing, but others before you seemed to be) is not a good comparison, since the format is so different.

@Heatth: You say that pros are unaffected by the difficulty of performing moves, so newbs are the only people affected by the balancing. First, you have forgotten something pretty important: everyone in between. The people who play the game, but are not just starting out, and for whom the balancing also applies, aka the majority of players. Second, the balancing is not only in the difficulty of the move, but the time it takes to pull off, which does affect pro players. A Spinning Piledriver would take roughly four times the amount of time as a Hadouken, even for a pro.

@Tiggers Are Great: Considering the original was not designed to be played on a keyboard, that's hardly the fault of the game, now is it. Also, while I've never had to do it, it doesn't seem that difficult to roll your fingers across the bottom row of keys to get a half-circle. Heck, the delta motion is probably easier to do on a keyboard.