A Couple of Rants About Fighting Games

Fighting games have been around for decades. We all know that the genre's popularity surged after the release of Street Fighter II, and we also know that a hugely successful game usually results in a flood of clones riding on said game's success. After a somewhat dry period, fighting games returned in a big way with the release of Street Fighter IV, and other fighting games soon followed.

OK, so you know all this, right? Yet, for some reason, I can't shake this feeling I have towards the genre and the community that I love so much. There's always something exciting happening in the fighting game community (FGC) around the world, yet I can't just walk up to a random gamer and talk about strategies because chances are they haven't played the game I'm talking about. Basically, I want more people to play fighting games and enjoy them for what they are. Many people are just content to mash buttons (or use the dreaded “play for fun” excuse—more on that later), and that's sad.

What follows next is just some rants I wanted to get off my chest.

This is Why Fighting Games Are So Hard To Commit To

Like any competitive game, you must put in a considerable amount of time in fighting games to be decent at them against human opponents. Fighting games are supposed to epitomize “easy to learn, hard to master,” yet the “easy to learn” part still evades most developers. To me, the solution always seemed straightforward: just teach the player how to play and how to utilize the combat mechanics. However, most developers are still content to give you the standard fend-for-yourself training mode and maybe a mission mode where you must perform strict, difficult combos that might not really be efficient in real matches. Even worse, there might be special control settings that don't do anything except insult the player's intelligence or limit the player's options.

So that's one of the reasons why I think some people don't really play fighting games for a long period of time. Another reason is that some people play the games for single player content, but I really think that's not a good enough reason to play a fighting game, and I'll explain why. The main component of a fighting game is the combat, and nothing else. For that reason, good developers focus on player retention, andwon't sacrifice versus play to satisfy those who aren't going to stick around long enough to appreciate the combat system to its fullest. That's why most fighting games based on popular manga aren't very good; they're made for fans of the property before they're made for fans of fighting games. While that makes sense on paper, in the end such developers are only doing themselves a disservice by making a substandard game (this could also be the result of executive meddling, but that's another issue). There are some exceptions, such as Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3, and Bleach: Dark Souls. Good fighting games are built to be played potentially for years; very few are played for decades. I love good single-player content, but I don't want it to come at the expense of solid combat mechanics, especially in a genre where the whole point is competitive play.

“Playing For Fun,” and “Fighting With Honour”

I have some advice for those of you who like to use that “I play for fun” excuse when they lose to a better player: don't. You want to know an undeniable truth? Those guys you keep losing to? They're playing for fun too! I'm not sure how many people have realized this, but we are often unwilling competitors in the game called life. We must compete at everything, against anopponent that's always changing. When you're job-hunting, you're competing against invisible people who want the same job as you. When you're catching a train, you're competing against the clock. I like to view fighting games as a less harsh version of life, where a loss doesn't result in something terrible. Maybe missing that train would result in you losing your job, thus being unable to pay your rent or feed your family. Fighting games don't have such consequences, which is one of the reasons why they're fun to play. Knowing that, I don't understand the attitudes of some online players (and only online players, it should be noted), and how they use “I play for fun” both as an excuse and as a way to insult the player they lost to. That kind defeatist attitude is often used when a player can't overcome an obstacle. I also like those players who claim that the winner has no “honour.” Well, did the winner cheat? The moment you start making up excuses, the opponent is no longer the guy who beat you, but yourself.

I'll be honest here. As a Virtua Fighter player, I hate Jacky players who abuse his somersault. It does huge damage on a counterhit and it's easy to perform. Although I hate the move, it's also easy to defeat since it's very unsafe, allowing a free combo. See the difference in attitude? You might dislike a strategy that's often used, but it's on you to find a way to beat it, not for the opponent to stop using it because you keep losing to it. The player's objective in a competitive game is to win. The time you take to complain about a strategy could be better spent looking up how to defeat it.

These Kids Are Playing, So We Must Be Doing Something Right

The players who complain about “unbeatable” tactics look even more foolish when you consider that the FGC has young kids competing in tournaments. You might have heard about Noah, the eight-year-old player who quickly gained popularity at Evolution 2011 for competing in Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 at an early age. Noah competed in NorCal Regionals 2013 that took place this past weekend. One of his opponents was someone who was a similar age. Over in Europe, there's a player named Wawa, a 10-year old who defeated several players in King of Fighters XIII. There are probably even more up-and-coming young players that we don't know about. We probably played—and lost to--some of them online.

I love the FGC, and hope that it continues to grow despite the grievances I and many other people have about the community or the games. The online players and the “stream monsters” are by no means indicative of the community as a whole, and becoming a member is extremely easy. Simply show up to local events, or contribute something like combo videos or guides. That's all there is to it. It's so easy, even a kid can do it! In fact, they have...so what's your excuse?

I can see a lot of what your saying, I personally get frustrated (maybe not the right word) but reviewers of fighting games that dont understand the basic concepts. Now 2 things I should say about that is I know a lot of this could be put down the games most don't teach very well (although they are improving) the other thing ill say is im not one of these jerks who comments going OMG JEFF SURELY YOU KNOW THAT MOVE IS PUNISHABLE BY JAB LINKED TO FIERCE DP FADC ULTRA JEEEZ, but at the same time (sorry to pick on Jeff) when you see the guy who is reviewing the game unable to do an absolute basic a b c d b b c d combo in MVC3 I question if they should be reviewing it at all, I would equal it to someone reviewing call of duty and never using the left trigger to aim down the sights just running around blindly firing as they run.

Anyway hope I don`t come off as to much of a dick with that rant.

ONE WORD

DIVE KICK

Being a fighting game player, I really like this blog.

At the least nowadays, developers are slowly trying to provide more basic tutorials. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is a great example since the fight lab provides the most basic stuff and slowly present things like punishment and the combo system. BUT...

Since a majority of the fighting games are developed in Japan, the competitive scene in arcades is so well established that Capcom and others provide barebones training modes. While experienced players will make full use of it, the developers seem to not embrace the more inexperienced folk; opting for a DEAL WITH IT mentality. Maybe people are just not willing to learn and rather DO ULTRAS HADUKEN SHIT LOOKS HYPE AS FUUUUUUUUUUCK BUT I DEDD WTF HE HAS NO HONOR. It reminds me of Egoraptor's talk about learning a gamme in the Sequelitis video of Mega Man and Mega Man X but in more complex form. People are not stupid but they are surely limiting themselves and assuming bullshit.

I really don't like the "play for fun" thing either. My focus this EVO is KOFXIII and TTT2 but I play the SFIV games casually. While it does fall in that quote, I still enjoy playing regardless with honesty even if I have to deal with Rufus divekick mixups or just a simple Ryu jump in to throw constantly. It's still fun regardless.

Next to Noah and Wawa, there is a French kid by the name of Kusanagi who plays a mean Cammy in AE and qualified for Tougeki Super Battle Opera last year. That's some good shit.

@carryboy: Good point about the reviewers. The problem with most fighting game reviews is the people writing them; that's why I don't read reviews. The only editor that I know of who knows anything about fighting games besides Jeff is GameSpot's Maxwell McGee. Max writes a lot of articles about the genre and the devs behind the games, and they're all good reads.

@king9999 said:

Maxwell is legit, Haunts when he freelanced for 1UP before going to Capcom, Vincent Ignacio who freelanced for IGN (FGC blown him up for his DOA5 review scored higher than the TTT2 review that was covered by someone who doesn't play fighting games). Good folks.

Fighting games peaked at 3S.

You know whats cool about games? People can enjoy them however they want.

I play fighting games at a semi-competitive level and my friends don't and we can still play together and fuck around without getting frustrated at each other because video games.

@king9999: Yeh Maxwell has a good grasp a lot of websites began freelancing the fighting game reviews which I thought was better then nothing I might be wrong but I think Haunts did a couple of reviews for either IGN or 1up, again i'm not asking for experts, hell it took me 100s of hours to truly get to grips with SF4, just basic understanding. People go on about frame data like its this super complicated thing and it can be daunting first time you look at a stack of numbers but as soon as you actually look at it you realise how simple it is. Anyways good read.

Yes! I want to play that game so badly!

It's fine they are not competitive. I think the blog intended to mention people who want to learn the games seriously but put themselves in a bad position where they inappropriately excuse rather than dedicate.

Back when I played SF4 online a lot, nothing gave me more pleasure than getting a screaming audio message from someone calling me a cheating, cheap #!*&^$#@ blah blah blah because I didn't just walk face first into his shitty tactics.

@thephantomnaut: Honestly if somebody is getting all worked up over people make excuses for losses, they're "doing it wrong." Every game has their sore losers, and it's better to just ignore them and let them live in their fantasy world where they're the best and throwing is cheap.

As for the lack of people enjoying fighting games, the best thing you can do to get people into these games is teach them yourself. If you know the game and know people who want to get good, then show them how to do it. Like I said, I'm far from great at these games, but I feel like I know my shit and I managed to teach a few people a lot of things in SF and Marvel that neither game makes any attempt to teach the player.

And if they don't want to learn, don't force it on them. The best way to alienate people from something is to make them to do something they don't want to do. If somebody just wants to mash buttons, let them.

Yeah, fighting games could do a lot better at teaching the player. Where many games nowadays try to (for better or for worse) have extensive tutorials and really explain the mechanics, fighting games seem content with their combo challenges.

There's progress being made though. Skullgirls, Darkstalkers Resurrection (I think?) and SFxT all had tutorials that at least tried to explain things from the ground up. I think they still need to emphasize 'the fundamentals' more, improving on them is the advice you'd get from SRK or most other places I'd imagine, so it'd make sense for the game to help players out on that.

As for honour/unbeatable tactics...as someone whose first traditional fighting game was SFIV I can sympathize with a lot of it. Zangief would walk up to me and throw me for insane damage, while if I tried to jump in he would just lariat. Spamming two moves, what a cheap character, god. It just arises from a lack of understanding, I think it'll get better with improved tutorials.

I want to add that I enjoy combo missions. I'm a huge fan of Street Fighter EX's mission mode because of the flexibility they provided, and the combos were actually useful in real matches. I actually made tutorials on how to beat the missions if anyone cares to watch them.

What I'm not a fan of is how modern games handle combo missions. You have to perform them exactly how they designed them or else you fail.

The best tutorial hands-down is Virtua Fighter 4 Evo's tutorials. Not only does it explain stuff to you, it also tells you why you would use each technique, as well as how not to use them. The game demonstrates techniques to you, and then lets you perform them a few times. VF4 was the game that got me into the series mainly because of the tutorial mode.

Now it’s time for what appears to be the opposite point of view: “playing to win” at all times is counter-productive. If you want to win over the long term, then you can’t play every single game as if it were a tournament finals. If you did, you wouldn’t have time for basic R&D, you’d never learn the quirky nuances that show up unexpectedly at tournaments, and you are likely to get stuck honing suboptimal tactics.

From David Sirlin, author of Playing to Win and hack-revisionist of SSF2 HD Remix. Probably something most people forget about playing games, also good reading for people looking to get more serious. It's over 10 years old now, but still has some good lessons.

@king9999 said:

Yes, absolutely, as someone that has been playing a lot of VF4 Evo in the past week. That tutorial and the game's quest mode have both gone hand in hand in, I feel, making me better at Virtua Fighter. Go through the first third of the tutorial sections, go into quest mode, return to tutorial to figure out techniques needed for certain quest orders, and so on. Helped me figure out how to respond to guaranteed throw moves effecitvely. In fact, all the options available in the regular training mode don't appear as daunting afterwards as you can then easily figure out what scenarios you want to set up to practice.

I'd say Blazblue (Continuum shift onwards) has one of the best tutorials in any fighting game I've played recently. It goes over the basics from moving, blocking and the different gauges to specific character strategies and how they're meant to be played. Skullgirls was also really comprehensive and should be helpful to new players.

I only got into fighting games recently, so I can see why people are frustrated and often don't want to invest much time into them. It took me days of being hounded by the same taunting cowboy Ken looking to increase his BP to learn about crossups and the fact I should be standing to block a jumping attack. I don't necessarily think learning by playing is such a bad thing though. Once you get this stuff down yourself it's much more satisfying. Learning and improving at the game is actually surprisingly more simple, and less stressful, when you stop hitting buttons in a panic and just start to think about what you should be doing and why.

Better tutorials would definetly be a plus. Aside from SF4 and UMVC3 the majority of fighting games out at the moment actually have good tutorials. I've always found the clamouring from some of the Bombsquad for detailed tutorials odd though, since in actions games or shooters they're often critical of tutorials that do exactly this and explain every single simple mechanic to them. I guess this is all just down to familiarity with the genre.

Unless the opponent is using some terrible 100% life in one button, game breaking glitch pretty much anything goes. If the guy stops playing suddenly in the middle of the match I'll generally wait to see if he comes back before getting a win on him however. With the way some of these guys rage at you I don't think everyone is playing for fun though!

Your argument about "I play for fun" reminds me of the ongoing debate in competitive sports gaming circles. I play a TON of NBA 2K (if I buy/complete any two other games in a given year, it's a bit of a miracle...at least before Playstation Plus) and I'm constantly getting into debates about "sim vs. win". In other words, sure, do all the cheesy animation-priority spin-moves that push my defenders out of the way you want, just take solace in the fact that you beat me by exploiting the game for "fun" (ie. slam dunks) while I kept the game close taking jump shots in rhythm, finding cutters and playing smart defense rather than swarming defense that takes advantage of the game's unrealistic, slow passing system.

This was a good read, because I've just recently got back into fighting games a little bit through clearing room on my HDD for the free SSIV: Arcade Edition and MK Trilogy, and after 12-15 online fights I still only have about 70 battle points and none of the other kind of points. Everyone I get matched to is wiping the floor with me because they know their characters, or even just the game in general. And it just makes me think, "man, this is a more democratized version of what I experience in NBA 2K. I wish that game was this balanced."

Good OP, but I think that recent calls for fighting games to tutorialize better are misguided. People who want to feel that particular thrill you get from having put in long hours of practice and beating another guy have done it without the need for intuitive tutorials and continue to do so today.

If a person is unwilling to jump the hurdle of teaching himself a fighting game, he's never going to get good at it, no matter how good the tutorial is, because no matter how good a tutorial is, it can't teach a guy when to use what combo, and which combos can be strung together under what circumstances, and it can't make him repeatedly input a combo in different circumstances to get him to burn it into his muscle memory. The tutorial doesn't change the fact that to become competitive, you have to teach yourself, and that's the real barrier to entry for these games.

If fighting game makers are happy with the audience they currently have, great. If they want to expand, however, they won't do so by trying to make more people who have the competitive drive to get good at their games. It's above the power of a video game to change personality in such a way. As such, purely from a business perspective, if a developer wants his fighting game to reach a wider audience, he needs to give it features that don't require that sort of dedication (single player, co-op, etc.)

I'd say most fighting games do a pretty good job of teaching you how to play the game. Mission / Challenge modes is usually where they teach you how to string a combo together and etc. Training mode is always useful but I do notice that not many people use the option menu to its full potential.

The only fighting game that I have ever played that made me felt stupid was The King of Fighters 13. That game took me awhile to get anything out of it.

As a casual fighting game player, the biggest problem I have in trying to get "good" at fighting games is that most of them (particularly the older, more iterated series) seem to really be buckling under their own complexity. In Tekken 6 the characters literally have well over 100 moves each - does anyone make use of more than a tiny fraction? The difficulty in executing moves and combos is also a problem - I can't even begin to get into KoF games for that reason. There's just no reason for fighting games to be made so difficult to play.

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 seemed a good model on how to be more forgiving with your combo system, where even (fairly) unskilled players like me could perform useful combos and stand half a chance online, but even then that game would be mad if you didn't already play fighting games. A lot of my non-fighting-game freinds struggle to even input quarter-circle-forwards consistently, let alone perform combos and cancels. Obviously with any game there'll be a while before you know what you're doing well enough to start playing the game properly, but there's no reason for it to be made as hard as it is in most fighters. And there really is an awful lot to push through before you can start playing the game with any kind of tactical consideration - which is why so many new players resort to "button mashing". So yeah - the simplest solution would be to just make the baseline easier.

I agree with you regarding difficulty of executing moves. The problem is made worse when you learn that certain games suffer from console-specific lag.

KOF is notorious for its execution barrier. They made it easier in KOF13, although it's still high. My stance on execution is: if I press a button, the move should come out. One of the reasons why I like VF5 so much is because of the large buffer for inputting most moves. There's less focus on when to press a button, and more importance placed on whether you should press the button. I think that's why the game works so well online compared to other games. In other games where your execution really has to be on point, even one dropped frame can ruin any momentum you had. That's why GGPO was invented.

Regarding Tekken, the movelists have always been large. Where it got ridiculous IMO was when every character was given a stance from which you had a whole new set of moves to work with. That's why Tekken 3 is still my favourite game in the series. The movelists were straightforward, and rounds could be won with a couple of good combos without any damage scaling.

Speaking of damage scaling, that's another barrier to entry IMO. When damage gets scaled down, you are forced to extend combos as much as possible to maximize damage, and you get diminishing returns for the effort you put in.

Check out the VF4 Evo tutorial. It does everything you're saying a fighting game can't teach. That's why I'm disappointed that other devs haven't stepped their game up when it comes to teaching the player how to play their own games.

Your last paragraph is an ongoing dilemma for fighting game devs. Who do they make these games for, and what has to be sacrificed in order to reach that goal?