I suck at fighting games. In every one I have played online I probably never won a fight against a human. Thats why I loved SC3 so much. Because of the crazy RTS mode it had which had you creating multiple custom characters and using them to take over points on a map. For me it really gave a purpose to the fighting other than just trying to get better at it, it made it actually feel like a game. And I wish more fighting games did stuff like this because without something similar I just cant get into fighting games no matter how much I want to.

hmmmmmm, I always found the RTS mode in SC3 really poorly implemented.

I just loved how it actually gave meaning to fighting. Like you are fighting to capture this castle. I wish more fighting games expanded beyond the actual fighting. I really think fighting games need to evolve beyond their arcade roots and become more than just a string of ten or so fights.

@devil240z: well the thing is, it wasn't the best RTS game. It was pretty below average, and even the fights that did happen were pretty much like stringing together those 10 fights that would be in an arcade game you were mentioning earlier. Namco does often throws so much junk in their games that sometimes even character creation which is popular is actually really crap compared to other games with character creation. But hey, this is a game where even VS mode is kinda buried into it's interface, and for me personally I could go on endless but that's hidden inside the store front.

To be honest, I prefer how Vanillaware handled it's RPG and fighting game mechanics in their games since they came from SF2 and Final Fight and have been remaking the same game over and over and over again for over 25 years. To some extend I can sympathize with what your saying they have to change from arcade design, but I do feel you need to look out more, some games do story beautifully well like MK9 and Injustice. A lot of people don't mention Jojo's Bizzare Venture's story mode, but hey that's why these games became niche anyway. But if you think SC3's RTS mode is good, fine enjoy it. But I do feel it's pretty pedestrian mini game in a game with extensive content to keep you entertained.

I really enjoyed the Weapon Master mode in Soul Calibur 1. Best singleplayer fighting game experience if you ask me. It felt like a fairly organic way of learning the game and unlocking new content at a steady trickle, and it had a badass map. So yeah, I wish more fighting games had something like that.

Also, would really like a 'hotjoin fight' option ala Street Fighter 4 in Killer Instinct...

by the way, what did you think of the Free to Play Soul Calibur Lost Swords game? They stripped away multiplayer in favor of a whole level up a character, craft swords and then get daily missions but with a whole priced energy meter of how many missions they can take a day and continued which are all micro-transaction.

It's not as sinister as Dungeon Keeper (in fact the largest price is 20 bucks for items 2 bucks for continues and points for missions you can continue to take a day), that's why I brought it up, but there's an objective and the only real online is sharing your profile with other players as an assist fight who comes in and substitutes another life bar for a short period. I find it an odd game to recommend to anyone, but who knows it might be different enough for you.

This is probably going to be an unpopular or at least niche opinion, but the problem that I have with extra modes like that is that it involves fighting against AI, which for me, isn't terribly interesting. It can be good early on, because the AI can actually teach you a lot of basics. It can potentially teach you basic things about character match-ups, like who has more control over certain ranges etc. It can teach you pattern recognition, since it literally is just running a scripted routine. It can be a decent way to drill certain punishes and such, so you can react with them more quickly.

But the shortcomings are obvious. It is both completely mindless, but also unfair, as it doesn't have to factor for reaction times or reads etc. It doesn't learn, so it will never adapt. The MK9 AI was particularly terrible about this, it's so easy to put the AI in a loop that it will basically never escape from, even though all it has to do is wake up blocking. It's not terribly fun to win that way, but it also feels weird to hold back a tactic or something which will lead to success. The other side is that if the AI never adapts, your game-plan doesn't necessarily have to change either, which may stunt development of your own ability to adapt. It may even reinforce terrible habits. I know I do things against the AI that I'd never do against another person, because you don't have to factor in awareness or adaption. Jumping in at the start of every round is a really stupid idea, people would catch on very quickly. But the AI never will and the potential damage off a free jump in attack far outweighs the damage you'll take if you get anti-aired or something. The reward shifts to far outweigh the risk and the game is encouraging and rewarding really bad play. AI hasn't really improved at all since SF2, because the things it would need to do to improve would be eye-meltingly complex and the people who would most notice would be the ones who only ever play against other people anyway.

So as much as I appreciate what Netherrealm did with the storytelling in MK and IGAU, it kind of flips the game on its head. Having to fight AI to see that stuff made it a little bit of a chore. It's basically the complete opposite of why I play fighting games, where the gameplay is the thing you're there for and nothing else is needed. It's definitely great that these modes exist for people that don't want to get super deep, they just want to have some fun pressing buttons and getting a crazy story and all that. I can enjoy it for what it is, too. The problem is that assigning development resources to those areas of a game could take those resources away from other important areas. MK9 and Injustice have a bucketload of single player modes with the story, challenge tower/challenges and all that. Street Fighter IV is lacking in those areas, but Capcom put a greater priority on the balance and it really shows. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the games that NRS has made since becoming NRS. But MK9 is reaaaaal rough around the edges.

So my entirely selfish opinion is that more fighting games do not actually need to adapt these modes. When Capcom get around to making Street Fighter V (hopefully not for a couple of years, still perfectly happy with IV), that game could have Versus, Training and Online and that'd basically have everything that I personally would want that game to have. Like I said, selfish, but that's how it is for me and I just felt like presenting a dissenting opinion. Yes, it would be nice to have more content in all our games, but resources are finite. I'll take a really well balanced fighting game that's bare-bones in terms of modes etc over one with heaps to do but the fighting is a bit wonky.

If that F2P Soul Calibur is single-player only, that sounds like the worst. THE WORST.

Although I do understand their place, I am not a fan of these special modes. Sure developers can make them but they will always dedicate the core to the main design and in the end, most people will play for that at least in this day and age of prosperous competition.

Since I can't evaluate why you are not good at fighting games, I can say is that you need to invest time to learn to compete much like any other game. You will lose a lot, I have as well, but understanding why you lose will help a lot in your game. "Why did you lose this match?" "Why did you get hit?" "What did your opponent do to you that prevented you from doing what you want to do?" "How will adapt with the character you have?" There might be more questions and can be headache-inducing but if you are willing to keep on going and use as much resources as possible, you won't have to say you suck. If you played any of the Souls games, imagine that but in a different perspective.

With the internet, you can find places like Shoryuken where there is a newbie forum and other content that can help you. Fighting game competition always gets uploaded to YouTube; They show players who can perform stuff in order to win so watch.

Online in fighting games are a mixed bag due to concerns like input lag and the varying competition.

I think weird single player modes are necessary for the non-competitive fighting game players. Injustice, MK, and Blazeblue all have their extensive single player stuff, and that stuff is really cool. I imagine there's a sizable audience that doesn't want to be the best and just want to see all the cool junk or the story. Which is probably the reason for all of those Naruto games and the recent Jojo's game.

What I really want is a feature set in between the story/special single player modes and the full on training mode suite. Basically something to help bridge the gap between competitive and non-competitive.

@damodar: I would just respond with the more the better? Wouldn't you rather have more content than less even if its against AI?(assuming that it does not take anything away from online/competitive content)

@crithon: I get that it wasn't a great game. I just like the sense of progression it presented. It gave me a reason to keep trying to get better at the base mechanics of the game. Without it I probably would have played though arcade mode on easy a couple times and given up. It was the direction that I wanted fighting games to start going in. I really thought at the time that it was the direction all fighting games were going in. it was before these games started going online so it was a fair assumption at that point in time. I thought that they were finally making them into real full console experiences and not just arcade ports. And I don't really see what was bad about the character creator... It actually kind of blew my mind at the time.

Lost swords is ok. I think its kind of dumb that you don't get to create your own character though. But I have been playing it recently. The F2P ness of it really doesn't get in the way at all because the recharge on the AP(currency that lets you keep playing) is really quick. I can barely get down to zero and if I do I have a ton of AP potions so I could play that game hours on end if I wanted to but I generally play games in 30m-1h chunks(unless its something special).

Side note. I like how Tekkin games have the whole rank up system. Should I play the free one or just re-install Tekkin 5?

@devil240z: Namco is an interesting company, considering how much STUFF, they cram into these arcade ports. As much as Capcom is beloved they never did do anything that ambitious. I'm playing Ultra SF4, and there is still much to be desired to really help encourage new players to understand why you should do this combo and when. Still there was always that lost in translation nonsense, the AI is brain dead, awful anime storyline, and some of the most confusing interfaces since Dark Souls. Personally for me, I was always impressed with how they kept changing up the Mr Driller games.... until the phone versions came out around 2006 that's when I started to notice Namco going down hill on their quality. Like Mr Driller Ace on GBA was an all out RPG with the Driller mechanics.

Actually I know there's a big fan base on the character creator on SC series, but I personally find it pretty poor. Even on it's release, I was far more impressed with Tony Hawk and even Tiger Wood's Golf games character creator. It was interesting to just have the collector mentality of just unlocking stuff, and to some players it made sense just too much junk that I didn't find worth collecting to a weird character that never looks up to par with Kilik or Mitsurugi.

Tekken Revolution I thought wasn't half bad. It's like Lost Swords with AP points and tickets to continue and same price point. There's single player arcade mode and online play only and a character is leveled up which kinda makes it a bit just unenjoyable to fight someone who's just unbalanced. Namco has an interesting idea for Free2play.... they are trying something but it's not clicking with everyone. The anaology of an arcade pumping quarters kinda makes sense but even still leveling up characters to an unfair balance isn't why I go to the arcades in the first place.

And that's the problem Namco is having, they are trying F2P mechanics but then it's not really clicking with anyone. I ask you about Lost Swords because maybe you might be different. I tried being open minded for maybe a month of it but even I wasn't impressed. Just give me endless mode that's enough for me. Like back when SC1 was in the arcade (when it ran on the Tekken 3 engine) I did have a 40 win streak against other players.

It's odd because Dungeon Keeper really lowered the bar on F2P.

I enjoyed all the bonus modes in Soulcalibur and Tekken back in the day. They weren't great but when I wasn't playing against friends they were a bit of fun. Online multiplayer always seems daunting to me, as I enjoyed playing against friends who equally had no idea what they were doing, which you can't replicate online.

I understand what you're saying and I even thought that I wanted this once. However, what I really wanted was a cross between a Dynasty Warriors game and a Devil May Cry game. The character variety of a dynasty warriors game, but not the simplicity, and the movelist depth of a Devil May Cry game, but without its demands for mastery.

I too suck at fighting games even though I love them. I remember enjoying the SFA3 World Tour mode on PS1 but I couldn't tell you why... I'm afraid to boot it up and hate it so it'll just have to remain a mystery!

I think JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle tried to do the simple yet somewhat deep approach to its design but it didn't really click with a lot of people. Experienced fighting game players might have thought it felt too lacking while new players couldn't enjoy it to its fullest.

Although some can digest fighting games easily, I think developers need to really show newcomers on learning details such as "Why should you use this move and what are the advantages/disadvantages of using them" and whatever. Some players can't just learn the hard way by playing and playing. The main goal in most fighters is to make your opponent lose their health before you do but how are you going to make it work? Eventually you will need to know how to reach the end because the opponent will aim to do the same. Maybe it's the area in between understanding the goal and what to do to reach it that developers really need to address. Fortunately some games have done a decent job doing so although not optimal.

Soul Calibur 3 is a really strong singleplayer game, as were the first 2 Soul Caliburs. Plus it's not like the game's taken seriously on any competitive level to begin with.

I can't memorize combos so I can never get good at them. I always wanted to find a game and just master one character, but no matter how much I try I just can't seem to get them button combos memorized. Doesn't help that fighting games these days apparently list them in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics just to make it that much harder.

Personally I learned combos from getting familiar with what attacks trigger what and use reference videos to see what players do to combo. Timing is a concern too but you will get familiar with the pace of a combo. It takes time but enough dedication will benefit.