Just to start off, I thought the versus mode offline and online for SFV was great and probably the best in the series. I also think the offline versus mode in Tekken is great and probably the best in the series. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to connect to anyone online. I got the game Thursday and have only been able to connect for a game three times.

So I've been stuck with primarily playing the offline modes. I can't for the life of me understand why SFV got so much shit over its offline content and Tekken seems to be getting a pass. I thought the main story was pretty bad. Yes, the last few chapters were pretty great, but everything between press buttons to throw in volcano and the end was pretty meh.

The single character stories are all a single fight and seem pretty dumb from what I've played. The last one I did was there's a bear chasing me, oh no! Fight the bear. Oh, he was bringing me jewelry, too bad I killed him.

Yes there's an arcade mode, but it seems pretty pointless without endings. Pretty much, after a couple days, all you're left with is treasure battle, which is just endless versus against AI.

It's missing so much stuff compared to previous Tekken games as well. I'm not even talking about the goofy minigames and modes. It's missing Tekken staples like time attack, survival, and team battle. There's also no tutorial whatsoever or trials to teach you some combos even though Tekken is one of the most complex fighting games.

Why is Tekken getting a pass when Street Fighter was a disaster? I also would have preferred that they followed the SFV release strategy. Was the story mode really worth the two years we had to wait to get a console version?

SF V was worse I guess so standards lowered. To me all these games except Netherrealm should be getting killed for their singleplayer offerings. Netherrealm raised the bar years ago and it's sad to see how so many fighting game devs can hardly even give a shit with singleplayer to try to even remotely capture what NR offers for fans of fighters that like fighting solo. It really says a lot honestly. Comparatively it'd be like in the FPS space no developers doing any progression/RPG stuff after CoD 4 came out or something.

The lack of better training stuff (not quite sure how T 7 is in this area) and singleplayer is just indefensible.

Uh....because Tekken 7 HAS singleplayer content?

Street Fighter V literally shipped with nothing. Tekken 7 has a story, it has an arcade mode, and it has that (IMO) awesome and addictive treasure battle mode that lets you unlock a ton of stuff. There's plenty to do. I will grant you it isn't as good as some of the older Tekken games or the Netherrealm games with living towers and stuff, but it's definitely there.

The issue with SFV was not that its single player content was not good it was that it was non-existent. If it had just shipped with a basic arcade mode and endings nobody would have complained because it's street fighter.

That being said, they should definitely patch in survival mode and other stuff. I agree that it could be more robust. But to compare it to the SFV debacle is kind of silly. I mean it HAS an actual story mode! Even if you don't like it it does exist.

Also I love treasure battle. Unlocks aside, fighting against the various goofy costumes is a ton of fun for more.

Probably because even if the story mode is short, it has one. And treasure battle is meant to take a decent while to get through.

In Street Fighter V even a basic campaign was missing, which made the whole package seem unfinished. Was there even an arcade mode at launch?

@bigsocrates: You're definitely right but what T7 offers should get criticized too. It's bare bones IMO for a fighting game in 2017 when other developers have shown you what can be done. And on top of that, this is a game being adapted from the arcades and they couldn't add more?

@artisanbreads:

My point is not that you CAN'T criticize Tekken 7 for not having enough single player content. You can and perhaps should. My point is that the reason that it didn't get raked over the coals like Street Fighter did is that Tekken does give you stuff to do. Most people don't buy fighting games for single player content (though I play more single player than anything else TBH these days) but they want some kind of option to be there. Some way to try out new characters and goof around with learning stuff without fighting online. Tekken 7 gives them that so they don't really mind that it's not as robust as it should be. Street Fighter V was lacking that basic function.

That explains the difference in reaction.

If you still want to criticize Tekken 7 go ahead. It should have had more.

I disagree...there is a fun single player and treasure mode. T7 is leaps and bounda better than SF5 was at launch.

lol, dude SFV didn't even have an arcade mode and all you could do was practice and do single fights and that was it. That's why it got shit, you are literally comparing something with nothing lol.

edit: it did have that survival mode i guess, which only had single rounds and wasn't even a good way to practice.

@bigsocrates: Yeah I wasn't trying to say you were saying it can't be called out too but I just think SFV was one of the all time worst game launches, I don't even compare games to it that are coming out in full form at launch.

I also think the singleplayer fighting game market is bigger than these developers think. I am absolutely one of those and I have bought every NR game at launch except Injustice 2 now (though I will pick it up, I'm just poor). And I kind of actively dislike most of DC and I still will love Injustice 2 I am sure. I think NR's game sales show the value of the singleplayer fighter market. Maybe it's not the biggest part of the market but I think it allows almost any type of person to get into a fighting game.

So for me, compared to most fighters T7 is not worth "raking over the coals" as you put it but compared to what NR does I think yes it is for me. I also know some of that market doesn't give a shit about singleplayer though so I know they don't care like I do.

@bigsocrates: SFV had a story for each character and the survival stuff. Everyone also knew the story mode was coming as free DLC. The Tekken story takes like 2-3 hours to complete. Is an afternoon of content in a fighting game really the deal breaker. Wouldn't you have much rather been able to play Tekken 7 at home two years ago?

The criticism is based off of what SFV shipped with. First impressions are everything. If it had shipped with what it currently offers, it would be a different story.

Here's the offline content SFV shipped with, outside of vs and practice modes:

• Character stories
• Survival mode

Same deal, here's the offline content Tekken 7 shipped with:

• Main Story mode
• Character episodes
• Arcade
• Treasure Battle
• Player customisation
• Gallery

And then there's the launch roster. 16 (SFV) vs 38 (T7) playable characters.

I'm quite satisfied with what we got. I was impressed with the Mishima story-mode (outside of the bad narration), and would prefer it over, say Tekken Bowling. Seems like that's where most of the effort went in. And personally, re: individual character stories, I'd take the single fight + rendered cutscene over what SFV had. Is it the best offline content? No, but unlike SFV, it doesn't feel like I bought an incomplete game.

@sanj: I don't see how it feels any less incomplete than SFV if you compare it to what you got in previous Tekken games. Everyone complained about SFV removing things that were in 4. Tekken 7 is also missing a bunch of stuff.

I'm not even trying to argue that Tekken 7 isn't a better single player game than SFV, but why has there been hardly any criticism when there's barely more content and it's taken them 2 extra years?

@hunkulese: Story for each character and survival stuff is ok as far as it goes but it's not a base "play the game" arcade mode. It's not as repeatable.

As for your question of whether a 2-3 hour story is a deal breaker...no. It's not. And if the story is the reason the game was delayed 2 years that is indeed silly. I don't think it is though. I think it was delayed to try and make money off the arcade game in Japan (no idea how profitable an arcade game can be these days) and to balance the game and make revisions to it. They were also probably working on some of the costume and nameplate content and optimizing.

I guess I've just been playing fighting games for a very long time (since SFII) and I'm used to mediocre home conversions. Tekken 7 has a bunch of costume stuff and other things to mess with. if you want endings, it has every ending from every previous Tekken game (which isn't worth much if you've kept up with them all but is a neat inclusion.) It should have survival. It should have time attack. It should have some of that goofy stuff like Tekken Force and Tekken Ball. I agree with you (though maybe those extra modes are too expensive to make these days given the cost of game development?)

They probably don't want to include team battle because they're saving it for Tekken Tag Tournament 3. That's not cool.

I just think the reason that it's not getting criticized like Street Fighter V did is because it has THE basic thing (Arcade mode) and 2 more substantial modes besides. For most people that's enough to meet the low standards of fighting game home conversions.

@bigsocrates: I'd also argue they ruined the arcade mode by not including the endings. What's the point of playing through the arcade mode multiple times if you're not getting an ending.

You do know they were working on more than the story mode in those two years right? A bunch of stuff like Rage arts and several characters were not included in the game until the Fated retribution version they released last year. They have also spent that time balancing and refining the game. They are using a new engine for Tekken 7 (Unreal I think) and I remember hearing that the extra time allowed them to cut loading times down by a good chunk. So we could have gotten Tekken 7 a couple of years ago, but it would have been a very different game and would have been missing a lot more than just a story mode. I am not a fan of early access and personally I definitely prefer to get a fully finished product.

@hunkulese: Re: T7 and lack of previous modes, there is somewhat of a trade-off with the inclusion of the Mishima storymode. You may not have liked it, but it's clear that a lot of time and money went into its creation. Game development and what's marketable changes with the times. I'm no game development expert, but that Mishima Storymode probably took longer to develop than all of the offline modes in Tekken 3 combined.

At the very least it appeared there was a clear intent to offer something substantive in offline. The same could not be said for SFV.

There is some arcade stuff that I feel is missing but I havent touched online and ive played for about 10 hours and im not even close to bored yet.

Fighting games are always going to be more based on the main fighting than modes. Really it doesnt' have much less than Injustice 2 except living towers has the feeling of more to do because of its constantly updating random ladders.

I think the vast majority of people do play mostly offline and possibly mostly single player. We have a lot more information on this now thanks to achievements and percentages. For Mortal Kombat XL (a mature game) only 22.73% of Xbox players have unlocked the "win 1 complete online match" achievement. And that's for people who have their consoles hooked up to the Internet. And that's not ranked matches, that's any online matches. Even if you assume that some relatively large percentage of the remaining 80% are playing local multi-player, it's likely ~30% of players who never play any multi-player and higher than that who play primarily single player. 32.41% of players got 50% through story mode, so a lot more people are playing story mode than are going online (and it's likely at least 50% of players actually started story mode, even if they didn't get too far.) 40% of players completed a tower. Only 4.29% of players played 100 matches online.

In Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has 18.67% of players fighting 3 times in online mode, but that number may be screwed up because Microsoft gave the game away as part of a promotion and that always causes artificially low trophy/achievement percentages from people who play the game once to see if they like it and then delete it. Tekken 6 also has 3 matches in online mode at 18.51% though, so who knows?

Anyway, my point is, I think you're right. In general I think game developers focus WAY too much on the vocal hardcore crowd and not enough on the teeming masses who buy their games. This is across the board. Most games aren't even finished (VERY few games have an over 50% completion rate) yet developers happily leave difficulty spikes in games and take it seriously when hardcore players whine that something was too easy. Relatively few games have a "tourist mode" even though it's clearly needed for a lot of people, and nobody cares about single player in fighting games (except Netherrealm) even though it's clearly why a lot of people buy the games.

It's an industry wide problem.

@bigsocrates: Yeah you're right it's an interesting point as far as looking it a problem for other genres as well. I think it's just so glaring in fighting games. To me SF V should have been the game that comes out and maybe makes them finally consider this stuff (we will see going forward).

I wonder if other developers aren't affected in similar ways (for example, Bioware focusing too much on having X amount of content so the game is X hours long, or how they are so focused on having so many romance options because they have a vocal fan base for that).

I thought the Blaz Blue thing of basically a auto-combo type thing was cool to see. There are some baby steps I guess.

All I want is a structured, in-game way to learn how a character plays. I don't think that's too much to ask, but apparently only Arc Systems can deliver that anymore. Hell, even Injustice 2 and MKX aren't as good with this as Injustice 1 was with the STAR Labs stuff. If it wasn't for those, there are several characters (like Solomon Grundy) I never would have tried.

Like, I played Tekken 7 in an arcade once and had a blast. However, paying per match didn't really lead to me experimenting much and I was looking forward to the home version so I could play around with other characters at my leisure. Short of looking up videos online or going through characters 150+ move lists in practice and hoping to remember anything there's no way to learn anything. You can't really just mash stuff out as a lot of the strings are very specific on button presses (i.e., no over-pressing) and timing so playing as a character you don't know against AI just kind of sucks. Also knowing that there are fundamental game mechanics (Rage, Screw attacks) that the game doesn't tell you about outside of loading screen tips is way shitty.

I was able to wrap my head around Jack-O in Guilty Gear in like, one play session. After a couple of days with Tekken I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing and it's a real bummer.

@artisanbreads Persona 4 Arena also had the Auto Combo, and stuff like that, the tutorial, and the combo challenges are what made it the first fighting game I ever tried to learn on a higher level and still one of the most satisfying times I've ever had playing a fighting game. I wish there was one of PS4 SO BAD.

@artisanbreads: Honestly I thought MK 9 and MK X were going to be the games to change things. MK X was a blockbuster, selling 5 million copies at a relatively early point in the console cycle, and proving that fighting games could be tent pole releases even in 2015. A huge part of MK's appeal was its single player focus and storyline. So to see Street Fighter V take...no...lessons from that and release like it did was kind of baffling. Is still kind of baffling.

To be fair I think the developers of Tekken 7 did try to learn from MK X they just aren't as used to doing story stuff as Netherrealm. Also MK 9 had a better story mode, but that's sort of beside the point. The point is, to my knowledge the biggest sales successes in the genre over the last 5 years (with the exception of Smash Brothers, which is its own crazy thing) have had attention paid to single player. So yeah, you'd expect that to be a feature that developers focused on. Except that fighting game critics and enthusiasts don't really care about that stuff so the feedback they HEAR is "don't waste time with that stuff, focus on online VS!"

I am curious as to whether tournaments and the like make any money for fighting game companies. My understanding was that they actually lose money (because of the cost of sponsorship) and game sales/DLC were where the actual profit was, but maybe now with e-sports stuff Capcom can actually profit off the tournament scene? Don't know.

Eurogamer gave it some shit for lack of SP content but since they dont assign scores nobody cares. It's a shame really since Tekken 7 would've been the first Tekken game I bought since 3 if it had more going on. Oh well, hopefully this is just practice for SCVI. (they're the same guys right?)

@bigsocrates: I agree that developers should not only listen to the hardcore fans and that they should create better Single player content for their games, but I don`t know if we can put all of MKX success on the fact that it had a strong SP offering though I am sure it helps a lot. I think there is a few factors involved like the hyperviolence in the game which probably helps sell it to a non-fighting game audience (like myself).

On a side note: Tekken is apparently the best selling fighting game series. I just saw this while reading up on some stuff about Tekken 7. I am a bit surprised since I feel people tend to talk about Street Fighter as the clear number one fighting game series. I guess Tekken has more appeal with casual audiences?

I agree that there should be more, but really NRS is the only fighting game studio that does single player content right. Meanwhile, Capcom's SF series tends to set the bar and SFV came out with practically nothing so everything looks good compared to that.

@bigsocrates: Good points. I think maybe what keeps them going their current path is a hope for ESPORTS MONEY at the end of it somewhere. That's what SF V seemed to be after. I don't see it happening.

I can't really get why they don't learn or respond to NR either so I really have no answers there. I really can love Japanese games but I feel like this is one of those areas where some developers there just will not change or look at the market. It goes on in different genres I feel there, although I think recently Japanese development there has taken a big leap (games like MGSV, Nier Automata, Zelda: Breath of the Wild). I think fighting game wise it has not though. I know MK is looked down on to some degree traditionally and maybe that's still part of it.

Back in the Xbox/PS2 era I felt like fighting games were giving it a try for singleplayer content and making inventive things, even if it wasn't the best. Soul Calibur had weird stuff, as did the MK games at the time. Now they don't even really try at all. I'm just happy NR does though. Like loot in their new game is just great to me. Some hand ringed all the way up to release about it like "what about ranked?" when so many don't care and that's the exact thing that keeps you playing and is really rewarding to use.

I have not really played Blaz Blue, Guilty Gear, or any Arc games for a while now, I should give them a try. They seem to have some interesting stuff going on. I really did like Guilty Gear originally, the original Blaz Blue I just haven't kept up with it. The tutorial stuff I can really appreciate. To me that is a crazy neglected area of fighters, even more than single player. If these devs want to have it be multiplayer focused like they seem to want, it's even more crazy not to try to get more people into these games.

I thought the QL of the recent game looked awesome and I play on PC almost always so I think I'll pick that up at some point. I would love to use Auto Combo when I play with friends on the occasion that comes up because, although I'm no pro, it's usually just a not fun thing where I either smash on them or try not to and then play in a stupid not fun way on purpose.

Tekken 7 has a decent amount of singleplayer stuff, though less than Tekken 6 did. SF has always had shitty singleplayer except arguably 2 because the comp was challenging and no one knew how to play (Alpha 3 is pretty good, too); Tekken is kind of back and forth. Also having a game where execution takes time to develop can help the training room experience, SFV didn't have that for quite a while except possibly Karin (though DLC has improved that aspect).

@artisanbreads: SFV has esports money, it just doesn't have anything else. If too many Americans win all of that esports money then gradually the rest of the world will lose interest; while much of the esports gfuel flows from America it usually doesn't go to Americans not named Sonic Fox.

@odinsmana: Mortal Kombat is a huge franchise and the hyperviolence gets it attention, no doubt, but I think that the single player content is a big reason. I mean what's the point of appealing to a non-fighting game crowd if they're just going to buy your game and hate it because they get stomped online and there's nothing else to do? If you want to sell to non-fighting game people you sort of need to have a big singleplayer component because it gives those people something to do with the game (at least until they decide to git gud and try to actually compete.)

Non-fighting game fan: I bought this game for the cool fatalities but I don't want to get stomped online. What can I even do with it? Oh there's a 4 hour kung fu movie I can play through? And a bunch of rotating single player "towers" with weird modifiers? And a ton to unlock in a 3-D maze crypt mode? Holy shit!

That's how you get that non-fighting game fan to tell his friends about the game and buy the next installment.

As for Tekken being the best selling series, I think that has to do with when the games 'crested' in popularity. Tekken's reign was during the PS1 era, and the PS1 sold like 100 million consoles. Street Fighter was most popular during the SNES era, and that meant many fewer consoles to sell to. Tekken 2 and 3 were must-have PS1 games, and that let the franchise rack up the sales. I would be very surprised if Tekken 7 moves more than a couple million copies. It's a really good version of Tekken, but the King of Iron Fist just isn't the king anymore. My understanding is that the current big franchises from a sales perspective are Smash and MK, with Smash way out ahead.

I'd say Tekken 7 is pretty average regarding the amount of single player content it has. It's not invulnerable to criticism, of course, and I wish it had a tutorial mode or something like the lab in Tekken Tag 2, but it doesn't seem to be a completely barren single player experience either. The story mode is short but good enough, and the ancillary endings for each character are amusing for what they are. Even if it'd be just as easy to go to Youtube, the fact that they included all the cutscenes from the previous games and made brief summaries of each game's plot is really neat. I find most of the customization items to be pretty worthless, but I'm nevertheless somewhat compelled to unlock them and the treasure battle mode in which to do that is pretty good.

Single player content just isn't an important concern for modern fighting games. It's barely why people go to them except for the few games that still have some mainstream appeal, and the older we get the less fun we find it to play fighting games against AIs that read your inputs and don't even in the slightest bit prepare you for fighting against real people. NetherRealm's maybe been the one exception to this, though their games tilt in that direction a bit too hard for me in the sense that their single player modes are the only thing I like about any of those games. And ArcSys does visual novels, which is about as interesting to me as having no story mode at all.

One thing that baffles me, however, is when I see people compare this unfavorably to, say, Tekken 3, a game whose single player content was no more in depth than unlocking stuff by beating the game more times than anybody today would want to do, and, like, some game modes you never wanted to touch. That's hardly single player content, it's tedious busywork.

My guess is because scrubs like myself can't hang online.

Tekken 7 can't compare to Injustice 2, but not sure if that's a fair comparison given that IJ2 is probably the most robust single player fighter I've ever played. Tekken 7 is honestly a pretty good release, just not my cup of tea.

@gtb08: I can't speak for Injustice 2, as I only game on PC, but Injustice 1 was one of the best single player fighting game experiences I've had the pleasure of playing. I've been quite happy with the singleplayer in Tekken 7 though, despite the fact I absolutely hate fighting as Heihachi, and you're forced to play as him for most of the story, as it centres on him. I'm slowly working all my characters up as far as 1st Dan on Treasure Battle, before settling on any mains, and that's keeping me pretty occupied, even if I'll never actually use 97% of the cosmetics on offer.

Tekken is making big strides at the moment, possibly because unlike Injustice 2, it has a PC port (roughly 150k owners already according to SteamSpy), and it's one of the big household names people knew of growing up. Like @bigsocrates said, Tekken 2 and 3 both being killer apps at a time where everyone and their mother had a PS1 helped massively in that regard, and to a much lesser extent, Tekken 5 on the PSP also.

Because for a fighting game it has plenty of content?
NetherRealm is constantly leading and improving their single player offerings, Tekken 7 doesn't quite reach those highs, but it certainly isn't lacking. So far i have 44 hours in the game, i about 35 are single player.

It has more content and characters than SF5 did at launch (and still does character wise), the online works better (even before the patch) and the netcode is much, much better.

While it does have less content than Injustice, SF5 set a very low bar for the amount of content a fighting game should have.

It's also not a dumbed down game that is notably worse than its predecessor, but that is just me and my bitterness towards SF5 talking. :)

Capcom are an incredibly dumb company. They made Street Fighter 5 easier to appeal to casual players and yet didn't launch with any content for those casual players. Nobody is happy and the tournament scene is suffering because the game isn't as deep or hype as Street Fighter 4 (those two go hand in hand, somewhat).

What I will say is this, nobody has come close to matching Guilty Gear Xrd. That game is the fucking king of online play, amazing netcode and incredible game lobbies. Let's not forget the best in class tutorial, mission and combo modes. I would put Xrd above Injustice 2 for useful content.

The arcade version of Tekken 7 wasn't finished until late 2016. See here for what I believe is the last update and here for changelogs.

It went through a lot of changes balance wise, roster wise and graphically. You are not playing a 2 year old game, arcades are quite often used as a form of early access. It happened with some versions of Street Fighter 4 and most recently Guilty Gear Xrd & Tekken (duh).

I don't expect people who are not in the know to get this just from glancing at the game but can we stop peddling the idea that this is a 2 year old game? That's a half truth.

Because nobody cares about Tekken anymore?

My only real problem is the lack of tutorial. There's too much going on in this game to not have any sort of proper explanation of anything. I guess they expect the community to help shepherd in new players by sharing knowledge? Either way, it's 2017. As good as this game is - and it seems pretty darn good - that's completely unacceptable.

After I finally settled on a character and messed around in training mode for a bit, I spent the next few hours trying to find any good, comprehensive tutorial somewhere on the internet just so I could know what the hell is going on and to me, that's not okay.

Speaking of practice mode by the way, yeah, how the shit is there no trial mode? That is insane.

???

Not sure what that has to do with it. Games are rarely finished and Tekken 7 is no where close to being finished. There will be more balance changes, roster additions, and additional modes to come. I played Tekken 7 two years ago and would have loved to be able to play it at home. The changes that have been made in the last two years don't justify the wait for me.

@hunkulese: A game getting more features/content added overtime doesn't mean the initial release wasn't finished. Tekken 7 launched with all its options available and functioning (at least for the most part the online got fixed for PS4 in under week thankfully (not a year and a half and counting)). SFV launched with giant buttons on the main menu that said "CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE WAIT UNTIL APRIL YO" And then April came and they said, it's been delayed till late May and then late May came and they said you know what? Let's scrap that idea all together wait for the Story Mode in June and then you can just buy things directly from Steam or Sony because we were too incompetent to develop our own storefront.

@ivdamke: I uninstalled it ages ago, does SF5 have an Arcade mode yet? Or VS CPU other than the survival mode?

This is where I land on all of this. I haven't even played the game since release night because this was such a bummer, and honestly I kind of regret buying it because I just don't have the time/energy to learn a fighting game this way. It's a shame because I was really excited for this game.

Another game that isn't getting mentioned re: single player content is DoA actually. DoA 5 had stories, arcades, combo challenges, and move tutorials for every character and it's great.

@epidehl: Although no in-game tutorial is a real bummer I will say, even if it did exist you would be spending equal time learning the game regardless. It would just be easier to access the very bare basics of the game but it most certainly wouldn't cover everything you need to know.

Buying into a fighting game wanting to learn them when you're in the mindset of not having enough time/energy makes zero sense to me, even with the best tutorial in the world it's going to require a lot of energy and time on the players part to learn an FG.

@cikame: No Arcade mode but there is P1 vs CPU.

@ivdamke: It's not just the tutorial, combo challenges/trials are an integral part of how I get a grasp on a fighting game's mechanics. STAR Labs in Injustice 1 and Arc Systems' various challenge stuff between games are the reason they're probably the deepest I've ever gotten into a fighting game. After one run through with any Guilty Gear character of their challenges I feel like I have a basic idea of what they can do and "how to play them", which takes like, 15-30 minutes depending on how hard I try some of the advanced combos. I'm not doing high-level shit, but I get what I should be doing for the purposes of playing vs. CPU or with friends, and that's what really matters to me.

The way Tekken is, which also just has to do with how it feels in general, I feel like I need to look up tutorial/combo videos for any character I want to even fuck around with in a casual way, because other I end up just doing one-two punch/kick combos over and over, and that's just tedious.

@epidehl: The move list has several sample combos for every character that also demonstrate what extends a combo and what juggles from what. It just doesn't make a ding noise for you when you do it.

@epidehl: The movelists do all have a couple of sample combos, but I honestly feel like having combo challenges would teach you very little about a character in the case of Tekken. The better thing to look at would be something like this: https://drunkardshade.com/2017/05/27/tekken-7-top-15-moves-for-all-characters/ (You have to scroll down a bit to get to it). It might be a bit hard to decipher if you're unfamiliar with the notation and terminology (I can help if you have any questions), but I think just taking a few moves that have really good utility is a much better way to get a basic grasp of a character than knowing combos. A really basic combo that just goes launcher >> string that ends in a tailspin (denoted by the green corkscrew icon on the movelist) >> single high damage move as ender is going to basically be good enough if you have a few basic moves and a gameplan.

It is a shame that T7 doesn't have a tutorial, especially since Tekken Tag Tournament 2 had what one might call an excellent tutorial, but Tekken IS a very complex game. The basic barrier to entry is lower than most fighting games if you just want to mash out some strings, but the gulf between there and even being ok at the game is massive, the skill ceiling is RIDICULOUS and the unfortunate truth of the matter is that even if it had a tutorial, it'd be very hard for that to effectively cover everything worth knowing. There are definitely good resources out there. Aris over at Avoiding The Puddle has been streaming a bunch and offering tips and doing little tutorials and stuff and those are getting clipped and put on his youtube channel (here's a playlist of the tutorials), so that's definitely worth a look.

As to the question of the thread, I don't really care about single player content in fighting games that much, because it's not what I come to them for, but I still think it's insane that SFV launched with no way to play a standard best of three rounds against the AI. Just two choices of game modes that were 1 round, one where you started with full meter, and the other where you might not start the round with full health and there could be weird modifiers on damage or things like that. Modes where you either don't have to worry about meter management or you can't use your health as a resource the way you would in a normal match. It just seemed so bizarre that there was basically no vs AI mode that was actually just a normal Street Fighter experience. I haven't played the game in a while, so for all I know, this could still totally not be an available option?

There is a very big difference between a game not being finished and a game being a little thin on content.

So you wanted the original arcade release with like 12 missing characters, only versus mode, worse graphics and frequent stuttering?

I don't really get your angle here. If you are complaining about a lack of content the arcade release is the last thing you should want.

Honestly comparing this to Street Fighter V is such a joke to me, that game is still on fire...they haven't fixed CFN despite more beta tests (that's generous, the game has basically been in beta since before release), the netcode has not been mentioned once (it's hot garbage) and they are frequently slow with delivering their season pass characters. The last time they mentioned the NPC battle mode (Ghost Bison etc) was over a year ago and they still haven't added two features that SF4 had in 2009: training mode saving your settings and player 2 being able to hit rematch/char select. No arcade mode, no car/barrel crushing, lobbies that feel incredibly outdated compared to Guilty Gear, a UI that feels like a placeholder, the list goes on and on. A fighting game with a tiny playerbase should not need 8 hours of maintenance every week.

SFV is a nightmare product. The best way to approach a new fighting game is to hold them up to the standard of Injustice 2 and Guilty Gear Xrd, those games have lots of content and in Xrd's case, a remarkable amount of content to help you truly learn the game at a high level. Tekken doesn't hang with those two but it's a much better effort than SFV.

@wynnduffy: My point is that Tekken 7's offline offering is garbage, just as SFV's offline offering is garbage. Who really cares which garbage smells worse? After playing through all the Tekken endings I can confidently say that SFV's character stories were a lot better and that's something I didn't think anyone would ever be able to say with a straight face. SFV at launch was a much better experience for me. The only thing that matters in a fighting game is offline/online versus and SFV worked flawlessly for me. It took a week before I could get an online match in Tekken. And yes, I would have loved to have been able to play Tekken 7 at home 2 years ago. Who cares if they were still adding characters? What else do you need in a fighting game besides versus and a training mode? I don't know where you live, but even finding an arcade with fighting games is a hassle for me and is much more expensive than $60 to learn a game.

It's a shame SFV didn't do so hot because I would love if future fighting games were available as soon as the versus mode was done.

The reason it matters that Tekken is better than SF is that you specifically compared and asked about them in the OP. Also obviously for a lot (if not most) people Versus and training is not the only thing that matters. Otherwise people wouldn`t be praising Netherrealms story modes and lamenting SFVs lack of one.

As to why they didn`t release it two years ago. People are currently very fed up with games being released unfinished (see No man`s sky or SFV), so releasing the game and promising free updates is not a good idea for the company. They could sell it as an early access game, but that brings a whole lot of other weirdness and also would mean that they couldn`t launch on PS4. It just doesn`t make sense for them to release it two years earlier to satisfy the most hardcore fans considering what it will cost them from a PR perspective (and in other ways too).

@hunkulese: This is a very close minded selfish point of view, and I have a hard time taking you even remotely seriously when you claim SFV's online vs worked for you at launch. It's widely known that the CFN servers could barely stay up for more than a few minutes until after a week of its launch cutting literally everybody out of being able to play online when they were down.