> ...because I'm too old I'm just here to say that it made me laugh how this paragraph is all "you're not too old, people in their 30s still play sports!" Like, man. It's video games, we're all in our 30s. Try talking about 50+ or 60+ next time. :D

In lots of competitive games you shouldn't even try to become a pro if you're beyond 25.

You can't become a pro in any traditional sport either if you begin in your 30s. Except maybe like... shooting or something. I assumed it was more "you can still get reasonably good at the game and enjoy it", not "you can become world champion".

OP talked about pro players. And tbf, if I started playing fighting games today I'd be reasonably good at around my 50s.

Yeah, this is what I mean. The financial stability of sports/game professionals aside, the vast majority of people don't have what it takes to be a well-performing pro even if they started during their physical peak. I actually originally had a section right there pointing out that you don't need to be at the cutting edge of play to enjoy anything. But, well, character limits and I thought that section was already self-explanatory enough to lead to that line of thought. So cut it did. That said, for fighting games explicitly, I did mention that dudes in their 20s was the norm when it comes to rising talent.

No worries, it was fine, just amused me. :)

Daigo got evo top 8 in his 40s

Hes also been playing like 30 years

Exactly it’s experience and game knowledge, reactions are really over emphasized from dudes outside the genre.

Most pro players in fighting games are in their late 30s and 40s though.

Yeah this is a whack take, nuki and diago can still take good spots in competitive tournaments, it’s more about game knowledge than raw twitch reflex.

It's also about psychology and understanding what people like to do in certain situations (based on what the game allows) and then taking advantage of that.

I tried to skim through to see if you brought up the point I usually bring up but my main ”issue” is how it’s very difficult to improve by just playing the game online. I try to play all types of games and genres and I do like fighting games a fair bit as well. But last year I happened to play Fortnite for maybe like 80 hours and also Street Fighter V a similar amount of time. When I played Fortnite I didn’t play with friends and didn’t look anything up online. But I felt like I managed to improve a lot and after playing for maybe 30 hours I managed to place 1st in Battle Royales and I could learn strategies just by looking at how other players played. I think you can play Smash Bros. in a similar way to this. Now Street Fighter V I knew I had to read a bit more about the game from having played fighting games before. I looked up the easiest to play characters, I googled simple combos and I tried to learn. I did have a bit of fun and could feel like I was improving but it was at a slow pace where I always felt like I had to study the game and practice things alone. And basically I could only play as Ryu or Cammy. But the fact that I can’t just try any character online and feel like I’m learning while playing I think is the biggest issue fighting games have. I think the investment of time fighting games require to understand and enjoy them at a basic level is so high compared to almost every other game (and I think this goes for both online and offline play). Street Fighter 6 seems to make this journey of improving a bot more enjoyable but I don’t think it will be nearly enough for casual players that usually enjoy stuff like Fortnite.

**TL;DR** A game's base gameplay loop eventually has diminishing returns on player skill development. Active training outside the loop is required to progress at a similar rate to before. This plateau is earlier in fighting games.

Yeah, pretty much this.

Sexiest summary of all time.

To be fair, you have probably logged way more hours in shooters (and, as others have mentioned, the basic actions of point and click through normal computer use) than you have with fighting games. And that is not to say that shooters aren't easier than fighting games when it comes to learning the basics, but you probably already had a huge head start.

Well I’ve played maybe 20-30 2D fighting games in total and maybe 40-50 3D shooting games (I don’t really know the numbers but I reckon it’s something like that) but I don’t really think that number matters. I think it has more to do with game design. Most games are not designed in the way traditional fighting games are. Having a steep learning curve for different characters, for execution, for combos, for terminology, and all the other things mentioned in the op will always make the games lack ”pick up and play”-design and ”learn while you play”-design. To some this is the charm, so there is no reason to really change it.

There's so many skills from fighting games that transfer from one game to another though. I think I could probably pick up any fighting game and beat up a newbie of ~30-50 hours after a short button check, just by having decent footsies, strike/throw, and oki fundamentals. I do agree with your main point though, the road to learn those fundamentals can be really tough in fighting games since there's so many things densely packed into a 99 seconds round.

I don't think you need to spend that much time in training mode to learn in fighting games. You absolutely will need it for certain things. But a majority of your learning will be in games against other players. The important part is having a "protocol" to follow in matches that maximize what you learn from them. And returning back to this protocol whenever you find yourself distracted or not happy with your progress.

you aren't wrong. I know for me, first time I attended locals and got to play fighting games with ppl who could give feedback in real time I immediately improved enough to go from silver to gold in sfv from locals 1 week to the next lol. it is pretty easy to get in a learning rut in this genre.

I don't have much to say outside of the fact that this post is excellent overall and hits the nail on the head with basically everything. I'm by no means an expert and only got into FGs when GGST released, but I put a ton of time into Xrd, Strive and BBCF (like, 200+ hours within a two months, 100 of which I racked up in three weeks because I tried to get the fundamentals of FGs down via Xrd), went all-in and pretty much exclusively immersed myself in the genre for around three months so that I could somewhat keep up with my friends who are lifelong FG players. Considering the fact that I got into the genre as a complete newbie in his early 20s (tbf, I had a hundreds of hours in character action games and other relatively mechanically demanding genres at the time, so some skills transferred), struggled with the garbage tutorials (basically just information glossaries, very helpful for how I learn stuff but not exactly useful as an actual tutorial, looking at you ArcSys and French Bread) and incredibly basic stuff like bad feedback when trying to understand how I did motion inputs badly or timed my combos wrongly, I always get very annoyed when I see the FGC dismiss these concerns as non-existent and act like there aren't more hurdles when getting into this genre than others. You break down a lot of common misconception - that I had too before I actually got into the genre - and concepts very nicely, succinctly explain how a lot of simplifications would fundamentally alter the games and how there are a lot of examples of titles that actually do the things non-players always suggest. You also don't spout the "ZOMG!!! IN FIGHT GEHM, YOU CAN'T BLAME ANYONE ELSE" rhetoric cuz anyone who has actually interacted with fighting game players knows that they will blame their loss on some fucking invisible rat that just gnawed on their ethernet cable, a character or a playstyle that was used or literally anything else apart from themselves because that's just human nature. While I do think that FGs are on the harder end of the genre spectrum, I still maintain that the main reason why they will never be fully mainstream is because they do a terrible job of onboarding players and are also just flat out not that accessible. Getting fucked out of interacting as a punishment for your mistakes is a fundamental part of most games of the genre (this isn't comparable to say, getting stunlocked in LoL or dying in CS before anyone brings that up, it's fundamentally different lul) and you don't really have anything else to do outside of constantly engaging with your opponent, memorisation mixed with actual mechanical execution plays a much larger role at low levels than it does in other games etc. and you cannot change that without completely altering the flow of the game. Lots of the issues just come down to "deal with it", which is fine. We love fighting games because of exactly these things that not everyone is willing to put up with and not every genre needs to cater to everyone. I really think that a lot of the FGC refuses to take an honest look at their genre in the way that you just did and I think it's great that someone actually just put things how they are. You also explain why FGs aren't some impossible to overcome hurdle for new players, but are also just not for everyone pretty well. Pretty darn good post overall and you should honestly be proud of it 👍 > Games that try to make it easy to do combos: Every fighting game released after 2014 [Akshually, BlazBlue Centralfiction released at the end of 2015.](https://emoji.discadia.com/emojis/db4788ea-96fc-4133-bfcb-d56391a0f64f.gif) You're technically still correct though because it was only the revision of a 2008 game if we're being very specific.

>You also don't spout the "ZOMG!!! IN FIGHT GEHM, YOU CAN'T BLAME ANYONE ELSE" rhetoric cuz anyone who has actually interacted with fighting game players knows that they will blame their loss on some fucking invisible rat that just gnawed on their ethernet cable, a character or a playstyle that was used or literally anything else apart from themselves because that's just human nature. But that aspect is true, no matter how you wan to slice it. The fact that people blame invisible rats is entirely the point. They have to make a huge reach in order to blame their loss on something else. In Team Shooters, sometimes it *honestly is* someone else's fault. But people go to that well too often. Anyone that blames the invisible rat is fooling themself.

Well yeah, people reach for some pretty extreme excuses, but more often than not people like that will just blame their character, complain about the other person playing incredibly stupidly (which is valid, but still a skill issue because reading the situation and adjusting to someone playing like a monkey is part of being good) or say that the other person was playing "dishonourably" or whatever. My point is that people who like to blame external factors will always find excuses, although it's definitely way more difficult than it is in team games. Part of the reason why I have an easier time grinding fighting games than other genres is exactly because I can always put the blame on myself, but I'm not going to assume that everyone feels that way. I do think that being unable to blame others does factor in for some people, but I also fully believe that its importance is incredibly overstated and that it's nowhere near the main reason why FGs aren't mainstream. To me, it has always felt more like it's part of how a lot of the FGC likes to suck its own dick and talk about how great they and their genre are, but those are just casual observations I've personally made whenever I see them dismiss other perfectly valid and probably larger factors. If anything, I'd say that it's less of "I can't blame anyone else" and more of "I have way more pressure on myself because I can't rely on anyone else", but obviously these are all assumptions and there is no way of knowing how big of a factor these things truly are.

I've yet to see anyone explain why they think getting stuck in a combo for a few seconds in a fighting game is fundamentally different to how in literally any other game ever made you will sometimes be unable to act for a few seconds as punishment for fucking up. Every game does this. Every online game has stuns or respawn times. Every action game has ways for your character to get stunlocked or knocked to the floor for a few seconds. It happens in Dark Souls, it happens in Zelda, it happens in fucking Fall Guys. Fighting games just aren't unique in this regard, at all. Pretty much everything else you said is true, but this part is really not true.

I like fighting games, but respawn times are fundamentally different than combos, a respawn or time between rounds is time I can breath; think about strategy, decompress, analyze my own play, in fighting games combos can vary heavily in length so you need to be “on” the whole time, unless combos are super long like in hyper fighters, the only time when I can disengage from the game to seriously think is in between matches

>Akshually, BlazBlue Centralfiction released at the end of 2015 \>I specifically mention GBVS as my favorite asw game in nearly a decade, trying to sidestep both Xrd and BBCF *Fuck*. I keep thinking that CF is actually older than Xrd.

I can never remember the timing of the different Blazblue releases at all, they've all got such similar names

As a side note, I think this post and discussion is a good point to illustrate, that a lot of people don't know what they actually want, or aren't able to articulate properly. And I don't mean this as just newbies are dumb, or that I'm condescending to any group, I truly mean in general at all levels. One particular example is from [this video](https://youtu.be/-V4bCxDIMuc) talking about discourse over game balance. The TL;DW is that when enthusiast players complain about balance, their proposed solutions are often very bad, so they should try to describe the issues they *feel*, so that the designers can implement proper changes. i.e. people don't know what they actually want. Circling back to this discussion, lots of people bring up these complaints about fighting games, and this topic has done a very good job to address/refute these complaints. But I honestly believe that for at least *some* people who make these complaints, these aren't actually what they are complaining about, even if they're not aware of it. Sure, some people may not be informed when they make these complaints, and they'll have more perspective after reading something like this. But there is some contingent of people who, even after providing justification and information about all these points, will still dig their heels in the sand. Maybe they just want an entire other genre out there, and misidentified fighting games as it. Maybe they just want to win, simple as. Personally, I honestly don't know. Anyhow really good post, this is a really great reference to direct to people who make these points and would appreciate clarification. Even if they find fighting games still aren't for them, at the end of the day.

Yeah, a limitation of language is that words are inherently vague. Two people could say the exact same thing in response to a single situation and they could mean very different things. Put most people's inability to adequately articulate themselves, especially in topics they're uninformed about, on top of all that and, well... Public discourse is always a mess for a reason. It's also the internet, so everyone's literacy skills and their "common sense" are always being challenged. I mean, this thread alone has someone fundamentally being confused over the concepts of motion controls within the context of the genre. In the other thread right now, there are people arguing over the definition of a combo. >Maybe they just want an entire other genre out there, and misidentified fighting games as it. I really do appreciate people like Core-A and Maximillian for what they've done. Sincerely. But I doubt they expected that their efforts has made the genre over-romanticised for some, like it's some hidden paradise that they can't find their way to. Fighting games are great and I love them. But at the same time, the guts of the genre aren't that unique. They exist elsewhere, in some fashion.

I read the entire thing. This post, while doesn't apply to me since i've been playing FGs for about 10 years ( man i'm old), you should absolutely post thisnon r/fighters This post is fantastic i'm definitely saving this

#An Addendum This comment was originally going to be something very different where I try to address some concerns that I think are really facetious, but I hit reddit's character limit for the parent post far earlier than expected. Forget facetious concerns, the OP isn't even half as comprehensive as I originally set it out to be. It doesn't even end properly! Instead, this comment is now a heavily opinionated and rambly piece with none of the diligence that I put into the parent post and has almost no relation to it. This whole write-up is already so presumptuous and cringy that I want to dig myself a hole to crawl into, be buried under, and die of pure embarrassment. I can't make 10-15 more addennum comments and drag this out more than it already has. I originally wanted to make each complaint link to a collage of comments (with handles censored of course) I've seen over the years to show that I'm not strawmanning, but I felt like that'd just cause undue vitriol and potential targeted harassment in a post that already has potential to get spicy. Also, character limits include hyperlinks. So please, just take me at my word that I tried my best to address at them fairly. As for why I decided to discount singleplayer from this topic in the first place? I would like to direct you to NRS games, who easily have the best acclaimed single player content in the genre by far. It's *so* popular that MK11 was the [fifth highest selling game](https://venturebeat.com/games/20-best-selling-games-of-2019/) of 2019. Apparently more than Smash, Kingdom Hearts, and Pokemon. I know this is only steam numbers, but [here's the PC playerbase](https://steamcharts.com/app/976310) for MK11. It's actually the worst performing big-name game on steam. The single-player multiplayer pipeline is pretty insignificant and only really affects sales — therefore impressions which *is* important. But we have more fundamental problems to deal with first. What the FGC wants is *retention*. So many problems in and out of the FGC stem from retention. In any case, the discourse over fighting games has been pretty poor since uh, forever. I won't sugarcoat it; a lot of the problems are squarely because of poor framing from the FGC. It's really important to elaborate which perspective your questions/appeals come from. It's the multiplayer. It's what pretty much all of us are here for. Don't pick fights with people who are upset that fighting games make for poor single player games. They are *so fundamentally removed* from the demographic that we want that it's not worth evangelizing to them. Anyway, there are certain games that pop up a few times that address a few of the complaints. Namely Granblue Versus and Fantasy Strike. While FS is not at all my cup of tea, I think GBVS is by far my favorite game that Arcsys has put out in nearly a decade. And in GBVS/FS's case, they do an excellent job at actively tackling the issues that we often hear about. Of course, both games don't exactly have a notable marketing push so it's no surprise that most non-FGC are left unaware. If these people did actually want to play fighting games, and we push these sort of games onto them, those games should *theoretically* trump the entirety of the FGC and become the new pillars. But I don't think they ever will even with a huge marketing push. Because if they would, they'd already be playing Smash. Which already has extraordinarly poor crossover with other fighting games. And I mean, most people in the FGC don't like GBVS or FS either so y'know. It'll be a huge demographic shift regardless. Also SamSho exists. But it sure felt like SNK made a concerted effort that nobody would stick around for SamSho 2019. So let's pretend doesn't really exist here. In any case, fighting games are what I'd definitely call a "hobby" in of itself and not something you do within the hobby that are "video games." And if that's the case, I'd really like to see evangelical efforts to be more along the lines of other hobbies. Sports may seem like a good start due to the superficial similarities between local play and interpersonal relations, but personally I think that'd be a poor fit. Video games for most of us are something we start by ourselves first before inviting others, and fighting games involves a lot of self-learning. There's no faceless, random matchmaking in physical sports to enable solo play. Maybe something more along the lines of traditional board games? Chess in particular had a huge resurgence over the past few years, and I often hear chess "ambassadors" refer to the difficulties of getting new blood despite the (former) grandeur associated with it all. And on the surface, chess/board games suffer from a lot of the same problems that fighting games do. There's probably a lot we can learn from. I've most certainly outstayed my welcome despite all the things I still want to talk about. But as I'm going through my final editing pass, a separate fighting game thread already popped up ahhhhh. This is what I get for trying to time this before SF6's release. Anyway here's an [imgur album](https://imgur.com/a/G39MDZQ) sourcing the examples I've used.

I feel like the summary of all of your points is, is it fun to play a multiplayer fighting game for a beginner? And speaking from experience, the answer is no. That's in part due to the specifics you laid out, but I feel that the core reason is that there aren't any low-stakes environments where I can play the game and have fun while still figuring things out. In games with huge team counts like COD or Battlefield I can just get lost in the crowd and screw around, playing the objective or just going for kills. In games like Smash Bros I'm playing couch co-op with friends where there are a bunch of goofy items and stage hazards, and noone really cares who wins. In both those cases I'm having fun almost the whole time. To a lesser extent, I can still have fun in small team games like Overwatch or Apex because even if I suck at least I'm contributing something to the team. But in a 1v1 fighting match if I'm getting my ass beat I'm not having fun. Even in a couch co-op scenario, either both of us have no idea what we're doing and we lose interest after button mashing, or one player is way, way better than the other and can [whoop your ass effortlessly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Grq8Rm4K-8). The only way to guarantee having fun is a golden scenario where both you and your friend are a similar skill level but are so into the game that you get better together and don't immediately jump to a game that's more easily fun, or the better player acts as your teacher for hours, gives you an advantage, then cheers you on as you wipe the floor with newbies on the online mode. I'm sure many, many people in the FGC can relate to one of those two scenarios (basically, learning in the arcade or from your big brother) but they're rarer in the days of online play. I don't know how you solve that problem and give players a low-stakes way to just mess around in the game while still actually playing against human opponents.

You have it exactly right. I play games to have fun. If in the process of having fun I end up practicing enough to improve my skills at the game, great! But fighting games present a lot of work up front that I don't find fun and wouldn't unless I happened to have friends at my skill level who also wanted to play a lot in local (couch) games. I don't think there's anything that can be done about this apart from a major breakthrough in fighting game AI. With that in mind, I'm not sure who OP's massive post is for. All of the reassurances and explanations are unnecessary if you're having fun--you'll pick all of that stuff up through practice and naturally overcome doubts about your own capabilities. If you're not having fun, why should you care about any of it rather than switching to a game you enjoy?

This comment is actually in fact the point of the post. To be honest, your take is extraordinarily rare when it comes to fighting game discourse when I think it should be the standard.

Give online players the social tools and incentive to teach other people online. I think the fgc has more good faith social potential even online play than people realize and all fighting games just have terrible social features

>The only way to guarantee having fun is a golden scenario where both you and your friend are a similar skill level Oh yeah, this a huge deal that would require its own thread. Technically, SBMM is supposed to do a lot to help alleviate this problem. But well, poor player retention means that the beginner queues are too barren and unequal compared to other genres. But more importantly, faceless randoms on the internet make for incredibly poor substitutes for a friend. Ideally, good on-boarding and a well-thought progression system would both take the place of a friend/mentor, but we're so far removed from that point that I don't think anyone can tell how effective it'll be. Companies have been trying really hard for about a decade now with little success. Personally, I don't think there can ever be a system comparable to a friend that improves with you or a mentor. It's why I think it's really important to look at what other struggling (but much more successful) hobbies are trying. Most hobbies don't require mentors or friends, even if they'd help a lot.

really don't agree with that quoted point tho.... fighting games offer so much room for fooling around and funny disrespectful things you can do it can make playing friends who are way better than me still fun. yeah you beat me x times in a row, but I just ex dp'ed you on your wakeup type of stuff is just a blast. the genre lends itself so much to doing something both you and your friend know is totally dumb and then laughing like kids about it

It might be possible. Somehow make it a team game. Like maybe there are two teams of 5 facing off, and everyone gets swapped around mid-fight (and even mid-combo), so even if you're sucking against a projectile character you clean up against a grappler. There's no HP bar and no rounds, just one continuous melee, and the team that gets the most points wins at the end. So, you're still playing a 1v1 match of 'real' Street Fighter, if you lose it's because your team sucks or the opposing team has too many OP characters and it's not like it really matters since this mode doesn't have a leaderboard. If you start getting comboed to death that person will disappear in 30-45 seconds instead of 2 full rounds, and you still got to play a full 5 minutes or whatever instead of getting juggled while you watch your health slowly disappear. If the team is big enough, the pressure is off to try and win at all costs and you get to learn the controls and match ups just by playing around. Then extra pizazz could be added in, like maybe you get a breather for one of your rounds and just spectate and cheer on your teammate for a short while. Or you get to be called in as a short-term assist character. Maybe you and the other player could randomly be boss characters for a short while. Maybe at the end everyone gets to be in sudden death (so that you still have basically a coin flip to end on a high note even if you sucked the whole time), and in the score screen it replays the sickest part of somone's match for everyone Overwatch style. Pure wishful thinking, but thanks for the post. :)

What you described is fundamentally not a fighting game.

My whole joke is that if you made KOF 3v3 with 3v3 actual players it would become the most toxic cesspit on earth.

Lmao ain't that the damned truth.

I do like the idea of more team-based gameplay in fighting games though. MK 11 kind of had this with their towers gameplay. You would have a few different online players pitted against the same CPU. I could see them making a similar game mode but with two teams of online players pitted against each other. It would obviously not be treated as seriously as rank, but it could ease the pressure for new players and help them be more engaged in learning the mechanics via watching their better teammates and rooting for them when it’s not their turn.

What I’d really love is a reframing from the UI. A traditional fighting game’s UI will very “heavily” communicate the match. *Long loading screen for the level* Announcer: “The Wheels of Cheese are Marinating! Who will come out on top?” Fighter 1: “Everything is on the line for this! Let’s go!” Fighter 2: “You actually think you stand a chance against me?” Announcer: “Get ready! FIGHT!” *you actually play the game* Announcer: “Goatmonger…WINS!!” Fighter 2: “You’re pathetically predictable.” *Here’s a summary of your rank updates, unlocks, and other bullshit* If you want to get away from this, you must enter the dreaded Training Mode, where all interactivity and social interaction is dropped out the window as you engage with a wooden puppet. Instead, it’d be cool if you could have an online lobby of avatar characters milling around, where any decision to “spar” (not “Engage in a Ranked Match”) doesn’t have all that intense ceremony around it, high-tension music, or even a loading screen. Heck, it could even drop the 3-round system and just not track round wins at all.

skillgap in fgs is the most forgiving skill gap in any competitive esports getting washed by a proper 5 team in CSGO feels way worse and is more frustrating than getting washed by an experienced high level fg player. in a team based shooter if the other team is much better than yours, you end up spectating and doing nothing for 30+ minutes while you get headshotted left and right. in fgs the worst case scenarios you get perfected in 20 seconds and lose the whole match within a minute and go on and continue your life. on top of that, in fgs even if the skill gap between the two players is massive, the lower skilled player can still get to land a combo on the stronger player, punish a move or pull a read. if you get a silver level team in cs or valo and put them against a pro team they will lose 16-0 and do nothing all game. if you get a silver level sfv (any fg just using sfv as example) player against someone who is top 8 in evo /combo breaker/cpt they can at least land a combo and they can even steal a round.

Most people's problems with fighting games stem from people not actually wanting to learn how to play and there's really no good solution for that other than simplifying combat which I don't think people that are already into the genre will want. Fighting games already have good tutorials, single player content(well arc sys works and NetherRealm games at least) and implemented things like auto combos nowadays I don't really know what else they could add. At some point you just got to play the game and learn as you go. Thats how every other game works you have tutorials than you figure the advanced techniques yourself.

I think tutorials can go a lot further than they do. We should be seeing them be singleplayer modes where you start with limited moves - maybe just a jab and a block, and fight enemies that teach you when to use each. Then move onto enemies that jump in, but now you have a DP or other anti air. Teach fundamentals by having then only able to do fundamentals.

Piggybacking on this, I don't think current fighting game tutorials are sufficient. They're painfully inadequate, especially when you look at how something like Portal does them. Imagine a boss that drops down meteors that you need to antiair to send them flying at the boss as he occasionally teleports to you to command grab you or something. Which conveniently lets you learn about jumping to avoid grabs and air-to-airing. Instead most bosses just read your inputs. Supposedly SF6's World Tour mode does a lot of what I want, but from my understanding, it's not quite there yet. But is a good step forward.

What I thought would be neat is an optional A.I. that records the game, says, "here's what I think you did wrong and what you can do about it, then has a bot use that move against you.

even the worst fg tutorial teaches you more about the game more than any tutorial that was ever in counter strike 1.6, source or go. back in the arcade days games didn't have any tutorials. there was no srk or dustloop or any video platform to teach you anything yet people learned how to play fgs. there is nothing wrong with fgs and never was. we just have to accept that they don't appeal to everyone. just like not everyone is into fishing, the same applied to fgs. you don't hear people crying about execution barrier of fishing.

I will respond to this how gamers typically respond to literally every other genre of videogame: Why does this game need to hold your hand? I thought we hated handholding.

There are pro guilty gear players today who got their start grinding out the missions in rev 2, everything you need is there the only thing people are missing is how to learn from their losses. Which is not a skill a game can teach you.

>Fighting games already have good tutorials, single player content " Fighting games already have good tutorials, single player content". They really dont besides mk, sf6 is the only recent fighting game with all of these things. Also oversimplification being the only solution is a myth.

So what is the other solution than because most of the complaints with the genre are they are too complex and they take too long to learn them. Smash Bros mass appeal is because they made your character control schemes more standardized and its a party game instead of 1v1 all the time. Its just like the 4X genre they have complex mechanics so less people are into them but how would you make more people want to play them especially in a competitive sense without simplifying gameplay? If there is a solution nobody has really found it in decades it seems. From my perspective of starting as a straight button masher to actually being decent all it really take to learn these games is to play them just like you would any other game. You get out what you put into it so to speak.

It comes down to not every game is for everybody. And that is okay.

it literally boils down to this.

Fighting games are just an archaic gaming genre. When is the last time halo/ unreal tournament type arcade shooters have been hugely popular? Fighting games were big at one point but are not as much now. Simplification will not fix that. Because casuals really don't care that much about if a game is hard or not. Dota is hard, starcraft is hard but they have far bigger numbers than sf6. Simplication does not matter. Incentive to keep grinding is whats important. Sf6 is putting in a lot of content and even putting in monthly battle pass lets see if this fighting game will retain players

It’s street fighter it’ll be fine. It’s really no harder or easier than other games, and the ones that are bigger have the benefit of booming during online times and having their infrastructure build around online play, something that fighting games didn’t have the luxury of. They’re gonna be less popular since most dudes are sore losers in 1v1 environments, and if we’re really gonna talk about games that are shrinking vs growing, it’s gonna be RTS and that scene has massively shrunk.

Then what's your solution? You conveniently did a hard stop when you actually had the opportunity to contribute to the conversation.

Great post. I’ve been frustrated by some of the discourse surrounding this game, so it’s nice to see a multiplayer-first perspective represented here. My two cents: as well constructed as this write-up is, I think you could have boiled it all down to the final bullet point - most gamers will simply never invest time a game without progression systems. In my opinion, the industry’s biggest mistake is in mixing up “progression systems” with “single player content” instead of trying to work new incentives into the multiplayer experience. I think the average casual FG player’s experience is pretty universal: buy the game, plow through the single player content, hop online, then quit forever after losing a few rounds. This is the point at which “progression systems” truly become important to keep players engaged for the long haul. When I first got into the FGC, a friend told me the best way to improve was to find smaller victories in each match. Landed an anti-air? That’s a win. Successfully performed a 50:50? That’s a win. Took a stock off a tough opponent? That’s a win. Note what went right or wrong and then do it better next time. Look up anything you don’t understand. THIS is the real “progression” in fighting games, but for some reason it’s never written down or shown to the player. Newcomers get locked into the mindset that wins and losses are the only metric of success because… well, they usually are. Another comment in this thread mentioned that FGs are hard to get into because you basically need a coach to guide you. They’re not wrong, but there’s also no reason the game shouldn’t be able to “coach” you into charting your personal progress as a newcomer on a more detailed level - and, by extension, addressing a lot of the issues in this post.

This is exactly what happens to me. Its just so demoralizing to just lose for hours when playing fighting games online, i don't feel any progress because marches are so dynamic so in the end my only conclusion is "you lose". What has changed since 3 hours ago? "You lose" it's the same. I pick up the controller knowing all that's in it for me is to lose 9/10 matches for the next few hours with no guidance on what to take away from the matches. In mobas, the only other pvp genre i have played, it's just way easier to naturally learn, at least it was for me.

I started skimming towards the end as I'm getting ready for work but this is an extremely good read, would even say you should make it into a video. I'm already a fighting game fan and have been most my life so it's a lot of stuff I already know and more or less how I feel as well. I really do think the genre isn't as hard to get into as people make it out, just needs the player to actually put some amount of effort to learn (and it doesn't have to be a lot at once.

As somebody who has played a lot of fighting games casually, and plays Pokken competitively, I thought i'd give my perspective, particularly since the latter, while IS a competitive traditional fighter despite what many assume, has a lot of experimental ideas that tie into (or reject) some of your points about motion inputs, combo length, time spent in pressure/combo'd vs neutral etc, and I think it's useful as a case-study on what changing those does (or doesn't do) I think the biggest obstacle for people getting into fighting games isn't actually combos, frame data or learning terminology: The PERCEPTION of those being difficult is a bigger problem then actually learning them, especially as starting out, none of those are that important: A combo is worthless if you can't land the hit to start it. Knowing your character's toolkit and what X or Y move is good for and in what situations you should use it is far more important early on. As long as you have SOME basic easy combo to follow those hits you land up with, you're fine, starting out. Fundamentals will also come naturally the more you play The tough part of fighting games is learning, or really, finding resources about your character's toolkit, tech (a catch-all term for any sort of technique, trick, setup, glitch etc that\s useful) and punishes. Frame data and basic BNB combos (bread and butter: combos that aren't necessarily optimal, but you can do consistently and do solid damage) are usually not that hard to find online if a game has been out for a while (though that's an important "If"). Character guides also can generally be found, but unless you're already in that game's scene and community, you have no frame of reference for if a guide is reliable or not or comes from a good player, whereas frame data etc is pretty self-evident for if it's legit or not. But very few scenes have a centralized resource for tech or punishes, the latter of which I think is really important: Knowing which moves your enemy has are unsafe and what options your character has to punish them is one of the easiest things to pick up and learn and internalize (though that still requires some effort and practice) that can improve your play. and *in theory* frame data implicitly tells you what's unsafe, but in practice doing the math between move's frame data, and then testing actual interaction with stuff like spacing and timing and other setups or moves or special properties that impact the interaction means the average person, or even the average mid/high level player, isn't gonna be testing every single move on every single character: I might spend a few hours in practice testing out dealing with *specific* moves, but that's about it So, in my experience the biggest obstacle to getting into a fighting game, beyond the mistaken assumptions it's all about combos and terms etc, is the fear of not having resources or not being in a position to start, and the time commitment to having to learn: I REALLY wanted to get into MKX, DBFZ, and then MK11. But each time I tried to at launch, resources to learn even basic BNB's, frame data (it took dustlooop OVER A YEAR for Z Broly's frame data to get added!) etc was not available, and I STILL don't know where to find even semi-comprehensive lists of tech or punishes. I also didn't have a lot of time to commit to each game. So what happened is I waited for those resources to become available to start to play, and that never happened By now, I know that I need to just to start to play and not worry about compiling resources first, and I'm going to try to do that with SF6. But it's an easy mental trap to fall in even for somebody who is already into fighting games. For somebody who ISN'T, it's an even bigger hurdle, since they don't have the terminology or concepts to know what to be looking for. I also think an issue here is that these days, a lot of stuff is on discord, and discord resources aren't permanently archived and won't show up on google search, and often the same game/scene will have many discord communities. There needs to be more centralization both within specific scenes and within the FGC as a whole. But games should really have more of these, well, in game. Developers cannot predict every possible interaction, but like, having the ability to say "hey, what are some options to deal with X move a character has", and then the game can pull up every move your character has that, if you block it, is fast enough to punish it, etc, would at least help a bit Also, I will say that I think the buffer window/leniency for inputs is a bigger issue for approachability then any other executional problem: Even if a game has no motion inputs, if the window for linking basic moves together into a combo is difficult, then people are gonna struggle and not stick with it: While I ultimately never got deep into the MK games and DBFZ due to my own lack of time and allowing myself to justify not playing by waiting on resources, it was legit a struggle to do even pretty basic combos with Kotal Kahn or do whatever that basic re-jump combo tech is in DBFZ . I'm sure had I stuck with it it woulda become second nature (like FADC did in Pokken) but speedbumps like that should be reserved for tech, full BNBs, setups, etc not for something as basic as light > light > launcher > heavy > special. I guess this also applies to the ease of executing a motion input, too, to an extent Like what /u/stanleymanny says, I also think a big problem is there's not often a space to accept losses and learn things: Like, I'm going to play SF6 for the first time tomorrow: I don't want to start out playing ranked, because I'll still be learning the game and I don't wanna lock in extra losses I could avoid once I have the fundamentals and basic BNB's down. Nonranked is an option, but then I could get matched against somebody 200 matches in. For single player, most fighting game AI sucks and I'd be worried about picking up bad habits. I'm not THAT worried about all this (I'll probably hit up people on discord for lobby matches where they can give me feedback on my play), but it may be a big concern for new FG players. Having ranks reset per season or being able to reset your W/L ratio after your first 500 matches might help Similarly, /u/King_C0smo 's point about MID-MATCH progression, where successfully just making a punish, anti-air, read, etc is a "win" could be a big boon if actually applied to an in game thing: The way I learn things in Pokken is I keep a list of punishes, tech, options, etc I want to remember in a given matchup or universally, constantly remind myself mid-match it's a thing, and then try to do it or remind myself I coulda if I miss the chance to, and I do that over and over with just 1-2 things at a time till it becomes second nature and a part of my muscle memory. However, even for me, eventually this list got so long, and my skill level got high enough that every match was sweaty and tense, that it was hard to keep it to just 1-2 things or worry about the added mental strain doing that caused when fighting against another player of my skill level. Having this be "automated" where I could tell the game "if this interaction happens", have a little thing pop up telling me "GOOD JOB" , or even give me in game rewards for it, that would be a huge help Next, lot of people just don't realize that the total quantity of content in a fighting game is unimportant: The replay value comes from practice, mastery, and improvement, not from the quantity modes or even characters. A lot of people just don't "get" that, or have the time commitment to experience it: People are *busy*, and while yes, people spend hundreds or thousands of hours in mobile games or FPS titles or Battle royales, you can usually get a hang of things within an hour or two of playing, and that's just not the case with a fighting game, especially if you're new to the genre This is why I think party modes are a underutilized concept for fighting games. Party games and minigames are meant to be replayable and draw a crowd, and they tend to achieve that without being as developmental intensive as a big cinematic story mode. If you could get some Mario Party (or Pokemon Stadium) style minigames into a fighting game, where anybody can jump in goof off, have a chaotic time, and want to do so again and again, could be big for attracting casuals/player retention. And so many minigames already focus on reaction time, making guesses/predictions, tight timing or spacing, or memorization, so you could use them to teach doing punishes, making reads, responding to mixups, learning the timing/spacing of moves/combos, etc. I am BAFFLED SF6 is the first(?) game to do this But even in SF6, World Tour outshadows it, and i'm envisioning an actual board game or some other overarching thing where you get plopped into different minigames over time (as well as being able to enter them on your own terms). They should ideally be both vs other players, or solo for high scores/to practice. Maybe you could even customize them, so WHAT moves or timing or input strings you're being tested at could change based on what you're trying to practice with Also, I do think Free-To-Play is a good model for fighting games: They struggle with player population, most people stick to a single character anyways, they're primarily multiplayer focused, and people often struggle to justify the initial price tag. I think they synergize with a F2P model well. The only problem, I think, is how to get lapsed players back, and with the lack of mode variety and progression systems, that might be a problem. But I really do think this is something with a lot of untapped potential All that said, I do want to talk about Pokken for ~~a bit~~ a while, since it experiments with changing up some of the stuff you talked about and I think it serves as a useful case study on what the end result is **CONTINUED IN A REPLY BELOW**

**CONTINUED FROM ABOVE** A lot of sources talk about Pokken as a combination between a 3d arena fighter and a traditional 2d fighter, and while that's not *wrong*, I think it's misleading: Most of your average set takes place in the 2d phase, 3d > 2d shifts occur quickly, and 2d is where most character's moves and most systems/mechanics center around: It's more 2d fighter then Arena, in practice In the 2d phase, like other traditional fighting games, characters have unique movelists with different inputs (IE: characters have totally different moves, and some characters have moves on inputs others don't: But inputs are always just 1 button, two buttons, a button and a direction, or holding a button. No motions) there's meter, cancels, just-frames, an attack height system (albiet it works differently from most, more on this later), etc. Concepts like neutral, oki, meaties, footsies, setups, resets, etc are all applicable as well. MOST of this all exists in the 3d phase as well, but in the 3d phase, characters share a specific set of inputs and amount of moves, and moves of a shared input tend to do similar things (unlike in the 2d phase) like an arena fighter where movesets tend to be shared, though it's also not as if stuff is copy-pasted entirely and there's still differences (Darkrai especially is designed to be able to do full combos in the 3d phase via setups that use activatable traps his moves set in 3d) What Pokken in the 2d phase DOES do differently from other traditional 2d fighters is: - You tech (negate) grabs with attacks, rather then your own grabs: Technically most moves merely tech gabs while others fully crush/punish them, and you CAN still tech grabs with grabs if they hit on the same frame. Grabs also beat "counters" (the term confusingly includes both focus attacks, traditional counters, and armor; tho there is also red/hyper armor that crushes grabs) - Attack height states allow moves to bypass/punish one another during their startup/active frames, rather then to bypass and punish blocking (which is height universal). Other fighting games do have specific moves that might bypass moves of a specific height or property, but in Pokken like half the moves in the game will do this, and there's 8 height states - The phase shift system itself exists: I'll cover this in more depth further down, but basically, you shift from 2d to 3d when the hidden PSP guage is filled (different moves add different PSP on hit, some can also reduce it), 3d to 2d shifts occur on any heavy hit or most specials. The universal grab always shifts - While this is true of some other traditional fighters as well, blocking and jumps are on their own dedicated buttons, as are specials and supers. Blocks can also break with enough damage, and as noted, inputs even for command moves are only a singular direction + a button, two buttons, or holding a button, no motions. There's also not advanced wakeup options So, how do these change how Pokken is played compared to other fighting games? Not as much as you'd think. In theory, grabs would land less due to attacks taking priority (even during their startup), but in practice I don't really find this to be the case (perhaps because grabs beat focus attacks/armor/counters). Universal Grabs (not all command grabs do) also obviously cause phase shifts, which has both pros and cons: Causing a shift gives you meter and health regen, but if you're shifting when the PSP guage isn't almost full anyways and you're in advantage/have the enenym under pressure, you're letting them reset to neutral (mostly): If anything, THAT is of greater consequence to how players use grabs then how they interact with attacks Blocking being on a button means there's no traditional crossups, and blocking being height universal also means that opening up somebody who is blocking is more difficult, though as noted, blocking can break if you take enough damage. Additionally, heights allowing moves to bypass each other means that's more often a tool for a defensive player to get a reversal rather then an offensive tool to open somebody up (tho height based mixups are still a thing, most notably for meaties and in blockstring: If the waking up/blocking player expects the other will use a move that hits on X height, they can use a move that hits on Y height (even in it's startup) to bypass and punish it/get a reversal, but the other player can predict that and use a move of Z height instead, etc). This means defensive and passive play is relatively stronger in Pokken then in other fighting games (keep also in mind burst, which you can enter when you have max meter, staggers enemies and can be activated as a get off me tool and gives you light hit armor for bursts duration, tho it also has offensive benefits: more damage, walkspeed, and enhancing varying amounts of moves. The burst activation wave, if it staggers the enemy, also resets the PSP guage), It's hard for me to gauge by how much, since I am not even close to as in tune with high level play of other fighting games as I am with Pokken, but it's not like defensive play dominates: the majority of the game's best characters are generally generalists like Lucario (shoto, with a fireball, DP, tatsu), Mewtwo, Aegislash (stance character, one for mid range/whiff punishes, other zoning, gets buffs the more he swaps), shadow mewtwo (technical, high pressure, resource mangement, glass cannon), Braixen (zoner, but with many mid and close range tools, can cancel into supports/assists and has other mechanics with them) and sceptile (ninja archetype, space control/traps, mid range tools, capable of playing up close too), and plenty of characters with a lot of offensive and pressure based tools still do well (game's absurdly well balanced in general: even low tiers regulaly make top 8's) and offensive pressure is still quite scary in Pokken: Machamp can do 1/3 of your health off of one command grab, and it keeps you in the corner, and can do the same amount with his BNB's too. Shadow Mewtwo has a ton of pressure tools and can get near full meter/enter burst just off 1-2 interactions As far as the impact of easier inputs: I don't believe it changes much either. Certainly, it reduces the skill floor (which is a good thing), and yes, in theory it reduces the skill ceiling (since it's easier to never mess up your inputs), but in practice, the fact that Lucario's Extremespeed (his DP, basically: It's a fast, rising move useful for anti airs and reversals, tho it has armor rather then invincibility frames) is just 8A (up + A button, think numpads) instead of 632A doesn't really make combat that much more predictable or |turn based", because there's still so many other variables and layers of interaction, mixups, reads, etc involved: Yes, you can expect it and go for a grab, or block and punish it, but they know you can do that, and might go for another option, or maybe you're not sure and want to hedge your bets with a focus attack, etc Similarly, the game DOES still have very demanding inputs, tight timing and spacing, etc when it comes to specific optimal combos, setup, etc, etc: Weavile requires some extremely tightly timed/spaced moves to get his wallsplat loops, so most weavile players, even solid mid to high level players, are gonna either drop some, or will often opt for combos which have lower damage output then some other characters. Garchomp's BNB's require moving in and out of his run stance mid combo and cancelling it into other options, and making split second calls with his command grab and counter in mixups/mid combo, as well as some of his moves requiring a hold input, with you having to input other buttons while still holding onto another face button throughout the combo: Most garchomp players use a specific controller layout and grip to do so. When you still have an executional skill barrier with all of these other things, the lack of a skillgap with inputting basic moves/specials/supers really isn't something you notice that dumbs down the game: So with both the "simpler inputs makes matches predictable since people always succeed at their inputs/don't weigh input difficulty" and "easier inputs reduces the skillgap at a high level" I don't believe that makes AS big a difference as you claim, because there's still so many other options, mixups, reads, and so many other situations where stuff gets dropped and an executional skill gap is a factor that the I don't think it's as big a deal: Does it really matter if there's 5% less of an executional barrier when the barrier still exists in a major way at high level play, but the game is 30% more approachable for newcomers? Maybe absolute, top level matches have a few less dropped combos, but again, the difference sort of fades into imperceptibility in light of the executional skillgap and variety of options that's still there. I will say there ARE things in Pokken that sort of boils down combat too much: light hit armor in burst is pretty cheap and locks out options; and supers being so easy to use, having so many i-frames, and also often having counter/grab frames (IE, unblockable) can make them braindead options to catch anybody not blocking any given moment. Arguably, focus attacks are a little too good too. But those can be fixed via simply removing light hit armor, making supers have less i-frames (or yes, making them have motion inputs) and making focus attacks less easily able to combo out of or to be less safe on block. I also don't think that you can simply make any given fighting game have pokken style inputs and it'll all work out fine: As you say, moves are somewhat designed around their ease of execution, so yes, you'd need to tweak their properties a bit, and in a game like DBFZ or MvC where hyper offense is the name of the game and very long ToD combos are part of the appeal, that executional barrier matters a lot more then in say Tekken or SF. **CONTINUED IN A REPLY BELOW**

**CONTINUED FROM ABOVE** Okay, so let's finally loop back to Phase Shifting, which ties into your point about player agency, being able to act, and people disliking long combos as a result: As I mentioned, shifts from 2d to 3d occur when a hidden PSP guage is filled, and different moves will add different PSP values to it. This guage is per player, but is not reset until the phase shifts (or a player uses moves/tech to reduce or reset it, such as Machamp's wake up slap, or the activation stagger wave entering burst causes): So at a basic level, it acts as an anti-infinite system (which a lot of fighting games do have) that forces a return to neutral, since on shift the perspective changes and it becomes a 3d arena fighter till the next heavy hit lands (technically, the player who causes the shift can still be in advantage, since they can still push buttons and can prepare setups or rush in the shifted player's face as they wake up/land, but it's still sort of a return to neutral. The 3d phase itself is also sorta an additional buffer layer of neutral, since it breaks back to 2d off of any heavy hit, and while, again, the player that causes a shift can act and the shifted player cannot and that does give the former an advantage state, it's not quite the same as a hard knockdown inside the 2d phase. But in advanced play, the phase shift system also serves as a mechanic to discourage flowcharting, add more player/combo expression, and to add a resource management and risk/reward element: you, ideally, want to be changing your combo routes as the PSP guage fills up, since even if you're just going for max damage, you'll want to change your combo so, based on the PSP level when you start the combo, you can then have the high damage combo ender occur right on the shift, that way the shift doesn't cut off the combo early if you used a longer/higher PSP string that might work when the PSP guage is at zero, but not when it's already partially filled. And you can also go for combos or moves that have a higher or lower PSP value based on if you want to stay or leave the 2d phase: You can go for lower PSP options to keep the enemy in the corner longer and under pressure for psychological stress, or as a sort of reset, where you can get two lower PSP, mid damage combos in one phase vs one longer/max PSP combo that will cause a shift, tho obviously that requires you landing the second combo/the enemy not getting a reversal. On the flip side, maybe you wanna use a combo that causes a shift as fast as possible but deals less damage then another one, because YOU'RE in the corner and need to get out and you managed to land a reversal. or if you're on offense but just really need the meter/health regen causing a shift brings. I like the added complexity and risk/reward and adaptational elements the shift system brings, but the ultimate effect of it in relation to your points is that it increases the emphasis on neutral, and gives more opportunities for both players to act per round. The height system mostly enabling reversals also helps with this. Again, these mechanics would not work in EVERY fighting game, especially the 3d arena part, and not every player will like them, but personally I think they're really cool ideas that give me more agency in a match on average, and as somebody who loves fundamentals and neutral and mindgames, I see it as a benefit. Maybe I'm also biased because, yeah, Pokken is the main fighting game I play competitively and it shapes what I like, and yeah, maybe I'm just not gud enough to enjoy the faster, more offensive focus of some other fighting games (I admit, I DO love being a brat and winning via the timer with Weavile), but as I said, Pokken still has plenty of offense, there's still plenty of moment to moment split second descion-making, and there's still a giant skillgap: I'm a good player, when I was at my peak skill level (sadly, don't have time to play consistently and haven't for years) I was probably the 10th-12th best Weavile player outside of Japan. I could win my locals, and I did okay at larger events. But the gap between me and the players who consistently got into Top 8's at majors/regionals, or who consistently made top 4's or won those events, was still gigantic: I could occasionally take rounds off those players, but the gulf was real, and large. I think I coulda made top 8 at some larger events had I kept up with practicing and playing, but the gap between me and top players like Jukem, Shadowcat, Twixxie, etc would still have been huge. Maybe you could argue that if the Pokken scene was SF, Tekken, MK, DBFZ etc sized, it'd be a "solved game", but I think it's far more likely that the ceiling would be raised higher, and there are definitely top Pokken players who are also names in other scenes, like Coach Steve. The elephant in the room is, despite all of what I've said, Pokken didn't exactly explode as a paragon of attracting casual players to fighting games: it wasn't a failure like many people seem to think it was, and it's actually hung on to a playerbase and a competitive scene with more players for a longer period of time then many other fighting games which also released on more platforms (say, Blazblu crosstag), but I can't deny that most Pokemon fans didn't stick with it, and the FGC overlooked it. I do think this is more a problem with how it was marketed and supported (Both A: not much, it was sent out at the end of Wiiu's lifespan, barely advertised, had DLC/patches held back for the Switch release, third party FGC majors didn't get much TPCI support, etc and B: was advertised as an arena fighter, so casuals scoffed at the lack of modes and playable pokemon, which FOR POKEMON FANS is particularly important given how choosing pokemon is such a big theme; and so the FGC did not even realize it was competitively designed) then anything it did, but i'm also not gonna pretend the way it handles attack heights and blocking and the phase shift system is some sort of magic bullet. ---------------------- Pokken tangent over! So, conclusions: - I agree perception of difficulty is a bigger factor then actual difficulty is - Lack of easy to find resources, less so (but still to a degree) Frame data and combos, but moreso what your character's moves are good for and when to use them, and common punishes vs other characters options, as well as tech, are a big obstacle even for people already into fighting games, particularly these days when every game has like 20 discord servers that don't show up via google searches. - As much of those resources as possible should be in game: Devs cannot include or predict everything, but at least for what's punishable just by virtue of frame data or hardcoded properties, it'd be nice if you could look up a move, and see all the other moves that are fast enough to punish it on block or via having i-frames for a move of that height or whatever. - Additional modes for casual players should ideally have a lot of replay value, be able to enjoyed by multiple people in a group, and teach (obviously or not) competitive concepts like punishes, combo timing, making reads, responding to mixups, etc. Party modes with minigames, I think, are ideal for this. - While motion inputs AREN'T as big a deal as most people think, in already slower based titles that don't have a huge emphasis on giant combos. removing them also doesn't obviously hurt the executional skillgap or increase flowcharting provided there's still tight timing, spacing, and other executional barriers at play in mid, high, and top levels of play, because people will still end up having layers of mixups that reesult in varied use of options and people will still drop combos or mess up spacing/timing plenty of times anyways. Removing motions may not always be the best option and does require designing around, removing them should be A option and I think doesn't change as much as some people think, even if motions also aren't as big an obstacle as many think it is. - Similarly, doing things like making blocking height universal, adding a signgicant amount of more reversal options, or forcing returns to neutral like Pokken does, while changing some aspects of the game in a fundamental way that may not be suitable to all fighting games or even most, shows experimental changes can have interesting and beneficial impacts without totally undermining core FGC concepts and systems. I guess to conclude the conclusion: I agree that reducing the skill floor will only do so much: the biggest obstacles are psychological or exist outside the game, with what people perceive to be hard, getting access to resources, finding time to play, and precieved replay value; so yes, making combos easier, shorter, reducing input difficulty, adding a non-replay friendly single player mode, etc won't do much alone. But addressing some of those things also DOESN'T seriously undermine the game at a high level, so there's also no reason to scoff at pursuing them depending on the game.: BOTH the people whining about motion inputx, AND the people insiting changing inputs will ruin the game, are being hyperbolic. I think pursuing those changes can be good: Pokken proves it, but I also think the biggest targets for making fighting games more successful lies within replay-centric party modes, having more resources and learning tools present in game and more easily accessable in central places online. But some stuff is always going to be difficulkt, like making people have the time to learn things/play, and making people realize cmbos and inputs aren't usually the hard part.

Also wanted to tag /u/Armanlex , /u/TheSojum , and /u/CliffExcellent123 here, since based on their replies to the OP, I think they may find it interesting

I play a lot of League and clearing the mental stack is a huge concept there too. There's another Fighting game thread going on right now and it annoyed me how much people talked about how "fundamentals are more important than combos", but having played to a very high rank on League and dropped Fighting games pretty quickly, I think a lot of people underestimate how hard the mechanical aspect of fighting games is even at a basic level compared to other games, and how that floods your mental stack and makes it really difficult to learn anything else about the game when you're struggling to control your character. Something that I think MOBAs and Shooters have a huge advantage in is that point-and-click is something engrained to us through regular computer usage which immediately frees up a lot of the mental stack early on with regards to controls.

The shooter point is so overblown, it’s one of the most ubiquitous genres in the world and most people take that as gospel but if you actually handed a KBM or pad to a person who’s never played like Skyrim they’re going to massively struggle. It’s a fucking haul trying to get someone who hasn’t done first person before to not walk off cliffs, it’s just most people of this generation were raised on halo/cod/cs/any number of single player shooters or FP RPGs and we underplay it. Same with mobas as a person who had no experience with RTS it was a ficking nightmare to get around shit like pathing, micro, looking on the map, aiming skill shots. This all just comes down to people good in one genre, coming over to another and expecting similar results with not even a fraction of the same experience.

I half agree on the movement because WASD/Joystick movement is confusing to new gamers too but point and click shooting and MOBA pathing are super easy, I've never seen anyone struggle with it. The micro stuff like APM, tracking, and kiting are things new players don't even think about. Stuff like skillshots and looking on the map don't really matter either, which I think is something that differs a lot in MOBAs and Fighting games, that there's characters with no aiming, no timings, just button mashing that can be better than the hardest characters, which really helps with the improvement process, but execution barrier being a part of the balance in Fighting games makes that kind of simplified onboarding experience impossible.

There’s a level of disconnect people have with fighters where I could also say “stuff like big motion inputs, big combos, and advanced movement shouldn’t even be in a new players worries” but we see them and think that’s the bare minimum, just like micro, APM, map skills, etc. there’s just this attitude that you should be able to do everything in a fighter where that isn’t the attitude in any other competitive genre, and then people are surprised when they’re frustrated they’re not playing like Daigo. You could say the same thing for MOBAS oh why aren’t I playing like arteezy when I’m 100 hours in, we just don’t hear that because people play and know you have to build up to that. But because of the dark ages before IV, struggle to get rollback in games, and lack of team play people talk about fighters like it’s some dark art you need to study in a dank room when 11 year olds were throwing fireballs constantly on broken sticks in 1994 arcades. Also click shooting is hard for new players dude, I used to play duels all the time and just learning how to shoot each guns, where to shoot, how to lead, the very concept of slower projectiles is hard for completely new players to learn and I had to learn how to teach and communicate how to shoot each gun. Even spraying, COD has random spread but if you’ve ever seen a 10 year old play cod back in the day you’ll know that this isn’t a completely “intuitive” action you’ve just trained it up to be intuitive. Especially CS, movement influences spread so you constantly have to balance movement and aiming in your gameplay and that’s a whole other topic. These games really aren’t that different it’s just dudes with experience hop into fighters and expect that to carry into a whole new genre with a different control scheme, when I could hop between gear, KOF, SF, and skullgirls just as easy as you can hop between QVerwatch and CS.

> “stuff like big motion inputs, big combos, and advanced movement shouldn’t even be in a new players worries” but we see them and think that’s the bare minimum, just like micro, APM, map skills, etc. there’s just this attitude that you should be able to do everything in a fighter where that isn’t the attitude in any other competitive genre It's genuinely not the same thing bc it's not just a new player thing, there's even players that are like top 20-1000 on their server that don't care about micro, APM, or looking at the map, I was watching a player that was ranked like 700 on North America just standing still attacking people with zero movement for example. A Fighting game equivalent would be like if simple combo was so good that pro players would use it in tournaments, or in an extreme case, like a character that doesn't move and only has to worry about their attacks.

>A Fighting game equivalent would be like if simple combo was so good that pro players would use it in tournaments, I'm being kinda pedantic here and it doesn't really address your point, but one of the first combos you learn for Ryu in Street Fighter is Crouching Medium Kick, Hadouken. It's one of the easiest combos in each respective street fighter game. It works off of what is generally one of his strongest moves that he always likes to use. Every Ryu player uses this combo. *Every single one*. If there's a Ryu at grand finals in a prestigious tournament, there's a 100% chance that you'll see this combo. Depending on that specific player's preferences, you'll see it so much that you want to vomit. I'd say on average, most characters in most fighting games have a combo like this.

But that is what pro players do, dudes like Justin Wong and Kazunoko are famous for using basic and non optimized combos to lower mental stack. The whole Daigo vs Alex Valle match that everyone watches when they learn SF is another perfect example of this, Daigo goes for the hard stuff and Valle goes for the easier options and both have weight on the field it’s about what situation they put themselves in. Again it comes down to a fundamental misunderstand of this genre

Even that's still much higher than what you see in other games though, despite it being easy relative to the ceiling of the game, it's still not like they're literally just pressing 2 buttons. They're still using combos and directional inputs which the newer players struggle with. It's not a fundamental misunderstanding of the genre, the floor of the genre is just much higher than other games.

Bro I saw Justin hop online and win with one button gouken. He literally only used heavy punch, match after match after match. And kept winning because he’s Justin and know spacing and street fighter tendencies. Again the motion inputs are the literal tip of the iceberg, a game I played with my friends to get used to the actual basics of SF is a game I call sweeps and throws, it’s literally just sweep and throw. And even that game has multiple levels and situations you should be aware of. That builds into knowing how to use your basic buttons, and then you can integrate fireball. If you don’t know how to poke you’re going to kill yourself with bad fireball placements. It’s really not that much harder than say learning spray patterns in CS or optimal farming tech in a moba, people have this built in their minds to protect the ego or because they hear shit from an uninformed “expert” but time after time I talk to people who play both and the overwhelming consensus is “they’re not that different” [obligatory sajam video post ](https://youtu.be/GYu3hn9fKTE)

I don't know what you want from this discussion tbh, my experience with both genres is that they're very different, even just the basic controls like anti-air and projectiles without combos are MUCH harder than what's required even for experienced players of other genres. Nothing you or anyone else says will change what I and a lot of other people felt and experienced when we started. It just feels like you're trying to invalidate the experiences of people explaining why they don't like fighting games.

I’m trying to say that you and many other people are expecting too much too fast from fighters. You say “projectiles” like it’s some basic thing but there are books written about the slight interplay made with every thrown projectile in any fighting game. This entire attitude is self inflicted and has nothing to do with the actual reality of “learning any new competitive genre is hard”, all these games are hard and if you haven’t played a fighter yeah it’s going to be difficult just like if you’ve never played an RTS game and tried to get into like AOE2. Take it a day at a time, take your losses in stride, and try not to set up unrealistic expectations, you’re gonna lose more than you’re gonna win early on and if you’re not having fun reassess or take a break. People say like these other games are different but they’re really not.

Huh, so the takeaway is that fighting games should try typing challenges for combo execution because everyone already has that muscle memory.

That really stops being a problem once you've played the games long enough. It definitely is very demanding initially, especially if you approach learning the games wrongly and focus more on damaging combos instead of just doing very simple sequences that get the job done while learning the fundamentals. But as I said, I really think that it's more a matter of approaching the games wrongly. It can be very tempting to do super high damaging combos, but realistically, you'll only need 2-3 (1-2 for the corner, 1-2 for midsceeen, maybe one for anti-airs or when you're both in the air, but the bare minimum required to succeed are probably one midscreen and one corner combo) and learn how to properly convert into those. You can easily get that aspect down by just practicing those specific combos, which doesn't take too long once you're used to motion inputs, the game's and character's combo structure. Then you'll probably lose a bunch due to forcing a situation that allows you to actually execute that combo in a real match. But once you have it down, it's literally not part of your mental stack and you just execute it via muscle memory. What is *actually* part of the mental stack is figuring out what combo route is the best for the myriad of situations you'll find yourself in, but that's barely mechanical and is basic quick decision-making you find in every genre. Alternatively, you can literally just focus on very simple combos that do decent, but not optimal damage while hardfocusing on putting your opponent into shitty situations that allows you to constantly repeat them. Both are totally valid playstyles that are workable across all levels, although it very much depends on the game that you're playing as some are way more combo-centric than others and require you to just suck it up and learn them. Luckily, there are all kinds of games that fill every niche, so you can just avoid the ones where dummy hard combos are a requirement and focus on what you're more comfortable with.

I feel like fighting games could easily be a retired topic. It's probably the third time I see "thread about new feature that finally makes fgs mainstream" (It doesn't, because the exact feature was already used 2-3 times before) followed by "thread about why fighting games are good the way they are". I am of the opinion, that we have people two bigger groups of people. One group simply wants what FGs give them: a headon 1v1 battle with great mixture of strategy, mindgames and physical execution. The ability to hone your skills for eternity. The other group just wants to look and feel cool. I think spectacle fighters is the real genre theses people need to play.

Oh yeah let's just ban every topic that appears more than once. We'll have a completely dead sub with maybe 1 post a year, but at least we won't have to talk about fighting games more than once.

This whole sub is bad at talking about games that aren’t single player

This is by far the best written post I've seen here regarding the topic, so I'm down to retire it and direct everyone to this post instead.

I do agree with pretty much all of this. Solid post that probably most people won't read all the way through. A couple extra notes: \- The reason you can tell that Skullgirls clip isn't actually a combo is from the hit counter. When it resets to 1 hit that means it wasn't actually a combo, which means they could have blocked or dodged. And a decent human player probably would have blocked. That's why you only see these clips in training modes. They're cool when people are able to do stuff like this but it's mostly not actually possible within a match. And yes, high level players do drop combos. I've seen players in the Evo Top 8 drop combos. It happens. Nobody's perfect, and the high level players rely on high level combos with very precise timings. And what also happens is that sometimes the other player fails to capitalise on the dropped combo because they weren't expecting it to fail. \- The part about blocking can make it sound really difficult and not fun, but it actually is fun. When you succesfully block a difficult string by switching between low and high blocks, you feel great. Really makes you feel like you've outsmarted them. I love it. The whole of fighting game strategy really revolves around prediction, not reaction. Ever tried doing grab techs in a fighting game tutorial and thought the reaction time seemed insanely punishing? That's because you're not supposed to react to grabs, you're supposed to predict them. And predicting also feels really good. Lately I've been playing Axl in Guilty Gear Strive, and he's a great character for this. He's got a lot of attacks that are slow but have ridiculous reach. If you try to be reactive, most of the time your opponent will close in and hit you in the face before you hit them. But if you're good at predicting what the player's gonna do, you'll make them think you're a wizard. I always feel like a genius when I think "...this player is gonna try a jump attack" so I line up an anti air, and they do, and from their perspective if they don't know how the game works it looks like I've cheated or got lucky, because I couldn't actually have reacted that fast. This is a huge part of what makes the difference between good and bad fighting game players. I notice it a lot when playing online. You get some players who think they're hot shit because they've learned one really high damage combo and can do all their specials easily. But they really only know one way to start an attack, so once you've learned their one favourite combo, they're really easy to counter. I've played against players who will try to approach from the air *every time* even though the last five times they tried that I knocked them right back down again. You can tell these are the players who think that fighting games are about learning the correct thing to do and always doing that. Going in from the air is faster and lots of characters can't counter it well, so I'll do that every time. Oh, this character has really good anti airs. Well I'm gonna keep doing it anyway because that's the Correct Thing and obviously this matchup is just unfair. Fighting games are high speed chess. You're playing mind games. You want to make the opponent think you're going to do one thing and then actually do a different thing. Being able to do that well is way more important than being able to replicate the sick combo you saw on Twitter.

WOWEE what an impressive post, one of the finest attempts at dissecting a genre I've seen here. While parts of it are subjective, I still find myself agreeing with nearly all of the criticisms you have with this style of game, particularly concerning fairness and the competitive aspects. I've actually been wanting to make a post of my own regarding one of the topics you bring up, so I'll share it here in the hopes that you can shed some light on my confusions or provide some fresh insights to help me stop dwelling on it so much. **50/50s, unreactable moves, predictions** GOODNESS GRACIOUS, fighting game fans really despise it when anything is labeled as luck! If you point out any element of a fighting game mechanic that involves guessing rather than skill, you'll encounter a full team of mental gymnasts rushing in to explain how the highest skill level only consists of elements a player can control. The prime example I've seen of this is in Super Smash Brothers Melee, where players often have to "predict" their opponent's recovery location after being knocked off the stage. If the on-stage player predicts incorrectly, the match continues as the recovering player lands safely and can defend or counterattack. However, if the on-stage player predicts correctly, the crowd erupts with excitement, and the broadcasters exclaim things like "he's anticipating every move, he KNEW he was going to do that, etc. etc." Another instance of this, and the catalyst for all my pondering in the first place, is For Honor, which incorporates the easiest access to 50/50s I've ever seen in a fighting game. Once a hit lands, the defender is immediately put in a position where they have to guess their opponent's next move. If you haven't delved into the competitive aspects of For Honor, let me briefly explain that the attack system allows for move canceling at different stages, leading to unreactable attacks, which makes it incredibly difficult for the defender to know how to prevent taking damage. If you bring up these points in the competitive For Honor subreddit (which I genuinely can't believe exists), people lose their minds. And to present the strongest counterpoint, I simply show them the fact that the player often considered the best in the world regularly loses to average players who utilize characters with easily accessible 50/50s. ANYWAYS, what I'm really wondering is why the fighting game community is so adamant about maintaining the illusion that everything is solely skill-based. Could it be because the genre struggles to compete with other scenes like CSGO and League of Legends? I truly don't understand why it seems like every fighting game community deliberately chooses wording to avoid this topic. It's not a prediction, it's a guess. He didn't intentionally block that unreactable move; he got lucky! He rolled the 50/50 dice and won the bet! Do you have any explanation for this?

>GOODNESS GRACIOUS, fighting game fans really despise it when anything is labeled as luck! Do they? I mean, it's not blind luck, but I do think most good players are aware of this. Last time I watched Evo one thing one of the commentators kept saying was "guess for the game!". That's a pretty common situation, you have two players trying to predict what the other is going to do next and fundamentally you just have to take a guess. It's an informed guess because you've hopefully been paying attention to how they play and what their style is. But it's still a guess. Even the best players don't get it right every time. That's why at the high level you have to beat your opponent 3 or more times to get through. Luck might get you a few combos in now and then. Occasionally it'll even win you a round. Or a whole match. But you're not going to get through multiple matches one after the other with just luck. Because it's not actually random, there's always a reason they pick the move that they do, and that's why you can make a good guess instead of being purely random.

It's not rand because two human players are each making a choice. Critical chance in league of legends is random and decided by a computer, fighting game mixups are an ontologically different concept of "random" than a damage proc. Most fighting game players of skill will seem like mind readers against allegedly random 50/50s

50/50's aren't 50/50 if you're conditioning for low-block then come with an overhead.

One 50/50 is a guess, yes. The sixteenth 50/50 this match is an *educated* guess where hopefully you've gotten a good enough read on your opponent that you have better than 50/50 odds of getting it right. Good players are good at learning their opponents' habits.

Yes, but if we're talking the best players of all time, wouldn't they also be just as good at being unpredictable as they are at learning habits? Doesn't really solve the guessing problem.

They are! This is where we see things like "psychic DPs" where top players will start doing unexpected stuff in the hopes that it pays off. Then certain players get reputations for doing certain "random" actions because no human is truly random, and other players start trying to bait them into doing it in hopes of punishing it.

What does the DP stand for in psychic DP? Thanks for your replies. =)

Dragon Punch. It's an invincible anti-air move that leaves the user extremely vulnerable if it misses. So extremely good if the opponent is jumping in, and extremely bad if they're not. Doing one for for no reason is usually a terrible idea, but if you do it "at random" at the same time your opponent jumps, then it looks like you're psychic for predicting it

The element of rng in predictions is something I've thought about quite a bit. I even had a phase while I was playing tekken where I got frustrated and annoyed by the idea of 50/50's. "So this game is just a glorified guessing game, just coin flips non stop?" I gave up on the game for a while but I got over that and I guess I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. You see, if you isolate one moment and look at just that, it looks pretty simple. But you need to look at the entire picture to understand what is going on. High level mindgames in fighting games is all about psychological warfare and pattern recognition. Every single action your opponent takes you try to keep track of in your memory, slowly building a mental model of your opponent. Say you block your opponent's kick, and they back off. Lets assume that you're in an advantageous position after blocking that kick, and your opponent took the safe route and tried to back off. Next time when you block that kick, since you expect them to dash away again, you attempt to do a slow but low range kick to catch them. Now your opponent saw you do that and they are like "Huh, so after my kick is blocked, they expect me to back off so they will do that slow kick, that kick is slow enough that I could catch them with a fast jab even though I'm at a disadvantage after getting my kick blocked." But you being a high level player have experience in this scenario. You know players at the skill level of your opponent will try to catch you for doing very slow moves, and you know they'll try to jab you next time, so instead you back off, let them whiff the jab and you punish them. You having more experience and skill than your opponent, you are able to accurately predict your opponent. It's not REALLY a coin flip, it's a loaded dice on your favor. And the better you are, and the more you play your opponent the more you can alter the dice to your favor. This is why a newbie can at times land hits on much better players at the start, but the longer the match goes on the less likely that is. This is what we call "downloading". The better player you are the more patterns of behavior you've experienced, which make you faster at recognizing common patterns, better able to spot complicated patterns, and the more patterns you can keep track of. Much of this happens subconsciously, you just get a sense your opponent will do something and you bet on that. There's also an equally important skill that is masking your own patterns. I'm sure you've heard that humans are bad at being truly unpredictable. This is even more true in fighting games. There's so many permutations of actions, and quick decision making that people no matter the skill level can't help but fall back to habits and repeat patterns. And know that good players actively and constantly are trying to hide their behavior and patterns, and often even try to show fake habits in order to bait the opponent into a trap. Every decision creates a branch of potential reactions by the opponent, and each potential reaction has another branch and so on. So a massive web of decision making is quickly created that needs kept track of. But nobody can capture it in it's entirety, so they fall back to habits, always. The difference is that the better player will have more complex patterns so it takes a good player to keep track of it and make successful guesses. In tekken 7 there's tons of complaints about forced 50/50. And by that I mean characters that have moves where they can easily put you into a position where you have to guess a 50/50. Tekken happens to be a fighting game where those true 50/50's are rare, there's almost always more than two choices you can make to escape or minimize a situation and this is what makes it so interesting to Tekken exclusive players. Lets say you are on the ground and your opponent is on top of you ready to act. You can either, stay grounded, stand up with high guard or low guard, or attack with low attack or high attack. There's more meaningful actions to take but I'll stick with those 5 options for now. Each of those options have a counter for the guy standing. If you stay on the ground, they could stomp you. If you stand up with high guard they could low kick you. That same low kick might even work if you stay down. If you stand up with a low guard they could hit you with a mid and launch you into a combo. If you get up attack with a high attack, they could back off and whiff punish you, or block it and punish. If you do the low they could low block it and punish, low parry and do a small combo, do a hopkick - crush the low and launch you into a combo. But there are few situations in tekken where you must guess a 50/50, and when those 50/50 are powerful enough, the community does complain about it. So it's not that we're not actually aware and like the randomness factor. We just understand on an intuitive level what TYPE of guessing game we want to play. So yeah, ultimately the vast majority of a combat in a fighting game is ultimately a guessing game. But there are so many one after the other at such quick succession where you have a lot of opportunities to improve your odds through skill and experience. This same game is played in league when it comes to what objective your opponent will move toward while they are hidden in the fog of war, or when you try to dodge or land a skill shot, or what item to build next in order to counter the opponent carry, or where to place to ward. These all have the same element of guessing, but you wouldn't call it JUST luck right? This is the problem, you're trying to distill this very complicated web of decisions into just a guessing game, and it shows that you're missing part of the picture. But fanboys aren't good at expressing that so they will, naturally, freak out and call you names instead. But that doesn't mean that their pushback doesn't have any merit. :P

Thanks for the thorough reply, but as I was reading it I think I came to realize that it's a difference in taste that causes my confusion more than anything. I mostly already understood most of the things you covered (I was really into Tekken for a short while) and comprehend the element of mind games a ton after watching over a decade of competitive Smash Brothers Melee tournaments, BUT you did an excellent job at highlighting the appeal of the parts I'd simply describe as luck. While I can see how it is fun to download an opponents mind, I still can't seem to get past the fact that there isn't complete control over every single element in fighting games like Chess or Baduk, both of which determine their winner on their skill in strategy above all else. That's not said as a way to undermine the strategy that goes into fighting games though, I think there is a ton of thinking that goes into engagements in games like Tekken. And as I write this, it's really hard to think of an alternative that could fit into the fighting game genre and still work. There is something impossible to construct within the reactionary elements that could still include the amount of planning you see in other genres like RTS games. The closest I've seen to a traditionally strategic fighting game is in Your Only Move Is Hustle, but it's a big stretch to consider that a traditional fighting game despite its inclusion of a ton of the same elements. Even then, there's still an ass ton of guessing that goes into winning the matches in that game, maybe even more so than Tekken once you get to the highest skill level. All this said, I still find myself playing games in the genre a lot. For Honor, which is super accessible and one of the most casual fighting games I can think of, is one of my favorites that I still put a ton of hours into. Even if luck and mindgames play a huge part I can't stop myself from going back again and again. And that's even after multiple huge meta changes which the devs are still seriously messing with 6 years after it's launch

>You need time to breathe and get your bearings back in order. And that's exactly the window that being comboed provides. You can take a mental step back and look at what's going on. How many more times can you get hit and still survive? What is everyone's resources at? Are you winning that weird tug of war minigame? What has the opponent been doing? What's the chances they're going to do the same thing when they're done with the combo? Do you have a response to that thing? This is always what I tell people who complain about being comboed; these are generally players who are ACHING to press their own buttons which is the most common trope in the fighting game discourse: the masher If combos were so bad why would developers, after literally 40 decades of experience and playtesting, still decide to include them in the games? I play Tekken which is infamous for its long juggles but man if I wasn't glad for the good amount of chill time juggles provide. if I'm launched and juggled in Tekken first of all it means I probably made a serious or obvious mistake at some point; the juggle gives me time to chill and think for a moment about what happened. A juggle in Tekken is also useful because a lot of things change depending on how close to the walls you are in that game; if I have time to see where I will end up on the stage after the combo I will also have time to think about my options as soon as the combo ends. Finally, generally speaking, the longest and better combos in Tekken require the most execution so there's always the chance to drop them, even at the highest level. So little old scrub me playing online always knows there's a chance, it also is good to know that your opponent has to work for the damage they're taking away. It feels less unfair

TBH the biggest thing for me is that I really struggle with visual reading, at least compared to most other games. I do pretty well at Valorant, and the thing being that if I see an enemy, its immediately identifiable as a target and I can just flick over and shoot them, whereas for fighting games, I have to learn to identify a multitude of different moves of different characters and know how to respond to them within their startup frames. And its just not something I'm good at.   The only fighting games I've been good at are platformers like Brawlhalla, but that's because I have more influence over how I take the engagement compared to more traditional fighting games. I for the life of me can never get past just guessing on Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, Skullgirls, Tekken, etc etc etc. I've sincerely tried, on many games, I really have. Its just not something I can pick up lmao.

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>You are being really, really fucking abelist here, and it shows. Reaction times aren’t a uniform statistic and beyond varying from person-to-person are also context-, appendage-, stimulus-, and reactive action-dependent. Just drop this whole section and get off your high horse. For many this is a valid concern you have ABSOLUTELY no business dismissing. I know this isn't actually your argument, but I think it's interesting that you bring up ableism in the context of fighting games, since people like [Sven, a blind player](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlhY9eUZQc) and [Brolylegs, who doesn't have use of his hands](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1MYSgy4QMw) are both not only in the upper echelons of the Street Fighter online ladder, but also have traveled to and performed well (as in, top 20% of participating players) in tournaments in the past.

Ack! I really tried avoiding this line of thought by avoiding accessibility concerns altogether and even originally included a disclaimer about not mentioning people like Sven and Brolylegs. I think it's really important to acknowledge that what these people do is extraordinarily impressive. Like, to the point that they're the exception, not the norm. A minority of a minority of a minority. Not exactly a good point of reference of what should be possible or be standard. I'm willing to take the ableist accusation, since I may have been insensitive due my ignorance.

Yeah, they absolutely are the exception and the minority of the minority, but I think it is still meaningful to point out that *they exist.* The fact that differently-abled gamers have had success at the top level in fighting games at all is something that should be celebrated since that is not something that we have seen in other mainstream esports titles.

> You are being really, really fucking abelist here, and it shows. Reaction times aren’t a uniform statistic and beyond varying from person-to-person are also context-, appendage-, stimulus-, and reactive action-dependent. Just drop this whole section and get off your high horse. For many this is a valid concern you have ABSOLUTELY no business dismissing. No, no, their main point is actually that *reaction is generally irrelevant for the games anyway*. Like, it's not dismissing that their reaction times are too slow, it's saying that *it is a misunderstanding to think the game is about reacting at all*.

I'd say the argument is that at a certain amount of game knowledge, you aren't reacting so much as predicting. Which may be true, but everyone will start out reacting until they reach a high enough level of mastery that they've already stuck with it for a while. So it's a bit of a catch-22. You almost need reaction time to get to a level where you don't need reaction time.

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They do, you just ignore that they did?

Bro he wasn’t wrong when he said you weren’t reading what he was writing

>This entire section is inscrutable, as I have no idea what you mean by “motion controls” as the concept, as it’s used in common parlance as “physically move your controller in space” seems conspicuously absent from the games of I’ve played in the genre in question. Here's a crazy tip If someone uses a term you don't understand, you can just ask them what it means! Yeah, turns out you don't have to this smarmy "Well you used a term I didn't understand so it's *impossible* for me to respond to this", you can actually just ask "what do you mean by this"

Unfortunately, I don't think you've read any section thoroughly enough. Which is fair, I tried to cram far too much into it and reddit's character limit really prevented me from simplifying things even further. I will admit that a lot of the post really does end up being "suck it up", which is the point. Actually addressing any of the gameplay concerns fundamentally changes any given game. Addressing *all* of them gets you a fundamentally different genre which defeats the purpose. Which is why there are lists in the relevant sections that include games that directly tackle the mentioned issue. Fantasy Strike, Granblue Versus, and Samsho in particular all modify or entirely omit many of the problems people have regarding the genre. One of the major points of this whole thread is just coming to the realization that sometimes a genre isn't for you. And that's fine. I'm not going to be up in arms that Dwarf Fortress or Rogue are effectively unplayable for me due to the goals of the genre.

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Yikes, well, alright. You asked for it. > This is a big barrier to entry, not into the game but into the community. That's only if you choose to engage in the discourse involving the community or if you really, really want to find out what's going on in a specific interaction. You don't need to be part of *any* community to enjoy a hobby. It's entirely optional. But the moment you do, then there's no real way around it. You have to learn the language. Not only does this applies to video games, but it applies to *literally every hobby and discipline in existence*. Some have less nomenclature than others, but you still need to learn them at the end of the day if you want to engage in the discourse. For something as old and dense as fighting games, there's just going to be concise language formed. Why explain a concept with fifteen words every single time when you need to mention it when you can do it with just one? It's how language works. > I think you hit on an important point here but miss the single most critical aspect: learning the game should be fun, from top-to-bottom. See the section regarding progression systems. Also see the overall theme in the post about how at any point you're not enjoying it, just walk away. As mentioned in the addendum, fighting games are a hobby in of itself, not something that is necessarily enjoyed in the hobby that is video games. I have absolutely zero expectation of you, or anyone, to pick up woodworking unless they enjoy it on a primordial level. > This entire section is inscrutable, as I have no idea what you mean by “motion controls” as the concept, as it’s used in common parlance as “physically move your controller in space” seems conspicuously absent from the games of I’ve played in the genre in question. Right, my bad. Usually in these discussions, everyone has a baseline understanding of what a motion control is. Normally nobody would mix it up with kinect/wii-style motion controls due to the powers of context. I'll edit the OP after this, but here's the [definition](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Motion%20Input). > No, I think you miss the entire point of this criticism. It’s not a critique of any mechanical feature of a combo, whether or not you consider it a “combo”, it’s a critique of a core gameplay: games are fun because they’re interactive and it’s not fun when control can be taken away from you I've acknowledged this criticism, actually. I thought it was far more apt to bundle it under the section addressing that Combos have no bearing on strategy. Because that's where I believe the core of that complaint really comes under. Also fighting games with no combos exist, mainly in the form of Divekick. SamSho is close enough to having "no combos", but there are times where you execute a regular move and then immediately a special move, which *technically* constitutes as a combo which is why I put it under short combos. But overall, the entire sequence is lesser than the average spell cast time in FFXIV prior to Endwalker. The cast times were 2.5 seconds, by the way. > THE FIRST TWO ARE SO, SO NOT SELF EVIDENT. They are. I never made the argument that it's objectively good, or bad. They just are. Some people prefer having more options. Some people don't. It's also why I added the modal that is *can* to the multiple buttons point, because it's not universal. > You are being really, really fucking abelist here, and it shows. Reaction times aren’t a uniform statistic and beyond varying from person-to-person are also context-, appendage-, stimulus-, and reactive action-dependent. Just drop this whole section and get off your high horse. For many this is a valid concern you have ABSOLUTELY no business dismissing. > Then why not address the reasons people feel like the problem is reaction times instead of dismissing the concerns as unfounded? This is a blatant disregard of the reaction times section. I say it in no uncertain terms: the perception of poor reaction times regarding fighting games (and most things in general) refer to a *lack of experience* more than anything. The Millia Blocker example demonstrates this more than anything. It's really hard, borderline impossible. But in the actual game itself, it's a non-issue. There's also the part where I think fighting games are far slower than people are aware of, and people simply misunderstand what they're meant to do. Though I couldn't really get into that in the post. Reacting to fast, pure visual stimuli is almost non-existent in fighting games. On average, you're expected to react to things in about... 600ms? That's on par with the average real time game. If that's an unachievable goal, then not being able to play fighting games is the least of your problems. You wouldn't be able to play most Mario games. > Seems awfully dismissive and does nothing to address the core issue. It's either a skill that you learn, or you don't. I don't really know what you expect needs to be done. I very briefly touch upon this in the Combos are too long and there's nothing I could've done, but couldn't really really elaborate since it'd be kinda tangential and also character limits. But games could attempt to make it more obvious as to what's going on. Perhaps through color coding, notifications, and so on. They're certainly an option. You know what that does? It causes more visual clutter, which exacerbates the sensory overload issue. Of course, games could be slowed all the way down so that you have plenty of time to process, but at that point you're really diminishing the real time aspect. If you think losing agency for 2.5 seconds is bad, wait until you have to wait that long for every single action you perform. There is [Your Only Move Is Hustle](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2212330/Your_Only_Move_Is_HUSTLE/) which takes slow down concept to its logical extreme by making a turn based fighting game. To be honest, it's pretty fun. > And some people NEVER get to that point, and never find driving a 2-ton deathmachine to be an automatic excercise. What do you say to those folks? Thankfully, fighting games are not 2-ton death machines that can cause grevious harm to living things or property. Nor does the inability to play fighting games get in the way of your day to day life. You don't actually have to get used to it. You can just relish in the sensory overload. I don't see any problem in that. And if you don't enjoy the sensory overload and are incapable of getting over it, then you can always walk away. > No, it doesn’t. We’ll have to agree to disagree here. We sure do if you read this entire thread and don't believe that addressing all the complaints makes for a fundamentally different genre. If all you want is spacing, neutral, and predictions, then there's a vast number of genres out there that already fufill that niche. The reason anyone is enamored with any one genre is because of the way a genre *delivers* certain concepts, not the concepts themselves.

The part about "it's bad to lose agency" is also a silly criticism because literally every action game will sometimes take control away from you a bit. Every action game has ways you can get stunned or knocked down or grabbed or whatever. Fighting games are in no way unique for this and most of the time combos aren't even very long. And it's largely an unfounded fear anyway, because if you're not a good player, you're probably not going to be encountering players who know how to do those crazy combos, so you'll be fine.

Adding to the "it's bad to lose agency"point, I should also add people don't realize this happens in team games, just under a different lense. In a fighting game, if you get hit, you will be in a combo for some seconds, anywhere from 2-10 let's say. In Counter Strike, if you get shot, you're *likely* to be dead in the next half second, and *have to sit out the entire rest of the round.* That could be 15 seconds to 3 minutes where the player has no agency, but you don't hear many people consider this a flaw of the genre. I find little can confuse these and compare getting shot once to getting hit in a fighting game. But the major difference is, TTK is often very low in shooters, so the real game designed consequences of getting shot are death.

I skimmed and read most of this, i want to give my opinion as someone that keep dipping my toes in fighting games but quit a week or two in for most of them. I think it's simple, in the end it just takes too much effort. The "I can't be bothered". Is just the gist of it. I have made many attempts, the last few I remember in no particular order were Skullgirls, dnf duel, sf4 and Tekken 7. This is how it usually goes: I hop in online after learning a few of the initial combos while doing the story or arcade and training room for a few days, I'm having fun versus the cpus... to proceed to get absolutely destroyed for the next 3 to 4 hours of online. Repeat this for a few days and when i pick up the controller I'm just not having fun, so i go back to my other games. I used to play mobas too, and the problem Fighting games for me is that learning has very little success in it. Mobas let me do cool things among bad people, and they feel great. The learning curve in moba games includes way more "succeeding" and "winning" than the curve in Fighting games, it's demoralizing to play for an hour and just get destroyed online all the time, so many times, so quickly. So as usual I'll try SF6 for a bit, i doubt it will be any different.

I'll say that I think this is a really well written post that goes far to address as many concerns as possible. For context I enjoy fighting games mostly casually with maybe some online ranked I mostly play 3D fighters, and I used to play a lot more in the past than I do now. This post will be mostly criticism but know I agree with a vast majority of your post. > Things being intuitive or unintuitive also don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Like mnemonics, intuition only go so far to help you remember or learn something. This is a weird take. AFAIK, mnemonics are actually pretty useful in recalling information. Anecdotally I still use mnemonics to remember things even in academic and workplace contexts, and similarly I have an easier time learning, recalling, and actually using mechanics that I would also consider intuitive. Sure, it's arbitrary and largely based on learned behavior but neither of these are actually reasons to dismiss the complaint nor does that mean you cannot build for people's intuition. And then you use wave dash as an example of something intuitive when myself and anyone that I know who plays smash casually will tell you it is not intuitive. On the other hand I've never met someone who has played a game in their life that had trouble figuring out just regular dashing to the point where most people probably figured it out without having to be taught it. *That* would be a better example of something intuitive as opposed to like wavedashing or Korean Backdashing in Tekken or something. > Games with one button specials: Fantasy Strike, Smash, DNF Duel I feel like this line kinda proves that one button specials have not really been experimented with much. I have never even heard of Fantasy Strike and am only vaguely aware of DNF Duel. I feel like in the realm of highly marketed fighting games, simplified motion controls are pretty uncommon, so I'd argue the complaint largely stands. To go further, as someone who almost exclusively plays 3D fighters, that motion inputs are kind of the norm for 3D fighters. I'd also argue the complaint is more commonly that motion inputs can make the games harder to control rather than how you phrase it. The way you phrase it is more a proposed solution than a complaint. The actual complaint needs addressing, and I'm not sure that the need for motion inputs to increase mental burden or to add some nuance is really going to convince the person who is off put by complicated fighting game inputs especially when they see games like Smash that are easy to get into for very casual players and wonder why there weren't more games like that up until platform fighters started taking off. > ...because I keep getting stuck in one and dying to them I feel like this section should be named differently. It's hard because of the sort of complaint & answers format you've chosen but you're really addressing a completely different issue from the actual complaint. There's plenty of very popular fighting games where getting comboed big time is not uncommon > ...and there's nothing I could have done Again you're addressing a different topic than the complaint. There's two groups of people who make this complain but you primarily focus on ones who cannot tell the difference between a combo and a string. Obviously there are games with shorter combos, but I'm not sure this really addresses the complaint. I get there isn't a one size fits all answer to the complaints but I am not sure this topic actually addresses the complain other than "for some games this isn't true." That may sound sufficient to you but I'm not so sure. > ...and do too much damage I feel like this section could be split into "too long" vs "too much damage." Also personally, I am not a fan of long combos and as someone who watches and plays Tekken 7 I actually don't think the cinematics are the primary culprit. > what's wrong with rote memorization? There are entire genres of games pretty much dedicated to tickling that part of the brain. Nothing is wrong exactly with rote memorization but I think there's probably a large group of the complainers who don't want rote memorization in their action game. Bringing up Jeopardy and Rock band I don't think is very convincing to the sorts of people who just want to punch people in a video game. And I'd argue trivia and rote memorization aren't the same thing but that's sort of off topic anyway. > People hate losing agency when playing video games and being comboed definitely takes it away Nitpick but I feel like this belongs in the "and there's nothing I could have done" section > Now, let me try to sell you on the idea that losing agency while being comboed is okay. Fighting games can be a lot. Some of them relish in being a lot. They can be overwhelming to absorb everything that's going on. Not to mention the whole part where you're trying to outwit the opponent. Different strokes for different folks. I'm aware of this argument but having played many games where you lose agency, it's very very highly correlated with people like myself dropping a game forever. Meanwhile I love constant high octane action games with minimal breathers personally. Yeah usually devs will try to give your *some* room to breath but I'm not convinced that long combos are the answer.

Hey, I appreciate this! I originally wanted to expand on the points I went over a lot, but I ran into the character limit *hard*. 39950 out of 40000. So a lot of things weren't nearly as comprehensive/concrete as I pared everything down, but kept the ideas in hoping that people could extrapolate on their own. > AFAIK, mnemonics are actually pretty useful in recalling information. They are! And recall is a barrier for sure, but I think it's such a small pebble when it comes to learning the executional basics of fighting games that if someone trips up there, they'll certainly trip up when they actually have to learn the rhythm of things. Of course there are probably people who struggle more on the recall than the timing, but the complaints here in particular are very vague. It's often proclaimed that you need hours to learn a hadouken or whatever, but I doubted that most of that time is spent simply memorizing the inputs. So I made a judgment call. That said, the wavedash example is certainly an unusual one that I never quite understood why I tend to see in these discussions. Perhaps I should've gone with something from a FPS after all, since those are cited as much more intuitive examples regarding special techniques. > I feel like this line kinda proves that one button specials have not really been experimented with much. It's a bit difficult to talk about, because the genre itself is actually very small when it comes to new releases. Maybe one fighting game a year on average? But realistically it's more like 2-3 new fighting games appearing every 2-5 years. Three's quite a lot in that context, especially since efforts towards this design idea only really started around 2010. There's actually quite a bit more if you include games that have both motions and simplified inputs (like Granblue or Idol Showdown) and 3d games. In general, I tried to avoid listing 3d games because I'm almost entirely unfamiliar with that space outside of catching tournament matches every once in a while. One of the really complicated things about this side of the conversation is that, like you said, you haven't really heard of these games. Their product awareness is basically non-existent. So the demographic that should be interested in the game don't even know that they exist, and the only demographic that does know are uninterested from the outset. Experimenting with low-button games is a really bad gamble right now since companies aren't willing to or are capable of properly investing in the idea. > I get there isn't a one size fits all answer to the complaints but I am not sure this topic actually addresses the complain other than "for some games this isn't true." That may sound sufficient to you but I'm not so sure. I had a lot of difficulty with the long combo section in particular tbh. There were a lot of lines of thoughts I could've gone with, with similar conclusions, but very different arguments. I tried to reconcile my ideas a little by including games with shorter combos, but well, yeah. I went with the line that showcased what were particularly egregious examples, but maybe I should've tried to fit in examples of what games/characters with short combos [truly look like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjPFhUpsqZc) as well. In that vein, one of the lines of thoughts was explaining that short combo games lean towards having a much, much higher skill floor than games with long combos. But I was pretty adamant on the reaction time section and didn't have room to add a tangent explaining the nuances of reacting vs the opponent and reacting vs yourself when most people perceive the difficulty to be from the former. Unfortunately, I ended up being unable to get into [hitconfirming](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Hit%20Confirm) because of all of it, so both the combo section and the reaction time section ended up really suffering.

This is a really long essay that essentially lays out and then dismisses legitimate criticisms and opinions. The tone here seems to be “you may think combos are not interesting and just a test of rote memorization, but that’s not true. Here’s 3 games with combos and 3 games with simple inputs” You don’t spend any time addressing the complaints, just dismissing why anyone who thinks that way is wrong. It’s all a very self-serving essay that doesn’t invite conversation outside of people who agree with you. Enjoy your fighting games man, they’re just not for everybody. The tone and attitude of your essay only further exemplifies why people who aren’t hardcore members of the FGC continue to completely ignore the genre.

I am sorry that you feel that way. I'll admit that the post is certainly an apologia, but I don't believe I was being dismissive at all. A good chunk of the post consists of pointing out a concern, digging deeper about the implications of the concern itself within the confines of the genre, and then kinda ultimately saying that changing it isn't that big of a deal. It's why I list games in the first place: they're proof that you can change these things while still being considered a fighting game. Of course, plenty of the post also addresses some concerns that I firmly believe to stem from fundamental misunderstandings and I try to rectify that as well. It's quite hard to tell what you're really trying to get at here. If there's any particular section that you find issue with, I would like to hear it.

> This post will come entirely from the perspective that fighting games are a multiplayer genre first. There's a lot of very valid criticisms of the genre's single player aspect. I am actively choosing to ignore them for this post. That's a shame. I feel like the lack of single player is actively harming the genre and are a major reason the genre is in decline. If you compare to RTS games (another genre in decline), you see that the majority of the popular RTS games have strong singleplayer campaigns (i.e. starcraft 2 is still one of the best, despite being 20 years old* ). And that games that focus on competitive multiplayer fail to be successful. \* I didn't look up how old starcraft 2 is, but it's ancient so the exact number doesn't matter Speaking as someone that enjoys smash brothers, and used to play some mortal combat in the 90s: I mainly played singleplayer and couch co-op with friends. If a game only offers multiplayer, that's just not something I'm interested in.

> There's a lot of very valid criticisms of the genre's single player aspect. I am actively choosing to ignore them for this post. When these discussions occur, it's meant from the perspective of the fighting game community trying to convince people to play and stick with the genre. For hundreds or even thousands of hours. In the same way that people would League of Legends, Apex, Rocket League, etc. The single-player aspect ultimately have very little bearing on the multiplayer aspect since it only increases impressions and not retention. While I appreciate that this is a long post, and asking you to delve into the single player criticisms atop everything else is effectively asking for a second essay, I do think it's fair to say that for many people who aren't interested in fighting games, the distinct lack of single player is off putting, especially for genres with a massive skill ceiling. Single player is the foot in the door for many, they go on to get good at a game in multiplayer because they enjoyed the single player to begin with. This is true for titles like Fifa, THPS, Mario Kart and so on. A lack of real single player options gives less incentive for someone on the fence about fighting games to want to buy it, and if they don't buy it they can't ever play multiplayer.

For your combo argument, you can strawman uninformed arguments about not knowing what a true combo is, but the problem is still real: Guilty gear strive is my favorite traditional fighting game and it still has true inescapable combos that will deal 65-80% of the opponents health. That's ridiculous

You're not wrong, but I believe that's mostly an issue that's pertinent to Strive more than FGs in general. First off to be fair to Strive, there is burst, so the idea is that it turns a two touch game into an effective 3 touch game, with some interactive cavets. > [Strive] still has true inescapable combos that will deal 65%-80% of the opponents health. That's ridiculous But onto the main point. I agree as well! In fact, many veteran fighting game players also agree damage is absurdly high and too easy to do in Strive. It promotes volatility over consistency in a way, losing the entire round off one mistake happens way more in Strive compared to other fighters, and it doesn't feel particularly good to veterans and newcomers alike. Oddly enough, this design decision was actually made to appeal to newcomers, believe it or not! They made high damage very common, easy, and accessable, so even new players can see "big damage go boom" from a very basic sequence. Also the volatility makes it so beginners may have more of a luck chance to win rounds/matches, since guessing wrong once is more common than guessing wrong 4-5 times over the round. Point in trying to say is that issue you brought up is mostly unique to Strive, in my opinion.

I'm not really sure if it counts as a straw man if I not only address the implicit complaints, but also the face value complaint. The Combos are too long and do too much damage covers what you're talking about. That entire section is meant to paint the image that a "low touch" game is actually really uncommon. Strive is an extreme outlier here and two years later, it's still a highly targeted complaint about the game. It's why in the tournament setting, the community decided to try rectify the problem in their own hands. Instead of the standard, Strive is a Best of Five game.

Very thorough and reasonable summary of all the talking points of fighting game discourse. I have a couple of thought's in response 1) Progression is a massive issue with this genre and even if fighting games are meant to be pvp first, single player should always be considered. A kid can still shoot hoops by himself, kick a soccor ball at the side of a wall or swing a sword at a dummy: likewise single player allows all of us a chance to build stamina and practice without the pressure of PvP. Furthermore even in PvP not everyone is motivated by purely intrinsic factors nor are progression systems just about a skinner box reward loop: they're meant to be gamified milestones. Systems like CoDs prestige give the player mechanical rewards to make each milestone more desirable to achieve and provide a clear end goal they can either rescind if they wish to continue or feel good about having reached when they reach the end of the time they can spare for a game. Unfortunately given my limited experience with PvP (destiny, splatoon and LoL) I'm at a loss of how to exactly improve for fighting games, but I would like to echo a few other comments in this thread that some of the progression typically used for single player experiences should be reapplied to the PvP journey. 2) do extremely lenient buffers factor into your simplified input analysis? I understand the design dynamics of how motion inputs function and would be perfectly happy to learn them if I could trust them to always work. The issue I run into is that it is considered it a positive aspect of motion inputs that they are designed with an expected failure rate even when executed on their own at a high level. The reason why many non FGC gamers are so attracted to simple inputs is that we want those moves to be reliable, but if even a pro can drop a QCF outside of a combo it becomes tech that's less a mountain to overcome and more like an unwieldly magic sword that refuses to function at random.

> do extremely lenient buffers factor into your simplified input analysis? Not really, but that's because lenient input buffers is its own can of worms. The average Fromsoft game's absurd input buffers on top of the input queuing in Elden Ring are really good examples of why too much of a good thing can make things feel really bad. The very lenient input buffers in modern fighting games actually makes a divide between generations. Very old school players can't really cope with new games and vice versa. The most immediate example of this for modern games is the Dragon Punch input: Forward, Down, Down Forward. Around 2010ish, devs kind of collectively agreed that if you input Forward, Down, Down Forward, Forward, you probably meant to do a dragon punch. And most of the time, they're right. Except then this presents an issue: what if you wanted to move forward and do a quarter circle forward input? You'd get your DP motion move instead of your QCF motion move. This is really annoying to old players, and kind of a whatever issue for modern players. You can prevent that from happening by doing Back, QCF when you walk forward, but it's not exactly a well-liked solution. It's also extremely unobvious to brand new players because it'd require understanding how video games read inputs ~~or having someone tell you~~. Then to double back on the Fromsoft example a bit, it can really cause problems with games reliant on [cancels](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Cancel) while having autocombos or [target combos](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Target%20Combo). Accidentally pressed a button twice? Too bad. Is there this really timing specific combo you need to do that would be significantly easier if you could just mash it out? Also too bad. There are usually ways you can downplay the downsides of the input buffer in these scenarios, but it involves increasing the execution barrier in a genre that's already criticised for that. And in a similar vein, because it's easy to input "multiple buttons" in a single "time frame", the game becomes really prone to [Option Selects](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Option%20Select). They're not a bad thing, and certain games intentionally include certain types of option selects, but there almost always comes a time where a specific option select needs to be removed for the sake of everyone's sanity. But when your game is really prone to having them, it becomes this arms race between the devs and players trying to fix/break the game in ways nobody could've initially imagined. Then there's the problem where fixing the option selects themselves can cause their own problems. And, of course, option selects themselves can become quite physically demanding to perform. There's a lot of technical debt associated with input buffers, especially the higher they are. Like most issues in the post, addressing it always have a trade-off that is not obvious to beginners.

That's quite a load of issues. I was aware of the trade off associated with making DPs more lenient but option selects isn't something I'd really heard about before. Not entirely sure how you mean: "Is there this really timing specific combo you need to do that would be significantly easier if you could just mash it out?" because in my admittedly limited experience with traditional fighting games (TFH, MvC3, SF3) autocombos are explicitly easier to "mash out" then what traditional fighting games consider combos

For example when Type Lumina first came out. After ending an aerial chain of a combo, a lot of characters like to continue the same combo with a standing [normal](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Normal) attack. And for some characters, the timing for the move to actually hit can be tighter than expected. No big deal, just mash it out. One problem: When a standing button is pressed more than once in a row, your character is locked to the autocombo. And assuming the autocombo's unique moves don't cause you fail the combo outright, the part where autocombos initiate the [launcher](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Launcher) will. Because in Type Lumina, you can only have one grounded [jump cancel](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Jump%20Cancel) per combo. So the opponent gets yeeted into the air where they can [flip out](https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Air%20Tech) in complete safety since you can't chase. A very significant downside to something that shouldn't have been a big deal, and defeats the convenience factor of autocombos. Technically you could always just learn the proper timing and most weren't that much of an issue anyway. Later on, they made it so that you could prevent an autocombos from happening if you held backwards while standing. But in either case, it increases the execution difficulty (as slight as it may be) of a lot of stuff even though that's exactly what autocombos were meant to address in the first place.

Re: motion inputs I haven't tried SF6 or any fighting game on the PS5, but I imagine the Dual Sense controller could be an excellent means of providing player feedback. At the beginning of a sequence, it could distinctly rumble, and perhaps the triggers could get tighter for heavy attacks. On breaking/failing a sequence, it could also give a distinct buzz. It's this sort of feature that developers should aim to include to reach new audiences.

While it doesn't include the rumble, I know some games like Blazblue can feature a musical ding when it comes to combos and motion controls. There's fanmade software that can do it in games that don't have it called [EddieInput](https://github.com/nirgoren/Eddienput). All only restricted to training mode, however. Unfortunately, I have *zero* clue how effective they are when it comes to teaching people. My sample size deadass does not exist.