Something I haven't seen mentioned yet about the financial barrier is that with fighting games notoriously lacking anything interesting for single player, you're paying $60 to learn if you like the gameplay specifically because there's no other content. And you have to the spend time learning the game on top of that price tag. You may not know if you enjoy the game until you've put enough time training in to play against real players.
7:10 The moment I heard that complaint I knew Sajam was going to consolidate himself as a Deadlock content creator with the cleanest movement tutorial.
My two cents: I seriously could not have gotten into FGs when I did if I didn't have a decent, steady stream of income for the first time in my life. I guess between 2XKO, Granblue etc this might not be the case for much longer, but as it currently stands these games are HELLA expensive, there's a BUNCH of DLC you have to get if you're commited to learning the matchups, and god help you if you live in a 3rd world country and want to get a stick or leverless - even the cheapest haute I could find still ended up eating 1/3 of my salary. I literally do not earn enough to import a Razer Kitsune. If you want to get into the games that actually have a large population of players, the financial barrier is absolutely real.
BTW, I tried to buy MK1 with all its DLC on SALE, and it still cost me around the same price of a full game. SF6 was the same because the normal price is 90 bucks for all the DLC. That's redicillous.
To be fair, when you are trying to get into fighting games, the last thing you should do is getting any DLC (except when your character of choice is DLC), let alone all of them, as learning matchups comes way later in the process. Byuing ALL the DLC is pretty much only mendatory for top tournament players.
idk, it has never occured to me that I needed to buy dlc to learn a matchup, yes you need them to find a training mode situation, but I'd say a beginner doesn't need training mode for anything other than learning a basic combo. Heck, I been playing strive for 3 years straight and have almost never used training mode for matchup specific stuff, which may be a fault on my part but you don't need that to have fun with a FG
that might be true but on the flipside there are many cheap fighting games and a couple that are free, and there is fightcade also you dont really need a leverless or stick, a keyboard without ghosting or a controller with a decent dpad is good enough
@@dj_koen1265 You're right on the controller, i now own a leverless and quality controller but stil play on my keyboard because it just feels better to me and there's no real downside(i don't play offline) Now talking about free or cheap fighting games, i wouldn't recommend most i know to beginners. The first huge problem is low population specially outside the US, and usually low population means no beginners and high skill floor. When you finally get a match you're just bulldozed without getting a chance to understand what's going on or even getting a feel for the game. GB only has the most vanilla character unlocked with the weekly characters you don't get enough time with to learn. Usually what makes people try fighting games and stick to them is the attachment to the cool characters they like, but while Gran is strong... He's just the most vanilla guy i've ever known. Skullgirls is very cheap and it's an amazing game, but for beginners? Way too advanced, get bulldozed. There's a big list of cheap legacy fighting games on steam, like the Arcsys ones, and at a first glance they're all really cool from a beginner's perspective, but then again, if you get a match you're just destroyed with no chance to even know what's going on. I think 2xko will be the one game that get new players to join, i even had some people join the alpha to try it because it was free and had the combos fuse, but for now, i'd say the few games suited for beginners are the more expensive ones.
(commenting mid-video): One thing you gotta understand about MOBAs and accessibility is that team based games are always gonna be more accessible as a social experience because your friend who's into it is playing it with you and often taking decisions for their beginner buddies mid-match. It actually turns the complexity into a positive on the onboarding experience, as long as the game surpasses a minimum level of general interest and playerbase size. edit: HOLY SHIT it's his EXACT NEXT SENTENCE im gonna kill myself
it's literally harder and more complicated even if you have 4 skilled friends to play with, you have even more pressure then to not feel like you're baggage to them, in fighters it's 1v1 and you are the ONLY person you're responsible for, i will never ever understand this argument, it's objectively many times harder and more stressful to git gud at a moba thana fighting game 100% of the time in any way shape or form with any example vs. any other example
@@koopakape That sounds like it depends on you as a person and the people you play with on personal levels. I'm far and away the weakest among my friend group when we play League of Legends together, but they never treat me like a burden when I make mistakes and I don't let said mistakes or my inexperience put unhelpful pressure on.
@@koopakape definitely not, when teaching new players you essentially play 2 games at once. I think it’s fun, especially if we’re both bot lane, to build two characters to support the others in the team. New players don’t need to be killing people out the gate they just need to not have a bad time. It’s mostly up to whoever is teaching you that will dictate your experience though. The person could be a dickhead who’s mad that you don’t know how to play the game you don’t play but I feel like that’s not the games fault.
damn back when I first started watching sajam I was elated with all the fresh topics and discussions that was new to ME at the time but now it’s just every 6 months, the next group of youths who’ve gained access to social media are on twitter asking “what’s a fuzzy” and the whole fgc scene rehashes the same discussion again I’ve realized that the time when I started watching was just another reset in the FGC cycle of Samsara
@@RvLeshrac really makes me sad how many members of this scene who are as much as a decade younger than me sound like crotchety old boomers who hate all new things and all new people
Next you'll learn it's all by design as some people set trends and other people just follow formulas. The FGC isn't rehashing the same discussion, content creators are rehashing content. Please make sure you don't mistake that
Sero’s tweet was so funny, because the moment it left her usual sphere and reached the greater FGC, a solid 70% of our community made it their sole mission to prove she was right, by arguing she was wrong. Bonus points to the people who carried that energy to her follow-up tweet pointing out how people agree when Maximilian says it, but not her. No solid reason to behave that way, just a moron for the sport, the passion, the love of the game
Me? For my money? I'd say she's 100% correct with the financial barrier, I mostly disagree with the statement that there's a lack of new player friendly resources, and I'd say the elitism is there, but is more situational. Although, the elitism might be more obvious and blatant to her, since being a streamer means those types of people are going to get magnetized to her.
The resources part definitely depends on the game, honestly resources for the popular games like Tekken and Street Fighter especially just fucking suck. But for any anime game there's a wiki page with 100 combos and general gameplan for every character. Like look at MBAACC's wiki man, 93 chars and almost all of them have novel-length guides.
@@pokecole37that's... completely irrelevant to the new player experience? beginners will tend to gravitate towards UA-cam for beginner resources and that's there in abundance for modern games. wikis and resources like dustloop and supercombo are very much more for intermediate+ players that are at the stage to start worrying about frame data and higher level strategy. too much depth all at once is very much detrimental to the new player experience and the way that the fgc constantly pushes those types of resources towards people just starting out is one of the reasons why new players think it's so hard to get started.
@@pokecole37 And the amount of assumed knowledge/skill level in those popular franchises can be kinda insane. I remember trying to look up a BNB for a character in Strive and most videos showed, like, combos with 7, 8 steps or even more. My brother in christ I couldn't even do a quarter circle half the time, there's no way this is my "Bread and Butter". Same thing with SF6 now that I'm learning it, though I am getting better at doing the funny motions over time. But to give the anime game folks praise where it's due, Dustloop is a GODSEND of a site that not only has several combos at different difficulty levels, it also has tons and tons of guidance explaining what each move's function is, not to mention all the other info in there. Sometimes it's genuinely better than the ingame tutorials for me.
People don't realize how big of a problem the financial barrier is to invite new players tbh. Not sure how much $60 means to people from the USA, but in my currency the game costs 250 while the minimum wage is ~1400. I have many friends who wouldn't mind trying SF6 and i know they would get hooked on it, some even tried the 2xko alpha with me, but it's so hard to convince them to pay this much money just to TRY a game they don't even know if they're gonna like + takes so much time and effort to learn(for people who aren't experienced in fighting games). And then they're like "oh i really like this poison lady" and I have to tell them "oh this is DLC you'll have to pay extra"
you can always invite them to play melty community edition or fightcade, which are free or you can buy them a copy of guilty gear xrd during a sale for 10 dollars, which is probably 40 in your local currency, but maybe less if there is regional pricing
This is why I pick old fighting games when there is a big sale. I picked Street Fighter 4 and the struggle is real, maybe I picked the wrong game to start learning but I can't imagine paying full price for a game I don't even know if Im gonna commit.
@@zzxp1 well street fighter 4 doesnt have rollback and its notoriously difficult but its a classic so i think its cool that you picked it up, you can always switch it up if something else comes up that catches your interest maybe try third strike as well on fightcade
Yeah it's actually ridiculous, I don't think anyone would defend it if they didn't already "buy in" to the whole thing. Think of how many DLC characters for SF6 are meta defining and imagine being a new player getting completely knowledge checked by AKI slide stance or Bison shadow rise/scissors kick shenanigans and being unable to practice against them. If the response to this is "well if you wanna learn how to play you're gonna have to buy DLC" then that just proves the point being made.
I would say it is more likely that people are likely to have experience with First person, third person and top down point and click games in single or co-op games. Meanwhile you are lucky to find many games that share fighting game fundamentals. Hell literally the games that got closet were things like Ninja Gaiden, Urban Reign or God Hand and they literally don't make games like that anymore. So for many it is like the first time they played a video game with no idea wtf they are doing except this time they have a real thinking breathing human caving in their skull. Edit: basically it isn't that fighting games are actually harder naturally, rather people collective are worse at them due to less experience
@boredomkiller99 they also feel a lot harder because of that. Sure my aim my suck in an fps but I can still shoot in the general direction of my target reticle. In fighting games there's a not insignificant chance if you're brand new that you can't do like half your character's moveset with any consistency such that you actually feel in control of them. In strive's whiff punish tutorial I've accidentally gotten fafnir with some consistency and still can't actually clear it and that's just back walking into a command normal. Don't think I've ever felt like a Game is literally fighting me on what my character gets to do.
I'll say this about motion inputs. I have TPS, meaning my tendons are naturally shorter than they should be, not to the point where I can't walk but it has caused me problems before and I had to spend years of my life doing yoga and physiotherapy and whatnot. This also ruins me when I play games, I can't go too hard and I ended up quitting League because of the strain it caused on my hands. No other game genre has caused me more hand pain than fighting games. After I reached Master with AKI, I just had to take a month-long break from how much my hands would hurt. Stick causes me the most pain, pad is bearable and also what Iam used to and I haven't tried a hitbox yet. But when it comes to physical pain from playing games, performing motion inputs is never any less painful. I'm never gonna quit over that (unless I'm forced to), but it definitely makes it difficult to enjoy these games long-term. I just got Granblue, and it feels amazing to not feel like my finger joints are about to lock after an hour-long session.
It’s def a big accessibility thing but that’s why alternate controllers are awesome Getting rid of motions entirely also isn’t really an option, since a lot of moves just can’t happen without them, or become utterly broken Not saying you’re saying they should be abolished, just hoping nobody sees your post and decides motions are ableist
As someone with a (different) connective tissue problem, I'll say that going leverless was 100% the right move. I got a small one made by Haute42 for around like $45.
I got trigger finger in my thumbs from playing on pad so I switched to hitbox. Now I have trigger finger in all my fingers. 😔 I don't play more than other players nor do I mash very hard, I think my form is normal as well my body just sucks
People will pour time into the game and not feel weird about it if it's free. That's the singular reason these games are so big and fighting games aren't, and even moreso why they *used to be bigger*. When the price of entry is a quarter instead of $60 you get a lot more people flowing through it, and I expect that in the future 2XKO will capture a lot of people based on this alone. Even a small financial barrier is still too much. It needs to actually be near zero and be functional online and you've got a winner imo. Remember that the reason KOF got so big in South America is that not only was it a small barrier to entry, but you got 3 whole characters per credit, that's value.
Additionally, you didn't need to buy a whole new NEO GEO each time you want to replace a cabinet. Hence why KOF had yearly releases. The biggest thing no one likes to mention though is that fighting games were never marketed and sold on their gameplay. People liked these games in the 90s due to large rosters, glorification or violence, and brand/nostalgia recognition pandering. Just check the reviews... Or read the dev stories on all the times fighting games tried to originate off of another Brand's success such as MK and Darkstalkers(Bloodsport/Horror Movies by Universal). Selling games on gameplay alone has always been unprofitable and you need superficial garbage to sell anything in the mainstream. Thankfully, game creation is easier than ever before and modding is a lot more elaborate then it used to be. This makes niches more viable.
@@dj_koen1265 That doesn't apply to KOF but to NeoGeo, the system that ran KOF and other games. SNK made more fgs than Capcom, and there were more Neogeo fgs made by other companies. So what you said doesn't explain alone the appeal for KOF in special. Like, why a superior game like Garou MOTW never got bigger than KOF in sales and fame? It's what the guy said basically... It's a big roster, 3 characters, a longer match and better comeback chances.
To me fighting games and shooters generally have the same learning curve. We dont really think about it because the concept of aiming the camera has been more popular in games. But learning to do fighting game inputs is just as difficult as learning to aim at an enemy if you have never picked up a controller. And both of these skills carry over between games
Aiming is easier to stumble into in a non-required context too, which can get people used to it. A lot of 3D games have a controllable camera that is managed and turned automatically and you can move it too if you stop and want to look around. Looking around with no time pressure and no tiny thing you have to hit is pretty easy to learn. Not to mention minecraft being so ubiquitous as a first person thing with shooter-adjacent mechanics, bulldozing through accessibility by sheer popularity. There's little easy "keyboard-like" controls to stumble into because games that target non-gamers or uhhh "low-gamers" (kill me) usually want to make buttons easy to use and with single functions.
I made my gf play cod once and she got a kill literally with the camera facing the ground the entire time. Also id argue fighting games are closer to rhythm games like guitar hero. I've had friends that could do the inputs, understood the concept, but just didn't want to or feel they had the capacity to learn and remember long strings.
@@TheNewblade1 hell i'd keep it to those "Emulate the instrument" style ones too or DDR. (Playing something like OSU! at a very basic level is incredibly easy if you've played mouse and keyboard). It's the fact you're learning a control method that is likely entirely foreign to you combined with the fact that for most people. Learning fighting games isn't fooling around flubbing it with buddies and chatting it up but instead sitting in what amounts to a padded room for hours and hours sitting through tutorials and trying to do inputs and basic combos. once you learned one fighting game you probably have basic competency in all of the traditional ones but getting to the bare minimum is a bit of work if you're brand spanking new. It's like me who's played on gamepad since i was 4 years old playing gamecube trying to learn how to play mouse and keyboard in a fps at 24. Hell, the fact that Smash Bros's inputs are simple and the avenue for learning the game is partying it up with items with your buddies is what probably gets it such a massive casual fanbase despite its complexities at a high level.
It's also interesting how smash bros fits into this discussion. We usually talk about helping onboard players by adding more resources for learning the game's mechanics. But smash takes the entirely opposite approach of _hiding_ It's complexities from new players, aswell as adding a bunch of silly stuff like free for all or items to encourage players to simply care less about being good at the game If Smash bros' huge casual playerbase is anything to go by, it seems like this approach paid off.
Hmm... You know, I never thought about that, but that makes so much sense for Smash Bros's design philosophy. Maybe the issue is that the FGC at large likes the perception that being technically challenging so much that they forgot that not everyone is out there trying to win EVO. Some people just wanna have fun playing cool characters they like and beat their friends' asses. That's why Smash works.
I think the other big aspect is that you can play smash like a team game or a group social game with the 2v2 or big 4-8 player free-for-all matches and such. Whereas most fighting games are 1v1 by definition.
I don't think many people really understand how big of a financial investment needed to get into fighting games, especially for those in developing countries like me. Not only SF6 cost more than my monthly electricity and water bills combined, but the hardware I need to play on is also expensive. Compare that to League that only requires any decently modern work laptop to run and about 5 mins to set up an account.
@alondjeckto Emphasize on "gets into" not just "play". Sure, there are free fgs like fightcade or MBAACC, but that's more for enthusiast than anything else.
@xXxCJ123xXx if people can't learn a fuckin qcf input they are probably not even trying to do it, and if they can't setup fightcade, then they don't know how to use fuckin computer
there are so many fighting games that are very cheap on sale, and even some games that are free, the problem is the general contempt people have for discord fighters or for fighters that are anything but the most new and popular
Which proves the point being made about elitism as well. "This game doesn't have a pro tour or a million dollar prize pool therefore it is dead and worthless" is quite literally textbook elitism, you can hardly write a more fitting definition.
@@dyrr836 Also the game is more respected if it has a long cycle of dlc updates, not only a long life. But in this whole genre, with several new releases every year (that are commonly disregarded by fgc for not being tournament ready), only few mainstream games can afford that.
I mean yeah. People do not like having to socialize to make their games work, much less make their games function: it’s why the ‘looking for group’ command in an MMO exists to handle that shit automatically. The amount of people willing to become invested in a random discord just to play the game at all is extraordinarily small.
Nailed it lmao. So many people millennial-ish age and younger especially (said as one of them) look for any reason or excuse to like, explain to people why we can't do a thing that's hard, when at the end of the day it's really just a matter of doing it and learning it like anything else and we don't feel like it lmao
That's not the issue at all. I gladly put in hundreds of hours into DBFZ, getting my ass kicked repeatedly because it has universal controls that are intuitive and make sense once you get the hang of them. But turn on classic controls in SF6, and every character suddenly has such random and arbitrary input sequences that none of it sticks in my head. The time investment to even learn how to simply *execute* a character's moves is already so steep, let alone figuring out how to properly implement them in a real match to see if you even enjoy a given character's playstyle! I never hear or say such complaints for literally any other genre of game. It is exclusively fighting games that have such arbitrary control schemes.
@@koopakape You're older then millenial-ish age? It's always fancinating finding people like that who are into videogames online because I know ONE person like that in real life.
@@RacingSnails64 "The time investment to even learn how to simply execute a character's moves is already so steep" I put my 9 year old son in front of a fighting stick and had him throwing pretty consistent fireballs in less than 5 minutes. The shit is really not complicated.
I think hearing Sajam talk about Deadlock's movement made me understand why people feel like fighting games are harder to get in to. I haven't touched Deadlock much, but I have played countless games where you move a character around a 3D space, and I think that experience would help me intuit a lot of what was shown. Not all of it of course, but a lot of what was shown feels familiar to other fps/platformer/action/etc games that I've played. Fighting games are very unique in how they want you to control a character in a 2D space, like you aren't gonna play Mega Man and then carry any of that over to Street Fighter. Fighting game tech isn't actually harder to understand, its that people don't have a frame of reference when they're just starting out in the genre.
@lobbynotlob add on to that for a lot of people (myself included) getting that frame of reference isn't doing the fun part of the game. Playing matches with people. It's sitting in training mode trying and failing to do the stuff you want to do and not knowing exactly why the game won't read your Overdrive input or an SPD. or why you can't get the combo or whatever. The expectation is that you reach this bare minimum competence before you get to have fun. Whereas in other games the expectation is you learn by playing the game. noob tubing and Spray in pray in cod. Or ARAM in League or what have you
@@jmanwild87 You don't *have* to sit in training mode when you just pick up a fighting game, though. You literally can just go and start hitting buttons against players of roughly your skill level, as long as the playerbase is big enough and the matchmaking works, which applies to shooters too. The expectation that you have to "reach this bare minimum competence before you get to have fun" exists, but it's wrong.
@Ketsuekisan it's the reason I don't really play Fighting Games. Button mashing just feels boring (doesn't help I know what i should do) and when I can't do more than that it just feels frustrating particularly when I can't do basic half circles. And often end up accidentally doing stuff i don't want for reasons i don't know
@@jmanwild87frankly i gotta ask atp if you dont care for fighting games why are you all over this comment section lmfao you been yapping on damn near every single reply thread on here. but to answer your question, the equivalent of being unable to do half circles properly in something like an fps is just having bad recoil control, or in a moba not knowing your character's trading pattern or whatever. the whole point of the video is that execution barriers exist in literally every genre but for some reason people like you make it sound like fighting game execution is a massive unscalable wall in comparison that cant be solved the same way as other execution barriers in other genres. its just not. if you have a problem with half circles, just practice them while in queue, most modern games let you queue while in training mode right? and unless youre named street fighter, most games combo system is lenient enough that you can just do abc special with no timing or tricks and thats a decent enough starting combo. if youre playing a game that has a big enough playerbase, most likely the people youre fighting will be just as clueless as you. thats how you learn. beat up other people that are the same skill level as you until you figure out the game. not by sitting in training and grinding hard combos. nobody is forcing you to do the stuff you dont know how to do, just ignore that for now and stick to the simple stuff. nobody expects a new valorant player to know every line up, nobody expects a new league player to know every champ match up, why do you expect to be a new player that knows how to do hard combos and tech? just shut that shit out and focus on the easy shit first thats how you gain the frame of reference. its literally that simple. stop worrying about being unable to do half circles or whatever, just do your basic abc fireball combo and remember to block and you'll get there eventually man. this is not a fighting game problem, its a you problem for putting your own expectations too high.
@Ixs4i i want to learn the damn game i paid money for is why I'm always frustrated and i pay attention to high level stuff because that's fun to see and interesting. And it's not an insurmountable wall of course but it sure as hell feels that way when you know what you should be doing but it feels like your controller is fighting you. If it's any indication of the kind of problems new players run into i can't even do strive's whiff punish tutorial with any consistency and that's demoralizing because I've never had a game seemingly fight me on what buttons I've pressed before i started playing fighting games
It’s probably been said before, but I think one of the largest barriers for entry into the FGC-aside from money and time-is that a lot of what is involved with “getting good enough to not get bodied when you play randoms” honestly feels…like homework to your average gamer. And gamers, by and large, do not want to do extra work when it comes to getting their instant dopamine fix of enjoying the games they play.
That's hard to change. That problem is a byproduct of the 1v1 formula, even with all of the comeback mechanic that are added. Card games are also 1v1 games but the rng gives the average Joe to win at least 50% of the time.
I think if you take a bronze league player and throw them into a game with "randoms" (who will be ranked several divisions higher than them if they are of average skill), they will have an equally bad time. Same in any genre if not worse.
That's why it's maddening when developers think shit like removing interesting options or skipping neutral will translate to more new players. It's like, no man, all you're doing is ensuring new players don't stick around because they have less time to analyze their mistakes!
My opinion is that the main reason that Fighting Games are perceived as harder is because it makes it incredibly obvious what you did wrong, even if the best way to solve that problem isn't obvious. Other games you can shrug off a couple losses but in fighting games you know it was your fault, you feel why you lost. Nothing stomps on an ego more than FGs. And people just have fragile egos.
i'd also argue that because most folks don't play arcade fighters these days you're starting even lower below the floor than usual. In other notably difficult games like moba's most of the new player difficulty if you aren't completely new to video games is based on knowledge rather than manual dexterity i can practice for hours and still struggle to do consistent combos and overdrive inputs in guilty gear whereas i had done little other than occasionally watch League of Legends and had an easier time playing a moba like Smite or DOTA.
On top of that it's really hard to play with buddies in fighting games as it's a 1v1 game. And the perceived barrier of "i have to sit in a padded room for hours and hours until i can do special moves and combos" not only makes it hard to get other people to play with you but magnifies every mistake and doesn't let you know how to fix it. I can do QC inputs pretty easily in lots of modern fighting games. I still don't know what is making my fireball inputs so inconsistent in Blazblue. Or how to consistently do a super in Guilty Gear and the only way i have to learn since none of my friends play is to bang my head against the wall in training mode until Either i break or the wall holding me back does
It's perceived as harder because it simply is harder. The same type of people who gush about "skill expression" and how "skill ceiling" are the same people in a same breath going about how fighting games aren't hard while fellating themselves over how hard and impactful skill matters. Also no other genre other than grand/realtime strategy games have an onboarding process obtuse as fighting games. People need to pick a damn lane and either acknowledge the genre as high skill or not and stop berating others at the lower familiarity in the wrong.
I can largely agree with Sajam's points here, though I think his comparison of special moves being an execution check vs. Deadlock movement isn't really a great comparison at all. Sure, the overall point that you don't NEED to know all the optimal stuff to play the game is valid and I agree with that, but there is a big difference between being super optimal with movement and...doing a singular move. I don't consider doing a Shoryuken input advanced or me playing optimally. It's a basic move in my toolkit and having to do these extra steps to execute it is weird. A better example would have been comparing a super easy bread and butter combo like a simple target combo in SF6 or something like Close Slash -> Far Slash - Heavy Slash in Strive to the more optimal combos that use all your resources. You don't NEED to know your wall break combos to play Strive, but you should probably know how to actually do half of your character's movelist. For the record, I don't hate motion inputs and think they have a place, but also there's plenty of games that clearly don't need them and I don't see why people can't admit that they're some of the least intuitive, alien concepts in fighting games that are in literally no other genre. If I want to shoot a gun in an FPS I hit the trigger. If I want to accelerate in a racing game I hit the gas. If I want to use my fireball I must perform a ritual with my d-pad or stick before it comes out. It's an extra step; not a super challenging step relatively speaking, but when you're starting out you're more likely to trip on that step.
I think a different way or wording it is "the motion isn't intuitive to simulate the action onscreen". If you center your controls like your taking hold of a character/person, you move the stick in a direction to get them to move there. Platformers work off of this intuition, even fast ones like Sonic games. I'd say the movement controls are intuitive enough (up for jumping, back for moving back and defending, double-forward for a dash, etc.), but when it comes to doing moves it gets weird. Goldlewis' Behemoth inputs I give a pass because they follow a consistency on a motion-level. I think Charge moves are a good example. You just hold back to block for a few seconds, then you can do an exclusive move. There is no visual indicator that implies this. It's just a tradition you learn, but for someone new it's very confusing. In action games for example, charge moves are highlighted by your character emitting a glow.
"I don't see why people can't admit that they're some of the least intuitive, alien concepts in fighting games that are in literally no other genre." Because these people have been in their bubble so much that they can't see outside of it. Every time Sajam talks about barrier to entry in fighting games or learning fighting games as if it's easy I roll my eyes because he's so incredibly out of touch. He's not dumb, he's smart, but Sajam is incredibly out of touch with the layman and the casuals. He's a math professor wondering why kids consistently put math as their least favorite subject when it's so intuitive, easy, and logical. No layman likes the uniqueness of fighting games. That's why the genre is small and insular. He does not understand new players because he's no longer a new player, nor does he understand people outside the genre because he's a pillar within the genre.
As a relatively new casual player who has gotten people with far less gaming experience (not FGs specifically, gaming in general) to play and enjoy fighting games with no simplified controls options, for them motion input is just "oh, so that's how this game is played". the important part is the "that are in no other genre", because people with gaming experience are used to be able to pick the basic stuff in a new game pretty easily, they are actually more taken aback by the fact that FGs controls differently. Now do those beginners I've gotten to play the game manage to do motion inputs? We'll, they manage more easily than I did playing SFIV in 2021 after not playing a game with motion input the mid to late 2000. Because I explain to them how to do the motions. Which brings me to my conclusion, the real issue FGs have is that they were for a long time very poorly explained. (notably, I improved more in motion execution after Blazblue tutorials than month of SF4). The barrier that is motion input can be very easily solved by making the games better at explaining basic stuffs (not necessarily the advanced tech, just the basic) and providing content in which to apply those basic like most games do (ID, the first level of a adventure game require only to know the easy moves). This is why SF6 works so well, and while modern controls help (since there are people who legitimately don't want or can't play classic), it could probably also works without it.
@@leithaziz2716 360 inputs are the biggest culprit of this since you're never "supposed" to actually do a full 360 but instead go from back to up forwards and hit the button at the same time as up forward to not jump. Why on earth would you make an input that overlaps with another function?
I want to point out with this deadlock example with all this complex decision making and interesting movement tech, that this is what makes video games fun. It feels rewarding to learn how to have more smooth movement and optimise your character, but because of this weird stigma fighting games have of being too hard, developers are trying to take that stuff away.
100% although there are also definitely things they could do to make the experience better at an entry level, and the type of changes they make seem strange too, like with strive for example they completely removed the complexity of the air game but they decided to keep the motion inputs that seems a bit conflicting to me on the other hand i do think the way they changed throws in strive was absolutely an improvement
I mean it is not a ‘random weird stigma’, it works. Smash bros and GG Strive are examples of how being simpler and more intuitive helps but the fact that virtually every developer/designer has making their games easier probably speaks to the fact that it’s true lol. Most of these people don’t like fighting games less than you do, but they *do* have to make those games sell. Money talks.
I nearly bounced off of strive because the region i play in has literally zero players in the towers. Going into your first fighting game online and getting double perfected by celestial players in open park is not a good way to start. Thankfully the netcode is good enough I could play tower in a different region with bad connections and still have fun when actually fighting people closer to my skill level, win or lose.
I notice a lot of people are hung up on his examples of Deadlock not being comparable (or as difficult) as fgs because you won't miss out if you don't know those techs in shooters/other games vs fighting games. Well, DUH. In other games there's typically other things to do. There's more down time. If you have other friends, you goof off, or talk, or just interact with in general. In fighting games, there's less of all of that so of course you'll feel more pressure and since it's individual and focused, it's quote unquote "more difficult". It's natural to feel this way. But the similar thing of "as a beginner, do you really need to know ALL the tech before fundamentals in order to enjoy the game" applies here. Speaking as someone who games a lot with various genres, shooters as a beginner makes me want to tear my hair out because I could get smoked INSTANTLY by headshots (even pros face this ofc). With fgs at the very least I ALWAYS have a chance (yes even with someone who's obviously better than me. And even when I lose, I learn valuable stuff). With fgs, I actually enjoy the push and pull because I'm always taking away something from it. And personally I like learning intricate tech but I know that's not going to magically earn me wins (and yes ofc it's fun WHEN you win with said tech) when I know fundamentals are going to carry me further until certain ranks where other factors come into play more. But again, the topic is do you need these intricate skills to ENJOY it more. Ultimately, it's down to the individual and it seems a bunch of people can't but they have to make it seem like it's a community wide thing (which kinda gives you a free pass into throwing your hands in the air and just say "oh well fgs amirite"). Frankly, I feel like it's also years of "fgs are so special" mentality that has some negative effects in that it lets this idea permeate in examples like the topic of this video regardless if people actually feel that way or not.
that's not you on being smoked by headshot. That's the opponent on hitscan. No matter how good you are, you can't directly fight a headshot because the onus of landing it on the shooter and not you. This is why both Widowmaker on launch and TF2 Sniper are currently hated.
What makes the quarter circle thing different from all the tech you showed in Deadlock is that most of that Deadlock tech is transferrable from other games, sometimes in completely different genres, while fighting game tech is only transferrable from other fighting games. If you've played Titanfall or basically any shooter during the movement shooter boom, you know about crouching to keep momentum. Dashing faster forwards than sideways/carrying current momentum into dash distance is common in 3D platformers and other third person games. Shooters are an incredibly popular genre, not just in multiplayer. If I've never played a fighting game, I can't quarter circle or do Z or charge inputs, but even if I've never played a competitive multiplayer shooter, maybe I've played Risk of Rain 2 or Doom or Sunset Overdrive. I probably know how to aim and do all kinds of basic movements and inputs from playing other games. The knowledge check of not knowing every single item until you're 300 hours in still exists, but it doesn't feel like you like the skill to control your character well on a basic level, so the game still generally feels good to play. Lacking the mechanical skill makes fighting games feel worse to play at the outset than a game like deadlock, where the biggest thing a lot of people are lacking is knowledge. Also it being a team game where someone can lane with you and help you out to learn the game as you play is a big benefit over fighting games.
This is spot on. Shooters give you affordances that make them easier to pick up if you've ever used a mouse and keyboard before. The same cannot be said for fighting games which require extremely unique inputs for even the most basic tools in your character's movelist. The Deadlock example in this video falls flat because not knowing motion inputs would be more akin to not being able to use half my abilities in a MOBA, not having a sub-optimal build.
Sajam's whole Deadlock comparison was terrible because he's talking about skill /ceiling/ techniques with Deadlock and skill /floor/ techniques in fighting games. Comparing advanced movement tech that wouldn't be necessary to know until the intermediate/advanced skill levels to the literal basic abilities of a fighting game character is just silly. The motion inputs are what defines characters the most in the minds of beginners. They are what you see in trailers and most of the reason you decide upon a character right alongside their aesthetic design. Not to mention the zipline movement tech is generally far easier to execute AND has a bunch of intermediary steps that you highlighted so people can move up slowly until they are comfortable hitting the diagonal wall jump. I'm pro-motion inputs but this is a really silly comparison. The general statements about things like sliding for infinite ammo and how much mechanical context surrounds it is good, but it still sort of misses the point when discussing something as skill-floor as motion inputs.
As someone who got Strive on recommendation of some friends and promptly noped out after trying to grind tutorials, it feels like the biggest barrier to entry isn't not having the resources - if anything, fighting games seem to have MORE built-in tutorials and such than most genres - but rather that those resources aren't fun to engage with. Take my favorite game, Team Fortress 2. Pretty much everyone who plays agrees that its tutorials are terrible and the best way to learn is to just play. And yes, when you do that you're going to get wrecked constantly for a good many hours, but in between the moments of frustration of being dominated by half the enemy team I can also laugh at a Spy getting launched across the map by a crit wrench or spectate our team's trolldier during my respawn timer while he harasses the enemy snipers, and that's not to mention all the funky cosmetics and group taunts. There's stuff that's fun that keeps the learning experience from being a slog. The PERCEPTION (and I'm not necessarily saying this is or is not the reality) when it comes to fighting games is that you as a new player are expected to complete at least a certain subset of the tutorials before actually getting into the game. Except those tutorials are often things like, "When your opponent makes this very specific mistake, you have a tiny window to press right bumper and play the drum intro from Hot For Teacher on their ribcage." It's intimidating and frustrating, especially when you aren't necessarily used to using a controller and your input precision is garbage (like me lmao, it's definitely at least partly a skill issue on my part). I dunno how to implement this, but maybe some kind of... more intuitive tutorial system might help. One idea that's sort of floating around in my head is a "stripped down" gamemode for new players, where a lot of the more advanced mechanics are outright removed, leaving players free to focus just on the fundamentals of movement, blocking, etc. Then once they've gained some confidence they can graduate to the full game. Idk, maybe some fighting game players could weigh in on this. I'd love to hear thoughts from those who know more about the genre, because I genuinely do want to get into this stuff. Fighting games seem amazingly deep and technical in a way that should, in theory, scratch my brain just the right way, but to my layman's perception it feels like there's something missing from the early-game experience.
nah i agree with you tutorials are nice but its easy to burn out on them the best way to learn is trial by fire and absorbing some information in between over time, you could always create the limited gamemode artificially with someone who is down to play with those rules
It's really just the difference between team games and 1v1 games. In a team game like TF2 there's no one to punish you directly for doing something bad and at worst you're just another player messing around on the map. You can more or less just go with the flow of your team and slowly develop awareness of what's going on around you. When you die it's maybe not the end of the world because everyone dies during a match, and when you lose it's maybe not your fault even if you died 17 times and everyone else only died 3-4 times. The same issue with fighting games exist in RTS games. It's 1v1 and you get immediately punished by another sentient human for being too slow or doing something wrong so you never get to the part where you can just mess about. You are in a constant state of being interferred with so you never get to have an idea and see it to fruition, you only get to experience being a punching bag. Team games can feel socially encouraging because there are aligned interests with you doing well on your team just as 1v1 games can feel socially discouraging, because here you doing well is at the cost of annoying the only other player in game.
@@gwen9939 keep in mind that for rts the team and co-op modes are usually the most popular mp modes for similar reasons, its easier to just mess around and do something without getting directly interfered with, and you have allies to fall back on when things fail
Consider this: I don't know how to do any of that movement tech but once I hear/read about it I just try it in matches and if I fail I just get the regular movement that I was already doing before. Eventually I just get consistent at it and I never have to spend a single second in "training mode". Compare to: I am just doing auto combo into special in GBVSR because I am a noob. I see someone do an optimal corner combo and I try to replicate it in a match. I drop my juggle, whiff my raging strike (wasting a BP) and my opponent recovers in time to punish me with a full combo while getting out of the corner in the process.
That comparison doesn't seem equivalent since from what I can understand you're using the best case scenario for Deadlocked and the worst case scenario for GBVS. And what's stopping you from trying the combo again as you would try the movement technique again?
@@k-thesupreme3511yeah was gonna say the same. I understand what he was tryin to say It would work if he was more specific in their first example. As is it falls short.
@k-thesupreme3511 The comparison does make sense when you take in the fact that doing an movement in an TGS game is going to be more easier and funnier to do than trying to practice an move in an fighting game where you are FORCED to learn it in the practice mode because you cannot practice that way on the fly in matches. In TGS and FPS games, you can get away with practicing an move in them without facing much consequences. But in fighting games, you will be severely punish if you try to execute an move you never done or practice much with and get beaten if you don't do it right. So you are forced to do it in an practice mode which is going to be extremely boring for alot of new players
@kyra9337 you only get punished by it depending on how good the person you're playing against is, the same way you could get sniped and killed by someone on the opposing team in an FPS. I don't think one should be more likely than the other when it comes to playing against people who are better than you especially if you're a beginner
Doing movement tech incorrectly in a shooter can easily get you killed, depending on the particular tech and game. Dropping a combo can lead to an "American reset" where you land another combo, doing more total damage than if you had done the first combo correctly. Sometimes your mistakes get punished, sometimes they don't. This is true in all games.
Even going to simplified games from “complex” genres specifically pokemon unite because it’s the only thing I’m good at Setting up a good build in unite to actually begin playing the game is so much harder than figuring out even a basic BNB, and unite is “simple” you gotta figure out which type your pokemon is, what items are good for it, if it’s a jungler or bot or top lane because the actual category doesn’t mean anything (jungler Aegislash on top) and you have to build for that specific lane in the most esoteric ways imaginable, why does attack weight work when I’m playing bot lane Ceruledge, but it doesn’t do anything when I’m in top, I genuinely still don’t know if that’s skill issue or not, game is fucked Imagine this in a fighting game, pick your character, figure out on your own if they’re a zoner or rushdown or grappler or whatever with zero guidance and the actual differences are pretty slim but snowball into huge gaps in playstyle, then learn your combos based on which version you want to play, keeping alternates in mind in case your teammate decides to not call their lane and just do whatever, and there’s alternate objectives like hitting 2k2d at 30 seconds in and if you don’t you lose in 5 minutes for reasons beyond your comprehension until you’re at least 20 hours in, and this is just the basic issues with trying to get into the SIMPLEST, WORST MOBA It is genuinely INSANE how much higher the standard for fighting games is, TLDR: ask a gamer to play jungler crit aegidlash focusing on objectives and they’ll spend 509 hours min maxing it, ask them to hit a quarter circle punch a single time and they’ll spend 5 seconds, give up, call you an elitist, and then break your controller
At some point you have to ask why so many people are willing to get stomped for 500 hours to learn in MOBAs, while so few can stand 5 seconds of learning fighting game inputs. It's not really about the learning curve at all, but how much people enjoy learning it. Yes, some of this is shaped by preconceived notions, but a lot of it is that one manages to make sure there are fun moments, even while getting absolutely ruined, and the other does not. IMO, a lot of players, after figuring out how to effectively learn PvP games, simply don't understand what it was like before they had that framework. New players not only don't care if they're playing optimally, but they also don't understand how to even process mistakes. A real noob is not going to realize something as esoteric as their shop decision 5 minutes in dictated the rest of the match. Or as JWong famously demonstrated, they will not realize they could stop getting hit by bazookas just by holding block. They are NOT gonna learn today, because they don't understand the game well enough to get anything out of it. As a noob, you don't even know what made you so vulnerable. You just know you can't do anything, none of your inputs mattered, so why bother even queuing up. I think that's actually why modern-type controls can be good for player retention. It lets even complete noobs occasionally do something flashy and satisfying, even if they have no practice. Players crave agency and explosive moments, and fighting games are basically made to gatekeep those things from the worse player. You have to throw people a bone or they'll decide it isn't worth it.
@ I think it’s less that there are fun moments in other games even when you’re getting stomped, and moreso that at a low level in a fighting game your fun moments just aren’t as noticeable, getting in 3 hits after being combod for 13 years doesn’t smack you in the face as hard as getting lucky and killing the other bot laner, and especially combined with preconceived notions it makes getting over the hump to learn and become competent very difficult to stick out I do definitely agree that a lot of people just forget what learning is like though, it was hard for me to learn strive after playing DBFZ because I just forgot what learning a fighting game was like, even though I knew I’d eventually get there, I still false started several times Have to also hard agree on the modern control stuff, though I’m partial to fighterz system of autocombos and Gatling being relatively simple to understand on their face but branching into an extremely cool combo system as it was my first game, and biased very hard against modern controls specifically because I have chronic skill issue and I am incapable of making them work
I think the one major differences between the types of knowledge and mechanical checks mentioned for something like Deadlock vs a fighting game is whether they are what I'll call explicit or emergent. In fighting games, almost all of the major mechanics, inputs, moves, tech, etc. are explicitly programmed into the game, or are otherwise bugs or other unintended stuff (like infinites) that will likely be patched out. Most of the tech you showed off in Deadlock is just the consequence of it's particular physics system; those techniques emerged from the interactions of other systems, like friction and momentum. Many of these emergent techniques even end up being "canonized" later on as explicit techniques in later games. I think a better comparison of an explicit mechanical skill check in Deadlock would be the dash jump. Like a quarter-circle input, it has a fairly unique and somewhat precise timing coordinated across different buttons that makes it not that intuitive when you first start, but it's easy enough that you do get used to it pretty quickly. The best example of an emergent fighting game mechanic I can think of is Melee wave-dashing. As an accidental consequence of the air-dodge physics, they created one of the most iconic techniques in all of competitive gaming. Traditional FGC games also have some examples though, like combos originally being an accident or the way that motion inputs influence how you play and position (I think there's a Core-A video about that). I think in general, players tend to not view emergent mechanics as being as difficult, and they tend to be less impactful at low level. I assume this is partially because games are more likely to teach the basic inputs but not emergent techniques (often because those techniques weren't known about at launch). But also, the fact that they emerge from other systems means they are effectively hidden from new players until they learn the base systems first, then the new technique just feels like doing what they were already doing, but better. And those base systems tend to be VERY simple and accessible, like moving, shooting, and controlling the camera; all certainly skills that take a long time to master, but which can be learned in seconds (with the notable exception of the camera which is not easy for complete beginners).
I'd argue option selects are still mostly emergent system consequences rather than something explicitly built in, ditto some categories of fuzzy-whatever. And then like you mention some stuff was unintentional 30 years ago but was intentionally codified sometime between then and now. But you have a point broadly about how a lot of other genres have a higher incidence of just throwing a million things out there and seeing what people make of it. SF6 was likely a lot more planned and controlled at release than a thing with functionally unlimited item combos is or even could want to be
I dunno if I fully agree on the way you framed the Deadlock comparison. The fact of the matter is that the number of controls you need to memorize to be able to play your character, using all of their abilities at a basic level, is far lower in mobas compared to fighting games. Setting aside Deadlock with its shooter mechanics, all you need to know to play a traditional moba is how to click around to move, 4-6 ability keys, and 0-6 item hotkeys. That's it. Those are all the controls you need to learn, and (barring some of DotA's more unique designs), they will carry over between every character in the game. Compare that to a fighting game where you need to learn normals, command normals, specials, supers, system-mechanic-button-combinations, AND movement commands. Is there a wide variety of other stuff you need to learn/memorize to play a moba correctly? Of course. But fighting games have a uniquely high number of inputs that need to be memorized compared to almost every other genre. Forgetting which direction and button combo makes your guy do the overhead punch (no, not that overhead punch, the other one) is a different kind of frustration than not knowing optimal movement tech in Deadlock.
All the controls you need to play a fighting game are how to move a joystick in a circle and 4-8 buttons. That's it, those are all the controls you need to learn, and (barring some more unique characters), they will carry over between every character in most fighting games. Compare that to a MOBA where you need to learn abilities, the layout of a map, the NPCs on a map, an entire shop's worth of items, what those items upgrade into or combo with, last hitting, AND aiming and character and/or map movement. If command normals(direction + button) are enough to set them apart from direction and button separately, then clicking targets and doing skillshots in normal MOBAs or aiming, moving, and pressing abilities together or separately should also be set apart from each other. You say the buttons in MOBAs carry over between characters, but so do the buttons in fighting games. Yes, the effects of pressing the buttons are different, but so are the effects of pressing the "4-6 ability keys" in MOBAs. In fighting games you have 8 directions and 4-8 buttons. That's less than the infinite directions of a mouse + 4 movement buttons + 4-12 ability/item buttons. Not knowing the optimal movement tech in Deadlock can get you killed for being too slow just as easily as pressing the wrong overhead can get you killed for being too slow. When people say "fighting games are held to a higher standard," this is what they mean. You let Deadlock, and MOBAs in general, get away with things that you hold against fighting games. If you can predict an opponent's movement to land a skillshot, or headshot them while you're both moving in Deadlock, you can do a quarter-circle and press a button.
@@Ketsuekisanproblem is it takes a lot more investment to have fun in a fg since mashing is not fun at all. In a shooter you intuitively get better by playing more. No need to go through matchups and learn punish windows and frame data to just get decent. Recoil control is intuitive. Just pull down. Even in mobas the biggest barrier to fun is controlling your character. The ceiling to have fun in a fg is higher that's why most casuals just play the arcade/story versus with their friends and never touch the game after
@alondjeckto it's fun for like a week and if it's your first fighting game. If the game is well designed you then start to get a feel for the game and mashing becomes the most mind numbing thing ever and u are still at noob phase. In fps the progression is more instinctive (your aim becomes naturally better the more u play and u get better map knowledge). Fg u have to go out of your way to really enjoy the game. It's one of the few genres where being a sweat is more fun. U don't get as much of a dopamine hit beating on noobs like an fps or moba
according to a friend of mine he stated: "I can read what items do and theorize. I can NOT theorize fighting games, it's muscle memory and training by doing the motion input instead of just **reading** is not fun and much harder in comparison"
Glad Ryan hart is fully committed to the engagement farming shit or people might not realize what he's doing when he, oh idk, tweets a tokido quote where the source(I think? If not, idk what it's supposed to be) is an interview that he still hasn't released months later. Still waiting for context on that quote but he damn sure got the clicks. I still find it tedious when it's a legendary player, personally.
I honestly think it might at least partially also come down to movement or sense of control (whether real or imagined). Controlling your character at a very very basic and baseline level in Mobas and Shooters is a lot easier than in Fighting Games. Yes moving left and right in a fighting game isn't hard, but actually moving your character to the part of the screen you want them to at the speed you want them to or moving away from your opponent fast enough to actually create distance etc is finicky at a beginner level (especially in an actual match where your opponent comes right out of the gate swinging), where as WASD or mouse click to move is fairly straight forward and you usually have a grace period or safe zone at the beginning of a match before you encounter other players. You'll still get your ass handed to you in Mobas and shooters when new don't get me wrong, and many of the times you die it can still feel very frustrating and confusing as to what happened. But it doesn't feel like you're fighting the game in order to move or control your character (Street Fighter especially can feel very stiff because of how many moves you can't cancel out of which can momentarily lock you out of moving or taking other actions which feels very weird and arbitrary to newer players). You get overwhelmed by other factors in these other genres which for whatever reason don't bother people as much.
It's just because people got used to WASD movement. You take someone who only play phone game to try shooter, they struggled extremely hard with mouse and WASD movement, especially the diagonal movement or aiming while jumping. On the other hand, telling a kid who has been playing game like metroidvania to try fighting game, he grasp the control instantly.
@DuoMaxwellDS i played gamepad games all my life i still can't consistently do half circle or dp motions or really do combos outside of Games with simplified controls lik Power Rangers battle for the grid and every time i try to learn i get put off because simply making my character do what i want it to do is a frustrating test of do i do the input well enough that the game thinks i did the input i wanted. Same reason i don't play fps's on mouse and keyboard. simply controlling my character is an awkward and sometimes even painful affair that doesn't lend itself well to beginners. At least with a game similarly considered complex like a moba most of that initial difficulty isn't routed in the basic controls but instead based in knowledge about the game. In a shooter shooting in the direction of your crosshair isn't hard and while aim can be difficult there's resources for practice. in fighting games it's got the knowledge gap but also learning manual dexterity because the control scheme is wholly unique to fighting games. And really there's no way to sort of get good at motion inputs without just sitting in the padded room or having a friend teach you. the only thing that comes close when it comes to motion inputs being something like Skate
Also it's really difficult to learn these games when you don't have friends to either teach you or who are similarly unskilled that you can play with. For lots of people learning a fighting game isn't playing the tutorial then immediately getting into the game like in something like CoD but playing the tutorial and then practicing for hours and hours in training mode so they're somewhat consistent at things before they get to the actual fun part of playing against other people because just flailing loses its luster very quickly
I find the Dealock example kind of misleading because none of that stuff you talked about is necessary for playing the game, but I'd argue special moves are very much necessary to play fighting games. Nobody starting Deadlock is expecting to know all the best movement tech and items just like nobody starting a fighting game is expecting to know all the best combos and setups, but people DO expect to be able to use their characters abilities, which is trivial in Deadlock but not in fighting games
As someone that loves fighting games more than most other things in the world now but bounced off them a lot when I was younger, I wish this point was acknowledged more and that fighting game people would be more willing to meet this complaint where they actually are coming from. Sajam showing the difference between walking to a location and crouch cancel air dash flying to the same location and saying that comparison is the same as "only using normal moves" vs "being able to use normals AND specials" feels like a misunderstanding of why motion inputs are frustrating. I think instead we should be focusing on why it is that people think motion inputs are hard in the first place (fighting game input buffer systems are WEIRD AS FUCK and nobody ever talks about it despite it being the primary reason someone could feel frustration from motions) and shifting the way we explain these things to new players so they don't sit there with the feeling of "I'm doing what the game is telling me to do and it still won't come out, this fucking sucks" for hours, days, weeks on end because they didn't realize that it was even possible for two similar inputs to result in something different, or that they just didn't understand the timing, or were using a poor input device/method. Motion inputs became a lot easier when I was taught *why* I was failing to perform them, but it somehow took 6+ years for anyone to sit me down and teach that, and I think that's a crying shame.
@@Tomoka51 Sajam is incredibly out of touch with the layman because he's too deep in the FGC. He looks at Infil's website of glossary of terms and think "Oh what a great resource" instead of thinking the logical thought of "Holy shit, why does this need an entire website dedicated to just terminologies" and then wonder why people find the genre impenetrable.
I just started fighting games like 2 months ago and I think the hardest part over special moves and combos is DEFENSE! It didnt take me long to understand the inputs and timing of the special moves and combos and I'm brand new. The thing that ALWAYS fucks me up online (and I've tried playing Skullgirls and Granblue) is when the enemy starts comboing me and I have no way to stop them. Trying to learn the tech to get out of your opponents combos for me at least, is the biggest roadblock. If I can get the first few hits in I usually win by overwhelming my opponent, but if my opponent gets their hits in first I'm pretty much dead if I'm not already blocking. And this isnt mentioning things like executing parrys or even just reacting to your opponent's character in time. Ive been trying for like 2 weeks now and I had to take a break cause I got tired of practicing for 30 minutes with the bot and then trying to go up against people and getting demolished. So yeah, combos and special attacks take some getting used to, but I think the single hardest part of fighting games and the thing that keeps people away is once you're losing, the vast majority of people have no clue how to recover.
I would say the difference between motion inputs and other knowledge/input checks is sure, you don't know how to do crazy movement tech in a shooter game, but motion inputs are closer to just... normal abilities than extra tech. Fighting games also have extra tech that require hard inputs, but normal regular moves/abilities are harder to use, and it's an all or nothing thing that feels frustrating to mess up even if it's not more difficult than other game's inputs. I agree the difficulty standard is still not applied fairly, but it's just something to consider.
have not watched the video yet but i think it's the difference between how easy the 'basics' are. in a game like dmc, it is difficult to actually play it but you can move around and hit enemies with strings. in a fighting game, the initial difficulty for a new player is with the basics, and not the mechanical complexity, which makes a lot of people frustrated.
talking about the example in the tweet, in deadlock you can shoot and move around and dodge just fine as a new player. the complexity and difficulty in understanding comes with the items and specific mechanics of the game, which is more digestible for the average gamer than having to relearn the basics
"in a fighting game, the initial difficulty for a new player is with the basics" The basics of a fighting game are moving and punching/kicking. These are not the source of difficulty in fighting games. There's very little difference between dmc's learning curve and the learning curve of a fighting game. Basic movement and attacks, then special moves with more complicated inputs, then combining multiple moves to create flashy combos. And you must do all that while avoiding enemy attacks.
@JackVolt if you feel that way that's fine but an average gamer that hasn't played a fighting game before does struggle with being able to do special moves and move around and combo
@@texasred8424 Just like how the average person who doesn't play shooters will struggle to hit their shots. Why do we see shooting and missing as "playing the game", but don't see whiffing buttons in neutral the same way?
Honestly, i think the things we can do to get people in to the general start with us as players getting our friends in. Added functionality like modem controls help a lot, but we need to start appealing to the personality seeds that make people pay attention. You know someone who likes action/superhero movies? Dope, here's a character who will ignite that same spark. You know someone who likes rhythm games? Guess what combos can feel like to you bud! You like outwitting or confusing the hell out of people? Let me introduce you to the left-right mix-up, friend. I've been teaching my gf how to play sf6, and she has never played and fg before. Now we're 1.3 years deep into playing sf6 multiple times a week, and she's a chun li lover. Things is when I'm teaching her, I'm not afraid to be as patient as it takes, break things down to the basics we take for granted, I'm not afraid to take "L" after "L" because I'm letting her get and feel success from the complicated techniques she just spent irl time learning with me in training mode. There are barriers we won't be able to over come as individual players, like the dlc fighters, lack of customization outside of Tekken and soul Calibur. But those can be ameliorated at least a little bit if we gift newer players a character the same way we buy a friend a drink. These aren't perfect, and certainly aren't catch all, but I'm just speaking from my personal experiences recently.
Honestly i think fighting games should have way more tutorials that feel like minigames. Not hidden on some world tour mode, but available in main menu and practice mode and marketed as additional singleplayer content. Learning combos as rhythm minigames and piecing them together is the biggest example for sure. The SF6 parry basketball minigame would also be a banger if it was more developed and available on main menu. They could even make a "playground" or whatever mode to go along WT, BH and FG.
@disonalvan you're especially right on the wt piece. There is so much good content there that you have to design an avatar and sit through so so so many cutscenes and missions to get to, it should straight up be selectable from the same menu as the extreme battles. I know people irl who would love it, but because the barrier to entry is so high they don't do it
I think the issue with fighting game execution isn't that it's harder or easier than other games, it's that's it's just so unintuitive. Specials are all a bunch of nonsense direction inputs combined with arbitrary button presses, until you get used to them it feels super awkward to execute. Lots of shooter have super cool movement tech that's just as technically challenging to execute as fighting game combos, but understanding the basics of manipulating momentum feels a lot more intuitive than input Konami code to do cool move.
Bruv I have 100+ hours on Deadlock and didn't know crouching off a zipline carried momentum. Its not not more intuitive. Hell its more intuitive when the game is actually telling me what inputs I need to press unlike movement tech in shooters you are referring to.
My first "fighting" game was Bleach Blade of Fate on the DS, Treasure developed madness so it was busted but incredibly fun. The DS Lite d-pad was surprisingly comfortable to roll my thumb around to do motions so I got used to motions real quick.....then some years later I try Third Strike Online Edition and the Dualshock d-pad is bugging me to no end. Comforts a big deal in doing motions and I think most controllers nowadays don't give a damn about d-pads, the focus in on the sticks. Stick works for some games definitely more than others, shame good d-pads are so hard to come by.
Yeah, the dpad nowadays is either in the right spot (parallel to the action buttons), but dogshit in comfort and feel. Or in the wrong spot (offset) but acceptable to SOMETIMES good in feel and comfort.
You do damage and such in Deadlock without having to get into advanced movement tech. Fighting game combos are all or nothing. You get the combo perfect, or you get a worse result than if you hadn't done it at all. In Deadlock, if your movement sucks, you lose to better players (as you should), but there's no "this guy can't do the 4-frame link so his character falls apart completely". You might die because you did something suboptimal in both games, which is fine, but having 10% less distance or 10% less damage in something like Deadlock is not going to destroy you consistently, especially versus other suboptimal play. The closest thing I can think of in a moba that hits that point is knowledge checks that turn into snowball scenarios - guy doesn't know to buy the item that counters the other guy's ult or something. This is still a matter of just getting informed or looking it up. This is usually the case with Tekken as well - I don't think it took me longer than 30 minutes to lab a decent combo I could hit every time in that game, thanks to its input buffer and on average easier inputs. With a traditional fighting game however, it's not just the knowledge check. You're also hitting up the lab for possibly hours to build muscle memory to hit super specific timings. The only thing I can think of remotely that demanding in Deadlock is corner boosting, and that doesn't stop your hero from doing anything fun if you can't do it. Not to mention the actual wrist pain involved with some traditional fighting games - again, not an issue I run into outside of them.
yeah I keep thinking of how the common knowledge for sf4 sakura was "if you can't do 1 frame links then don't even play her" because simple bnbs wouldn't function. I'd argue what fighting games have a skill *floor* problem. I think this is why so many people take to things like soul calibur so well, since you're playing a physically intuitive game with fun moves and real decisions even before you get into combos. a casual is going to be rightly unsatisfied if all they can manage in street fighter is a stiff basic punch and they can't access any of the character's signature techniques which are all over the promo material.
"You do damage and such in Deadlock without having to get into advanced movement tech. Fighting game combos are all or nothing. You get the combo perfect, or you get a worse result than if you hadn't done it at all." Wrong. When you're just starting out, you don't need all that, not against opponents of a similar skill level. "In Deadlock, if your movement sucks, you lose to better players (as you should), but there's no "this guy can't do the 4-frame link so his character falls apart completely"." No, instead there's "this guy aims and reacts faster than me, so I get shot before I can do anything, and now my currency situation is so bad and my build so far behind that fighting other players is actively detrimental to my team because I'm feeding and causing us to spiral further and further into being mathematically unable to win."
@@Ketsuekisanbut in deadlock you have the option to go just hang back and farm up or gank people in deadlock if your being out meched you have option in a fighting game if your oponent can do specials and you cant its gg
@@SupermanSajam I have bad memories of playing Street Fighter 4 and not being able to make any conversions off of stray hits. I'd land punches on my opponent and get 5% life, and they'd usually get at least 20% or more. The only time I could do real damage to someone was off an ultra - and that's assuming I could do the motion. Metsu Hadouken wasn't that bad, but doing 1319 charge motions felt completely impossible on an Xbox 360 pad. I also have bad memories picking up KoF 2002 and 15, spending 3 hours in the lab trying to get a basic normal -> command normal -> special move combo, completely failing to get it once, even on keyboard (my most comfortable setup), and leaving frustrated. I've never run into anything like this in another genre. Do I get outskilled? Of course - one of the most extreme cases I've seen outside of a fighting game is Lethal League. People go crazy with the ball control in that game. Maybe I can't get a crazy juggle like they can, maybe I don't get the ball as often as they do, but I can take a life off of them when I do get that ball. More importantly, I can do my character's special attack without having to spend at least 3 hours in the lab. Same with Deadlock. I don't have to spend a whole evening practicing to summon an owl on Gray Talon - that part's easy. Landing it's the hard part, sometimes. And that's fine - it should be able to be juked. But if I gotta read a 300 page manual and go to flight school for 6 months and learn how to fly a real jet just to make the owl take off at all, I'm not having fun anymore. I'm not committing that much time to a game that's making me really upset right from square one.
Doesn't the Deadlock example prove the opposite though? You showed some very very high level Deadlock optimizations, dashing sidewise rather than forward, crouching off the rail rather than jumping etc. These are not moves that a new Deadlock player needs to know and in fact you mention a lot of players in chat didn't know these techniques exist. The comparison that the non-FGC public at large love to complain about again and again is motion controls, which is table stakes in a fighting game without simple inputs.
Did u perform any actual user studies or did u just base it off ur own experience and that of those who are passionate in the genre? Fighting games are objectively harder than most games
@@derpaboopderp1286 They are not "objectively harder" They are simply different. Some fighting games of the past are very very strict but that is only if you're trying to do the best things your character can do. See the 1frame links in SF4. They aren't necessary for every beginner to learn and aren't needed with 2 beginners anyway. Games of a long running genre, believe it or not, are made intuitively so that they aren't far removed from the past iterations. Every fighting game has the same core principles it never changed and it in fact got much more accessible for people who actually have conditions preventing them from doing motion inputs comfortably.
I think the comparisons are very shallow: Deadlock's movement tech is not an integral part of the game and people can play just fine without using them. In FGs, motion inputs practically gatekeep half, likely even more, of the genre's gameplay and joy. It's not just a matter of optimization. Not to mention that the example movement tech will be easier to a lot of people than being consistent with even a 5f-link, which can get you killed if you drop and go unsafe ob. You can also research what to buy or straight-up copy others' builds in other genres. In FGs, copying even the most basic tech comes with execution homework. There's alao the matter of decision-making. In other competitive games, macro decisions come into play far after beginner levels. In FGs, the very first moment you have in a match might be knowledge check or perhaps youtry to do a combo but whoops you suck at neutral or you have some neuch tech but the oponent does not move in the way you need and now you need to determine wtf to do. You don't have minions or jungle or any other opponent-agnostic strat to rely on--you need to adapt. Mathematical FG play doesn't exist because in the end, we all go gambling. In short, as a beginner, you have no choice but to get bodied to learn FGs.
This last point I unfortunately completely disagree with. I can say the same about a MOBA "The very first moment you have in a lane might be a knowledge check or whoops you missed a minion cause you suck and now your opponent hits the next level before you and now you don't know wtf to do" EVERY competitive game has knowledge checks from the first second of gameplay that can make or break a match whether you know it or not, but it's not relevant because there's 100s of knowledge checks and you're JUST starting out.
@@GenieStorm I added that sort of as a joke and didn't want to go in-depth in an already-long comment: In MOBAs, you have a lot of PvE or way safer stuff you can do but to engage with that specific micro-level challenge: get sustain items, chug lots of potions, focus on farming, go jungle, push and gank other lanes, swap lanes... If things go to late-game, what you did in lane might as well be fiction. In FGs, you have no other option but to constantly re-engage because there is no other game--it's just the fight. Add that FGs focus a lot on the human error aspect, even if you know literally everything about the system, you have to learn the specific person's knowledge checks. The process of "get hit > try to form a pattern" is the core of FGs. Even at the highest level they are a competition for who gets bodied less before they figure the opponent out. I don't think FGs are inherently harder or more knowledge-based or anything--it's just that for a beginner, the initial experience is a lot more overwhelming due to lack of alternatives (besides playing something else, which many of them choose to).
@theuzi8516 Apologies, didn't catch the joke! I highly disagree on "If things go to late-game, what you did in lane might as well be fiction" Fiction how? Maybe I'm misunderstanding this comment but what you do in lane absolutely impacts the late-game and is often a direct result of it. All the small micro level challenges you mentioned earlier are variables that a beginner can't efficiently monitor or keep track of all at once. They may forget about them by late game but if the goal is to learn and improve it absolutely starts with the basics. The last two points I also completely disagree with: MOBAs have inherently more factors to keep track of and be aware of, it's extremely overwhelming for new players BECAUSE there are so many variables, and even if you focus on one aspect you still miss the other 99. Farming and enganging with the enemy laner is a prime example of 2 variables that can be extremely difficult to focus on. All competitive games focus on the human error aspect and decision making, you constantly change and adapt to the situation. I disagree on that being the core of FGs and high level play is about applied knowledge, adaptability and decision making in my opinion. "initial experience is a lot more overwhelming due to lack of alternatives" training mode, story mode and AI matches serve the same purpose as PvE or Co-op vs AI in MOBAs. Some of the largest competitive games (LoL, TFT, CS:GO, Valorant, etc) do not have very good or friendly initial experiences and some are even known to have a smurfing problem which means a beginner is likely to have an "unfair" match whether the smurf is on their team or not. All competitive games have an initial overwhelming experience precisely because they are competitive, and therefore take time and effort to advance in
@@GenieStorm It wasn't a good joke anyway, nw :D What I mean by "might as well be fiction" is essentially that no matter what the past was, the present is apparent--doesn't matter if you bodied or got bodied in lane because you're in the late game now and late-game factors are now what you need to consider. (This is basically the theme of the rest of this comment btw lol.) I also disagree with some of your other comparisons but I find this whole thing similar to a Final Fantasy XIV argument about whether a song ("The Fiend") is too similar to Powerman 5000's "When Worlds Collide", and I feel like the crux of the issue is the same in both. Basically the FFXIV situation is that a bunch of music nerds made several posts explaining how at the technical level, the songs have a lot of differences and that they are nowhere near similar enough for the comparisons but the funny thing is that in every comment section or in-game chat about the song was (is) filled with people comparing the two and getting lots of agreement. So, at the end of the day, the technical mumbo jumbo is inconsequential because even if FGs and other competitive games have the same issues on paper or The Fiend and When Worlds Collide are technically very different, the end result is that we see a lot of people sticking with other competitive stuff even when playing solo and we find a lot of people thinking The Fiend sounds very much like When Worlds Collide. This all means that, assuming the on-paper similarities/differences are accurate, they fail to capture the similarities/differences in the degrees in the sense that the potential turn-offs for FGs and other competitive games might be the same but they are more pronounced in FGs at least enough to give us the end result we see. At the end of the day, think of which one is more likely to be true: a) everyone is so deluded that they find FGs significantly harder to get into despite there not being all that much of a difference, or b) FGs actually are significantly harder to get into for the average player. If only we had solo competitive shooters to compare because if you are right, the social element is doing waaaaaay more than I'd guess :D
ok but i feel like this defense is always a little bad faith - yes deadlock is objectively way harder to learn, but all of the tricks he showed were optional, you can control your character and start playing the game without them. With fighting games, if you can't do your special moves, it is completely disingenuous to say that you are playing the game. It is not fun or satisfying in any way to play most fgs with just normals, and wanting to do a move but physically not being able to do it is way more frustrating than having to do things inefficiently and losing, because at least in the latter you have agency over what your guy does on screen. I definitely agree that fighting games are judged as impossible to play unfairly but motion inputs is a VERY LEGIT barrier to entry that is worth solving with stuff like modern controls
He always compares tech to base character control and it's definitely not the same thing. Not just that but everything he showed was more knowledge checks than mechanic checks. They are like 1-2 button things as opposed to motion inputs. Then fighting games still have knowledge checks on top of the mechanic checks like motion inputs.
"yes deadlock is objectively way harder to learn" And that's really all anyone is trying to say. This is why fighting games are "held to a higher standard." You admit that Deadlock is harder, but then immediately try to "um ackshually" it away. As an aside, if being able to do special moves without motion inputs is all it takes, then why isn't Granblue Versus far and away the most popular fighting game of all time?
@Ketsuekisan Granblue can just be unpopular. Also you ignored the actual point. Type of difficulty matters. Fighting games are hard mechanically at an entry level. Deadlock is not hard mechanically at an entry level. You can do things with very simple button presses as opposed to doing a dp. Even other games that have mechanical difficulty usually put it somewhere other than controlling your character. Think of souls games, nioh, GoW or Musou games. They are hard but doing your own moves isn't hard.
I have gotten a bunch of 12 years old with little to no gaming experience to play Third strike and they enjoyed the game just fine. They don't need to know how to do a 5f link because it's only useful at a intermediate level. You don't need to know what a link is to play the game. You'd need it if you want to git gud, but And motion inputs doesn't deter them from having fun, they're hyped as shit when one manage to land a super because that's seen as good skill for them but that's about it. There is a problem with FGs but it's not specifically that motions inputs are too hard, though they may seem like they are.
@emperormegaman3856 A group of similarly skilled kids playing in person is a very controlled environment compared to what's typically going to happen. Not just that but ignorance is bliss. Their lack of gaming experience can make simpler things more fun, they have less to compare it to.
All i know is that i got good at overwatch by playing with friends but to learn sf6 i started by watching a characters guide for the character i wanted to play next, played combo trials alone, did reaction and combo drills and find solutions to situations alone in training mode, while also having to regularly hop back into training mode after sets to look for solutions again. i have 4 characters in masters in sf6 so far and got to masters in overwatch, but in one game i was constantly just playing with friends and only went into the practice range for 5 minutse when a new hero dropped and in the other i was in my secluded training chamber for probably 100 hours. Im the only one of my friends who plays fighting games but i dont deny that the barrier to entry to actually start playing the real game is higher than other games. you always use deadlock as an example cuz its so complicated, but there are many games out there you can absolutely learn while playing with friend without watching guides.
This, a thousand times this. The issue isn't difficulty or a lack of resources - in fact I think fighting games excel when it comes to the quantity and depth of tutorials, both official and community-made - but rather that the learning process is uniquely unfun compared to many other genres. When your options as a new player are "get dumpstered repeatedly while barely being able to move your character" and "spend hours and hours doing flashcards for your thumbs," it's pretty easy to get fed up and throw in the towel. There needs to be a middle ground between these to make learning the basics more interesting. Remember, it's a GAME. It's supposed to be FUN, even during the awkward early learning portion. Side note, I've been seeing a communications issue all over this comments section that's not really specific to fighting games but crops up a lot in software development as well. The customer will complain about a specific feature or design element when what's actually bothering them is something more fundamental. They just don't have the language to express what the ACTUAL problem is. One of the hardest things to do as a developer is understand that what the customer says is not always what they mean. That applies here too, I think. People outside the community do like to say that fighting games are "too hard," yeah - but I don't think that's what they actually mean; rather, I think they're frustrated that learning the mechanics doesn't feel like an engaging process, which creates a perception, real or false, that the genre is uniquely difficult. Or maybe I'm talking out my rear. Idk, could go either way :P
@@Vegetation1691 thats what i mean, i am currently teaching a friend rivals of aether 2 (which is a monumental task, cuz the game currently has 0 tutorials, but those thankfully will come) but despite him having a lot of platform fighter experience, he does barely learn while playing against other players and only really improves in the sessions where he plays against me and i specifically teach him stuff and let him do a setup, punish or combo repeatedly on me to build patter recognition and muscle memory, which you dont really do while playing naturally.
@@Vegetation1691 Also the learning process can be fun, atleast to me, but its clearly not to everyone, cuz dropping a hard combo a 1000 times to finally have it down consistently tests your patience.
I know you kind of touched on it, but when it comes down to "look up someone else playing it", there is just so many flaws in that, usually anyways. What if the person sucks, what if you're watching the literal best player in the world pull off some tech, and trying to replicate it within minutes of picking up a game. Hell there's even stuff like misinformation, whether directly or indirectly, as more things are "figured out" that may date a video hard. At the end of the day, you're also just using someone else's ideas, or opinions, to form how you play or think. Reminds me of gacha games, where every banner that'll get posted, there will be tons of "should I pull x" "is x a must pull" etc. Also if you're trying to play the way someone else does, it can be hard to form your own style, or again if you can't replicate it, then it is kind of a feelsbad. People will be quick to doubt their ability to play it, whether cause they think it is too hard, or they think they suck too much, but like anything else, you gotta give it a little bit of time.
You made enough videos about rollback that we now have rollback in almost every fighting game. Time to use your powers to make people shut up about fighting games being more complicated than other more popular genres.
If u only use someone elses build in deadlock chances are you dont even know why ur buying them and might not even know what they do. Learning how to build on the fly was a huge game changer at least in terms of enjoying the game
Price is a weird one. I think that's one of the last issues until more recent where the FTP has skyrocketed very casual genres. SF4 did not have this issue, Tekken didn't, and neither soulcal until recently. One of the biggest issues for so long was actually the online experience. You couldn't play with randoms from across the country or play with your homie who moved away cause delay made the game frustrating. Devs took so long to address that even when rollback was launched.
@muckdriver i feel like part of it is almost a self perpetuating cycle. Fighting Games have a reputation for being hard to get into and that you need to spend hours or days on a character to see any kind of success. People don't play against other people to learn but instead sit in training room getting increasingly frustrated when they attempt something and it's not working and just hitting a dummy for hours and hours isn't fun as a noob. Eventually bounce off and go back to playing games where your skills learned in other games transfer and make onboarding easier. Gaming with friends is fun but now you gotta get someone else to play with who is either also a noob or willing to put up with noobs and most people don't want to spend on a fighting game because spending 60 bucks on a game you might bounce off of after two hours feels terrible. The reputation that fighting games are hard means that noobs aren't really joining which means most of the content you see is high level which can perpetuate the reputation because "you'll never be able to do that." The hardest fighting game to get into is the first one because you're starting at the ground floor and think you need to get to floor 5 before you start having fun
@@jmanwild87 i can relate because i too felt like i hsd to practice in training mode first before playing online but you literally cant learn the game like that you just need a fellow noob to hsve fun while you learn as you play
Rivals 2 was the first time I ever put time into learning a plat fighter in a competitive aspect and while it was tough I was able to pick it up. Just like SF4 was the first time I competitively learned traditional fighters, and Strive was my first anime fighter I took seriously. Sure each of these games have a learning curve but its honestly not that crazy to put effort into. If you can learn deadlock you can learn any of these games.
I think the perfect system is sf6 so the choice between lobby and ranked from menu, but with an added way to text and an optional voice option in ranked matches
I think the biggest reason why the whole "quarter circle bad" argument still prevails to this day is that, while obviously it isn't really that big of a deal, I think because you need the motion just for a single action, it is perceived as making the game harder than it actually is. So like, using Deadlock as an example again, you dash with one button, you jump with one button, you use the zipline by pressing one button. All of these actions are a single button press, making them "easier" but then people don't realize to do anything effective with all of this nonsense, you have to do a bunch of things back to back, so it may as well be a motion input in terms of execution. Now sure, someone could argue in fighting games that to do anything effective with some special moves you have to do other stuff into it and all that, but really at some point every game will get hard, whether that happens earlier or later, it doesn't REALLY matter. Tbh I prefer it happens earlier because something like Halo is pretty easy for quite a long time, but once it gets hard, everything gets hard at once and it becomes a headache. I think the best part about fighting games is there are a bunch of things here and there you can just work on, and it all comes together eventually.
The skill floor is really exaggerated by people that only know of fighting games by osmosis and only touching them once or twice and refunding. Half of these players would have a much better time if they don't panic as soon as the match starts, and block every once in a while. At the same time, FGs do a dogshit job of conveying to players how their mechanics work. Simple knowledge things like how buffers work, what a hit confirm is, how to anti air, what hits are cancelable into what etc. will take you a LOT farther than the endless hours of agonizing over combos. You can be very good in most of the populated fighting games by just simple checks like that with absolutely no combos.
The difference between motion inputs and shooting or clicking one butter to use a skill is motion inputs are not intuitive, and of course you can play without them but you won't be able to do cool moves. Of course in most modern fg there are modern imputs and lots of new players use them so it's not all bad.
I was going to actually counter-argue against the comparison of doing a motion input vs Deadlock's movement example but then it hit me: *2XKO has no motion inputs and people are still gonna perceive it as extremely difficult.* It seriously is just a matter of people being unable/unwilling to accept all that comes with the 1v1 format and it's what allows them to easily form excuses such as "The genre is just too hard" when it inherently is not. 2024 was the first year I really sat down to try and learn "big boy" fighting games for the first time and, yes, there are literally exactly like any other genre once you get past your own perception of them. They are not magically more difficult than any other genre by default/nature, they're just not. This perception is what draws the line and is the main thing that creates that huge divide in the FGC space and other genres. Everyone who has gotten past their perceived idea of how difficult fighting games are, now view everyone who hasn't as puzzling. "How do they see this as so hard?" Everyone who hasn't gotten past their perceived idea of how difficult fighting games are, now can only draw conclusions such as, "Fighting game players must just be talented", "The genre is just inherently difficult", or other things like that.
I feel like everyone comparing the fighting game learning curve to the learn curve of MOBAs and FPSs are making false equivalencies. In games like valorant, league of legends, or pretty much any FPS you have easy access to all of your moves. You’re never going to get yourself killed because you performed the wrong button combo to shoot. Of course you’re going to be trash when you first start out, but you have all your tools available at the start and can practice with all of them in as many live games as you want. There’s difficulty in learning things like matchups, aiming, spacing, and timing, but you’re acting like fighting games don’t have these. The difficulty of fighting games is that you have to learn all of those things ON TOP of learning how to make your abilities come out consistently. If you start going into online matches without worrying about how to do inputs, you’re never going to learn how to do them. That’s like asking someone to play DOTA2 or League of Legends but only playing matches with their basic attacks. It doesn’t help that a lot of people in the FGC are so disconnected from people outside of it that they simply don’t understand how to help new people get in. I started SF6 with modern controls, but wanted to learn classic, so I joined some discords to try and get advice. I mentioned going into practice mode to try and learn inputs but almost everyone told me to just go into ranked matches and just start playing without worrying about inputs. So I did that. The majority of matches were just me using basic punches and kicks at max range and using spacing to make up for the fact that I couldn’t use special moves. It was so boring. In other games, even if I can’t use all my abilities optimally, at least I can still USE them. I went back to the discords, asked several people if it was a good idea to start practicing inputs now and they still told me not to bother. Even had some people making fun of me for not learning by this point, (how the hell am I supposed to learn inputs if I’m not practicing them?). I mentioned wanting to do matches against low level CPU’s to see if I could practice inputs that way, but everyone said it would be a waste of time, that I wouldn’t learn how to fight against real people that way. They didn’t understand that I wasn’t trying to learn how to fight against real people at that point, I was trying to figure out how to make my characters do what I wanted them too. How was I ever going to learn that if everyone was telling me to not bother to learn how to do it? No other game genre has that issue. Even games famous for being difficult like souls-likes and cuphead aren’t difficult because you have to fight to learn how to make your character use their abilities, your abilities are easily accessible from the start. The difficulty from those games comes from maneuvering around your opponents with the simple skill set given to you. Fighting games require that you learn how to maneuver around your opponent and how to make your character perform a massive chunk of their moveset at the same time. Haven’t played an FG since August because of school, work, and research. I still want to learn classic controls, but needless to say, I’ll be avoiding the discords from now on
i think a lot of those people gave that advice with good intentions but just misunderstood your situation for me personally i think a healthy balance of playing and practice is important and that it is indeed best to play against other people instead of thinking that you can learn everything in training mode but it is ofcourse also true that you have to practice the motion inputs for a bit if you are unable to figure it out while playing
If spacing and positioning and basic punches and kicks are "so boring" then maybe fighting games just aren't for you. They are the heart of what the genre is about. That's like saying that aiming and shooting and using cover is boring in FPS games. The way people moan about how hard it is to move the stick a little and press punch makes me wonder how they got this far in life. Pick a move, read how it's done, practice it by yourself a few times to get a feel for it. If you can't figure it out, the internet has tons of explanations and how-to videos. Once you know how to do it, start doing it in real situations. You'll do it badly at first because you're a beginner. At some point you'll start doing it well. None of what I just said is different from learning any other skill.
@@JackVolt And this is the problem with you guys, you're so elitist that you can't even bother to read what's actually being written. You also can't help but toss out insults before giving actual "advice". I did not mean that spacing and positioning were boring, that's the fun of any action game. The boring part is spacing and positioning with little follow up because I'm missing about 40% of my moveset. I had already come to the conclusion that I have to lab out motion inputs on my own, in fact, that's the conclusion I came to initially, but I had so many veterans giving shitty advice because they were reading past my issues. Who said I wasn't looking up online tutorials? I WAS, but the fact that I had to do that at all speaks to the learning curve that I was talking about. At no point did I mention giving up, in fact at the end up my comment, I mentioned getting back into learning classic controls when school and work calmed down. I am willing to put the work in, but here you are insulting me as if I've given up entirely before giving me the "advice" of a conclusion I've already come up with. I'm not bitching and moaning about movement inputs, I'm saying they are inherently more difficult than using abilities in other games. Even you yourself stated that I should learn an input by memorizing it and practicing it a few times. Again no other competitive game makes you do that, every other game genre let's me use abilities with a single button press and the "combos" come with chaining those single button press abilities together. Why is it so hard for some FG people to admit that having to do a button combo to get a single ability to come out is more difficult than hitting a single button to get an ability to come out. No it's not a monumental task, but we're talking about comparative difficulty here. The street fighter community didn't seem to have an issue understanding that concept when modern controls were announced and people were complaining about the unfair advantage one button specials and supers would give to modern control users. Finally, what you said IS different from learning any other skill. If I'm learning another game, I'm not fighting with the control scheme to get my character to do what I want them to. Sure, I can learn how to pilot them more smoothly, but I can still perform all their skills sub optimally. If I'm learning how to play piano, I'm not fighting my body to move my fingers, they do what I tell them to, even if the music come out sounding like crap. If my fingers move too slowly or I keep accidentally hitting the wrong note, it's frustrating, but not as frustrating as it would be if half the time my mind told my index finger to hit a key on the piano, my finger just didn't do anything. The frustration of fighting games come from the fact that you're not just piloting your character sub optimally, you're not even piloting the whole character. Again this isn't a complaint of , "oh woe is me, I'll never be good at this", it just adds am extra layer of frustration that nothing else comes with.
@@HellecticMojo There is some truth to this unfortunately. Some of the comments on this video only make sense to me because I already "bought in" to fighting games a long time ago, if I was totally unfamiliar with the genre I'd see a game with a 70 dollar price tag and two 40 dollar expansion that are mandatory to play the real game I'd just say "nah I'm good" and then go cue up on Fortnite or something. On another note I think a decent amount are pretty bad at helping new players too because the game looks totally different to an experienced eye compared to a brand new player's perspective. That could just be me though, I really struggle at conveying ideas to newcomers in a way that makes sense.
I play a small indie game called Rumble VR, which is a VR Earthbending fighting game. The game has built in voice chat (defaulted to ptt), and I think that it's one of the biggest reasons behind the awesome community behind the game. Everyone takes time to help eachother, and explain the techniques behind different combos. It definitely also helps that you'll run into someone, chat a bit, and then run into them again on a later date because there's only ever max 30 people in queue, so you are almost forced to communicate. The social aspect of the game made it the first gaming community I have ever truly interacted with, and now I'm friends with a bunch of the active playerbase.
People's perspective on this is skewed, I see people saying that what sajam did is advanced tech not comparable to motion inputs which is a basic necessary mechanic and I agree. A better comparison for motion input is AIMING. If you've ever seen a person who've never played a 1st or 3rd person game try it for the first time its a similar frustration you will see when people get into a fighting game and can't do motion inputs. Its not a perfect analogy cause nothing will be perfect these are two entirely different genres but I works well to illustrate my point motion inputs aren't extraordinarily harder than any other way of controlling your character you're just not used to them.
Ok but shooters and MOBAs have a lot more in common with singleplayer, even casual, games in terms of controls. First-person camera control is ubiquitous, lots of point-and-click movement in isometric stuff especially... Literally the only game, not even genre, that is somewhat similar in controls to FGs is DMC (also notorious for having difficult controls lol), and even FGs with simple control schemes like Granblue or 2XKO are closer to DMC than the bazillion more popular singleplayer games. The sad truth of the matter is that FGs are actually harder to get into than the FGC thinks--perhaps not in isolation but in the wider context of gaming by virtue of playing like no other genre. (I'll also add that whole hand movement is a lot easier and intuitive to most people than complex individual-finger movement, especially for middle and ring.) Edit: I forgot that there are some sick side-scrollers with FG-like controls but considering they are hidden indie gems, I think the point still stands :D
@theuzi8516 about the whole hand movement being easier than percise small movements there's a reason people play with really low mouse sensitivity in an fps because it allows for greater control since being twitchy won't be nearly as debilitating on your aim. Hell it's part of the reason I am debating on getting a Hitbox. Sure it'll be a bigger learning curve starting out but it feels like i should be way less twitchy in the whole "accidentally do a dp when I'm trying to do a fireball" kind of movements than when I play pad and somehow get 2H rather than 6H
@@theuzi8516 yea i agree with you. Gamers have gotten so used to having background knowledge and muscle memory of how game work that when they play a game that they don’t have any previous common ground with they think it’s some extraordinary hard game. But they just forget every games hard. Like a body builder might think advanced stretching is extraordinarily hard but to a layperson both can be equally as hard.
@@jmanwild87 just play on keyboard, its the same as a leverless except for that it might cause issues if you go to locals if you decide to go to a local you can easily transfer your keyboard muscle memory to a leverless if you use a similar layout
Damn Mr. Jam the beard and hair looking clean as hell. Also I had no clue Deadfall was just more complicated and long matches of Titanfall 2 with that insane movement at 8:29 , might get me to try the game as this is wilding kinda movement
you can probably unironically make it decently high in most mobas with just knowledge. Just watching a few vids skyrocketed my performance. but trying to learn most FG past the equivalent of iron/herald felt like it required me to both get the knowledge checks and sit in a box until I got muscle memory. now repeat that for every character I would want to learn. felt like for every character in a FG it was the equivalent time of learning a character like morphling or zeri(probably takes longer for them but still semi comparable). why would I bother with that when I can just play Phantom assassin or jhin and most of the improvement just comes from knowledge I can get while eating dinner or seeing it without having to fall asleep while sitting in training mode(not even counting physical problems that might occur with FG controls).
outside of motion inputs you can learn a lot by just playing and by the time you have tangible goals i feel like training mode isnt so bad of an experience because you are more invested at that point
i think it would be really cool if you could vote to pause and talk about things ingame in lobby matches instead of having to wait until the match is over
the tower system is great IN CONCEPT, the execution is just horrible. the important factors of it could exist exactly how they are but with standard matchmaking, celestial challenge could have tighter ping limits and disallow dodging by counting as a loss upon match, etc. all these things have fixes and are not intrinsic to the tower ranking system. the fact you can go up to higher floors (excluding celestial) whenever you want is great for players (like me) who prefer to be challenged regularly, and it also avoids any negative feelings i get from ranking down as i can keep playing with the players i want to play with
I think the idea thag most people have with fighting games being more difficult comes from them being way more unconventional than a lot of other game genres. More difficult to learn a game when youre brand new to everything about it.
I have been saying this for a while, but there has been a reason a lot of games have been taking cues from the tower, and it's because underneath all the jank and questionable decisions the core idea is very strong. Like other games have died for less than what Strive did, but it still has a strong player base despite all these competitors coming out with better QOL, and better features. Of course you can argue it has to do with the gameplay but I think there's more to it than just that. There's a lot of moaning and groaning about it, but I bet you there's probably a lot of data out there about people who tend to like what the tower does. I mean, only in Strive can I come onto the tower, and just play a long set with someone in the ranked equivalent, that's just not something you do in pretty much anything else. And afterward, as Sajam said, I can talk to the person I played about the set, or just move onto the next person. It's also very fun recognizing people you played before, and having stories or experiences with them. There's a lot about the tower system that gets buried underneath the lack of a ranked system, and largely people ignore because it doesn't really function well.
The tower system is the single worst thing Guilty gear strive has. I don't like it for a lot of reasons but wanting to ever come back and play it and I see that shyt I usually just ignore that I own for another couple of months. To me the system really is that shyt But the game itself is decent for what it is.
In Strive you can matchmake in training mode, you don't need to run around the lobby. And it lets you finish the set before changing floors. But it wasn't like that at launch.
idk if Sajam hasn't played Strive in a while or Celestial specifically is different, but as a 8-10 floor gamer, I can just press Quick Match and never interact with lobbies at all
The thing that I like about the Floor system vs Ranked is the ability to punch way above my weight, and the breadth of skill levels I get to experience
Quick match just places your avatar in a lobby. That means you are still constrained by the amount of people in whatever tower lobby you are placed in. Part of the issue with strive lobbies isn’t just how ass they are to use, but also that your matchmaking pool is limited to the amount of people in the lobby, you can’t get matched with anyone else unlike other games.
Its way quicker to find players than a game like granblue, the lobby just allows you to bypass the search part, only problem is the size limit of like 32 players
"My little nephew beat me up in Tekken and now it is my life's work to say fighting games are the hardest genre" is my favorite genre of social media madness
I think an issue with fighting game mechanical execution is that it often feels like you NEED all of it at once. You can reach a tower a little bit slower, or free-form remove a couple pieces of tech you aren't comfortable with, but often in a fighting game you feel like you NEED to do several different things fast, and there's no halfway state, either you do everything right or you flub the combo and get next to zero reward. Because you can lose a round in only a couple mistakes, every tech flub feels magnified instead of hundreds of small pieces of movement across a longer game.
@@dominicjannazo7144 yeah. You can walk up to tower normally as ho shown in the video but you need to do a motion input to get a projectile with almost every character.
Exactly. Also the execution barrier feels way more _annoying_ compared to stuff like movement tech or itemization knowledge because it's a barrier to "use your character". People get very attached to who they are playing and if they feel like their hands are failing to use a character's basic moves, the "this game isn't for me" feeling goes super hard. Also also a reminder about the execution requirement argument: Moba players often consider characters that chain skills into each other "not for beginners". Like even for basic ass 4 hit combos that are just pressing buttons and clicking the mouse in between. People who don't play demanding videogames and don't play instruments and don't type fast on actual keyboards 6 hours a day are plentiful and they are VERY BAD at pressing buttons. You put collectible card game timmy in front of an arcade stick and he's gonna get mad at the inputs at least once.
That's more of matchmaking problem than execution problem. I've seen low level players that finished their match without using a single DP. It also has way more back and forth than high level match where you can usually see a one side beating because people made one single mistake. Giving players simpler execution didn't save GBVSR. The people advocated for it didn't stick around at all.
Yeah, like. It's all well and good to say 'other games are hard too! look at this du duh duh duh duh see isnt that complicated' and its like yeah sure. So why do people keep bouncing off fighting games. Are they just dumb morons? Ontologically evil? Sun got in their eyes? They don't know video games are hard? Did RNGesus roll at the beginning of time and say 'people in this universe are more likely to bounce off fighting games'? No. Clearly something is different. I think your explanation is a pretty good one. I mess up the movement tech in deadlock, I still get there. I mess up anti-air in SF6, I eat absolute shit in the game. It's an ego thing, but video games aren't real so it's kinda important in context.
@@nonuvurbeeznus795 Fighting games were far and away the most popular genre for a whole decade, and they remain the most popular game genre played primarily in-person. Fighting game culture has always been about taking your wins and losses with equal grace, and having to socialize with other people in order to improve as a player. The difference between then and now is that online gaming lets people blame teammates, disconnect, ragequit, and talk endless amounts of trash totally anonymously. Most other competitive gaming genres have had all those things baked into them since their inception, but FGC culture predates all that. Skill issues are nothing but a scapegoat for people who never had to learn to work on themselves.
I think what makes a lot of other games easier to learn than fighting games is the 'opt-in' approach to learning systems. In Deadlock for example, you don't need to understand item builds to play the game well. You don't need good aiming. You don't even need good teamwork. You could decide to only learn how to lane-bully while ignoring the other systems and still be a decent enough player. In fighting games, every system is interconnected to such a degree that if you don't know any of them, it feels like you are screwed. I think casual players liked the modern system in SF6 not because 'motion-inputs bad', but because it meant that new players didn't have to learn as many systems to start playing games.
This is an example of the perception of fighting games being skewed. You most definitely do not need to know all of the mechanics in a fighting game to have a good time and be a decent player, but people think you do, either because they see other players using them consistently or tutorials throwing them in your face. You can most definitely reach a decent rank in SF6 without Parry or Drive Reversal or Back Roll. It may not be Plat, but less than half of people in the world playing ranked have made it to Plat. You can get plenty far in Guilty Gear Strive without knowing what Faultless Defense or Deflect Shield do. Just like in any other competitive genre, when you're starting out, it's fine to not learn everything at once. When you reach a point where you want to reach higher and do better, you can start looking more into what these other things that you haven't been paying attention to because you didn't know how to use them actually do. Add them to your arsenal over time, just like the movement tech that Sajam mentioned in Deadlock. And this does goes for moves too. If you can't do a dp-input consistently, it's possible to anti-air with something else. Your game will improve tremendously when you learn it, but it isn't actually a requirement for getting into the game like so many people get convinced it is. You have to start somewhere in every game, it's not gonna be the peak of competition in any game, and that's okay, no matter the game, but so many people seem to think it has to be in fighting games for some reason.
Your monitor or the TV response time will affect how you enjoy the game. My monitor has a .5 millisecond response time. I got a copy of Tekken 8 for PS5 for a decent price. It was a surprise to find out my combos were being dropped, because the response time on the TV is longer. It kind of felt I had to push the input slightly ahead to execute. I didn't think it was a big deal, but double checked, went back to PC, and yup I can nail the DSS Law combo with relative ease. Yup, so Arslen Ash is kind of right, in the sense the response time of a monitor or tv can alter your timing in executing combos. If you want up your standards in fighting games, consider the response time of your display.
Yay....while I agree with the premise I think your example this time was off. Would have been better explaining how just aiming in first person shooters if someone has zero experience with it can actually be a struggle or even just being in first person in general. Watching someone who has never played a FPS is like watching a rookie in SF6 or low rank floors in Strive hilarious bad to the point you have to question if it is intentional
Never played Deadlock, but I would assume that those momentum tricks might work BECAUSE those are similar momentum mechanics to Doom/ultrakill/arena shooters. (Note the fact arena shooters is a dead genre does not help the argument) I don’t like getting rid of motion inputs because I already speak the SF style language the same way. If my reversal isn’t a shoryuken motion or flash kick, I absolutely hate it, because I fumble over my words unless I spend hours learning the new language.
Letting 3 matches play out is very good imo. You cant really download someone in 2 matches only And especially in games like T8 with a ft2 and normal matchmaking you lose you someone and never match with them again, so you cant get the runback nor learn
Players don't dislike motion inputs because they are complex or unintuitive; it's because it locks a part of the game away behind something other than knowledge or a decision. In Deadlock you might not know about diagonal dashing, but as soon as you learn about it it takes 20-30 minutes of practice and now you can reliably do it. Same thing with the items, to a new player that might be too much information, so they use a build to not have to deal with that information. But as soon as they want to engage with the item system it's frictionless, if they want to try something they just can. In Strive I know about Elphelt's half circle super and I know when I want to use it and I know what the theoretical input is to do it, but I don't yet have the muscle memory to do it consistently so 90% of the time it doesn't come out and I whiff something punishable and die. That's what feels super bad, knowing (or thinking you know) that there is something you could do in a situation but being just physically unable to do it. And I know, it's just Muscle Memory, if I just keep trying eventually I'll be able to do it because I've played something over 200 hours in different fighting games and so I can reliably do quarter circles. A player picking up their first fighting game period? They can't even do those reliably so they just have to suffer and watch as everyone else gets to do cool shit except them because they haven't spent the hours in the mines it takes to build up that muscle memory. Think about how shit that experience is, to know there is cool shit and to see other people do cool shit but be simply unable to do it.
Maaaaan you can make any genre of game difficult because they all have little intricacies and nuances. You can play classic Mega Man games as easy as jump and shoot. But you can also make it look flashy with ceiling zips and screen rolling. Or knowing really niche` stuff like in Mega Man 6, you can't directly jump out of a slide, you have to come to a full stop and release the jump button. You can make any game hard.
i mean the floor of basic stuff isn't that hard. simply moving and shooting megaman isn't that hard if you played games before. learning a fighting game for the first time is like learning to play on mouse and keyboard when you've been playing on controller your whole life on top of all the mental complexity and mind games because there's not much transfer between fighting games and other genres of games. not many games have motion inputs and add on that it can feel like you need to sit in a padded room for hours to learn to do inputs for your character and that it's very easy to see when you're doing something wrong but very difficult to fix it and well Fighting games seem very difficult to approach compared to even Mobas as well a lot of the difficulty there is knowledge.if you played mouse and keyboard at all before you probably have some skill transfer to easily make it so you can move buy items and Use Abilities Is it telling that the most fun i've had at least was in stuff like Power Rangers battle for the Grid and more normals centric games like Soul Caliber?
@@jmanwild87 Honestly, I kinda have to agree. Soul Calibur is always fun for me and I even take wins off of people who actually know the advanced tech in fighting games generally. I honestly have the most fun with characters that have good normals cuz it's easier to just hit buttons that work than hope that you're doing your motions correctly. And don't even get me started on charge moves. There's a reason why Street Fighter 6 got rid a good chunk of those inputs.
12:16 I'll disagree with the new player resources. I mean we are literally on one right now. I never understand what people say the fgc doesn't have enough educational content. That is some of the most popular stuff in it.
Because “not enough tutorial” and “not beginner friendly” is an excuse to not get humbled in a 1v1 game where you cant rely on teammate and existing skill set they have from whichever genre they played.
i think the strive tower system is not a bad idea personally, but there should probably be an easier access to automated matchamaking for those who want it although the implementation of the floor system could be improved in a lot of ways
The entry for "movement" in fighting game is what causes most of these issues. FPSs don't need tutorial for movement because no matter how complex they are, it's always WASD to move and mouse 1 to shoot. I don't care that I don't know how to wall jump bunny hop slide kara cancel to save 0.3 seconds before reaching the tower, I press W and my character walks exactly where I want him, I press right click and I scope in, then I move my mouse on the enemy and press left click to shoot. Because people have played video games for so long, it's easy to tell your character what to do in a FPS even if you've maybe only played fortnite or whatever. You don't accidentally throw a grenade when trying to melee like how you would miss-input a DP and get a fireball.
Smash got me into FGC and Ryu, Ken, Terry, ect are the perfect example of this. I like terry a lot in that game but the inputs are pretty hard outside of buffering mid-combo. Especially because missing one will result in an unintended whiff. Even worse when the commands are accidentally hit when intending to do something else and it gets you killed. For most other characters, it is incredibly intuitive to new players. Its obviously a different type of game though and its approach to controls wouldnt work the same for a traditional 2d fighter
Wtf are you even talkin about? You can play every fighting game on WASD, in 2D fighters your movement is basically the same as 2D platformers, in 3D fighters it's still ultra simple. Pressing m1 is shoot? Waaauuuuu, what next you are gonna say is that pressing button on controller/keyboard is not attack in a fighting game?
you know sajam... i also stepped into the YT ring now.. and I appreciate you dealing with some well brainrot comments from time to time (ken player downplay) , i now realise how hard it is to restrain oneself and simply.. ignore it. I will honor you in a seperate video and also will folllow your call from years ago, you said i should demand stuff from my fighting games... and i will do it. greetings from germany.
I like fighting games because they aren't filled with whatever is going on with Deadlock cause that looks legitimately awful, confusing and very frustrating to learn and play right lol
Are people really giving Deadlock a pass as an easy game to learn? I have over 1k hours in Overwatch and Dota 2, and countless more in Tekken and other fighting games... I put maybe 10 hours into Deadlock and I'm like, this game is WAY too complicated. lol
Honestly with the execution thing I think it's because, at least for me, special moves are such a basic part of functioning in the game. I've never played deadlock but I'm sure I could play, see someone zooming through the air, search it on youtube, and be doing it myself in a few minutes or less and probably with enough consistency to bring it into matches. I can always perform it better or more clean but it's rarely a case of like "I wanna do this basic option, oh I can't, I have to practice it in training for an hour first and then fail to do it in match for another 3 hours before I can kinda use it". I don't mind having to gain more knowledge, but it just feels bad being skill checked by the game before I even consider my interaction with an opponent. Doesn't count as a traditional fighter but it was so annoying playing rivals 2 recently not being able to tilt out of dash. It felt like such a basic option I wanted my character to do, and you do tech that allows you to do it, but not just being able to instantly do this super basic thing was very annoying when I would play matches. It made me feel like I have to go practice it in practice mode for a while or all of my matches are going to be extremely frustrating as I try and fail to this thing. I eventually did go practice it enough to use babydashing or wavedashing into tilt instead but I very nearly fell off the game right away cause of that. I can't recall ever feeling that way outside of fighting games.
"team games are more accessible because you can blame your losses on other people" is an insane take to me. Whenever I play team games I despise every single one of my teammates, the fact that I lose games through no fault of my own is MADDENING to me. It's the most frustrating thing in the world to play good but still lose. How on earth do people have that experience and go "eh, not my fault! :)" and feel encouraged to keep playing? How do you not want to destroy the entire concept of teamwork itself???
you are the perfect example of it. You say the game is super frustrating but since you can blame your team for your losses so you keep playing. You can't do this in fighting games
I totally agree with you and that's why I like fighting games and RTSs but most people don't which is why those genres are comparatively less popular to mobas and shooters.
It's also why for example so many shooter players, especially call of duty, just care about their individual K/D ratio and not actually playing objectives to win matches.
that sounds crazy to me, why would you hate your team? why would you assume you are losing because of them? why would you care about your individual performance when its the team as a whole that counts sounds like you just arent a team player to me and thats oke so long as you stick to non-team games
Yearly video of "Fighting games are not harder than other genres"
It’s like every other month these days
More like biweekly
And we love it every time don't we folks.
And I'll be here every time.
Talk about a bad take
"im fighting like a faceless void" i wasnt paying attention and i thought sajam was talking about dota
Waiting for dota fighting game, level 3 super chronosphere
@@nyga-s4u "Za Warudo! Muda Muda Muda Muda!"
@@nyga-s4u Well, technically we have it in the current event, but the frame data is jank af. lmao
But it has rollback tho.
@@nyga-s4u I hate Dota after giving 2500 hours of my life to it and quitting but I would play a Dota fighting game in a fucking HEART BEAT MAN
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet about the financial barrier is that with fighting games notoriously lacking anything interesting for single player, you're paying $60 to learn if you like the gameplay specifically because there's no other content.
And you have to the spend time learning the game on top of that price tag. You may not know if you enjoy the game until you've put enough time training in to play against real players.
7:10 The moment I heard that complaint I knew Sajam was going to consolidate himself as a Deadlock content creator with the cleanest movement tutorial.
There's a underground gem by "trackpad chad" a hobbyist really delve into deeper while remain clean
My two cents:
I seriously could not have gotten into FGs when I did if I didn't have a decent, steady stream of income for the first time in my life. I guess between 2XKO, Granblue etc this might not be the case for much longer, but as it currently stands these games are HELLA expensive, there's a BUNCH of DLC you have to get if you're commited to learning the matchups, and god help you if you live in a 3rd world country and want to get a stick or leverless - even the cheapest haute I could find still ended up eating 1/3 of my salary. I literally do not earn enough to import a Razer Kitsune. If you want to get into the games that actually have a large population of players, the financial barrier is absolutely real.
BTW, I tried to buy MK1 with all its DLC on SALE, and it still cost me around the same price of a full game. SF6 was the same because the normal price is 90 bucks for all the DLC. That's redicillous.
To be fair, when you are trying to get into fighting games, the last thing you should do is getting any DLC (except when your character of choice is DLC), let alone all of them, as learning matchups comes way later in the process.
Byuing ALL the DLC is pretty much only mendatory for top tournament players.
idk, it has never occured to me that I needed to buy dlc to learn a matchup, yes you need them to find a training mode situation, but I'd say a beginner doesn't need training mode for anything other than learning a basic combo. Heck, I been playing strive for 3 years straight and have almost never used training mode for matchup specific stuff, which may be a fault on my part but you don't need that to have fun with a FG
that might be true but on the flipside there are many cheap fighting games and a couple that are free, and there is fightcade
also you dont really need a leverless or stick, a keyboard without ghosting or a controller with a decent dpad is good enough
@@dj_koen1265 You're right on the controller, i now own a leverless and quality controller but stil play on my keyboard because it just feels better to me and there's no real downside(i don't play offline)
Now talking about free or cheap fighting games, i wouldn't recommend most i know to beginners. The first huge problem is low population specially outside the US, and usually low population means no beginners and high skill floor. When you finally get a match you're just bulldozed without getting a chance to understand what's going on or even getting a feel for the game.
GB only has the most vanilla character unlocked with the weekly characters you don't get enough time with to learn. Usually what makes people try fighting games and stick to them is the attachment to the cool characters they like, but while Gran is strong... He's just the most vanilla guy i've ever known.
Skullgirls is very cheap and it's an amazing game, but for beginners? Way too advanced, get bulldozed.
There's a big list of cheap legacy fighting games on steam, like the Arcsys ones, and at a first glance they're all really cool from a beginner's perspective, but then again, if you get a match you're just destroyed with no chance to even know what's going on.
I think 2xko will be the one game that get new players to join, i even had some people join the alpha to try it because it was free and had the combos fuse, but for now, i'd say the few games suited for beginners are the more expensive ones.
"Scroll up a little" bro chat is fuckin MESSY! 😂
Trying to see receipts before the purchase even been made man
LOL
Reporters be like "from an anonymous source"
(commenting mid-video): One thing you gotta understand about MOBAs and accessibility is that team based games are always gonna be more accessible as a social experience because your friend who's into it is playing it with you and often taking decisions for their beginner buddies mid-match. It actually turns the complexity into a positive on the onboarding experience, as long as the game surpasses a minimum level of general interest and playerbase size.
edit: HOLY SHIT it's his EXACT NEXT SENTENCE im gonna kill myself
I mean what are Crews for in the fgc,
it's literally harder and more complicated even if you have 4 skilled friends to play with, you have even more pressure then to not feel like you're baggage to them, in fighters it's 1v1 and you are the ONLY person you're responsible for, i will never ever understand this argument, it's objectively many times harder and more stressful to git gud at a moba thana fighting game 100% of the time in any way shape or form with any example vs. any other example
@@koopakape That sounds like it depends on you as a person and the people you play with on personal levels. I'm far and away the weakest among my friend group when we play League of Legends together, but they never treat me like a burden when I make mistakes and I don't let said mistakes or my inexperience put unhelpful pressure on.
@@koopakape definitely not, when teaching new players you essentially play 2 games at once. I think it’s fun, especially if we’re both bot lane, to build two characters to support the others in the team. New players don’t need to be killing people out the gate they just need to not have a bad time. It’s mostly up to whoever is teaching you that will dictate your experience though. The person could be a dickhead who’s mad that you don’t know how to play the game you don’t play but I feel like that’s not the games fault.
@@koopakapefind better friends dude
im 300 hours in deadlock wtf i always wondered how players kept their momentum off the zipline ive been jumping this whole time 😭
damn back when I first started watching sajam I was elated with all the fresh topics and discussions that was new to ME at the time
but now it’s just every 6 months, the next group of youths who’ve gained access to social media are on twitter asking “what’s a fuzzy” and the whole fgc scene rehashes the same discussion again
I’ve realized that the time when I started watching was just another reset in the FGC cycle of Samsara
Man almost like the FGC needs to learn something and make changes, so that it can stop having the same problems over and over again.
@@RvLeshrac really makes me sad how many members of this scene who are as much as a decade younger than me sound like crotchety old boomers who hate all new things and all new people
Rizzy
Next you'll learn it's all by design as some people set trends and other people just follow formulas. The FGC isn't rehashing the same discussion, content creators are rehashing content. Please make sure you don't mistake that
This is why I always try and come up with new fun topics or versions of it too
Sero’s tweet was so funny, because the moment it left her usual sphere and reached the greater FGC, a solid 70% of our community made it their sole mission to prove she was right, by arguing she was wrong. Bonus points to the people who carried that energy to her follow-up tweet pointing out how people agree when Maximilian says it, but not her. No solid reason to behave that way, just a moron for the sport, the passion, the love of the game
Vast amounts of people agree with max regardless of how hot his take is.
Me? For my money? I'd say she's 100% correct with the financial barrier, I mostly disagree with the statement that there's a lack of new player friendly resources, and I'd say the elitism is there, but is more situational. Although, the elitism might be more obvious and blatant to her, since being a streamer means those types of people are going to get magnetized to her.
The resources part definitely depends on the game, honestly resources for the popular games like Tekken and Street Fighter especially just fucking suck. But for any anime game there's a wiki page with 100 combos and general gameplan for every character. Like look at MBAACC's wiki man, 93 chars and almost all of them have novel-length guides.
@@pokecole37that's... completely irrelevant to the new player experience? beginners will tend to gravitate towards UA-cam for beginner resources and that's there in abundance for modern games. wikis and resources like dustloop and supercombo are very much more for intermediate+ players that are at the stage to start worrying about frame data and higher level strategy. too much depth all at once is very much detrimental to the new player experience and the way that the fgc constantly pushes those types of resources towards people just starting out is one of the reasons why new players think it's so hard to get started.
@@pokecole37 And the amount of assumed knowledge/skill level in those popular franchises can be kinda insane. I remember trying to look up a BNB for a character in Strive and most videos showed, like, combos with 7, 8 steps or even more. My brother in christ I couldn't even do a quarter circle half the time, there's no way this is my "Bread and Butter". Same thing with SF6 now that I'm learning it, though I am getting better at doing the funny motions over time.
But to give the anime game folks praise where it's due, Dustloop is a GODSEND of a site that not only has several combos at different difficulty levels, it also has tons and tons of guidance explaining what each move's function is, not to mention all the other info in there. Sometimes it's genuinely better than the ingame tutorials for me.
People don't realize how big of a problem the financial barrier is to invite new players tbh.
Not sure how much $60 means to people from the USA, but in my currency the game costs 250 while the minimum wage is ~1400.
I have many friends who wouldn't mind trying SF6 and i know they would get hooked on it, some even tried the 2xko alpha with me, but it's so hard to convince them to pay this much money just to TRY a game they don't even know if they're gonna like + takes so much time and effort to learn(for people who aren't experienced in fighting games).
And then they're like "oh i really like this poison lady" and I have to tell them "oh this is DLC you'll have to pay extra"
you can always invite them to play melty community edition or fightcade, which are free
or you can buy them a copy of guilty gear xrd during a sale for 10 dollars, which is probably 40 in your local currency, but maybe less if there is regional pricing
This is why I pick old fighting games when there is a big sale. I picked Street Fighter 4 and the struggle is real, maybe I picked the wrong game to start learning but I can't imagine paying full price for a game I don't even know if Im gonna commit.
@@zzxp1 well street fighter 4 doesnt have rollback and its notoriously difficult
but its a classic so i think its cool that you picked it up, you can always switch it up if something else comes up that catches your interest
maybe try third strike as well on fightcade
Yeah it's actually ridiculous, I don't think anyone would defend it if they didn't already "buy in" to the whole thing. Think of how many DLC characters for SF6 are meta defining and imagine being a new player getting completely knowledge checked by AKI slide stance or Bison shadow rise/scissors kick shenanigans and being unable to practice against them.
If the response to this is "well if you wanna learn how to play you're gonna have to buy DLC" then that just proves the point being made.
a fellow brazilian?
I would say it is more likely that people are likely to have experience with First person, third person and top down point and click games in single or co-op games.
Meanwhile you are lucky to find many games that share fighting game fundamentals. Hell literally the games that got closet were things like Ninja Gaiden, Urban Reign or God Hand and they literally don't make games like that anymore.
So for many it is like the first time they played a video game with no idea wtf they are doing except this time they have a real thinking breathing human caving in their skull.
Edit: basically it isn't that fighting games are actually harder naturally, rather people collective are worse at them due to less experience
@boredomkiller99 they also feel a lot harder because of that. Sure my aim my suck in an fps but I can still shoot in the general direction of my target reticle. In fighting games there's a not insignificant chance if you're brand new that you can't do like half your character's moveset with any consistency such that you actually feel in control of them. In strive's whiff punish tutorial I've accidentally gotten fafnir with some consistency and still can't actually clear it and that's just back walking into a command normal.
Don't think I've ever felt like a Game is literally fighting me on what my character gets to do.
Shoutout to the thumbnail maker as always
Thumbnail creator has it all. Who even thinks to use a frame from an old Busta Rhymes MV..
I'll say this about motion inputs.
I have TPS, meaning my tendons are naturally shorter than they should be, not to the point where I can't walk but it has caused me problems before and I had to spend years of my life doing yoga and physiotherapy and whatnot. This also ruins me when I play games, I can't go too hard and I ended up quitting League because of the strain it caused on my hands.
No other game genre has caused me more hand pain than fighting games. After I reached Master with AKI, I just had to take a month-long break from how much my hands would hurt. Stick causes me the most pain, pad is bearable and also what Iam used to and I haven't tried a hitbox yet. But when it comes to physical pain from playing games, performing motion inputs is never any less painful.
I'm never gonna quit over that (unless I'm forced to), but it definitely makes it difficult to enjoy these games long-term. I just got Granblue, and it feels amazing to not feel like my finger joints are about to lock after an hour-long session.
It’s def a big accessibility thing but that’s why alternate controllers are awesome
Getting rid of motions entirely also isn’t really an option, since a lot of moves just can’t happen without them, or become utterly broken
Not saying you’re saying they should be abolished, just hoping nobody sees your post and decides motions are ableist
I really believe you should give hitbox a shot. Most people say it causes less strain, and as a stick and hitbox user, I agree.
As someone with a (different) connective tissue problem, I'll say that going leverless was 100% the right move. I got a small one made by Haute42 for around like $45.
i have the opposite, my tendons are longer, lets trade
I got trigger finger in my thumbs from playing on pad so I switched to hitbox. Now I have trigger finger in all my fingers. 😔
I don't play more than other players nor do I mash very hard, I think my form is normal as well my body just sucks
People will pour time into the game and not feel weird about it if it's free. That's the singular reason these games are so big and fighting games aren't, and even moreso why they *used to be bigger*. When the price of entry is a quarter instead of $60 you get a lot more people flowing through it, and I expect that in the future 2XKO will capture a lot of people based on this alone.
Even a small financial barrier is still too much. It needs to actually be near zero and be functional online and you've got a winner imo. Remember that the reason KOF got so big in South America is that not only was it a small barrier to entry, but you got 3 whole characters per credit, that's value.
also the kof cabinets were very cheap and modular so a lot of busineses could more easily afford them
Additionally, you didn't need to buy a whole new NEO GEO each time you want to replace a cabinet. Hence why KOF had yearly releases.
The biggest thing no one likes to mention though is that fighting games were never marketed and sold on their gameplay. People liked these games in the 90s due to large rosters, glorification or violence, and brand/nostalgia recognition pandering. Just check the reviews... Or read the dev stories on all the times fighting games tried to originate off of another Brand's success such as MK and Darkstalkers(Bloodsport/Horror Movies by Universal).
Selling games on gameplay alone has always been unprofitable and you need superficial garbage to sell anything in the mainstream. Thankfully, game creation is easier than ever before and modding is a lot more elaborate then it used to be. This makes niches more viable.
@@dj_koen1265 That doesn't apply to KOF but to NeoGeo, the system that ran KOF and other games. SNK made more fgs than Capcom, and there were more Neogeo fgs made by other companies. So what you said doesn't explain alone the appeal for KOF in special. Like, why a superior game like Garou MOTW never got bigger than KOF in sales and fame?
It's what the guy said basically... It's a big roster, 3 characters, a longer match and better comeback chances.
Sajam truly is the Ouroboros of the FGC
To me fighting games and shooters generally have the same learning curve. We dont really think about it because the concept of aiming the camera has been more popular in games. But learning to do fighting game inputs is just as difficult as learning to aim at an enemy if you have never picked up a controller. And both of these skills carry over between games
Aiming is easier to stumble into in a non-required context too, which can get people used to it. A lot of 3D games have a controllable camera that is managed and turned automatically and you can move it too if you stop and want to look around. Looking around with no time pressure and no tiny thing you have to hit is pretty easy to learn. Not to mention minecraft being so ubiquitous as a first person thing with shooter-adjacent mechanics, bulldozing through accessibility by sheer popularity. There's little easy "keyboard-like" controls to stumble into because games that target non-gamers or uhhh "low-gamers" (kill me) usually want to make buttons easy to use and with single functions.
I made my gf play cod once and she got a kill literally with the camera facing the ground the entire time.
Also id argue fighting games are closer to rhythm games like guitar hero. I've had friends that could do the inputs, understood the concept, but just didn't want to or feel they had the capacity to learn and remember long strings.
@@TheNewblade1 hell i'd keep it to those "Emulate the instrument" style ones too or DDR. (Playing something like OSU! at a very basic level is incredibly easy if you've played mouse and keyboard). It's the fact you're learning a control method that is likely entirely foreign to you combined with the fact that for most people. Learning fighting games isn't fooling around flubbing it with buddies and chatting it up but instead sitting in what amounts to a padded room for hours and hours sitting through tutorials and trying to do inputs and basic combos. once you learned one fighting game you probably have basic competency in all of the traditional ones but getting to the bare minimum is a bit of work if you're brand spanking new. It's like me who's played on gamepad since i was 4 years old playing gamecube trying to learn how to play mouse and keyboard in a fps at 24. Hell, the fact that Smash Bros's inputs are simple and the avenue for learning the game is partying it up with items with your buddies is what probably gets it such a massive casual fanbase despite its complexities at a high level.
Finally, someone that thinks the same way🙏🙏🙏
@@jmanwild87 bro stop saying "to learn fighting games you need to commit all your life" in every comment section
It's also interesting how smash bros fits into this discussion. We usually talk about helping onboard players by adding more resources for learning the game's mechanics. But smash takes the entirely opposite approach of _hiding_ It's complexities from new players, aswell as adding a bunch of silly stuff like free for all or items to encourage players to simply care less about being good at the game
If Smash bros' huge casual playerbase is anything to go by, it seems like this approach paid off.
Hmm... You know, I never thought about that, but that makes so much sense for Smash Bros's design philosophy.
Maybe the issue is that the FGC at large likes the perception that being technically challenging so much that they forgot that not everyone is out there trying to win EVO. Some people just wanna have fun playing cool characters they like and beat their friends' asses. That's why Smash works.
I think the other big aspect is that you can play smash like a team game or a group social game with the 2v2 or big 4-8 player free-for-all matches and such. Whereas most fighting games are 1v1 by definition.
The biggest draw of Smash Bros is being able to play as Zelda and Mario and Metroid, and sadly no other game can do that
That's because it's a party game that stumbled backwards into becoming competitive
I don't think many people really understand how big of a financial investment needed to get into fighting games, especially for those in developing countries like me. Not only SF6 cost more than my monthly electricity and water bills combined, but the hardware I need to play on is also expensive. Compare that to League that only requires any decently modern work laptop to run and about 5 mins to set up an account.
Bro you can run fightcade on 10+ year budget laptop
@alondjeckto Emphasize on "gets into" not just "play". Sure, there are free fgs like fightcade or MBAACC, but that's more for enthusiast than anything else.
@@alondjeckto No one "jumping in on the genre" is gonna even know what Fightcade is.
@@alondjeckto People cant learn a 236 input and you think they're gonna learn how to setup fighcade?
@xXxCJ123xXx if people can't learn a fuckin qcf input they are probably not even trying to do it, and if they can't setup fightcade, then they don't know how to use fuckin computer
there are so many fighting games that are very cheap on sale, and even some games that are free, the problem is the general contempt people have for discord fighters or for fighters that are anything but the most new and popular
Which proves the point being made about elitism as well. "This game doesn't have a pro tour or a million dollar prize pool therefore it is dead and worthless" is quite literally textbook elitism, you can hardly write a more fitting definition.
@@dyrr836 Also the game is more respected if it has a long cycle of dlc updates, not only a long life. But in this whole genre, with several new releases every year (that are commonly disregarded by fgc for not being tournament ready), only few mainstream games can afford that.
I mean yeah. People do not like having to socialize to make their games work, much less make their games function: it’s why the ‘looking for group’ command in an MMO exists to handle that shit automatically. The amount of people willing to become invested in a random discord just to play the game at all is extraordinarily small.
"I don't want to learn fighting games and I need to justify it with some excuse about how it's hard to learn."
Nailed it lmao. So many people millennial-ish age and younger especially (said as one of them) look for any reason or excuse to like, explain to people why we can't do a thing that's hard, when at the end of the day it's really just a matter of doing it and learning it like anything else and we don't feel like it lmao
That's not the issue at all. I gladly put in hundreds of hours into DBFZ, getting my ass kicked repeatedly because it has universal controls that are intuitive and make sense once you get the hang of them.
But turn on classic controls in SF6, and every character suddenly has such random and arbitrary input sequences that none of it sticks in my head. The time investment to even learn how to simply *execute* a character's moves is already so steep, let alone figuring out how to properly implement them in a real match to see if you even enjoy a given character's playstyle!
I never hear or say such complaints for literally any other genre of game. It is exclusively fighting games that have such arbitrary control schemes.
@RacingSnails64 Man, sf6 only has qcf, half circles, and dp motions. It really isnt that hard.
@@koopakape You're older then millenial-ish age? It's always fancinating finding people like that who are into videogames online because I know ONE person like that in real life.
@@RacingSnails64 "The time investment to even learn how to simply execute a character's moves is already so steep"
I put my 9 year old son in front of a fighting stick and had him throwing pretty consistent fireballs in less than 5 minutes. The shit is really not complicated.
I think hearing Sajam talk about Deadlock's movement made me understand why people feel like fighting games are harder to get in to. I haven't touched Deadlock much, but I have played countless games where you move a character around a 3D space, and I think that experience would help me intuit a lot of what was shown. Not all of it of course, but a lot of what was shown feels familiar to other fps/platformer/action/etc games that I've played. Fighting games are very unique in how they want you to control a character in a 2D space, like you aren't gonna play Mega Man and then carry any of that over to Street Fighter. Fighting game tech isn't actually harder to understand, its that people don't have a frame of reference when they're just starting out in the genre.
@lobbynotlob add on to that for a lot of people (myself included) getting that frame of reference isn't doing the fun part of the game. Playing matches with people. It's sitting in training mode trying and failing to do the stuff you want to do and not knowing exactly why the game won't read your Overdrive input or an SPD. or why you can't get the combo or whatever. The expectation is that you reach this bare minimum competence before you get to have fun. Whereas in other games the expectation is you learn by playing the game. noob tubing and Spray in pray in cod. Or ARAM in League or what have you
@@jmanwild87 You don't *have* to sit in training mode when you just pick up a fighting game, though. You literally can just go and start hitting buttons against players of roughly your skill level, as long as the playerbase is big enough and the matchmaking works, which applies to shooters too. The expectation that you have to "reach this bare minimum competence before you get to have fun" exists, but it's wrong.
@Ketsuekisan it's the reason I don't really play Fighting Games. Button mashing just feels boring (doesn't help I know what i should do) and when I can't do more than that it just feels frustrating particularly when I can't do basic half circles. And often end up accidentally doing stuff i don't want for reasons i don't know
@@jmanwild87frankly i gotta ask atp if you dont care for fighting games why are you all over this comment section lmfao you been yapping on damn near every single reply thread on here.
but to answer your question, the equivalent of being unable to do half circles properly in something like an fps is just having bad recoil control, or in a moba not knowing your character's trading pattern or whatever. the whole point of the video is that execution barriers exist in literally every genre but for some reason people like you make it sound like fighting game execution is a massive unscalable wall in comparison that cant be solved the same way as other execution barriers in other genres. its just not. if you have a problem with half circles, just practice them while in queue, most modern games let you queue while in training mode right? and unless youre named street fighter, most games combo system is lenient enough that you can just do abc special with no timing or tricks and thats a decent enough starting combo. if youre playing a game that has a big enough playerbase, most likely the people youre fighting will be just as clueless as you. thats how you learn. beat up other people that are the same skill level as you until you figure out the game. not by sitting in training and grinding hard combos. nobody is forcing you to do the stuff you dont know how to do, just ignore that for now and stick to the simple stuff. nobody expects a new valorant player to know every line up, nobody expects a new league player to know every champ match up, why do you expect to be a new player that knows how to do hard combos and tech? just shut that shit out and focus on the easy shit first thats how you gain the frame of reference. its literally that simple. stop worrying about being unable to do half circles or whatever, just do your basic abc fireball combo and remember to block and you'll get there eventually man. this is not a fighting game problem, its a you problem for putting your own expectations too high.
@Ixs4i i want to learn the damn game i paid money for is why I'm always frustrated and i pay attention to high level stuff because that's fun to see and interesting. And it's not an insurmountable wall of course but it sure as hell feels that way when you know what you should be doing but it feels like your controller is fighting you. If it's any indication of the kind of problems new players run into i can't even do strive's whiff punish tutorial with any consistency and that's demoralizing because I've never had a game seemingly fight me on what buttons I've pressed before i started playing fighting games
It’s probably been said before, but I think one of the largest barriers for entry into the FGC-aside from money and time-is that a lot of what is involved with “getting good enough to not get bodied when you play randoms” honestly feels…like homework to your average gamer. And gamers, by and large, do not want to do extra work when it comes to getting their instant dopamine fix of enjoying the games they play.
That's hard to change. That problem is a byproduct of the 1v1 formula, even with all of the comeback mechanic that are added. Card games are also 1v1 games but the rng gives the average Joe to win at least 50% of the time.
I think if you take a bronze league player and throw them into a game with "randoms" (who will be ranked several divisions higher than them if they are of average skill), they will have an equally bad time. Same in any genre if not worse.
@@user-et3xn2jm1u fighting games are worse because of hitstun.
That's why it's maddening when developers think shit like removing interesting options or skipping neutral will translate to more new players. It's like, no man, all you're doing is ensuring new players don't stick around because they have less time to analyze their mistakes!
My opinion is that the main reason that Fighting Games are perceived as harder is because it makes it incredibly obvious what you did wrong, even if the best way to solve that problem isn't obvious.
Other games you can shrug off a couple losses but in fighting games you know it was your fault, you feel why you lost.
Nothing stomps on an ego more than FGs. And people just have fragile egos.
i'd also argue that because most folks don't play arcade fighters these days you're starting even lower below the floor than usual. In other notably difficult games like moba's most of the new player difficulty if you aren't completely new to video games is based on knowledge rather than manual dexterity i can practice for hours and still struggle to do consistent combos and overdrive inputs in guilty gear whereas i had done little other than occasionally watch League of Legends and had an easier time playing a moba like Smite or DOTA.
On top of that it's really hard to play with buddies in fighting games as it's a 1v1 game. And the perceived barrier of "i have to sit in a padded room for hours and hours until i can do special moves and combos" not only makes it hard to get other people to play with you but magnifies every mistake and doesn't let you know how to fix it. I can do QC inputs pretty easily in lots of modern fighting games. I still don't know what is making my fireball inputs so inconsistent in Blazblue. Or how to consistently do a super in Guilty Gear and the only way i have to learn since none of my friends play is to bang my head against the wall in training mode until Either i break or the wall holding me back does
Fckin nailed it
It's perceived as harder because it simply is harder. The same type of people who gush about "skill expression" and how "skill ceiling" are the same people in a same breath going about how fighting games aren't hard while fellating themselves over how hard and impactful skill matters.
Also no other genre other than grand/realtime strategy games have an onboarding process obtuse as fighting games.
People need to pick a damn lane and either acknowledge the genre as high skill or not and stop berating others at the lower familiarity in the wrong.
They also require more complicated inputs. The only other games that do are classic action games like Ninja Gaiden and DMC
I can largely agree with Sajam's points here, though I think his comparison of special moves being an execution check vs. Deadlock movement isn't really a great comparison at all. Sure, the overall point that you don't NEED to know all the optimal stuff to play the game is valid and I agree with that, but there is a big difference between being super optimal with movement and...doing a singular move. I don't consider doing a Shoryuken input advanced or me playing optimally. It's a basic move in my toolkit and having to do these extra steps to execute it is weird. A better example would have been comparing a super easy bread and butter combo like a simple target combo in SF6 or something like Close Slash -> Far Slash - Heavy Slash in Strive to the more optimal combos that use all your resources. You don't NEED to know your wall break combos to play Strive, but you should probably know how to actually do half of your character's movelist.
For the record, I don't hate motion inputs and think they have a place, but also there's plenty of games that clearly don't need them and I don't see why people can't admit that they're some of the least intuitive, alien concepts in fighting games that are in literally no other genre. If I want to shoot a gun in an FPS I hit the trigger. If I want to accelerate in a racing game I hit the gas. If I want to use my fireball I must perform a ritual with my d-pad or stick before it comes out. It's an extra step; not a super challenging step relatively speaking, but when you're starting out you're more likely to trip on that step.
I think a different way or wording it is "the motion isn't intuitive to simulate the action onscreen". If you center your controls like your taking hold of a character/person, you move the stick in a direction to get them to move there. Platformers work off of this intuition, even fast ones like Sonic games.
I'd say the movement controls are intuitive enough (up for jumping, back for moving back and defending, double-forward for a dash, etc.), but when it comes to doing moves it gets weird. Goldlewis' Behemoth inputs I give a pass because they follow a consistency on a motion-level.
I think Charge moves are a good example. You just hold back to block for a few seconds, then you can do an exclusive move. There is no visual indicator that implies this. It's just a tradition you learn, but for someone new it's very confusing. In action games for example, charge moves are highlighted by your character emitting a glow.
"I don't see why people can't admit that they're some of the least intuitive, alien concepts in fighting games that are in literally no other genre."
Because these people have been in their bubble so much that they can't see outside of it.
Every time Sajam talks about barrier to entry in fighting games or learning fighting games as if it's easy I roll my eyes because he's so incredibly out of touch. He's not dumb, he's smart, but Sajam is incredibly out of touch with the layman and the casuals. He's a math professor wondering why kids consistently put math as their least favorite subject when it's so intuitive, easy, and logical.
No layman likes the uniqueness of fighting games. That's why the genre is small and insular. He does not understand new players because he's no longer a new player, nor does he understand people outside the genre because he's a pillar within the genre.
As a relatively new casual player who has gotten people with far less gaming experience (not FGs specifically, gaming in general) to play and enjoy fighting games with no simplified controls options, for them motion input is just "oh, so that's how this game is played".
the important part is the "that are in no other genre", because people with gaming experience are used to be able to pick the basic stuff in a new game pretty easily, they are actually more taken aback by the fact that FGs controls differently.
Now do those beginners I've gotten to play the game manage to do motion inputs? We'll, they manage more easily than I did playing SFIV in 2021 after not playing a game with motion input the mid to late 2000. Because I explain to them how to do the motions.
Which brings me to my conclusion, the real issue FGs have is that they were for a long time very poorly explained. (notably, I improved more in motion execution after Blazblue tutorials than month of SF4).
The barrier that is motion input can be very easily solved by making the games better at explaining basic stuffs (not necessarily the advanced tech, just the basic) and providing content in which to apply those basic like most games do (ID, the first level of a adventure game require only to know the easy moves). This is why SF6 works so well, and while modern controls help (since there are people who legitimately don't want or can't play classic), it could probably also works without it.
@@leithaziz2716 360 inputs are the biggest culprit of this since you're never "supposed" to actually do a full 360 but instead go from back to up forwards and hit the button at the same time as up forward to not jump. Why on earth would you make an input that overlaps with another function?
I want to point out with this deadlock example with all this complex decision making and interesting movement tech, that this is what makes video games fun. It feels rewarding to learn how to have more smooth movement and optimise your character, but because of this weird stigma fighting games have of being too hard, developers are trying to take that stuff away.
100%
although there are also definitely things they could do to make the experience better at an entry level,
and the type of changes they make seem strange too, like with strive for example they completely removed the complexity of the air game but they decided to keep the motion inputs
that seems a bit conflicting to me
on the other hand i do think the way they changed throws in strive was absolutely an improvement
I mean it is not a ‘random weird stigma’, it works. Smash bros and GG Strive are examples of how being simpler and more intuitive helps but the fact that virtually every developer/designer has making their games easier probably speaks to the fact that it’s true lol.
Most of these people don’t like fighting games less than you do, but they *do* have to make those games sell. Money talks.
I nearly bounced off of strive because the region i play in has literally zero players in the towers. Going into your first fighting game online and getting double perfected by celestial players in open park is not a good way to start. Thankfully the netcode is good enough I could play tower in a different region with bad connections and still have fun when actually fighting people closer to my skill level, win or lose.
I notice a lot of people are hung up on his examples of Deadlock not being comparable (or as difficult) as fgs because you won't miss out if you don't know those techs in shooters/other games vs fighting games. Well, DUH.
In other games there's typically other things to do. There's more down time. If you have other friends, you goof off, or talk, or just interact with in general. In fighting games, there's less of all of that so of course you'll feel more pressure and since it's individual and focused, it's quote unquote "more difficult". It's natural to feel this way.
But the similar thing of "as a beginner, do you really need to know ALL the tech before fundamentals in order to enjoy the game" applies here. Speaking as someone who games a lot with various genres, shooters as a beginner makes me want to tear my hair out because I could get smoked INSTANTLY by headshots (even pros face this ofc). With fgs at the very least I ALWAYS have a chance (yes even with someone who's obviously better than me. And even when I lose, I learn valuable stuff). With fgs, I actually enjoy the push and pull because I'm always taking away something from it. And personally I like learning intricate tech but I know that's not going to magically earn me wins (and yes ofc it's fun WHEN you win with said tech) when I know fundamentals are going to carry me further until certain ranks where other factors come into play more. But again, the topic is do you need these intricate skills to ENJOY it more. Ultimately, it's down to the individual and it seems a bunch of people can't but they have to make it seem like it's a community wide thing (which kinda gives you a free pass into throwing your hands in the air and just say "oh well fgs amirite"). Frankly, I feel like it's also years of "fgs are so special" mentality that has some negative effects in that it lets this idea permeate in examples like the topic of this video regardless if people actually feel that way or not.
that's not you on being smoked by headshot. That's the opponent on hitscan. No matter how good you are, you can't directly fight a headshot because the onus of landing it on the shooter and not you. This is why both Widowmaker on launch and TF2 Sniper are currently hated.
What makes the quarter circle thing different from all the tech you showed in Deadlock is that most of that Deadlock tech is transferrable from other games, sometimes in completely different genres, while fighting game tech is only transferrable from other fighting games. If you've played Titanfall or basically any shooter during the movement shooter boom, you know about crouching to keep momentum. Dashing faster forwards than sideways/carrying current momentum into dash distance is common in 3D platformers and other third person games. Shooters are an incredibly popular genre, not just in multiplayer. If I've never played a fighting game, I can't quarter circle or do Z or charge inputs, but even if I've never played a competitive multiplayer shooter, maybe I've played Risk of Rain 2 or Doom or Sunset Overdrive. I probably know how to aim and do all kinds of basic movements and inputs from playing other games. The knowledge check of not knowing every single item until you're 300 hours in still exists, but it doesn't feel like you like the skill to control your character well on a basic level, so the game still generally feels good to play. Lacking the mechanical skill makes fighting games feel worse to play at the outset than a game like deadlock, where the biggest thing a lot of people are lacking is knowledge. Also it being a team game where someone can lane with you and help you out to learn the game as you play is a big benefit over fighting games.
This is spot on. Shooters give you affordances that make them easier to pick up if you've ever used a mouse and keyboard before. The same cannot be said for fighting games which require extremely unique inputs for even the most basic tools in your character's movelist. The Deadlock example in this video falls flat because not knowing motion inputs would be more akin to not being able to use half my abilities in a MOBA, not having a sub-optimal build.
Sajam's whole Deadlock comparison was terrible because he's talking about skill /ceiling/ techniques with Deadlock and skill /floor/ techniques in fighting games.
Comparing advanced movement tech that wouldn't be necessary to know until the intermediate/advanced skill levels to the literal basic abilities of a fighting game character is just silly. The motion inputs are what defines characters the most in the minds of beginners. They are what you see in trailers and most of the reason you decide upon a character right alongside their aesthetic design. Not to mention the zipline movement tech is generally far easier to execute AND has a bunch of intermediary steps that you highlighted so people can move up slowly until they are comfortable hitting the diagonal wall jump.
I'm pro-motion inputs but this is a really silly comparison. The general statements about things like sliding for infinite ammo and how much mechanical context surrounds it is good, but it still sort of misses the point when discussing something as skill-floor as motion inputs.
As someone who got Strive on recommendation of some friends and promptly noped out after trying to grind tutorials, it feels like the biggest barrier to entry isn't not having the resources - if anything, fighting games seem to have MORE built-in tutorials and such than most genres - but rather that those resources aren't fun to engage with.
Take my favorite game, Team Fortress 2. Pretty much everyone who plays agrees that its tutorials are terrible and the best way to learn is to just play. And yes, when you do that you're going to get wrecked constantly for a good many hours, but in between the moments of frustration of being dominated by half the enemy team I can also laugh at a Spy getting launched across the map by a crit wrench or spectate our team's trolldier during my respawn timer while he harasses the enemy snipers, and that's not to mention all the funky cosmetics and group taunts. There's stuff that's fun that keeps the learning experience from being a slog.
The PERCEPTION (and I'm not necessarily saying this is or is not the reality) when it comes to fighting games is that you as a new player are expected to complete at least a certain subset of the tutorials before actually getting into the game. Except those tutorials are often things like, "When your opponent makes this very specific mistake, you have a tiny window to press right bumper and play the drum intro from Hot For Teacher on their ribcage." It's intimidating and frustrating, especially when you aren't necessarily used to using a controller and your input precision is garbage (like me lmao, it's definitely at least partly a skill issue on my part).
I dunno how to implement this, but maybe some kind of... more intuitive tutorial system might help. One idea that's sort of floating around in my head is a "stripped down" gamemode for new players, where a lot of the more advanced mechanics are outright removed, leaving players free to focus just on the fundamentals of movement, blocking, etc. Then once they've gained some confidence they can graduate to the full game. Idk, maybe some fighting game players could weigh in on this. I'd love to hear thoughts from those who know more about the genre, because I genuinely do want to get into this stuff. Fighting games seem amazingly deep and technical in a way that should, in theory, scratch my brain just the right way, but to my layman's perception it feels like there's something missing from the early-game experience.
nah i agree with you
tutorials are nice but its easy to burn out on them
the best way to learn is trial by fire and absorbing some information in between over time,
you could always create the limited gamemode artificially with someone who is down to play with those rules
It's really just the difference between team games and 1v1 games. In a team game like TF2 there's no one to punish you directly for doing something bad and at worst you're just another player messing around on the map. You can more or less just go with the flow of your team and slowly develop awareness of what's going on around you. When you die it's maybe not the end of the world because everyone dies during a match, and when you lose it's maybe not your fault even if you died 17 times and everyone else only died 3-4 times.
The same issue with fighting games exist in RTS games. It's 1v1 and you get immediately punished by another sentient human for being too slow or doing something wrong so you never get to the part where you can just mess about. You are in a constant state of being interferred with so you never get to have an idea and see it to fruition, you only get to experience being a punching bag.
Team games can feel socially encouraging because there are aligned interests with you doing well on your team just as 1v1 games can feel socially discouraging, because here you doing well is at the cost of annoying the only other player in game.
@@gwen9939 keep in mind that for rts the team and co-op modes are usually the most popular mp modes for similar reasons, its easier to just mess around and do something without getting directly interfered with, and you have allies to fall back on when things fail
Consider this: I don't know how to do any of that movement tech but once I hear/read about it I just try it in matches and if I fail I just get the regular movement that I was already doing before. Eventually I just get consistent at it and I never have to spend a single second in "training mode".
Compare to: I am just doing auto combo into special in GBVSR because I am a noob. I see someone do an optimal corner combo and I try to replicate it in a match. I drop my juggle, whiff my raging strike (wasting a BP) and my opponent recovers in time to punish me with a full combo while getting out of the corner in the process.
That comparison doesn't seem equivalent since from what I can understand you're using the best case scenario for Deadlocked and the worst case scenario for GBVS. And what's stopping you from trying the combo again as you would try the movement technique again?
@@k-thesupreme3511yeah was gonna say the same. I understand what he was tryin to say It would work if he was more specific in their first example.
As is it falls short.
@k-thesupreme3511 The comparison does make sense when you take in the fact that doing an movement in an TGS game is going to be more easier and funnier to do than trying to practice an move in an fighting game where you are FORCED to learn it in the practice mode because you cannot practice that way on the fly in matches.
In TGS and FPS games, you can get away with practicing an move in them without facing much consequences. But in fighting games, you will be severely punish if you try to execute an move you never done or practice much with and get beaten if you don't do it right. So you are forced to do it in an practice mode which is going to be extremely boring for alot of new players
@kyra9337 you only get punished by it depending on how good the person you're playing against is, the same way you could get sniped and killed by someone on the opposing team in an FPS. I don't think one should be more likely than the other when it comes to playing against people who are better than you especially if you're a beginner
Doing movement tech incorrectly in a shooter can easily get you killed, depending on the particular tech and game. Dropping a combo can lead to an "American reset" where you land another combo, doing more total damage than if you had done the first combo correctly.
Sometimes your mistakes get punished, sometimes they don't. This is true in all games.
Even going to simplified games from “complex” genres specifically pokemon unite because it’s the only thing I’m good at
Setting up a good build in unite to actually begin playing the game is so much harder than figuring out even a basic BNB, and unite is “simple” you gotta figure out which type your pokemon is, what items are good for it, if it’s a jungler or bot or top lane because the actual category doesn’t mean anything (jungler Aegislash on top) and you have to build for that specific lane in the most esoteric ways imaginable, why does attack weight work when I’m playing bot lane Ceruledge, but it doesn’t do anything when I’m in top, I genuinely still don’t know if that’s skill issue or not, game is fucked
Imagine this in a fighting game, pick your character, figure out on your own if they’re a zoner or rushdown or grappler or whatever with zero guidance and the actual differences are pretty slim but snowball into huge gaps in playstyle, then learn your combos based on which version you want to play, keeping alternates in mind in case your teammate decides to not call their lane and just do whatever, and there’s alternate objectives like hitting 2k2d at 30 seconds in and if you don’t you lose in 5 minutes for reasons beyond your comprehension until you’re at least 20 hours in, and this is just the basic issues with trying to get into the SIMPLEST, WORST MOBA
It is genuinely INSANE how much higher the standard for fighting games is,
TLDR: ask a gamer to play jungler crit aegidlash focusing on objectives and they’ll spend 509 hours min maxing it, ask them to hit a quarter circle punch a single time and they’ll spend 5 seconds, give up, call you an elitist, and then break your controller
At some point you have to ask why so many people are willing to get stomped for 500 hours to learn in MOBAs, while so few can stand 5 seconds of learning fighting game inputs. It's not really about the learning curve at all, but how much people enjoy learning it. Yes, some of this is shaped by preconceived notions, but a lot of it is that one manages to make sure there are fun moments, even while getting absolutely ruined, and the other does not.
IMO, a lot of players, after figuring out how to effectively learn PvP games, simply don't understand what it was like before they had that framework. New players not only don't care if they're playing optimally, but they also don't understand how to even process mistakes. A real noob is not going to realize something as esoteric as their shop decision 5 minutes in dictated the rest of the match. Or as JWong famously demonstrated, they will not realize they could stop getting hit by bazookas just by holding block. They are NOT gonna learn today, because they don't understand the game well enough to get anything out of it. As a noob, you don't even know what made you so vulnerable. You just know you can't do anything, none of your inputs mattered, so why bother even queuing up.
I think that's actually why modern-type controls can be good for player retention. It lets even complete noobs occasionally do something flashy and satisfying, even if they have no practice. Players crave agency and explosive moments, and fighting games are basically made to gatekeep those things from the worse player. You have to throw people a bone or they'll decide it isn't worth it.
@ I think it’s less that there are fun moments in other games even when you’re getting stomped, and moreso that at a low level in a fighting game your fun moments just aren’t as noticeable, getting in 3 hits after being combod for 13 years doesn’t smack you in the face as hard as getting lucky and killing the other bot laner, and especially combined with preconceived notions it makes getting over the hump to learn and become competent very difficult to stick out
I do definitely agree that a lot of people just forget what learning is like though, it was hard for me to learn strive after playing DBFZ because I just forgot what learning a fighting game was like, even though I knew I’d eventually get there, I still false started several times
Have to also hard agree on the modern control stuff, though I’m partial to fighterz system of autocombos and Gatling being relatively simple to understand on their face but branching into an extremely cool combo system as it was my first game, and biased very hard against modern controls specifically because I have chronic skill issue and I am incapable of making them work
I think the one major differences between the types of knowledge and mechanical checks mentioned for something like Deadlock vs a fighting game is whether they are what I'll call explicit or emergent.
In fighting games, almost all of the major mechanics, inputs, moves, tech, etc. are explicitly programmed into the game, or are otherwise bugs or other unintended stuff (like infinites) that will likely be patched out. Most of the tech you showed off in Deadlock is just the consequence of it's particular physics system; those techniques emerged from the interactions of other systems, like friction and momentum. Many of these emergent techniques even end up being "canonized" later on as explicit techniques in later games.
I think a better comparison of an explicit mechanical skill check in Deadlock would be the dash jump. Like a quarter-circle input, it has a fairly unique and somewhat precise timing coordinated across different buttons that makes it not that intuitive when you first start, but it's easy enough that you do get used to it pretty quickly.
The best example of an emergent fighting game mechanic I can think of is Melee wave-dashing. As an accidental consequence of the air-dodge physics, they created one of the most iconic techniques in all of competitive gaming. Traditional FGC games also have some examples though, like combos originally being an accident or the way that motion inputs influence how you play and position (I think there's a Core-A video about that).
I think in general, players tend to not view emergent mechanics as being as difficult, and they tend to be less impactful at low level. I assume this is partially because games are more likely to teach the basic inputs but not emergent techniques (often because those techniques weren't known about at launch). But also, the fact that they emerge from other systems means they are effectively hidden from new players until they learn the base systems first, then the new technique just feels like doing what they were already doing, but better. And those base systems tend to be VERY simple and accessible, like moving, shooting, and controlling the camera; all certainly skills that take a long time to master, but which can be learned in seconds (with the notable exception of the camera which is not easy for complete beginners).
I'd argue option selects are still mostly emergent system consequences rather than something explicitly built in, ditto some categories of fuzzy-whatever. And then like you mention some stuff was unintentional 30 years ago but was intentionally codified sometime between then and now. But you have a point broadly about how a lot of other genres have a higher incidence of just throwing a million things out there and seeing what people make of it. SF6 was likely a lot more planned and controlled at release than a thing with functionally unlimited item combos is or even could want to be
I dunno if I fully agree on the way you framed the Deadlock comparison. The fact of the matter is that the number of controls you need to memorize to be able to play your character, using all of their abilities at a basic level, is far lower in mobas compared to fighting games.
Setting aside Deadlock with its shooter mechanics, all you need to know to play a traditional moba is how to click around to move, 4-6 ability keys, and 0-6 item hotkeys. That's it. Those are all the controls you need to learn, and (barring some of DotA's more unique designs), they will carry over between every character in the game. Compare that to a fighting game where you need to learn normals, command normals, specials, supers, system-mechanic-button-combinations, AND movement commands.
Is there a wide variety of other stuff you need to learn/memorize to play a moba correctly? Of course. But fighting games have a uniquely high number of inputs that need to be memorized compared to almost every other genre. Forgetting which direction and button combo makes your guy do the overhead punch (no, not that overhead punch, the other one) is a different kind of frustration than not knowing optimal movement tech in Deadlock.
All the controls you need to play a fighting game are how to move a joystick in a circle and 4-8 buttons. That's it, those are all the controls you need to learn, and (barring some more unique characters), they will carry over between every character in most fighting games. Compare that to a MOBA where you need to learn abilities, the layout of a map, the NPCs on a map, an entire shop's worth of items, what those items upgrade into or combo with, last hitting, AND aiming and character and/or map movement.
If command normals(direction + button) are enough to set them apart from direction and button separately, then clicking targets and doing skillshots in normal MOBAs or aiming, moving, and pressing abilities together or separately should also be set apart from each other. You say the buttons in MOBAs carry over between characters, but so do the buttons in fighting games. Yes, the effects of pressing the buttons are different, but so are the effects of pressing the "4-6 ability keys" in MOBAs.
In fighting games you have 8 directions and 4-8 buttons. That's less than the infinite directions of a mouse + 4 movement buttons + 4-12 ability/item buttons. Not knowing the optimal movement tech in Deadlock can get you killed for being too slow just as easily as pressing the wrong overhead can get you killed for being too slow. When people say "fighting games are held to a higher standard," this is what they mean. You let Deadlock, and MOBAs in general, get away with things that you hold against fighting games. If you can predict an opponent's movement to land a skillshot, or headshot them while you're both moving in Deadlock, you can do a quarter-circle and press a button.
@@Ketsuekisanproblem is it takes a lot more investment to have fun in a fg since mashing is not fun at all. In a shooter you intuitively get better by playing more. No need to go through matchups and learn punish windows and frame data to just get decent. Recoil control is intuitive. Just pull down. Even in mobas the biggest barrier to fun is controlling your character. The ceiling to have fun in a fg is higher that's why most casuals just play the arcade/story versus with their friends and never touch the game after
@@falaflani4831 bro mashing is fun, it's not fun when you go out of noob stage in any FG
@alondjeckto it's fun for like a week and if it's your first fighting game. If the game is well designed you then start to get a feel for the game and mashing becomes the most mind numbing thing ever and u are still at noob phase. In fps the progression is more instinctive (your aim becomes naturally better the more u play and u get better map knowledge). Fg u have to go out of your way to really enjoy the game. It's one of the few genres where being a sweat is more fun. U don't get as much of a dopamine hit beating on noobs like an fps or moba
according to a friend of mine he stated: "I can read what items do and theorize. I can NOT theorize fighting games, it's muscle memory and training by doing the motion input instead of just **reading** is not fun and much harder in comparison"
Glad Ryan hart is fully committed to the engagement farming shit or people might not realize what he's doing when he, oh idk, tweets a tokido quote where the source(I think? If not, idk what it's supposed to be) is an interview that he still hasn't released months later. Still waiting for context on that quote but he damn sure got the clicks.
I still find it tedious when it's a legendary player, personally.
I honestly think it might at least partially also come down to movement or sense of control (whether real or imagined). Controlling your character at a very very basic and baseline level in Mobas and Shooters is a lot easier than in Fighting Games. Yes moving left and right in a fighting game isn't hard, but actually moving your character to the part of the screen you want them to at the speed you want them to or moving away from your opponent fast enough to actually create distance etc is finicky at a beginner level (especially in an actual match where your opponent comes right out of the gate swinging), where as WASD or mouse click to move is fairly straight forward and you usually have a grace period or safe zone at the beginning of a match before you encounter other players.
You'll still get your ass handed to you in Mobas and shooters when new don't get me wrong, and many of the times you die it can still feel very frustrating and confusing as to what happened. But it doesn't feel like you're fighting the game in order to move or control your character (Street Fighter especially can feel very stiff because of how many moves you can't cancel out of which can momentarily lock you out of moving or taking other actions which feels very weird and arbitrary to newer players). You get overwhelmed by other factors in these other genres which for whatever reason don't bother people as much.
It's just because people got used to WASD movement. You take someone who only play phone game to try shooter, they struggled extremely hard with mouse and WASD movement, especially the diagonal movement or aiming while jumping.
On the other hand, telling a kid who has been playing game like metroidvania to try fighting game, he grasp the control instantly.
@DuoMaxwellDS i played gamepad games all my life i still can't consistently do half circle or dp motions or really do combos outside of Games with simplified controls lik Power Rangers battle for the grid and every time i try to learn i get put off because simply making my character do what i want it to do is a frustrating test of do i do the input well enough that the game thinks i did the input i wanted. Same reason i don't play fps's on mouse and keyboard. simply controlling my character is an awkward and sometimes even painful affair that doesn't lend itself well to beginners. At least with a game similarly considered complex like a moba most of that initial difficulty isn't routed in the basic controls but instead based in knowledge about the game. In a shooter shooting in the direction of your crosshair isn't hard and while aim can be difficult there's resources for practice. in fighting games it's got the knowledge gap but also learning manual dexterity because the control scheme is wholly unique to fighting games. And really there's no way to sort of get good at motion inputs without just sitting in the padded room or having a friend teach you. the only thing that comes close when it comes to motion inputs being something like Skate
Also it's really difficult to learn these games when you don't have friends to either teach you or who are similarly unskilled that you can play with. For lots of people learning a fighting game isn't playing the tutorial then immediately getting into the game like in something like CoD but playing the tutorial and then practicing for hours and hours in training mode so they're somewhat consistent at things before they get to the actual fun part of playing against other people because just flailing loses its luster very quickly
3:56 Someone gotta clip this with no context lmao
I find the Dealock example kind of misleading because none of that stuff you talked about is necessary for playing the game, but I'd argue special moves are very much necessary to play fighting games. Nobody starting Deadlock is expecting to know all the best movement tech and items just like nobody starting a fighting game is expecting to know all the best combos and setups, but people DO expect to be able to use their characters abilities, which is trivial in Deadlock but not in fighting games
As someone that loves fighting games more than most other things in the world now but bounced off them a lot when I was younger, I wish this point was acknowledged more and that fighting game people would be more willing to meet this complaint where they actually are coming from. Sajam showing the difference between walking to a location and crouch cancel air dash flying to the same location and saying that comparison is the same as "only using normal moves" vs "being able to use normals AND specials" feels like a misunderstanding of why motion inputs are frustrating.
I think instead we should be focusing on why it is that people think motion inputs are hard in the first place (fighting game input buffer systems are WEIRD AS FUCK and nobody ever talks about it despite it being the primary reason someone could feel frustration from motions) and shifting the way we explain these things to new players so they don't sit there with the feeling of "I'm doing what the game is telling me to do and it still won't come out, this fucking sucks" for hours, days, weeks on end because they didn't realize that it was even possible for two similar inputs to result in something different, or that they just didn't understand the timing, or were using a poor input device/method. Motion inputs became a lot easier when I was taught *why* I was failing to perform them, but it somehow took 6+ years for anyone to sit me down and teach that, and I think that's a crying shame.
@@Tomoka51 Sajam is incredibly out of touch with the layman because he's too deep in the FGC. He looks at Infil's website of glossary of terms and think "Oh what a great resource" instead of thinking the logical thought of "Holy shit, why does this need an entire website dedicated to just terminologies" and then wonder why people find the genre impenetrable.
@@Tomoka51 Deadlock "motion input" is pressing 1 to toss a fireball. And definitely not the advanced tech being shown.
Bro pressing 2 buttons to do a quarter circle is indeed trivial idk what to tell you man
I just started fighting games like 2 months ago and I think the hardest part over special moves and combos is DEFENSE!
It didnt take me long to understand the inputs and timing of the special moves and combos and I'm brand new.
The thing that ALWAYS fucks me up online (and I've tried playing Skullgirls and Granblue) is when the enemy starts comboing me and I have no way to stop them. Trying to learn the tech to get out of your opponents combos for me at least, is the biggest roadblock. If I can get the first few hits in I usually win by overwhelming my opponent, but if my opponent gets their hits in first I'm pretty much dead if I'm not already blocking. And this isnt mentioning things like executing parrys or even just reacting to your opponent's character in time.
Ive been trying for like 2 weeks now and I had to take a break cause I got tired of practicing for 30 minutes with the bot and then trying to go up against people and getting demolished.
So yeah, combos and special attacks take some getting used to, but I think the single hardest part of fighting games and the thing that keeps people away is once you're losing, the vast majority of people have no clue how to recover.
I would say the difference between motion inputs and other knowledge/input checks is sure, you don't know how to do crazy movement tech in a shooter game, but motion inputs are closer to just... normal abilities than extra tech. Fighting games also have extra tech that require hard inputs, but normal regular moves/abilities are harder to use, and it's an all or nothing thing that feels frustrating to mess up even if it's not more difficult than other game's inputs. I agree the difficulty standard is still not applied fairly, but it's just something to consider.
have not watched the video yet but i think it's the difference between how easy the 'basics' are. in a game like dmc, it is difficult to actually play it but you can move around and hit enemies with strings. in a fighting game, the initial difficulty for a new player is with the basics, and not the mechanical complexity, which makes a lot of people frustrated.
talking about the example in the tweet, in deadlock you can shoot and move around and dodge just fine as a new player. the complexity and difficulty in understanding comes with the items and specific mechanics of the game, which is more digestible for the average gamer than having to relearn the basics
"in a fighting game, the initial difficulty for a new player is with the basics"
The basics of a fighting game are moving and punching/kicking. These are not the source of difficulty in fighting games. There's very little difference between dmc's learning curve and the learning curve of a fighting game. Basic movement and attacks, then special moves with more complicated inputs, then combining multiple moves to create flashy combos. And you must do all that while avoiding enemy attacks.
@JackVolt if you feel that way that's fine but an average gamer that hasn't played a fighting game before does struggle with being able to do special moves and move around and combo
@@texasred8424 just like the average gamer struggles the first time they play dmc
@@texasred8424 Just like how the average person who doesn't play shooters will struggle to hit their shots. Why do we see shooting and missing as "playing the game", but don't see whiffing buttons in neutral the same way?
I micro-dosing on community stupidity in small doses through your videos rather than being in the (formerly known as Twitter) trenches
Honestly, i think the things we can do to get people in to the general start with us as players getting our friends in. Added functionality like modem controls help a lot, but we need to start appealing to the personality seeds that make people pay attention. You know someone who likes action/superhero movies? Dope, here's a character who will ignite that same spark. You know someone who likes rhythm games? Guess what combos can feel like to you bud! You like outwitting or confusing the hell out of people? Let me introduce you to the left-right mix-up, friend.
I've been teaching my gf how to play sf6, and she has never played and fg before. Now we're 1.3 years deep into playing sf6 multiple times a week, and she's a chun li lover. Things is when I'm teaching her, I'm not afraid to be as patient as it takes, break things down to the basics we take for granted, I'm not afraid to take "L" after "L" because I'm letting her get and feel success from the complicated techniques she just spent irl time learning with me in training mode.
There are barriers we won't be able to over come as individual players, like the dlc fighters, lack of customization outside of Tekken and soul Calibur. But those can be ameliorated at least a little bit if we gift newer players a character the same way we buy a friend a drink.
These aren't perfect, and certainly aren't catch all, but I'm just speaking from my personal experiences recently.
Honestly i think fighting games should have way more tutorials that feel like minigames. Not hidden on some world tour mode, but available in main menu and practice mode and marketed as additional singleplayer content.
Learning combos as rhythm minigames and piecing them together is the biggest example for sure. The SF6 parry basketball minigame would also be a banger if it was more developed and available on main menu. They could even make a "playground" or whatever mode to go along WT, BH and FG.
@disonalvan you're especially right on the wt piece. There is so much good content there that you have to design an avatar and sit through so so so many cutscenes and missions to get to, it should straight up be selectable from the same menu as the extreme battles. I know people irl who would love it, but because the barrier to entry is so high they don't do it
I think the issue with fighting game execution isn't that it's harder or easier than other games, it's that's it's just so unintuitive. Specials are all a bunch of nonsense direction inputs combined with arbitrary button presses, until you get used to them it feels super awkward to execute. Lots of shooter have super cool movement tech that's just as technically challenging to execute as fighting game combos, but understanding the basics of manipulating momentum feels a lot more intuitive than input Konami code to do cool move.
Bruv I have 100+ hours on Deadlock and didn't know crouching off a zipline carried momentum.
Its not not more intuitive. Hell its more intuitive when the game is actually telling me what inputs I need to press unlike movement tech in shooters you are referring to.
My first "fighting" game was Bleach Blade of Fate on the DS, Treasure developed madness so it was busted but incredibly fun. The DS Lite d-pad was surprisingly comfortable to roll my thumb around to do motions so I got used to motions real quick.....then some years later I try Third Strike Online Edition and the Dualshock d-pad is bugging me to no end. Comforts a big deal in doing motions and I think most controllers nowadays don't give a damn about d-pads, the focus in on the sticks. Stick works for some games definitely more than others, shame good d-pads are so hard to come by.
ye i have been saying for a while that fighting games neede to support analog stick gameplay with proper deadzones but nobody is taking this seriously
Yeah, the dpad nowadays is either in the right spot (parallel to the action buttons), but dogshit in comfort and feel. Or in the wrong spot (offset) but acceptable to SOMETIMES good in feel and comfort.
You do damage and such in Deadlock without having to get into advanced movement tech. Fighting game combos are all or nothing. You get the combo perfect, or you get a worse result than if you hadn't done it at all. In Deadlock, if your movement sucks, you lose to better players (as you should), but there's no "this guy can't do the 4-frame link so his character falls apart completely". You might die because you did something suboptimal in both games, which is fine, but having 10% less distance or 10% less damage in something like Deadlock is not going to destroy you consistently, especially versus other suboptimal play.
The closest thing I can think of in a moba that hits that point is knowledge checks that turn into snowball scenarios - guy doesn't know to buy the item that counters the other guy's ult or something. This is still a matter of just getting informed or looking it up. This is usually the case with Tekken as well - I don't think it took me longer than 30 minutes to lab a decent combo I could hit every time in that game, thanks to its input buffer and on average easier inputs. With a traditional fighting game however, it's not just the knowledge check. You're also hitting up the lab for possibly hours to build muscle memory to hit super specific timings. The only thing I can think of remotely that demanding in Deadlock is corner boosting, and that doesn't stop your hero from doing anything fun if you can't do it. Not to mention the actual wrist pain involved with some traditional fighting games - again, not an issue I run into outside of them.
yeah I keep thinking of how the common knowledge for sf4 sakura was "if you can't do 1 frame links then don't even play her" because simple bnbs wouldn't function. I'd argue what fighting games have a skill *floor* problem. I think this is why so many people take to things like soul calibur so well, since you're playing a physically intuitive game with fun moves and real decisions even before you get into combos. a casual is going to be rightly unsatisfied if all they can manage in street fighter is a stiff basic punch and they can't access any of the character's signature techniques which are all over the promo material.
"You do damage and such in Deadlock without having to get into advanced movement tech. Fighting game combos are all or nothing. You get the combo perfect, or you get a worse result than if you hadn't done it at all."
Wrong. When you're just starting out, you don't need all that, not against opponents of a similar skill level.
"In Deadlock, if your movement sucks, you lose to better players (as you should), but there's no "this guy can't do the 4-frame link so his character falls apart completely"."
No, instead there's "this guy aims and reacts faster than me, so I get shot before I can do anything, and now my currency situation is so bad and my build so far behind that fighting other players is actively detrimental to my team because I'm feeding and causing us to spiral further and further into being mathematically unable to win."
@@Ketsuekisanbut in deadlock you have the option to go just hang back and farm up or gank people in deadlock if your being out meched you have option in a fighting game if your oponent can do specials and you cant its gg
You can do damage without combos, or advanced combos.
@@SupermanSajam I have bad memories of playing Street Fighter 4 and not being able to make any conversions off of stray hits. I'd land punches on my opponent and get 5% life, and they'd usually get at least 20% or more. The only time I could do real damage to someone was off an ultra - and that's assuming I could do the motion. Metsu Hadouken wasn't that bad, but doing 1319 charge motions felt completely impossible on an Xbox 360 pad. I also have bad memories picking up KoF 2002 and 15, spending 3 hours in the lab trying to get a basic normal -> command normal -> special move combo, completely failing to get it once, even on keyboard (my most comfortable setup), and leaving frustrated.
I've never run into anything like this in another genre. Do I get outskilled? Of course - one of the most extreme cases I've seen outside of a fighting game is Lethal League. People go crazy with the ball control in that game. Maybe I can't get a crazy juggle like they can, maybe I don't get the ball as often as they do, but I can take a life off of them when I do get that ball. More importantly, I can do my character's special attack without having to spend at least 3 hours in the lab. Same with Deadlock. I don't have to spend a whole evening practicing to summon an owl on Gray Talon - that part's easy. Landing it's the hard part, sometimes. And that's fine - it should be able to be juked. But if I gotta read a 300 page manual and go to flight school for 6 months and learn how to fly a real jet just to make the owl take off at all, I'm not having fun anymore. I'm not committing that much time to a game that's making me really upset right from square one.
Doesn't the Deadlock example prove the opposite though?
You showed some very very high level Deadlock optimizations, dashing sidewise rather than forward, crouching off the rail rather than jumping etc. These are not moves that a new Deadlock player needs to know and in fact you mention a lot of players in chat didn't know these techniques exist. The comparison that the non-FGC public at large love to complain about again and again is motion controls, which is table stakes in a fighting game without simple inputs.
Didn’t expect a deadlock guide but it’s well worth it
it's funny actually i wrote an essay on fighting games not actually being that hard for my game studies class and cited you and core-a as sources lol
Did u perform any actual user studies or did u just base it off ur own experience and that of those who are passionate in the genre? Fighting games are objectively harder than most games
@@derpaboopderp1286 They are not "objectively harder" They are simply different. Some fighting games of the past are very very strict but that is only if you're trying to do the best things your character can do. See the 1frame links in SF4. They aren't necessary for every beginner to learn and aren't needed with 2 beginners anyway. Games of a long running genre, believe it or not, are made intuitively so that they aren't far removed from the past iterations. Every fighting game has the same core principles it never changed and it in fact got much more accessible for people who actually have conditions preventing them from doing motion inputs comfortably.
Didn't expect to get sold on Deadlock clicking on this video 😅
deadlock is very good
@@lionshazz i personally didnt like it, i felt like it gave me a headache just trying to play at a basic level
I think the comparisons are very shallow: Deadlock's movement tech is not an integral part of the game and people can play just fine without using them. In FGs, motion inputs practically gatekeep half, likely even more, of the genre's gameplay and joy. It's not just a matter of optimization. Not to mention that the example movement tech will be easier to a lot of people than being consistent with even a 5f-link, which can get you killed if you drop and go unsafe ob.
You can also research what to buy or straight-up copy others' builds in other genres. In FGs, copying even the most basic tech comes with execution homework.
There's alao the matter of decision-making. In other competitive games, macro decisions come into play far after beginner levels. In FGs, the very first moment you have in a match might be knowledge check or perhaps youtry to do a combo but whoops you suck at neutral or you have some neuch tech but the oponent does not move in the way you need and now you need to determine wtf to do. You don't have minions or jungle or any other opponent-agnostic strat to rely on--you need to adapt. Mathematical FG play doesn't exist because in the end, we all go gambling.
In short, as a beginner, you have no choice but to get bodied to learn FGs.
This last point I unfortunately completely disagree with. I can say the same about a MOBA
"The very first moment you have in a lane might be a knowledge check or whoops you missed a minion cause you suck and now your opponent hits the next level before you and now you don't know wtf to do"
EVERY competitive game has knowledge checks from the first second of gameplay that can make or break a match whether you know it or not, but it's not relevant because there's 100s of knowledge checks and you're JUST starting out.
In short, as a beginner, you have no choice but to get bodied in a MOBA, Shooter or RTS
@@GenieStorm I added that sort of as a joke and didn't want to go in-depth in an already-long comment:
In MOBAs, you have a lot of PvE or way safer stuff you can do but to engage with that specific micro-level challenge: get sustain items, chug lots of potions, focus on farming, go jungle, push and gank other lanes, swap lanes... If things go to late-game, what you did in lane might as well be fiction.
In FGs, you have no other option but to constantly re-engage because there is no other game--it's just the fight. Add that FGs focus a lot on the human error aspect, even if you know literally everything about the system, you have to learn the specific person's knowledge checks. The process of "get hit > try to form a pattern" is the core of FGs. Even at the highest level they are a competition for who gets bodied less before they figure the opponent out.
I don't think FGs are inherently harder or more knowledge-based or anything--it's just that for a beginner, the initial experience is a lot more overwhelming due to lack of alternatives (besides playing something else, which many of them choose to).
@theuzi8516 Apologies, didn't catch the joke!
I highly disagree on "If things go to late-game, what you did in lane might as well be fiction" Fiction how? Maybe I'm misunderstanding this comment but what you do in lane absolutely impacts the late-game and is often a direct result of it. All the small micro level challenges you mentioned earlier are variables that a beginner can't efficiently monitor or keep track of all at once. They may forget about them by late game but if the goal is to learn and improve it absolutely starts with the basics.
The last two points I also completely disagree with:
MOBAs have inherently more factors to keep track of and be aware of, it's extremely overwhelming for new players BECAUSE there are so many variables, and even if you focus on one aspect you still miss the other 99. Farming and enganging with the enemy laner is a prime example of 2 variables that can be extremely difficult to focus on. All competitive games focus on the human error aspect and decision making, you constantly change and adapt to the situation. I disagree on that being the core of FGs and high level play is about applied knowledge, adaptability and decision making in my opinion.
"initial experience is a lot more overwhelming due to lack of alternatives" training mode, story mode and AI matches serve the same purpose as PvE or Co-op vs AI in MOBAs. Some of the largest competitive games (LoL, TFT, CS:GO, Valorant, etc) do not have very good or friendly initial experiences and some are even known to have a smurfing problem which means a beginner is likely to have an "unfair" match whether the smurf is on their team or not.
All competitive games have an initial overwhelming experience precisely because they are competitive, and therefore take time and effort to advance in
@@GenieStorm It wasn't a good joke anyway, nw :D
What I mean by "might as well be fiction" is essentially that no matter what the past was, the present is apparent--doesn't matter if you bodied or got bodied in lane because you're in the late game now and late-game factors are now what you need to consider. (This is basically the theme of the rest of this comment btw lol.)
I also disagree with some of your other comparisons but I find this whole thing similar to a Final Fantasy XIV argument about whether a song ("The Fiend") is too similar to Powerman 5000's "When Worlds Collide", and I feel like the crux of the issue is the same in both.
Basically the FFXIV situation is that a bunch of music nerds made several posts explaining how at the technical level, the songs have a lot of differences and that they are nowhere near similar enough for the comparisons but the funny thing is that in every comment section or in-game chat about the song was (is) filled with people comparing the two and getting lots of agreement.
So, at the end of the day, the technical mumbo jumbo is inconsequential because even if FGs and other competitive games have the same issues on paper or The Fiend and When Worlds Collide are technically very different, the end result is that we see a lot of people sticking with other competitive stuff even when playing solo and we find a lot of people thinking The Fiend sounds very much like When Worlds Collide. This all means that, assuming the on-paper similarities/differences are accurate, they fail to capture the similarities/differences in the degrees in the sense that the potential turn-offs for FGs and other competitive games might be the same but they are more pronounced in FGs at least enough to give us the end result we see. At the end of the day, think of which one is more likely to be true: a) everyone is so deluded that they find FGs significantly harder to get into despite there not being all that much of a difference, or b) FGs actually are significantly harder to get into for the average player.
If only we had solo competitive shooters to compare because if you are right, the social element is doing waaaaaay more than I'd guess :D
ok but i feel like this defense is always a little bad faith - yes deadlock is objectively way harder to learn, but all of the tricks he showed were optional, you can control your character and start playing the game without them. With fighting games, if you can't do your special moves, it is completely disingenuous to say that you are playing the game. It is not fun or satisfying in any way to play most fgs with just normals, and wanting to do a move but physically not being able to do it is way more frustrating than having to do things inefficiently and losing, because at least in the latter you have agency over what your guy does on screen. I definitely agree that fighting games are judged as impossible to play unfairly but motion inputs is a VERY LEGIT barrier to entry that is worth solving with stuff like modern controls
He always compares tech to base character control and it's definitely not the same thing. Not just that but everything he showed was more knowledge checks than mechanic checks. They are like 1-2 button things as opposed to motion inputs. Then fighting games still have knowledge checks on top of the mechanic checks like motion inputs.
"yes deadlock is objectively way harder to learn"
And that's really all anyone is trying to say. This is why fighting games are "held to a higher standard." You admit that Deadlock is harder, but then immediately try to "um ackshually" it away.
As an aside, if being able to do special moves without motion inputs is all it takes, then why isn't Granblue Versus far and away the most popular fighting game of all time?
@Ketsuekisan Granblue can just be unpopular. Also you ignored the actual point. Type of difficulty matters. Fighting games are hard mechanically at an entry level. Deadlock is not hard mechanically at an entry level. You can do things with very simple button presses as opposed to doing a dp. Even other games that have mechanical difficulty usually put it somewhere other than controlling your character. Think of souls games, nioh, GoW or Musou games. They are hard but doing your own moves isn't hard.
I have gotten a bunch of 12 years old with little to no gaming experience to play Third strike and they enjoyed the game just fine.
They don't need to know how to do a 5f link because it's only useful at a intermediate level. You don't need to know what a link is to play the game. You'd need it if you want to git gud, but
And motion inputs doesn't deter them from having fun, they're hyped as shit when one manage to land a super because that's seen as good skill for them but that's about it.
There is a problem with FGs but it's not specifically that motions inputs are too hard, though they may seem like they are.
@emperormegaman3856 A group of similarly skilled kids playing in person is a very controlled environment compared to what's typically going to happen. Not just that but ignorance is bliss. Their lack of gaming experience can make simpler things more fun, they have less to compare it to.
All i know is that i got good at overwatch by playing with friends but to learn sf6 i started by watching a characters guide for the character i wanted to play next, played combo trials alone, did reaction and combo drills and find solutions to situations alone in training mode, while also having to regularly hop back into training mode after sets to look for solutions again. i have 4 characters in masters in sf6 so far and got to masters in overwatch, but in one game i was constantly just playing with friends and only went into the practice range for 5 minutse when a new hero dropped and in the other i was in my secluded training chamber for probably 100 hours. Im the only one of my friends who plays fighting games but i dont deny that the barrier to entry to actually start playing the real game is higher than other games. you always use deadlock as an example cuz its so complicated, but there are many games out there you can absolutely learn while playing with friend without watching guides.
This, a thousand times this. The issue isn't difficulty or a lack of resources - in fact I think fighting games excel when it comes to the quantity and depth of tutorials, both official and community-made - but rather that the learning process is uniquely unfun compared to many other genres. When your options as a new player are "get dumpstered repeatedly while barely being able to move your character" and "spend hours and hours doing flashcards for your thumbs," it's pretty easy to get fed up and throw in the towel. There needs to be a middle ground between these to make learning the basics more interesting. Remember, it's a GAME. It's supposed to be FUN, even during the awkward early learning portion.
Side note, I've been seeing a communications issue all over this comments section that's not really specific to fighting games but crops up a lot in software development as well. The customer will complain about a specific feature or design element when what's actually bothering them is something more fundamental. They just don't have the language to express what the ACTUAL problem is. One of the hardest things to do as a developer is understand that what the customer says is not always what they mean. That applies here too, I think. People outside the community do like to say that fighting games are "too hard," yeah - but I don't think that's what they actually mean; rather, I think they're frustrated that learning the mechanics doesn't feel like an engaging process, which creates a perception, real or false, that the genre is uniquely difficult.
Or maybe I'm talking out my rear. Idk, could go either way :P
@@Vegetation1691 thats what i mean, i am currently teaching a friend rivals of aether 2 (which is a monumental task, cuz the game currently has 0 tutorials, but those thankfully will come) but despite him having a lot of platform fighter experience, he does barely learn while playing against other players and only really improves in the sessions where he plays against me and i specifically teach him stuff and let him do a setup, punish or combo repeatedly on me to build patter recognition and muscle memory, which you dont really do while playing naturally.
@@Vegetation1691 Also the learning process can be fun, atleast to me, but its clearly not to everyone, cuz dropping a hard combo a 1000 times to finally have it down consistently tests your patience.
I know you kind of touched on it, but when it comes down to "look up someone else playing it", there is just so many flaws in that, usually anyways. What if the person sucks, what if you're watching the literal best player in the world pull off some tech, and trying to replicate it within minutes of picking up a game. Hell there's even stuff like misinformation, whether directly or indirectly, as more things are "figured out" that may date a video hard. At the end of the day, you're also just using someone else's ideas, or opinions, to form how you play or think. Reminds me of gacha games, where every banner that'll get posted, there will be tons of "should I pull x" "is x a must pull" etc.
Also if you're trying to play the way someone else does, it can be hard to form your own style, or again if you can't replicate it, then it is kind of a feelsbad. People will be quick to doubt their ability to play it, whether cause they think it is too hard, or they think they suck too much, but like anything else, you gotta give it a little bit of time.
You made enough videos about rollback that we now have rollback in almost every fighting game. Time to use your powers to make people shut up about fighting games being more complicated than other more popular genres.
Imo saying fighting games are no less accessible than Deadlock is damning with faint praise
If u only use someone elses build in deadlock chances are you dont even know why ur buying them and might not even know what they do. Learning how to build on the fly was a huge game changer at least in terms of enjoying the game
idc if sajam makes the same video. ill keep watching them
Price is a weird one. I think that's one of the last issues until more recent where the FTP has skyrocketed very casual genres. SF4 did not have this issue, Tekken didn't, and neither soulcal until recently.
One of the biggest issues for so long was actually the online experience. You couldn't play with randoms from across the country or play with your homie who moved away cause delay made the game frustrating. Devs took so long to address that even when rollback was launched.
@muckdriver i feel like part of it is almost a self perpetuating cycle. Fighting Games have a reputation for being hard to get into and that you need to spend hours or days on a character to see any kind of success. People don't play against other people to learn but instead sit in training room getting increasingly frustrated when they attempt something and it's not working and just hitting a dummy for hours and hours isn't fun as a noob. Eventually bounce off and go back to playing games where your skills learned in other games transfer and make onboarding easier. Gaming with friends is fun but now you gotta get someone else to play with who is either also a noob or willing to put up with noobs and most people don't want to spend on a fighting game because spending 60 bucks on a game you might bounce off of after two hours feels terrible. The reputation that fighting games are hard means that noobs aren't really joining which means most of the content you see is high level which can perpetuate the reputation because "you'll never be able to do that."
The hardest fighting game to get into is the first one because you're starting at the ground floor and think you need to get to floor 5 before you start having fun
@@jmanwild87 i can relate because i too felt like i hsd to practice in training mode first before playing online but you literally cant learn the game like that
you just need a fellow noob to hsve fun while you learn as you play
Always 3 games is cool. You get the points but you get to get a redeeming game
Rivals 2 was the first time I ever put time into learning a plat fighter in a competitive aspect and while it was tough I was able to pick it up. Just like SF4 was the first time I competitively learned traditional fighters, and Strive was my first anime fighter I took seriously.
Sure each of these games have a learning curve but its honestly not that crazy to put effort into. If you can learn deadlock you can learn any of these games.
I think the perfect system is sf6 so the choice between lobby and ranked from menu, but with an added way to text and an optional voice option in ranked matches
I think the biggest reason why the whole "quarter circle bad" argument still prevails to this day is that, while obviously it isn't really that big of a deal, I think because you need the motion just for a single action, it is perceived as making the game harder than it actually is. So like, using Deadlock as an example again, you dash with one button, you jump with one button, you use the zipline by pressing one button. All of these actions are a single button press, making them "easier" but then people don't realize to do anything effective with all of this nonsense, you have to do a bunch of things back to back, so it may as well be a motion input in terms of execution. Now sure, someone could argue in fighting games that to do anything effective with some special moves you have to do other stuff into it and all that, but really at some point every game will get hard, whether that happens earlier or later, it doesn't REALLY matter. Tbh I prefer it happens earlier because something like Halo is pretty easy for quite a long time, but once it gets hard, everything gets hard at once and it becomes a headache. I think the best part about fighting games is there are a bunch of things here and there you can just work on, and it all comes together eventually.
The skill floor is really exaggerated by people that only know of fighting games by osmosis and only touching them once or twice and refunding. Half of these players would have a much better time if they don't panic as soon as the match starts, and block every once in a while.
At the same time, FGs do a dogshit job of conveying to players how their mechanics work. Simple knowledge things like how buffers work, what a hit confirm is, how to anti air, what hits are cancelable into what etc. will take you a LOT farther than the endless hours of agonizing over combos. You can be very good in most of the populated fighting games by just simple checks like that with absolutely no combos.
The difference between motion inputs and shooting or clicking one butter to use a skill is motion inputs are not intuitive, and of course you can play without them but you won't be able to do cool moves.
Of course in most modern fg there are modern imputs and lots of new players use them so it's not all bad.
I was going to actually counter-argue against the comparison of doing a motion input vs Deadlock's movement example but then it hit me:
*2XKO has no motion inputs and people are still gonna perceive it as extremely difficult.*
It seriously is just a matter of people being unable/unwilling to accept all that comes with the 1v1 format and it's what allows them to easily form excuses such as "The genre is just too hard" when it inherently is not. 2024 was the first year I really sat down to try and learn "big boy" fighting games for the first time and, yes, there are literally exactly like any other genre once you get past your own perception of them. They are not magically more difficult than any other genre by default/nature, they're just not. This perception is what draws the line and is the main thing that creates that huge divide in the FGC space and other genres.
Everyone who has gotten past their perceived idea of how difficult fighting games are, now view everyone who hasn't as puzzling. "How do they see this as so hard?"
Everyone who hasn't gotten past their perceived idea of how difficult fighting games are, now can only draw conclusions such as, "Fighting game players must just be talented", "The genre is just inherently difficult", or other things like that.
I feel like everyone comparing the fighting game learning curve to the learn curve of MOBAs and FPSs are making false equivalencies.
In games like valorant, league of legends, or pretty much any FPS you have easy access to all of your moves. You’re never going to get yourself killed because you performed the wrong button combo to shoot. Of course you’re going to be trash when you first start out, but you have all your tools available at the start and can practice with all of them in as many live games as you want. There’s difficulty in learning things like matchups, aiming, spacing, and timing, but you’re acting like fighting games don’t have these. The difficulty of fighting games is that you have to learn all of those things ON TOP of learning how to make your abilities come out consistently.
If you start going into online matches without worrying about how to do inputs, you’re never going to learn how to do them. That’s like asking someone to play DOTA2 or League of Legends but only playing matches with their basic attacks. It doesn’t help that a lot of people in the FGC are so disconnected from people outside of it that they simply don’t understand how to help new people get in.
I started SF6 with modern controls, but wanted to learn classic, so I joined some discords to try and get advice. I mentioned going into practice mode to try and learn inputs but almost everyone told me to just go into ranked matches and just start playing without worrying about inputs. So I did that. The majority of matches were just me using basic punches and kicks at max range and using spacing to make up for the fact that I couldn’t use special moves. It was so boring. In other games, even if I can’t use all my abilities optimally, at least I can still USE them.
I went back to the discords, asked several people if it was a good idea to start practicing inputs now and they still told me not to bother. Even had some people making fun of me for not learning by this point, (how the hell am I supposed to learn inputs if I’m not practicing them?). I mentioned wanting to do matches against low level CPU’s to see if I could practice inputs that way, but everyone said it would be a waste of time, that I wouldn’t learn how to fight against real people that way.
They didn’t understand that I wasn’t trying to learn how to fight against real people at that point, I was trying to figure out how to make my characters do what I wanted them too. How was I ever going to learn that if everyone was telling me to not bother to learn how to do it?
No other game genre has that issue. Even games famous for being difficult like souls-likes and cuphead aren’t difficult because you have to fight to learn how to make your character use their abilities, your abilities are easily accessible from the start. The difficulty from those games comes from maneuvering around your opponents with the simple skill set given to you. Fighting games require that you learn how to maneuver around your opponent and how to make your character perform a massive chunk of their moveset at the same time.
Haven’t played an FG since August because of school, work, and research. I still want to learn classic controls, but needless to say, I’ll be avoiding the discords from now on
i think a lot of those people gave that advice with good intentions but just misunderstood your situation
for me personally i think a healthy balance of playing and practice is important
and that it is indeed best to play against other people instead of thinking that you can learn everything in training mode
but it is ofcourse also true that you have to practice the motion inputs for a bit if you are unable to figure it out while playing
If spacing and positioning and basic punches and kicks are "so boring" then maybe fighting games just aren't for you. They are the heart of what the genre is about. That's like saying that aiming and shooting and using cover is boring in FPS games.
The way people moan about how hard it is to move the stick a little and press punch makes me wonder how they got this far in life. Pick a move, read how it's done, practice it by yourself a few times to get a feel for it. If you can't figure it out, the internet has tons of explanations and how-to videos. Once you know how to do it, start doing it in real situations. You'll do it badly at first because you're a beginner. At some point you'll start doing it well. None of what I just said is different from learning any other skill.
FGC are out of touch with normal gamers in general. They are awful for people dipping their toes in to the genre.
@@JackVolt And this is the problem with you guys, you're so elitist that you can't even bother to read what's actually being written. You also can't help but toss out insults before giving actual "advice".
I did not mean that spacing and positioning were boring, that's the fun of any action game. The boring part is spacing and positioning with little follow up because I'm missing about 40% of my moveset.
I had already come to the conclusion that I have to lab out motion inputs on my own, in fact, that's the conclusion I came to initially, but I had so many veterans giving shitty advice because they were reading past my issues.
Who said I wasn't looking up online tutorials? I WAS, but the fact that I had to do that at all speaks to the learning curve that I was talking about.
At no point did I mention giving up, in fact at the end up my comment, I mentioned getting back into learning classic controls when school and work calmed down. I am willing to put the work in, but here you are insulting me as if I've given up entirely before giving me the "advice" of a conclusion I've already come up with.
I'm not bitching and moaning about movement inputs, I'm saying they are inherently more difficult than using abilities in other games. Even you yourself stated that I should learn an input by memorizing it and practicing it a few times. Again no other competitive game makes you do that, every other game genre let's me use abilities with a single button press and the "combos" come with chaining those single button press abilities together.
Why is it so hard for some FG people to admit that having to do a button combo to get a single ability to come out is more difficult than hitting a single button to get an ability to come out. No it's not a monumental task, but we're talking about comparative difficulty here. The street fighter community didn't seem to have an issue understanding that concept when modern controls were announced and people were complaining about the unfair advantage one button specials and supers would give to modern control users.
Finally, what you said IS different from learning any other skill. If I'm learning another game, I'm not fighting with the control scheme to get my character to do what I want them to. Sure, I can learn how to pilot them more smoothly, but I can still perform all their skills sub optimally. If I'm learning how to play piano, I'm not fighting my body to move my fingers, they do what I tell them to, even if the music come out sounding like crap. If my fingers move too slowly or I keep accidentally hitting the wrong note, it's frustrating, but not as frustrating as it would be if half the time my mind told my index finger to hit a key on the piano, my finger just didn't do anything. The frustration of fighting games come from the fact that you're not just piloting your character sub optimally, you're not even piloting the whole character. Again this isn't a complaint of , "oh woe is me, I'll never be good at this", it just adds am extra layer of frustration that nothing else comes with.
@@HellecticMojo There is some truth to this unfortunately. Some of the comments on this video only make sense to me because I already "bought in" to fighting games a long time ago, if I was totally unfamiliar with the genre I'd see a game with a 70 dollar price tag and two 40 dollar expansion that are mandatory to play the real game I'd just say "nah I'm good" and then go cue up on Fortnite or something.
On another note I think a decent amount are pretty bad at helping new players too because the game looks totally different to an experienced eye compared to a brand new player's perspective. That could just be me though, I really struggle at conveying ideas to newcomers in a way that makes sense.
I play a small indie game called Rumble VR, which is a VR Earthbending fighting game. The game has built in voice chat (defaulted to ptt), and I think that it's one of the biggest reasons behind the awesome community behind the game. Everyone takes time to help eachother, and explain the techniques behind different combos. It definitely also helps that you'll run into someone, chat a bit, and then run into them again on a later date because there's only ever max 30 people in queue, so you are almost forced to communicate. The social aspect of the game made it the first gaming community I have ever truly interacted with, and now I'm friends with a bunch of the active playerbase.
thanks for the Deadlock Movement tutorial, I didn't know half this shit
Bruh, I heard a LOTTA things, but no one told me that Deadlock moves like Warframe.
That's because it doesn't
@@skully8692 Not with THAT attitude!
It's a Valve shooter, it'd be a sin to NOT have some sorta shmovement.
People's perspective on this is skewed, I see people saying that what sajam did is advanced tech not comparable to motion inputs which is a basic necessary mechanic and I agree. A better comparison for motion input is AIMING. If you've ever seen a person who've never played a 1st or 3rd person game try it for the first time its a similar frustration you will see when people get into a fighting game and can't do motion inputs. Its not a perfect analogy cause nothing will be perfect these are two entirely different genres but I works well to illustrate my point motion inputs aren't extraordinarily harder than any other way of controlling your character you're just not used to them.
Ok but shooters and MOBAs have a lot more in common with singleplayer, even casual, games in terms of controls. First-person camera control is ubiquitous, lots of point-and-click movement in isometric stuff especially... Literally the only game, not even genre, that is somewhat similar in controls to FGs is DMC (also notorious for having difficult controls lol), and even FGs with simple control schemes like Granblue or 2XKO are closer to DMC than the bazillion more popular singleplayer games.
The sad truth of the matter is that FGs are actually harder to get into than the FGC thinks--perhaps not in isolation but in the wider context of gaming by virtue of playing like no other genre.
(I'll also add that whole hand movement is a lot easier and intuitive to most people than complex individual-finger movement, especially for middle and ring.)
Edit: I forgot that there are some sick side-scrollers with FG-like controls but considering they are hidden indie gems, I think the point still stands :D
@theuzi8516 about the whole hand movement being easier than percise small movements there's a reason people play with really low mouse sensitivity in an fps because it allows for greater control since being twitchy won't be nearly as debilitating on your aim.
Hell it's part of the reason I am debating on getting a Hitbox. Sure it'll be a bigger learning curve starting out but it feels like i should be way less twitchy in the whole "accidentally do a dp when I'm trying to do a fireball" kind of movements than when I play pad and somehow get 2H rather than 6H
@@theuzi8516 yea i agree with you. Gamers have gotten so used to having background knowledge and muscle memory of how game work that when they play a game that they don’t have any previous common ground with they think it’s some extraordinary hard game. But they just forget every games hard.
Like a body builder might think advanced stretching is extraordinarily hard but to a layperson both can be equally as hard.
@@jmanwild87 just play on keyboard, its the same as a leverless except for that it might cause issues if you go to locals
if you decide to go to a local you can easily transfer your keyboard muscle memory to a leverless if you use a similar layout
Damn Mr. Jam the beard and hair looking clean as hell. Also I had no clue Deadfall was just more complicated and long matches of Titanfall 2 with that insane movement at 8:29 , might get me to try the game as this is wilding kinda movement
Thanks for the Lash tech my dude.
you can probably unironically make it decently high in most mobas with just knowledge. Just watching a few vids skyrocketed my performance. but trying to learn most FG past the equivalent of iron/herald felt like it required me to both get the knowledge checks and sit in a box until I got muscle memory. now repeat that for every character I would want to learn. felt like for every character in a FG it was the equivalent time of learning a character like morphling or zeri(probably takes longer for them but still semi comparable). why would I bother with that when I can just play Phantom assassin or jhin and most of the improvement just comes from knowledge I can get while eating dinner or seeing it without having to fall asleep while sitting in training mode(not even counting physical problems that might occur with FG controls).
outside of motion inputs you can learn a lot by just playing and by the time you have tangible goals i feel like training mode isnt so bad of an experience because you are more invested at that point
i think it would be really cool if you could vote to pause and talk about things ingame in lobby matches instead of having to wait until the match is over
the tower system is great IN CONCEPT, the execution is just horrible. the important factors of it could exist exactly how they are but with standard matchmaking, celestial challenge could have tighter ping limits and disallow dodging by counting as a loss upon match, etc. all these things have fixes and are not intrinsic to the tower ranking system.
the fact you can go up to higher floors (excluding celestial) whenever you want is great for players (like me) who prefer to be challenged regularly, and it also avoids any negative feelings i get from ranking down as i can keep playing with the players i want to play with
I think the idea thag most people have with fighting games being more difficult comes from them being way more unconventional than a lot of other game genres. More difficult to learn a game when youre brand new to everything about it.
I have been saying this for a while, but there has been a reason a lot of games have been taking cues from the tower, and it's because underneath all the jank and questionable decisions the core idea is very strong. Like other games have died for less than what Strive did, but it still has a strong player base despite all these competitors coming out with better QOL, and better features. Of course you can argue it has to do with the gameplay but I think there's more to it than just that.
There's a lot of moaning and groaning about it, but I bet you there's probably a lot of data out there about people who tend to like what the tower does. I mean, only in Strive can I come onto the tower, and just play a long set with someone in the ranked equivalent, that's just not something you do in pretty much anything else. And afterward, as Sajam said, I can talk to the person I played about the set, or just move onto the next person. It's also very fun recognizing people you played before, and having stories or experiences with them.
There's a lot about the tower system that gets buried underneath the lack of a ranked system, and largely people ignore because it doesn't really function well.
The tower system is the single worst thing Guilty gear strive has. I don't like it for a lot of reasons but wanting to ever come back and play it and I see that shyt I usually just ignore that I own for another couple of months. To me the system really is that shyt But the game itself is decent for what it is.
i agree that the tower system is really good but it has points of improvement left still
In Strive you can matchmake in training mode, you don't need to run around the lobby. And it lets you finish the set before changing floors. But it wasn't like that at launch.
idk if Sajam hasn't played Strive in a while or Celestial specifically is different, but as a 8-10 floor gamer, I can just press Quick Match and never interact with lobbies at all
The thing that I like about the Floor system vs Ranked is the ability to punch way above my weight, and the breadth of skill levels I get to experience
Quick match just places your avatar in a lobby. That means you are still constrained by the amount of people in whatever tower lobby you are placed in.
Part of the issue with strive lobbies isn’t just how ass they are to use, but also that your matchmaking pool is limited to the amount of people in the lobby, you can’t get matched with anyone else unlike other games.
Its way quicker to find players than a game like granblue, the lobby just allows you to bypass the search part, only problem is the size limit of like 32 players
"My little nephew beat me up in Tekken and now it is my life's work to say fighting games are the hardest genre" is my favorite genre of social media madness
I think an issue with fighting game mechanical execution is that it often feels like you NEED all of it at once. You can reach a tower a little bit slower, or free-form remove a couple pieces of tech you aren't comfortable with, but often in a fighting game you feel like you NEED to do several different things fast, and there's no halfway state, either you do everything right or you flub the combo and get next to zero reward. Because you can lose a round in only a couple mistakes, every tech flub feels magnified instead of hundreds of small pieces of movement across a longer game.
@@dominicjannazo7144 yeah. You can walk up to tower normally as ho shown in the video but you need to do a motion input to get a projectile with almost every character.
Exactly. Also the execution barrier feels way more _annoying_ compared to stuff like movement tech or itemization knowledge because it's a barrier to "use your character". People get very attached to who they are playing and if they feel like their hands are failing to use a character's basic moves, the "this game isn't for me" feeling goes super hard.
Also also a reminder about the execution requirement argument: Moba players often consider characters that chain skills into each other "not for beginners". Like even for basic ass 4 hit combos that are just pressing buttons and clicking the mouse in between. People who don't play demanding videogames and don't play instruments and don't type fast on actual keyboards 6 hours a day are plentiful and they are VERY BAD at pressing buttons. You put collectible card game timmy in front of an arcade stick and he's gonna get mad at the inputs at least once.
That's more of matchmaking problem than execution problem. I've seen low level players that finished their match without using a single DP. It also has way more back and forth than high level match where you can usually see a one side beating because people made one single mistake.
Giving players simpler execution didn't save GBVSR. The people advocated for it didn't stick around at all.
Yeah, like. It's all well and good to say 'other games are hard too! look at this du duh duh duh duh see isnt that complicated' and its like yeah sure. So why do people keep bouncing off fighting games. Are they just dumb morons? Ontologically evil? Sun got in their eyes? They don't know video games are hard? Did RNGesus roll at the beginning of time and say 'people in this universe are more likely to bounce off fighting games'? No. Clearly something is different. I think your explanation is a pretty good one.
I mess up the movement tech in deadlock, I still get there. I mess up anti-air in SF6, I eat absolute shit in the game. It's an ego thing, but video games aren't real so it's kinda important in context.
@@nonuvurbeeznus795 Fighting games were far and away the most popular genre for a whole decade, and they remain the most popular game genre played primarily in-person. Fighting game culture has always been about taking your wins and losses with equal grace, and having to socialize with other people in order to improve as a player. The difference between then and now is that online gaming lets people blame teammates, disconnect, ragequit, and talk endless amounts of trash totally anonymously. Most other competitive gaming genres have had all those things baked into them since their inception, but FGC culture predates all that. Skill issues are nothing but a scapegoat for people who never had to learn to work on themselves.
I think what makes a lot of other games easier to learn than fighting games is the 'opt-in' approach to learning systems.
In Deadlock for example, you don't need to understand item builds to play the game well. You don't need good aiming. You don't even need good teamwork.
You could decide to only learn how to lane-bully while ignoring the other systems and still be a decent enough player.
In fighting games, every system is interconnected to such a degree that if you don't know any of them, it feels like you are screwed.
I think casual players liked the modern system in SF6 not because 'motion-inputs bad', but because it meant that new players didn't have to learn as many systems to start playing games.
This is an example of the perception of fighting games being skewed. You most definitely do not need to know all of the mechanics in a fighting game to have a good time and be a decent player, but people think you do, either because they see other players using them consistently or tutorials throwing them in your face. You can most definitely reach a decent rank in SF6 without Parry or Drive Reversal or Back Roll. It may not be Plat, but less than half of people in the world playing ranked have made it to Plat. You can get plenty far in Guilty Gear Strive without knowing what Faultless Defense or Deflect Shield do. Just like in any other competitive genre, when you're starting out, it's fine to not learn everything at once. When you reach a point where you want to reach higher and do better, you can start looking more into what these other things that you haven't been paying attention to because you didn't know how to use them actually do. Add them to your arsenal over time, just like the movement tech that Sajam mentioned in Deadlock. And this does goes for moves too. If you can't do a dp-input consistently, it's possible to anti-air with something else. Your game will improve tremendously when you learn it, but it isn't actually a requirement for getting into the game like so many people get convinced it is. You have to start somewhere in every game, it's not gonna be the peak of competition in any game, and that's okay, no matter the game, but so many people seem to think it has to be in fighting games for some reason.
Your monitor or the TV response time will affect how you enjoy the game.
My monitor has a .5 millisecond response time. I got a copy of Tekken 8 for PS5 for a decent price. It was a surprise to find out my combos were being dropped, because the response time on the TV is longer. It kind of felt I had to push the input slightly ahead to execute. I didn't think it was a big deal, but double checked, went back to PC, and yup I can nail the DSS Law combo with relative ease.
Yup, so Arslen Ash is kind of right, in the sense the response time of a monitor or tv can alter your timing in executing combos.
If you want up your standards in fighting games, consider the response time of your display.
Yay....while I agree with the premise I think your example this time was off.
Would have been better explaining how just aiming in first person shooters if someone has zero experience with it can actually be a struggle or even just being in first person in general.
Watching someone who has never played a FPS is like watching a rookie in SF6 or low rank floors in Strive hilarious bad to the point you have to question if it is intentional
Never played Deadlock, but I would assume that those momentum tricks might work BECAUSE those are similar momentum mechanics to Doom/ultrakill/arena shooters. (Note the fact arena shooters is a dead genre does not help the argument)
I don’t like getting rid of motion inputs because I already speak the SF style language the same way. If my reversal isn’t a shoryuken motion or flash kick, I absolutely hate it, because I fumble over my words unless I spend hours learning the new language.
Letting 3 matches play out is very good imo.
You cant really download someone in 2 matches only
And especially in games like T8 with a ft2 and normal matchmaking you lose you someone and never match with them again, so you cant get the runback nor learn
Players don't dislike motion inputs because they are complex or unintuitive; it's because it locks a part of the game away behind something other than knowledge or a decision. In Deadlock you might not know about diagonal dashing, but as soon as you learn about it it takes 20-30 minutes of practice and now you can reliably do it. Same thing with the items, to a new player that might be too much information, so they use a build to not have to deal with that information. But as soon as they want to engage with the item system it's frictionless, if they want to try something they just can.
In Strive I know about Elphelt's half circle super and I know when I want to use it and I know what the theoretical input is to do it, but I don't yet have the muscle memory to do it consistently so 90% of the time it doesn't come out and I whiff something punishable and die. That's what feels super bad, knowing (or thinking you know) that there is something you could do in a situation but being just physically unable to do it. And I know, it's just Muscle Memory, if I just keep trying eventually I'll be able to do it because I've played something over 200 hours in different fighting games and so I can reliably do quarter circles.
A player picking up their first fighting game period? They can't even do those reliably so they just have to suffer and watch as everyone else gets to do cool shit except them because they haven't spent the hours in the mines it takes to build up that muscle memory. Think about how shit that experience is, to know there is cool shit and to see other people do cool shit but be simply unable to do it.
Maaaaan you can make any genre of game difficult because they all have little intricacies and nuances. You can play classic Mega Man games as easy as jump and shoot. But you can also make it look flashy with ceiling zips and screen rolling. Or knowing really niche` stuff like in Mega Man 6, you can't directly jump out of a slide, you have to come to a full stop and release the jump button.
You can make any game hard.
i mean the floor of basic stuff isn't that hard. simply moving and shooting megaman isn't that hard if you played games before. learning a fighting game for the first time is like learning to play on mouse and keyboard when you've been playing on controller your whole life on top of all the mental complexity and mind games because there's not much transfer between fighting games and other genres of games. not many games have motion inputs and add on that it can feel like you need to sit in a padded room for hours to learn to do inputs for your character and that it's very easy to see when you're doing something wrong but very difficult to fix it and well Fighting games seem very difficult to approach compared to even Mobas as well a lot of the difficulty there is knowledge.if you played mouse and keyboard at all before you probably have some skill transfer to easily make it so you can move buy items and Use Abilities
Is it telling that the most fun i've had at least was in stuff like Power Rangers battle for the Grid and more normals centric games like Soul Caliber?
@@jmanwild87 Honestly, I kinda have to agree. Soul Calibur is always fun for me and I even take wins off of people who actually know the advanced tech in fighting games generally.
I honestly have the most fun with characters that have good normals cuz it's easier to just hit buttons that work than hope that you're doing your motions correctly. And don't even get me started on charge moves. There's a reason why Street Fighter 6 got rid a good chunk of those inputs.
12:16 I'll disagree with the new player resources. I mean we are literally on one right now. I never understand what people say the fgc doesn't have enough educational content. That is some of the most popular stuff in it.
Because “not enough tutorial” and “not beginner friendly” is an excuse to not get humbled in a 1v1 game where you cant rely on teammate and existing skill set they have from whichever genre they played.
Ryan Hart asking about hot takes after his own awful ones about vaccines is kinda hilarious ngl
i think the strive tower system is not a bad idea personally, but there should probably be an easier access to automated matchamaking for those who want it
although the implementation of the floor system could be improved in a lot of ways
The entry for "movement" in fighting game is what causes most of these issues. FPSs don't need tutorial for movement because no matter how complex they are, it's always WASD to move and mouse 1 to shoot.
I don't care that I don't know how to wall jump bunny hop slide kara cancel to save 0.3 seconds before reaching the tower, I press W and my character walks exactly where I want him, I press right click and I scope in, then I move my mouse on the enemy and press left click to shoot.
Because people have played video games for so long, it's easy to tell your character what to do in a FPS even if you've maybe only played fortnite or whatever.
You don't accidentally throw a grenade when trying to melee like how you would miss-input a DP and get a fireball.
Smash got me into FGC and Ryu, Ken, Terry, ect are the perfect example of this. I like terry a lot in that game but the inputs are pretty hard outside of buffering mid-combo. Especially because missing one will result in an unintended whiff. Even worse when the commands are accidentally hit when intending to do something else and it gets you killed. For most other characters, it is incredibly intuitive to new players. Its obviously a different type of game though and its approach to controls wouldnt work the same for a traditional 2d fighter
Wtf are you even talkin about? You can play every fighting game on WASD, in 2D fighters your movement is basically the same as 2D platformers, in 3D fighters it's still ultra simple.
Pressing m1 is shoot? Waaauuuuu, what next you are gonna say is that pressing button on controller/keyboard is not attack in a fighting game?
The remake isn't as good as the original for this video, I think the Reddit was thread articulated. The point a bit more clearly.
you know sajam... i also stepped into the YT ring now.. and I appreciate you dealing with some well brainrot comments from time to time (ken player downplay) , i now realise how hard it is to restrain oneself and simply.. ignore it. I will honor you in a seperate video and also will folllow your call from years ago, you said i should demand stuff from my fighting games... and i will do it. greetings from germany.
I like fighting games because they aren't filled with whatever is going on with Deadlock cause that looks legitimately awful, confusing and very frustrating to learn and play right lol
Are people really giving Deadlock a pass as an easy game to learn? I have over 1k hours in Overwatch and Dota 2, and countless more in Tekken and other fighting games... I put maybe 10 hours into Deadlock and I'm like, this game is WAY too complicated. lol
Honestly with the execution thing I think it's because, at least for me, special moves are such a basic part of functioning in the game. I've never played deadlock but I'm sure I could play, see someone zooming through the air, search it on youtube, and be doing it myself in a few minutes or less and probably with enough consistency to bring it into matches. I can always perform it better or more clean but it's rarely a case of like "I wanna do this basic option, oh I can't, I have to practice it in training for an hour first and then fail to do it in match for another 3 hours before I can kinda use it".
I don't mind having to gain more knowledge, but it just feels bad being skill checked by the game before I even consider my interaction with an opponent. Doesn't count as a traditional fighter but it was so annoying playing rivals 2 recently not being able to tilt out of dash. It felt like such a basic option I wanted my character to do, and you do tech that allows you to do it, but not just being able to instantly do this super basic thing was very annoying when I would play matches. It made me feel like I have to go practice it in practice mode for a while or all of my matches are going to be extremely frustrating as I try and fail to this thing. I eventually did go practice it enough to use babydashing or wavedashing into tilt instead but I very nearly fell off the game right away cause of that. I can't recall ever feeling that way outside of fighting games.
"team games are more accessible because you can blame your losses on other people" is an insane take to me. Whenever I play team games I despise every single one of my teammates, the fact that I lose games through no fault of my own is MADDENING to me. It's the most frustrating thing in the world to play good but still lose. How on earth do people have that experience and go "eh, not my fault! :)" and feel encouraged to keep playing? How do you not want to destroy the entire concept of teamwork itself???
you are the perfect example of it. You say the game is super frustrating but since you can blame your team for your losses so you keep playing. You can't do this in fighting games
The theory is that thinking you lost despite playing well is still less painful that realizing you aren't actually playing well
I totally agree with you and that's why I like fighting games and RTSs but most people don't which is why those genres are comparatively less popular to mobas and shooters.
It's also why for example so many shooter players, especially call of duty, just care about their individual K/D ratio and not actually playing objectives to win matches.
that sounds crazy to me, why would you hate your team? why would you assume you are losing because of them?
why would you care about your individual performance when its the team as a whole that counts
sounds like you just arent a team player to me and thats oke so long as you stick to non-team games