Dude it’s not even combos….cause that argument will get you cornered. Dudes will hit you with “hard combos is ArtiFicial DiFculTy BRO” …..just the system mechanics them selves are so remedial. The game has a ton of forward moving normals cause they just want you to shimmy over and over and be plus on block. The drive rush is basically a demon flip. Except the demon flip takes skill.
The year is 20XX. I sit alone in my bedroom. It's 4AM, and I am desperately trying to catch the Grand Finals of a Japanese fighting game tournament. In the final final round, my favorite player lands a pivotal low forward. The opponent still has about 35% of their HP remaining, and looking at our meter, we just barely don't have enough to kill. At this moment, with thousands watching online, and prize money on the line, our hero has a decision to make. They could opt for a demanding combo that might just build enough meter to close this out, or they could keep this simple and get a hard knockdown, and force the opponent to guess again for game. If we drop the hard combo, it could put us in a position so compromising we lose the entire event. But if he goes for a shorter combo, there's no guarantee we'll win the next RPS. With all the chips down he opts for the harder combo. The world stands still for a moment. Seconds feel like an eternity. And my god, he hits it. The crowd goes wild, I pop out of my seat, yelling at the top of my lungs. My upstairs neighbor is pissed and files a noise complaint. I get evicted. Still hype, and now homeless, I slap my arm like Dwayne Johnson. This is cinema. This... is peak.
I think folks are just burnt out. the state of the world is affecting everyone and you see how rash and ignorant folks are online...even more than usual. the constant downplaying and threats to developers. weird times man.
Very true. It can be hard to enjoy shit the same when you don't know how bills are gonna get paid.. That extra 10-15 bucks for your weekly local could go to gas or food.
This so so accurate. I think crossplay is essential going forward. Not having it on your indie fighter is a death sentence now. Even with it, I can hardly ever get Diesel Legacy matches and that game is soooo fun.
Speaking for DOA6, I still get plenty of matches on Steam. The community and player base may be small, but it's passionate, and more importantly, pretty chill. And for me, that's more than enough to keep me going.
The big issue is that many games that haven't been released recently or have active foghtcade communities have awful netcode. Want to play MVC3 or Tekken 6? Even if the servers are up and you have a discord of dedicated players, the netcode will stop you.
You cant even find matches at your level in GGST because the matchmaking is dog shit. Its not a problem with lack of players, it is entirely Arc Sys' fault.
Tekken is the one game i still cant put down. Still very fun in all aspects even with the aggression being turned up in 8. There's always something to learn.
Part of that is that it’s the experts that are usually left and they just cook the little random new players that show up. Instead of trying to teach and give new players a break. Then they want to say “it’s lonely at the top” … nah Mf you done killed everyone! 😂😂
SFV was the game that got me into the competitive side of the FGC. So that game naturally has a special place in my heart. So I fired up some matches over the weekend and after playing SF6 Sfv is kinda garbage. I was surprised how many matches I got but the netcode is shit. The V Skills and V Triggers are crap.
+r player tuning in. The game peaks at around 100 players during weekdays and optimistically 200 on weekends, and I think Ive struggled finding games maybe a dozen times in my embarrisingly large amount of hours. I think a lot of it has to do with the quick match lobby system. All the players exist in one space where its incredibly easy to scan for skill level and jam games. More games should steal it. And replay take over. And the lab.
I didn't play +R online but it reminds me of the way the first BlazBlue lobbies were haha. And to think that style of online lobby was basically just the way it was across most fighting games at the time. But nowadays gimmicks are king. And then because the casual Twitch monster fanbase that they make these games for now, especially those who didn't grow up with arcades, romanticizes the fuck out of them, they want to "simulate the arcade environment" by making you walk through a giant amusement park or casino with a ton of distractions to get to the action. Xrd's lobby system, if I can't have just the regular one like +R and the old BlazBlue games, is the next best thing IMO. A small room with 1-4 arcade cabinets for 2-8 players. There are a few gimmicks like a soccer ball to kick around, but they're there for you to have something to do while you wait for a match. They don't really incentivize you to do much more than walk 2 steps to the cabinet right in front of you and start playing.
One fighting game that's fairly new that I've been putting a lot of hours into is called Starward. It's a Gundam style 1v1 or 2v2 f2p gacha game. It just got an English translation and can be found on steam
Yeah I know about Starward, I made a video about it last year when it first popped up on steam. It's definitely a cool game but definitely a tough sell. The NA Servers just dropped like 2 weeks ago (praise be) but because there was no NA marketing for the game, the queues are almost exclusively bots. I'm in a little Starward NA discord that seems to be successfully coordinating matches, but I just haven't gotten too deep into it yet.
Personally I loved Soul Calibur 6 and BBtag but those are two games that as you said you just can't find any matches for. Here's to hoping we can get SoulCal 7 with cross platform play soon
i miss the arcade culture at times and socializing that added so much to fighting games. no fighting game has yet made it a social event, like make clans, dojos, etc and you can go against other groups, train together etc. it’s why marvel rivals is doing well. team based games people tend to stick around if the support is positive. no fighting game i’m aware of has made like a true legit online social experience via the fighting game.
Not formally, but the Mortal Kombat scene had their own online clan battles in the PS2 era. It’s just that the rest of the FGC thought that was cringe since they were so IRL-focused, so it never caught on elsewhere
I. Can't. Wait. For Virtua Fighter 5 VEVO to come to PC. I've been playing Virtua Fighter since the original Arcade game, and fell in LOVE with the series after playing VF2 in the Arcades. Funny enough, I don't play online much.
I've been having trouble with this same kind of thing. I wanna play a fighting game but nothing's appealing right now. I'd love to get into Punch Planet more but like you said, it's hard to find matches organically and the dedicated players in the Punch Planet discord are so far above my level I'm not sure how much fun I'd have. VF5: Revo and CotW sound good but they're so far away. I'm tired of SF6 and Strive, even if they're the most popular games with my friends. I wanna try the more modern KI but I also feel that "seven years too late" feeling you described there. And it's not like losing to a much more experienced player is so bad or anything. But I wanna fight someone about my level and just chill and have fun. But IDK where I wanna go do that.
Bro KoF can get pretty fast, if you playing the game the way it wants you to play it it becomes a completely different game. Even the older ones, my friends and I still play KoF 2k2 on steam
@@neocrimson3542 True, wish they could re-release an updated balanced version of 2001. That's the most unique fighting game imo and has never been done in a team fighter...
I think that's after playing almost 200hrs on sf6 and really enjoying them, I can't complain. In the end these are video games, we're supposed to have fun first
These games aren't being optimized for high-ceiling players, they're being optimized for ONLINE CONSISTENCY. The 3-frame input buffer isn't *just* there to make the games "easier for new players," they're to make executions not drop due to internet lag. We want games to be good and fun online, but we can't have everything be a teleporting Magento Tri-Dash guessing game that's unreactable. You're not wrong about the pacing being off though; or the finite number of players issue - and I think that's why FGC is more of a cross-threaded experience than super-huge AAA industries now. You don't see Fortnite or CoD or whatever shooter you wanna find being lacking in players/lobbies; but fighting games and their population DO put this kind of uniquely on us.
On your first point: It’s true that games are being designed with the rollback in mind. I’m pretty sure the reason Strive has it’s slow IAD is to make sure you can still 6A it even if the first few frames of animation got skipped. In the case of a 2 frame buffer however, I don’t know if I agree. To me it’s a little ironic that the first SF to include this buffer was also the first one to have rollback, where it would be far easier to hit these links compared to delay based netcode. It makes me wonder if we didn’t over-solve the problem.
On the upside, fiber internet will become more practical/available with time, and hopefully games will only go back up from here in the future. Vanilla SF4 was pretty slow compared to Super/AE, too. I still say the third year is always the sweet spot, especially for Capcom games; and you see this play throughout the history of games, too. Hyper was the first definitive SF2. Alpha 2/Gold was the hook for that series. 3 didn't get good until 3rd Strike, SF5 AE was Season 3 for that title, too.
I'm one of the newer FGC members (sort of became a member in 2023). I appreciate aspects of all fighting games and find them to all have their own quirks. I have no nostalgia for any games, really. It allows me to view the games on the general scope of its quality and features. There are problems with old games, there are problems with new games. If I can still pull off some crazy, mostly fair beatings and squeeze some fun out of the game, I value it.
You know what's a weird outlier that I've seen? Pokken Tournament. Nobody really talks about it anymore (outside of a "remember this" or "we need a sequel" kind of way), it's almost 10 years old, it has this weird hybrid 2D fighter/arena fighter gameplay, it's stuck on Nintendo platforms, and it has delay-based netcode, and yet anytime I see someone hop on the game, even now, they're able to find matches (really quickly too). You'd think nobody was playing it, yet that's clearly not the case. A lot of it is probably because the game is Pokemon, but it still seems odd. A lot of Pokemon fans seem pretty casual, and even if they wanted to play something with a multiplayer focus, they have Pokemon Unite, which probably has more casual appeal than Pokken does. Anyways, really hoping CotW and VF5 REVO do well this year. Got a chance to play CotW at EVO, and it was a blast. Also been playing some Rivals 2. Really hope the updates for that game are good ones. I like the game, but it hasn't quite grabbed me yet. Doesn't help that the character I tried to main, but was struggling with a bit, got nerfed pretty hard in the first major patch. Idk, that game for me has the problem of "I want to like this game, it's foundation is exactly what I'm looking for, but none of these characters really click for me".
@@Saber_fgc Yeah, it's actually really well-made and super unique. I get why it's not on other platforms, but it would be nice to have a larger player base to play with.
I'm just a rando who got recommended this video by UA-cam because I've recently been watching a lot of videos about fighting games which are one of the few genres I actually enjoy playing against other people, but I never had the drive to become pro level, for the first fifteen years or so of my playing them, I couldn't have played any of them online even if I had wanted to, and whatever arcade scene might have existed in the nearest city died out about halfway through those fifteen years, so I'm used to merely playing against CPU and have been fine with when that's the only option in my second fifteen years or so of playing them as well. Anyway, I want to add three points why people stay with older games beyond gameplay mechanics (frankly I can have fun on that level with almost every fighting game ever released): Crap stories/retcons, which obviously doesn't matter if PvP is your sole concern, but I really have to mention it for the sake of completeness. (Most commonly rehashing the same villain over and over for the former and fundamentally changing a character's lore for the latter.) Unappealing new visual direction. (Mostly when moving from 2D to 3D but not exclusively so.) And removal of all your favorite (for gameplay, look, personality, and/or lore reasons) characters or at least enough of them that buying the game sans a huge discount would feel like a ripoff. Case in point, I've tried out Street Fighter 6 and enjoyed it, but a grand total (not counting World Tour) of one appealing new character in the expensive base game (Jamie) and one returning favorite as overpriced DLC (Elena) is far from a great value proposition. I'm sticking with Street Fighter III and IV plus the occasional game of Zero, thank you very much. On a very similar note, literally the only Tekken character that has ever appealed to me was Hwoarang, which wasn't enough to buy. And now he's just one roided out abomination among dozens, miss me with that. Conversely, while Yunseong is my clear favorite character (and deciding factor) in Soulcalibur, there at least are some others (for variety). KOF and MK are filled with plenty of appealing characters in every entry, even if some favs of mine in each haven't been seen in years (and both series recently took a saddening nosedive lore-wise). I have never even tried MvCI because of its horrible roster, UMvC3's is okay enough, and MvC2 is the only one in the whole series with a great one; it's close to perfect on the Marvel side. And I'm still starting up GGXXΛCPR, BBCF, BBCTB, P4U, and others from time to time (while not even touching Xrd or Strive with a digital ten-foot pole), have been catching up on classic 3D fighting games that had escaped my attention until recently, am looking forward to VF5 REVO (despite no story even) and Hunter × Hunter: Nen × Impact, am excited for City of the Wolves (even if I shall remain forever disappointed that SNK didn't finish the already mostly completed pre-bankruptcy Mark of the Wolves 2 during its last 2D era alongside Ash's KOF trilogy and Samurai Spirits Zero/TK instead of revamping it into this final product, partly because I vastly prefer story arcs visually cohesive and partly because as great as the new CotW characters look so far, to me they are downgrades compared to their obvious conceptual predecessors and I increasingly fear that we'll get neither a playable Hokutomaru nor an equivalent to MotW2's Jess), 2XKO, and New Virtua Fighter (with ironically enough most likely the best single player story mode in any fighting game ever to date), and have increasingly been tempted to revisit my days of playing Naruto games. The sheer number of games I just mentioned (which are merely the highlights, to boot) ultimately explains the lack of players in most cases, though. (And I know the following is mostly stuff you've already addressed in the video, but, again, gotta be thorough.) It's the same as with any fandom (be that genre overall or particular IP) that continues to put out new entries: books, songs, films, games, you name it. Recency bias is massive. And everything else has to compete for playtime/airtime/etc. in an ever more packed field. For comparison, Alfred Hitchcock will forever be remembered as one of cinema history's greatest directors, but how many Gen Z outside film school have ever watched even one of his films? I'd be surprised if it were even 1%. And you don't even have to go back that far. Maybe there has been some more interest thanks to recent media in the wake of Stranger Things referencing '80s stuff, but over the last several years I have seen many a poll of which age groups have seen a particular movie, and the numbers for all the '70s, '80s, and '90s blockbusters (!! - not asking about remotely niche films) that weren't Star Wars or Disney Renaissance were shockingly low and for anything older basically nonexistent. I was born in 1985; I grew up with plenty of '60s and '70s media and some (much) older stuff on TV alone. That is to say, I naturally had recency bias as well, but it appears to have been increasing exponentially, as ever more media old and new are competing for far more slowly growing audiences.
Blazblue Central Fiction.. its the only true fighting game around.. lots of stuff to learn, aggressive and defensive options, long combos, mind games. it has it all..
2:34 Tabletop RPGs. Lots of people play Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition but there’s constant bickering between old and new versions. And anyone playing something alternative like Pathfinder will often play other games, DnD included too but have that same need to “promote their game” as the one everyone should be playing.
In 90' and 00' Fighting games latched on already existing arcade community and culture and later those same people created events that grew in FGC we know today. Problem now I believe is there is nothing in these games to foster a sense of belonging because there is nothing like forums or arcades anymore to take a hype train ride on, fighting game cannot be just a game now to break through it needs to be a social hub to create that sense of community and belonging, Capcom and Bandai tried with their take on that but it ultimately it felt empty, and the games were left as endless ranked grind again. Honestly all of this is just a symptom of people generally interacting less with each other and more with the box in our hands, I hope VF as the biggest contributor in terms of innovation figures it out, but that remains to be seen.
I used to play a lot of DBFZ for the last 3 years, but with recent patches, it feels like they are actively trying to take the remaining execution barriers out of the game, so I don't play that game anymore. In the last couple of years, I am playing 3rd strike, vsav, etc...
I'm in a similar boat. Fighterz was my first trad fighter, and ever since the past 2 or 3 patches I've put way more time into sf6. As a fellow dbfz fan tho, I highly recommend the mvc collection. Specifically reintroducing mvc 2 with rollback was an excellent move.
Ohh, that's so relatable (the 8 hour Darkstalkers grind part), I had kinda the same situation with uni2. I saw that the pc port is shit, I waited a month, then returned and said "Ok, I'm here and I'm staying" and... nobody heard me because nobody stayed but me (especially in eu).
I was just watching Brian_F's interview with GuileWinQuote where Brian talks about how if you have a clickbaity title/thumbnail you have to address it immediately so that all your comments aren't just replying to the title instead of watching the video and I must say you've done it masterfully. Ya got me, I'm in.
i dabbled in jojo all star battle (the original one) a while ago and was having a lot of fun with it, but eventually it was just too hard to set up online through the emulator. i was so excited when all star battle r dropped, but the game absolutely shot itself in the foot by not having rollback. i absolutely love the game and think it's genuinely one of the most creative and fun fighting games out there, but i can barely find any matches that don't come with insane amounts of input lag. every day i look in my steam library i just hope that out of nowhere asbr gets a rollback update.
I feel like I would be so much more into UMVC3 and Pokken Tournament if I could find games quickly and easily on them like I can in Tekken 8. It's criminal how much you need to do to get a good game of UMVC3 specifically considering how popular it is but we're likely to never get a rollback patch so...
There is Virtua Fighter 6 too RGG is so far is doing the right steps thus far of bringing back that technicality that fans are yearning for FF COTW is going that direction as well. As of rn I'm playing KOF 15 and its pretty active still through the wills of dedicated players its still one of the current games that still retain the legacy skill and technicality. The games pretty fun. The high octane adrenaline inducing gameplay is what hooks u in its high stakes and high risk when ppl are on their last team member and one player hardly has any meter to spare whereas the other is at 4 bars. You should try it
The issue there is the player base is peak boomer, we’re talking “sitting on the floor with a MAS stick” level. So some other games’ cultures would def not mesh well with them lmao
9:40 Steve's Gattling Gun move from Tekken. it used to feel so awesome to actually land the inputs for that move, but now in tekken 8 it's so easy, you can just spam the buttons and it will go through everytime. It's so unsatisfying now because it is easier.
i think something people also miss is the communities and discussion around fgs which are very centered around the newer titles, which isn't a bad thing that's just how it's going to be people are going to talk about what's new, but it's definitely a lacking element in the older titles. for example, when i was playing ggxrd i could find matches pretty consistently and i can chat with a few people in a lobby if they're willing but outside of that the discord is IMO kinda dead, no one talks about the game itself on twitter (usually just discourse although i do see krackatoa always doing stuff tho which is cool), there arent any new videos on youtube (when rollback first came out there was a ton but that's over now, only person i really see uploading xrd content now is leon massey), and i don't really know where or when xrd tourneys are held except like frosty faustings, which i always miss the news of when it's happening unfortunately but if there was more people talking about the game i'd definitely have an easier time knowing that. because all of that isn't that present or lacking it makes people less attached to the games and less motivated to start or continue playing even if they actually can get matches. i think that's part of what people want out of these old titles, because then you have more people to play, you have more people to help you when you need it, you get excited about tourneys, etc. there's local scenes but nowadays i think people are going to want to get invested with a game online before spending money to show up to something. this basically all results in the fact that if you want to actually feel like you're participating in the fgc you have to just follow the newest games that are getting all the coverage and i think that has people feeling like they're stuck. one of the biggest exceptions i've seen to this is melee which still has the community giving it a ton of love after all these years. the top players frequently stream and upload to youtube, i've seen multiple active discords (even the char discords are pretty active), people talk about it on twitter (shit like hbox slamming a chair went around a bit lol) and there's also tons of tournaments that are typically streamed and that gives the community something to talk about constantly. i don't know how they've done it but if all of this manifested into older traditional fgs i think we'd see a lot less of this discourse.
I think FGC communities want to flourish but there’s just something there that’s preventing it from breaking through into gigantic esports arena style recognition. It’s come a long way tho, but the players for better or worse are a very particular type of gamer who enjoys that sort of hyper RPS chess on crack 1v1 gameplay
The other issue to consider is that esports as a whole have been struggling financially in recent years, so this isn’t the time for anything new to break out sadly
11:46 I feel this way too, I hope 2XKO can be this for me but imma try to play mvc3 until 2XKO bc TNS plays it every week so I should be able to get games easily
I love watching videos like this while trying to make a fighting game since they give me a lot of inspiration on things I could change or how players feel regarding certain mechanics in popular games, overall great video!
The first fighting game i really tried to sink into coming over from SSBU and shooting games was Punch Planet. I saw sajams videos of him trying it and running sets and thought it looked neat and it fit my immediate budget better than a more mainstream game. I got to put 20 hours into the game before i had to step away from it. I think that game is great even though a lot of things mechanically were going over my very greenfooted brain. But the experience of being able to play someone online only a handful pf times was really formative for what i want out of these games and thats just to play them consistently.
What is sad about niche games like punch planet is that no one plays them because they have a low player count. They are kinda stuck in a hole. Hopefully it gets a player counter boost on launch. What I reccomend is preaching to it at people at locals. It works for me whenever I want to play a niche FG.
Im a boomer, so boomer opinion incoming, but I think social media has ruined a part of the community. Met my rl friends in the sf4/mvc3 era and I swear it was easier then to convice them to try other games (like persona 4 arena) than it is today. I get comments like "lol dead game", "noone plays that". These days if the game does not have an active tournament scene its really hard to convince them to try a game for an afternoon or even to go back for a while to sf4. And personally new games do nothing for me, kof 15 is good but nobody plays it around my area and its the less played "major" franchise these days, so whatever I'll be in my corner playing roguelites.
social media, peer pressure and FOMO brainrot is huge with younger people nowadays. I play 3rd Strike very regularly and on fightcade there are typically only 5-15 people max online that I have a good connection with. yet it has almost never happened that I hopped on and there was no one to play with. i wish people would stop caring what the perceived public thinks and just focus on what they think is cool and fun
@@Bas_Brand My issue is slightly different, Im talking more in the sense of "hey guys there is this random two dollar fighting game on the steam sale lets play it for a bit for the sake of it". Feels like if the game doesnt have a battle pass or already has an active scene people does not give it a shot, because why would they, its lost time they could have spent grinding something else. Which to me its odd, people grind the popular games just to drop them when new ones come out in a cycle, that leaves good games in the dust.
@@marinn00 yeah that sort of behaviour is sort of what I meant as well, maybe I didn't word it correctly. i feel games should be played because they're fun and to improve at it and not just because it's popular, new or has artificial dopamine hitting unlock or incentive mechanics
@@Bas_Brand I mainly play Tekken 8. I've tried Sf5, SF6, strive, but they all just don't hit it for me like Tekken does. Because of that, I just wanna get really good at Tekken to go far in tournament. I'll only try another fighting game if I get sick of Tekken (which does happen, just very rarely) otherwise, I'm on my Tekken binge and it's hard to get out of Idk if this is what y'all were referring to, but thought I'd say something
I actually started back into tekken cause 1) it is super underrated and 2) it’s got a player base. I’m happy it’s a little easier in execution as I’m coming from 2d but I think execution is an extremely important aspect of fighters and needs to stay in some capacity
You’re one of the few people that acts reasonable. The “go play the old game” crowd hasn’t been around long enough to see their favorite franchise turn into something they don’t like. People loved melee so much and the official sequels were so far from it people literally made entire new, big games to try to provide a similar experience (I.e. rivals 2) Melee still has a big scene but if you are a guy that loved Tekken 7 you can’t really just go play it in the same way. And it’s worth being sad about the idea that there may never be a good KBD again…like you might never see JDCR shmoove again…that’s genuinely sad to me. Movement is why I got into Tekken and it really is sad how aggressively they nerfed defensive styles…. Edit: It’s nice to hear you plainly state that for a lot of people why you like FGs or a franchise is not being represented as much in the new games. There are so many gaslighting creators who act like it isn’t the case and it’s so weird to me. Ignoring that is just irritating.
Have you thought deeper into *why* you cant go back and play T7? The game is still there, you can queue ranked, but you cant get matches very quickly. Buy why? Its because everyone has moved to T8, all of those people who were playing T7 still have it and can play at any time, but they choose not to. Why do they chose to boot up T8 instead of T7? T8 existing doesn't just stop people from being able to enjoy T7 and continue to play it. So why?
@@skadixiubecause people just generally flock over to new things and also Tekken 8 is a lot of people’s first Tekken game or at least first game they decided to take seriously.
@@skadixiubecause that’s how 99% of gaming scenes work. When sequels come out most of the community plays the new thing. It’s new, supported, looks better, and is different than the thing you been doing for 2-10 years. Melee is a notable exception. The migration away and the return was something I actually experienced. It’s not that complicated
The whole discussion around the loss of execution (and the constant mention of the loss of "skill expression" or "combo freedom" that come with it) really reminds me of the comparison between spectacle fighters (or in general older action games) vs soulslikes. Soulslikes are the new favorite child, ofc, and the focus is on slow, methodical play and everyone seems to prefer that over the older stuff while fans of, say, DMC or Bayonetta must watch as more and more games simplify the player side of the controls and streamline the gameplay (and, frankly, also simplify decision-making inadvertently because the required skill to execute a decision is going down), leaving them with games at least 5 years old. In the case of a whole genre (mostly singleplayer), sure, not-fans of soulslikes can play the games they like but even then it just sucks to see bootleg souslikes being pumped out like game diarrhea while an entire genre you enjoy is completely neglected. Heck, with Team Ninja, Nioh fans are experiencing this twice over as each new game TN makes is Nioh 2 but way simpler. So, imagine liking older FGs lol. Not only do you watch and slowly realize that the genre as you like it is probably dead, but you can't even revive it because the technology supporting and enabling the game itself is way below modern standards. It's as close as it gets to literally living in the past. I wasn't expecting this to turn into a 200-word essay when I started typing lol. The point is that it's sad that in the name of streamlining, entire genres (or rather, playstyles or gameplay types) are lost, and it's even sadder to me that a take as imbecilic as, "Then just go play the old game," is so widespread.
you are right beside triple A mainstream game every others games are niche discord fighter even if you have multiple setup to run several discord fighter at the same time (I play samsho , gbvs rising , kof xv , uni 2, fexlad , capcom fight collection, melty ) I still have to wait more and play less games overall than a quick 30 min casual SF6 I can wait hours with not a single match in samsho or more than 15 minutes in kof ... in the ends its demotivating and make you switch to those triple A so its an infinite unfortunate loop
My main game is Idol Showdown, and I kind of get the sentiment of it being hard to go back to, but there are thankfully enough players that I can still pick it up and play for a while. But Tekken is definitely easier as I find matches sometimes too fast(like please let me finish one combo lol) and I've found myself playing Tekken for longer because of it. I think something else that helps me stick with Idol Showdown is that the devs reworked the netcode recently, and it is really good now. We have pretty good connections now from NA to SA, EU, JP, or OCE. It's not perfect, obviously there's only so much you can do, but it effectively increased the player base without needing new players joining.
Not a fighting game but I used to play a couple different arena shooters, mostly what used to be nexuiz(now xonotic). It's a genre that has has died off unfortunately. The only game that you can still find an active enough user base is quake champions but I didn't enjoy a lot of aspects of that game. The game I play now that still scratches that itch is TF2 because it kept what I enjoyed a lot from its arena shooter origins. The movement, weapons, map design, and general feel of the game still hits the same notes that make arena shooters stand out from other shooter games. I really wish there was something that brought new life to the genre but each time a new game comes out the player base dies very quick. The only games that see success are single player games like dusk and ultrakill. They're fun but imo arena shooters aren't that interesting outside of pvp, similar to fighting games.
Yeah I agree. I can’t remember the names of them, but there were a couple of Quake clones that floated around Steam roughly 10 years ago. I remember enjoying 1v1 arenas, bunny hoping around, trying to control different weapon spawn points, memorizing where all of the health packs and armor were. I wish something could revive the genre, it’s a very engaging eSport, but very difficult to get into without opponents at your skill level. Similar to fighting games really!
I know that feel because I used to play Quake Live a lot. Bethesda/ID's treatment of Quake really set the genre back into irrelevancy. Quake Champions was one of the worst technical packages I've ever seen in a shooter. That game dropped with no SDK, mods or crosshair customization - which is insane considering ID's pedigree with the IdTech engine. Fighters were in a similar situation in 2016-17, best analog is Capcom dropping SFV with 8f of input lag and no content, but thankfully there were GGXRD, Tekken, and MK to catch people who would've otherwise lost interest in the genre - all of those games had legacy and a community already. Meanwhile, in AFPS land there's only Quake vs Quake Live (Now Paywalled cuz bethesda didn't like it cannibalizing Champions) vs indie titles. There's legit no market - you either have Quake or open-source indie games like Xonotic or Warsow. You can have the most technically impressive shooter, but it'd still basically fail because of how Champions ruined the perception. It's super unhealthy and I'm impressed that people hardly discuss this. Fighting games have options which is so good.
If you like a game just play it, back in my day there was no netplay. So I'd play the "main game" street fighter 4 at the time, to get my multiplayer EXP, then my preferred game to learn and have fun with what I like. The reason why competitive (not eSports) side dislike SF6 is because of drive rush negating neutral /making it play strangely depending on who you ask. No one plays strive because, ppl don't like the wall break mechanic.
Meanwhile im just here in the corner asking if we could finally start moving up from the 60fps lock as its not 1990 anymore. Yes before you ask, it is possible, only reason we don't have it is because we don't ask for it. Just like how it was with netcode before rollback was introduced into all these games we have today. Loops if you want more info for a video i can provide you with more info, i just want a discussion to start within the fgc as thats the first step. Then we ask as a collective. And then only we can get it.
My gut reaction is something to the effect of “60fps has been and is still the baseline clock speed for quite some time, particularly for televisions if I’m not mistaken, and tying the game logic to a refresh rate a sizeable portion of your customer base can’t hit without investment is a bad idea”. That said, I haven’t thought about this until literally right now, so I’m interested in hearing your perspective. Also I thought your name and pfp looked familiar, turns out I’d watched some of your Ibuki stuff way back in the SF4 era. Small internet, or something. Thanks for watching!
@@loops9508 wow. thats crazy. its hard to believe that anyone has watched any of my videos tbh. anyway, regarding the 60fps yes you may be partially right. I dont have a secret source, so I assume this is combination of a few factors: 1) Displays: as you said the 60hz tvs were in fact the original reason why this was even set at 60fps. due to NTSC (60hz) standard. but this is quickly becoming not applicable anymore, as in the last few years tvs (and much longer for monitors) have been 120hz(+) other than budget segment. I'm not pretending everyone upgrades tvs every year, or even if they do im not saying people are rich to buy the latest hardware. but for pc gaming 60+hz is the norm for a while, but by the time SF7 comes out everyone will pretty much have 120(+)hz tvs. so if we want to at least get 60fps+ on even next gen FGs we should probably start talking about it now, as these sort of things take a while. GGPO was invented and used in skullgirls a decade before it started coming into AAA games. and even then only because people started demanding it. I still believe this is the least big factors are the next two. 2) Japanese companies, if you know anything about them, is incredibly change-averse. Any time it is question on 'why' (and thats rarely because of the business/culture) - they have a saying that goes something along the lines of 'Its been done that way'. They simply don't like to change things. And since most FGs are from japan (and now mature game development companies) its no wonder that they dont really innovate in this direction. 3) Very closely tied with point 2: Consumers simply dont demand for it: remember how hard it was to get rollback implemented? people kept buying games at 60fps so obviously there was no incentive. and a lot of the community even said it would be impossible to implement this because the games were fast, and even when some did (like skullgirls) people still made all kinds of excuses. Only once prominent people like Sajam started talking about rollback (remember the whole 'rollback nation'?) and started almost a movement that wanted higher standards for netcode until things started to slowly turn. and then once *humanvirus19* happened it was the final nail, as people realized that online netcode is crucial. Well i went through all of that just to illustrate that - this is now the time for the community to start talking, discussing, and (hopefully) demanding higher standards for FPS, otherwise theres no incentive for the companies to spend money/effort implementing this. Some of the problems why every other game has moved past 60 and only FGC still remains is, if i may put it blunt, FGC is a tech illiterate community. I know it sounds harsh, but any time i mention anything remotely to this then it becomes quite clear as i see a lot of misconceptions. I'll quickly try and dispel a few of the common ones: * technical: its not possible, FGs must be 60fps. Well this is straight up not true, I'd be more than happy to elaborate further if you wanna continue on discord or something, i have pages just on this point. Without boring you just take me on my word for now that its very possible. * consoles cant do 120fps! This is also nonsense as current gen consoles are very powerful, some games already run at 120fps, and really it doesnt take a genius to understand that there are already perf/qual modes in some games and if you reduce some particles and resolution, some other optimizations you can get 120fps. *competition related. this is a bit more nuances, thats why we need community to talk, so far no one even wants to talk so i havent even heard very good arguments. but so far i would say that: competitors play in in big competitions usually locally on the hardware, but we can get into this much more for now ill skip this. * 'This would require a ton of money to implement'. Half-truth. yes it would cost money, but so does ninja turtle outfits that no one care about seemingly, wouldnt you rather this go into bettering the game QoL? One last thing, google "Tekken 8 overlay", i swear on ibuki this is not a virus, (scan it on virsustotal or smth) you can try it just like on offline or something - run it, then press F1 - then in FPS click 'set' (i think), and youll be mind blown how much better the game feels. Just try that if nothing else. As they say, smth smth 60+fps one attempt is worth a thousand words. I just want you to understand how it feels so you'd know im not crazy. Anyway, i have a lot to say on this as ive been essentially thinking for a decade+ on this topic. You can just add me GFX#6863 on discord or any other way just lemme kno whats convenient for you, if youre interested. Hopefully my comment doesnt get autodeleted or something.
It's entirely possible for a 3D fighter to animate at frame rates beyond 60 while still having its logic run at 60. Tekken 7 had a mod that did exactly that.
I also feel you on “there is no game I enjoy watching that much right now” I LOVED competitive Tekken 7. Easily my favorite traditional fighting game to watch. I also enjoyed watching SFV a lot (more than I enjoyed playing it). GGST was the first game I tried to actually get really good at and got to max rank but I hated playing against the top tiers (Leo h DP into win the entire game when it existed) and the game direction & balance really turned me off so I stopped caring about it. Something I do not like about both T8 and SF6 is how you start the game with resource. I think the gameplay looks more generic than it ever has. SF6 I think has cooler decision making than T8 IMO because you can do things like burn yourself out on purpose but truly something is being lost when you have powerful neutral and offensive tools that you are constantly throwing at each other. The games look like 2 people doing system mechanics back and forth and less like 2 characters that are extensions of the players
I do love traditional fighting game matches but there's only so much u can do before things need to change... I mean tekken's been using the same gameplay for so long now and it's kinda refreshing to see a new iteration of it... The pro games r still fun to watch it's just different and for me as much as I have my preferences I'm open to appreciating new things too
I actually really enjoy Ultra Fight Da Kyanta 2 but like who tf am I gonna play with? I got one buddy irl who likes to play it with me sometimes but i cant realistically play it whenever I want
Dope that you run rouge on Asetto Corsa too, what server do you play on? My fav fgc is 3rd strike luckily there is a decent amount of people on fightcade
Just your typical Touge Life 1 and 3. 1 for player volume, 3 for touge variety. Only gripe with those servers is they only support official kunos cars. I like an AWD drivetrain, and the only AWD car there is the R34. Great car, but I wish I could drive my Lan Evo V.
@@loops9508 Same! I run TL1 mostly for player volume but I wish there was more players running other courses. I gotta try TL3. Also same the car variety is kinda lacking! would be dope to do some runs!
this is just the natural result of the whole scene turning against the concept of skill in the sf5 generation. its pointless to have a ranked mode and a pro tour when everyone knows the game is fake
I had the same feeling with Fighterz, like I missed my chance to hop in. I bit the bullet a year ago and dove in and it's a blast! Best FG out there right now in my opinion. You're probably a much better learner than me, so I'm sure you could pick it up way faster than you think!
When I was talking about missing the boat with DBFZ, I mostly meant from a content perspective. I enjoy playing the game and still do, but I think the excitement fof watching DBFZ is largely over.
I never got to olay soul caliber 6 but it looked like a cool game. Currently playing tekken 8 a bit more seriously and ggst whenever i wanna kinda turn my brain off and press buttons.
On the subject of execution (8:29 to 10:43), you mention how newer games try to de-emphasize execution to further emphasize decision making, and how some people prefer that, especially newer players. One thing I'd like to point out is that these newer players don't necessarily mean younger generations, it can also very well mean players who bounced off of fighting games their whole childhood precisely because of these execution checks. In other words, a whole audience that would've joined the FGC sooner if not for the unreasonably hard execution requirements. I know I'm in that boat! When I was a kid I was definitely drawn to these games and had a lot of fun goofing around by myself or with friends and what have you. But, without fail, every single FG I tried I eventually dropped whenever it was time for me to sit down and take it seriously and improve, and I realized the kind of things I'd have to learn to improve were things I didn't want to learn. And, at the time, I definitely had this (admittedly scrubby, don't judge, I was a teen) feeling of "Man, I played way better than my opponent, but he had the sweaty combos so he still won", which in retrospect was me going "my decision making was far better than my opponent's, but he had the better execution and the game rewarded that", and that was leaving a sour taste in my mouth. That's not to say that there's no place for hard execution, but when even doing simple things like an instant airdash or a BnB are considered tough achievements, it gets in the way of the enjoyment of the game. Old games have high execution requirements for the most basic shit tbh. I definitely enjoy this shift to rewarding decision making more than arbitrary execution.
The issue I take with most of these single button input games is that they tend to still have long combos - and I think "do you want input complexity or don't you" If you are going to have one button inputs and want it to be mostly footsies then why are you making combos complicated? Just have gatling from heavy normal down to light special and not a lot of ways to extend beyond that - mostly just character specific mechanics or supers. The point of one button inputs is to make it so that execution is not often what determines the winner after all. If you want execution to be in the game, why do the 1 button inputs? Either 1 button or long combos, I do not want you to try to do both
@@doombybbr I agree, personally. When I said I like lowering execution barriers, I don't really mean 1 button inputs. Besides, I like how motion inputs feel (so long as we avoid really ridiculous motions like pretzels and such) I do dislike long combos, however. Like REALLY long combos. FighterZ was horrendous for it, for instance. I dislike 1 frame links, I dislike not having a dash macro, I dislike not having buffers, etc.
2:48 rock and metal communities (metal especially) can have similar interests but all have their own superiority complex on how to enjoy the genre. (Old heads hate young bloods etc.) FPS games can be just as if not more hostile (a lotta the COD fans hate on all other shooters.) boomer shooter lovers typically stay in their own camps. Though the ID family of quake and doom seem more open.
You forgot to mention Gundam Maxiboost. Cool Concept. Best arena fighter. but the movement mechanic is the sweatiest bs I’ve ever seen. Esoteric unexplained game mechanics thats there’s not actual real tutorial. This creates a huge skill gap.
basically any older game in europe lol; p4au, cf, rev it's just really hard to find people even though i love those games to death and i dont like the newer games like strive or gbvsr, thankfully melty is still alive and well in eu and i actually enjoy playing rivals 2 so i have those 2 at least.
You raise a good point about the many bubbles inside of the fgc itself. Sure we all intermingle here and there, but for the most part we stay inside the bubbles of the games we play the most, which i guess isn't necessarily a bad thing from a individual perspective. Im guilty of doing this myself. Outside of playing and posting content for Es laf 2, i dont really interact with players from other communities or really consume any other fg content at all. I think thats mostly due to me losing interest in newer fighting games as a whole. Es laf is honestly the one game that has given me that giddy feeling that older games like third strike and marvel 3 gave me growing up, and its not even a finished product yet. That aside, i still hope that fighting games as a whole will one day reach a point where it can see success similar to that of big time games like Fortnite, call of duty, etc. Even if the games moving forward aren't necessarily my cup of tea, as a fan of the genre as a whole, im rooting for us. Great Video Loops!
11:58 - I tried out Virtua Fighter for the first time with the VF5 REVO beta last month and it gave me this feeling, maybe try that out when it comes out?
I really wish I could play BlazBlue games when they were releasing. I got introduced to BB universe by BB Entropy Effect which is rogue like with BB characters that released last year. I love the characters, I played some story modes from older BB games and I like it but picking up these games (BBCF or BBTag) as new player when everyone, who is playing it right now, years ahead of you is just too much. I am also in Europe which reduces number of players available significantly (we have local in my city once every 3 or 5 month). I am playing Tekken 8 right now since I played a bit of Tekken 7 at the end of its lifespan and Tekken 3 is the first FG I ever played. I will probably play a bit of Strive when Lucy gets dropped. And of course waiting to see what 2XKO has to offer when it finally releases, although it's probably still like 2 years away.
For me personally i primarily play anime, versus and NRS games. I don't need to talk about NRS, but for anime i don't like strive and the other options are pretty much discord outside of granblue, but that doesn't play like an anime game either. Versus is currently dead af too so 😂. That being said looking forward to CotW
Main game I play is DoA6. Know some people that makes getting some games pretty manageable. The main thing I struggle with is getting caught up. Got a long list of people who would rather not play than have a bad opponent. 😮💨 Still, I dabble in a lot of different games and it keeps me engaged.
morrigan is my ultimate waifu btw…. hands down hottest fg character of all time. hoping maybe cvs3 or mvc4! would love to see demitri and others in a tag fighter.
Oldheads can't gatekeep the genre forever, it will just die like pre-SF4 and the developers don't want that to happen for obvious reasons. Some people still can't move on from the arcade era and built their ego on beating people who didn't know what they were doing. Of course they lash out and cry when games (including execution, knowledge, frame data etc) are becoming more accessible. The genre needs to evolve and move forward and I hope the new VF will be a good starting point just like SF6. Old scrubs should stay on Fightcade and stop talking in general. Arcade sticks will slowly disappear as well, but it is what it is.
i know this was kinda an informal video but i feel like this wtatement is EXACTLY what the fgc need to hear. Negativity cant be like an implicit part of the entire fgc there no way for the commjnity to ever build that way. Also wjy dont you play MBTL there still ppl online and it kinda fit everything you were saying you were looking for in a new game. I'd show you ropes i taught my beat friend and he was S+ on ranked in a week.
Great video, sub earned. I wish we could have more stuff like the Marvel collection for other franchises with enough hype and marketing around them to get players interested. With the 20th anniversary of Tekken 5 this year, hopefully Bandai Namco get something going (they won't)
this video reminds me of when i first got in the newest KI. it was like, what, 2023? and i bought the game on a whim but i very very quickly fell in love with it. to this day, it's one of the most fun FGs i think i have ever played, excellent roster to boot. but this was before the final patch and anniversary edition and all this other crap: basically meaning that no one was on game. it was also abnormally difficult to find the community for KI 2013, couldn't even find a Discord anywhere. to this day I'd still like to go back and give it a proper spin but I just haven't felt the motivation to do so. runner up would definitely be KOF XV tho. the MOST fun modern fg out rn, super cool to watch, no complaints from me. I wish the hype from pre-launch was maintained but ig people just weren't willing to shell out full price on a new KOF after the mixed rep of its predecessor. i hope garou 2 has a much better launch, cuz SNK has proved that they still know how to make great fighting games, and I am super super super excited to see how Garou 2 develops.
I like that you touched on a part of it which people dont bring up. I remember when SFV came out and I didnt like it as much and wanted to play SF4 but the online was kind of dead. SFV became something I really enjoyed and I dont enjoy the current state of SF6 but I cant go play SFV unless I hit up friends who want to play it. I love CVS2 but I only have 1 friend who can play it so we play it once it and awhile when we both happen to have time. Was talking about this with guys from my local offline scene because we had a steady decline with people going to locals since SF6 got announced. It killed the motivation for the SFV players, the Tekken players were board of 7 at the time. With SF6 and then T8 we have an initial increase in players but in a short amount of time dropped back to the end of SFV/T7 era level of entrants (lucky to get at least 8 entrants). Strive at our locals has been at the point of just being the side game for Smash players for a few years now too. Most the feedback given to the TO for the locals in my country is the events are really good just lack of interest in the current games. Cause all the locals around the country have had similar things with declining attendance and even with the online tournaments that were run. FGC in my country is in such a weird spot
Ha man, I’ve been playing for 13 years and I’ve been DYING for a game half as good. Tekken 7 got my attention in a serious way but what I liked about it has been turned down a lot in T8….so I feel like I literally have nothing else to play and it sucks man
I do! It’s a beautiful game. I’m delusional and firmly believe Y.Link has what it takes to move up the tier list like DK and Yoshi have. But when I don’t feel like working as hard, I too will bust out the netplay Falco.
I think the prices need a nerfed. 60 or 70 too much for game with two modes. Jojo all star R I wish to play but only people who play South America very bad connection
Dude it’s not even combos….cause that argument will get you cornered. Dudes will hit you with “hard combos is ArtiFicial DiFculTy BRO” …..just the system mechanics them selves are so remedial. The game has a ton of forward moving normals cause they just want you to shimmy over and over and be plus on block. The drive rush is basically a demon flip. Except the demon flip takes skill.
The year is 20XX. I sit alone in my bedroom. It's 4AM, and I am desperately trying to catch the Grand Finals of a Japanese fighting game tournament. In the final final round, my favorite player lands a pivotal low forward. The opponent still has about 35% of their HP remaining, and looking at our meter, we just barely don't have enough to kill. At this moment, with thousands watching online, and prize money on the line, our hero has a decision to make. They could opt for a demanding combo that might just build enough meter to close this out, or they could keep this simple and get a hard knockdown, and force the opponent to guess again for game. If we drop the hard combo, it could put us in a position so compromising we lose the entire event. But if he goes for a shorter combo, there's no guarantee we'll win the next RPS.
With all the chips down he opts for the harder combo. The world stands still for a moment. Seconds feel like an eternity. And my god, he hits it. The crowd goes wild, I pop out of my seat, yelling at the top of my lungs. My upstairs neighbor is pissed and files a noise complaint. I get evicted. Still hype, and now homeless, I slap my arm like Dwayne Johnson. This is cinema. This... is peak.
@ that was hard body 🔥❤️💀
I lol at the use of "remedial" and how LTG put that word into our lexicon
I think folks are just burnt out. the state of the world is affecting everyone and you see how rash and ignorant folks are online...even more than usual. the constant downplaying and threats to developers. weird times man.
Very true. It can be hard to enjoy shit the same when you don't know how bills are gonna get paid.. That extra 10-15 bucks for your weekly local could go to gas or food.
This so so accurate. I think crossplay is essential going forward. Not having it on your indie fighter is a death sentence now. Even with it, I can hardly ever get Diesel Legacy matches and that game is soooo fun.
Speaking for DOA6, I still get plenty of matches on Steam. The community and player base may be small, but it's passionate, and more importantly, pretty chill.
And for me, that's more than enough to keep me going.
The big issue is that many games that haven't been released recently or have active foghtcade communities have awful netcode.
Want to play MVC3 or Tekken 6? Even if the servers are up and you have a discord of dedicated players, the netcode will stop you.
You cant even find matches at your level in GGST because the matchmaking is dog shit. Its not a problem with lack of players, it is entirely Arc Sys' fault.
Tekken is the one game i still cant put down. Still very fun in all aspects even with the aggression being turned up in 8. There's always something to learn.
Was so hyped to play the uni again after they dropped a new game and I've just been fighting the same three people on a rotation for months
This is so real omg
Part of that is that it’s the experts that are usually left and they just cook the little random new players that show up. Instead of trying to teach and give new players a break. Then they want to say “it’s lonely at the top” … nah Mf you done killed everyone! 😂😂
SFV was the game that got me into the competitive side of the FGC. So that game naturally has a special place in my heart. So I fired up some matches over the weekend and after playing SF6 Sfv is kinda garbage. I was surprised how many matches I got but the netcode is shit. The V Skills and V Triggers are crap.
+r player tuning in. The game peaks at around 100 players during weekdays and optimistically 200 on weekends, and I think Ive struggled finding games maybe a dozen times in my embarrisingly large amount of hours.
I think a lot of it has to do with the quick match lobby system. All the players exist in one space where its incredibly easy to scan for skill level and jam games. More games should steal it. And replay take over. And the lab.
+R unironically has the best lobby system I’ve ever seen.
I didn't play +R online but it reminds me of the way the first BlazBlue lobbies were haha. And to think that style of online lobby was basically just the way it was across most fighting games at the time. But nowadays gimmicks are king. And then because the casual Twitch monster fanbase that they make these games for now, especially those who didn't grow up with arcades, romanticizes the fuck out of them, they want to "simulate the arcade environment" by making you walk through a giant amusement park or casino with a ton of distractions to get to the action.
Xrd's lobby system, if I can't have just the regular one like +R and the old BlazBlue games, is the next best thing IMO. A small room with 1-4 arcade cabinets for 2-8 players. There are a few gimmicks like a soccer ball to kick around, but they're there for you to have something to do while you wait for a match. They don't really incentivize you to do much more than walk 2 steps to the cabinet right in front of you and start playing.
One fighting game that's fairly new that I've been putting a lot of hours into is called Starward. It's a Gundam style 1v1 or 2v2 f2p gacha game. It just got an English translation and can be found on steam
Yeah I know about Starward, I made a video about it last year when it first popped up on steam. It's definitely a cool game but definitely a tough sell. The NA Servers just dropped like 2 weeks ago (praise be) but because there was no NA marketing for the game, the queues are almost exclusively bots. I'm in a little Starward NA discord that seems to be successfully coordinating matches, but I just haven't gotten too deep into it yet.
That game used to be VF5. I played a ton of the REVO beta and preordered the game, super hype to finally have VF on PC with rollback.
Personally I loved Soul Calibur 6 and BBtag but those are two games that as you said you just can't find any matches for. Here's to hoping we can get SoulCal 7 with cross platform play soon
Soulcalibur _desperately_ needs quality netcode next time around if they want the game to thrive long term.
I'm in the same boat as you
i miss the arcade culture at times and socializing that added so much to fighting games. no fighting game has yet made it a social event, like make clans, dojos, etc and you can go against other groups, train together etc. it’s why marvel rivals is doing well. team based games people tend to stick around if the support is positive.
no fighting game i’m aware of has made like a true legit online social experience via the fighting game.
Not formally, but the Mortal Kombat scene had their own online clan battles in the PS2 era. It’s just that the rest of the FGC thought that was cringe since they were so IRL-focused, so it never caught on elsewhere
Bro when Dota 1 slowly started disappearing cause of Dota 2 that literally hurt me. As much as I love Dota 2 I will never forget that
I. Can't. Wait. For Virtua Fighter 5 VEVO to come to PC. I've been playing Virtua Fighter since the original Arcade game, and fell in LOVE with the series after playing VF2 in the Arcades.
Funny enough, I don't play online much.
This happens every single time. These people need to just take a break.
I've been having trouble with this same kind of thing. I wanna play a fighting game but nothing's appealing right now. I'd love to get into Punch Planet more but like you said, it's hard to find matches organically and the dedicated players in the Punch Planet discord are so far above my level I'm not sure how much fun I'd have. VF5: Revo and CotW sound good but they're so far away. I'm tired of SF6 and Strive, even if they're the most popular games with my friends. I wanna try the more modern KI but I also feel that "seven years too late" feeling you described there. And it's not like losing to a much more experienced player is so bad or anything. But I wanna fight someone about my level and just chill and have fun. But IDK where I wanna go do that.
@@Gilbot9000 Melee
Revo is Jan 27 take a break from fgs for a sec.
Fortnite unironically
revo literally drops this month man, blink and you’ll be playing the game lmfao
try 2xko, the first alpha lab was amazing and felt great, i can't wait for the next one.
Just completely forgot about SF Zero 💀
that is not a real game, alpha series doesnt exist bro
Bro KoF can get pretty fast, if you playing the game the way it wants you to play it it becomes a completely different game. Even the older ones, my friends and I still play KoF 2k2 on steam
Sadly nobody gets on kof games other than 15
@@neocrimson3542 True, wish they could re-release an updated balanced version of 2001. That's the most unique fighting game imo and has never been done in a team fighter...
@@aspekt7631 I can see that happening but I hope they revamp the art for it or rerelease 11 since it's goated
@@neocrimson354298 and 2002 are still relevant on Fightcade
SNK just doesn’t have much of a hold competitively in the west.
People will play it for a bit, figure its budget SF and go back to their other games
I think that's after playing almost 200hrs on sf6 and really enjoying them, I can't complain.
In the end these are video games, we're supposed to have fun first
These games aren't being optimized for high-ceiling players, they're being optimized for ONLINE CONSISTENCY. The 3-frame input buffer isn't *just* there to make the games "easier for new players," they're to make executions not drop due to internet lag. We want games to be good and fun online, but we can't have everything be a teleporting Magento Tri-Dash guessing game that's unreactable.
You're not wrong about the pacing being off though; or the finite number of players issue - and I think that's why FGC is more of a cross-threaded experience than super-huge AAA industries now. You don't see Fortnite or CoD or whatever shooter you wanna find being lacking in players/lobbies; but fighting games and their population DO put this kind of uniquely on us.
On your first point: It’s true that games are being designed with the rollback in mind. I’m pretty sure the reason Strive has it’s slow IAD is to make sure you can still 6A it even if the first few frames of animation got skipped.
In the case of a 2 frame buffer however, I don’t know if I agree. To me it’s a little ironic that the first SF to include this buffer was also the first one to have rollback, where it would be far easier to hit these links compared to delay based netcode. It makes me wonder if we didn’t over-solve the problem.
On the upside, fiber internet will become more practical/available with time, and hopefully games will only go back up from here in the future.
Vanilla SF4 was pretty slow compared to Super/AE, too. I still say the third year is always the sweet spot, especially for Capcom games; and you see this play throughout the history of games, too. Hyper was the first definitive SF2. Alpha 2/Gold was the hook for that series. 3 didn't get good until 3rd Strike, SF5 AE was Season 3 for that title, too.
I'm one of the newer FGC members (sort of became a member in 2023). I appreciate aspects of all fighting games and find them to all have their own quirks. I have no nostalgia for any games, really. It allows me to view the games on the general scope of its quality and features. There are problems with old games, there are problems with new games. If I can still pull off some crazy, mostly fair beatings and squeeze some fun out of the game, I value it.
You know what's a weird outlier that I've seen? Pokken Tournament. Nobody really talks about it anymore (outside of a "remember this" or "we need a sequel" kind of way), it's almost 10 years old, it has this weird hybrid 2D fighter/arena fighter gameplay, it's stuck on Nintendo platforms, and it has delay-based netcode, and yet anytime I see someone hop on the game, even now, they're able to find matches (really quickly too). You'd think nobody was playing it, yet that's clearly not the case. A lot of it is probably because the game is Pokemon, but it still seems odd. A lot of Pokemon fans seem pretty casual, and even if they wanted to play something with a multiplayer focus, they have Pokemon Unite, which probably has more casual appeal than Pokken does.
Anyways, really hoping CotW and VF5 REVO do well this year. Got a chance to play CotW at EVO, and it was a blast. Also been playing some Rivals 2. Really hope the updates for that game are good ones. I like the game, but it hasn't quite grabbed me yet. Doesn't help that the character I tried to main, but was struggling with a bit, got nerfed pretty hard in the first major patch. Idk, that game for me has the problem of "I want to like this game, it's foundation is exactly what I'm looking for, but none of these characters really click for me".
Pokken is awesome, wish it was on more than just switch
@@Saber_fgc Yeah, it's actually really well-made and super unique. I get why it's not on other platforms, but it would be nice to have a larger player base to play with.
I'm just a rando who got recommended this video by UA-cam because I've recently been watching a lot of videos about fighting games which are one of the few genres I actually enjoy playing against other people, but I never had the drive to become pro level, for the first fifteen years or so of my playing them, I couldn't have played any of them online even if I had wanted to, and whatever arcade scene might have existed in the nearest city died out about halfway through those fifteen years, so I'm used to merely playing against CPU and have been fine with when that's the only option in my second fifteen years or so of playing them as well. Anyway, I want to add three points why people stay with older games beyond gameplay mechanics (frankly I can have fun on that level with almost every fighting game ever released): Crap stories/retcons, which obviously doesn't matter if PvP is your sole concern, but I really have to mention it for the sake of completeness. (Most commonly rehashing the same villain over and over for the former and fundamentally changing a character's lore for the latter.) Unappealing new visual direction. (Mostly when moving from 2D to 3D but not exclusively so.) And removal of all your favorite (for gameplay, look, personality, and/or lore reasons) characters or at least enough of them that buying the game sans a huge discount would feel like a ripoff. Case in point, I've tried out Street Fighter 6 and enjoyed it, but a grand total (not counting World Tour) of one appealing new character in the expensive base game (Jamie) and one returning favorite as overpriced DLC (Elena) is far from a great value proposition. I'm sticking with Street Fighter III and IV plus the occasional game of Zero, thank you very much. On a very similar note, literally the only Tekken character that has ever appealed to me was Hwoarang, which wasn't enough to buy. And now he's just one roided out abomination among dozens, miss me with that. Conversely, while Yunseong is my clear favorite character (and deciding factor) in Soulcalibur, there at least are some others (for variety). KOF and MK are filled with plenty of appealing characters in every entry, even if some favs of mine in each haven't been seen in years (and both series recently took a saddening nosedive lore-wise). I have never even tried MvCI because of its horrible roster, UMvC3's is okay enough, and MvC2 is the only one in the whole series with a great one; it's close to perfect on the Marvel side. And I'm still starting up GGXXΛCPR, BBCF, BBCTB, P4U, and others from time to time (while not even touching Xrd or Strive with a digital ten-foot pole), have been catching up on classic 3D fighting games that had escaped my attention until recently, am looking forward to VF5 REVO (despite no story even) and Hunter × Hunter: Nen × Impact, am excited for City of the Wolves (even if I shall remain forever disappointed that SNK didn't finish the already mostly completed pre-bankruptcy Mark of the Wolves 2 during its last 2D era alongside Ash's KOF trilogy and Samurai Spirits Zero/TK instead of revamping it into this final product, partly because I vastly prefer story arcs visually cohesive and partly because as great as the new CotW characters look so far, to me they are downgrades compared to their obvious conceptual predecessors and I increasingly fear that we'll get neither a playable Hokutomaru nor an equivalent to MotW2's Jess), 2XKO, and New Virtua Fighter (with ironically enough most likely the best single player story mode in any fighting game ever to date), and have increasingly been tempted to revisit my days of playing Naruto games.
The sheer number of games I just mentioned (which are merely the highlights, to boot) ultimately explains the lack of players in most cases, though. (And I know the following is mostly stuff you've already addressed in the video, but, again, gotta be thorough.) It's the same as with any fandom (be that genre overall or particular IP) that continues to put out new entries: books, songs, films, games, you name it. Recency bias is massive. And everything else has to compete for playtime/airtime/etc. in an ever more packed field. For comparison, Alfred Hitchcock will forever be remembered as one of cinema history's greatest directors, but how many Gen Z outside film school have ever watched even one of his films? I'd be surprised if it were even 1%. And you don't even have to go back that far. Maybe there has been some more interest thanks to recent media in the wake of Stranger Things referencing '80s stuff, but over the last several years I have seen many a poll of which age groups have seen a particular movie, and the numbers for all the '70s, '80s, and '90s blockbusters (!! - not asking about remotely niche films) that weren't Star Wars or Disney Renaissance were shockingly low and for anything older basically nonexistent. I was born in 1985; I grew up with plenty of '60s and '70s media and some (much) older stuff on TV alone. That is to say, I naturally had recency bias as well, but it appears to have been increasing exponentially, as ever more media old and new are competing for far more slowly growing audiences.
Blazblue Central Fiction.. its the only true fighting game around.. lots of stuff to learn, aggressive and defensive options, long combos, mind games. it has it all..
2:34 Tabletop RPGs. Lots of people play Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition but there’s constant bickering between old and new versions. And anyone playing something alternative like Pathfinder will often play other games, DnD included too but have that same need to “promote their game” as the one everyone should be playing.
If mcv3u gets rollback I'm never playing anything else again. Until that day I settle.
I miss the mvc3 and sf4 days so much 😢
In 90' and 00' Fighting games latched on already existing arcade community and culture and later those same people created events that grew in FGC we know today. Problem now I believe is there is nothing in these games to foster a sense of belonging because there is nothing like forums or arcades anymore to take a hype train ride on, fighting game cannot be just a game now to break through it needs to be a social hub to create that sense of community and belonging, Capcom and Bandai tried with their take on that but it ultimately it felt empty, and the games were left as endless ranked grind again. Honestly all of this is just a symptom of people generally interacting less with each other and more with the box in our hands, I hope VF as the biggest contributor in terms of innovation figures it out, but that remains to be seen.
god i wish forums were around sometimes i wonder if they're actually outdated or if it's just that no one bothers
I used to play a lot of DBFZ for the last 3 years, but with recent patches, it feels like they are actively trying to take the remaining execution barriers out of the game, so I don't play that game anymore. In the last couple of years, I am playing 3rd strike, vsav, etc...
I'm in a similar boat. Fighterz was my first trad fighter, and ever since the past 2 or 3 patches I've put way more time into sf6. As a fellow dbfz fan tho, I highly recommend the mvc collection. Specifically reintroducing mvc 2 with rollback was an excellent move.
Ohh, that's so relatable (the 8 hour Darkstalkers grind part), I had kinda the same situation with uni2. I saw that the pc port is shit, I waited a month, then returned and said "Ok, I'm here and I'm staying" and... nobody heard me because nobody stayed but me (especially in eu).
I was just watching Brian_F's interview with GuileWinQuote where Brian talks about how if you have a clickbaity title/thumbnail you have to address it immediately so that all your comments aren't just replying to the title instead of watching the video and I must say you've done it masterfully. Ya got me, I'm in.
12:00 fav feeling in any game man you get it, big part of why I can’t put down melee and why I’m so thankful it’s still so active
i dabbled in jojo all star battle (the original one) a while ago and was having a lot of fun with it, but eventually it was just too hard to set up online through the emulator. i was so excited when all star battle r dropped, but the game absolutely shot itself in the foot by not having rollback. i absolutely love the game and think it's genuinely one of the most creative and fun fighting games out there, but i can barely find any matches that don't come with insane amounts of input lag. every day i look in my steam library i just hope that out of nowhere asbr gets a rollback update.
I feel like I would be so much more into UMVC3 and Pokken Tournament if I could find games quickly and easily on them like I can in Tekken 8. It's criminal how much you need to do to get a good game of UMVC3 specifically considering how popular it is but we're likely to never get a rollback patch so...
There is Virtua Fighter 6 too RGG is so far is doing the right steps thus far of bringing back that technicality that fans are yearning for FF COTW is going that direction as well. As of rn I'm playing KOF 15 and its pretty active still through the wills of dedicated players its still one of the current games that still retain the legacy skill and technicality.
The games pretty fun. The high octane adrenaline inducing gameplay is what hooks u in its high stakes and high risk when ppl are on their last team member and one player hardly has any meter to spare whereas the other is at 4 bars. You should try it
What are your thoughts on mvc2?
I feel like that’s your team game, it’s a very fast fighting game.
The issue there is the player base is peak boomer, we’re talking “sitting on the floor with a MAS stick” level. So some other games’ cultures would def not mesh well with them lmao
@ I’m a newcomer to the game myself, it’s been a blast I genuinely can’t say I have had a bad interaction on the game yet.
2XKO from riot will hopefully bring more people to the FGC and hopefully that will help keep more games alive for longer
9:40 Steve's Gattling Gun move from Tekken. it used to feel so awesome to actually land the inputs for that move, but now in tekken 8 it's so easy, you can just spam the buttons and it will go through everytime. It's so unsatisfying now because it is easier.
i think something people also miss is the communities and discussion around fgs which are very centered around the newer titles, which isn't a bad thing that's just how it's going to be people are going to talk about what's new, but it's definitely a lacking element in the older titles.
for example, when i was playing ggxrd i could find matches pretty consistently and i can chat with a few people in a lobby if they're willing but outside of that the discord is IMO kinda dead, no one talks about the game itself on twitter (usually just discourse although i do see krackatoa always doing stuff tho which is cool), there arent any new videos on youtube (when rollback first came out there was a ton but that's over now, only person i really see uploading xrd content now is leon massey), and i don't really know where or when xrd tourneys are held except like frosty faustings, which i always miss the news of when it's happening unfortunately but if there was more people talking about the game i'd definitely have an easier time knowing that.
because all of that isn't that present or lacking it makes people less attached to the games and less motivated to start or continue playing even if they actually can get matches. i think that's part of what people want out of these old titles, because then you have more people to play, you have more people to help you when you need it, you get excited about tourneys, etc. there's local scenes but nowadays i think people are going to want to get invested with a game online before spending money to show up to something. this basically all results in the fact that if you want to actually feel like you're participating in the fgc you have to just follow the newest games that are getting all the coverage and i think that has people feeling like they're stuck.
one of the biggest exceptions i've seen to this is melee which still has the community giving it a ton of love after all these years. the top players frequently stream and upload to youtube, i've seen multiple active discords (even the char discords are pretty active), people talk about it on twitter (shit like hbox slamming a chair went around a bit lol) and there's also tons of tournaments that are typically streamed and that gives the community something to talk about constantly. i don't know how they've done it but if all of this manifested into older traditional fgs i think we'd see a lot less of this discourse.
I think FGC communities want to flourish but there’s just something there that’s preventing it from breaking through into gigantic esports arena style recognition. It’s come a long way tho, but the players for better or worse are a very particular type of gamer who enjoys that sort of hyper RPS chess on crack 1v1 gameplay
The other issue to consider is that esports as a whole have been struggling financially in recent years, so this isn’t the time for anything new to break out sadly
11:46 I feel this way too, I hope 2XKO can be this for me but imma try to play mvc3 until 2XKO bc TNS plays it every week so I should be able to get games easily
I love watching videos like this while trying to make a fighting game since they give me a lot of inspiration on things I could change or how players feel regarding certain mechanics in popular games, overall great video!
The first fighting game i really tried to sink into coming over from SSBU and shooting games was Punch Planet.
I saw sajams videos of him trying it and running sets and thought it looked neat and it fit my immediate budget better than a more mainstream game.
I got to put 20 hours into the game before i had to step away from it.
I think that game is great even though a lot of things mechanically were going over my very greenfooted brain. But the experience of being able to play someone online only a handful pf times was really formative for what i want out of these games and thats just to play them consistently.
What is sad about niche games like punch planet is that no one plays them because they have a low player count. They are kinda stuck in a hole. Hopefully it gets a player counter boost on launch.
What I reccomend is preaching to it at people at locals. It works for me whenever I want to play a niche FG.
Im a boomer, so boomer opinion incoming, but I think social media has ruined a part of the community. Met my rl friends in the sf4/mvc3 era and I swear it was easier then to convice them to try other games (like persona 4 arena) than it is today. I get comments like "lol dead game", "noone plays that". These days if the game does not have an active tournament scene its really hard to convince them to try a game for an afternoon or even to go back for a while to sf4. And personally new games do nothing for me, kof 15 is good but nobody plays it around my area and its the less played "major" franchise these days, so whatever I'll be in my corner playing roguelites.
social media, peer pressure and FOMO brainrot is huge with younger people nowadays.
I play 3rd Strike very regularly and on fightcade there are typically only 5-15 people max online that I have a good connection with. yet it has almost never happened that I hopped on and there was no one to play with.
i wish people would stop caring what the perceived public thinks and just focus on what they think is cool and fun
@@Bas_Brand My issue is slightly different, Im talking more in the sense of "hey guys there is this random two dollar fighting game on the steam sale lets play it for a bit for the sake of it". Feels like if the game doesnt have a battle pass or already has an active scene people does not give it a shot, because why would they, its lost time they could have spent grinding something else.
Which to me its odd, people grind the popular games just to drop them when new ones come out in a cycle, that leaves good games in the dust.
@@marinn00 yeah that sort of behaviour is sort of what I meant as well, maybe I didn't word it correctly.
i feel games should be played because they're fun and to improve at it and not just because it's popular, new or has artificial dopamine hitting unlock or incentive mechanics
@@Bas_Brand I mainly play Tekken 8. I've tried Sf5, SF6, strive, but they all just don't hit it for me like Tekken does. Because of that, I just wanna get really good at Tekken to go far in tournament. I'll only try another fighting game if I get sick of Tekken (which does happen, just very rarely) otherwise, I'm on my Tekken binge and it's hard to get out of
Idk if this is what y'all were referring to, but thought I'd say something
Kinda like how the commercial music industry has been. If a song is older than a year that song is sooooo old
I actually started back into tekken cause 1) it is super underrated and 2) it’s got a player base. I’m happy it’s a little easier in execution as I’m coming from 2d but I think execution is an extremely important aspect of fighters and needs to stay in some capacity
BBCF Renaissance
One of the best fighting games known to man.
You’re one of the few people that acts reasonable.
The “go play the old game” crowd hasn’t been around long enough to see their favorite franchise turn into something they don’t like.
People loved melee so much and the official sequels were so far from it people literally made entire new, big games to try to provide a similar experience (I.e. rivals 2)
Melee still has a big scene but if you are a guy that loved Tekken 7 you can’t really just go play it in the same way.
And it’s worth being sad about the idea that there may never be a good KBD again…like you might never see JDCR shmoove again…that’s genuinely sad to me. Movement is why I got into Tekken and it really is sad how aggressively they nerfed defensive styles….
Edit:
It’s nice to hear you plainly state that for a lot of people why you like FGs or a franchise is not being represented as much in the new games. There are so many gaslighting creators who act like it isn’t the case and it’s so weird to me. Ignoring that is just irritating.
Have you thought deeper into *why* you cant go back and play T7? The game is still there, you can queue ranked, but you cant get matches very quickly. Buy why? Its because everyone has moved to T8, all of those people who were playing T7 still have it and can play at any time, but they choose not to. Why do they chose to boot up T8 instead of T7? T8 existing doesn't just stop people from being able to enjoy T7 and continue to play it. So why?
@@skadixiubecause people just generally flock over to new things and also Tekken 8 is a lot of people’s first Tekken game or at least first game they decided to take seriously.
@@skadixiubecause that’s how 99% of gaming scenes work. When sequels come out most of the community plays the new thing. It’s new, supported, looks better, and is different than the thing you been doing for 2-10 years. Melee is a notable exception. The migration away and the return was something I actually experienced. It’s not that complicated
i hope you'll give vf5 revo a shot when it comes out. it's the fastest FG in terms of decisions per second that i have found.
I’m looking forward to trying it more.
Project Justice for me.
The whole discussion around the loss of execution (and the constant mention of the loss of "skill expression" or "combo freedom" that come with it) really reminds me of the comparison between spectacle fighters (or in general older action games) vs soulslikes. Soulslikes are the new favorite child, ofc, and the focus is on slow, methodical play and everyone seems to prefer that over the older stuff while fans of, say, DMC or Bayonetta must watch as more and more games simplify the player side of the controls and streamline the gameplay (and, frankly, also simplify decision-making inadvertently because the required skill to execute a decision is going down), leaving them with games at least 5 years old.
In the case of a whole genre (mostly singleplayer), sure, not-fans of soulslikes can play the games they like but even then it just sucks to see bootleg souslikes being pumped out like game diarrhea while an entire genre you enjoy is completely neglected. Heck, with Team Ninja, Nioh fans are experiencing this twice over as each new game TN makes is Nioh 2 but way simpler.
So, imagine liking older FGs lol. Not only do you watch and slowly realize that the genre as you like it is probably dead, but you can't even revive it because the technology supporting and enabling the game itself is way below modern standards. It's as close as it gets to literally living in the past.
I wasn't expecting this to turn into a 200-word essay when I started typing lol. The point is that it's sad that in the name of streamlining, entire genres (or rather, playstyles or gameplay types) are lost, and it's even sadder to me that a take as imbecilic as, "Then just go play the old game," is so widespread.
you are right beside triple A mainstream game every others games are niche discord fighter
even if you have multiple setup to run several discord fighter at the same time (I play samsho , gbvs rising , kof xv , uni 2, fexlad , capcom fight collection, melty ) I still have to wait more and play less games overall than a quick 30 min casual SF6
I can wait hours with not a single match in samsho or more than 15 minutes in kof ... in the ends its demotivating and make you switch to those triple A so its an infinite unfortunate loop
My main game is Idol Showdown, and I kind of get the sentiment of it being hard to go back to, but there are thankfully enough players that I can still pick it up and play for a while. But Tekken is definitely easier as I find matches sometimes too fast(like please let me finish one combo lol) and I've found myself playing Tekken for longer because of it.
I think something else that helps me stick with Idol Showdown is that the devs reworked the netcode recently, and it is really good now. We have pretty good connections now from NA to SA, EU, JP, or OCE. It's not perfect, obviously there's only so much you can do, but it effectively increased the player base without needing new players joining.
Not a fighting game but I used to play a couple different arena shooters, mostly what used to be nexuiz(now xonotic). It's a genre that has has died off unfortunately. The only game that you can still find an active enough user base is quake champions but I didn't enjoy a lot of aspects of that game. The game I play now that still scratches that itch is TF2 because it kept what I enjoyed a lot from its arena shooter origins. The movement, weapons, map design, and general feel of the game still hits the same notes that make arena shooters stand out from other shooter games. I really wish there was something that brought new life to the genre but each time a new game comes out the player base dies very quick. The only games that see success are single player games like dusk and ultrakill. They're fun but imo arena shooters aren't that interesting outside of pvp, similar to fighting games.
Yeah I agree. I can’t remember the names of them, but there were a couple of Quake clones that floated around Steam roughly 10 years ago. I remember enjoying 1v1 arenas, bunny hoping around, trying to control different weapon spawn points, memorizing where all of the health packs and armor were. I wish something could revive the genre, it’s a very engaging eSport, but very difficult to get into without opponents at your skill level. Similar to fighting games really!
I know that feel because I used to play Quake Live a lot. Bethesda/ID's treatment of Quake really set the genre back into irrelevancy. Quake Champions was one of the worst technical packages I've ever seen in a shooter. That game dropped with no SDK, mods or crosshair customization - which is insane considering ID's pedigree with the IdTech engine. Fighters were in a similar situation in 2016-17, best analog is Capcom dropping SFV with 8f of input lag and no content, but thankfully there were GGXRD, Tekken, and MK to catch people who would've otherwise lost interest in the genre - all of those games had legacy and a community already.
Meanwhile, in AFPS land there's only Quake vs Quake Live (Now Paywalled cuz bethesda didn't like it cannibalizing Champions) vs indie titles. There's legit no market - you either have Quake or open-source indie games like Xonotic or Warsow. You can have the most technically impressive shooter, but it'd still basically fail because of how Champions ruined the perception. It's super unhealthy and I'm impressed that people hardly discuss this.
Fighting games have options which is so good.
Quale 3 still has lobbies going on from time to time I get on and get blasted by Finnish people lmao
If you like a game just play it, back in my day there was no netplay. So I'd play the "main game" street fighter 4 at the time, to get my multiplayer EXP, then my preferred game to learn and have fun with what I like.
The reason why competitive (not eSports) side dislike SF6 is because of drive rush negating neutral /making it play strangely depending on who you ask. No one plays strive because, ppl don't like the wall break mechanic.
Damn mentioning Samurai Shodown was crazy. Fantastic game, one of my favorite franchises but 2019 was a terrible product.
Meanwhile im just here in the corner asking if we could finally start moving up from the 60fps lock as its not 1990 anymore. Yes before you ask, it is possible, only reason we don't have it is because we don't ask for it. Just like how it was with netcode before rollback was introduced into all these games we have today.
Loops if you want more info for a video i can provide you with more info, i just want a discussion to start within the fgc as thats the first step. Then we ask as a collective. And then only we can get it.
My gut reaction is something to the effect of “60fps has been and is still the baseline clock speed for quite some time, particularly for televisions if I’m not mistaken, and tying the game logic to a refresh rate a sizeable portion of your customer base can’t hit without investment is a bad idea”.
That said, I haven’t thought about this until literally right now, so I’m interested in hearing your perspective.
Also I thought your name and pfp looked familiar, turns out I’d watched some of your Ibuki stuff way back in the SF4 era. Small internet, or something. Thanks for watching!
@@loops9508 wow. thats crazy. its hard to believe that anyone has watched any of my videos tbh.
anyway, regarding the 60fps yes you may be partially right. I dont have a secret source, so I assume this is combination of a few factors:
1) Displays: as you said the 60hz tvs were in fact the original reason why this was even set at 60fps. due to NTSC (60hz) standard. but this is quickly becoming not applicable anymore, as in the last few years tvs (and much longer for monitors) have been 120hz(+) other than budget segment. I'm not pretending everyone upgrades tvs every year, or even if they do im not saying people are rich to buy the latest hardware. but for pc gaming 60+hz is the norm for a while, but by the time SF7 comes out everyone will pretty much have 120(+)hz tvs. so if we want to at least get 60fps+ on even next gen FGs we should probably start talking about it now, as these sort of things take a while. GGPO was invented and used in skullgirls a decade before it started coming into AAA games. and even then only because people started demanding it.
I still believe this is the least big factors are the next two.
2) Japanese companies, if you know anything about them, is incredibly change-averse. Any time it is question on 'why' (and thats rarely because of the business/culture) - they have a saying that goes something along the lines of 'Its been done that way'. They simply don't like to change things. And since most FGs are from japan (and now mature game development companies) its no wonder that they dont really innovate in this direction.
3) Very closely tied with point 2: Consumers simply dont demand for it: remember how hard it was to get rollback implemented? people kept buying games at 60fps so obviously there was no incentive. and a lot of the community even said it would be impossible to implement this because the games were fast, and even when some did (like skullgirls) people still made all kinds of excuses. Only once prominent people like Sajam started talking about rollback (remember the whole 'rollback nation'?) and started almost a movement that wanted higher standards for netcode until things started to slowly turn. and then once *humanvirus19* happened it was the final nail, as people realized that online netcode is crucial.
Well i went through all of that just to illustrate that - this is now the time for the community to start talking, discussing, and (hopefully) demanding higher standards for FPS, otherwise theres no incentive for the companies to spend money/effort implementing this.
Some of the problems why every other game has moved past 60 and only FGC still remains is, if i may put it blunt, FGC is a tech illiterate community. I know it sounds harsh, but any time i mention anything remotely to this then it becomes quite clear as i see a lot of misconceptions. I'll quickly try and dispel a few of the common ones:
* technical: its not possible, FGs must be 60fps. Well this is straight up not true, I'd be more than happy to elaborate further if you wanna continue on discord or something, i have pages just on this point. Without boring you just take me on my word for now that its very possible.
* consoles cant do 120fps! This is also nonsense as current gen consoles are very powerful, some games already run at 120fps, and really it doesnt take a genius to understand that there are already perf/qual modes in some games and if you reduce some particles and resolution, some other optimizations you can get 120fps.
*competition related. this is a bit more nuances, thats why we need community to talk, so far no one even wants to talk so i havent even heard very good arguments. but so far i would say that: competitors play in in big competitions usually locally on the hardware, but we can get into this much more for now ill skip this.
* 'This would require a ton of money to implement'. Half-truth. yes it would cost money, but so does ninja turtle outfits that no one care about seemingly, wouldnt you rather this go into bettering the game QoL?
One last thing, google "Tekken 8 overlay", i swear on ibuki this is not a virus, (scan it on virsustotal or smth) you can try it just like on offline or something - run it, then press F1 - then in FPS click 'set' (i think), and youll be mind blown how much better the game feels. Just try that if nothing else. As they say, smth smth 60+fps one attempt is worth a thousand words. I just want you to understand how it feels so you'd know im not crazy.
Anyway, i have a lot to say on this as ive been essentially thinking for a decade+ on this topic. You can just add me GFX#6863 on discord or any other way just lemme kno whats convenient for you, if youre interested.
Hopefully my comment doesnt get autodeleted or something.
If you want to play fighting games at beyond 60fps, use lossless scaling. And even then, it's PC only.
@@Teh69thSpartan it adds lag and weird motion artifacts. I want fgc to move to 60tickrate unlocked fps model
It's entirely possible for a 3D fighter to animate at frame rates beyond 60 while still having its logic run at 60. Tekken 7 had a mod that did exactly that.
I also feel you on “there is no game I enjoy watching that much right now” I LOVED competitive Tekken 7. Easily my favorite traditional fighting game to watch. I also enjoyed watching SFV a lot (more than I enjoyed playing it). GGST was the first game I tried to actually get really good at and got to max rank but I hated playing against the top tiers (Leo h DP into win the entire game when it existed) and the game direction & balance really turned me off so I stopped caring about it.
Something I do not like about both T8 and SF6 is how you start the game with resource. I think the gameplay looks more generic than it ever has. SF6 I think has cooler decision making than T8 IMO because you can do things like burn yourself out on purpose but truly something is being lost when you have powerful neutral and offensive tools that you are constantly throwing at each other. The games look like 2 people doing system mechanics back and forth and less like 2 characters that are extensions of the players
I do love traditional fighting game matches but there's only so much u can do before things need to change... I mean tekken's been using the same gameplay for so long now and it's kinda refreshing to see a new iteration of it... The pro games r still fun to watch it's just different and for me as much as I have my preferences I'm open to appreciating new things too
I actually really enjoy Ultra Fight Da Kyanta 2 but like who tf am I gonna play with? I got one buddy irl who likes to play it with me sometimes but i cant realistically play it whenever I want
Lethal league. Really unique game, hard to find people at an intermediate level even though there’s a strong discord community.
I miss Soul Calibur 2.
So much
JoJo ASBR is hella underated. I love this game so much, but it's a shame Bamco killed it immediately with broken netcode.
people tell you "if you dont like the new game go play the older one you liked" ye bro imma wait 20 minutes in queue surely :D
Average overwatch experience
Dope that you run rouge on Asetto Corsa too, what server do you play on? My fav fgc is 3rd strike luckily there is a decent amount of people on fightcade
Just your typical Touge Life 1 and 3. 1 for player volume, 3 for touge variety. Only gripe with those servers is they only support official kunos cars. I like an AWD drivetrain, and the only AWD car there is the R34. Great car, but I wish I could drive my Lan Evo V.
@@loops9508 Same! I run TL1 mostly for player volume but I wish there was more players running other courses. I gotta try TL3. Also same the car variety is kinda lacking!
would be dope to do some runs!
i always said i missed the pixel street fighter era, i will not buy a 3d fighter outside of guilty gear i guess
EX is the best Street Fighter series, seethe, mald.
dfci and tvc gotta be some of the most fun games i cannot get matches for
i waited for Nenmaster to drop since DnFDuel was announce but by the time she arrived....ya finding matches at my region is impossible.
Virtua Fighter 5 is apparently very fast. You should try that out if you haven't already
The fgc cycle took too long to affect 09'ers tbh
Why don't you play darkstalkers on fightcade?
HMU for Akatsuki
this is just the natural result of the whole scene turning against the concept of skill in the sf5 generation. its pointless to have a ranked mode and a pro tour when everyone knows the game is fake
I really want a new soul caliber or DOA game.
I had the same feeling with Fighterz, like I missed my chance to hop in. I bit the bullet a year ago and dove in and it's a blast! Best FG out there right now in my opinion. You're probably a much better learner than me, so I'm sure you could pick it up way faster than you think!
When I was talking about missing the boat with DBFZ, I mostly meant from a content perspective. I enjoy playing the game and still do, but I think the excitement fof watching DBFZ is largely over.
I never got to olay soul caliber 6 but it looked like a cool game. Currently playing tekken 8 a bit more seriously and ggst whenever i wanna kinda turn my brain off and press buttons.
This isnt to say ggst is a turn your brain off game. I just def my more wind down game where i play just to have fun
On the subject of execution (8:29 to 10:43), you mention how newer games try to de-emphasize execution to further emphasize decision making, and how some people prefer that, especially newer players.
One thing I'd like to point out is that these newer players don't necessarily mean younger generations, it can also very well mean players who bounced off of fighting games their whole childhood precisely because of these execution checks.
In other words, a whole audience that would've joined the FGC sooner if not for the unreasonably hard execution requirements.
I know I'm in that boat! When I was a kid I was definitely drawn to these games and had a lot of fun goofing around by myself or with friends and what have you. But, without fail, every single FG I tried I eventually dropped whenever it was time for me to sit down and take it seriously and improve, and I realized the kind of things I'd have to learn to improve were things I didn't want to learn. And, at the time, I definitely had this (admittedly scrubby, don't judge, I was a teen) feeling of "Man, I played way better than my opponent, but he had the sweaty combos so he still won", which in retrospect was me going "my decision making was far better than my opponent's, but he had the better execution and the game rewarded that", and that was leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
That's not to say that there's no place for hard execution, but when even doing simple things like an instant airdash or a BnB are considered tough achievements, it gets in the way of the enjoyment of the game. Old games have high execution requirements for the most basic shit tbh. I definitely enjoy this shift to rewarding decision making more than arbitrary execution.
The issue I take with most of these single button input games is that they tend to still have long combos - and I think "do you want input complexity or don't you"
If you are going to have one button inputs and want it to be mostly footsies then why are you making combos complicated? Just have gatling from heavy normal down to light special and not a lot of ways to extend beyond that - mostly just character specific mechanics or supers.
The point of one button inputs is to make it so that execution is not often what determines the winner after all. If you want execution to be in the game, why do the 1 button inputs? Either 1 button or long combos, I do not want you to try to do both
@@doombybbr I agree, personally. When I said I like lowering execution barriers, I don't really mean 1 button inputs. Besides, I like how motion inputs feel (so long as we avoid really ridiculous motions like pretzels and such)
I do dislike long combos, however. Like REALLY long combos. FighterZ was horrendous for it, for instance. I dislike 1 frame links, I dislike not having a dash macro, I dislike not having buffers, etc.
2:48 rock and metal communities (metal especially) can have similar interests but all have their own superiority complex on how to enjoy the genre. (Old heads hate young bloods etc.)
FPS games can be just as if not more hostile (a lotta the COD fans hate on all other shooters.) boomer shooter lovers typically stay in their own camps. Though the ID family of quake and doom seem more open.
HAVE YOU SEEN THE NEW VF!!! 🤯 Hopefully it will make Tekken be Tekken again, because Tekke is straight anime fighter. Not for old school Tekken guys
Curious….. What is your favorite fighting game of all time?
You forgot to mention Gundam Maxiboost. Cool Concept. Best arena fighter. but the movement mechanic is the sweatiest bs I’ve ever seen. Esoteric unexplained game mechanics thats there’s not actual real tutorial. This creates a huge skill gap.
22:51 same bro😔
I want DNF to come back I loved playing that game so much I wish more people played
This is why we can't have nice things
basically any older game in europe lol; p4au, cf, rev it's just really hard to find people even though i love those games to death and i dont like the newer games like strive or gbvsr, thankfully melty is still alive and well in eu and i actually enjoy playing rivals 2 so i have those 2 at least.
You raise a good point about the many bubbles inside of the fgc itself. Sure we all intermingle here and there, but for the most part we stay inside the bubbles of the games we play the most, which i guess isn't necessarily a bad thing from a individual perspective. Im guilty of doing this myself. Outside of playing and posting content for Es laf 2, i dont really interact with players from other communities or really consume any other fg content at all. I think thats mostly due to me losing interest in newer fighting games as a whole. Es laf is honestly the one game that has given me that giddy feeling that older games like third strike and marvel 3 gave me growing up, and its not even a finished product yet. That aside, i still hope that fighting games as a whole will one day reach a point where it can see success similar to that of big time games like Fortnite, call of duty, etc. Even if the games moving forward aren't necessarily my cup of tea, as a fan of the genre as a whole, im rooting for us.
Great Video Loops!
11:58 - I tried out Virtua Fighter for the first time with the VF5 REVO beta last month and it gave me this feeling, maybe try that out when it comes out?
I really wish I could play BlazBlue games when they were releasing. I got introduced to BB universe by BB Entropy Effect which is rogue like with BB characters that released last year. I love the characters, I played some story modes from older BB games and I like it but picking up these games (BBCF or BBTag) as new player when everyone, who is playing it right now, years ahead of you is just too much. I am also in Europe which reduces number of players available significantly (we have local in my city once every 3 or 5 month).
I am playing Tekken 8 right now since I played a bit of Tekken 7 at the end of its lifespan and Tekken 3 is the first FG I ever played. I will probably play a bit of Strive when Lucy gets dropped. And of course waiting to see what 2XKO has to offer when it finally releases, although it's probably still like 2 years away.
15:39 it's not like rollback moved a niddle for xrd. And it's sad
For me personally i primarily play anime, versus and NRS games. I don't need to talk about NRS, but for anime i don't like strive and the other options are pretty much discord outside of granblue, but that doesn't play like an anime game either. Versus is currently dead af too so 😂. That being said looking forward to CotW
Main game I play is DoA6. Know some people that makes getting some games pretty manageable. The main thing I struggle with is getting caught up. Got a long list of people who would rather not play than have a bad opponent. 😮💨 Still, I dabble in a lot of different games and it keeps me engaged.
If you want a competitive, demanding game, just play Melee. Havent found a better competition than that yet.
morrigan is my ultimate waifu btw…. hands down hottest fg character of all time. hoping maybe cvs3 or mvc4! would love to see demitri and others in a tag fighter.
fighting games just don’t hit the same for me anymore so stopped playing them all together. marvel rivals bangs tho!!
Oldheads can't gatekeep the genre forever, it will just die like pre-SF4 and the developers don't want that to happen for obvious reasons. Some people still can't move on from the arcade era and built their ego on beating people who didn't know what they were doing. Of course they lash out and cry when games (including execution, knowledge, frame data etc) are becoming more accessible. The genre needs to evolve and move forward and I hope the new VF will be a good starting point just like SF6. Old scrubs should stay on Fightcade and stop talking in general. Arcade sticks will slowly disappear as well, but it is what it is.
Pretty sure arcade stick sales are way higher than they've ever been but alright.
i know this was kinda an informal video but i feel like this wtatement is EXACTLY what the fgc need to hear. Negativity cant be like an implicit part of the entire fgc there no way for the commjnity to ever build that way. Also wjy dont you play MBTL there still ppl online and it kinda fit everything you were saying you were looking for in a new game. I'd show you ropes i taught my beat friend and he was S+ on ranked in a week.
Great video, sub earned. I wish we could have more stuff like the Marvel collection for other franchises with enough hype and marketing around them to get players interested. With the 20th anniversary of Tekken 5 this year, hopefully Bandai Namco get something going (they won't)
this video reminds me of when i first got in the newest KI. it was like, what, 2023? and i bought the game on a whim but i very very quickly fell in love with it. to this day, it's one of the most fun FGs i think i have ever played, excellent roster to boot. but this was before the final patch and anniversary edition and all this other crap: basically meaning that no one was on game. it was also abnormally difficult to find the community for KI 2013, couldn't even find a Discord anywhere. to this day I'd still like to go back and give it a proper spin but I just haven't felt the motivation to do so.
runner up would definitely be KOF XV tho. the MOST fun modern fg out rn, super cool to watch, no complaints from me. I wish the hype from pre-launch was maintained but ig people just weren't willing to shell out full price on a new KOF after the mixed rep of its predecessor. i hope garou 2 has a much better launch, cuz SNK has proved that they still know how to make great fighting games, and I am super super super excited to see how Garou 2 develops.
Nen impact will save us
I like that you touched on a part of it which people dont bring up. I remember when SFV came out and I didnt like it as much and wanted to play SF4 but the online was kind of dead. SFV became something I really enjoyed and I dont enjoy the current state of SF6 but I cant go play SFV unless I hit up friends who want to play it. I love CVS2 but I only have 1 friend who can play it so we play it once it and awhile when we both happen to have time.
Was talking about this with guys from my local offline scene because we had a steady decline with people going to locals since SF6 got announced. It killed the motivation for the SFV players, the Tekken players were board of 7 at the time. With SF6 and then T8 we have an initial increase in players but in a short amount of time dropped back to the end of SFV/T7 era level of entrants (lucky to get at least 8 entrants). Strive at our locals has been at the point of just being the side game for Smash players for a few years now too.
Most the feedback given to the TO for the locals in my country is the events are really good just lack of interest in the current games. Cause all the locals around the country have had similar things with declining attendance and even with the online tournaments that were run. FGC in my country is in such a weird spot
just play melee!
Ha man, I’ve been playing for 13 years and I’ve been DYING for a game half as good. Tekken 7 got my attention in a serious way but what I liked about it has been turned down a lot in T8….so I feel like I literally have nothing else to play and it sucks man
I do! It’s a beautiful game. I’m delusional and firmly believe Y.Link has what it takes to move up the tier list like DK and Yoshi have. But when I don’t feel like working as hard, I too will bust out the netplay Falco.
I think the prices need a nerfed. 60 or 70 too much for game with two modes. Jojo all star R I wish to play but only people who play South America very bad connection