Fighting Game Difficulty & the "Skill-gate"
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- Опубліковано 6 січ 2021
- streamed Jan. 4, 2021
Finna break fighting game players out of their bubble eventually, one step at a time.
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#FGC - Ігри
The Tekken/Tarkov swerve is what separates the good from the great.
Genius
its funny because i wanted to learn tekken a while ago instantly hopped on youtube.
recently just bought tarkov, instantly hopped on youtube.
that was a perfect comparison definitely hit me with the mix up.
@@ZuperPhresh gayest comment ive read yet.
@@Zenbon111 i concur
Let's be honest. I would've gotten hit by that. You would've gotten hit by that. Nobody would've fuckin blocked that. Nobody.
Sajam, that's a trick question. No one is mentioning fighting games because no one plays fighting games.
Thank you. Was about to come in and point out that fighting games are still niche as hell. But I said...wait. This is a vast world. No way I'm the only one.
This is actually the answer. No one fuckin plays FGs.
And these other games mentioned are more affordable and accessible than fighting games
Haha, I was gonna mention that, but didn't expect it to be the first comment!
@@TobyJay2k the point is fighting games are not harder than other genres and face the same issues so maybe we should realize that no one play them because they generally suck majors amounts of ass in terms of content, general tutorials, and online features instead of that dumb ass excuse of "FG's are harder" "FG's are niche" which sounds more like people trying to feel special.
The common first objective to learning almost every single game before getting to the "meat" is just "figure out how not to die"
this is how you get rats in Tarkov and it's ruining the game....
That's... actually very true.
I agree. I was teaching a couple of newbies how to play and I decided to try a new approach: I told them to focus on staying alive for as long as possible. I gave them the clock as a metric to gauge their progress. It wasn't the most fun experience but it seemed to help them get comfortable with blocking and observing. In the same session, they even started taking whole rounds from experienced players.
@@AkibanaZero What game?
@@macchiateaux Did you trip over your words or did you mean that rats are based?
I feel like people are missing the point. Fighting games are niche, but the complaints people think are unique to fighting games are actually things that occur in other competitive games.
The player base being so much smaller in fighting games makes the issue more prevalent. No one is saying these are exclusive to fighting games; what we're saying is that the smaller player base in general makes it more of an issue than in many other genres. Survivor and particular hardcore fps games are similar, but those are exceptions along with fighting games; not the norm. In most online competitive games, there are enough new players trying it out to mitigate the issue quite a bit.
The dead by daylight example was an atrocious one.
Too many people replying "fighting games aren't popular" instead of realizing the point being made
I understood that, but a big problem for fighting games is that there aren't enough people playing them. Especially on PC, you'd see dead ranked queues and the catch 22 applies: Only a few people play so new blood doesn't join because "only a few people play, online play is dying".
@@CGoody564 goodluck finding actual new players in a moba. The amount of smurfing in League and Dota is too damn high!!!!
Excuse, sleep deprivation.
@@HighLanderPonyYT Except, the entire point of this is that large games with much larger player bases have the same issue. It's the focus of the video, and it's part of the point of discussing it all. Sure there are less players, but even games with HUGE numbers of players have this issue, or get called "dead games" like fighting game players do.
"Fighting games are hard!"
"It's no different than learning to play a FPS, MOBA, etc,"
"Yeah, and I suck at THEM too."
It's way different than those
most FPS and MOBAs are free though
@@jed949 there are free fighting games. especially if you go the fightcade route
@@blgdoesthings4122 im not referring to myself. Non fgc or newbies have no idea about fightcade in the beginning until theyre in deep in fgc
@@blgdoesthings4122 plus you cant play new titles in fightcade 2. Old games are a tough sell
I still don't know why fighting game people and arena FPS people don't hang out more often
I dunno, I've seen a lot of Quake 3 Arena diehards talking shit about fighting games, they think the genre's been kiddified or has too many noob mechanics or whatever. They might only get along with the sort of fighting game players who only play 3rd Strike and automatically reject anything newer.
@@BaconheartStuff yeah sounds like they would get along with the FGC pretty well
Hey im a part of both communities
@@BaconheartStuff there's a whole subset of fucking old heads in the FGC that want to do exactly that so...
Because FPS players absolutely detest the concept of hitstun. They won't even tolerate a slow effect, let alone an actual stun.
that's because fighting game nerds don't go on r/gaming
Huge reason right here. lmao
r/fightinggames only haha
The thread was r/games r/gaming is just a bunch of karma whoring memes
Yeah, they complains on r/Fighters in stead
The only reason fighting games haven’t came up is because me and you and the other brave souls out there are the only players. I’m the only person who plays fighting games out of all the people I know or have ever met.
Pretty much; Fighting games don't come up because they're so far removed from the discussion that most people aren't thinking about them.
I feel that
This hit
This is true from my experience as well. I don't really know anyone who plays fighting games besides myself because they aren't an FPS or a MOBA so the skills they have already cultivated don't transfer over. Fighting games aren't popular enough to warrant learning an entirely new genre in their minds. The one exception to this is Smash. I know a ton of people that play Smash and its really for no other reason than it's popular and they played it when they were kids. We can rant about what fighting games have to offer us all we want, but besides core gameplay, Smash is by far the worst package of any fighting game out there yet it is also the most popular.
Lowkey why I think I drifted away from my high school friends. Granted, I was the odd one out for a variety of reasons. But this was up there.
But that's also why I found locals. Don't have to convince anybody because these people already get it 🤷♂️ lol
"Nobody drives in New York anymore, there's too much traffic"
"Nobody has time to get good at these games, everybody is too good already"
First I was like "What?!" Then I understood.
It's not equivalent. It's like pitting a new driver against an F1 champion.
The issue with a lot of fighting games is that they have a long legacy and transferrable skills and techniques that can carry across iterations.
Someone who has played since SF2 will handily beat any player who's new to the genre even if the veteran player has never picked up that game in general due to a better sense of what is safe vs risky and positional sense.
It's much the same reason I tend to play locally with other low-skilled players because I'm a minnow in the ocean of sharks, but in the tiny creek of my area, I can play with other minnows.
@@cptncutleg man someone has gotta break this to sonicfox, multiple game world champion, that he's not allowed to be good because he wasn't born in 1925
@@zerograv185 I was going to argue time commitment, but I'll play fantasy strike if I want a low commitment.
High skill games like Guilty Gear and King of Fighters though? You can forget about playing online as a new player years into the game.
@@cptncutleg I picked up dbfz like two years after it came out and still managed to climb the ranks to a place where I was satisfied. And I fucking suck at fighting games.
To quote a modern poet: "IT SMELL LIKE BITCH IN HERE."
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I still want to win. What do?”
Find the game in the genre you want to play with the best match making. Accept your win rate shouldn't be above x:1 where x equals the number of players in the game.
I know. "Play a slot machine!"
play sfv
Keep wanting win after you have lost 100 times. If you do that eventually you probably will.
tbf many highly popular games have such big player counts that even if you're not good on a competitive level you'll still win some matches. Some fighting games are like this, it's not a genre thing. Nowadays if you want to play third strike because it's pretty fucking cool, you gotta hop on fightcade where everyone's way better than you (the anniversary release is dead, you can't find matches)
I'm not saying you can't practice and become better but do you seriously expect a newbie to remain invested after going through a few of those matches?
Newbies should get in on the new games and then move onto the older ones imo
"Where only hardcore players remain" -- Yeah us MMORPG ppl already had a term for that since U.O. died. It's called _"No Sheep, All Wolves"_
If you're familiar with Mark Rosewater's "psychographics" I think the problem is that fighting games are the least Timmy genre until you get good at them. The most viscerally thrilling thing you can do without practice is normals. It's not like other genres that let you do fun stuff even if you're not getting much reward for it. Also fighting games don't really give you very many opportunities to lie to yourself about how good you are.
My Timmy brain saw me through many matches of Skullgirls. I picked up SG not sure I'd even try multiplayer, but the feedback on every action felt so good, even though the controls were foreign to my hands. I just had to keep playing once I was done with single player. Learning a big combo felt good. I had to constantly block but blocking felt good. And in each match, I grasped a small piece of what to do.
I think one of the reasons for Tekken's success with casuals (almost everyone who owned some kind of Playstation is nostalgic for Tekken) is because almost all the cool stuff IS normals. Folks start mashing buttons and they're already doing backflips.
As a result, when I switched from PC to PS4 (the netcode update made it too CPU intensive), I was shocked to see how many casuals were mauling each other in blue ranks (sometimes with thousands of matches under their belt). For a game that's often criticized for being too hard for casuals to get into, there are a lot of casuals who seem pretty into it.
I suspect that they are drawn to the fact that you can be Bruce Lee doing backflips with basically no practice.
@@MrDrumStikz True.
I also think the reason Tekken has so many strings is so that new players who are just mashing buttons can perform these pseudo combos and hit their opponent for decent damage.
Try that in a fighting game without that many strings and the most you'll get out of it is a whiffed normal
@@MrDrumStikz yeah, eddie is a noob slayer but every one loved him because he has pretty moves by clicking random kick buttons.
That's why autocombos are a thing, homie
Fighting gaming tutorials have been getting good recently. The problem is some people are expecting tutorials to teach them how to play at a competitive level. This isn't possible for a new game as the devs themselves can't predict where players take it.
I can't remember the video, but I remember seeing one tutorial that was a guy teaching another guy how to play Elphelt in GG Xrd and he was basically like "yeah you don't need to be a pro to get out there and have fun. Just like, know this one bnb, know that qcb+k is good, and you'll have fun" and somehow that just blew my mind. Sticks in my head.
All competitive games are hard, I think what separates fighting games from all of these turbo popular stream games is that in a fighting game there is no randomization or obfuscation so you can't rationalize your loss as easily. In a battle royale you can blame bad drops, or in a team game like Siege or Dota you can blame things out of your control like teammates or lack of information because you don't know where the enemies are. In a fighting game it's just two people squaring up and if you make a mistake or don't understand what just happened doing research to figure it out is in your own hands.
fighting game players just blame their opponents for playing "cheap" characters or "lame" playstyles.
or blame connections and lag.
In addition: group Multiplayer games almost always have someone in any given match who is *worse* than you. In fortnite, before you learn how to proactively build, you can just snipe a guy who didnt see you. In siege theres a guy who killed the hostage with fuze; and in Quake 2 theres a lobotomite bottom scoring who is trying to direct hit with the rocket launcher. The ego death is required to play fighting games with randoms. Bronze players in SFV swear that DP's are busted, and they'd be plat if Ken wasnt in the game
@@awxangel6781 can do the same in team games like the op mentioned, at the end of the day its still more obvious in a 1v1 games that it's your fault cause there are no outside factors.
@@awxangel6781 it's still true to this day
@@grotto185 "you only beat me because you were spamming buttons"
At some point we gotta accept a lot of these people don't want to play, they just want to bitch at you for liking something they don't.
@@measurablederision2718 lol
@@measurablederision2718 lol
@@measurablederision2718 When people vent about fighting games, they usually talk about the genre as if it's segregated into two groups of players, professionals and beginners. There is wide variety of players ranging from all skill levels(just like everything else in life). If you tell yourself that you'll never be able to achieve something, with a mindset like that you bet your ass you won't. Unless you have some sort of mental deficiency or self esteem issues, nothing should stop you from progressing. I literally saw a video of a dog executing a Hadouken and Brolylegs playing with his face. You can do it too.
@@measurablederision2718 everyone is capable, if you’re unwilling to put in the time and work that’s on you. We all struggled at first but kept at it
The glaring problem is spending any time on Reddit. Absolute trash heap of shitty opinion
I like this topic a lot. From my experience trying to get pairs of friends into fighting games, there will always be one person who hates losing and hates that it was 100% their fault.
In MOBAs and shooters, there’s feedback for kills and assists, tertiary progression systems, but most importantly cooperative failure; as pointed out by the one donation. All of these games are hard, but I think it matters on the environment where difficulty is placed.
I would love to see another game like SFxT where you can hop online with a pal and play 2v2 games with randoms. Could be a cool gateway into traditional 1v1s.
Fighting game players say fighting games are hard to make themselves feel better about being “ok” at them
Agreed, along with the fact that majority of FG players mostly only play.... other fighting games at a somewhat decent level.
Elitism is rampant as well as thoughts along the lines of "I'm more intelligent because I play X fighting game and you don't". Or constantly berating other games they don't ever intend to give a fair chance or just simply suck at.
yea basically.
some like what's a wake up DP? I'm like yo wish i could wake up EX DP all the bull shit endlessly and be safe then fuzzy a Tatsu in there.
but I'll just pogo as yoshi hoping for a wiff lol
@@Bilal44 so much elitism. Before i played guilty gear i was too iffy abt picking it up because gg players love talking about how ‘complex’ and ‘hard’ and how apparently insane it is. I played it and while theres a lotta depth to uncover you can still play v basic at the start. Some gamers rly wanna sound like a badass so theyll hype up their game way unneccesarily
Thats what i've been saying
@snugdarkly But every game takes alot of effort to get gud at. I recently picked up CSGO a FPS and i was getting destroyed for the first 50-70 hours until i decided to improve my aim and think while playing.
As a non-fighting game player that really wants to get into fighting games, I think the video has many good points. But It think Sajam misses on what people mean when they say fighting games are "hard" to play.
For me personally i've been gaming since I could remember, but fighting games are still by far the hardest games imo. Fighting games are "hard" to play in the meaning that fight games are "hard to keep playing until i get to a level of play that is satisfying". I won't argue that every game is difficult in it's own way, but fighting games are especially hard to keep playing in "making the frustration of a new player worth it" and "keeping player interested".
First, "making the frustration of a new player worth it" . Part of the frustration in every new game is getting destroyed by better/veteran players. But fighting games has many additional frustrations without the benefit of co-op to relieve some of the frustration. Additional frustrations that are not present in the games mentioned but are present in fight games include: Long loading times and matching making relative to incredibly short game time, laggy netcode and delayed controls for most games.
While the match making plus loading times of fighting game may not be longer than other games, but when each round and game of fight games are 3-5 mins long, and then more loading/matchmaking again, it become really frustrating when you get destroyed and just want to try again. In many fps, there are no respawn timers, therefore you die, hit respawn, in the game again instantly. In battle royales and mobas, each game can be around 30 minutes, thus making 5 minutes of loading/matchmaking not a big deal. But when in a fighting game, each round is 1 minute (since i'm getting destroyed)., 3 rounds later, I lose and want to match someone else in hope of an easier opponent(or less lag), I spent 3-5 minutes playing, and 3-5 minutes loading/matchmaking which is frustrating.
While other online game also have the problems of lag in online games, most have servers in your region or decently close so that the lag is manageable, and even if the ping is crazy high 200-300 ping, in most games your controls are not delayed on your screen. In FPS your walking and aiming won't be delayed by high ping, your shooting animation and sound won't be delayed, when you see others and the shots that kill your opponents may be delayed, but at least the controls won't be laggy and sluggish on your end of the screen.
Also, even though Sajam mentioned in the video of the problems that may arise when co-oping with an friend, the benefits dwarves any of the problems. Being matched with players that are more skilled is less frustrating when at least you can win a few games since it's a team game, even if you did nothing to contribute. Playing together on the same side as your friend is less frustrating since your friend can lead, teach and encourage you without it sounding like sandbagging and pity from your enemy. Also, every other team game can also be played with you and your friend (two people) with matchmaking therefore only requiring two people is not an argument.
Second, "keeping player interested". In fighting games there's less random or RNG elements, it is less intuitive what counts as improvement and success, and more responsibility for your losses compared to other games. In a battle royale, there is random guns/loot of random stats, random drop points creating random encounters that hardly overlap. In moba there are hundreds of champions with almost unlimited combination of teams of 5. However, in fighting games there are 1v1 (or 3v3), in which one side(yours) doesn't change character that often and maps that most of the time only change the background; also, there are no random items, because of all that there is less chance and variety in the game which may contribute to quicker feeling of stale games for beginners before they can get to the skill element of the games.
Next, in fps games there are a lot of chaos, many teammates, therefore you may get to shoot at enemies while they are distracted, and even if your bullets miss him completely and you get killed instantly as he turns to you, you understand: "if i could aim better and hit him, I could've killed him." That is intuitive and obvious. In battle royales, you may feel "if i found better guns and armor and stuff, I could've beat him". Whether or not those feelings are true are debatable but at least it is intuitive even to beginners that there are things that are improve on. But in fighting games, as you've mentioned in previous videos, i may get into a game, hit an anti-air or hit someone in neutral, but then immediately get comboed into the corner, block an overhead after wakeup, then get mixed and dies in corner. Even though i did some successful moves and blocks, it is not intuitive that hitting an anti-air/blocking overhead meaty/neutral is a successful move and can be improved on with hit-confirms and etc.
Finally since fight games are 1v1 game with no random elements, there's nothing to blame the lost of except the game itself. In fps, you can blame teammates, guns, maps, equipments, perk load outs. In battle royales you can blame teammates and unlucky item drops. In mobas you can blame teammates, items. Notice in all those three game types i did not mention character balance and lag, because those are universal. Only in fighting games can you only blame yourself and the game. Not wanting to blame yourself, it's easy to say "fighting games are too hard, this game sucks".
I'm not saying fight games are unfun or bad design or anything of the sort, but I'm simply pointing out the differences i've felt that made fighting games "harder" to get into and enjoy. I recognize how awesome and cool it is the play fighting games, thats why i've been watching Core-A/Sajam/Max etc to try and learn and motivate myself to play and enjoy fighting games (which i've yet to be able to yet).
I'm just gonna address the thesis statement since I'm not reading all that: the first couple 1v1 games I tried (Starcraft and Smash) I got frustrated at, practicing felt like a chore, I didn't get better and after months I quit. Then I played a fighting game where I was really hesitant about playing multiplayer, I only intended to play story. And when I played it, the controls felt good. They felt foreign to me, but also I could tell that the game's feedback felt really good. That game was Skullgirls, and I played it for 600 hours. For someone else, it was Guilty Gear they really liked the feel of. When I like how it feels to do the moves, I can have fun learning a big combo. When I like the sounds and visuals of blocking, I can have fun being constantly on the defensive. This motivation may not apply to everyone as it's a Timmy thing (see: magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-revisited-2006-03-20-2 ), but there are ways to enjoy fighting games even when you're "not playing the real game" yet.
@snugdarkly That's the point. Just because you can't be bothered doesn't mean everyone shouldn't.
You bring up a lot of good points. I would say any game can be difficult to be successful in. But in fighting games you can lose a round in 10 seconds as opposed to a battle royale where you probably don't die for about 8 minutes and in the meantime you've farmed something good. Games like these deliver small victories or non-losses before anything substantial as happened.
As we know, fighting games were originally arcade games designed to get one player to pay every 3-5 minutes, so someone is supposed to lose quickly. That's why they feel harder--they deliver frustration and pain at a higher speed lol.
@snugdarkly lmaoo
One of the biggest problem I came across, is the lack of feedback. In fps, you feel a rush when you kill someone. In rocket league, you feel a rush when you hit the ball in. In dead by daylight, you feel a rush when you finish a gen. In smash, you feel a rush when you get a stock.
This is a huge deal when learning fighting games. For the longest time, I didn't know what I should be working on, because there is no feedback that tells me "hey, nice one jab." If I didn't grew up with mk2 and melee, I would've thought that fighting games must revolve around combos cause that's the only thing with feedback in most FGs. Which is why every one of my friends are so intimidated by combos.
I feel like people are more willing to commit to learning other games like shooters or mobas for example because it is very easy to blame teammates or say the other person got lucky cause of low TTK, whereas in fighting games it is very apparent when you suck
Actually it's not apparent, that's why people don't want to improve, because moment to moment satisfaction is a gated event available to a single person.
Depends on your personality. I have zero interest in playing team based games. Can't take pride in my victories because I may have been carried but constantly will question if I deserved my losses.
This is some double standard. When fighting games are being compared to other games, it's only skill that matters. But when you talk about fighting games, noob wake DP, brain dead charge character, garbage throws, broken character, garbage rage mode or v trigger. Oh yeah sure fighting game players are the kings of accepting that they suck when they lose.
I hear this often and I doubt that people are actively choosing to play team-based games because they'd rather have someone else to blame. A new player can't tell if a teammate has done something right or wrong. What I feel team games have over FGs is that they're less stressful because you have other players backing you up. There's an implied sharing of the burden. Though that can be counter-argued by perceived added pressure from your team. Also, even when people get to the point where they blame others I think it's still a small portion of them who outright don't believe they need to improve. They see their shots miss. They can tell when they make a bad decision. You've got to be a certain type of personality to straight-up believe you're better than everyone else in spite of your observed faults.
@@BlueLightningSky those comments are dismissed as scrub talk unless the game is considered to be broken
Thats with like every competitive everything ever tbh. Cant expect to not be stomped by people who've been playing longer than you, if its as small as a month or 2 weeks, it just feels worse as a new player since you *literally* just started.
More effective matchmaking would help.
@@arcpegasus2002 exactly... i dont understand this sick obsession of fgc, over newbies needing to get stomped to learn when other game genres get a flack for having poor matchmaking. Sure you can still learn something with anything, but its been proven that the best grounds in learning is with people at your level and a little bit more better than you.
@@mendics This has never been proven, and quite frankly the fastest rising players I've seen are those that are willing to go 0-50 over and over. The players that are like "I only want to play players my level" tend to either quit or just stay free to anyone decent.
Even still, the matchmaking itself is very much effective in higher pop games like SFV or DBFZ or T7, and of course games with lower populations will struggle to find very equal matches but that's not a problem with the game, it's just not possible to matchmake like that if the game doesn't have enough people.
I feel like literally every game has the issue of getting stomped by better players ,but in fighting games it feels worse to a new player because you feel like you’re not playing when someones hitting you with more loops than toucan sam. In battle royales u jump in get to chat with ur friends on the mic goof around unless solo
I play titanfall 2 were the only players left are cracked asf but i love it
Can u recommend a good channel or stream? I feel like this game didn't get enough of a shake and I wanna watch some esports lol
Titanfall 2 is absolutely BRUTAL
@@zaybak My friend and I only do easy and normal vs AI, we don't even try vs people lol
@@p4rtyf4v0r lol yeah, tried to jump back into it late last year and got absolutely dumpstered. I might try vs ai sometime, super fun to move in that game
bought it the other month but havent played yet
Got on Granblue ranked the other day. Took so long to find another player in E rank that I started playing Smash. Ran an entire set in Ult before dequeuing bc I still hadn’t found an opponent.
you dont play ranked. you go into lobbies and play people
@@mfbandit7930 deadass there are like 4 people max in lobbies for my region and they’re all high rank.
How the fuck are you E? I jumped into rank with nothing but the tutorial on me and was put in B.
@@Stroggoii bc I’m bad at the game? Tf kinda question is that bro you’re rude as hell.
same thing with fighterz. I bought the game last year and check on it every couple months and never have I seen the player count on the lobby get to double digits. it's awful
I think one thing that actually is more unique to fighting games is the experience of "wtf, I couldn't even do anything that entire time." Even if you're getting completely demolished in other game genres, at least you're still generally in full control before your head gets blown off or whatever. Meanwhile in many fighting games you just feel like you're not even allowed to press a button the entire time.
One perspective, I was talking to someone who knew nothing about fighting games, he didn’t even know what they were. But, when I showed him a screenshot, he responded “oh! It’s one of those button mash games!”
There’s a ton of people outside of the fgc who don’t perceive fighting games as hard at all
Yeah. The issue is the accesibility
@@jed949 what issue? Is your mission to make sure every man, woman and child knows what fighting games are? Lol
@@Splozy price of fightimg games competing with AAA. Lack of features that are helpful for newcomers. Online not up to standards. Other competitive gamee are free therefore easy to invest time in. This more on how can fgs be popular and not seen as niche
@@jed949 fighting games will never not be niche simply by virtue of being competitive from the ground up.
@@Splozy fair point. all im saying is fighting games can be more accessible without really adjusting the difficulty. a lot of those adjustments dont have to be about gameplay and more about pricing models, standard features, cool characters and theme.
I think the only two real differences between fighting games and other competitive games are:
1. (Sajam kind of mentions this in the video) If you suck at other games, there's usually enough downtime at the start where people get to fuck around and loot things or kill creeps or turn 1 coin hero power before getting btfo and realising they suck, whereas if you suck at a fighting game the other guy is right there beating your ass, so it feels like you're "not playing" because you never got your chance to mess around (playing defense is still playing but I'm sure you guys all know that already)
2. Outside of literal children getting into fortnite or whatever because it's popular at school, most people have probably played a bunch of video games before they start getting into competitive multiplayer games. CS:GO and PUBG are probably not somebody's first shooter ever, so they at least have that baseline of knowing how to move around and do things before they start learning what they should do. They've probably played mario kart and/or GTA, so racing games and rocket league aren't so intimidating even though their strategy and execution are severly lacking. But nothing really plays like a fighting game - with the fixed walk speeds and jump arcs, directional blocking, and inability to move and attack - so learning how to win or even just not get bodied has to take a back seat to just learning how to move the character around. We used to have beat-em-ups and classic castlevania but those are very rare and extinct respectively.
This is kind of what I was trying to say in the reddit post he read out
Dude never stop hammering these topucs these discussions are awesome you and core a are the only ones I see focus on these topics.
Easy fighting game take: the biggest barrier for people to get into fighting games is poor netcode and playing with a group of more than 2 online specifically, mostly due to poor lobby systems that poorly emulate the playing with friends in person experience.
Not only do they have bad netcode, they have bad netcode in a genre that demands a lot of precision or quick reactions. Shooting games and MOBAs demand those things too but are built in a way where your shots or abilities feel like their precise and accurate unless your connection is very bad. A below average connection is still functional in those games where fighting games feel off when they are not on great/perfect connections.
That and poor social/chat features. Games are social events now more than ever, why don't fighting games follow the trend of having people be able to talk and interact in game? Because of some salty players (who will be on funny twitch montages anyway)? I say let people talk and interact in the lobbies and game. It would make the game way more interesting for casual people, because then they have something they can be distracted by rather than just being focused on gameplay they don't completely get yet.
@@Arlo5.13 I understand that issue as well, but I definitely feel it’s a lesser issue since a lot of people use 3rd party apps such as discord, or the console chat channels instead anyway
@@brycemiller831 I guess that’s fair, but asking people to jump through a million hoops for something that other games do seems like a pretty glaring point of contention for some 😅
It’s this and other stuff like cross-play too. Someone might have a friend that plays on a different platform. It’s all symptomatic of things that fighting games should have but most don’t.
@@Arlo5.13 well shame the chat message systems on console mainly is used for salt, on PC I've reached out to a seemingly new player mid S3 of Tekken 7 to passed a playlist of videos but some look around found Aris, Core-A-gaming i got a playlist handy to pass them the stuff on the r/Tekken sub that's useful but as most us will say is a nice phat online L is the best sensei in fighting games right? *sadly LTG not figured that out* but yea.
That's a really interesting point I hadn't considered. Are fighting games really that hard, or instead is it just the genre that lets you know painfully clear how bad you are? I can run around in a team game and feel like I'm a badass even if I do absolutely nothing. In a fighting game, when I suck, it is made very obvious to me just how much so I do, and there is no one else to shoulder a part of that blame other than me.
The issue I feel we face as fighting game players is where in a fps game there can be a bad player and a good player but the amount of critical interactions till a reward stimulus is far fewer in these games. Basicly what I'm saying is in call of duty you can have a world class player and a total scrub but if the scrub shoots at the pro while he's not looking he can still be rewarded with a kill aka reward stimulus. Fighting games are different due to their being many many interactions throughout the game for both parties before reward stimulus is reached so even if one gains footing first the other can usually pick enough "better" options in a row and potentially mount a comeback. This stacking effect of momentum is frustrating to them because it can really only be gapped by experience and it requires them to understand and accept their incompetence if they hope to adapt and win. It's understandably frustrating to them when they realized oh this isn't a fluke they are just better and now i have to do something different, they can't keep running their game plan and still get lucky occasionally like when they catch the good player off guard. It's similar still in shooters but as I said what's different is successful interactions till "something that feels good" so the good player can be blitzed and the bad player can achieve reward occasionally when all goes right. But if the bad player misses or doesn't imidiatly score a kill and the good player begins to make decisions and we see a similar senario where the momentum shifts and the good player is allowed to shoot back, take cover, or even call out to a ally to adapt and overwhelm them with better decisions.
Starcraft 2 I've found has a very similar issue and scenario where new players find it almost completely inaccessible
@@NauticalComander as a fairly new starcraft 2 player, I would disagree
@@3XHS Probably depends on your experience with rts games.
I'll be honest, I find learning a competitive FPS or MOBA or other team game filled with skilled players way more stressful than fighting games. I won't pretend getting good at a fighting game isn't stressful, but one of the things that is nice about it is that every game is just me alone. If I play well, it's me. If I play like shit and lose, it's me. If I play a bad character because I want to it's me. I'm only responsible for my own enjoyment, and if I feel like fucking around and experimenting no one is going to yell at me.
With cooperative games it's different. Now if I'm getting blown up I'm bringing the team down. If I choose the wrong character or class I'm hamstringing my allies. I can't fuck around or experiment because it directly impacts my team's ability to win and enjoy the game. The pressure from feeling of not knowing what the fuck you're doing is multiplied because now you know you can cost your teammates the game, so there's now no excuse to not be good. This is compounded with the omnipresent threat of verbal abuse from your teammates if you fuck up.
It might just be a personal thing, but it honestly drove me away from getting into or further into team based games. If I get blown out in a fighting game I can just move onto the next match, as I'm the only one responsible for my enjoyment. In a team game I have to acknowledge that I ruined my teammates' fun, and I hate it so much.
This 100%. I've tried getting into League of Legends and Apex Legends, and in both cases I accidentally screwed something up for one of the other players on my team, died, and then uninstalled. With fighting games the worst I could do is give someone else a free win.
Holy shit this is nearly the exact same mindset as my own. Glad to know I'm not alone. I also just generally like a game where the outcome of the game is directly based on my own skill with no outside factors. One thing I hate about team games is that no matter how good you are as a player, it doesn't matter unless you're completely in-sync with your team. Your individual skill doesn't matter, which is especially apparent when you play in solo.
Other genres are more popular because you get to do more things before you lose. Getting bodied in a FG often means you might as well go AFK. (Yes, you might be able to do things in a FG, too, but that can be so obscure to figure out that you won't even know what you don't know before the match is over.)
In other genres you usually have a team so you can also blame others when you lose.
I feel like a big part of learning fighting games is trying to learn while being bodied, not getting frustrated and just slowly focus on implementing things into your game plan one at a time
Fps noobs complain "all i did was walk forward and I got headshot."
Moba noobs complain "i go to lane and just die instantly."
Chess noobs complain "I moved like 3 pieces and got checkmated."
Baseball noobs complain "I didn't even hit the ball and I got 3 strikes."
This exists in basically EVERY form of competition, ever.
@@Setteri_ That type of scapegoating is present in any game. Think about it, in a fighting game its "This character is cheap and broken", in a moba its "My teammates fucking suck", in an fps its "That guy is lagging I swear I hit him". People don't like losing and losing in a fighting game feels more personal because it's you in a 1v1 vs your opponent
This. Theres also enough variety and unpredictability in matches to let people have a chance to figure things out before dying as well as have information presented better. If I give someone an FPS to play for the first time, its easy to know that you have to shoot the dude and its just that simple. No first time FG player is gonna know about how to combat against a dp with invincibility unless its explained, which 9/10 it isnt.
It's about the enviroment of the game. On most other type of games (battle royale, moba, fps) there's a randomness to it. Even first time players can get a few wins and get motivated to get better due to outside factors beyond their control. On a fighting game, is a 1v1 versus your opponent, nothing else decides the outcome besides your skill. So when you are inexperienced, is really hard to win at the beginning, and that's not fun and doesn't motivate the player to learn and get better.
Also, most other games have a distinct feel of progression: you get more kills, better score, better items. On a fighting game, you win or you lose, there's no other metric. So if you win by spamming projectiles, it's exactly the same as winning by performing combos and outplaying your opponent, there's no direct feedback from the game besides "you win" that motivated you to learn more complicated stuff.
It's a problem with the feedback loop of the games themselves. Having a community fixes most if not all those problems, but most casual players just pick the game, have a few matches were they had no chance to win, and drop the game. That's the most difficult barrier of entry for any kind of game,
There is definitely progression in fighting games even from loss to loss, but the games don't show it to you. If fighting games implemented a system where it could give you medals or a better score for things like blocking overheads, anti-airs, hitting combos, opening up your opponent, etc. this would be fixed. Then instead of the player having to look over their replays to see how well they did they can look at the analysis by the game, and would get a more clear sense of progression. I personally don't need this, I already can understand when I improve in certain areas of my gameplay but I imagine this would be really helpful for newer players.
@@8Kazuja8 You have to be careful that trying to accomplish these things doesn't run counter to learning to play the game well, but when done right it's awesome.
Speaking from experience with Quake Champions, the challenges that game gives generally guide the player towards doing the stuff that helps them win, like picking up major health/armour items or doing combo kills to shorten the fights for them, not to mention that Quake has had a medal system for all sorts of things since Quake 3. Hit two railgun shots without missing or dying, have a medal; deal 1000 damage without dying, have a medal; pick up a major health/armour item the second it becomes available, medal. I'll grant that the game also has deathmatch and team deathmatch as its main modes, rather than duels, but the medals and challenges are still a useful way to get recognizable small wins even when losing.
I think the skill-gap is present in every competitive game, but I think other games have certain things that make it less painful for beginners to overcome. The first one is size of the playerbase and matchmaking, generally the games they listed have a bigger player pool so generally the lower tiers are better populated meaning generally closer matches in terms of skill difference. The second and arguably the biggest reason for "skill-gate" is the fact that in terms of design the learning curve in fighting games is way way steeper then in other competitive games. I think input controls are a big part of it, for example I never played Siege but I feel my hand-eye coordination from other shooters would help me out in the beginning a lot. Fighting games on the other hand require a specific type of skill which is only present in fighting games (for the most part), and once you learn one fighting game those skills can be for the most part translated to other fighting games. So the difference between complete noob -> average player is in my opinion bigger in fighting games, since the noob has close to 0% to win.
Clicked here to watch a video about fighting games, got a lecture about how brutal Tarcov is while playing Tarcov. Love this channel 😂
“Drugs are bad;”
-Sajam
He is not wrong though...
I don't get Sajam's "fighting games are easy" crusade. Like, yeah, we know.
It's just that they're boring to new players since they can't do anything cool before hitting the lab for hours. Shooters are much easier to get into: even if you're just starting out you'll get a couple of kills and you'll have some fun.
But of course, whatever game you're playing, you'll get stomped by much more experienced players
@@DXYS95 you dont have to know the intricacies of every gun and map to play COD, and you dont need to know max damage combos to play fighters. Plenty of fun can be had in fighters by learning some basic combos and special moves. Ppl aren't so dumb that they cant accomplish that. I, like sajam, refuse to believe something so cynical.
Most people have panic atacks when they play fighting games, most cant control button mashin and end up losing even whem they toght they are doing what is requiered.
Thats me, although i think ive gotten better at controling myself and my fingers while playing
“The only way to get past that is to continue playing the game and get used to it.”
Man I *wish* people could get over the newbie hump in fighting games by just continuing to play. Over the years I've started various playgroups and locals for titles like TT2, T7, Skullgirls, DFC, SFV and DBFZ. I’ve also set events and playgroups up for CCGs, RTS games and MOBAs (no FPS or battle royale). I’ve taught dozens of people how to play, with mixed success. Some ended up sticking with the genre and becoming great players, but most hit the same wall and quit shortly after. It’s a tale as old as time for me at this point.
Newbies don't quit because they have to "keep playing the game". They quit because they have to STOP playing the game and grind in training mode, in order to keep up with the other players who happen to like and enjoy grinding. It is just an inevitable fact of life that training mode gives a completely different experience to playing fighting games, and the people who eventually come out the other end of the newbie hump are people whose personalities happen to involve enjoying *BOTH* training mode and the real game *OR* they love the real game so much they can power through the training mode hump through sheer force of will.
The only local I’ve started that is still going strong is DBFZ and I am sure it’s in no small part thanks to that game requiring minimal training mode grinding.
“Oh there’s a lot of people here. I’m dead. BACK INTO THE QUEUE.”
I’ve emphasized the important aspect here. You play, you lose, you play again but now you have a little clue that says “don’t do that again” to maybe make your next run better. Imagine the same scenario playing out in a fighting game.
“Oh I dropped my combo. I’m dead. BACK TO TRAINING MODE FOR A COUPLE HOURS/DAYS/WEEKS UNTIL I CAN GET THIS COMBO DOWN.”
That’s an important point in time there. Every time the player has to stop playing the game to do something else, is a time where they may decide to quit for good. Fighting games are *constantly* requiring players to go back to training mode and lab some combo/setup or whatever.
FWIW paper CCGs have a similar problem. Everyone starts out having fun, then one hardcore player orders a $300 tournament-winning deck from online and shortly afterwards it's an arms-race. Most players who don't want to drop a couple hundred bucks on the hobby end up quitting. Luckily digital CCGs don't have as this problem to the same extent because you can earn cards by playing.
This is super important! I follow Cod YTers and a couple of them have aiming drills they run through at the start of a new Cod game. These drills are just muscle memory grinding but YOU ARE STILL PLAYING THE GAME just shooting bots instead of other players. I really struggle with fighting games for this reason because the training room bores me to death and most times I walked in, I felt so aimless as to what to do to help me get better. It's why I have 4 fighting games gathering dust in my Steam library. I always gather the courage to try again but between the stomps, harsh atmosphere, and the boredom of the training room. I just cannot stick with it.
@@KingLeone201 I enjoy training mode myself and consider it an important part of the fighting game experience, but for better or worse most people I teach fighting games to say the same thing when they are in training mode. "When can I get back to playing the game?" "How much training mode do I have to do before I can start playing again?"
It's a little funny (but not wrong) that you bring up DBFZ as a game with little training room input, when there are a fair number of people who pretty much exclusively play Dragon Ball in the training room. Lab/tech monsters rarely get bored just going through all possible team and assist configurations, not to mention finding game breaking stuff. You even get the sense some of them are the opposite of your example, forcing themselves to play others just to make use of their tech!
"man oh man"
Right when I heard that. I knew this was gonna be good. Praise the editor.
Me and my buddy tried a MOBA (smite) together years ago. We picked someone who we each thought looked cool and we jumped in. We got demolished repeatedly. Once we finally figured out what the fuck the shop was and how moves work, we were confused why I did way more damage than my buddy and he brushed it off as "well I guess your just better," and he bounced off the game.
After like a week of playing it turns out he was playing a guardian (the tank role designed to not do damage lmao) and we never noticed or knew what that meant. Point is it sucks that he bounced off of a game because he didn't understand it.
Good onboarding is essential to player retention. Some devs need to wake up and realize that.
the game didn't have a tutorial? what a fucking joke lmao
I've had the opposite experience described at the end; my opponent didn't say hi, didn't say good luck, didnt say gg, just beat my ass and fist bumped and went on with this life, it was unreal
These comments also reveal that no matter how simplified you make a game, people will complain about this shit. You bet your ass that when Tetris 99 was popping off, people were saying “God all these tryhard no-lifers are ruining my Tetris experience”. You cannot make a game that has multiplayer simple enough to stop people from saying “There’s no point to playing, everyone is better than me, this game sucks.”
People don't play for fun, they play to win. But funny enough, they refuse to take the time to improve and achieve their endeavors. Naturally the end up in Fat Bastard's vicious cycle " I'm unhappy because I eat, and I eat because I'm unhappy". They're just looking for something or someone to blame for their own shortcomings. This is coming from a player that is average at best.
You need a path forward. Much as trolly they can be, but imagine Dark Souls with no comments. You would just die and die again, think everything was a gotcha moment BS game. Why would you go anywhere unless you read "great chest ahead"
People will learn if taught or are given options, but you need to have these tools in regular play, not practice mode.
Fighting game devs really need to design a game that doesn't require a practice mode.
Yup, the nature of competitive games is that for somebody to feel like they're winning, someone else has to be losing. As much as some games try to sugarcoat losing by trying to make losing fun or engaging in some way; at the end of the day you gotta learn to just take the L. Which is a very hard lesson for many people.
@@seokkyunhong8812 That’s a line that you really need to be careful about crossing. I’m all for teaching new players in a way to make sure that they walk out of a game learning something, but not without practice mode. If devs take a route like that, then their teaching methods will just become hand-holding, which is a terrible thing to do in a fighting game IMO. We already had an age where there was no training mode, and look how better off we are now with it. Training modes serve a larger purpose than to go practice an input or your combos. That’s where people go to lab their characters and learn tech that the game does not teach you. Not having a training mode is how you contribute to a skill-gated game. Imagine losing a game and the game tells you after, “use your anti air”, but you lost the ability to go to training and work on your anti airs. That’d be horrible when you get to advanced tech
7:05 "at the end of the day, tarkov is still an FPS so it make it easy to understand than a fighting game for most player"
that is actually super true, most big game nowadays are FPS, and most people have lot's and lot's of time in FPS, they already are used to aim, movement, how to press buttons and even positioning, even if those things are a little different from game to game. and people can play FPS at a safe environment where they can win a lot, the single player campaign
in fighting game, you need to put you face to someone beat to learn how to move properly, and most of times, the single player of it will not teach you how to do that, since the IA is not that good.
most people don't know movement, spacing, press buttons so your special can go out, and a lot of basic things in fighting games
it is harder, but not because it is a more complex game, it is harder because people don't play it for single player, and never really gets used to all it's mechanics in a safe environment, and people that want to learn, REALLY need to learn from the most basic thing possible, like walking, and I'm not talking about positioning, I'm talking about how to walk properly
I've already coined a term for that state of FG's.
I named it, and the era post 2002 when Capcom took it's ball and went home, the WASTELAND.
It dawned on me in 2006, while looking/playing Hokuto No Ken at Planet Zero in Houston. The only people who were playing it, and other FG's around that time, were all killers. We were literally the roving gangs of HNK, roaming either in the arcades, or ruining online rooms for games.
We bent the games in ways that they DEF weren't supposed to be bent, and made newcomers regret ever even looking at the game.
What a time to be alive.
I think the big thing that separates the FPS learning curve from fighting game learning curves is just that en masse, you are statistically more likely to have become proficient in a shooter over a fighting game. Because of this, you can take the knowledge you have gained from babies first fps and move it to the next one. Most people don't even hit proficiency in a fighting game, so they struggle in all of them.
Facts. You know one COD, you know them all.
I think a lot of these takes end up coming down to 'core control scheme' too. FPS games, while individually having their own unique mechanics, all work off the exact same aim 'n shoot mechanics and so if you're a god at one FPS game, if you pick up another you only really need to learn that game's extra mechanics and will probably be able to coast your way through stuff. If you learn one Moba, you generally speaking know how to control any moba. It's the genre hop that hits people the hardest because you both have to learn the mechanics specific to that game, but also just how to control that genre of game in general.
I feel like FPS and 3rd Person games like some RPGs tend to be the easiest to pick up because the WSAD + Mouse Aim is such a universally used scheme that people can pick it up much more intuitively, where as things like fighting games, strategy games, mobas, more niche games like rocket league etc all have such a drastically different control scheme from that 'baseline' that it's a way bigger hurdle for new players to have to leap before they can even begin to learn the mechanics of that game specifically.
Honestly I was just thinking about this tonight when I was trying to learn Guilty Gear, thinking it's too complex for me to learn. This video however made me realize and remember that I put 2,000+ hours into Dota 2 (still wasn't great but I feel like that game's even crazier in terms of knowledge and practice required than a FG) and almost a thousand into TF2, however I had a blast doing so and learning it, and I should be trying to apply that same learning by playing and enjoying it along the way to fighting games.
To me, I recently realized that in every other competitive genre besides fighting games, I'm either pretty okay or just really really bad. I've gotten into League last year solely because of the League fighter, and at some point I almost just gave up because I thought I would always stay at the same mediocre skill level no matter what. In contrast, I picked up Tekken 7 literally three days ago and I already feel like I have a pretty good understanding of how the game works, without even looking at a tutorial. I can understand being intimidated by the climb to get good at fighting games, but you can't just claim that any other game doesn't have that exact same process.
My FG hot take: I just wish DBFZ had rollback so I could improve and not play 6-10f connections constantly... :(
That take is as cold as the vast emptiness of space. We all feel that way.
also if only wasn't 78% goku's.... if only...
@@M4TTYN Understandable when the roster itself is 78% goku.
Look for people to play against in your region. You don't have to go outside and literally ask people, but go onto the Dbfz Subreddits. They have threads for people who want to play online with people from similar regions. You might find an awesome training partner who is relatively close to you so you guys have a good connection.
The fact that I'm brazilian gives me the ability to destroy all of that "fighting games are impossible" bullshit
The amount of people I know who don't know jack shit about frame data, neutral, etc but still fuck shit up in KoF is unreal.
Granted, they're not pro level or anything, but they banged rocks together for years in a game that's not even in their native language, and had fun doing it
That's the point for me. I tried playing card games, and never got into it. I always lost, and when I won, it felt hollow. I was constantly waiting for the time I got good so I could have fun.
If learning the game isn't fun, just give up. Getting good won't make the experience better, it will just turn you into a sour motherfucker, like many League players I know.
what does being Brazilian have to do with any of this?
I used to play Brawlhalla with a friend because it had a 2v2 competitive mode and we had a blast trying to climb the ladder in that. It's not the first kind of fighting game to come to mind but the co-op is there and brought me and my friend a lot closer.
Usually come here for fighting games, very surprising for you to talk about my bnb (Tarkov) to me. I think they both have the same priniciple where knowledge and persistence are going do outdo cross-game skill in the long run.
Your whole small talk about the knowledge gaps at the end are spot on and I really appreciate that you bother to point out that most of the knowledge *doesn't even come from combat*. I have several friends who would quit because shit is confusing and nothing is explained without someone around tk guide them. It's not just a fighter problem. Games are just difficult in some cases
I was really interested in Tarkov a while ago. So much about the idea of slowly gathering loot and gearing up in a hostile environment sounded good, but I decided against getting it. Partly because it was in early access, but mostly because I know that my gaming habits have me "grazing" from game to game and suddenly dropping games for weeks, months, or sometimes years at a time. I wouldn't be able to keep my skills, map, or system knowledge sharp enough to do anything other than get chewed up all the time. Fighting games at least have an arcade mode I can screw around in.
@@Thalanox Coming back to this 9 months later I can say in confidence that was a wise decision as at 2000+ hours Ive finally come to a point where Im at peace having dropped the game. The game still is in development hell and the direction is seemingly floundering.
That aside, I'd say if you're the variety type where you switch consistently its hard to keep up in a lot of games- which I think pleads to the necessity of stuff like arcade modes, alternative minigames, trials; things that can let the player learn at a pace they're comfortable with as it's overall beneficial to player interest and replay value. Example; having moved over to Strive for a decent portion of time since release; I easily spend 2x as much time labbing than opposed to laddering because I genuinely just find it enjoyable to mindlessly hit combos sometimes; and as a result of having an engaging lab experience, I've enjoyed a lot more of my interaction with the game as opposed to blind laddering since day 1 (though granted i have fighters experience).
tldr the "at least fighters have an arcade mode" hits home really hard.
I thought he was talking about Escape From Tarkov
Lol he was
I see a lot of comments saying how niche fighters are, I want detective sajam to look into why that is.
The explanation of Infil looting a body in PUBG reminds me of when I played Magic in HS with a bunch of friends who were all really experienced players and I always held up our drafts because I was the only one who had to read all the cards to figure out what they did lol
Once again, another top tier thumbnail
I disagree that you can't play against others with a friend. Sure not at the same time, but some of my favorite memories are taking turns playing randoms with a friend in SF4
I think I had similar experiences with passing the pad and respect it, but it would be neat to get more co-op modes even in moderation.
SF has actually had co-op in arcade mode for select games, but to keep the scope small... Perhaps some sort of recreation of that baton pass can exist online with rooms and spectating.
Besides that Granblue has a co-op campaign and Smash is Smash.
The main reason why FG are nieche is because how people think playing them feels
Shooters: point Click kill
Adventure: do whatever tf you want
Moba: click move click kill level up
Rougelikes: dont get hit
FG: DO A FUCKING CHEAT CODE TO DO DAMAGE
Im saying is that Fighting games have a lack of new players because of how peoples peespective of them.
The only solutions ive come up is market the shit out of it and/or have so much collabs outside the FG genre your bound to get the jackpot
"Oh ball go fast, me hit ball" Felt that in my soul
As someone new to fighting games, I will say that I get more satisfaction when improving in a fighting game. I have no one to blame but myself when I lose, but when I win it feels hella good.
i love to hear this
Dang, meanwhile I haven’t won a game in +R in 2 weeks and I’m still having fun.
The slower pace of +R makes it easier to win neutral at least once a set and see what you can do. It probably makes it easier to learn.
@Lilgav I misphrased; I meant the health bars are bigger, essentially.
this, T7 online i ran into a KR player got my ass washed was lil tilted they win quit but I was like damn good shit GG and kept it moving if only majority did that and also didn't plug like rank don't mean shit bro glad GG Strive don't got a rank system it in fighting games is kinda pointless.
but mainly all gotta do that LAN tech, I did prnt.sc/wiqfm2 :) and don't let the salt talk for you always say GG help new players and pass the Core-A-gaming's videos.
Dang same my dude
This happened to me when I recently got back into KI. I ended up playing what felt like 20 or so games with one guy where I was basically getting destroyed each time. What's cool though is once we were around game 15 I could actually feel and see myself adapting to my opponent's playstyle and it was an amazing feeling. Came close to actually winning a few times. Then they left with me wanting more. It was an odd yet cool feeling though actually seeing myself adapting to my opponent. I've played fighting games for as long as I can remember but I never felt a feeling like that before.
Fighting games are not THE hardes genre but definitely one of the hardest games. What i've noticed in my experience with fps, moba, cards games is that in about 6 months you get the hang of the game but in fg the learning curve is a lot steeper for various reasons. Also the difference between a new player and a beginner in fg is huge. Also in fps, card games and moba luck is a thing. In fg an experienced player will never lose to a beginner if he is playing seriously.
I think the main reason that people think fighting games are harder than most other genres is that it doesn't pat you on the back for the small victory's. Other games and other players do in most other games. The morale boost you get from those is what help gives hope and motivates you to continue to play.
I just started playing Rocket league just cause I needed something new outside of Dbfz. And hearing your take on the veteran players was hilarious 😂.
I play every genre of games. Fighting games are my favorite because they are the most difficult. It adds value and replayability like no other genre.
Yes, all competitive games have a skill barrier to get into, but FGC style stuff suffers from two issues
#1 the lack of a new playerbase which results in more often than not, tons of smurfing involved
#2 the absolute lack of agency that a new player has in fighting games versus any other genre
A new player can literally have the ability to play 100% taken away from them at such a point that they can't even press buttons(or so it will seem to them)
Tarkov? You might walk around. Find something new. You can pick a new direction. Maybe get some new loot. Maybe, if lucky, kill some stuff
Siege? You might get a kill out of luck. You might find something cool. You get to play with different characters and experience what they can do.
Fighting games? The feedback is immediately violent with a "you don't know what you're doing". Then, upon googling, it's a "learn the basics." make sure you can nail your motions. Block more.
But it still isn't enough. It then quickly comes to "learn combos. practice." then that practice turns into more practice, turns into more practice, turns into studying stuff like framedata, matchups, but even after that, then the reflexes just aren't there. Still getting bodied. Back to the practice board, or practicing through matches, which involves consistently losing.
Heck, even rats will stop playing if they don't win 3/10 times. ( See reference study : projectauthenticity.org/2017/11/06/the-surprising-moral-dimension-of-fights-between-rats-strong-rats-have-to-let-their-weaker-opponent-win-30-percent-of-the-time-if-they-dont/#:~:text=When%20two%20rats%20fight%20it's%20not%20always%20the%20biggest%20rat%20that%20wins.&text=It's%20the%20smaller%20rat%20that,over%20for%20both%20of%20them. )
That's about when people decide if they want to go in deeper or not. "other games have barriers to entry, too", sure, but the barrier to entry for other games is kind of like sticking your hand through a bubble. You can't get it all the way in, but you might touch something. The barrier of entry to the FGC is a blender designed to rip human arms off.
Sajam, you have the best fucking takes on the planet man. Love it.
I recently started playing Unist. and yeah the playerbase is on the low side and most opponents have 1000+ matches, BUT the tutorial is pretty complete. Even teaching you gameplan per characters and neutral strategies, okis and post knockdown setups. so even with my limited knowledge of the game, I managed to steal some games from stronger players and even had a ton of fun.
All I got from this is that Flintstones Rocket League needs to exist
I don't think people are comfortable sucking at something for awhile before they can start to see improvement.
"Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something."
It's really hard to continue playing a game when it constantly tells you how you're super shit at it.
-Me: reads thumbnail...
-Also me: Oh so its a UMvC3 video
I think you're exactly right, the concept of skill gated games as they are describing it can apply to any game as long as it's not brand new, and even if it's brand new, if it's not an entirely new franchise (with new mechanics no one has experience with) the players with experience from the previous iterations already have a massive advantage, rocket league being an example where Kronovi got popular for being really good from the start of Rocket League because he played
Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, Psyonix's previous game.
I think the exact same thing happens in a lot of the popular fighting games but over a bigger number of games, which makes the "skill gate" effect feel worse.
i think the truth is fighting games violently scream in your face that you're trash, while most other competitive games are team games, meaning you can blame your shortcomings on other people. Not being reminded constantly with no doubt that you're incompetent goes a long way to keep someone playing a game.
I'm not trying to start a career in gaming. All I want to do is boot up a game, get some adrenaline boost after work. So there really is little point for me to play games with huge skill gaps.
You can just beat up bots on easier difficulties
I think there is also a small detail not mentioned here. Which is "skill" carry over. If we take mmos and mobas and shooters some of the skills like predicting movement or aiming which you learned in one game can help you in another one once you just get a bit used to it. Where if we take fighting games a lot of skills that you learn for those are pretty much unique to fighting games. Which means someone new coming to fgs starts mostly from zero, but if you come into mobas from mmo then you already have something that can help you at least a tiny bit close the gab and give you some fighting chance. I still agree with the take that games no matter what genre are difficult and its not just fgs that are hard.
I like to imagine the reason people (myself included sometimes) find fighting games to be that huge of a challenge are 1. Fighting games being in such a different genre that they have no baseline to reference from (e.g. an FPS player going from Warzone to EFT instead of Warzone to LoL) and don’t understand how much time they’ve invested in their more played genres. They don’t realize just how intimate their knowledge is of a game and how that reflects the time spent playing it, and 2. There are many different ways of determining “success” in other games that don’t rely on your ability to personally perceive improvement. Tarkov is really difficult, but you can find “success” without purposefully seeking out gunfights and still level up/make a bunch of cash. In CoD you might have a low KD/R but maybe you got that killstreak that one time, or upgraded a weapon you’re using. Stuff like that. Most people will have a difficult time treating fighting games as a process instead of a simple win/lose scenario. In your other video you mentioned being like “dang I really can’t tech dragon rushes imma focus on that” and *bam* you’ve improved on that, but this alone won’t make the game go “wow good job he’s a concrete reward”, instead it’ll just better your chances at success. Doesn’t give that instant gratification kind of success. Well for these kinds of people anyway
So to be clear, and I'm not saying this applies to *you* . But what you're saying is that people need external validation?
Fighting game players really love to think fighting games are so hard. It’s like a badge of honor. Like some kid who decides he likes black metal and posts constantly about how hard to get into black metal is.
I have interacted with these kinds of people as a fan of both, it's not fun.
Lol K
In a battle royale, it's completely brainless to just run around, it's completely brainless to just find a gun and just with that you'll usually have enough shit to have a firefight. You'll probably get only like 0-2 kills per game for your first several games, but each game it feels like you're progressing. In a fighting game, if you're completely lost, you stay completely lost unless you have a really solid approach to learning fighting games specifically.
It's completely brainless to play Sol in guilty gear and if you're fighting people at a low level it's so easy to overwhelm them by hitting FS over and over.
The reason fighting games feel harder than other games to me is the different hurdles players first face. For people used to the mouse and keyboard, the first hurdle in others games is knowledge. Although the concept of fighting games is easy to understand, the first hurdle is execution (motions, timing, etc). While knowledge can be gained via guides and watching gameplay, execution requires playtime. And, it's harder to put in time when you can't do the moves, can't co-op with friends, etc.
3:22 Had us in the first half not gonna lie
"You can't go into a fighting game together with a friend".
SFxT and DBFZ: Are we jokes to you?
EDIT: Smash technically has co-op too. But smash community probably won't play teams on average.
DBFZ’s party mode is an amazing idea and it’s definitely a no-brainer for team-based fighting games. TBH, I believe all team-based fighters should have a mode like that. However, the game’s net-code can’t handle it. A shame, really.
Yes actually.
SFxT was bad and DBFZ party mode requires too many hoops.
@@seokkyunhong8812 SFxT was actually co-op was actually good. Just because its the meme to hate SFxT doesn't mean that every feature about it was bad.
Another day, another reason why SFxT was ahead of its time.
@@EnderTitan Co-op in team fighters have to be built with it in mind, which is why I think SFxT co-op was good.
The only game they can kinda just throw it in there without thinking about it is KOF, since there is no tagging or on the fly decisoin making regarding the other character
I think the most off-putting thing about fighting games for the general population is not the difficult, but the way you learn. Not a lot of people like playing against bots, let alone spend countless hours against a motionless dummy to learn the basics of ONE character.
Devs should make a greater effort at streamlining learning the game. Making it more fun and intuitive, not easier.
Then don’t. Go online.
Bro, the flinstone skit there had me dying 😂 😂 🤣
fantastic topic and video!
I feel like I'm the only person on the planet that loves getting stomped by better players. How else do you learn new cool stuff?
Me too
that's only cool if you have a choice, if your only training partners are guys who 20-0 you every time, things can get quite frustrating. You learned something cool and wanna try it? Doubt that you could do that. That's all ofc is a good experience, but having to play same 3 dudes in a fg is super not cool
It’s really difficult to learn from getting stomped out. Improvement is gradual so you get the most improvement through close loses against people slightly better than you.
Im dont mind getting stomped but why people love to tea bag and send messages to people they clearly know are way worse?
I used to think the same thing. And then i played Skullgirls.
i think where you're faltering here is not appreciating the lack of cross-genre knowledge needed to excel in fighting games
you've said this before about fighting games, when you learn one pretty well you can pick up another one and figure things out well enough because of your previously acquired mastery. this works for other genres, too. so if you learn one shooter, like quake or counter-strike or some shit, you more or less know how to move, how to navigate levels or areas, how to manage ammunition, all that shit. tarkov is a hard fucking games but 99% of people drawn to it already know how to shoot, have already played a survival game, all that shit, and dont have to struggle with the utter basics of getting around and fighting, they can worry about the higher level concepts without worrying about HOW to kill an opponent
now imagine a gamer who has never played a shooter in their lives trying to pick up tarkov. hell, imagine them trying to learn quake or CS. they would struggle and flounder in shooters the same way people struggle and flounder when they first pick up a fighter. but what are the odds that someone who plays a lot of games has NEVER played a shooter before? same goes with MOBAs (which attracted RTS players when they were new who knew roughly how to play). this is the natural advantage a new shooter or moba has, everyone more or less knows how to get started. in a fighting game people struggle to fucking move their character becasue there's a ravenous opponent 2 feet away who wants to punish every tiny mistake they make and the game sure isnt telling them anything about what's going wrong for them
fighting games also do a lot of unique stuff, like motion inputs (the most complicated MI you'll find in a fps is something like the dodge mechanic in vermintide (direction + space bar)), which dont cross over to other genres, meaning those players dont have experience with those mechanics the same way they have experience rounding a corner with their gun at roughly head level and scrutinizing foreground and background looking for a hitbox to shoot
fighting games are not uniquely difficult, they're just uniquely unique and dont have enough crossover with other genres for people to know what's up when a round starts in their very first match . if they played a beat em up or sidescrolling platformer (who even plays those really? they're not that popular, or at least not as popular as shooters or mobas) you might not be completely disoriented and will know how to move kinda, but very few thigns prepare you for getting whiff-punished, meatied, and combo'd to death in 15 seconds flat. especially the game, the game wont prepare you for shit most of the time and defintely wont give you any useful stats or feedback on how to get better
A good point!
"the most complicated MI you'll find in a fps is something like the dodge mechanic in vermintide (direction + space bar)"
I mean, I would argue that effective rocket jumping is a motion input and it's WAY harder than most fighting game inputs I've seen.
@@brocksteele7475 sure. that and bunny-hopping would be good counter-examples. but you dont need these skills to pick up one of these games and have fun or even get proficient, they're advanced techniques for when you wanna start getting real sweaty
The outros are always gold.
the battle royale analogy he used is 100% correct, as someone who literally never plays royale or fps games when i play apex with my friends who are rank 300 or whatever and know what all the weapons do, even landing a shot on a guy before their whole squad takes me out is a victory for me lol.
there’s nothing inherent to fighting games that makes them significantly harder than other competitive genres, its just that most average or casual players are often turned away by a games bad online, poor in game resources to teach a player even the most basic functions, or just this pervasive idea amongst fighting game fans that theyre so much more difficult than any other genre
Side point from the "Skill gate" argument. I wonder what's your opinion on the feedback loop from fighting games compared to other players. I feel overall the game mechanics are not great at making the player learn something without them intending to do so. IMO This matters to me because if you can't project or predict what your path to improvement looks like, you're probably not going to go through it or stick around. I have to give examples from other genres here for this to make sense.
- In an FPS, the individual skill of aiming the gun is also a feedback mechanism in game. If you miss your target, it'll show you where you missed because you are aiming there.
- In a racing game, driving a tight gap will give you better information on what you did wrong. If you hit a wall to the left, you need to drive further right, etc. Replace the wall with the ball if talking about rocket league.
- A game like DDR will show you how mistimed you were on the notes even if you hit them. Either way you will see an animation play on screen for when you pressed the input and that should tell you if you were too early or too late.
But the feedback in fighting games is often not exactly the exact action the player is doing. To learn something from the feedback, you often need to pre-emptively know something about the system. Here are 2 examples :
- If you are trying to practice things relating to charge specials, there's not much of a visual feedback. Either the move comes out, or it doesn't.
- Let's say you try to practice links. It's really useful to know that if you press too early, nothing comes out and if you press too late, the combo drops.
I think in both these examples, the intention from the player and the feedback in game are further apart than the ones given in the other genres. As in the gameplay and feedback both overlap much more. It's not that fighting games doesn't do this, it's that they don't do it often as part of their core loop. Elphelt rifle stance is identical to the FPS example, Eltnum reloading her gun visually works like the DDR example as well.
I don't think the process of intending to learn is harder for fighters. What I'm saying is that their framing is often not leading the player to learn something without intending to do so. These learning steps rely more on the player deciding to learn rather than being led to it. I'm not talking about being godlike at the game, i'm talking about having a better idea of where there's room for improvement. There's a lot more of this that doesn't relate just to feedback given in game : Core gameplay loop, guiding principles, room for the player to experiment without high interaction. All of it limiting potential engagement with the genre. To what extent, I don't know. But I feel this is what differs the most from our genre Vs. Others
Yeah, this is the thing about like, learning to aim or some shit. Aiming is hard. Harder than Dragon Punches. But people feel like they can "sorta" aim and it shows them how far off they were. Your gun will never outright fail to shoot...well unless you need to reload, but that's a simple action, which you have to keep in your mind but it's not hard to do on its own.
Fighting game devices are a issue with fighting games a lot of newbies believe you need a arcade stick to be good. That hinders people from even trying out games. Even tho controllers are perfectly fine and in fact modern players use controllers more often. The arcade stick stigma just discourages people I think.
Try doing 360 motions on a d-pad and tell me its as easy as doing them on stick. Your full of it. Lots of motions are just done easier, faster, smoother, and with more accuracy on stick. And yes i know the controller has a stick but because you cant grip it the way your hand grips a real fight stick it slides and can cause mis-inputs.
@@ethangonzalez9265 I mean I use both. I don’t care what’s easier or harder. I’m speaking for other people as in brand new players THINKING about trying a fighting game. You hear it all the time they think stick is easier and they don’t own a stick just a controller so they just play CoD instead of a fighting game
@@ZarelidT Yes they do think stick is easier, because it actually is. You can see this even on the controller as the joystick is easier to use than the dpad for many motions. and a stick works even better because you can manipulate it better because you can grip it.
@@ethangonzalez9265 I mean for some things stick is easier for for some things controller is easier for. It’s honestly a preference it’s not FACT sticks are easier or else half of the top SF or DBFZ players wouldn’t be as high rank as they are. The message of needing a stick to be good is the issue which was what my initial post was about.
@@ZarelidT It absolutely is a fact. You simply have more control over a stick than a d-pad or a thumbstick. Why do you think fighting games have been adapted to work better on controllers as time has passed ? Especially for mortal kombat? Its not coincidence. A fight stick is generally with a steeper learning curve to use but also provides more accuracy and dexterity by virtue of being larger.
Also your analogy makes no sense. Its harder to driver stick than it is to drive auto but all the top drivers are stick. By your logic they would all be auto. but it doesnt work that way. People dont always use whatever is easiest, sometimes they use what gives them more control, accuracy, or dexterity.
Im well aware what your initial post is about, you edited it several times to make it reflect something different. But my point remains the same. Have a nice day.
I think it's that in FPS games or MOBAs there are ways to lean into randomness or luck or a team element to feel like you're succeeding. In fighting games, luck is responsible for a much smaller amount of wins.
So gamers encounter more FPS games or MOBAs or other competitive genres and are able to have this feeling of success, and these games have skills that transfer (identifying a good camping or grenade spam spot, how to creep farm and the basics of team fights) so new FPS games and new MOBAs seem less scary.
There's a competency floor for fighting games and combo construction that most players won't casually encounter playing with their friends, and when you play against someone who has gotten above that floor without playing a tutorial you just get bodied.
i love fighting games but i think the main difference between them and other competitive games is the fact that you need practice and experience to be fully in control of your character. when i first started playing traditional fighters (i played melee and project m before) i started with guilty gear, and i found it uniquely frustrating not being able to control and use my character in the way they were intended.
this was different from when i was learning to play halo, in which i felt as if i had control of what i was doing but i just wasn't doing anything right. it was different because even when i won, my lack of control over my character, since i was basically button-mashing, made it feel as if i was winning via luck and made it difficult to determine what part of my gameplay was working and what part needed to be improved.
fighting games are also very fast-paced compared to shooters like halo, and you are constantly engaged with your opponent rather than running around a map and occasionally getting into fights. for a beginner who can't mentally filter all the information being thrown at them, it's difficult to make executive decisions based on past experience since there is no downtime, and even when you manage to do so, it can be a crapshoot as to whether your fingers permit you to execute the strategy you've come up with. i find this uniquely frustrating because when you die in a game like halo, it's relatively easy for the player to pin down the MAJORITY of what went wrong ("i tried to click on the guy's head and missed", "i went in front of a camping spot and got sniped", "i didnt know where the rocket launcher was on this map and this guy did"), whereas i remember wondering after playing over a hundred total hours of various fighting games how people even find combos and how to properly practice executing them.
considering all these things, the main issue i find that i've rarely heard anyone else bring up is that, in my experience, it's difficult to manage expectations of yourself in fighting games and understand what exactly you need to do to get better and what short-term goals you should set. the classic problem is when scrubs pick up a new game, look up a tutorial for a character on youtube, and see a 20-hit BnB combo that they could never hope to do, and they quit. in this situation, they don't know things like...
- high-level players are limited by execution as well
- a BnB punish combo is good to know but doesn't always come up very often, depending on the game, and you'd be better off just learning how to land single hits from your normals first
- there's almost certainly a much easier version of this combo that's almost as good, and it's OKAY to do the easier version
most other video games deliberately make it only as difficult as it absolutely has to be to control your character, and execution is oftentimes something a new player will be approaching for the first time. they have never had to develop this skill before, since most games of other genres with difficult-to-execute moves (such as flickshotting or combo heroes in mobas, etc) are optional and more of a playstyle thing. when you fail at execution, it's therefore very easy to feel like you're failing at the absolute basics, indicating this genre is not within your skillset to tackle.
tl;dr: i think execution difficulty is the main thing, although not so much the execution itself but how to think about it, since no other game genres incorporate it in quite the same way fighting games do. it's very easy to feel like it's something you should automatically be able to do, and the games themselves do little or nothing to tell players how they should go about learning it or what goals to set for themselves in that area. combo trials are a start, but i think fighting games need to do more to direct the player away from complicated combos and towards normals and fundamentals.
This is because FGs are so niche that people discussing the topic don't even know about them. Kapp
"This is because FGs are so niche"
Tekken 7 sold how many copies? DBFZ sold how many copies (usual does well cause DBZ but still) but melty blood and UNIST and then guilty gear *insert MK*
well okay, most in this tread prob ain't know the jargon and stuff even the known players and stream monsters but I hope most in that thread pick up T7, UNIST, GG +R or Fighting EX Layer and watch a few core-A-gaming videos to hopefully don't get a Aris video *peep his stream* if he's live say a question and gets shot lmao but them the bricks.
@@M4TTYN That was pretty incoherent but I got the general idea. lol
sorry sajam but mobas have really easy execution, but theres so much little tips and information you have to know, that makes learning them hard
You know, I was listening to this and thinking, this describes both badminton and competitive cycling perfectly.
that tarkov/tekken bit was fucking smooth. god you're sick with those
bad argument. health bars deploy in every game so all game are easy
Too many people focus on the popularity of fighting games, when that's not the point at all. Dig a little harder, you'll figure it out. Especially the idea behind, "fighting games are less popular so of course nobody brings them up" The entire video is spent discussing games with HUGE player bases with the exact same complaints that fighting games have.
Why are these complaints even a problem though? The people that want to play whatever game or genre do. The people that don't, find a reason not to. Why does it matter if people use "too hard" as their reason?
@@kinginthenorth1437 I think fgc players over-stating the barrier to entry of their games may discourage new players from getting into fighting games. They might think "damn fighting games look cool but it sounds like they're way too hard, I'll play a game I can handle instead." Even though, as Sajam argues, steep learning curves exist across most genres.
There IS a clear reason for why getting into fighting games (and MOBAS) is *more* difficult than other genres and that is *transferable skills*
Most of us started gaming with some sort of third or first person action game, GTA for example, and even if not 95% of us at one point have played a shooter, and for shooters, there are many transferable skills: Hand-to-eye coordination, Tracking, Flicking, Projectiles, Crosshair placement, Recoil management, Defending angles, Pushing angles, Movement etc etc.
I've put in 1kh into Siege, 500h into CSGO, 300h into Sandstorm, 200h into Apex, and idk how much into vsai Unreal 3 as a kid: If a new fps game came out tomorrow, chances are I'm going to be, more than competent at it.
Now, if tomorrow I decided to play a fighting game, how many of these skills will transfer? Hell, atleast w. MOBAS I would still have hand-to-eye coordination, but that's about it.
With fighting games you have to re-learn the fundamental skills of how to manoeuver your character from scratch. That within an of itself is a tall mountain to climb, and it doesn't even include any other skills that you need: Footsies, Pressure, Defense, RPS, Anti-airs etc etc.
Theyre giving the wrong complaint, the reason is they dont know. “Its hard to have fun” is closer to what they mean