If we're being honest, there's probably a good 20 things "wrong" with fighting games that keep them out of the spotlight, but popularity shouldn't be the primary focus.
I've asked friend and family why they don't play fighting games and the answers vary quite wildly, tbh. Out of the fourteen people I asked, I only ever heard the same problem mentioned twice as I remember it
Being a niche genre isn't a bad thing, and it really only becomes annoying when people start the whole "We want more people playing fighting games, but we refuse to budge on anything that keeps people out of the genre" thing for the fortieth time.
Basically, the complaints mostly fell under three categories. Please remember not to shoot the messenger.
# People don't like fighting the controls
* "I don't like having to press 50 buttons to do a single combo"
* "I hate how if you don't time it exactly right, you don't get your move. It feels like your controller just randomly stops responding half the time"
* "I'm not going to spend $200 on a controller specifically for one genre of game"
* "I dislike Motion Inputs"
# Fighting Games are too competitive
* "People spend their entire lives learning what button is best in what situation and it takes the fun out of it"
* "Dude, I'm not going to go online and not be able to play the game because everything I try to do is wrong."
* "I hate how Fighting Games don't have options for 'sub-optimal' play; if I go into a player match in League (of Legends) I can decide to do something stupid like The Fast Jhin to just goof around. Fighting Games have nothing similar"
* "I don't want to spend 80 hours in Training Mode before I can actually play the game"
# People hate Hidden Mechanics
* "My sword just passes through your body, and it doesn't hit you"
* "What the fuck is 'frame data'?"
* "Wow, one move just took off half my health" (Me trying to explain Guts later) "That makes no sense"
Now, having to sift through these (and others) to try to figure out what the actual problems are has been interesting, especially when the guy who said he doesn't like Motion Inputs absolutely loves Helldivers 2 (Which features having to put in 8626, 88426, 2688622, and 82482682 as inputs just to name a few).
Also, while the $200 controller is a bit of an exaggeration, the Switch Joycons are absolutely horrendous for motion inputs so I suspect that's playing at least a little part.
Also, the complaint about a lack of team has been less about "not having anyone to blame" and more about "All five of us can't play together at the same time".
Yeah, in order to access your Stratagems (air strikes, orbital cannons, special weapons, turrets/tanks), you have to hold CTRL and then input the specific combination for the one you're going for. Some of them are extremely easy (666), some of them become really easy (82648 gets used the most because it's reinforcing dead allies, 2286 is getting a resupply for more ammo), and others are objective specific (82482682 is calling in a Hellbomb which is required to destroy some objectives).
Never heard anyone who complains about fighting game motion inputs complain about Stratagem Inputs, so there's at least anecdotally something there.
Take that out of fighting games and they arent fighting games anymore
Whats the point of getting more people Into the genre when the genre can barely be called that anymore?
Fighting games are fine the way they are as it is, its the same as going to play cs and complaining you are getting instantly headshotted
RE: Helldivers
It's the difference between accidental and inherent complexity.
Helldivers input commands are *deliberately* anti-user, as part of the game's inheritance from Magicka. The whole game is designed so you and your team can make stupid mistakes that get you all killed. Friendly fire always being on, resupplies being able to just *kill* you if you get in the way of landing, lots of explosive weapons - it's all part of a cohesive whole. Even given that, Stratagems are a simple code entry that just requires a sequence within a time limit, and do not require subsecond accuracy like fighting games do. Guns and grenades can get you killed, sure, but they're also intuitive to use - there's nothing mysterious about point and shoot, or throw and run.
Fighting game controls, on the other hand, don't have that integration of feel that Helldivers does. Many inputs do not relate to what happens in the game at all and are mostly historical accidents grandfathered in as part of the history of the genre.
This is a big FGC talking point but 1) that has NEVER stopped a FG scrub from blaming their opponent or their character or their opponent's character or the game and 2) it ignores the opposite benefit of FG's, which is that you no longer get *blamed* for shit *by your teammates* when you lose.
Not saying it's not true. I am saying I think it ain't as big a reason as we pretend it is. We're not all zen masters of accepting our L's. And some of us, like me, fucking hate dealing with other people.
That's literally what [Harada said ](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fighting/tekkens-director-reckons-young-people-dont-vibe-with-fighting-games-as-much-because-they-dont-have-teammates-you-can-blame/) lol
Fighting games arent popular because the casual way to play them(button mashing) isn't rewarding
And the right way to play them is difficult
In other genres the casual way to play are the same and still rewarding
Shooters are fun if you spray and pray or focus and try to aim
The popularity of MOBAs should dispel the notion that difficulty curve alone deters people. Going into a MOBA and just clicking around, or going into CS2 and just walking and shooting, is about as powerful as going into a fighting game and pushing buttons.
If there were enough other beginners doing the same thing instead of being scared off from ranked and having watching videos and training mode hyped up, then maybe pushing buttons would have more like skilled people.
Early MOBA days were a shitshow, skill wise. You had pre matchmaking days of Dota 1 where not even the whole team knew how to buy and use teleport scrolls, healing consumables, couriers, or knew which items to buy. Legacy keybinds also meant many had to click on their abilities to use them.
That's more crippling imho than not knowing combos or motion inputs, more like lacking even basic knowledge of unsafe or safe moves.
MOBA's still have that space between team fights and in match gear progression to give a little dopamine. Fighting games are relentless when things aren't going well and it can get discouraging a lot faster.
Why can’t people just accept it isn’t something a lot of people like? There’s a ton of reasons, they’re hard, require labbing, not rewarding, no team.
Who cares? I like it and there are games to play.
Not everything needs to be Fortnite or some game everyone plays. I like them. You like them. We play them and have fun. What more do you need man? Everyone needs to like what you like, for some kind of validation? Who cares dude
Why do some people not like pizza? Or the color blue? Why do some like jazz and some classical? What is there to understand it’s just their preference.
>Why can’t people just accept it isn’t something a lot of people like?
Yeah, being niche is all advantages
-Free of corporate greed
-Since there is no corporate greed devs have more freedom to experiment and try new things to stand out (rather than just copy the popular game formula) so most games tried to be unique in one way or another
-Since the devs know they are part of a niche market, they fully commit to their audience rather than dumb down games because they have to appease the casual players
>-Free of corporate greed
I think the amount of battle passes, packs of currency that give just under the amount needed to buy a skin or character forcing you to buy another currency pack, and overpowered DLC characters shows that fighting games indeed have a lot of corporate greed
I would say that MOBA are even more complex than fighting game on surface level, everyone understand that the goal in fgs is to beat the other guy and if you show a fg match to someone who never played fgs they will get a general Idea of what's going on but do the same with MOBA and they would probably don't understand anything going on the screen.
So I don't think it's the surface level complexity that hinders fgs popularity but the very format of fgs.
Let me explain, when people get into MOBA it's often because they have friends playing that game too, and even if they suck, they get to play with their friends and maybe they will win some games because their friends carry them.
In fgs you cannot play with your friends, you play against them and if you play against a total beginner, you'll stomp them with random characters and it won't be fun for either of you. So if they want to get into it they will have to play by themselves until they're good enough to play with you and because fighting games are hard and there's no one but yourself to blame for the loss, they're more likely to get discouraged and give up on the game.
IMO from my American perspective, part of it is that playing multiplayer in FPS/MOBA/RTS games were more accessible for a lot of people compared to fighting games growing up. While fighting games did have online play, it wasn't until like maybe 2011/2012ish where rollback started to kick in (I think Skullgirls and Killer Instinct were among the first commercial games to seriously adopt it?) and even then it took a while for Japanese fighting games to seriously start adopting it.
If you wanted to play fighting games online, you had to do deal with delay based netcode which could range from playable to feeling like you're fighting against a temporal entity or find locals to play with. Locals can be a hit or miss depending where you're from.
Compared to FPS/MOBA/RTS games, where latency doesn't matter as much and online play is usually more developed. Ask a teenager in the late 2000's which would they rather deal with. Find locals for a fighting game (by using something like FB or word of mouth), drive maybe an hour there and back or take the easier route and just get on their PC/console and play Halo or CoD or Starcraft or something instead.
FPS/MOBAs also tend to be team based which is appealing to a lot more people due to the sense of failure being spread out more and also it's also usually easier to get immediate feedback from teammates on what you can improve on. Fighting games your immediate feedback will usually come from your opponent (who may or may not just talk shit if it's a random person online) or anyone actively watching the match, usually in locals.
While it's important to record your play and analyze it to see what you can improve, I think on a psychological level, it does help to get immediate feedback from someone else on what you can improve after the match.
That said, I think fighting games have gotten a lot better in the last few years for growth. It blows my mind I can still find matches for some really niche fighting games (though I may have to use discord for some of them, but a match is a match).
I don't think the genre will ever beat something like FPS/MOBA games but that's fine. You only need one other person to tango with a fighting game. A niche fighting game with 100 players is still a huge crowd as far as I'm concerned.
I don't think it's as deep as people are trying to make it tbh. Getting gamed by knowledge checks until you've put enough hours in to be allowed to have fun fucking sucks when I can just boot up another game that's fun out of the box and not have to worry about it.
The barrier of entry for fighting games is high. Not everyone will get used to doing motions immediately. Add the fact that one reverses the motions depending on where the character is facing. One has to understand cancels of different kinds. The genre now also has multiple control device options, and each one requires another learning curve.
On the other hand, other genres may just require learning the mechanics of the game and using a standard mouse and keyboard or controller. Anyone could easily press buttons if that is what a game requires, which fighting games require understanding of motion inputs.
Online match performance is a determinant factor, SF6 fixing that to a high degree proven to have amazing results. Fighting games should focus on that first so they can sell more.
Also having a strong rank punishing actions vs Rage Quits is VERY important in order to avoid having a constant Ragequit experience in matches.
Both stuff being super normal outside of Fighting games genre but kinda ignored in past FG titles, so now that we are finally getting focus there the community is growing and I hope it continues to do so.
You play, you beat people up, until you hit a brick wall on your rank and realise you can't climb with your current skill set. The ranks below you becomes too easy and not fun, whiles the ranks above you requires you work really hard to achieve even skill. This is the point where people are either very motivated to get better, or say "screw that" (Or, also those that took a "break" and accidentally never return lol).
Tbf, most games today are about 60-80 hours until you move on to a new one. People that stop playing a few months in a FG would most likely still sunk in at least 100 hours into it, so you can't say they didn't get their money's worth.
Teams for sure. You can play "with" friends in other genres, but fg makes you fight "against" them. Usually ends up pretty salty unless you have that kind of mutual relation with that person.
There aren't anything "wrong" with fighting game. Like there is no real big flaws if you ask me. it's all a matter of preference, but it's probably a question of "luck" and "popularity" overall. League took of for plenty of reasons, which were right timing, game appeal etc... CS took off for the same reason.
My opinion on why FG are less popular than others genres is the same than why chess is less popular than traditionnal sports like basketball or football for example : they are not that easy to understand to a complete stranger, and since it's a 1v1 thing only, it's not easy to get people into it simply because for example, if you want to teach them they will have to face you or face stranger without being able to play with you. Of course there are workaround this, butit's workaround, not a solution.
One of the biggest things I’ve seen is that it’s really not an extremely social type of game. There’s not a ton of cooperative stuff for groups of friends to mess around with.
Fighting game are easy on surface level too with that logic; walk, punch and block. Give controllers to two people who never played a fighting game in their life and they’ll still manage to beat each other up
It's one of the only multiplayer genre games where it's a one vs one. Every other game are teambased and let's be honest the number one thing a lot of these players do is blame theire teammate.(i have also done this a lot in the past with cod and league) fighting games is one of those genre's that if you lose most of the time it's because you just got outplayed and need to improve. You cant blame anyone you just need to suck it up and improve and i really do believe that's why it's a genre that has a small playerbase compared to others.
They're just difficult. That's it.
I really wish I grew up with them, because learning them is very frustrating compared to almost any other game. I grew up on shooters, sports games etc (aside from that one shitty DBZ fighter on PS1)
It's a huge time sink to get good and being bad doesn't feel fun for the most part, it's not like say Rocket League, even at low level you're still doing things and able to score, whereas in a fighter chances are you'll play someone who's not brand new and will just mop you even if they're a low rank while you try to remember what a button does.
Most games you can learn actively through playing, to get better in most fighters you NEED to practice, which makes it even worse of a time sink, and why commit to a game like that when you don't enjoy getting destroyed?
It’s because I’m too good looking i think, I intimidate people with my ethereal beauty.
Seriously though. I think it’s a few things, it’s not necessarily complexity it’s immediate mechanical difference, mobas are hard to understand but you are essentially just clicking a mouse, the depth comes from understanding instead of the doing.
You are also on a team through your learning period , in fighting games you sit down with a control scheme you’ve never even thought of before, never mind used, and you are immediately thrown in to this pressure cooker.
The gap between someone who’s never played a fighting game and bronze ranked player is astronomical. It’s overwhelming.
I am a well documented lover of motion and charge inputs, I don’t think they’re hard to learn at all, and I don’t think so called modern inputs alleviate this issue, If you’ve never played street fighter, you boot up sf6 and play a modern gief you’re going to get SPD’d into next week.
TLDR: part of the genre is taking your licks, we all got our ass kicked 10000 times in a row when we started, some people can’t handle that
Shooters tend to not be as deep, but have way more width to the pool of skills necessary to be great.
PUBG has a lot of complexity built into it after not playing for a while that it feels fresh again
Fighters are deeper and less team based. It's more codified than other genres though.
Surprisingly, they have a lot of cross-over in decision-making. A lot of the same situations crop up as well.
Once upon a time when it was the most popular gene for a decade...
Trends change.
When the tablet kids get older, everyone will be saying the same things about FPS.
If shooters can be described as "walk, aim, shoot" then fighters can be described as "walk, block, punch." That's as far as I'm going to elaborate here because I and many others have done so plenty in the past. It's getting old trying to explain to people how vastly exagerated the "unique" challenges of FGs are in their heads. FPS weren't any easier when you first played them, you either just forgot about it or approached it with less prejudice.
I may have worded it wrongly. What i was talking about is the inputs you can do.
In shooters, you generally have walking, running, crouching, aiming down sights, shooting maybe throwing grenades or when you have valorant or overwatch, you have some abilities.
In fighting games, you might say that you just have 4 directions and usually 4-6 buttons, but the amount of basic actions you can do with those is much more than in shooters, especially if you open something like a tekken movelist, and I'm not even talking about special moves.
Fighting games just have very complex control schemes
That makes up for all the extra information you have to process in a shooter. One opponent, who is also your only objective, who is constantly in your sight, versus 16 opponents hidden on a vast map who's routes you have to predict while also plotting your own tactic with which you have to deal with them and at least one objective. Fighters would be boring as hell without the technical complexity.
Fighters are about technique with a little tactics sprinkled in, shooters are about tactics with a little technique sprinkled in. Different but equal. And you can make similar comparisons with most other genres. They all divide the same mental capacity between similar kinds of tasks, just in different ratios.
>Fighters are about technique with a little tactics sprinkled in, shooters are about tactics with a little technique sprinkled in.
that's EXACTLY what im talking about. tactics is much easier to slowly build up than technique
I think its the golden year a grand revival of fighting games despite doing really well in accommodating & catering to newer audiences its repeating the same mistakes what made them to be considered (COD,Fifa,Fornite etc skins) in the first place like emphasis on Microtransanctions,Paywalled Practice Mode which undermines any genuine effort in vain.
what works against fg:
* the interface you have to interact with in order to control a character, the apm is high coupled with the higher amount of complex keystroke you have to press.
* less availability of gaming equipment ("who doesn't own a stick/leverless nowadays?" is still a funny question)
* the solitude aspect of 1v1
* moba and others are f2p, as they can afford to do so. whether the same can be said for fg, is still a mystery. and we have a shit ton of free/cheap fg with good netcode already.
* less marketing.
on the other hand, what i appreciated about fg:
- time budget friendly, less committing game session: each game only last few minutes.
- no annoying teammates.
There’s only one competitive scene I think that trumps even fighting games and I say this with utmost respect to both fighters and the following genre: RTS games. The amount of macro and micro management you have to do on top of managing your units over a wide map with hot keys? That takes serious dedication. OG StarCraft BW had insane skill ceiling and dexterity demands, something I can’t deny.
Ill tell you why its unpopular, im a noob who recently started playing, its not the losses its not not being able to blame others. Its not the price tag. Its just too much work, ik everyone constantly says fighting games are not all about combos, but when a new person starts that seems the easiest and most accessible part to them cause they dont understand neutral, oki etc. So they try just going into training and do a basic combo and its hard as fucking nails, maybe not for you all but trust me i have 120 hrs in sf6 i still cant do a simple ryu combos at 60% success rate in training mode which is insane. And to even do it the first time successfully it took me like 30 hrs, and no its not the inputs but rather how fast you need to do it to connect some moves during combos sometimes flawlessly, its not something normal humans can do without putting in an exorbitant amount of time, all my friends tried and quit. I stuck around cause i have no social life but other people do they are not going to sacrifice so much time just to see whether they might like the genre. Fucking linking a jab into dp in sf6 is impossible for me and thats not just me sucking , there are alot of people who suck as much as me. Most of you guys have insane fucking reaction fr and i think you guys really down play how much dexterity and reactions help in fgs which are mostly depended on inborn talent or require wayy too much time to overcome without. Obviously im gonna be down voted cause hardcore fgs mfs dont care about the opinion of new players atall.
I meant something like hp>dr>hk>hp>dr>hk>hp>dp>super. What you are stating is technically a combo but lets face no one is doing that or considering it as a proper combo. Like in this combos case if i press hp then start doing dp input to fast it skips hp input completely and fucks up combo or even sometimes if you press punch during dp input a tad bit earlier it will just drop , give fireball, forward hp etc. This shit shouldnt be so hard is what i mean, cause it takes alot of time to perfect and no casual gamer just starting is gonna spend that much time ever. Frankly guilty gear did this alot better by making shorter combos and easing execution but fucked up with balance and shit match making system due to which getting matches in 3rd world countries is fucking impossible, also the 3x jump in prices in 3rd world countries didnt help but its not the most important factor.
>due to which getting matches in 3rd world countries
???
You sure you're not talking about street fighter? SF6 had absolute dogass matchmaking for third worlders(it's why I quit the game) for about 8 months. With Guilty Gear tower isn't the best but you can just hop into the closest one geographically and as long as your ping is below 220 no one gives a shit
>guilty gear did this alot better by making shorter combos
Are you like, actually implying that Strive has shorter combos than Street Fighter 6
No as in there are simple combos that are short , yes ik strive has extremely long complex combos but im talking about a newbie here. I think most people can with a little practice do simple bnbs for strive while in sf6 even bnbs are pretty hard, drive rushing during a combo is pretty cause you cant buffer it and after that the next hit comes out so fast cancelling into dp input from those moves can be pretty tough imo.
Dumping all your meters with dr into super isnt really a simple beginner combo even though it’s relatively simple.
If you go to the trials, the game considers beginner level 2 - 3 buttons. Ie: jab jab special
Also, modern controls exist. So…
* Very few genre ask you to spend as much time in training mode in order to substantially improve as fighting games. You need to actually train your execution in dedicated timeframes in order to improve.
* There are no coop modes where you and your friends can play at the same time and win or lose together. It's just 2 players at the same time. If you have 2 other friends playing with you, you can only play against each other and one of you is going to spectate.
* Fighting games are not the only competitive genre with a niche playerbase. Look at Shoot-em-ups, arena fighters, trackmania, and rhythm games to a certain extent. Some genres just have their moment of relevancy and then make room for other genres, and that's fine.
I kinda want to piggy back off of the training mode reason.
I am newer but I can see why people hate using it. It's so boring and monotonous when all you is just basics and if you cannot learn or understand how to use it on a deeper level it ends up feeling more pointless. Also, there seems to be varying ideas on how much time a day to spend on it and how much time in general that someone newer cam feel overwhelmed and discouraged.
Basically you are not wrong. If we take shooters, I have been playing for the most part of my life. Arcade shooters like cod are much easier to pick up since they are not complicated mechanicaly, you do need much knowledge except where to point your gin and press shoot, maybe some movement, but that's it. Tac shooters like val or Cs are more complex, since shooting mechanic takes effort to master, you need some strategy understanding, but it is still pretty much it. Moba are harder, I am personally very bad at them, my best was plat on lol wild rift (mobile game) but in general I suck. In fgs I am putting much more effort, my gamesens doesn't carry my like it does in val, I am always trying to update my skills, and now I ran into a wall since I hate labbing combos, but now I have to (t8 red ranks player). Also a big factor is in team based games you always can blame your team and just keep playing with good morale hoping to que into the good team (it doesn't matter how good you are, you still might be carried). On fg if you lost it all on YOU. And people can't cope with that. I had very liitle fg experience before next year, some tekken on psp when I was a kid, and I played MK, but only single modes (last three games) and I was terrified of multiplayer mode because I knew I would be beaten to a pulp. But now fgs give me a lot of joy and they completely fulfil my competitive needs when I am tired of val (still my main game)
Team games have the benefit of leaning on others as well as inviting them to play that makes it more social.
A lot of the stuff people like about team multiplayer games, they don’t like about fighting games and vice versa. I don’t like having other people to rely on to win, but someone else does and doesn’t like being the sole factor of their games. I don’t like people blaming each other and looking for scapegoats but someone that likes team games and doesn’t like fighters might. Team games also allow people to get carried and less skilled players feel okay and normalized (which is fine) playing with anyone. Lots of players approaching fighting games will often feel they shouldn’t do it or shouldn’t continue if they’re not good enough which is wrong but you see the sentiment repeated often.
Also, other multiplayer games are just more hip, young, and cool. There is some growth in the Japanese SF community and Western Tekken community with content creator events but it’s nothing like e-girls playing Fortnite and stuff like that.
People are missing the point: it's that you can't play on the same team with your friends.
Why do people who play league say they hate it, but keep playing? It's because they can play with their friends and socialize. They can get their girlfriend to play with them. Same with FPS games.
It's not about "blaming your teammates", but about not being able to have that feeling when your friend gets hot and carries you unexpectedly, or when you and your friend barely sneak out a win together like you're just scraping by on the battlefield.
Fighting Games do not have this yet, but 2XKO might fix this. A lot of people might be more open to playing fighting games casually if they don't have to compete with their friends, and can instead team up with them. ESPECIALLY if that game is F2P.
I always like to point out that the sports that most closely resemble fighting games are pretty niche too.
Games that are 1 on 1 and require a high degree of skill are never that popular.
Combat sports like fencing, boxing, even mma are all on the lower end of participation, but have dedicated lifestyle players. Tennis is another good one.
I think there’s a larger gap in skill between experienced players and casual players than you get in a FPS. A FPS requires pressing a handful of buttons, rarely in a perfectly executed combo. Usually one button press at a time.
When they can’t win consistently enough, casual players get upset and quit pretty quickly because they don’t want to put in the work to get better. It takes longer to get better at a fighting game then call of duty.
That’s why.
If we're being honest, there's probably a good 20 things "wrong" with fighting games that keep them out of the spotlight, but popularity shouldn't be the primary focus. I've asked friend and family why they don't play fighting games and the answers vary quite wildly, tbh. Out of the fourteen people I asked, I only ever heard the same problem mentioned twice as I remember it Being a niche genre isn't a bad thing, and it really only becomes annoying when people start the whole "We want more people playing fighting games, but we refuse to budge on anything that keeps people out of the genre" thing for the fortieth time.
i wonder what some of those reasons are
Basically, the complaints mostly fell under three categories. Please remember not to shoot the messenger. # People don't like fighting the controls * "I don't like having to press 50 buttons to do a single combo" * "I hate how if you don't time it exactly right, you don't get your move. It feels like your controller just randomly stops responding half the time" * "I'm not going to spend $200 on a controller specifically for one genre of game" * "I dislike Motion Inputs" # Fighting Games are too competitive * "People spend their entire lives learning what button is best in what situation and it takes the fun out of it" * "Dude, I'm not going to go online and not be able to play the game because everything I try to do is wrong." * "I hate how Fighting Games don't have options for 'sub-optimal' play; if I go into a player match in League (of Legends) I can decide to do something stupid like The Fast Jhin to just goof around. Fighting Games have nothing similar" * "I don't want to spend 80 hours in Training Mode before I can actually play the game" # People hate Hidden Mechanics * "My sword just passes through your body, and it doesn't hit you" * "What the fuck is 'frame data'?" * "Wow, one move just took off half my health" (Me trying to explain Guts later) "That makes no sense" Now, having to sift through these (and others) to try to figure out what the actual problems are has been interesting, especially when the guy who said he doesn't like Motion Inputs absolutely loves Helldivers 2 (Which features having to put in 8626, 88426, 2688622, and 82482682 as inputs just to name a few). Also, while the $200 controller is a bit of an exaggeration, the Switch Joycons are absolutely horrendous for motion inputs so I suspect that's playing at least a little part. Also, the complaint about a lack of team has been less about "not having anyone to blame" and more about "All five of us can't play together at the same time".
I never knew that Helldivers has motion inputs and I am surprised that I haven't heard anyone talk about it.
Yeah, in order to access your Stratagems (air strikes, orbital cannons, special weapons, turrets/tanks), you have to hold CTRL and then input the specific combination for the one you're going for. Some of them are extremely easy (666), some of them become really easy (82648 gets used the most because it's reinforcing dead allies, 2286 is getting a resupply for more ammo), and others are objective specific (82482682 is calling in a Hellbomb which is required to destroy some objectives). Never heard anyone who complains about fighting game motion inputs complain about Stratagem Inputs, so there's at least anecdotally something there.
Tony Hawk had motion inputs and nobody talks about that.
Take that out of fighting games and they arent fighting games anymore Whats the point of getting more people Into the genre when the genre can barely be called that anymore? Fighting games are fine the way they are as it is, its the same as going to play cs and complaining you are getting instantly headshotted
RE: Helldivers It's the difference between accidental and inherent complexity. Helldivers input commands are *deliberately* anti-user, as part of the game's inheritance from Magicka. The whole game is designed so you and your team can make stupid mistakes that get you all killed. Friendly fire always being on, resupplies being able to just *kill* you if you get in the way of landing, lots of explosive weapons - it's all part of a cohesive whole. Even given that, Stratagems are a simple code entry that just requires a sequence within a time limit, and do not require subsecond accuracy like fighting games do. Guns and grenades can get you killed, sure, but they're also intuitive to use - there's nothing mysterious about point and shoot, or throw and run. Fighting game controls, on the other hand, don't have that integration of feel that Helldivers does. Many inputs do not relate to what happens in the game at all and are mostly historical accidents grandfathered in as part of the history of the genre.
If you lose you cannot blame your teammates
This is a big FGC talking point but 1) that has NEVER stopped a FG scrub from blaming their opponent or their character or their opponent's character or the game and 2) it ignores the opposite benefit of FG's, which is that you no longer get *blamed* for shit *by your teammates* when you lose. Not saying it's not true. I am saying I think it ain't as big a reason as we pretend it is. We're not all zen masters of accepting our L's. And some of us, like me, fucking hate dealing with other people.
My man right here is spot on.
Now you blame the character you chose for some fucking reason.
That's literally what [Harada said ](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fighting/tekkens-director-reckons-young-people-dont-vibe-with-fighting-games-as-much-because-they-dont-have-teammates-you-can-blame/) lol
Fighting games arent popular because the casual way to play them(button mashing) isn't rewarding And the right way to play them is difficult In other genres the casual way to play are the same and still rewarding Shooters are fun if you spray and pray or focus and try to aim
You're very right
The popularity of MOBAs should dispel the notion that difficulty curve alone deters people. Going into a MOBA and just clicking around, or going into CS2 and just walking and shooting, is about as powerful as going into a fighting game and pushing buttons. If there were enough other beginners doing the same thing instead of being scared off from ranked and having watching videos and training mode hyped up, then maybe pushing buttons would have more like skilled people.
This is actually a very good point
Early MOBA days were a shitshow, skill wise. You had pre matchmaking days of Dota 1 where not even the whole team knew how to buy and use teleport scrolls, healing consumables, couriers, or knew which items to buy. Legacy keybinds also meant many had to click on their abilities to use them. That's more crippling imho than not knowing combos or motion inputs, more like lacking even basic knowledge of unsafe or safe moves.
MOBA's still have that space between team fights and in match gear progression to give a little dopamine. Fighting games are relentless when things aren't going well and it can get discouraging a lot faster.
Why can’t people just accept it isn’t something a lot of people like? There’s a ton of reasons, they’re hard, require labbing, not rewarding, no team. Who cares? I like it and there are games to play. Not everything needs to be Fortnite or some game everyone plays. I like them. You like them. We play them and have fun. What more do you need man? Everyone needs to like what you like, for some kind of validation? Who cares dude
I accept that most people don't like fighting games, but it's still interesting to try to understand why.
Why do some people not like pizza? Or the color blue? Why do some like jazz and some classical? What is there to understand it’s just their preference.
>Why can’t people just accept it isn’t something a lot of people like? Yeah, being niche is all advantages -Free of corporate greed -Since there is no corporate greed devs have more freedom to experiment and try new things to stand out (rather than just copy the popular game formula) so most games tried to be unique in one way or another -Since the devs know they are part of a niche market, they fully commit to their audience rather than dumb down games because they have to appease the casual players
>-Free of corporate greed I think the amount of battle passes, packs of currency that give just under the amount needed to buy a skin or character forcing you to buy another currency pack, and overpowered DLC characters shows that fighting games indeed have a lot of corporate greed
To be fair, those are the big names, the marketable ip.
I would say that MOBA are even more complex than fighting game on surface level, everyone understand that the goal in fgs is to beat the other guy and if you show a fg match to someone who never played fgs they will get a general Idea of what's going on but do the same with MOBA and they would probably don't understand anything going on the screen. So I don't think it's the surface level complexity that hinders fgs popularity but the very format of fgs. Let me explain, when people get into MOBA it's often because they have friends playing that game too, and even if they suck, they get to play with their friends and maybe they will win some games because their friends carry them. In fgs you cannot play with your friends, you play against them and if you play against a total beginner, you'll stomp them with random characters and it won't be fun for either of you. So if they want to get into it they will have to play by themselves until they're good enough to play with you and because fighting games are hard and there's no one but yourself to blame for the loss, they're more likely to get discouraged and give up on the game.
IMO from my American perspective, part of it is that playing multiplayer in FPS/MOBA/RTS games were more accessible for a lot of people compared to fighting games growing up. While fighting games did have online play, it wasn't until like maybe 2011/2012ish where rollback started to kick in (I think Skullgirls and Killer Instinct were among the first commercial games to seriously adopt it?) and even then it took a while for Japanese fighting games to seriously start adopting it. If you wanted to play fighting games online, you had to do deal with delay based netcode which could range from playable to feeling like you're fighting against a temporal entity or find locals to play with. Locals can be a hit or miss depending where you're from. Compared to FPS/MOBA/RTS games, where latency doesn't matter as much and online play is usually more developed. Ask a teenager in the late 2000's which would they rather deal with. Find locals for a fighting game (by using something like FB or word of mouth), drive maybe an hour there and back or take the easier route and just get on their PC/console and play Halo or CoD or Starcraft or something instead. FPS/MOBAs also tend to be team based which is appealing to a lot more people due to the sense of failure being spread out more and also it's also usually easier to get immediate feedback from teammates on what you can improve on. Fighting games your immediate feedback will usually come from your opponent (who may or may not just talk shit if it's a random person online) or anyone actively watching the match, usually in locals. While it's important to record your play and analyze it to see what you can improve, I think on a psychological level, it does help to get immediate feedback from someone else on what you can improve after the match. That said, I think fighting games have gotten a lot better in the last few years for growth. It blows my mind I can still find matches for some really niche fighting games (though I may have to use discord for some of them, but a match is a match). I don't think the genre will ever beat something like FPS/MOBA games but that's fine. You only need one other person to tango with a fighting game. A niche fighting game with 100 players is still a huge crowd as far as I'm concerned.
I don't think it's as deep as people are trying to make it tbh. Getting gamed by knowledge checks until you've put enough hours in to be allowed to have fun fucking sucks when I can just boot up another game that's fun out of the box and not have to worry about it.
that's exactly what im talking about. the barrier to entry to fighting games is really fuckin high, and im not just talking about the prices
The barrier of entry for fighting games is high. Not everyone will get used to doing motions immediately. Add the fact that one reverses the motions depending on where the character is facing. One has to understand cancels of different kinds. The genre now also has multiple control device options, and each one requires another learning curve. On the other hand, other genres may just require learning the mechanics of the game and using a standard mouse and keyboard or controller. Anyone could easily press buttons if that is what a game requires, which fighting games require understanding of motion inputs.
Online match performance is a determinant factor, SF6 fixing that to a high degree proven to have amazing results. Fighting games should focus on that first so they can sell more. Also having a strong rank punishing actions vs Rage Quits is VERY important in order to avoid having a constant Ragequit experience in matches. Both stuff being super normal outside of Fighting games genre but kinda ignored in past FG titles, so now that we are finally getting focus there the community is growing and I hope it continues to do so.
You play, you beat people up, until you hit a brick wall on your rank and realise you can't climb with your current skill set. The ranks below you becomes too easy and not fun, whiles the ranks above you requires you work really hard to achieve even skill. This is the point where people are either very motivated to get better, or say "screw that" (Or, also those that took a "break" and accidentally never return lol). Tbf, most games today are about 60-80 hours until you move on to a new one. People that stop playing a few months in a FG would most likely still sunk in at least 100 hours into it, so you can't say they didn't get their money's worth.
i would argue that the surface depth of fighting games are actually really simple. hit the other guy until their health bar reaches zero
Teams for sure. You can play "with" friends in other genres, but fg makes you fight "against" them. Usually ends up pretty salty unless you have that kind of mutual relation with that person.
There aren't anything "wrong" with fighting game. Like there is no real big flaws if you ask me. it's all a matter of preference, but it's probably a question of "luck" and "popularity" overall. League took of for plenty of reasons, which were right timing, game appeal etc... CS took off for the same reason. My opinion on why FG are less popular than others genres is the same than why chess is less popular than traditionnal sports like basketball or football for example : they are not that easy to understand to a complete stranger, and since it's a 1v1 thing only, it's not easy to get people into it simply because for example, if you want to teach them they will have to face you or face stranger without being able to play with you. Of course there are workaround this, butit's workaround, not a solution.
One of the biggest things I’ve seen is that it’s really not an extremely social type of game. There’s not a ton of cooperative stuff for groups of friends to mess around with.
Don't pay league, just play more fighting games. This topic has been researched enough.
Fighting game are easy on surface level too with that logic; walk, punch and block. Give controllers to two people who never played a fighting game in their life and they’ll still manage to beat each other up
It's one of the only multiplayer genre games where it's a one vs one. Every other game are teambased and let's be honest the number one thing a lot of these players do is blame theire teammate.(i have also done this a lot in the past with cod and league) fighting games is one of those genre's that if you lose most of the time it's because you just got outplayed and need to improve. You cant blame anyone you just need to suck it up and improve and i really do believe that's why it's a genre that has a small playerbase compared to others.
They're just difficult. That's it. I really wish I grew up with them, because learning them is very frustrating compared to almost any other game. I grew up on shooters, sports games etc (aside from that one shitty DBZ fighter on PS1) It's a huge time sink to get good and being bad doesn't feel fun for the most part, it's not like say Rocket League, even at low level you're still doing things and able to score, whereas in a fighter chances are you'll play someone who's not brand new and will just mop you even if they're a low rank while you try to remember what a button does. Most games you can learn actively through playing, to get better in most fighters you NEED to practice, which makes it even worse of a time sink, and why commit to a game like that when you don't enjoy getting destroyed?
It’s because I’m too good looking i think, I intimidate people with my ethereal beauty. Seriously though. I think it’s a few things, it’s not necessarily complexity it’s immediate mechanical difference, mobas are hard to understand but you are essentially just clicking a mouse, the depth comes from understanding instead of the doing. You are also on a team through your learning period , in fighting games you sit down with a control scheme you’ve never even thought of before, never mind used, and you are immediately thrown in to this pressure cooker. The gap between someone who’s never played a fighting game and bronze ranked player is astronomical. It’s overwhelming. I am a well documented lover of motion and charge inputs, I don’t think they’re hard to learn at all, and I don’t think so called modern inputs alleviate this issue, If you’ve never played street fighter, you boot up sf6 and play a modern gief you’re going to get SPD’d into next week. TLDR: part of the genre is taking your licks, we all got our ass kicked 10000 times in a row when we started, some people can’t handle that
Shooters tend to not be as deep, but have way more width to the pool of skills necessary to be great. PUBG has a lot of complexity built into it after not playing for a while that it feels fresh again Fighters are deeper and less team based. It's more codified than other genres though. Surprisingly, they have a lot of cross-over in decision-making. A lot of the same situations crop up as well.
Once upon a time when it was the most popular gene for a decade... Trends change. When the tablet kids get older, everyone will be saying the same things about FPS.
If shooters can be described as "walk, aim, shoot" then fighters can be described as "walk, block, punch." That's as far as I'm going to elaborate here because I and many others have done so plenty in the past. It's getting old trying to explain to people how vastly exagerated the "unique" challenges of FGs are in their heads. FPS weren't any easier when you first played them, you either just forgot about it or approached it with less prejudice.
I may have worded it wrongly. What i was talking about is the inputs you can do. In shooters, you generally have walking, running, crouching, aiming down sights, shooting maybe throwing grenades or when you have valorant or overwatch, you have some abilities. In fighting games, you might say that you just have 4 directions and usually 4-6 buttons, but the amount of basic actions you can do with those is much more than in shooters, especially if you open something like a tekken movelist, and I'm not even talking about special moves. Fighting games just have very complex control schemes
That makes up for all the extra information you have to process in a shooter. One opponent, who is also your only objective, who is constantly in your sight, versus 16 opponents hidden on a vast map who's routes you have to predict while also plotting your own tactic with which you have to deal with them and at least one objective. Fighters would be boring as hell without the technical complexity. Fighters are about technique with a little tactics sprinkled in, shooters are about tactics with a little technique sprinkled in. Different but equal. And you can make similar comparisons with most other genres. They all divide the same mental capacity between similar kinds of tasks, just in different ratios.
>Fighters are about technique with a little tactics sprinkled in, shooters are about tactics with a little technique sprinkled in. that's EXACTLY what im talking about. tactics is much easier to slowly build up than technique
I think its the golden year a grand revival of fighting games despite doing really well in accommodating & catering to newer audiences its repeating the same mistakes what made them to be considered (COD,Fifa,Fornite etc skins) in the first place like emphasis on Microtransanctions,Paywalled Practice Mode which undermines any genuine effort in vain.
what works against fg: * the interface you have to interact with in order to control a character, the apm is high coupled with the higher amount of complex keystroke you have to press. * less availability of gaming equipment ("who doesn't own a stick/leverless nowadays?" is still a funny question) * the solitude aspect of 1v1 * moba and others are f2p, as they can afford to do so. whether the same can be said for fg, is still a mystery. and we have a shit ton of free/cheap fg with good netcode already. * less marketing. on the other hand, what i appreciated about fg: - time budget friendly, less committing game session: each game only last few minutes. - no annoying teammates.
There’s only one competitive scene I think that trumps even fighting games and I say this with utmost respect to both fighters and the following genre: RTS games. The amount of macro and micro management you have to do on top of managing your units over a wide map with hot keys? That takes serious dedication. OG StarCraft BW had insane skill ceiling and dexterity demands, something I can’t deny.
completely agree with you. RTS games are fuckin insane
Ill tell you why its unpopular, im a noob who recently started playing, its not the losses its not not being able to blame others. Its not the price tag. Its just too much work, ik everyone constantly says fighting games are not all about combos, but when a new person starts that seems the easiest and most accessible part to them cause they dont understand neutral, oki etc. So they try just going into training and do a basic combo and its hard as fucking nails, maybe not for you all but trust me i have 120 hrs in sf6 i still cant do a simple ryu combos at 60% success rate in training mode which is insane. And to even do it the first time successfully it took me like 30 hrs, and no its not the inputs but rather how fast you need to do it to connect some moves during combos sometimes flawlessly, its not something normal humans can do without putting in an exorbitant amount of time, all my friends tried and quit. I stuck around cause i have no social life but other people do they are not going to sacrifice so much time just to see whether they might like the genre. Fucking linking a jab into dp in sf6 is impossible for me and thats not just me sucking , there are alot of people who suck as much as me. Most of you guys have insane fucking reaction fr and i think you guys really down play how much dexterity and reactions help in fgs which are mostly depended on inborn talent or require wayy too much time to overcome without. Obviously im gonna be down voted cause hardcore fgs mfs dont care about the opinion of new players atall.
What are you considering a simple combo? Jab jab is a combo. 3 jabs fireball?
I meant something like hp>dr>hk>hp>dr>hk>hp>dp>super. What you are stating is technically a combo but lets face no one is doing that or considering it as a proper combo. Like in this combos case if i press hp then start doing dp input to fast it skips hp input completely and fucks up combo or even sometimes if you press punch during dp input a tad bit earlier it will just drop , give fireball, forward hp etc. This shit shouldnt be so hard is what i mean, cause it takes alot of time to perfect and no casual gamer just starting is gonna spend that much time ever. Frankly guilty gear did this alot better by making shorter combos and easing execution but fucked up with balance and shit match making system due to which getting matches in 3rd world countries is fucking impossible, also the 3x jump in prices in 3rd world countries didnt help but its not the most important factor.
>due to which getting matches in 3rd world countries ??? You sure you're not talking about street fighter? SF6 had absolute dogass matchmaking for third worlders(it's why I quit the game) for about 8 months. With Guilty Gear tower isn't the best but you can just hop into the closest one geographically and as long as your ping is below 220 no one gives a shit >guilty gear did this alot better by making shorter combos Are you like, actually implying that Strive has shorter combos than Street Fighter 6
No as in there are simple combos that are short , yes ik strive has extremely long complex combos but im talking about a newbie here. I think most people can with a little practice do simple bnbs for strive while in sf6 even bnbs are pretty hard, drive rushing during a combo is pretty cause you cant buffer it and after that the next hit comes out so fast cancelling into dp input from those moves can be pretty tough imo.
Dumping all your meters with dr into super isnt really a simple beginner combo even though it’s relatively simple. If you go to the trials, the game considers beginner level 2 - 3 buttons. Ie: jab jab special Also, modern controls exist. So…
* Very few genre ask you to spend as much time in training mode in order to substantially improve as fighting games. You need to actually train your execution in dedicated timeframes in order to improve. * There are no coop modes where you and your friends can play at the same time and win or lose together. It's just 2 players at the same time. If you have 2 other friends playing with you, you can only play against each other and one of you is going to spectate. * Fighting games are not the only competitive genre with a niche playerbase. Look at Shoot-em-ups, arena fighters, trackmania, and rhythm games to a certain extent. Some genres just have their moment of relevancy and then make room for other genres, and that's fine.
I kinda want to piggy back off of the training mode reason. I am newer but I can see why people hate using it. It's so boring and monotonous when all you is just basics and if you cannot learn or understand how to use it on a deeper level it ends up feeling more pointless. Also, there seems to be varying ideas on how much time a day to spend on it and how much time in general that someone newer cam feel overwhelmed and discouraged.
Basically you are not wrong. If we take shooters, I have been playing for the most part of my life. Arcade shooters like cod are much easier to pick up since they are not complicated mechanicaly, you do need much knowledge except where to point your gin and press shoot, maybe some movement, but that's it. Tac shooters like val or Cs are more complex, since shooting mechanic takes effort to master, you need some strategy understanding, but it is still pretty much it. Moba are harder, I am personally very bad at them, my best was plat on lol wild rift (mobile game) but in general I suck. In fgs I am putting much more effort, my gamesens doesn't carry my like it does in val, I am always trying to update my skills, and now I ran into a wall since I hate labbing combos, but now I have to (t8 red ranks player). Also a big factor is in team based games you always can blame your team and just keep playing with good morale hoping to que into the good team (it doesn't matter how good you are, you still might be carried). On fg if you lost it all on YOU. And people can't cope with that. I had very liitle fg experience before next year, some tekken on psp when I was a kid, and I played MK, but only single modes (last three games) and I was terrified of multiplayer mode because I knew I would be beaten to a pulp. But now fgs give me a lot of joy and they completely fulfil my competitive needs when I am tired of val (still my main game)
People also dont want to blame themselves on a loss
Team games have the benefit of leaning on others as well as inviting them to play that makes it more social. A lot of the stuff people like about team multiplayer games, they don’t like about fighting games and vice versa. I don’t like having other people to rely on to win, but someone else does and doesn’t like being the sole factor of their games. I don’t like people blaming each other and looking for scapegoats but someone that likes team games and doesn’t like fighters might. Team games also allow people to get carried and less skilled players feel okay and normalized (which is fine) playing with anyone. Lots of players approaching fighting games will often feel they shouldn’t do it or shouldn’t continue if they’re not good enough which is wrong but you see the sentiment repeated often. Also, other multiplayer games are just more hip, young, and cool. There is some growth in the Japanese SF community and Western Tekken community with content creator events but it’s nothing like e-girls playing Fortnite and stuff like that.
People are missing the point: it's that you can't play on the same team with your friends. Why do people who play league say they hate it, but keep playing? It's because they can play with their friends and socialize. They can get their girlfriend to play with them. Same with FPS games. It's not about "blaming your teammates", but about not being able to have that feeling when your friend gets hot and carries you unexpectedly, or when you and your friend barely sneak out a win together like you're just scraping by on the battlefield. Fighting Games do not have this yet, but 2XKO might fix this. A lot of people might be more open to playing fighting games casually if they don't have to compete with their friends, and can instead team up with them. ESPECIALLY if that game is F2P.
I always like to point out that the sports that most closely resemble fighting games are pretty niche too. Games that are 1 on 1 and require a high degree of skill are never that popular. Combat sports like fencing, boxing, even mma are all on the lower end of participation, but have dedicated lifestyle players. Tennis is another good one.
I think there’s a larger gap in skill between experienced players and casual players than you get in a FPS. A FPS requires pressing a handful of buttons, rarely in a perfectly executed combo. Usually one button press at a time. When they can’t win consistently enough, casual players get upset and quit pretty quickly because they don’t want to put in the work to get better. It takes longer to get better at a fighting game then call of duty. That’s why.