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Fighting Games are Approaching Accessibility Wrong

The example you give seems bizarre to me. Why would you need to have a tutorial on how to look at the screen? (I'm assuming you mean the interface). If I was making a game where I felt that I had to explicitly tutorial players on how to read the interface, then I might begin considering a redesign of the interface.

Because if it's the first fighting game you've ever played in your entire life, the 3 different meters, and the word BURST under your character portrait may seem strange.


I'm talking about this:

GuiltyGear-Xrd-Revealator-620x349.jpg
 

Mantiskilla

Neo Member
Lets go back into DOA5. :)

Playing replays of your online or offline matches with the amount of data offered here is quite amazing to learn from your mistakes and tweak your playstyle. They could add a forward and backward feature in the future game cause that would be a bit more helpful if I wanna repeat a scene but still amazing to see.

Yeah DOA5 has a real good training mode, but lets be honest. All they did was copy and paste the VF tutorial system from VF4 and VF5.

Heck VF still would let you know what your attacks would confirm as on screen (low, mid, high, etc) along with different contact colors when you hit the dummy to let you know if you were frame perfect or not.
 

kyored

Member
Developers are not suppose to teach you every little detail. They give a few a examples and the rest is suppose to be up to YOU to learning and find out its secrets on your own to play how you like to play.
 
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Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Ah, so someone who has no idea what they're doing can beat a pro Smash player?

Of course not. But they can hop in and quickly learn all the moves (mostly the same inputs for every character and very simple) and have fun playing online against others mostly doing the same.

Vs. something like SF where it takes a lot of effort to learn the moves and you tend to get bodied online as the other newbies are often people who have played prior games, know more moves, know more fighting game fundamentals, or Tekken were even something like backdashing is complex.

Again, nothing wrong with those games, but clearly stuff like Smash sells more as its easier for newbies and scrubs to have fun than the more complex games.

What the genre is missing is good tools in the more complex games, or some type of popular game between a Smash and an SF/Tekken, that more gently and effectively teaches fundamentals and eases into more complex execution games.
 

Sullichin

Member
I've been playing Tekken since 1 (on consoles only) and the way things are explained has always confused the fuck out of me. It's in terms of the arcade game and all of the inputs/acronyms are just really hard for me to get down.
 

ShinMaruku

Member
Absolutely agreed. It's laughable how much these companies say they want to the make their accessible through easier execution, but do nothing to teach how to actually play a fighting game.
That's because nobody actually knows how to teach how to play a fighting game.
Teaches you a lot of stuff =/= accessibility. It's about the structure and pacing of information, as much as it is what is taught. I don't think GG really does that well.

And it also doesn't mean that that process is enjoyable. They gamify the opening... dashing tutorial, and then that style of presentation is dropped, it's not too long before you're sat their, grinding it out on combo trial 17 for hours on end, just like every other fighter.



Playing other players helps a tonne yes but you should also be able to achieve a certain level of competence alone, without wading through nonsense to do it. Placing the responsibility for the user experience on the user, reflects a failure of the game. Sure, it's a multiplayer game, designed to be better with people to play with, but it should also learn and develop a sense of competence with, without that.

Also, it's 2017, people shouldn't have to drive across town to play with someone. If that's the only way to get a good experience from your product then your game has failed. Not to mention, a lot of people don't have that option, the vast majority of players don't engage with their FGC, many of which don't have access to one. I used to run the FGC in my town and there was only so much I could learn because of the 20-40 players who used to attend I was among the top 2 players. There was only so much to learn playing against the other guy that was decent (Necalli) over and over). I invested a lot of time into my local FGC and while it did help, it wasn't an answer to these problems. I'm sure it is if you live next to Justin and he's happy to teach you footsies, but that's not everyone.



It wasn't mentioned because I don't own it. I only listed games that I own and have explored the menus with. That's also why I left KOF alone for most of it. I don't own it.

Dead or Alive 5 always gets snubbed when it comes to the tutorial conversation.
You got a deep tutorial

You got combo challenges which encourages you to learn some more things with the character you want to play.

You also get the traditional command training, free training and you even get frame data, damage values advantage, tracking data etc.



DOA5 for all the fan service it may have they also care about teaching people the mechanics well and went the extra mile giving people tools.

Of course it will never give the game burn, it's fanservice allows people who don't want to learn a new fighting game a easy out to pass on it. It has a very well desgined tutorial mode, it has frame data and other info. But it will never get credit for reasons that make it easy to write off. But I like what they are doing, make your own community and never try to convert people from the fgc, that is a fools errand.

As someone who loves fan-service, hawt women and good fighting games I wish a new DoA comes out soon :(
Well the PR dude said look for the doa championship for a announcement.
 
Of course not. But they can hop in and quickly learn all the moves (mostly the same inputs for every character and very simple) and have fun playing online against others mostly doing the same.

Vs. something like SF where it takes a lot of effort to learn the moves and you tend to get bodied online as the other newbies are often people who have played prior games, know more moves, know more fighting game fundamentals, or Tekken were even something like backdashing is complex.

Again, nothing wrong with those games, but clearly stuff like Smash sells more as its easier for newbies and scrubs to have fun than the more complex games.

What the genre is missing is good tools in the more complex games, or some type of popular game between a Smash and an SF/Tekken, that more gently and effectively teaches fundamentals and eases into more complex execution games.

Agreed. I was a little strong on my idea of accessibility, and implied removing tons of complexity instead of easing new players into it. A middle-ground does exist though, and I hope more devs catch onto that.

EDIT: Fun fact, if you look up "accessible fighting game" on google, the 4th result is an article I wrote 6 years ago
 

JTCx

Member
Theres only so much hand holding the devs can do. All the information is out there to help new players. Everything else is up to the player, if you're not putting in the work then thats too bad.
 
the problem is that the systems are complex so explaining them succinctly in a way that isnt information overload is something i think is borderline impossible.

another thing is that the pace of a fighting game match is quick so learning how to implement these extremely situational things on a time table where the situation is constantly changing is something that 10 minutes in a tutorial isnt going to teach you how to do. GG and SG tried to cover basic fg mechanics like hit confirming or trying to react to mixups but im fairly confident these are things that can only be learned by lots of time playing matches or maybe in the lab.


Pretty much how I feel. Information overload is also a self caused problem in a lot of cases. People wanna know everything as soon as possible and I don't think anyone's brain actually works like that
 

Cybit

FGC Waterboy
Easy to learn, hard to master should be how FGs approach development. Think of SF2; easy to get into, but the little details are what separates the arcade warrior from the pros. Too much of the execution barrier is started upfront, rather than letting people do 80-90% of the crap they need to from the basics.

Lower execution barrier at the start + KI's tutorial system + solid fun combo system + competitive level playable netplay is probably the next major jump in FGs.
 

WarRock

Member
Challenge modes aren't tutorials.

Learning isn't fun.

There is a limit to how much you can learn from reading/listening, you should try stuff for yourself.

I do agree that there is a presentation/information architecture issue to be addressed in the genre, but most of your complaints aren't the actual problems. I'm also not sure why you are equaling accessibility to learning. Stylish mode in Blazblue makes the game instantly accessible and has its own learning curve if you so wish to explore it, since there are multiple branches for combos just alternating button presses. Yeah, that doesn't make you learn how to play footsies properly, but it does makes the game more accessible to those who want to do flashy stuff and/or have weak execution and/or want quick pick up and play game.

Now here is the crazy thing: CS:GO doesn't teach you the proper way of grouping with people, camping spots or how to use smoke grenades. No MOBA tells you "that item use useless for this character, and that one is better at the end of the match and not the start". Rocket League doesn't teach you advanced movement or meta. And nobody complains about it. It's always fighting games.

The example you give seems bizarre to me. Why would you need to have a tutorial on how to look at the screen? (I'm assuming you mean the interface). If I was making a game where I felt that I had to explicitly tutorial players on how to read the interface, then I might begin considering a redesign of the interface.
Please, you are telling me you can design an icon that shows I have enough of a resource used to either break out of combos or to instantly fill my other resource meter depending when I use it without cluttering the screen? I'm talking about GG's Burst by the way.

Even grouping characters to reflect their play style has become a staple in other genres (like Overwatch / Battleborn). You could do that to reflect the type of range that a character likes to play in, that informs players what they should expect from the character, their play style, helps with understandability.
Guilty Gear literally does this in its FAQ, in a section about how to choose a character.

Why do these developers believe that players don't want to learn how to play, when they have never tried to teach anyone how to play?
Which developer said that?

As I stated a number of years ago in a thread I started, I think that AI will be a great force in tutorial mechanics in fighting games and games in general in the future.

Imagine an AI that is able to instruct and train newbies better than any canned tutorial or a video.
Not the same thing you are mentioning, but Dissidia had different AI patterns, each one with a name. So, the "Special Squall" would exclusively attack (or more appropriately, spam) his Blasting Zone attack, a huge beam that he swings down and breaks guard. As soon as you saw that category in the pre fight screen, you could customize your character to deal with it, or at least have a proper plan (in this case, dodge after Blasting Zone's sound cue and hit him back while he recovered).

People around me usually complained that those single move spamming CPU opponents were too hard. Figures.
 
No matter how much information you give them a large sum of people cannot handle fighting games. There is no one else to blame in these games but yourself if you lose. People can't even handle being grabbed in ARMS.
 

Basketball

Member
The community does a better job of creating training materials and instructional videos than the games will ever be able to do.

This is totally acceptable and idk why people are so against reading some forums or watching some YouTube tutorials to learn how to play a fighting game.

It's not like an in game tutorial is going to suddenly make you win anyway. You still need to put in the work and put in the time to learn.

And most importantly you need to put in the time losing matches to learn what not to do. This is the biggest barrier to new players, who think that losing is a problem that the game must fix for them.

Losing is part of the experience of learning the game. Losing a match means nothing. Learn from it and get better. It's the only way to stop losing.

A game like call of duty a new player can wander in and get a few kills and run around and be stupid and feel like they "won" a few times.

Fighting games don't have that. If you're just pushing buttons mindlessly you get destroyed. It's a fundamental difference with most console online experiences.
.
 
I don't know how viable it is but my big weakness is execution. When I played music, I started songs at half speed and slowly sped up until I can play at regular speed. I don't know if that's viable but it's been part of my requests for every fighting game that asks for feedback
 

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
Of course it will never give the game burn, it's fanservice allows people who don't want to learn a new fighting game a easy out to pass on it. It has a very well desgined tutorial mode, it has frame data and other info. But it will never get credit for reasons that make it easy to write off. But I like what they are doing, make your own community and never try to convert people from the fgc, that is a fools errand.

I mean the original release of DOA5 toned down a lot of the fan service and in the end didnt gain that much of a new following and the fans of the game that want the fanservice made it clear they were not happy to the approach they took so they ended up doubling down on the fan service later on plus making that F2P approach that in the ended up working wonders for them. So we can tell they pretty much learned from their mistakes of trying to cater to an audience that wasnt there for them from the beginning.

They still made a pretty good job at getting the game on tournaments for years and giving it support so I wouldn't worry much about the game on the FGC tournaments because it has an audience for it still even if its not as big as others manages to keep the game alive.

I hope they keep doing what they do and keep improving the mechanics and tools they give.
 

ShinMaruku

Member
Given how DOA has progressed I'm sure they are getting to where they need to be. Just need a new DOA and them going all in on it.
 
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Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
...plus making that F2P approach that in the ended up working wonders for them.
.

I really do think that is the way forward for most fighters outside of the huge ones like Smash, Tekken, MK, Injustice etc. that sell on strength of the IP.

The KI approach is great as fans can just buy the season passes and be done with it, but casuals can try for free--including the meaty and well done tutorial.

SFV would have been well served to have just fully embraced that type of game as service model vs. getting hammered for the $60 barebones at launch with a season pass their day one approach they went with.
 

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
I really do think that is the way forward for most fighters outside of the huge ones like Smash, Tekken, MK, Injustice etc. that sell on strength of the IP.

The KI approach is great as fans can just buy the season passes and be done with it, but casuals can try for free--including the meaty and well done tutorial.

SFV would have been well served to have just fully embraced that type of game as service model vs. getting hammered for the $60 barebones at launch with a season pass their day one approach they went with.

Overall giving options on how to get the game can work wonders. Some people can get encouraged to pay for a full package if they feel the little taste they get of the free version or pay for the content they want from it. Then you add the cosmetic aspects like DLC of loot boxes and you have some potential to attract more people into the game in that aspect. We are going off topic but its also another interesting aspect to explore as a conversation piece.
 
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Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Overall giving options on how to get the game can work wonders. Some people can get encouraged to pay for a full package if they feel the little taste they get of the free version or pay for the content they want from it. Then you add the cosmetic aspects like DLC of loot boxes and you have some potential to attract more people into the game in that aspect. We are going off topic but its also another interesting aspect to explore as a conversation piece.

Only slightly off topic as one big way to make fighting games more accessible is building a bigger base of casual players to help with matchmaking.

As earlier, things like Smash, MK, Injustice are more newbie friendly is they have larger player bases and thus there are more newbie/scrub players for people to find similar skilled matches against.
 

Zackat

Member
Preach.

It took me way too long to learn how to play. I had to spend hours reading and watching videos, etc. I have hundreds of hours played.

And I still am not that great and there is plenty I don't understand on a deep level.
 

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
Yeah I have no idea what you are even talking about in the OP and Guilty Gear does just about cover every single issue you have.

It has a in game FAQ answering things from what's on screen to what you can do in game to learn or just have fun goofing around

It has a interactive tutorial to get you used to the basic controls of the game

It has a FAR deeper tutorial in it's mission mode objectives that give lots of detail about each aspect of the game from basic fighting game knowledge to specific character match ups and gives you tips about said aspects

g5gR6pH.jpg


and it gives solid actually pretty useful combos for new players to pick up and start with.


Just because you don't want to take the time to learn doesn't mean it's not doing everything it can to teach you.


The tekken button thing is laughable too at least for the console the series was originally released at home on, the buttons are the color of the buttons on the controller
 
Challenge modes aren't tutorials.

Learning isn't fun.

There is a limit to how much you can learn from reading/listening, you should try stuff for yourself.

I do agree that there is a presentation/information architecture issue to be addressed in the genre, but most of your complaints aren't the actual problems. I'm also not sure why you are equaling accessibility to learning. Stylish mode in Blazblue makes the game instantly accessible and has its own learning curve if you so wish to explore it, since there are multiple branches for combos just alternating button presses. Yeah, that doesn't make you learn how to play footsies properly, but it does makes the game more accessible to those who want to do flashy stuff and/or have weak execution and/or want quick pick up and play game.

Now here is the crazy thing: CS:GO doesn't teach you the proper way of grouping with people, camping spots or how to use smoke grenades. No MOBA tells you "that item use useless for this character, and that one is better at the end of the match and not the start". Rocket League doesn't teach you advanced movement or meta. And nobody complains about it. It's always fighting games.


Please, you are telling me you can design an icon that shows I have enough of a resource used to either break out of combos or to instantly fill my other resource meter depending when I use it without cluttering the screen? I'm talking about GG's Burst by the way.


Guilty Gear literally does this in its FAQ, in a section about how to choose a character.


Which developer said that?


Not the same thing you are mentioning, but Dissidia had different AI patterns, each one with a name. So, the "Special Squall" would exclusively attack (or more appropriately, spam) his Blasting Zone attack, a huge beam that he swings down and breaks guard. As soon as you saw that category in the pre fight screen, you could customize your character to deal with it, or at least have a proper plan (in this case, dodge after Blasting Zone's sound cue and hit him back while he recovered).

People around me usually complained that those single move spamming CPU opponents were too hard. Figures.

If people are using challenge modes to learn to play the game then they become tutorial. Good games are designed around the user. If you leave people with no instruction on how to learn combos, then provide a set of combos that players can learn in a 'challenge mode' people are going to use that as a tutorial.

People go to those menus looking for help, looking to learn. The same was true on SFIV, where trials were the only resource of that type in the game. It taught players a load of rubbish information. You could even see the effects online, as people parroted unsafe and useless BNBs from the games trials, because it was the only resource of its type that the game made available to it.

Ultimately, the challenge moniker doesn't enable it to escape criticism. It's embeded in the training menu in Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, and the challenges are the only character-specific content that the game offers within the Dojo.

As far as the iconography goes. It could definitely be clearer than it is in GGrd, however not everything needs to be explicitly taught to the player either. Would it not make sense to introduce that mechanic (and the associated UI element) when introducing the meter system? In general GGs information architecture is a mess. 52 basic mission items with no meaningful prioritisation of what it intends to teach.

Hell, the most basic example of poor information architecture is embeded in the menu itself, the items are categorised as 'mission' 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to 51', they're not sorted by type, combat, defensive, system, or anything else to help the player focus on what they might want to learn. Players need to read a paragraph of text because the titles (which aren't presented on the list items themselves) are vague and non-descriptive words like 'intercepting'. Players that are stuck because they don't understand the mission are forced to fail x number of times to reveal the hint, it's non-nonsensically obtuse.

I feel that your analogy to Rocket League and CS:GO misses the point. Those games don't have a comparable mechanical barrier between the player and being able to achieve what they want to, on screen. Additionally, they also have good matchmaking so that players can easily access players of their skill level at any time. You're comparing games where many players can't even execute the basic moveset, to games where the controls is inherently accessible, designed from the staples of two of the most successful genres in the industry. Heck, CS:GOs mechanical depth is determined by the accuracy of mouse movement, something that many, many people are likely to engage with every day.

Additionally, the mechanical depth to those games scales off of a single mechanic (accuracy) that people have a basic grasp of within moments of starting the game. Not to mention, everyone they play against wants to do the same thing as they do, so they don't have to worry about understanding each character, instead focusing on strategic components (often specific to each map).
 

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
Only slightly off topic as one big way to make fighting games more accessible is building a bigger base of casual players to help with matchmaking.

As earlier, things like Smash, MK, Injustice are more newbie friendly is they have larger player bases and thus there are more newbie/scrub players for people to find similar skilled matches against.

DOA celebrated 8 million downloads in January 2017 and from what I gather the DLC content sells pretty well to the point they have kept releasing DLC all these years and getting collaborations with different companies from other videogames, manga and anime. Killer Instinct Microsoft was celebrating last year 6 million unique users and as well continue to support the game with new seasons.

This encourages developers to keep supporting the game in the long run with balance updates, new characters and cosmetics without having to buy a new game the next year and adds longevity to the games and if the people trying that f2p version get encouraged to learn more they can just splurge more money on the full package.
 

New002

Member
OP you should highlight Killer Instinct in the OP and what it does right (if you've played it). I think that could be valuable info.
 

Mupod

Member
I've done every guilty gear xrd tutorial I could manage and I feel like I gained nothing of value from it whatsoever. I don't know if Revelator is better, I got it ages ago and just never had the time or will to try and dive into that mess of nonsense again. It's a shame because I like everything else about GG, it's just too complicated.
 

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
If people are using challenge modes to learn to play the game then they become tutorial. Good games are designed around the user. If you leave people with no instruction on how to learn combos, then provide a set of combos that players can learn in a 'challenge mode' people are going to use that as a tutorial.

People go to those menus looking for help, looking to learn. The same was true on SFIV, where trials were the only resource of that type in the game. It taught players a load of rubbish information. You could even see the effects online, as people parroted unsafe and useless BNBs from the games trials, because it was the only resource of its type that the game made available to it.

Ultimately, the challenge moniker doesn't enable it to escape criticism. It's embeded in the training menu in Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, and the challenges are the only character-specific content that the game offers within the Dojo.

As far as the iconography goes. It could definitely be clearer than it is in GGrd, however not everything needs to be explicitly taught to the player either. Would it not make sense to introduce that mechanic (and the associated UI element) when introducing the meter system? In general GGs information architecture is a mess. 52 basic mission items with no meaningful prioritisation of what it intends to teach.

Hell, the most basic example of poor information architecture is embeded in the menu itself, the items are categorised as 'mission' 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to 51', they're not sorted by type, combat, defensive, system, or anything else to help the player focus on what they might want to learn. Players need to read a paragraph of text because the titles (which aren't presented on the list items themselves) are vague and non-descriptive words like 'intercepting'. Players that are stuck because they don't understand the mission are forced to fail x number of times to reveal the hint, it's non-nonsensically obtuse.
They want you to sit there and try to S rank it, they want you to be willing to invest some time and learn, they want you to go back and try again later, they expect you to try and learn the missions in order.

They expect the player who wants to learn to actually want to learn.

You don't want to learn, you don't want to invest time, you want to be magically good at the game in record time. People need to stop focusing on how the high level players play and get frustrated when they can't just do the shit they do out the gate and understand that ALL OF THOSE players had a long road of learning the game at their own pace. And this is the issue with most people that complain about stuff like this
 

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
OP you should highlight Killer Instinct in the OP and what it does right (if you've played it). I think that could be valuable info.
Launched quickly KI on PC and took some quick images.

Basic and Advanced lessons. Of course I didnt take a pic of all the lessons but it tackles pretty basic stuff to advance stuff from movement to linking attacks and defence stuff.

Training options

I see some stuff there but it also has to do with the way Killer Instinct handles certain situations so I may be missing stuff.
 

danmaku

Member
I think the situation is not as grim as the OP seems to imply. Most games have decent tutorials and online communities are an invaluable resource to learn how to play. Back in the 90s, when fighting games were super popular, we had nothing at all. Most games didn't even have a training mode, most of the information were hidden and people had no idea how to play these games. But they were super popular, because they were new and cool and looked awesome. Now they're old stuff, all the cool kids are playing MOBAs or Overwatch or CSGo and so everyone wants to learn these games, not Street Fighter. They can afford to have terrible communities and give the finger to noobs because they have so many of them that it doesn't matter if some will quit.

Could tutorials be better? Yes, of course. I'd like to see a guitar hero-like display for button inputs, to learn the proper timing more easily. However, I feel it's not that important in the big picture. There isn't a big crowd of people that would get into FG if they had better tutorials.

Wait, the situation seems even more grim in my post...
 
They expect the player who wants to learn to actually want to learn.

Pretty much every time I read a related GAF thread regarding fighting games accessibility.

At the end of the day, the fighting game genre appeals to gamers who want to take the time to learn a new skill via playing the versus mode (human or AI) and learning from their successes and mistakes. The devs can only do so much in terms of good tutorials and simplifying mechanics.

It's okay to not like a genre of games due to its intricacies.
 

JimiNutz

Banned
As someone that wants to learn fighting games I agree with the OP.

The biggest annoyance for me is that it is never fun to learn the game. They need to work on fun and interactive methods for teaching the game mechanics. It's often really boring to learn a fighting game and that usually makes me want to give up.

Playing against real players is often overwhelming for new players as well and they need to improve the CPU AI so that it's actually possible to learn the game by playing against the CPU (Ive heard that fighting the CPU teaches nothing about actually playing against other real players?)
 

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
Playing against real players is often overwhelming for new players as well and they need to improve the CPU AI so that it's actually possible to learn the game by playing against the CPU (Ive heard that fighting the CPU teaches nothing about actually playing against other real players?)

When you are super new at the game fighting the AI is perfectly fine, you need to get comfortable actually playing the game in a active match. When people say playing the AI sucks they mean if you want to get past pre - intermediate level. Because the ai falls for certain things consistently and that can create bad habits / expectations in the players.
 

HeelPower

Member
Great post.

I think they've become reliant on user created tutorials.

I think that if games are to continue as a sport, how to play the them should not be a secret.

Actual real sports have well known training facilities and well established methods known to be effective in the game.
 

IbukiLordSA

Member
I don't think there is much they can do about this, there is only so much they can teach a player, the majority of learning is on the player. I think that tutorials should be left simple and only teach the basic mechanics and agree that the game teaching players useless combos is well useless. More practical combos would make a huge difference.

However the major part of the learning is on the player, the only way to learn a fighting game is to play it with other people, worse of better and learn from them, communicate with them and teach yourself. The problem is ego's get in the way, too many players are quick to jump on the "this is cheap" " this character needs a nerf" etc etc without even understanding the mechanics. Fighters are far too deep to explain everything to people and people are too lazy to go into practice mode record a combo or move that keeps hitting them and find ways around it or punish it. This is the only way to learn and sadly that pushes out the majority of players.
 
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Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
DOA celebrated 8 million downloads in January 2017 and from what I gather the DLC content sells pretty well to the point they have kept releasing DLC all these years and getting collaborations with different companies from other videogames, manga and anime. Killer Instinct Microsoft was celebrating last year 6 million unique users and as well continue to support the game with new seasons.

This encourages developers to keep supporting the game in the long run with balance updates, new characters and cosmetics without having to buy a new game the next year and adds longevity to the games and if the people trying that f2p version get encouraged to learn more they can just splurge more money on the full package.

Yep. Like I said, I think F2P is the way to go for both gamers and developers for all but the staple franchises that sell based on their IP. Players have a steady base of newbies trying out the free characters to play against (as long as the game catches on like DOA and KI and doesn't die of course) and devs get more people trying the game and potentially splurging on the full package or at least a few characters etc.

I'll probably give KI a go when it hits Steam as that should lead to a huge influx of newbies. Too busy trying to learn Tekken 7, Injustice 2 and Arms at the moment to beother with the Windows 10 versions. :D. I played a tad of the free version when I had an X1 and liked the little I played.
 

Ferrio

Banned
I don't know how viable it is but my big weakness is execution. When I played music, I started songs at half speed and slowly sped up until I can play at regular speed. I don't know if that's viable but it's been part of my requests for every fighting game that asks for feedback

You can do the same things in fighting games. Don't start out with complex combos/techniques/characters. Use someone simple, use simple combos, use simple moves.

The music analogy isn't half bad either. People look at the fighting game pros and think that's what they should be doing. It's like picking up a guitar and thinking you're able to play Freebird.
 

WarRock

Member
If people are using challenge modes to learn to play the game then they become tutorial. Good games are designed around the user. If you leave people with no instruction on how to learn combos, then provide a set of combos that players can learn in a 'challenge mode' people are going to use that as a tutorial.
Give me examples. Plus, even if you do want to use the challenge mode in GG to learn, guess what, GG does it in a good way. It teaches you a knockdown combo as the first thing. Then some special confirms. Then a anti-air. Then a jump cancel. Then a dust combo.

I do agree it's doesn't teach properly; it should make the player perform each combo multiple times in a row and in both sides before considering it "learned". Even then, in GG's case it is designed so you can gradually learn. If you go to the advanced section and then get annoyed you can't do or follow what's in there, guess what, go back and practice the beginner and intermediate some more.

People go to those menus looking for help, looking to learn. The same was true on SFIV, where trials were the only resource of that type in the game. It taught players a load of rubbish information. You could even see the effects online, as people parroted unsafe and useless BNBs from the games trials, because it was the only resource of its type that the game made available to it.
Fair enough, and I don't anybody can disagree the genre lacks in game information in general.

Ultimately, the challenge moniker doesn't enable it to escape criticism. It's embeded in the training menu in Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, and the challenges are the only character-specific content that the game offers within the Dojo.
Mission mode says hi.

As far as the iconography goes. It could definitely be clearer than it is in GGrd, however not everything needs to be explicitly taught to the player either. Would it not make sense to introduce that mechanic (and the associated UI element) when introducing the meter system? In general GGs information architecture is a mess. 52 basic mission items with no meaningful prioritisation of what it intends to teach.
Yes it would, but I am explicitly calling out your argument about redesigning the whole interface if you need outside information to read it. As a graphic design undergrad student (or grad student? I always get confused with the proper English terms for education) I think that's a bullshit ideal that UX/UI people follow. There is no way someone can take a look at something like the GRD gauge in Under Night and know everything there is to know about it - and that's fine.

Hell, the most basic example of poor information architecture is embeded in the menu itself, the items are categorised as 'mission' 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to 51', they're not sorted by type, combat, defensive, system, or anything else to help the player focus on what they might want to learn. Players need to read a paragraph of text because the titles (which aren't presented on the list items themselves) are vague and non-descriptive words like 'intercepting'. Players that are stuck because they don't understand the mission are forced to fail x number of times to reveal the hint, it's non-nonsensically obtuse.
Absolutely agreed, but I do think you are seriously overestimating how many people would use (and learn something out of) the mode no matter the case.

I feel that your analogy to Rocket League and CS:GO misses the point. Those games don't have a comparable mechanical barrier between the player and being able to achieve what they want to, on screen. Additionally, they also have good matchmaking so that players can easily access players of their skill level at any time. You're comparing games where many players can't even execute the basic moveset, to games where the controls is inherently accessible, designed from the staples of two of the most successful genres in the industry. Heck, CS:GOs mechanical depth is determined by the accuracy of mouse movement, something that many, many people are likely to engage with every day.

Additionally, the mechanical depth to those games scales off of a single mechanic (accuracy) that people have a basic grasp of within moments of starting the game. Not to mention, everyone they play against wants to do the same thing as they do, so they don't have to worry about understanding each character, instead focusing on strategic components (often specific to each map).
You avoided my MOBA comparison, and you're underestimating how hard it is to people who never touched a controller to read or control something like Rocket League or FPSes.

I addressed this whole "people can't access the basic mechanical level of fighting games" argument in a past thread IIRC, so let's just say I disagree about your assessment.
 

Nick_C

Member
Not t really understanding GG being included in some of these. The information overload is definitely a problem when you do the character combo tutorials, but Xrd also has one of, if not the, best tutorial a fighting game has ever seen. The starter tutorial is basically a set of mini games to teach things like air and ground movement, dodging and different types of attacks.

Other than that, everything else is pretty much spot on. I'm neither for nor against one button combos, but a lot of times it's too simplified and instead of being a good way to learn the games ins and outs it becomes a crutch.
 
Didn't get far into Bayonetta, but I like how the tutorial showed you a list of possible combos that narrowed down based on what you already pressed. At least you could be in the action while learning.

 
As someone that wants to learn fighting games I agree with the OP.

The biggest annoyance for me is that it is never fun to learn the game. They need to work on fun and interactive methods for teaching the game mechanics. It's often really boring to learn a fighting game and that usually makes me want to give up.

Playing against real players is often overwhelming for new players as well and they need to improve the CPU AI so that it's actually possible to learn the game by playing against the CPU (Ive heard that fighting the CPU teaches nothing about actually playing against other real players?)

The best way to improve at fighting games is to play other people.
 

IbukiLordSA

Member
Playing against real players is often overwhelming for new players as well and they need to improve the CPU AI so that it's actually possible to learn the game by playing against the CPU (Ive heard that fighting the CPU teaches nothing about actually playing against other real players?)

You can learn but you would learn more in practice mode, the cpu can teach you very bad habits. it's usually incredibly easy for a player who plays other people and has a deeper understanding of the game to beat someone who has only ever played the CPU or his friends.

There shouldn't be anything overwhelming about playing other people, even if you lose really badly. It's so easy to record matches and watch them over again. Pretty much every major fighting game lets you go into practice mode and record something and play it back. This will teach you far more than just fighting the CPU. Get online with people that have good connections, leave the ego at the door and just learn. Friend people who beat your ass so you can have more matches with them and continue to learn from them. Record your matches, see what is hitting you, learn what you can do to avoid that situation again. You will learn more from watching one match and repeating it in practice mode than you will against 100 cpu fights.

The best advice I ever got when I wanted to learn how to play Tekken was to lose my first 1000 matches as quickly as possible :p
 

retroman

Member
You know, I'd love to see a REAL back-to-basics fighting game. I don't need a huge roster, countless moves or combos that last half an hour. Just a simple game that's easy to pick up and play. For example, I'd love to see a modern version of International Karate +.

Any recent games that fit those criteria?
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Could tutorials be better? Yes, of course. I'd like to see a guitar hero-like display for button inputs, to learn the proper timing more easily.

That's a great idea. I feel it's been done in some tutorials I've played in years past, but I can't recall which one(s). It would be great in both Tekken 7 and Injustice 2 currently for getting timing down as I'm often left guessing where I need to be faster or add a delay etc.

However, I feel it's not that important in the big picture. There isn't a big crowd of people that would get into FG if they had better tutorials.

Also true and why most pubs don't invest much in tutorials etc. At the end of the day it's always going to be a niche (though a large one in many cases) of people who want to play games with a high skill/execution floor. Most people are tired from school/work/life and just want to play something they can pick up quickly and at least be decent at and learning and practicing a fighting game just feels too much like work to many people. For those willing to work, they're probably more likely to turn to community resources, youtube tutorials etc. so devs don't see it worth their money to ramp up their in-game teaching tools.

You can learn but you would learn more in practice mode, the cpu can teach you very bad habits. it's usually incredibly easy for a player who plays other people and has a deeper understanding of the game to beat someone who has only ever played the CPU or his friends.

There shouldn't be anything overwhelming about playing other people, even if you lose really badly. It's so easy to record matches and watch them over again. Pretty much every major fighting game lets you go into practice mode and record something and play it back. This will teach you far more than just fighting the CPU. Get online with people that have good connections, leave the ego at the door and just learn. Friend people who beat your ass so you can have more matches with them and continue to learn from them. Record your matches, see what is hitting you, learn what you can do to avoid that situation again. You will learn more from watching one match and repeating it in practice mode than you will against 100 cpu fights.

The best advice I ever got when I wanted to learn how to play Tekken was to lose my first 1000 matches as quickly as possible :p

While 100% true, that's exactly why these types of games will remain large niche titles. Most games just aren't finding fun in losing that often, watching replays, figuring out what was hitting them, how to pull it off themselves so they can record it for the training mode AI, spend time in training mode figuring out counters etc.

At the same time, I don't think anyone is really saying games need to teach that kind of stuff to players in tutorials. Just that games should at least do things like KI, GG etc. and have tutorials to at least teach the fundamentals as one has to learn those before they can do any of the above and games like SFV, Tekken 7 etc. don't bother teaching those at all. They really should add those and/or develop some simpler fighting games that are more focused on just fundamentals--maybe a Street Fighter or Tekken kids chibi type game that's more complex than Smash in terms of inputs but not near SFV or Tekken and market it as easy to to learn, a bridge to complex fighters etc.

But then again, as above I mostly concede that there's just not a huge market of people not already in the FGC (of the type of young gamer already likely to join later on already) willing to do work to play games so maybe these types of games just need to remain niche and not worry about trying to become huge mainstream hits that appeal to casuals.
 

Ferrio

Banned
You know, I'd love to see a REAL back-to-basics fighting game. I don't need a huge roster, countless moves or combos that last half an hour. Just a simple game that's easy to pick up and play. For example, I'd love to see a modern version of International Karate +.

Any recent games that fit those criteria?

Divekick?
 

Malice215

Member
Games could do more to add incentives to the learning process, but you could have the best tutorial in a game and new players still won't touch it because they want instant gratification. There's no reward for learning stuff in fighting games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p42p_CCrDRE

There's plenty of resources out there for those who are willing to learn.
 
Fighting games could definitely be better, but I think they're pretty good. Killer Instinct is pretty much perfect. They introduce the basics, show you how to do your moves, give you the info you need to get started, and show you what you need in training mode.

Having said that, I've never liked strategy guides, I prefer to learn by doing, and I'm totally happy with a game being like here's one example. There are many more. Experiment and have fun finding the approach for you and pretty much stopping instruction there. As long as they cover the basics and show me that there's more advanced stuff possible, I'm pretty good.

Part D is kinda weird to me. You'll have to train and practice no matter what. If fighting matches or training mode isn't the fun part of a fighting game, maybe they aren't for you. Unless you're a savant or prodigy, most things in life will be pretty rough to catch on to or get into if your desire to do what it takes to learn is way less than your desire to have the final skills from practice/training.
 

Anth0ny

Member
It's sad how off the mark they are when it comes to making fighting games more "casual friendly".


When it was done perfectly over 15 years ago:

Super_Smash_Bros_Melee_box_art.png
 

WarRock

Member
You know, I'd love to see a REAL back-to-basics fighting game. I don't need a huge roster, countless moves or combos that last half an hour. Just a simple game that's easy to pick up and play. For example, I'd love to see a modern version of International Karate +.

Any recent games that fit those criteria?
Yomi (available as physical card game too), Black and White Bushido, Nidhogg, Samurai Gunn, Divekick, Gundam VS, Arms, Rivals of Aether, Last Fight, Pocket Rumble...
 
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