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Can fighting games be casual?

W

Weiss

Banned
So I'm not much of a fighting game fan, I'm gonna buy MvC:I and ragequit when I lose all the time, butt with the stated focus on being an accessible game, I figured it was worth asking whether or not a genre based inherently on competition can be casual friendly.

I think of games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, Soul Calibur 2, and Mortal Kombat Deception. Those games had entire modes dedicated to single player content with buttloads of unlockables, and I feel that spending so much time having to play the game was an organic way to teach players the fundamentals as opposed to just dumping them into Practice Mode.

I remember spending hours in Soul Calibur 2's modes like Survival, Team Attack and Weapon Master. I liked just dicking around in Mortal Kombat Deception's Konquest mode, and I played Melee's single player modes over and over to get all the trophies.

Heck, Netherrealm has gotten massive success over the years and they devote a lot to single player content in MKX and Injustice. Those games have dedicated, hours long story modes.

In theory, online should provide an infinite amount of content and I think it's why modern fighters have been skimping on the single player content for the last decade, but in practice I wonder if having the only avenue for extended gameplay be in getting chewed up and spat out by hardcore fans is what is ultimately keeping casual fans away, and why MvC:I slimming down and advertising its single player content as a selling point could be a good thing. I want to play the game without getting bodied by SwagBlazer420.
 
M

Man God

Non-Canon Member
MvC2 is like the most casual game ever made. It's the summation of all these crazy games Capcom made in the 90's thrown together with hardly any care.
 
D

David___

Banned
I mean they can, but it wont change the outcome where the people who are more dedicated will destroy anyone online who only plays a couple hours a week.

When devs lower the skill ceiling they lower it for everyone, including those who play hours a day and in the end the inevitable outcome above will just be met faster.

Fighting game devs need to focus on single player content for the everyday joe instead of making the core gameplay more accessible.
 
C

capitalCORN

Member
Does no one in this forum have real life friends? Obviously playing online will involve tryhards, but these games have local multiplayer for a reason. Or go fight the CPU and master the art of impractical combos. That's how I got my money's worth before GGPO.
 
T

TheSpoiler

Member
I think you have a few misconceptions about fighters.

Weiss said:
So I'm not much of a fighting game fan, I'm gonna buy MvC:I and ragequit when I lose all the time, butt with the stated focus on being an accessible game, I figured it was worth asking whether or not a genre based inherently on competition can be casual friendly.
Click to expand...

What they mean by accessible can be a myriad of things. It's probably not going to be less deep than the previous Marvel games.

I think of games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, Soul Calibur 2, and Mortal Kombat Deception. Those games had entire modes dedicated to single player content with buttloads of unlockables, and I feel that spending so much time having to play the game was an organic way to teach players the fundamentals as opposed to just dumping them into Practice Mode.
Click to expand...

Kind of. When you play against the AI, you aren't really learning fundies. You are learning moves and such, sure, but translating that to a real opponent is incredibly difficult. That isn't to say one can't enjoy both fighting the AI and people! It's just hard unless you know how to switch back and forth is all (since AI won't evolve from reading your inputs for a long time).

GG has a great tutorial that teaches players, as does KI. Both games should really become a standard. Oh, and VF4 EVO!

I remember spending hours in Soul Calibur 2's modes like Survival, Team Attack and Weapon Master. I liked just dicking around in Mortal Kombat Deception's Konquest mode, and I played Melee's single player modes over and over to get all the trophies.

Heck, Netherrealm has gotten massive success over the years and they devote a lot to single player content in MKX and Injustice. Those games have dedicated, hours long story modes.
Click to expand...

Are we discussing this from a content aspect? Are these people going to move to other modes where they fight other people?

In theory, online should provide an infinite amount of content and I think it's why modern fighters have been skimping on the single player content for the last decade, but in practice I wonder if having the only avenue for extended gameplay be in getting chewed up and spat out by hardcore fans is what is ultimately keeping casual fans away, and why MvC:I slimming down and advertising its single player content as a selling point could be a good thing. I want to play the game without getting bodied by SwagBlazer420.
Click to expand...

Single player content is part of it. Retaining players depends on a lot of factors besides the content involved. Every fighting game player starts out as a casual. We get bodied, and some stick with it and learn, and others decide it's not for them. Some hover in Super Bronze (like me!). I think the main problem is that you have to spend hours learning combos. For the most part, you don't. There's a great GAF topic somewhere explaining that.

Anyway, they CAN be hard to get into if you aren't into browsing places like GAF, but help is out there. At some level, fighting games can't always grasp people and that's fine. Even people who play Smash casually don't always translate to people who want to learn the game and win against other people.
 
S

Shadynasty

Member
I always found most fighting games casual. You could have a player who knows every single input for a characters moves and pit them against a 6 year old who mashes buttons and the 6 year old wins.
 
K

Karsticles

Member
Anyone can play any game casually if they find other people to play with in the same way. Casual isn't a game feature, it's an attitude. The problem isn't that hardcore players push casuals out, it's that casuals want to play with hardcore players without putting the effort in, so they quit.
 
Q

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
Karsticles said:
Anyone can play any game casually if they find other people to play with in the same way. Casual isn't a game feature, it's an attitude. The problem isn't that hardcore players push casuals out, it's that casuals want to play with hardcore players without putting the effort in, so they quit.
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This
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I would say that Super Smash Bros offers an experience that attracts a large casual audience even with its multiplayer.

Riot and Radiant are currently making a game (presumed to be a League of Legends fighter) around the idea of a fighting game with simple controls. I imagine that will be rather accessible too, given most of the target audience presumably has never played a fighting game before.

Edit:

To the above, I think the main idea here would be titles that actually attract an audience online that could allow for beginners to frequently run into other beginners when playing, and similarly do so for intermediate players. If you only have 200K people playing online each month and they're overwhelmingly very advanced players, it's not a great experience for people who want to learn and get better by playing against someone at least within a lightyear of their skill level.
 
J

jnWake

Member
Shadynasty said:
I always found most fighting games casual. You could have a player who knows every single input for a characters moves and pit them against a 6 year old who mashes buttons and the 6 year old wins.
Click to expand...

084.png
 
F

Frozenprince

Banned
I mean.

That's kinda what fighting games are.

Casual experiences best done on a couch with friends.

Or, back in my day, an arcade with $5 worth of quarters.
 
Q

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
Shadynasty said:
I always found most fighting games casual. You could have a player who knows every single input for a characters moves and pit them against a 6 year old who mashes buttons and the 6 year old wins.
Click to expand...

Money match me vs a 6 year old 100 bucks, I could use the cash
 
Shpeshal Nick

Shpeshal Nick

aka Collingwood
Killer Instinct is the closest I've seen to a casual friendly fighting game. It even has an option that can be turned on to auto combo.

It effectively encourages button mashing. But it's deep enough to allow pros to get out of it pretty easily.
 
P

pla-pla-place holder

Member
Sure if more focus is put into teaching people mechanics rather then simplifying controls. Take for examble the parry mini game in street fighter 3 a mode focused on just parrying timing without worrying about anything else.
 
S

SarusGray

Member
Shadynasty said:
I always found most fighting games casual. You could have a player who knows every single input for a characters moves and pit them against a 6 year old who mashes buttons and the 6 year old wins.
Click to expand...

no. Either the player who knows inputs never actually won a match against a cpu or something or the 6 year old actually is pro af.
 
T

TheSpoiler

Member
Nirolak said:
I would say that Super Smash Bros offers an experience that attracts a large casual audience even with its multiplayer.

Riot and Radiant are currently making a game (presumed to be a League of Legends fighter) around the idea of a fighting game with simple controls. I imagine that will be rather accessible too, given most of the target audience presumably has never played a fighting game before.

Edit:

To the above, I think the main idea here would be titles that actually attract an audience online that could allow for beginners to frequently run into other beginners when playing, and similarly do so for intermediate players. If you only have 200K people playing online each month and they're overwhelmingly very advanced players, it's not a great experience for people who want to learn and get better by playing against someone at least within a lightyear of their skill level.
Click to expand...

But, I mean, that's why you have ranking systems in place. And there's no real way to completely gate people from getting better. Eventually, people will learn the game, and for some casual players, it'll seem impossible to advance. That's kind of a state of mind and I don't think a game can fully solve it short of continuously reminding you that it's possible to get better and that what they are doing isn't exactly cheap.

As someone said before, lowering the skill ceiling only makes things worse. Again, even in Smash, people feel outclassed all the time at beginner levels. I know this because I'm absolute ass, and that's where I stay in that game. My friends aren't going to keep playing online because they aren't winning, and the only thing that can change that is them getting better.
 
N

nded

Member
Yeah, but only if you have friends or a local scene at a similar skill level to you.

Online play is a poor substitute for a night in getting drunk and talking shit about your friend's Sagat.
 
D

Dreavus

Member
Shadynasty said:
I always found most fighting games casual. You could have a player who knows every single input for a characters moves and pit them against a 6 year old who mashes buttons and the 6 year old wins.
Click to expand...

That's true before either player has fundamentals. Blocking punishing etc. It becomes pretty easy to dismantle a button masher once you know the basics.
 
Junahu

Junahu

Member
David___ said:
When devs lower the skill ceiling they lower it for everyone, including those who play hours a day and in the end the inevitable outcome above will just be met faster.
Click to expand...
I don't think that is how it works. When the skill ceiling is lowered, it forces skilled players to cap at a lower level of performance. Relative to a casual player, there is less that a hardcore player can do to pull ahead.
 
K

Kid Kamikaze10

Member
Personally, I think good single player content can really bring people in, especially those who aren't trying into the whole "getting your ass whooped online" thing or play offline.

I wish more fighting games would put effort into the SP experience, like FPS do. And FPS are just as invested in multiplayer experiences if not more.


As for making the multi player aspect more casual, that would take learning from the other genres too. Like the DOTAs, LOLs and many many FPS.
 
P

pizzacat

Banned
Fighting games can be casual buts its hard to get there.

but if theres depth to be found, and theres more than 1 person willing to put in the work to find the tech then it will be competitive as well.
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
TheSpoiler said:
But, I mean, that's why you have ranking systems in place. And there's no real way to completely gate people from getting better. Eventually, people will learn the game, and for some casual players, it'll seem impossible to advance. That's kind of a state of mind and I don't think a game can fully solve it short of continuously reminding you that it's possible to get better and that what they are doing isn't exactly cheap.

As someone said before, lowering the skill ceiling only makes things worse. Again, even in Smash, people feel outclassed all the time at beginner levels. I know this because I'm absolute ass, and that's where I stay in that game. My friends aren't going to keep playing online because they aren't winning, and the only thing that can change that is them getting better.
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Well, sure, there are going to be some people who never want to get better and these types of games are a bad fit for them.

However, I think there's something to be said that there were nearly a million people playing Dota 2 at the same time today, which is actually an incredibly complicated game with a very high skill ceiling.

I think if you just flipped a switch and made Street Fighter V free 2 play tomorrow, that wouldn't happen, and I would suggest that there's design decisions both within the mechanics and within the long-term-play incentivization structure for online play that would cause this.

Mind, I don't think there's anything wrong with a game that wants to target a very specific audience, but I do believe you could design a fighting game that was actually capturing 200K+ concurrent players worldwide on a daily basis. There's clearly a lot of interest around the genre, but I think the product for doing that hasn't been designed yet.

I would guess that product would both be easier to immediately pick up and play (even if you're playing at a very poor level overall, you should probably be able to at least pull off all of the moves after an hour or two), and then it would have more meaningful metagame elements around it to keep rewarding the player (level-up rewards, cosmetics, taunts, and all the various other things you see f2p titles and heavy service games doing). I think Smash's controls work well for the former, and Injustice 2's gear system is probably a good element along these lines for the latter, and Street Fighter's business model is a great retention tool as well to keep giving people new content to look forward to, but you basically need something that fuses this all together.
 
M

Mik317

Member
ynes

It can and has been done; Melee for example shows you can have your cake and eat it too. However most of what made Melee the way it is was a mistake in a sense.

MKX kinda hits it too with it's dearth of singleplayer content...but i am not sure how it does as a competitive game.

As stated above, it is a mindset issue. The best of the best or hell even the just okay put in a lot of time to "git gud" and they will often stomp those who don't...which isn't fun for the stompee. So what do you even do? You make it easier to close the gap and you lose the hardcore. Finding that balance is hard. But ideally its the players that need to meet each other both ways too.

The best times I have had with fighting games was against my friend in something we were close in level in...on the flipside against that same friend in Marvel 3, which I sucked at, it wasn't as fun because he knew combos and shit (HAX I say). But regardless with the internet and GAF in general, finding a group of people on your level shouldn't be too hard....however, you also need to just realize if you want to get in, you might have to put in some time. Not enough to become EVO worthy either...just some actual practice. but alot of people don't want that and thus here we are
 
J

Jon Carter

Member
Is Power Stone a fighting game? Because that was amazing and I'm terrible at fighting games. Smash Bros. is an obvious answer.
 
Alex

Alex

Member
Kid Kamikaze10 said:
Personally, I think good single player content can really bring people in, especially those who aren't trying into the whole "getting your ass whooped online" thing or play offline.

I wish more fighting games would put effort into the SP experience, like FPS do. And FPS are just as invested in multiplayer experiences if not more.
Click to expand...

I really do not think single player content is the answer. I think it'd be nice to have but for growing a multiplayer game it's more about updating the design.

I think Smash Brothers sort of has it going in the right direction. It has a more forgiving learning curve, it's not 1v1 and there's a little more to it beyond raw combat. To boot, it also is backed with familiar licenses and a big name

Issue is, that big name is Nintendo, so there hasn't been nearly as much room to grow into a bigger event. You'd probably want something that bridges a PC and console divide, draws in streamers and promotes an evergreen nature. Being steeped more as a mascot game it's also more difficult to replicate by anyone else.

I'm surprised there aren't more takes on expanding the genre but mistakes are really expensive nowadays, I suppose.
 
B

bman94

Member
capitalCORN said:
Does no one in this forum have real life friends? Obviously playing online will involve tryhards, but these games have local multiplayer for a reason. Or go fight the CPU and master the art of impractical combos. That's how I got my money's worth before GGPO.
Click to expand...

The problem with local multiplayer sometimes is that you, as the owner of the game ends up getting super good at the game and your friends eventually get tired of playing cause they get tired of losing. And you can only play the computer so much before you get bored of that.
 
P

perorist

Unconfirmed Member
Karsticles said:
Anyone can play any game casually if they find other people to play with in the same way. Casual isn't a game feature, it's an attitude. The problem isn't that hardcore players push casuals out, it's that casuals want to play with hardcore players without putting the effort in, so they quit.
Click to expand...
This is it right here
 
D

David___

Banned
Junahu said:
I don't think that is how it works. When the skill ceiling is lowered, it forces skilled players to cap at a lower level of performance. Relative to a casual player, there is less that a hardcore player can do to pull ahead.
Click to expand...

On the flip side, when the skill ceilings lowered, hardcore players will perform a ton more consistently than before.
 
N

Nanashrew

Banned
Yes they can. It's why it's important to have a low/semi-low skill floor so that anyone can get into the game. Which fighting games generally do have.

You should be fine playing MvCi. MvC has always been pretty casual friendly and fun with its spectacles. It's a hype game that anyone can get into. I'm not a pro in any sense of the word but I've been playing MvC games since 2 in the arcade when I was a kid and I just have so much fun with the characters.
 
C

capitalCORN

Member
bman94 said:
The problem with local multiplayer sometimes is that you, as the owner of the game ends up getting super good at the game and your friends eventually get tired of playing cause they get tired of losing. And you can only play the computer so much before you get bored of that.
Click to expand...

Well, if you get good go online. Get better.
 
S

Shadynasty

Member
Dreavus said:
That's true before either player has fundamentals. Blocking punishing etc. It becomes pretty easy to dismantle a button masher once you know the basics.
Click to expand...

True, but my point is that while I'm not a pro gamer level Tekken player, I was hands down better than most of my friends and my son beat my ass by spamming me button mashing. Most fighting games imo can be casual because of this. I can sit down with my wife and kids and we can play Injustice and everyone has a great time. That's why I like them. While you can have some hardcore versus battles with your friends/online/cpu etc, the games are approachable enough for my family to play with me as well.

Also Smash Bros to me is the best example of a fighting/melee game being casual and maintain decent competition.
 
S

Shadynasty

Member
capitalCORN said:
Well, if you get good go online. Get better.
Click to expand...

I have a question about this. At what point is your ISP fast enough to play online fighting without noticeable input lag?


Anyone can play any game casually if they find other people to play with in the same way. Casual isn't a game feature, it's an attitude. The problem isn't that hardcore players push casuals out, it's that casuals want to play with hardcore players without putting the effort in, so they quit.
Click to expand...

This so much. There's not a lot of satisfaction in wrecking a "casual" or inexperienced player. If I did that I'd never have family fight night.
 
N

Nemesis121

Member
Man God said:
MvC2 is like the most casual game ever made. It's the summation of all these crazy games Capcom made in the 90's thrown together with hardly any care.
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Tekken more casual, the regular dude visiting an arcade with his girl can win a match, pick Law and smash buttons=victory....seen it too many times, shit even I almost became a victim, girl next to him he's button mashing and i am getting salty because he's hitting me with combos, but final round I dodge a lot of sent him packing to play some shit arcade game his GF wanted to play..
 
NoKisum

NoKisum

Member
Of course fighting games can have elements that would be deemed "casual". But the more of those features added, the less the FGC would deem them to be considered "real games".

OT: I have no idea if I worded that second sentence right. It sounds right but looks wrong, and it's bothering me...
 
T

Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!

Member
Street fighter 2's core gameplay was the perfect mix of fun to play for casuals but hard to master which is probably why it's the most popular fighting game of all time.
 
Seraph_Nicholas

Seraph_Nicholas

Member
Single player content in fighting games teaches you absolutely dick about how the game is actually played. I'd go so far as to say it actively makes you a worse player.

If you can't find satisfaction in nigh-invisible improvements in your personal skill, then I doubt any fighting game will hold your attention beyond the dripfeed of content.
 
L

Lokbob

Member
Karsticles said:
Anyone can play any game casually if they find other people to play with in the same way. Casual isn't a game feature, it's an attitude. The problem isn't that hardcore players push casuals out, it's that casuals want to play with hardcore players without putting the effort in, so they quit.
Click to expand...

100%. You can take a game like Divekick which is super simple but the better player who put in more time will win most of the time. That's just how it is and should be.
 
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