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Extra Credits - The Fighting Game Problem - How to Teach Complicated Mechanics

Moondrop

Banned
The video is well made, but the mechanics barrier is only half the battle. The other half is players who refuse to adopt a competitive mindset. As long as players refer to tactics as "cheap" or "gay," as long as they pride themselves on picking unpopular characters for the sake of being unpopular, as long as they refute the concept of tiers, those players will never experience high-level play and fighting games will continue to be a niche genre.
 

ito007

Member
always happy to be giving extra credits my clicks. as someone who is garbage at fighting games, i could use a single player design like the ones they suggested.
 

patapuf

Member
The video is well made, but the mechanics barrier is only half the battle. The other half is players who refuse to adopt a competitive mindset. As long as players refer to tactics as "cheap" or "gay," as long as they pride themselves on picking unpopular characters for the sake of being unpopular, as long as they refute the concept of tiers, those players will never experience high-level play and fighting games will continue to be a niche genre.

Tiers are a sing of poor balance more than anything imo. Especially if there are a lot of them.
 

Syril

Member
I can't watch this right now at work, but the biggest problem I usually see with fighting games trying to teach their mechanics is that most of them just don't even try. Skullgirls is the only 2D fighter I've seen to have an actual tutorial that explains the actual fundamentals of fighting games like mixups or safe attacks or hit confirming. The way most fighting games give information is like if Dota 2 or something told you how much mana your abilities cost but didn't say what they did.
 
For some reason the teaching fighting game Mechanics video wasn't playing for me, so I downloaded the video, very good insight on how you should teach fighting games to new players! Subscribed to it because I agree to I believe everything they said in the video
 

kirblar

Member
The video is well made, but the mechanics barrier is only half the battle. The other half is players who refuse to adopt a competitive mindset. As long as players refer to tactics as "cheap" or "gay," as long as they pride themselves on picking unpopular characters for the sake of being unpopular, as long as they refute the concept of tiers, those players will never experience high-level play and fighting games will continue to be a niche genre.
You are completely and utterly wrong. People are always going to people.

Reducing barrier to entry is hugely important when trying to expand your player base. Also, figuring out what your players like, what they don't like, then working to showcase the positives while smoothing out the negatives, is a good thing.

People play for all sorts of reasons. Not every character is for everyone, not every game is for everyone, and not every style of play is for everyone.

Tournaments are great. So is story mode. So are combo videos. None of these are "wrong" ways to play. They're just different.
 

El Sloth

Banned
My biggest criticism of his suggestions is that he's basically saying devs should be making a whole other game to go along with the competitive multiplayer game, and at that point you have to wonder what sorts of sacrifices will have to be made to accommodate this "other game".

The biggest hit will definitely be felt in the roster size. While I'm personally fine with smaller 8 or 7 man rosters, I always see endless complaining about there not being enough characters for all sorts of reasons. Games in established franchises have it especially tough since players will always want their specific character(s) in the previous games to show back up again.
 

ShinMaruku

Member
A great show they did. And as for the teaching complicated mechanics you would need to have developer who can actually teach a game the issue with fighting games is none of the developers nor their high level players have the skills to break down the game for more accessibility. The current crop of people right now are not capable of that.
 

Toxi

Banned
I don't get the whole "fighting games are the most complex games ever!" idea people have about the genre. They seem less complex than RTS or MOBAs to me, and those genres have tons of new players.
Tiers are a sing of poor balance more than anything imo. Especially if there are a lot of them.
Tiers exist even in extremely balanced games where all characters see play in tournaments.
 
My biggest criticism of his suggestions is that he's basically saying devs should be making a whole other game to go along with competitive multiplayer game, and at that point you have to wonder what sorts of sacrifices will have to made to accommodate this "other game".

The biggest hit will definitely be the roster size. While I'm personally fine with smaller 8 or 7 man rosters, I always see endless complaining about there not being enough characters for all sorts of reasons. Games in established franchises have it especially tough since players will always want their specific character(s) in the previous games to show back up again.

This is a very,very valid point that most people don't seem to realize. You only have a finite amount of money, time and manpower. If you add something, chance are unless the budget and time grow accordingly (and this is not a magic fix, you can't just throw more people and more money at a projet and expect a linear return on productivity and that's for any project in life) you are going to cut something to compensate.
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
I think there is definitely a cultural factor to fighting game "impenetrability". Lots of people think they can't learn complex games, and many don't think they should have to learn in order to get to "the good bit". Some players don't recognize that not every game must be as inherently simple to pick up as every other game. Go isn't required to be as simple as checkers.

But I don't see why fighting games can't offer more content that enables players to learn as they play. I don't agree with the idea that the primary draw of playing a fighter is human competition. The action of making a cool looking character punch and kick stuff is fun in any context. So more robust single player (or cooperative) modes don't hurt. If you could find a way to embed education in the single player mode, go for it.
 

OceanBlue

Member
I don't get the whole "fighting games are the most complex games ever!" idea people have about the genre. They seem less complex than RTS or MOBAs to me, and those genres have tons of new players.

I'm not sure if I'm right because I don't really play MOBA games or RTS games (and because I'm bad at fighting games too :V), but I've always told myself that the amount of subsystems and things that they let the player do make them more approachable for new players.

An RTS or a MOBA might seem complicated at first, but when a new player hits a wall on some mechanic, they can practice something else. Are you bad at ganks in MOBAs or micro in RTS? You can let off steam by practicing last hitting or trying different build orders. There's so much you can learn in more complex games--some of which don't involve as much player vs. player interaction as others--that you can stay engaged by the game without that one mechanic ruining the experience.

Fighting games kinda have stuff like this too. I can still practice my offense on other people, work on footsies, or grind out setups and combos in training mode even when my defense is bad. Still, there are much less mechanics than in other games and, as with other genres, being bad at one thing makes it harder to find opportunities to do other things. If I have good neutral but bad offense, I won't ever be rewarded for my neutral and the opponent will have to make far less reads. I'm not saying that other genres don't punish you for being bad at something, but I'm not sure they're as restricting.

Kinda scatterbrained post but yeah :p. I'm bad at all of these genres too so who knows.
 
My biggest criticism of his suggestions is that he's basically saying devs should be making a whole other game to go along with the competitive multiplayer game, and at that point you have to wonder what sorts of sacrifices will have to be made to accommodate this "other game".

The biggest hit will definitely be felt in the roster size. While I'm personally fine with smaller 8 or 7 man rosters, I always see endless complaining about there not being enough characters for all sorts of reasons. Games in established franchises have it especially tough since players will always want their specific character(s) in the previous games to show back up again.

The suggestion actually reminded me of Mortal Kombat Deceptions story mode. It's been a few years since I played it, but you played as Shujinko in what was an adventure mode with a bunch of move list tutorials for various characters. I think they went into a bit of depth about the stance/weapon switch, I don't recall them teaching something too in depth about the system though.

As a fighting game player I prefer a Virtua Fighter 4 training mode that runs down through system almost step by step. It was amazing to see that they gave you strategies for almost every scenario. Almost every fighting game could benefit from a mode like that, but I recall hearing that SEGA may have some weird patent for that kind of training mode though which may prevent other games from implementing it (unless they pay to use it right?). Capcom could really help new comers by really breaking down the different ways to combo in their games(links, cancels, chain cancels, target combos, etc). The Super Street Fighter IV trials just kind of gave you a bunch of commands and didn't really break down why some worked and why some didn't work unless you performed it a certain way.

I also wonder if training modes suffer because companies like to get that licencing money from Brady games for strategy guides. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the Marvel 3 Bible and the Ultimate Marvel New Testament, but I am sure Capcom was looking at the monetary gain from licencing and left their trials to a bare minimum. I also recently got the Frame Data app for Ultra Street Fighter 4, which is quite nice, but could of course use some work. However, I think that kind of stuff could be available in training mode/replays within the game itself.
 

aeolist

Banned
my problem has always been execution more than mechanics. i don't mind playing games that take a long time to master but i can't get into them when just learning how to perform basic inputs takes weeks or months of practice.
 

Toxi

Banned
I'm not sure if I'm right because I don't really play MOBA games or RTS games (and because I'm bad at fighting games too :V), but I've always told myself that the amount of subsystems and things that they let the player do make them more approachable for new players.

An RTS or a MOBA might seem complicated at first, but when a new player hits a wall on some mechanic, they can practice something else. Are you bad at ganks in MOBAs or micro in RTS? You can let off steam by practicing last hitting or trying different build orders. There's so much you can learn in more complex games--some of which don't involve as much player vs. player interaction as others--that you can stay engaged by the game without that one mechanic ruining the experience.

Fighting games kinda have stuff like this too. I can still practice my offense on other people, work on footsies, or grind out setups and combos in training mode even when my defense is bad. Still, there are much less mechanics than in other games and, as with other genres, being bad at one thing makes it harder to find opportunities to do other things. If I have good neutral but bad offense, I won't ever be rewarded for my neutral and the opponent will have to make far less reads. I'm not saying that other genres don't punish you for being bad at something, but I'm not sure they're as restricting.

Kinda scatterbrained post but yeah :p. I'm bad at all of these genres too so who knows.
Not at all! I don't play RTS and MOBAs. I've tried, but I found learning those games very daunting. But if I approached them from a different direction instead of hammering at the same thing over and over, I probably would have had less trouble. Meanwhile, I like fighting games because even when I suck at something, I can practice, practice, practice to try and improve it.
 

Zissou

Member
I don't get the whole "fighting games are the most complex games ever!" idea people have about the genre. They seem less complex than RTS or MOBAs to me, and those genres have tons of new players.

It's hard to do an apples-to-apples genre comparison. For one, it's more about perception of complexity rather than actual complexity. A lot of players picking up League of Legends don't think the game is very complex whereas fighting games have a reputation for being very demanding/difficult to get into.

You see this even within the genre of fighting games- a lot of people who don't play fighters too seriously have the idea that certain games have easier execution than others, but often times, they're completely wrong. I remember when VF5 came out for the PS3 not long after the system launched and listening to the 1up Yours podcast where they talked about it. They thought VF had the steepest execution requirements of any fighter out there, citing some Akira-specific move that required 1/60 of a second (one frame) timing. Meanwhile, when SF4 came out, they happily praised the game's accessibility... despite the fact that one frame links are plentiful and even an absolute requirement to play many characters properly (they just weren't aware of this).

MOBAs being team-based mean that people don't often win or lose solely due to their own personal merit. Bad players will still win when their team comes through sometimes, so it allows people to believe they are better than they are and gives them the ultimate option select: Did we win? If yes -> all me, imdabes. If no -> my fucking scrub team sucked!

When it comes to RTS, I don't really agree that the genre is attracting new players. SC2 seems like the only game in town, and it (according to wikipedia) sold 4.5 million copies, which is less than the cumulative sales of the SF4 series, and this doesn't take into account the sales of other fighters. I'd be willing to bet that as an overall genre, fighting games sell substantially more copies annually than RTS games.
 
What I don't like about this video is that it asks for tutorials that are breaking the wall of things you need to learn, so you can take time to learn them, memorize them all. Many games already did it: VF4, DOA5U, Skullgirls, even MK9 and Killer Instinct. In Skullgirls you have a tutorial explaining to you that you need to jump over a projectile runing on the ground, a tutorial explaining to you what is hit confirm, etc...

The problem is : nobody likes tutorials that lasts more than 20 minutes. Nobody except for MMOs players like grinding like the video suggests. You could very well put tutorials in story modes (it already exists) but if you are not good enough or don't care because you actually like the story more than the game (hello BlazBlue), you can't continue and you stop playing the game without being able to learn how to play or how the story ends.
Of course we can have tutorials like VF4E and DOA5U where the game explains to you what, why, how. But if you did played them, you know exactly what went wrong : you forgot what you learned one hour earlier, because you didn't practice enough each mechanic the tutorial teached you and because they are too many mechanics. So the solution would be to unlock the next tutorial only if you accept to play one week of footsies so you finally get it ? But who the hell would buy a game and them accept to do this ? It will never happen.

And that's where the problem is: you can't teach fighting game with a one hour tutorial because it takes way too much time. You can give players information about how things works, but that's all. Because you can only learn this kind of game by trial and error, repetition, and by encountering situations you don't know and trying to understand them by reading again the mechanics and taking a step back about what you did.

To me teaching fighting game is like teaching how to drive. You know a wheel turn the car. You know that if you'll go too far in a curve, you'll hit the sidewalk. You'll not turn it enough or too much sometimes. But can you give people 10 hours of class just for the wheel by creating a space where all kinds of turns exists? Nope, you'll teach them the wheel at the same time they'll learn to evaluate the distances, the size of the car, how to watch in mirrors, avoid people, in the real street. The wheel, as well as the engine, the brakes, how people react, how they drive, can't be teach by tutorials/challenges. You have to do it in real life, make mistakes, and having someone near you avoiding you being hurt and explaining to you what mistake you made, why you made it, and how not to do it.

That could fun of course ! But after one hour of lessons, your ego is tormented with your poor skills and you are exhausted by concentration. It's hard, you don't want to do it each day. It's not a game, it's school. You don't "play" school when going back home and put a disk in the console to relax. And that's why people force themselves to drive but not to play fighting games : driving is an essential part of life so you endure expensive lessons, fighting games are just a game you think as something fun that should be automatic and served on a plate, but is actually a new way of thinking by taking other people in consideration, acting with or against other people, controlling yourself in high stress moments. You need a coach and real life lessons to learn fighting games.

That's why League of Legends or Dota2 have so many players. First, real life lessons are free, as the games are free. Characters are way simpler than any fighting game characters and you pass from one to the other once you mastered one. You will fail a lot at the beginning, blame yourself and you team. But you can eventually win if your team is ok, so your ego is restored, you are less frustrated.
Because the most important thing about MOBAs is that since you are not playing only AGAINST people but WITH a team, you'll eventually make a lot of friends faster and learn faster as you can ask for help and among 4 players, you have more chances to have someone explaining things to you and progress. That's the same way you progress when you learn how to drive because the teacher is all yours for one hour of play. In any fighting game because it's one vs one, it's a 3 minute match, and the single person with you is actually your opponent who will not tell you how to play, you can't really learn.

So that's it for me : you can't learn fighting games without actually fighting for real. The game can teach you how to play from a theory perspective, but the only way to progress is fighting a real opponent, not being in a single player mode where you grind, do tutorials you forgot one hour later. Instead of doing tutorial, we should have modes that permits you and your opponent to focus on specific parts of the game. For example, being able to play online without using any special move or super but only normals, having a multiplayer mode where you take turns at attacking and garding. Even a mode where the ultra would be instant kill on touch could be could, as you would have to focus on ways of landing it.

But you always have to be with a human player or a coach sharing with you your lesson.
 
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