This:
Although games with input execution barrier are less casual (since you'll be missing out on a lot of the game).
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Can fighting games be casual?
- Thread starter Weiss
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Definitely stellar opposites haha. I think FPS games are easier and by default appeal to the casual crowd more easily as a result. Overwatch being a prime example haha.
Silent Chief
Member
Casual fighting sounds a lot like professional wrestling.
follow up question: is League of Legends more complex than Street Fighter? If so, how the fuck is it so popular?
At a glance, this:
looks a shit load more confusing than this:
yet you don't hear about how games like LOL and DOTA2 are too difficult. they're massive games for a reason, huge at a level fighting games can't even dream of yet.
At a glance, this:
looks a shit load more confusing than this:
yet you don't hear about how games like LOL and DOTA2 are too difficult. they're massive games for a reason, huge at a level fighting games can't even dream of yet.
HollowCentral
Member
And that's why we love it
I don't think this is a bad thing. In life, people that practice things are better at things. That's okay if it's true in video games too.
As I mentioned before, I think this is why a good competitive game has a good balance between tech skill and mental skill. Shooters lean too heavily in the mental and not in the technical. Which doesn't mean they aren't skill based, but simply that they are less technical skill based. High level Melee has APMs similar to DOTA and SC2 which is why I think it truly is a sport.
You clearly don't know anything about Melee or PM, haha.
Justin Wong's View on Melee Justin Wong names Smash 4 one of three games he'd play outside of SFV in 2017
Does LoL require a lot of split second decisions? I've never played a MOBA so I'm not sure. But competitive fighting games are tough because of those split-second reads you have to make and respond to. Memorizing combos and making consistent, highly accurate inputs is also part of it, but that's secondary, I think.
capitalCORN
Member
It is super complicated. But it is from a genre that was born from a free mod to a VERY popular game, which was even MORE complicated.
Maybe not as heavy on reflex, but still very important. But much heavier on meta.
Edit: And if your playing fighting games with a punish heavy mentality, you've still got ways to go.
See what I posted on a previous page -
I think most games can be enjoyed at a casual level if there's an audience there to support it. I mean everyone mentions Street Fighter II, but lets not forget most people played locally with friends or relatives who were likely going to be of a similar experience level to you. The issue with Street Fighter now and other newer fighters is just that people are more increasingly playing online, and the skill level is just so much higher when you're pooling in people from all over the world.
Scrub Mcgrubb
Member
You know a good example is For Honor.
The main mode is team based... and you can help your team without necessarily having to engage in a fight with another person- you can capture points or try to kill cpu minions.
At it's core though it's still very much a fighting game... there's character matchups... reads... reactions... grappling and cheap stuff, etc.
The main mode is team based... and you can help your team without necessarily having to engage in a fight with another person- you can capture points or try to kill cpu minions.
At it's core though it's still very much a fighting game... there's character matchups... reads... reactions... grappling and cheap stuff, etc.
I'm excited to try it. I hope it turns out well.
When I lose at dota/overwatch I can blame my oponents, cant do the same on a 1v1 so I just quit.
Also is harder to find peopel of your exactly level to practice, often in SFIV and V I would get matched with someone way better or way worse
GhostOfSparta305
Banned
I'm not saying it's bad that people have to practice to get good at a game. I'm saying that it's bad for accessibility when a game's controls are complex for no apparent reason.
Some games do have a good reason: take Twisted Metal 2012, a game often criticized for its "complex" controls. However, literally every button on the controller performs a unique function. So even if you think its controls are complex, you at least understand why.
Meanwhile, with Street Fighter 4, there's so much repetition built into its control scheme, yet performing special moves requires very specific combination inputs. What's the reason for this? Why are the controls so complex when they don't need to be? What would be lost by making this control scheme simpler?
I don't know either, but shooters have split second decisions and they seem to be popular.
So here's what I'm thinking it comes down to:
MOBAs: Complex inputs, slow paced decision making. Casual.
Shooters: Simplistic inputs, fast paced decision making. Casual.
Fighting games: Complex inputs, fast paced decision making. Hardcore AF.
(and, as mentioned, there's the whole "blame your team" thing that flies with those genres and doesn't with fighting games. You gotta hold that L)
Is there a way to fix this "problem" while still keeping it a fighting game?
Is Smash Bros Brawl the logical end point for fighting games?
capitalCORN
Member
Shooters and MOBAs casual? Have you even played a MOBA or a PC centric multiplayer shooter in your life?
I think you're on to something, but I think you're being unfair to MOBAs and Shooters haha.
Slamtastic
Member
By casual they mean that people are okay with playing them by the millions. That they give them a shot because there's less of a stigma about their difficulty.
Talking about what allows LoL and Overwatch to have the playerbase size they have vs any fighting game's base/sales.
the whole point of this thread is trying to pinpoint a way in which fighting games can be deemed "casual"
shooters and MOBAs, judging from how huge they are with sales/players/stream viewers, have already hit that point.
Exactly. I'm really bad at shooters, but I can play Lucio in Overwatch and do well enough for people to add me as friend to keep playing with me.
In a fighter there's a lot you have to learn just to compete.
A game with the right tech and the right "feel," to the movement/tech makes the game feel amazing. Which is why the hardcore scene seems to always frown upon simplifying a game's mechanics. While the casual crowd wants to be able to just pick up something with zero investment and be good/okay because they've played videos games before.
capitalCORN
Member
Fighters had the 90s. A week wouldn't pass without a new fighting game cabinet showing up at arcades.
That's beside the point. Games like Dota and CS are lifestyle games like fighters. They require day in day out dedication to approach competency. MOBAs blew up as consequence of being a free mod that was easier to play than the progenitor game. Shooters started the online multiplayer revolution back in the 90s.
Raylan Targaryen
Member
As it's been pointed out, casual is a mindset. You could play Dota 2 casually if you wanted. Team based games either allow you to contribute a little. You know you'll probably never get the top score, or even second highest score, but you can get satisfaction from doing small things to help your team. Also, if you care about winning but know you aren't good enough, you can always blame your teammates for being terrible. With fighting games, it's all on you. There's no contributing a little, there's no blaming anyone else.
InfiniteCombo
Banned
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer (warning, wall of text incoming):
I think that modern fighting games have largely lost their "soul" and are now just vehicles for pure competitiveness, as opposed to just... having fun. Back in the 90s (golden age of fighting games), during the 16 and 32 bit generations especially, fighting games were ported to consoles all the time, and they were less than arcade perfect. But -- who cared!?. The ports made up for lack of arcade perfection with tons of single player features, such as:
- Story Mode (e.g., Rival Schools. Amazing Story Mode. Guilty Gear XX had a very elaborate one as well)
- Art Gallery (e.g., Street Fighter Zero 2; still remains one of the best art galleries to this day)
- "Custom Character/Ability" Mode, where you enhance your character in various ways (the most famous one is perhaps World Tour mode from Street Fighter Zero 3; the "Soul" games had incredibly fun modes, like the "Weapon Master Mode" in SoulCalibur II -- hell, they even gave each weapon a "backstory")
- Quest Mode
- Extra characters not found in the arcade (quite often powered characters, like bosses, or wacky/goofy characters like Gon and Dr. B from Tekken 3, or characters from previous games, like the console version of Vampire Savior having Donovan).
- Arranged Soundtracks. Sometimes they were simple, like the arrange of Nash's theme in the console versions of Street Fighter Zero; if you were SNK, the arranged tracks were musical masterpieces.
- Plenty of unlockables. I remember playing furiously through Capcom vs SNK (1) on the Dreamcast, since that game has an insane amount of unlockables that you can buy in an in-game "shop."
I feel like all of these things gave fighting games personality, and added plenty of incentive for single player playtime and a casual attitude. If I wanted to play Garou, it's because I wanted to have fun fighting against the CPU, and find out what happens to Terry in the story, not necessarily because I'm gonna go to EVO and pwn everybody (spelling intentional). In fact, doing a quick playthrough of, say, X-Men vs Street Fighter on arcade mode in my Saturn was a very relaxing activity.
The overt focus on arcade and mechanical purity has made many fighting series lose sight of what once made them great for casual and single players. I haven't played them yet, but it seems that the NetherRealm games actually invest in single-player content, but that seems more like an exception than the rule.
Longer answer (warning, wall of text incoming):
I think that modern fighting games have largely lost their "soul" and are now just vehicles for pure competitiveness, as opposed to just... having fun. Back in the 90s (golden age of fighting games), during the 16 and 32 bit generations especially, fighting games were ported to consoles all the time, and they were less than arcade perfect. But -- who cared!?. The ports made up for lack of arcade perfection with tons of single player features, such as:
- Story Mode (e.g., Rival Schools. Amazing Story Mode. Guilty Gear XX had a very elaborate one as well)
- Art Gallery (e.g., Street Fighter Zero 2; still remains one of the best art galleries to this day)
- "Custom Character/Ability" Mode, where you enhance your character in various ways (the most famous one is perhaps World Tour mode from Street Fighter Zero 3; the "Soul" games had incredibly fun modes, like the "Weapon Master Mode" in SoulCalibur II -- hell, they even gave each weapon a "backstory")
- Quest Mode
- Extra characters not found in the arcade (quite often powered characters, like bosses, or wacky/goofy characters like Gon and Dr. B from Tekken 3, or characters from previous games, like the console version of Vampire Savior having Donovan).
- Arranged Soundtracks. Sometimes they were simple, like the arrange of Nash's theme in the console versions of Street Fighter Zero; if you were SNK, the arranged tracks were musical masterpieces.
- Plenty of unlockables. I remember playing furiously through Capcom vs SNK (1) on the Dreamcast, since that game has an insane amount of unlockables that you can buy in an in-game "shop."
I feel like all of these things gave fighting games personality, and added plenty of incentive for single player playtime and a casual attitude. If I wanted to play Garou, it's because I wanted to have fun fighting against the CPU, and find out what happens to Terry in the story, not necessarily because I'm gonna go to EVO and pwn everybody (spelling intentional). In fact, doing a quick playthrough of, say, X-Men vs Street Fighter on arcade mode in my Saturn was a very relaxing activity.
The overt focus on arcade and mechanical purity has made many fighting series lose sight of what once made them great for casual and single players. I haven't played them yet, but it seems that the NetherRealm games actually invest in single-player content, but that seems more like an exception than the rule.
I've answered this so many times because Melee has so many unique characteristics/cancels, but it ultimately comes down to adding options to the players and allowing for unique play styles.
In Melee there are numerous things that people consider "for no reason," which is a fair assumption on paper, but in real play changes things substantially from player to player. I think a casual Smash observer may not realize it because they haven't experienced it and because they may only watch Smash during the top 8 of a tournament where there are players SOOO GOOOOD we call them gods, but outside of those players, but honestly still applying to them, these "complex controls for no reason," actually have interesting side effects.
So here are a few skills that are important, but can be done to different degrees of excellence.
Wavedashing (also platform dashing)
DI
Smash DI
Moon walking
Here are a few skills that can be done either successfully or unsuccessfully, binary outcomes.
L Canceling
Edge Canceling
Pivoting
Shield Dropping
For simplicity I'll refer to the top skills as Degree Skills and the bottom skills as Binary Skills.
Degree skills are interesting because they can be done better or worse between players, but even being able to consciously pay attention to these skills can improve your game even if you aren't perfect at them.
Binary Skills are skills that 100% make you a better player if you simply press or time the correct inputs.
However in Melee there are still times in which you may not want to risk an L Cancel if you're confident that you can land an edge cancel. If you did an edge cancel and pushed L you'd actually end up in a worse situation than if you hadn't pushed L.
To compare Melee to a sport.
Degree Skills are like your ability to dribble, sprint, hold a ball tightly, etc.
Binary Skills are things like catch a ball, throw a three pointer, etc
A good competitive game has a balance of degree skills and binary skills as well as a good combination between requiring mental determination and physical resolve.
For someone that wants to just play a game for fun after work, Melee probably doesn't sound to enticing, but if you love the beauty of Melee play, you would obviously want to invest.
Wat
Harken Raiser
Banned
There's an old article by James Chen that addresses this: http://shoryuken.com/2012/07/16/lost-strategy-series-the-role-of-execution-by-james-chen/
The special move inputs are part of the balancing, and inform how players approach match-ups.
As for what would be lost by making the controls simpler?
You would lose the complexity that feeds fighting games' longevity. The reason the FGC was able to play games like MvC2, CvS2, and 3d Strike for so many years and keep evolving the meta, without any of the updates Mobas get, was because there was so much to work with in the fighting engines of these games. Less complexity can end up limiting player creativity.
Also, a simpler control scheme wouldn't help casual players, it would just make them lose faster to more experienced players. Every time a new feature is introduced to give casual players an edge, competitive players just use that tool more effectively, like with X-Factor in MvC3.
Back when Rising Thunder was in alpha you saw competitive and pro players dominating online. Despite it's hyper-simple controls, the same people who were good at traditional fighting games were still beating all the casual players.
Casual is a mindset, no matter how simple the game, the more dedicated player always wins (unless the game is completely random).
Yup to pretty much all of that.
Rolling Stone just published: Why 'Super Smash Bros. Melee' Is Still the King
Harken Raiser
Banned
I forgot Melee in my examples. That game's community has only grown with time, and it's the most complex of the Smash series.
GhostOfSparta305
Banned
I'm confused. I didn't once criticize Melee's controls: in fact, I applaud Smash for proving to the FGC that you can still have a deep game without needlessly complex controls. My reasons for finding its 1v1 modes uninteresting have nothing to do with controls.
I was talking about SF4's controls, which only uses a fraction of the controller's buttons and yet still has needless repetition built into its control scheme:
- The Left Stick and D-pad perform the same functions.
- L1/L2 perform the same functions as pressing 3 other face buttons at the same time.
- Meanwhile, the Right Stick (8 inputs!) and L3/R3 aren't used at all.
With Smash, there is repetition (Jumping, Smash attacks, and Grabbing all can be done with multiple buttons/inputs) but the controls are so simple and EVERY button on the controller is used that the confusion is subdued. In SF4, the confusion is amplified.
Ah my B.
I was talking about Smash in my posts and you replied to me, that's my fault. Got confused. I don't know enough about SFIV to know if there's a good answer to that.
A good team based game let's all types of players get involved. MOBA you can play support or AoE damage, shooters pick something exploding or in Overwatch, healer or Junkrat.
Fighting games, you're alone. There's nothing you can contribute, there's no one to share blame with, no one to measure yourself to see how well you did in comparison. You just win or lose, try to understand where you went wrong or talk to your opponent for advice.
The most important part of learning and improving in fighting games is the social aspect imo. Like there should be some incentive to drop good feedback like "mash less", "practice anti air", "throw more" or "jump less". Even if like 1 thing you did well, 1 to work on.
Fighting games, you're alone. There's nothing you can contribute, there's no one to share blame with, no one to measure yourself to see how well you did in comparison. You just win or lose, try to understand where you went wrong or talk to your opponent for advice.
The most important part of learning and improving in fighting games is the social aspect imo. Like there should be some incentive to drop good feedback like "mash less", "practice anti air", "throw more" or "jump less". Even if like 1 thing you did well, 1 to work on.
Harken Raiser
Banned
Street Fighter 4 was an arcade game released on a cabinet with 6 buttons and one stick. The console ports were meant have parity with the controls of the original arcade version, so they didn't take full advantage of console game pads, as you might say.
ShinMaruku
Member
The fact that you do have to learn moves is indeed a large stumbling block for some people to get to the ground level where they game is, but that's how the game is designed and it's why I find some people pondering how an fighting games can explode in popularity laughable. It's a minority mindset that will excel at a fighting game.
GhostOfSparta305
Banned
I read this article, and while it's interesting, I don't think it addresses why the commands themselves need to be complex.
It mentions, for example, that positioning yourself in a way to make it difficult for your opponent to perform Special A is the reasoning, but that can be achieved without complexity.
What if Special A was simply given a longer input? Or a Bayonetta-style delayed input? Either of those would achieve the same result, without the complexity.
...but how does that explain Melee, a game with incredibly simple controls and that's received no updates...but still has incredible longevity and an evolving meta-game?
You seem to be getting the idea that I want casual players to be given some artificial handicap to have a chance at beating pro players, but I don't.
I'm saying that when a casual and a pro player understand a game's controls more or less equally, the only thing that the pro can beat the casual with is strategy/tactics. This, imo, is the way it should be: taking pride in beating someone who can't figure out the controls is silly, and actually a bit pathetic.
Said differently, when a casual chess player loses to a pro, it's because the pro has a better idea of tactics and strategy. It is not because the casual player is physically incapable of moving his knight, rook, or pawn.
The FGC's utter misunderstanding of what that word means has been one of my biggest reasons for never wanting to be a part of it.
Hentailover
Member
Can somebody post that video where Daigo plays with random people? Specifically, where he utterly destroys some kid? XD
ShinMaruku
Member
Humanity in general don't understand random to be quite honest. Our brain will sabotage just to make things seem ordered.
SiegfriedFM
Member
Can't we please, please, please do away with the fallacy that "special moves are too complex"?
Quarter circle.
Half circle.
DP.
360.
Charging.
There, five motions that let you do 98% of all special moves.
If you learn these, you can play basically any modern fighter and most older ones. How is requiring this minimal effort setting up huge barriers for anyone (outside of, obviously, physical disabilities)?
Of course, it's not even about inputs in a competitive match. It's about knowing all options and applying them correctly to the situation. But that's called experience and applies to any game. I don't see people whining that CS is too hard because they don't know what button to press to defuse the bomb.
Quarter circle.
Half circle.
DP.
360.
Charging.
There, five motions that let you do 98% of all special moves.
If you learn these, you can play basically any modern fighter and most older ones. How is requiring this minimal effort setting up huge barriers for anyone (outside of, obviously, physical disabilities)?
Of course, it's not even about inputs in a competitive match. It's about knowing all options and applying them correctly to the situation. But that's called experience and applies to any game. I don't see people whining that CS is too hard because they don't know what button to press to defuse the bomb.
ShinMaruku
Member
We know it is far more complex than that. Yes to the practiced it is simple but you try to do that in a combo and it can get much more complex, then add v-trigger, YRC,FADC within a combo timing and it can get exponentially more complex.
Also consider frame data and other things. All this adds more time you have to put in. There is a not insignificant portion of the population who will not see that as time well spent. It is what it is.
GhostOfSparta305
Banned
I know that, but why did the console ports need to have parity with the arcade versions in terms of controls, when that was clearly not the most efficient solution?
And for what it's worth, they were never going to have 100% parity anyway with the scheme they chose. There are some inputs that are either extremely difficult or impossible to perform on a controller compared to a stick just by virtue of the way most people hold the controller (one finger responsible for 4 face buttons) or the shape of the controller (4 face buttons vs Arcade's 6).
ShinMaruku
Member
Let it be known Capcom cup was won by a pad user. 
VanillaCakeIsBurning
Member
Casual isn't based on the game but the people you who are involved.
Blazblue is pretty casual if I give controllers to my family members who have no idea what they're doing aside from button mashing.
That changes if you replace one or both participants with skilled players though.
After the release of new fighting games the people who tend to stick around tend to be quite good. And the player populations aren't massive like league for example so ranked matchmaking has less to work with resulting in new players getting matched against better players more often.
Also fighting games are single player affairs so if you lose there's no one to blame your loss on like in league and dota where it's extremely rampant. Most games when I played both had people blaming others for one reason or another for why we were losing/lost.
Also some want to be able to stand against skilled players without putting in the work which doesn't work out in practice.
That's why single player content is good since you can avoid all of that. I remember when fighting games on earlier consoles had no online like soul calibur 3, so I mostly did stuff in the single player modes where as now it seems like fighting games tend to not have the same volume and/or longevity in terms of singleplayer content outside a few exceptions.
Singleplayer content won't be too much of a deal to someone who likes to play online (I like both) a lot but it will make a greater difference to players who want to buy a game to enjoy a singleplayer story and not deal with getting annihilated online.
Blazblue is pretty casual if I give controllers to my family members who have no idea what they're doing aside from button mashing.
That changes if you replace one or both participants with skilled players though.
After the release of new fighting games the people who tend to stick around tend to be quite good. And the player populations aren't massive like league for example so ranked matchmaking has less to work with resulting in new players getting matched against better players more often.
Also fighting games are single player affairs so if you lose there's no one to blame your loss on like in league and dota where it's extremely rampant. Most games when I played both had people blaming others for one reason or another for why we were losing/lost.
Also some want to be able to stand against skilled players without putting in the work which doesn't work out in practice.
That's why single player content is good since you can avoid all of that. I remember when fighting games on earlier consoles had no online like soul calibur 3, so I mostly did stuff in the single player modes where as now it seems like fighting games tend to not have the same volume and/or longevity in terms of singleplayer content outside a few exceptions.
Singleplayer content won't be too much of a deal to someone who likes to play online (I like both) a lot but it will make a greater difference to players who want to buy a game to enjoy a singleplayer story and not deal with getting annihilated online.
SiegfriedFM
Member
Well, yes, but those are specifics that you would have to learn for every game. How much damage does this weapon do, what is the reload time, where are good places to be in a level. These are important to know for any competitive play.
But more importantly, you can have plenty of fun with just the basics.
ShinMaruku
Member
That depends on skill gulf. In fighting games they can be massive and without a shallow enough gradient all games would fuck off competetively. LoL and DOTA2 side step it with being free and accruing over 5 million people playing allowing for a proper gradient. Fighting games will never have that.
ZeroTheShadow
Member
The answer is no. They are versus games and people who play them will inevitably become competitive. You're not going to go online in any fighting game and not find someone trying to push your shit in and exploiting everything they can to do it. If you want a casual experience you need to invite friends to a private lobby or play in person.
Quoting this in full because it's an interesting view on things. But it does lead to a question:
Are fighting games generally too binary to be casual?
What if there was a "bad" way to do execution that gave you the result, but at a penalty? I mean, if we're talking casual games with extreme execution, I'd point to rhythm games as the big genre to look at. Consider Guitar Hero and good old Expert Level Through the Fire and Flames. The level of execution in the video is obviously not something to expect from the average player, the drummer even freestyles in the low-note sections.
However, not a single of those notes are binary. You can hit it perfectly for a lot of points. Good for okay points. Bad for not a whole lot of points. Or miss it for no points, take damage, and lose your combo streak. So... why not have slightly mistimed execution in fighting games give less damage? Any other properties of a move should probably be left alone, but if you could do a close approximation of the combo, you'd have something good enough to bring to a PvP fight. You might only be able to do it as a string of Bad hits, but it's there, now you just have to perfect it. You're pulling off a difficult combo at a reduced success, but you are pulling it off.
So what if execution in a fighting game was a Degree Skill?
The various guitar games demonstrate that this is something casual players do like. Obviously this means hit-stop or whatever effect on impact needs to be long enough for there to be time to have a Perfect/Good/Bad hit be meaningful, but that does give hits a bigger visual oomph, so it's not all bad.
I'm not sure this is a correct analysis. Don't casuals just want to play other people? Where do you get any evidence that the average casual wants to play hardcore players without putting effort in?
I think that this is fundamentally a matchmaking problem. These fighting games should be laddered like something like Starcraft 2 (maybe make the laddering and the ELO ranking behind the scenes). Then people only play people close to their skill, as they get better over time they play better people, everyone has a 50/50 win-rate over time, a fair share of close matches and fewer curb-stomps which are no fun for either side.
ShinMaruku
Member
Matchmaking on that level is not possible due to the small amount of players to make a gentle skill gradient.
I'm not sure casual players consciously decide they should play against hardcore players, they probably think "hey I like this and I usually win against my friends. Let's try this online mode..."
That said, the most fun I've had with fighters was when I was a kid/teen playing with my friends and none of us really knew what we were doing. I think when you have that one friend that wants to play but he's been watching YouTube videos and practicing a bunch and knows you haven't... That one friend is kind of a dick, and if anything should be teaching his friends instead of getting a quick ego boost.
This is true. I kinda like facing random demon players in fighting games. Gives you an idea of where you stand.
Permanently A
Junior Member
I think the absolute key to making a casual fighting game is to ditch the 1 v 1 formula.
In a 1 v 1 situation losing feels bad. You lost because you got outplayed. And if this keeps happening, well, most people give up.
Whereas in a team formula, its a lot harder to single yourself out as bad. You lost? Your teammates were the problem. Its also a lot easier to feel good as you can gang up 2 v 1 against a player and feel like you contributed. We see this repeated time and time again in MOBA games. Which explains why MOBAs are infinitely more popular than fighting games.
Smash Brothers would probably be the best example of a casual fighting game. The multiple people fighting allows the casual playerbase to be sustained alongside the hardcore playerbase.
In a 1 v 1 situation losing feels bad. You lost because you got outplayed. And if this keeps happening, well, most people give up.
Whereas in a team formula, its a lot harder to single yourself out as bad. You lost? Your teammates were the problem. Its also a lot easier to feel good as you can gang up 2 v 1 against a player and feel like you contributed. We see this repeated time and time again in MOBA games. Which explains why MOBAs are infinitely more popular than fighting games.
Smash Brothers would probably be the best example of a casual fighting game. The multiple people fighting allows the casual playerbase to be sustained alongside the hardcore playerbase.