That's the thing though, Multiplayer games are only as complex as you make them. People aren't playing League of Legends because they're good at it or learning the game. TRUST ME.
They're playing it just because they have fun. My friend and I dodged down to sub 600 ELO one season just to see what it was like. There are dudes down there with like 200+ games in ranked. They don't know anything about how the game works on any level but they still play that much
This reminds me of that "plz stop harassing me" guy asking for a print out of all the SF4 character special moves so that he could just reference it and play random select online. Everyone got on his case but on the low, I LOVED his attitude and approach towards the game. He didn't care about combos or "learning to play properly" or any other bullshit he couldn't be bothered with. He just wanted to have a printout with the movesets and he was going to make his own fun.
That's the biggest thing I think is holding fighting games back. That stigma that if you aren't learning to be competitive there's no point in playing them. Instead of tricking people into learning all this bullshit they don't care about, Fighting game devs should just be communicating to players why their game is fun. The people that actually have the desire and ability to play at that next level, will do so. Not everyone needs to to have fun though. League of Legends is proof of that if nothing else.
There's still plenty more devs could do to teach basic stuff. Post release support (as the community finds new tech, adding tutorials etc. to teach the tech) and/or the player-driven community hub where players could teach each other could both accomplish this.
"Playing for fun" is totally fine but even playing for fun, you ought to know the basics. They way you're presenting it, you can either play for fun or play to win Evo or something, where "playing for fun" is that move-list guy's method. Playing chess for fun still involves knowing how the pieces move. Playing basketball for fun still involves knowing you get points when the ball goes in the hoop. Playing fighting games by mashing like a nut is not really playing fighting games. Devs need to at least teach you the basics. You don't even need to know THAT much. Like if you were the move-list guy and you tried to play Rose in SF4 with only the commands for her specials as your guide, you wouldn't really be playing Rose. If you had the specials and the notes "anti air with cr.HP, poke/whiff punish with st.MK, cr.MP, st.HK, fwd.HK, cr.MP xx soul spiral is really good, her backdash is a good escape option, dash up throw/st.closeMK is a good mix-up, have fun!" then you'd actually be playing the game. That's not even that much information!
Someone should go around and ask LoL players why they don't play fighting games instead.
LoL is a team-based FTP game that you likely already have the hardware to play. Not hard to understand the popularity difference, IMO. Fighting games could be at least two of those things. I'm still waiting for a legit FTP PC fighting game that's at least decent. I think something like that could really blow up.
That's why I quit league. I figured that if I lost, I wanted the blame to rest solely on me for not getting gud. It's not really a popular mindset, but it works out okay
My exact reasoning for quitting.
Hmm. Maybe it is that simple. FGC too minority driven for the big money.
Come on- every professional sport in the U.S. is minority driven.
