The Responsibility of the Tutorial

[CriticalGaming]

So I just posted in the "What are you playing" thread about my recent experience in playing Mortal Kombat 11 for the first time. As i wrote my feelings I began to have very specific thoughts and questions that might make for an interesting discussion.

Here is the relevant part of that post if you don't want to look it up:
"Also i think Mortal Kombat has a terrible tutorial system. For two reasons. One, they throw shit loads of terms at you at a back-to-back pace. Bounce Cancels, Breakaways, perfect counters, and much much more, but they never explain how these things are useful. They just kind of give you the term, and a button input and then expect you to do it. Secondly, there is a tutorial for combos but the combos they expect you to do are fucking nuts and in no way beginner friendly.

Especially for someone who could be completely new to fighting games, expecting someone to use Raiden and in rapid juggling perfection be able to do two punches, special move cancel into the quarter circle back ability, hit R1 to enhance that ability to make the enemy float for a second, down up teleport to the other side, do two more punches, the special move cancel into the flying shove attack to send the enemy across the screen.....THIS IS NOT SOMETHING TO TELL A NOOB TO DO, or if you do, you slow the game down to make sure the inputs do not have to be frame perfect. "

I've seen all kinds of tutorial systems in games, from the obnoxious tutorial where 12 hours into the game you are still getting tutorial pop-ups (JRPG's), to the obtuse or barely there tutorial (Dark Souls). The question I was asking myself as I did my best with the Mortal Kombat tutorial was this, "How much should the game be required to explain to the player, and how should that information be delivered?"

Because I haven't played many fighting games, I felt like my best course of action to take with MK11 would be to start in the tutorial. Which starts basically harmless, press this to move, press this to attack, simple stuff. But it quickly goes into deep fighting game mechanics that I didn't understand even after they explained it. It boiled down to "this is a super cancel now do it", they give you these terms but the never really showcase or explain the how or why behind it and I ended most tutorials more confused than when I started. (If you want to watch my decent into madness you can watch the VOD of my twitch stream here )

Personally, i feel like a tutorial in any game should explain what it is then show the player how to apply it in context, while at the same time giving the player the simplest ways to do said task. For example if you want to give someone combo training in a fighting game, the strings and button inputs for said combos should be fairly straight forward and short. Give the player starter combos, and leave the more advanced stuff for the player to discover on their own. I feel like the best way to go about this is to get the player's feet wet, then let the player discover things on their own. Get the player started without asking them to get professional right out of the gate.

Though perhaps it depends on the game. It's probably harder to string together crazy moves in a fighting game than it is to figure out Materia combinations in Final Fantasy 7. Though maybe not, maybe by teaching the player the basics of stringing the moves together, you then allow the player to figure out how those strings can be extended as they get better and better at the game. Where a fighting game and an RPG tend to be apart is that there are no new systems the fighting game hits you with 10 hours in. A fighting game is very surface level with it's mechanics and everything is available to you from moment one. Whereas something like an RPG will unlock weapon upgrades, character talent trees, crafting, and any number of other things more and more as the player progress through.

I can't help but feel like MK11 could have done a better job tutorializing itself if that's what they wanted. Though I remember the days of old school tekken, where the game just told you what the buttons were and left you alone to figure out all the combos and specials. Now things have gotten so complicated that I had a tutorial that wanted me to read the frames of animation certain attacks had, which is just too much.


What do you guys think? Am I just being a boomer about this? What games have you seen that have good tutorials versus bad tutorials?

 

[happyninja42]

No I don't think it's...*shudder* boomerish of you to expect a tutorial to educate a player on the mechanics of the game, in a way that's understandable and digestible. That's perfectly reasonable. That's the whole point of a tutorial. If the tutorial isn't trying to inform the player of mechanics...then why have it in there at all?

As to how it should be done, I usually prefer the system that introduces the mechanics one event at a time, usually in the opening scenes of the prologue. The game has fighting and parkour elements, so the first event is a brief combat tutorial, possibly not even all the combat stuff, maybe just have the things, block, punch, dodge, counter. Let the player do those various things multiple times to win the fight, and then cut away. Perhaps they just beat wave one of baddies, and now wave 2 shows up, so they run with their friend. Introduce parkour running tutorial. Give them the simple objective of "evade your pursuers, get to X location." Then let them practice the mechanics. Then, if there are some more involved combat mechanics, perhaps when they get to X, there is a second fight. "Hahah! You thought you escaped me! But I phone ahead to my friends!" Introduce new fighting mechanics, that build off the previously tutorialed mechanics, thus requiring the player to grasp the basics to pull off the intermediate stuff.

Then, just let them have at it for a while. Introduce other things as they pop up. Preferably with a short time freeze as the popup window appears, so they have time to read it and comprehend. Then let them go.

There really shouldn't be anything else than that to a tutorial.

Also having the tutorials in the main menu as something a player can manually opt into for further refinement, I think is really good. I rarely use those, as for me, most in-game tutorials are sufficient. But sometimes I'll forget a specific detail of a mechanic, like the button press order to accomplish something, so having the tutorial available at any time for a refresher is just good design in my opinion.

As to specific examples of good/bad tutorials, it's hard to really come up with examples, as most do a reasonable job in my opinion. Though the 2 most recent Assassin's Creed games are annoying in that their tutorials KEEP POPPING UP even after 100+ hours of play. Yes game, I KNOW the mechanics of swimming underwater. I don't need you to pop it up EVERY TIME I JUMP INTO WATER TO GO SWIMMING!

 

[CaitSeith]

I'm trying to think how people used to figure out the special moves and fatalities in the original Mortal Kombat...

 

[CriticalGaming]

I'm trying to think how people used to figure out the special moves and fatalities in the original Mortal Kombat...

Back in the day i think they originally had that stuff written on the arcade cabinets. Also the 90's were the era of video game hotlines, and "cheat" books, as well as just general guides.

 

[Catfood220]

I'm trying to think how people used to figure out the special moves and fatalities in the original Mortal Kombat...

Video game magazines used to have tips sections that would tell you how to do all the moves and fatalities. Good old days. Also, I wrote to Midway asking for help and they sent me print outs with the moves on them

 

[CriticalGaming]

Video game magazines used to have tips sections that would tell you how to do all the moves and fatalities. Good old days. Also, I wrote to Midway asking for help and they sent me print outs with the moves on them

I didn't know that! Goodguy Midway.

 

[happyninja42]

I'm trying to think how people used to figure out the special moves and fatalities in the original Mortal Kombat...

Usually it was word of mouth from one player to another. You'd be playing at the cabinet in an arcade, some other person would do some move on you with X character, and your response would be along the lines of "holy shit, how did you do that?" Then if they were cool, which most were in my experience, they would share the details of the actions to trigger the stuff.

I remember we'd even do things like give people time to practice the moves, like "Ok so I'll just block in the back squatting down for about say, the first 20 seconds of this round so you can try the move ok? After that, game on." "Ok cool, thanks." *tries out new moves*

Or if we were trying something like trying to fight...I think it was Smoke? Maybe it was Noob Saibot...I forget which one, but it was the one where you had to hit the start button when the "Toasty!" message came up from an uppercut. We'd just agree to do nothing but upper cuts on each other, and let someone fight the hidden character. We'd usually offer the other player a quarter for their assistance/sacrifice of a game session to try something odd. We'd also do things like when you had to try a certain action when fighting on the bridge map (the one over the spiked pit), but the special event could only happen if random things were flying over the moon, one of us would keep an eye on the moon for them or whatever.

Man, thinking back, that was a really cool kind of fan base. Most of the players were all on the same side in the aspect of trying to improve and beat the game in one way or another. Lots of cooperation and looking out for each other. When it came to fighting each other, yeah it was Best Player Wins. But the ancillary part of that game? Very cool, cooperative kind of vibe.

 

[Yoshi]

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I've seen some parts of the rebooted Killer Instinct's tutorial, and it seemed to be a lot better at explaining not just how to do things, but when and why you'd want to do them.

 

[Dreiko]

Tutorials in fighting games differ from those in other genres of games.

You're meant to slowly go through the tutorial, revisiting it over and over multiple times. Each new system being a new thing you learn to use until you are familiar enough with it that you feel comfortable to move on to the next one.

People not too into the genre have this expectation of just playing through the tutorial once and after finishing it being more or less capable of playing the game at a basic level. That expectation is just fully and completely wrong in this genre.


As for combos, they're something you practice not unlike playing a musical piece on an instrument. They're supposed to not be easily doable for a beginner. What you wanna focus on is starting with what you can do, then slowly adding to that from the stuff you can't yet do. Don't expect to instantly be able to do all the things, you're not supposed to. Especially if you're a newer player of the genre it will take you months to learn all this stuff. Also, figuring out how to string a combo together and having the skill to ACTUALLY do it are two completely different things. Combos can require split second timing. Timing that makes parrying in Sekiro feel ridiculously easy. There's this thought beginners have where "if I just knew all these combos I could do them too!" but no, you also need to practice each of them for a good dozen hours on top to be able to pull em off in a real match lol.

But yeah to wrap things up, in a combo, what you wanna do is figure out what hits you can land that will begin your combo, then what hits combo off of those beginning hits (we call em starter hits) and after that learn what moves to end combos with such that you are left in an advantageous position to continue your offense (so for example you end your combo in a move that leaves an active projectile out which will force your foe to block right as they get up or you end with a hit that lets you act quickly enough where you can throw out another hit right as they recover from knockdown allowing you to continue your offense). Damage is paradoxically not what you wanna care about unless you're able to kill your foe in the combo you're doing. No, what you wanna care about is positioning and converting those starter hits into full combos reliably (we call this hitconfirming, it means you actively did a move because you saw something hit and reacted to it, you weren't just doing a thing hoping it'd hit) and after that ending those combos advantageously. As a beginner you can just do like a 3 hit thing in most games which is just starter>extension>advantageous ender to keep things simple. Eventually what you will learn is how to pile on the damage during that extension phase of the combo and how to extend unique situational starters to optimize damage (since usually you have corner specific variant combos or airborne specific variant combos that only work during those conditions that do more damage than the thing that always works, which you will learn to go for when the situations is right).

The above is true for all fighters, I'm not into MK at all so I can't offer more specific tips pertaining to it. But for the best tutorial in fighters, I'd have to give it to Xrd Revelator 2. They have a fun minigame that explains movement to you in the best way possible. Also UNIEL has the most detailed tutorial, but they go into some deep stuff so you will struggle to do more than half of it if you're completely new. It's there to teach you how to be actually competitive, not just play at a beginner level.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Yeah even though it was praised for its depth, the MK11 tutorial system seemed lacking on the “why” end of its mechanics in places IIRC. While they’re labeled well enough in that there’s basics, advanced and strategy sections, and the individual character ones are easy enough to follow, some more reasoning behind the moves would have help add context. While I have played through them all on both PS4 and PC, I think my problem is I never absorbed the information enough from brief introductions of different mechanical aspects to utilize them properly.

Having said that I just went back to the tutorial and replayed the entry on Hit Confirming in the Strategy section. It seemed to explain things pretty well, but I think the message might get lost or at the very least overlooked in the middle of actually performing the moves. There is a big learning curve there where it’s kinda up to the player how far they want to dive into It all. One of my favorite things about the series besides the broad spectrum of characters and content is the fact that each recent game seems to be built with a game pad in mind.

 

[Dreiko]

Yeah even though it was praised for its depth, the MK11 tutorial system seemed lacking on the “why” end of its mechanics in places IIRC. While they’re labeled well enough in that there’s basics, advanced and strategy sections, and the individual character ones are easy enough to follow, some more reasoning behind the moves would have help add context. While I have played through them all on both PS4 and PC, I think my problem is I never absorbed the information enough from brief introductions of different mechanical aspects to utilize them properly.

Having said that I just went back to the tutorial and replayed the entry on Hit Confirming in the Strategy section. It seemed to explain things pretty well, but I think the message might get lost or at the very least overlooked in the middle of actually performing the moves. There is a big learning curve there where it’s kinda up to the player how far they want to dive into It all. One of my favorite things about the series besides the broad spectrum of characters and content is the fact that each recent game seems to be built with a game pad in mind.

The controller you use is never an issue. That is because the amount of time it takes to learn to do any move on a pad is negligible compared to the time it takes to learn all those advanced mechanics and how they interact. I've played on a pad all my life and never had an issue with it. Even characters who require you to hold down one button and then let it go as you hold down another (Zato in GG/Carl in BB etc.) are fully usable on pad.

This is one of the myths that existed for so long, that you need an arcade stick to play. That's either what some people who like to brag and put others down said or what people who simply didn't put in the time and were looking for an external to themselves excuse latched onto.


But yeah you're right about the part that the learning curve is huge so if someone is confused about that and goes in expecting to learn everything from one session of the tutorial when they're new at the game or genre they will definitely have a rough time. It's mainly an issue of expectation here. Fighting games are deep, even ones which hold your hand and let you block with a button which negates crossups lol.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Dreiko]

I've got very little fighting game experience, apart from button mashing Soul Calibur with my friends, but shouldn't this kind of information be in the tutorial and not offered up by a kind stranger on a forum? Isn't this exactly the problem that CriticalGaming actually discussed, that the game itself doesn't bother to tell the player the conventions of the genre or the expectations of the developers and instead just pushes the new player into the deep end?

The Paradox Podcast has an episode on difficulty and accessibility and they briefly touch upon their own problems with tutorials, namely that their tutorials did just what MK11 does and introduced a bunch of concepts, told you how to manipulate them and then dropped you off into the deep end to figure out how CIC, MIC, production efficiency, efficiency retention and tech trees all tied together and how these concepts affected your infantry divisions posted in North Africa. It is hard to argue with their conclusion that a good tutorial not only drives up player retention, but leaves the player hungry for more instead of scaring the player off by being obtuse and never fully explaining important concepts.

Like I said, I don't know much about MK in particular. It is in one form or another in the stuff I mainly play (airdashers/anime fighters). Your millage will vary depending on the game. SF5 for example would instantly plop you in a tutorial as soon as you started the game without allowing you to go through the modes at one point. I'm not a SF fan but I can tell that that's pretty damn heavy handed lol.


The thing though is that fighting games fundamentally keep being developed by the community that plays them on the mechanical front. So even if you WANT to put all this info in a tutorial, it doesn't yet EXIST when you're making the tutorial. Lots of stuff gets discovered by players burning millions of hours testing system interaction until by accident they discover hyper-effective things. I had a thing I discovered in like a week of DB fighterZ get patched out only a couple months later cause it was a legit bug that had just escaped testing due to being highly situational (gotenks assist restand on first hit).

So because of this, it behooves you to engender in yourself this mentality of looking for advice from the community and looking up things yourself and testing things yourself. The game is there to just aim you in the right direction basically. It's literally up to you to create how it really is to be played. I think that's something very freeing and special and feels kinda like the journey of a martial artist honing their craft which is cool. Like someone said above, that's how it was back in the arcade days where there was lore about how to do certain moves and so on because there were no movelists for fatalities and what have you, only for regular specials. It never really changed, what changed was that the few of us who do the work to come up with this stuff then go on to kindly upload it for the massess like this:



(yes, these are all combos I discovered without the help of a tutorial or a training mode during the beta test of a game that won't be out for half a year, truly old school!)

Also, the reason why UNIEL has such a good tutorial is that the game had already been out in JP arcades for 2 years by the time the console port was created so the community had already discovered most of what there was to discover so they could actually put that stuff in the actual tutorial. You just can't do that with a brand new game.

 

[Chimpzy]

I rather like Valve's approach to tutorials. Starting with Half-Life 2, you could chop each of their games into distinct sections with each teaching you one or two mechanics. First in a safe or low stakes environment, then gradually ramping up the complexity and challenge, culminating in a sort of gameplay exam where you have to apply all the tricks you've learned along the way. For example, Ravenholm teaches gravity gun applications. Highway 17 teaches Antlions behaviour, Thumpers and fighting gunships. Nova Prospect teaches turrets. The Citadel is a tutorial on how to fight the final boss. Portal 1 and 2 take it even further, where arguably the entire game is an extended tutorial for the final boss. If you need an earlier mechanic again after not having used it for a while, the games give you a quick low-stakes refresher first. But the really good part is how you don't really conciously notice you're being tutored. It feels way more natural and organic than in most games. Not as in your face. It strikes enough of a balance between holding your hand and giving you the freedom to figure it out on your own that it never becomes irritating either way. Because whatever other flaws they may have, Valve is a master at teaching its players.

This is really noticeable in Black Mesa, which sort of backports HL2 mechanics into HL1, but doesn't teach them nearly as well. You can tell Crowbar Collective is trying to follow Valve's example, but they are far less accomplished at the subtle guiding Valve employs. For example, early in the game you can learn you can light zombies and flammable gas with flares. Things is, this is not really mandatory. It makes things harder, but you can miss it entirely miss. Then in Xen, at least 13-15 hours later for a first time player, this mechanic returns and you need to light gas pipes to burn webs. But it's now mandatory for progress. Or how usually red light means no go/no entry and green means progress, but sometimes red light is progress. Doors with modeled handles can be opened, but sometimes they can't. Some tutorial moments can be easily missed. Some are inconsistently applied. Some mechanics are only taught once then never again used until near the end of the game.

The real eyeopener was watching former Super Best Friends member Woolie's let's play of it, someone who basically hasn''t played any FPS before, and he predictably ended up bumbling around to the very end of the game. Naturally the comment section was full of vitriol berating the guy for not learning, but it's not entirely his fault. There are points in the game where if you have no prior experience with either HL1 or 2, it can be very confusing to new players, let alone those with little experience playing FPS. Recalling that gas example, of course Woolie was stumped. "I" was stumped there for a bit, because I had forgotten all about how flares can light gas, and I'm a seasoned FPS player and used to be a massive HL fan. Because that teaching moment happened 10 hours before.

But to get back to the Valve tutorial method, that only applies to their singleplayer games. Cuz what I've seen of the tutorials for the MP games ... yeah, no, garbage. Team Fortress 2 has a tutorial. It only cover 4 out of 9 classes, and only half-assed. And I don't mean that it doesn't teach more advanced stuff like rocket/sticky jumping, air strafing, damage surfing, or god forbid, trimping. It doesn't teach very important basics, like the Medic's Ubercharge, a mechanic that when used correctly just once can turn imminent defeat into a rolling victory. Or Pyro's airblast. Neither are ever explained outside of the weapon's description. For emphasis, you learn about a core feature of a class by reading a single sentence only visible when you hover your mouse over the weapon in the loadout screen. That's absurd. No wonder TF2 has a reputation for having a really high learning curve.

But remember Pyro airblast? That wasn't in the game when it launched. Like many multiplayer games nowadays, TF2 has changed significantly over the years. New modes, weapons and mechanics added, sometimes removed. Weapons nerfed and buffed. How would you even create a tutorial for something that's always changing? What do you focus on. Just basics, or also more advanced stuff which might alienate newcomers. Are you going to tweak or even redo the tutorial every big update, because so much changed it's now effectively obsolete. And that's assuming you even get a tutorial. Lot's of multiplayer games teach you fuck all.

Ooof, got a bit ranty there. Might come back to this later to refine into more coherent points, but safe to say, I think a good tutorial is a bloody hard thing to do, only getting harder as a given game's complexity increased (duh), to the point it could even be considered essentially impossible if that game's experience is not static over time.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

There is some more detailed stuff in the Kombat Academy in regards to MK11 if anyone wants to dive a bit deeper than its in-game tutorials.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

The controller you use is never an issue. That is because the amount of time it takes to learn to do any move on a pad is negligible compared to the time it takes to learn all those advanced mechanics and how they interact. I've played on a pad all my life and never had an issue with it. Even characters who require you to hold down one button and then let it go as you hold down another (Zato in GG/Carl in BB etc.) are fully usable on pad.

This is one of the myths that existed for so long, that you need an arcade stick to play. That's either what some people who like to brag and put others down said or what people who simply didn't put in the time and were looking for an external to themselves excuse latched onto.


But yeah you're right about the part that the learning curve is huge so if someone is confused about that and goes in expecting to learn everything from one session of the tutorial when they're new at the game or genre they will definitely have a rough time. It's mainly an issue of expectation here. Fighting games are deep, even ones which hold your hand and let you block with a button which negates crossups lol.

OTOH though a lot of the hand holding is also negated by the fact that you’re not mostly auto-blocking via retreating. The crossups factor should be easy enough to read too; at least more than a Scorpion teleport punch for example. I think originally it was about fan demand, but MK is pretty much built around a BB now with those kinds of specials but also spacing, pressure, input commands in general, more neutral game focus, etc.

But B2B certainly works better for other games. Although, while I’ve only ever scratched the surface of many of them (SF2T, 3, Tekken 2, 3, Darkstalkers) it always felt kinda jarring to me playing characters that have charge move sets vs the more directional input ones. The timing seemed to favor one over the other, because it’s almost like they were designed for different game types but both are bound by the same fundamental defensive system. But I’m sure for people who really play these games it’s a non issue and just another thing to adjust for.

My problem with input commands on a game pad for games like SF4 is the odd rotational accuracy required for some of the diagonal inputs. Like I remember some of Ryu’s specials or supers requiring off kilter circular motions that were very difficult to do accurately; certainly moreso than a charge-based character’s. MK has some circular stuff, but it’s always felt like like it was designed to be comfortable with a dpad is what I meant in my last reply. It also has some multi-face button stuff but that too is usually designed around Square and X or more rarely Square and Triangle which can both be covered with the thumb itself.

Although, that’s also just what I’m used to. With enough practice even something obtuse can feel second nature.

 

[Dreiko]

OTOH though a lot of the hand holding is also negated by the fact that you’re not mostly auto-blocking via retreating. The crossups factor should be easy enough to read too; at least more than a Scorpion teleport punch for example. I think originally it was about fan demand, but MK is pretty much built around a BB now with those kinds of specials but also spacing, pressure, input commands in general, more neutral game focus, etc.

But B2B certainly works better for other games. Although, while I’ve only ever scratched the surface of many of them (SF2T, 3, Tekken 2, 3, Darkstalkers) it always felt kinda jarring to me playing characters that have charge move sets vs the more directional input ones. The timing seemed to favor one over the other, because it’s almost like they were designed for different game types but both are bound by the same fundamental defensive system. But I’m sure for people who really play these games it’s a non issue and just another thing to adjust for.

My problem with input commands on a game pad for games like SF4 is the odd rotational accuracy required for some of the diagonal inputs. Like I remember some of Ryu’s specials or supers requiring off kilter circular motions that were very difficult to do accurately; certainly moreso than a charge-based character’s. MK has some circular stuff, but it’s always felt like like it was designed to be comfortable with a dpad is what I meant in my last reply. It also has some multi-face button stuff but that too is usually designed around Square and X or more rarely Square and Triangle which can both be covered with the thumb itself.

Although, that’s also just what I’m used to. With enough practice even something obtuse can feel second nature.

I'm definitely not familiar with the sort of moves that can cross up in MK in particular but in airdashers crossups are huge because of the aforementioned airdashing so a lot of mixup tends to come in the form of crossups. To the point where people are OSing reversals on the opposite side while they hold back to block. To me it feels basically like you're taking away a vector for depth of offense that is fundamental when you add that in. But who knows, maybe MK has other ones which suffice or is just less mobility focused or something.


Charge moves are basically faster to throw out but you can't throw them out from as many things (though in most games you can throw out a down up charge while dashing forward by doing a down>diagonally down input holding diagonally down to dash forward which also gives you a down charge) so it is balanced out. It's also a way of letting people who can't do the special inputs yet have the ability to use some special moves as they learn.


SF feels pretty tight and particular overall, stuff like Guilty Gear requires these inputs too but it's pretty responsive overall. But yeah either way you'll have to practice to get it to be consistent in a real match. What little I know of MK is that it doesn't require diagonanls which is I guess a way of simplifying the skills required but you can't have as many moves if you don't have diagonals. Also some longer inputs tend to have shortcuts such as for example most 360 inputs are doable by just doing a tk half circle so regular inputs aren't that scary.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I'm definitely not familiar with the sort of moves that can cross up in MK in particular but in airdashers crossups are huge because of the aforementioned airdashing so a lot of mixup tends to come in the form of crossups. To the point where people are OSing reversals on the opposite side while they hold back to block. To me it feels basically like you're taking away a vector for depth of offense that is fundamental when you add that in. But who knows, maybe MK has other ones which suffice or is just less mobility focused or something.


Charge moves are basically faster to throw out but you can't throw them out from as many things (though in most games you can throw out a down up charge while dashing forward by doing a down>diagonally down input holding diagonally down to dash forward which also gives you a down charge) so it is balanced out. It's also a way of letting people who can't do the special inputs yet have the ability to use some special moves as they learn.


SF feels pretty tight and particular overall, stuff like Guilty Gear requires these inputs too but it's pretty responsive overall. But yeah either way you'll have to practice to get it to be consistent in a real match. What little I know of MK is that it doesn't require diagonanls which is I guess a way of simplifying the skills required but you can't have as many moves if you don't have diagonals. Also some longer inputs tend to have shortcuts such as for example most 360 inputs are doable by just doing a tk half circle so regular inputs aren't that scary.

Actually most characters in MK do have directional stuff, which can also be shortcut as QTR circle back/forward. They just don’t really use the top half of the dpad or off-kilter rotations. Command grabs are about as complex as it gets for specials, where it’ll be DBF plus face buttons or some combination of them here and there.

What’s surprising is that recent MK games are significantly quicker than SF, so having the quickest possible input patterns help to facilitate that pace. MK11 dialed the speed back a bit in terms of rush down style mechanics (replacing running with dashing mostly), but the general pacing is still on the snappier side. This also might explain why the combo strings are mostly dialed in, whereas the juggling and extending combos off of that are what require more specific timings.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Actually most characters in MK do have directional stuff, which can also be shortcut as QTR circle back/forward. They just don’t really use the top half of the dpad or off-kilter rotations. Command grabs are about as complex as it gets for specials, where it’ll be DBF plus face buttons or some combination of them here and there.

What’s surprising is that recent MK games are significantly quicker than SF, so having the quickest possible input patterns help to facilitate that pace. MK11 dialed the speed back a bit in terms of rush down style mechanics (replacing running with dashing mostly), but the general pacing is still on the snappier side. This also might explain why the combo strings are mostly dialed in, whereas the juggling and extending combos off of that are what require more specific timings.

I just learned that you can actually "Kustomize" the characters special moves into a different load out. So Some characters could be charge characters by default, but you have directional stuff you can unlock and then Kustomize with them to make their play style work better for you.

I've also discovered how to break the AI in AI battles, to make it almost impossible for your AI to lose a match. Which was a free way to get Koins while i had to play wow last night.