Question for fighting game fans.

[Maximum Bert]

Snip

Thanks, thats some very useful information.

Extra credits recently did a video about fighting game tutorials, it got me looking for a fighting game with a really good tutorial to explain things like this, I?ve heard that skullgirls has a really good tutorial, however a game about monster girls fighting each other triggers my creepy fetish alarm.

Gonna be honest most fighting game tutorials are either complete garbage or non existant. Skullgirls has a (comparatively) good tutorial so does Virtua fighter 4 Evolution and apparently Killer Instinct 3 (but never personally tried the tutorial on that as I have only played the game at a friends house).

Skullgirls is a great fighter the best western made fighter ever imo but it does have a lot of moves to memorise and the combos can be pretty long then again it can in most 2D fighters. Im not sure but maybe something like Soul Calibur would suit you better it doesnt have long combos to memorise and the button presses are mostly pretty simple trouble is SC2 online is horrendous and while SCVs online is excellent the only people still playing will be pretty damn good. Its also 3D so if you really wanted a 2D fighter its no good.

If you want to get into fighters the only way is to sit down and play and lose lots then try and figure out why you lost rinse and repeat and ofc hit the lab every so often as your skill improves to try out new tech or learn new combos. The internet and various forums are your best tutorials for these games for Skullgirls there is the Skullhearts forum, if you genuinely wanted help there are players on there who will assist you a lot of info will already be on there so odds are you will find all of what you need to learn the game to an extremely high level. Putting what you have know into practice is another thing entirely though.

Youtube is another great source although there are some really bad tutorials out there as well but you can usually spot which ones are decent and which are not.

Also 2D fighters usually have stranger inputs to 3D fighters and longer combos but a much shorter move list while 3D fighters tend to have simpler inputs shorter combos (although some can still be pretty long) but have a pretty massive movelist which can be pretty intimidating.

 

[shatnuh]

Why do special attacks always require you to memorize button combinations? why don?t they simply do what smash bros does? does it add something to the game?

Because that's pretty much part of the skill required.

People who love fighting games love them exactly because they can show off how they memorized all of a character's moves, combos, counters, counterpicks, infinites, etc.

Source: I am a fighting game addict.

Unlike many fighting game players, however, I also enjoy pseuod-fighting videogames that require little to no skills (the Naruto videogames or the Smash Bros series). They're relaxing.

Smash bros and naruto fighting games do require skill, it?s just that like most normal games there easy to learn but hard to master, unlike most fighting games which are hard to learn and harder to master.

Also if the only reason is bragging rights(which according to everybody else isn?t the case) then that?s a very stupid reason, all it does is make it harder for new players to learn how to play, and fighting games are hard enough to learn already without also having to memorize complicated button inputs.

If everyone was honest and said exactly how they felt why fighting games need to be skilled and hard to play, a good portion of people would of said exactly what he said. People get good in competitive games to be better than others. If you can't accept that fact, then you shouldn't be playing fighting games. You get good to pwn and have bragging rights. That's the way its always been since the arcade days. Adapt to the community but the community should never adapt to the new players.

Hell, just look at my gif. I do combos like this to everyone I play in Melee and other fighting games. If they don't like it then they can quit and deal with me trash talking. When it comes to fighting games, you play to win or don't play at all.

Lol! That looks like M2K in the gif, there. Not to say you can't do that, (chaingrabs are really easy once you figure them out) but amirite?

Edit: Put post inside the original quote. Whoops.

Actually that gif is me. But M2K is one of the pros my playstyle mostly emulates, especially when it comes to Marth. Chaingrabs are actually pretty easy to do over time. Just need to read where the DI will be. I spent a lot of years playing Melee. And I can understand why people would think I just used a gif from a m2k video. But trust me it is me.

Word, good shit. I play Sheik myself, so I know all about dem chaingrabs. Especially against Marths.

Ironically, I model my Sheik after M2K's as well. Though, I've always watched guys like KirbyKaze, Tafo, Fly Aminita and even Isai from way back and tried to incorperate a lot of their game, as well.

Isai was a beast back then. The characters I play competitively are: Fox, Falco, Marth, Capt. Falcon, and Dr. Mario as my low tier.

Sheik, Falco, Fox, Doc. If you've ever played competitive, you always have some kind of Spacey game. That's why I'm loving Project M so much, though. Character diversity is so welcome.

 

[Artaneius]

Why do special attacks always require you to memorize button combinations? why don?t they simply do what smash bros does? does it add something to the game?

Because that's pretty much part of the skill required.

People who love fighting games love them exactly because they can show off how they memorized all of a character's moves, combos, counters, counterpicks, infinites, etc.

Source: I am a fighting game addict.

Unlike many fighting game players, however, I also enjoy pseuod-fighting videogames that require little to no skills (the Naruto videogames or the Smash Bros series). They're relaxing.

Smash bros and naruto fighting games do require skill, it?s just that like most normal games there easy to learn but hard to master, unlike most fighting games which are hard to learn and harder to master.

Also if the only reason is bragging rights(which according to everybody else isn?t the case) then that?s a very stupid reason, all it does is make it harder for new players to learn how to play, and fighting games are hard enough to learn already without also having to memorize complicated button inputs.

If everyone was honest and said exactly how they felt why fighting games need to be skilled and hard to play, a good portion of people would of said exactly what he said. People get good in competitive games to be better than others. If you can't accept that fact, then you shouldn't be playing fighting games. You get good to pwn and have bragging rights. That's the way its always been since the arcade days. Adapt to the community but the community should never adapt to the new players.

Hell, just look at my gif. I do combos like this to everyone I play in Melee and other fighting games. If they don't like it then they can quit and deal with me trash talking. When it comes to fighting games, you play to win or don't play at all.

Lol! That looks like M2K in the gif, there. Not to say you can't do that, (chaingrabs are really easy once you figure them out) but amirite?

Edit: Put post inside the original quote. Whoops.

Actually that gif is me. But M2K is one of the pros my playstyle mostly emulates, especially when it comes to Marth. Chaingrabs are actually pretty easy to do over time. Just need to read where the DI will be. I spent a lot of years playing Melee. And I can understand why people would think I just used a gif from a m2k video. But trust me it is me.

Word, good shit. I play Sheik myself, so I know all about dem chaingrabs. Especially against Marths.

Ironically, I model my Sheik after M2K's as well. Though, I've always watched guys like KirbyKaze, Tafo, Fly Aminita and even Isai from way back and tried to incorperate a lot of their game, as well.

Isai was a beast back then. The characters I play competitively are: Fox, Falco, Marth, Capt. Falcon, and Dr. Mario as my low tier.

Sheik, Falco, Fox, Doc. If you've ever played competitive, you always have some kind of Spacey game. That's why I'm loving Project M so much, though. Character diversity is so welcome.

Very true. I play project M more than I do Melee now. Just much more variety of strats and characters.

 

[Kaisharga]

Okay. Let's make a thought experiment out of this. Let's make special moves in SF4 single-button maneuvers. What changes?

Now, the player has access (on Ryu, because he is The Example Character) to dragon punch, fireball, swirlykick, super, and ultra, with a single buttonpress. Now everyone can do any move they want when they really want to, as long as they remember which button does what! For the sake of simplicity, let's assume everyone can always remember the right button.

Immediately people get into serious trouble. If a fireball is so easy to do, people will do it. A lot. They will win a little bit more at the start, maybe, but they will quickly get body organs blasted off them once people know to expect fireballs. Why? Because special moves take a long time. If someone jumps your fireball, or blocks your dragon punch, they get a free full combo, even if they were at half-screen (or greater!) distance when you started your special move. A simple, single-button thing can get you into incredible, super hyper crazy amounts of trouble. What we can learn from this is that special moves take more effort to do because doing them indiscriminately can be catastrophic.

Let's go one step further and say your typical 'normal' moves are special inputs. Quarter circle forward + swirlykick to get a standing Roundhouse, dragon punch + fireball to get a crouching jab. You're probably expecting what happens next: your opponent jumps in, a clear opportunity for a quick punish with a crouching Fierce, but you screwed up the motion and now you're doing a basic fireball, which is the perfect thing to NOT do when your opponent is jumping in. You end up in an incredibly vulnerable position for the better part of a full second because you couldn't reliably do the motion.

By contrast, when you screw up a motion in an actual fighting game (where the specials are not single buttons)--you get a quick, low-investment low-risk normal move. That dragon punch came out as a jab and you have a whopping three frames of vulnerability. Sure, you didn't dragon punch him like you wanted, but you're also not having to eat a vast amount of reprisal. So from this we learn that special moves require big inputs to ensure your safety.

Let's also not forget the variability in special moves. If you do a, say, Falcon Kick in a Smash Bros. game, you know exactly how far it's going to travel, at what speed, every time. Ryu can throw a fireball at three different speeds. Gouken can throw fireballs at three different trajectories! All because they can use the same motion with a different-strength button to get a different tweak on the move. So special moves use motion commands so that the buttons can give them varying utility.

(Not that the Smash Bros. games are poorer for this, by the way. Smash has the interesting aspect of, among other things, only having one hit 'height'--either a move connects or it doesn't, there's no "high" and "low" and "mid" moves to worry about. There's a lot more too, but my point is it's a different world there, and the system reflects as well as creates that.)

Let's look at one more thing. When you do a half-circle back move, and your opponent wants to hit you at the same time, you might actually be okay because the command involves the same motions that also get interpreted as blocking. Executing the move is safer, in a real way. A dragon punch has no such luxuries, all its moves are forward or down. Actually, it was a really big thing when people learned the input shortcuts for dragon punch, as down-forward, down-forward--that's really, REALLY big because it means you never have to stop crouching even while inputting the DP. That means you can hold a down-to-up charge move while you DP. Or continue to crouch below moves that only hit high. That is a massive, super huge thing--a move's safety is built right into the commands needed to perform it, and each move's commands are decided by the designers on purpose with these effects in mind. You're not *supposed* to be able to do a full-circle command without having to buffer it out of something else. Without having the command inputs the way they are, a lot of depth would be lost.

If you don't believe me, pick up a copy of Capcom Vs. SNK 2: Match of the Millenium, for Gamecube (and I think the PS2 version does this as well). Start to learn the game in GC-ism--all your specials are on different directional inputs of the right analog stick--and I don't mean sweeping quarter-circle stuff, I mean like Raging Demon is at precisely 45 degrees up and toward, and a fireball is at straight forward, and dragon punch is at 90 degrees up; click the stick in that direction and out comes the move. Take careful note of what happens. And then tell us about your experience.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I like the motions. At first, I couldn't get the hang of it, but once I did I thought it was very satisfying. After that, I thought it made individual characters more fun to learn. Each character having different inputs, rather than a set of standardized button presses, give character choice a lot more weight, too.

From a gameplay perspective, the inputs allow individual characters to have more or fewer than the standard number of moves. The system that Smash Bros. has is actually rather limiting, since every character can only have exactly four special moves. Additionally, having single-button projectiles would more or less break the game, since the dominant strategy would be to throw Hadoukens or whatever from the corners until someone dies; with the inputs, it's possible to mess up the move and leave themselves vulnerable. It's also helpful because special moves generally have more power and more ending lag, so if the inputs are complex, you're less likely to pull them off when you don't want to.

 

[themilo504]

Snip

Thanks, thats some very useful information.

Extra credits recently did a video about fighting game tutorials, it got me looking for a fighting game with a really good tutorial to explain things like this, I?ve heard that skullgirls has a really good tutorial, however a game about monster girls fighting each other triggers my creepy fetish alarm.

Gonna be honest most fighting game tutorials are either complete garbage or non existant. Skullgirls has a (comparatively) good tutorial so does Virtua fighter 4 Evolution and apparently Killer Instinct 3 (but never personally tried the tutorial on that as I have only played the game at a friends house).

Skullgirls is a great fighter the best western made fighter ever imo but it does have a lot of moves to memorise and the combos can be pretty long then again it can in most 2D fighters. Im not sure but maybe something like Soul Calibur would suit you better it doesnt have long combos to memorise and the button presses are mostly pretty simple trouble is SC2 online is horrendous and while SCVs online is excellent the only people still playing will be pretty damn good. Its also 3D so if you really wanted a 2D fighter its no good.

If you want to get into fighters the only way is to sit down and play and lose lots then try and figure out why you lost rinse and repeat and ofc hit the lab every so often as your skill improves to try out new tech or learn new combos. The internet and various forums are your best tutorials for these games for Skullgirls there is the Skullhearts forum, if you genuinely wanted help there are players on there who will assist you a lot of info will already be on there so odds are you will find all of what you need to learn the game to an extremely high level. Putting what you have know into practice is another thing entirely though.

Youtube is another great source although there are some really bad tutorials out there as well but you can usually spot which ones are decent and which are not.

Also 2D fighters usually have stranger inputs to 3D fighters and longer combos but a much shorter move list while 3D fighters tend to have simpler inputs shorter combos (although some can still be pretty long) but have a pretty massive movelist which can be pretty intimidating.

I might check out both skullgirls and soul calibur 2, both games are pretty cheap.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Yay for the quote button still not working for me! :/

Maximum Bert:
"Gonna be honest most fighting game tutorials are either complete garbage or non existant. Skullgirls has a (comparatively) good tutorial so does Virtua fighter 4 Evolution and apparently Killer Instinct 3 (but never personally tried the tutorial on that as I have only played the game at a friends house)."

This is so true it hurts.

Special moves are absolutely important to learn and master, but normal moves are actually the real key to knowing what you are doing with a character. If you don't understand their normals you can't even build any sort of strategy or game plan with most characters in most fighters. For a great example of this, watch the Snake Eyez VS Fuudo (Zangief VS Fei Long) match from the Top 8 at last weekends Evo tournament. It's almost entirely about two players who have exacting control of their characters normal moves and just what that can do to a match. Or watch how Ricky Ortiz or Justin Wong completely change their Rufus play style when faced with a strong Zangief player. Fighting game tutorials largely suck at actually explaining and demonstrating what you really need to learn to play a fighting game.

----

Kaisharga:
"If you don't believe me, pick up a copy of Capcom Vs. SNK 2: Match of the Millenium, for Gamecube (and I think the PS2 version does this as well). Start to learn the game in GC-ism--all your specials are on different directional inputs of the right analog stick--and I don't mean sweeping quarter-circle stuff, I mean like Raging Demon is at precisely 45 degrees up and toward, and a fireball is at straight forward, and dragon punch is at 90 degrees up; click the stick in that direction and out comes the move. Take careful note of what happens. And then tell us about your experience."

Oh god, that brings back such painful memories. CvS2 was probably the one game I would consider myself to ever have been tournament quality at in terms of my level of play.. but Easy Operation mode still made some characters near gods in that game. Giving one button instant access to moves like Zangief's SPD nearly broke the entire way the game played. it is an extreme example, but it does pretty clearly illustrate why one button specials are a very bad idea in traditional fighting games.

 

[Lieju]

Yeah, I never got into (real) fighting games for that reason.

Soul Calibur 2 was an exception, and that was because we had a circle of friends who all started out as beginners and played the game together.
Also it had a training mode that told you what buttons you had pressed.

I gave up with Marvel vs Capcom 3 when I tried pulling off those moves, failed, and had no idea WHY I failed.

It gave me button lists but I had no idea what they meant.

Did two arrows up + A mean I had to wiggle the stick up twice and then press A or have it all happen at the same time?

I tried asking on the net, and the only answers I got was along the lines of 'It's obvious'.
Well would I be asking if it was obvious to me!??

And one would think a game like Marvel vs Capcom 3 that had an 'easy' mode and all these characters that would make non-fighting game players want to play them would be accommondating to people new to the genre.

But no.

I'll just stay with Super Smash where at least I know what I'm doing.
(And most importantly, WHY I'm failing.)

 

[AJ_Lethal]

I think the fun of fighting games is picking a character and figure out how to use it effectively.

Also, I know there are brawlers that do simplified button outputs well, like KOF EX2 (GBA). There's a couple of button scheme designed for the GBA 2+2 button layout: one is A and B having variable strength input for punches and kicks while leaving L and R for strikers and rolling. And the other is similar but with R as a "special" button that uses the d-pad as a modifier.

Yeah, I never got into (real) fighting games for that reason.

Soul Calibur 2 was an exception, and that was because we had a circle of friends who all started out as beginners and played the game together.
Also it had a training mode that told you what buttons you had pressed.

I gave up with Marvel vs Capcom 3 when I tried pulling off those moves, failed, and had no idea WHY I failed.

It gave me button lists but I had no idea what they meant.

Did two arrows up + A mean I had to wiggle the stick up twice and then press A or have it all happen at the same time?

I tried asking on the net, and the only answers I got was along the lines of 'It's obvious'.
Well would I be asking if it was obvious to me!??

And one would think a game like Marvel vs Capcom 3 that had an 'easy' mode and all these characters that would make non-fighting game players want to play them would be accommondating to people new to the genre.

But no.

I'll just stay with Super Smash where at least I know what I'm doing.
(And most importantly, WHY I'm failing.)

in movelists you normally have to hold the stick/dpad to the last position for a little bit of time while you follow with the buttons, so 2x up + A is two times up, then press A immediatly without releasing up while you do it.

Sorry for the late advice.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

It doesn't matter if you know all the combos, I'll just keep smashing the A button

Some of the combos I will take my time to learn and memorize, but some just aren't worth the effort it seems to me. Streetfighter has a lot of needlessly complicated ones. It's why I prefer the Capcom VS games, the combos are easier to do. It's less about technical proficiency and more about fast fun.

 

[gargantual]

Why do special attacks always require you to memorize button combinations? why don?t they simply do what smash bros does? does it add something to the game?

First thought is to maximize the amount of special moves you can give to a character. When you're not limited to mapping everything to whats on the gamepad, a player can have a multitude of attack, defense and other expressions.


and its a button based simulation of the learning curve. It shows you what it takes to dish out certain moves in a fight. People who can execute the hard ones have clearly practiced. If you look at the framerate data for specific moves in fighting games, you'll see many basic ones can dish damage within a shorter window of time, whilst others require more frames to execute and may land or miss based on what they other guy is doing. hence basic moves are staggering your opponent for a follow up (insert specific special move or combo here)

You don't wanna telegraph 'the big kahuna' right out of the gate otherwise someone'll see it coming and just move or punish you mid-preparation.

 

[themilo504]

My question has pretty much been answered, and I learned a lot more about fighting games.

Thanks for the help everybody, and have a happy vacation!

 

[pspman45]

I'm a Blazblue and P4A player

Knowing the motions for directional inputs is something that just comes with time, it seems bad and janky, but you get used to it pretty quickly. Games like Mortal Kombat are good to start with because they have relatively simple inputs (like a single quarter circle forward + A), and also save basic combos in the move list. Games like P4A and Blazblue encourage you to make your own combos from the moves in your kit, you pretty much have to think about what normal or special move can follow up what attack quick enough for your opponent to stay stuck in the combo. it is very overwhelming at first, but when you make your own cool combo, there aren't many feelings like it. You pick a character whose play style you like, and try to be as unpredictable as possible.

To answer the second part of the question, the reason those games don't do what smash does is because usually there are too many commands to bind, and not enough buttons on the controller. Blazblue and P4A let you bind the pressing of multiple buttons to an un-used button (The Burst, whose input is A+B+C at the same time, is bound to clicking the left stick by default). Those games are known as Four Button Fighters, so all of the face buttons are a different type of attack. Also, a standing A attack is different from a couching A attack. Blazblue characters have at least 12 types of normal attacks, then their specials, then their supers, and a controller with 14 buttons just wouldn't do.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I am actually quite interested, because when I play fighting games the winner is typically decided by who can spam moves more.

That is only true in the lowest of the lowest tiers. Even a moderately-skilled player should be able to beat a player who's just randomly spamming attacks.

Edit: And keep in mind, I'm not saying that as an insult; it's just how it is. If you lose to someone who's strategy is to randomly mash attacks, then either you need a lot more practice, or the other guy was using a bit more strategy than is apparent (and admittedly, even in the most balanced of fighters, some characters can have very cheesy tactics).