The Fighting Game Problem?

[gargantual]

I'll be upfront and say first off these guys have some awesome points about how to change the tutoralizing of fighting games through the campaign. Hopefully if the Shenmue III rumors are true or if people keep the cause going for making more fighters, we could see future games that demonstrate through longer single payer experiences how to condition someone to be ready to pop over any arcade machines still around, go online or with some experienced friends and match that high level play with equal strategy.

Personally one of my dreams would be a fighting game that looks more closely like asian fight choreography (The Raid included!!!) with more interwoven blocks, parries, escapes, environmental props and damage. Itd be ridiculously hard to systemize, but IMO its the same benchmark in principle, for people that learn Jin Kazama or Scorpions longest and most unique, deadly combos.

"When its pulled off it is a fucking beautiful sight to behold."

We've seen stuff like skullgirls and divekick deconstruct the fighter to get players to focus on the intuitive parts of move and counter move or change how fighting games are more intuitively tutorialized.

I agree with what they're doing to a degree so that fighting games won't be so niche, and learning moves shouldn't be an too much of an informational brick wall.

BUT at the same time I have this nagging feeling that there can be a slippery slope as we've seen in other action genres between tutorial-izing, and casual-izing. And before anyone reacts I'm not here to dump on casual players. I think there should be some sort of permeable learning divide to separate the determined from the indifferent.


What I am here to say is part of what makes high level play so amazing its that its no small feat to pull off, and jaw-dropping when executed in the least opportune or illogical moments of gameplay. It makes you say, I wanna do that. or..

*I soo had'em. How the FUCK did they do that?*

So best to let people in through more intuitive learning, but only enough to discourage us out of the habits of button mash, aggro and cheap workarounds, and approaching with strategy instead giving up entirely, and how to better perform tricky moves and combo strings.

But the rub should still remain...to get up to the levels of pros like Mr.Wong, Bronson or Knee and Nin? The message in the gameplay should be clear. Sorry gamers you're on your own. And what should that even mean? "To their level"....a player should at some point be chasing 'their' zenith 'their' peak performance. Not someone else's right?

And that aspect is great on an educational level. We need these critical moments in games that ask us how much are we going to commit to tackling intimidating problems.

Fighting games don't shelter arrogance or coddle us at all. All it takes is one miss to lose your momentum. They're all mostly humbling, and its those mechanics that reflect on a social level in the community. The mechanics show they can reinforce behavior far more than game aesthetics and themes ever could and only in context of the game. People trash talk, but to b-ball player levels. Not lazy armchair CoD-racist levels. Many pros are focused and have silent pride, because they literally don't have time to gloat. They often hustle and lose the first round just to see what you're going to do, much like championship sports teams like to save their energy before all hell breaks loose. Or least thats what I see.

When you come into a game feeling hyped, naive, ready to kick ass without practice, I imagine its just like lifting weights you're not ready for. The game doesn't judge you blatantly like spec ops. You either get into the rhythm or look like a fool, and it only mirrors you. without any extra subliminal messaging.

The levels of mastery and expression in those high level playing games are so vast its no wonder they're addictive. Theres as much attraction in mastery as there is in demonstrating it to others, and seeing you're on a level that many'd have a hard time reaching if they tried.

I'll draw an awkward comparison to creative software like Photoshop or Ableton Live's music production suite. Both have been around for years. There are so many endless means of customizing and using these programs to get different results for professional sound and artwork. So much they have certified trainers, an huge inner economy of education built upon how sophisticated and versatile they are, and when you start them up, its not immediately obvious to you how to master and combine every tool in its box.

Its basically the same damn interface it was from earlier versions years ago, same empty palette and basic tools without signs telling you where to go and what to push. You learn a few tricks and see the same basic functions have multiple capabilities and hacks, eventually you form your own means of working because there are so many ways to solve problems, that yours becomes unique and makes more sense, eventually the way you arrive towards a finished piece of art is ultimately going to be different than someone else.

So it'd be good to change the way fighting games are tutorialized but its important to keep hiding the things they already hide. If all solutions to problems in games are common and general, the game can be a common forgettable romp. A Wiitoy people do for fun, but not an experience that two different type of gamers can get worlds of different learning experiences from, I think this is one thing to watch in future development while bringing a whole new audience of gamers into the fold of fighting or reinvigorating the genre so that others will realize whats cool about it. They should realize what's cool about it, the same way that determined struggling players do. A Mt. Everest worth climbing.

 

[StriderShinryu]

The biggest limitation faced by fighting game tutorialization is that a single player experience it's never going to properly emulate the player versus player experience.

Fighting game tutorials can, and should, be better designed so that they are actually teaching you the important mechanics and the basics of play. They should be teaching and showing you the important concepts instead of "teaching" you silly combos that have little to no application in real play. This is the first hurdle and I'm really not sure why more fighting games don't at least try to do it. Heck, if they're really at that much of a loss they should just hire someone already in the community like James Chen to do it for them. Whether they want to do this through a separate tutorial mode or through a single player campaign is not all that relevant as long as the right information is there. But this only goes so far.

A tutorial will never be able to really teach you what it's like to play against another human player. Whether it be the random masher who has no real idea what they're doing or the seasoned veteran, the only way to actually learn this side of a fighting game is to get out there and play. The biggest lesson once you've got a handle on the basics is to just learn how to lose. I'm not talking about learning to take losing well, though that helps, but to be able to reflect on what you did and what your opponent did in such a way that each loss comes with acquired knowledge. Heck, you should do this even if you win. Don't let a match go by without learning something. It's going to be rough but that's just the nature of a fighting game. No specialized tutorial, no matter how good or in depth, is going to teach you how a human player is going to react, how to train your opponent, how to read your opponent, etc. No tutorial is going to, basically, teach you how to lose but not give up.

Capcha: red herring
Yes, Capcha, to some extent the fighting game tutorial debate is a red herring.

 

[gargantual]

Nice capcha. reminds me of an about.com post I read about fighting games that ultimately said, to get good like any competitive game, means at the start you just have to essentially come to terms with losing...A LOT. And dude's right. Eventually it clears the head by being figuratively beat over it with what we're doing wrong. We stop feeling agitated and are amazed at the little things we keep missing. When we're patient.

A friend of mines has been barraged with complaints on PSN in the past. hes beaten people a bit as Sean in SF:Third Strike when apparently he's not supposed to win with a "low tiered character" and not believing in tiers, but experience his response is usually the same

He tells them to "Go Home and re-evaluate your life."

Priceless. Maybe its a stretch to call 'entitlement' when someone loses angrily. Being frustrated is common but...if they put it out there right?


Another example would be Bronson Tran at the Tekken finals for Evo 2013. Saw it on youtube. I know some underground players out there really spit upon that tournament in general, but if that performance doesn't say 'Veteran' I don't what does. Granted he used Jinpachi Mishima and Ogre, he really hung in there. Everyone was impressive to me frankly.

 

[ChristopherT]

In response to the video in terms of starting with basic moves and picking up more as you go there's Art of Fighting and the Bouncer. Decent tutorials see King of Fighters 13.

I think that might help people get into fighting games easier might be what helped me. In King of Fighter '99 there was an option to make the PS2's L1, L2, R1, and R2 buttons be shortcuts to supers. So with a single press of a button, L1 the game would put in Down, Down-Forward, Forward, Light Punch and out would come the fireball. After sometime of playing the game that way, getting use to the system, how things worked, take the training wheels off and learn the combos and supers the proper way. Could work rather well as a single player training mode.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The main reason I don't play fighting games is because all the time it takes to get good. Plus, you also need a fighting stick. I also hate the fighting games where it's all about juggling and if a good player gets you in the air just once, the match is over.

 

[flying_whimsy]

I found Dead or Alive 5's story mode to be a pretty good tutorializing setup. It teaches you the moves and ramps up the difficulty well enough (by requiring more variety and creativity on the part of the player) that by the time I was finished I was a considerably more formidable opponent than I was before and I've been playing the series since doa2. Just the same, it's the old adage you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink: it was showing me the moves but I had to work them into my own approach. There's no substitute for a human opponent, but I think that having a game that teaches you the basics (including things more commonly used by actual people and not just ticking off check boxes on the move list) is a much better approach of putting new players in the fold without it being the toxic thing competitive fighting games have turned into. Plus, anything to get rid of those bullshit implausibly hard bosses that exist solely to milk quarters in japanese arcades: I really hated the boss in one of the blazblue games because the story was so much fun but so hard to get to.

I disagree with the OP that there should be some sort of barrier to keep more 'casual' players from learning how to be as good as the 'determined.' All that does is punish new players and further the elitist mindset that has permeated the genre for years. Then again, I don't take fighting games all that seriously compared to the 'hardcore' (I prefer a good d-pad over a joystick): I enjoy the fight more than the victory and routinely sandbag so my friends and I can have fun without getting frustrated. I find the more hardcore crowd with the arcade sticks and stuff that have become more prevalent over the last decade or so have hurt the genre more than helped it. Too much "git good" and the idea of status in general takes all of the fun out of it. And yes I realize this is not going to be a popular opinion.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

The only real way to learn a fighting game is to play it. You need practical knowledge and technical skills in order to do anything, and that's where tutorials fail.

The best tutorials would ones that explore the general mechanics of the game and then give specific tutorials for each individual character which explores general playstyle, normal attacks, special moves, various uses for these moves, and basic combos and moves that link into each other well. They would be extensive, but fed to the player in bite-sized chunks so as to not be overwhelming. However, no matter how extensive the tutorial is, it can't prepare you for actual fights. A long single-player mode with a slow-but-steady difficulty curve would be the best way to practice for actual fighting because it takes a lot of time to get good and significant difficulty spikes can be overwhelming. At this point, the best way to get better is to be creative and try new things, since you might discover things that you really like.

Even this, though, doesn't match up to the skills you pick up when fighting against other players. This, in particular, is what's holding me back from actually becoming any good at fighting games, since my anxiety problems prevent me from playing against players that are on my level and no one less skilled than me wants to play at all, as much as I may want to. I actually got really good at Super Smash Bros. because I had actual people to play against, and that's really what makes all the difference.

Fighting games require knowledge and intuition that can only really be developed through playing the game. While tutorials can help, they can't replace actual experience.

 

[LaoJim]

I'm struggling with this problem at the moment, as it happens. I've been a fan of Street Fighter ever since playing SF2 in the arcades when it first came out, however back in the day I didn't have a SNES or Genesis and I could only play in arcades when we went on holiday to the coast. (The PC and Amiga versions were cack). As a result I've kind of been playing Chun-li for more than twenty years, only not really. A few years ago I bought an XBox and played a bit of the vanilla SF4 but couldn't play on-line because I was living in China (and didn't have a good internet connection). Anyway last month Super Street Fighter Arcade Edition was free on Gold, so I downloaded it and jumped into playing on-line. I was having lots of fun playing, felt I was learning how to play the game against a human again and winning about 50% of my matches. Since I felt like I was going to be playing this game a lot (and as I'd only bought a cheap second hand copy of SF4 before) I decided to spend the 12 pounds required to upgrade to Ultra. I quite liked Elana from SF3 and thought why not.

Bad mistake. Since starting to play on-line I haven't won a single game and but I've been double perfected more than a few times. Being comprehensively beaten down isn't much fun and clearly no-one anywhere near my ability is playing the game at the moment. I'm not learning anything because I'm hardly having chance to move before being juggled and ultra'd out of existence. Basically after three nights playing I had to delete the update and go back to Super where I can enjoy myself. (Although Ultra gives you the opportunity to play previous versions characters against the most recent versions, you can't just go back to playing Arcade Edition without deleting ultra, which seems like a tactical error by Capcom as it fractures the communities)

One of the problems I think is that fighting games are adding increasing layers of complexity into the game. First of all the cast size for most games is getting bigger and bigger. Street Fighter 2 had essentially 7 playable characters (as Ken and Ryu were identical), Ultra Street Fighter 4 has (I think) 44. If I get comprehensively beaten down by Dhalsim, I might have learned something, but then I might not face another Dhalsim for a while and what I've learned might not be useful against the 43 other characters.

Fighting games require knowledge and intuition that can only really be developed through playing the game. While tutorials can help, they can't replace actual experience.

I feel like this is true to a point, but I also feel that game developers feel this way as well and their logic says that since tutorials can't replace experience we don't need to do anything to make tutorials better.

I think there are more things developers can do to help new players. One example would be to keep a record of the number of special moves, combos, EX moves, focus attacks etc (To use SF terminology, please change according to your favourite fighting game). After fighting a few matches (against AI or on-line), the game could make suggestions as to what you are doing, for example "Hey did you know Chun-Li can throw opponents in the air" or "You're ending the game with your super meter full and neither using EX moves or Super Combo finishes, want me to show you how?". As others have suggested a Prince of Persia rewind time feature might be useful to see how you could have avoided that fifty hit mega combo. The game could also rewind the previous battle and say things like "Okay you hit your opponent in the air here, but didn't juggle, you could HK for a bit more damage". Things like this would be challenging for developers to implement (but by no means impossible the AI already knows how to do stuff like this), and they'd only do something like it if they had a strong commitment to helping new players, which generally I think they don't.

A lot of people learn from videos on the internet. Why not integrate these videos with the game, so you can practice at the same time as you're watching it.

The best tutorials would ones that explore the general mechanics of the game and then give specific tutorials for each individual character which explores general playstyle, normal attacks, special moves, various uses for these moves, and basic combos and moves that link into each other well.

This is one way of doing it. What I've personally wanted for a long time is rather than an Arcade mode with a randomized series of opponents, to have a way to get systematically better at fighting each AI opponent. For example suppose there are seven difficulty levels on Street Fighter 4. When you first start the mode each opponent fights at level 4 (medium). If you win a match they go up to level 5 and you lose they go down to level 3. From the menu screen you can see who you are good against and who needs practice. This can then carry over to on-line play, if you know your Chun-li is strong against Dhalsim, then you can look for higher ranking players who play him to fight against; at this point you will probably find out that they are very different from the AI, but you'll still more of a chance than you would going in blind. At the moment on-line matches tend to be very random, since players are not asked to chose a character until the start of the game, it might be nice to have options to declare "Today I'm going to play Blanka" and match up with players who want to learn more about fighting that character. Experienced players could even offer a choice of, say, three or four characters they are proficient with and let their less experienced opponents chose which one they are to play.

(These suggestions may play merry hell with the ranking system, but the ranking system isn't or shouldn't be the most important thing here).

Plus, anything to get rid of those bullshit implausibly hard bosses that exist solely to milk quarters in japanese arcades

I think that one of the big problems is that Japanese developers are still designing with the arcade in mind, which may work in Japan, but certainly in Britain (and most of the rest of the world I suspect) we play at home and have different requirements. For example when you play Arcade mode (on say medium) it is obvious that the first fighter you face is much easier (for example I can usually perfect them) whereas the rival fight near the end is usually a much more balanced match. This makes sense when you are feeding a machine quarters and the developer wants to limit progress, but not when you are playing at home. If I'm playing on Medium I want the character to be medium difficulty period. I could play on CPU Versus, but that doesn't really give me any kind of feeling of progress (neither does arcade mode after the first few play throughs to be honest). The arcade mentality extends to the secret bosses, perhaps in the days before the internet, having Akuma appear if you beat the game without continuing and won X perfect games and did Y super move finishes would be cool story to tell your friends (who probably wouldn't believe you anyway). With the internet these requirements seem like BS and at the very least the game should tell you what it expects you to do and keep a tally of how well you are achieving it.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

I think their tutorials could be better yes, but anything beyond explaining the mechanics wont really help if someone wants to get to a high level in the FGC, simply because of how the metagame changes over time, and players do things the developers would never expect. You can teach basic strategy yeah, but you can never predict how actual players will fight.

One thing I think more fighters should do is display frame data etc like Injustice Ultimate Edition did, it was really nice being able to just see that, as well as in the moves list, there is a short written description about every move at your disposal. I also think more games need to at least show you what the move you're attempting looks like, for timings sake. Like in Street Fight 4 AE, the combos they give you for each character can be pretty tricky, but they dont show you what the full move should look like.

 

[blackdwarf]

The main reason I don't play fighting games is because all the time it takes to get good. Plus, you also need a fighting stick. I also hate the fighting games where it's all about juggling and if a good player gets you in the air just once, the match is over.

sure, all competitive games require time to get good at them, so maybe that is not for you, but you don't need a fighting stick. I play on a stick yeah, but a stick doesn't make me a better player, it just gives me a button layout that I prefer, but I play against players that just use the standard controllers and they still can do all the stuff that I do. On most tournaments there are players who play on controllers and they aren't bad players.

Juggling fighting games (like Tekken and Marvel) can be disliked because of the juggling style of play. Once you are hit, you have to wait till the combo is over, which is frustrating. But I do want to point out that that that so called "one-touch kill-combo's" are more a result of poor game design.

I think when designing a fighting game that is accessible for new players, you have make a game that is "easy to play, hard to master." That is what SFIV did and what started to rebirth of FG's nowadays. Now a lot of the FG's today try to do this. Tekken gives examples of bread and butter combo's that you have to understand to properly play a character. Persona 4 Arena gives you the 5A autocombo, which ends in a super if you have the required meter. this are examples of tools that the game gives to new players, but these aren't too strong. The combo's of tekken can be improved with some changes and the auto combo is a waste of meter for a better player. Still it is important that these tools are there, so that newer players can get the feeling that they are playing the game.

 

[sXeth]

Well the two major problems are tutorials focusing on flashy super moves that are impractical, and as online goes, a tendency to have no/terrible matchmaking to keep people from slamming into brick walls of the expert players while learning. A third would be online latency making any timing precision kind of hit and miss even in the games that do it best.

In general though, I kind of compare it to the Expert Players in Guitar Hero (which when they were collecting the data of it, was something like 3% or so). Those who have the time and desire to memorize the combos/charts will invariably massively outpace the people dropping in occasionally, or playing multiple games, or simply a lack of free time. The only reason we see the pros even crossover games is typically that most of the tournament fighters are using incredibly similar mechanics with few new ideas, if any. Even then, they usually only play one or two characters in any serious fashion. The comparison of a guy who literally has done 100 (or more hours) of Mario Kart as Bowser learning every track, or played a similar amount of CoD using only a pistol will probably be able to do fairly impressive work with them compared to people who vary it up more or put in less time.

 

[RaikuFA]

What about the other issue? Fighting game fans who make it so the newcomers arn't allowed to play or feel welcome?

 

[Something Amyss]

The biggest limitation faced by fighting game tutorialization is that a single player experience it's never going to properly emulate the player versus player experience.

I'm not a huge fighting game player anymore, but my experience with training and tutorials in modern fighting games goes a step further, that they often teach you things counter to the experience of playing with a human.

This could simply be that they don't anticipate human behaviour, but at some point, one has to ask how they can be so far off. Humans are random and unpredictable, but you'd think you could guess you were way off just by playtesting.

This isn't just limited to fighting games (I've played shooters with similar problems) or even just games in general (Dungeons and Dragons comes to mind), but it seems like sort of a big thing for fighting games.

To some extent, the only way you're going to learn is by playing, but it helps to have a strong grasp of the fundamentals.

Eh. This is probably why I can't be bothered anymore.

 

[gargantual]

What about the other issue? Fighting game fans who make it so the newcomers arn't allowed to play or feel welcome?

Yeah there can be dicks out there, i imagine its just to disrupt our focus. but once you get a hang of it, you'll see complainers in fighting games mad cause they lost. Some winners can be obnoxious, but thats when they're confident in winning. most pros Ive seen have silent pride, because you have to be on point more than other game genres. The margin of error is slim in fighters for everybody.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Being comprehensively beaten down isn't much fun and clearly no-one anywhere near my ability is playing the game at the moment. I'm not learning anything because I'm hardly having chance to move before being juggled and ultra'd out of existence

Oh ive been there so many many times and I agree I have also been playing for many a year (SF2 Blanka main myself) but I havent got chance to play as much as I used to and so my skills arent as great as they once were and I have just recently tried to make the jump to hitbox controller wise so the controller is unintuative at the moment to boot.

The problem of being beaten by players way above your level is that you dont learn much (unless they are by your side and explaining what just happened) to get the best experience you need to play players around your level or ideally a bit better than you, If someone created a matchmaking system that was able to pair you up with players of your level reliably fighters would be better for everyone (cant see how they can do that personally though).

I would call for better tutorials but honestly im not sure how games like DOA5, Blazblue, Skullgirls and Killer Instinct have pretty good tutorials but ist still a lot of info the two games I learnt the most at and consider myself decent at are Street Fighter 2 Hyper edition and Soul Calibur (mostly 1 and 2) but I onloy got good at SF by playing for hundreds of hours while with Soul Calibur I played a friend who was/is great at the game and just took hundreds of straight losses with him giving me tips on what I should be doing or how to do moves etc until eventually I could give him a decent game (lots of mirror matches though lol).

I usually go online for my fighting game tutorials now and read up on them it helped me hugely in DOA5 with Ayane because there is a great guide I found that explained her well and had a load of strings and combos to supplement my fundamentals.

Fighters will never be mainstream though P4A did a great job of opening them up to newcomers but not sacrificing the depth. They will never be that accessible because you cant make them hugely accessible without sacrificing what they are although SF2 I suppose would be an exception (dont think we will see another fighter like it though). Most people dont want to practice for hundreds of hours and I can understand that but at the end of the day the better player should always win only thing is that dosent help with accessibility its hard to read a tutorial and instantly understand how it works and why it is important and to use it effectively.

What about the other issue? Fighting game fans who make it so the newcomers arn't allowed to play or feel welcome?

You get people like this everywhere who cares what they think play if you enjoy and dont if you dont. I have encountered many people like this it gets even worse in team driven games imo remove the personal aspect of interaction and lots of people turn into dicks.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

sure, all competitive games require time to get good at them, so maybe that is not for you, but you don't need a fighting stick. I play on a stick yeah, but a stick doesn't make me a better player, it just gives me a button layout that I prefer, but I play against players that just use the standard controllers and they still can do all the stuff that I do. On most tournaments there are players who play on controllers and they aren't bad players.

Juggling fighting games (like Tekken and Marvel) can be disliked because of the juggling style of play. Once you are hit, you have to wait till the combo is over, which is frustrating. But I do want to point out that that that so called "one-touch kill-combo's" are more a result of poor game design.

I think when designing a fighting game that is accessible for new players, you have make a game that is "easy to play, hard to master." That is what SFIV did and what started to rebirth of FG's nowadays. Now a lot of the FG's today try to do this. Tekken gives examples of bread and butter combo's that you have to understand to properly play a character. Persona 4 Arena gives you the 5A autocombo, which ends in a super if you have the required meter. this are examples of tools that the game gives to new players, but these aren't too strong. The combo's of tekken can be improved with some changes and the auto combo is a waste of meter for a better player. Still it is important that these tools are there, so that newer players can get the feeling that they are playing the game.

It just feels so daunting to get good in fighting games. I can play against the very best players in 3rd-person shooters and baseball games; I even used the weakest team (since they are my 2nd favorite team) in an official MLB The Show tourney against the best players using the Yankees and beat them. I just don't have the time to practice at fighting games to get good, I'm pretty sure I can with practice though.

I bought Samaria Showdown on PS3 since I loved playing it at the bowling alley as a kid but I only played it for like an hour because it just felt awkward playing with the d-pad.

Secondly and most importantly. It's very tricky to play online. In no other genre of gaming will you be more aware of the effect of ping time.

Lag might be even more of an issue with online baseball, which I do play. Heck, any input lag on your TV kinda makes a baseball game unplayable.

 

[RaikuFA]

What about the other issue? Fighting game fans who make it so the newcomers arn't allowed to play or feel welcome?

Yeah there can be dicks out there, i imagine its just to disrupt our focus. but once you get a hang of it, you'll see complainers in fighting games mad cause they lost. Some winners can be obnoxious, but thats when they're confident in winning. most pros Ive seen have silent pride, because you have to be on point more than other game genres. The margin of error is slim in fighters for everybody.

I've never met a fighting game fan who wanted my head for being new. Even on "newbie friendly sites" like Dustloop and SRK.