Why you should play fighting games

[hanselthecaretaker]

Or so the video [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UT2pDl-lKX8] says.

What are your thoughts on fighting games? I?ve always liked them, but have never been all that proficient at any of the ones I?ve played. My favorite by far has always been the MK series, mainly due to its unique style and having loads of high quality kontent. It?s also getting better exposure and cred on the tournament side of things now too; most recently at Combo Breaker. I?ve just started playing as Sonya so this [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eXcNm3qu5gs] was an interesting to match to watch.

I?ve also played Street Fighter of course but mostly from the classic era. I like it but especially now it seems you need an arcade stick to get the most out of it. Never really cared for the crazy fractional back and forth circular and zig zagging stick inputs and timing requirements for basic combos. I actually liked Darkstalkers quite a bit more. Also played a lot of Killer Instinct and some Tekken, but only dabbled in others. Always preferred 2D overall as well.

 

[CaitSeith]

I'm not much of a fan of fighting games, because they are mainly designed to be competitive experiences against other players (and I prefer games focused more on single-player or co-op). I used to play SFII and the original Mortal Kombat as a kid (and some DBZ games later on).

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Love fighters, I've been competitive for over a decade now but I played em for a good decade or more before that point, I used to play a bit of everything but I got competitive with the first Blazblue game so from then on I focused more exclusively on those kinds of games like Guilty Gear and Undernight in birth and arcana heart and so on. ATM I'm on the closed beta for the new Granblue Fantasy fighting game, super excited for it! Not a fan of 3d games or stuff like MK especially, since they tend to have shallow mechanical depth and use mechanics that for a lack of a better terms mask button mashing too much and all of their supposedly original ideas are ripped off from other games that were innovative at the time but were hardly recognized. (for example, the 3 different styles of character introduced in MKX was actually already a system of the Melty Blood series from the mid 2000s)


Oh and it's a complete myth that you need an arcade stick to play games with directional moves and special command inputs. I have never owned one and I always played with the default playstation's controller (sixaxis, ds3, ds4) yet have won tons of money and various tournaments and local gatherings and what have you. You still need to practice just as much with a stick too. Also, the practice it takes to just become able of doing the attacks whenever you want to is nothing at all compared to every other thing you need to learn to play the game effectively so if you stumble there you weren't gonna make it far either way anyways. If you can't figure out how to time a series of directions effectively, you won't be able to figure out how to abare through pressure or how to instant block, never mind learning to react to overheads and what have you.

 

[Hawki]

Oh hey, someone else likes Cosmonaut.

That said, I don't really have any thoughts on fighting games. Nothing against them, but they're not really my thing. I did enjoy Soul Calibur I-III, and Mortal Kombat I-III even further back, but I've never been invested in any other fighting games since. Doesn't help that for much of their lives, fighting games were never good at conveying story, and even in recent times, with Mortal Kombat and Injustice, it'll get the fighters to brawl as soon as one of them sneezes, even when it makes little sense in the story.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Oh hey, someone else likes Cosmonaut.

That said, I don't really have any thoughts on fighting games. Nothing against them, but they're not really my thing. I did enjoy Soul Calibur I-III, and Mortal Kombat I-III even further back, but I've never been invested in any other fighting games since. Doesn't help that for much of their lives, fighting games were never good at conveying story, and even in recent times, with Mortal Kombat and Injustice, it'll get the fighters to brawl as soon as one of them sneezes, even when it makes little sense in the story.

You may wanna check the blazblue and guilty gear series if you're into storymodes in your fighters then. Both of the above have tons of story content (20-30 HOURS for each of the four blazblue games of just storymode) with barely any fighting. Some of which have absolutely no fighting at all, and unfold in a Visual Novel fashion, even.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I used to love fighting game in the 90's (SF2, SFA, SF3, Soul Calibur, Tekken 1-3, OG MK 1-3) but whenever I try to get into a more recent ones, I just bounce off them. Personally, I find they're just too complicated now with too many mechanics and complex command inputs that are more annoying than fun to learn. I think I've just aged out of the genre.

 

[09philj]

Not all that fussed about fighting games but I did beat Skullgirls' story mode with every character, that was a fun time.

 

[Trunkage]

Fighting game are like RTSs. When you played with your friends in the 90s, you thought you were awesome. But now that you can connect with way more people on the internet, you realise how crap you are.

The learning curve to catch up is incredibly steep and I dont have the patience or time to do that.

 

[BrawlMan]

I used to love fighting game in the 90's (SF2, SFA, SF3, Soul Calibur, Tekken 1-3, OG MK 1-3) but whenever I try to get into a more recent ones, I just bounce off them. Personally, I find they're just too complicated now with too many mechanics and complex command inputs that are more annoying than fun to learn. I think I've just aged out of the genre.

This. I will occasionally pop in SF or MvsC, etc. for old times sake, but I am in the same boat. Plus, all of the season pass and DLC bullshit makes fighting games more expensive than ever. With that said, I am getting Samurai Showdown, because those games are known for not being combat heavy. There has not been a SamSho game since 2008. Kill La Kill IF is on my list since it's just an arena fighter anyone can pick up and play.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

No thank you. Any community that lionizes and encourages people like Low Tier God is one I want nothing to do with.

Also, if I want the non stop of experience of getting repeatedly beaten and humiliated over and over by people far above my skill level, I'll sign on to MMA.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Fighting game are like RTSs. When you played with your friends in the 90s, you thought you were awesome. But now that you can connect with way more people on the internet, you realise how crap you are.

The learning curve to catch up is incredibly steep and I dont have the patience or time to do that.

If actual sports worked like fighting games, pee wee football players would be expected to go in against NFL teams at times.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I like them, but my DSL isn?t good enough to play very well online. So I just play the story mode and play against friends when the opportunity arises.

 

[Squilookle]

I think the only reason I never got into them is because I'm just not interested in beating up on people. If we lived in an alternate universe where every fighting game had been about swordfighting, I probably would have been all over it.

 

[stroopwafel]

Fighting game are like RTSs. When you played with your friends in the 90s, you thought you were awesome. But now that you can connect with way more people on the internet, you realise how crap you are.

The learning curve to catch up is incredibly steep and I dont have the patience or time to do that.

This. The skill level is really high online which makes them just not fun. They also made them too complex like SF5 with V-triggers and all kind of difficult combinations I don't understand. I love how basic classic Street Fighter was. It was more about positioning and timing. I played both the previous Mortal Kombat and SF5 Arcade and just didn't really enjoy either. However I absolutely loved Street Fighter Collection. Maybe it's a mix of nostalgia and these old fighting games just being simpler. For me, SF2 Turbo will always be the best fighting game ever made.

I guess you really need to have the time and inclination to get good at fighting games, which I neither have nor care for.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Love fighters, I've been competitive for over a decade now but I played em for a good decade or more before that point, I used to play a bit of everything but I got competitive with the first Blazblue game so from then on I focused more exclusively on those kinds of games like Guilty Gear and Undernight in birth and arcana heart and so on. ATM I'm on the closed beta for the new Granblue Fantasy fighting game, super excited for it! Not a fan of 3d games or stuff like MK especially, since they tend to have shallow mechanical depth and use mechanics that for a lack of a better terms mask button mashing too much and all of their supposedly original ideas are ripped off from other games that were innovative at the time but were hardly recognized. (for example, the 3 different styles of character introduced in MKX was actually already a system of the Melty Blood series from the mid 2000s)


Oh and it's a complete myth that you need an arcade stick to play games with directional moves and special command inputs. I have never owned one and I always played with the default playstation's controller (sixaxis, ds3, ds4) yet have won tons of money and various tournaments and local gatherings and what have you. You still need to practice just as much with a stick too. Also, the practice it takes to just become able of doing the attacks whenever you want to is nothing at all compared to every other thing you need to learn to play the game effectively so if you stumble there you weren't gonna make it far either way anyways. If you can't figure out how to time a series of directions effectively, you won't be able to figure out how to abare through pressure or how to instant block, never mind learning to react to overheads and what have you.

True, but it also depends on the game. There are a lot of people who are very proficient in SF that struggle with having to actively block or time combo strings in something ?simple? like MK due to the difference in mechanics. I personally also have played the more recent SF?s mainly on a projector with 67ms input lag best case, which makes the strict timing all that more difficult to comply with.

Learning curves will always vary from player to player but it ultimately boils down to how much time one is willing to invest in any given game. Even the latest MK takes a lot of time to reach a competitive level. It also has one of the most comprehensive tutorial systems I?ve seen, even though it still only touches upon a bit of everything. More fighters should start including something like it to help players adjust to their own respective mechanics.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

No thank you. Any community that lionizes and encourages people like Low Tier God is one I want nothing to do with.

Also, if I want the non stop of experience of getting repeatedly beaten and humiliated over and over by people far above my skill level, I'll sign on to MMA.

Who?

Is he a streetfighter person?

Legit never heard of him and I've put thousands of hours in the genre. (this is a good point to highlight the fact that fighters have a lot of sub-genres, each its own enclosed environment with its own separate community, there is crossover of course and some people play a lot of stuff but you don't wanna think of the community as a monolith.

Love fighters, I've been competitive for over a decade now but I played em for a good decade or more before that point, I used to play a bit of everything but I got competitive with the first Blazblue game so from then on I focused more exclusively on those kinds of games like Guilty Gear and Undernight in birth and arcana heart and so on. ATM I'm on the closed beta for the new Granblue Fantasy fighting game, super excited for it! Not a fan of 3d games or stuff like MK especially, since they tend to have shallow mechanical depth and use mechanics that for a lack of a better terms mask button mashing too much and all of their supposedly original ideas are ripped off from other games that were innovative at the time but were hardly recognized. (for example, the 3 different styles of character introduced in MKX was actually already a system of the Melty Blood series from the mid 2000s)


Oh and it's a complete myth that you need an arcade stick to play games with directional moves and special command inputs. I have never owned one and I always played with the default playstation's controller (sixaxis, ds3, ds4) yet have won tons of money and various tournaments and local gatherings and what have you. You still need to practice just as much with a stick too. Also, the practice it takes to just become able of doing the attacks whenever you want to is nothing at all compared to every other thing you need to learn to play the game effectively so if you stumble there you weren't gonna make it far either way anyways. If you can't figure out how to time a series of directions effectively, you won't be able to figure out how to abare through pressure or how to instant block, never mind learning to react to overheads and what have you.

True, but it also depends on the game. There are a lot of people who are very proficient in SF that struggle with having to actively block or time combo strings in something ?simple? like MK due to the difference in mechanics. I personally also have played the more recent SF?s mainly on a projector with 67ms input lag best case, which makes the strict timing all that more difficult to comply with.

Learning curves will always vary from player to player but it ultimately boils down to how much time one is willing to invest in any given game. Even the latest MK takes a lot of time to reach a competitive level. It also has one of the most comprehensive tutorial systems I?ve seen, even though it still only touches upon a bit of everything. More fighters should start including something like it to help players adjust to their own respective mechanics.

I don't know about SF much either since the last one I played was vanilla sf4 back before I was competitive (which happened when the first BB came out, about a year later) but from what I know with MK, there's no hitconfirming and the way cancels work make it so that you wanna input your string ahead of time so you can't visually react to what your foe is doing mid-string and alter your input cause if you try to time it like that the input will be too slow and nothing will come out. It feels very limiting.

Oh but of course there's other things to learn and those take a lot of effort too, I'm just coming into this from an arc system works style angle (the general "airdashers" subgenre) and pointing out the things that stand out to me.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Who?

Is he a streetfighter person?

It was legit tough to decide on a good concise clip, but here ya go.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I was into fighting games back in the ?90s, but as my interests broadened, I began to see them as one-trick ponies, shallow and limited experiences better suited to an arcade cabinet when I?ve got 50 cents and 30 seconds to blow. They just don?t hold my attention for very long and there?s so little to do in them. I guess if you get your jollies off in intense-if-brief competition, they?re perfect, but outside of that? meh?

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Who?

Is he a streetfighter person?

It was legit tough to decide on a good concise clip, but here ya go.

Lol that guy sounds like the type of person the FGC makes fun of, never mind idolize. (also I knew it, he is a SF person after all! XD)


But yeah, this is the kinda thing I'm more into:



Just listen to the sheer hype!

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Lol that guy sounds like the type of person the FGC makes fun of, never mind idolize.

I dunno man, I read the chats on this guy's videos, those aren't rubberneckers in his box, they're legit fans, and like DSP, he's impressing someone enough to keep the money coming.