Also something I’ll talk about soon maybe, is that part of what makes so many modern games feel “solved” so much faster. It has some part to do with how they are created, but also has tremendously changed with the skill level of modern fighting game players, and how how information travels. There are some really good examples of things from old games which took a long time to discover, which would very quickly be found in the modern era.
The problem of fighting games getting solved easily nowadays is that when you have every single piece of data available to you, it means there's an optimal set of choices for every single frame and not making those choices means that you are objectively wrong. As the game becomes more solved, the game becomes less creative, less about skill over others but more about who's making less blunders. This is why the greatest chess player of all time Bobby Fischer quit chess, he claims that computers have shown that chess no longer has creativity, it's about playing the optimal moves, if you don't you'll just lose to the opponent who makes those optimal moves. I think "emergent gameplay" is gameplay that has so many variables that it is nearly impossible to solve or have a ceiling that's humanly impossible to reach, so discoveries and choices are extremely vast, which contributes to be fun, especially in a non E sports competitive way.
Yeah, I think long-time gamers consistently underestimate the effects of gaming turning from a niche hobby into a mainstream pastime. There's orders of magnitude more people involved "solving" games and the competitive scene to maximize profitability. That's the tradeoff of the industry's success. Similar to the sports or tv industries.
@Sajam its more just what you said. A lot of "taking out most of the moves that served little to no purpose and only having moves that exist with a general or less niche case scenario." and what that really does is quicken the pace so everyone gets to the top faster, since theres less superfluous fluff. Its now "easier" to play like a pro, since the pros will use the same couple of moves given. Personally, I dont like this because it means its hard to build your own "style" or way of playing. Or if you can, its more subtle than if the moveset was more "complex" or dense. But like you said in the video, the problem with dense movesets is its hard to make some where all of the moves feel like they have a place or a good enough use and reason to be in the game.
I'd start by establishing what "solved" means, because it gets misused the same way "emergent gameplay" does. Like, a "solved" game is one where you know what to do in any given situation, but that doesn't mean a game isn't fun. Plus, different levels of a game have different metas and "solving" them is often how you rank up. Beginners play the game of "don't get hit" until they solve it, then they play "don't drop your combos" until they solve that game, then they move up to the game of spacing, decision-making, etc.
Emergent gameplay just means that the developers didn't consider all the ways the systems they built can interact. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, and thats usually subjective. But, generally, I think players like it when they discover things that weren't necessarily intended or accounted for, and those things enhance the gameplay rather than totally breaking it.
Tons of now intended things in games were spawned from emergent gameplay for the better NGL. Combos from SF2 are literally that. Then there's DotA 2 with emergent gameplay mechanics due to WC3 engine restrictions for the OG DotA. Another example is LoL. The og creators of it wanted to escape the engine restrictions of WC3 and even made old off hand PR statements on their old dead forums about how they disliked emergent gameplay and called it "lazy game design". If anyone's boomer enough to remember GunZ the Duel, K-style was literally the maindraw of that game but was born from emergent gameply and was put back QUICKLY when the devs tried to remove it because the game wasn't fun without it.
You know, except the times they do totally break it. Which is likely the case in a TON of the mountains of fighting games we forgot about that came out at the same time as games like 3rd Strike, MvC 2 and 3, etc. But in the age of patching it does seem like devs should let things rock if it's not super busted.
@@williampounds5191 yeah, things like patching out oro fast fall are mistakes imo. It didn't put oro at the top of the tier list or anything, but it made the character more fun! Sometimes, developer pride can get in the way
I think part of the with the love for emergent design is that people's fondness of it is riddled with survivorship bias, they remember all the games where it turned out well and forget all the games that because the unintend effects were so negative didn't get played and didn't get remembered. Like Shaq Fu is full of emergent gameplay, and pretty much every kusoge is full of jank unintended broken shit.
I think the term had its uses back when information was hard to come by and single people could knowledge check entire continents. In this day and age I don't think it has any coherent definition. It reminds me of Leon Massey's Strive review where he flippantly gave +R the same rating as Strive even though it has nearly all of the things that he said was good about Xrd. It's all just people communicating really, really badly.
I think people confuse "emergent gameplay" with "intentional design." A lot of new fighting games are definitely more straightforward, but even over the past 10 years it's clear to see that there are distinct things the developers do and do not want players to do. In the '90s it seemed like developers thought "we're gonna make a fighting game." In the '00s it seems like devs thought "we're gonna make a fighting game with an emphasis on x." In the '10s, it seems like we've reached a point in fighting game design where developers know what they want the game to play like and have enough experience playing and balancing games beforehand that they can get pretty close.
Personally I resonate more with Max's sentiment, but I don't agree with the logic, especially this concept of intended vs. unintended. An absolute shit load of combos in old and new games are "intentionally designed". They give the moves links, or + frames with the knowledge that they can then be linked into a next move. And in modern fighting games that people are bemoaning e.g dragonball fighterz, there's still tons of unintended/unexpected interactions that the devs didn't anticipate. So I find this fixation on intended vs not intended to be silly. Snapback meta in dragonball fighterz was clearly emergent gameplay, but I don't think keeping it in would've somehow make everyone think it's the coolest game ever. Contrary to I think both Sajam and LordKnight, I personally really enjoy value systems where there are more things you can do off of a hit. I recognize that fundamentally, everything can eventually be distilled to be "THE OPTIMAL" because that's just the nature of a non-RNG system. But personally, I really like messing around labbing random shit, and seeing spicy tech that is clearly unoptimal but looks hella cool. My monkey brain likes it when I try something in training mode, and there's this cool sequence that I can figure out. I remember in Strive labbing a DP punish where I have a fully charged dust inside of it. Finding that shit was dopamine, even if the combo was objectively just worse than other options. People get caught up in trying to justify this like "oh old games had depth" or "new games are being made for casuals" but the reality is that 95% of people belittling these modern games haven't even begun to scratch the surface of competitive play in any of those games. Personally, I just like having that ""false"" sense of choice, and occasionally it has the added benefit where a former sub-optimal move/sequence can have some niche use-cases in certain matchups etc.
With regards to the combo thing, it’s the Timmy-Johnny-Spike dichotomy. Some players just enjoy feeling strong, love making big reads, and attempting gimmicky stuff. The Timmies. Some players just like being creative, coming up with their own combos and strategies that nobody else has done before, and winning in cool and uique ways. The Johnnies. And some people just want to look for the most optimal, safest, and consistent way of winning. The Spikes. Nobody is rarely just one of these; it’s a spectrum, but you get the point. And players like you lean more in the Johnny direction, while players like Sajam lean more in the Spike direction (even though my impression of Sajam has never been that of somebody who’s only a Spike player, but a lot of his thinking and philosophies around fighting games tend to come at it from that direction). And the fact that people get these very different things out of fighting games depending on what type of player you are is where a lot of the disagreements usually show up. Side note: these aren’t perfect descriptions of the player types, as it’s originally used for Magic the Gathering players, but it gets the point across. Fighting games usually use the similar Heart-Body-Mind player dichotomy, but that’s more about competitive player approach than just general player outlook, imo.
I like games with rooms for "unoptimal" stuff, because there's still a genuine choice between optimal damage or not. Because usually, stuff that isn't optimal for health bar damage actually provides optimal *mental* damage to the opponent. If I use a very specific niche shitty move/combo to finish my opponent in a funny way, there's a good chance that'd genuinely put my opponent on tilt for the next round. If my opponent has a bizarre playstyle, even if it's less than optimal, I'm more worried about what kind of opponent I'm fighting.
THIS. Thats exactly how I usually learn games, I start out with the bare bones, what are my moves and simple confirms, and then I turn into a lab monster for a week and try shit out. I remember finding how doing a Tk.DP with H-Aoko in MBAACC would cross up my opponent depending on distance while they are crouching or knocked down and if it hit them it leads to full combo AND even if blocked it was like +24 or some shit. And TO THIS DAY, even though the optimal option is always a strike throw setup with orb because it does the same thing but safer vs reversals I still do this stupid crossup mix because its MY stupid crossup mix. Could this be the reason why I had an 0-2 streak on tourneys for 2 years or so? Probably, but I do not regret the fun I had while making characters I choose feel like my characters.
I mean, you can make a Street Fighter game with lots of freedom in regards to decision making. They made two games in row with lots of freedom: 3rd Strike and SFIV. Both games made use of one universal mechanic that massively expanded the decision making tree and made the skill ceiling basically infinitely high. Yes, both of those games were shit on by the community, both at the beginning of their competitive lives and at the end of their competitive lives, but at this point I'd say that's a completely normal phenomenon that will happen to every game until the end of time.
You are right but you forgot to point out what the DEVS wanted and how they respond to how the community responds to their design (like toning down crush counters in SFV because players at launch would only use heavy buttons). At the end of the day it's their decision good or bad. Also, SFIV isn't shitted on by the community don't worry it's a beloved game as it should be
@@numa2k147 It isn't *now,* but that's well after its competitive lifespan came to an end. By the time we were at Ultra people were sick and tired of SF4 and were shitting on it constantly.
I don’t think freedom in choice for SF is a problem, or what I mention in regards to SFs more grounded nature compared to other fighting game franchises. It just has a lower system and character power level than other franchises, and I think that’s a part of why SF fans gravitate towards it.
i think this style is sick. sajam just talking and providing really cool insight to fighting game topics is i think my favourite content on youtube (frfr) and i think the style of editing really compliments that. also sick to see something new (at least i havent seen something like that on this channel)
I've seen Max, Lord Knight, and now Sir Jam talk about this topic; it'd be really groovy to hear all 3 of them have a sit down discussion about their perspectives.
Having them all talk about it on Jam Radio, or having Lord Knight and/or Sajam guest on Max, Justin and Matt McMuscle’s new fighting game podcast “Triple K.O” to talk about this could be fun!
For what it's worth, intent is not usually what is used to define emergent gameplay in game design discussion. Usually, it's about multiple systems interacting to create new mechanics in the game, such as Rocket Jumping in Team Fortress, which is a result of the knockback from rockets, self-damage from rockets, and the game's air control mechanics. And what's noteworthy about this is that Rocket Jumping works basically the same in TF2 as it did in Quake, the primary difference being that in TF2 it was added intentionally. So it doesn't really make sense to talk about designer intent when that has no actual impact on the mechanic in the context of the game. What I think is cool about emergent gameplay is that because it's made up of basic mechanics of the game, it increases the depth of the game without increasing the complexity greatly. You could theoretically have a mechanic in your game that says "hey, you can spend some of your health to do a super jump, and you can use the aim of your mouse to control the angle of that jump." and it would effectively have the same result as a rocket jump, but now you have to teach a player about the super jump, and the rocket launcher, wheras with rocket jumping, you understand the nuances of the mechanic intuitively if you understand the nuances of its component parts.
Rocket jumping in TF2 is a really good example of intentional emergent gameplay. It adds depth in other ways too; good medics will surf damage towards the safety of their team if you let them, and optimized rollouts will depend on the map geometry and travel time of your projectiles. Compared to an imagined Overwatch "spend health aim jump", that would be tied to just the one character, and you'd just point where you wanted to go.
This is the definition. Like the Korean backdash in Tekken, or animation cancels in SF2. It's not combo routes the devs didn't come up with themselves. I don't think Max wants something bad, but I think he did a really bad job explaining what he wants, and conflated it with terms that don't apply and it muddied the waters.
"What I think is cool about emergent gameplay is that because it's made up of basic mechanics of the game, it increases the depth of the game without increasing the complexity greatly" I get very confused when people talk about intent and emergence, but your version is how I wish it was seen. I keep pointing to GunZ: the Duel because it acts like it is a shooting game, but you have movement options and animation cancels. It even shares the competitive sentiment when they made GunZ2, most people that played GunZ1 found it hard to enjoy; they are just different games, just like smash melee to brawl, the base game is the same (hit and don't get hit) how you play it changes depending on what is available to the players.
I think emergent gameplay is just a term people use for games that have a lot of room for exploration and discovery. The main reason I think it's associated with old games is because they've been explored more, although it is true that simplification and frequent patches do slightly reduce the potential for discovery.
Part of the reason it gets associated with older games is because the gameplay doesn't get "patched" unless it's a serious, serious issue and only if the company cares to. And even then the person would need internet to patch it. Even worse pre-dating widespread internet. The issue doesn't get fixed until the next sequel, so if players like it, it might continue, or if they don't, then hopefully it's fixed by then. Emergent gameplay still happens nowadays just sometimes it can be perceived as things like a "meta-shift", but who's to say a tank Akali build in LoL isn't emergent gameplay when the devs purposefully target it's removal, or intend a character like Nunu to be played in a specific role only for them to be seen in a different role at high level online warrior gaming.
@@Freakattaker Most importantly, fgs were normally yearly releases. From 91 to 99 Capcom made only SF2, SF3 and SFA - 3 titles in terms of real sequels. But 11 titles total (yeah, really 11 SF releases in 8 years). Capcom spent more time managing those "revision" type sequels, that polished the gameplay, fixed issues, and offered minor features (few times a big feature), rebalance and a couple new chars. In short, we can see those revisions like today's patching in practical terms. It was a late and once in a year "fix". All 4 SF2 revisions have a new roster balance. Same for Marvel, Darkstalkers, Jojo, the SNK fgs (MANY more than Capcom), other fgs from different companies, also MK, GG, etc. It was normal to have yearly sequels. So fg companies had to use that situation to kept polishing the base gameplay and fixing problems.
Good vid, my personal stance is that when people point to "emergent gameplay" in old games like third strike, they mean mechanics like parries that edge the player on to explore situations and get immediate results for that exploration and discovery, compared to small optimizations like combos which will only improve their fundamental gameplay by very small increments. The fault is once people get amazing at these mechanics such as parry, the expressiveness and exploration is gone, it is widely known and consistent to do X parry in X situation, or do option select parry in X situation, etc. it is a very hard balance to get right in a fighting game where that sense of exploration and immediate results upon implementation is still there at higher levels. What people are looking for is that great feeling of when the gears start clicking, and you start to really flex your knowledge of the game and its engine by making decisions on the spot without much rehearsal. I do think universal mechanics that are applicable in many situations is the way to go, and that isn't fully lost in modern fighting games (I think strive's RC is a great example), although games should be striving for even more. Devs should look back at these mechanics that felt so good to learn at a lower - mid level and make them retain their expression at the top, modern fighting games have the privilege of updates so they should take more liberties at the beginning and sound it until that mechanic feels expressive at all levels. My fav example even if it's from platform fighters would be something like wavedashing, where there are both obvious uses that will provide the lower - mid level with immediate satisfaction, and so many mixups / unique uses that will provide people an incentive to explore its possibilities forever.
Personally I like it when my emergent gameplay is paired thoughtfully with not only ludonarrative dissonance but raytracing too. And none of that matters if your kinetic game feel and open world aren’t taken into account when you mix a little bit of the choices and consequences and the high-skill ceiling. Honestly if a game releases in 2022 and it doesn’t have a battle royale, mental stack, 4K, gigatextures, adaptive soundtrack OR yoinky sploinkly I’m not playing.
I keep hearing from you guys how people switched up on rev 2 when strive came out Lk also talks about how he's seen it happen so many times it's crazy to me how thing always turn out like that not only is it hard to make fans happy but it's hard to know if they were even unhappy in the first place
About halfway in Sajam basically just paraphrased that one Core-A video: "Honers vs Innovators" or something. Wait a minute..... we've never seen Sajam and Jared from Core-A in the same room together 👀
Emergent gameplay isn't that hard to define, it is just nebulous to decide how much/little of that type of experience exists in any specific game. I definitely think games of the past 10 or so years have consistently tried to be super intentional with how everything is designed and balanced. You have very well defined answers to very well designed situations and the core systems aren't as open to player expression and a higher skill ceiling. That's why I like Guilty Gear so much. The roman cancel system allows for so much emergent gameplay and skill expression. The game engine might have been slowed down and characters have been tuned to have less layered and predictable offense/defense, but roman cancels help inject a very solid amount of base level depth.
I don't think newer games lack expression or emergent gameplay but I definitely think newer games have "less" of that. The terms are nebulous though so it's hard to really quantify anything beyond my personal feelings
I've been playing master Duel as a new yugioh player, and I think it's interesting that while everyone whines about how wild the games gotten, it's probably the card game designed to encourage the most "emergent game play". I think it comes down to how many basic blocks the devs make that can be combined in lots of novel ways that they havn't even planned - a rigid defined system, more complex building blocks, might be smoother, and might have less random jank, but the trade off is that things will work out the same way - 'properly' - more of the time. I enjoy tekken because I feel it's really natural and intuitive how things come together /chain together, namely 'realistically', as emergent as real Combat can be. I don't play it, but I think Melee lasting this long, comes down to emergent game play, play that emerges because the basic building blocks can fit together in a host of interesting ways that the devs didn't, or couldn't plan (which is where the value comes from - player imagination on a long enough timeline will always overshoot what devs can conceive during a limited development cycle) - I might even say melee looks like it has the most emergent game play amongst fighting games haha, if you include it. And I imagine that's why a lot of people enjoy yugioh to, even though it's crazy these days.
Aye shout outs to this editor for these extra pictures. Very cool change to the format. Also emergent gameplay isn't as important to me as skill expression. If there's some movement tech or whatever, but if it's the only thing that's good for movement then I think it's boring.
The thing that confuses me with the idea of emergent gameplay is that sometimes emergent gameplay can be found in modern games but because information is so blistering fast because of the internet the speed of learning is insane these days. I guarantee that if older games existed now that they would be figured out waaaaayyy faster than compared in the past.
I'm honestly more into polishing up in more open games like +R than linear games like Strive since I already spent so much time learning the basics of my character, I'm already invested to polish them up, I also find it more fun to break down situations when the answer isn't just 6P or a dedicated anti-air button with Strive it feels like I hit the polishing stage within a week, well before I've had the time to truly a appreciate my character and a lot of the problem solving feels so distilled and too consistent for my liking
I think the other thing for 'emergent' game play is moves have much clearer purposes and that prevents people playing the same character differently. You mention LK saying he wouldn't whiff punish with a certain move because he didn't feel he could do it. Sometimes things like that breed entirely different styles and when moves are not designed as narrowly it's possible for people to find different solutions to the same problem that are optimal for what they want. It's having 2-3 options to solve the same thing that are each more rewarding in different ways. The moment you have a combo or situation that is better than all ways the decision tree narrows to a line and it becomes a matter of timing not of option selection which is less entertaining.
Emergent gameplay is gameplay so complex the creators cannot predict its endgame. They balance it just enough that even if someone “figures it out” it will be gdlk and obviously impressive to anyone who has spent more than an hour paying any form of attention to it. Newer games, however, lean on the fact that it is a zero sum game in the end regardless and will always be hard to win in consistently. And then they can replace ingenuity with streamlined, drip fed content to reach the same longevity that used to come about only from making an insanely deep game that won’t get patched but 2-3 times if at all in its entire lifespan.
HMC has exactly 1 use & requires full meter: you bait the opponent into jumping so you can Dragon Uninstall & punish them in the air. It doesn't work every time, but I've gotten a few sicknasty air grabs or DPs off of it. Problem is, you can only use it once before your opponent knows better and won't fall for it twice (unless they're bad). Aside from that 1 specific use, it is objectively a trash move
Shoutouts to the more visual elements Moste presented during Sajam's TED talk here, looks real clean Not sure if you have done this sort of thing before, but I think it's a great addition to these discussion videos Cheers
This is an interesting discussion, especially as it applies across genres of video game, and not just fighters. The best (and most fun) tech in first person shooters is unintended gameplay.
EMERGENT GAMEPLAY is when interactions between simple mechanics create a more complicated game that is bigger than the sum of its parts. The board game Go is a great example.
I think another thing worth mentioning in the modern era is that patches are an expectation right? Like there's a lot of people that complained about Oro Fast Fall or Danfinite being removed as "Capcops removing the fun" but Ive seen just as many people look at that stuff before it got patched out and react with "lol yet ANOTHER reason SFV is garbage lol they just leave busted shit in the game cause they dont care, they dont even know how to make a game lol etc". Sometimes its even the same people. I also want to say I agree with what you said about SF players being drawn to the more limited combos and more grounded neutral of that series. I love the way SFV feels to play and its kind of annoying how people look at the fact that you dont just get to mash through a magic sequence and have it all work once you touch someone as some kind of flaw. No disrespect to anime games or anything else but there are SO MANY of those kinds of games out right now with how prolific ArcSys is that I feel like those people could probably just play those games instead of demanding that SF follow that same design ethos. I like that longer combos are more rare in SF games. I like that the neutral is more played on the ground than in the air. I just like Street Fighter. Dont get me wrong, sometimes Im in the mood for air dashes and whatever else, so I still do enjoy those kinds of games but its so lame to me that people find something they like more and immediately start touting it as the "correct" way for all fighting games to be. I dont comment on here often but I also wanna say I appreciate your content a lot. Its real good stuff.
It feels like what a lot of people want, and maybe the best way for fighting game devs to approach things, is to be given a sandbox that provides various ways to enjoy the product that, otherwise, is limited in scope for gameplay/story elements that it provides. And rather than rely on devs to optimize the experience, the player wants to do this, in whatever way and at whatever pace they deem most enjoyable.
Its true that especially in modern gaming not just about fighting game, where most of the game now will always had even more easier accessibility than the classic games with fairly limited amount of access, which because of "Quality of Life" exist in video game, and therefore you can't deny or ignored that even tho its always fine to like it or hate it depend on your thought and your experience to any introduced mechanic you just see in the newer release title. More often than that, its also noticeable that many gamers now will keep treating almost every game existed like a trading card than anything else which speaking of everyone literally play the same way and all (yes of course about that "Meta" thingy)
I think it depends on how the devs make their intentional design and also how they deal with things the community finds. Sometimes it is the right move to see some character specific thing and make it a feature or do things yo make characters even more unique and cool. I think that is the challenge is figuring out what works for your series.
Him saying "Brain's video" was what it took for me to realize this was not a Brian_F secondary channel for longer talking videos... I then had to find a video with both of them in it to make sure but gotdamn
I don't like new games because devs intentionally limit themselves instead of going towards a vision they used to have. When I watch high level bbcf and xrd I always wonder if the things that go on in matches is 100% intended or by some chance is not with how varied people play characters. A perfect example of that would be Xrd May, she is a character that can be played very rushdown heavy with really strong oki tools like beach ball and hoops but also she could be played from afar with these tools but in strive the only way the character can be played is rushdown with strike/throw with explosive damage to compensate for the lack of tools she has which is just very sad to me since her play style way very unique and they sacrificed it to make her very very bland. I know Strive is a new game still getting updates but I genuinely don't see this game turning into what older games became at the end of their developing lifespans and that just disappoint me immensely since the philosophy these devs have nowadays is only caring about new players experience by assassinating interesting concepts and hurting the longevity of their own games. It is one of the main reason I haven't really got into a new fighting game in the last 5-6 years as I feel like I am not the target demographic.
I think it’s more patching culture that changed “emergent gameplay” than any new game design philosophy. When things are unintended by devs, they don’t just let it rock any more, they fix it, because that’s their job. But it means that a game like Marvel 2 won’t ever come out again
People complain about thing -> thing changes -> people complain about new thing This pattern looks hypocritical but I think mostly it's different people
The long and the short is that the fighting game is being refined. Developers are trimming the fat, attempting to distil the essence of a successful and fun fighting game from what we have now. Developers are locked in a heated race to develop the definitive entry game to the fighting game community. Once this game comes into existence, it will be the fertile ground that brings forth better crop. We're already seeing this now with the onslaught of games this year and next. Sit back and watch our awesome community grow!
People complaining about Strive having too many strong, hard to deal with moves, when the game's roster is notably neutered compared to it's predecessors: What I think is happening that creates this mentality is that people believe if *their* character had more options to deal with or the same tools as other characters that they would be losing/winning on a more "fair" or even playing ground. But most of the time they aren't really considering how much harder it would be for their opponents to fight against them as a result of that. I also think that when people start to discover which parts of their character's kit they dislike they begin comparing it to the characters that don't have those same problems. They might want to know why their character doesn't have the same tools or they might want to know why they were designed differently, but since they can't just call up the devs and ask they have to pick a frame of reference. Like for example let's say someone didn't like how Baiken or May don't get knockdown very easily off of their f.S or 2S hitting. A person that doesn't fully understand the reasoning behind that might look at Sol and say "Well Sol gets good return off of his f.S and it's plus! That's how it should be for my character!" And that's how we end up at these crossroads. I kind of get it though. Or at least I get where the sentiment comes from. This seems to me like a topic that could end up being it owns big crazy discussion. There are a lot more reasons why I believe Strive's player base is kind of in a weird in between spot on what they want. Most of us get that if more shit was added to the game, it would make the existing problems and characters that much harder to deal with. But even so, it still feels like something is missing from the game that could help give players that sens elf freedom or expression.
I think as a community it's very important to discuss how fighting games ought to be. There are a lot of things that are commonly held in high regard but are not defined very well or don't end up being that productive in the long run. This emergent gameplay thing being on of them. People being actually able to say what they actually want in a way that makes sense should help developers make games that more people enjoy.
I feel like I'm one of the few players who doesn't love the discovery period of games the most. My favorite part of learning a game is when things start to click, and now I have to dig deeper to improve. It almost feels artificial to improve in the very beginning of a game compared to later on where everyone knows what you're doing, and you have to make adjustments.
Great take! Immediately knew it when you mentioned emergent gameplay being thrown around as a buzzword at this point. From what I understand, emergent gameplay is when the collection of systems present in a game create another type of game that wasn't "intended". It is as you say immediately. Clear intent, proper descriptions, and high level play information being readily available make the old days of fighting games "emergent" gameplay not a thing anymore because (and this is my take) it never really was that. It was just players figuring things out that were really arcane or buggy and exploiting the hell out of it. Now everyone can do it given even just a little time of research on their mains. True emergent gameplay would be something closer to how Double Dragon was a beat''em up side scroller that turned into a fighting game at the end and if they took that concept and made fighting games with it. Oh wait!
This is exactly how I felt about DNF duel, which is why I'm surprised so many people like the game. Neutral feels so limited with weak movement options while moves that hit you 75% of the screen exist.
Games are made of variables (health, position, hitbox, frame data...), and the more variables you have, the more states the game can be in. The more states there are, the more emergent the gameplay is, and you can induce it by designing interactions that modify as many variables as possible.
I think it's a big mistake to just say everything unintentional is "emergent gameplay." Emergent gameplay is when multiple existing mechanics come together to create something new. If a dev forgets to add a hurtbox to a move, that's not emergent gameplay. It's no more "emergent" than a move that has invincibility by intentional design. And I find it weird how many people seem to love emergent gameplay, but will praise +R over Strive. Specifically, the RC system in GG has intentionally become more and more emergent. With drift RC, blue RC, and being able to RC practically anywhere, the devs are letting you use RC in such an open way, when originally it mostly just let you recover fast on hit/block, or at a very specific point in the move that was specifically hard-coded in by devs. Sure, strive has less moves, simpler characters, but that has nothing to do with "emergent gameplay." Sometimes people will just pick something specific they liked about an old game (maybe the DHC glitch in MvC3), and will then make a mountain out of a molehill, and act like they have some really high-concept reason for liking the old game better. Which is especially funny when new games often try to elevate old glitches into new mechanics (the tag system in MvCI was way more open-ended than the DHC glitch).
I feel Fox/Falco's Shine is a perfect example of emergent gameplay. The move was intended as a projectile reflector, but became a 1 frame, chainable, kill confirm due to the discovery of wave dash. A new way to play the character emerged from the player base.
I'm currently trying to wrap my brain around the actual definition of emergent gameplay, but everything about Fox's Shine was intentional. The frame data, the set knockback, and the ability to jump cancel it. Even wave dashing was known to the devs. Each exact use might not have been known but the core aspects were clearly allowed for. Overall I'm not very fond of this definition. Take Shine and put it in a new game where it's functionally the same, but this time advertise wave dashing before it's released. Both Shine as it is now and in this hypothetical scenario are exactly the same. The only difference is that some nerds got to feel special developing a new tech. I'm not against new tech, but plenty of modern games have it all over the place as well. The solution sounds less like the ideal situation (i.e. More freedom in gameplay mechanics leading to more diverse situations that are hard to optimize) and more so like devs should just stop telling us what they've intended or allowed for gameplay-wise.
Such a well done explanation and edit pointing out the catalysts to the evolution of fighting. Next level gaming development is absolutely only possible due to the speed information is shared. Even though it is creating copycats it still inspires legends to combine tech and approaches from their peers to create new play styles. As an old school player I really couldn't get into Guilty gear Strive because of the counter system but I love how it's animations have come along. Dragonball fighterz started like SF alpha and now feels like MVC. Unlike old games it evolved in itself through patches, DLC, and listening to fans which makes new games more stay fresh retaining their fan base.
I think this sort of stuff is what the Smash community lives off of. Like yeah there’s optimal combo routes and strings and there’s certain neutral tools and movement options that are absolutely solved. A tier list? Boom. And then Axe or AMSA or Void or HungryBox or Gluttony or MKLeo even with his Byleth will come and absolutely shake things up. You get the satisfaction of having safe and easy ways to play, have fun, rank up or whatever by just focusing on improving your execution with a character but then at the top level you almost never know what to expect. There’s so many times where someone could pretty legitimately say “yeah, such and such character is mid-low tier.. UNLESS you’re one of the people mentioned above. The way THEY play the character is broken” and it’s exciting.
A great game to take note of in my opinion is soulcalibur. The game is basically all about neutral and dealing with pressure, combos are short and simple and not the important part and yet people like the series a lot.
The classic definition of "emergent gameplay" that I've heard (or "emergent mechanics") is when you have two or more systems implemented in a game, all with their own individual sets of mechanics, and those systems interact to create "new" mechanics; they are mechanics which "emerge" from existing, directly implemented mechanics. Emergent gameplay can be intended or unintended, and an emergent mechanic can be extremely useful or not useful at all; what defines emergent gameplay is the interaction of distinct systems and that's it.
Im not gonna talk about whats good or bad with dnf duel, but dude YES the gatlings with normals are not super deep but its like people forget you have gatlings with specials which are the focus of the game. Im not completely hopeful for dnf, but i think its gonna be a very fun game. I just hope. It is good enough to enjoy fpr more then a month. Hopefully they also do something better with movement and defense.
Sadly enough the best example I have of emergent gameplay is the snap meta during DBFZ season 2, players learned the ins and outs of the game and started taking advantage of setups and fuzzy stuff to become almost unblockable and then snap you to death. No new mechanics were introduced as far as I remember that made things like that, it was just a viable strategy that emerged and became popular.
I make videogames professionally. I only think emergent gameplay means anything from a game dev perspective. It's just when you design things with a certain intention, and the way the game gets played at high level isn't what you were planning, and it's similar to your video on tfh. I think there is a real issue where cool but unintended things get patched out (like oro jump stuff) rather than adjusted to fit within the design. In other words it's where you constantly patch the game to remove anything outside of the original design documents rather than adjusting unexpected stuff to fit the intention of the design.
Out of all the people who spoke on this, I feel like your video was more relaxed and nuanced. When I watched the other videos, I rolled my eyes often because it felt that they were just saying there games are great and max is wrong. I didn’t even agree with everything max was saying but I also thought there arguments were more personal then it should have been. How you approached the topic, such as tone, helps the discussion be more then just an example war. Edit: i like brians video aswell.
I think some facet of the emergent gameplay discussion boils down how quick data travels and how much people can play now, between replays, wikis to collate data, better netcode for more play, and just plain more people playing. Some part of it feels a bit like a criticism on over-design, but I think a lot of it just boils down to what Sajam said; homogenized play. It reminds me a lot of the recent years in magic the gathering, or really any card game, but if you look at the pro scene (at least when magic still had one) in the past five years, and compare it to even the previous five years before that you see a lot of complaints of the game being "solved" or stale. In some regards anything competitive is just zero sum and when you get so much traffic and so much data the road always converges into a particular spot. The real challenge for developers is how to make things approachable and still engaging knowing that the road can converge so quickly nowadays. It's not an easy task but I think they really do get it right more than they get it wrong in the modern Era of fighting games.
@14:30 This is the goddamn truth. Watching Sonic Fox play Erin Black Evo after Evo in MKX and just mix people up with overhead and low and seem to connect every single time felt like witchcraft
This issue of emergent game play sounds like the difference between innovator and honing player types. People complaining about a lack of emergent game play are mad that the innovators have so many tools to refine their gameplay quickly in an online era. Innovators want that arcade magic and for things to be discovered slowly over time, giving them time to have fun without being punished for a bad move optimally by a honer or to have their discoveries already recorded online by someone else a few days in advance. Innovators show up for the first two weeks of a fighting game or new patch and then bounce. They want more time to explore and find cool things to do, but the internet does not sleep.
I used to be one of those folks who would say that "the old games are better and these new watered down games aren't as fun", but after watching all these videos and messing around in Strive again I realized that its not the fact that these games are watered down that bothers me, its the fact that they're slow. I love playing fast characters with great mobility options, and if there's a character in a slow game who fits that (IE Chipp, Lancelot) I find that the fun factor increases ten fold. So now I just look for that instead of lamenting "the good old days" where everybody was decently fast to bonkers.
I think a good example of a game with emergent gameplay, just look at BBTAG 1.0, people at that point were using assists as a way to extend combos/punish bursts. And then a rando japanese dude comes out of nowhere, goes to a tourney, uses cross combo in such a inventive and soon to be fucked up way. I think the devs didn't even know that they could do that because some characters just go through the opponent when they do a move+active switch, while Ruby Gord was so good with it because the devs thought their entire body should be a hitbox, so it didnt matter if they passed through. They soon patched it in the game to make cross combo a way to start pressure consistently throughout the cast. Kind of crazy once you think about it.
"Let's see if he does anything weird" 5 seconds later "okay he hit 2p this guy is on drugs" This is the moment where I realised that I have never truly played a fighting game, I have only ever just been hitting buttons.
When I talk about xrd vs strive I gotta take into account that it was one of my first fighting games I took online and took kinda serious. When I went to strive I was better at fighting games as a whole. But I was still mad they took dragon install from sol and took chip’s teleport. I’m not big on the smaller move sets in strive but I kind of like it. It makes characters easier to pick up and use special moves kind of like dragon ball. But sometimes I feel like I’m not getting everything out of a character when playing strive. Xrd movesets feel more complete to me. Please give Xrd rollback I wanna go back and play online
So I'm most likely a new gen fighting game player so I'm going to do my comparison with two fairly recent games being MKX and MK11. in MKX characters had 3 different variations to choose from, some characters played extremely differently depending on the variation you picked, this in my eyes made the gameplay of characters feel expressive and explorable, my friend and I could both be playing scorpion but have completely different gameplans because of the variations we picked. When MK11 came around everyone felt more restricted, Scropion's spear no longer gave you a free combo extension, sub zero no longer had his ice clone, and the variation system was so butchered that even custom variations didn't feel that different to me, variation only change a maximum of 3 moves, didn't change the characters game plan that much, and most characters couldn't get good damage from combos without spending resources, everyone in MK11 felt so restricted to the point that the optimal way to play felt like the only way. The way I feel about "tight" or restricted game design is that I feel like it's getting to the point where characters can only play exactly the way developers design them and no other out the box thinking way, basically destroying player expression in my eyes. SFV'S Oro had an unintended fast fall when he released and players from what I saw loved it, but because it wasn't the way capcom wanted players to play Oro they got rid of it. Basically my point it's when you try to cut all the fat off a steak, you end up cutting off some of the meat too.
Also something I’ll talk about soon maybe, is that part of what makes so many modern games feel “solved” so much faster. It has some part to do with how they are created, but also has tremendously changed with the skill level of modern fighting game players, and how how information travels. There are some really good examples of things from old games which took a long time to discover, which would very quickly be found in the modern era.
This was something I was curious about. Can't wait to hear your take on it
The problem of fighting games getting solved easily nowadays is that when you have every single piece of data available to you, it means there's an optimal set of choices for every single frame and not making those choices means that you are objectively wrong.
As the game becomes more solved, the game becomes less creative, less about skill over others but more about who's making less blunders. This is why the greatest chess player of all time Bobby Fischer quit chess, he claims that computers have shown that chess no longer has creativity, it's about playing the optimal moves, if you don't you'll just lose to the opponent who makes those optimal moves.
I think "emergent gameplay" is gameplay that has so many variables that it is nearly impossible to solve or have a ceiling that's humanly impossible to reach, so discoveries and choices are extremely vast, which contributes to be fun, especially in a non E sports competitive way.
Yeah, I think long-time gamers consistently underestimate the effects of gaming turning from a niche hobby into a mainstream pastime. There's orders of magnitude more people involved "solving" games and the competitive scene to maximize profitability. That's the tradeoff of the industry's success. Similar to the sports or tv industries.
@Sajam its more just what you said. A lot of "taking out most of the moves that served little to no purpose and only having moves that exist with a general or less niche case scenario." and what that really does is quicken the pace so everyone gets to the top faster, since theres less superfluous fluff. Its now "easier" to play like a pro, since the pros will use the same couple of moves given.
Personally, I dont like this because it means its hard to build your own "style" or way of playing. Or if you can, its more subtle than if the moveset was more "complex" or dense. But like you said in the video, the problem with dense movesets is its hard to make some where all of the moves feel like they have a place or a good enough use and reason to be in the game.
I'd start by establishing what "solved" means, because it gets misused the same way "emergent gameplay" does. Like, a "solved" game is one where you know what to do in any given situation, but that doesn't mean a game isn't fun. Plus, different levels of a game have different metas and "solving" them is often how you rank up. Beginners play the game of "don't get hit" until they solve it, then they play "don't drop your combos" until they solve that game, then they move up to the game of spacing, decision-making, etc.
emergent gameplay is when press button does the thing i like, and NEW GAME doesnt have the thing i like so its not emergent gameplay
This dude spitting frfr
It's a term created to celebrate games fucked design wise in a fun to play way...
It's defos a buzzword, but B hopping and Speedrun strata are cool
Honestly 90% of fighting games are if you’re happy when hitting buttons so you’re spitting
💀💀💀.
Emergent gameplay just means that the developers didn't consider all the ways the systems they built can interact. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, and thats usually subjective. But, generally, I think players like it when they discover things that weren't necessarily intended or accounted for, and those things enhance the gameplay rather than totally breaking it.
Tons of now intended things in games were spawned from emergent gameplay for the better NGL. Combos from SF2 are literally that.
Then there's DotA 2 with emergent gameplay mechanics due to WC3 engine restrictions for the OG DotA.
Another example is LoL. The og creators of it wanted to escape the engine restrictions of WC3 and even made old off hand PR statements on their old dead forums about how they disliked emergent gameplay and called it "lazy game design".
If anyone's boomer enough to remember GunZ the Duel, K-style was literally the maindraw of that game but was born from emergent gameply and was put back QUICKLY when the devs tried to remove it because the game wasn't fun without it.
@@Freakattaker yes, sometimes bugs become features because they enhance the fun!
You know, except the times they do totally break it. Which is likely the case in a TON of the mountains of fighting games we forgot about that came out at the same time as games like 3rd Strike, MvC 2 and 3, etc. But in the age of patching it does seem like devs should let things rock if it's not super busted.
@@williampounds5191 yeah, things like patching out oro fast fall are mistakes imo. It didn't put oro at the top of the tier list or anything, but it made the character more fun! Sometimes, developer pride can get in the way
I think part of the with the love for emergent design is that people's fondness of it is riddled with survivorship bias, they remember all the games where it turned out well and forget all the games that because the unintend effects were so negative didn't get played and didn't get remembered. Like Shaq Fu is full of emergent gameplay, and pretty much every kusoge is full of jank unintended broken shit.
I think the term had its uses back when information was hard to come by and single people could knowledge check entire continents. In this day and age I don't think it has any coherent definition. It reminds me of Leon Massey's Strive review where he flippantly gave +R the same rating as Strive even though it has nearly all of the things that he said was good about Xrd. It's all just people communicating really, really badly.
I’m giving you a heart just for how sick “knowledge check entire continents” is as a sentence tbh. It’s a fact, and there are some cool examples IMO
@@SupermanSajam I'd watch a video about it 👀
Leon Massey is a joke.
@@henriquefinger935 I mean... his British.
@@henriquefinger935 why
I think people confuse "emergent gameplay" with "intentional design." A lot of new fighting games are definitely more straightforward, but even over the past 10 years it's clear to see that there are distinct things the developers do and do not want players to do. In the '90s it seemed like developers thought "we're gonna make a fighting game." In the '00s it seems like devs thought "we're gonna make a fighting game with an emphasis on x." In the '10s, it seems like we've reached a point in fighting game design where developers know what they want the game to play like and have enough experience playing and balancing games beforehand that they can get pretty close.
Personally I resonate more with Max's sentiment, but I don't agree with the logic, especially this concept of intended vs. unintended.
An absolute shit load of combos in old and new games are "intentionally designed". They give the moves links, or + frames with the knowledge that they can then be linked into a next move. And in modern fighting games that people are bemoaning e.g dragonball fighterz, there's still tons of unintended/unexpected interactions that the devs didn't anticipate. So I find this fixation on intended vs not intended to be silly. Snapback meta in dragonball fighterz was clearly emergent gameplay, but I don't think keeping it in would've somehow make everyone think it's the coolest game ever.
Contrary to I think both Sajam and LordKnight, I personally really enjoy value systems where there are more things you can do off of a hit. I recognize that fundamentally, everything can eventually be distilled to be "THE OPTIMAL" because that's just the nature of a non-RNG system. But personally, I really like messing around labbing random shit, and seeing spicy tech that is clearly unoptimal but looks hella cool. My monkey brain likes it when I try something in training mode, and there's this cool sequence that I can figure out. I remember in Strive labbing a DP punish where I have a fully charged dust inside of it. Finding that shit was dopamine, even if the combo was objectively just worse than other options.
People get caught up in trying to justify this like "oh old games had depth" or "new games are being made for casuals" but the reality is that 95% of people belittling these modern games haven't even begun to scratch the surface of competitive play in any of those games. Personally, I just like having that ""false"" sense of choice, and occasionally it has the added benefit where a former sub-optimal move/sequence can have some niche use-cases in certain matchups etc.
With regards to the combo thing, it’s the Timmy-Johnny-Spike dichotomy.
Some players just enjoy feeling strong, love making big reads, and attempting gimmicky stuff. The Timmies.
Some players just like being creative, coming up with their own combos and strategies that nobody else has done before, and winning in cool and uique ways. The Johnnies.
And some people just want to look for the most optimal, safest, and consistent way of winning. The Spikes.
Nobody is rarely just one of these; it’s a spectrum, but you get the point. And players like you lean more in the Johnny direction, while players like Sajam lean more in the Spike direction (even though my impression of Sajam has never been that of somebody who’s only a Spike player, but a lot of his thinking and philosophies around fighting games tend to come at it from that direction). And the fact that people get these very different things out of fighting games depending on what type of player you are is where a lot of the disagreements usually show up.
Side note: these aren’t perfect descriptions of the player types, as it’s originally used for Magic the Gathering players, but it gets the point across. Fighting games usually use the similar Heart-Body-Mind player dichotomy, but that’s more about competitive player approach than just general player outlook, imo.
I like games with rooms for "unoptimal" stuff, because there's still a genuine choice between optimal damage or not. Because usually, stuff that isn't optimal for health bar damage actually provides optimal *mental* damage to the opponent. If I use a very specific niche shitty move/combo to finish my opponent in a funny way, there's a good chance that'd genuinely put my opponent on tilt for the next round. If my opponent has a bizarre playstyle, even if it's less than optimal, I'm more worried about what kind of opponent I'm fighting.
THIS. Thats exactly how I usually learn games, I start out with the bare bones, what are my moves and simple confirms, and then I turn into a lab monster for a week and try shit out.
I remember finding how doing a Tk.DP with H-Aoko in MBAACC would cross up my opponent depending on distance while they are crouching or knocked down and if it hit them it leads to full combo AND even if blocked it was like +24 or some shit. And TO THIS DAY, even though the optimal option is always a strike throw setup with orb because it does the same thing but safer vs reversals I still do this stupid crossup mix because its MY stupid crossup mix.
Could this be the reason why I had an 0-2 streak on tourneys for 2 years or so? Probably, but I do not regret the fun I had while making characters I choose feel like my characters.
I mean, you can make a Street Fighter game with lots of freedom in regards to decision making. They made two games in row with lots of freedom: 3rd Strike and SFIV. Both games made use of one universal mechanic that massively expanded the decision making tree and made the skill ceiling basically infinitely high. Yes, both of those games were shit on by the community, both at the beginning of their competitive lives and at the end of their competitive lives, but at this point I'd say that's a completely normal phenomenon that will happen to every game until the end of time.
You are right but you forgot to point out what the DEVS wanted and how they respond to how the community responds to their design (like toning down crush counters in SFV because players at launch would only use heavy buttons). At the end of the day it's their decision good or bad. Also, SFIV isn't shitted on by the community don't worry it's a beloved game as it should be
@@numa2k147 It was shitted on at the beginning I think we all know that one.
Whats the infinite about sfiv
@@numa2k147 It isn't *now,* but that's well after its competitive lifespan came to an end. By the time we were at Ultra people were sick and tired of SF4 and were shitting on it constantly.
I don’t think freedom in choice for SF is a problem, or what I mention in regards to SFs more grounded nature compared to other fighting game franchises. It just has a lower system and character power level than other franchises, and I think that’s a part of why SF fans gravitate towards it.
i think this style is sick. sajam just talking and providing really cool insight to fighting game topics is i think my favourite content on youtube (frfr) and i think the style of editing really compliments that. also sick to see something new (at least i havent seen something like that on this channel)
I've seen Max, Lord Knight, and now Sir Jam talk about this topic; it'd be really groovy to hear all 3 of them have a sit down discussion about their perspectives.
You missing deb and brian in your collection
@@affegpus4195 you're right!
Having them all talk about it on Jam Radio, or having Lord Knight and/or Sajam guest on Max, Justin and Matt McMuscle’s new fighting game podcast “Triple K.O” to talk about this could be fun!
@@CrossfacePanda I didn't know either of them had podcasts, I'll have to peep; good looks G
For what it's worth, intent is not usually what is used to define emergent gameplay in game design discussion. Usually, it's about multiple systems interacting to create new mechanics in the game, such as Rocket Jumping in Team Fortress, which is a result of the knockback from rockets, self-damage from rockets, and the game's air control mechanics. And what's noteworthy about this is that Rocket Jumping works basically the same in TF2 as it did in Quake, the primary difference being that in TF2 it was added intentionally. So it doesn't really make sense to talk about designer intent when that has no actual impact on the mechanic in the context of the game.
What I think is cool about emergent gameplay is that because it's made up of basic mechanics of the game, it increases the depth of the game without increasing the complexity greatly. You could theoretically have a mechanic in your game that says "hey, you can spend some of your health to do a super jump, and you can use the aim of your mouse to control the angle of that jump." and it would effectively have the same result as a rocket jump, but now you have to teach a player about the super jump, and the rocket launcher, wheras with rocket jumping, you understand the nuances of the mechanic intuitively if you understand the nuances of its component parts.
Rocket jumping in TF2 is a really good example of intentional emergent gameplay. It adds depth in other ways too; good medics will surf damage towards the safety of their team if you let them, and optimized rollouts will depend on the map geometry and travel time of your projectiles. Compared to an imagined Overwatch "spend health aim jump", that would be tied to just the one character, and you'd just point where you wanted to go.
This is the definition. Like the Korean backdash in Tekken, or animation cancels in SF2. It's not combo routes the devs didn't come up with themselves. I don't think Max wants something bad, but I think he did a really bad job explaining what he wants, and conflated it with terms that don't apply and it muddied the waters.
"What I think is cool about emergent gameplay is that because it's made up of basic mechanics of the game, it increases the depth of the game without increasing the complexity greatly"
I get very confused when people talk about intent and emergence, but your version is how I wish it was seen. I keep pointing to GunZ: the Duel because it acts like it is a shooting game, but you have movement options and animation cancels.
It even shares the competitive sentiment when they made GunZ2, most people that played GunZ1 found it hard to enjoy; they are just different games, just like smash melee to brawl, the base game is the same (hit and don't get hit) how you play it changes depending on what is available to the players.
The real emergent gameplay was the friends we made along the way
I think emergent gameplay is just a term people use for games that have a lot of room for exploration and discovery.
The main reason I think it's associated with old games is because they've been explored more, although it is true that simplification and frequent patches do slightly reduce the potential for discovery.
Part of the reason it gets associated with older games is because the gameplay doesn't get "patched" unless it's a serious, serious issue and only if the company cares to. And even then the person would need internet to patch it. Even worse pre-dating widespread internet. The issue doesn't get fixed until the next sequel, so if players like it, it might continue, or if they don't, then hopefully it's fixed by then.
Emergent gameplay still happens nowadays just sometimes it can be perceived as things like a "meta-shift", but who's to say a tank Akali build in LoL isn't emergent gameplay when the devs purposefully target it's removal, or intend a character like Nunu to be played in a specific role only for them to be seen in a different role at high level online warrior gaming.
@@Freakattaker Most importantly, fgs were normally yearly releases. From 91 to 99 Capcom made only SF2, SF3 and SFA - 3 titles in terms of real sequels. But 11 titles total (yeah, really 11 SF releases in 8 years).
Capcom spent more time managing those "revision" type sequels, that polished the gameplay, fixed issues, and offered minor features (few times a big feature), rebalance and a couple new chars.
In short, we can see those revisions like today's patching in practical terms. It was a late and once in a year "fix". All 4 SF2 revisions have a new roster balance.
Same for Marvel, Darkstalkers, Jojo, the SNK fgs (MANY more than Capcom), other fgs from different companies, also MK, GG, etc. It was normal to have yearly sequels. So fg companies had to use that situation to kept polishing the base gameplay and fixing problems.
Great video! loved the visual touches on the parts of the convo to accompany Sajam's commentary!
Good vid, my personal stance is that when people point to "emergent gameplay" in old games like third strike, they mean mechanics like parries that edge the player on to explore situations and get immediate results for that exploration and discovery, compared to small optimizations like combos which will only improve their fundamental gameplay by very small increments. The fault is once people get amazing at these mechanics such as parry, the expressiveness and exploration is gone, it is widely known and consistent to do X parry in X situation, or do option select parry in X situation, etc. it is a very hard balance to get right in a fighting game where that sense of exploration and immediate results upon implementation is still there at higher levels. What people are looking for is that great feeling of when the gears start clicking, and you start to really flex your knowledge of the game and its engine by making decisions on the spot without much rehearsal. I do think universal mechanics that are applicable in many situations is the way to go, and that isn't fully lost in modern fighting games (I think strive's RC is a great example), although games should be striving for even more. Devs should look back at these mechanics that felt so good to learn at a lower - mid level and make them retain their expression at the top, modern fighting games have the privilege of updates so they should take more liberties at the beginning and sound it until that mechanic feels expressive at all levels. My fav example even if it's from platform fighters would be something like wavedashing, where there are both obvious uses that will provide the lower - mid level with immediate satisfaction, and so many mixups / unique uses that will provide people an incentive to explore its possibilities forever.
You know, for all the 'MaX iSn'T aCtUaLlY FgC' dorks out there, it's kinda funny that everyone and their mom is weighing in on this.
Personally I like it when my emergent gameplay is paired thoughtfully with not only ludonarrative dissonance but raytracing too. And none of that matters if your kinetic game feel and open world aren’t taken into account when you mix a little bit of the choices and consequences and the high-skill ceiling. Honestly if a game releases in 2022 and it doesn’t have a battle royale, mental stack, 4K, gigatextures, adaptive soundtrack OR yoinky sploinkly I’m not playing.
Gotta have that sploinky
I was confused by this comment until I realized that you just forgot to add verticality.
I keep hearing from you guys how people switched up on rev 2 when strive came out
Lk also talks about how he's seen it happen so many times
it's crazy to me how thing always turn out like that
not only is it hard to make fans happy but it's hard to know if they were even unhappy in the first place
Gamers are just whinny
@@affegpus4195 horse gamers
@@bb010g neigh gamers
emergent sploinky
About halfway in Sajam basically just paraphrased that one Core-A video: "Honers vs Innovators" or something. Wait a minute..... we've never seen Sajam and Jared from Core-A in the same room together 👀
Emergent gameplay isn't that hard to define, it is just nebulous to decide how much/little of that type of experience exists in any specific game.
I definitely think games of the past 10 or so years have consistently tried to be super intentional with how everything is designed and balanced. You have very well defined answers to very well designed situations and the core systems aren't as open to player expression and a higher skill ceiling.
That's why I like Guilty Gear so much. The roman cancel system allows for so much emergent gameplay and skill expression. The game engine might have been slowed down and characters have been tuned to have less layered and predictable offense/defense, but roman cancels help inject a very solid amount of base level depth.
I don't think newer games lack expression or emergent gameplay but I definitely think newer games have "less" of that. The terms are nebulous though so it's hard to really quantify anything beyond my personal feelings
Shout outs to Moste for the very critical reference images throughout the discussion. He knows how the game is really played.
i love the new editing style Moste! 👏👏🎬
i'm so glad to see Sajam pursue his destiny as an edutainment TH-camr!
I've been playing master Duel as a new yugioh player, and I think it's interesting that while everyone whines about how wild the games gotten, it's probably the card game designed to encourage the most "emergent game play". I think it comes down to how many basic blocks the devs make that can be combined in lots of novel ways that they havn't even planned - a rigid defined system, more complex building blocks, might be smoother, and might have less random jank, but the trade off is that things will work out the same way - 'properly' - more of the time.
I enjoy tekken because I feel it's really natural and intuitive how things come together /chain together, namely 'realistically', as emergent as real Combat can be.
I don't play it, but I think Melee lasting this long, comes down to emergent game play, play that emerges because the basic building blocks can fit together in a host of interesting ways that the devs didn't, or couldn't plan (which is where the value comes from - player imagination on a long enough timeline will always overshoot what devs can conceive during a limited development cycle) - I might even say melee looks like it has the most emergent game play amongst fighting games haha, if you include it. And I imagine that's why a lot of people enjoy yugioh to, even though it's crazy these days.
Aye shout outs to this editor for these extra pictures. Very cool change to the format.
Also emergent gameplay isn't as important to me as skill expression. If there's some movement tech or whatever, but if it's the only thing that's good for movement then I think it's boring.
The thing that confuses me with the idea of emergent gameplay is that sometimes emergent gameplay can be found in modern games but because information is so blistering fast because of the internet the speed of learning is insane these days. I guarantee that if older games existed now that they would be figured out waaaaayyy faster than compared in the past.
I'm honestly more into polishing up in more open games like +R than linear games like Strive since I already spent so much time learning the basics of my character, I'm already invested to polish them up, I also find it more fun to break down situations when the answer isn't just 6P or a dedicated anti-air button with Strive it feels like I hit the polishing stage within a week, well before I've had the time to truly a appreciate my character and a lot of the problem solving feels so distilled and too consistent for my liking
Emergent gameplay is the new ludonarrative dissonance
People making fancy words for "discourse" annoy me.
Forget the emergent gameplay, is no one noticing how on point Sajam’s hair is today
Emergent hairplay
@@affegpus4195 💀 that's what the community actually needs rn
I think the other thing for 'emergent' game play is moves have much clearer purposes and that prevents people playing the same character differently.
You mention LK saying he wouldn't whiff punish with a certain move because he didn't feel he could do it. Sometimes things like that breed entirely different styles and when moves are not designed as narrowly it's possible for people to find different solutions to the same problem that are optimal for what they want.
It's having 2-3 options to solve the same thing that are each more rewarding in different ways. The moment you have a combo or situation that is better than all ways the decision tree narrows to a line and it becomes a matter of timing not of option selection which is less entertaining.
Diggin' the example boxes. Dope editing, Moste!
The small visual additions to the side are a really nice touch! Would love to see more like it.
Can Sajam react to Romolla reaction to LK reaction to Max reaction to the video?
Emergent gameplay is gameplay so complex the creators cannot predict its endgame. They balance it just enough that even if someone “figures it out” it will be gdlk and obviously impressive to anyone who has spent more than an hour paying any form of attention to it. Newer games, however, lean on the fact that it is a zero sum game in the end regardless and will always be hard to win in consistently. And then they can replace ingenuity with streamlined, drip fed content to reach the same longevity that used to come about only from making an insanely deep game that won’t get patched but 2-3 times if at all in its entire lifespan.
HMC has exactly 1 use & requires full meter: you bait the opponent into jumping so you can Dragon Uninstall & punish them in the air.
It doesn't work every time, but I've gotten a few sicknasty air grabs or DPs off of it. Problem is, you can only use it once before your opponent knows better and won't fall for it twice (unless they're bad).
Aside from that 1 specific use, it is objectively a trash move
Shoutouts to the more visual elements Moste presented during Sajam's TED talk here, looks real clean
Not sure if you have done this sort of thing before, but I think it's a great addition to these discussion videos
Cheers
This is an interesting discussion, especially as it applies across genres of video game, and not just fighters. The best (and most fun) tech in first person shooters is unintended gameplay.
The slideshow thing adds a lot to your videos, helping make sure people are on the same page when you're talking. Natural addition
EMERGENT GAMEPLAY is when interactions between simple mechanics create a more complicated game that is bigger than the sum of its parts. The board game Go is a great example.
Emergent yoinky hits different
you could make a game where every button does the exact same thing and people will still figure out which ones are best to press
It sorta happened with SF's mash moves. There's an entire video by Theory Fighter
I think another thing worth mentioning in the modern era is that patches are an expectation right? Like there's a lot of people that complained about Oro Fast Fall or Danfinite being removed as "Capcops removing the fun" but Ive seen just as many people look at that stuff before it got patched out and react with "lol yet ANOTHER reason SFV is garbage lol they just leave busted shit in the game cause they dont care, they dont even know how to make a game lol etc". Sometimes its even the same people.
I also want to say I agree with what you said about SF players being drawn to the more limited combos and more grounded neutral of that series. I love the way SFV feels to play and its kind of annoying how people look at the fact that you dont just get to mash through a magic sequence and have it all work once you touch someone as some kind of flaw. No disrespect to anime games or anything else but there are SO MANY of those kinds of games out right now with how prolific ArcSys is that I feel like those people could probably just play those games instead of demanding that SF follow that same design ethos. I like that longer combos are more rare in SF games. I like that the neutral is more played on the ground than in the air. I just like Street Fighter. Dont get me wrong, sometimes Im in the mood for air dashes and whatever else, so I still do enjoy those kinds of games but its so lame to me that people find something they like more and immediately start touting it as the "correct" way for all fighting games to be.
I dont comment on here often but I also wanna say I appreciate your content a lot. Its real good stuff.
have a thumbs up, my guy. i feel the same way
It feels like what a lot of people want, and maybe the best way for fighting game devs to approach things, is to be given a sandbox that provides various ways to enjoy the product that, otherwise, is limited in scope for gameplay/story elements that it provides. And rather than rely on devs to optimize the experience, the player wants to do this, in whatever way and at whatever pace they deem most enjoyable.
i like the editing a lot, gj on it moste
Its true that especially in modern gaming not just about fighting game, where most of the game now will always had even more easier accessibility than the classic games with fairly limited amount of access, which because of "Quality of Life" exist in video game, and therefore you can't deny or ignored that even tho its always fine to like it or hate it depend on your thought and your experience to any introduced mechanic you just see in the newer release title. More often than that, its also noticeable that many gamers now will keep treating almost every game existed like a trading card than anything else which speaking of everyone literally play the same way and all (yes of course about that "Meta" thingy)
I think it depends on how the devs make their intentional design and also how they deal with things the community finds. Sometimes it is the right move to see some character specific thing and make it a feature or do things yo make characters even more unique and cool. I think that is the challenge is figuring out what works for your series.
Oh shit we got the thumbnails to test your sajamery. Now that's emergent gameplay
Loved the edited images lmao, would love to see more of that
Him saying "Brain's video" was what it took for me to realize this was not a Brian_F secondary channel for longer talking videos...
I then had to find a video with both of them in it to make sure but gotdamn
Loving the editing on this one Moste. Great job!
Editing was chef's kiss.
I think it's worth looking into what accessibility means in games, and what approachability means in games.
I don't like new games because devs intentionally limit themselves instead of going towards a vision they used to have. When I watch high level bbcf and xrd I always wonder if the things that go on in matches is 100% intended or by some chance is not with how varied people play characters. A perfect example of that would be Xrd May, she is a character that can be played very rushdown heavy with really strong oki tools like beach ball and hoops but also she could be played from afar with these tools but in strive the only way the character can be played is rushdown with strike/throw with explosive damage to compensate for the lack of tools she has which is just very sad to me since her play style way very unique and they sacrificed it to make her very very bland. I know Strive is a new game still getting updates but I genuinely don't see this game turning into what older games became at the end of their developing lifespans and that just disappoint me immensely since the philosophy these devs have nowadays is only caring about new players experience by assassinating interesting concepts and hurting the longevity of their own games. It is one of the main reason I haven't really got into a new fighting game in the last 5-6 years as I feel like I am not the target demographic.
This took many attempts to write. Sorry if my english is not that good. It is not my first language and I am kind of bad at it
@@fishfillet5555 looks fine bro
I think it’s more patching culture that changed “emergent gameplay” than any new game design philosophy. When things are unintended by devs, they don’t just let it rock any more, they fix it, because that’s their job. But it means that a game like Marvel 2 won’t ever come out again
Try dnf duel
@@ratedr7845 Brother. The game is not out yet. DNF Duel will also certainly get patched, it's not some "savior" to emergent gameplay.
People complain about thing -> thing changes -> people complain about new thing
This pattern looks hypocritical but I think mostly it's different people
Emergent gameplay is the only reason why Melee is still around.
The long and the short is that the fighting game is being refined. Developers are trimming the fat, attempting to distil the essence of a successful and fun fighting game from what we have now. Developers are locked in a heated race to develop the definitive entry game to the fighting game community. Once this game comes into existence, it will be the fertile ground that brings forth better crop. We're already seeing this now with the onslaught of games this year and next. Sit back and watch our awesome community grow!
People complaining about Strive having too many strong, hard to deal with moves, when the game's roster is notably neutered compared to it's predecessors: What I think is happening that creates this mentality is that people believe if *their* character had more options to deal with or the same tools as other characters that they would be losing/winning on a more "fair" or even playing ground. But most of the time they aren't really considering how much harder it would be for their opponents to fight against them as a result of that. I also think that when people start to discover which parts of their character's kit they dislike they begin comparing it to the characters that don't have those same problems. They might want to know why their character doesn't have the same tools or they might want to know why they were designed differently, but since they can't just call up the devs and ask they have to pick a frame of reference. Like for example let's say someone didn't like how Baiken or May don't get knockdown very easily off of their f.S or 2S hitting. A person that doesn't fully understand the reasoning behind that might look at Sol and say "Well Sol gets good return off of his f.S and it's plus! That's how it should be for my character!" And that's how we end up at these crossroads.
I kind of get it though. Or at least I get where the sentiment comes from. This seems to me like a topic that could end up being it owns big crazy discussion. There are a lot more reasons why I believe Strive's player base is kind of in a weird in between spot on what they want. Most of us get that if more shit was added to the game, it would make the existing problems and characters that much harder to deal with. But even so, it still feels like something is missing from the game that could help give players that sens elf freedom or expression.
I think as a community it's very important to discuss how fighting games ought to be. There are a lot of things that are commonly held in high regard but are not defined very well or don't end up being that productive in the long run. This emergent gameplay thing being on of them. People being actually able to say what they actually want in a way that makes sense should help developers make games that more people enjoy.
I feel like I'm one of the few players who doesn't love the discovery period of games the most. My favorite part of learning a game is when things start to click, and now I have to dig deeper to improve. It almost feels artificial to improve in the very beginning of a game compared to later on where everyone knows what you're doing, and you have to make adjustments.
hmc is actually a neat whiff punish at low floors. most sols at like 7 and under are a little too fond of it but in moderation it can do something
Great take! Immediately knew it when you mentioned emergent gameplay being thrown around as a buzzword at this point. From what I understand, emergent gameplay is when the collection of systems present in a game create another type of game that wasn't "intended". It is as you say immediately. Clear intent, proper descriptions, and high level play information being readily available make the old days of fighting games "emergent" gameplay not a thing anymore because (and this is my take) it never really was that. It was just players figuring things out that were really arcane or buggy and exploiting the hell out of it. Now everyone can do it given even just a little time of research on their mains. True emergent gameplay would be something closer to how Double Dragon was a beat''em up side scroller that turned into a fighting game at the end and if they took that concept and made fighting games with it. Oh wait!
i get to watch sajam talk AND look at moste's thumbnails at the same time? sick.
This is exactly how I felt about DNF duel, which is why I'm surprised so many people like the game. Neutral feels so limited with weak movement options while moves that hit you 75% of the screen exist.
Games are made of variables (health, position, hitbox, frame data...), and the more variables you have, the more states the game can be in. The more states there are, the more emergent the gameplay is, and you can induce it by designing interactions that modify as many variables as possible.
I think it's a big mistake to just say everything unintentional is "emergent gameplay." Emergent gameplay is when multiple existing mechanics come together to create something new.
If a dev forgets to add a hurtbox to a move, that's not emergent gameplay. It's no more "emergent" than a move that has invincibility by intentional design.
And I find it weird how many people seem to love emergent gameplay, but will praise +R over Strive. Specifically, the RC system in GG has intentionally become more and more emergent. With drift RC, blue RC, and being able to RC practically anywhere, the devs are letting you use RC in such an open way, when originally it mostly just let you recover fast on hit/block, or at a very specific point in the move that was specifically hard-coded in by devs. Sure, strive has less moves, simpler characters, but that has nothing to do with "emergent gameplay."
Sometimes people will just pick something specific they liked about an old game (maybe the DHC glitch in MvC3), and will then make a mountain out of a molehill, and act like they have some really high-concept reason for liking the old game better. Which is especially funny when new games often try to elevate old glitches into new mechanics (the tag system in MvCI was way more open-ended than the DHC glitch).
I feel Fox/Falco's Shine is a perfect example of emergent gameplay. The move was intended as a projectile reflector, but became a 1 frame, chainable, kill confirm due to the discovery of wave dash. A new way to play the character emerged from the player base.
If emergent gameplay means unintended by the developers/tech found by players, the entirety of competetive melee is emergent gameplay.
@@dud3inator fr
I'm currently trying to wrap my brain around the actual definition of emergent gameplay, but everything about Fox's Shine was intentional. The frame data, the set knockback, and the ability to jump cancel it. Even wave dashing was known to the devs. Each exact use might not have been known but the core aspects were clearly allowed for.
Overall I'm not very fond of this definition. Take Shine and put it in a new game where it's functionally the same, but this time advertise wave dashing before it's released. Both Shine as it is now and in this hypothetical scenario are exactly the same. The only difference is that some nerds got to feel special developing a new tech. I'm not against new tech, but plenty of modern games have it all over the place as well. The solution sounds less like the ideal situation (i.e. More freedom in gameplay mechanics leading to more diverse situations that are hard to optimize) and more so like devs should just stop telling us what they've intended or allowed for gameplay-wise.
You know, good video and all, but damn the outro bit had me burst out laughing. Dunno why that one got me this good.
Such a well done explanation and edit pointing out the catalysts to the evolution of fighting. Next level gaming development is absolutely only possible due to the speed information is shared. Even though it is creating copycats it still inspires legends to combine tech and approaches from their peers to create new play styles. As an old school player I really couldn't get into Guilty gear Strive because of the counter system but I love how it's animations have come along. Dragonball fighterz started like SF alpha and now feels like MVC. Unlike old games it evolved in itself through patches, DLC, and listening to fans which makes new games more stay fresh retaining their fan base.
I think this sort of stuff is what the Smash community lives off of. Like yeah there’s optimal combo routes and strings and there’s certain neutral tools and movement options that are absolutely solved. A tier list? Boom. And then Axe or AMSA or Void or HungryBox or Gluttony or MKLeo even with his Byleth will come and absolutely shake things up. You get the satisfaction of having safe and easy ways to play, have fun, rank up or whatever by just focusing on improving your execution with a character but then at the top level you almost never know what to expect. There’s so many times where someone could pretty legitimately say “yeah, such and such character is mid-low tier.. UNLESS you’re one of the people mentioned above. The way THEY play the character is broken” and it’s exciting.
A great game to take note of in my opinion is soulcalibur. The game is basically all about neutral and dealing with pressure, combos are short and simple and not the important part and yet people like the series a lot.
I have school tomorrow and haven’t done my essay, why are you posting perfect distractions (content) at my worst times 😂
Imagine having a solved game.
The classic definition of "emergent gameplay" that I've heard (or "emergent mechanics") is when you have two or more systems implemented in a game, all with their own individual sets of mechanics, and those systems interact to create "new" mechanics; they are mechanics which "emerge" from existing, directly implemented mechanics. Emergent gameplay can be intended or unintended, and an emergent mechanic can be extremely useful or not useful at all; what defines emergent gameplay is the interaction of distinct systems and that's it.
Im not gonna talk about whats good or bad with dnf duel, but dude YES the gatlings with normals are not super deep but its like people forget you have gatlings with specials which are the focus of the game. Im not completely hopeful for dnf, but i think its gonna be a very fun game. I just hope. It is good enough to enjoy fpr more then a month. Hopefully they also do something better with movement and defense.
This video is sick loving the emergent editing.
Sadly enough the best example I have of emergent gameplay is the snap meta during DBFZ season 2, players learned the ins and outs of the game and started taking advantage of setups and fuzzy stuff to become almost unblockable and then snap you to death. No new mechanics were introduced as far as I remember that made things like that, it was just a viable strategy that emerged and became popular.
I make videogames professionally. I only think emergent gameplay means anything from a game dev perspective. It's just when you design things with a certain intention, and the way the game gets played at high level isn't what you were planning, and it's similar to your video on tfh. I think there is a real issue where cool but unintended things get patched out (like oro jump stuff) rather than adjusted to fit within the design. In other words it's where you constantly patch the game to remove anything outside of the original design documents rather than adjusting unexpected stuff to fit the intention of the design.
Out of all the people who spoke on this, I feel like your video was more relaxed and nuanced. When I watched the other videos, I rolled my eyes often because it felt that they were just saying there games are great and max is wrong. I didn’t even agree with everything max was saying but I also thought there arguments were more personal then it should have been. How you approached the topic, such as tone, helps the discussion be more then just an example war. Edit: i like brians video aswell.
I think some facet of the emergent gameplay discussion boils down how quick data travels and how much people can play now, between replays, wikis to collate data, better netcode for more play, and just plain more people playing. Some part of it feels a bit like a criticism on over-design, but I think a lot of it just boils down to what Sajam said; homogenized play.
It reminds me a lot of the recent years in magic the gathering, or really any card game, but if you look at the pro scene (at least when magic still had one) in the past five years, and compare it to even the previous five years before that you see a lot of complaints of the game being "solved" or stale. In some regards anything competitive is just zero sum and when you get so much traffic and so much data the road always converges into a particular spot.
The real challenge for developers is how to make things approachable and still engaging knowing that the road can converge so quickly nowadays. It's not an easy task but I think they really do get it right more than they get it wrong in the modern Era of fighting games.
ngl hate the popups after the mandatory youtube ads even if it's SUSSOL BADBAKAGUY
@14:30
This is the goddamn truth. Watching Sonic Fox play Erin Black Evo after Evo in MKX and just mix people up with overhead and low and seem to connect every single time felt like witchcraft
Im like a child getting entertained by keys looking at the pictures popping up
Sajam basically calling max a relative casual
Love the new editing
This issue of emergent game play sounds like the difference between innovator and honing player types. People complaining about a lack of emergent game play are mad that the innovators have so many tools to refine their gameplay quickly in an online era. Innovators want that arcade magic and for things to be discovered slowly over time, giving them time to have fun without being punished for a bad move optimally by a honer or to have their discoveries already recorded online by someone else a few days in advance. Innovators show up for the first two weeks of a fighting game or new patch and then bounce. They want more time to explore and find cool things to do, but the internet does not sleep.
I'm pretty sure you meant to use "honers" once or twice.
@@absoul112 Thanks. "Patched" it.
This feels very familiar to Core-A talking about Innovators and Honers
Emergent gameplay is when you can stack a bunch of boxes to solve your problems
I used to be one of those folks who would say that "the old games are better and these new watered down games aren't as fun", but after watching all these videos and messing around in Strive again I realized that its not the fact that these games are watered down that bothers me, its the fact that they're slow. I love playing fast characters with great mobility options, and if there's a character in a slow game who fits that (IE Chipp, Lancelot) I find that the fun factor increases ten fold. So now I just look for that instead of lamenting "the good old days" where everybody was decently fast to bonkers.
Ok but seriously, what the fuck was Mocchi doing?
I think a good example of a game with emergent gameplay, just look at BBTAG 1.0, people at that point were using assists as a way to extend combos/punish bursts. And then a rando japanese dude comes out of nowhere, goes to a tourney, uses cross combo in such a inventive and soon to be fucked up way. I think the devs didn't even know that they could do that because some characters just go through the opponent when they do a move+active switch, while Ruby Gord was so good with it because the devs thought their entire body should be a hitbox, so it didnt matter if they passed through. They soon patched it in the game to make cross combo a way to start pressure consistently throughout the cast. Kind of crazy once you think about it.
I don't have anything useful to add to the emergent conversation, but I will say this, Aris is a national treasure
4:02 the absolute look of disgust before the cut
"Let's see if he does anything weird"
5 seconds later
"okay he hit 2p this guy is on drugs"
This is the moment where I realised that I have never truly played a fighting game, I have only ever just been hitting buttons.
When I talk about xrd vs strive I gotta take into account that it was one of my first fighting games I took online and took kinda serious. When I went to strive I was better at fighting games as a whole. But I was still mad they took dragon install from sol and took chip’s teleport. I’m not big on the smaller move sets in strive but I kind of like it. It makes characters easier to pick up and use special moves kind of like dragon ball. But sometimes I feel like I’m not getting everything out of a character when playing strive. Xrd movesets feel more complete to me. Please give Xrd rollback I wanna go back and play online
1:42 should’ve included the “INSANE BLACKS” series of thumbnails that shits a classic
it make me sad when game is one way and I want to take that further and then game update takes away that thing
The new exciting style is very cute, I like it
So I'm most likely a new gen fighting game player so I'm going to do my comparison with two fairly recent games being MKX and MK11.
in MKX characters had 3 different variations to choose from, some characters played extremely differently depending on the variation you picked, this in my eyes made the gameplay of characters feel expressive and explorable, my friend and I could both be playing scorpion but have completely different gameplans because of the variations we picked.
When MK11 came around everyone felt more restricted, Scropion's spear no longer gave you a free combo extension, sub zero no longer had his ice clone, and the variation system was so butchered that even custom variations didn't feel that different to me, variation only change a maximum of 3 moves, didn't change the characters game plan that much, and most characters couldn't get good damage from combos without spending resources, everyone in MK11 felt so restricted to the point that the optimal way to play felt like the only way.
The way I feel about "tight" or restricted game design is that I feel like it's getting to the point where characters can only play exactly the way developers design them and no other out the box thinking way, basically destroying player expression in my eyes. SFV'S Oro had an unintended fast fall when he released and players from what I saw loved it, but because it wasn't the way capcom wanted players to play Oro they got rid of it.
Basically my point it's when you try to cut all the fat off a steak, you end up cutting off some of the meat too.
People will shout to the heavens that games don't have emergent gameplay when the games haven't had time for that shit to emerge.
Had to use the creepiest picture of Kyo Kusanagi ever....*backs away*