Personally I love that this video covers multiple aspects of the topic. Feels like too often people try to simplify it to one thing is the reason when there’s usually more to it than that.
I mean I feel like barrier to entry in fighters with their technical input and lack of reliable skill matchmaking is plenty of explanation. It's not even a hard concept to rank people based off algorithmic measurements of hit registration combo input and high profile game behaviors. But they don't do that so people aren't fighting someone they can learn against they take 9 losses and 1 win against some poor sap unlucky enough to be worse than them. It doesn't need a complicated or multifaceted response it's as simple as the average win rate being lower than 30% what is considered in most ladders to be a guarantee like it takes effort to be sub 30% in overwatch, cod, destiny, league, etc.
Straight up, fighting games aren't more popular because the only way to get better at them is to lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and lose horribly each time. Then after losing 50 times someone says you should go into training mode and just practice the same move over and over and over and over against a CPU training dummy and even then you will likely still lose horribly. And over the course of all those losses you gain absolutely nothing in-game. Then also people that are already in it speak basically an entire different language when it comes to describing moves, then you're told if really want to be good you need to be able to read and remember exact frames of moves for a roster of like 20-30 characters. None of that shit is fun or enticing at all. Atleast that's why I don't play them personally.
You hit the nail on the head! I wasted so many hours (practically day) torturing myself in the training room trying to nail a simple combo or an ultimate move to where it required such precise timing that my fingers hurt. Most of these games have really poor training modes and do not explain the mechanics clearly. I was surprised with Strive at how decent they explained the core basics. Hardcore fans don't like the dumbing down of it, but I appreciate it. I can actually pull of moves and such pretty well. I just wish it had more single player content.
I agree, learning to be at least good in fighting games requires too much time investment to learn. And time is not something for me to waste as a working adult. Usually in my down time, I just want games that I can easily pickup and play without wasting time trying just to learn moves. And if I want to learn something new I would prefer to learn skills that would benefit me in real life.
I dont think there is a better way to phrase the sense of community fighting games have than how spanish youtuber joseju did. Translated, he said "the people in this gave do rematches way more than others. I think this is because this community is the one that loves the raw game the most" or something along those lines in his "ponte a jugar juegos de lucha" video. Which if you know spanish or can deal with the autosubs, watch it.
The main reason I believe fighting games aren't mainstream (among many others) is because they are very personal. All the games you mentioned League, Valorant & Fortnite are all team based games that you play with friends. With FG's, when you're in the ring it's a 1V1 between two opposing players, nobody else. Competitive games for most are already stressful, having a team or friends makes it somewhat easier (so you can blame them instead lmao) so when you lose in a FG and you're told the problem is YOU, most lose confidence and label the genre as "too hard" when usually you aren't terrible, your opponent is just superior. By not having mainstream appeal we therefore don't reach a greater audience outside of our own most of the time. You have to search for the community, you won't just stumble across it, so if you don't have any incentive to give FG's a chance you most likely never will as you won't go searching. A paradox of sorts fr. The next few years however are going to be interesting for sure. With Project L, we're tapping into one of the world's largest competitive and just gaming communities in general. League has brand name, people who don't even play it are massively aware of it and some even like something else related to it within it's expanded media, meaning PL will have broader mainstream appeal even outside of LoL/Riot players. More eyes will be on FG's than ever thought possible in an era with Rollback & Crossplay and many other great or better FG's on the market with numerous content creators/streamers and a strong & passionate community. When PL releases, it'll be now or never.
@@third-ratedude4234 I'm not betting on anything more than 5-10% of their playerbase sticking around. Even then that's still over a million new players. To me the most important time is the honeymoon phase when the game first launches. More eyes will be on FG's than ever before from LoL and mainstream competitive players alike. The biggest issue FG's face outside of the game itself is attracting new players & capitalising on untapped audiences and PL is aiming to tackle them both. Will it be successful? Who really knows, the point is that it's going to try.
I’d be a tough one for sure. Just the LoL name alone won’t be enough. 2 key things i think it would need. It has to be fun to play and the presentation as to be on the lvl of a dbfz or greater. Presentation being most important to me for a hype and coolness factor when playing.
@@jalenjohnson7446 It obviously has to be a high quality game as well, there's no way brand name on it's own can carry. I meant a high quality FG, with frequent and excellent support (new fighters, stages, game modes, balancing, story, cinematics + music videos), excellent community, insane tournament support and is accessible as hell to jump in but remains challenging for veterans to master + brand name is the recipe for success. Insanely ambitious (unrealistic even) but that is their goal after all, if they manage to achieve it.
Another aspect as to why fighting games are not mainstream is that they cost a lot. I've been interested in GGST since 2021, but I only finally bought the game recently. Reason? I'm hesitant to invest a bunch of money into a game where I may not even enjoy it, therefore putting it below my other buy list instead. Brawlhalla is an example of a mainstream fighting game, but that game also had a lot of problems with the devs and community therefore you can see that player base dwindle unlike a few years ago.
How can you not say this about any other paid game? At least with something like a 2D fighter if you already like 2D fighters it’s a safe bet you’ll like another hot new 2D fighter Let’s see what happens with Project L which will almost certainly be F2P and have devs that really care about the FGC
For me from where i am the term "fgc" is legit non existent, because well nobody play fighting games. I sadly have to play on pretty high pings and half of my motivation is just dead at this point. I legit think that they have nailed the fighting part of fighting games but they still have no clue about the game part. There is also absolutely no incentive for someone who well doesn't wanna play ranked or tower to just become some god fighting game player. I take starcraft2 as an example here, it is an insanely difficult game and very competitive but is still somehow alive. It's only and only because the majority of players are NOT ranked competitive players but they play the casual but fun as fuck mode called Co-op commanders, and that is how you keep the game alive. There is nothing to do for someone who does not want to compete in fighting games, they don't have cosmetic or any other incentive to well keep playing. It's also sad that they just as of recent have started taking online a tad bit more seriously while the rest of the game are made to be played ONLINE primarily. They treat online as just a feature and not as THE mode to play and grind in. They suck balls at marketing too cause well they believe that just magically their game will reach the audience, they don't take the best sources to get there game out there and those are content creators and streamers. There are also nothing like seasonal content or anything like that, just plain old character dlcs which is not even for everyone (i still don't like a single dlc character from strive). I still humbly believe that the fgc barely grows, players just migrate from one game to another. Developers also are disconnected with what the modern audience want and are a decade behind in mindset.
Something I think might be missing from the conversation is single-player content. I realize fighting games are inherently a multiplayer genre, but so are shooters, the prime-time esports genre. Games like Halo and Splatoon have insanely fun campaigns to play through that take the pressure off of trying to be the very best, instead immersing yourself in the amazing world of the game. Personally, I love the story modes of Brawl, Tekken, and Soul Calibur because I got to experience the stories of the badass characters that got me interested in the game in the first place. I got to have a hand in the fight between Heihachi and his devil-spawn Kazuya, I got to see Meta Knight dueling Marth, I got to play through Darth Vader's story where he dual-wields Soul Edge and Soul Calibur into the Star Wars universe. Crazy stories/campaigns that are boosted by already fun game-play are what make me break-out my wallet. The community... eh, not so much.
I totally agree. I just wish they'd try a story reboot or have actual catch up movies/stories because these are very long running franchises and most people have no idea about a game or characters story
I think fighting games have a disadvantage there and it's that they're "just" about your guy and the opponent, you can't really use levels to influence gameplay for example (Tekken 4 and Virtual Fighter 3 tried. They had problems.). Although, I say this but I would be curious to see a single player story in fighting games that happens in the same perspective as the main gameplay, like a more animated version of If The Emperor Had A Text-To-Speech Device and others of the same kind.
I agree with the SPC sentiment but it is fascinating that none of the popular competitive games have any SPC. Hell Fortnight had SPC and no one played it lmao
@@ELDENLORD89 I think games like LoL, Warzone and Fortnite can afford not having a Single player mode thanks to being F2P games. A person can theoretically try them for free and abandon it in a few minutes without feeling like they wasted their money. Most fighting games are AAA priced games, so they need Single player content and other modes to justify the purchase, like classic COD games or Halo. (I remember Rainbow Six receiving plenty of criticism regarding its lack of content outside of the main Multiplayer modes.
I think a big problem is just how hard it is to get into. Like you have to pay 60 dollars for a game of a genre you don't really play. Then you have to hope that the game has an active playerbase. You have to basically get a controller because sure, you can play on keyboard but it sucks. Especially if you are new to the genre. And even after all that, the most you can do is play the same mode online and hope you don't get matched up against some dude with 1000 games on his character who has relentlessly studied the frame data for years and beats the living hell out of you with you not getting to do anything. It just makes you want to quit instanty. If you don't have friends to play fighting games with its just though
Started playing dbfz a few days ago and just met a guy with like 500 ranked games and lost off like 6 interactions. Then i search for an other game and meet the same guy again. I just alt f4'd. Like I'm sorry but i just don't enjoy getting combo'ed the whole game
you either put hundreds of hours "learning" the characters or you're just gonna get absolutely destroyed, and who wants to just play to learn instead of having fun with some other actuall good game
@@kartonkopf1332tbf, you're playing DBFZ. FighterZ is a notoriously terrible fighting game when it comes to giving the one getting hit a chance. Seriously, if you're playing low ranked what you're probably going against is some guy spamming autocombos, and in the end all you have to do is punish his raw super dash and then you get your turn.
I've wanted to take fighting games seriously and to improve but it's a rough mental barrier. Since there's usually nothing to earn in game, so the initial "lose constantly until good is obtained" feels even worse. I also have anxiety because I hate the idea of joining a community when I am not already decent. Feels like I'd waste everyone's time because the experienced player gains nothing from beating me constantly. I'd like to try but social anxiety sucks
Im in a similar boat when it comes to more smaller fighting game communities since I've only played FighterZ alot, even then I'm not so great at it. Theres also how many of the communities have barely anyone at lower skill levels which is what stopped me from playing Guilty Gear and almost Blazblue as well
I'll say it honestly because people deserve to hear it: yeah, beating up on far weaker players is incredibly boring. There is something that changes this dynamic drastically: whenever that weaker player has a sincere desire to improve. This acts in the self-interest of the stronger player as well, because teaching somebody else invariably leads to their own improvement in many ways. It's also a lot more fun than whaling on a silent sandbag. You don't even have to say or type a word, necessarily; when I see someone learning and adapting even a little bit through gameplay, this is enough motivation for me to continue playing with them. They earn my respect as a player for being actively engaged in the conversation of battle. Communities built around improving as a beginner exist for all but the very least populated fighting games. If you approach the game and the players in these communities with an attitude of self-improvement, you'll find that people are quite welcoming, willing to answer questions, run scenarios in-game to help you understand how to beat them, etc. That being said, you should at least know what the buttons of the game are. And I understand social anxiety may still stop you from getting this process started; that's outside the scope of what I can do for you. I can only offer my assurance that practically every fighting game's community wishes they had more motivated new players who want to learn and improve, no matter how good they may or may not be.
@@dilly2760 A good amount is social anxiety, mainly because I am not new to fighting games. For example in strive I hover around floors 7-9 when I play online. There's now a massive skill gap between me and my friends because I didn't have as much time to play when they got to grinding. Now that I do have time the skill difference is so great that no one has fun anymore. It's not fun since I'm not a clueless new player, I'm just genuinely not great. I know the only solution is to just get to the grind now, but my motivation is very low, that's why I made my comment. I was frustrated, but talking about it helped lol. Thanks for the genuine response.
It seems weird that in a video about mainstream appeal of fighting games, other than a single throw away comment, you wouldn't discuss Super Smash Bros, i.e.. by far the most mainstream fighting game for the past 20 years. It's certainly very different from traditional fighting games, so much so that it's existence required the creation of the distinction between "platform fighter" and "traditional fighter", but there is a reason that it has succeeded to an extent that other fighting games haven't, and it isn't just the Nintendo IP (although that does help a lot). The number 1 factor for mainstream appeal is bad-player appeal; ie. can a player with little skill meaningfully play your game. As such, accessibility is extremely important for mainstream appeal, especially the types of accessibility that aren't related to actual game difficulty. The most important part of accessibility, imo, is *how easy it is to learn* the basics, how much time and effort does it take to learn the absolute bare minimum such that you can actually play the game. Not bare minimum as in understanding the mechanics and strategy, but that you know how to move your character and how to achieve the most basic objectives, like how to attack or shoot your opponent, how to search for loot, or how to hit a ball into a goal. Understanding the difference between different attacks, or guns, or strategies is simply irrelevant for a new player. Just teach them the minimum as fast as possible so that you can actually put them into a game. A new player is like a newborn baby, they have to learn how to control their legs and stand before they can even be concerned with something that we might consider trivial, like walking. Most mainstream competitive games are shooters. The bare minimum knowledge to play those games is "these buttons/stick make you move, the mouse/other-stick controls the camera, and this button shoots". And that's literally all the information you need to just be able to *start* playing. Obviously there are usually more buttons that do important stuff, but a completely new player probably doesn't need to know about those until they've at least gotten the hang of moving and shooting. Non-shooter mainstream games still have a similar degree of simplicity. A game like rocket league is just "here's the movement stick/buttons, and then here's the accelerate, boost, and jump buttons", learn how to move around first, then figure out the important stuff later. Most fighting games are not just hard games, but hard to learn games as well. You usually have 4-6 attack buttons, many dozens of moves, command inputs (which are character specific to make things worse), and a relatively complex blocking system, all added on to games which historically have really bad or no tutorials and few resources in game to learn those most basic of controls and mechanics. It's a massive hurdle to overcome for a brand new player. It's why I gave up on Tekken 7 within a few days, but also why I ended up sticking with Strive; the difference that a well made tutorial aimed at complete noobs makes can not be overstated. Smash is by far the most accessible fighting game I've ever played, containing one of the largest differences between skill floor and ceiling of any game I know of. The entire game can be played with just a joystick (or even D-Pad) and 3 buttons. Characters have ~20 moves each, but because they are all directional inputs using one of the 2 buttons, it is extremely easy to learn how to use all of them, and also makes it really easy to learn how to apply moves you haven't used before. It's really just a matter of "press the direction you want to attack in, and press the attack button". A completely new player doesn't need to know the distinction between tilts and smash attacks and aerials, they can get the bare minimum knowledge to play the game by just attacking in a direction. The bare minimum knowledge is so simple, that a player can get into a game as fast as possible so that they can actually start to develop a deeper knowledge of the moves and mechanics. The amount of time between starting a game completely clueless, and being able to play the game by yourself, even really poorly is, in my opinion, the #1 goal of accessibility. It's not to make the gameplay easier. It's to make the game easier to play.
I've always said that Smash is like learning to play the piano, and FGs are like learning to play the guitar. Obviously, mastering the piano takes thousands and thousands of hours and it not something that just anyone can do. But, if you have absolutely no idea about music, or have never before played an instrument in your life, and you sit down in front of a piano for 10 minutes and just mess around, you will probably figure out how to play something remotely musical. At the end of the day, you're pretty much just pushing a button. Guitar on the other hand... holy moly, if you have never tried to play the guitar before, and you assume that it must not be that hard... you're going to be in for a rough time. Just to be able to make that thing make a sound that isn't offensive to the ears takes, AT MINIMUM, weeks of practice. You need to use muscles in your left hand that you didn't even know were there. You need to be able to coordinate the strumming of your right hand, to the chords of your left hand. You need to develop a thick layer of dead skin on your fingers, just to be able to play for more than ten minutes and have it not physically hurt... and this is just to make the guitar make somewhat of a musical sound.
3:58 right off the bat you don't understand; when I'm playing a fighting game, I don't want to do homework, I don't care for auto combos that make it easy, I want to LEARN the mechanics AND have it where the learning curve isn't a WALL but a CURVE. Why was Neon White fun? A good learning curve! In that game when I lost/ failed to do good I was able to at least LEARN and not have it be a wall for the mistakes I was dealing with!
Whenever most people discuss this topic they alwasy just end on "presumed difficulty from the wider public" and so its interesting to see the genre more directly compared to contemporary nultiplayer games that do way better in terms of raw player numbers. Weaker marketing is definitely a factor. Another could be a rough experience in the past. I personally had had a rough experience playing smash with my friends and losing so often it felt bad I was terrified of playing traditional fighters until I eventually decided to try the genre after hearing bridget's strive theme and relating to it so much, but I was still scared of spending the money of a full game on strive from fear I'd not enjoy it, dbfz was on sale at the time so I bought that and ended up enjoying it and now here I am entering beginner tournaments and aiming to consistently hit top 8 in strive, having people jump that hurdle whether its presumed or based on a bad experience they already had is a big deal.
This is mostly why I think FG's don't really get mainstream. You will get steamrolled at the start and it's gonna feel terrible. League, Warzone and Fortnite also have similar beginner experiences, but they have the advantage of being mostly played on teams with your friends, while also letting you progress through things even when losing (be it a Battle Pass, account level or just making progress in your daily missions) Playing through a FG online is a lonely experience, and it takes a lot of mental strength to keep playing daily. Couple that with mostly mediocre single player content, AAA game pricing on top of season passes, and other barriers of entry and you have a pretty low chance of convincing people to play your game.
I'm currently developing a FG with a roguelike campaign mode that will help teach the player the basics behind the game. It's also my way of attempting to familiarize casual players with the concept of fighting games. Im hoping that this can help start moving the genre in a better direction.
Some of my best memories were hanging out at a buddies house with like 4 of my friends and we all had a tournament on whatever fighting games we had on hand. I had forgotten what we played cause this was years ago, and back when Strive released, an old friend showed it to me, and immediately the nostalgia flooded in, because back when I was but a wee lad, we were playing Guilty Gear XX. If my buddy hadn’t sent me the link to the Strive reveal trailer, I would’ve never gotten back into Guilty Gear. Tldr; FG’s need to step up their marketing cause holy shit I missed out on 20 years of Guilty Gear games
I think your comment highlights one of the main reasons why FG's don't really explode in popularity. The social aspect. Fighting games were born in Arcades, where people played and interacted locally. Nowadays, modern habits have shaped multiplayer games into predominantly online endeavors, and FG's still suffer from that shift to this day. Unless you have a local community, you'll spend most of your starting experience being steamrolled by strangers online, alone. It's a frustrating venture and you're paying $60 for it.
14:07 This only works if all of your friends are into a specific fighting game. Convincing a single dabbler to jump on a game they aren't familiar with just to get smoked is a TALL task. Let alone an entire group.
Simple answer: if you’re not good at fighting games, you’re not gonna enjoy them. Eventually, you’ll play something else. Since many are not, it has lost its luster and is still a popular genre amongst its community, but it’s smaller than back in the day when you would ask your friend’s parents if they could spend the night over so y’all could play games all night. It’s just not like that any longer. Shooting games are less complex to get a kill, thus, they’re gonna attract people who are skilled and unskilled players. They also allow you to potentially hack to be even better, but you cannot hack a fighting game where you have to beat your opponent & there is no way to substitute what it takes. RPG’s allow almost anyone a story experience and a chance for the player to win because ultimately that is the point, especially if it is linear like God of War games used to be, before the 2018 & new Ragnorok which is a bit more open world, strategy, etc.
Ait I'm a couple weeks late but to add: Imo the actual biggest issue with most fighting games is how hard it is to... I guess perform in them? And i dont mean being at a competitive or even semi-ok level, but in general. For example, games you mentioned, like Valorant or Fortnite, to do very basic you just move your aim reticle on enemy and press left mouse. In LoL you just right-click on red untill it dies. In most fighting games, however, to do your char's moves, you need fairly precise inputs that, in addition, might be even harder depending on what input device you using. Like, me for example. I like concept of fighting games - reads, predictions n shit. I have something like 1.5k hours in For Honor, if you count it as fighting game. However, each time i try "real" fighting game, i just... Stop. Cuz even if I'd be able to correctly predict opponent's move, I can't properly input 6246S, not on MnK or even conventional gamepad. And I'm not about to break my fingers and dedicate 40 hours to do so. Look, Smash is pretty mainstream, for that very same reason. It's easy to start.
I’ve tried to get a few of my friends that don’t play fighting games to try a few of them out. The ones that have little to 0 interest just aren’t interested in the prospect of 2 characters on a 2d plane on a small stage. They play a little bit, I explain some mechanics but those mechanics arent interesting in the first place because the games come off as archaic or cheap (especially when they’re used to playing AAA games on a regular basis). Then I have some friends that wanted to try to get into them but don’t stick with them. I think that’s because for a lot of people the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Most people are more interested in immersion, adventure, ease of access, GUNS, sports or a power fantasy.
Some people are more interested in stats. I’ve seen someone say they want rpg leveling in a Mortal Kombat game and didn’t see the obvious balance problem it would face in an online setting til I pointed it out
@@notproductiveproductions3504 yea an example of external gratification. It's super addictive, only really requires time to grind, usually no skill gate. Easy dopamine kick. I love them.
@@notproductiveproductions3504 Idk Injustice 2 did ok with the Gear system. As long as there is a competitive mode (no stats/Base Characters) it could work. I think it could work if maybe you had the Main online experience be ranked of sorts. You get matched with people at your around your power level. As much as I like gear, I'd argue from both a commercial and gameplay POV it makes much more sense for most of that stuff to be cosmetic only. An Item Shop, Loot Boxes or even a Fifa-style transfer market could be a cool implementation as a source of Cosmetics (Gear, Intros, Outros, Finishers, Emotes, Colour-Palettes, Profiles, Music, Backgrounds, etc..). Commercially that stuff could elevate the game to whole other level. But if your talking about RPG Levelling then a Skill tree would undoubtedly be a revolutionary addition to fighting games, akin to when they finally give us 3d Arena's as a pose to the classic 2d stages or the trash 2.5d circles in the current "3d fighting games". A Skill tree would enable you to completely choose the variant of your fighter you wish to play with. You could start off with a really bare bones character and then slowly progress in your chosen direction. It wouldn't affect Ranked because that's level locked and you could turn your fighters into absolute beasts. Imagine playing Scorpion in Mk11 and slowly unlocking the abilities and then choosing which ones to use. You could create a Scorpion that focuses on The Get over Here, Fire Breath, Fire Damage over time, Teleport etc. The same applies to other characters and it's really just an evolution of the Variation system that's already in that game. I'd be interested to see if you think if there's a hole in this kind of system, because it's late and I'm spitballing but I defo think this could work.
On the topic of for honor, the way they structured their currency, unlocks and cosmetics are a great example of what fighting games could be like. Unlockable characters, custom taunts or win screens, cosmetics and skins, are all things that keep new players invested.
@@Roboardo totally agree. I fully expect sf6..7? Whatever the new one is to sell emotes for the vs screen. While animations and win poses are costly, i would happily pay 10-20 quid for a really good victory animation
For Honor is a fighting game it just plays differently from the rest and its approach to combat. Kinda like how Tekken and Soul Caliber (which are also 3D fighting games) are nothing like Guilty Gear, Melty Blood, Marvel Vs Capcom, Darkstalkers etc.
People get tired of throwing the same punch and kick 100 times so they move on to the next game. The entry level is way too high for these games in terms of skill so people naturally don’t give a shit.
I think there's some ideas that might not have been included, though perhaps simplistic in and of themselves. 1. Shooters have been standardized for years. Watch someone control an avatar and you know exactly how they're doing it. The tools between different shooters are all very similar. Hit scan? Reticule to face. Actual projectile? Compete against Canadian, UK and US special forces for world longest shots (cool fantasy there, to boot). Everyone know how a gun works. How does a DP work? is it motion or single button? Does it hit in front and behind? does it spin or wiggle? is it flying, or is it grounded? Is it a combo starter or is it a combo ender? Does it have invincibility? Which type of unsee-able invincibility is it? Throw, Air, Full, etc? Which meter is the block gauge, super gauge, comeback or special gauge? Which particle effects mean what? Why is it all diharrea Christmas lights? I just caught Will it Kill and they whole point of the show is that you don't know anything about anything. Do cool shit is the starting point for some players, for everyone else, you might as well be watching static. You can't see the green from the brown, never mind the forest for the trees. 2. Zeitgeist. In the west in general we no longer have the martial art fighting fantasy that many of these games came from. Almost all major developers are Japanese where that long cultural heritage of civil unrest and justice started with martial arts (since often swords and other weapons were illegal to the general populous). Shaolin monks have a lot in common with slaves and Capoeira in that regard. They have Sun Wu Kong, we have Don Quixote. In the west, our civil unrest is predicated on the gun. Warfare is based around the fantasy of the infantryman (though I hope most people realize that's been a dead man's game for a very long time). Like scary movies being a safe way to confront attackers, terrifying events and supernatural opposition, gun games gives everyone a "safe and fun" way to play at the next war. Never mind American propaganda that always needs a boogieman and that war is always just around the corner. Seriously guys, no war and a stable economy, the 90s were amazing. While there have been a few more recent martial arts movie promoting the fantasy, there's like 1 mainstream every few years while there's another infantryman movie every 6 months. Often in the west, we think (at least i certainly do) think street fights are down an dirty scrums. You might know how to throw a punch, but often is in the context multiple vs one. It's a vicious beatdown. While i don't believe any less of eastern violence, pop culture presents as the fantasy expert beats thugs, professional jockey for position with the fancy maneuvering, and many other subtleties I can't explain and don't know because I'm not a trained fighter. Holyfield could wipe the floor with 99% of the planet, but boxing is "just a sport".
The fact that guns or the fantasy of using them is marketed heavily towards us definitely plays a huge role in people’s decisions. Also, when attempting creating combat systems it’s much easier to replicate projectile combat. Even the military uses tactical fps games for virtual training.We still don’t have simulation based melee combat in games that work anywhere close to melee combat, mainly because the human body is just so complex. So for people that want a less “gamey” video game, they just probably won’t like fighting games.
Agreed almost entirely! But i think in an attempt to both make these games more entertaining and to match that sort of complexity, "gamey" properties like juggles, and 20 foot punches make the combat counter intuitive. How often is "how did i get hit by that" actually "how does that even work"? I've seen UFC and Boxing games that were pretty straight forward and realistic, covering most of the footsie spectrum without resort to "flying bullshit from 20 miles away". There was one Boxing game in particular i loved the controller scheme: I forget which, but you controlled each hand with a different analog stick and dodged with the shoulder buttons. You threw a punch by "drawing" that punch with the analog stick. Your thumbs became tiny arms. lol. Wonderfully simple, but without practice i thought the inputs were absolutely unresponsive. /shrug
@@justinkeck2980 Fight Night Round 4 (?). EA Sports UFC (2-4) & the Fight Night (Round 3-4/Champion) games are fantastic combat sports games. Very intuitive if you understand the sports at even a base level. I personally think 2D fighters are unintuitive as hell. Crouch block to stop 85% of attacks? Umm.
I really am starting to develop the opinion that the dimensions are the primary thing holding fighting games back. Games are going to get better graphically now due to the PS4 exclusives pushing that forward. The physics of games are going to get better with Battlefield, Forbidden West and Breath of the Wild pushing that forward. The stories in games can be amazing, As can the Gameplay loops. But none of this matters if you can't even see your surroundings/interact with the environment. Fighting games give you the illusion of a 3d plain of existence in cutscenes (and trailers) then they snap you back to the old school arcade style fighters of the past with their inability to allow you to move left or right. 3D fighters were made when people initially realised these limitations but they don't quite go far enough. I think a 3rd Person style Fighter in a SMALL arena is the answer. Think about it, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War Ragnarok, Spiderman Ps5, Jedi Fallen Order. Look at the cinematic Boss Fights in those games. There isn't an open feeling to it like rest of those games, it's much more tight (like a fighter), all while retaining the 3rd person perspective. Imagine everytime you fought someone online in a fighting game, it was like a mini boss fight. Like Vader in Fallen order, Deathstroke in Arkham Origins, Thor in God of War Ragnarok. You have to make sure to keep the arenas small to make sure it doesn't turn into something a little bigger like an open exploration or Hero Shooter but If you manage that you can retain the fighting game heritage andd dna all while completely revolutionising the genre. It'd be an innovation at such a scale that whether it was Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken etc. Who took the risk, they'd become the de facto industry leader (Much like Fortnite in Multiplayer shooters, League in Mobas, Chess in Board game lol). I'm just spitballing here tbh, but I'd be interested to here what you think.
@@himum3429 Well, I'm thinking people have been addressing this in exactly the way you're describing. 3-d Combat/beat'em ups/adventure games give the player more freedom and tactical options. We don't think of these as fighting games but all the footsies and mind games are present, so what then is the mechanical difference between these and "standard" fighting games. What makes a fighting game feel like a fighting game. I think this boils down to one particular overlap: In fighting games, your ability to execute combat and execute maneuvering are on the same part of the controller. Block in a 2-d fighter? give up movement. Block in any 3-D action/fighting game? You CANCEL movement by overriding it. Dodging in a 3-d fighter isn't always a Direction input, it depends if it overlaps with too many other mechanics. If you can dodge, odds are then that jumping is a special move of some kind. There are ugly, game specific concessions everywhere. If you're right-handed, it puts a large load on your left side to learn and control a cornerstone control mechanic. You LACK multitasking in a very limiting way, and is why moves like wave dashing and korean dashing completely change how a game is intended to be played (and worse are also completely unavailable to someone ignorant of them). A lack of options forces players to interact with the opposing character with certain outcomes in mind, often with the intention to keep people in a melee scrum as opposed to falling back to neutral. The word of the day seems to be precision as all the "3-D" "action" and "adventure" examples we've cited all have felt very imprecise. These games don't need GrandMaster-esque mastery, because so often they don't feel like you need to be a half inch out of the hitbox (or bad AI makes the player as lazy as the developer). Fighters are normally side-on as you described because you need to know where to stand to give yourself a close shave. Anyone normally involved in speedrunning (PvE) would have that level of knowledge, but an average player sees much more success with less experience (relative to fighting games). In 3-d action games as well, a large portion of them have a fundamental, spammable move that is invulnerable and/or armored to allow exciting gameplay. Not everyone is on the 1HP challenge run train. This makes for a different playstyle again, as invulnerable moves are extremely dangerous and risky in fighters. Dodge rolling in Dark Souls/Elden ring, or other melee-centric action games are very generous, but flubbing a roll is still how you end up losing. I'd call any Souls-borne game a "FighterLite" in that regard. A realistic physics system leads to a lot more ground based interaction, so we end up with a ufc/wrestling set of commands and I don't know if a 3rd control scheme would help most fighters. Monster Hunter World does a great job of allowing players to jump off walls and climb on ladders for advantage (absolutely a sparring game). Virtua Fighter (and probably Tekken) has minor wall bouncing such that a block that pushes you into a wall creates blockstun or trips you and breaks your guard. Sometimes, that environmental interaction is there in a major way, it's just so poorly explained that you're again pissed at something you didn't know would screw you over. I strongly consider darksouls/eldenring to be exactly what you're hoping for, (without the overlap) especially people expressly building characters for regulated play (ie lvl 50 level cap) and using those in-game pvp matchmaking systems. Beyond that, I don't know because i think most of these ideas are being explored already. Which, considering the success of elden ring, i think we've already decided the innovator.
The part about a game where teams or clans fight each other and receive a reward at the end of the week was done in a fg. It was mkx. You would pick a clan and fight for global points and at the end of the week, you would get some rewards like a clan fatality.
In my mind, a large and mostly understated issue is that arcade fighting games are an antiquated genre. Fighting games never adapted or changed to cater to the console and PC market in a way that other genres did. They fundamentally are just arcade games ported to consoles, even in their more modern forms. With rare exceptions, they have a single core experience in mind and the game's design and features are all meant to feed into that core experience. In contrast with other genres, especially FPS games, fighting games don't have nearly the same level of variety in content or ways to enjoy them. And that is the biggest thing that changed with the jump from arcades to consoles.
Because fighting games tend to be competitive and very personal, I always thought it was a good thing fighting games didn't become main stream. After seeing a crowd sing Guilty Gear Strive's Smell of the Game with Daisuke Ishiwatari present in the crowd, I am glad the genre still maintains this underground, grassroots kind of vibe. I I will say the fighting game community and tournaments as a whole have more appeal and reach now then they ever have. I am curious where iut will grow from here. Really good video that covered this multi-faceted topic because it isn't as simple to discuss as it appears.
As much as I like fighting games, the community is kind of full of nobheads who scream at every minor or major change and are quick to give the stink eye to any new fighting game just trying to find its place. Hard for devs to get in, hard for new players to get in.
Aight, I get that I'm late to this Vid, But an Important factor you missed is Ease of Access. The mechanical skill needed to execute "basic" combos and do supers is something that turns many players off, especially when in other games, The most power tools are locked behind good aim at the most and not several complex inputs intentionally difficult to string along
I can confirm this. In theory I love fighting games, but in practice I never found a one-on-one fighting game that I could play. Most of the people that don't play fighting games have the idea of a game where learning and executing attacks is easy, and the dificulty consists in learning what is the most apropriated situation to use which attack to which opponent. In reality the dificulty is to understand why nothing happends when someone follows the commands.
@@arturferrao7353 This so much! I "QCF" then hit punch so a fireball should come out, right? Why is the character throwing a normal punch? Or I block then hit forward and punch. Even if I don't accidentaly crouch or jump...WHY IS THE CHARACTER WALKING FORWARD? I PUT IN THE COMMAND!
Simple In fighting games, you almost exclusively compete, but rarely if ever toy In most mainstream games, you can almost always toy, and sometimes you can compete Most regular people see games as toys to play with rather than competitions to sweat over
The reason I get to play most games are because I have seen people playing these games on TH-cam of my country, and I don't mean ads, I mean people having fun with the game, Minecraft, League of Legends, Rocket League, Celeste, Skyrim, but for fighting games in specifically* I never saw a popular TH-camr or a fighting game on a popular video or livestream in my country.
They are, if you consider Smash Bros a fighting game. It's a massive mainstream hit. The thing is, you would have drastically change how fighting games are and how they work in order to appeal to a mainstream audience. Smash is a great blueprint for how to do that, but a lot of FGC folks don't really consider Smash a fighting game in the same way they do Street Fighter or Guilty Gear. I think FGC people don't really *want* fighting games to be mainstream, because the times they have been able to break into the mainstream, people insist that "isn't a fighting game." Most people just don't want to dedicate hundreds and hundreds of hours to a journey of self-improvement (which is essentially what playing fighting games is), and there's nothing wrong with that. What does it matter if it's niche or not? So long as you're passionate about it and enjoy playing them, why does it matter? Not everything is for everyone.
Yeah I don't want every game to be mainstream, but it also sucks when you can't play any matches online cause the games are dead... Good luck finding a match in KOFXIII online
Most people already spend 40 + hours a week doing repetitive tasks at work for money, when they are done most people don't want to invest another 40 + hours learning to make a dude punch better for not money. The most main stream you will get is anime fighters where the point is to play it for a week, or two with watching people do super moves.
I'm so tired of hearing about internal motivation to be the best or want to spend hours learning combos. The vast majority of gamers don't wanna do that shit
@@mor3gan285 I look at it this way. I can spend 20 hours learning how to cancel a punch mid animation, or I can spend 20 hours playing bio shock. Punching better, or go on a undersea scifi adventure with a well written story. What do you think most people are going to pick?
@@dmcoub78 I'm stuck on whether to put time into learning a combo that I can't even do charge motions consistently for yet. I just spent a game in SF5 yesterday just doing Honda's headbutt trying to get it down but it saps the enjoyment of how I want to win. Not through spammy shit but through something that looks competent. I don't want to be the best but good enough to get past the fog of being unfamiliar with the genre that I can pick up any game and win.
Fighting games rarely offer value for money unless you know going in that you're going to spend a lot of time online. Tekken 7 and Strive are very guilty of this the single player experience is pathetic. SF5 got better eventually, The arcade ladders and survival mode changes added plenty of value but the damage was done by then. Fighting game developers need to realise that not everyone wants to go online and get smashed there have to be other ways to play. I don't gel with netherealms fighting mechanics but the sheer amount of stuff to do is why they sell so well. I think SF6 is looking to emulate that while also having better social features with the battle hub.
Fighting game singleplayer content isnt even worth the pricetag though which is another issue, at this point id imagine it would be better for them to sell a fighting game at like 20 or 30 cheaper for people who just wanna play singleplayer but even that feels like a scam, this is of course without mentioning the dlc which you wont ever use if youre serious about the game (youre not gonna main 30 different characters) but forced to purchase just because theyll be locked even in training modes. SF6 succeded to a degree with world tour (atleast from what ive heard it wasnt a selling point to me) but the game still fits into a niche.
One thing that I noticed is that most people do not want to lose and it be their own fault. If you play rocket league, LOL, or valorant, it's possible to get carried as long as you aren't terrible. In a fighting game, if you get smacked, it is your own fault and there is no way to avoid the inevitable ass whooping unless the internet connection fails. Another thing is that, while fighting games aren't any harder to learn that other games, the process of learning a fighting game can be absolutely boring. You have to either spend a lot of time in training mode alone or play against other people are suffer until you get better. In fortnite, you can learn while having fun on a team, you don't have to suffer alone.
I believe the only way a fg can be fun is when you are motivated to get better and getting better is satisfying enough to motivate you to do it The majority of people don’t want that, and i think its very understandable that the genre is so hard to get into even for people who want to try and get into them
I’ve been playing fighting games for about 30 year. Strive made me officially walk away from the genre recently. I love fighting games, but it’s the genre I put the most time into and I still struggle to make any impact.
Damn is strive that hard i have not played it yet.Have you tried street fighter 5 it is pretty easy to learn or just wait for 6 to come out in a few month's DNF is not any good one wrong bad move and you will eat a 52 hit combo🤣 just remember age plays a big factor in fighting games i am 42 so my reflexes are slow now compared to what they was in my 20's it can be a challenge to win alot against these young players drinking those energy drinks lol.
I agree as games like mmo’s have “achievements” you unlock this skin, this item, this title by doing something that usually takes a grind. Fighting games could include this. They could also include special skins, titles, auras, or things like that for perfecting a character, placing in a certain rank in a season, making skins that matched their fav pro player in that game. When I say make a skin like that, I mean I’d say SonicFox won a tournament then the character he used could have a skin available for purchase for the players. Things like this is what keeps people playing WoW and League and many more. A game that I feel is a great example and one that I’ve grown to love is “Sea of Thieves”.
We already have to consider e-sports are still technically a niche. A big thing is of course the fact fighting games are 1v1 and since there's no team to blame, you can't avoid the fact that you might just suck, and fighting games are still considered "hard" even with games like Strive (technically you could say games started getting simplified since MVC2 and "easy" since P4A) have simplified the genre a lot to attract newcomers, and people don't like taking a lot of time to learn something they won't be playing all the time. You need to WANT to be good, instead of naturally getting good, I guess you could say. (Anyway reader, you should go binge all GekkoSquirrel videos, subscribe, and if possible, donate to the patreon!)
i think that a game being competitive is a force pushing *towards* mass appeal, rather than away from it. I'll explain: if you want your game to have a competitive seen, you would want as many people playing it as possible so that you have a large pool of players to draw competitors from, and also because competitive games are by necessity multiplayer games, and multiplayer games are only fun if you have people to play with/against.
The most mainstream thing about fighting games that happened to fighting games is actually Jack-O challenge lol It's the only thing that became so viral, it's even caught on by non gamers, random influencers and celebrities on tiktok and twitter.
I love that idea about the club battles and ranks and leaderboards. That would be super dope, and it would be so cool to be fighting against people for rank that's not JUST your own.
I know I'm speaking for a lotta casuals when I say this, but if you want to have players enjoy characters outside of internal motivation, *do like Brawl, and make a Good fuckin' Story Mode that doesn't revolve around just 1v1s.* Literally something like a beat-em-up or brawler style that shifts away from the 1v1 aspect helps make casuals get attached to the game and its mechanics more. Players progress through the main level lobbing through countless goons and enemies, allowing for the eventual 1v1 character bossfights to feel more engaging. Plus, having it be sectioned as Level>Bossfight is much better for pacing, as most recent fighting games are just 1v1 character duels that feel like Bossfight after Bossfight after Bossfight, making the story a dull train ride and borderline exhausting by the end. On top of this, this makes the fighting game _have more game in it's game_ so that you have more playtime and experience with said game. I will die on this hill; a fighting game's principles are to make good of mechanics, controls, characters, lobbies, match-making, and rollback. But the story must not, and cannot for the love of god, be just 1v1 after 1v1 after 1v1 until credits roll. Leave that to online, give the "single player" their single player experience.
As an addendum, allow your game's story mode, on top of it not just being 1v1 ad nauseam, to be meaningful in teaching the player the mechanics of the game and why the player should learn them. More importantly, reinforce that knowledge with the eventual 1v1s to become knowledge checks, and aren't easy. The best way to do this is to let the story mode dictate the characters for the section and then have them be unlocked after certain points, with the player already having understood the gist of what to expect from picking up said characters. That way the story teaches how to play as each character to their strengths and pinpointing their weaknesses that need overcoming. Combine this all with competent enemies towards the later game and 1v1s against characters you've already unlocked, and you essentially teach the player how to play your fighting game with a modicum of confidence. And that right there is the key. Having the player build long term confidence through the story mode to give it a go online, even if they get their butt kicked, will be much better than a burst of short term confidence from the archaic nonstop 1v1s. The long term makes players want to learn stuff after they get schooled going 0-10, whereas the short term would've caused an uninstall after going 0-3.
Agreed and more Single player content in general to really give context behind the characters and game world. Street Fighter 6 is looking to do just this and I'm really happy about it. Soul Calibur was good with this too. Despite SCVI not being popular, I loved how robust the single player content and campaign mode was where you could play as your customizable character.
I really think that Riot's project L is gonna be a big hit, considering every points from your video, Free to play, Unlockable skins and characters with in game rewards(Long term goals/show off) and potentially huge ID appeal considering the impact LoL had those previous decades. If the gameplay is good the game will have a lot of players.
The problem fighter games have is that they are 1v1 and pretty straightforward. It's all "see that guy right there? Beat him up." Then you win or you lose. Compare that to the other "competitive" games, which have a lot more players and a lot of things to do that aren't direct competitive combat. You don't have to win an entire round of Fortnite, you just have to get a few kills along the way. You might even just enjoy exploring the map. If Fortnite were boiled down to JUST the "endgame" in which it is you and one other person in a tiny arena trading shots at each other, then far fewer people would play it. Also, in many team based games, there are "less competitive" roles to them, supports and healers, and that isn't to say that being really good at these roles is not important on a pro team or something, but playing casually, there's a lot less pressure to them, so that can also help to expand the audience beyond the "sweaty" players. I think this is also part of the reason why a game like Smash Bros is so successful, because while you can play it at a competitive level, it's also a lot more fun to goof around with, and while you might lose most matches, you can still score a lot of fun KOs along the way.
YOMI Hustle seems to help new players with its slower pace and its re-focusing of gameplay on strategy over execution. Another big barrier to entry is having to pay a full price tag for a game you might not even like, in a genre you might not even enjoy. So... here's a wild idea from someone who doesn't play fighting games, but on paper is likely a person who would like them: A free to play mode, with limited movesets, characters, the ability to slow down the game, and the ability to have asymmetrical handicaps. This serves a number of purposes. Firstly, by being free, it gives players a chance to try out the basics of the game, potentially with a friend who wants to get them into the game. Secondly, by limiting the movesets, you focus the game more on fundamentals. It doesn't have to be balanced - that isn't the point of this mode. By limiting the characters, there's less to keep track of - DOTA2 has limited heroes mode for this purpose too, and I would not have learned DOTA2 without it! Thirdly, by slowing down the game it makes actions significantly more clear. It also has a side effect of messing up established players timings as an indirect handicap for experienced friends getting a noob into the game. Imagine doing half speed 1v1s with a handicap against your noob friend, and you start noticing them getting the hang of things so you speed it up on the next one, until they are keeping track of the game at full speed - that's growth! Fourthly, asymmetrical handicaps let you rebalance the match. Maybe an experienced player could set themselves to have only 1hp, so a new player just has to get a single hit off, while the experienced player does their best to play defensively and only do punishes. I've done similar in MOBAs back when I played them, where punishing mistakes when they happened but not forcing errors through pressure helped my inexperienced friends gain skill in laning. As a whole, this will let people try a limited version of the game, one that is easier to get into in terms of execution and memory, without having to justify a purchase, and gives a very frictionless proposition for experienced players to give to a potential new player. Consider a new player to league: 'Hey, this game is free, come try it out. We can just play against bots while you learn the ropes, you don't need to worry about all the fancy stuff, just a low stakes chill experience.' That is a pretty easy suggestion to agree to. Consider a new fighting game player: 'Hey, come pay $60 to play this game where you will suck for hours playing in full stakes matches against vastly more experienced players. I'll help you learn the massive roster, combo list, counters, hey where are you going?' Now consider the following: 'Hey, you know how I keep trying to get you into X? Well you can play this new free mode. We can do some 1v1s, slow the game down to make it easier to see what is going on, and you only need to keep track of a few moves. I promise it's not going to be overwhelming. I can play with a handicap so you just need to get a hit off to win. Yeah, totally free, and if you like it, you can get the full game when you feel like it. Plus the people queuing for it are mostly noobs because the tryhards just play the regular version.' Speaking for myself... I'd consider the latter. It could probably get me into the genre. I think many others would feel the same.
If we’re calling Persona 5 a mainstream game then I think it could be said that fighting games are mainstream too. Fighting games not being F2P is probably the biggest hurdle a fighting game thats focused on multiplayer has. Fighting games made the most money in the arcade days of the ‘90s when the price of admission was .25¢. If you’re free, you’re going to instantly have more people playing the game online. I mean for one thing the game doesn’t cost anything, but also being free-to-play means everyone on consoles can play online for free too; where if it’s a $60 game those console players are also going to have to pay for whatever their systems online multiplayer is. Move inputs don’t exactly help either. I’m sure anyone that plays fighting games have seen there friends that don’t play fighting games bounce off them when they can’t do stuff, or consistently do stuff. It’s probably no big surprise that the Smash Bros series has been the best selling fighting game since it came out...and that’s with the N64 and the GameCube (especially the GameCube) not exactly being the best of sellers. It is interesting to see Capcom doing the Modern Controls thing with Street Fighter 6, not really surprising given how much Smash Bros. Ultimate outpaced every fighting game on the market, but interesting nonetheless. I am a little surprised it took them this long; hell, back when they announced Marvel vs Capcom 3, I figured the Special Button in that game would be used like Modern Controls in SF6. When it comes to retail releases I think a total lack of real proper single player content like a normal single player game has hurts fighting games too. Like you can be huge and not have any single player at all, but then you’ve got to be F2P. Otherwise, even if the multiplayer is the big draw like with Call of Duty and the old Halo games, you still need the single player. The really odd thing about fighting games total lack of single player is fighting games started as games focused on single player. Original Street Fighter is basically a boss rush game, and when the original Street Fighter team went off and made Fatal Fury they still kept that boss rush style but now the game had three playable characters instead of the one of Street Fighter. It’s also weird it’s taken Capcom until Street Fighter 6 to seemingly remember they did big single player things in Alpha 3 and the Rival School games.
The community never got me into fighting games. I got himself into fighting games. Growing up I always played them on my own. Most of my friends back then didn't play them. They said that fighting games were too hard. Which you forgot to mention in your vid. Which now that i mention it you failed to talk about. Fighting games are harder to play then most games out there due to the complexity of motion inputs and execution. I didn't find a community until I was in college now. They are my best friends. But most of them don't even play anymore unfortunately.
I started playing Strive (and traditional fighting games in general) about a week ago, and I'm stuck between floors 6 and 7 atm, but I love it so much! and guess how I got introduced to it? tiktoks about bridget and giovanna, and engaging with the community in the comments 😭
In my case it was the youtube creators that convince me to learn a fighting game and they also help me to understand that is not an impossible task. To be more specific, youtube creators playing and commenting the beta of Guilty Gear Strive hype me a lot to buy the game. The big problem I have right now Is that I don't have the habit of playing the game, even when I enjoy the online experience most of the time, I know that I need a lot of time to git gud but all depend from my self motivation.
One thing I would throw in is FREE2PLAY. Most fighting games are full price titles and will cost you 60bucks. I can try out Geshin or Valorant without that. I download it for free and in case I don't like it, I uninstall it. Also Updates: Valorant gets a new character every 2 months+battle pass, skins, balance patches etc. Of course its easier to design a character with 4 abilities than a fg-character with like 30 moves... There are frequent hooks to go back because there is something new. Strive takes a bit longer, but its "just a char". Balance patches take half a year. And besides that we got a short movie. Mainstream games don't just market for new players but for old players to return as well.
I started playing fighting games because I hate playing in a team and I love competition. I don't trust other people to cooperate well. Went from kof97 to getting strive. Tho, for strive, i bought that because 1, i love anime; 2, the visuals are awesome; 3, its an actual fighting game that I can research for my own projects as a fighting game dev. So far its the game i've played the most, catching up to around 250 hours or so in a matter of 1.5 years (i bought it in Aug21).
some things i think more fighting games should have are the king of the hill mode from mortal kombat, 3v3 party battles in dbfz and team battles/special battles in smash or guilty gear isuka. fighting games are best when their 1v1 but they really should have more modes where you can enjoy them as a group.
Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3 says hello(5v5) and Storm 4 and Storm Connections(both 3v3) says a big hi as well, people are truly clueless just how many fighting games there are out there 😅
It's a combination of community and the learning curb. It's too time consuming and sometimes it's not worth it for most. The time spent getting good with a character can be spent getting good in your life whether it be exercising, learning a new skill, honing creativity or better yet, learning real life martial arts.
I already told to all FGC on reddit, twitter or etc about this problem & there is 3 reasons the devs need to fix this 1. Fighting Games Was expensive AF: Imagine buying the full game + you need the dlc expansion pack just for playing on it And after finishing the whole story mode then get bored playing it what next ? Installing N*DE mods ?? 2. The gameplay was hard & so frustrated: The lacks of new blood or casuals players for FGC is because the games was designed for them to learn all the combo until they finally got punished on match, if you wanna know that most of fighting games ranked mode & some players always stuck on low rank rather than middle or high rank 3. Need a good, fast & stabble connection internet: FGC already know this they cry so hard to some developers for adding rollback netcode, dual connection, etc.
One of the main reasons is play space. You're confined to a very small play space where the arenas or levels are basically moving pictures. It gets tiring seeing the same thing over and over again, especially when there aren't even many viable characters to choose from. This contrasts with the open worlds of BR for example where there's a lot of stuff going on.
I think fighting games have long periods of intensity and not enough down time. Other competitive games have many seconds or minutes of nothing really happening where tension can build up, but also giving you room to mentally relax and goof around if needed. Even in smash bros, you can do well without being optimal, especially with 3+ players where you can avoid the conflict to reset yourself. Most traditional fighting game require CONSTANT counter play, which is definitely the appeal, but gives little flexibility to actually relax.
My friend had only played platform fighters and I had gotten into the Guilty Gear Strive character themes and he came across them and loved them. He wanted to get the game because he thought Bridget was cool so we both got the game and he loves it. He's not bad either for having 10 minutes of training in Smash Ultimate where I taught him Ryu's motion inputs.
That thing about the community doing all the advertising is totally true, the only reason I got interested or even found out about strive was cause a sfm used Smell of the Game and Armor Clad Faith. If not for that the only fighting game I would have ever played was smash bros.
1v1 games are uniquely situated to only appeal to a niche group. Same reason SC2 “died” when LoL took off. Ppl just don’t like the stress of losing and knowing it was just bc they suck
With a huge rise in BR games maybe using the concept of the SF6 where it’s a 3D world and once you engage in combat you go into the actual game might be a fun idea like a survival mode with players instead CPUs
I think one other thing is that most people deep in the FGC don't realize is that the community shit-talk can be incredibly intimidating or even off-putting to an outsider. I have a small group of friends in a private Discord server and they love Fighting Games, but they hate the outward facing communities (Twitter mostly). Whenever the topic comes up its usually Smash drama, Strive players shitting on MBTL/DNF Duel, or major influencers dunking on each other/some Joe Schmoe account and they usually comment something to the effect of "Just play your fucking game". From someone who quit League 8 years ago because the in-game chat is constant backseat gaming from people roleplaying as therapist Gordon Ramsey, I have to agree as most FGC chatter on social media brings back those vibes. Now I play Team Fortress 2 which arguably has an even worse community, but by the time I saw the rotten side I was already deep into the game and had found other communities who weren't out to ruin each other over random internet slights. Once you find that community that hooks you into the game, it becomes really easy to shut out the high school tier drama that's always circulating the web. This is a really awful analogy, but it's like how it's easier to shut out the sounds of your parents fighting when you're playing games with a sibling or a friend cause implicitly you know you got each other's backs, where as alone you're always keeping eyes and ears out and not really concentrating on the game. If fighting games had ways for you to foster communities in-game rather than through the drama hell-hole that is Twitter and public Discord servers, be that through clubs/guilds, ways for you to curate the social experience, and/or simply just being able to befriend random players you find in FT3 matchmaking it'd go a long ways to keep people invested.
I feel this. Always been in the mindset of liking fighting games, their mechanics, and the stuff that arises from said mechanics, but a lot of FGC circles have a bit too "bro-y" for my tastes, for lack of a better term. I've trying to break into Strive (and, to a lesser degree, Accent Core), and have joined a few public Discords, but finding a small circle to play with would be nice, honestly.
Without my local scene i would've dropped some games i love and never tried out others i love. Having in-game ads for at least major tournaments could get people to look into some near them
If I were to make a fighting game mainstream i would change the casual matchmaking system from a 1v1 personal brawl and done to 10 people mini tournaments; if you lost to one player that's fine, at least you made it somewhat far and you can tag them and fight them in a lobby as much as you'd like if you fancy a revenge or practice, someone dominated the tournament?, The last special event it's a 2v1 battle: where 2d and 3rd tag team the winner. And for the community aspect you can send a request to a player you fought to be your "Rival", you can track their progress, spectate their matches and ask them for a fight anytime you want, you can have multiple rivals at the same time and even endorse them to one another; inside training mode there are custom game modes created by the developers and the community that can be played with friends for fun or to practice with a character
As someone that tried Strive, played for 46 hours, and the BBCF for 28, the only real problem is that you're just supposed to know everything about the game to play it. Everyone saying "you don't need to know the game to have fun" definitely hasn't felt the utter hopelessness of just being stuck in the corner with every button press doing absolutely nothing. Fighting games are just that good at making people hopeless, and sadly nothing can change that.
I already knew some basics before going online but to me i never felt a huge emotional connection to what was happening in game Being in the corner was more of a puzzle i was going to try and solve over many games rather than something i had to figure out at that moment I played 200 games and only won 11% but i still had fun learnjng the game by fighting people in the discord and practicing my execution a bit in between I know not everyone is like that but there is something to it, it might also depend on what game you are playing
i still remember back in-early 2000 s India, huge lines on the local arcade parlor for Tekken 3 people would just not stop that culture was insane, that vibe. eminem / linkin park playing.
Because fighting games have a quite rigid play to win meta and a high skill ceiling. A Qcf motion is never going to feel as effortless for people as "I pull trigger and big loud sound of metal pain happen" You can't fuck around in a fighting game like you can in something like a shooter, not to mention there's not really ways to cushion a loss in a fighting game either. Also side note: SF5 has dailies and kind of loot boxes... All of this means fighting games just lack ways to make players feel good in general.
I'm a casual fighting game player, what got me into the genre was umm... Childhood exposure tbh lol Been playing Street Fighter II and Killer Instinct on my older cousin's SNES since I was 6, kept on playing the odd fighter here and there to this day, I just think they're fun and neat! Would I be a fighting game fan were it not for said childhood exposure though? Umm... Yeah, probably, I've always gravitated towards games that demand skill... I mean, most of the reason why I'm just a casual is cuz I'm too busy being a hardcore rhythm game player lol
Same, I grew up playing fighting games it was just always around me. Growing up, I would play Tekken and Marvel vs. Capcom on my box TV even though all I did was mash it was still fun!
I mean, to me it’s extremely simple: most people don’t want to play a game where you can’t compete without training. For hours. I love Tekken but I spent hours learning multiple characters all just to completely forget their move sets when I put the game down for a month or so. Fighting games in general-the great ones-require so much learning and dedication that just doesn’t exist with NBA 2K, CoD, Fortnite, etc. Even when you do get good you hit several walls that make you feel like you were almost never good at the game to begin with. I’d love to be able to play more fighting games like Dragon Ball Fighterz and Street Fighter but with my experience it’s almost hopeless trying to play more than one fighting game because of how complicated they can be.
Great video. We can't ignore, though, that fighting games in general have a steep learning curve for new players. That's one of the main reasons why Super Smash Bros is (and probably will always be)by far the most successful fighting game: it's very acessible to new players since all characters have the same inputs , players don't need to memorize tons of commands to explore and having fun with the game. Most modern fighting games are frustrating for new players. I personally love fighting games and I am always teaching my younger friends and relatives how to play them, but they always give up to the frustration of not being able to perform and memorize the special moves, despite my efforts .
I think another issue is cooperative play, the main games I've been playing are game I got into cause I could take on the challenges with my friends not always against. I think if more fighting games had a team mode that would help.
THIS is it, imo. This is one of the biggest missing pieces. People talk about how in team games you can blame your team and in fighting games you have to accept responsibility- I think, more than that, it's the fact that you can't play with your friends that's the problem. Overwatch is 5v5 and we still don't have enough room for all the people who want to play on any given day so a 1v1 game is just out of the question for most of us.
@@farslashenjoyer I used to think that too, but Multiversus kinda flopped after its initial month and it's main focus was 2v2 multiplayer. It's similar to a real life martial arts in that sense, since most of your motivation will come from your own progress instead of your team's. Though, it's definitely a barrier of entry to many people, I'll agree. That DOES seem to be problem, but, for now, seems like creating a co-op focused Fighting Game isn't the solution.
@Far Slash Enjoyer No it isn't. Far from it. There's been so many team or tag team fighting games or team modes over the years since basically 2000. They've either had only minor success, people not touching those modes much, or straight up flopped.
In terms of earning in game content, MK11 does this with Kombat League. Basically you fight online to get cosmetics which makes everyone sweat but I think it's a step in the right direction. You don't have to grind as much as a battle pass but gets you hooked enough to put in some time daily
I think the real problem with fighting games is the move to the Internet. When it was arcade cabs or people's home's. You were playing against a smaller pool of people in your neighborhood, at your school, etc. Now when you log in, you're matching against the world. No matter how good you get, the pool around you is shifted to always have you be grinding a never ending mountain of opponents. I think a game that addresses this well is actually Trackmania 2020. In that game, when you race on a map, you see your regional (in the US, a state) rank on the map alongside your country and world ranks along with leaderboards for each. By having these multiple leaderboards, you get to know your opponents and have that local-feeling rivalry of the smaller pool while not sacrificing the infinite mountain for people who are looking for global play.
Short answer: people don’t like to have to learn and get better I mean they don’t even do that with their real lives why expect them to do that in games
For me, I love character development, complex storylines, customization, and large in depth world building. These aren’t really things fighting games focus on and that is fine, it’s just not the kind of game that keeps me long term.
How do you think price relates to the barrier of entry? A lot of the games you listed are free, making the the barrier of entry pretty low compared to convincing someone to spend $60 on a new game.
Skullgirls was my first fighting game and honestly i was dogshit I was a masher like most people who start and i decided to go to the discord and play with someone And that person bodied me but they said "your valentine combos are cool ive never seen anyone do that before" and it made me feel really really good so i kept playing now im alot better then before and my friends actually dont like playing the game because i keep beating them I wanna see them improve too, one of my all time favorite fighting games
I used to play grandblue fantasy versus because there was a single player campagin and easy to learn combos that, when doing the inputs correctly, resulted in more damage. So when i started to play online...my moves had delay now? I firmly believe this is one of the MAJOR problems with fighting games and its the connectivity. This is not an excuse. I shouldnt have to relearn my combos just cause theres 5 frame delay, wiping away my muscle memory. Thats like half a day down the drain for someone who doesnt play fighting game. I dont want to relearn something i just did 30 minutes ago when i could play a shooter game and 90% of my games are butter smooth.
Another thing I don't see mentioned is that in other competitive games there is not much fortnite 2, valorant 2, league of legends 2. In fighting games there is ggxrd and ggstrive for street fighter there is street fighter 3rd strike and sfv then for mvc2 and mvc3 and ssbm with smash ult. Even in overwatch 2 the same people who played the first overwatch mostly move on. I think most stayed for ow2 then ow1. But, for fighting games, there seems to be a division from the same group which creates a less pool of players potentially which I'm not saying isn't good but it could be a reason of it being less mainstream
Part of a fighting game is learning. That is a huge part of the game. Most people find learning as torture and cant find the joy and accomplishment in it, they just want to get good as fast as possible so they can play the "real game".
What do you think about letting players play for free, but restricting F2P players to one character? I've heard about some fighting game doing that, but I don't remember the title of the game.
The issue with fighting games is that for players to feel like they possess even a semblance of competency in the game it requires a bigger upfront investment in the form of labbing compared to for instance fps. Also lucky shots ain't really a thing in fg. You either have skill/execution/know the match up or you don't. Basically they require way more work put into them to start and a lot more lab work on your own, which is boring. They are not necessarily harder at the top end of the skill ladder, it is all about the initial investment and labbing.
i think a good way to get people to play in groups is to make it easier to host a tournament style lobby where you can have a showdown between your friends about who's the best. imagine casual players being able to host one easily and everyone spectating the match thats currently happening on a discord call. allow for easy customizable options and you got yourself a way to hook newer players in and keep friend groups playing. as a bonus this would also make it easier for tournament organizers to get going
I don't have any experience with other type of competitive games, so I know that my point can miss something. But for me, it is mainly because in general fighting games don't help you getting better of finding your mistake in any ways. This, combined with lot of cheese in ranked and dlcs politics, is why (according to me) they can be really frustating for new players (and not only). Also they are not team based, so you are alone in your journey (unless you find the community outside of the game)
Learning the basics of fighting games is mechanically hard because it involves memorising precise button inputs and executing correctly, you won't get far button mashing. Compounded further by every character having different moves and inputs. This means you can't even start playing new without starting a studying session. Most multiplayer games are incredibly easy mechanically. If you can aim and shoot at heads you already know most FPS fundamentals. Moba just learn your role, farm gold safely and play with your team you will be better than 90% of the playerbase. Coupled with lack of casual game modes fighting games are a hard sell.
I think you underestimate how hard league is for a beginner But ye fg execution is a barrier And a lot of them are really hard to get to the point where you can actually get to feel like you are playing And learning combos is boring
Im not sure how you would lower the execution barrier without impacting things that veterans care about But lowering that entry level execution barrier would be necessary for the genre to get wider appeal The thing is idk how one would achieve that
Congrats, I've just bought Strive, played hourse of tutorials and lost 15 matches in a row. I feel empty. Gonna play again tomorrow because of your motivation powers. Good job! Edit: Everything said in this comment is meant to be read in a joking manner. You're good. Keep it up my guy!
when i first wanted to get into fighting games i bough mk 11 watched a bunch of tutorials and lost 50 matches in a row and couldnt stop til i reached demi god. gosh damn i love fighting games.
Losing matches consecutively like that hurts deeply but know that it's normal. What's more important is understanding why you lost and working on that. Watch some videos online (for beginners don't worry about the more advanced stuff, you'll get there eventually), practice what you learnt in training mode cause believe me, you won't be able to do everything immediately, then run some sets with a CPU to test everything out against a moving opponent before jumping back online. Also play through the story mode, it serves as an excellent introduction to the games mechanics without the worry of losing + cutscenes cool. Best of luck dawg, there's no where else to go but up.
Recently got into SFV and I did lose a ton as well but now I can hold my own fairly well when my controller doesn't go crazy and the game performs like it should. (I feel like I'm dropping frames on ps4 even offline)
Fighting games can just be so dam cool. I honestly wish i could play them more now that im starting to get into more traditional kinds of fighters (as-in not smash bros, of which introduced me to the concept in itself) and i have absolutely loved my time playing gg strive with my best friend. Now im not at a level in which i would consider by any means even competent, i can hardly string a combo together yet, but i just find them so exhilarating and fun. I also absolutely love cool visuals and guilty gear REALLY scratches that itch. Just wish i wasnt so broke so i could actually get it for myself :,I
I find it funny how Moba players will complain about mastering combos, but then turn around and spend hundreds of hours looking at character to item interactions.
I played my first fighting game at 6 years old with sf2, like almost everyone my age. but I didn't -get into them- until mortal kombat 11. And it wasn't just because in between those times I had gotten into starcraft 2 for many years and so was more competitive minded... mk11 also had a shitload to do in the game. So I had it open for hours upon hours every day, and slowly but surely I really fell in love and now I play every fighting gameI can all the damn time. I think sf6 will do this too. However it's not super hard to see why lots of fighting games don't, because I no longer care if they offer me more than a basic fighting game, I'll probably buy.
Someone should make a joke game where every first hit from any angle can lead into a 100 to 0 combo, but the execution and length of each combo is painfully complicated (like thirty UMK3/MKT Brutalities in a row at minimum) and they all last so long that the round timer will zero out well before they're done. Only snag there is that the round doesn't end even if the timer hits 0 as long as a combo is still ongoing. For the ultimate comedy, make it a free online game with two lobbies. The main lobby is the one everyone starts in, but if someone gets you 100 to 0 with a complete combo then you get banned and can only play in the second lobby. To escape the second lobby and return to the main lobby you must 100 to 0 somebody else and claim your freedom that way, but since nobody can choose to go to the second lobby by choice you have to wait for someone else to get sent there. I guess if you wanted to have mercy you could include an AI opponent that players in the second lobby can fight like once a week or something and if they 100 to 0 it then they get to escape, but even that would kind of hamper the joke.
we definitely need fighting games to bring back the concept of grinding to get secret characters. smash bros may have adopted DLC but they still have characters in the base game that are locked until you meet certain conditions. they even still do this in games with daily and weekly missions. in yugioh duel links theres a secret character called Scud, who is a complete joke and was very briefly in the newer Dark Side of Dimensions movie but fans loved that he challenge to get the meme character.
Why most people started to play fighting games: oh i just heard of it from a friend How i did: i hear smell of the game and find your one way on pootis engage and shazamed it. Then played the game
14:07 most of my coworkers know what Street Fighter VI is besides the old people and guess what? None of them want to play it! Marketing doesn't magically = sales. The mobile games that hook players in, the older people like my step dad not your average youngster! Even NSFW mobile games this is the case! Can good marketing work? Of course but it's not the only factor; having something that's turn your brain off though is the kind of game the mobile games attract. Actual good gameplay though? Not the first thought. Who are you trying to appeal to and why would x group want to play your game?
i dont know if someone might agree with me or not, but i like Lol, even tho i dont have mechanics to play complex champions, i still get to diamond every season by just playing simpler champions (Garen, Morde, Urgot, Aatrox,Sett) that i allow me to beat ppl with more mechanical expression than me, so i feel thats what makes me dont wanna try out fighting games, cause its theres no workaround if u are against an opponent with great mechanics therefore u are bound to lose no matter what. great video btw!
I always thought implementing daily/season pass missions and make them a gamified practice/warmup pros use. If designed well even pros will do it as a warm up and casuals secretly get trained .
I think the biggest issue is the perceived barrier of entrance. I felt this when I first started to play fighting games with MK X. Granted, i only got it because it was free on PlayStation+ and MK11 had been out for years at the time, but it was still impossible to play online. Evetually i went to MK11 and had the same experience, then I thought I could finally break that curse by playing MK1 from day 1 aaaaand, the same thing happend again. Street Fighter 6? Even worse, going 0-90 in my first 10h of the game. For what ever reason I still enjoyed fighting games, tried strive for the first time a couple of months ago and finally I got a tutorial mode that actually teaches the game somewhat decently. But getting friends into it is almost impossible, since everyone is affraid of getting stomped and lack the motivation to spend 2h going through basic tutorial stuff and learn the basics. However, there is a chance project L could finally make people more interested. With it being a part of the league of legends "franchise" a lot of people that never played fighting games might actually try it and see how good they can be. Ive also heard its a very simple game when it comes to inputs, which will help a lot as well.
My issue right, like me as a Rhythm game player or being top 1% for Rocket League, fighting games for me has the issue where like the bar in which I need to play at is set high and only high. I more or less need to learn everything before I ever start seeing any results of winning. Just seeing the lists of documents and complicated actions thats considered basic things is just alot to try to get into. To me there is no like, ease of difficulty but also information that allows someone to develop the skills over time. Sure some have missions to do that teach you moves or w/e but even after that being told I have to just sit there and take my beatings until I don't anymore ends up being the turn off.
The only thing your really need to start playing fighting games is knowledge of the game mechanics so you can figure out why you are losing and a good understanding of your character’s main moves.
That's some real 'draw the rest of the fucking owl' reasoning. The only thing you need to get into fighting games is to overcome the extremely high barrier to entry! So easy! Thankfully, fighting games are notoriously excellent at helping you learn these things and also feature a well noted visual clarity that makes seeing mistakes and successes very clear. Oh they don't? The exact opposite you say? Damn. Well at least the community is welcoming and not at all infamously toxic... oh right... uh... damn...
There is no good way to market a game when the initial learning experience is an endless suffering.
they are way too hard, mk11 is impossible for me to pull off a combo
League of legends
@@derekhatake bro how😭
@@playharderscrub cant get the timing right when pressing buttons, also i panic alot
@@auraoblivion8379 league’s only hard concept is the map awareness and positioning...
Clicking and QWER is baby levels of execution…
Personally I love that this video covers multiple aspects of the topic. Feels like too often people try to simplify it to one thing is the reason when there’s usually more to it than that.
I mean I feel like barrier to entry in fighters with their technical input and lack of reliable skill matchmaking is plenty of explanation. It's not even a hard concept to rank people based off algorithmic measurements of hit registration combo input and high profile game behaviors. But they don't do that so people aren't fighting someone they can learn against they take 9 losses and 1 win against some poor sap unlucky enough to be worse than them. It doesn't need a complicated or multifaceted response it's as simple as the average win rate being lower than 30% what is considered in most ladders to be a guarantee like it takes effort to be sub 30% in overwatch, cod, destiny, league, etc.
Has anyone noticed that whenever geckos ggst avatar lies down it looks like it's being stomped on by a shoe
please do not kinkshame him
Oh my good it does
Sometimes when I close my eyes I can't see
Straight up, fighting games aren't more popular because the only way to get better at them is to lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and lose horribly each time. Then after losing 50 times someone says you should go into training mode and just practice the same move over and over and over and over against a CPU training dummy and even then you will likely still lose horribly. And over the course of all those losses you gain absolutely nothing in-game. Then also people that are already in it speak basically an entire different language when it comes to describing moves, then you're told if really want to be good you need to be able to read and remember exact frames of moves for a roster of like 20-30 characters. None of that shit is fun or enticing at all.
Atleast that's why I don't play them personally.
You hit the nail on the head! I wasted so many hours (practically day) torturing myself in the training room trying to nail a simple combo or an ultimate move to where it required such precise timing that my fingers hurt. Most of these games have really poor training modes and do not explain the mechanics clearly. I was surprised with Strive at how decent they explained the core basics. Hardcore fans don't like the dumbing down of it, but I appreciate it. I can actually pull of moves and such pretty well. I just wish it had more single player content.
Yeah I’m not gonna play this game for 100 hours+ a just to watch the colorful number go up. There’s nothing really fun about losing constantly.
I agree, learning to be at least good in fighting games requires too much time investment to learn. And time is not something for me to waste as a working adult. Usually in my down time, I just want games that I can easily pickup and play without wasting time trying just to learn moves. And if I want to learn something new I would prefer to learn skills that would benefit me in real life.
I dont think there is a better way to phrase the sense of community fighting games have than how spanish youtuber joseju did. Translated, he said "the people in this gave do rematches way more than others. I think this is because this community is the one that loves the raw game the most" or something along those lines in his "ponte a jugar juegos de lucha" video. Which if you know spanish or can deal with the autosubs, watch it.
The main reason I believe fighting games aren't mainstream (among many others) is because they are very personal. All the games you mentioned League, Valorant & Fortnite are all team based games that you play with friends. With FG's, when you're in the ring it's a 1V1 between two opposing players, nobody else.
Competitive games for most are already stressful, having a team or friends makes it somewhat easier (so you can blame them instead lmao) so when you lose in a FG and you're told the problem is YOU, most lose confidence and label the genre as "too hard" when usually you aren't terrible, your opponent is just superior.
By not having mainstream appeal we therefore don't reach a greater audience outside of our own most of the time. You have to search for the community, you won't just stumble across it, so if you don't have any incentive to give FG's a chance you most likely never will as you won't go searching. A paradox of sorts fr.
The next few years however are going to be interesting for sure. With Project L, we're tapping into one of the world's largest competitive and just gaming communities in general. League has brand name, people who don't even play it are massively aware of it and some even like something else related to it within it's expanded media, meaning PL will have broader mainstream appeal even outside of LoL/Riot players.
More eyes will be on FG's than ever thought possible in an era with Rollback & Crossplay and many other great or better FG's on the market with numerous content creators/streamers and a strong & passionate community. When PL releases, it'll be now or never.
Might be a bad idea to put that much faith on Project L bringing many people from League, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
@@third-ratedude4234 I'm not betting on anything more than 5-10% of their playerbase sticking around. Even then that's still over a million new players.
To me the most important time is the honeymoon phase when the game first launches. More eyes will be on FG's than ever before from LoL and mainstream competitive players alike.
The biggest issue FG's face outside of the game itself is attracting new players & capitalising on untapped audiences and PL is aiming to tackle them both. Will it be successful? Who really knows, the point is that it's going to try.
@@third-ratedude4234 It's not about the lol community, if the game is free that could make more people approaching this game
I’d be a tough one for sure. Just the LoL name alone won’t be enough. 2 key things i think it would need. It has to be fun to play and the presentation as to be on the lvl of a dbfz or greater. Presentation being most important to me for a hype and coolness factor when playing.
@@jalenjohnson7446 It obviously has to be a high quality game as well, there's no way brand name on it's own can carry.
I meant a high quality FG, with frequent and excellent support (new fighters, stages, game modes, balancing, story, cinematics + music videos), excellent community, insane tournament support and is accessible as hell to jump in but remains challenging for veterans to master + brand name is the recipe for success.
Insanely ambitious (unrealistic even) but that is their goal after all, if they manage to achieve it.
Another aspect as to why fighting games are not mainstream is that they cost a lot. I've been interested in GGST since 2021, but I only finally bought the game recently. Reason? I'm hesitant to invest a bunch of money into a game where I may not even enjoy it, therefore putting it below my other buy list instead. Brawlhalla is an example of a mainstream fighting game, but that game also had a lot of problems with the devs and community therefore you can see that player base dwindle unlike a few years ago.
How can you not say this about any other paid game? At least with something like a 2D fighter if you already like 2D fighters it’s a safe bet you’ll like another hot new 2D fighter
Let’s see what happens with Project L which will almost certainly be F2P and have devs that really care about the FGC
For me from where i am the term "fgc" is legit non existent, because well nobody play fighting games. I sadly have to play on pretty high pings and half of my motivation is just dead at this point. I legit think that they have nailed the fighting part of fighting games but they still have no clue about the game part. There is also absolutely no incentive for someone who well doesn't wanna play ranked or tower to just become some god fighting game player. I take starcraft2 as an example here, it is an insanely difficult game and very competitive but is still somehow alive. It's only and only because the majority of players are NOT ranked competitive players but they play the casual but fun as fuck mode called Co-op commanders, and that is how you keep the game alive. There is nothing to do for someone who does not want to compete in fighting games, they don't have cosmetic or any other incentive to well keep playing.
It's also sad that they just as of recent have started taking online a tad bit more seriously while the rest of the game are made to be played ONLINE primarily. They treat online as just a feature and not as THE mode to play and grind in.
They suck balls at marketing too cause well they believe that just magically their game will reach the audience, they don't take the best sources to get there game out there and those are content creators and streamers. There are also nothing like seasonal content or anything like that, just plain old character dlcs which is not even for everyone (i still don't like a single dlc character from strive).
I still humbly believe that the fgc barely grows, players just migrate from one game to another. Developers also are disconnected with what the modern audience want and are a decade behind in mindset.
Something I think might be missing from the conversation is single-player content. I realize fighting games are inherently a multiplayer genre, but so are shooters, the prime-time esports genre. Games like Halo and Splatoon have insanely fun campaigns to play through that take the pressure off of trying to be the very best, instead immersing yourself in the amazing world of the game.
Personally, I love the story modes of Brawl, Tekken, and Soul Calibur because I got to experience the stories of the badass characters that got me interested in the game in the first place. I got to have a hand in the fight between Heihachi and his devil-spawn Kazuya, I got to see Meta Knight dueling Marth, I got to play through Darth Vader's story where he dual-wields Soul Edge and Soul Calibur into the Star Wars universe. Crazy stories/campaigns that are boosted by already fun game-play are what make me break-out my wallet. The community... eh, not so much.
I totally agree. I just wish they'd try a story reboot or have actual catch up movies/stories because these are very long running franchises and most people have no idea about a game or characters story
I think fighting games have a disadvantage there and it's that they're "just" about your guy and the opponent, you can't really use levels to influence gameplay for example (Tekken 4 and Virtual Fighter 3 tried. They had problems.).
Although, I say this but I would be curious to see a single player story in fighting games that happens in the same perspective as the main gameplay, like a more animated version of If The Emperor Had A Text-To-Speech Device and others of the same kind.
Single player content is practically the only thing anyone ever brings up these days.
I agree with the SPC sentiment but it is fascinating that none of the popular competitive games have any SPC. Hell Fortnight had SPC and no one played it lmao
@@ELDENLORD89 I think games like LoL, Warzone and Fortnite can afford not having a Single player mode thanks to being F2P games. A person can theoretically try them for free and abandon it in a few minutes without feeling like they wasted their money.
Most fighting games are AAA priced games, so they need Single player content and other modes to justify the purchase, like classic COD games or Halo. (I remember Rainbow Six receiving plenty of criticism regarding its lack of content outside of the main Multiplayer modes.
I think a big problem is just how hard it is to get into. Like you have to pay 60 dollars for a game of a genre you don't really play. Then you have to hope that the game has an active playerbase. You have to basically get a controller because sure, you can play on keyboard but it sucks. Especially if you are new to the genre. And even after all that, the most you can do is play the same mode online and hope you don't get matched up against some dude with 1000 games on his character who has relentlessly studied the frame data for years and beats the living hell out of you with you not getting to do anything. It just makes you want to quit instanty. If you don't have friends to play fighting games with its just though
Started playing dbfz a few days ago and just met a guy with like 500 ranked games and lost off like 6 interactions. Then i search for an other game and meet the same guy again. I just alt f4'd. Like I'm sorry but i just don't enjoy getting combo'ed the whole game
@@kartonkopf1332 lmao git gud.
you either put hundreds of hours "learning" the characters or you're just gonna get absolutely destroyed, and who wants to just play to learn instead of having fun with some other actuall good game
Keyboard is goated though, i could never play on controller
@@kartonkopf1332tbf, you're playing DBFZ. FighterZ is a notoriously terrible fighting game when it comes to giving the one getting hit a chance. Seriously, if you're playing low ranked what you're probably going against is some guy spamming autocombos, and in the end all you have to do is punish his raw super dash and then you get your turn.
I've wanted to take fighting games seriously and to improve but it's a rough mental barrier. Since there's usually nothing to earn in game, so the initial "lose constantly until good is obtained" feels even worse. I also have anxiety because I hate the idea of joining a community when I am not already decent. Feels like I'd waste everyone's time because the experienced player gains nothing from beating me constantly. I'd like to try but social anxiety sucks
Im in a similar boat when it comes to more smaller fighting game communities since I've only played FighterZ alot, even then I'm not so great at it. Theres also how many of the communities have barely anyone at lower skill levels which is what stopped me from playing Guilty Gear and almost Blazblue as well
I'll say it honestly because people deserve to hear it: yeah, beating up on far weaker players is incredibly boring. There is something that changes this dynamic drastically: whenever that weaker player has a sincere desire to improve. This acts in the self-interest of the stronger player as well, because teaching somebody else invariably leads to their own improvement in many ways. It's also a lot more fun than whaling on a silent sandbag. You don't even have to say or type a word, necessarily; when I see someone learning and adapting even a little bit through gameplay, this is enough motivation for me to continue playing with them. They earn my respect as a player for being actively engaged in the conversation of battle.
Communities built around improving as a beginner exist for all but the very least populated fighting games. If you approach the game and the players in these communities with an attitude of self-improvement, you'll find that people are quite welcoming, willing to answer questions, run scenarios in-game to help you understand how to beat them, etc.
That being said, you should at least know what the buttons of the game are. And I understand social anxiety may still stop you from getting this process started; that's outside the scope of what I can do for you. I can only offer my assurance that practically every fighting game's community wishes they had more motivated new players who want to learn and improve, no matter how good they may or may not be.
@@dilly2760 A good amount is social anxiety, mainly because I am not new to fighting games. For example in strive I hover around floors 7-9 when I play online. There's now a massive skill gap between me and my friends because I didn't have as much time to play when they got to grinding. Now that I do have time the skill difference is so great that no one has fun anymore. It's not fun since I'm not a clueless new player, I'm just genuinely not great. I know the only solution is to just get to the grind now, but my motivation is very low, that's why I made my comment. I was frustrated, but talking about it helped lol. Thanks for the genuine response.
It seems weird that in a video about mainstream appeal of fighting games, other than a single throw away comment, you wouldn't discuss Super Smash Bros, i.e.. by far the most mainstream fighting game for the past 20 years. It's certainly very different from traditional fighting games, so much so that it's existence required the creation of the distinction between "platform fighter" and "traditional fighter", but there is a reason that it has succeeded to an extent that other fighting games haven't, and it isn't just the Nintendo IP (although that does help a lot).
The number 1 factor for mainstream appeal is bad-player appeal; ie. can a player with little skill meaningfully play your game. As such, accessibility is extremely important for mainstream appeal, especially the types of accessibility that aren't related to actual game difficulty. The most important part of accessibility, imo, is *how easy it is to learn* the basics, how much time and effort does it take to learn the absolute bare minimum such that you can actually play the game. Not bare minimum as in understanding the mechanics and strategy, but that you know how to move your character and how to achieve the most basic objectives, like how to attack or shoot your opponent, how to search for loot, or how to hit a ball into a goal. Understanding the difference between different attacks, or guns, or strategies is simply irrelevant for a new player. Just teach them the minimum as fast as possible so that you can actually put them into a game. A new player is like a newborn baby, they have to learn how to control their legs and stand before they can even be concerned with something that we might consider trivial, like walking.
Most mainstream competitive games are shooters. The bare minimum knowledge to play those games is "these buttons/stick make you move, the mouse/other-stick controls the camera, and this button shoots". And that's literally all the information you need to just be able to *start* playing. Obviously there are usually more buttons that do important stuff, but a completely new player probably doesn't need to know about those until they've at least gotten the hang of moving and shooting. Non-shooter mainstream games still have a similar degree of simplicity. A game like rocket league is just "here's the movement stick/buttons, and then here's the accelerate, boost, and jump buttons", learn how to move around first, then figure out the important stuff later.
Most fighting games are not just hard games, but hard to learn games as well. You usually have 4-6 attack buttons, many dozens of moves, command inputs (which are character specific to make things worse), and a relatively complex blocking system, all added on to games which historically have really bad or no tutorials and few resources in game to learn those most basic of controls and mechanics. It's a massive hurdle to overcome for a brand new player. It's why I gave up on Tekken 7 within a few days, but also why I ended up sticking with Strive; the difference that a well made tutorial aimed at complete noobs makes can not be overstated.
Smash is by far the most accessible fighting game I've ever played, containing one of the largest differences between skill floor and ceiling of any game I know of. The entire game can be played with just a joystick (or even D-Pad) and 3 buttons. Characters have ~20 moves each, but because they are all directional inputs using one of the 2 buttons, it is extremely easy to learn how to use all of them, and also makes it really easy to learn how to apply moves you haven't used before. It's really just a matter of "press the direction you want to attack in, and press the attack button". A completely new player doesn't need to know the distinction between tilts and smash attacks and aerials, they can get the bare minimum knowledge to play the game by just attacking in a direction. The bare minimum knowledge is so simple, that a player can get into a game as fast as possible so that they can actually start to develop a deeper knowledge of the moves and mechanics.
The amount of time between starting a game completely clueless, and being able to play the game by yourself, even really poorly is, in my opinion, the #1 goal of accessibility. It's not to make the gameplay easier. It's to make the game easier to play.
If I could print out and frame this comment, I would.
bro speaks the language of fax
Love this
I've always said that Smash is like learning to play the piano, and FGs are like learning to play the guitar. Obviously, mastering the piano takes thousands and thousands of hours and it not something that just anyone can do. But, if you have absolutely no idea about music, or have never before played an instrument in your life, and you sit down in front of a piano for 10 minutes and just mess around, you will probably figure out how to play something remotely musical. At the end of the day, you're pretty much just pushing a button.
Guitar on the other hand... holy moly, if you have never tried to play the guitar before, and you assume that it must not be that hard... you're going to be in for a rough time. Just to be able to make that thing make a sound that isn't offensive to the ears takes, AT MINIMUM, weeks of practice. You need to use muscles in your left hand that you didn't even know were there. You need to be able to coordinate the strumming of your right hand, to the chords of your left hand. You need to develop a thick layer of dead skin on your fingers, just to be able to play for more than ten minutes and have it not physically hurt... and this is just to make the guitar make somewhat of a musical sound.
Smash is not a fighting game.
3:58 right off the bat you don't understand; when I'm playing a fighting game, I don't want to do homework, I don't care for auto combos that make it easy, I want to LEARN the mechanics AND have it where the learning curve isn't a WALL but a CURVE. Why was Neon White fun? A good learning curve! In that game when I lost/ failed to do good I was able to at least LEARN and not have it be a wall for the mistakes I was dealing with!
Whenever most people discuss this topic they alwasy just end on "presumed difficulty from the wider public" and so its interesting to see the genre more directly compared to contemporary nultiplayer games that do way better in terms of raw player numbers. Weaker marketing is definitely a factor. Another could be a rough experience in the past. I personally had had a rough experience playing smash with my friends and losing so often it felt bad I was terrified of playing traditional fighters until I eventually decided to try the genre after hearing bridget's strive theme and relating to it so much, but I was still scared of spending the money of a full game on strive from fear I'd not enjoy it, dbfz was on sale at the time so I bought that and ended up enjoying it and now here I am entering beginner tournaments and aiming to consistently hit top 8 in strive, having people jump that hurdle whether its presumed or based on a bad experience they already had is a big deal.
This is mostly why I think FG's don't really get mainstream. You will get steamrolled at the start and it's gonna feel terrible. League, Warzone and Fortnite also have similar beginner experiences, but they have the advantage of being mostly played on teams with your friends, while also letting you progress through things even when losing (be it a Battle Pass, account level or just making progress in your daily missions)
Playing through a FG online is a lonely experience, and it takes a lot of mental strength to keep playing daily. Couple that with mostly mediocre single player content, AAA game pricing on top of season passes, and other barriers of entry and you have a pretty low chance of convincing people to play your game.
I'm currently developing a FG with a roguelike campaign mode that will help teach the player the basics behind the game. It's also my way of attempting to familiarize casual players with the concept of fighting games. Im hoping that this can help start moving the genre in a better direction.
@@ashtonphoenyx That sounds fun can’t wait when you are ready to release it (no rush though) :)
It's really all about how many dopamine hits per minute on average.
@@ashtonphoenyx i wish you could bookmark youtube comments, that sounds like a really cool idea
Some of my best memories were hanging out at a buddies house with like 4 of my friends and we all had a tournament on whatever fighting games we had on hand. I had forgotten what we played cause this was years ago, and back when Strive released, an old friend showed it to me, and immediately the nostalgia flooded in, because back when I was but a wee lad, we were playing Guilty Gear XX. If my buddy hadn’t sent me the link to the Strive reveal trailer, I would’ve never gotten back into Guilty Gear.
Tldr; FG’s need to step up their marketing cause holy shit I missed out on 20 years of Guilty Gear games
I think your comment highlights one of the main reasons why FG's don't really explode in popularity. The social aspect. Fighting games were born in Arcades, where people played and interacted locally. Nowadays, modern habits have shaped multiplayer games into predominantly online endeavors, and FG's still suffer from that shift to this day. Unless you have a local community, you'll spend most of your starting experience being steamrolled by strangers online, alone. It's a frustrating venture and you're paying $60 for it.
That part about the marketing is veeeery true, can't remember the last time I saw an ad on yt for a fighting game, fighting games deserve more love
14:07 This only works if all of your friends are into a specific fighting game. Convincing a single dabbler to jump on a game they aren't familiar with just to get smoked is a TALL task. Let alone an entire group.
Simple answer: if you’re not good at fighting games, you’re not gonna enjoy them. Eventually, you’ll play something else. Since many are not, it has lost its luster and is still a popular genre amongst its community, but it’s smaller than back in the day when you would ask your friend’s parents if they could spend the night over so y’all could play games all night. It’s just not like that any longer. Shooting games are less complex to get a kill, thus, they’re gonna attract people who are skilled and unskilled players. They also allow you to potentially hack to be even better, but you cannot hack a fighting game where you have to beat your opponent & there is no way to substitute what it takes. RPG’s allow almost anyone a story experience and a chance for the player to win because ultimately that is the point, especially if it is linear like God of War games used to be, before the 2018 & new Ragnorok which is a bit more open world, strategy, etc.
Ait I'm a couple weeks late but to add:
Imo the actual biggest issue with most fighting games is how hard it is to... I guess perform in them?
And i dont mean being at a competitive or even semi-ok level, but in general.
For example, games you mentioned, like Valorant or Fortnite, to do very basic you just move your aim reticle on enemy and press left mouse.
In LoL you just right-click on red untill it dies.
In most fighting games, however, to do your char's moves, you need fairly precise inputs that, in addition, might be even harder depending on what input device you using.
Like, me for example. I like concept of fighting games - reads, predictions n shit. I have something like 1.5k hours in For Honor, if you count it as fighting game. However, each time i try "real" fighting game, i just... Stop. Cuz even if I'd be able to correctly predict opponent's move, I can't properly input 6246S, not on MnK or even conventional gamepad. And I'm not about to break my fingers and dedicate 40 hours to do so.
Look, Smash is pretty mainstream, for that very same reason. It's easy to start.
Having to break your fingers to get your moves out can be really annoying and frustrating for sure
I’ve tried to get a few of my friends that don’t play fighting games to try a few of them out. The ones that have little to 0 interest just aren’t interested in the prospect of 2 characters on a 2d plane on a small stage. They play a little bit, I explain some mechanics but those mechanics arent interesting in the first place because the games come off as archaic or cheap (especially when they’re used to playing AAA games on a regular basis). Then I have some friends that wanted to try to get into them but don’t stick with them. I think that’s because for a lot of people the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Most people are more interested in immersion, adventure, ease of access, GUNS, sports or a power fantasy.
Some people are more interested in stats. I’ve seen someone say they want rpg leveling in a Mortal Kombat game and didn’t see the obvious balance problem it would face in an online setting til I pointed it out
@@notproductiveproductions3504 yea an example of external gratification. It's super addictive, only really requires time to grind, usually no skill gate. Easy dopamine kick. I love them.
@@notproductiveproductions3504 Idk Injustice 2 did ok with the Gear system. As long as there is a competitive mode (no stats/Base Characters) it could work. I think it could work if maybe you had the Main online experience be ranked of sorts. You get matched with people at your around your power level. As much as I like gear, I'd argue from both a commercial and gameplay POV it makes much more sense for most of that stuff to be cosmetic only. An Item Shop, Loot Boxes or even a Fifa-style transfer market could be a cool implementation as a source of Cosmetics (Gear, Intros, Outros, Finishers, Emotes, Colour-Palettes, Profiles, Music, Backgrounds, etc..). Commercially that stuff could elevate the game to whole other level. But if your talking about RPG Levelling then a Skill tree would undoubtedly be a revolutionary addition to fighting games, akin to when they finally give us 3d Arena's as a pose to the classic 2d stages or the trash 2.5d circles in the current "3d fighting games". A Skill tree would enable you to completely choose the variant of your fighter you wish to play with. You could start off with a really bare bones character and then slowly progress in your chosen direction. It wouldn't affect Ranked because that's level locked and you could turn your fighters into absolute beasts. Imagine playing Scorpion in Mk11 and slowly unlocking the abilities and then choosing which ones to use. You could create a Scorpion that focuses on The Get over Here, Fire Breath, Fire Damage over time, Teleport etc. The same applies to other characters and it's really just an evolution of the Variation system that's already in that game. I'd be interested to see if you think if there's a hole in this kind of system, because it's late and I'm spitballing but I defo think this could work.
@@himum3429 I mean yes it had very few complaints. But we must strive for even less complaints
Depending on if you consider for honour a fighting game or not. They had the war map thing. That was quite cool
On the topic of for honor, the way they structured their currency, unlocks and cosmetics are a great example of what fighting games could be like. Unlockable characters, custom taunts or win screens, cosmetics and skins, are all things that keep new players invested.
@@Roboardo totally agree. I fully expect sf6..7? Whatever the new one is to sell emotes for the vs screen.
While animations and win poses are costly, i would happily pay 10-20 quid for a really good victory animation
Honestly, For Honor, for me, is kind of a realistic take on an arena fighter... and it works.
For Honor is a fighting game it just plays differently from the rest and its approach to combat.
Kinda like how Tekken and Soul Caliber (which are also 3D fighting games) are nothing like Guilty Gear, Melty Blood, Marvel Vs Capcom, Darkstalkers etc.
Depends on what’s stopping us from calling it otherwise
People get tired of throwing the same punch and kick 100 times so they move on to the next game. The entry level is way too high for these games in terms of skill so people naturally don’t give a shit.
I think there's some ideas that might not have been included, though perhaps simplistic in and of themselves.
1. Shooters have been standardized for years. Watch someone control an avatar and you know exactly how they're doing it. The tools between different shooters are all very similar. Hit scan? Reticule to face. Actual projectile? Compete against Canadian, UK and US special forces for world longest shots (cool fantasy there, to boot). Everyone know how a gun works. How does a DP work? is it motion or single button? Does it hit in front and behind? does it spin or wiggle? is it flying, or is it grounded? Is it a combo starter or is it a combo ender? Does it have invincibility? Which type of unsee-able invincibility is it? Throw, Air, Full, etc? Which meter is the block gauge, super gauge, comeback or special gauge? Which particle effects mean what? Why is it all diharrea Christmas lights?
I just caught Will it Kill and they whole point of the show is that you don't know anything about anything.
Do cool shit is the starting point for some players, for everyone else, you might as well be watching static. You can't see the green from the brown, never mind the forest for the trees.
2. Zeitgeist. In the west in general we no longer have the martial art fighting fantasy that many of these games came from. Almost all major developers are Japanese where that long cultural heritage of civil unrest and justice started with martial arts (since often swords and other weapons were illegal to the general populous). Shaolin monks have a lot in common with slaves and Capoeira in that regard. They have Sun Wu Kong, we have Don Quixote. In the west, our civil unrest is predicated on the gun. Warfare is based around the fantasy of the infantryman (though I hope most people realize that's been a dead man's game for a very long time). Like scary movies being a safe way to confront attackers, terrifying events and supernatural opposition, gun games gives everyone a "safe and fun" way to play at the next war. Never mind American propaganda that always needs a boogieman and that war is always just around the corner.
Seriously guys, no war and a stable economy, the 90s were amazing.
While there have been a few more recent martial arts movie promoting the fantasy, there's like 1 mainstream every few years while there's another infantryman movie every 6 months.
Often in the west, we think (at least i certainly do) think street fights are down an dirty scrums. You might know how to throw a punch, but often is in the context multiple vs one. It's a vicious beatdown. While i don't believe any less of eastern violence, pop culture presents as the fantasy expert beats thugs, professional jockey for position with the fancy maneuvering, and many other subtleties I can't explain and don't know because I'm not a trained fighter.
Holyfield could wipe the floor with 99% of the planet, but boxing is "just a sport".
The fact that guns or the fantasy of using them is marketed heavily towards us definitely plays a huge role in people’s decisions. Also, when attempting creating combat systems it’s much easier to replicate projectile combat. Even the military uses tactical fps games for virtual training.We still don’t have simulation based melee combat in games that work anywhere close to melee combat, mainly because the human body is just so complex. So for people that want a less “gamey” video game, they just probably won’t like fighting games.
Agreed almost entirely! But i think in an attempt to both make these games more entertaining and to match that sort of complexity, "gamey" properties like juggles, and 20 foot punches make the combat counter intuitive. How often is "how did i get hit by that" actually "how does that even work"? I've seen UFC and Boxing games that were pretty straight forward and realistic, covering most of the footsie spectrum without resort to "flying bullshit from 20 miles away". There was one Boxing game in particular i loved the controller scheme: I forget which, but you controlled each hand with a different analog stick and dodged with the shoulder buttons. You threw a punch by "drawing" that punch with the analog stick. Your thumbs became tiny arms. lol. Wonderfully simple, but without practice i thought the inputs were absolutely unresponsive. /shrug
@@justinkeck2980 Fight Night Round 4 (?). EA Sports UFC (2-4) & the Fight Night (Round 3-4/Champion) games are fantastic combat sports games. Very intuitive if you understand the sports at even a base level. I personally think 2D fighters are unintuitive as hell. Crouch block to stop 85% of attacks? Umm.
I really am starting to develop the opinion that the dimensions are the primary thing holding fighting games back. Games are going to get better graphically now due to the PS4 exclusives pushing that forward. The physics of games are going to get better with Battlefield, Forbidden West and Breath of the Wild pushing that forward. The stories in games can be amazing, As can the Gameplay loops. But none of this matters if you can't even see your surroundings/interact with the environment. Fighting games give you the illusion of a 3d plain of existence in cutscenes (and trailers) then they snap you back to the old school arcade style fighters of the past with their inability to allow you to move left or right. 3D fighters were made when people initially realised these limitations but they don't quite go far enough. I think a 3rd Person style Fighter in a SMALL arena is the answer. Think about it, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War Ragnarok, Spiderman Ps5, Jedi Fallen Order. Look at the cinematic Boss Fights in those games. There isn't an open feeling to it like rest of those games, it's much more tight (like a fighter), all while retaining the 3rd person perspective. Imagine everytime you fought someone online in a fighting game, it was like a mini boss fight. Like Vader in Fallen order, Deathstroke in Arkham Origins, Thor in God of War Ragnarok. You have to make sure to keep the arenas small to make sure it doesn't turn into something a little bigger like an open exploration or Hero Shooter but If you manage that you can retain the fighting game heritage andd dna all while completely revolutionising the genre. It'd be an innovation at such a scale that whether it was Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken etc. Who took the risk, they'd become the de facto industry leader (Much like Fortnite in Multiplayer shooters, League in Mobas, Chess in Board game lol). I'm just spitballing here tbh, but I'd be interested to here what you think.
@@himum3429 Well, I'm thinking people have been addressing this in exactly the way you're describing. 3-d Combat/beat'em ups/adventure games give the player more freedom and tactical options. We don't think of these as fighting games but all the footsies and mind games are present, so what then is the mechanical difference between these and "standard" fighting games. What makes a fighting game feel like a fighting game.
I think this boils down to one particular overlap: In fighting games, your ability to execute combat and execute maneuvering are on the same part of the controller. Block in a 2-d fighter? give up movement. Block in any 3-D action/fighting game? You CANCEL movement by overriding it. Dodging in a 3-d fighter isn't always a Direction input, it depends if it overlaps with too many other mechanics. If you can dodge, odds are then that jumping is a special move of some kind. There are ugly, game specific concessions everywhere. If you're right-handed, it puts a large load on your left side to learn and control a cornerstone control mechanic. You LACK multitasking in a very limiting way, and is why moves like wave dashing and korean dashing completely change how a game is intended to be played (and worse are also completely unavailable to someone ignorant of them). A lack of options forces players to interact with the opposing character with certain outcomes in mind, often with the intention to keep people in a melee scrum as opposed to falling back to neutral.
The word of the day seems to be precision as all the "3-D" "action" and "adventure" examples we've cited all have felt very imprecise. These games don't need GrandMaster-esque mastery, because so often they don't feel like you need to be a half inch out of the hitbox (or bad AI makes the player as lazy as the developer). Fighters are normally side-on as you described because you need to know where to stand to give yourself a close shave. Anyone normally involved in speedrunning (PvE) would have that level of knowledge, but an average player sees much more success with less experience (relative to fighting games).
In 3-d action games as well, a large portion of them have a fundamental, spammable move that is invulnerable and/or armored to allow exciting gameplay. Not everyone is on the 1HP challenge run train. This makes for a different playstyle again, as invulnerable moves are extremely dangerous and risky in fighters. Dodge rolling in Dark Souls/Elden ring, or other melee-centric action games are very generous, but flubbing a roll is still how you end up losing. I'd call any Souls-borne game a "FighterLite" in that regard.
A realistic physics system leads to a lot more ground based interaction, so we end up with a ufc/wrestling set of commands and I don't know if a 3rd control scheme would help most fighters. Monster Hunter World does a great job of allowing players to jump off walls and climb on ladders for advantage (absolutely a sparring game). Virtua Fighter (and probably Tekken) has minor wall bouncing such that a block that pushes you into a wall creates blockstun or trips you and breaks your guard. Sometimes, that environmental interaction is there in a major way, it's just so poorly explained that you're again pissed at something you didn't know would screw you over.
I strongly consider darksouls/eldenring to be exactly what you're hoping for, (without the overlap) especially people expressly building characters for regulated play (ie lvl 50 level cap) and using those in-game pvp matchmaking systems.
Beyond that, I don't know because i think most of these ideas are being explored already. Which, considering the success of elden ring, i think we've already decided the innovator.
The part about a game where teams or clans fight each other and receive a reward at the end of the week was done in a fg. It was mkx. You would pick a clan and fight for global points and at the end of the week, you would get some rewards like a clan fatality.
In my mind, a large and mostly understated issue is that arcade fighting games are an antiquated genre.
Fighting games never adapted or changed to cater to the console and PC market in a way that other genres did. They fundamentally are just arcade games ported to consoles, even in their more modern forms. With rare exceptions, they have a single core experience in mind and the game's design and features are all meant to feed into that core experience. In contrast with other genres, especially FPS games, fighting games don't have nearly the same level of variety in content or ways to enjoy them. And that is the biggest thing that changed with the jump from arcades to consoles.
Because fighting games tend to be competitive and very personal, I always thought it was a good thing fighting games didn't become main stream.
After seeing a crowd sing Guilty Gear Strive's Smell of the Game with Daisuke Ishiwatari present in the crowd, I am glad the genre still maintains this underground, grassroots kind of vibe. I
I will say the fighting game community and tournaments as a whole have more appeal and reach now then they ever have. I am curious where iut will grow from here. Really good video that covered this multi-faceted topic because it isn't as simple to discuss as it appears.
As much as I like fighting games, the community is kind of full of nobheads who scream at every minor or major change and are quick to give the stink eye to any new fighting game just trying to find its place. Hard for devs to get in, hard for new players to get in.
Aight, I get that I'm late to this Vid, But an Important factor you missed is Ease of Access. The mechanical skill needed to execute "basic" combos and do supers is something that turns many players off, especially when in other games, The most power tools are locked behind good aim at the most and not several complex inputs intentionally difficult to string along
Heck, I'll even go further and mention pulling off regular *special moves* can be hard. I can't even reliably throw a fireball.
I can confirm this. In theory I love fighting games, but in practice I never found a one-on-one fighting game that I could play.
Most of the people that don't play fighting games have the idea of a game where learning and executing attacks is easy, and the dificulty consists in learning what is the most apropriated situation to use which attack to which opponent. In reality the dificulty is to understand why nothing happends when someone follows the commands.
@@arturferrao7353 This so much! I "QCF" then hit punch so a fireball should come out, right? Why is the character throwing a normal punch?
Or I block then hit forward and punch. Even if I don't accidentaly crouch or jump...WHY IS THE CHARACTER WALKING FORWARD? I PUT IN THE COMMAND!
Fighting Games are the only kinda game that you hear casters at the highest levels talk about "mis-inputs".
Simple
In fighting games, you almost exclusively compete, but rarely if ever toy
In most mainstream games, you can almost always toy, and sometimes you can compete
Most regular people see games as toys to play with rather than competitions to sweat over
The reason I get to play most games are because I have seen people playing these games on TH-cam of my country, and I don't mean ads, I mean people having fun with the game, Minecraft, League of Legends, Rocket League, Celeste, Skyrim, but for fighting games in specifically* I never saw a popular TH-camr or a fighting game on a popular video or livestream in my country.
They are, if you consider Smash Bros a fighting game. It's a massive mainstream hit. The thing is, you would have drastically change how fighting games are and how they work in order to appeal to a mainstream audience. Smash is a great blueprint for how to do that, but a lot of FGC folks don't really consider Smash a fighting game in the same way they do Street Fighter or Guilty Gear. I think FGC people don't really *want* fighting games to be mainstream, because the times they have been able to break into the mainstream, people insist that "isn't a fighting game." Most people just don't want to dedicate hundreds and hundreds of hours to a journey of self-improvement (which is essentially what playing fighting games is), and there's nothing wrong with that. What does it matter if it's niche or not? So long as you're passionate about it and enjoy playing them, why does it matter? Not everything is for everyone.
Yeah I don't want every game to be mainstream, but it also sucks when you can't play any matches online cause the games are dead... Good luck finding a match in KOFXIII online
Mortal kombat is pretty mainstream
Smash is a party game tho.
Smash bros is a party game it doesn't count
i would like to see a game that combines fps and fighting games, basically like metal gear with its cqc
Very good video that covers a lot more things rather than just "fighting games". Great job Gekko.
I've been trying to break into the FGC for two years, but I'm too anxious to try and join the community so it's been rough
All the controversy going on?
@@Xraellium No, just normal social anxiety
You could always just play the game and not talk to people
Stay away from esports and ecelebs and just play whatever you want and like.
It's not an admission test dude there's nothing to be anxious about.
because people pickup a fighting game, lose once or twice then give up
Most people already spend 40 + hours a week doing repetitive tasks at work for money, when they are done most people don't want to invest another 40 + hours learning to make a dude punch better for not money. The most main stream you will get is anime fighters where the point is to play it for a week, or two with watching people do super moves.
I'm so tired of hearing about internal motivation to be the best or want to spend hours learning combos. The vast majority of gamers don't wanna do that shit
@@mor3gan285 I look at it this way. I can spend 20 hours learning how to cancel a punch mid animation, or I can spend 20 hours playing bio shock. Punching better, or go on a undersea scifi adventure with a well written story. What do you think most people are going to pick?
@@dmcoub78 I'm stuck on whether to put time into learning a combo that I can't even do charge motions consistently for yet. I just spent a game in SF5 yesterday just doing Honda's headbutt trying to get it down but it saps the enjoyment of how I want to win. Not through spammy shit but through something that looks competent. I don't want to be the best but good enough to get past the fog of being unfamiliar with the genre that I can pick up any game and win.
@@j.r.765nothing wrong with likening fighting games. Issue is with how they play the best you will ever get is a nich player base.
Smash bros?
Fighting games rarely offer value for money unless you know going in that you're going to spend a lot of time online. Tekken 7 and Strive are very guilty of this the single player experience is pathetic. SF5 got better eventually, The arcade ladders and survival mode changes added plenty of value but the damage was done by then.
Fighting game developers need to realise that not everyone wants to go online and get smashed there have to be other ways to play. I don't gel with netherealms fighting mechanics but the sheer amount of stuff to do is why they sell so well. I think SF6 is looking to emulate that while also having better social features with the battle hub.
Fighting game singleplayer content isnt even worth the pricetag though which is another issue, at this point id imagine it would be better for them to sell a fighting game at like 20 or 30 cheaper for people who just wanna play singleplayer but even that feels like a scam, this is of course without mentioning the dlc which you wont ever use if youre serious about the game (youre not gonna main 30 different characters) but forced to purchase just because theyll be locked even in training modes. SF6 succeded to a degree with world tour (atleast from what ive heard it wasnt a selling point to me) but the game still fits into a niche.
One thing that I noticed is that most people do not want to lose and it be their own fault. If you play rocket league, LOL, or valorant, it's possible to get carried as long as you aren't terrible. In a fighting game, if you get smacked, it is your own fault and there is no way to avoid the inevitable ass whooping unless the internet connection fails. Another thing is that, while fighting games aren't any harder to learn that other games, the process of learning a fighting game can be absolutely boring. You have to either spend a lot of time in training mode alone or play against other people are suffer until you get better. In fortnite, you can learn while having fun on a team, you don't have to suffer alone.
I believe the only way a fg can be fun is when you are motivated to get better and getting better is satisfying enough to motivate you to do it
The majority of people don’t want that, and i think its very understandable that the genre is so hard to get into even for people who want to try and get into them
I’ve been playing fighting games for about 30 year. Strive made me officially walk away from the genre recently. I love fighting games, but it’s the genre I put the most time into and I still struggle to make any impact.
Damn is strive that hard i have not played it yet.Have you tried street fighter 5 it is pretty easy to learn or just wait for 6 to come out in a few month's DNF is not any good one wrong bad move and you will eat a 52 hit combo🤣 just remember age plays a big factor in fighting games i am 42 so my reflexes are slow now compared to what they was in my 20's it can be a challenge to win alot against these young players drinking those energy drinks lol.
I agree as games like mmo’s have “achievements” you unlock this skin, this item, this title by doing something that usually takes a grind. Fighting games could include this. They could also include special skins, titles, auras, or things like that for perfecting a character, placing in a certain rank in a season, making skins that matched their fav pro player in that game. When I say make a skin like that, I mean I’d say SonicFox won a tournament then the character he used could have a skin available for purchase for the players. Things like this is what keeps people playing WoW and League and many more. A game that I feel is a great example and one that I’ve grown to love is “Sea of Thieves”.
Tekken 7 Treasure Battle mode says hello, also fighting games have had all sorts of unlockables in game YEARS before online gaming was even a thing 🙄
We already have to consider e-sports are still technically a niche. A big thing is of course the fact fighting games are 1v1 and since there's no team to blame, you can't avoid the fact that you might just suck, and fighting games are still considered "hard" even with games like Strive (technically you could say games started getting simplified since MVC2 and "easy" since P4A) have simplified the genre a lot to attract newcomers, and people don't like taking a lot of time to learn something they won't be playing all the time. You need to WANT to be good, instead of naturally getting good, I guess you could say. (Anyway reader, you should go binge all GekkoSquirrel videos, subscribe, and if possible, donate to the patreon!)
i think that a game being competitive is a force pushing *towards* mass appeal, rather than away from it.
I'll explain: if you want your game to have a competitive seen, you would want as many people playing it as possible so that you have a large pool of players to draw competitors from, and also because competitive games are by necessity multiplayer games, and multiplayer games are only fun if you have people to play with/against.
The most mainstream thing about fighting games that happened to fighting games is actually Jack-O challenge lol
It's the only thing that became so viral, it's even caught on by non gamers, random influencers and celebrities on tiktok and twitter.
I love that idea about the club battles and ranks and leaderboards. That would be super dope, and it would be so cool to be fighting against people for rank that's not JUST your own.
I know I'm speaking for a lotta casuals when I say this, but if you want to have players enjoy characters outside of internal motivation, *do like Brawl, and make a Good fuckin' Story Mode that doesn't revolve around just 1v1s.*
Literally something like a beat-em-up or brawler style that shifts away from the 1v1 aspect helps make casuals get attached to the game and its mechanics more. Players progress through the main level lobbing through countless goons and enemies, allowing for the eventual 1v1 character bossfights to feel more engaging. Plus, having it be sectioned as Level>Bossfight is much better for pacing, as most recent fighting games are just 1v1 character duels that feel like Bossfight after Bossfight after Bossfight, making the story a dull train ride and borderline exhausting by the end. On top of this, this makes the fighting game _have more game in it's game_ so that you have more playtime and experience with said game.
I will die on this hill; a fighting game's principles are to make good of mechanics, controls, characters, lobbies, match-making, and rollback. But the story must not, and cannot for the love of god, be just 1v1 after 1v1 after 1v1 until credits roll. Leave that to online, give the "single player" their single player experience.
As an addendum, allow your game's story mode, on top of it not just being 1v1 ad nauseam, to be meaningful in teaching the player the mechanics of the game and why the player should learn them. More importantly, reinforce that knowledge with the eventual 1v1s to become knowledge checks, and aren't easy. The best way to do this is to let the story mode dictate the characters for the section and then have them be unlocked after certain points, with the player already having understood the gist of what to expect from picking up said characters. That way the story teaches how to play as each character to their strengths and pinpointing their weaknesses that need overcoming. Combine this all with competent enemies towards the later game and 1v1s against characters you've already unlocked, and you essentially teach the player how to play your fighting game with a modicum of confidence.
And that right there is the key. Having the player build long term confidence through the story mode to give it a go online, even if they get their butt kicked, will be much better than a burst of short term confidence from the archaic nonstop 1v1s. The long term makes players want to learn stuff after they get schooled going 0-10, whereas the short term would've caused an uninstall after going 0-3.
Agreed and more Single player content in general to really give context behind the characters and game world. Street Fighter 6 is looking to do just this and I'm really happy about it. Soul Calibur was good with this too. Despite SCVI not being popular, I loved how robust the single player content and campaign mode was where you could play as your customizable character.
I really think that Riot's project L is gonna be a big hit, considering every points from your video, Free to play, Unlockable skins and characters with in game rewards(Long term goals/show off) and potentially huge ID appeal considering the impact LoL had those previous decades. If the gameplay is good the game will have a lot of players.
The problem fighter games have is that they are 1v1 and pretty straightforward. It's all "see that guy right there? Beat him up." Then you win or you lose. Compare that to the other "competitive" games, which have a lot more players and a lot of things to do that aren't direct competitive combat. You don't have to win an entire round of Fortnite, you just have to get a few kills along the way. You might even just enjoy exploring the map. If Fortnite were boiled down to JUST the "endgame" in which it is you and one other person in a tiny arena trading shots at each other, then far fewer people would play it. Also, in many team based games, there are "less competitive" roles to them, supports and healers, and that isn't to say that being really good at these roles is not important on a pro team or something, but playing casually, there's a lot less pressure to them, so that can also help to expand the audience beyond the "sweaty" players. I think this is also part of the reason why a game like Smash Bros is so successful, because while you can play it at a competitive level, it's also a lot more fun to goof around with, and while you might lose most matches, you can still score a lot of fun KOs along the way.
In other words, you don't like games that require any real depth or effort to win, gotcha, keep on with your Fortnite victory dances kiddo 👍
@@travis92x I'm not speaking for myself here, I'm saying why they have a limited audience in general.
YOMI Hustle seems to help new players with its slower pace and its re-focusing of gameplay on strategy over execution. Another big barrier to entry is having to pay a full price tag for a game you might not even like, in a genre you might not even enjoy. So... here's a wild idea from someone who doesn't play fighting games, but on paper is likely a person who would like them:
A free to play mode, with limited movesets, characters, the ability to slow down the game, and the ability to have asymmetrical handicaps. This serves a number of purposes.
Firstly, by being free, it gives players a chance to try out the basics of the game, potentially with a friend who wants to get them into the game.
Secondly, by limiting the movesets, you focus the game more on fundamentals. It doesn't have to be balanced - that isn't the point of this mode. By limiting the characters, there's less to keep track of - DOTA2 has limited heroes mode for this purpose too, and I would not have learned DOTA2 without it!
Thirdly, by slowing down the game it makes actions significantly more clear. It also has a side effect of messing up established players timings as an indirect handicap for experienced friends getting a noob into the game. Imagine doing half speed 1v1s with a handicap against your noob friend, and you start noticing them getting the hang of things so you speed it up on the next one, until they are keeping track of the game at full speed - that's growth!
Fourthly, asymmetrical handicaps let you rebalance the match. Maybe an experienced player could set themselves to have only 1hp, so a new player just has to get a single hit off, while the experienced player does their best to play defensively and only do punishes. I've done similar in MOBAs back when I played them, where punishing mistakes when they happened but not forcing errors through pressure helped my inexperienced friends gain skill in laning.
As a whole, this will let people try a limited version of the game, one that is easier to get into in terms of execution and memory, without having to justify a purchase, and gives a very frictionless proposition for experienced players to give to a potential new player.
Consider a new player to league: 'Hey, this game is free, come try it out. We can just play against bots while you learn the ropes, you don't need to worry about all the fancy stuff, just a low stakes chill experience.' That is a pretty easy suggestion to agree to.
Consider a new fighting game player: 'Hey, come pay $60 to play this game where you will suck for hours playing in full stakes matches against vastly more experienced players. I'll help you learn the massive roster, combo list, counters, hey where are you going?'
Now consider the following: 'Hey, you know how I keep trying to get you into X? Well you can play this new free mode. We can do some 1v1s, slow the game down to make it easier to see what is going on, and you only need to keep track of a few moves. I promise it's not going to be overwhelming. I can play with a handicap so you just need to get a hit off to win. Yeah, totally free, and if you like it, you can get the full game when you feel like it. Plus the people queuing for it are mostly noobs because the tryhards just play the regular version.'
Speaking for myself... I'd consider the latter. It could probably get me into the genre. I think many others would feel the same.
If we’re calling Persona 5 a mainstream game then I think it could be said that fighting games are mainstream too.
Fighting games not being F2P is probably the biggest hurdle a fighting game thats focused on multiplayer has. Fighting games made the most money in the arcade days of the ‘90s when the price of admission was .25¢. If you’re free, you’re going to instantly have more people playing the game online. I mean for one thing the game doesn’t cost anything, but also being free-to-play means everyone on consoles can play online for free too; where if it’s a $60 game those console players are also going to have to pay for whatever their systems online multiplayer is.
Move inputs don’t exactly help either. I’m sure anyone that plays fighting games have seen there friends that don’t play fighting games bounce off them when they can’t do stuff, or consistently do stuff. It’s probably no big surprise that the Smash Bros series has been the best selling fighting game since it came out...and that’s with the N64 and the GameCube (especially the GameCube) not exactly being the best of sellers. It is interesting to see Capcom doing the Modern Controls thing with Street Fighter 6, not really surprising given how much Smash Bros. Ultimate outpaced every fighting game on the market, but interesting nonetheless. I am a little surprised it took them this long; hell, back when they announced Marvel vs Capcom 3, I figured the Special Button in that game would be used like Modern Controls in SF6.
When it comes to retail releases I think a total lack of real proper single player content like a normal single player game has hurts fighting games too. Like you can be huge and not have any single player at all, but then you’ve got to be F2P. Otherwise, even if the multiplayer is the big draw like with Call of Duty and the old Halo games, you still need the single player. The really odd thing about fighting games total lack of single player is fighting games started as games focused on single player. Original Street Fighter is basically a boss rush game, and when the original Street Fighter team went off and made Fatal Fury they still kept that boss rush style but now the game had three playable characters instead of the one of Street Fighter. It’s also weird it’s taken Capcom until Street Fighter 6 to seemingly remember they did big single player things in Alpha 3 and the Rival School games.
The community never got me into fighting games. I got himself into fighting games. Growing up I always played them on my own. Most of my friends back then didn't play them. They said that fighting games were too hard. Which you forgot to mention in your vid.
Which now that i mention it you failed to talk about. Fighting games are harder to play then most games out there due to the complexity of motion inputs and execution.
I didn't find a community until I was in college now. They are my best friends. But most of them don't even play anymore unfortunately.
True but I think with streaming that has changed over the last 5-10 years
I started playing Strive (and traditional fighting games in general) about a week ago, and I'm stuck between floors 6 and 7 atm, but I love it so much! and guess how I got introduced to it? tiktoks about bridget and giovanna, and engaging with the community in the comments 😭
In my case it was the youtube creators that convince me to learn a fighting game and they also help me to understand that is not an impossible task. To be more specific, youtube creators playing and commenting the beta of Guilty Gear Strive hype me a lot to buy the game.
The big problem I have right now Is that I don't have the habit of playing the game, even when I enjoy the online experience most of the time, I know that I need a lot of time to git gud but all depend from my self motivation.
One thing I would throw in is FREE2PLAY.
Most fighting games are full price titles and will cost you 60bucks. I can try out Geshin or Valorant without that. I download it for free and in case I don't like it, I uninstall it.
Also Updates: Valorant gets a new character every 2 months+battle pass, skins, balance patches etc. Of course its easier to design a character with 4 abilities than a fg-character with like 30 moves... There are frequent hooks to go back because there is something new. Strive takes a bit longer, but its "just a char". Balance patches take half a year. And besides that we got a short movie.
Mainstream games don't just market for new players but for old players to return as well.
I started playing fighting games because I hate playing in a team and I love competition. I don't trust other people to cooperate well. Went from kof97 to getting strive.
Tho, for strive, i bought that because 1, i love anime; 2, the visuals are awesome; 3, its an actual fighting game that I can research for my own projects as a fighting game dev.
So far its the game i've played the most, catching up to around 250 hours or so in a matter of 1.5 years (i bought it in Aug21).
some things i think more fighting games should have are the king of the hill mode from mortal kombat, 3v3 party battles in dbfz and team battles/special battles in smash or guilty gear isuka. fighting games are best when their 1v1 but they really should have more modes where you can enjoy them as a group.
Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3 says hello(5v5) and Storm 4 and Storm Connections(both 3v3) says a big hi as well, people are truly clueless just how many fighting games there are out there 😅
It's a combination of community and the learning curb. It's too time consuming and sometimes it's not worth it for most. The time spent getting good with a character can be spent getting good in your life whether it be exercising, learning a new skill, honing creativity or better yet, learning real life martial arts.
Facts
I already told to all FGC on reddit, twitter or etc about this problem & there is 3 reasons the devs need to fix this
1. Fighting Games Was expensive AF:
Imagine buying the full game + you need the dlc expansion pack just for playing on it And after finishing the whole story mode then get bored playing it what next ? Installing N*DE mods ??
2. The gameplay was hard & so frustrated:
The lacks of new blood or casuals players for FGC is because the games was designed for them to learn all the combo until they finally got punished on match, if you wanna know that most of fighting games ranked mode & some players always stuck on low rank rather than middle or high rank
3. Need a good, fast & stabble connection internet:
FGC already know this they cry so hard to some developers for adding rollback netcode, dual connection, etc.
One of the main reasons is play space. You're confined to a very small play space where the arenas or levels are basically moving pictures.
It gets tiring seeing the same thing over and over again, especially when there aren't even many viable characters to choose from.
This contrasts with the open worlds of BR for example where there's a lot of stuff going on.
I think fighting games have long periods of intensity and not enough down time. Other competitive games have many seconds or minutes of nothing really happening where tension can build up, but also giving you room to mentally relax and goof around if needed. Even in smash bros, you can do well without being optimal, especially with 3+ players where you can avoid the conflict to reset yourself. Most traditional fighting game require CONSTANT counter play, which is definitely the appeal, but gives little flexibility to actually relax.
My friend had only played platform fighters and I had gotten into the Guilty Gear Strive character themes and he came across them and loved them. He wanted to get the game because he thought Bridget was cool so we both got the game and he loves it. He's not bad either for having 10 minutes of training in Smash Ultimate where I taught him Ryu's motion inputs.
That thing about the community doing all the advertising is totally true, the only reason I got interested or even found out about strive was cause a sfm used Smell of the Game and Armor Clad Faith. If not for that the only fighting game I would have ever played was smash bros.
1v1 games are uniquely situated to only appeal to a niche group. Same reason SC2 “died” when LoL took off. Ppl just don’t like the stress of losing and knowing it was just bc they suck
With a huge rise in BR games maybe using the concept of the SF6 where it’s a 3D world and once you engage in combat you go into the actual game might be a fun idea like a survival mode with players instead CPUs
I think one other thing is that most people deep in the FGC don't realize is that the community shit-talk can be incredibly intimidating or even off-putting to an outsider. I have a small group of friends in a private Discord server and they love Fighting Games, but they hate the outward facing communities (Twitter mostly). Whenever the topic comes up its usually Smash drama, Strive players shitting on MBTL/DNF Duel, or major influencers dunking on each other/some Joe Schmoe account and they usually comment something to the effect of "Just play your fucking game". From someone who quit League 8 years ago because the in-game chat is constant backseat gaming from people roleplaying as therapist Gordon Ramsey, I have to agree as most FGC chatter on social media brings back those vibes.
Now I play Team Fortress 2 which arguably has an even worse community, but by the time I saw the rotten side I was already deep into the game and had found other communities who weren't out to ruin each other over random internet slights. Once you find that community that hooks you into the game, it becomes really easy to shut out the high school tier drama that's always circulating the web. This is a really awful analogy, but it's like how it's easier to shut out the sounds of your parents fighting when you're playing games with a sibling or a friend cause implicitly you know you got each other's backs, where as alone you're always keeping eyes and ears out and not really concentrating on the game. If fighting games had ways for you to foster communities in-game rather than through the drama hell-hole that is Twitter and public Discord servers, be that through clubs/guilds, ways for you to curate the social experience, and/or simply just being able to befriend random players you find in FT3 matchmaking it'd go a long ways to keep people invested.
I feel this. Always been in the mindset of liking fighting games, their mechanics, and the stuff that arises from said mechanics, but a lot of FGC circles have a bit too "bro-y" for my tastes, for lack of a better term. I've trying to break into Strive (and, to a lesser degree, Accent Core), and have joined a few public Discords, but finding a small circle to play with would be nice, honestly.
Without my local scene i would've dropped some games i love and never tried out others i love. Having in-game ads for at least major tournaments could get people to look into some near them
If I were to make a fighting game mainstream i would change the casual matchmaking system from a 1v1 personal brawl and done to 10 people mini tournaments; if you lost to one player that's fine, at least you made it somewhat far and you can tag them and fight them in a lobby as much as you'd like if you fancy a revenge or practice, someone dominated the tournament?, The last special event it's a 2v1 battle: where 2d and 3rd tag team the winner. And for the community aspect you can send a request to a player you fought to be your "Rival", you can track their progress, spectate their matches and ask them for a fight anytime you want, you can have multiple rivals at the same time and even endorse them to one another; inside training mode there are custom game modes created by the developers and the community that can be played with friends for fun or to practice with a character
As someone that tried Strive, played for 46 hours, and the BBCF for 28, the only real problem is that you're just supposed to know everything about the game to play it.
Everyone saying "you don't need to know the game to have fun" definitely hasn't felt the utter hopelessness of just being stuck in the corner with every button press doing absolutely nothing.
Fighting games are just that good at making people hopeless, and sadly nothing can change that.
I already knew some basics before going online but to me i never felt a huge emotional connection to what was happening in game
Being in the corner was more of a puzzle i was going to try and solve over many games rather than something i had to figure out at that moment
I played 200 games and only won 11% but i still had fun learnjng the game by fighting people in the discord and practicing my execution a bit in between
I know not everyone is like that but there is something to it, it might also depend on what game you are playing
i still remember back in-early 2000 s India, huge lines on the local arcade parlor for Tekken 3 people would just not stop that culture was insane, that vibe. eminem / linkin park playing.
Because fighting games have a quite rigid play to win meta and a high skill ceiling. A Qcf motion is never going to feel as effortless for people as "I pull trigger and big loud sound of metal pain happen"
You can't fuck around in a fighting game like you can in something like a shooter, not to mention there's not really ways to cushion a loss in a fighting game either.
Also side note: SF5 has dailies and kind of loot boxes...
All of this means fighting games just lack ways to make players feel good in general.
I'm a casual fighting game player, what got me into the genre was umm... Childhood exposure tbh lol
Been playing Street Fighter II and Killer Instinct on my older cousin's SNES since I was 6, kept on playing the odd fighter here and there to this day, I just think they're fun and neat!
Would I be a fighting game fan were it not for said childhood exposure though? Umm... Yeah, probably, I've always gravitated towards games that demand skill... I mean, most of the reason why I'm just a casual is cuz I'm too busy being a hardcore rhythm game player lol
Same, I grew up playing fighting games it was just always around me. Growing up, I would play Tekken and Marvel vs. Capcom on my box TV even though all I did was mash it was still fun!
passive aggressive toxicity is not for everybody
I mean, to me it’s extremely simple: most people don’t want to play a game where you can’t compete without training. For hours. I love Tekken but I spent hours learning multiple characters all just to completely forget their move sets when I put the game down for a month or so. Fighting games in general-the great ones-require so much learning and dedication that just doesn’t exist with NBA 2K, CoD, Fortnite, etc. Even when you do get good you hit several walls that make you feel like you were almost never good at the game to begin with. I’d love to be able to play more fighting games like Dragon Ball Fighterz and Street Fighter but with my experience it’s almost hopeless trying to play more than one fighting game because of how complicated they can be.
Great video. We can't ignore, though, that fighting games in general have a steep learning curve for new players.
That's one of the main reasons why Super Smash Bros is (and probably will always be)by far the most successful fighting game: it's very acessible to new players since all characters have the same inputs , players don't need to memorize tons of commands to explore and having fun with the game.
Most modern fighting games are frustrating for new players. I personally love fighting games and I am always teaching my younger friends and relatives how to play them, but they always give up to the frustration of not being able to perform and memorize the special moves, despite my efforts .
I think another issue is cooperative play, the main games I've been playing are game I got into cause I could take on the challenges with my friends not always against.
I think if more fighting games had a team mode that would help.
Try Guilty Gear Isuka. It is a 2vs2 traditional fighting
@@svinbreaker never even heard of it, looking it up now
THIS is it, imo. This is one of the biggest missing pieces. People talk about how in team games you can blame your team and in fighting games you have to accept responsibility- I think, more than that, it's the fact that you can't play with your friends that's the problem. Overwatch is 5v5 and we still don't have enough room for all the people who want to play on any given day so a 1v1 game is just out of the question for most of us.
@@farslashenjoyer I used to think that too, but Multiversus kinda flopped after its initial month and it's main focus was 2v2 multiplayer. It's similar to a real life martial arts in that sense, since most of your motivation will come from your own progress instead of your team's. Though, it's definitely a barrier of entry to many people, I'll agree.
That DOES seem to be problem, but, for now, seems like creating a co-op focused Fighting Game isn't the solution.
@Far Slash Enjoyer No it isn't. Far from it. There's been so many team or tag team fighting games or team modes over the years since basically 2000. They've either had only minor success, people not touching those modes much, or straight up flopped.
In terms of earning in game content, MK11 does this with Kombat League. Basically you fight online to get cosmetics which makes everyone sweat but I think it's a step in the right direction. You don't have to grind as much as a battle pass but gets you hooked enough to put in some time daily
I think the real problem with fighting games is the move to the Internet. When it was arcade cabs or people's home's. You were playing against a smaller pool of people in your neighborhood, at your school, etc. Now when you log in, you're matching against the world. No matter how good you get, the pool around you is shifted to always have you be grinding a never ending mountain of opponents. I think a game that addresses this well is actually Trackmania 2020. In that game, when you race on a map, you see your regional (in the US, a state) rank on the map alongside your country and world ranks along with leaderboards for each. By having these multiple leaderboards, you get to know your opponents and have that local-feeling rivalry of the smaller pool while not sacrificing the infinite mountain for people who are looking for global play.
No mention of sales or player count? What is your definition of mainstream? This video lacks research.
Short answer: people don’t like to have to learn and get better I mean they don’t even do that with their real lives why expect them to do that in games
Exceptions exist, but this statement is dead on. Metallica said it best. "You know it's sad but true."
For me, I love character development, complex storylines, customization, and large in depth world building. These aren’t really things fighting games focus on and that is fine, it’s just not the kind of game that keeps me long term.
How do you think price relates to the barrier of entry? A lot of the games you listed are free, making the the barrier of entry pretty low compared to convincing someone to spend $60 on a new game.
Every free fighting game has failed, or had a very steep decrease. Its just the nature of the genre
Skullgirls was my first fighting game and honestly i was dogshit
I was a masher like most people who start and i decided to go to the discord and play with someone
And that person bodied me but they said "your valentine combos are cool ive never seen anyone do that before" and it made me feel really really good so i kept playing now im alot better then before and my friends actually dont like playing the game because i keep beating them
I wanna see them improve too, one of my all time favorite fighting games
I used to play grandblue fantasy versus because there was a single player campagin and easy to learn combos that, when doing the inputs correctly, resulted in more damage. So when i started to play online...my moves had delay now? I firmly believe this is one of the MAJOR problems with fighting games and its the connectivity. This is not an excuse. I shouldnt have to relearn my combos just cause theres 5 frame delay, wiping away my muscle memory. Thats like half a day down the drain for someone who doesnt play fighting game. I dont want to relearn something i just did 30 minutes ago when i could play a shooter game and 90% of my games are butter smooth.
Another thing I don't see mentioned is that in other competitive games there is not much fortnite 2, valorant 2, league of legends 2. In fighting games there is ggxrd and ggstrive for street fighter there is street fighter 3rd strike and sfv then for mvc2 and mvc3 and ssbm with smash ult. Even in overwatch 2 the same people who played the first overwatch mostly move on. I think most stayed for ow2 then ow1. But, for fighting games, there seems to be a division from the same group which creates a less pool of players potentially which I'm not saying isn't good but it could be a reason of it being less mainstream
Part of a fighting game is learning. That is a huge part of the game. Most people find learning as torture and cant find the joy and accomplishment in it, they just want to get good as fast as possible so they can play the "real game".
What do you think about letting players play for free, but restricting F2P players to one character?
I've heard about some fighting game doing that, but I don't remember the title of the game.
Dead or Alive 5 and 6 and Killer Instinct (Xbox One)
The issue with fighting games is that for players to feel like they possess even a semblance of competency in the game it requires a bigger upfront investment in the form of labbing compared to for instance fps. Also lucky shots ain't really a thing in fg. You either have skill/execution/know the match up or you don't. Basically they require way more work put into them to start and a lot more lab work on your own, which is boring. They are not necessarily harder at the top end of the skill ladder, it is all about the initial investment and labbing.
i think a good way to get people to play in groups is to make it easier to host a tournament style lobby where you can have a showdown between your friends about who's the best.
imagine casual players being able to host one easily and everyone spectating the match thats currently happening on a discord call.
allow for easy customizable options and you got yourself a way to hook newer players in and keep friend groups playing.
as a bonus this would also make it easier for tournament organizers to get going
basically tekken 7's tourney mode
Simple answer: People rather blame others than themselves.
I don't have any experience with other type of competitive games, so I know that my point can miss something. But for me, it is mainly because in general fighting games don't help you getting better of finding your mistake in any ways. This, combined with lot of cheese in ranked and dlcs politics, is why (according to me) they can be really frustating for new players (and not only).
Also they are not team based, so you are alone in your journey (unless you find the community outside of the game)
Learning the basics of fighting games is mechanically hard because it involves memorising precise button inputs and executing correctly, you won't get far button mashing. Compounded further by every character having different moves and inputs. This means you can't even start playing new without starting a studying session. Most multiplayer games are incredibly easy mechanically. If you can aim and shoot at heads you already know most FPS fundamentals. Moba just learn your role, farm gold safely and play with your team you will be better than 90% of the playerbase. Coupled with lack of casual game modes fighting games are a hard sell.
I think you underestimate how hard league is for a beginner
But ye fg execution is a barrier
And a lot of them are really hard to get to the point where you can actually get to feel like you are playing
And learning combos is boring
Im not sure how you would lower the execution barrier without impacting things that veterans care about
But lowering that entry level execution barrier would be necessary for the genre to get wider appeal
The thing is idk how one would achieve that
Congrats, I've just bought Strive, played hourse of tutorials and lost 15 matches in a row. I feel empty. Gonna play again tomorrow because of your motivation powers. Good job!
Edit: Everything said in this comment is meant to be read in a joking manner. You're good. Keep it up my guy!
when i first wanted to get into fighting games i bough mk 11 watched a bunch of tutorials and lost 50 matches in a row and couldnt stop til i reached demi god. gosh damn i love fighting games.
Losing matches consecutively like that hurts deeply but know that it's normal. What's more important is understanding why you lost and working on that.
Watch some videos online (for beginners don't worry about the more advanced stuff, you'll get there eventually), practice what you learnt in training mode cause believe me, you won't be able to do everything immediately, then run some sets with a CPU to test everything out against a moving opponent before jumping back online.
Also play through the story mode, it serves as an excellent introduction to the games mechanics without the worry of losing + cutscenes cool. Best of luck dawg, there's no where else to go but up.
my biggest losing streak was 100+ to a single guy in a single session, did start taking rounds at around 50 though
Gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers. I lost over 80 matches online before I got my first win with Potemkin
Recently got into SFV and I did lose a ton as well but now I can hold my own fairly well when my controller doesn't go crazy and the game performs like it should. (I feel like I'm dropping frames on ps4 even offline)
Fighting games can just be so dam cool. I honestly wish i could play them more now that im starting to get into more traditional kinds of fighters (as-in not smash bros, of which introduced me to the concept in itself) and i have absolutely loved my time playing gg strive with my best friend. Now im not at a level in which i would consider by any means even competent, i can hardly string a combo together yet, but i just find them so exhilarating and fun. I also absolutely love cool visuals and guilty gear REALLY scratches that itch. Just wish i wasnt so broke so i could actually get it for myself :,I
I find it funny how Moba players will complain about mastering combos, but then turn around and spend hundreds of hours looking at character to item interactions.
I played my first fighting game at 6 years old with sf2, like almost everyone my age. but I didn't -get into them- until mortal kombat 11. And it wasn't just because in between those times I had gotten into starcraft 2 for many years and so was more competitive minded... mk11 also had a shitload to do in the game. So I had it open for hours upon hours every day, and slowly but surely I really fell in love and now I play every fighting gameI can all the damn time. I think sf6 will do this too. However it's not super hard to see why lots of fighting games don't, because I no longer care if they offer me more than a basic fighting game, I'll probably buy.
Someone should make a joke game where every first hit from any angle can lead into a 100 to 0 combo, but the execution and length of each combo is painfully complicated (like thirty UMK3/MKT Brutalities in a row at minimum) and they all last so long that the round timer will zero out well before they're done. Only snag there is that the round doesn't end even if the timer hits 0 as long as a combo is still ongoing. For the ultimate comedy, make it a free online game with two lobbies. The main lobby is the one everyone starts in, but if someone gets you 100 to 0 with a complete combo then you get banned and can only play in the second lobby. To escape the second lobby and return to the main lobby you must 100 to 0 somebody else and claim your freedom that way, but since nobody can choose to go to the second lobby by choice you have to wait for someone else to get sent there. I guess if you wanted to have mercy you could include an AI opponent that players in the second lobby can fight like once a week or something and if they 100 to 0 it then they get to escape, but even that would kind of hamper the joke.
we definitely need fighting games to bring back the concept of grinding to get secret characters. smash bros may have adopted DLC but they still have characters in the base game that are locked until you meet certain conditions. they even still do this in games with daily and weekly missions. in yugioh duel links theres a secret character called Scud, who is a complete joke and was very briefly in the newer Dark Side of Dimensions movie but fans loved that he challenge to get the meme character.
Why most people started to play fighting games: oh i just heard of it from a friend
How i did: i hear smell of the game and find your one way on pootis engage and shazamed it. Then played the game
I got into guilty gear because I saw the faust strive trailer, liked his design and alone infection
14:07 most of my coworkers know what Street Fighter VI is besides the old people and guess what? None of them want to play it! Marketing doesn't magically = sales.
The mobile games that hook players in, the older people like my step dad not your average youngster! Even NSFW mobile games this is the case!
Can good marketing work? Of course but it's not the only factor; having something that's turn your brain off though is the kind of game the mobile games attract. Actual good gameplay though? Not the first thought.
Who are you trying to appeal to and why would x group want to play your game?
i dont know if someone might agree with me or not, but i like Lol, even tho i dont have mechanics to play complex champions, i still get to diamond every season by just playing simpler champions (Garen, Morde, Urgot, Aatrox,Sett) that i allow me to beat ppl with more mechanical expression than me, so i feel thats what makes me dont wanna try out fighting games, cause its theres no workaround if u are against an opponent with great mechanics therefore u are bound to lose no matter what. great video btw!
I always thought implementing daily/season pass missions and make them a gamified practice/warmup pros use. If designed well even pros will do it as a warm up and casuals secretly get trained .
I think the biggest issue is the perceived barrier of entrance. I felt this when I first started to play fighting games with MK X. Granted, i only got it because it was free on PlayStation+ and MK11 had been out for years at the time, but it was still impossible to play online. Evetually i went to MK11 and had the same experience, then I thought I could finally break that curse by playing MK1 from day 1 aaaaand, the same thing happend again. Street Fighter 6? Even worse, going 0-90 in my first 10h of the game. For what ever reason I still enjoyed fighting games, tried strive for the first time a couple of months ago and finally I got a tutorial mode that actually teaches the game somewhat decently. But getting friends into it is almost impossible, since everyone is affraid of getting stomped and lack the motivation to spend 2h going through basic tutorial stuff and learn the basics.
However, there is a chance project L could finally make people more interested. With it being a part of the league of legends "franchise" a lot of people that never played fighting games might actually try it and see how good they can be. Ive also heard its a very simple game when it comes to inputs, which will help a lot as well.
My issue right, like me as a Rhythm game player or being top 1% for Rocket League, fighting games for me has the issue where like the bar in which I need to play at is set high and only high. I more or less need to learn everything before I ever start seeing any results of winning. Just seeing the lists of documents and complicated actions thats considered basic things is just alot to try to get into. To me there is no like, ease of difficulty but also information that allows someone to develop the skills over time. Sure some have missions to do that teach you moves or w/e but even after that being told I have to just sit there and take my beatings until I don't anymore ends up being the turn off.
The only thing your really need to start playing fighting games is knowledge of the game mechanics so you can figure out why you are losing and a good understanding of your character’s main moves.
That's some real 'draw the rest of the fucking owl' reasoning. The only thing you need to get into fighting games is to overcome the extremely high barrier to entry! So easy! Thankfully, fighting games are notoriously excellent at helping you learn these things and also feature a well noted visual clarity that makes seeing mistakes and successes very clear. Oh they don't? The exact opposite you say? Damn. Well at least the community is welcoming and not at all infamously toxic... oh right... uh... damn...