The offline content is usually bland. Playing online is only fun if you are almost evenly matched. Without a large player base, you just run into the most experienced players.
This. I love DFO, but I'm not buying a game for full price, or even 40 USD, when I'll get maybe 2 hours of entertainment out of the arcade, then have nothing to do but fight tryhards.
Worst thing is, that you may be doing well offline and think yourself as some kind of master. Then you go online, and you have your ass handed to you, and you don't know why.
calling someone to try hard it's exactly mentality of people and why these games have such a low player count Adding more single player content just extends the lifespan of the game by maybe a month
its a huge problem, and the main reason why I am not a fan of them shilling the switch version before there is any crossplay. Even overlooking the switch version having no rollback (something they are not clear about at all) it seems like there is going to be 30 players after a few weeks and that is not worth the money in my opinion
I think the reason for the drop is fairly obvious. The extremely high barrier for entry. People with little experience in fighting games see some cool combos in a new fighting game and want to do that. Then they buy the game and realize that they can't do it, so they start practicing, but at some point they realize that it's going to take far longer to learn than they're willing to spend on it, and end up leaving the game. Then once the player count gets too low the experienced players will also start leaving.
It's certainly a reason. Honestly I have played fighting games for so long its very hard to imagine from the perspective of someone relatively new to the genre. I think having people you know to learn with helps a lot to encourage training
@@flowchartkenYT I got a friend to try SFV a while ago. When he got matches (rookie queue was actually kind of long) he struggled to get a special move out while his bronze opponents got free hits and did that combo they practiced. He hasn't played since. Until that moment I had not considered how much exactly new players can struggle with fighting games. To me at this point simple motion inputs (quarter circle forward + button) do not even cross my mind as a barrier to entry. I think difficulty is a lot of it for really brand new players. In other games you move around, you press your button, you do your thing, and everything makes sense. Most fighting games have complicated inputs (though we don't think of them as such, being fighting game players ourselves) and on top of that there are combos with varying difficulty and very little input for what's going on in the game during gameplay (how long am I in block stun, when can I press a button, what's + and what's punishable, etc. those things need to be presented on screen somehow during gameplay so new people can interface with those concepts by playing rather than visiting online encyclopedias imo). SF6's world tour mode seems like an interesting take on teaching people fighting games. I'm curious to see how it goes.
the barrier of entry has NEVER been lower than now and we still see a significant drop in players, i think the problem is modern fighting games don't give casual people enough things to do outside of online mode to keep them entertained
@@bloomallcaps that's also a thing! MK11 did really well and most people just did SP content (comparing sales to playerbase). Ideally those people would be incentivised to try out online as well and the game would make sense when they do.
I'm certain that's not the main reason. Almost every game's playerbase got dropped sharply after launch. Fighting games don't have that one thing that keep people playing, "season pass". Heck, Elden Ring's players drop 90% after launch, would you say it's because it's a hard game? Just online content won't be enough to keep people around. Live service games that don't have frequent update also have its playerbase reduced significantly. The problem is fighting games don't have constant new contents for people to play, and depend mostly on the tournament/online scene to keep people interested.
As a casual player, most fighting games have close to NO single player content that has variety or is fun on its own. Usually its just training mode or story mode. Sure story mode is cool, but it's usually the same thing as a normal match but easier/a way to learn the game, not something I would consider very engaging. I think that's why a lot of people love smash games. They arent the same as traditional fighters for sure but they have a plethora of single player content in most titles that were just fun. smash bros melee had things like adventure mode where the game just became a platformer, fun minigames like break the targets, event mode for whacky scenarios, and quite a few others. Brawl also had a crazy single player experience. I'm pretty sure that traditional fighting games can create modes similar to these that take advantage of the game's central mechanics to make a unique and fun single player experience on top of the multiplayer experience fighting games are known for.
That's what annoyed me about DBFZ, The story mode was fun but besides that...nothing. Even it's arcade mode sucked as there was nothing for beating it, Non canon endings for the winner would've been nice. I like SF/MK/Tekken as they do offer things like that (Along with other stuff).
@@Jiren261 There was unlocking SSJ Blue Goku and Vegeta for both in Arcade Mode, and in Story Mode(in Story Mode you have to get Goku and Vegeta to max level in order to even use Goku Blue and Vegeta Blue but it doesn't unlock them for the other modes)
I think it comes down to the mentality "I Didn't spend x money to get tossed around all day" Fighting games are naturally a feels bad game because it does take time and effort to really improve. It takes a special type of person to really get enjoyment out of them. Similar to why people don't often do martial arts(competitively). The only real way to retain people is to add something more chill like what SF6 is doing with their adventure mode thing.
hopefully the adventure mode and AI matches will give people the time to improve without getting roflstomped by high end players early on. a fighting game needed to evolve past just giving arcade and player vs modes as options, you need more side content to keep people invested. you need something more than roflstomping AI and getting roflstomped by real people.
Sometimes some games add mini games or other modes for replayability value in case you get fed up with just playing offline arcade/survival/versus or online ranked. Melty Blood Type Lumina has different stories for the arcade mode of the characters and 4 "boss rush modes" which are just gimmicky fights that have more story than fighting. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax has the huge story modes covering the first Arena game and Ultimax. Plus a survival mode called "Golden Arena Mode" which mimicks the dungeons from the Persona games by putting you into matches where the enemies are buffed with different things (extra life, insta kill moves, infinite SP bar, constantly triggering debuffs, etc.) And you can pick a partner to give you support in the game until you reach the top of the dungeon. With bosses dropping out abilities to aid you in the fights, as well as you leveling up like an RPG and raising your stats (life, SP, defense, power, speed). There are even special dungeons with special drops based on the year's holidays or seasons. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has something similar with Heroes vs. Heralds where your objective, outside of defeating the opposing faction and take over a stage and secure it; is to collect the MvC cards which can be equipped to grant different effects (HP regen, HC regen, high defense high attack, status effects). Dragon Ball FighterZ has different modes which sadly, the most interesting ones are online. Like Union fights where you fight for the faction of your favorite character and try to make it raise in the chart by facing others online. Or boss rush modes where sometimes the fights get gimmicky and the maximum fights you can have on a raw unless you lose is 7. Finally, there's story mode... which sadly, I find lackluster and boring to go through. Other games before online mode became the norm had mini games to make it more fun. Fate/Unlimited Codes has different mini games for all the characters. They all range from beat 'em up, to rail shooter or running away from something; among other games. Mortal Kombat Deception had its story mode and a Puzzle Fighter game that played the same as Super Puzzle Fightee 2 Turbo. As well as Chess Kombat, a chess game with MK elements where instead of taking down a piece after hitting it, you had to fight first in order to take the square. Mortal Kombat Armaggeddon had its story mode too and Motor Kombat, a racing mini game in the fashion of Mario Kart. Tekken Tag Tournament had a Bowling mini game. Tekken 4 had Tekken Force, a beat 'em up mode. Tekken 5 had The Devil Within, similar to Tekken Force but with more liberties. As well as emulated versions of the first 3 Tekken games. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R had Challenge mode where you had to fight gimmicky fights and if you won, you earned a new artwork. As well as the story mode for each character and them having different paths and endings based on specific win/lose conditions. If the developers knew how to keep the playerbase from burning out, they could always release mini games. The mayority not even being fighting based themselves.
I used to play fighting games a lot back then. Games such as MK trilogy to Armageddon, Street fighter 2 to 3rd strike, killer instinct and tekken. But then after I got my hands on other games such as Grand Theft Auto series, midnight club series, max Payne series and others, I never went back to fighting games because of the amount of fun things to do in those games. Right now, open world games and MMORPGs are my favorite genres because of the level of freedom I have to do what I want in a big open space
A major problem im seeing with many fighting games released today is general lack of offline content, i get that playing these games against real human opponents is more engaging, but you’re not going to have internet all the time and sometimes i just want to play around a chill, so having next to nothing to do outside of online really sucks and it’s the reason why i drop most fighting games. I prefer to play older Tekken games for this reason when I don’t feel like hopping online for tekken 7, story mode and treasure battle is not enough, and that arcade mode is laughably short.
Here's the problem with that though. Back when most of them had that offline content people weren't fucking with them like that....outside of certain ones
There needs to be more content for the casual player base. But also maybe just rewarding them with stuff for playing online win/lose as long as they play. For any of us who commit to fighting games we dont care about rewards/skins etc. we just want good matches. Curious to see how sf6 does.
This is the main reason i dont buy them. I like combos but playing againt people online feels hollow. Theres no real feeling of playing against someone, it might as well be a cpu. The issue is usually i do spend time in them before getting bored of there not being a physical person, so i play with those who haven't played before. And games are either too hard to get into casually or have no casual content. Its a big killer
As a casual I absolutely play for skins/rewards...it's nice to show off my accomplishments by what I'm wearing. I am a reward feen in bf2042...it does make me play more and more. I think you have something here
This is where I think old Arc System Works games shine the most. The various Survival modes with rpg touches were such a fun casual experience imo that at the same time served as a teaching ground for low-level players while still being fun opposed to grinding one combo for 6 hours on training mode. Some Bandai games like Soul Calibur and Dragon Ball Z Tenkaichi Budokai had some amazing casual modes too mostly story focused like trying to unlock all of the alternate timelines in Dragon ball.
Biggest thing that kills a game for me is when I can't find that one character I just LOVE playing. A game can be otherwise-perfect, but if no character just speaks to me, it will ruin the whole game, just like that.
I so agrée with this. I was not too invested into Strive until I played Potemkin and I found a character that I LOVE. That put the game from a good fighting game to my favourite fighting game ever.
I can relate.Thats the reason why I stopped playing Under Night a lot.None of the characters stood out to me as 'the one' for me. I generally play every character in the roster in whatever FG but I always have a preferred main no matter what.
I can relate.Thats the reason why I stopped playing Under Night a lot.None of the characters stood out to me as 'the one' for me. I generally play every character in the roster in whatever FG but I always have a preferred main no matter what.
This is me in Dragonball Fighterz. I actually have one character I love but I can't find a team. It kills my entire drive to play because my character doesn't play well with others and isn't a good anchor.
I remember back when Tekken 3 came out and me and my brother started playing it. Our friends came over and we would play it for hours. But we weren't just playing vs, we were also playing the other modes like Tekken Force. We even watched the unlocked endings like Mokujin's multiple times because they were pretty funny. I think there should be more modes where you could enjoy the game with a friend rather it's on the couch or online.
Tekken force was the only single player mode I really played, and I always liked it. Im surprised that more fighting games dont have beat em up modes attached considering how closely tied together the genres used to be
Soulcalibur 3 had a fantastic mode for your own custom made character which featured an original story separated from the plotline of the game and with original characters as well. It had some light strategy elements like choosing unit types and you could defeat enemies in the map without going into a classic 1v1 fight. Hell, even the story mode for each character had branching paths, unique cutscenes with quick time events that could affect your starting health and some secret enemies you could only face by fullfilling certain conditions. Sadly none of the following installments came close to that level of extra modes. SCVI is closer but the story paths for characters are linear and the mode for custom characters is just you moving around a map from fight to fight. SC4 felt like a tech demo and SCV had a criminally linear story which barely let you use 3 characters
You're beating around the bush, it's a very simple answer: Lack of accessibility and unintuitive controls. The masses want simple games that you can just immediately get, like a shooter where you just move your mouse and click, not a game where you have to hit 4 different buttons to do an uppercut. I know obviously this is what makes fighting game fans like the genre, but it's just a massive, obvious barrier to anyone outside the niche. It's not any of the other points you mentioned, nor is it ambiguous, it's pretty clear cut.
@@flowchartkenYT I mean, that's definitely truth. Why do you think people despise motion controls? Because it takes a while to make the move you want consistently, and same applies to most fighting games. You don't need 6 attack buttons to do everything when 2 and some clever use of direction, positioning and timing are good enough for a fleshed moveset of around 25 moves.
I absolutely LOVED dnf duel and really hyped for its release last summer. It was actually the player drop-off that made me stop playing- when it got to a point you could barely find a ranked match and when you did you'd get the same opponent over and over again. The lack of developer support was the final nail in the coffin.
spectre copium but hopefully it brings the game back to around 300 concurrent. Playing the same person over and over isn't the worst thing ever but its not a great experience and its certainly not a good matchmaking system
Because new games come out. Fighting game communities need to understand that most people don't care about online fighting and just want to have fun. Then when the next big release, be it a fighter, shooter, action game or whatever is released they play that instead. This is why offline content is so important.
Like what others said, fighting games really need to have content than just PVP and arcade modes (or story mode if you’re lucky.) I remember sinking so many hours into soul caliber 2 and mortal kombat deception because of the interesting extra modes and unlockables the games had to offer that kept me coming back to play them more and more.
Y’know what I think Mortal Kombat should do to keep MK from getting stale a Shaolin Monks type of game again Midway (The original holders of MK) were on to something back then they had created a MK game that had all the elements of a typical MK game but made it where you could explore the worlds they should definitely do that again as well
Ppl enjoy fighters more when there is more content. For instance playing and wathcing mk armageddon the konquest mode was awesome and motor kombat was a pretty fun. Seriously hope that MK1 2023 have these single player and vs content and mini games again. And lets hope that we see these other modes again such as Soul Calibur's Weapon Master Tekken's Tekken Force Tekken Ball and Tekken Bowl Virtua Fighter's Quest mode Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max's World Tour mode that was an arcade mode with RPG elements now turned into a full fledge open world story mode with RPG elements in SF6 along with the vast amount of modes it had in previous console versions. King of Fighters' Party mode Memory and Challenge modes The PS2 era was truly something for FGs so for the devs to forget or choosing not to bring back single player in FGs sooner is really questionable. But Capcom has acknowledge it and an even larger audience will be attracted tot he genre now more than ever. Lets hope it stays that way.
Honestly, it's the focus on competitive PVP that kills it for me. I like fighting games like Smash Bros and Soul Calibur III because without the online component, I can still go and enjoy plenty of game modes while using characters I like. Nowadays fighting games feel like they do the bare minimum to appeal to a larger demographic.
I never really considered that perspective, but it seems obvious now after you pointed it out - it's not "fighting games" that struggle with this /only/ because they're fighting games, but the market really is just crazy fluid - people pick up games then drop em or move on to the next new thing, just about every genre seems to be suffering from something like this
Yeah if you look at basically any multi-player online game that isn't one of the biggest esports titles in the world you see the same issue. All new games are competing for the same limited player base and they have to design around a big burst of initial players and then a good chunk leaving.
What made me move on: Not having any friendly rivals, skill gap, crappy online or UI/UX, dwindling playerbase, bad functionality, asinine design like charging for frame data, the game not having or getting my favorites (C. Viper, ABA and such).
Fighting games often have REALLY bad single player. Like a disposable "arcade" mode, a story mode with a bad story, and that's kinda it most of the time. Fighting games really need to pick up the single player aspect to really keep people playing them if they don't want to become the best of the best online. Make skill trees, good replayable and varied PVE, allow me to make different builds with different fighters, let me rank up fighters for cosmetics and skill upgrades, etc etc. Think of it like devil may cry or the new overwatch pve coming out, that is the type of stuff that would keep fighting games alive despite the online presence. Edit: A good starting point for this would be like Virtua Fighter 5 "Quest" mode. Go look it up, that's a good mode that kept me playing VF5 for awhile. It's not perfect and needs more, for sure, but as a baseline it's a great place to start
I agree but some fighting games are good like most of the NRS games. Those tend to see more numbers for longer. I will say too, to get games in a fighter you don't need a giant playerbase. You don't need a team or 100 people for a BR, you just need 1 other person.
the sense of individuality that comes with fighting game can be appealing to some, but on the other hand it can be daunting to others. Having to work harder than you have in any other genre with no signs of it paying off any time soon can be exhausting, and the most important part is that's just not fun. as someone who's been trying to get their friends into fighting games for a very long time i've tried making the process as smooth as possible. but due to the 1v1 format it usually means you have to coach them by practice sparring, where they get mopped or you have to severely limit yourself which isn't fun for either of you. compared to mobas or fps', you can just hop on a team match, have fun regardless since you're playing with friends and that fun can turn into motivation to want to improve. i think in future fighting games they should go about making co-op play more standard to first emphasize the FUN part of the game, the stronger player can have their challenge while the weaker one can still have a great time and don't have to feel too bad for their lack of skill.
The big thing that made me move away from FGs is a local scene. I started as a 09er with SFIV, but back then there was a flourishing scene around the area that I lived in. I grew up as a FG player due to the mass amount of locals around me and being able to constantly get games in and made friends along the way. But since I've moved to an area that just doesn't have a constant local scene, it's been hard for me to adjust to the new, online-only environment that the FG has moved to. It's just not the same as grinding with other players around you.
For me personally, it is because a lot of my friends are what you might call fair weather players. They play whatever game is popular for maybe a week or two before moving on to the next big trend. While I can stick with a game for months to even years, the fact that they don't stick around makes me way less motivated to learn a fighting game. Fighting games take a lot more dedication than your typical FPS or RPG to learn. You can get away with being lucky and button mashing your way to victory only for so long. Learning a character's input, combos and movesets and even just finding a character that fits your particular playstyle takes an inordinate amount of time compared to any other genre of gaming. For instance, I once spend weeks learning how to play as Tsubaki in BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend, learning all of her combos and memorizing her moveset. My friends play maybe a couple of times before they are all off playing whatever else just came out that strikes their fancy. We never go back to BlazBlue and I'm left with a pseudo-mastery over a single character in a game that we never touch again. While I could have taken to just competitive play, a lot of those players are just heads and shoulders above me in skill level that I just can't compete as I lack the sixth sense that they do since I'm not normally a competitive player in most games and it becomes very demoralizing to even launch the game.
I spent a few weeks when blazblue 1 calamity trigger came out playing as Noel and my buddy played Jin. At first we were rather evenly matched spamming and mashing our special attacks, but after training and learning 2 basic bread and butter combos for my character and playing maybe about 10 hours worth of online matches (with a 30% win rate) I was considered 'too good' and he wouldn't play me anymore, word quickly spread to my other friends that I was the fighting game god and that was it. Same experience with every fighting game i play with whatever friends I have at the time, I learn 1 or 2 combos and then none of them want to play anymore. Only way I can extend the life of these games nowadays is to find random online strangers on discord to play with.
Before I watch the video, I'm gonna give my answer to the question asked in the title. Most games are kept alive by casual players who can have fun even when they suck, and being able to constantly replace players who leave with new players. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to make fighting games feel fun and casual. There are no teammates to carry you, so if you suck, you're just going to get wrecked over and over until you get better or quit. Most people don't get better. You can say that's what ranking systems are for, but you'd be hard pressed to find a game of any genre where the majority of players feel like the ranking system works well; even if it does. Every loss in MOST games feels unfair to most players. The games that do manage to keep a lot of casual players longer are NRS games, because they offer SO much single player content. So many things to do other than get wrecked in online play. The other thing that makes so many people leave fighting games so quickly is the perceived unapproachability by people who don't play fighting games regularly. Sajam has talked about this at length. So they hop in when it comes out, play whatever single player content is available, go online, get wrecked, say "I have no idea what's going on" or "this game is so unfair.", "this game makes no sense.", then leave. Part of the unapproachability stems from historically terrible tutorials, but those are slowly being replaced in all of the big franchises. Also, more companies are investing more heavily into better single player content. Honestly, I think the future for fighting games is looking kind of sunny.
Tutorials don't matter. MK11 and DBFZ both have trophies for doing the very basics in training mode. A majority of the player base never touches it and even less do the advanced tutorials.
It definitely all comes down to love. For one you got to love the game. Then you got to find a character you love. Then you got to love it enough to improve through losses. Then extra love is needed because of the losses that occur due to things like lag. Like other games there's basically so many factors that can drive someone away so you're going to need enough sticking points that you love about it to keep you interested. I think one potential area to address is having people you enjoy playing the game with may help. Perhaps team-based, 3v3 MvC-style fighting games where people can coordinate assists, tag-ins, etc. with perhaps their family and can add some excitement and more reason to stick around. Like FPS games, some casuals will hop on because their friends want to get into some matches against the world. People love team content, even going into the newer Madden and 2k games that used to be all about the 1v1 match-up. Plus with a team you enjoy playing with, you can get external motivation to keep grinding.
then by the time you love the game and get good mechanically, the playerbase has moved to a different fighting game altogether so now you have to do cycle all over again (which also hurts your wallet)
I *want* to like fighting games but despite trying to I just can’t get into them. With something like a rhythm game I can get better just by playing the game. There isn’t a requirement to spend time “in the lab” essentially doing homework just to possibly enjoy a game later.
@@flowchartkenYT You are either stupid or play nothing but fighting games your entire life to make a statement like that. You are an arrogant prick. When you die at an old age as hard as you played fighting games- it couldn't be more ironic.
I always figured fighting games had the highest level entry barrier. It even happened with the old Street Fighter 2 series too, and pretty much every fighting game. And I honestly feel like there really isn't much that can be done. Just like with regular sports, most sports that involve a team have more spectators and players, compared to sports that involve 1v1 like Boxing and MMA. Not only that, but I within our own fighting game community. Not many people transition to a new version of the fighting game. Like I know people who like SS2T and Street Fighter Alpha 3 a lot and won't touch any other fighting game. Then there is people who like SF3: Third Strike, but wont touch Alpha 3 or Street Fighter 4. Then you got players who only like and play Street Fighter 4, but dislike Street Fighter 5 and wont touch it. Then I am pretty sure you got players who liked Street Fighter 5, but didn't really like SF4, and some may not like SF6. Then you got some people who only play Mortal Kombat or NRS games. Then some players who only play Tekken, and then some who only play SNK fighting games. Then people who play anime fighters just play anime fighters and dabble in other fighting games a tad bit. But I think what it is too, is that our fighting game community just has too many different fighting games, on top of that there is usually a new fighting game coming out within a year or two. I think thats how League of Legends, Fortnite and all that lasted so long. They just kept updating the same game over and over for years. To be honest, my favorite fighting game is still Capcom v.s. SNK 2 and Street Fighter Alpha 3. If Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8 is out and then say someone at my house had a set-up for Capcom v.s. SNK 2. I would drop everything quick just to play Capcom v.s. SNK 2 or Street Fighter Alpha 3 with them lol. That is just me, but I am sure there is a lot of fighting gamers out there that are the same way. For me I kind of just play the new stuff, since that's pretty much what everyone is playing. But I do like SF6 so far, and I do like the direction Tekken 8 is going in right now.
This is true. The only exception to this is when a new game of certain specific series is made. Like a new SF will get people from anime games, MK games, Tekken games and older SF games all playing together for like half a year to a year, then it drops off and the people who want to main that new SF game are the ones left.
I do think there is a certain quality that makes certain games timeless. MVC3 is 12 years old and people are swarming to EVO to compete in it again. CVS2 is one of those games that you can play for 20 years and still learn something new about it, I personally like a mix of new and old games
Back in the day everyone I knew played sf2.. literally everyone. We never thought sf2 was a higher level play type of game. I guess the Fgc is very different from any other genre. 8 enjoy having different types of FPS games to play. Bf2042, boundary and on the low end CoD. All same fps genre but different styles all together. CoD is a Murda fest, in bf I can do other things like recon, spot..or be a medic. And boundary is its own monster..near orbit 360 degree shooter
@@callofmetals24 How I wee fighting games, is like chess and boxing combined in some ways. Pretty much at certain points, fighting games dont have different levels of players. Its either extremely good or extremely bad players lol. There is no in between. With certain fighting games, everyone plays with the lowest risk possible, but for the highest reward. But i think the big problem with fighting games. Is that it was traditionally more prominent in areas that have big city's. and I think thats why fighting games fell off with player base during late 90s and early 2000's. It entered the online scene extremely late. But i think it was also difficult to get fighting games online back then. Since everything is critical to a single frame, and I think online back then could not allow fighting games to flow properly before. I think not until xbox 360 era and on. Cause thats also when they started to release fighting games on PC too.
I love fighting games and typically just pick it up for a few hours and then determine if it goes in my rotation of games to try and improve in or to play with friends. I very rarely am a "core audience" and i think that most fighting game players are like me in that sense. Lots of games but the genre is niche. And while i think thats perfectly fine, if i had to label a particular issue, its how we as a community market ourselves. We focus way too much in the "getting good" part instead of the base fun that playing these games can be even if youre losing. Most people want to play a game. Not pay $40-60 for a job.
Fighting game used to have a survival mode where you try to beat as many opponents as possible before you lose, as well as time attack mode which was basically another arcade mode with set difficulty I remember correctly... Tekken 3 stands out with having some interesting side modes outside of what I just mentioned, Super Smash Bros. Brawl had a well made adventure mode, a boss rush mode, severally types of Survival modes, and coin battle mode where you collected to try to win, along side stock, stamina, and time battles... Ever since online modes became a thing these side modes basically died out in fighting games, which in turn negatively affected the overall lifespan of fighting games for casual players...
I have a few thoughts on this topic and have had them for many years. This is more about what creates the perception of a high barrier of entry as opposed to making the game fun for newer players, or market competition and saturation, or how we have been trained by publishers to never stick to one game. The first one is that generally speaking, when we talk about how to approach fighting games specifically, or what developers tend to bring to focus, it's all offensive gameplay, that's the draw, that's the zing of every new release. The new mechanics, the new moves and combo routes, the new animations. I'd be lying if I didn't feel movement and defense are both a "back of the mind" given and swept under the rug, like some non-factor, or 2 seconds in a tutorial. Right now, if a developer wants to make a new fighting game easier to play, offense is where they take their changelog, basically always. They will never attempt to make movement and defense easier to execute, the things that I believe the newest players always struggle with the most. These players probably can lab or do combo challenges successfully all day, and get basically 0 wins easy, because defense isn't as easy to make someone habitually fluent in as opposed to c. MK -> Fireball, LMHS MMHS OTG HC, or embracing your inner Justin Wong and making a 10-year-old learn today. The second thought that I have is that fighting games do something that doesn't translate into basically every other game you can think of. I don't know what to call it, I don't even think it has a name, the closest I've gotten is "Active Downtime". In a fighting game, both you and your opponent can see each other on the screen, you can't mask your moves, they can't either and both of you know that it's only a couple of frames to the point of contact at all times. In a way you could say that the chances of not being an instant threat to each other is almost next to never. You could probably number it down to; between rounds, hard knockdowns, and someone pausing the game, it's basically 1% of the gameplay. If you were to then translate this to say, a competitive shooter, then this percentage completely reverses. The 1% of the time in a shooter equivalent to the 99% in a fighting game, would be basically, you and the other player are simultaneously shooting at each other in that moment. Things like a grenade throw, getting the drop on someone, taking cover, reloading mid firefight, none of these and more are not instances where both you and your opponent are frames from threatening each other until you are both pulling the trigger at the same time as each other, at each other. Feel free to translate this to any other game in any other genre, be it a driving simulator, card game, anything super heavy with action or the complete opposite. I'm not saying that the difficulty is dictated by room to breathe and strategise, so much as that we do exist at a time where fighting games are probably not baby's first game and will always have the experience from other games that they do have anywhere from subpar to stellar competence. The baseline feel of a fighting game is probably more distant than many give it credit for, and so I think those people are already being questioned at the get go by the game if it's worth continuing (like some kind of gacha that just outright never gives you free spins ever). It's why a lot of the top competitive gamers in other genres struggle so much with consistency in fighting games. It's also probably why people do end playing a fighting game for a week, maybe even less, and it just never gets started up ever again because they know they can justify having a better time elsewhere. But it's also that feel and circumstance that makes fighting game what they are and honestly can't be fucked around with, otherwise you don't have a fighting game anymore.
I like the long response so im going point by point: Offense is a selling point but I think less casual players also notice defense and movement. Project L diaries had a good amount of focus on it as well as tag mechanics, it's just that the casual audience is a lot larger and cares more about "wow" moments which usually come from offense and combos. I think you are describing a combination of oki and neutral. I'm not really sure how I would translate this into another genre tbh I do think fighting games are both a heavily transferable skill and completely separate from other genres but I don't think this is necessarily unique to it. Someone who is good at strive would probably also be good at DNF, in the same way that someone who is good at DOTA will be much faster to pick up league. I think its more that fighting games tend to have 1/100th the playerbase of moba and shooter games so it feels like a more rare skill when there might really just be less players to pull from. It is hard to experiment in a way that feels both meaningful and stays within the lines enough to attract people. I think it's easiest to branch out into new IPs like DBFZ in that sense, much more so than to make a truly unique mechanic. Interesting points!
@@flowchartkenYT I honestly want to refer to what I mean as pressure, but I also feel like that's not true to what I'm trying to explain. I think if I were to sum up what I mean using shooters as reference, if a player wants to make an engagement with an enemy they will generally make movement from Point A to Point B, where Point A is deciding to engage and Point B is killing the other player, or getting killed and failing. All throughout this process, the player will be strategising and readjusting strategy until the conclusion is met. Using cover, reloading, choosing entry points, how they retreat, grenade usage, using sound cues, using abilities, map knowledge, holding and rushing, fake outs etc. Now to translate the scale to a fighting game, imagine the player was constantly receiving a zero damage interaction, it doesn't kill, but it does interrupt actions the player would like to take every other second. It's interrupting reload, it's interrupting sprint, it's interrupting grenade throws. Theoretically, you could still come out the winner but it's exceedingly unlikely, falling short of mashing inputs and hoping. And so, he player's mindset needs to essentially naturalise itself for the context of playing a fighting game, but it becomes something of a wall when you want to try and do things but you're opponent wishing to do the same cancels you out with immediate force. Now when you take this into the context of a newer player, who will almost always have experience in any other genre, it's never gonna be a fun time. That player is gonna have to determine whether to be that person constantly taking interruptions going from Point A to B and practice, or accept that this isn't for them and play something that is. What I'd like the discussion for the FGC to be isn't how do we make games easier for less experienced people (a button dedicated to all the defensive options wouldn't go astray though), but rather how do we entice people to continue their fighting game journey in order to make the player base healthier than where it currently is. I 100% agree that the main crux of that is player base cannibalisation across all games, which stems from easily accessible F2P games like DotA 2 and LoL. I also feel fighting games cannabilise each other even further (Honestly, ArcSys feels like the Omega Force of fighting games, except Warriors games don't have active userbases to strip players from, unlike Strive/Xrd/Central Fiction/Cross Tag/DNF/FighterZ/GBVS/UNiB/Arcana Heart/P4A recently all becoming rollback I think). Anyway, I know that there's a lot of underlying pipework that needs to be paid for but, go big or go cheaper honestly FFS. It just feels like forever that fighting games have been stuck in this weird 2009 styled DLC bubble and that has held them back from becoming a solid competitor in the greater wealth of the current market.
Cross Tag was the last fighting game I tried to get into. After clearing 30 minutes long tutorials for EACH character, learning some basics (that I didn't know how to properly use anyway), I ended up playing in a lobby that was 10% people that didn't know what they were doing and I completely destroyed them, 10% people who were even match and it was fun, and 80% of "he hit me and started a combo, I won't be playing the game for the next 10 seconds", then after that I had a half-second window to do something or else the cycle continued until I died. No thanks. I know fighting game crowd loves their 20 hit combos and it takes a lot to master, but I do not enjoy not playing the game. Also for whatever reason the single player modes suck, if there are even any.
single player is an issue, but to be fair there are games with shorter combos. games like street fighter and samsho are much more about positioning than long combos
There’s need to be a free to play fighting game, with decent appeal, so people can try a fighting game with no possible chance of losing anything. $60-70 is a lot to just be bad at it, and a sale early is a sign a game isn’t doing so hot. It needs a great tutorial that goes over common problems new players need to understand in all fighting games, footsies, zoning, range control, frame data, plus-negative advantage, knowing your tools and how to use them, the weaknesses of every character exposed. And then a multiplayer system that keeps you in a pool of players with the same skill. No character DLC, a high tier character locked behind a paywall, causes issues in the player base, it’s difficult to train against or learn. Should just make money off skins, if a game is fun enough, people will buy it. Also maybe add 2v2s, a lost is always easier to take with a friend. Or you can make yourself feel better and blame the lost on them.
I'll bite this bait!; fighting games lose players fast because fighting games aren't inherently FUN, they're annoying, restrictive and punishing. You need to STUDY and we as humans DON'T like studying, specially if there's nothing to gain on it. Nobody likes getting pushed to a wall failing a guessing game and losing the match for it, a single failed coin flip and the other guy executes his the combo he memorized and depending on the game you might or not be able to escape with other 50/50, not fun at all. Plus some games SUCK, they copy better things without doing it better, like multiversus or nick brawl
I used to play fighting games a lot coz back then we play with friends couch fighting and it's fun fighting with someone you know. Now it's just online stranger and also, you either get pro or get stomp. There's no middle skill like other team multiplayer games.
As a 90s kid who grew up with the arcades and playing fighting games with my brother and friends I can say at least for me it is the ridiculous jump in play level you see online. For a little bit of context me and my brother used to play Street fighter, King of Fighters, Marvel vs Capcom, Tekken, Dead or Alive a lot, and I really mean A LOT, while our parents were shopping we went to the arcade and spent quite a decent amount of money there, so we're not newbies to the genre, sure there were dudes that would obliterate us and with 1 coin would be playing there for HOURS, but we could say that locally we were at a high level and only a few school friends would really challenge us to that level. So when online play became a thing I decided to give the current Street Fighter a try (I think it was back to SFIV).... won 0 matches, I wasn't even able to win a single round, people were so extremely OP it made me realize the ridiculous level gap... it's like having a kid who plays any sport just for fun with his friends play against a professional but the professional is taking it extremely serious as if their career depended on winning against a kid who's no older than 12...
I feel this, I was a very similar situation. I played original MVC in arcades and then got into fighting games around the PS1 era, even some of the more obscure ones like fighters destiny on N64. Only played with friends and brother until well into adulthood. We thought being able to do combo trials meant understanding how to play fighting games. You don't really understand fighting games until you play someone much better than you are and that doesn't usually happen until you start playing online online.
Ever since I was a kid in the 90's I've always had ideas for fighting games in my head. But when I grew up and worked in the game and illustration industry I realized how much effort it takes to make one compared to indie single player games. So many animations, voices, sound effects, network programming, balance, etc etc. Then after all that it's not guaranteed that you will have a decent community for the game to survive given that the FGC community isn't as large as other game genre's communities. Arcsys has literally hundreds of thousands to millions of fans, and yet their game DNF Duel still lost 90% of players. So it's going to be even harder for an indie fighting game to survive.
yeah as hard as it is for a big fighting game to succeed it is 100x harder for a small one. The case of indie fighting games blowing up and becoming mainstream is almost unheard of
@@flowchartkenYT The only two I know of are Skullgirls and Thems Fightin' Herds. Both are great but still suffer the same issue of losing the majority of players early on, and an indie having a decent install base to stay afloat after that is the real challenge.
I think a lot of the issue is lack of content. Stuff like singleplayer content, more substantial patches, season passes, loads of cosmetics, and evolving storylines are why other live service games stay so fresh. FGC gamers are lucky to get 5 characters a year, and that's just not good enough, especially if you main someone that exists already. SF6 looks like it's starting to shift that way, and hopefully Project L does really good as well, I think a modernization of Fighting Games is coming soon to join other games like Apex and Valorant.
@@flowchartkenYT Yeah ok pal. So what, us older players have to sit here and watch our games be dumbed down for gen z douchbags? The same casuals who can't stick with any game for more then 2 seconds? I'd rather fighing games die then see them be dumbed down an made easy for Csucking scrub casuals.
Try to practice the mechanics you idiots. If you can't get it then move on they aren't for you. Not all games are meant for people. Especially crybabies and non coordinated morons. You want one button supers and specials little girls? Yes casuals are hated. You are hated because you absolutely refuse to practice something difficult. You don't stick with a challenge. You cry on Twitter and people hate you for it. But, it's always a good day when casuals jump online and get crushed. Nothing makes me happier then making a scrub casual rage quit and never play again. Cod pussies
@@redmage8719bro smash players have always done that. Its stuff like that and the lack respect for other games that made distance myself from the community.
I think the barrier to entry is one thing that used to kind of bug me in general especially when I had no idea what to prioritize when learning. But I've also just never vibed with a character in a 2D fighter like ever. I think I enjoyed tekken as a kid but didn't have people to play with for that series until I gave up on it. Smash was always cool but it's online sucked until they made roll back for melee, which is like 20 years old. I'm excited for SF6 honestly. I spent a lot of time playing other genres and just learning a bit more how to learn and had a ton of fun with the beta and really liked a bunch of characters. I think the game also just clicks better with me for whatever reason cause I've been playing 5 in the meantime and its a little rough lol.
street fighter is one of those games that changes the mechanics a lot between titles. SFV and SF6 are very different, but either way finding a character you like it probably the most important thing to keep you coming back. Hope you find someone fun, the SF6 launch roster does look very good
Something that I have happen to me often times is sometimes I find the game really fun when it's not being played optimally near the launch, but as the meta crystalizes and the better tech is found, I find myself not enjoying the game that comes as an end result, even when I'm able to play it. While I might be able to play it casually with some friends, I often find that online people are either people that are really good at playing the game how it's supposed to be played and people that aren't very good at fighting games. I assume for a lot of player when they start getting to a level and see, "oh, that's how the game is supposed to be," even if they're not correct about their perception, it's demotivating and makes you want to just go play a different game.
I used to think I was really good at fighting games, but that was back in the pre-internet dark ages when the only other players I competed against where other kids on my block. Now that online play is a thing, I've long since had to come to terms with the fact that I'm actually pretty trash. I still love the genre in concept, but I find it harder to stick with the games for any length of time the way I used to.
online for me was humbling as well. Its funny to see how much better you can be than your friends only to get absolutely stomped by the average online player.
I personally believe it's a combination of too many games wanting to take your time and the fighting game genre itself being niche like you said. There's just so many games now that demand you to grind (battle passes, limited time events, etc) and I feel people are more attracted to putting time into games that give them more satisfaction achieving something rather than grinding for the sake of being better at the game amongst other players. And with fighting games they are extremely hard to get into if you play the game months later versus other genres like FPS and MOBAs because the skill gap of 1v1 games versus team based games is just a lot more noticeable on yourself. And with single player heavy games they are just a different category of games that determine it's success without online engagement. I use to be super big into fighting games back in college, but I'm not as interested in getting good at fighters anymore since that feeling of getting good went away. SF4, MK10, and Smash 4 were the big 3 that I put so much time into. But as time went on, I just lost the interest to get good at fighting games because the appeal of it didn't matter to me. I think in the end it's just the genre's fault for having the core gameplay loop of getting better against others and that's literally it. There's no other hook to keep people from playing fighting games now other than passion and grinding to be the better player. I just feel lots of people who play video games in their free time need to be happy with what game they distribute their time into and I don't think a majority of gamers out there would do that for fighting games as their choice of time commitment.
the current market needs to cater to players more than ever. When I started playing fighting games free to play games that were actually worth playing were few and far between. At this point you could easily play only F2P if you wanted to. the market has simply changed and cannot go back
Imho the biggest challenge is the control system itself. I can't see any exceptions, where learning complicated twitch combos and pairing that with granular framerate changes and timing are NOT THE GAMEPLAY itself in fighting games? That's exceptionally niche. Then add in to that it's a zero-sum contest where the loser will often not come back and you're bound to have a genre that bleeds players. In addition the small niche is taken up already with the few highly polished games of this small pool of players and any new game will have fun novelty then falter in comparison to the tightness of the control scheme and other QOL features of a bigger budget IP game eg SF etc.
@@flowchartkenYT It's simple if you apply your mind: If you watch players playing twitch fighting games and you specifically WATCH THEIR HANDS... That's an enormous barrier to entry added to the frame-rate twitch reactions needed to be identified to combine moves, to transition and react etc. Then throw in zero-sum result where the good get better and the weaker eventually give up on the game. It's not the only genre that suffers that dynamic. Hence as said it's a niche genre even if a brilliant one.
@@commentarytalk1446 "twitch fighting games" means nothing. "Frame-rate twitch reactions" means nothing. You can't just make shit up and expect people to understand what you are saying. It seems like you are saying people have to move their hands too fast for the average person to play fighting games at a high level which I do not agree with. Also fighting games are absolutely not zero sum. Someone getting experience from winning does not make someone else worse because they lost. Both players improve and gain experience.
@@flowchartkenYT Fighting games are a zero-sum game: Winner and Loser = Zero-Sum. It's text-book. Gaining experience from playing is a separate outcome. Secondly you seem not to consider that a player can lose, keep losing and not progress in skill and then eventually quit the game. Have you never heard of "twitch skills" which applies to fighting games? Do you not understand what frame-rates are and how having twitch reactions is necessary (along with training) to respond to those frames? I'm baffled you cannot comprehend 1) simple English 2) terms widely used in games and fighting games. All I can conclude is your responses seem emotional as if any criticism of fighting games cannot be beard? To go back to the subject: Fighting games are a niche because of the control scheme being imho excessively based on twitch reactions and twitch skills. That's not a judgement evaluation of the genre: It's a statement of opinion about the core reason why their popularity is limited by a limiting factor in the design. I'm really not sure how hard that is to understand. Put it this way: There's a barrier to entry: That's gaining the skills to fight. The gaining of those skills depends on developing the twitch ability of input combinations via the hands and fingers using the buttons and movement stick or pad. The majority of people WILL NEVER learn that skill and find fighting games hits ceiling early on where any player who does progress will easily beat them. That's boring and not just boring for the loser, it's negative feedback and the opposite of fun.
@@commentarytalk1446 find one other example of someone using those terms. They are not at all used in fighting games, you are just making them up. You also do not understand the difference between frames as a unit of measurement in fighting games and frame rate, which are not the same thing.
Fighting games tbh just doesn't have enough content. Also the difference of fighting games vs. FPS vs. MOBA is that fighting games require more effort no matter how easy the community perceives it to be. Meanwhile when you play an FPS game, Aim is pretty much all you need. Your skill on aiming is carried out through multiple games too and all you need to do after that is improving your game sense. MOBA games are more on the technical side and teamplay. When you grasp the basics, you learnt everything and your skill goes uphill from now on. Fighting games on the other hand, depending on the community/player count doesn't put you on a pedestal and forces you to learn the hard way. (You actually have to understand the mechanics and stuff, frame data, punishing etc.) which discourages people which is understandable because it takes a considerable amount of time and can't be fully understood on just 1 or 2 matches. Fighting games also loves to force new players fight veterans which further discourages them to continue learning the game.
I think that fighting games despite getting sell as competitive games, a lot of people who get them are for fun to have something in their catalog to play when they have friends in home
Fighting games only work with a niché demographic. As in, only those who like fighting games will enjoy the genre. The wide group of players at the start of a fighting game's launch are often those who have heard about a specific series or a specific game that follows a similar formula but for one reason or another eventually dip out and decide it's just not their thing. Be it the skill ceiling being to high, the combos being to complicated or to precise, or the cast characters just not feeling right to them. It's kinda similar to live service games in a way. Folks will pick it up, try it out and leave if it doesn't suit their preferred gameplay style or if there's too much of an over-reliance on microtransactions. Or even both. Fighting games just require to much reliance on having large groups of people, especially online. It's not like your racing games or party games where folks can feel more at home and take some time to plan things out. (And also yell at friends or family for screwing you over instead of at randos online who have no clue who you are.) Also, not everyone wants to play online. Sure some fighting games will have a single-player mode of some kind, maybe even multiple. But the main purpose of a fighting game is fighting other people, getting in 1v1s or free-for-alls and seeing who can win. Single-player content is pretty much the appetizer while multiplayer and online is the main dish and single-player alone can't satiate much of anyone's appetite who aren't competitive.
I think fighting games need players but its actually far less than other genres. A moba or BR will require 5-10x the number of players for a healthy online of a fighting game. I also don't agree that it is a specific niche because many players including myself also enjoy other types of games. It is a niche and hardcore players are a niche within a niche but that is true of almost any genre.
It's the simple combination of lacking content and extremely poor learning curves. Arcade, Versus and Online all do the same thing, just a simple 1v1 against someone else. Combo Trials and such are nice diversions but if you're not already good or willing to try hard you will hit a wall with your first couple characters and never come back. Meanwhile, fighting games are hard to play even if they had super simple and intuitive controls. Smash shows this extremely well, once there's a gap in skill on those games even if the controls are simple you will be overrun easily. But TFGs aren't super simple and intuitive. If you don't have the decades of experience across several fighting games starting back from when you spent basicallly nothing for arcade attempts, you have loads of homework to do. No game genre consistently use these controls, few demand as much execution>memorization and the moment-to-moment is super intricate already. Other genres out there don't hit this snag because either they have actual level design to progressively train the player while they have fun (like, say, Mario) or make up for their open-ended progression curve by being super easy to play like most sport and racing games. Fighting games don't have that. They sell little, repetitive content and expect you to master it with little help or direction. SF6's city exploration mode needs to be the industry standard. It can solve both problems at once if designed well enough, teaching and reinforcing concepts through special enemy design like those flying flamethrower drones, minigames, and slowly unlocking more and more moves from other characters... all while providing a meaty 20-30 hours adventure. The fact that almost all fighting games have barely broken the content level of SF2 is ALARMING. Like just compare the amount and variety of content of most fighters, to freaking Smash Melee and Brawl... Nintendo got the memo way back in 2022, even though they seem to have been forced to sacrifice it somewhat to meet the sequels's core goals (smash 4 being in 2 consoles and ultimate focusing on bringing everyone back above anything else)
@@flowchartkenYT yes, and I'm all here for it. Always found fighters to be really interesting and potentially fun but so goddamn unacessible if you weren't around for the arcade age (and countries, i guess)
I was heavy into Multiversus since launch until about 2 months ago. The reason is that I was even heavier into competitive Smash Ultimate and that game is so bs. Nothing makes sense and nothing is rewarding in ultimate. You make the right read, and you still lose. Multiversus changed that where if I make 3 or so correct reads in a row, I can just kill and that goes for almost every character on the roster, not just people that excel at it like Superman. Multiversus kinda shot themselves in the foot with the whole 'we didn't actually launch the game' thing. The thing that really killed it was that there was absolutely no developer transparency. Nobody knew when or if something was going to change (ex: new character shakes up the meta). It just lead to frustration when certain characters that were highish tier would get nerfed but then characters that were actual problems would get buffs or remain unchanged. What really changed my mind about fighting games in general was SFV. I got it with PS Plus and decided to try it out. I'm really glad I did because that game taught me everything about risk reward and real neutral game. Every move felt like it had a purpose and things like giant moves that do big damage actually have lag. That's part of my main issue with fighting games. No other game in my personal experience does lag correctly. Multiversus, Smash, and even certain anime fighters all have the issue of trying to cater to an audience that apparently thinks that lag means the game feels clunky. Ultimate in particular got under my skin because some characters would have really good defensive options just because their up b or up smash was fast. The rules made no sense. Roy is a good example of how not to make a character: he's rushdown but can never really be punished for anything because his framedata is insane. Mario is another one and don't even get me started on shit like MinMin. Even if a fighting game is developed for a casual audience, it doesn't mean that moves shouldn't have lag. So long story short, fighting games have low numbers because 1: giant time commitment 2: avg player skill 3: they're probably the most frustrating genre to learn because of their 'quirks' (there is no consistency in framedata in the sense that high tiers are privileged just because the devs felt like it).
long story short: every fighting game character needs to be more balanced, there are too many moves that just break the rules of 'big move do big damage but have big lag.' If this were paid more attention to, the genre would be less frustrating and more rewarding as a whole (players would probably become less salty also).
Last summer, I had a several-week period where I was very into fighting games, a genre that I was always curious about but hesitant to get into. Sure, I have put many hours into Smash Bros. and other platformer fighters over the years but understood that those are a different ballpark. I did begin to learn the mechanics and moves of games, even buying the Champion edition for SFV, for the sixteen fighters with the base edition felt limiting. Sagat was my main, and I was actually learning combos and winning around forty-percent of my matches. I also played Fantasy Strike, which was an excellent base for learning the genre, and P4AU, which taught me that anime fighting games are absolutely insane. But, as I said, this period only lasted for so many weeks. I felt that my skills were beginning to plateau, and still not being able to complete some tutorials was wearing on me. For all my practice, I was never able to consistently input a dragon punch from a crouch. I never did make it out of bronze. I do not believe that the fighting genre, as a whole, should simplify themselves to appeal to a wider audience, but its inseparable connection to the competitive scene will always make players of all stripes feel like they have to become a master to justify any time spent on the game. People will play shooters, MOBAs, and more and never have the thought of becoming competitive cross their mind, but something about fighting games does that. Most people in the comment have lamented how limited single-player options are, and I agree. I hope to freshen up a bit before SFVI comes out, which, despite its lack of Sagat, looks rad.
I think as fighting games evolve they need to become simplified in how they are learned, not in how they play. All games imo should be easy to learn hard to master if they want to keep an audience while growing
For me the enjoyable part of fighting games are the interactions and back&forth in a match. That requires us to be a similar skill level to even have that part of the game be enjoyed. While with FPS I can just enjoy racking up kills or landing a few shots because of all the feedback the game gives me for doing well. So even if the game is unpopular I can still enjoy the shooting and occasional cool thing or unique situation.
yeah not finding opponents of relative skill level is a self defeating thing. The more players leave the rarer it gets, the rarer it gets the more players will leave.
Yeah it’s couch co op or nothing. Plus when they don’t have a story mode to teach controls I don’t really care to spend 10 mins reading control and combo buttons 🤷♀️
Because fighting game developers don't understand how the casual player base work over veteran fighting games player base(Capcom are now starting to understand it with SF6, but it took two installments since SFIV to figure this out.) They just think making fighting games more easier will keep the casual around longer, and it turn out it doesn't. If you don't give the casuals any content that sustainable and give them a reason to stick around longer, they will leave. There are soo many games coming out that will grab the attention away from your casuals player base. Which is why casuals are a lot more pickier and less tolerable to BS than the veteran fighting games players. Veteran players are more tolerable to BS and more easier to please. However if they don't get their matches they will dismiss your games and called it "dead" because all the casual left.. Leaving it this never ending cycle of fighting games losing their player base long term.
I agree that casual players keep these games alive. Catering to the most hard-core player base seems like a good idea but leaves the game with only 100 people in the end
ez answer. when you adjust your games for only competitive play, it lockes out the majority of the player base. leaving you with only people that have matrix level ability to pick up any fighting game and already doing TOD combos after a few minuted of playing. these people have 0 idea what it is like to play on a casual level.
Fighting games are too focused on maintaining a"core player base" when the reality is not going to be a high number. Instead they should focus on attracting new players and turn them into semi casual players that support the game regardless of playtime (like league). DLC, patches and consistent dev support has been more common for modern FGs but still not fresh enough to cycle casual players.
the casual players are what drive the playerbase. Appealing to the .1% of hardcore players isn't really viable, its more about converting casuals into hardcore players and you need to cast a large net for that to happen
We don't need you crybaby casuals that want to make everything easy mode. You idiots can't think. Have no coordination, you want to change the mechanics and difficulty to make it easy because of your adhd brain. So please stay the fuck away from fighting games and stick to your yearly cod releases. Casuals are destroying fighing games.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I dropped out of the genre almost entirely when I accepted that I’m never going to care enough to learn about “frame data”, “plus/minus on block” and other fighting game terminology that seems absolutely essential to high level play. I never cared to be “great”, just not bad or good. But my type of player usually only does well until about gold or platinum and then gets destroyed by the guys investing 8 hours a day learning even a single mixup. That long combo string you pulled off was impressive the first time, then it’s boring to watch my bar get deleted while I wait for the match to be over. SF2 got a lot of years out of me when the only community I had was my local group of friends and some strangers at the arcade. Unfortunately we’re at the point where it’s just way easier to fight randoms online than get the boys together in person so I guess it’s not for me anymore. Also, people say you have the best chance starting on week one of release, but it feels like a lot of people are getting to play these games even much earlier than that now.
As a new player who quit multiple fighting games 2-5 hours into the game: It's the difficulty. Every game has steep learning curves, but fighting games aren't curves, they're fucking mountains. It's not fun to dedicate so much time to learning combos, especially when you know that your talent only comes into question to fight other players all the time. Guilty Gear was kind of interesting solely because of how fresh they tried to keep the game, but it still winded up being "Boot up, find match, get Potemkin Bustered, sink or swim, uninstall". As for why they buy it to begin with? I mean look at GG. It has amazing, cool characters designed to look pretty and badass. They get everything right about designing characters, they just chose a dying, gatekept genre.
It depends on what you are looking for. If you are getting stomped out in matches and unwilling to learn or adapt past the point of that difficulty I can imagine it wouldn't be very fun. Tbh it is possible fighting games, at least traditional 2D ones are a dying genre. But I don't really see it that way and I think they have enough of a niche audience to continue
Do you play on PS or PC? I cannot understand how the PS lobby system is so terrible. It literally averages 1-2 disconnects per session for me which is insanely high
Yeah I have had the issue sparingly on PC but it's been very bad for PS lobbies. Aside from wanting to play specific people or PS tournaments I don't have a lot of reason to play the game off of PC
No single player content. I bought guilty gear strive cuz I watch maximillian he hyped the game up for me. Day 1 I play story mode. It’s a movie… fine I try Arcade and hope for a unique movie at end for each character nope. Did I unlock a new costume at least? Nope. I moved on. I’m a casual fighting game fan. Not gonna bother with multiplayer if the single player can’t hook me into putting time into it
I feel like the last fighting game I played with good offline was injustice 2, there is so much to do and I enjoy it. Grinding for gear, colors, and ability keep me playing to this day. I swear they could shut down servers and I would still play to to make every character as dripped out as possible. They even had Ai fights if the grind was too long and you wanted to switch out. Bosses were annoying but fun once you beat them, I think this was the last fighting game that cared about offline just as much or more than online.
cosmetics aside injustice 1 and 2 had amazing story modes, its good to see a game based on a comic actually took it somewhat seriously and recreated a compelling story
Fighting Games just need to bring back expansive single player content. Tekken Force back in the day was a good example. A lot of fighting games nowadays will just have Arcade mode, practice and online. I'm a casual fighting game player now I don't have time to put the hours in like I did when I was younger. If I'm gonna shell out money for a fighting game I'm really looking for offline content. Content where I can just enjoy the characters, the lore the art style without having to go online and get schooled by the veterans.
I definitely think more stuff to do and more things to bring in casual audiences would help so much. I know indie games just wanna make their main game and move on, but you need like... a story mode. You need mini games. Something to play. Something to take your mind off that match you just lost without making you wish you'd booted up a different better game.
I’ve always been a combat junkie, and can appreciate great fighting mechanics, but I’ve lost the vast majority of interest due to the stagnation of the genre and most people just playing like uninspired robots chasing the meta combos.
It's no secret that the barrier to entry is pretty high and it only further divides new players and skilled players over time, so here's another thing that might probably contribute to it. The fact that a bunch of them tend to lack meaningful single player content. A lot of them have admittedly low effort story modes and maybe a combo challenge or two, so you already lost the players who are there for story. I can only take so many static no animation visual novels before I start to lose interest. I'm just not a visual novel kind of guy. Combo challenges are obviously hard for people who can't do them as well. Then, sometimes the fights in said story mode are never like gradually scaled in difficulty. It's either poop baby easy, or suddenly balls to the wall hard, it doesnt usually gradually try to improve the player over the course of the game. A player can do Low medium high all day, but the game never tries to say," hey have you tried punishing a jump with an anti air? Do that, instead." no instead you just kinda do it after getting beat after awhile.
idk what the solution to this would really be. There are just too many things to explain to someone and against a human opponent if you punish a jump in maybe he never jumps again and your practice is useless. I don't think this is a fighting games issue i think this is a multiplayer issue. Any human opponent can potentially adapt to the point of making practice not relevant.
@@flowchartkenYT True, but still though, I think introducing concepts in single player would probably go a long way. Sometimes, new players tend to buckle down on their playstyle and then get frustrated when its not working, when they probably just need to look at it differently. This is where some kinda story mode can come in and say," This CPU is going to do X, try doing Y without doing the thing you usually do" or something. Now when they fight against a human and see they tend to favor doing X, they can hopefully gather they should try to do Y a little bit more. Y'know like give them the knowledge, make them apply it, now they'll learn to do it when they need it instead of just trying to brute force and get frustrated when it doesnt work. For example I had a friend that kept Super Dashing in FighterZ and I just told her, hey, 2H can punish that literally all day, try not to depend on that to approach." And well, now she only did it 9 times out of 10 instead of all 10 times lol. which is still progress.
DNF is so unfortunate because it’s actually an amazingly beginner friendly fighting game, but was tied to a property that most people in the west didn’t even know existed
yep adding motion inputs and restricting air movement made it a very deep game but very approachable. I don't think the reasons DNF failed had to do with the gameplay, although SM supremacy and infinites at launch really hurt it
@@flowchartkenYT It’s gameplay from the open beta was the main reason I bought the game, even though the visuals are what pulled me in at first. If it actually had a functional story, I probably would’ve got a lot more time out of it.
up until recently fighting games were something i only played once in a blue moon, I've only just started getting into them and i think the biggest reason people drop them is because the learning curve is so massive. most new players will struggle to even perform a quarter circle and find it very difficult to do a dp movement in training let alone in the middle of a match. then they realize they have to be able to do them in a combo with quick precision and sometimes you try a combo over and over and it gets frustrating because you feel like you're doing the move and nothing happens, or the move comes out but you did it too slowly for it to combo. and then they hear about footsies and playing the neutral and frame data and punishes and they get overwhelmed with how much there is because "i can't even do a basic move how am i supposed to lose all that"
learning curve is definitely an issue and I hope things like modern controls and simple inputs can combat that without taking away from skill ceiling at a top level
I, as a complete casual fighting game player, feel like SF6 is trying to fix all the problems fighting games have. World tour looks cool AF, theres a ton of casual fun modes, battle hub is amazing, modern controls for new players + GGStrive like tutorials are great and the characters are tried and true classics. I have never been more hyped for a fighting game than this because it feels like ill be getting my money's worth of content even if somehow the playerbase goes to the hundreds. But i wonder what would happen if SF6 was free to play with the exact same content it has right now...
I've seen this topic brought up before, and it really goes to show you how niche fighting games really are. It sounds weird, but I actually got anxiety when I would play online before because I was worried how shit I was or I'm forgetting my moves and all that. It's been a hot minute since I've played a fighting game online, yet I still like them despite my shortcomings. I feel like SF6 is a step in the right direction to draw in the new crowd, while Tekken 8 and MK12 could be pretty good too. Project L might launch it into the stratosphere, but at the end of the day just play what you like and have fun. Low player counts and getting bodied constantly can hurt some people's motivation factor for sure
ranked anxiety is very real, many people actually do feel something similar. I agree that end of day whatever you had fun with is what you should spend time on
There's also never a whole lot in most fighting games when it comes to casual players. Smash is able to survive because of it has a aspect to the game that's very casual and pick up and play. A lot of fighting games just ended up being sweatshops and if you aren't enjoying the sweat you probably shouldn't be there. And as you mentioned, if you show up late you gotta sweat a lot more without a whole lot to do. Also, side content should help players improve at the game itself naturally or be so obviously detached from the game to avoid getting players into bad habits.
Street Fighter and The King Of Fighters series are the reason why I got into fighting games and then the Super Smash Bros series and the Mortal Kombat series!
Im gonna say that fighting games doesnt offer a beginner's guide that well at all. Ive played Tekken 6 and 7 sometimes when I get a chance on arcades or friends. The game would just let u pick a character in a training room and just information bomb you with a massive movelist. How could a casual learn a game that doesnt start simple to complex like how mobas do it. They just plop u in a match and waves you goodluck to learn everything that is also technical. If youtubers teach you better basics than what the game offers, theres something wrong with this game being too forgetful of the casuals trying to create babysteps. In the end the foundation of fighting games for aspiring players is a crumbling one and that nothing can be jumpstarted if all they can say is "git gud"
yeah fighting game guides are by and large trash and the playerbase ranges from very helpful to insufferable. I think the issue is the best way to learn is to play and playing is hard when you are not very good.
For me, I’ve never really gotten past intermediate skill level. I can always picture in my mind what I need to do and stuff, but my hands just won’t do it properly. Not to say I’ve given up, I still attempt to properly do at least simple combos so I can have something for the opportunities I find in a match. Though it seriously saps my motivation to lab and learn then just get slapped when I try to go online. It is what it is and I really really want to get to that sweet point in fighting games, but I can’t seem to reach it. Another issue is that there’s no one to play fighting games with, since the genre is a niche essentially none of the people I would like to play with play them. Thus the fighting game experience for me is a cycle of practicing something cool doing it, feeling good about myself, get demolished in online lobbies, try again, then eventually give up until I decide to give it another shot. I know my level of commitment isn’t high enough but fighting games seriously do ask a lot of the player to really experience the fun part. I’ve been on the fence with SF6 cause I know it’s catering more to people like me who can’t be as good as the average player, but I’m also scared I’ll end up doing the same thing of spending money on a game I expect to play a lot and end up dropping within 3 months. I think I’ll ultimately purchase it though I really hope this is finally the last hurdle for me to reach that sweet point where I can actually enjoy fighting games to the fullest.
its probably going to sound hollow but getting past the knowing it > doing it phase is usually just practice. You have to be able to do some things without actively thinking about it. Either way good luck 👍
My main in Guilty Gear XX and Xrd was May. I played other characters, but I learned about the existance of the game when I was listening random music years ago and suddenly "Blue water Blue Sky" (May's theme) pop out. I was enchanted by the song, so i looked for the game and instantly fell in love with it. When Strive was announced I was very exited, but when Arc started showing gameplay and I saw the May's movements list... well, it was heart breaking for me. Videos talking about the game beta started to pop out, and the character that introduced me to the game had become a silly meme in the franchise... sadly I have no interest in playing GG now a days.
@@flowchartkenYT I understand that you like it more, but for me the May's motif in the theme song lacks a lot of presence in Strive. In Blue Water Blue Sky and even in Starry Story, you can immediately tell, thanks to the musical motif, that the character is somehow related to the sea. The disaster of passion really fails in that aspect. The way they used the motif conveys May's cheerfull and childish personality but it fails to convey her other side and her connection to the sea. The voice and lyrics were needed to make the song more serious and deep, but even with that it doesnt convey what the instrumentation managed in previous games.
@@21clife27 I phrased my comment badly - I do not like May's theme in strive. It sounds like a random anime opening and seemingly has nothing to do with the character other than weird uwu vibes
sounds good to me - anything that rewards players for playing is a good idea. Not everyone wants to grind ranked matches for points especially if they are losing
It's a form of dementia. 1. Hey that trailer looks pretty cool I really like "x" IP. This is the fighting game im gonna practice and play "for real". 2. Buy the game, play a bit of training/arcade mode. 3. Go online get paired up with people who play fighting games religiously as a job. 4. Get smoked 5. I don't even know why I bothered. I don't have time for this shit. I'm never playing fighting games again. 6. Trailer for new fighting game releases -> go back to step 1.
Fighting games occupy a similar niche to RTS games: They have a steep learning curve, are primarily balanced around PVP, and are (for the most part) 1v1. The 1v1 nature means it's almost always your fault when you lose, and it basically makes it so there is very little room for casual play. The competitive balance makes it so the difference between not knowing and knowing is insurmountable and quite unfun. There are a few ways around this, the two main ones coming to mind are through having an extensive campaign/PvM mode (such as Warcraft/Starcraft), or introducing RNG (such as Smash w/ items). Fighting games struggle extra because the core gameplay is very similar and plot is often relegated to cutscenes, making it very difficult to have an engaging campaign mode, while RNG is disliked in both genres due to it compromising the competitive integrity. The viewership experience is also difficult as a newcomer to fighting games, due to everything happening very quickly and the lack of a "newbie" stream during most major tournaments. I clearly recall watching a Street fighter tournament and only understanding that I should be excited when everyone's yelling, but not understanding at all why what they did was impressive. The technical terms are also quite difficult to understand as they don't really translate to similar things in other game genres, causing it to be quite difficult to pull people into the games. Another point that I don't see mentioned often is that fighting games is a VERY oversaturated market. You already have the "Main" titles coming out with a game every few years, on top of that there's the occasional "breakout" indie titles, the "franchise IP" titles, and there are simply too many people dipping their feet in the tiny pond. Compare that to the RTS scene which is pretty much down to just a few titles with a surviving competitive scene (Starcraft, Warcraft, and Age of empires), almost all of which have been around 10+ years. Perhaps there are good reasons, but I never quite understood why they needed to release new street fighter games (for example) when they could simply continue to balance/add to the previous game's rosters.
I would actually argue fighting games are similarly saturated to other markets. XYZ Moba/BR/Shooter game comes out with the same frequency as fighting games imo
@@flowchartkenYT And few of those ever stick their landing, with the exception of maybe shooters, which is my point. The most popular mobas is still LoL and Dota 2 by a vast margin, both of which came out like 10 years ago. With the smaller playerbase fighting games have, the problem is further exacerbated. It's very different when each game holds 15~25% of the playerbase when the concurrent player count is 20000 vs when it's 2000.
The solution could be better AI that better mimics human behavior but also doesn't abuse, or cheat to almost always win, giving people someone to play with and not frustrating the player with loosing against way more experienced players or abusive hard AI or way too easy boring AI. (Difficulty level settings are key for this). That would improve the overall gameplay experience. Just see what happened in the RTS gaming. StarCraft 2 is still being played thanks to coop mode missions.
I mostly play fighting games in the arcade mode and barely online. I'm not worried about trying to compete with everyone else, whether it be online or local. I got into fighting games because of the characters themselves. I do like SFV, Killer Instinct, and Mortal Kombat 11, but i hate how the games got released due to how you had to be online most of the time for most things. That's one of the reasons I still have my older fighting games.
I’ve started and stopped with fighting games over the years. I’ve found that the (skill) barrier to entry is too high for me. I recently found all of these concepts such as frame data, priority moves, tech, etc, and realized that this basically gonna be like taking a college course. I love watching high-level players in fighting games, but I can’t get my teeth kicked in for hundreds of hours hoping to start to have fun soon.
I get this, but I think you can learn a lot just messing around. Not for everyone but if you can find someone who you have fun playing with it makes it a lot easier.
frame data is the worst mechanic for fighting game not only you have to know about your character combo but you have to know about other frame too or you will end up in trap frame or +
@@oratank Are you actually serious? The entire game is frame data. You literally can not have a fighting game without frame data. Frame data is how fast moves come out, how long they stay out, and so on.
@@bestaround3323 nobody need to learn about how different of frame data in every move just make it simple then you don't need a frame data at all like old 2d fighting game
What makes me move on from fighting games is the difficulty to learn combos and be flashy then when playing online you get demolishes it’s not fun unless it’s an even match
My problem with fighting games is that they're bare bones when it comes to content. People just want to boot up their game and chill after a long day of school/work. But outside of vs mode netplay, there usually isn't much to do, and most fighting games dont teach you anything. You have to learn these games through TH-cam tutorials.
its definitely a requirement to use outside resources if you want to improve past a certain level but I think that is true of most online games. The slow drip content method sucks but unfortunately it seems to be the combo of what keeps players interested and what makes money right now
I agree. A lot of fighters lack any real tutorial mode for beginners. Under Night In Birth had an excellent tutorial mode and actually taught the player things pretty much no other fighter at the time did. More games need to be like that
@@Jack_Horner_is_a_hero That would require people to actually fuck with them. There had been several fighting games that actually teach you shit. Skullgirls, Them Fighting Herds, v Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, Virtua Fighter 5, Dead or Alive 5 and 6. What do most of those games have in common? They're games that unfortunately not many people play.
@@trellwhitehurst6670 which is why bigger titles need to start adding them. A newbie to the fgc isn't going ti start out with any of those games. More than likely right now it'd either be GGST, KOFXV, MBTL, T7, SFV, or even MK11. Kizzie Kay had the chance to play the full SF6 game and said that the trials were actually crazy useful so hopefully that will ease up the lrarnung curb for new players
@@Jack_Horner_is_a_hero That's the problem I have with people. If you're actually serious about that shit, then the fighting game shouldn't matter. People kill me with that shit. That's like a woman saying where all the good men at. They're all over the place ....including in front of them. It just they don't really want them. Back when I was learning fighting games I didn't give a fuck which one I played. For the most part I still don't. Whatever I learned in one was going to translate to the others I may play. Unlike most people now, I actually took the time to learn and get good at the basics as well.
The biggest problem modern fighting games have in my opinion is there’s just not much there for a casual player. Skill barrier for entry aside there’s rarely anything to do other than a brief/limited single player experience and then going against people online. MK11 for example performed really well in part due to its rather indepth single player offerings in my opinion. I’d be interested in seeing a fighting game with some significant investment in some online PvE content in addition to the usual stuff. Like having a lengthy co-op campaign or arcade mode with characters tagging in and out or something like that and seeing if it’s capable of holding interest. Because if something like that works, they might be able to improve/get invested to stick around as a long term player of the game
I agree it should be a complete game. I think it depends on who you are marketing to, but as I have said many times in this comments section casuals should be the people marketed to. Make a great game with a deep combat system and hardcore FGC heads will play it. But you have to make a complete game with more to do than grind ranked to get the other 90% of the audience you need
@@flowchartkenYT here's why I disagree with that. There's been PLENTY of fighting games that had done that in the past only for those same casuals to still not fuck with them. Be it Virtua Fighter 5, KOF 2006 and 13, Tekken Tag 2, Tekken 6 for some, Soul Calibur 3 or 6 even. If it ain't certain IPs doing it, they're not going to fuck with it unfortunately.
well, fighting games require a lot of work when compared to most other genres. you need to learn and understand the frame data and match ups. you need to practice your combos/set ups. and most importantly especially in the beginning you have to be able to accept that losing is part of the process. your average player isnt built like that. all it takes is a few bad matches against a veteran player and that game is getting uninstalled.
@@flowchartkenYT thats the thing, the work is necessary if you want to play past the first month of the game. sf6 just came out and i know im looking at a 15 hour minimum(more like 20 cause i didnt play any betas) lab time before i start taking matches. with that said the work leads to the genres biggest hook which is personal growth. when something that you thought was too hard to do becomes part of your regular gameplay you feel that sense of accomplishment and that drives you to spend even more time which turns you into a regular player. i cant think of any other genre that delivers that kind of feeling. but like i said before your average player isnt used to this. they are trained for instant gratification(and this extends beyond gaming). you load in, get a few kills, win? good, lose? you blame your team, see all the maps, unlock the weapons. in a few months new game comes and repeat the cycle. that doesnt work with fighting games. even in the modern era where games are retired we still commit years to them. and then you have games that have playing something like super turbo, 3s, cvs2 for decades. fighting games arent the fast food gaming that people are used to. the level of commitment required is why theres always a giant dive after a game launches.
I've got maybe...since I was playing in 91, at least 20k hours on street fighter 2(with its many variants). I remember playing all day at a arcade from open to 6pm, spending 40 dollars in quarters, mk1, mk2, samurai shodown, street fighter 2...any fighting game. Hell of a good time!
because only a small minority of people like doing PVP and most fighting games have nothing else to do. a small percentage stays for the online (the hardcore), a small percentage enjoys the gameplay enough to learn more and eventually go online (the converted from casual to hardcore), and the vast majority leave when they run out of things to do other than PVP, because PVP requires actual investment (the casuals). SF6 is about to nuke every other fighter in terms of player retention, and I bet my left ball that everyone else will copy the literal autoplay dynamic mode instead of spending some cash to make actual content to play, and then wonder why everyone leaves while they come up with ways to make their games more braindead e.e calling it now.
I actually think the second group is a good call out. Converting casuals to hard-core is really how you hold players, and having the single player modes is what brings casuals in.
*I think fighting game could save itself with simply faster loading times, fun ways to train and more modes.* _I'm a new fighting game player (Tekken 7, 2 months in) so my opinions are based on little experience with the genre_ *Loading Time* The most important time for loading to be fast is after a match is over. You're not necessarily losing players because they didn't win the matches (90% of battle royal players don't win, and a good amount die in the first 1min of the game)... If your game has long loading (1mins or more) then you need to create a way for players to be able to interact with your game during that time. I can easily spend hours in Tekken's training mode but for something as simply as changing characters after a match, I usually just play another game or get off because it would take like 5 minutes to get back into a match even in their offline modes. *Fun ways to train* This could be things like: - Arcade style Mini games that helps players get used to a character's combos, special abilities or scenario/situational training - Give players the ability to add combos to a character's movelist, and be able to share and rate community made combos *More modes* Tbh story mode in most fighting games (and other games) are a big waste of development time and resources that could be used elsewhere. The only players that would miss cut scene stories are hardcore character fans... even then if you really care about stories, having it written in text or comic/manga style, would provide the best opportunity for a deep story development since the cost would be significantly less, then later it can be turned into an anime like Tekken has done a couple of time 😂. Fighting games online as a new player feels so solitary, there's no community presence. The only time you're interacting with another human is in a match unless you're in a player hosted server, which those tend to be less noob friendly than not given fighting game usually are too sweaty and doesn't offer non-competitive modes for players to interact with each other on. With that said, SF6 is evolving the genre with their open world style mode called "world tour". I'm not up on the details but if that mode is MMO styled (being about to interact with other players), then I would be surprised if their player base does grow. We've seen something similar with NBA 2k's "The Park" mode and how deeper that made the game. Community + creative modes ideas: - Tag team game mode but each character has a player, so a 2v2 match would be 4 human players playing 2 to a team - Battle royal or elimination mode; players of all skill levels are added to one server and have 1v1 matches. Winners stays, losers are out, but winner must keep their health level maybe gain a little from the win. - Giving players the ability to create tournaments for online or offline use and give them the ability to set rules, schedule that notifies all involved players, invite players or opening it for community.
I don't have much to add to this tbh, I pretty much agree with all of it. I think there is more that can be done with story modes but personally I couldn't care less about it so its hard to say exactly what that would be.
Not a dig at you specifically but I think barrier of entry or "FG are hard" is too often used as a reason and other issues get overlooked. Early in your video you mention gameplay loop in FG and I think that is possibly a bigger reason than "FG are hard" cuz a lot of games are hard but most games the gameplay loop isn't as simple or basic as it is in FG. You mention it here in your video, iterating on little nuances. Most other games or genres have much bigger extremes in terms of gameplay loop. In League of Legends you can change your build, playstyle, character, modes, lanes, roles. You can farm, gank, support, build damage, build tank...there are a ton of variables and different ways to play the game within the game. And improve on top of that. Even in FPS there are significant changes in the maps and strategies based on the maps alone. You may be a really good skilled player but you need to alter your strats and learn OR USE different tactics on new maps. New weapons, new characters, new power ups, etc. These all change gameplay and add variables that affect & potentially enhance the gameplay loop. Also FG being 1v1 will inherently always be smaller than team games. Being on a team or playing with friends will always have the upperhand in player retention. Finally I think SF6 is doing something correct w/ its Single Player but up until now NRS games and Smash were the only real FG that did any significant single player content. SP content will sell games and its a way to get new players even if the % of new SP that turn to Online MP is small its still something. IMO the create a character stuff in SF6 might be its biggest seller in terms of new players.
I still think that MOBA games are just as hard in terms of barrier to entry and they get 1000x the players. I agree with everything you said, but I think the perception of high barrier to entry is doing more to keep players out than actual barriers. One thing someone pointed out the I think adds to that perception is execution difficulty is higher. Someone playing moba might need to only learn to press 10 buttons, where as a person playing strive has to be able to do a 641236 input as a requirement to do supers.
@@flowchartkenYT I agree to an extent the problem lies in that a new player is gonna get destroyed & potentially quit whether it has high execution or 1 button specials because the better more knowledgable player is doing to win fairly easy regardless, so barrier to entry still exists in the basic sense. I def agree that the perception of high barrier to entry in FG does more damage than the reality. For some reason the basic population thinks FG are significantly harder than MOBA or BR, Arena Shooters, FPS, MMO, ARPGs... I think the only genre that comes close in terms of perception of difficulty is multiplayer RTS like StarCraft which I actually believe is hard as fuck IMO. I'll also add the team based game w/ friends could still be a hard high execution game but scrubs or new players will put up with it cause their friends who are skilled can carry them. Imagine if you could somehow play a FG w/ your friend whos a noob and carry them in matches until they get good. I bet they stay around longer.
Another issue with fighting games is sometimes you want to play and main multiple characters but when all of their moves require unique inputs and other factors you usually stick to maining one character because learning multiple is simply too arduous. But playing only one character gets super boring and when you want to switch, you realzie you have to learn the whole game over again and just give up.
@@flowchartkenYT It's interesting cuz I like playing a lot of characters in mk9 and I watched a ton of mk10 and when I finally tried out mk10 I immediately put it done after finding out how actually difficult it was in comparison despite me liking the characters more in mk10
Use to play fighting games in the arcade back in high school. Was fun then cause we all did not know shit, we just was out there hitting buttons and learning new shit here and there. I have a group of buddies now that we like to try and play games together, so we tried GGST and GBV. With two of our friends be FGC vets, any of use none tenured players never can take a game off any of them (Legit had a set with one that was 56-0). So after awhile then the two tenured guys would just play each other and then us would play each other. This was just different than the times in the arcade as we are all playing online. In how social the world is today online.. funny enough fighting games just don't feel the same when not in that group of people you hang out with or meet new people around playing that game. Its like playing a tcg online vs at a store or shop. Its not the same, and i believe both tcg and fighting games thrive off smaller communities where info can be shared and skill levels are not as vast. That social aspect to it, you just cant beat. The big games like fornite/league/apex, cant really match fgc or tcg when we talk about social interactions offline.
True I do think smaller communities exist within fighting games and not nearly as much on larger titles. My brother is a big MTG guy and he thinks there is a lot of similar things about the communities
I tried mortal kombat 11 online after owning it for like a week and got absolutely destroyed by some guy playing as robocop. He juggled me so much I spent more time in the air than on the floor. I then played another guy and a similar story happened. After that matchup ended I decided I was too unskilled for online play ..and tend to just play the CPU offline now.
I think you have to go in with a different mindset. going against the computers your goal should be to have fun, enjoy pressing buttons or maybe just beat the arcade mode. Going against human players you're goal has to be to learn and it has to have different requirements. You will need to know some basics and put in some time outside of just playing. Similar to learning anything their are practice methods that are less fun or engaging then just doing the thing that are a requirement for improvement. Some players don't like that and there is no problem with that. You should spend your time and energy how you want to, and if playing other players doesn't interest you than that is totally fine. Games do not exist to be enjoyed in one way.
I really want more people to play Punch Planet. People are constantly discovering the game and going "whoa, that looks cool!", buying it and then the only matches they can find are against people who have been playing for like 5+ years already. If you don't come in with the right mindset, you just get demolished and move on to a game where you can get competition at your own level.
Yeah it's really hard to jump in to a game that's old and the player base is moved on. I only ever saw punch planet from core a gaming but it looked interesting albeit a little slow for me personally
I think the problem is that the floor of entry is really high, for an example, LoL has a massive playerbase and is also I'd argue equally as difficult to play competantly, but the skill floor is much lower due to there only being 4 abilities and combos consists of pressing Q,W,E,R,D or F at the right time.
That's definitely true. Lol is just as hard and knowledge heavy as fighting games but the execution difficulty is non existent which makes it less intimidating
For me, it's not that "fighting games are boring" or anything. I just have other things I want to work on. Like Comic panels, storyboards, voice overs, etc. I still come back to play them. Just not as frequently.
Most fighting games have nearly zero content. There's only a weak "story" mode and that's it. Stuff like time attack and survival are redundant because it's just the same thing with a different title. Unless you want to spend hours in training mode or playing online, there's nothing for you to do. SF6 will certainly set the bar with its World Tour mode. Mortal Kombat also does well with content.
The offline content is usually bland. Playing online is only fun if you are almost evenly matched. Without a large player base, you just run into the most experienced players.
Yeah it's an issue especially with smaller players base
This. I love DFO, but I'm not buying a game for full price, or even 40 USD, when I'll get maybe 2 hours of entertainment out of the arcade, then have nothing to do but fight tryhards.
Worst thing is, that you may be doing well offline and think yourself as some kind of master. Then you go online, and you have your ass handed to you, and you don't know why.
@@roncerjani9063if you think you're good at a fighting game because you can beat bots you're just stupid
calling someone to try hard it's exactly mentality of people and why these games have such a low player count
Adding more single player content just extends the lifespan of the game by maybe a month
The fact that no one hardly play dnf Duel.. and when I do get a matchup it's against someone who just wipes the floor with me. It's not their fault.
its a huge problem, and the main reason why I am not a fan of them shilling the switch version before there is any crossplay. Even overlooking the switch version having no rollback (something they are not clear about at all) it seems like there is going to be 30 players after a few weeks and that is not worth the money in my opinion
This is to true I've gone 16 and 82 in the first week of the game and haven't touched it since
@@doggermelon wow 16 wins ...I could never say that...not even one win 😭
yeah same i have waited hours for a single match and it was a launcher player that completeley anihilated me
@@Rin_404 lmao was it jaxvex? Dude is hard smurfing on switch rn
I think the reason for the drop is fairly obvious. The extremely high barrier for entry. People with little experience in fighting games see some cool combos in a new fighting game and want to do that. Then they buy the game and realize that they can't do it, so they start practicing, but at some point they realize that it's going to take far longer to learn than they're willing to spend on it, and end up leaving the game. Then once the player count gets too low the experienced players will also start leaving.
It's certainly a reason. Honestly I have played fighting games for so long its very hard to imagine from the perspective of someone relatively new to the genre. I think having people you know to learn with helps a lot to encourage training
@@flowchartkenYT I got a friend to try SFV a while ago. When he got matches (rookie queue was actually kind of long) he struggled to get a special move out while his bronze opponents got free hits and did that combo they practiced. He hasn't played since.
Until that moment I had not considered how much exactly new players can struggle with fighting games. To me at this point simple motion inputs (quarter circle forward + button) do not even cross my mind as a barrier to entry.
I think difficulty is a lot of it for really brand new players. In other games you move around, you press your button, you do your thing, and everything makes sense. Most fighting games have complicated inputs (though we don't think of them as such, being fighting game players ourselves) and on top of that there are combos with varying difficulty and very little input for what's going on in the game during gameplay (how long am I in block stun, when can I press a button, what's + and what's punishable, etc. those things need to be presented on screen somehow during gameplay so new people can interface with those concepts by playing rather than visiting online encyclopedias imo).
SF6's world tour mode seems like an interesting take on teaching people fighting games. I'm curious to see how it goes.
the barrier of entry has NEVER been lower than now and we still see a significant drop in players, i think the problem is modern fighting games don't give casual people enough things to do outside of online mode to keep them entertained
@@bloomallcaps that's also a thing! MK11 did really well and most people just did SP content (comparing sales to playerbase).
Ideally those people would be incentivised to try out online as well and the game would make sense when they do.
I'm certain that's not the main reason. Almost every game's playerbase got dropped sharply after launch. Fighting games don't have that one thing that keep people playing, "season pass". Heck, Elden Ring's players drop 90% after launch, would you say it's because it's a hard game?
Just online content won't be enough to keep people around. Live service games that don't have frequent update also have its playerbase reduced significantly. The problem is fighting games don't have constant new contents for people to play, and depend mostly on the tournament/online scene to keep people interested.
As a casual player, most fighting games have close to NO single player content that has variety or is fun on its own. Usually its just training mode or story mode. Sure story mode is cool, but it's usually the same thing as a normal match but easier/a way to learn the game, not something I would consider very engaging.
I think that's why a lot of people love smash games. They arent the same as traditional fighters for sure but they have a plethora of single player content in most titles that were just fun. smash bros melee had things like adventure mode where the game just became a platformer, fun minigames like break the targets, event mode for whacky scenarios, and quite a few others. Brawl also had a crazy single player experience.
I'm pretty sure that traditional fighting games can create modes similar to these that take advantage of the game's central mechanics to make a unique and fun single player experience on top of the multiplayer experience fighting games are known for.
That's what annoyed me about DBFZ, The story mode was fun but besides that...nothing.
Even it's arcade mode sucked as there was nothing for beating it, Non canon endings for the winner would've been nice.
I like SF/MK/Tekken as they do offer things like that (Along with other stuff).
@@Jiren261 There was unlocking SSJ Blue Goku and Vegeta for both in Arcade Mode, and in Story Mode(in Story Mode you have to get Goku and Vegeta to max level in order to even use Goku Blue and Vegeta Blue but it doesn't unlock them for the other modes)
I think it comes down to the mentality "I Didn't spend x money to get tossed around all day" Fighting games are naturally a feels bad game because it does take time and effort to really improve. It takes a special type of person to really get enjoyment out of them. Similar to why people don't often do martial arts(competitively). The only real way to retain people is to add something more chill like what SF6 is doing with their adventure mode thing.
yeah hopefully it works with 6 and other devs copy it and improve on it. Fingers crossed
They also do a terrible job of illustrating that "dropping in rank" is still progress *towards* rewarding matchups.
hopefully the adventure mode and AI matches will give people the time to improve without getting roflstomped by high end players early on. a fighting game needed to evolve past just giving arcade and player vs modes as options, you need more side content to keep people invested. you need something more than roflstomping AI and getting roflstomped by real people.
Sometimes some games add mini games or other modes for replayability value in case you get fed up with just playing offline arcade/survival/versus or online ranked.
Melty Blood Type Lumina has different stories for the arcade mode of the characters and 4 "boss rush modes" which are just gimmicky fights that have more story than fighting.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax has the huge story modes covering the first Arena game and Ultimax. Plus a survival mode called "Golden Arena Mode" which mimicks the dungeons from the Persona games by putting you into matches where the enemies are buffed with different things (extra life, insta kill moves, infinite SP bar, constantly triggering debuffs, etc.) And you can pick a partner to give you support in the game until you reach the top of the dungeon. With bosses dropping out abilities to aid you in the fights, as well as you leveling up like an RPG and raising your stats (life, SP, defense, power, speed). There are even special dungeons with special drops based on the year's holidays or seasons.
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has something similar with Heroes vs. Heralds where your objective, outside of defeating the opposing faction and take over a stage and secure it; is to collect the MvC cards which can be equipped to grant different effects (HP regen, HC regen, high defense high attack, status effects).
Dragon Ball FighterZ has different modes which sadly, the most interesting ones are online. Like Union fights where you fight for the faction of your favorite character and try to make it raise in the chart by facing others online. Or boss rush modes where sometimes the fights get gimmicky and the maximum fights you can have on a raw unless you lose is 7. Finally, there's story mode... which sadly, I find lackluster and boring to go through.
Other games before online mode became the norm had mini games to make it more fun. Fate/Unlimited Codes has different mini games for all the characters. They all range from beat 'em up, to rail shooter or running away from something; among other games.
Mortal Kombat Deception had its story mode and a Puzzle Fighter game that played the same as Super Puzzle Fightee 2 Turbo. As well as Chess Kombat, a chess game with MK elements where instead of taking down a piece after hitting it, you had to fight first in order to take the square. Mortal Kombat Armaggeddon had its story mode too and Motor Kombat, a racing mini game in the fashion of Mario Kart.
Tekken Tag Tournament had a Bowling mini game. Tekken 4 had Tekken Force, a beat 'em up mode. Tekken 5 had The Devil Within, similar to Tekken Force but with more liberties. As well as emulated versions of the first 3 Tekken games.
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R had Challenge mode where you had to fight gimmicky fights and if you won, you earned a new artwork. As well as the story mode for each character and them having different paths and endings based on specific win/lose conditions.
If the developers knew how to keep the playerbase from burning out, they could always release mini games. The mayority not even being fighting based themselves.
There's always fightcade
I used to play fighting games a lot back then. Games such as MK trilogy to Armageddon, Street fighter 2 to 3rd strike, killer instinct and tekken. But then after I got my hands on other games such as Grand Theft Auto series, midnight club series, max Payne series and others, I never went back to fighting games because of the amount of fun things to do in those games. Right now, open world games and MMORPGs are my favorite genres because of the level of freedom I have to do what I want in a big open space
that's cool, glad you found something you liked 👍
A major problem im seeing with many fighting games released today is general lack of offline content, i get that playing these games against real human opponents is more engaging, but you’re not going to have internet all the time and sometimes i just want to play around a chill, so having next to nothing to do outside of online really sucks and it’s the reason why i drop most fighting games.
I prefer to play older Tekken games for this reason when I don’t feel like hopping online for tekken 7, story mode and treasure battle is not enough, and that arcade mode is laughably short.
tekken force needs to make a comeback. I genuinely like it as a kid and I remember it being hard as shit too
Here's the problem with that though. Back when most of them had that offline content people weren't fucking with them like that....outside of certain ones
Tekken devil within in Tekken 5 was peak gaming. I wish more fighting games would implement that kind of gameplay
@@daizenmarcurio Why....when people will just throw out the IP/ Brand card?
@@trellwhitehurst6670 that didn't define tekken 5 but it was a separate game mode that you play and it was great
There needs to be more content for the casual player base. But also maybe just rewarding them with stuff for playing online win/lose as long as they play. For any of us who commit to fighting games we dont care about rewards/skins etc. we just want good matches. Curious to see how sf6 does.
Sf6 and project L I do think will have better methods of player retention. To keep people playing you need a slow drip of content
This is the main reason i dont buy them. I like combos but playing againt people online feels hollow. Theres no real feeling of playing against someone, it might as well be a cpu. The issue is usually i do spend time in them before getting bored of there not being a physical person, so i play with those who haven't played before. And games are either too hard to get into casually or have no casual content. Its a big killer
As a casual I absolutely play for skins/rewards...it's nice to show off my accomplishments by what I'm wearing. I am a reward feen in bf2042...it does make me play more and more. I think you have something here
This is where I think old Arc System Works games shine the most. The various Survival modes with rpg touches were such a fun casual experience imo that at the same time served as a teaching ground for low-level players while still being fun opposed to grinding one combo for 6 hours on training mode.
Some Bandai games like Soul Calibur and Dragon Ball Z Tenkaichi Budokai had some amazing casual modes too mostly story focused like trying to unlock all of the alternate timelines in Dragon ball.
Nobody likes loosing, so no amount of rewards or forced online achievements will make a guy who looses ten matches in a row stay in the game 😂
Biggest thing that kills a game for me is when I can't find that one character I just LOVE playing. A game can be otherwise-perfect, but if no character just speaks to me, it will ruin the whole game, just like that.
I so agrée with this. I was not too invested into Strive until I played Potemkin and I found a character that I LOVE. That put the game from a good fighting game to my favourite fighting game ever.
I can relate.Thats the reason why I stopped playing Under Night a lot.None of the characters stood out to me as 'the one' for me. I generally play every character in the roster in whatever FG but I always have a preferred main no matter what.
I can relate.Thats the reason why I stopped playing Under Night a lot.None of the characters stood out to me as 'the one' for me. I generally play every character in the roster in whatever FG but I always have a preferred main no matter what.
we do be named k3n for a reason
This is me in Dragonball Fighterz. I actually have one character I love but I can't find a team. It kills my entire drive to play because my character doesn't play well with others and isn't a good anchor.
I remember back when Tekken 3 came out and me and my brother started playing it. Our friends came over and we would play it for hours. But we weren't just playing vs, we were also playing the other modes like Tekken Force. We even watched the unlocked endings like Mokujin's multiple times because they were pretty funny. I think there should be more modes where you could enjoy the game with a friend rather it's on the couch or online.
Tekken force was the only single player mode I really played, and I always liked it. Im surprised that more fighting games dont have beat em up modes attached considering how closely tied together the genres used to be
Soulcalibur 3 had a fantastic mode for your own custom made character which featured an original story separated from the plotline of the game and with original characters as well. It had some light strategy elements like choosing unit types and you could defeat enemies in the map without going into a classic 1v1 fight.
Hell, even the story mode for each character had branching paths, unique cutscenes with quick time events that could affect your starting health and some secret enemies you could only face by fullfilling certain conditions.
Sadly none of the following installments came close to that level of extra modes. SCVI is closer but the story paths for characters are linear and the mode for custom characters is just you moving around a map from fight to fight. SC4 felt like a tech demo and SCV had a criminally linear story which barely let you use 3 characters
@@flowchartkenYT ,yes, beat em ups are fighting games' relatives.
One of my biggest disappointments for Tekken 7 was how minimal the single player mode content was compared to previous Tekken games.
@@mafiousbj Hell yeah, Chronicles of the Sword was THE shit.
You're beating around the bush, it's a very simple answer: Lack of accessibility and unintuitive controls. The masses want simple games that you can just immediately get, like a shooter where you just move your mouse and click, not a game where you have to hit 4 different buttons to do an uppercut. I know obviously this is what makes fighting game fans like the genre, but it's just a massive, obvious barrier to anyone outside the niche. It's not any of the other points you mentioned, nor is it ambiguous, it's pretty clear cut.
I aspire to your level of confidence in your opinions on topics you probably know very little about.
@@flowchartkenYT I mean, that's definitely truth. Why do you think people despise motion controls? Because it takes a while to make the move you want consistently, and same applies to most fighting games.
You don't need 6 attack buttons to do everything when 2 and some clever use of direction, positioning and timing are good enough for a fleshed moveset of around 25 moves.
@@flowchartkenYT So you have more knowledge about the subjective experiences of people you've never met than those people do?
if you cant do an uppercut, you probably suck at a lot of other games too
I absolutely LOVED dnf duel and really hyped for its release last summer. It was actually the player drop-off that made me stop playing- when it got to a point you could barely find a ranked match and when you did you'd get the same opponent over and over again.
The lack of developer support was the final nail in the coffin.
spectre copium but hopefully it brings the game back to around 300 concurrent. Playing the same person over and over isn't the worst thing ever but its not a great experience and its certainly not a good matchmaking system
Because new games come out. Fighting game communities need to understand that most people don't care about online fighting and just want to have fun. Then when the next big release, be it a fighter, shooter, action game or whatever is released they play that instead.
This is why offline content is so important.
Like what others said, fighting games really need to have content than just PVP and arcade modes (or story mode if you’re lucky.) I remember sinking so many hours into soul caliber 2 and mortal kombat deception because of the interesting extra modes and unlockables the games had to offer that kept me coming back to play them more and more.
chess kombat come back pls
Y’know what I think Mortal Kombat should do to keep MK from getting stale a Shaolin Monks type of game again Midway (The original holders of MK) were on to something back then they had created a MK game that had all the elements of a typical MK game but made it where you could explore the worlds they should definitely do that again as well
Ppl enjoy fighters more when there is more content. For instance playing and wathcing mk armageddon the konquest mode was awesome and motor kombat was a pretty fun. Seriously hope that MK1 2023 have these single player and vs content and mini games again.
And lets hope that we see these other modes again such as
Soul Calibur's Weapon Master
Tekken's Tekken Force Tekken Ball and Tekken Bowl
Virtua Fighter's Quest mode
Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max's World Tour mode that was an arcade mode with RPG elements now turned into a full fledge open world story mode with RPG elements in SF6 along with the vast amount of modes it had in previous console versions.
King of Fighters' Party mode Memory and Challenge modes
The PS2 era was truly something for FGs so for the devs to forget or choosing not to bring back single player in FGs sooner is really questionable. But Capcom has acknowledge it and an even larger audience will be attracted tot he genre now more than ever. Lets hope it stays that way.
Honestly, it's the focus on competitive PVP that kills it for me. I like fighting games like Smash Bros and Soul Calibur III because without the online component, I can still go and enjoy plenty of game modes while using characters I like. Nowadays fighting games feel like they do the bare minimum to appeal to a larger demographic.
it has gotten somewhat bad but hopefully it is now in the process of improving. time will tell
I never really considered that perspective, but it seems obvious now after you pointed it out - it's not "fighting games" that struggle with this /only/ because they're fighting games, but the market really is just crazy fluid - people pick up games then drop em or move on to the next new thing, just about every genre seems to be suffering from something like this
Yeah if you look at basically any multi-player online game that isn't one of the biggest esports titles in the world you see the same issue. All new games are competing for the same limited player base and they have to design around a big burst of initial players and then a good chunk leaving.
And fighting games is the one that suffer the most, because the playerbase already isnt big
What made me move on: Not having any friendly rivals, skill gap, crappy online or UI/UX, dwindling playerbase, bad functionality, asinine design like charging for frame data, the game not having or getting my favorites (C. Viper, ABA and such).
Fighting games often have REALLY bad single player. Like a disposable "arcade" mode, a story mode with a bad story, and that's kinda it most of the time.
Fighting games really need to pick up the single player aspect to really keep people playing them if they don't want to become the best of the best online. Make skill trees, good replayable and varied PVE, allow me to make different builds with different fighters, let me rank up fighters for cosmetics and skill upgrades, etc etc. Think of it like devil may cry or the new overwatch pve coming out, that is the type of stuff that would keep fighting games alive despite the online presence.
Edit: A good starting point for this would be like Virtua Fighter 5 "Quest" mode. Go look it up, that's a good mode that kept me playing VF5 for awhile. It's not perfect and needs more, for sure, but as a baseline it's a great place to start
Never played VF ill look into quest mode. I'm always curious what people want in a single player because I never cared about it
I agree but some fighting games are good like most of the NRS games. Those tend to see more numbers for longer. I will say too, to get games in a fighter you don't need a giant playerbase. You don't need a team or 100 people for a BR, you just need 1 other person.
@@flowchartkenYT People want Weapon Master Mode from Soulcalibur II.
@@spiffythealien dang i forgot about that. I loved that game, playing the story mode as Link to unlock the new weapons was actually worth it
@@flowchartkenYTscenario campaign in t6 is peak single player for fighting games
the sense of individuality that comes with fighting game can be appealing to some, but on the other hand it can be daunting to others. Having to work harder than you have in any other genre with no signs of it paying off any time soon can be exhausting, and the most important part is that's just not fun. as someone who's been trying to get their friends into fighting games for a very long time i've tried making the process as smooth as possible. but due to the 1v1 format it usually means you have to coach them by practice sparring, where they get mopped or you have to severely limit yourself which isn't fun for either of you. compared to mobas or fps', you can just hop on a team match, have fun regardless since you're playing with friends and that fun can turn into motivation to want to improve. i think in future fighting games they should go about making co-op play more standard to first emphasize the FUN part of the game, the stronger player can have their challenge while the weaker one can still have a great time and don't have to feel too bad for their lack of skill.
im not sure how co-op would be implemented, but I would try it if it was
There are so many choices out there it is challenging just to stick to one game of any category.
very true, definitely hard to stick with one game these days
The big thing that made me move away from FGs is a local scene. I started as a 09er with SFIV, but back then there was a flourishing scene around the area that I lived in. I grew up as a FG player due to the mass amount of locals around me and being able to constantly get games in and made friends along the way.
But since I've moved to an area that just doesn't have a constant local scene, it's been hard for me to adjust to the new, online-only environment that the FG has moved to. It's just not the same as grinding with other players around you.
honestly it could come back with SF6, we could be looking at the second coming of 09ers
@@flowchartkenYT hope into one hand and shit into the other see what fills up first
For me personally, it is because a lot of my friends are what you might call fair weather players. They play whatever game is popular for maybe a week or two before moving on to the next big trend. While I can stick with a game for months to even years, the fact that they don't stick around makes me way less motivated to learn a fighting game. Fighting games take a lot more dedication than your typical FPS or RPG to learn. You can get away with being lucky and button mashing your way to victory only for so long. Learning a character's input, combos and movesets and even just finding a character that fits your particular playstyle takes an inordinate amount of time compared to any other genre of gaming.
For instance, I once spend weeks learning how to play as Tsubaki in BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend, learning all of her combos and memorizing her moveset. My friends play maybe a couple of times before they are all off playing whatever else just came out that strikes their fancy. We never go back to BlazBlue and I'm left with a pseudo-mastery over a single character in a game that we never touch again. While I could have taken to just competitive play, a lot of those players are just heads and shoulders above me in skill level that I just can't compete as I lack the sixth sense that they do since I'm not normally a competitive player in most games and it becomes very demoralizing to even launch the game.
I spent a few weeks when blazblue 1 calamity trigger came out playing as Noel and my buddy played Jin. At first we were rather evenly matched spamming and mashing our special attacks, but after training and learning 2 basic bread and butter combos for my character and playing maybe about 10 hours worth of online matches (with a 30% win rate) I was considered 'too good' and he wouldn't play me anymore, word quickly spread to my other friends that I was the fighting game god and that was it. Same experience with every fighting game i play with whatever friends I have at the time, I learn 1 or 2 combos and then none of them want to play anymore. Only way I can extend the life of these games nowadays is to find random online strangers on discord to play with.
It's hard if you rely on having friends to play with, too easy to leave
Before I watch the video, I'm gonna give my answer to the question asked in the title. Most games are kept alive by casual players who can have fun even when they suck, and being able to constantly replace players who leave with new players. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to make fighting games feel fun and casual. There are no teammates to carry you, so if you suck, you're just going to get wrecked over and over until you get better or quit. Most people don't get better. You can say that's what ranking systems are for, but you'd be hard pressed to find a game of any genre where the majority of players feel like the ranking system works well; even if it does. Every loss in MOST games feels unfair to most players. The games that do manage to keep a lot of casual players longer are NRS games, because they offer SO much single player content. So many things to do other than get wrecked in online play. The other thing that makes so many people leave fighting games so quickly is the perceived unapproachability by people who don't play fighting games regularly. Sajam has talked about this at length. So they hop in when it comes out, play whatever single player content is available, go online, get wrecked, say "I have no idea what's going on" or "this game is so unfair.", "this game makes no sense.", then leave. Part of the unapproachability stems from historically terrible tutorials, but those are slowly being replaced in all of the big franchises. Also, more companies are investing more heavily into better single player content. Honestly, I think the future for fighting games is looking kind of sunny.
These are all good points, sadly you were baited because I mostly think all multiplayer games lose players fast 💀
@@flowchartkenYT how dare you bait me lol
@@kingroosta 🤡
Tutorials don't matter. MK11 and DBFZ both have trophies for doing the very basics in training mode. A majority of the player base never touches it and even less do the advanced tutorials.
Touch of death is a gaming FLAW
Any game you have to play 20+ hours of to be able to do anything but get hit isn’t fun.
to you
It definitely all comes down to love. For one you got to love the game. Then you got to find a character you love. Then you got to love it enough to improve through losses. Then extra love is needed because of the losses that occur due to things like lag. Like other games there's basically so many factors that can drive someone away so you're going to need enough sticking points that you love about it to keep you interested.
I think one potential area to address is having people you enjoy playing the game with may help. Perhaps team-based, 3v3 MvC-style fighting games where people can coordinate assists, tag-ins, etc. with perhaps their family and can add some excitement and more reason to stick around. Like FPS games, some casuals will hop on because their friends want to get into some matches against the world. People love team content, even going into the newer Madden and 2k games that used to be all about the 1v1 match-up. Plus with a team you enjoy playing with, you can get external motivation to keep grinding.
completely agree 👍
then by the time you love the game and get good mechanically, the playerbase has moved to a different fighting game altogether so now you have to do cycle all over again (which also hurts your wallet)
I *want* to like fighting games but despite trying to I just can’t get into them.
With something like a rhythm game I can get better just by playing the game. There isn’t a requirement to spend time “in the lab” essentially doing homework just to possibly enjoy a game later.
boy do I have news for you
th-cam.com/video/8wpBGzLBw0Y/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=rooflemonger
I could get an engineering degree for the effort it takes to get competent at fighting games
Pretty shit degree if that's the case
@@flowchartkenYT You are either stupid or play nothing but fighting games your entire life to make a statement like that. You are an arrogant prick. When you die at an old age as hard as you played fighting games- it couldn't be more ironic.
I always figured fighting games had the highest level entry barrier. It even happened with the old Street Fighter 2 series too, and pretty much every fighting game. And I honestly feel like there really isn't much that can be done. Just like with regular sports, most sports that involve a team have more spectators and players, compared to sports that involve 1v1 like Boxing and MMA. Not only that, but I within our own fighting game community. Not many people transition to a new version of the fighting game. Like I know people who like SS2T and Street Fighter Alpha 3 a lot and won't touch any other fighting game. Then there is people who like SF3: Third Strike, but wont touch Alpha 3 or Street Fighter 4. Then you got players who only like and play Street Fighter 4, but dislike Street Fighter 5 and wont touch it. Then I am pretty sure you got players who liked Street Fighter 5, but didn't really like SF4, and some may not like SF6. Then you got some people who only play Mortal Kombat or NRS games. Then some players who only play Tekken, and then some who only play SNK fighting games. Then people who play anime fighters just play anime fighters and dabble in other fighting games a tad bit. But I think what it is too, is that our fighting game community just has too many different fighting games, on top of that there is usually a new fighting game coming out within a year or two. I think thats how League of Legends, Fortnite and all that lasted so long. They just kept updating the same game over and over for years. To be honest, my favorite fighting game is still Capcom v.s. SNK 2 and Street Fighter Alpha 3. If Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8 is out and then say someone at my house had a set-up for Capcom v.s. SNK 2. I would drop everything quick just to play Capcom v.s. SNK 2 or Street Fighter Alpha 3 with them lol. That is just me, but I am sure there is a lot of fighting gamers out there that are the same way. For me I kind of just play the new stuff, since that's pretty much what everyone is playing. But I do like SF6 so far, and I do like the direction Tekken 8 is going in right now.
This is true. The only exception to this is when a new game of certain specific series is made. Like a new SF will get people from anime games, MK games, Tekken games and older SF games all playing together for like half a year to a year, then it drops off and the people who want to main that new SF game are the ones left.
I do think there is a certain quality that makes certain games timeless. MVC3 is 12 years old and people are swarming to EVO to compete in it again.
CVS2 is one of those games that you can play for 20 years and still learn something new about it, I personally like a mix of new and old games
Back in the day everyone I knew played sf2.. literally everyone. We never thought sf2 was a higher level play type of game. I guess the Fgc is very different from any other genre. 8 enjoy having different types of FPS games to play. Bf2042, boundary and on the low end CoD. All same fps genre but different styles all together. CoD is a Murda fest, in bf I can do other things like recon, spot..or be a medic. And boundary is its own monster..near orbit 360 degree shooter
@@callofmetals24 How I wee fighting games, is like chess and boxing combined in some ways. Pretty much at certain points, fighting games dont have different levels of players. Its either extremely good or extremely bad players lol. There is no in between. With certain fighting games, everyone plays with the lowest risk possible, but for the highest reward. But i think the big problem with fighting games. Is that it was traditionally more prominent in areas that have big city's. and I think thats why fighting games fell off with player base during late 90s and early 2000's. It entered the online scene extremely late. But i think it was also difficult to get fighting games online back then. Since everything is critical to a single frame, and I think online back then could not allow fighting games to flow properly before. I think not until xbox 360 era and on. Cause thats also when they started to release fighting games on PC too.
@The Mixed Plate Frequency You do got players that are in the middle. Hell I would consider myself that. There are players like that out there
I love fighting games and typically just pick it up for a few hours and then determine if it goes in my rotation of games to try and improve in or to play with friends. I very rarely am a "core audience" and i think that most fighting game players are like me in that sense. Lots of games but the genre is niche. And while i think thats perfectly fine, if i had to label a particular issue, its how we as a community market ourselves. We focus way too much in the "getting good" part instead of the base fun that playing these games can be even if youre losing. Most people want to play a game. Not pay $40-60 for a job.
it depends on if you enjoy playing it to improve i guess
Fighting game used to have a survival mode where you try to beat as many opponents as possible before you lose, as well as time attack mode which was basically another arcade mode with set difficulty I remember correctly...
Tekken 3 stands out with having some interesting side modes outside of what I just mentioned, Super Smash Bros. Brawl had a well made adventure mode, a boss rush mode, severally types of Survival modes, and coin battle mode where you collected to try to win, along side stock, stamina, and time battles...
Ever since online modes became a thing these side modes basically died out in fighting games, which in turn negatively affected the overall lifespan of fighting games for casual players...
Quite a few fighting games still have survival modes but options as a whole have certainly declined
I have a few thoughts on this topic and have had them for many years. This is more about what creates the perception of a high barrier of entry as opposed to making the game fun for newer players, or market competition and saturation, or how we have been trained by publishers to never stick to one game.
The first one is that generally speaking, when we talk about how to approach fighting games specifically, or what developers tend to bring to focus, it's all offensive gameplay, that's the draw, that's the zing of every new release. The new mechanics, the new moves and combo routes, the new animations. I'd be lying if I didn't feel movement and defense are both a "back of the mind" given and swept under the rug, like some non-factor, or 2 seconds in a tutorial. Right now, if a developer wants to make a new fighting game easier to play, offense is where they take their changelog, basically always. They will never attempt to make movement and defense easier to execute, the things that I believe the newest players always struggle with the most. These players probably can lab or do combo challenges successfully all day, and get basically 0 wins easy, because defense isn't as easy to make someone habitually fluent in as opposed to c. MK -> Fireball, LMHS MMHS OTG HC, or embracing your inner Justin Wong and making a 10-year-old learn today.
The second thought that I have is that fighting games do something that doesn't translate into basically every other game you can think of. I don't know what to call it, I don't even think it has a name, the closest I've gotten is "Active Downtime". In a fighting game, both you and your opponent can see each other on the screen, you can't mask your moves, they can't either and both of you know that it's only a couple of frames to the point of contact at all times. In a way you could say that the chances of not being an instant threat to each other is almost next to never. You could probably number it down to; between rounds, hard knockdowns, and someone pausing the game, it's basically 1% of the gameplay. If you were to then translate this to say, a competitive shooter, then this percentage completely reverses.
The 1% of the time in a shooter equivalent to the 99% in a fighting game, would be basically, you and the other player are simultaneously shooting at each other in that moment. Things like a grenade throw, getting the drop on someone, taking cover, reloading mid firefight, none of these and more are not instances where both you and your opponent are frames from threatening each other until you are both pulling the trigger at the same time as each other, at each other. Feel free to translate this to any other game in any other genre, be it a driving simulator, card game, anything super heavy with action or the complete opposite.
I'm not saying that the difficulty is dictated by room to breathe and strategise, so much as that we do exist at a time where fighting games are probably not baby's first game and will always have the experience from other games that they do have anywhere from subpar to stellar competence. The baseline feel of a fighting game is probably more distant than many give it credit for, and so I think those people are already being questioned at the get go by the game if it's worth continuing (like some kind of gacha that just outright never gives you free spins ever). It's why a lot of the top competitive gamers in other genres struggle so much with consistency in fighting games. It's also probably why people do end playing a fighting game for a week, maybe even less, and it just never gets started up ever again because they know they can justify having a better time elsewhere.
But it's also that feel and circumstance that makes fighting game what they are and honestly can't be fucked around with, otherwise you don't have a fighting game anymore.
I like the long response so im going point by point:
Offense is a selling point but I think less casual players also notice defense and movement. Project L diaries had a good amount of focus on it as well as tag mechanics, it's just that the casual audience is a lot larger and cares more about "wow" moments which usually come from offense and combos.
I think you are describing a combination of oki and neutral. I'm not really sure how I would translate this into another genre tbh
I do think fighting games are both a heavily transferable skill and completely separate from other genres but I don't think this is necessarily unique to it. Someone who is good at strive would probably also be good at DNF, in the same way that someone who is good at DOTA will be much faster to pick up league. I think its more that fighting games tend to have 1/100th the playerbase of moba and shooter games so it feels like a more rare skill when there might really just be less players to pull from.
It is hard to experiment in a way that feels both meaningful and stays within the lines enough to attract people. I think it's easiest to branch out into new IPs like DBFZ in that sense, much more so than to make a truly unique mechanic.
Interesting points!
@@flowchartkenYT I honestly want to refer to what I mean as pressure, but I also feel like that's not true to what I'm trying to explain. I think if I were to sum up what I mean using shooters as reference, if a player wants to make an engagement with an enemy they will generally make movement from Point A to Point B, where Point A is deciding to engage and Point B is killing the other player, or getting killed and failing. All throughout this process, the player will be strategising and readjusting strategy until the conclusion is met. Using cover, reloading, choosing entry points, how they retreat, grenade usage, using sound cues, using abilities, map knowledge, holding and rushing, fake outs etc.
Now to translate the scale to a fighting game, imagine the player was constantly receiving a zero damage interaction, it doesn't kill, but it does interrupt actions the player would like to take every other second. It's interrupting reload, it's interrupting sprint, it's interrupting grenade throws. Theoretically, you could still come out the winner but it's exceedingly unlikely, falling short of mashing inputs and hoping. And so, he player's mindset needs to essentially naturalise itself for the context of playing a fighting game, but it becomes something of a wall when you want to try and do things but you're opponent wishing to do the same cancels you out with immediate force.
Now when you take this into the context of a newer player, who will almost always have experience in any other genre, it's never gonna be a fun time. That player is gonna have to determine whether to be that person constantly taking interruptions going from Point A to B and practice, or accept that this isn't for them and play something that is. What I'd like the discussion for the FGC to be isn't how do we make games easier for less experienced people (a button dedicated to all the defensive options wouldn't go astray though), but rather how do we entice people to continue their fighting game journey in order to make the player base healthier than where it currently is.
I 100% agree that the main crux of that is player base cannibalisation across all games, which stems from easily accessible F2P games like DotA 2 and LoL. I also feel fighting games cannabilise each other even further (Honestly, ArcSys feels like the Omega Force of fighting games, except Warriors games don't have active userbases to strip players from, unlike Strive/Xrd/Central Fiction/Cross Tag/DNF/FighterZ/GBVS/UNiB/Arcana Heart/P4A recently all becoming rollback I think). Anyway, I know that there's a lot of underlying pipework that needs to be paid for but, go big or go cheaper honestly FFS. It just feels like forever that fighting games have been stuck in this weird 2009 styled DLC bubble and that has held them back from becoming a solid competitor in the greater wealth of the current market.
Cross Tag was the last fighting game I tried to get into. After clearing 30 minutes long tutorials for EACH character, learning some basics (that I didn't know how to properly use anyway), I ended up playing in a lobby that was 10% people that didn't know what they were doing and I completely destroyed them, 10% people who were even match and it was fun, and 80% of "he hit me and started a combo, I won't be playing the game for the next 10 seconds", then after that I had a half-second window to do something or else the cycle continued until I died.
No thanks. I know fighting game crowd loves their 20 hit combos and it takes a lot to master, but I do not enjoy not playing the game.
Also for whatever reason the single player modes suck, if there are even any.
single player is an issue, but to be fair there are games with shorter combos. games like street fighter and samsho are much more about positioning than long combos
There’s need to be a free to play fighting game, with decent appeal, so people can try a fighting game with no possible chance of losing anything. $60-70 is a lot to just be bad at it, and a sale early is a sign a game isn’t doing so hot. It needs a great tutorial that goes over common problems new players need to understand in all fighting games, footsies, zoning, range control, frame data, plus-negative advantage, knowing your tools and how to use them, the weaknesses of every character exposed. And then a multiplayer system that keeps you in a pool of players with the same skill.
No character DLC, a high tier character locked behind a paywall, causes issues in the player base, it’s difficult to train against or learn.
Should just make money off skins, if a game is fun enough, people will buy it.
Also maybe add 2v2s, a lost is always easier to take with a friend. Or you can make yourself feel better and blame the lost on them.
Project L coming for you
I'll bite this bait!; fighting games lose players fast because fighting games aren't inherently FUN, they're annoying, restrictive and punishing. You need to STUDY and we as humans DON'T like studying, specially if there's nothing to gain on it. Nobody likes getting pushed to a wall failing a guessing game and losing the match for it, a single failed coin flip and the other guy executes his the combo he memorized and depending on the game you might or not be able to escape with other 50/50, not fun at all. Plus some games SUCK, they copy better things without doing it better, like multiversus or nick brawl
I hate labbing but I also hate losing so it evens out
Niche within a niche whithin a niche within a niche.
I used to play fighting games a lot coz back then we play with friends couch fighting and it's fun fighting with someone you know. Now it's just online stranger and also, you either get pro or get stomp. There's no middle skill like other team multiplayer games.
As a 90s kid who grew up with the arcades and playing fighting games with my brother and friends I can say at least for me it is the ridiculous jump in play level you see online.
For a little bit of context me and my brother used to play Street fighter, King of Fighters, Marvel vs Capcom, Tekken, Dead or Alive a lot, and I really mean A LOT, while our parents were shopping we went to the arcade and spent quite a decent amount of money there, so we're not newbies to the genre, sure there were dudes that would obliterate us and with 1 coin would be playing there for HOURS, but we could say that locally we were at a high level and only a few school friends would really challenge us to that level.
So when online play became a thing I decided to give the current Street Fighter a try (I think it was back to SFIV).... won 0 matches, I wasn't even able to win a single round, people were so extremely OP it made me realize the ridiculous level gap... it's like having a kid who plays any sport just for fun with his friends play against a professional but the professional is taking it extremely serious as if their career depended on winning against a kid who's no older than 12...
I feel this, I was a very similar situation. I played original MVC in arcades and then got into fighting games around the PS1 era, even some of the more obscure ones like fighters destiny on N64. Only played with friends and brother until well into adulthood. We thought being able to do combo trials meant understanding how to play fighting games.
You don't really understand fighting games until you play someone much better than you are and that doesn't usually happen until you start playing online online.
Ever since I was a kid in the 90's I've always had ideas for fighting games in my head. But when I grew up and worked in the game and illustration industry I realized how much effort it takes to make one compared to indie single player games. So many animations, voices, sound effects, network programming, balance, etc etc. Then after all that it's not guaranteed that you will have a decent community for the game to survive given that the FGC community isn't as large as other game genre's communities. Arcsys has literally hundreds of thousands to millions of fans, and yet their game DNF Duel still lost 90% of players. So it's going to be even harder for an indie fighting game to survive.
yeah as hard as it is for a big fighting game to succeed it is 100x harder for a small one. The case of indie fighting games blowing up and becoming mainstream is almost unheard of
@@flowchartkenYT The only two I know of are Skullgirls and Thems Fightin' Herds. Both are great but still suffer the same issue of losing the majority of players early on, and an indie having a decent install base to stay afloat after that is the real challenge.
I think a lot of the issue is lack of content. Stuff like singleplayer content, more substantial patches, season passes, loads of cosmetics, and evolving storylines are why other live service games stay so fresh. FGC gamers are lucky to get 5 characters a year, and that's just not good enough, especially if you main someone that exists already. SF6 looks like it's starting to shift that way, and hopefully Project L does really good as well, I think a modernization of Fighting Games is coming soon to join other games like Apex and Valorant.
Project L will set a new standard for this so I am hopeful
It's refreshing to see a video on fighting games that doesn't trash casual players or people that don't play fighting games at all.
All games need casual players to survive, anyone shitting on casual players is actively rooting for their game to die at this point.
@@flowchartkenYT I remember back when Smash 4 was big, I saw people online trashing casuals by calling them filthy casuals.
@@flowchartkenYT Yeah ok pal. So what, us older players have to sit here and watch our games be dumbed down for gen z douchbags? The same casuals who can't stick with any game for more then 2 seconds? I'd rather fighing games die then see them be dumbed down an made easy for Csucking scrub casuals.
Try to practice the mechanics you idiots. If you can't get it then move on they aren't for you. Not all games are meant for people. Especially crybabies and non coordinated morons. You want one button supers and specials little girls? Yes casuals are hated. You are hated because you absolutely refuse to practice something difficult. You don't stick with a challenge. You cry on Twitter and people hate you for it. But, it's always a good day when casuals jump online and get crushed. Nothing makes me happier then making a scrub casual rage quit and never play again. Cod pussies
@@redmage8719bro smash players have always done that. Its stuff like that and the lack respect for other games that made distance myself from the community.
I think the barrier to entry is one thing that used to kind of bug me in general especially when I had no idea what to prioritize when learning. But I've also just never vibed with a character in a 2D fighter like ever. I think I enjoyed tekken as a kid but didn't have people to play with for that series until I gave up on it. Smash was always cool but it's online sucked until they made roll back for melee, which is like 20 years old. I'm excited for SF6 honestly. I spent a lot of time playing other genres and just learning a bit more how to learn and had a ton of fun with the beta and really liked a bunch of characters. I think the game also just clicks better with me for whatever reason cause I've been playing 5 in the meantime and its a little rough lol.
street fighter is one of those games that changes the mechanics a lot between titles. SFV and SF6 are very different, but either way finding a character you like it probably the most important thing to keep you coming back. Hope you find someone fun, the SF6 launch roster does look very good
Something that I have happen to me often times is sometimes I find the game really fun when it's not being played optimally near the launch, but as the meta crystalizes and the better tech is found, I find myself not enjoying the game that comes as an end result, even when I'm able to play it.
While I might be able to play it casually with some friends, I often find that online people are either people that are really good at playing the game how it's supposed to be played and people that aren't very good at fighting games. I assume for a lot of player when they start getting to a level and see, "oh, that's how the game is supposed to be," even if they're not correct about their perception, it's demotivating and makes you want to just go play a different game.
Yeah this is why updates are important in competitive games. The game will get solved eventually if you change nothing which stifles player expression
I used to think I was really good at fighting games, but that was back in the pre-internet dark ages when the only other players I competed against where other kids on my block. Now that online play is a thing, I've long since had to come to terms with the fact that I'm actually pretty trash.
I still love the genre in concept, but I find it harder to stick with the games for any length of time the way I used to.
online for me was humbling as well. Its funny to see how much better you can be than your friends only to get absolutely stomped by the average online player.
I personally believe it's a combination of too many games wanting to take your time and the fighting game genre itself being niche like you said. There's just so many games now that demand you to grind (battle passes, limited time events, etc) and I feel people are more attracted to putting time into games that give them more satisfaction achieving something rather than grinding for the sake of being better at the game amongst other players. And with fighting games they are extremely hard to get into if you play the game months later versus other genres like FPS and MOBAs because the skill gap of 1v1 games versus team based games is just a lot more noticeable on yourself. And with single player heavy games they are just a different category of games that determine it's success without online engagement.
I use to be super big into fighting games back in college, but I'm not as interested in getting good at fighters anymore since that feeling of getting good went away. SF4, MK10, and Smash 4 were the big 3 that I put so much time into. But as time went on, I just lost the interest to get good at fighting games because the appeal of it didn't matter to me. I think in the end it's just the genre's fault for having the core gameplay loop of getting better against others and that's literally it. There's no other hook to keep people from playing fighting games now other than passion and grinding to be the better player. I just feel lots of people who play video games in their free time need to be happy with what game they distribute their time into and I don't think a majority of gamers out there would do that for fighting games as their choice of time commitment.
the current market needs to cater to players more than ever. When I started playing fighting games free to play games that were actually worth playing were few and far between. At this point you could easily play only F2P if you wanted to. the market has simply changed and cannot go back
Imho the biggest challenge is the control system itself.
I can't see any exceptions, where learning complicated twitch combos and pairing that with granular framerate changes and timing are NOT THE GAMEPLAY itself in fighting games?
That's exceptionally niche. Then add in to that it's a zero-sum contest where the loser will often not come back and you're bound to have a genre that bleeds players. In addition the small niche is taken up already with the few highly polished games of this small pool of players and any new game will have fun novelty then falter in comparison to the tightness of the control scheme and other QOL features of a bigger budget IP game eg SF etc.
I'm not even really sure what you are saying about the controls tbh
@@flowchartkenYT It's simple if you apply your mind: If you watch players playing twitch fighting games and you specifically WATCH THEIR HANDS... That's an enormous barrier to entry added to the frame-rate twitch reactions needed to be identified to combine moves, to transition and react etc.
Then throw in zero-sum result where the good get better and the weaker eventually give up on the game. It's not the only genre that suffers that dynamic.
Hence as said it's a niche genre even if a brilliant one.
@@commentarytalk1446 "twitch fighting games" means nothing.
"Frame-rate twitch reactions" means nothing.
You can't just make shit up and expect people to understand what you are saying. It seems like you are saying people have to move their hands too fast for the average person to play fighting games at a high level which I do not agree with.
Also fighting games are absolutely not zero sum. Someone getting experience from winning does not make someone else worse because they lost. Both players improve and gain experience.
@@flowchartkenYT Fighting games are a zero-sum game: Winner and Loser = Zero-Sum. It's text-book.
Gaining experience from playing is a separate outcome. Secondly you seem not to consider that a player can lose, keep losing and not progress in skill and then eventually quit the game.
Have you never heard of "twitch skills" which applies to fighting games?
Do you not understand what frame-rates are and how having twitch reactions is necessary (along with training) to respond to those frames?
I'm baffled you cannot comprehend 1) simple English 2) terms widely used in games and fighting games.
All I can conclude is your responses seem emotional as if any criticism of fighting games cannot be beard?
To go back to the subject: Fighting games are a niche because of the control scheme being imho excessively based on twitch reactions and twitch skills.
That's not a judgement evaluation of the genre: It's a statement of opinion about the core reason why their popularity is limited by a limiting factor in the design.
I'm really not sure how hard that is to understand.
Put it this way: There's a barrier to entry: That's gaining the skills to fight. The gaining of those skills depends on developing the twitch ability of input combinations via the hands and fingers using the buttons and movement stick or pad.
The majority of people WILL NEVER learn that skill and find fighting games hits ceiling early on where any player who does progress will easily beat them. That's boring and not just boring for the loser, it's negative feedback and the opposite of fun.
@@commentarytalk1446 find one other example of someone using those terms. They are not at all used in fighting games, you are just making them up.
You also do not understand the difference between frames as a unit of measurement in fighting games and frame rate, which are not the same thing.
sitting in lab learning combos on a bot for hours then attempting to transfer that skill to an actual player 💀
It's hard for sure. It helps if you learn practical combos and are willing to be not perfectly optimal at times
Fighting games tbh just doesn't have enough content. Also the difference of fighting games vs. FPS vs. MOBA is that fighting games require more effort no matter how easy the community perceives it to be. Meanwhile when you play an FPS game, Aim is pretty much all you need. Your skill on aiming is carried out through multiple games too and all you need to do after that is improving your game sense. MOBA games are more on the technical side and teamplay. When you grasp the basics, you learnt everything and your skill goes uphill from now on. Fighting games on the other hand, depending on the community/player count doesn't put you on a pedestal and forces you to learn the hard way. (You actually have to understand the mechanics and stuff, frame data, punishing etc.) which discourages people which is understandable because it takes a considerable amount of time and can't be fully understood on just 1 or 2 matches. Fighting games also loves to force new players fight veterans which further discourages them to continue learning the game.
I dont think new players fighting veterans is what they aim for it just happens inevitably as a result of player drop off unfortunately.
I think that fighting games despite getting sell as competitive games, a lot of people who get them are for fun to have something in their catalog to play when they have friends in home
agree 👍
Fighting games only work with a niché demographic. As in, only those who like fighting games will enjoy the genre.
The wide group of players at the start of a fighting game's launch are often those who have heard about a specific series or a specific game that follows a similar formula but for one reason or another eventually dip out and decide it's just not their thing.
Be it the skill ceiling being to high, the combos being to complicated or to precise, or the cast characters just not feeling right to them.
It's kinda similar to live service games in a way. Folks will pick it up, try it out and leave if it doesn't suit their preferred gameplay style or if there's too much of an over-reliance on microtransactions. Or even both.
Fighting games just require to much reliance on having large groups of people, especially online.
It's not like your racing games or party games where folks can feel more at home and take some time to plan things out. (And also yell at friends or family for screwing you over instead of at randos online who have no clue who you are.) Also, not everyone wants to play online.
Sure some fighting games will have a single-player mode of some kind, maybe even multiple. But the main purpose of a fighting game is fighting other people, getting in 1v1s or free-for-alls and seeing who can win. Single-player content is pretty much the appetizer while multiplayer and online is the main dish and single-player alone can't satiate much of anyone's appetite who aren't competitive.
I think fighting games need players but its actually far less than other genres. A moba or BR will require 5-10x the number of players for a healthy online of a fighting game. I also don't agree that it is a specific niche because many players including myself also enjoy other types of games.
It is a niche and hardcore players are a niche within a niche but that is true of almost any genre.
It's the simple combination of lacking content and extremely poor learning curves.
Arcade, Versus and Online all do the same thing, just a simple 1v1 against someone else. Combo Trials and such are nice diversions but if you're not already good or willing to try hard you will hit a wall with your first couple characters and never come back.
Meanwhile, fighting games are hard to play even if they had super simple and intuitive controls. Smash shows this extremely well, once there's a gap in skill on those games even if the controls are simple you will be overrun easily. But TFGs aren't super simple and intuitive. If you don't have the decades of experience across several fighting games starting back from when you spent basicallly nothing for arcade attempts, you have loads of homework to do. No game genre consistently use these controls, few demand as much execution>memorization and the moment-to-moment is super intricate already.
Other genres out there don't hit this snag because either they have actual level design to progressively train the player while they have fun (like, say, Mario) or make up for their open-ended progression curve by being super easy to play like most sport and racing games.
Fighting games don't have that. They sell little, repetitive content and expect you to master it with little help or direction.
SF6's city exploration mode needs to be the industry standard. It can solve both problems at once if designed well enough, teaching and reinforcing concepts through special enemy design like those flying flamethrower drones, minigames, and slowly unlocking more and more moves from other characters... all while providing a meaty 20-30 hours adventure.
The fact that almost all fighting games have barely broken the content level of SF2 is ALARMING.
Like just compare the amount and variety of content of most fighters, to freaking Smash Melee and Brawl... Nintendo got the memo way back in 2022, even though they seem to have been forced to sacrifice it somewhat to meet the sequels's core goals (smash 4 being in 2 consoles and ultimate focusing on bringing everyone back above anything else)
I think SF6 will set a new bar people will need to reach. Its a very good thing for the genre overall
@@flowchartkenYT yes, and I'm all here for it. Always found fighters to be really interesting and potentially fun but so goddamn unacessible if you weren't around for the arcade age (and countries, i guess)
I was heavy into Multiversus since launch until about 2 months ago. The reason is that I was even heavier into competitive Smash Ultimate and that game is so bs. Nothing makes sense and nothing is rewarding in ultimate. You make the right read, and you still lose. Multiversus changed that where if I make 3 or so correct reads in a row, I can just kill and that goes for almost every character on the roster, not just people that excel at it like Superman. Multiversus kinda shot themselves in the foot with the whole 'we didn't actually launch the game' thing. The thing that really killed it was that there was absolutely no developer transparency. Nobody knew when or if something was going to change (ex: new character shakes up the meta). It just lead to frustration when certain characters that were highish tier would get nerfed but then characters that were actual problems would get buffs or remain unchanged. What really changed my mind about fighting games in general was SFV. I got it with PS Plus and decided to try it out. I'm really glad I did because that game taught me everything about risk reward and real neutral game. Every move felt like it had a purpose and things like giant moves that do big damage actually have lag. That's part of my main issue with fighting games. No other game in my personal experience does lag correctly. Multiversus, Smash, and even certain anime fighters all have the issue of trying to cater to an audience that apparently thinks that lag means the game feels clunky. Ultimate in particular got under my skin because some characters would have really good defensive options just because their up b or up smash was fast. The rules made no sense. Roy is a good example of how not to make a character: he's rushdown but can never really be punished for anything because his framedata is insane. Mario is another one and don't even get me started on shit like MinMin. Even if a fighting game is developed for a casual audience, it doesn't mean that moves shouldn't have lag. So long story short, fighting games have low numbers because 1: giant time commitment 2: avg player skill 3: they're probably the most frustrating genre to learn because of their 'quirks' (there is no consistency in framedata in the sense that high tiers are privileged just because the devs felt like it).
long story short: every fighting game character needs to be more balanced, there are too many moves that just break the rules of 'big move do big damage but have big lag.' If this were paid more attention to, the genre would be less frustrating and more rewarding as a whole (players would probably become less salty also).
Steve does kindve make me rethink ultimates game balance. It doesnt help that the character is extremely boring to watch
@@flowchartkenYT Steve and Min Min were why I quit the game, combined with Multiversus release
I'll be honest fighting games require way too much time to get good at to were it starts feeling like a chore after a while.
gotta love the grind honestly
Last summer, I had a several-week period where I was very into fighting games, a genre that I was always curious about but hesitant to get into. Sure, I have put many hours into Smash Bros. and other platformer fighters over the years but understood that those are a different ballpark.
I did begin to learn the mechanics and moves of games, even buying the Champion edition for SFV, for the sixteen fighters with the base edition felt limiting. Sagat was my main, and I was actually learning combos and winning around forty-percent of my matches. I also played Fantasy Strike, which was an excellent base for learning the genre, and P4AU, which taught me that anime fighting games are absolutely insane.
But, as I said, this period only lasted for so many weeks. I felt that my skills were beginning to plateau, and still not being able to complete some tutorials was wearing on me. For all my practice, I was never able to consistently input a dragon punch from a crouch. I never did make it out of bronze.
I do not believe that the fighting genre, as a whole, should simplify themselves to appeal to a wider audience, but its inseparable connection to the competitive scene will always make players of all stripes feel like they have to become a master to justify any time spent on the game. People will play shooters, MOBAs, and more and never have the thought of becoming competitive cross their mind, but something about fighting games does that.
Most people in the comment have lamented how limited single-player options are, and I agree. I hope to freshen up a bit before SFVI comes out, which, despite its lack of Sagat, looks rad.
I think as fighting games evolve they need to become simplified in how they are learned, not in how they play. All games imo should be easy to learn hard to master if they want to keep an audience while growing
For me the enjoyable part of fighting games are the interactions and back&forth in a match. That requires us to be a similar skill level to even have that part of the game be enjoyed.
While with FPS I can just enjoy racking up kills or landing a few shots because of all the feedback the game gives me for doing well. So even if the game is unpopular I can still enjoy the shooting and occasional cool thing or unique situation.
yeah not finding opponents of relative skill level is a self defeating thing. The more players leave the rarer it gets, the rarer it gets the more players will leave.
Yeah it’s couch co op or nothing. Plus when they don’t have a story mode to teach controls I don’t really care to spend 10 mins reading control and combo buttons 🤷♀️
Because fighting game developers don't understand how the casual player base work over veteran fighting games player base(Capcom are now starting to understand it with SF6, but it took two installments since SFIV to figure this out.) They just think making fighting games more easier will keep the casual around longer, and it turn out it doesn't. If you don't give the casuals any content that sustainable and give them a reason to stick around longer, they will leave. There are soo many games coming out that will grab the attention away from your casuals player base. Which is why casuals are a lot more pickier and less tolerable to BS than the veteran fighting games players. Veteran players are more tolerable to BS and more easier to please. However if they don't get their matches they will dismiss your games and called it "dead" because all the casual left.. Leaving it this never ending cycle of fighting games losing their player base long term.
I agree that casual players keep these games alive. Catering to the most hard-core player base seems like a good idea but leaves the game with only 100 people in the end
ez answer.
when you adjust your games for only competitive play, it lockes out the majority of the player base.
leaving you with only people that have matrix level ability to pick up any fighting game and already doing TOD combos after a few minuted of playing.
these people have 0 idea what it is like to play on a casual level.
somewhat hyperbolic but when all the casuals leave it does become hard to learn the game without getting smashed so I get where your coming from
Fighting games are too focused on maintaining a"core player base" when the reality is not going to be a high number. Instead they should focus on attracting new players and turn them into semi casual players that support the game regardless of playtime (like league). DLC, patches and consistent dev support has been more common for modern FGs but still not fresh enough to cycle casual players.
the casual players are what drive the playerbase. Appealing to the .1% of hardcore players isn't really viable, its more about converting casuals into hardcore players and you need to cast a large net for that to happen
We don't need you crybaby casuals that want to make everything easy mode. You idiots can't think. Have no coordination, you want to change the mechanics and difficulty to make it easy because of your adhd brain. So please stay the fuck away from fighting games and stick to your yearly cod releases. Casuals are destroying fighing games.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I dropped out of the genre almost entirely when I accepted that I’m never going to care enough to learn about “frame data”, “plus/minus on block” and other fighting game terminology that seems absolutely essential to high level play. I never cared to be “great”, just not bad or good.
But my type of player usually only does well until about gold or platinum and then gets destroyed by the guys investing 8 hours a day learning even a single mixup. That long combo string you pulled off was impressive the first time, then it’s boring to watch my bar get deleted while I wait for the match to be over. SF2 got a lot of years out of me when the only community I had was my local group of friends and some strangers at the arcade. Unfortunately we’re at the point where it’s just way easier to fight randoms online than get the boys together in person so I guess it’s not for me anymore.
Also, people say you have the best chance starting on week one of release, but it feels like a lot of people are getting to play these games even much earlier than that now.
Playing by feel is hard and definitely less effective as more information is available to everyone online. I feel your pain
As a new player who quit multiple fighting games 2-5 hours into the game: It's the difficulty.
Every game has steep learning curves, but fighting games aren't curves, they're fucking mountains. It's not fun to dedicate so much time to learning combos, especially when you know that your talent only comes into question to fight other players all the time.
Guilty Gear was kind of interesting solely because of how fresh they tried to keep the game, but it still winded up being "Boot up, find match, get Potemkin Bustered, sink or swim, uninstall". As for why they buy it to begin with? I mean look at GG. It has amazing, cool characters designed to look pretty and badass. They get everything right about designing characters, they just chose a dying, gatekept genre.
It depends on what you are looking for. If you are getting stomped out in matches and unwilling to learn or adapt past the point of that difficulty I can imagine it wouldn't be very fun.
Tbh it is possible fighting games, at least traditional 2D ones are a dying genre. But I don't really see it that way and I think they have enough of a niche audience to continue
I wanted to love DNF Duel, but it KEPT disconnecting my lobby matches.
Damn game wouldn't even let me play with friends
Do you play on PS or PC? I cannot understand how the PS lobby system is so terrible. It literally averages 1-2 disconnects per session for me which is insanely high
@@flowchartkenYT I play on PS4 or PC and it disconnects my lobby a ton. Which sucks because I really enjoy the characters
Yeah I have had the issue sparingly on PC but it's been very bad for PS lobbies.
Aside from wanting to play specific people or PS tournaments I don't have a lot of reason to play the game off of PC
No single player content. I bought guilty gear strive cuz I watch maximillian he hyped the game up for me. Day 1 I play story mode. It’s a movie… fine I try Arcade and hope for a unique movie at end for each character nope. Did I unlock a new costume at least? Nope. I moved on. I’m a casual fighting game fan. Not gonna bother with multiplayer if the single player can’t hook me into putting time into it
Hopefully sf6 has something for everyone 🙏
I feel like the last fighting game I played with good offline was injustice 2, there is so much to do and I enjoy it. Grinding for gear, colors, and ability keep me playing to this day. I swear they could shut down servers and I would still play to to make every character as dripped out as possible. They even had Ai fights if the grind was too long and you wanted to switch out. Bosses were annoying but fun once you beat them, I think this was the last fighting game that cared about offline just as much or more than online.
cosmetics aside injustice 1 and 2 had amazing story modes, its good to see a game based on a comic actually took it somewhat seriously and recreated a compelling story
Yeah, I remember playing a lot of Multiversus in injustice 2 so much fun.
Fighting Games just need to bring back expansive single player content. Tekken Force back in the day was a good example. A lot of fighting games nowadays will just have Arcade mode, practice and online. I'm a casual fighting game player now I don't have time to put the hours in like I did when I was younger. If I'm gonna shell out money for a fighting game I'm really looking for offline content. Content where I can just enjoy the characters, the lore the art style without having to go online and get schooled by the veterans.
SF6 world warrior mode could be for you
I definitely think more stuff to do and more things to bring in casual audiences would help so much. I know indie games just wanna make their main game and move on, but you need like... a story mode. You need mini games. Something to play. Something to take your mind off that match you just lost without making you wish you'd booted up a different better game.
i think indie games depending on where they are priced get looked at differently, its more when someone pays full price they expect a full game
I’ve always been a combat junkie, and can appreciate great fighting mechanics, but I’ve lost the vast majority of interest due to the stagnation of the genre and most people just playing like uninspired robots chasing the meta combos.
I think combo expression does exist but it's hard to not want to just do what does the most damage sometimes
It's no secret that the barrier to entry is pretty high and it only further divides new players and skilled players over time, so here's another thing that might probably contribute to it. The fact that a bunch of them tend to lack meaningful single player content. A lot of them have admittedly low effort story modes and maybe a combo challenge or two, so you already lost the players who are there for story. I can only take so many static no animation visual novels before I start to lose interest. I'm just not a visual novel kind of guy. Combo challenges are obviously hard for people who can't do them as well. Then, sometimes the fights in said story mode are never like gradually scaled in difficulty. It's either poop baby easy, or suddenly balls to the wall hard, it doesnt usually gradually try to improve the player over the course of the game. A player can do Low medium high all day, but the game never tries to say," hey have you tried punishing a jump with an anti air? Do that, instead." no instead you just kinda do it after getting beat after awhile.
idk what the solution to this would really be. There are just too many things to explain to someone and against a human opponent if you punish a jump in maybe he never jumps again and your practice is useless.
I don't think this is a fighting games issue i think this is a multiplayer issue. Any human opponent can potentially adapt to the point of making practice not relevant.
@@flowchartkenYT True, but still though, I think introducing concepts in single player would probably go a long way. Sometimes, new players tend to buckle down on their playstyle and then get frustrated when its not working, when they probably just need to look at it differently. This is where some kinda story mode can come in and say," This CPU is going to do X, try doing Y without doing the thing you usually do" or something.
Now when they fight against a human and see they tend to favor doing X, they can hopefully gather they should try to do Y a little bit more. Y'know like give them the knowledge, make them apply it, now they'll learn to do it when they need it instead of just trying to brute force and get frustrated when it doesnt work.
For example I had a friend that kept Super Dashing in FighterZ and I just told her, hey, 2H can punish that literally all day, try not to depend on that to approach." And well, now she only did it 9 times out of 10 instead of all 10 times lol. which is still progress.
DNF is so unfortunate because it’s actually an amazingly beginner friendly fighting game, but was tied to a property that most people in the west didn’t even know existed
yep adding motion inputs and restricting air movement made it a very deep game but very approachable. I don't think the reasons DNF failed had to do with the gameplay, although SM supremacy and infinites at launch really hurt it
@@flowchartkenYT It’s gameplay from the open beta was the main reason I bought the game, even though the visuals are what pulled me in at first. If it actually had a functional story, I probably would’ve got a lot more time out of it.
Beginner friendly? With those combos and little to no defensive options?
up until recently fighting games were something i only played once in a blue moon, I've only just started getting into them and i think the biggest reason people drop them is because the learning curve is so massive. most new players will struggle to even perform a quarter circle and find it very difficult to do a dp movement in training let alone in the middle of a match. then they realize they have to be able to do them in a combo with quick precision and sometimes you try a combo over and over and it gets frustrating because you feel like you're doing the move and nothing happens, or the move comes out but you did it too slowly for it to combo. and then they hear about footsies and playing the neutral and frame data and punishes and they get overwhelmed with how much there is because "i can't even do a basic move how am i supposed to lose all that"
learning curve is definitely an issue and I hope things like modern controls and simple inputs can combat that without taking away from skill ceiling at a top level
I, as a complete casual fighting game player, feel like SF6 is trying to fix all the problems fighting games have. World tour looks cool AF, theres a ton of casual fun modes, battle hub is amazing, modern controls for new players + GGStrive like tutorials are great and the characters are tried and true classics. I have never been more hyped for a fighting game than this because it feels like ill be getting my money's worth of content even if somehow the playerbase goes to the hundreds. But i wonder what would happen if SF6 was free to play with the exact same content it has right now...
Sf6 does seem to be pulling in the direction of bringing in new players, hopefully it creates more players for other fgs as well
I've seen this topic brought up before, and it really goes to show you how niche fighting games really are.
It sounds weird, but I actually got anxiety when I would play online before because I was worried how shit I was or I'm forgetting my moves and all that.
It's been a hot minute since I've played a fighting game online, yet I still like them despite my shortcomings. I feel like SF6 is a step in the right direction to draw in the new crowd, while Tekken 8 and MK12 could be pretty good too. Project L might launch it into the stratosphere, but at the end of the day just play what you like and have fun. Low player counts and getting bodied constantly can hurt some people's motivation factor for sure
ranked anxiety is very real, many people actually do feel something similar. I agree that end of day whatever you had fun with is what you should spend time on
There's also never a whole lot in most fighting games when it comes to casual players. Smash is able to survive because of it has a aspect to the game that's very casual and pick up and play. A lot of fighting games just ended up being sweatshops and if you aren't enjoying the sweat you probably shouldn't be there. And as you mentioned, if you show up late you gotta sweat a lot more without a whole lot to do.
Also, side content should help players improve at the game itself naturally or be so obviously detached from the game to avoid getting players into bad habits.
something something SF6
Street Fighter and The King Of Fighters series are the reason why I got into fighting games and then the Super Smash Bros series and the Mortal Kombat series!
Very nice 👍
Im gonna say that fighting games doesnt offer a beginner's guide that well at all. Ive played Tekken 6 and 7 sometimes when I get a chance on arcades or friends. The game would just let u pick a character in a training room and just information bomb you with a massive movelist. How could a casual learn a game that doesnt start simple to complex like how mobas do it. They just plop u in a match and waves you goodluck to learn everything that is also technical. If youtubers teach you better basics than what the game offers, theres something wrong with this game being too forgetful of the casuals trying to create babysteps.
In the end the foundation of fighting games for aspiring players is a crumbling one and that nothing can be jumpstarted if all they can say is "git gud"
yeah fighting game guides are by and large trash and the playerbase ranges from very helpful to insufferable. I think the issue is the best way to learn is to play and playing is hard when you are not very good.
For me, I’ve never really gotten past intermediate skill level. I can always picture in my mind what I need to do and stuff, but my hands just won’t do it properly. Not to say I’ve given up, I still attempt to properly do at least simple combos so I can have something for the opportunities I find in a match. Though it seriously saps my motivation to lab and learn then just get slapped when I try to go online. It is what it is and I really really want to get to that sweet point in fighting games, but I can’t seem to reach it. Another issue is that there’s no one to play fighting games with, since the genre is a niche essentially none of the people I would like to play with play them. Thus the fighting game experience for me is a cycle of practicing something cool doing it, feeling good about myself, get demolished in online lobbies, try again, then eventually give up until I decide to give it another shot. I know my level of commitment isn’t high enough but fighting games seriously do ask a lot of the player to really experience the fun part. I’ve been on the fence with SF6 cause I know it’s catering more to people like me who can’t be as good as the average player, but I’m also scared I’ll end up doing the same thing of spending money on a game I expect to play a lot and end up dropping within 3 months. I think I’ll ultimately purchase it though I really hope this is finally the last hurdle for me to reach that sweet point where I can actually enjoy fighting games to the fullest.
its probably going to sound hollow but getting past the knowing it > doing it phase is usually just practice. You have to be able to do some things without actively thinking about it.
Either way good luck 👍
My main in Guilty Gear XX and Xrd was May. I played other characters, but I learned about the existance of the game when I was listening random music years ago and suddenly "Blue water Blue Sky" (May's theme) pop out. I was enchanted by the song, so i looked for the game and instantly fell in love with it. When Strive was announced I was very exited, but when Arc started showing gameplay and I saw the May's movements list... well, it was heart breaking for me. Videos talking about the game beta started to pop out, and the character that introduced me to the game had become a silly meme in the franchise... sadly I have no interest in playing GG now a days.
funny that you like May's theme - Blue water Blue Sky is actually great but god her strive theme -_-
@@flowchartkenYT I understand that you like it more, but for me the May's motif in the theme song lacks a lot of presence in Strive. In Blue Water Blue Sky and even in Starry Story, you can immediately tell, thanks to the musical motif, that the character is somehow related to the sea. The disaster of passion really fails in that aspect. The way they used the motif conveys May's cheerfull and childish personality but it fails to convey her other side and her connection to the sea. The voice and lyrics were needed to make the song more serious and deep, but even with that it doesnt convey what the instrumentation managed in previous games.
@@21clife27 I phrased my comment badly - I do not like May's theme in strive. It sounds like a random anime opening and seemingly has nothing to do with the character other than weird uwu vibes
Xrd did get rollback which means a new influx of players, did that at least catch your attention?
For somwe reason I came back playing either unclr/BBCF/Chaos Code just for practice combos
The lab is calling
I got an idea but I am not sure if it is a good one. Perhaps a PVE mode were it rewards the player with cosmetics or an incentive to keep playing.
sounds good to me - anything that rewards players for playing is a good idea. Not everyone wants to grind ranked matches for points especially if they are losing
Injustice 2 has that. Grinding for better and cooler looking gear for your favorite characters keeps the game fresh.
Exactly why i love Killer Instincts Shadow Lords mode. Even if u don't beat the mode your items and power ups carry over and u can mismatch teams etc
KI probably deserved better, it seemed like it did a lot of things right and just never really caught on
It's a form of dementia.
1. Hey that trailer looks pretty cool I really like "x" IP. This is the fighting game im gonna practice and play "for real".
2. Buy the game, play a bit of training/arcade mode.
3. Go online get paired up with people who play fighting games religiously as a job.
4. Get smoked
5. I don't even know why I bothered. I don't have time for this shit. I'm never playing fighting games again.
6. Trailer for new fighting game releases -> go back to step 1.
kinda accurate
Fighting games occupy a similar niche to RTS games: They have a steep learning curve, are primarily balanced around PVP, and are (for the most part) 1v1. The 1v1 nature means it's almost always your fault when you lose, and it basically makes it so there is very little room for casual play. The competitive balance makes it so the difference between not knowing and knowing is insurmountable and quite unfun. There are a few ways around this, the two main ones coming to mind are through having an extensive campaign/PvM mode (such as Warcraft/Starcraft), or introducing RNG (such as Smash w/ items). Fighting games struggle extra because the core gameplay is very similar and plot is often relegated to cutscenes, making it very difficult to have an engaging campaign mode, while RNG is disliked in both genres due to it compromising the competitive integrity.
The viewership experience is also difficult as a newcomer to fighting games, due to everything happening very quickly and the lack of a "newbie" stream during most major tournaments. I clearly recall watching a Street fighter tournament and only understanding that I should be excited when everyone's yelling, but not understanding at all why what they did was impressive. The technical terms are also quite difficult to understand as they don't really translate to similar things in other game genres, causing it to be quite difficult to pull people into the games.
Another point that I don't see mentioned often is that fighting games is a VERY oversaturated market. You already have the "Main" titles coming out with a game every few years, on top of that there's the occasional "breakout" indie titles, the "franchise IP" titles, and there are simply too many people dipping their feet in the tiny pond. Compare that to the RTS scene which is pretty much down to just a few titles with a surviving competitive scene (Starcraft, Warcraft, and Age of empires), almost all of which have been around 10+ years. Perhaps there are good reasons, but I never quite understood why they needed to release new street fighter games (for example) when they could simply continue to balance/add to the previous game's rosters.
I would actually argue fighting games are similarly saturated to other markets. XYZ Moba/BR/Shooter game comes out with the same frequency as fighting games imo
@@flowchartkenYT And few of those ever stick their landing, with the exception of maybe shooters, which is my point. The most popular mobas is still LoL and Dota 2 by a vast margin, both of which came out like 10 years ago.
With the smaller playerbase fighting games have, the problem is further exacerbated. It's very different when each game holds 15~25% of the playerbase when the concurrent player count is 20000 vs when it's 2000.
The solution could be better AI that better mimics human behavior but also doesn't abuse, or cheat to almost always win, giving people someone to play with and not frustrating the player with loosing against way more experienced players or abusive hard AI or way too easy boring AI. (Difficulty level settings are key for this). That would improve the overall gameplay experience. Just see what happened in the RTS gaming. StarCraft 2 is still being played thanks to coop mode missions.
A couple people did suggest this and I do like it. It would have to be done well though which is a big ask
I mostly play fighting games in the arcade mode and barely online. I'm not worried about trying to compete with everyone else, whether it be online or local. I got into fighting games because of the characters themselves. I do like SFV, Killer Instinct, and Mortal Kombat 11, but i hate how the games got released due to how you had to be online most of the time for most things. That's one of the reasons I still have my older fighting games.
Online requirement is annoying for sure
This is the exact same issue I have!
I’ve started and stopped with fighting games over the years. I’ve found that the (skill) barrier to entry is too high for me. I recently found all of these concepts such as frame data, priority moves, tech, etc, and realized that this basically gonna be like taking a college course. I love watching high-level players in fighting games, but I can’t get my teeth kicked in for hundreds of hours hoping to start to have fun soon.
Getting your teeth kicked in is the fun
I get this, but I think you can learn a lot just messing around. Not for everyone but if you can find someone who you have fun playing with it makes it a lot easier.
frame data is the worst mechanic for fighting game not only you have to know about your character combo but you have to know about other frame too or you will end up in trap frame or +
@@oratank Are you actually serious? The entire game is frame data. You literally can not have a fighting game without frame data. Frame data is how fast moves come out, how long they stay out, and so on.
@@bestaround3323 nobody need to learn about how different of frame data in every move just make it simple then you don't need a frame data at all like old 2d fighting game
What makes me move on from fighting games is the difficulty to learn combos and be flashy then when playing online you get demolishes it’s not fun unless it’s an even match
thats most fighting games but yeah I get it. Its hard to want to put in crazy time to do simple stuff
My problem with fighting games is that they're bare bones when it comes to content. People just want to boot up their game and chill after a long day of school/work.
But outside of vs mode netplay, there usually isn't much to do, and most fighting games dont teach you anything. You have to learn these games through TH-cam tutorials.
its definitely a requirement to use outside resources if you want to improve past a certain level but I think that is true of most online games. The slow drip content method sucks but unfortunately it seems to be the combo of what keeps players interested and what makes money right now
I agree. A lot of fighters lack any real tutorial mode for beginners. Under Night In Birth had an excellent tutorial mode and actually taught the player things pretty much no other fighter at the time did. More games need to be like that
@@Jack_Horner_is_a_hero That would require people to actually fuck with them. There had been several fighting games that actually teach you shit. Skullgirls, Them Fighting Herds, v
Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, Virtua Fighter 5, Dead or Alive 5 and 6. What do most of those games have in common? They're games that unfortunately not many people play.
@@trellwhitehurst6670 which is why bigger titles need to start adding them. A newbie to the fgc isn't going ti start out with any of those games. More than likely right now it'd either be GGST, KOFXV, MBTL, T7, SFV, or even MK11. Kizzie Kay had the chance to play the full SF6 game and said that the trials were actually crazy useful so hopefully that will ease up the lrarnung curb for new players
@@Jack_Horner_is_a_hero That's the problem I have with people. If you're actually serious about that shit, then the fighting game shouldn't matter. People kill me with that shit. That's like a woman saying where all the good men at. They're all over the place ....including in front of them. It just they don't really want them.
Back when I was learning fighting games I didn't give a fuck which one I played. For the most part I still don't. Whatever I learned in one was going to translate to the others I may play. Unlike most people now, I actually took the time to learn and get good at the basics as well.
The biggest problem modern fighting games have in my opinion is there’s just not much there for a casual player. Skill barrier for entry aside there’s rarely anything to do other than a brief/limited single player experience and then going against people online. MK11 for example performed really well in part due to its rather indepth single player offerings in my opinion. I’d be interested in seeing a fighting game with some significant investment in some online PvE content in addition to the usual stuff. Like having a lengthy co-op campaign or arcade mode with characters tagging in and out or something like that and seeing if it’s capable of holding interest. Because if something like that works, they might be able to improve/get invested to stick around as a long term player of the game
I agree it should be a complete game. I think it depends on who you are marketing to, but as I have said many times in this comments section casuals should be the people marketed to.
Make a great game with a deep combat system and hardcore FGC heads will play it. But you have to make a complete game with more to do than grind ranked to get the other 90% of the audience you need
@@flowchartkenYT here's why I disagree with that. There's been PLENTY of fighting games that had done that in the past only for those same casuals to still not fuck with them. Be it Virtua Fighter 5, KOF 2006 and 13, Tekken Tag 2, Tekken 6 for some, Soul Calibur 3 or 6 even. If it ain't certain IPs doing it, they're not going to fuck with it unfortunately.
well, fighting games require a lot of work when compared to most other genres. you need to learn and understand the frame data and match ups. you need to practice your combos/set ups. and most importantly especially in the beginning you have to be able to accept that losing is part of the process. your average player isnt built like that. all it takes is a few bad matches against a veteran player and that game is getting uninstalled.
I do think there is a lot of work that goes into improving in fighting games, and its not necessarily "fun" to practice things over and over
@@flowchartkenYT thats the thing, the work is necessary if you want to play past the first month of the game. sf6 just came out and i know im looking at a 15 hour minimum(more like 20 cause i didnt play any betas) lab time before i start taking matches.
with that said the work leads to the genres biggest hook which is personal growth. when something that you thought was too hard to do becomes part of your regular gameplay you feel that sense of accomplishment and that drives you to spend even more time which turns you into a regular player. i cant think of any other genre that delivers that kind of feeling.
but like i said before your average player isnt used to this. they are trained for instant gratification(and this extends beyond gaming). you load in, get a few kills, win? good, lose? you blame your team, see all the maps, unlock the weapons. in a few months new game comes and repeat the cycle.
that doesnt work with fighting games. even in the modern era where games are retired we still commit years to them. and then you have games that have playing something like super turbo, 3s, cvs2 for decades. fighting games arent the fast food gaming that people are used to. the level of commitment required is why theres always a giant dive after a game launches.
I've got maybe...since I was playing in 91, at least 20k hours on street fighter 2(with its many variants). I remember playing all day at a arcade from open to 6pm, spending 40 dollars in quarters, mk1, mk2, samurai shodown, street fighter 2...any fighting game. Hell of a good time!
Mvc2 all day for me, miss the arcade era. For non fighting games knights of the round!
because only a small minority of people like doing PVP and most fighting games have nothing else to do.
a small percentage stays for the online (the hardcore), a small percentage enjoys the gameplay enough to learn more and eventually go online (the converted from casual to hardcore), and the vast majority leave when they run out of things to do other than PVP, because PVP requires actual investment (the casuals).
SF6 is about to nuke every other fighter in terms of player retention, and I bet my left ball that everyone else will copy the literal autoplay dynamic mode instead of spending some cash to make actual content to play, and then wonder why everyone leaves while they come up with ways to make their games more braindead e.e
calling it now.
I actually think the second group is a good call out. Converting casuals to hard-core is really how you hold players, and having the single player modes is what brings casuals in.
*I think fighting game could save itself with simply faster loading times, fun ways to train and more modes.*
_I'm a new fighting game player (Tekken 7, 2 months in) so my opinions are based on little experience with the genre_
*Loading Time*
The most important time for loading to be fast is after a match is over. You're not necessarily losing players because they didn't win the matches (90% of battle royal players don't win, and a good amount die in the first 1min of the game)... If your game has long loading (1mins or more) then you need to create a way for players to be able to interact with your game during that time. I can easily spend hours in Tekken's training mode but for something as simply as changing characters after a match, I usually just play another game or get off because it would take like 5 minutes to get back into a match even in their offline modes.
*Fun ways to train*
This could be things like:
- Arcade style Mini games that helps players get used to a character's combos, special abilities or scenario/situational training
- Give players the ability to add combos to a character's movelist, and be able to share and rate community made combos
*More modes*
Tbh story mode in most fighting games (and other games) are a big waste of development time and resources that could be used elsewhere. The only players that would miss cut scene stories are hardcore character fans... even then if you really care about stories, having it written in text or comic/manga style, would provide the best opportunity for a deep story development since the cost would be significantly less, then later it can be turned into an anime like Tekken has done a couple of time 😂.
Fighting games online as a new player feels so solitary, there's no community presence. The only time you're interacting with another human is in a match unless you're in a player hosted server, which those tend to be less noob friendly than not given fighting game usually are too sweaty and doesn't offer non-competitive modes for players to interact with each other on. With that said, SF6 is evolving the genre with their open world style mode called "world tour". I'm not up on the details but if that mode is MMO styled (being about to interact with other players), then I would be surprised if their player base does grow. We've seen something similar with NBA 2k's "The Park" mode and how deeper that made the game.
Community + creative modes ideas:
- Tag team game mode but each character has a player, so a 2v2 match would be 4 human players playing 2 to a team
- Battle royal or elimination mode; players of all skill levels are added to one server and have 1v1 matches. Winners stays, losers are out, but winner must keep their health level maybe gain a little from the win.
- Giving players the ability to create tournaments for online or offline use and give them the ability to set rules, schedule that notifies all involved players, invite players or opening it for community.
I don't have much to add to this tbh, I pretty much agree with all of it. I think there is more that can be done with story modes but personally I couldn't care less about it so its hard to say exactly what that would be.
Not a dig at you specifically but I think barrier of entry or "FG are hard" is too often used as a reason and other issues get overlooked.
Early in your video you mention gameplay loop in FG and I think that is possibly a bigger reason than "FG are hard" cuz a lot of games are hard but most games the gameplay loop isn't as simple or basic as it is in FG. You mention it here in your video, iterating on little nuances. Most other games or genres have much bigger extremes in terms of gameplay loop. In League of Legends you can change your build, playstyle, character, modes, lanes, roles. You can farm, gank, support, build damage, build tank...there are a ton of variables and different ways to play the game within the game. And improve on top of that.
Even in FPS there are significant changes in the maps and strategies based on the maps alone. You may be a really good skilled player but you need to alter your strats and learn OR USE different tactics on new maps. New weapons, new characters, new power ups, etc. These all change gameplay and add variables that affect & potentially enhance the gameplay loop.
Also FG being 1v1 will inherently always be smaller than team games. Being on a team or playing with friends will always have the upperhand in player retention.
Finally I think SF6 is doing something correct w/ its Single Player but up until now NRS games and Smash were the only real FG that did any significant single player content. SP content will sell games and its a way to get new players even if the % of new SP that turn to Online MP is small its still something. IMO the create a character stuff in SF6 might be its biggest seller in terms of new players.
I still think that MOBA games are just as hard in terms of barrier to entry and they get 1000x the players. I agree with everything you said, but I think the perception of high barrier to entry is doing more to keep players out than actual barriers.
One thing someone pointed out the I think adds to that perception is execution difficulty is higher. Someone playing moba might need to only learn to press 10 buttons, where as a person playing strive has to be able to do a 641236 input as a requirement to do supers.
@@flowchartkenYT I agree to an extent the problem lies in that a new player is gonna get destroyed & potentially quit whether it has high execution or 1 button specials because the better more knowledgable player is doing to win fairly easy regardless, so barrier to entry still exists in the basic sense. I def agree that the perception of high barrier to entry in FG does more damage than the reality. For some reason the basic population thinks FG are significantly harder than MOBA or BR, Arena Shooters, FPS, MMO, ARPGs... I think the only genre that comes close in terms of perception of difficulty is multiplayer RTS like StarCraft which I actually believe is hard as fuck IMO.
I'll also add the team based game w/ friends could still be a hard high execution game but scrubs or new players will put up with it cause their friends who are skilled can carry them. Imagine if you could somehow play a FG w/ your friend whos a noob and carry them in matches until they get good. I bet they stay around longer.
Another issue with fighting games is sometimes you want to play and main multiple characters but when all of their moves require unique inputs and other factors you usually stick to maining one character because learning multiple is simply too arduous.
But playing only one character gets super boring and when you want to switch, you realzie you have to learn the whole game over again and just give up.
This is true but my brain is not big enough for more than one character
@@flowchartkenYT It's interesting cuz I like playing a lot of characters in mk9 and I watched a ton of mk10 and when I finally tried out mk10 I immediately put it done after finding out how actually difficult it was in comparison despite me liking the characters more in mk10
Use to play fighting games in the arcade back in high school. Was fun then cause we all did not know shit, we just was out there hitting buttons and learning new shit here and there. I have a group of buddies now that we like to try and play games together, so we tried GGST and GBV. With two of our friends be FGC vets, any of use none tenured players never can take a game off any of them (Legit had a set with one that was 56-0). So after awhile then the two tenured guys would just play each other and then us would play each other. This was just different than the times in the arcade as we are all playing online.
In how social the world is today online.. funny enough fighting games just don't feel the same when not in that group of people you hang out with or meet new people around playing that game. Its like playing a tcg online vs at a store or shop. Its not the same, and i believe both tcg and fighting games thrive off smaller communities where info can be shared and skill levels are not as vast. That social aspect to it, you just cant beat. The big games like fornite/league/apex, cant really match fgc or tcg when we talk about social interactions offline.
True I do think smaller communities exist within fighting games and not nearly as much on larger titles. My brother is a big MTG guy and he thinks there is a lot of similar things about the communities
tcg?
@@metalgeartrusty "Trading Card Game" Yugioh/Magic/Pokemon etc.
I tried mortal kombat 11 online after owning it for like a week and got absolutely destroyed by some guy playing as robocop. He juggled me so much I spent more time in the air than on the floor. I then played another guy and a similar story happened. After that matchup ended I decided I was too unskilled for online play ..and tend to just play the CPU offline now.
I think you have to go in with a different mindset. going against the computers your goal should be to have fun, enjoy pressing buttons or maybe just beat the arcade mode.
Going against human players you're goal has to be to learn and it has to have different requirements. You will need to know some basics and put in some time outside of just playing. Similar to learning anything their are practice methods that are less fun or engaging then just doing the thing that are a requirement for improvement.
Some players don't like that and there is no problem with that. You should spend your time and energy how you want to, and if playing other players doesn't interest you than that is totally fine. Games do not exist to be enjoyed in one way.
I really want more people to play Punch Planet. People are constantly discovering the game and going "whoa, that looks cool!", buying it and then the only matches they can find are against people who have been playing for like 5+ years already. If you don't come in with the right mindset, you just get demolished and move on to a game where you can get competition at your own level.
Yeah it's really hard to jump in to a game that's old and the player base is moved on. I only ever saw punch planet from core a gaming but it looked interesting albeit a little slow for me personally
I think the problem is that the floor of entry is really high, for an example, LoL has a massive playerbase and is also I'd argue equally as difficult to play competantly, but the skill floor is much lower due to there only being 4 abilities and combos consists of pressing Q,W,E,R,D or F at the right time.
That's definitely true. Lol is just as hard and knowledge heavy as fighting games but the execution difficulty is non existent which makes it less intimidating
For me, it's not that "fighting games are boring" or anything. I just have other things I want to work on. Like Comic panels, storyboards, voice overs, etc. I still come back to play them. Just not as frequently.
Nothing wrong with that 👌
Most fighting games have nearly zero content. There's only a weak "story" mode and that's it. Stuff like time attack and survival are redundant because it's just the same thing with a different title. Unless you want to spend hours in training mode or playing online, there's nothing for you to do.
SF6 will certainly set the bar with its World Tour mode. Mortal Kombat also does well with content.
SF6 about to change this, good times