Analysis: Why Button Mashing Doesn't Work (Good explaination of fighting games)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R0hbe8HZj0
Just came across this and it provides a lot of good and detailed yet concise explanations of fighting game mechanics and terminologies.
It always came to as me odd that fighting games are the most spectacle and popular games out there but most people wouldn't bother with the technicalities, whereas other games don't suffer from such... cluelessness. Fighting games are stressful, unforgiving and unintuitive, but they still are the best competitive genre out there.
I feel it's a mixture of a daunting amount of stuff to learn from the surface, and memorization of button inputs, combinations and character quirks that comes in each fighting game that most people get turned off from and just rely on the quickest and easiest way to get the other person's health bar and hope that it works out. Even some of the more accessible tutorial modes in modern fighting games can be a bit confusing, and terminologies usually go over people's heads and remembering them can be tricky when accounting for the other fundamentals needed to be learned. I'm just glad videos like this exist, and some newer fighting games are starting to incorporate these mechanics in their tutorial suites, like the recent MK11 having dedicated sections for neutrals, footsies, combos, cancels and the likes.
I guess it's a bit of a more extreme version of the same kind of userbase that usually crops up in multiplayer shooting games, where they're usually on the bottom of the leaderboard, endlessly rushing the enemy's frontline and try to at least get a 1-2 kills per game and not really bother to learn the map, weapon behavior, objectives and such.
And yeah, fighting games definitely is the best competitive genre yeah, since most of it is 1v1, meaning there's no team to yell at and any mistakes or successes you make during a game is all on the individual player.
Fighting games are ridiculously complex. They always seem to have tons of invisible mechanics that you just have to know somehow.
Then there's the thousands of visual and contextual cues you need to memorise in order to be able to play with or against all the characters, and of course you'll want to memorise all the specific frame timing shit for their moves as well.
Basically, the barrier of entry is absurd because of the high level of knowledge and dedication required.
On the other end, you have stuff like Rocket League - the mechanics are so simple, you can learn everything you'll ever need to know in an hour.
What's left is training your muscle memory so that you can execute what you learnt better than the other players.
Personally, this is why fighting games, barring perhaps Smash, are one of my least favorite to play or watch. They feel like they have distilled competitiveness down to such a level and it almost becomes abstract, if that makes any sense. Like there's nothing but two people trying to achieve the slightest iota of more perfection than the other.
While the mechanics and fundamentals are important enough to make that 'perfect play' a base goal, I don't see it being too different as well when high level play of something like Counter-Strike or StarCraft also presents themselves. Making the mechanics a second nature and executing them perfectly is a huge factor, but I think an equally important factor are the human elements themselves, which are mind games and mixing things up. The video recites one of the best examples, where Gandhi a relatively low-skilled player beats a higher skilled player because Gandhi knows the basics and fundamentals but aren't particularly great at executing them. Nonetheless, perhaps thanks to his own lack of professional experience made him an unpredictable element and thrown off the more experienced opponent, giving Gandhi the win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfEVcZ3anG0
I think a good example of the appeal of fighting games with less of the complexities is with the new Mordhau game. Dueling is pretty much a fighting game, with footsies, mind games and such. The character roster being replaced with perks, armors and weapon sets. Two highly skilled players can play perefectly but the one that can win is the one that can think outside the box and adapt to a situation, rather than just constantly one-upping each other in the same mindset.
Admittedly not every fight is exciting and can result in being derivative due to metas (but going back, it's also not too different when CS:GO high level plays usually also follow many similar metas, with the team executing and chereographing the most perfect play usually results in the winner, with unexpected plays sometimes turning the tides).
I think another good example of how you don't have to be perfect or even out-skill players is this guy who won a tourney for using an infamously 'low-tier' character.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkHPr2OhF_A
I really liked Rising Thunder, it still had a lot of mechanics, but the inputs were simple so you can start learning the mechanics right away, and you start to get some things intuitively. It was really cool getting a sense of how the game works and then you start looking things up and the things you figured out all have names.
Sadly that game shut down, I haven't gotten into any fighting game since.
I just looked it up and apparently they released a client and server the community can run over a year ago and I never heard about it, so I'll have to try that. I bet everyone who's left now is really good so it might not be as good for learning anymore.
I remember Rising Thunder too, it was pretty fun. Haven't heard of a community-run client/server yet but I would say it's never too late to learn and adapt. I'm pretty terrible at fighting games myself but one of the best learning experiences really does end up being just going into the fray and getting your own butt kicked. You start to learn from mistakes, adapt the usual stuff your opponent's do and then you start to develop a rhythm and feel in general.
If you're interested in something easy to get into as well, Skullgirls has a great tutorial suite, as well as a not-too-complex system. It's a lot more than Rising Thunder for sure, but I feel like it's a good bridge between the simplicity of Rising Thunder and something a bit more complex like Street Fighter. Something niche but got a relative boost in new players is Under Night In-Birth which might be worth checking out. Good learning suite as well and has a relatively friendly community.
I know MK11 has its fair share of controversies recently, but it's also another great and new game that has an active playing community and one of the best tutorial suites as well. It takes you step by step on the things the video covered, and on top of that the inputs and combos are also relatively simpler compared to other games of the same caliber.
Executions aren't really an issue (unless we talking just frames), the importance is risk assessment under pressure. I'd like to blame fighting games that 'rewards' button mashing by giving them super flashy moves which many mistake as the way to 'win', but they are far from it. Although, trying to incentivize newbies from panic button presses can be a difficult problem to tackle, but man, auto combos are such a noob trap. I suppose the developers have long identified two groups of players they attract: those who wants to play fighting games, and those who wants to play party games.
I'm not gonna lie, but one of the biggest detractors of fighting games for me is just the overall toxicity of the community. The Gandhi vs FSP video posted above is a great example, where the hosts are laughing at Gandhi's performance. It makes it feel like only professionals are allowed to play these games.
In the end though I guess it's just the result of competitive games with large prize pools, and the fact that fighting games tend to be 1 on 1 matches, which means it's easier to compare other player's skill/performance.
Fighting games attract elitism as they're one of the rare genres where it's all about individual execution. You don't have elements of RNG like in a card game, you don't have teammates, it's just straight up 1v1. It attracts a lot of shitty hypercompetitive people who's only goal is to win at any cost.
I won't deny the elitism and toxicity of the fighting game community, it also has one of the most notable sort of gatekeeping, more so than any other game genre. Especially gets bad on some of the older guard sort of franchises, especially infamously the Smash Melee community and of course Street Fighter.
But on the flip side, the good side of the FGC is really good. For every trash talking and snobby high and mighty 'pro player', there's also a bunch of players who are just hype on the games themselves, and love nothing but a good bout with friends and catch a glimpse of anime comebacks and awesome moments every now and then. I met a bunch of good friends over fighting games and it's fun being able to share techniques and strats while sparring with each other. And it feels REALLY rewarding to notice your own improvements overtime. It may not come quick, and might even take weeks, months or even a year or so, but you eventually start gaining confidence in your own abilities over time and it feels awesome being able to perform feats or outplay opponents in ways you weren't able to before.
Oh GOD, do fighting games bring out the worst people. I've met some pretty neat people but the toxic people in the FGC are HORRENDOUSLY toxic.
The problem is the initial barrier to entry, before you even get to that stage.
Unless you have an extensive background in fighting games, the inputs are really freaking hard. Back when I really liked playing the first BlazBlue game I spent days on end practising and trying to get the fucking ultra precise inputs right, but even after months on end, I just couldn't do stuff like
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/217809/b67a7111-c443-46a6-86ea-2f917ec4e28a/image.png
with the right timing for the game to recognise it as "oh you want to do that special move" rather than "so you want to take one step towards the opponent, then duck, then step towards them again" or hell, even just pulling off an accurate quarter turn without the game penalising you for going just past the horizontal or just barely not reaching it. Fighting games may have the highest skill ceiling of probably all genres of games, but the skill floor starts where other games would have a ceiling.
No kidding. These are the reasons why I'm always in support of fighting games providing options and making the entry barrier less harsh. Things like more forgiving input windows, alternate control styles, button shortcuts and options to tag certain inputs and display them onto the screen during gameplay are huge boons to make that initial struggle a bit comfortable. Things like maybe have settings that most veterans would opt in for, and have settings newbies can get comfortable with first so they can at least learn the fundamentals in a relatively relaxed manner rather than juggling between so many things at once.
I think another egregious thing fighting games give a false impression to is cheap AI in the single-player segments (on which most casual players would play first before going online). Cheap AI, especially in boss fights, encourages a lot of cheesing and spamming rather than the usual fundamentals in typical competitive scenarios.
Guilty Gear is pretty guilty (heh) of this especially too. The game has a good tutorial and all, but damn does it treat its players like everyone have already played similar fighting games like BlazBlue or Melty Blood. I'm just glad at least a lot of newer fighting games recently are starting to adapt a more streamlined mindset. I'm not one for dumbing down systems, but a game dev really deserves some kudos for being able to strike a balance between keeping a high skill ceiling while making the floor relatively low.
Win at any cost AND act like absolute cunts to their opposition, like is it really so hard to act respectful and still want to win?
Shake hands, say "Good game.", that's all it takes to be decent, not talking bollocks after you've won or during it.
I'm still sad they didn't go over the ultimate version of mashing, called washboarding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6L7HgNZ0Sc
Sanford Kelly still makes me laugh with this and the stickdunk incident:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anHQWQlAxaw
On the subject of toxicity in the FGC, I think what a lot of people who aren't really in tune with the whole "subculture" of fighting games don't realize is; to some extent, the toxicity is inherently celebrated.
Not that I'm apologizing for people being assholes, I just find the subject really interesting because it demonstrates some interesting history of fighting games.
See, the modern American FGC largely originates from low-income communities, especially black or latino ones. Even today, you'll probably notice that the FGC has a significantly higher ratio of nonwhite competitors to other esports.
By the time that fighting games started really hitting their stride with the release of Street Fighter 2, the game industry was already shifting over to home consoles; consoles which kids in those low-income neighborhoods couldn't afford. Your family couldn't buy a SNES or a Genesis so you were totally out of the loop on all the playground console wars at school, but the laundromat down the street had a Super Turbo cabinet. And that was your only affordable access to video games, so you played it all the time.
And since these kids were coming from poorer, predominantly black communities, they carried their other interests with them. As gangsta rap culture started solidifying and taking hold in these areas, it started leaking over into the world of fighting games too.
The two combined to form this culture where everyone was out to prove themselves as the biggest baddest dick on their block, reputation was everything, and everyone had to know just how much of a tough motherfucker you were. This was also around the same time as the Monday Night Wars and the peak of pro wrestling's popularity, so I have a suspicion that a generation of kids seeing Stone Cold and The Rock talking shit, kicking ass, and taking names probably helped reinforce the performative, grandstanding aspects of the forming FGC.
Even if arcades are dead and gone and fighting games are all on consoles now, that foundational lower-class hip hop spirit of "fuck you bitch I'm the big dog on this street" still formed the heart of the FGC, lasting to this day. Shittalking your opponents and protecting your rep are still core values of the community. And as fighting games have been pushed more and more into the public eye, to the passing layman this all comes off as hateful and toxic because they don't have the firsthand context of the whole social climate of the community.
I have another theory that the reason that the Smash community is so different from all other fighting games is for this same reason, that it was always a console game from the start and never mingled with that arcade culture.
Like I said, I'm not trying to make excuses here, and if you still feel like the FGC has a lot of assholes despite all this, that's totally valid. I just think it's a really interesting topic to dissect a bit.
button mashing does work tho
I don't know about you but learning tables upon tables of arbitrary numbers isn't what I play games for, and frankly I find it weird how many people are willing to put up with systems like that
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