Fighting Games

[goregoregoregoregoregore]

I think one of the unique problems that the genre faces is that there really isn't much of a way to placate casual players completely from a mechanical standpoint. Sure, you can add auto combos or modern controls but ultimately the core game still needs to be designed around people who actually like fighting games. Otherwise, the game will die 1000 deaths.


I feel like fundamentally the wall can't be torn down without sacrificing what makes these games fun in the first place, it would be like removing the option to drive manual in a racing game. That's how you end up with something completely different like Smash Bros.

But i think it's possible to achieve a stable amount of sweatyness and be accessible. And also, as i said, i don't think the skill ceiling is even the main problem about this whole situation, fighting game fans might not believe this but plenty of people like difficulty games, they just need a reason to do it, not just this "the path of improvement is paved by hardship" mentality that isn't realistic at all. That's why games like "getting over it" or "only up" are only a little fad, they don't have any real content and just rely on "improving your gameplay" without making more effort

 

[miguk]

It's hard to say we're in a golden age for fighting games when so many series are in their graves and unlikely to be dug up. Darkstalkers is probably never coming back, as Capcom teases it endlessly to gauge interest in mediocre releases and then cancels any attempt to make a sequel based on bad sales for a bad game. Project Justice will only at most get merged into Street Fighter the same way Final Fight was due to it having no big name characters that the casuals can name. The rest of Capcom's forgotten list (Red Earth, Cyberbots, Plasma Sword, etc) has very little chance of revival.

SNK is reviving some series, but at a slow pace. Garou is coming back, and Art of Fighting might be next, but there's no guarantee for the multiple others that ended 25+ years ago.

There's a possibly of Eternal Champions coming back with Sega's new retro initiative. That, of course, has no evidence yet.

So if we ever get back to the same level of popularity and output as in the 90s, then would could call it a golden age. For now, we're missing a lot.

 

[kanesha]

I feel like fundamentally the wall can't be torn down without sacrificing what makes these games fun in the first place, it would be like removing the option to drive manual in a racing game. That's how you end up with something completely different like Smash Bros.

I dunno, where are all the failed attemts? If failing to make a fighting game gives you a masive success like Smash Bros, then everybody should be on it xD I think the genre has massive untapped potential but you need these big AAA devs to be brave enough to try to fail. I mean we noobs are all so starved that random indie games that have like one gimmick as their whole fighting mechanic make us happy... oh boy, brace yourselves, my brain is racing right now with that slow combo idea: so you can do combo at any speed as long as you press the correct sequence, right?, ok, but if you are slow the opponet gets a window to do a fast punch or something, buuuuut, if you weren't actually slow or they mistimed it they get more damage for "struggling", so if you know your opponent is good you don't even try to break their combos, right?, BUT WAIT certain parts of certain combos do MORE DAMAGE if you do them slow, so there can be this whole mind game of would your opponent respect you and do the combo cleanly or will they try to eek out some of that juicy extra damage thinking you won't expect it or not be fast enough to react. I'm pretty sure dynamics like these exist in the games already at the top level, but you could make it a much more deliberate part of the game and make it more accessible, and let us casuals do roughly the same things pros are doing except slower.