Man the fighting game scene is falling apart.

[Ephemera1_]

Never been a fighting game scene
They made damn sure of that by gatekeeping the fuck out of it since literal day 1 and making sure to keep it a closed-off community so nobody could join without already being close buddy-buddy with all the assholes lucky enough to participate or rich enough to run it.

Are you talking about your local scene where they run tournaments? If so I'm sorry that you went through that. If not tho, im curious on what gatekeeping there is?

 

[TruxtonTatsujin]

Just play what you like, and help support the communities for those games. There's plenty of dedicated people out there keeping the scenes for these old games alive. If you don't like the direction modern fighters are going it's very easy these days to just play the previous entry, especially so do to the widespread adoption of rollback netcode. (tho there are still a few outliers that really need it)

I used to keep up with all the modern fighters but not so much anymore, the genres gotten too simplified for me. Now I mostly just stick to old favourites, though there are a few newer games I'm playing too.

I've been enjoying SF6, it's still greatly simplified from 4 but is a big step up from 5. Melty Blood Type Lumina and Under Night 2 look like two pretty good modern anime fighters I'm interested in trying out. I'm a big Strive hater but I've been checking out the 2.0 patch to see if it'll change my mind. So far the answer seems like no, my core issues with the game are still present, however I will admit that the changes made are overall great for the game's long term health.

Post automatically merged: Apr 10, 2026

Also there's no gatekeeping. Many of these scenes are relatively small so they're always looking for new players

 

[Ephemera1_]

If you don't like the direction modern fighters are going it's very easy these days to just play the previous entry, especially so do to the widespread adoption of rollback netcode.

Fightcade is a godsend in this regard. Theres so many more avenues to enjoy the genre now than ever before.

I've been enjoying SF6, it's still greatly simplified from 4 but is a big step up from 5.

Who do u main if u dont mind me asking? I remember playing the beta with some friends and I wasn't SUPER into it but now i wanna give it a better try. Im thinking about using Marissa or Chun, something new other than using Dhalsim/Sagat every game

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

I dont say it for bad-blood but i think its good that it happens .

Fighting games doesnt need much to be enjoyed because those games live and die by its gameplay alone .

The whole idiotic E-sport mentality and squeezing a huge story-mode alone , when only an arcade-mode with personal and different story-bits for each character in the endings for beating it differently on different difficulties , is enough .

And the whole truck-load of controversies that happen in the FGC just disgusts every gamers who want to set foot into the genre .

And how homo-globo the Tripple A fighters become , its just a sludge of mediocrety that has no personality anymore except being Hip-Hop slop-style or modern Pop-Rock with the Rock'n'Roll-heart ripped out for sanitized and non-edgy/blunt style that maybe draws in its first impression and gets stale lightspeed-fast .

Thank god indies try to change it .

 

[TruxtonTatsujin]

Who do u main if u dont mind me asking? I remember playing the beta with some friends and I wasn't SUPER into it but now i wanna give it a better try. Im thinking about using Marissa or Chun, something new other than using Dhalsim/Sagat every game

I've played a few characters since launch; Blanka, Lily, Bison, Terry and a little bit of Jamie and Honda. Now that Alex is out I'll be mostly sticking to him. He was a fairly simple character in the past but in this game he's rather technical.

Chun is probably one of the harder characters to play but I always hear people say she's strong, Marisa on the other hand is one of the easiest. She's kind of low tier but no character in this game is truly bad, a big reason I played Lily for a bit is because everyone was saying she was the worst in the game. I still got her to Master though.

 

[Neb Lleb]

It genuinely feels like the fighting game genre is losing its way. Questionable decisions running rampant (I.E. The pandering Testament and Bridget retcons in Guilty Gear Strive and the unrelated slop guest characters in Fatal Fury COTW), overblown monetisation, oversimplification for most games... They've gone from one-on-one ways to match wits with each-other to eSports fodder and that's just sad.

EDIT: And the community surrounding these games are even worse, being a rogue's gallery of salty manchildren, scuff lords, idiots and truly undesirable people. Remember Low Tier God and how he once got so salty that he ranted about how his opponent should KYS on stream?

 

[Blue Buddha]

They release too many fighting games a year for a genre with a fairly low player ceiling. The developers of these games all seem to be convinced that dumbing the games down will lead to better sales. Offense in most games is neutered. Defense in most games is gutted. Braindead beginner level strike/throw offense dominates most games. Characters in most games are have been homogenized into a bland gruel thanks to the prevalence of overwhelming universal mechanics.

The games cost more than ever while offering less content. They price gouge for DLC and have been doing so for a very long time. Grassroots tournaments are dying. Locals are drying up. The esports circuit is aggressively corporatized to the extent where the players aren't even allowed to get hype or pop off the way they would in the 2000s. Pro players may be forced by their sponsors to apologize just for calling a character stupid.

The current Street Fighter is embarrassing dogshit nobody wants to watch or enjoys playing. The flagship Tekken is embarrassing dogshit nobody wants to watch or enjoys playing. Guilty Gear Strive rewrote the book on selling out. Riot gutted most of 2XKO's staff mid-launch. No one gives a fuck about new SNK games. Patches for these games either do nothing meaningful or make the experience worse. There's an army of youtube sycophants for any given game ready to shout the community down if a game starts to get criticized too heavily. Even if any of these games were good or likely to improve, travel is just generally more expensive right now, so that will discourage some people from going out to events.

With all this in mind, it's understandable that people aren't all that excited for fighting games right now. It's a far cry from where the genre was even just from 2016-2018.

On the plus side, most worthwhile legacy titles have reasonably active communities via fightcade or modern rereleases, and fighting games are very low overhead by the standards of most multiplayer genres. You only need two people to get a match going, so even a small community of 20 players can get a fair bit of mileage out of a game. SF3 and KOF 98 in particular have very healthy playerbases from what I see of them.

 

[Badseed Badseed]

Fighting games were dead after

Post automatically merged: Apr 10, 2026

I don't think all the high-profile fighting franchises are guilty of that in every regard... yet. but I have little doubt that you could be theoretically right but I guess only time will tell how much lack of accountability the genre (or industry) will clearly devolve into abusing

'douchetool' is just a compound insult word I use as an alternative to the (IMO) archaic 'douchebag'. a lot (read: 99.9x%) of my made-up words since very early years never actually catch on anywhere. n that's mostly by part of the point of the design. I sometimes tone down my shameless nonconformist shenanigans but I will never abandon fastidious individualism even if it's to detriments the likes of grand-scale alienation. I lose sense of purpose easily so I counter this defect with ambitions/creations. anywey those are the elaborations you never asked for xD

Hey bro, remember we are just talking about games, easyweights, OK?

 

[Blueskunky Blueskunky]

You mean"...Where's Kinger?"

The fact someone got this reference makes me just beyond happy

 

[Badseed Badseed]

The biggest problem with any fighting game fan is that he needs to be broadening his horizons at all times. If you narrow your focus down too much you'll run into caustic elements and assume that a infinitesimal fraction of the scene amounts to a disproportionately larger amount of it. For example did you know there is still a thriving MVC3 community?

Not so impressive, with the world-wide connectivity of the interwebs there is a thriving
community for EVERYTHING!

 

[PrismRed]

I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority here, personally I think FGC in general worry too much about winning and meta play they forgot how to just play and have fun.

 

[Morgan Katarn]

Honestly I got no clue about street fighter or mortal kombat and such.

Only fighting games I care about today are Gran blue and King of Fighter and king of fighter 15 is freaking AWESOME.

I even given up on Guilty gear. Honestly all I want new is a modern dark stalker.


"Little side note last time I owned and played a street fighter game was 2 on snes sure I tired the Demo for 6 but I was not convinced it was worth 60 euro when it came out. Maybe if I can get it for 5 euro I might get it. Honestly street fighter has such boring charters in my opinion.

 

[Pearly]

i wad playing the MK legacy collection and man... i liked them back then on SNES and PS1 but they are SO TRASH, input reading AI on every game, games are hard as shit even on easiest modes, boss fights that are just absolutely unfair.
UMK3 is still a great time, but only because you just as easily can be cheap as hell spamming until you win, before the AI does
i always had more fun against human players of course

but anyways lately the only fighting games i enjoy are Melty blood actress again, (not type-lumnia which much too boring and "balanced" heavily and missing more than half the playable cast of Actress)
street fighter i still always just play Alpha 3 OR capcom vs snk 2

The mortal combat games actually got better after the 3D change to 2.5 d transition.

Injustice 2 is actually sound mechanics wise and that engine was used for MK 1 and 11, I played 1 recently for Conan and it's actually pretty good, it feels like how many remember mortal Kombat playing as opposed to how it actually played, which was kind of shit.

I played both Mortal Kombat and Street fighter back on the genesis and the ps1 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was easily the best of those old games, but for the most part they were clunky thrash, especially compared to street fighter 2, the alpha series and especially X-men children of the atom

Mortal combat trilogy was the last game in that old series and was essentially a nether realm mugen version of UMVC 3 that had all the other characters plopped in, boss characters and such.

Compare this with X men children of the atom, which released 2 years earlier and yeah, sure, the ps1 port was lacking frames etc. but was still a much better game that the MK games that came out around the same time.

There's no nice way of saying this but MK only exists because of the controversy at the time for the silly fatalities, they only got realistically gruesome as of the ps3 era and the little exaggerated drips of blood in those old games are just that, it was kind of silly even at the time when I was about 5-7 years old. I was there during the hey day of these games and much of whom loved MK at the time in the early 90's was teenage boys that thought the gore was awesome and they were sticking it to their parents. I have the observation of being there but the appeal not working on me, because it didn't hold a candle to the capcom fighters/

I played street fighter 2 before MK and it was my older brother who loved MK, as he was in the age range that loved MK at the time. MK has good games now, and has since the ps3 reboot, but the games before that are buried in nostalgia, and there's a few things all of us like that we haven't touched in years, we play/watch/read them now and they are just absolutely thrash

Also there was Fatal Fury and King of the fighters around at the time and they were also way better than MK, MK did really well when it honestly should have bombed, basically it was a bad game in a crowded market that is still around, it's the definition of an outlier in the old 90's fighting games.

 

[BrawlMan]

And how homo-globo the Tripple A fighters become , its just a sludge of mediocrety that has no personality anymore except being Hip-Hop slop-style or modern Pop-Rock with the Rock'n'Roll-heart ripped out for sanitized and non-edgy/blunt style that maybe draws in its first impression and gets stale lightspeed-fast .

Not everything needs to be edgy for the sake of it. I'm not into a lot of other fighters, but I respect Strive and it's killer soundtrack. SF6 has more than the hip hop going on, and I wouldn't consider it "slop" either. People love SF6 because the new and distinct look, and people just love the create a character, and story mode. Not to mention, it id fun hanging out with many of the street fighter cast and learning their expanding back stories and character development by doing side quests for them.

I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority here, personally I think FGC in general worry too much about winning and meta play they forgot how to just play and have fun.

Do not worry, you are not in the minority on this. Max Dood has been saying this for years.

(I.E. The pandering Testament and Bridget retcons in Guilty Gear Strive

I can't speak for Testament (their story direction doesn't bother me either way, though) exactly but Bridget I wouldn't call "pandering" to beginning with. Also, lots of media panders to different types of people. It's just a matter of you being one of those people are not. Especially when dicegate already had it planned to begin with. I actually respect the character growth, and it shows that you can't just have a uncomfortable gender, reveal gag all the time. So it's not as doom and gloom as you are, others exaggerated to be. Strive already expanded its audience.And now it has a bunch of people who either never knew the franchise or only enjoyed the privately, and then didn't wanna open themselves up because of ridicule of who they are, or who they are transitioning into.

Why This Video Game Character Is a Watershed Moment for Trans Gamers

Nearly twenty years after her debut, 'Guilty Gear's Bridget is evolving from a transphobic meme to the trans representation we need.

www.them.us

Kit's Controller Corner: Bridget — The fight for positive trans representation from cis creators - The Student Life

Trans representation in the media is scant as it is. Columnist Kit Kumar PO '25 reflects on trans representation in the video game industry, particularly by cisgender creatives.

tsl.news

And the whole truck-load of controversies that happen in the FGC just disgusts every gamers who want to set foot into the genre .

If there's any positives is that they're nowhere near as toxic as they used to be back in the old days or pre 2013. I'm not excusing any other actions I do or how they react unnecessarily vital, but it's a huge improvement of what they used to be before. The ones that still act like entitled jerks can fuck off as always.

 

[Aldia Aldia]

unrelated slop guest characters in Fatal Fury

This is how I found out Ronaldo was in a fighting game.

 

[PhaseJump]

Falling apart you say? The scene is middle aged or older. They spend more time in a drug store line for pain medication than they do playing a match with somebody. Taking naps has become more important than rollback netcode.

 

[BrawlMan]

17 Best Fighting Games with Rollback Netcode

Lag and other online issues often detract from the experience of playing fighting games. Rollback netcode can help alleviate that.

www.thegamer.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fighters/comments/1d8pvur/what_currently_available_fighting_games_have/

That's a lot of fighting games with rollback net code. MultiVersus is dead though.

 

[PhaseJump]

Fighting games were dead after

View attachment 172843

Whenever I remember this piece of shit game, I remember other pieces of shit like Dragon Ball GT Final Bout, which in turn leads me to think about Budokai 3 & Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and how they improved things for the franchise. It makes me wonder how cool Star Wars could be with a good roster and a fighting game engine that isn't clunky trash.

Then I remember Disney ruined Star Wars and made it not worth paying a dime for anything related to it anyway.

 

[Tengu Plant]

Well, if we're talking about the community itself it's obviously too serious, politicized, sanitized for sponsors, and gatekeepy...but that's basically every "community" in the West now so I'll move on.
There's two major problems with the genre from my perspective.

1. Fighting games really haven't transitioned well to the modern game development and online play environments. Not that I like these environments but we do need these games to make money and keep players interested. Let's be honest, how many people will get excited for a faceless ranked ladder and a bi-annual "content pass" of new characters when other online games have constant streams of new events and other things to keep gameplay fresh along with a robust social environment built in. These games were made for an in-person arcade environment where you could develop rivalries with people in your area. The current online modes were made around the PS3/360 era and never really developed beyond that. Playing SF3 against anyone from your living room was exciting then, it's unremarkable now.

2. Lack of experimentation. I'm just going to put it bluntly, I think we've refined the traditional 2D fighting game formula about as much as we can. Who's getting excited over a new type of pushblock or a new way to integrate special moves with a resource meter? The 90s brought us MvC and the original Guilty Gear. What crazy innovations have we gotten since then? What other genre could survive this many years of only minor improvements to the same formulas?
Unfortunately, the fans are typically very resistant to change. Just look at how they treat Smash Bros for going in a slightly different direction. If you were a developer, and your potential customers said that another franchise wasn't a "real fighting game" because it did a few things differently, would you want to take any risks with your game?

 

[diet_orange]

Mortal Kombat 1's flaw seems to lie at the storytelling, I heard the gameplay itself was pretty solid.

Not trying to sound like an asshole, do people REALLY care about a storyline in a game that revolves around beating the absolute shit out of your opponent?

 

[SpcDaicon]

Yeah, Fighting games are falling apart, just like they were in the 90's when arcades were failling, just like the early 2000s, just like after the realease of SFV. Hell, we can say Fighting games are falling apart every year for the past 30 years!

But seriously, the FGC is doing fine and still solid despite being a rather niche genre. Yes, it had higher highs but it never got as bad as some other genres like hero shooters that are dead as soon as they are released.

Despite some blunders like Multiversus and 2XKO (that were more of corporate fuckups rather than the games themselves) and MK1 (wich still sold VERY well), we're still getting a bunch of good re-releases, we still have a lot of tournaments with a good number of attendees, players-devs relationships are closest they ever being, DOA and VF are makeing a comeback, Strive is on the rise, there are even MK and Street Fighter series/movies on the works, we somehow are still getting fighting games for modern IPs (Kill la Kill, Hunter x Hunter, Avatar, Jujustu Kaisen, Invencible) and there is a bunch of smaller and indie projects out there.

The FGC survived way worse and is now on a much more confortable place. It's still niche if you compare to the greater gaming market and may not reach the hights it once had but saying its failling is just plain wrong.

And how homo-globo the Tripple A fighters become , its just a sludge of mediocrety that has no personality anymore except being Hip-Hop slop-style or modern Pop-Rock with the Rock'n'Roll-heart ripped out for sanitized and non-edgy/blunt style that maybe draws in its first impression and gets stale lightspeed-fast .

Hip-hop and street culture has being used in the FGC since the 90's. Hell, the whole SFIII (and specially 3rd Strike) identity is based on it.
As for Rock, do you wanna something more edgy than Guilty Gear? It has all the aesthetic and the substance to back it up.

(I.E. The pandering Testament and Bridget retcons in Guilty Gear Strive and the unrelated slop guest characters in Fatal Fury COTW)

And the whole truck-load of controversies that happen in the FGC just disgusts every gamers who want to set foot into the genre .

The only people complaining about these "controvesies" are a loud monirity that overblows everything. Most normal people don't care about it. Case in point, Testament and Bridget backstory didn't affect Strive, Alex's situation died after a week and Ronaldo's and the DJ guy inclusion on COTW are much more akin to joke characers, even if it wasn't the devs intention. In a genre that had a japanese comedian in one of its most beloved games once, Ronaldo's and DJ seems pretty normal.

I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority here, personally I think FGC in general worry too much about winning and meta play they forgot how to just play and have fun.

Isn't it true for every game with a modereta size playerbase with a competitive scene? Can't really say its a FGC only problem

 

[BrawlMan]

Yeah, Fighting games are falling apart, just like they were in the 90's when arcades were failling, just like the early 2000s, just like after the realease of SFV. Hell, we can say Fighting games are falling apart every year for the past 30 years!

But seriously, the FGC is doing fine and still solid despite being a rather niche genre. Yes, it had higher highs but it never got as bad as some other genres like hero shooters that are dead as soon as they are released.

Despite some blunders like Multiversus and 2XKO (that were more of corporate fuckups rather than the games themselves) and MK1 (wich still sold VERY well), we're still getting a bunch of good re-releases, we still have a lot of tournaments with a good number of attendees, players-devs relationships are closest they ever being, DOA and VF are makeing a comeback, Strive is on the rise, there are even MK and Street Fighter series/movies on the works, we somehow are still getting fighting games for modern IPs (Kill la Kill, Hunter x Hunter, Avatar, Jujustu Kaisen, Invencible) and there is a bunch of smaller and indie projects out there.

The FGC survived way worse and is now on a much more confortable place. It's still niche if you compare to the greater gaming market and may not reach the hights it once had but saying its failling is just plain wrong.


Hip-hop and street culture has being used in the FGC since the 90's. Hell, the whole SFIII (and specially 3rd Strike) identity is based on it.
As for Rock, do you wanna something more edgy than Guilty Gear? It has all the aesthetic and the substance to back it up.



The only people complaining about these "controvesies" are a loud monirity that overblows everything. Most normal people don't care about it. Case in point, Testament and Bridget backstory didn't affect Strive and Alex's situation died after a week.


Isn't it true for every game with a modereta size playerbase with a competitive scene? Can't really say its a FGC only problem

You are stating nothing but truth and facts. This thread is over. You win.

 

[PhaseJump]

Virtua Fighter is the only fighting game that matters, and everything else is trash. This thread is over. You lose.

 

[BrawlMan]

If that were the case, then the new Virtua Fighter would have long been out by now already and "dominating" over everything. So how's that release date coming?

I get it, but at the same time, i'm not gonna act like a brat about it. You're just gonna have to wait it out like everyone else. Though this is why you don't announce games too early. I already know it'll be good, but there are so many games coming out right now that are grabbing my attention and coming out later this year. So I got time, because there are so much good and better on the horizon.

 

[Need4Power]

It's not the fighting game genre, it's modern gaming as a whole. It just so happens that fighting games suffer greatly from current trends and overly-corporate industry. You can't have this kind of genre thrive in such environment.