Will fighting games ever not be dead again?

during the late 90s - early 00s, fighting games died supposedly because of 2 reasons: 1) market flooded with too many games (like sf3 competing with sfa3, both from the same company) and the death of arcades outside japan

in the last generation, companies could no longer afford to spam games (even capcom), so first problem didn't exist. and with online gaming taking off, the second problem was dealt with, at least as well as we'll be able to deal with it for a long time (unless internet becomes a lot better worldwide)

yet here we are, with sf5 bombing and another marvel likely never happening again, no interest by capcom in another kind of capcom vs game, snk only has kof14, no samurai showdown, fatal fury or anything and kof14 doesn't seem to be doing that well, no virtua fighter, doa5 not doing well on steam (and doaxbv3 not releasing on the west tho i don't know if you can count that). no soul calibur (last game wasn't very popular either). not sure about tekken, seems to be doing ok? i'm not sure about guilty gear and blazblue either. the games are still coming out but they don't seem to be growing their userbases, which are pretty small. but at least they still exist

anyway, what do you expect to happen for fighters in the next 2,5,10 years? how should they be fixed? (if you think they're broken and fixable)

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youtube.com/watch?v=ZKvz21kq_Kw
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I think that one of the worst problem for me is that it is really hard to play casually with friends. I mean, look at any time of game out there. Most you can play with friends, even competitively, and still manage to do well, even if the skills levels are somewhat different.
Fighting games are hard af to master and its skill ceiling is so high that its literally impossible to find irl friends that play the same skill tier as you.
You stomp them or they stomp you. There is hardly a middle ground.
>b-but there is online!
Yes, but the already lacking single player of fighting games and the problems of locally playing with friends just help to diminish the fun out of these games.

>how should they be fixed?
You can't. Nu-gamers can't into something so complex. Even if you make inputs retardedly easy they'll still get mad when people outplay them (see Rising Thunder). The only way to make fighting game popular is
>1) Make actually good fighting game.
>2) Burn a lot of money to market it - support tournaments, streams, advertise it for normies, do constant updates and patches, etc.
Usually companies doing fighting games can't afford the second. If company is huge they can still not make all that great of a game (see SFV or MK which literally still rides same meme train from 90s). And even if company can afford burning money on a fighting game, why would they do it? It's very hard to gain profit from such genre.

How do we fix it a bit? Crossplay between consoles and PC is a must. You can't keep such small player base splitted.

The sheer presence of online doesn't make it solved. Even with good netcode the actual online experience of a fighting game can be pretty painful because the setup and matchmaking sucks.

They should reset the whole genre. Start from the ground up with a whole different system.

Fighting games are fine, and will be fine. At least the good ones are.

>dat button mashing

>summary: CAPCOM CAPCOM CAPCOM. CAPCOM CAPCOM? CAPCOM.

op here, my favorite fighter from the last couple of years is ggxrd (second most played being kof13). i don't even own sf5 (i refunded it after the first beta on steam) and i hated all versions of sf4. your post couldn't be farther away from the truth

then why did you talk all based on them? I didn't criticise your knowledge at all.

Nigga what does that even mean?

1. make "trades" equal. if our hands/fists connect either we both take damage or the attacks cancel each other out. frame data and invisible bullshit that you just have to magically know turns people off instantly. if you lose a trade because you punched someone's foot and it hurts them and not you because the "hurtbox" was bigger thats some nonsensical shit to casuals.

2. remove special inputs. people still to this day have problems doing a dragon punch. there is no need for special joystick movements to to a special move. just add a special button like smash.

3. remove things like canceling and any other "advanced techniques". again it makes no logical sense to anyone other than fighting game vets which will play whatever new game comes out anyway.

4. huge roster. with all this simplification you need a ton of characters to add variety.

5. in depth training mode for every possible situation. mainly for the pros since casuals wont care.

6. lengthy storymode with multiple unique boss fights. tons of people hate fighting other actual people. i personally played mvc2 on ps2 for well over 300 hours just trying to unlock everything and i never had friends to play against.

7. esports ranking shit with unlockable rewards. not just a number that goes up. make a framework and a website you can check with meaningful rewards in multiple increments as you advance in ranking or win a match for the day. think league of legends.

thats all off the top of my head.

You also have to factor most of the big companies started going to shit during ps2 era. Games got more expensive and square, Capcom, and konami become a corpse by the end of it

>3. remove things like canceling and any other "advanced techniques". again it makes no logical sense to anyone other than fighting game vets which will play whatever new game comes out anyway.
You stupid motherfucker, you know absolutely nothing about video game combat systems at all do you?

>2. remove special inputs. people still to this day have problems doing a dragon punch. there is no need for special joystick movements to to a special move. just add a special button like smash.
>3. remove things like canceling and any other "advanced techniques". again it makes no logical sense to anyone other than fighting game vets which will play whatever new game comes out anyway.

I think they're fine. This is about as well as they've ever done. They're a niche genre, they require effort to play well and are less fun when you suck. Furthermore they're 1v1 so you can't get carried or blame someone else when you lose.

Fightan games will always remain niche because
>High barrier of entry, your average character is far more complex and has more options available to him at any given time than any other comp game
>Can't shift the blame to teammates/rng
People that like fightan are masochists that enjoy testing themselves. They relish in failure so they can enjoy improvement. Your average person wants to be able to join a game and be carried by a team they can blame losses on. For some people, shifting blame is even part of what makes the game fun.

that the genre is stale and it can never grow like the others because of its limitations. Only the graphics are getting better.
If they dont rework it from the ground up and redesign what we today see as the "fighting genre" it will never escape its fate as a niche genre

>2. remove special inputs. people still to this day have problems doing a dragon punch. there is no need for special joystick movements to to a special move. just add a special button like smash.
>3. remove things like canceling and any other "advanced techniques". again it makes no logical sense to anyone other than fighting game vets which will play whatever new game comes out anyway.
Is this bait. Canceling isn't even a fighting game specific thing.
Dude what the fuck.
I agree with the training mode, but not for literally every scenario. Something like P4A's tutorial where most of the systems are explained is enough.

The people that play fighting games don't want it to be anything else.
If they wanted something else they would play something else.

Fighting games are more alive than they ever have been.

Negro
SF/MK/3D/AirDash/Platform style fighters Are all vastly different from each other mechanically. Fighting games have been deconstructed and rebuilt several times over

Retards like you always make this claim but what needs changing? You dont see FPS's being called "stale" and "boring", same with virtually any other genre. Fighting games are the only genre i can think of that people make this argument with and oddly enough it always coincides with posts like this one Truth is many casual fighting games are thriving (such as smash 4, MKX and injustice) and the only time people demand change is to them is to make the other competitive titles more casualised. Its also not a coincidence at all that you are a juri poster.

damn even if its bait you wrote too much

>KOF isn't doing that well
The fuck are you on about

they can play their deadass game, who gives a fuck what fighting game players want? there are hardly any of them anyways just look at how dead their games are.

didn't riot buy the team behind rising thunder?

you'll get your casuals soon enough

>Grow up in Hong Kong
>Arcade scene is nuts at the time
>Go to this local big one that always hosts tournaments and such
>Would project a cabinet onto a project and blast the sounds from it.
>Real Bout 2 just came out and they had it up there
>Guy gets to Krauser
>This is blasting over the speakers
>youtube.com/watch?v=ZKvz21kq_Kw
>MFW

I'm sorry future generations will never know such joy.

You said "dead" but fighting game players are able to play their video game against another person.
There's nothing more a fighting game player needs.

There's nothing to change.

>who gives a fuck what fighting game players want
The people who play fighting games are the only people that will stick around after the casual scene (you) leaves.
I think they are pretty important.

Marvel 2 got played for 10 years by only the competitive scene, and that was very fun for them.

the only thing holding back fps'es are the devs imaginations and budgets. They have room to grow. They can experiment with other genres, they can be heavy packed with a great story, etc. FPS its a camera angle, basically.
There are a lot of games experimenting with the mixing of genres lately, like rpg fpses.
But as far as fighting games go, like mentioned by , they may change mechanically in how they play, but the core is very similar yet still.

I stopped playing LoL a long while ago because I grew to hate mobas but if they really do make a fighter based on the characters of that game I'd be all in.

No some people think there e-sports.

Why do you feel so personally offended by people playing a genre of game?

Is it because you cant?

The only reason i see you being so personally invested in this is because you are a shitter that wants to play fighting games but is to scrubby to ever improve.

lmao why are so many other games doing so much better than FGC games if their casual?

There are more casual gamers than serious gamers.

Fighting games are not designed for casual gamers and there is very little single player content or multiplayer content on the casual relaxing level of League Of Legends gameplay.

This is completely fine and doesn't need to change.

Your preconceptions are skewed by the modern era of overblown budgets. Back in the era that fighting games hailed from, you didn't have to sell 10 million copies to be successful.

Maybe the genre wouldn't be dead if publishers actually released popular fighting titles like Tekken and no community backstabbing deals are made like with SFV.

So you just want a Single Player/Story Driven fightan that genre mixes? Lucky for you they exist, they're called action games.

>do a strong move
>you miss or its blocked
>you are left open
>lol jk i did some other specific thing and now magically i dont have to recover

the delay is there for a reason.

Not that guy, but I always find it hilarious when this rebuttal comes up. The only defense FGCers EVER give of their genre is "You're just not GOOD ENOUGH for them!" Like, what?

Fighting games was the number one genre because it had the biggest competitive scene. That died when arcades died. Fighting games have been replaced with FPS, which is simple and easy to get into. Unless Unless fighting games manage to dominate the online competitive scene, they will never return to their former glory. The fighting game genre's biggest mistake was not setting up base on PC and pushing for online/lan multiplayer like FPS were. But then again most fighting games were developed by japs, and those chinks are too dumb to use PCs anyways.

No. Dumb rodentposter.

Read his post, its riddled with vitriol and angst. The only reason someone has to be that mad at other people enjoying videogames is because they have some sort of grudge against that community, coupled with the "MAKE THEM EASIER" complaints in this thread it aint hard to put one and one together and get two.

Is there supposed to be another defense? The point of a fighting game is to prove how much better you are than the other player, to demonstrate superior understanding of either the game or your opponent. If you lose, it's because the opponent made better choices than you. You can blame that on the rules of the game, but it doesn't change the fact that you lost. This is why fighting games will always be niche, because most people just don't have the drive to be better.

Rising Thunder did 2 and 3 and normies still got assmad at that game. Removing the barrier from special inputs (heaven forbid I have to actually learn how to play the video game) doesn't do anything other than make it easier to jump in day 1.

What needs to be changed in fighting games is the person playing them. Even if Joe and Steve both play the same character, the one who actually understands basic psychology while playing video games will win more often than not. You cannot be taught this directly, but have to learn it yourself after getting your ass kicked for hours. Unfortunately, gamers today tend to put things down if they don't constantly win, even though their win means a loss for the other person; they don't see that part of it and only confirm their wins to themselves rather than accepting their losses and wondering what they did wrong or how to improve.

>5
Any training mode with a record feature has this already. You just have to be able to put two and two together to figure out how to record the scenario you want to practice.

>6
The draw for many hardcore fighting game fans isn't fighting the AI, but another living human on the other side of the screen/controller who has their own unique, subjective way of approaching matchups with the characters they use and the tactics they employ based on their mindset. After Fighting AI for so long, you notice patterns that you can exploit to get your free hits in that will work every time because of the fact that it's an AI controlled opponent who cannot adapt like a human can. The whole point is to identify similar patterns in your opponent's gameplan and to exploit them while you can until they adapt and change, then you have to find a way back in again from a different angle because of their adjustment while they are constantly doing something similar simultaneously; To hate fighting other people in a fighting game is to hate fighting games as a whole.

>two player single screen game
>pushing LAN
Please go and stay go

Well, you got a point. I still believe there is potential in fighting games if they can be reworked, tho. The solution is not simple, or else devs would have done it already. Its hard to think outside of the box.

>The fighting game genre's biggest mistake was not setting up base on PC and pushing for online/lan multiplayer like FPS were

This makes no sense. The reason why you need LAN for FPSs is because you're not going to play with 24 people on one screen, so you need many computers to make a FPS game with friends viable. It's possible to do the same with consoles, as was popularly done with Halo 2, but getting enough TV screens + consoles together is more cumbersome than getting a bunch of PCs and monitors together. Fighters only need one gaming device, be it PC or console, and two controllers, that.s it.

>7
How is this any different than current ranking systems? Ranking stratifies your ability to give you and your opponents a general idea of your proficiency with that character or game. Your proposed solution is giving someone a reward for just playing the video game rather than excelling at the video game. Ranking should serve as motivation to improve rather than giving you pats on the back for trying.

Fighting games, much like MMOs, will never be as good as the used to be because of how our social spheres have changed since the genre's inception. The person playing the game does not play the video game to get better at it, but to play the video game for fun. This is the stance that many people take:

I play video games for fun.
When I play fighting games, I lose often.
I do not have fun when I lose.
I am not having fun, so I will not play this video game.

Taking the time to learn how to actually play a video game is a lost art. If there's no instant gratification to be had, it will flop on the mass market, which to a company means that it is ultimately not worth funding.

Your bait was delicious, thank you.

All I got from it is "Why bother, they're in a dead genre and there's no real reason to listen to them." Sure, it's an angry tone, but that could just be edginess for its own sake.

>not thinking about computer cafes
>which are a big deal in asian countries
>especially korea
Retard, please

Isn't there there a new fps/rts game they are making? It's not an entirely new idea, but it's certainly not the same old stale fps.

>Fighting games are dead.

Why does Sup Forums insist that if a games audience is in any way eve a little bit niche its dead?

Fighting games still have shit tons of people playing them.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_bang

Because
>Your perceptions are skewed by the modern era of overblown budgets.
All they ever hear nowadays is "GAME X DIDN'T SELL 5 MILLION COPIES, IT\'"S A FAILURE HA HA HA HA COMPANY Y IS DONE FOR!"

Why the fuck do they need to go to a computer cafe when they have a fucking game center you esports shitting retard.

Different guy, but your response to 6 doesn't gel with me. I hate fighting games because I don't really give a damn about how I measure up against another person. That said, I do like Smash. Brawl especially, because of how extensive its single-player was.

But I never got the draw for the whole "git gud" focus. Like, it's a video game. One of thousands that exist. Who cares how good I am at it? Having to grind away at unenjoyable training to develop the skills to START enjoying the game just feels like an inefficient use of my time. Give me an experience that's CONSISTENTLY enjoyable. The whole "self-improvement" thing some gamers preach about never made a lick of sense to me. No one else cares, and I certainly don't either.

I'm sure the Korean market would have maintained the popularity of the fighter genre worldwide.

I think a big thing is also finding an audience.

Mixing rpg and fighting is hard, since much of what is alluring to the genres clash with eachother.

Fighting players want a fair fight that can be reset everyting but player skill and knowledge. They want to win, not win because their stats are better for putting more time into the game.

Rpg players wouldn't want to deal with difficult fighting mechanics.

This is why they just make action rpgs.

It's unprofitable to try to make a game that targets only a small portion of an already nice genre.

What does that have to do with someone dissing on the genre?

>computer cafe
>exclusive to korea

>No one else cares

People dont improve because other people care or not. They do it because they care and enjoy it.

Its fine if you dont, but that doesn't make it something that shouldn't exist in video games.

Fighting games would be better off without the retarded "complex" move system. quarter circle x and other cancerous shit needs to stop and maybe some people won't be scared away by the autism required to get good with that tedious system.

>computer cafe popularity
>not exclusive to korea

They tried that, turns out all the people that think "I would be good without motions" still suck too bad to play even without them. Go figure.

the problem with fightans is the way online is presented.

get rid of points based rankings and focus on more lobby support options, even if you have to go so far as adding a clunky text chat for people who dont have mics on consoles. add multiplayer specific options in training mode such as input display on both ends if this isnt a feature already, and add input button icons in the chat function. add server browsers for training matches. punish quitters harder. encourage communication this incentives like colors or taunts unlocked by interaction rather than money or wins.

you should be doing your best to connect the more tightly knit fighting game community to the outside world, and give an avenue for curious newcomers to explore options and learn from better players within the game's structure, and then incentive them to do so as well. make the competition about becoming better than the guy you learn from, rather than increasing an arbitrary value to a certain point to get a rank up. the people who play these games get turned off to them because they have no idea what theyre getting into, and dont realize many of the people kicking their asses may be perfectly willing to help them learn.

it sounds absurd to trust an online community to show etiquette, but without the environment of a physical arcade to meet new people and learn to play from them, you need some sort of structure to create new longtime fans

maybe im being to optimistic

The problem with the fighting genre is that whenever you want to add something new to it, it would be a lot more successful if you did that to another genre. There were a couple of coop boss fighters released in the 90s like Red Earth, which were pretty good but also very unsuccessful. The idea is neat, but coop boss fighting is better if you apply that to the RPG genre, hence PSO and Monster Hunter.

And why do you touch yourself at night. LAN lobbies would be a good feature to add in case gooks wanted to play in a cafe instead of suffering internet speeds before the 10's.

ggxrd does a fair amount of that stuff.

No, but that mentality is starting to creep into other games, when some existing fans of those games wish it would just fuck off. Especially when a dev starts to focus on big-time comp stuff like eSports instead of polishing or fixing other parts of the game.

PlanetSide 2 fell into this trap for a while, when the game's entire structure (there's no ultimate lose or win condition) was completely opposite to it. TF2's starting to get hit with the same thing. The recent Meet your Match update which finally introduced a competitive mode was in fact considered one of the worst in recent memory.

People are getting tired of competitive. I can't blame them for starting to resent it and stuff like eSports.

You can learn that shit in a day if you stopped being a scrub

That sounds fucking awesome.

hows ggxrd doing anyway? seems to be fairly popular this time around

So don't play a 1 on 1 fighting game. If you have no interest in competitive multiplayer whatsoever you really aren't relevant to the health of a competitive multiplayer game.

If you like short and terrible VNs then I guess you can help make the competitive multiplayer game profitable but fighters don't lend themselves to single player.

You mean like they have in a GAME CENTER?

>No one else cares, and I certainly don't either.
It is in human nature to compete with one another. We've been devising comp games to best each other in since at least the dawn of civilization.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Game_of_Ur

They have arcades for that.

>computer cafe popularity
>exclusive to korea
Why does LAN trigger you so much anyways? Did Ching and Chong rape you in a computer cafe as a teen.

Its gotten a boost in popularity since rev came out, and stayed pretty high after evo. If you have a good connection and you live in EU/US, you should have zero trouble finding rooms.

I find at least 10 lobbies up every night.

Reading shit from people that have no idea what they're talking about triggers most people retard.

It's not about blindly trying to be the master of every video game you play. For me it's more like "Oh man, that guy did something really fucking cool. I want to do something as cool as that guy." So I look at what he did, try to understand why he did it, and finally try to replicate it if its something that can be beneficial to me.

The whole reason I play video games is to have fun. For me, having fun is doing cool shit in video games. Cool shit to me in video games is being good at fighting games and being able to control your opponent through both your actions and inactions while simultaneously being able to predict what their next move will be and readying a counter for it.

Now, understanding all of that AND being able to be flashy and functional is what "git gud" means.

To "enjoy" a book, you have to know how to read which comes from being able to know how to write. Once you have that down, you begin to understand the meaning of the words printed. Once you get the meaning, you can synthesize them into ideas and create your subjective understanding of that passage you are reading.

People who jump into fighting games and complain about losing constantly without trying to understand the game are the same people who would complain about a book not being accessible enough because they don't know how to read nor do they care to try to.

With reading, the basic skills needed are provided to you in the form of a general education, so you can just jump into any book provided you have a rudimentary understanding of written language.

Fighting games just give you the book; it's up to you to figure out how to read it. Some people enjoy learning to read, other people avoid it.

Because there's no reason to leave out an easy to implement feature. Especially with the popularity of internet cafes in asia.

>It is in human nature to compete with one another.

Gotta disagree here. I hate competition. I think more and more people are starting to hate it, too. Playing games and interacting with their mechanics and systems is fun, but this whole "there's another person interacting with this system and only one of you is coming out the victor" is such a pain in the ass.

>fighting games are dead

Not really. Just slipping back into its little niche genre since Capcom keeps fucking up and as much as I don't like to admit it they're kinda the face of the scene or at least one of the more well known ones. I was honestly a bit shocked that SF4 was such a hit but it came at the right time when people were hungry for a new SF and it reinvigorated players while bringing in new blood.

Right now we're past that phase and hitting a slight lull. The next five years will be interesting to see. They need to definitely do something to bring more players in but they cannot alienate the hardcore user base.

When you've got a group or scene that are really into a game it's fun to play against one another and start getting a leg up. When you get a great opponent or two that switch things up, play mind games, etc. it's fun to get inside of their head or just make the right reads to pull ahead. Maybe some new guy slips in and does shit you've never thought about. Sure, it's a video game, but it's fun to be competitive in the right setting.

It's a staple of the genre. I hate to say it but unless they're 'pretzel motions' or other bullshit it's easy to get down. 'Git gud' is a very shitty way some put it but with practice you can get it down. I got it down as a kid and my friend's kids play on pad but can do simple inputs in SFIV, etc.

so you trigger yourself retard?

Stop talking about yourself. Try using your brain a little. But don't try too hard. No one wants you hurting yourself.

>I want fighting games to become party platformers like trash

For some reason, your post made me want to post webms of people getting fucked up in internet cafes. I've got this one video of a guy getting his throat slit by a player he just beat with a zerg rush, and another where two guys have a fist fight in an internet cafe.

To add to this, there have been many attempts by developers to innovate in the fighting genre. The big problem is though that whenever you deviate too much from the SF2 template, you'll be disregarded as a fighter. Take for examples Super Smash or Gundam Extreme Vs. In essence, they can be considered a different style of fighting games, just as SF2 was to games like Pit Fighter.

Tell me what a LAN cafe gains from using two computers to run a game that can be played on one computer and two screens.

inb4 muh glorious corean overlords again

>rpg players don't want to deal with difficult fighting game mechanics

You better be speaking for yourself. The real problem with mixing rpgs and fighters is having to deal with even more numbers, like gear like you said.

>Capcom keeps fucking up
p much this

I can't say I've ever truly enjoyed a capcom fighting game. I've played a bunch of others, though, and see why people enjoy fighters. But goddamn, is the SF and Marvel series goddamn dogshit. And its playerbase is even worse.

t. someone who actually went to locals and attempted to git gud with actual players in person at an arcade

Sounds like fighting games aren't for you. You may not care but for those who do, it's great to to see how far you've grown when fighting someone else.
When I lose, I just think "shit I got destroyed, how did he do that? How can i counter it nextime?" and what not.
Fighting games at their core are about beating the shit out of each other, simple competition.
I try to "git gud" because it's actually fun for me. Playing with a few friends fightan while trash talking is one of the best experiences I had.

Spot on, user.

Sup Forums doesn't know shit about fighting games, I thought this was established fact by now.

They hate them too because they can't make a claim and back it up properly, it's a genre that requires actual understanding of how things work before you can voice an opinion and Sup Forums is literally full of casual facebook/redditors that think garbage like gone homo and call of duty are masterpieces.

You have to actually get good at them and practice, you're not going to become amazing over night, for some people it takes months, some people years, you're going to get your butt kicked a lot until you get your shit down well enough. Sup Forums also doesn't seem to deal well with losing either.

So people wouldn't have to physically move around a crowded cafe like retards. Think a little before posting.

Why do you enjoy the mechanics? Because there is a challenge presented and you overcame it, even if its something as comparatively brain dead as flashbanging a Tracer with Mcree then scoring a headshot. Sure your focus may not be to "win the game" but you are still gaining satisfaction from overcoming the challenge other players present. There is absolutely no reason why any multiplayer game would be compelling without some level of competition, there would simply be no reason to play online if that was the case.

fighting games and rpgs dont mix on a fundamental level. everything in fighting games (damage, hp, stun, etc) is constant depending on the character you play. in an rpg with gear and stats, those are all variable. if i can beat you by simply outdamaging you even though youre playing better, theres no reason to have it be a skill based game in the first place

Fighting games have kind of always been guilty of that though for the most part. The solution would be to give an in-depth tutorial that provides new players with the fundamentals they would need to begin playing. Tutorials have been getting better in fighting games as of late, but the secondary problem is the execution barrier.

It's cool that the game tells you that you that Shoryukens are pretty good anti-airs for the most part, but that doesn't mean anything to the average person if they can't consistently execute the command. This becomes the new problem. As previously mentioned, Rising Thunder is a recent example where this barrier was removed to allow newer players to jump in without having to worry about execution. While the game saw fgc and non-fgc players, many of the non-fgc players completely dropped the game because they don't understand concepts like "zoning" that come intuitively from spending time playing the game and practicing.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

And once that hurdle is overcome, the new one is the lack of people with a skill level similar to yours. A person who understands game mechanics and psychology will always beat someone who just picked up the game. Such a person doesn't want to regularly fight people who are in Gold when they are just a Bronze starting out. It's very difficult to learn and grow if you are just getting beat every game without taking any ground. This is why people who frequent local scenes end up becoming skilled at their game of choice. While practicing with a small circle of friends is fine, there will come a point where you may become better than everyone else. Unless those friends have the same drive, it's likely they will give up because of reasons like "I can't beat you anymore."

People forget that fighting games always have a binary outcome in that there will always be exactly one winner and one loser.

The genre is built entirely on this idea.

You sound like a nigger chimping out

marvel is dogshit but sf is fine mechanically. when it comes to player bases sf is really down there though, probably second only to smash for level of autism

Tekken 7 is coming to Steam. Street Fighter V had some major issues. If they had all of the bugs ironed out before they released it, I'm sure it would have done better. I have Street Fighter 4 and DOA5 on Steam. I would love to see Virtua Fighter. I'd lose it if they had arcade classics emulated or remade of VF2 and especially 3 seeing as how Model3 hardware can't be emulated properly.

>there is hardly a middle ground

you need more friends