The Real Reason Nobody Plays Fighters

Ever questioned why online games like Overwatch or Team Fortress are so popular? Because it's easy to blame you're teammates on losing. Fighting games have absolutely nobody to blame but yourself when you lose. So why can't you take responsibility for sucking at fightan and git gud Sup Forums?

Why is mario in a fighting game thread?

Fighting games aren’t popular because humans are social beings.
There is nothing social about sitting at home or going to tournaments and playing 1v1 games. Humans like to interact with other humans to achieve their goals

Lmfao

Please check what you just wrote user. And try thinking this time.

>Ever questioned why online games like Overwatch or Team Fortress are so popular?
Because there are few to no layers of bullshit involved with pointing and shooting at a guy to make them die. I don't need to press Mouse1 Mouse1 R Space Z X C ~ ASDSA Mouse2 to fire my grenade launcher and deal optimal damage.

I don't have to sit down for several hours each day alone in a Training room to learn how to play the game before I can actually play the game.

This, at least use machamp from pokken or something, pokken at least has the same set of mechanics and fundamentals as traditional fighting games.

Figthers aren't very popular because they are the arguably the most competitive genre so you either get super autistic about it or you buy a fighting game, sink some time into it and then only bring it out again when you have some friends over.

>smash
>fighting game

Real question:
Does anyone here even play fighting games, aside from a few anons?

>mario next to fighting game characters

I am so fucking tired of you delusional nintendronies.

Fighters are not popular because the skill floor is too high. It's almost impossible to introduce new players into the fighting game genre unless they're prepared for months to a year of practice. It's almost impossible to find someone at the same level of competency for any given player unless you're a turbo sperg who spends days training and competes in local tournaments. If you're anything less than that, you're going to be on a wide spectrum of total garbage to competent, and it's no fun for a competent player to blast a total garbage player for either involved.

It's also why Smash is the most popular fighting game--its skill floor is so low that even a new player has a decent chance of beating someone who is competent at the game, especially as you begin to introduce the randomness of stages and items.

Why was it so popular during the 90s then and arguably being the dominant genre at the time? Why is smash so popular? inb4 Smash is not a fighter, that's besides the point. Why did MKX sell millions of copies? SFV could have been huge but Capcom fucked it up.

>its skill floor is so low that even a new player has a decent chance of beating someone who is competent at the game
That is the biggest lie I've ever read.

>scrubquotes.txt

I dont play fighting games cause I suck at them and feel like it would take a loooooooong time for me to improve so I don't bother

Maybe don't remove the quoted part from context then?
>especially as you begin to introduce the randomness of stages and items.
Randomness in any game immediately lowers the disparity between the best player and the worst. See: Mario Kart.

Its because they're easier to get into compared to fighting games. Fighting games generally expect you to already have an understanding of older fighting mechanics to really do well in them. Hell, even the very basics tend to be call backs to earlier games, like doing fireball motions.

The problem with that however is that newer players just don't have that experience. And to get to the point of doing well in the game, it requires not only a lot of memorization, but also mechanical training, which can put people off.

Compared to pretty much any other online game thats popular, and you will see that the barrier from entry to pro is relatively minor in comparison.

We have daily Street Fighter and Guilty Gear threads so yeah

i play fightens (especially 2ho fightens) i just don't play online.

i used to really like those games, and spend hours on games like virtua fighter 2, virtua fighter kids or golden axe the dual. but you know op? fighten games aren't cute. so i stopped playing them when i got older.

Melee fags need to quit pretending like their game is the best "fighting" game in the world and how it's "so complex"

Fuck off and die smash babby

Fighters lack of popularity baffle me. Everyone cites FPS but Counter Strike is one of the most popular multiplayer games of all time and that's one of the easiest games to get destroyed at if you're a noob, not to mention waiting a minute or more after getting headshotted by an AWP player sucks balls. Whereas fighters it's just you vs the other player and you can go right back to playing after losing, you have to less wait then a minute to play another match (unless you're playing T7). I've grown up with both fighters and FPS, but I've played fighters with my dad and in the arcade as a kid whereas I remember playing CS in cafes with more experienced people as a kid so I guess my experience may be biased.

Fighting Game fans tend to be some of the most elitist assholes ever which can put people off playing the games.

Its mostly the tourneyfags and the wannabe tourneyfags, but they're generally the most annoying and off putting fanbase you'll ever associate with.

This sounds like every online shooting/MOBA fanbase. The fightan fanbase is pretty placid other than le hypppe XD

Fighting games are hard to learn hard to master, relatively speaking. There are many MANY more games with similarly high skill ceilings, but with a much lower barrier to entry than fighting games that people can spend their time enjoying themselves with.

tl;dr too hardcore for mass appeal

This, really. I feel as though the typical game can introduce the player to enjoyment from the very start, while fighting games require weeks of practice to even reach a level where the gameplay becomes enjoyable. It's why games that are straightforward in their concept like shooter games(look at the guy, point your gun at him, shoot him) are more popular due to being able to 'play' from the very start while fighting games need hours of dedication to have any enjoyment at all.

To be fair, it can be. The upside though is that those communities can have at least some people who are more chill about it.

Fighting games more than anything seem to bring out the ultra competitive tourny wannabes however. From my experience, I genuinely can't recall a time where I've met someone who wasn't some turbo sperg when it comes to Fighting Games when they're into them.

>its skill floor is so low that even a new player has a decent chance of beating someone who is competent at the game, especially as you begin to introduce the randomness of stages and items.
It seemed like you're saying; only in smash a rookie has a good chance to beat a decent player, and adding items in only makes this chance greater. Hence why the skill floor is so low. But in 90% of fighting games it's possible for a rookie to beat a decent player by button mashing.
>Melee fags need to quit pretending like their game is the best "fighting" game in the world and how it's "so complex"
Nobody said that, fuck off.

>Fighting Game fans tend to be some of the most elitist assholes ever which can put people off playing the games.

HAHA. What a fag. Any game with a competitive scene acts like this. You think any games that are FPS or MOBA's don't have their fair share of elitist assholes?

I dont play fighters because I dont feel like learning a bunch of sequences of button presses just to play the game.

If you try playing a fighter you've never played before you wont even get 1 hit in.

shits gay, fuck that

So what are your guys thoughts on Fantasy Strike and Rising Thunder, are they a good way to get new blood into the genre or are they going about it the wrong way? Are fighters just inherently doomed to be niche? Why was it so popular during the 90s though, I guess lack of internet may have been different but still.

>fighting game must be fully traditional to be a fighting game
this is why fighting games outside of smash bros are going nowhere

Theres a difference between having elitist assholes and consisting of nothing but elitist assholes.

That is true, but most of those threads consist of footfags, and waifuposting.

This. The Overwatch community alone is truly insufferable. In fact, the FGC is actually pretty helpful. I've had a good time learning from them for the last year. My first fighter was SFV.

Fighting games are child's play compared to the real thing

Who the fuck cares?

If I'm the only one playing fighters and enjoying myself, My only concern is that the ai is good then

Ego protection is why most people play team based games like mobas or team shooters

Fightan has less of a problem with this than real 1v1 games like quake or toxikk, because in fightan you can still blame your own moveset or their character being overpowered or something.

If you start with a completely pure even playing field, it's even worse ego abuse when losing.

If you want to know the actual answer it's because people don't want to invest time into practicing. All my friends say this but yet they're jobless and spend all day playing DotA and watching TV shows. They simply want instant gratification which is something that the most popular games on steam offer right now. Multiplayer games that require low effort and investment to play but consistently reward the player. A game that you can just hop on and play with no need to worry about skill. It's also why loot crates are becoming so popular. Instant gratification and a nice dopamine kick that is addicting as fuck if you get a good drop

> I don't have to sit down for several hours each day alone in a Training room

but that's the best part

>Why was it so popular during the 90s though,

I think it's because the big generation of gamers who grew up in the 90s didn't have as much concern for time as they did now, i.e., when you're 9 years old you can spend 12 hours a day grinding away at high skill floor genres like fighting games without a care in the world. Now in our 20s, we have to budget our time against enjoyment, and anyone new to games these days just have too many low-barrier-to-entry options to consider fighting games. So yeah, doomed to nichedom I'd say.

That doesn't change shit because no one is gonna play Gundam and that's strictly team based. Actually, I'm really curious to know how that and Dissidia NT are going to be taken by regular fighting game people.

All these traditionalist faggots getting mad because smash is the only relevant fighting game and consistently churns out more viewers at every major, respectable tournament. Stay gluteusmaximallydevastated friends!

>SFV was my first game

You poor bastard.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE DONT MAKE FUN OF MY FIDING VIDYA

Not they, but I don't really do that. I just watch some tournies and copy the combos they do, play online and watch recordings of my match, or just ask the person who beat me what I did wrong, and how they beat me.

My Internet only passes the bare minimum, so I can't get bodied online

But I'm still practicing. I can even do a combo

I think it's fun.

there is nothing more intimate than a 1v1 which is also why people dont like 1v1.

Good job user. What fightan do you play?

SF2 was my first, then T6, then BB.

I'd have to say it will always be niche. Games like rising thunder make the entry for fighting games much more accessible, but I feel as though those games eliminate the core of fighting games: many layers of understanding, deep mechanics, and I feel it takes away a bit from the mind game aspect as well. Pushing individual buttons to use certain abilities is easy and all, but it takes away many options from the game already. Ex: you press 'X' on your controller to use a fireball instead of doing a quarter circle. Now the game has reduced the amount of special abilities that can be used due to having a button be wasted on a special AND a button has been taken away for normals.
If fighting games reduce their complexity and give into the wants of the mass market(easier games) then I feel the point of fighting games will have been ceased.

People might hate on user for saying this, but he's right. Most of my friends who don't play fighting games have owned a Tekken, Soul Calibur, or Dead or Alive game in the past, and only stopped once online play became a thing. If you only look at the basic level, you can press a direction and press a button to attack in those games. Most of them have played Smash too. They wouldn't touch something like Guilty Gear unless they had easy mode though.

They don't want to have to study to play vidya, they just want to play it. I understand the feeling, as I try to avoid training mode for the most part, but pop in when I need to figure some shit out or learn a new game or character.

This is why Fantasy Strike has potential: It's fucking easy as shit. I got my brother who hates fighting games to play it, understand it, and enjoy it. On top of that, Fantasy Strike plays like an easier version of Super Turbo, and has more depth than SFV. It's still rough as fuck and needs some changes, but I like where it's going and hope it shapes into a great game.

There's a bunch of reasons for why I think fighting games were more popular.
One thing to start with is that games as a whole were more niche in the 90, so if you were playing games, you weren't some casual who wasn't willing to put hours into it to get good.
Another thing is that arcade culture was different and also so was the tech. The only games where you could challenge someone directly ( not high score based) was with a racing game or a fighting game, and one has alot more depth than the other, or can also be seen as a real fight between two people.
There's a few more reasons I could prob think of but I don't care enough nor have the time
.
As for the fighters that are coming out that are simplifying inputs and stuff.
I, to be frank, wont think they will last. People who don't play fighters will find another thing they don't understand about them and complain. While sure alot of things are eased at the end of the day a better player will still destroy a worse player or else its a bad fighting game. What is the point of a skill based game where skill amounts to nothing.
Also alot of people still won't look at a loss, accept that it was their own fault, and try to learn from their mistakes, most likely they will just call something cheap or the person a bitch for using a move instead of trying to learn how to counter it.
Hell i could go on about my feelings about that but it's something I can really only discuss effectively with words, even now i don't really want to read this over so it's prob all over the place, hope I at least got some things across.

not sure if sarcasm

>Rising Thunder
No. Rising Thunder was actually TOO complex for new players. The game had a fucking Roman Cancel for crying out loud. On top of that, new players get confused when there are too many buttons. Rising Thunder had 7, which is actually more than fucking Street Fighter. To make things worse, the "Abilities have cooldowns" mechanic didn't make for the most interesting gameplay, and playstyles weren't different enough.
>Fantasy Strike
Honest to god has a chance. It looks like butt, but then you pick it up and realize it's fun as fuck. Feels like a successor to SF2. Still unpolished, and could use a few tweaks, but it works out in the end.

I disagree. Fighting Games changed significantly since SF2 and Mortal Kombat exploded. Some people complain that they've gotten easier since the SF4 era, but that's a very limited view of things. The only thing that has really gotten easier is shit like inputs, while the games add more movement options, more mechanics, and keep combos long.

Virtua Fighter seemed to be the only game that actually looked at their core mechanics and thought "Actually, we should take a second look at this". Because of this, VF5FS has the best grab system in any fighting game, a movement system that has depth but is also intuitive, and a redone jump system that doesn't feel as janky. Capcom, SNK, Arcsys, Namco, or anyone else would have just slapped some new mechanics (Or mechanics they borrowed from someone else) on to the box, and called it a day.

You might be right about people who don't play fighters finding something else to complain about, but I'm hopeful for Fantasy Strike. It still has most of the depth of SF2, but with easier controls and design decisions that point players in the direction of playing smart. I gave Rising Thunder to some fighting casuals, and they didn't really improve. With Fantasy Strike I could see them actually thinking and improving. If any game has a shot, it's that one.

Not a argument

VF>Tekken

>Fighting games have absolutely nobody to blame but yourself when you lose. So why can't you take responsibility for sucking at fightan

But i do, and thats why I don't play them.

Fighting games arent fun unless you are good, but online games can be fun whenever.

>Smash is more friendly to new players
I can both prove and disprove this statement

>friends are hyped for Smash 4
>decide to try it
>I had never played before, friends were Melee veterans
>won my first ever match

Some time later

>have another friend who plays Mortal Kombat
>ask him if he wants to try Smash
>he agrees
>try to explain the controls
>he says "I'd rather just mash the buttons"
>I go easy on him
>he dies three times, two of which because he spiked himself off the stage
>he now firmly believes the game is objectively bad

hey, me too

All multiplayer games are gay.

That says more about your friends than it does anything else.

Overwatch is more popular with normies than Mario has been in the past 20 years. It's mostly nerds and manchildren who are excited for the upcoming Mario game. But why?

Because it looks fun, I guess.

...

then i blame the devs or my internet

Not when there's very little balance in the game. People can easily steam roll most of the Smash cast just by using certain characters.

Obligation to champion Mario because he invented videogames and "deserves" the upmost respect (review score bump)

I don't play fighting games because I don't know anyone who plays fighting games. Add to that Australian internet and I'll just sit the fuck out.

Pokken is far from being fully traditional, though. It's a good example of a fighting game being truly experimental while still actually keeping the core of what a traditional fighting game is.

As a Mexican i grew playing King of fighters in arcades and stores, i'm pretty sad that it's still easier to play the game in the arcades than online but a lot of the people that plays the game or Street fighter usually don't play anything else, they just know fighting games

That makes no sense, because games like Mario Kart are extremely popular.
The real reason is because fighting games are hard to learn, and most people just don't give a fuck about putting the time into that.
It's why Smash is so popular. It's easy to learn, because it was developed as a party game. There's no special inputs or anything.

Me. Fighting games are fucking hard and if I never grinded them out while I was 14 I would have dropped them like I did to League of Legends

Is it wrong if I like them for the very same reason? I remember getting destroyed by better players, but watching and taking mental notes on what to do/don't and putting it into practice is part of the fun, isn't it?

Though beat em ups and fightan games have been in my life since childhood so maybe that has something to do with it.

More like if you're playing a team based shooter you don't have to be that good and you can still win because you can get carried to victory by other players and you can get the odd kill or contribute in some case and death is only a short setback.

In a Fighter if you're not good its just an endless frustration where you'll just keep losing. Fighters are pretty much destined to become niche as they do nothing but discourage lower skilled players from playing, Why would you keep coming back to a game you keep losing?

Ryu actually has special inputs, and so do C.Falcon and Ganon's neutral b. Along with Marth/Roy/Lucina's side b.

Nobody likes to get bodied by something they find cheap, but you're right that eventually overcoming it is fun.

Mario Kart is popular because it's something that people pull out at social gatherings and odds are nobody grinds it out. Plus there is a huge randomness factor people can blame losing on.

Namco made the last a smash it's a fightan

In Mario Kart even if you lose quite badly you still get to enjoy driving the track and getting good items. In a Fighter if you lose badly you practically don't get to do anything but be the other player's punching bag.

fighting games suck for that too because once you develop any skill you just beat your friends every time and they don't wanna play anymore. as a matter of fact that's the main problem i have with them, none of my friends want to git gud or if they try to they just end up getting frustrated after losing for a few more days then they quit

Yes, so how exactly does that exclude FPS or MOBA's, which are just that.

Especially fucking Dota. You think Dota is welcoming? Are you fucking dense, Dota is literally only got popular to begin with because people sucked shit at Warcraft 3 and cried to Blizzard to support the fucking game because they were good at it. Dota is literally what Meleefags are but worse in every conceivable way.

Hasn't namco always helped with smash? I remember in an interview Sakurai mentioned if he wanted to make a fighting game, those were the best people for it, that he knew of.

>have to listen to people around me play assfaggots all the time
>"why do I always get paired up with shit players"
>"why can I never win"
>"every time I play with you I lose"
>"fuck you don't ks me"
>"my teammates are shit"

is it so hard to admit you're the problem?

You sound like a salty cunt

...

Honestly the FGC would not give a fuck about melee if it wasn't at evo

Are you having trouble understanding what was said or something? Having some people acting like that is different than the entire community acting like that. And yes, MOBA communities are pretty fucking bad. I would even dare to say almost as bad as fighting game communities.

Every other community has people like that, sure. But Fighting game communities are pretty much exclusively people like that.

>Honestly the FGC would not give a fuck about _________ if it wasn't at evo

Fixed

Smash players in general don't care much about fighting games at large. It's weird, Smash players, Melee players specifically crave validation from the fighting game community at large while still seemingly wanting nothing to do with them or the games. It's probably because they want the prestige associated with fighting games, that they're generally thought of as difficult.

but melee is more difficult than other current traditional fighters

But Guilty Gear has an easy mode - you can choose Stylish and it allows one button combos and specials.

I do agree with your points though. I don't think Fighting games will ever become mainstream unless they change something significant about themselves. But that's not really a bad thing. A game genre can be niche and still be great.

I'm looking at the Fantasy Strike Crowdfunding campaign and while the game seems fun, the campaign seems like it'll never reach it's goal. Do you think it's a good investment?

That's not what I'm arguing nor to I care. It's about public perception.

>fighting game tournaments exist before there are online tournaments for basically anything else except FPS
>not social
Fighting games are the most social because so much of them take place away from the computer. They all started grassroots as fuck and unlike MOBAs/Overwatch/whatever, you can't just socialize with the same 4 people on your "squad." You are constantly making friends and rivalries in fighting games as you push yourself up. First take at least a round. Then take at least a game. Then don't drown in pools. Then consistently make bracket. Then make top 16. Top 8. Top 3.

i can which is why i play arena fps
it has a higher skill cap and floor and isn't a mindless masher

Fighting games play like shit online with any kind of input lag, and are basically only enjoyable if you got to locals anyway.

>it has a higher skill cap and floor and isn't a mindless masher
What shooters do you play?

>Ever questioned why online games like Overwatch or Team Fortress are so popular? Because it's easy to blame you're teammates on losing. Fighting games have absolutely nobody to blame but yourself when you lose. So why can't you take responsibility for sucking at fightan and git gud Sup Forums?

That isn't why.

Fighting games are everything most people are put off by
>constant repetition and grind
>can't stop playing it or else you get rusty fast, you have to play it non-stop
>eats up huge amounts of time, one of the most time consuming genres
>often needlessly complex with button combinations and combos
>too much guesswork involved (unlike when you fight IRL)
>neither the games or the communities are newcomer friendly
>playing online is absolute shit most of the time due to netcode and even 1 frame drop can mess you up
>all that time and dedication yet you will be almost guaranteed to achieve nothing, even the world largest fighting game tournament is turning into a joke so it's not even worth it for that
>etc

It's just as useless as trying to "git gud" at something like Dota 2. You will waste your life away on a mostly unpleasant experience, no glory and only nuggets of actual enjoyment

Nigger, you have it all wrong. Fighting games give some of the best rushes of dopamine possible for video games but most people never get to the base level where execution isn't a thought anymore and your brain is 100% thinking. Great example is Tokido vs Punk at EVO this year. In the GF set you can see Tokido get into Punk's head and then Tokido starts running the train. It's the whole GOTCHA BITCH zen flow you hit where it all comes together that is godlike.

I stopped playing fighting games because my closest local is a 2 hour drive and the closest major is a 3 and 1/2 hour drive. Netplay is still pretty ass in general with Fightcade or Skullgirls being the only options where games are somewhat meaningful.

It's just not feasible anymore now that I'm out of college and have a job. It also doesn't help that I'm not particularly fond of any of the fighting games out right now.