The most important things about a fighting game today are

The most important things about a fighting game today are.

>Balance and Accessibility
No one wants to play or watch a game in which everyone picks and plays the same exact characters every time. And playing vs character that ether deals incredible damage at no effort or has no drawbacks is only fun for the one person in a match. Every character should have at lest some chance of wining if you learn how to play them. In addition to this the game canto be needlessly complicated to play. One button combos and specials are overkill but at the same time forcing your player to preform finger twister to do anything is a big no. Fighters should not be about had to do moves but about knowing when to do moves.

>Graphics and presentation
We can argue all we want all day about how graphics dont matter but they do.
Its literally a small almost fixed camera map and 2 characters minimum there is no excuse to use this fact that you can focus more on graphics and presentation because pressing power for this is lower than usual. If a fighter has sup par graphics people will notice and the game usually sells like shit.

>Netplay
Few people live in places that have a vibrant fighting game player community.
For most ravel is mandatory to get some real life matches and this takes time and money. So having a good net code is mandatory to a games life. The netcode doesn't have to be perfect but it has to make the game playable vs people who live on the same continent. A game can have the 2 things above mentioned but if it has shit net code it will die fast even if it sells a decent amount of copies the online will be barren because of this.

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If a game lacks in any o the above 3 departments its destined to die.
Take MVCI or KOF these games lack 2 of the above mentioned things each.
MVCI has shit graphics and presentation and the balance is fucked so hard that they have to do a complete re balance 2 months after release it sold like shit and the online is nearly dead despite having a decent netcode.
And KOF XIV
The game is fun to play and has great balance.
But the net code is horrible and the grafics in the first version of the game made it look like a PS2 tittle or an early PS3/360 one at best.
Even now its not that much better while stages are pretty and colorful the characters themselves till animate and look like PS2 models.

At the weary least it has to meat the bare minimum expectations and it will survive.
Good example of this is SFV.
The game has its haters and its fans. But it has good net play that is assuming you dont use shit Wifi and play wired vs other wired players on the same content it almost feels like you are plying locally.
The graphics are great and most of the cast is detailed and animate great despite capcom making some questionable camera angles on win posses and character select.
And the balance is so good that mirror matches during big tournaments are almost non existent and finals almost always have different characters in them
Tekken 7 also managed to accomplish this because it also has good balance graphics and net play.
Hell the only real critiques people have about the game are omissions of some classic characters and the fact the music isn't as good.
But despite this is one fo the best selling fighters in a while.

>Accessibility
This is the meme that's causing the genre to die and 9/10 new titles to lose their playerbases after a few months. Funny how many of the "muh accessible" games like KoFXII and SFV are complete shit.

>Balance and Accessibility
Irrelevant
>Graphics and presentation
Moderately important
>Netplay
Pretty important

Its also funny how accessible games die in 1 month after release.

I am not saying games need to be rising thunder Fantasy strike levels of trash but at the same time its not a good idea to base your entire game around finger twisters after literally envy landed hit.
Or to be specific in a game like SFIV or V or we even KOF you can win games wo acualy landing a single combo because moves on there own are pretty powerful.
Compare this to a game like BB or MVC series and in these games moves on there won deal almost no damage and everything is based around combos so unles you spend hours in training learning combos dont expect to win even intermediate matches.

>in a game like SFIV or V or we even KOF you can win games wo acualy landing a single combo because moves on there own are pretty powerful.
This is a good thing because it puts higher emphasis on neutral and actually thinking about how you play.
>Compare this to a game like BB or MVC series and in these games moves on there won deal almost no damage and everything is based around combos
This is less good, because it puts higher emphasis on execution.

When a game puts too much focus on execution, it becomes boring. Sure, BB looks flashy and I think it's a fun game, but eventually, you'll find the optimal combos and overdrive set-ups and that's more or less it. You get your hit confirm and you take your opponent on a 30 hit corner carrying combo.
Long combos may look cool the first few times, but after a while you just want them to end. These fighting games are the best when combos are generally below 10 hits and deal a significant amount of damage.

lmao if you think i'm reading all this shit

Don't post then.

make me nerd

>execution meme

lmao, why is Sup Forums so trash at fighters?

It doesn't matter how accessible the games are:
Casual or new players will only keep playing if they constantly feel like they are winning. No matter how high the barrier is, in fighting games you will always have a moment where you feel like you don't progress.
At that moment people will turn away. So the only thing a fighting game really needs is a tutorial for interested players.

youtu.be/iSgA_nK_w3A
>Accessibility
I agree that some fighting games should be more accessible, because we have almost none of them. It's good to get different styles.
But, on the other hand Core-A Gaming did a pretty interesting video on the whole concept of making a game more accessible. I guess it's more about dumbing down an already established franchise rather than creating your own.
But, I think it can be applied on the genre as a whole.

>Doesn't read the post

What are your favourite fightan, Sup Forums? And WHY?
Please don't give me the tired old ''3S, Garou, Darkstalkers'' list. I want to know the actual reasons why you like these games.

you didn't have anything to say. are you the same retard saying having good net code is mandatory to a games life, when the most popular fighting game and the one that will be around in the spotlight for the longest amount of time this cycle (SFV) has THE worst netcode out of any modern fighting game available right now? fuck off

what do you even mean by "accessible"? literally every fighting game out right now is beyond accessible for even the newest of players. do you guys even play fighting games at all?

Accessibility can be replaced with barrier of entry or difficulty.

Tekken 7. I started with TTT2 and it was too complicated and the combos took of too much health for my taste.
Now the game is more balanced, combos take of 1/3 of the health most of the time and comebacks aren't determined by one combo.
The spacing aspect and the mindgames are insane. You can literally troll your opponent with "useless" moves if you know what you are doing. You can make up strategies and combine myriad of moves and many unique characters make you reevaluate your knowledge constantly.
I feel like I have more freedom in this game than in SF for example, where your options seem kind of predetermined as there aren't many.

I've wanted to get into Tekken for a while, but never really knew where to begin. Guess I'll keep an eye on T7, because it looks really interesting.

It is really hard to get into, as they never had a tutorial. You literally need to watch youtube videos, but T7 has easy characters that teach you the game as they have good versions of the basics, like Shaheen and Katharina.

>genre that was always niche and pretty much only for people who really, truly liked that genre
>did well enough to chug through gens 4-6 pretty successfully
>gen 7/8 jewery kicks in
>"Let's make these games for everyone for more money!"
>non-fans still give exactly 0 fucks about genre
>fans alienated and leave
>genre decays
Who would have thought that making games no one wanted would result in games no one wants?

Talking generally, I'm convinced that most people don't bother with the tutorials in these games anyway. BB & GG have really in-depth tutorials yet you still get people confused about how to approach those games.

>>genre that was always niche and pretty much only for people who really, truly liked that genre
Not true. SF2 ushered in a golden age of fighting games and they were insanely popular. Fucking everything had a tournament fighter on home consoles at one point. Shaq-Fu exists. That's not niche.

Accessibility isn't a priority. Make a tutorial that's good enough to make learning the game less initially arcane and it'll be good enough for someone that actually cares about learning. The most important thing is to make the game feel rewarding to play. To reward competency and high level execution on both a physical and mental level in pvp such that it becomes a well-rounded test of skill.

Yeah you would be right for a big portion of the playerbase. But if you don't make tutorials the people who actually want to learn the game and could become long term players will also turn away.
Even basic features, like punishment, whiff punishment, frame data and crushing properties aren't even mentioned. It took me quite a while to get into TTT2 and I only did because of an IRL friend whom I had a friendly competition with.

fighting games have literally never been more accessible though. I think Tekken is the only game that isn't but it's been the same game for like, 20+ years. it's a legacy game

with the amount of information online, in depth tutorials and guides to help you out, places like Discord, tech on youtube/twitter, forums and groups on other sites, fighting games are extremely accessible. you can't even throw out the execution meme because even that is extremely simple these days compared to older fighting games.

Think about Street Fighter 4, one of the hardest fighting games in terms of accessibility due to a lack of in game tutorials, difficult 1F link system, extreme match up difficulty, hard knockdown setplay style..yet it was one of the most popular fighting games this decade, re-sparked the entire genre when Tekken was the only real series keeping it alive, and spawned some of the best current fighting game players around right now. and it was a brutally punishing game.
it's less about fighting games not being 'accessible' and more about the modern gamer being lazy and wanting easy wins. it's literally a fighting game. you fight. if you aren't ready to be prepared to train, just what exactly do you think you're getting into?

I hate that when it comes to fighting games, people automatically think 'accessibility' means making the game easier. it's not about that, it's about making sure people know every mechanic in and out so they don't struggle and aren't clueless; and every modern fighting game out right now does this.

The people who want to learn a game will just look up video tutorials on Youtube and match analysis.
I think developers are aware of this and are using it as an excuse to not make a proper tutorial themselves.

And yet SFII and the MKs were the only ones that any significant number of people who weren't really into fighting games had in their home collections or gravitated towards in arcades, with the occasional Primal Rage or KI because people just thought they looked cool and were more explicit. The explosion of SF clones died down significantly by gen 5 due entirely to the fact that the genre wasn't able to sustain SFII's level of popularity like devs thought it would.

Yup. SF and MK dominated the genre, but it was far from niche.

>I think Tekken is the only game that isn't but it's been the same game for like, 20+ years. it's a legacy game
Mortal Kombat was always accessible to casuals and nu-MK/Injustice 1-2 are even easier

Tekken is notoriously difficult, but right now Tekken 7 has been the best entry point for newcomers since 3, hence why it's bigger than ever. While there is no ingame tutorial, the game's been streamlined a lot and there's plenty of tuts on YT all the way from basics to the more obscure mechanics

Yeah that is the problem IMO. They never tried having a good tutorial, so they can't really say if their playerbase might grow more.