What a fighting game needs in today's time in order to survive

[Juggs]

Fighters these days are polluted with arbitrary prerequisites. Most of these things either weren't very important, or didn't even exist in the past. But today, there's some otherwise frivolous aspects a fighter needs in order to survive.

1. The game needs to be easy to get into. This one is pretty important and applies to nearly every game these days. If a game is too hard to get into, not many are going to play it. Some of the best fighters are basically dead because they aren't noob friendly. As an example, Virtua Fighter 5 comes to mind. You have to be able to compete on a basic level without putting too much time into the game.

2. The game has to be enjoyable to watch. This one didn't really even matter before streaming was such a big thing. If the game is boring, people will lose interest. You have to be able to understand what's going on when you have limited knowledge of the game. If not, the game will be deemed as boring and new players won't want to get into it. If it looks boring to a scrub, that means it is boring to play in a scrubs mind.

3. The skill gap can't be too big. If a high level player cannot be beaten by a lower leveled player, the game won't be as successful if some random joe is able to win on occasion. There has to be a possibility of upsets in tournaments. This goes along with #2. If you're watching the same people always win, you're not going to care too much to watch in future tournaments. A noob has to have the possibility to beat an average player, an average players has to have the possibility to beat a decent player, a decent player has to have the possibility to beat a good player, and so on. This on is what sickens me the most about today's games. Big skill gap used to be admired and is what made people want to get into the game and watch it at high levels.

4. The game needs to be balanced. This also goes along with #2. Balance today is severely overrated. If the same characters are being used, it's going to be called an imbalanced game, and deemed boring. Imbalance to a scrub is like the most essential thing there is. It's like it's all they even care about. The game could be amazing and have everything that's needed to be a good tournament game, but if it isn't balanced, the game won't survive.

5. The game needs depth, but not too much depth. This goes along with #1, and #3. If the game is too shallow, it's too scrubby. However if it's too deep, the players today won't even bother. It has to be somewhere in the middle.

While I hate almost everyone on these, I have to admit it has brought a lot of new faces into the tournament scene. It's like you either get a great tournament game that's has a huge skill gap but no one plays it, or you get a simple, dumbed down game that's easy to get into and that a bunch of people play.

I'm sure there's other things that a game needs today that I didn't mention, but I just wanted to know how you all feel about the noobafication of games today. In my opinion, a game is "good" if it requires skill, has a big skill gap and you can get into it kinda easy but you will always lose to a better player. What about you? What do you want a game to have in order to play it? What do you think makes a good game good?

 

[Sequel]

6. The game needs a solid ONLINE experience. Yeah, I said it. As much as I am an OFFLINE player I am not ignorant to the fact that not everyone has the luxury of traveling, meeting new people in their area, nor having SOLID COMPETENT OFFLINE PLAYERS to practice with. Just because you can go offline doesn't mean the practice you're getting is necessarily good. Offline players can be just as weak as their online counterparts.

7. Game developers need to start supporting the games they make. Blizzard with Starcraft 2 is a shining example of this. Capcom being the complete opposite. In order for fighting game streams to start hitting 80k (like StarCraft does) the company needs to support it. They need to get involved with the tournament scenes. They need to SPONSOR tournaments. If game devs would invest money into the tournament scene much like Blizzard does with Starcraft 2 then we would see more players, bigger venues and payouts, and worldwide exposure. Casual players will be more inclined to get better and become a "hardcore" offline player. Right now this is not happening with anyone, NRS included.

 

[Loot]

8. Have tournament players advise on balancing Fairly obvious. Namco does this and Tekken has excellent balance. Look at the SF community due to AE being deliberately unbalanced. They are in arms.

 

[Juggs]

I'd like to note that this thread's intentions were to point out the frivolous things games need these days in order to survive in the tournament scene that aren't really needed for the game to be good. For example a game doesn't need to be balanced to be good, but to survive in today's misguided world it does.

 

[THTB]

What's sad is this is all 100% true.

 

[Sequel]

It would also help if the fighting game community actually took pride in providing a professional presentation to the viewers.

Using profanity while commentating matches should be frowned upon. That's just one example, there are many.

I believe fighting games should follow the UFC/Boxing structure. There should be an amateur circuit and a pro circuit. Going up against Justin Wong in your first match at EVO is ridiculous. Some people will disagree and say that they enjoy the open format such as EVO (and many others) but I say that the right to fight someone like Justin Wong should be EARNED not RANDOMIZED via Bracket software.

Whoever holds the title on the pro circuit will defend it until it is pried from their dead hands.

 

[Lucky Day]

I believe fighting games should follow the UFC/Boxing structure. There should be an amateur circuit and a pro circuit. Going up against Justin Wong in your first match at EVO is ridiculous. Some people will disagree and say that they enjoy the open format such as EVO (and many others) but I say that the right to fight someone like Justin Wong should be EARNED not RANDOMIZED via Bracket software.

Whoever holds the title on the pro circuit will defend it until it is pried from their dead hands.

ugh. No I agree with your other ideas, but not this one.

Prize fighting has a belt because people can only fight a couple of times a year, and generally the champion is favored to win every time.

It defeats the hype, cheapens the championship, and decreases the value of a title fight if the fg 'championship' is contended for 45 times a year, and the title has 20 champions a year.


Fighting games should be structured more like Tennis. Points should be awarded for virtually every tournament all year, not just 8 select tourneys like EVO is doing. The points would be weighted based on the competition at the tournament (earn more points for placing in Final Round, less for winning a regional).

*edit* the proper way to do this would be have a real governing body, that sanctions every tournament based on size and quality of competition attending. Then points would be broken down like that. Uniform rules would also apply.

Then the majors would all be correctly seeded and the tournament brackets wouldn't be randomized, but legitimate.

You would sort of have a title like you're talking about (the #1 ranked player holds the title in Tennis, Golf, and lots of other sports that use formats like these). But it wouldn't be in contention every single match, which really can't be done in a sport where the best player in the world can't win every time he goes out.


That leads me to another point in that the word Major is thrown around too much, and we should really have 4 majors, one in each season and balance the schedule better, but that's a lengthy discussion as well.

*double edit* A lot of this is really discussion for another thread. Formats of leagues, titles, rules, etc. has less to do with a community surviving than it does the long term success of fighting games in general as a sport.

 

[Sequel]

I agree with some of your points except I don't think the way UFC is handled defeats the hype or anything you listed. I know a lot of people who get hyped over UFC. The anticipation leading up to a championship is pretty fierce amongst friends I know. Mind you, I said there should also be an amateur circuit. This circuit could go on throughout the entire year. Like you mentioned with Tennis, it could award points for everything.

I still believe the way it is handled now is not the best and will keep fighting games nested in that little niche for years to come until - like we both agree - there is a governing body.

While this discussion maybe a little off topic, the thread title says otherwise. I believe these are hand and hand. Part of what a fighting game needs is ALSO solid competition and a tournament/title fight structure that is supported by its developers. If this doesn't happen, you better believe that fighting games will go back to that dark hole prior to SF4. It's just a matter of time.

Edit: Don't take this the wrong way. I do agree with a lot of your points. In fact perhaps the UFC title fight thing isn't the best way to go but something of a cross pollination of that and what Tennis/Golf does could work better than the way it is now. Think of Starcraft 2 and the two circuits. Code A and S. One is amateur circuit the other pro. You don't fight the Justin Wong equivalent in your first amateur match, nor should you here at tournaments.

 

[Lucky Day]

Yeah I wasn't even saying the pro amateur part was bad, just having a defendable title like fighting.

And we do have an amateur division, it's called online.

Until we get thousands of players competing or big sponsorship money its hard logistically to split up competitions and make different ranks.

I sort of half agree with you on a top ranked player facing a nobody being a problem though. Instead of thinking of it in relation to a nobody getting a title shot in his first match, I think of it like a #16 seed playing a #1 in the NCAA tourney. It's more of the top seed being rewarded for his rank than a reward for the low seed.

Part of what contributes to it being not a problem is that in out sport the unknown will (almost) never knock Justin out first round. Similarly, a 16 has never beat a 1 in the NCAAs. And that's not even double elim.

In fighting, the nature of the sport gives an underdog a relatively better chance to knock out the champ despite a difference in skill. The champion stands to lose quite a bit more by facing a nobody than a legit challenger.

As for the title fights and belt type methods, there is probably a way to mix it in. We have main event prize fights in our money matches and I think that's the way to go (big money on the line for a ft10 to headline an event, not just something thrown together by the players on the side).

Of course ideally we would have a "Pro" tourney with 256 or so players that are all ranked, seeded and appropriately placed in the tourney based on points as mentioned earlier. And we would have Justin facing someone while obscure, qualified to be there.

 

[Sequel]

And we do have an amateur division, it's called online.

Online is very disorganized at the moment. And with the current state of netcode it's not solid enough grounds to prove that you deserve the title shot. Starcraft 2 has amazing matchmaking and online netcode. It's playable. Not to mention most of their amateur stuff is still played offline at events.

This goes back to what I was saying earlier about the devs lacking support for their games. I believe this needs to change if fighting games want to have a "fighting" chance in hell to survive.

 

[Lucky Day]

Lol yeah I was just making fun of online players. Even if netcode was great I wouldn't ever advocate any sort of serious division online in fighting games.

 

[Sequel]

Lol yeah I was just making fun of online players. Even if netcode was great I wouldn't ever advocate any sort of serious division online in fighting games.

Lol yeah. ; )

 

[Juggs]

Online is very disorganized at the moment. And with the current state of netcode it's not solid enough grounds to prove that you deserve the title shot. Starcraft 2 has amazing matchmaking and online netcode. It's playable. Not to mention most of their amateur stuff is still played offline at events.

This goes back to what I was saying earlier about the devs lacking support for their games. I believe this needs to change if fighting games want to have a "fighting" chance in hell to survive.

Fighting games are way different in regards to online than almost every other online game. For example, 1 frame delay in fighters can cost you a match, where as in non fighters it would go unnoticed most of the time.

 

[Lucky Day]

Yeah, I think the delay is less of an issue than people make it out to be sometimes. A few frames of lag (or masking like is done with GGPO) can be adapted to by a good player. You even see people playing in conditions they aren't used to offline on different displays.

Where I think the competition differs,like Juggs is saying, from other online games is the risk involved with one spike during a match.

In something like Starcraft, you certainly have to be fast and react quickly to certain things. But a blip in the connection is going to be easier to overcome over the course of a longer match in Starcraft (or FPS, sports games, and others) with proper strategy and planning.

But in a fighting game if you have one quick de-sync or lag spike in a round that only takes about sixty seconds, you just lost. And the problem is that both people don't experience it, unlike when slowdown or lag occurs offline (i.e. Marvel3 on PS3).

 

[Pooty Mack]

I love complexity in fighters, shit that takes me awile to get down. I don't wanna be the best (or even close) soon after the game comes out. When SFIV 1st came out, I was soooo intimidated by FAs. They came along with so many uses and tactics it wasn't funny. By themselves they had 3 levels of damage/armor, in combos shit really got crazy level 1,2 fadcs ect... I was hoping for somthing as deep in the new MK fighting engine, somthing to where I could see some combos I would never think of or be able to do right away. Unfourtunately I've purposefully stayed away from the forums to see what I would learn aside from what I could figure out by myself. Apart from personal strategies, I haven't learned much, if anything, from coming back. Don't get me wrong I love MK9, but just like Juggs is implying, it takes ALOT to make a really good game.