Who cares lol
Games are about having fun, not market potential or whatever.
Fighting games have a product design problem
Submitted 2 days ago by kip5608@retrolemmy.com to games@lemmy.world
https://cthor.me/Fighting-games-product-design
Comments
2FortGaming@lemmy.world 1 day ago
grueling_spool@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
This. It’s not a problem, it’s a niche.
Katana314@lemmy.world 1 day ago
After playing Arc Raiders, I kind of wonder if the newer generation of AI could put together a challenge that actually fits the holy grail of fighting Game singleplayer.
An AI could be given a special avatar that challenges a particular theme of the player’s development, being strong in some regards but not in others. Think one enemy that’s a crawling ninja with super fast movement, another who’s a crawling hulk with high-range attacks.
The AI could also be guided by metrics of how fast its opponents learn mechanics or how much they enjoy the match, rather than “how do I beat this player”. I’d feel safe thinking a predictable AI would not be judged well.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You phrased it as “the newer generation of AI”, so it was unclear what you meant, but it seemingly referred to the AI we hear about all too often these days in the news. I do think there’s more room to get closer to approximating a human opponent in fighting games, and I know how I’d attempt to tackle it at a high level, but it must be harder than I think it is, or it would have been done by now; one potential pitfall would be having to update it every time you put out a balance patch, because that would affect how the computer player would have to behave.
Katana314@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Well, that’s the good part. I don’t think AI will ever replicate the kinds of full-system dynamics that occur in ranked modes, but I DO think it could make for an interesting challenge when the goal is to reduce the game state to just a few techniques the game is trying to teach the player.
For instance, an AI playing as Guile that can only use Flash Kick and Sonic Boom, and teaches players to counter him by spotting out his charging and blocking what comes through.
_Lory98_@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
I honestly don’t see how single player “content” could be of any help. Sure, situational training like Strive and a few other games have (UNI I think had it?) would be nice to have, but I think the main obstacle for a lot of players is the (gameplay) interaction with another real person. I can’t say how other genres fix this (or if they even do), but my guess is that the mechanics themselves are less restrictive and a bit more forgiving.
Also, personally, I prefer buying characters for relatively cheap rather than having the usual f2p predatory crap. They should obviously be free for training tho.
hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
The idea of buying characters is itself wild. Games as a service has really screwed up player expectations.
_Lory98_@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
I mean… I’m not saying it’s good, but considering most games wouldn’t get free characters as updates (I think only MBTL did it, and it’s probably because most of the free characters are from Fate), I think it’s better to be able to optionally buy a set of characters if you want to play them, instead of having to buy a whole new version of the game to continue playing.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Also, personally, I prefer buying characters for relatively cheap rather than having the usual f2p predatory crap. They should obviously be free for training tho.
As someone who has been playing fighting games on and off since 1995, the idea that non-dlc characters are f2p predatory crap is wild to me.
_Lory98_@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
That’s not what I meant.
The article mentions paying for cosmetics instead of characters. With how f2p/live-service games are currently designed, I’d imagine that means things like battle passes (which are present already in some games like SF6 and GBFVS), rotating stores and/or lootboxes.
Katana314@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think the biggest thing it can help with is steady escalation of difficulty.
In level 3, you learn how to grapple. The level has a growing number of enemies that can only be beaten by grappling.
In level 4, you learn about pokes and block punishes; and enemies will use different attacks that can test your block (but grappling is set aside for the moment so players aren’t overloaded)
Oh, and crucially: This isn’t put into the set dressing of a big square stage with a “Training Step 5 of 182” HUD and a “Good!” and jump to the next lesson each time the player executes a mechanic once.
Have the president’s daughter kidnapped, send a horde of zombies, make the player a detective finding clues in the bad part of town. Break it up with a locked door puzzle, climbing sections, etc. The lessons of interest learned from every other action adventure game.
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 1 day ago
As an outsider the reason i domt bother with these is you have to know every damn iframe and move flow timing perfectly to even know what the game is.
Theres one point in this article about a practice mode thats totally wrong.
Then later one saying single player should teach you this stuff. This is right.
Reimagining these games as a 2d souls like would be incredible. But then, those games have loot and xp to soften the harsh reality of the skill ceiling. Would fighting games lovers accept that? I think no.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The problem with these games is ranked online multiplayer. Back in the arcade days no one knew the damn frame timings. People just played and had a good time with each other in person. Console ports brought that experience home so you could enjoy it with friends and family, without needing a roll of quarters. No one had any issues with anxiety over these games because you were just hanging out with friends playing a game together. Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost. If your brother’s Ryu was too good, you just challenged him to beat you with a different character.
Online ranked play takes all that away. It makes the competition serious even if you don’t want it to be. Now you’re always being matched up against an equally skilled opponent playing their best character. You never feel like you’re making progress because every match is tough as nails. For people who thrive on competition, that’s great. For everyone else it really sucks!
hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
This is legit. I remember playing Soul Calibur 3 I think on PS2 pretty regularly with a couple of friends. One of them owned the game and would stomp us until I asked to borrow it for a while so the other two of us could get good. A few weeks later I was doing bomb and air grab loops with Takin and we were pretty evenly matched, while other friends who would play occasionally were pretty easy to beat. There was no big competitive online play, we got better by figuring out how to counter each other because we had similar amounts of experience with the game.
I’m not sure how you replicate that experience with randos.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s why SF6 has freak fights, MK has challenge towers and king of the hill, DBFZ has weird random modes on rotation, etc.
xep@discuss.online 1 day ago
And that’s fine, not every game has to be for everyone.
popcar2@piefed.ca 1 day ago
It can be a problem if the company is trying to bring in and maintain new users, which is kinda why the article was made. 2XKO laid off most of their team and scaled back development because it wasn’t successful. It’s also hurting indies like Rivals of Aether 2 which seems to be doing OK but not as good as the first game.
ieGod@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
I don’t really play fighting games anymore but previous titles like SF Ex+Alpha had a killer training mode which scratched my completionist itch. There were scores and gates and orogressions, though I can’t recall if you got anything like XP (in truth that bares no relevance to a fighting game anyway).
Auth@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
You dont need to know iframes or combos. I do ok on Tekken online not knowing a single combo or any frame data. I just play my game jabbin and kickin duckin and dodging and sometimes i win sometimes i lose. Its fun. The only part I hate about online is fucking Brazil MFers with connection so bad we have to play the entire fight at 5fps.