I have a recent experience in this with GGXrd vs DBFZ.
Xrd was easy to get into, even against more knowledgeable players. There is so much I can do, often unexpectedly, to throw a more seasoned opponent off. It also gives a sense of progression. Going from spamming Gatlings to combos, working in safe jumps, figuring out which of my 20 normals punish this.
Vs DBFZ. There are few mechanics. My opponents know exactly what to do if I don't use them optimally, and even using the mechanics optimally results in a return to neutral, where my lack of character and match up knowledge punishes me extremely hard. In creating a simple, easy game, they have also created one of the most unfun and oppressive games I've ever tried learning. It's a souring experience
Big agree, game may be complex but that complexity gives the freedom of having a bunch of solutions to the same problem. Its like being at a fancy dinner table. Sure theres like a bunch of utensils and a 'proper' way to eat but fuckit grab a fork and start chowin down.
in my opinion Guilty Gear was actually designed to be easier to get into with its Marvel like mechanics and Daisuke himself has said this.the whole point of chain combos was to make it possible for a player just to go from A to B to c and to be able to rush in and do stuff
you got to decide f*** it and just have fun with a game Guilty Gear is that kind of game you're going to sit there and treat it like something that you going to win tournaments with or you can have fun and learn how to play.m spoilers for the fgc games are supposed to be fun and when they're no longer fun you don't have to play them. you don't necessarily have to have a man you don't have to have tournament optimized combos you don't have to play only against tournament players you can just enjoy the game. Revolutionary, I know.
Fighting Games are easy to pick up. This is often the case. However, the post implying that difficult/complex games are easier to get into than simpler ones feels like a reach, because it doesn't seem to work across any activity that i know of. I think this post is conflating 'Picking up a Game', with 'Getting into a Game'. I started really playing +R last week with Testament and I can say, just from looking up the dustloop and seeing there's so much to learn beyond just "do a bnb and jump around", it did seem like it was a difficult game to get into . I started looking at my BnB's and thought, ok cool, Testament does this and that but oh, i cant do this with certain chars, also what's this weight thing and this combo is actually quite tight on timing, and this one says tiger knee the input. Then the more you dig, the more you know, and the more you have to retain and understand how to utilise that information. Which leads to new players being filled with anxiety to actually comitting to the game more. I find it hard to see something like Fantasy Strike or GBvs being harder to get into than +R (or any difficult game) when the simpler ones plateau at it's depth so early that it somewhat limits that feeling of anxiety. Picking +R is as easy as buying the game, booting it up and just going online/finding someone at your level. You'll have fun doing that regardless on i'd say any game, imo. But "getting into it" is completely different, as it implies getting to grips with more than surface level and sticking with it. You don't have to know everything but enough to make you more competent than where you were when you first booted it up.
I came to +R as a GBVS player when it had rollback and I was more intrigued into the Airdash system the characters immediately gravitated. You see Faust, Sol and Baiken you immediately know who they are even without playing the game. But I couldnt get into French Bread games
This matches my experience with the community-made online multiplayer for Guilty Gear XX#Reload. Before entering there, I knew nothing about how to play Guilty Gear. And back in 2011, there was no convenience equivalent to Discord, it was pretty much all about just entering the lobby and either challenging people or getting challenged. And even so, the game was lots of fun.
How new players look at acpr is probably similar to how Indiana Jones looked at the "bridge" in The Last Crusade, but then he just took a leap of faith and might have thought "It's not that deep".
I think part of it has to do with how it feels to lose. I don’t know why, but despite a background in 3S, SFIV, KoF, and air dashers, losing in SFV fucking kills me, but losing in Guilty Gear or Melty is totally fine and feels like I need to learn.
Melty Blood has every fighting game mechanic there ever was, and it's because of this that's it's easy to pick up. There are so many options; if you just experiment a bit you're going to find something that works. It's a sandbox. Go wild.
The simpler games are more restrictive in what you can do even at a very basic level and becomes especially bottlenecked once people start to get a gist of what they should do in each situation. In more complex games even when I don't know exactly what I'm doing I feel like I can start doing stuff right at the start and slowly figure out from there. Not that what I'm doing at the start was any good, but I had more room to explore as opposed to something like Street Fighter where it feels super stiff and useless until you start figuring out what you're doing.
My first fighting game where I decided to learn beyond just button mashing was Bleach on the DS — it's not as complicated as Guilty Gear but it is mechanically very traditional anime fighter-esque and even if I didn't have 100% awareness of what I was doing at the start the more freeform nature of it made e feel like I was doing cool stuff and from there I started learning more about what was going on. By the time SF4 came out I wasn't an FGC grinder or anything but I was mechanically familiar with an anime fighter and could do combos without dropping them and all that — only to fall flat on my face when SF4 felt way more stiff and restrictive on what I could do than I was used to. So even though I had already learned a more "complex" fighter fairly in-depth at that point and wasn't a button masher I felt like I was back to square 1 with SF4 until I got used to it
Long ago (11 years) I started with BBCS and I can speak from that experience that you'd be surprised what playing tutorial and some challenge mode alone can do to you. Maybe I'm just too open-minded (and naturally obstinate, I've always hated the idea of giving up), but you'd be surprised how capable you already are after tutorial alone. Beginners nowadays always sound like game doesn't explain a thing (which is true for some games, but not for most).
I feel that the only thing proven by the reddit post is that because of Strive hype and the rollback patch, there are enough newbies playing +R that you can get in, fall asleep on top of stick and get some wins out of it. And same goes for basically any fighting game with decent amount of players, if you just look, you'll find some beginners. But I just feel that grasping a game, learning it, getting feel for it requires something deeper than just Pressing Buttons and Doing Stuff. Like is someone who never touches max-mode really playing KoF 2k2um, or can someone really play Killer Instinct without ever breaking combos. Sure on some level, yes, but then you could say that everything is easy when you ignore the hard parts.
I think rich defensive options are another facet where this applies. A new player in, say, DBFZ will have problems blocking and their only respite is to deflect, which is inconsistent and easy to bait out if you see them going for it. A new player in GGXrd (and probably ACRR+, but I don’t play it) has Faultless Defense, dead angles, and Blitz to get them out of pressure. This means that they can choose whichever option is easiest for them, and because they have so many options, a veteran can’t bait them out as easily since they don’t know which option the noob might pick.
I got to witness my best friend start from being totally new to FGs, to becoming really good at Dragon Ball FighterZ. I helped him a bit, but since It was also my first ArcSys game I couldn't help him much with the system mechanics, only some fundamentals. He's now far better than me and grinds online regularly. I think it's just about whether or not you enjoy the game on a base level, he loves Dragon Ball, so he just kept playing and got better with time. Eventually he started watching videos about the game and learning more about the mechanics. And now almost a year later he already has legacy skill going into these other games. We're now both learning Xrd and +R after playing a lot of Strive beta sets together.
“You don’t have to know all there is to have fun.” I can’t stress this point enough when talking to people who are intimidated by Uni’s GRD system. There are plenty of beginner players out there who boil GRD down to “just mash the X button when you start glowing” and have an absolute blast with the game.
The depth is there for if and when you’re interested but it’s not like a scientific rule that you need to master it to enjoy yourself.
I have to give it up on the last couple videos from this guy. I am pretty good at learning things. But it is not easy to learn fighting games. I’ve been playing sfv for 2 straight years and I’m still only silver rank. Don’t make fun of me lol. I try! the reason fighting games are hard is because there is so many different levels and different outcomes that can happen in a single match. The replay ability is off the charts for a fighting games. Since there is a google amount of outcomes and levels you can obtain in fighting games. Thanks for helping me try to understand and realize a little bit more. Mr sajam
Wanna cancel that super to a command grab? Yeah sure! Wanna do an infinite dust loop from that command grab? Suuuuuure! Wanna Unga Bunga?! YEAH BABY!! – Some guy, probably.
I remember getting into FGs and after like 2 years of playing SF4 I still couldn't do combos because I didnt understand the concept of a link and it seemed like "Why would I learn a specific timing for combo I'm never gonna remember that" I was wrong of course because building muscle memory is just time related but the game didn't teach you how to do links. So after going to a friends house and we played Blazblue I was like "holy shit I can do combos" because of the gatling system. Of course BB is more on the complex side but that little thing right there is what made me an anime player all these years later than more of a capcom fighter. TL;DR teach how to do links in games.
The resources for learning are so much more accessible too. It's never been easier to solve issues you have in games like +R. If you find something that's hard to deal with you can lookup on the internet exactly how to deal with it. You can watch hours of match footage of players much better than you dealing with that exact issue you're having. The information roadblocks to learning older complicated games just aren't their anymore. And the game's old enough that the arguments about what's good to do is over. You can lookup and feel confident that the solutions other players have worked out are going to be solid. Finally the best part is you don't need to do any of that to have fun, but it's there in case you get stuck and need some help.
I'm glad you made this video because I've got +R in my library and every time I look at it I think "There's so much to this game I don't even know where to start learning". I think I'm gonna just boot it up and fight some people today.
watching zappa in recent tournaments makes me never want to play +R in a serious way. Been trying to learn rev2 instead because its funner, but the netcode is garbage and trying to block a Leo or Jam in 5f of lag is literally impossible and makes me kinda angry lol.
Long story short; GG is actually kinda hard to get into, but not because it's complicated.
You dont realize how simple a "hard" fighting game is until you start to just understand and have fun with it. I started with skullgirls and it took me a long time to really understand it (i was playing casually with friends and some discord folks). Once i wrapped my head around it a bit more, i realized it really just wasn't as hard as i thought it was.
I've been having a blast learning Melty Blood as someone whose experience with fighting games prior consisted almost entirely of <10 hours of Street Fighter 2. I just take it one step at a time and have fun playing with the tools I do know how to use. Even when I didn't know shit I still had fun pushing buttons and figuring stuff out. If the game is fun, it's fun.
The way I always say it, with Guilty Gear is… It's a game about pressing far slash, whether you're a know-nothing kid in 2005, or a serious player in 2021. Yeah, sure, it's a really hard game in one sense, and it DOES have nigh-infinite hard stuff available to learn. But it's also a game about really simple, fundamental things, and that contrast is part of what makes it good. When you lose to a good player, MAYBE they hit you with some flashy combos or whatever… But probably they're largely outplaying you in neutral, doing simple stuff like anti-airing you with 6P. When I'm watching tournaments, yeah sure it's fun to see the swag combos, but what makes me cheer just as hard is the really well-placed 6H in neutral. Guilty Gear is a game that you can get into because so much of it is about simple, basic stuff. Just because there's tons of hard stuff available doesn't mean you need crazy execution to play the game, to start out and play for real. Many of the things you do on day 1, the first things you learn, are things that will be relevant for your entire journey.
I was told this when I first wanted to play +r. That the game is so fucking Hard. That and the fact online sucked big time I dropped it immidiatly. Played strive beta and wanted to play More gg. Bought rev2 and +r and man I am enjoying these games. Now im pissed that I didint start to play these games long time ago
I know how to do exactly three things in fighting games beyond just motion inputs. 1. Unga. 2. Apply pressure. 3. Air dash mixups for Raven in Xrd. Where are my hit and hurtboxes gonna be after I glide in? NOBODY KNOWS!
Also. The technical and difficult stuff from a game may not even matter for a casual or newplayer. A complicated game could be just as inviting as long its fun to play from the start
I think the only reason why people say older games were harder is because of the limited communication and less content to learn from. A game might not be hard to learn now, but back when there was limited content it was harder. Tech was somewhat of even secret, and held back. Hearing someone say save it for evo/regionals was not uncommon. Tech was pretty much rumors
This is the shit I've been saying for a while. I cannot understand the viewpoint that guilty gear is hard
How is that even possible, tekken 7 ps4 is more dead than +R 🙁
lol i pick up Revelator 2 as a new player meanwhile waiting Strive, is hard but incredibly fun
The reddit era of gaming has cultivated a culture where people feel pressured to already know everything about a game/topic before even touching it.
you make it sound like ancient witchcraft is complicated.
it's mostly cauldron go brr.
I have a recent experience in this with GGXrd vs DBFZ.
Xrd was easy to get into, even against more knowledgeable players. There is so much I can do, often unexpectedly, to throw a more seasoned opponent off. It also gives a sense of progression. Going from spamming Gatlings to combos, working in safe jumps, figuring out which of my 20 normals punish this.
Vs DBFZ. There are few mechanics. My opponents know exactly what to do if I don't use them optimally, and even using the mechanics optimally results in a return to neutral, where my lack of character and match up knowledge punishes me extremely hard. In creating a simple, easy game, they have also created one of the most unfun and oppressive games I've ever tried learning. It's a souring experience
I've been casually playing +R over the last few weeks, I'm having a blast, and I haven't dead angled or just defended even once.
Big agree, game may be complex but that complexity gives the freedom of having a bunch of solutions to the same problem.
Its like being at a fancy dinner table. Sure theres like a bunch of utensils and a 'proper' way to eat but fuckit grab a fork and start chowin down.
Yup
in my opinion Guilty Gear was actually designed to be easier to get into with its Marvel like mechanics and Daisuke himself has said this.the whole point of chain combos was to make it possible for a player just to go from A to B to c and to be able to rush in and do stuff
you got to decide f*** it and just have fun with a game Guilty Gear is that kind of game you're going to sit there and treat it like something that you going to win tournaments with or you can have fun and learn how to play.m
spoilers for the fgc games are supposed to be fun and when they're no longer fun you don't have to play them. you don't necessarily have to have a man you don't have to have tournament optimized combos you don't have to play only against tournament players you can just enjoy the game. Revolutionary, I know.
Virtual Fighter is also not that hard at a basic level it's just hard to beat the best people.
You ain't just going to walk in there and beat Chibita.
Fighting Games are easy to pick up. This is often the case. However, the post implying that difficult/complex games are easier to get into than simpler ones feels like a reach, because it doesn't seem to work across any activity that i know of. I think this post is conflating 'Picking up a Game', with 'Getting into a Game'.
I started really playing +R last week with Testament and I can say, just from looking up the dustloop and seeing there's so much to learn beyond just "do a bnb and jump around", it did seem like it was a difficult game to get into . I started looking at my BnB's and thought, ok cool, Testament does this and that but oh, i cant do this with certain chars, also what's this weight thing and this combo is actually quite tight on timing, and this one says tiger knee the input. Then the more you dig, the more you know, and the more you have to retain and understand how to utilise that information. Which leads to new players being filled with anxiety to actually comitting to the game more. I find it hard to see something like Fantasy Strike or GBvs being harder to get into than +R (or any difficult game) when the simpler ones plateau at it's depth so early that it somewhat limits that feeling of anxiety.
Picking +R is as easy as buying the game, booting it up and just going online/finding someone at your level. You'll have fun doing that regardless on i'd say any game, imo. But "getting into it" is completely different, as it implies getting to grips with more than surface level and sticking with it. You don't have to know everything but enough to make you more competent than where you were when you first booted it up.
I came to +R as a GBVS player when it had rollback and I was more intrigued into the Airdash system the characters immediately gravitated. You see Faust, Sol and Baiken you immediately know who they are even without playing the game. But I couldnt get into French Bread games
IMA GO PLAY REV 2
This matches my experience with the community-made online multiplayer for Guilty Gear XX#Reload. Before entering there, I knew nothing about how to play Guilty Gear. And back in 2011, there was no convenience equivalent to Discord, it was pretty much all about just entering the lobby and either challenging people or getting challenged. And even so, the game was lots of fun.
How new players look at acpr is probably similar to how Indiana Jones looked at the "bridge" in The Last Crusade, but then he just took a leap of faith and might have thought "It's not that deep".
I think part of it has to do with how it feels to lose. I don’t know why, but despite a background in 3S, SFIV, KoF, and air dashers, losing in SFV fucking kills me, but losing in Guilty Gear or Melty is totally fine and feels like I need to learn.
Melty Blood has every fighting game mechanic there ever was, and it's because of this that's it's easy to pick up. There are so many options; if you just experiment a bit you're going to find something that works. It's a sandbox. Go wild.
wheres that comment that sajam is ranting about loool
The simpler games are more restrictive in what you can do even at a very basic level and becomes especially bottlenecked once people start to get a gist of what they should do in each situation. In more complex games even when I don't know exactly what I'm doing I feel like I can start doing stuff right at the start and slowly figure out from there. Not that what I'm doing at the start was any good, but I had more room to explore as opposed to something like Street Fighter where it feels super stiff and useless until you start figuring out what you're doing.
My first fighting game where I decided to learn beyond just button mashing was Bleach on the DS — it's not as complicated as Guilty Gear but it is mechanically very traditional anime fighter-esque and even if I didn't have 100% awareness of what I was doing at the start the more freeform nature of it made e feel like I was doing cool stuff and from there I started learning more about what was going on. By the time SF4 came out I wasn't an FGC grinder or anything but I was mechanically familiar with an anime fighter and could do combos without dropping them and all that — only to fall flat on my face when SF4 felt way more stiff and restrictive on what I could do than I was used to. So even though I had already learned a more "complex" fighter fairly in-depth at that point and wasn't a button masher I felt like I was back to square 1 with SF4 until I got used to it
Long ago (11 years) I started with BBCS and I can speak from that experience that you'd be surprised what playing tutorial and some challenge mode alone can do to you. Maybe I'm just too open-minded (and naturally obstinate, I've always hated the idea of giving up), but you'd be surprised how capable you already are after tutorial alone. Beginners nowadays always sound like game doesn't explain a thing (which is true for some games, but not for most).
I feel that the only thing proven by the reddit post is that because of Strive hype and the rollback patch, there are enough newbies playing +R that you can get in, fall asleep on top of stick and get some wins out of it. And same goes for basically any fighting game with decent amount of players, if you just look, you'll find some beginners. But I just feel that grasping a game, learning it, getting feel for it requires something deeper than just Pressing Buttons and Doing Stuff. Like is someone who never touches max-mode really playing KoF 2k2um, or can someone really play Killer Instinct without ever breaking combos. Sure on some level, yes, but then you could say that everything is easy when you ignore the hard parts.
I think rich defensive options are another facet where this applies. A new player in, say, DBFZ will have problems blocking and their only respite is to deflect, which is inconsistent and easy to bait out if you see them going for it.
A new player in GGXrd (and probably ACRR+, but I don’t play it) has Faultless Defense, dead angles, and Blitz to get them out of pressure. This means that they can choose whichever option is easiest for them, and because they have so many options, a veteran can’t bait them out as easily since they don’t know which option the noob might pick.
I got to witness my best friend start from being totally new to FGs, to becoming really good at Dragon Ball FighterZ. I helped him a bit, but since It was also my first ArcSys game I couldn't help him much with the system mechanics, only some fundamentals. He's now far better than me and grinds online regularly. I think it's just about whether or not you enjoy the game on a base level, he loves Dragon Ball, so he just kept playing and got better with time. Eventually he started watching videos about the game and learning more about the mechanics. And now almost a year later he already has legacy skill going into these other games. We're now both learning Xrd and +R after playing a lot of Strive beta sets together.
“You don’t have to know all there is to have fun.” I can’t stress this point enough when talking to people who are intimidated by Uni’s GRD system. There are plenty of beginner players out there who boil GRD down to “just mash the X button when you start glowing” and have an absolute blast with the game.
The depth is there for if and when you’re interested but it’s not like a scientific rule that you need to master it to enjoy yourself.
This game is hard. Simple as that
I was told not to pick up xrd Rev2 to get ready for Strive.
I have to give it up on the last couple videos from this guy. I am pretty good at learning things. But it is not easy to learn fighting games. I’ve been playing sfv for 2 straight years and I’m still only silver rank. Don’t make fun of me lol. I try! the reason fighting games are hard is because there is so many different levels and different outcomes that can happen in a single match. The replay ability is off the charts for a fighting games. Since there is a google amount of outcomes and levels you can obtain in fighting games. Thanks for helping me try to understand and realize a little bit more. Mr sajam
"This is a //Reddit// thread. BUT…"
I hear/read that general sentiment a lot. I know 4chan's reason for shitting on it, but otherwise?
Wanna cancel that super to a command grab? Yeah sure! Wanna do an infinite dust loop from that command grab? Suuuuuure! Wanna Unga Bunga?! YEAH BABY!! – Some guy, probably.
I remember getting into FGs and after like 2 years of playing SF4 I still couldn't do combos because I didnt understand the concept of a link and it seemed like "Why would I learn a specific timing for combo I'm never gonna remember that" I was wrong of course because building muscle memory is just time related but the game didn't teach you how to do links. So after going to a friends house and we played Blazblue I was like "holy shit I can do combos" because of the gatling system. Of course BB is more on the complex side but that little thing right there is what made me an anime player all these years later than more of a capcom fighter. TL;DR teach how to do links in games.
The resources for learning are so much more accessible too. It's never been easier to solve issues you have in games like +R. If you find something that's hard to deal with you can lookup on the internet exactly how to deal with it. You can watch hours of match footage of players much better than you dealing with that exact issue you're having. The information roadblocks to learning older complicated games just aren't their anymore. And the game's old enough that the arguments about what's good to do is over. You can lookup and feel confident that the solutions other players have worked out are going to be solid. Finally the best part is you don't need to do any of that to have fun, but it's there in case you get stuck and need some help.
This is all under the pretense that you find people that are new to play with
I'm glad you made this video because I've got +R in my library and every time I look at it I think "There's so much to this game I don't even know where to start learning". I think I'm gonna just boot it up and fight some people today.
I think ppl just underestimate their own ability to pick things up. Stop listening to ppl and just try what you wanna try. End of story
watching zappa in recent tournaments makes me never want to play +R in a serious way. Been trying to learn rev2 instead because its funner, but the netcode is garbage and trying to block a Leo or Jam in 5f of lag is literally impossible and makes me kinda angry lol.
Long story short; GG is actually kinda hard to get into, but not because it's complicated.
I'm still waiting for people to get good at Guilty Gear 1. C'mon dudes, let's see some high level GG1 matches with Instant Kill around every corner.
You dont realize how simple a "hard" fighting game is until you start to just understand and have fun with it. I started with skullgirls and it took me a long time to really understand it (i was playing casually with friends and some discord folks). Once i wrapped my head around it a bit more, i realized it really just wasn't as hard as i thought it was.
I've been having a blast learning Melty Blood as someone whose experience with fighting games prior consisted almost entirely of <10 hours of Street Fighter 2. I just take it one step at a time and have fun playing with the tools I do know how to use. Even when I didn't know shit I still had fun pushing buttons and figuring stuff out. If the game is fun, it's fun.
This is literally me rn
The way I always say it, with Guilty Gear is… It's a game about pressing far slash, whether you're a know-nothing kid in 2005, or a serious player in 2021. Yeah, sure, it's a really hard game in one sense, and it DOES have nigh-infinite hard stuff available to learn. But it's also a game about really simple, fundamental things, and that contrast is part of what makes it good. When you lose to a good player, MAYBE they hit you with some flashy combos or whatever… But probably they're largely outplaying you in neutral, doing simple stuff like anti-airing you with 6P. When I'm watching tournaments, yeah sure it's fun to see the swag combos, but what makes me cheer just as hard is the really well-placed 6H in neutral. Guilty Gear is a game that you can get into because so much of it is about simple, basic stuff. Just because there's tons of hard stuff available doesn't mean you need crazy execution to play the game, to start out and play for real. Many of the things you do on day 1, the first things you learn, are things that will be relevant for your entire journey.
I was told this when I first wanted to play +r. That the game is so fucking Hard. That and the fact online sucked big time I dropped it immidiatly. Played strive beta and wanted to play More gg. Bought rev2 and +r and man I am enjoying these games. Now im pissed that I didint start to play these games long time ago
I know how to do exactly three things in fighting games beyond just motion inputs.
1. Unga.
2. Apply pressure.
3. Air dash mixups for Raven in Xrd. Where are my hit and hurtboxes gonna be after I glide in? NOBODY KNOWS!
I started with getting into FGs with +R and Xrd. It perhaps can be a benefit to not have a frame of reference.
Absolutely, and it's generally good advice for life. Just get your feet off the ground instead of worrying about being good
Also. The technical and difficult stuff from a game may not even matter for a casual or newplayer. A complicated game could be just as inviting as long its fun to play from the start
Run up wild throw and run up DP is all you need to start up as Sol in +R
I get SHMACKED in plus r but that shit is super fun
losing a lot can make you feel a type of way but it's still all exp at the end of the day
I think the only reason why people say older games were harder is because of the limited communication and less content to learn from. A game might not be hard to learn now, but back when there was limited content it was harder. Tech was somewhat of even secret, and held back. Hearing someone say save it for evo/regionals was not uncommon. Tech was pretty much rumors