Fighting Games Are Not Inherently Harder to Learn Than Other Competitive Games
Sajam
Views: 77643
Like: 2918
streamed Sep. 23, 2019
Getting good at any game is hard and takes a lot of time and focused effort, maybe y’all just aren’t good at the games you think you are.
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Editing/Thumbnail by Magic Moste:
#FGC
12.02.2022
8:52 – 9:25 sounds about like league
My boi, a long time CoD player, got SFV for free on PSN. He went Ryu. All I taught him was fireball and it didn't take long for him to understand that it was a good tool to use when at long range. He learned the execution very fast as well. He asked me how to grab and figured out just as quick that it good up close or as a get off me tool. He even learned on his own that he could challenge my jump ins with a jump of his own. Learned anti airing without even knowing the term. Very simple strategies he had already adapted into his game plan. Not a second was spent in training.
I think people keep trying to answer the question "why aren't more people playing fighting games" when they bring up points about why people think they are hard. I don't think it's an ego stroke to say "yeah fighters are hard but at least I can play them, big brain as I am"
I do find it interesting though, how people invest hours and $1000s into sports, but the games that create similar competitive environments and emotions aren't the popular ones
2:45 watching woolie playing FPS games
me: yep sounds about right.
Racing games are easy to learn because single-player practice translates so directly to multi-player practice. Most of it is just about lines and every single match drills them in and you can clearly see your progress. I'm not saying the practice is 1:1 because you can still get trapped or sniped when items are involved and you have to be more aware of other players' lines than you would with any CPU but I think they're the easiest type of multiplayer game to learn.
It’s not really hard to learn but it hard to get good enough have fun
I came from smash and although combos and defense don’t translate at all I feel that the advantage state I learnt in smash worked really well
It really depends on the game, but fighting games suffer generally from being more niche than shooters for instance. Game population is the lifeline of a competitive play. The more people play, the more likely it is that you can find people on your skill-level. The less populated a game is, the more of that population will just be people that diehard the game and know it inside and out. This creates a signifigant barrier of entry and while every genre of competitive games are vulnerable to this, Fighting games get it pretty hard due to just the smaller community. The top played shooter on steam will have hundreds of thousands of players daily, the top fighting game might break 3 000 and the drop-off from there is huge. Your options if you want a balanced experience of feeling like you're playing at an appropriate skill level are limited. Currently, it's either Dragonball FighterZ, MK11, SFV maybe and that's yer lot. Everything else, you either have to pick it up with someone you can play or you have to just get used to being bodied by launch-day veterans pretty much. I'm being facetious of course, but that's how it can genuinely feel.
Seriously. I got into fighting games by playing them and laughing with my friends when we were 8. It's not hard, but like anything you get better at it as you do it more.
"Fighting games are hard" is one of those oft-repeated phrases in the community, sort of like how americans keep insisting "america is a free country" whatever that means. We need to believe that fighting games are hard because otherwise the problem might be us…. or it might be that Fighting Games simply aren't that appealing to most people. Compared with these alternatives, its far preferable to believe that we just scare people away with our massive skill.
I am so glad I found Sajam so early in my fighting game career. It’s tremendously encouraging to hear you talk about learning fighting games in a way that’s fundamentally different from a lot of other content.
Fighting games are harder in the sense that they are a worse experience bad balance bad online bad tutorials then add the hours it takes to learn one characters moves barely not even matchups. So yes fighting games are harder they take more work and time are less enjoyable experience to have.
this video gave me a new way of looking at fighting games, most in-game tutorials are bad in teaching you the most basic skills so i focus only on doing combos and supers
Fighting games are hard not because of difficulty of pressing buttons (though it does demand more precise ways of button pressing than a lot of genres) but because of tedium. Being better at fighting games requires doing things that are lackluster in many people's eyes compared to being better at a lot of other games.
Lol yes they are.
FPS? click and win, Moba? 4 skills to manage and a team. Fighting games? please, frame data? 60 actions every second lets be honest, fighting games be crazy. No really, think about it. In no other game do you even have to THINK about counting frames. No one ever lost a match of dota 2 because they did not pull off a frame perfect stun with wraith king, no, you left click the other guy, he gets stuned for around 3 seconds, that's 180 frames in a fight game. How can he honestly say that moba's are as hard as fighting games when fighting games need you to preform 180X the amount of actions?
Ilove this! I think i heared like 4 times! I played dota, csgo and fg and i always learn playing the game, and when i figured something to improve i go to training mode. If u learn mobas or shotter u can lear fg
Solid take.
people say getting into fighting games are hard because you are lossing but if I loss in a fighting game that game lasts like 5 mins. I just looked at my LoLs match history and when I added the length of all my 8 losses in a row rounding down the mins it came to right around 4 hours. lossing 8 matches of a fighting games is close to the length of lossing 2 games of a moba. you want to talk about feeling bad at a video game
Disagree
i played a BUNCH of genres, some that i think u don't know even the existence. FGs they demand SO MUCH
>DAILY<training to get in your muscle memory, SO MANY situations you are put and SO MANY options to use right on the spot and you have like what… having to react to some moves, remember the RIGHT punish having the execution to land the combo and then remember what the opponent can do to stop you and what u can do to keep the pressure and this is 5 seconds of a match"but shooting games they have to react to enemies and stuff" if you KNOW how the map works… sometimes YOU know where are the spots and if are someone in there most of the time. Practice your Aim and you are good to go
De por sí pienso que sobrevaloran demasiado las dificultades de los juegos de pelea, mientras sepas cubrirte, la función de ciertos I-frames de algunos ataques para cuando usarlos, ya puedes defenderte en la mayoría de casos incluso puedes llegar a ganar perfectamente a alguien que sabe combear (Hasta se han visto casos de falsos noobs matando veteranos en los juegos de pelea oprimiendo todos los botones a lo "loco" en torneos, aplicando solo lo básico que mencioné anteriormente).
La cuestión del porque los juegos de pelea son tan poco populares es por el hecho de que los servidores son extremadamente mediocres, haciendo que si se juegan online el tema del manejo de los personajes se vea afectado por la más mínima pérdida de paquetes de la red, afectando de manera fatal la experiencia de juego, habiendo incluso casos en donde algunos jugadores usan pull para sacar ventaja de los bajones de fps forzados por temas de conexión (Cuando jugaba BBCP, BBCF o el DBFZ esto de cierta manera me sacaba de casillas, pues lo aplicaban para salirsen de los catches que les hacía, incluso de los combos), ya que a diferencia de la mayoría de juegos acá el lag de conexión te genera input lag, haciendo que todo lo que hayas aprendido se vea extremadamente situacional y te veas limitado a utilizar ciertos movimientos para asegurar de que en caso que un jugador abuse de esto no pueda escapar (Y en algunos casos no es tan efectivo lamentablemente, toca abusar muchas veces de movimientos con gran hitstun), incluso si no es tu lag te tendrás que comer el input lag de la pelea, cosa que a diferencia de otros juegos como lo pueden ser los shooters por ejemplo si tu te lageas perderás por tener mala conexión, pero rara vez afectarás al rival por ello (Antes el rival podrá matarte por ello).
Curiosamente la comunidad de los juegos de pelea tampoco ayudan mucho, ya que se encierran en sus grupos y no ven más allá por el hecho de que el delay ya afecta toda experiencia de juego.
Personalmente diré que los juegos de pelea se disfrutan es en batallas locales mayormente, por el hecho de que tu habilidad en sí no se verá afectada por el delay u lag, haciendo que incluso si te encuentras con alguien que sabe jugar te pueda enseñar u jugar más cómodamente.
La gente piensa que en sí los juegos de pelea requieren mucha mecánica y tienen un alto nivel de requerimiento de habilidad para entrar, sin embargo juegan muchos otros juegos que requieren horas que un juego de peleas e incluso mayores a estos y que requieren mucha más habilidad de por medio.
Other genres are not as mechanically intensive as fighting games' stringing together combos. Like, I can suck in a moba or an FPS but there are only so many tools that players use to play. Fighting games have hella diverse options for combat and if it's post-launch window then you're learning against people who sweep you. I understand hating the baby attitude that fighting games are too hard and people get discouraged from losing too often, but fighting games are definitely more complex by default.
This guy doesn't miss
Interesting. Never played other competitive games, so I wouldn't know.
The higher difference in skill ceiling can exist because sometimes fighting games have A LOT of bloat you have to memorize to improve further. Like for example take tekken 7 and their 50+ character with 50 moves per character. If you learn ALL of that then your punishment game will be a lot better vs random pick compared to someone who did not bother to learn more than 10% of all of the movesets. And having better punishment will let you win more games. So building a bigger knowledge base is you improving your skill at this fighting game. And this can take a long time.
Compare this to a shooter game where you only have to memorize like 10 weapons and how they shoot, several different gameworld maps, and the rest of the process is just pure improvement of your execution and strategy. I am not sure about moba games, but from an outsider perspective they also do seem to poses a lot of knowledge checks.
in fighting games at lower level u loose to scummy tactics and doesn't feel rewarding. Loosing in RTS or Shooter doesn't feel that scummy, i mean lost to deception not that triggering as to button mashing. sure its strategy to button mash but not that fun. in the end of day u play games to have fun right.
I agree, with the implicit scope here being competitive games. FGs are harder to learn than more narrative driven adventure games (you aren't going to spend hundreds of hours mastering Nathan Drake games).
Fighting games for me it's like a barrier.
I just need to get over it.
Get over the barrier intensifies
And that's where my mind barrier is.
I don't think someone who is already good, and has been for a while, has the perspective to say fighting games are easier to get into than any other genre. You talk about perception, but I don't think you can fully put yourself in a new players shoes.
When I'm playing cod or apex and all my bullets miss and I get dunked, I'm still playing the game Because all that bad aim was all me. Fighting games, specifically guilty gear, are designed to prevent your opponent from playing the game. When I'm in block stun and my inputs get eaten, or I mess up a special. As a new player it feels like the game isn't responsive or intuitive(I pressed a button and it didn't come out?!), and that lack of pick-up-and-play value makes it harder to get invested. In a moba, pressing 1 of 4 buttons is not hard. In a shooting game, shooting bullets is not hard. But for a fighting game, doing dp input, basic cancels, or just anti airing is a far steeper learning curve.
Still can't believe a video with this this many faults still gets commonly used to somehow prove fighting games are not extraordinarily difficult. Complete and utter lack of, ironically, perspective and perception.
This was actually really motivating. A friend of mine has as of late gotten me into trying fighting games, but I never really spent too much time practicing because I got the perception that I need to spend 100+ hours in training mode labbing a character before I can start even meeting people, and just grinding in training mode is honestly really really dull to me
I completely agree. I don't think Fighting games are "harder" than other genres to learn (I'd actually argue they may be easier, due to the limits of player interactions, but I digress). I think the problem for people is it's harder to feel externally MOTIVATED to learn a fighting game.
To me I think it's just the difference between intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic, and the amount of time you get to reflect on what happened. MOBA's, card games, even shooters I'd argue, all get you a little "something" to show that you did a good job. You kill the enemy's monster, or get a tally in your kill count, or gold for taking out a minion. Small, little tangible rewards that the player can visually see and understand, and know that it's positively influencing their game later down the line. It's extrinsic rewards that inform the player every step of the way. And perhaps best of all, the player has a lot of time to understand what went right or wrong. They can look back on the play they just made that went really well, and have several minutes to try and set up that scenario again. There's time to process, and the game motivates you to do so.
Fighting games actually do this too- but I think people find it harder to see, so it takes a lot more internal effort to really focus on. Things like getting a Counter hit, blocking the opponent's Burst, landing anti-airs, all of these are just like in the other games. Little rewards that positively impact your chances of winning the whole match. But people don't seem to "see" that as easily, and I think it's because of the speed of rounds. The rewards come much, much faster than in most other competitive genres (most), and the majority of it results in your opponent losing their Life Bar as the reward. It can be hard for new players to understand how "well" they're doing, since a new player may not have time to really reflect on what even happened. They could press some buttons, get blown up, and not have time during the match the process how it even started. As a fighting game player, you have to motivate yourself to sit down and think things through. You have to set your own goal of "Okay, I lost the round, but I'm learning the timing for working around their anti-air. I'll do even better against it next time.". The game doesn't do it for you.
There's speed and freedom in how you reach your goal, beating the opponent, but it comes at the cost of a slower pace for people to ruminate on. You hit the ground running in fighting games, as does your opponent. I think that's the part that intimidates people. At least it did for me at first.
Not that other games don't also throw you into the thick of it, or benefit from research and analyzing outside of actual matches. I just think most new players feel more rewarded for processing during the match of different genres than fighting games.
I mean if this were true then there would be a comparable FG to something like Fortnite or Genshin. FGs are most definitely harder to learn than most other games/game genres. The fact that there are so many stipulations on the very first point in the video kinda proves that soooo many things have to align for this line of reasoning to be correct. I think denying that FGs are difficult to learn just sort of creates the problem we see today of a total lack of a player pool because they're so difficult. By this I mean you can't really be a "casual" FG player in the traditional sense, like I personally consider myself a casual player, and even still, I know DP, hado, and a few other basic inputs. I don't know optimal usage of them, and I certainly couldn't perform any in a combo or as a reaction, but I'm okay getting bodied every match because at least I get to look at the cool punch animation lol. Most people can't pick up and just play a new FG. They'd need to read the command list, and beyond that, to improve, they'd need to throw soooo much time in the lab just to start performing them. Anyway, hard disagree, but still thumbs up because it was a good vid and sajam is the best
I think the reason that people perceive fighting games as being harder is because it’s 1v1. In other genres, you have teammates to fall back on, so it’s easier to win. Relating to this, I feel like people sometimes equate ease of wins to ease of genres.
15:23 Last hits are absolutely tangible once a player graduates from struggling with basic controls for the game. It's like one of the first priorities you learn besides "don't die" and "get kills".
The difference is in how the community makes it apparent that it's an important skill to learn and the game points out your CS to you. You can also directly feel a difference when you have more items because of more CS.
Blocking a sweep and then punishing with your own is an important thing, but I think the community should do more to elevate such basic concepts for a new player. Instead of combo montages and explaining what each and every move a character does. Combo montages are everywhere, so it's no wonder the general public thinks "man I need to get good at combos, but it's too difficult and I don't want to do training mode for combos and execution." before they feel like they can play and that they've improved in a FG.
It'd be nice if these stats were quantified into post game stats too. Something like "blocked % of hits" or "# of low block hits, A+!"
My friends who are only scratching the very surface FGs do seem to appreciate the diamond of "technique, etc." in GGST right now at the end of a match. They'll say things like "hold on I need to take a screenshot of this, it's so pog." Like I don't care, cuz I'm just having fun hitting them with wake up super 90% of the time because they're still learning to watch for it, but it's interesting to see what people take value in and derive fun from.
That said, it'd be even better with things like # of low attacks, # of fireballs thrown, # of anti-airs, and giving grades based on perhaps the % of execution. Encourage the player when they perform the basics and emphasize that they ARE doing a good job and making progress!
I think more of the issue comes from the fact that fighting games just typically don't have a good way of introducing new players to the mechanics of the game outside of throwing them into what's essentially a bunch of tutorials and an arcade mode. Not everybody wants to go directly into what's essentially an hour long tutorial to play the game. It's just not engaging for everybody. So they go online, get bodied, and say fighting games are impossible to learn. I don't really mind the mission modes and even like them when they're included, but more of these games really need to start having a mode similar to a campaign like in shooters to teach the players these mechanics in an engaging and immersive way. Mission modes should be another layer to educating the players, not the end all be all way to learn the basic mechanics, because frankly put, it's kind of boring.
Guilty Gear Strive was really trying to appeal to more of a casual player base, specifically the ones they already attracted with FighterZ, but I think it would have benefited it even more if it actually had a playable story and, not a literal 5 hour long movie, even if it was a great one to watch. FighterZ story mode wasn't great, but the inclusion of it specifically was a great choice and I think helped a lot of people get into it. Because even though it had tutorials and elements of a mission mode thrown in there, the players were thrown into an actual story they could take part in and wanted to see the ending, but had to work for it. It also gave you rewards like unlocking the new character Android 21, and the incredibly hyped up Super Saiyan Blue forms. And then you have story modes like Undernight where it's literally just hours of text boxes and slide shows. Your only given motivation to play this story mode? Some achievements/trophies, and maybe some in-game currency to buy more colors for your character.
For me, learning a fighting game is waaaay easier than learning a MOBA.
The thing is, MOBAs do a way better job at keeping a complete scrub around long enough that they learn and not drop the game immediately.
"Just clicking" is bullshit, I agree with Sajam. New shooter players can't do anything without experience in other first/3rd person games.
MOBA noobs die to towers and die without understanding how.
MOBA AIs suck. they can make you better at landing some ability combos, but it will not teach you strategy, in fact it's quite the opposite. The AI will make you get used to stomping on your lane opponent whenever they get close. You will never learn what fights to actually take and how to make them happen.
Fighting games are rock paper scissors but with 10 times more moves
13:00 is exactly how I felt when I first made it into D2 (always hovered D4/D3) I could feel my skill capping in a demoralizing way. No more solo kills, always down in cs, no pressure in lane to rotate. I was horribly outclassed and dropped back down immediately.
Came back to this video bc I have recently started playing an FPS (Apex) and I have never felt so out of water. Anyone who says "in a shooter you just move the mouse and click" obviously got into them at a young age bc that shit is difficult.
In 5 trios matches with my friends, the only 2 times I did any damage is when I punched a guy who dropped on top of us and when I shot someone who wasn't moving with my shotgun. That second one was even more embarrassing bc I managed to miss them like 3 times with the pistol even though he wasn't moving.
I disagree with the point made at 15:00 a lot. He says that a new player won't recognize basic things like last hitting or whatever in a moba when they're getting stomped, but I think a better comparison would be like just killing minions at all. In a Moba I doubt any player would be incapable of recognizing that they can kill minions and seeing what they get for doing so. They're also given a tangible gold reward for doing so. And hell even killing an entire enemy champion or assisting in a kill isn't nearly as big a deal as say winning a round in a Fighting Game. Like I know I am absolutely trash at Mobas, but I can at least see when I kill a champion and feel good about myself even if I don't understand most of the underlying strategy.
In comparison to a fighting game, killing an enemy champion is the equivalent of landing like 1 or 2 punches in a single round, considering it's something that's expected to happen dozens of times across the match. And so even if you go 1-15 or whatever and you only get that one kill while dying 15 times, it still feels like you did something. Whereas if I reduce my enemy's life in a fighting game to less than 50%, but then I lose the round, I don't feel very accomplished at all, despite the fact that I was way closer to winning in that than I ever was in the MOBA.
Landing a hit in a fighting game just isn't as inherently satisfying compared to getting a kill in a shooter or a Moba or whatever. It doesn't feel like a complete action and thus it doesn't trigger a response from me that makes me feel like I did something. Not even compared to just killing a few minions in a Moba. Killing a minion feels like a complete action and I get the happy juices in my brain a little. Landing a punch, only to then be grabbed and combo'd to death, does not give me the happy juices.
Fighting games are harder to learn on your own. When you are new to fighters it feels like you have a washing machine strapped to your left leg and a vacuum on your left arm, then you try to box a world champ. The screen looks like a fireworks show and the buttons seem to do something different everytime you press them.
Here’s a strange hot take: mobas and FPS are harder to get into. It’s because there are more than one reason that you will lose: your other teammates can be a pain to deal or you haven’t gambled enough. take league of legends as a example of this isn’t it annoying that some moron keeps making stupid errors because he doesn’t know what he’s doing not to mention a moba is something you end up spending more to play because its “free to play.” The same goes for a FPS those have become free to play games you have to buy and their all extremely superficial the only one that has done anything actually interesting lately is doom eternal their all super generic so they are easy to get into that’s all they actually have going for them
I think fighting games are of pretty average difficulty in terms of learning. I just picked up fighting games a week after strive launched and after 75hrs I'm winning games, having fun, getting noticeably better and went from floor 4 to 8. Those stats are nothing crazy but in dota 2 it took me 300 hours to get to point where I felt I was doing something of value. In overwatch it took me 250hrs to feel like I was doing something at all. The biggest barrier in fighting games so far has been using the optimal options but muscle memory is just a matter of playing; it's not like learning a game where you have to consider dozens of characters, hundreds of item combinations, creep timings, camp timings, wave control, etc etc. Fighting games are hard to learn don't get me wrong but they're not on a pedestal of difficulty far above other genres. I can think of a lot of games I've played that were significantly harder to learn.
The main reason so many people have this poor opinion about learning fighting games is because other genres do a better job of giving you an equal skill opponent. All the fighting games I find enjoyable are “discord fighters”, who wants to join a discord and ask people to play for every set? All you have to do in LoL or Cs go is queue up and 80% of the time it’s a somewhat even match.
As someone with a new love for fighting games, I think in a way they are harder, because of both the execution barrier and how that leads to needing to "work" before you have fun.
If you're new to a shooter, you can't aim well. But if you're given a static target then straight away you can slowly aim and fire. The input is simple, and from there you begin the slow but smooth task of improving your speed. Crucially, you can improve at this simply by playing the game.
If you're new to a fighting game and input your special move incorrectly, nothing comes out at all. I can do them pretty consistently now, but it took about 10-15 hours to get to that point.
Up to that point, I didn't feel in control of my character and the game honestly wasn't fun. Doing 10 hours of practice before you can even figure out if you enjoy a game is not a sane thing to do, and the only reason I didn't quit like the three other attempts over the last 12 years is that I've played enough Smash and watched enough great fighting game content on YouTube to know I would enjoy these games.
Lol I don't mean to sound salty, just thought you might appreciate a perspective from a new player.
Your point is garbage
ive seent this video like 7 times