fighting game solution?

[pop_squally]

i just read that excellent article about the death and rebirth of fighting games however i do feel that unless somebody actually creates a new system then the genre will die a quicker death than before. reason being that they have become too difficult for what they really are. im sure everybody at some point in their life has been in a fist fight and unless you had some kind of martial art or some other fighting based training will fight on instinct.
yet in certain fighting games that we all know and love, some characters can fly through your attacks and then take half your bar even though you anticipated their intent to attack. that alone is enough to turn off many a non hardcore fighting gamer. fighting games dont have to be easy as mario and sonic but they dont have to be complicated to be challenging because after all what is so complicated about wanting to smash somebodys head in?
wouldnt it be more fun if players were rewarded with victory if their discipline was to use timing and survival instincts as opposed to corner traps and infinite combos?
for example i sometimes play kof2k2 on ggpo with my best mate and use ralf in his team for specific reasons.

1. grab defense = prevents grab happy characters from running in or floor trap spam
2. high priority moves = seeing as i dont own the game to practice combos on, i can frequently win rounds with jumping light punch spam and standing hard punch or kick depending on what i expect my opponent to do.
3. special grab = forces opponents back even though they dont know if i can do the running grab tactic.

thats it....just four moves, no other character i have seen can match that damage output ralf does without using supers,combos,two or more special moves or cancels and thats just one out of 30+ characters. sure i would be a lot better if i learnt his combos but i wouldnt find the game anymore fun. until ralfs normal moves become ineffective then thats pretty much the end of kof2k2 for me, theres no fun in fighting games if you cant fight at will.
if they can make fighting games which forces the fighter to think about where and when to hit the enemy it would open up a whole new dynamic as opposed to just choosing kim with his two combos and your dead, i would happily invest in it even if it was based on the same streetfighter 2 system from waaaaaaaay back.

fighting games should simply be something you can just pick up and play for a couple hours and happily enjoy pretending your beating the crap out of someone....as simple as picking up a barbwire ended stick.

the author of this rant can be found online playing kof2k2 using ralf on ggpo under the username team duddikoff.

[hebretto]

care to link this "death and rebirth" article?

Also it's about "balance". Some characters lack special moves but make up for it in higher priority normals (Chang for example). And some characters got such good normals they don't really need to mix their specials to win (Goro in 98 for example). Ralf in 98 was even simpler cause his Far C was fast + good range, combined with pow and you got 20% from one counter hit.

Fair or not that's what distinguishes character tiers. Some just have better (and easier to use) tools to win. Some others will have to play harder/smarter for the win.

If you want to enjoy a couple of hours of beating people up you might be better off against the CPU because people tend to play to win. Who goes into a fighting game against a human opponent with the intent of losing? Fact of the matter is that fighting games are not meant to be simple on the basis that your opponent is human and can come up with different ways to deal with your offense/defense, you cannot just go on auto-pilot when you're going against a human being. Seasoned pros probably has an easier time against beginners but that boils down to wealth of experience + reaction + knowledge of game against reaction + knowledge of game. Beginners can win against seasoned pros don't get me wrong, but that is more dependent on their reactions and knowledge.

God I'm ranting too hahahaha verbal diarrhea :o

[The Master]

i just read that excellent article about the death and rebirth of fighting games however i do feel that unless somebody actually creates a new system then the genre will die a quicker death than before. reason being that they have become too difficult for what they really are. im sure everybody at some point in their life has been in a fist fight and unless you had some kind of martial art or some other fighting based training will fight on instinct.
yet in certain fighting games that we all know and love, some characters can fly through your attacks and then take half your bar even though you anticipated their intent to attack. that alone is enough to turn off many a non hardcore fighting gamer. fighting games dont have to be easy as mario and sonic but they dont have to be complicated to be challenging because after all what is so complicated about wanting to smash somebodys head in?
wouldnt it be more fun if players were rewarded with victory if their discipline was to use timing and survival instincts as opposed to corner traps and infinite combos?
for example i sometimes play kof2k2 on ggpo with my best mate and use ralf in his team for specific reasons.

1. grab defense = prevents grab happy characters from running in or floor trap spam
2. high priority moves = seeing as i dont own the game to practice combos on, i can frequently win rounds with jumping light punch spam and standing hard punch or kick depending on what i expect my opponent to do.
3. special grab = forces opponents back even though they dont know if i can do the running grab tactic.

thats it....just four moves, no other character i have seen can match that damage output ralf does without using supers,combos,two or more special moves or cancels and thats just one out of 30+ characters. sure i would be a lot better if i learnt his combos but i wouldnt find the game anymore fun. until ralfs normal moves become ineffective then thats pretty much the end of kof2k2 for me, theres no fun in fighting games if you cant fight at will.
if they can make fighting games which forces the fighter to think about where and when to hit the enemy it would open up a whole new dynamic as opposed to just choosing kim with his two combos and your dead, i would happily invest in it even if it was based on the same streetfighter 2 system from waaaaaaaay back.

fighting games should simply be something you can just pick up and play for a couple hours and happily enjoy pretending your beating the crap out of someone....as simple as picking up a barbwire ended stick.

the author of this rant can be found online playing kof2k2 using ralf on ggpo under the username team duddikoff.

It's just not KOF.. everything game has this to an extent. in SF, Guile has always has a low number of special movies. His standing backhand(F+FP) has great range,also can buffer out standing sonic booms at will.

[Wry Guy]

That Death and Rebirth article is actually mine. It's on the front page here: http://orochinagi.com/2010/03/tainted-beauty-the-death-and-rebirth-of-a-genre. My article was more about the community and the people playing fighters but it is true that when you lose to a 100% corner combo that it's hard to maintain interest in a game.

[pop_squally]

how do you link the post? or is it already linked?...dont get me wrong, i thought i was the man when i first learnt guile' sonic boom traps back in the early 90s, i actually went into arcades thinking i was gonna kick ass only to get dusted but hey those were good memories. okay fighting games dont have to be as straight forward and wacky as smash bros on nintendo but what if they involved more use of psychology and idividual style as opposed to purely traps,cancels and combos?
one good example i'll use is darkstalkers 2...the round and health bar system is open to debate but almost every character has a unique way of fighting and some of the moves and setups really push you to think about how your gonna catch your opponent, pin them and then batter them. i could go in more detail about that game but that may as well be a whole new topic.
ive bought blazblue as well out of interest and boredom, i think the characters look camp but the drive button system to me was the best idea in that game. thats one of the few fighting games where you have to use the characters individual style to win battles as opposed to just having a moveset...lets say dragon punch,fireball and super then call it a day.
funny thing is that both of those games use cancels,traps,and combos, have many characters i think look pants but both games require using an individual style to win battles. if the genre encouraged the use of style and thought instead of logic(why use kyo when i only need two hard kicks and no super bars with kim) then maybe more players would find these games interesting and rewarding?

sooner or later one company will get the idea, i just hope its snk first.

[arstal]

The thing is that it's hard to innovate and actually make a good game, so most companies just preach to the choir. Capcom in particular has zero innovation these days- SF4 was pretty unoriginal- and makes its money mostly off nostalgia. That said, it makes a lot of money of that, so you can't fault them.

The real problem is that fighting games are often hard, in the places they shouldn't be, such as execution. People don't like to lose to things they can't do themselves (or take a lot of practice to do). People can tolerate losing to things they can do a lot better, and one of the important things with a fighter is that losing has to be as fun as possible.