I know for me the biggest barrier to entry was that, well, when I played other games and lost I could at least kind of figure out what I did wrong that led to my defeat, and avoid doing that in the future. With fighting games you don't really KNOW what you did wrong. You just know you pressed a button, which you thought was the POINT of the game, and then some kung-fu lady did a full river dance routine on your face and it just sort of...happened? There isn't a kill cam that shows where you crossed a sight line, there isn't a stat screen that says, "You did this many attacks and only 14% of them connected, maybe don't do that, dummy" you just LOSE. And unless you go, as you said, do a bunch of homework, then the game really never tells you WHY or how to STOP losing. And if you're REALLY new you don't even speak the LANGUAGE. A vet can tell you "Hey your standing fierce is like minus 4 on block and has huge recovery on whiff try not to use it to poke when you're playing footsies." and while that's valid information, it means NOTHING to a newbie. So now you have to do HOMEWORK before you can even do the HOMEWORK. It's kind of ridiculous. That's why one of the most exciting things I saw in the new SF6 info was the little plain english descriptions in the move lists. I know it seems dumb and insignificant but just those little lines of info like: "This move goes over lows" or "This lets you act before your opponent even when blocked." and even "This lets you move forward while maintaining a back charge." That is HUGE! I did the homework that let me do the homework. I know how painful and frustrating it can be to not even know what you need to fix much less how to do it. I would have KILLED for those little info blurbs back in SFIV. I'm glad they're here now, I don't want the new people to have suffer like we did. I wear scars so they don't have to and it's better that way.

To me, it's never been an issue of difficulty (though I consider their mechanical intensity a standout among genres) but rather conveyance. Many fighting games have so much information that is not told or outright omitted from the product. Which is why tutorials could stand to be better.

There's a difference between *_playing_* the game and *_winning_* at the game. Most fighting games are easier *_to play_* than the mainstream gaming community believes (you don't need combos, specials or supers to play against your friends and family), but they definitely are very hard *_to win_* at. The real issue with fighting games is that there's no measurable way to gauge progress other than ranks and W/L ratio.

SF6 seems to try to make it easier with the expansive World Tour and the advancements in Training Mode especially with the Frame Data implementation. Hopefully, like the previous inspirational SF games, other devs will adapt and iterate from that.

You touched on the main point IMO when it comes to why people don't play fighting games. The skill gap even between new players is fucking HUGE, if you know how to anti air and the guy who only knows how to jump in gets knocked out of the air every time he's going to feel like there was nothing he could have done and he just got his ass kicked without even getting to land a hit. The frustration of not understanding why you lost and just getting wrecked for a minute is just not fun for alot of people and even if they go to a video on how to get better the concepts presented in a lot of these videos are VERY foreign to new players and then they run into someone talking about frame data and they are like 'Yeah, i'm not learning this, not worth it.'

Casual modes are one of the things that most competitive players think about the least but draws in the most player. Every single smash player I know played it as a kid casually, got really interested in the game because of it and then took the next step to get better. That’s what traditional fighting games need to draw in players and I think SF6 is taking good steps to do it. The ball game, character creator an open story mode, it looks like capcom is taking really good steps to draw in casuals

As someone who has bounced off fighting games before but is trying to stick with it this time: I think you’re underestimating just how hard playing with purpose can be for newer players. Yes MOBAs and shooters are very difficult in their own way, but they’re all based firmly in a foundation of game mechanics most of us learned as kids (if we played games as kids). While the only way you learned the micro needed to play a fighting game as a kid was if you were an arcade kid growing up or you had an older sibling who was. The problem I and I think a lot of people have is we can’t even get to the skill floor of micro proficiency necessary to even start *failing* at macro. While league of legends or CSgo you can get to that floor within a day or two of playing easy. And to address another point. In the age of the internet and youtube game content creators…learning what to do has not been the problem. Better tutorials would be nice, but I guarantee you they aren’t a fix.

The other thing with fighting games versus other genres is not that its harder its that its more obtuse. Give someone a controller or a keyboard and mouse and its easy to be like "Okay you use the mouse to aim and shoot people, shoot the bad guys to win" and then have that be the basis for getting better. But its a lot harder to say "Okay you have six buttons of varying strength but sometimes its four with special inputs you have to memorize and theres animation differences yadda yadda yadda." Its just a harder sell for people, even competitive people, who look at these games. If fighting game tutorials had like "Do a Hadouken 5 times in a row without doing a misinput" or "Do 3 Sonic Booms within X amount of seconds" to build the basics of muscle memory of inputs and charges would help a lot.

BABE WAKE UP GEKKOSQUIRREL DROPPED

Fighting game systems themselves are NOT difficult to grasp. It's the gradual optimization of pushing those buttons that is the real difficulty. You can make it easy for yourself and have fun by playing against the AI repeatedly and bonking the shit out of them just by pushing a bunch of buttons because they make cool moves come out, but the moment you want to start improving and playing other humans that is the biggest, most difficult step.

The big point that you touched on that's always made fighting games such a hard sell for any of my friends is that you can never play them together but always have to play *against* one another AND that it's generally not possible to play a fighting game with more than two people at a time. My gaming friend groups are almost always three or more, so any activity that doesn't allow for three of us to play at the same time is tossed out every time. Even if I'm willing to sit and watch while they play, they just question why we'd bother to get together if we're not all going to play together. I have no other local friends who are interested in fighting games as a genre, so my options for getting my friends into my favorite genre are very low. It's why Smash was really big with our group for a little while. You have NO idea how much my enjoyment of the genre was saved by online matchmaking during the XBox360 era. Goodness, that was a godsend.

It's hard but you can always get better at 1 something every day Thanks to your videos and sajam's, I've gotten less scared and enjoy fighting games more now. Thanks for choosing to see these games in such a cool way to fight back against the bad things said about fighting games. You've helped me and others.

the modern day video game player is used to instant gratification and fighting games are the antithesis of that. you have to take time and practice your inputs/combos, you have to learn about frame data and match ups if you want to reach a decent level. most people arent going to do that. to make things worst eventually they will be matched against a more experienced player(this is unavoidable during the launch period) and get trashed which is a hit to their ego(which isnt tolerable for a lot of people these days). ive been through this for the last 2 sf games(and it will happen again in 6). my friend says "i saw the new trailer, im going to get it and fight you". first night we play and he can clearly see that its a mismatch, i have to sand bag, i have to pick characters that he knows i dont play, im trying to coach him, but it goes no where. he knows that it would take a real effort to catch up to my thousands of hours of experience, he gives up and we play something else(which will must likely be over watch 2). fighting games arent for everyone. we have to accept that.

Fighting games are hard in the same way that mundane skills are hard, in that: 1. You are _never_ good enough. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at it, there’s always people on your level that will not wait, they will not gently nudge you, they will _push and shove_ for you to be better, or you will be left behind as new things come about. 2. Your skills will always come about in subtle, nonchalant ways that make it impossible for you to gauge _exactly_ how good you are, or if you’ve made progress at all, until you’ve arrived at a point where it’s blatantly obvious, but by then the only thought going through your mind is: “fuckin’… *FINALLY.”* 3. You will not get better in any way that doesn’t make you taste failure. Failure is one of those things that humans understandably take quite hard, and those that do best in contests of skill are often those who’re predisposed to think less of failure. If you aren’t the kind of person trained in that mindset, or weren’t graced by chance with such a predisposition, you will not make it far. Basically, mindset is key in a competitive environment, and when the game is essentially an eternal arms race and your play habits are that of a casual gamer who just wants to sit and relax, relishing in a small victory, rather than several hours of defeat followed by a victory that your mind might not even consider worth the trouble… Yeah. The problem is that fighting games are not causal-centric. They’re competitive by design. The only casual element they had was lost when the arcade era came to a close more than a decade ago, and they’ve yet to catch up with the world they exist in now. No, you can’t just take an arcade game, throw it onto a computer and call that _done._ There’s a new feel to it, and a whole new audience that demands more than what the arcade could provide for a quarter. When your choices are between a story-rich campaign with interesting, fully-fleshed-out characters and gameplay that paces itself with new and interesting concepts, A multiplayer co-op experience that allows you and your buds to play alongside each other, have a lark, and goof around with easy-to-comprehend mechanics that naturally test your awareness and capacity to improvise in an environment that gives you plenty of space to work with, Or the game that locks you in a cage with a cracked-out pit bull, a man with a gun, and a gorilla that has exclusively been allowed access to WWE for entertainment for its entire life… That third choice starts becoming less of an appealing one.

As someone who has been trying to get into fighting games the hardest part is the seemingly random nature of the controls particularly when it comes to motion inputs where it can feel like a 50/50 shot of actually getting them right

Actually I think that fighting games can be as fun as say party games. For example me and my friend play a few days a week in some fighting games after work. Be it MK11, Tekken 7 or Dead or Alive 6, we are having a tons of fun, but only on one condition - we are both kinda just mashing the buttons to see what happends. The plus side of this - we are having actual fun. In MK11 we have Fatalities, Friendships and more or less easy set of moves. In Tekken we have a million moves on any characters, so if you mash, something cool will happen eventually and if slow-mo activates it's just pure hype. And Dead or Alive 6 not only have easy go to combat but also many cute girls. And spent a few evenings after work in fighting games are actually not that bad. The problem is - one day one of you want to learn more. Not just mash, but to learn at least basic combos and HERE problems begin. From bad tutorials to hard ass timings of combos. And fighting games are really hard even on the mechanical level. You can use existing decks in card games, or some soft like Blitz in League of Legends if you don't want to experiment with runes. Even in shooters you basically can just point a crosshair in right direction and click. Unfortunately in fighting games you can't do that. There is no corner cutting. You can't just hop in King of Fighters XIII and make a cool combo with Terry, you need weeks, if not months, to learn a SINGLE character at least at mediocre level. I played in Strive about 36 hours but not even close to be mediocre. It's fun to learn things in fighting games, but it could be more fun if developers made learning process more accessible, interesting and fun. But right now, the only thing that can hold the player in learning process is player himself.

Caught me in the rambling mood, there's so much to unpack and say about this video! 10:09 The one on one aspect intimidates sooo many people that I try to get into chess... Doesn't help that chess, like fighting games, also has a reputation for being hard. Some of the ways that makes it easier for me to get people into Chess than fighting games would be as follows: - I usually play Chess in VR, thus we get to see each other's body movements and such which surprisingly can be a lot more relaxing to people. If I play Chess in top-down on a website, I'll overanalyze my stuff and sabotage my brain so I can't learn stuff, even if I'm playing the same people I'd play in VR. I wonder if this is a big problem for other people with fighting games (definitely happens for me in ranked) - Chess is turn based. If a player is getting too heated, they can feel free to take it at their own pace to cool off so they don't get burnt out trying to get better. Fighting games, you don't get that option, as the pace of how fast you think is heavily influenced by your opponent. Perhaps if there was a way to slow things down for when people are learning fighting games that don't involve a CPU standing idley and then randomly throwing out something that is unreactable. Whether it be having some npc enemies to toss at the opponent in some horde mode or whatever, or maybe even a literal slow down on the game and/or opponent. - I give personalized tips for each player I see. Fighting games aren't gonna be able to do this 'till general ai starts becoming like personal trainers for everyone in everything, but having stats and having recommendations is a nice start I've seen from some fighting games. 11:ish As a smash player, I love motion inputs! The shotos, Terry, and Kazuya all are some of the most fun to play characters in the game. I get the joke though =p 12:59 Fighting games being anime is one of the reasons keeping me away. I love anime, I could watch it anyday all the time. However I want to see other things too ya know? Honestly I'm shocked Guilty Gear was able to catch my attention, but combination of Max, Gekko, and Sajam recommending it, GG having some awesome music, Strive making me relate to a quite a few characters and just the gameplay look great was all the stuff needed to make me fall in love with the game. 13:26 This is one of the big reasons why I dislike combos. I care how my opponent is feeling. I'm no tournament goer, but I do want to continue to give my tournament going friends a hard time so they will be able to beat the tournament goers when they go there. Like, I see ice Climbers in Ultimate and seeing all the different types of cool combos I see them whenever someone is good with them and I go "That looks pretty neat, I kinda want to be awesome like that". However, you know that for whatever their opponent is, it's basically the same as being wobbled in melee/brawl where they are sitting there for 30 seconds, and it's basically to the point where it doesn't even matter what the combo looks like, it's just not fun when you're robbed of gameplay in a video game. 14:02 I find handicapping myself is the best way to play with new players. I mean heck, Core-A gaming mentioned a little funny thing about making a game called sweeps & throws which is essentially what I do a lot of the time when getting new players into platform fighters, it just reduces the skill gap so much, and you can still strengthen the fundamentals using whatever tool you are using while not feeling like you are holding back. When someone gets good enough, then you can go "okay, time for level 2" and lessen the handicaps on yourself a little more and you do that slowly until they are on your level. 17:ish Traditional fighting games not being inviting is exactly the reason why Smash is my main fighting game (I prefer Rivals when it comes to platform fighters though). Lots of people know smash, people are willing to play some games. People get scared when they have to start getting good at it. However, at least they had the chance to improve and really see what fighting games can be like when they play smash. If I try to get someone to play a traditional fighter, why would they even try the game in the first place? It's like there's no hope of getting anyone to try to get good so they can see how awesome fighting games are. Heck I'm having a hard time getting into Strive with my main Jack-O, or in DBFZ with Beerus/Hit/Cooler. I keep forgetting that Tekken 7 exists, and only remember it because of Kazuya being in Smash (And Kazuya is fun as heck in Smash). I just really love neutral game stuff, or characters that can do zoning things or have high mobility. High mobility usually implies combos, which is why I've been turning to traditional fighters to learn how to love practicing combos 'cuz currently I don't really care about combos, I often feel bad for making my opponent wait through a cutscene, and if I can do that combo, then I've probably practiced it to death to the point where it doesn't feel satisfying to pull off even if I do it properly every time. Trying to find some sort of mentality so I can learn it combos better since I'm struggling to learn to love doing combos in smash, despite a lot of the combo characters being some of the more fun characters to play. The 4 traditional fighting game characters in Smash (Shotos, Terry, Kazuya) hit too hard that I can just kinda muscle my way through not having combos, especially since they seem to have a tool for everything in neutral as long as you are close enough to the opponent. Then there's a sliding scale of what kind of combos other characters do but I still struggle with them all. 1. Sheik just feels amazing in general because they can start combos and those combos lead into each other so well, but you can expect to lose constantly if you don't understand the character, and some of those combos have tight execution. Sheik is fun because I feel like I can swap between things all the time, but this means I never practice anything long enough for it to stick in my mind. At least Sheik always feels like one of the most fun characters even if I practically always lose with Sheik. 2. Pichu is extremely glass cannon that only has to learn a few combos, but I often practice a couple and forget about the others..... Also being outranged by literally everyone and so light distracts me a lot when I play, and I love Pichu too much to swap to Pikachu who is just flat out better competitively in so many ways. Also very discouraging that if you mess up one combo, you're very very likely to die because of it due to self damage on top of being the lightest character in the game. 3. Meta Knight is also fun because he only really has one combo for his opponent to worry about, but despite it's simplicity at a glance, it's one of the hardest combos in the game to do because it's so precise and you have to react to so many things quickly, I'd rather do the fighting game character combos it's that hard. So learning Meta Knight's Up air/down air combos feels like you're honing your sword's blade, making it ready for when you find the opportunity to strike with it since any decent opponent will avoid letting you hit that combo. However, doing the same thing over and over can get boring sometimes, especially when you're constantly failing at it for weeks/months at a time. Most other combo characters just feel fine, or don't have enough of an emphasis on combos. Maybe if I try learning Falco, Peach, or Bayonetta, they'll have the right formula to make me enjoy the process of combos, but I don't really care about those characters so it's unlikely they'll be able to. Hence, I've looked towards other fighting games to find out if they can figure out how to make me love doing combos.

A few things every training mode should have. An option to play the game frame by frame. A slow down feature to practice combos and learn animations An AI that doesn't play like an absolute lunatic All frame data available. An option to physically see hit/hurt boxes of your moves and character and of course locations and frames of I frames The ability to upload combos for anyone with internet to access and practice with commands displayed.

I think controlling characters is one of the big things that sets fighting games apart. If someone gets into league you can set them on Garen and they can enjoy themselves. Just click where you want to go and use his basic abilities to fight. The mistakes they make aren't mistakes that end up making their character feel sluggish or clunky to play. Meanwhile if you get into fighting games characters just don't feel intuitive at all because the control system is unique to fighting games. If something as simple as controlling your character feels bad then it's pretty hard to keep yourself enjoying the game.

As someone who played a lot of competitive games over the years, in my opinion the two most difficult game genres to play are fighting games and simracing games, the number of things that you need to learn in both genres is immense, not only inside the game but outside with the controls setup and the equipment as well

I think it's something as simple as motion controls turn people off from the game. In a MOBA if you want to shoot a fireball, you press Q and aim or maybe even just click your target; And your character shoots a fireball. In a fighting game you have to a charge motion or a hadouken motion, to shoot a fireball; And for new, heck even someone who plays fighting games, drops motions sometimes. Basically its psychological right. The player has the idea of the move they want to, not even a combo, just a special; They try to do it and then it doesn't come out because they dropped the motion. That builds up frustration, specially in a match.

I am new to fighting games. Started with Guilty Gear strive 2 weeks ago. I think one thing that is pretty hard in the beginning (still is for me) is to understand what the F is happening on the screen. In some Matches I play online, my oponent starts a combo and all I see are explosions, fire and lights. In other games like shooters you can see and know what is happening right now.

One thing a lot of people forget or just don't realize about Fighting games is how they play COMPLETELY differently from any other game genre. Just the general way you move your character is do different from other games. Usually when you play games, some of those skills transfer over to other games. Smash Bros (and other platform fighters) are already more accessible because of the platforming aspect of them. Almost everyone has played a platformer, so it feels more natural. Fighting games really only exist in their own bubble, where skills can only really be transferred to other fighting games. People give shit to people who can't do motion inputs, but it can be hard to do those when you're learning an entirely new type of control scheme you have never used before. Let alone one that's so complicated.

Gecko, keep doing your thing. I've been watching a lot of your videos in the past week. From the stereotypes to you climbing in GGST. I like your perspective and sense of humor and this video is another great.

Great video, I especially enjoyed the constant war flashbacks to how bad I am at Eternal Return every time you mention MOBAs

only the execution

Your point about people wanting to work together with their friends makes me wonder if that was the reason why TTT with my brother had such a special place in my childhood.

Id love a story mode that goes further than teaching the most basic controls, but using a story or something to teach players. having an opponent do jump in sweep until you either learn to block that or anti air would be great.

I think the real problem is that, no matter how many tutorials you throw at the player, no matter how much content you add to ease them into competition, no matter how you encourage people to put the same time into them as they put into other competitive games, none of that will change the fact that fighting games are the most *unintuitive* competitive genre in the world. In a shooter, you move a cursor onto someone and left-click them, and that’s how you shoot. It mimics the natural use of a mouse and PC. Most intuitive thing imaginable. In fighters, you can press down-back punch, and your character will move forward and up and grab. A mountain of tutorials won’t change the fact that there’s no existing structure in the player’s mind for that. They have to learn it all from zero, and retain it during every fight. For every character, for every game. Not many people want to deal with that. Yeah, “practicing any game takes time,” but it takes a lot longer to learn to one than the other, because one has a command list handing out moon logic in Japanese, and the other asks you to hit the 2 button for Weapon 2. If you sat me down in front of a shooter I’ve never seen before, and told me I had one chance to point my gun at someone and shoot them, I’d move the mouse, left click the enemy, and it would work. If you sat me down with a fighting game I’ve never played, and told me I have one chance to do a heavy attack, I’m *fucked.*

I find you very chipper to listen to in the morning about fighting games as a topic discussion. Thanks! :)

I’d say it it can be summed up with the “drowning” feeling you get when losing to better players, which makes learning extremely difficult unless you have consistent sparring partners, and the complex inputs this genre (somewhat stubbornly) refuses to omit. More so than aiming or strategy, Fighting Games can summon the rage of knowing what you SHOULD have done, but simply not being able to because of the difficulty of execution. I for one can think of how many matches would’ve been closed in Guilty Gear if I was just better at the Overdrive inputs. That sort of frustration can really turn somebody away in a world where practically every other game has very intuitive controls that make the controller itself feel more like a catalyst than a barrier.

Good video, but small correction, getting a goal in rocket league is definitely not micro, it's very much a macro thing, it's like winning a round in a fighting game, there are so many small micro interactions that happen in rocket league that lead to a goal, a micro interaction in rocket league would be more like performing an aerial and hitting the ball where you want it (and beating the opponents to that ball) or winning a 50/50

The mental stack in neutral, checking dashes, anti airing, dealing with zoning and enforcing your oki/ rushdown makes it difficult to immediately do well in fighting games. It takes months to develop the muscle memory and reactions to play how the game is intended. Also, the answer to a lot of knowledge checks may not be intuitive for new players.

super cool that you used Neon White and also Utrakill music both of those games deserve more attention and the music too especially the Neon White soundtrack

I think fighting games as a whole aren't inherently more difficult than any other competitive game, whether you want to be good at these games requires a lot of game knowledge/macro and skill/micro, and being great at them requires and equal amount of knowledge/skill (High skill ceiling). The key difference between fighting games and any other genre is how approachable they are and their respective skill floors. The skill floor for most single player games for example is non existent because devs don't want the player to struggle with controls/gameplay in order to properly progress through the game. But then you have something like Dark Souls where if you're unacquainted with more methodical/slow action melee games you'll have a very hard time getting into it before it "clicks" and you understand how to play properly. The same idea can be said for competitive games, you need very little upfront game knowledge and skill to not only play but WIN (against people your rank) in most of these games, controls are overall easier with actions being tied to single inputs and also have the added benefit of being familiar like aiming in a FPS. You're also able to rely more on your team to fill any weak points that you as a player may have AND you can lean into your strengths to close the cap and cover your own faults (if your macro is bad you can lean more into micro and vice versa). I would argue that in a fighting game you need to have a balance of macro and micro as a default and if you fail to have one or the other you'll fail immediately even at the lowest rank. Fighting games do a terrible job of explaining how to play them so naturally the macro is effected, and doing combos, hit confirms, whiff punishing, anti airs can be incredibly difficult for a beginner and so the upfront micro the game asks of you is a lot higher. I think games like GG Strive do an amazing job of trying to solve both of these problems while not sacrificing depth (unlike MK11), Strive has very comprehensible tutorials that cover all manner of FG philosophy/terminology and help the player better understand the fundamentals of FGs AND the specifics of the game. You also have the counter and roman cancel slowdowns which makes combing and hit confirming a million times easier for new players not to mention the anime style gatling (SF combo links are fucking brutal lol) which reduces the required upfront micro. Strive reduces the skill floor making it more accessible WHILE still keeping a high skill ceiling because it doesn't sacrifice depth for accessibility. And it seems to have worked because GG which previously was simply a well known and respected FG in the FGC, is now a known and respected FG in the general gaming community, and is now up there with street fighter, tekken and DBFZ in terms of population. Seeing with the direction SF6 is going I think a lot of games are going to follow Strive's example and make these games more approachable, whether it's through learning tools (comprehensive tutorials and training modes), having more single player content (SF6 world tour), or easier lower end execution. Clearly something has to be done to get new people into the genre and I think finally after some trial and error FGs are heading in the right direction.

One thing that probably is also a part of it is that a lot of the most popular esports games seem to give the player full control of their character at all times. In fighting games if you get knocked down, or backed into a corner, or hit then you have to deal with pressure. And especially in the internet age, it certainly gives a "feel" that developers are designing the games way more tightly, with a game like SFV having the importance of knowing frame data be something that you can feel from even a low level of gameplay or something like Strive where there are multiple moves with only one dedicated answer after blocking them. There's a reason why there are so many jokes about people not knowing how to block or the constant mashing, it's because especially at lower levels, players might not know when it's their turn, if the game is even designed so they get their turn without having to do something specific other than block and wait, and a lot of fighting games are DESIGNED to have players just start swinging and eating constant counter hits because other than going to an outside resource and looking up the answer, the only way to figure out how to respond to a move that's giving you trouble is to trial and error it so if the devs have only given that situation a single dedicated answer, everything else the player tries will be making them get beat up.

The amount of information given goes a long way for getting people into a genre. In FPS games you usually get the gun stats and in some case perk description as well as ability overview with a example sample video of the ability. In MOBA games you get ability descriptions and an example video. Strive and Tekken are the only games I've seen do this. Sfv doesn't even tell you what a character's v-trigger does.

Soulcal has always had casual modes, and has custom characters for a long time. Still never blew up the way I hoped, which it got roll back.

Great video, and a lot of great comments here too. Not really related to fighting games at all but massive kudos though to your comments on the Soulbourne games. As stated in the video, they really do have multiple ways to either decrease or increase the difficulty organically but you just have to actually engage with the games and experience it (and give them a chance) to reach that point. So, so, so many people overlook that and it's nice to see it so clearly stated and presented.

There is also the fact that in fighting games the ability you acquire by playing the cpu are not transferable to multiplayer, the cpu will never play even remotely like a human. On other genres like FPS the gap between single a multiplayer is far smaller. My first shooter online was CoD 4, but I literally been playing FPS since Wolfenstein, playing online was not that different that playing with very hard bots. Also fighting games aren't "easy to understand and hard to master", are hard to understand and harder to be average, the skill gap in most FG is huge. There were shooters like that, trying to jump to a Quake 3 server and see how your ass gets handed to you harder than in any FG, but the thing is 99% of FPS players don't play that kind of games anymore, nowadays we play Cod, Halo, Fortnite, etc, all games with a much smaller skill gap where is easier to get decent before getting frustrated.

When GS mentions most popular 1v1 competitive games focus on macro vs micro decision making he unintentionally made the best argument anyone could ever make for simplifying execution in fighting games 😅

Im so glad to see people play Julia I've loved her since I played her as a kid

Surprised you didn't mention Fighterz, with its fair share of tutorials, combo challenges, silly arena modes and raids. Like you, I've only gotten one friend to stick with it, but it's been my first fighter and I've felt very welcome until running into triple C-assist fusions in ranked.

"No casual modes outside the main gameplay" Tfh salt mines: Allow me to introduce myself

This is a very interesting video. It reminds me a bit about a video from a couple months ago by GiantGrantGames titled "Why the next major rts will fail. This is why." One of the reasons he mentioned was that several rts games that were hyped over the years, and didn't have much staying power, were focused primarily on the hardcore/competitive multiplayer playerbases largely to the detriment of other parts of the game. And while there is nothing wrong with catering to the hardcore playerbase, it is still alienating the rest(And from polls I believe he conducted, the large majority of the playerbase). Anecdotally, I went from having literally zero interest in Street Fighter 6, to at least watching the trailers for the world tour and other modes. As of now, i probably still won't get it, but I am definitely more open to the idea of getting it now.

13:34 and then you get a end quote from the character rubbing it in your face.

I saw that you were playing eternal return in this video, if you enjoyed it I would appreciate seeing a quick video so more people can know about it. It is a really fun game even though when you start playing its hard to understand.

Eternal Return in a Gekko vid! :O

For me the hardest part of fighting games is the amount of knowledge checks and feeling like you are being taken out of control of your character. In a FPS game when you are losing to a superior opponent you still feel as if you can shoot back and evade, but in 2-D fighters if you either don't pass knowledge checks or know frame data for certain matchups it can feel like you could just set your controller down until the round is over and their would be no difference in the outcome.

Nice touch with the ultrakill music

13:19 Honestly, I feel like Fighting Games should have some kind of xp rewards system for two reasons in particular. First off, it's a lot easier to learn a harder skill when you have micro rewards along the way. Sometimes just getting better isn't really enough to string someone along, especially if you have ADHD like me. By having smaller rewards, it helps the player feel like they are accomplishing something, even if they aren't getting that far. It helps to keep them invested just by playing, while they will learn skills whether they notice it or not. Not to mention that like every fighting game has a ranking with little to nothing to show for it, so why not reward them. The other is that it can be used as tool to show how the player has grown. A lot of old FG players scoff at this for being nothing more than a "consolation prize", but it really doesn't have to be! The game could give you rewards for pulling off hard tech or other important skills consistency. Instead of just telling you that you lose, it could be a good way to have players realize that they're still learning even in loss. For example: the game could go "you lost, but you've parried X amount of times this game!" Or "You've gotten 5 OTGs in the past few matches. you're become more consistent"! It can be a way to reinforce how failure isn't the end, but just another lesson with its own small victories.

Personally I think fighting games are harder to play because of the muscle memory involved under the pressure of actually fighting. Then each controller has it's own unique quirks for your execution. It's been a difficult barrier for me to pick up a game and having to fight my fingers just to do anything. Also I hear that Ultrakill music, great taste 👌

I'm so glad 'easy' fighters like Fantasy Strike, Lethal League, DiveKick exist. They allow to bypass the (actually insanely hard) execution stage and go straight to the meat of the fighting games - mindgames and wit battles. And I guess some knowledge and reaction in there too.

I remember hopping on some Quake III duel server on The Longest Yard... That was an interesting experience: the player kept knocking me off the map with rockets, which in Q3 counts as a suicide. So I was quickly at, about, negative twenty frags. Also, SFVI looks cool.

As someone who likes fighting games but aint the best at execution i end up getting good at set play and reading my opponent Doing a slow "death by a thousand cuts" approach to beating them It can be fun but it leads to the issue at high end where you feel like you are putting in 3 times the work then someone who gets an opening and blows up half your health

Fighting games can be hard from certain perspectives of a new player. I started getting my gf and her siblings to try out a few that I have. (They played smash and Rivals of Aether mostly) I got my gf to try out fight of animals where she got the game down easily but still struggled when it came to getting a round win. So I figured why not try a 3d fighter then. Enter Schwarzerblitz and SoulCalibur 6. I show her what the buttons do and said just have fun. Next thing I know she's able to keep up with me during each and every fight which was super exciting to see. Her brothers tried those two as well with her middle brother easily grasping guard impact (and abused it constantly). All of their games were both amazing and hilarious watching their shenanigans unfold. They've tried out Tekken 7 as well as Jojo All star battle R and GG Strive for a bit so they have a small grasp on 2d fighters. Her sister did join us for a game of soulcalibur 6 which for her first fighter she had 2 very close games!

First time I've ever seen any new news on SF6 and I'm honestly hyped for it. Most likely won't play it cause I can't but the fact that it seems to be pulling out all the stops to actually attract people out of the FGC into it. Attractive characters and absolute bops and bangers for music can only do so much, even when done well. Also the "need to do homework before actually playing the game" part is so true. I'd say most FGC players don't even look at the tutorial and just jump straight in. But since we have experience with the genre already it doesn't hinder us as much as newcomers

The perfect thing to watch after working out at the gym.

Are fighting games hard: They don't have to be. Are the people you play against hard: ABSOLUTELY!!!

One thing that makes learning fighting games so frustrating to learn is the wonky incentive structure in play. Learning a new, better strategy typically entails losing a bunch of games that you maybe would have won if you just did the old, worse strategy you used to use. The results always get worse before they get better. It's a hard sell.

I've compared learning a fighting game to learning an instrument. In the end it comes down to you. You can have the best teachers, comprehensive lessons, find a genre you enjoy, and you may even have a natural knack for it, but practice is key. The pressure comes when you are ready to perform: it's all on you. The main difference is that it's a battle of the bands, where you've got to find your opening - because they are going to show off what they can do. They may have years or even decades more experience than you. Still, you try, and give it your best shot. Just because there are better skilled musicians out there doesn't mean there aren't new ones every day wanting to learn. (Then again the analogy breaks because to some there is a best player in the world, but that hasn't stopped people before).

was not expecting eternal return to pop up... in basically anything that i watch. A pleasant suprise

Am still trying to get good at May and Gio in Ggs and still getting beaten by high level opponent’s but this is my first fighting game so it makes since

Soul Calibur 6 still remains the best game on the market for new-to-genre experience. It's the only fighting game out there which outright prioritizes single-player content.. including actual tutorials, fun casual modes, single-player challenges, and a multi-hour RPG adventure attached to it.

I think the main issue with difficulty isn't the number of options/situations players have to memorize, but how they get the information stuffed in their heads. I had never played a Guilty Gear game before Xrd, but when I played the tutorial (which is a fucking splendid tutorial btw), everything just _clicked_ for me. No unnecessary, long-ass text bubbles, no degenerate unskippable cutscenes, just learning. Just good learning. Admittedly, I still suck chode at the game, but the game's amazing tutorial helped me grasp the mechanics, and even if I was missing something I could always just go to Dustloop to learn some more stuff with my pre-existing knowledge. TL;DR: It's not the nose, it's the face.

This might seem trivial but imo you need to get hooked by the either the character or just the game's aesthetic. I remember when I was a kid I saw people play tekken 3 and pull off crazy 60% combos ,and the characters like Jin and Yoshitmitshu were so cool in their presentation and move animations. So when I started playing later even though it was hard at first I eventually mastered much of it because I really wanted to.

Yet another absolute banger

When Sony designed the PS5 D-pad, I'm sure they had fighting games in mind.. 😉

probably my favorite video of yours

Ngl I would LOVE to see him play jojo all star battle R

shout out for using eternal returns as your moba example!

A huge difference between fighting games and other games like shooters or mobas, is that those other games have tons of single player games in the same genre that do a great job of teaching players with basic game design. The reason why people can jump into games like CSGO without a tutorial is because they already played a tutorial when they played games like Half Life or Halo. Even with Mobas they share a lot of elements from games like RTSs and Isometric RPGs like Diablo. So people have played dozens or hundreds of hours of content in those genres that are specifically designed to help a new player learn the content. The best examples of which even have invisible tutorials that teach people without realizing they're being taught. Again Half Life 2 is probably one of the best examples of this. You're not given a weapon for well over 10 minutes at least as the game forces you to learn basic movement controls and item manipulation while disguising the tutorial with story elements. And even then you only get a Crowbar at first so you don't even fire a gun for quite a while. And even *then* you get a single weapon at a time, allowing the player to naturally learn the ins and outs of that weapon without overloading them with new information, slowly and continually expanding their moveset with new tools and abilities until by the end of the game they're a walking arsenal with so many options, yet any player that gets that far will never feel overwhelmed Fighting games don't really have anything like that. There's no real analogue to a single player game that plays anything like how a fighting game does, and fighting games rarely have good singleplayer content. Usually even the most elaborate Campaigns just come down to a basic arcade mode where you just fight a dumb AI and then watch a cutscene, and you can usually beat them with random button mashing, which means the player doesn't actually learn anything. There's a reason why Half Life has enemies like the snipers, it's because it forces the player to learn how to do things like take cover and use grenades. Fighting games almost never do anything even as simple as that, like say having an enemy that just does basic medium and low attacks to force the player to learn how to block properly. Or say having the player unlock new moves over time. Honestly as a non-Fighting Game player, I'm eager to see how SF6 plays out because I think that for the first time ever for a AAA fighting game, they might actually be incorporating these elements that are so common in every other genre. If the Player starts out with a tiny moveset and then has to learn new moves from the characters they meet, that alone could help a ton in teaching new players. And hopefully they'll actually do some proper enemy design like I mentioned earlier to help people learn basic strategies and fundamentals.

Can't believe you played Eternal Return!

YES!!! Glorious fighting game content

I tend to have issues with doing timing for special moves and shit But I’m planning on getting into GGST because I love the lore

As a smash player I am shivering at the thought of motion inputs. /J

I love fighting games, lots. The thing with learning them isn’t difficulty more or less it’s the fact that people are just better and know more. Just that fact alone makes losing feel more like a repeating pattern then an avoidable problem.

I think, while fighting games aren't nececcarily as difficult as other genres, I'd argue that for a competetive genre they have the biggest initial barrier to entry. • Firstly, most of them are full price which is a LOT to ask of people for a game that they KNOW is difficult to get into. If you want to try League, Hearthstone or CS:GO, it doesn't cost you anything other than time, and if it's not you you you don't feel like you've wasted money. • Secondly, there is still a rather steep execution barrier in most fighting games because of things like motion inputs, percice frame data and movement. In other competetive genres and games you learn the fundementals FIRST and then move onto specifics and execution. But for fighting games you have to learn execution before you can even start learning the fundementals like footsies, spacing, meter management, positioning, anti-airs etc.

The thing making it seem like fighting games are hard to play is that practically every FG for the last fifteen years has thrown out any modes or options that allow for a fun, casual game. No tekken ball, no weird beat-em-up mode, no story mode, nothing. The only thing bringing people into the game is the competitive experience, and getting into a competitive game, any competitive game, is HARD. These don’t need to be THE GAME, but you need something for a random guy who just wants to down a couple beers with his friends and not bother to lab convos to grt into. More sales means more potential competitive players. If SF6 succeeds, its weird modes and story campaign could do a lot of good for the genre.

Since I played many different competitive video games in the last 2 years (OR at least tried to get into them) I can say out of experience: Each genre is really tough to learn, but FGs are much harder to start with. But before I elaborate this point any further, let me say: I enjoy FGs the most. The reason is really own feeling, but if I get better - I really feel it, even if it takes much longer to recognize that. As you said in your video each genre, when playing ranked, will kick your ass. But one thing I saw in most of the non-fg-games are much more "learning"-tools. More tutorials, more helping "tooltips", even those daily, weekly or 1-per-account missions are giving you hints what you should/can do. For an good example, because it happened today for me: I tried out Omega Strikers (which I will testing in the next days even more). Even if the tutorial was a literal joke imo, the missions gave me an idea what I should try to focus to do. In my first two games I was absolutly overwhelmed from the pace of the game, but after seeing the Mission "Strike the ball 5 times" which only means, KICK IT, I tried only to do that. in the next 5 games my fokus was 100% on where is the ball, where is my character and what can, must or should I do to get in range for kicking it. Does this made the game overall easier? well, no...but I focused on a core concept of this game, just because of a little mission. For FGs...there is not such a thing, you the player has to make such missions for yourself - today I focus to do more Tatami Jump-Ins or back-jumps with baiken or today I want to air throw more or today I do 50 TK youzansen from left and from right. Such things are made-up missions from me for me, to get better. Sure in the end even in a moba, shooter, cardgame you will have self-made missions for your daily routine, but you have for your starting pre-made ones from the devs to help you out. I do not say, I would something like that in FGs, and I know some (eg GBVS and SFV) do have this, but I think FGs has to find more ways to improve the starting process. And if we look closely, I believe all the different aspects of having a good help for beginners are there in the genre, but only spreaded across games. I absolutly love the Missions of GGXrd and GGST, even if I read that UNISTs Missions are even better, I love how core FG concepts are teached there. Red Earths Arcade mode is a fun way to learn basic fundamentals, and afaik Them's Fighting Herd as something similiar to that. Combo trials, good Replay modes (give us this +R feature in every game, where you can take control of your character out of the replay to train a situation), enormous Training Mode (a good ingame tutorial to use them would be great or at least tooltips for some settings) - everything is there. The only thing missing - getting all of that in one singular game. After seeing the latest news of SF6 - I strongly believe Capcom will give us all of this tools which will help newer player, some advanced players or even veterans and pro player, to grasp SF6s mechanics easier and faster than in any FG before. Which does not mean, the game will have no depth - just that everyone will get faster to the point where the true fun begins.

Yes…yes they are

"Which areas are good places to get shot" LOL

5:10 nice music sync on Kage’s string

I've been trying to get into fighting games for a while now, but the part that I find most hard is having to learn A LOT of new stuff, controller imputs and develop a whole new muscle memory that is so different from other games. I really want to just know how to play the game so I can enjoy it, but beffore that I need to learn how toplay it and the process feels more like a second job than something fun (tho I know people may find the process fun, it's probably a me thing).

I used to think doing motion inputs were hard but learning enough to know how little you know compared to everyone else is where the genre really gets hard.

What is that moba that you’re showing? Looks interesting

Not Inherently i think. The main difficulty in fighting games come from actually learning the game and learning your character's execution . The difficulty of the game scales with both how good you are and how good your opponent is.

Sorry to say but it really is just difficulty. All I need to do to play Rocket League and have base enjoyment is to be able to move (simple button press + direction at any moment), jump (button press) and activate rockets (button press). Let’s compare this to a motion input in any fighting game. You need to use the exact directions necessary without overshooting slightly and press either a specific button out of six that all attack, making it ambiguous to an outsider which one is the desired one, or one of many without any clear indication of which ones or what would make them different. All of this being done in a fraction of a second without a single mistake. This should be the difficulty of an advance technique, not a basic move. I’ve wanted to play fighting games for a long time but I simply don’t have the mechanical skill to even reach the skill floor.

Yoooo Eternal Return mentioned!

It's a pity more FGs don't do something like the Shadow Lords mode in Killer Instinct (2013). That was a really fun way of enjoying the game casually that was a lot more fulfilling that just taking a different character through the arcade/story mode.

The two biggest aspects is how different fighting games are to anything else and how punishing they can be to a weaker player. Picking up csgo, you’ve probably played a shooter before and the base concepts are easy enough to grasp that you can want to go further. For card games like hearthstone your friend group as kids probably had a yugioh phase. MOBAs are kinda weird but similar enough to top down brawlers. Fighting games don’t really have naturally transferable skills as easily, things such as holding back to block can feel really unwieldy to a new player. And with any skill gap likely causing a lot of losses, it takes a lot of dedication to get far enough over the wall to where you feel like you’re making actual progress. Once you get that far though, there’s no going back.

It has always been a pleasure to get into long hours of training to learn every button of a character in any fighting games. This aspect makes people feel good about themselves when they cook other players with their fancy new combo because it was actually difficult to pull off and I think that making quick commands like in Granblue fantasy versus where you only need 2-3 hours to understand a character’s data ( I got to top 100 euw just by playing a cheap ass character and I’m not proud of it ) It ruins the skill ceiling and can make new players compete with veterans wich is not ok.

It's pretty funny how whenever you mention MOBAs you show footage of Eternal Return which is probably *the most* uninviting MOBA because of its nature as a hybrid between a MOBA and a battle royale game, and how routing works. 10/10

I feel like fighting games are not hard it’s just when your going up against another person it’s harder tbh I used to play fighting games a lot and it wasn’t hard it’s just it feels harder cause it’s a 1v1 and I have no one to help unlike valorant where I have 4 different team members to help me they are not hard but they feel more unforgiving to me

One repeat complaint I’ve heard about trying to get more of my friends into any more traditional fighting game, even the simplest ones is the controls. If you play games you’re generally used to having a dedicated jump button. And not having that option is pretty off putting for a while. It took me months of play on and off of strive and other games to get used to it. But trying to get there in the first place was still a struggle. Platform fighters don’t suffer as much with it as having moves tied to the 8 direction you need that dedicated jump button. I don’t know how one could reconcile that but here’s hoping

I believe the biggest hurdle Fighting games face isn't how difficult they are but instead that people don't enjoy the 1v1 pvp aspect of it. With CS:GO, Leage, rocket league, you are not alone you have a team; and with games like Dark souls and Elden ring, yes you are alone and it's hard but it's oriented around PvE, and if you lose you lose to the system; in Hearthstone even if you are in a 1v1 there's luck involved so you don't have to hold the blame for losing BUT when you lose in a fighting game is because someone else bested you and only you and it's your fault it happened and people simply don't like this feeling or want to face this situation so they avoid it completely.

It feels hard because when losing in a game of 1 v 1. It feels deeply personal. However most multiplayer game, you can blame your lack of skills or bad play on your team mate. As a person who used to play fighting games competitively. When the first time I jump into Apex and trying to learn. I just found out there is so much cry babies in other genres games. (Especially FPS)

12:55 I concur with the DIAGNOSIS XD

also fighting are always 1v1 which mean you play with your friend or make a group and just queing

YOOOOO YOU PLAY ER to Gekko.