[Xrd] News & (Theoretical) Gameplay Discussion

[Narroo]

Um, isn't that like everything in a fighting game? It gives a clear advantage to those who learned it over those who didn't.

20-30 minutes of practice to get it down and daily practice isn't too much to ask in my opinion, but that is indeed dedication.

That said, I wouldn't mind the FRC windows being slightly increased at all.

People are assuming here that if FRC's and other execution barriers suddenly became easier everyone would be a grandmaster at the game. Ultimately, the real skill in the game doesn't come from being able to hit that combo everytime- that's the baseline. The real skill is how you deal with other players.

This begs the question then: Why demand "dedication" to be expressed in arbitrary forms such as execution? If someone is truly good at the game its because they like it and play it often, which IS dedication. Demanding that people have to go through rituals and traditions to prove they're good at the game for the sake of being "a real Guilty Gear fan" is silly.

It's a game! Play it if you like it, and you'll get good at what matters eventually. Demanding that it should take arbitrary longer to get good at the game to "confirm" that the players like it is an irrational fanaticism that makes the game worse, because let's be honest: If you're given the choice between two different fun games, one which takes a month to learn and have fun with, and one that takes a day, which is the better?

EDIT: He's a point I think most people missed: If someone is trying to learn things like FRCs and what not, they just picked up the game probably. In that case, how can they like the game enough to dedicate themselves to it? Does someone pull out a random strum viper and decide: "THIS GAME IS AMAZING. I MUST MASTER THIS!"? Let's be honest, no. Demanding that people need to dedicate themselves to the game to simply pull off BnB's is pretty much saying that they need to decide how much they love the game before they can even play it properly. Doesn't anyone else think that's backwards?

Edited June 10, 2013 by Narroo

[YoYoCheese]

The way I see it is this: competitive fighting games are a test of skill, correct? (All forms of competition are a test of something.) Fighting games, however, are not just a test of strategic ability, they are a test of technical skills as well. With that in mind I believe that making things too easy would be a bad idea.

Let's use chess as an analogy. In chess, next to no skill is required to pick up a piece and move it to where you want. The game is a test of pure strategy and tactics; all of the skill and difficulty involved with that game stems entirely from the strategic end of things.

Now let's say that someone created a new form of chess called dart chess. The rules are exactly the same except for that, whenever you try to take your opponent's piece you must throw three darts at a board from a specific distance away and score a certain amount of points otherwise your opponent captures your piece instead. This form of chess is no longer just a test of just strategy and tactics, it is now also a test of technical ability (throwing darts in this case). In order to be good at this game you not only have to have to be smarter than your opponent you also need to be good at throwing darts as well.

Fighting games are like dart chess. Most of them are not and should not be just a pure test of strategy (things like Senor Footsies are exceptions). They are also testing things like your reactions, the best combo you can do consistently in a given situation, how good you are at blocking, how good you are at creating tight, effective blockstrings, etc.

I'm not advocating making fighting games prohibitively hard to play. In fact I believe that the ideal for fighting games is to be easy to learn, difficult to master and also that there is such a thing as something that's too difficult and needs to be made easier. Nevertheless, a beginner shouldn't be able to pull of everything in the game right out of the gate unless they are experienced with other fighters or extraordinarily talented. They should be able to perform all of their character's moves, most of the system mechanics, basic movement for most characters, and at least a couple of suboptimal, beginner-level combos. Everything else should require skill and\or a decent amount of practice.

[Silmerion]

I'm not advocating making fighting games prohibitively hard to play. In fact I believe that the ideal for fighting games is to be easy to learn, difficult to master and also that there is such a thing as something that's too difficult and needs to be made easier. Nevertheless, a beginner shouldn't be able to pull of everything in the game right out of the gate unless they are experienced with other fighters or extraordinarily talented. They should be able to perform all of their character's moves, most of the system mechanics, basic movement for most characters, and at least a couple of suboptimal, beginner-level combos. Everything else should require skill and\or a decent amount of practice.

Beginners already can't do everything right out the gate.

Ever watch a new fighting game player play Persona 4: Arena? P4A is the easiest fighting game Arcsys has ever made, but newbies still can't do much more than autocombos and other basic things like Yukiko's projectiles. I've watched many otherwise experienced gamers struggle with fireball motions for literally days. On the other hand, newbies can still have a lot of fun with P4A because of autocombo; they know it doesn't do much, they're not stupid, but they're also relieved that they can do something worthwhile, instead of nothing like with most fighting games.

I'm not saying that GG should be as mechanically simple as Persona (though, full disclosure here, I don't think I'd mind so much if it were - I like Persona a lot, minus the whole hold-button-to-tech thing). What I'm pointing out is that we, as competitive fighting gamers, are at risk of losing perspective on our own situation: fighting games are complex affairs, full of frustration and the embarrassment of losing to your fingers rather than to your opponent, and GG is one of the more involved entries in the genre. A little more accessibility in the right places, whether that's FRCs or not, wouldn't kill us.

Edited June 10, 2013 by Silmerion

[shinr]

Demanding that people need to dedicate themselves to the game to simply pull off BnB's is pretty much saying that they need to decide how much they love the game before they can even play it properly.

Isn't that a case with every single competitive sports you can name?

[mAc Chaos]

EDIT: He's a point I think most people missed: If someone is trying to learn things like FRCs and what not, they just picked up the game probably. In that case, how can they like the game enough to dedicate themselves to it?

Well, how did everybody on Dustloop manage.

That said, it only makes sense to ease players into the more advanced topics. You don't just throw a 1st grader into a calculus class.

[Narroo]

Isn't that a case with every single competitive sports you can name?

No, not really. As long as you're physically able you can play any popular sport. That's why they're popular! Anyone can kick or throw a ball. I don't need to spend weeks practicing how to throw a football to play a game of football with friends and get the general idea. I don't have to be able to Rainbow or do a flip in soccer to play. I won't be good at soccer, obviously, but I could still play and get the general idea. I could play against my friends, who aren't much better, and we could play the game as it's meant to, minus advanced strategies, and tell if we like the game.

Conversely, with GG we're talking about basic mechanics that require training just to pull off some individual moves, let alone some character's BnB's. Why? Just because. And there are a number of mechanics which if you can't perform, or don't know about, you just simply can't play the game "right." You and your friends can play together and button mash all month, but it's not really going to be the same game until you invest large amounts of time into execution requirements.

Imagine if we made a game of "dart Chess." The same exact game as chess, except now you have to throw darts on a board to place pieces. This would be the stupidest thing ever. You can argue that it would take more skill to play "dart chess." That's technically true. That's not a good thing though. The dart element would completely work against the strategic play of chess. You wouldn't be even able to play the "chess game" until you became a master of darts, in which case it would be something of a non-factor that adds nothing to the game. All it would do is to prevent anyone from playing chess until they could ace their shots 9/10 times, and only THEN could they begin playing the game for real.

Why? Because some guys like playing darts so they demanded shoving it into chess? Darts is it's own game for a reason, and note the fact that it isn't considered to be even close to the same as chess. Dart Chess would be an exercise in arbitrary game requirements that do not help the game at high level play, and hinder it at low level play. It's pointless.

In the end, a game should be designed to be lean and mean. All game elements should exist for a reason that aids in the goal of the game: Fun. If it doesn't aid this, it should be removed. Throwing in requirements to prove you have a commitment, or satisfy a random person's arbitrary accomplishment*, or whatever, isn't good game design.

* Sense of accomplishment is something a bit dicey. Many games are difficult and give you a sense of accomplishment for wining, which is good. But these games are usually difficult for a reason and do not have random fluff added on for the sake of difficulty and pride. Devil May Cry and Ikaruga are difficult because they need to be to work, and thus the games are fun to play AND you get the bonus of feeling accomplished. Playing a random IWBTG rip-off on the web does not because the game sucks and the difficulty exists for the sake of itself. That's the short of it.

[Rhannmah]

Well then go play chess if you're only interested in the strategic element. If execution is a pointless hurdle for you, you're playing the wrong games.

[mAc Chaos]

A better comparison is sports. It involves strategy AND execution. And it's not true that anyone can play, at least not at a high level. If our definition of being able to play is that they can just kick the ball around, that is basically the same as just mashing buttons and doin whatever in a fighter at the low level. In which case they are perfectly able to.

[Digital Watches]

Has this topic looped back around again? Does anyone think anyone's going to change their mind? Has anything new been said?

Let's say we're in some platonic ideal of a fighting game. Assume everyone had perfect execution, never dropped a combo, jump installed when they wanted to, hit their 1F links, could do every move and every cancel consistently. I'm not talking perfect reaction time, or perfect knowledge, just the ability to do the thing they thought they should do at any given time. Let's say you know nothing about your opponents' experience. How much they've practiced to get to this point, what their character in particular requires them to do, how they go about learning. Let's further say that you know nothing about what the game requires to execute. You somehow have selective amnesia, where you can execute perfectly, but you don't remember the steps it took to get there. Maybe this has happened because the controls have become perfect. The game plugs directly into your brain, and your character is just an extension of your body. Maybe the game is controlled normally, but you and your opponent have both spent an ungodly amount of hours, and now execute perfectly. The details don't matter. The point is you will never drop something you meant to do. Neither will the person you're playing.

So you have these fast decisions to make. You must block mixups, you must escape pressure, you must confirm hits into combos, you must control space with movement and hitboxes, you must try to discern whether you're at advantage and can attack, or should keep blocking, or need to bait something. If it's a complicated game like Guilty Gear, you must decide how to block a given attack, how to spend your meter, whether it's worth it to burst. When you're on offense, you must come up with ways to get around your opponent's blocking. Force them to react quickly. Trick them into reacting wrong. Maybe even confound their timing such that, despite doing exactly what they wanted to do, they still executed wrong, because they were crossed up, or the situation changed for some other reason. You must also weight attacking unpredictably versus attacking such that your confirms can be done on reaction or with a sufficiently good guess, and will net you good damage and an advantageous position. Do you still feel that you are playing a fighting game? Do you find the game exciting, interesting, sufficiently fast-paced? Do you feel that every match will look different, even between the same players?

I personally would say yes. Some people would say no.

On the flip side, do you feel you've accomplished something when your opponent accidentally taps up and gets hit when they meant to block? When you win because they dropped a combo? When you punish them for a move they wanted to, and could have FRCed if they had practiced more? I don't. That seems like a worse match, and a win I don't deserve. It feels better to win than to lose, but it feels better to outsmart or out-react or trick someone than to win by their failure to use the controls. It is not significantly different to me than winning because someone walked into the room and cut the cord to their controller at a critical moment. I don't care about what the other person has practiced in the past, that's a black box of no interest to me. I care about what is happening now, in the match itself. I care about having more and better people to play against.

There's a difference between saying "That's how the game is, deal with it or play something else" and saying "That's how the game should be, I like that as a feature." There's no point in pining and wishing that any particular game you want to play were easier, and that you didn't have to work as hard. We deal with the game the way it is, and we do what has to be done to play it at as high a level as we can. But when we talk about what should be the case, the status quo is irrelevant. Saying we should deal with what we have is not the same as saying we should never try to improve it as new games come out.

And demanding an entry barrier to the game is demanding that there be less competent competition. The highest level of challenge a competitive game can offer is the strongest players. The people you actually have to beat to win. If a game is harder to just make the dude on the screen do a thing, less people will get to that highest level. Predictably. Inevitably. Unnecessary entry barriers allow people to be big fish in small ponds. I'm not saying everyone who wants them is thinking that way, but I am saying that that's all it will ever accomplish. Consider what you actually want to get out of fighting games.

Or don't. Like I said, people's opinions on this seem to be set in stone. I'm sure we'll have the exact same conversation again in another week. I might have written this post before already, for all I know.

[TheRealBobMan]

So, in a world where Xrd is a Xbone exclusive, will anyone here still buy it?

[Narroo]

Has this topic looped back around again? Does anyone think anyone's going to change their mind? Has anything new been said?

Let's say we're in some platonic ideal of a fighting game. Assume everyone had perfect execution, never dropped a combo, jump installed when they wanted to, hit their 1F links, could do every move and every cancel consistently. I'm not talking perfect reaction time, or perfect knowledge, just the ability to do the thing they thought they should do at any given time. Let's say you know nothing about your opponents' experience. How much they've practiced to get to this point, what their character in particular requires them to do, how they go about learning. Let's further say that you know nothing about what the game requires to execute. You somehow have selective amnesia, where you can execute perfectly, but you don't remember the steps it took to get there. Maybe this has happened because the controls have become perfect. The game plugs directly into your brain, and your character is just an extension of your body. Maybe the game is controlled normally, but you and your opponent have both spent an ungodly amount of hours, and now execute perfectly. The details don't matter. The point is you will never drop something you meant to do. Neither will the person you're playing.

So you have these fast decisions to make. You must block mixups, you must escape pressure, you must confirm hits into combos, you must control space with movement and hitboxes, you must try to discern whether you're at advantage and can attack, or should keep blocking, or need to bait something. If it's a complicated game like Guilty Gear, you must decide how to block a given attack, how to spend your meter, whether it's worth it to burst. When you're on offense, you must come up with ways to get around your opponent's blocking. Force them to react quickly. Trick them into reacting wrong. Maybe even confound their timing such that, despite doing exactly what they wanted to do, they still executed wrong, because they were crossed up, or the situation changed for some other reason. You must also weight attacking unpredictably versus attacking such that your confirms can be done on reaction or with a sufficiently good guess, and will net you good damage and an advantageous position. Do you still feel that you are playing a fighting game? Do you find the game exciting, interesting, sufficiently fast-paced? Do you feel that every match will look different, even between the same players?

I personally would say yes. Some people would say no.

On the flip side, do you feel you've accomplished something when your opponent accidentally taps up and gets hit when they meant to block? When you win because they dropped a combo? When you punish them for a move they wanted to, and could have FRCed if they had practiced more? I don't. That seems like a worse match, and a win I don't deserve. It feels better to win than to lose, but it feels better to outsmart or out-react or trick someone than to win by their failure to use the controls. It is not significantly different to me than winning because someone walked into the room and cut the cord to their controller at a critical moment. I don't care about what the other person has practiced in the past, that's a black box of no interest to me. I care about what is happening now, in the match itself. I care about having more and better people to play against.

There's a difference between saying "That's how the game is, deal with it or play something else" and saying "That's how the game should be, I like that as a feature." There's no point in pining and wishing that any particular game you want to play were easier, and that you didn't have to work as hard. We deal with the game the way it is, and we do what has to be done to play it at as high a level as we can. But when we talk about what should be the case, the status quo is irrelevant. Saying we should deal with what we have is not the same as saying we should never try to improve it as new games come out.

And demanding an entry barrier to the game is demanding that there be less competent competition. The highest level of challenge a competitive game can offer is the strongest players. The people you actually have to beat to win. If a game is harder to just make the dude on the screen do a thing, less people will get to that highest level. Predictably. Inevitably. Unnecessary entry barriers allow people to be big fish in small ponds. I'm not saying everyone who wants them is thinking that way, but I am saying that that's all it will ever accomplish. Consider what you actually want to get out of fighting games.

Or don't. Like I said, people's opinions on this seem to be set in stone. I'm sure we'll have the exact same conversation again in another week. I might have written this post before already, for all I know.

Thank you! There is always an execution element to an action game. But, there's a difference between route execution and interactive execution. route is simply things keeping your combos together; interactive is things like mixing up and blocking. I prefer the latter because it is not an arbitrary exercise in difficulty. It exists for a reason and is fun.

And as far as the sports analogy goes, two things:

One, at some point, yes, you do have to practice. If you want big muscles and a good throw, you have to work for it. The catch here is that you HAVE to. It's a rule of biology, and no one has made a magic fitness pill yet. With what we're talking about in fighting games though, we're talking about arbitrary requirements. We're asking: "If the FRC window and other moves can be made easier with little or no impact on the game, should we? No, we should we keep execution artificially difficult?" That's like saying quarterbacks should be running in lead weights to make the game harder and more impressive. They'd never agree to it because professional football is already demanding and hard enough naturally.

And secondly: There's a difference between playing poorly and lacking advanced tactics and simply being unable to play the game. In the Dart Chess example, you're not playing the game if you can't throw darts. You're practicing your dart throwing so you can maybe learn how to play chess eventually if you stick with it. This is fundamentally different from making bad throws and passes in Basket Ball. Also, the dart-chess example is an exaggeration; Guilty Gear isn't that bad, we're arguing the principal of the matter at this point it seems.

[White Man]

Or don't. Like I said, people's opinions on this seem to be set in stone. I'm sure we'll have the exact same conversation again in another week. I might have written this post before already, for all I know.

One of the many possibilities... of the Continuum Shift.

Awesome post, though. Ditto Narroo's contributions.

The only thing I have to add is a reminder of the ugly-yet-unavoidable fact that at least some of this "keep the game as difficult as possible to play" mentality comes from that which has been (I believe) a cancerous tumor on the fighting game fandom since its inception: pride. Not that giddy little ego boost you get from winning a match or the sense of purpose that drives you to perfect your skill at any hobby, but that filthy emotional toxin that whispers into the ear of every asshole who's ever used the word "scrub" unironically and tells them they can achieve respect and adoration if the world knows they're really good at a video game. I'm not talking about playing for pride, where your desire to overcome your own limitations fuels you on a continual journey of self-improvement—I'm talking about playing for pride, where the hours and days and weeks spent in training mode are all for the purpose of making sure everyone knows you are the Alpha Male at simulated martial arts. The game NEEDS to be hard for the player motivated by pride, not because it's more enjoyable or more satisfying, but because a harder game demands greater street cred.

[Agni]

Well, how did everybody on Dustloop manage.

DL represents players who are absolutely serious. We're not a good representation of the standard player. DL'ers are like professional racers compared to some dude who does casual race days. Same thing, technically, but the real differences are immense.

[Kyosuke Kagami]

Tempted into putting agni's words in my sig

But heck no, Xrd becoming XO exclusive, i don't see it happening

[Rhiya]

One, at some point, yes, you do have to practice. If you want big muscles and a good throw, you have to work for it. The catch here is that you HAVE to. It's a rule of biology, and no one has made a magic fitness pill yet. With what we're talking about in fighting games though, we're talking about arbitrary requirements. We're asking: "If the FRC window and other moves can be made easier with little or no impact on the game, should we? No, we should we keep execution artificially difficult?" That's like saying quarterbacks should be running in lead weights to make the game harder and more impressive. They'd never agree to it because professional football is already demanding and hard enough naturally.

A lot of the difficulty of fighting games comes from their highest levels of play being exploiting the game as hard as possible, combined with the exploitable nature of the basic FG system. Better players will find things that help them win, but they'll probably be hard to do, and probably aren't things the devs expected or accounted for a lot of the time. When you add the next bit of the mix in -- that the FGC at large (and myself, honestly) are opposed to patches that fix unintentional "features" -- you're just looking at something that's going to be hard by nature. It's not that FGs were made to be hard; playing them competitively revealed hard things that gave people an advantage, and those things stuck around to become part of the culture.

There are attempts to resist that, now -- autocombo in P4A, for example, or hold to tech (which I love) -- and I see them as good, since I'm inclined to believe the real game is against the other player, not your own execution. But even those are imperfect, and in their infancy.

Tempted into putting agni's words in my sig

Needs to be juxtaposed with an SKD quote, for multiple levels of irony.

[Agni]

Tempted into putting agni's words in my sig

But heck no, Xrd becoming XO exclusive, i don't see it happening

I have no idea if that means you agree with me or if you think my post was so dumb it needs to be paraded around for all to see its stupidity

[shinr]

Asking again, how will Arc will handle Xrd if they decide to follow the F2P route, or at least make a separate F2P version?

And just not to sound repetitive: What are the chances that they will have Young May and Young Bridget as DLC?

[Kurushii]

Asking again, how will Arc will handle Xrd if they decide to follow the F2P route, or at least make a separate F2P version?

And just not to sound repetitive: What are the chances that they will have Young May and Young Bridget as DLC?

No one knows, and no one knows.

[Sanger Zonvolt]

Asking again, how will Arc will handle Xrd if they decide to follow the F2P route, or at least make a separate F2P version?

And just not to sound repetitive: What are the chances that they will have Young May and Young Bridget as DLC?

After playing Tekken Revolution a lot today, I pray to Ishiwatari that GG is not F2P at all.

[mynus]

Wait...Guilty Gear is hard to play? Son, go spend time emailing arcsys and cry to them instead rather than posting/complaining here. Or better yet, *gasp*...actually spend some time learning guilty gear. Jesús Christo. Just cause something takes effort to learn doesn't mean it is difficult. Its like this thread is the pre-whining outlet for Xrd.

[Rhiya]

That's a really confusing point. Most difficult things aren't nearly as difficult once you know how to do them, but that doesn't stop them from being difficult to begin with. For example, I don't have trouble doing CSEX Litchi combos now, but it took me ridiculous amounts of effort to learn them. The fact that I can do them now doesn't mean they were any easier to learn then.

What is something you would consider difficult -- something the difficulty of which gets no easier no matter how much effort you put in? Or do you consider "difficult to learn" separate from regular difficulty?

[Narroo]

That's a really confusing point. Most difficult things aren't nearly as difficult once you know how to do them, but that doesn't stop them from being difficult to begin with. For example, I don't have trouble doing CSEX Litchi combos now, but it took me ridiculous amounts of effort to learn them. The fact that I can do them now doesn't mean they were any easier to learn then.

What is something you would consider difficult -- something the difficulty of which gets no easier no matter how much effort you put in? Or do you consider "difficult to learn" separate from regular difficulty?

Well, difficult is difficult. If it takes a lot of effort, it takes effort. Rather, I like to think of good difficulties and bad difficulties.

[Rhiya]

Well, difficult is difficult. If it takes a lot of effort, it takes effort. Rather, I like to think of good difficulties and bad difficulties.

The problem is, by that logic, almost nothing you can work at is difficult. 1f links? Not difficult. Multivariable calculus? Not difficult. Finding the love of your life? Not difficult.

It's a very strange definition that doesn't mesh with everyday use of the word.

I'm assuming you're talking about separating "requires effort" and "difficulty," though.

[Xtra_Zero]

When you think about it, "difficult" is just a term for something that the person in question isn't used to doing yet. When you were a kid, walking was difficult. Even when something you've technically never done in your life comes easy the first time, it's because you're accustomed to doing something similar. You could also take it to mean something that someone just doesn't want to do, etc. It's really not a very objective term at all no matter how you look at it.

[White Man]

Sssssssttt. Haaaahhh. Man, what if, like, difficulty doesn't even exist? I mean, what if, like—bear with me here—Guilty Gear is reality, okay, and we're in the game? Y'know? Oh man, I'm getting a little freaked out here.