So Riot Games just announced like 4 games...

[StrawberryZebra]

Also fighting games are still developing an online scene, most of the serious competitive play still happens at local scenes which adds more to this regional tribalism in the genre. If more games had netcode worth a shit this might change.

Which is one of the problems really. Gamers at large have moved on from that era.

The youngest person who goes to my local is 29. Most of the people there are married with kids. Most of us, like myself, have been playing fighters that way since we were kids with console versions of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. That's the way it's always been for us.

For the new players to the genre that's a huge culture shock. They're used to matchmade games, queues and ranking systems. While some fighters do have those, they're not the main method of play yet. Even in titles like Street Fighter many players usually go through lobbies to find opponents, and having both a separate ranked queue and casual queue only serves to divide the matchmaking pool. It leaves the genre in a strange place, where they're attempting to make the games easier to get into for new players, but at the same time not drive away their existing player bases. The result is the player base is split across multiple modes of play rather than having a singular point of entry into a match.

I agree that netcode issues are a big part of why this is. Particularly in the early days of online play it was janky as hell. It's usually better now, though still not perfect - I actually have a Street Fighter 5 replay saved where I had Ken Shoryuken his way out of a Chun Li Super when I was 21 hits into the combo. But we've made some pretty big steps towards solving that problem, internet connections are faster and more stable than ever and GGPO Netcode usually gives solid and reliable performance. Sooner or later fighting games are going to have to fully embrace online play in a format to suit modern audiences, I do hope that doesn't spell the death of more local scenes, but online play is the only way to facilitate a global audience for a game.

I would love to see fighting games being able to capture global audiences in the way that LoL has. Or Fortnight. Or World of Warcraft. They can't do that if the genre still has one foot in the past. They need to be able to engage and retain new players in addition to the older school player base and I don't think that is going to happen without adopting the systems that other genres use.

[Tech614]

Only titles with cross play are SFV and KI and both are console exclusives that happen to have cross play with PC.

Meanwhile Harada sits on his ass and laughs when asked about it for their titles, that aren't exclusives and could use it even more.

Also I disagree with netcode being ok, it's ok within reasonable distance but that's about it. Most fighting games are still made by JP companies and the netcode is made to work well in Japan. SFV, DBFZ, Tekken 7, GGXrd, BBCT are all terrible if you're playing even halfway across the US let alone coast to coast. KI and the NRS games are better in this regard but still not great if going long distances. Smash netcode is a fucking joke entirely, if we want to count it lol.

These devs test the netcode and think it's fine cause it works in Japan, which is half the size of Texas and think it's gonna work well for the rest of the world... hell no.

I can play most online games with friends fine even when traveling abroad, but fighting games just forget about it. KI probably is the closest to having playable netcode across oceans but still not nearly as playable as most other games are.

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Bamco already giving riot terrible ideas on how to monetize a fighting game now I see. Selling training mode tools to help you get better at the game as paid DLC. Between this, their terrible pro tour prize pools and no cross play I'm not sure why the scene loves to praise this company. They are pretty much everything wrong with fighting games.

[StrawberryZebra]

Also, new player experience is almost always poor. Pay $60, log in, wait in a queue for 15 minutes, get matched against some veteran that beats you in 12 seconds and you have no idea why. Decide to play the single player content instead and then uninstall.

And of course the biggest strength of the genre is also a weakness: The mechanics being somewhat opaque at first and very unforgiving, the execution requirements, the raw amount of knowledge to amass, and so on. It's easy to frustrated new players and scare them off, as I saw happen time and again back when I was playing more often and trying to help new players. (And it doesn't help that there's a lot of "midcore" level players who love to beat up newbies to make themselves feel better.)

Rising Thunder had one button special moves, but they had a short cooldown before you could use them again. That kind of system is near identical to LoL, as well as other Genres like Hero Shooters and MMOs too, so players shouldn't feel completely out of their depth when it comes to even getting to the stage where they can perform all of their characters moveset. Some of the input commands, particularly full circle and DP inputs, tend to cause new players a lot of problems. The motion itself is something they've never had to do in any other genre before.

It immediately gets players over that initial execution frusration, where you want to DP as an anti air but end up firing off a Hadouken into space instead. Which is good - It avoids a lot of that initial uncertainty around "can this player do that special move as a counter?" and puts everyone on an even playing field to start with. It doesn't jump right over the execution curve of course, but it does skip a lot of the early frustrations and spending hours in the training room to get even basic execution down.

Having a system players are already familiar with, and the one their favourite LoL Champs already use, is probably the most ideal way to encourage LoL players to give it a try. Assuming the move sets are similar, there's already a lot of transferable knowledge that can be applied from one game to the other potentially helping to cut down on the learning curve further.

As for the mechanics... Well that's always going to be the rub. At their core, the most stripped down fighters are easy enough to understand when you break them apart for new players. That Rock/Paper/Scissors trinity of Attack/Block/Throw that is the corner stone of almost all fighters is a straight forwards enough concept to grasp. Where it gets complicated is when you're trying to eyeball which moves are safe on block and which can get you punished, which are true block strings, frame traps. When can you use a reversal to get you out of pressure. That's where the game gets complicated - There's a lot of working knowledge you need of each match up.

I feel like the FGC will always be a primarily spectator sport. People find them interesting, they like a lot of the personalities, find the gameplay impressive, but just don't want to dive into something like that on their own

I've always considered that the appeal of both eSports and Sport Sports was that you could try it yourself at home. When I was younger everyone I knew, myself included, was trying their absolute best to get the David Beckham free kick down. Just like how you can try doing a Daigo parry in Street Fighter. The idea that one day you could pull off those feats of skill for yourself is a strong hook to get people interested in my opinion.

Meanwhile Harada sits on his ass and laughs when asked about it for their titles, that aren't exclusives and could use it even more.

Relevant;


I agree, Tekken would really benefit from crossplay. But Harada has made his position very clear it seems. I don't agree with it, but I don't think he'll be changing his mind.

I'm hoping that Riot can go full cross play with every platform they release on. Unlike Bamco or Capcom, they're not relying on a platform like Steam to distribute or host their games, so in theory they could integrate it within their existing network structures. Having a much broader pool of players in theory should mean a larger community and much more players at all skill levels.

These devs test the netcode and think it's fine cause it works in Japan, which is half the size of Texas and think it's gonna work well for the rest of the world... hell no.

I live in the UK and I find that for most fighters the games I have are fine with players in Ireland France, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. It gets a bit hit and miss as you start aproaching Scandanavian countries and Italy, some games are fine others might as well be in stop motion. Much beyond there and the games tend to be too poor to be a worthwhile experience.

GGPO netcode tends to be a much more reliable option than whatever in house one that Capcom and Arc use though. I've had good matches of Skullgirls with players as far away as Finland without significant drops in quality. I can't comment on how well it works in other parts of the world, but it definately works well enough in Europe. I do agree with the main point though - Just because the netcode works fine in Japan, a country which has a lot of infrastructure to support it and is a smaller land mass, that doesn't mean it's going to work well when applied across an entire continent.

Japanese developers usually don't have the experience to deliver on a project that scope in the way that Blizzard, Riot or Activision do either.

I don't think it helps that fighters are perhaps the one genre where a latency of 60 ms can make a huge difference to the game play. Being a frame behind your opponent is such an overwhelming disadvantage for us, where in an FPS or an MMO it's far less of an issue altogether. It still makes a difference of course, but not to the extent that it will make some combos and punishes literally impossible.