Fighting games and depth from a gaming noob's perspective.

[Mith_]

Link to original post: [drupal=880]Fighting games and depth from a gaming noob's perspective.[/drupal]



I've been looking at some non-smash 2d fighting games recently (I'm getting kinda tired of Brawl haha). We all know that fighting games were made to be competitive. I wonder what goes thru makers minds when they come out with these games.

Do they try to balance all of the characters?
Do makers favor their favorite characters over others? (lol Sakurai, all of the characters from the Kirby series are **** good in Brawl and he knows it. Ness/Kirby were good in ssb64, only made them suck in Melee so he could not seem to favor them)
Do they actually put infinites and broken mechanics in games thinking the players won't find them out?
Do they make the game as real as possible?

I wonder these things sometimes. Something I observed was that no matter how hard makers try to balance all of the characters, its not gonna happen. Casual gamers want billions of characters, competitive gamers want balance characters. In a game with several characters there's gonna be a breech in balance somewhere. What the competitive gamers try to get is as many viable characters as possible. Now that is achieveable, but very very difficult.

In a game with 100 characters, its not possible for every character to not get ***** by several others. There is no way that your favorite character won't have at least 20 bad matchups.(That would call for a pretty ****ed up tier list.) Now, with 100 characters, its impossible to have many viable characters. But with 12 characters (ssb64 xD) there's no reason for each character's bad matchups to be 60:40. Yes, there is gonna be a tier list, but the worst character should at least be able to knock 2 stocks off of the best character in the game. (I'm not very knowledgeable about SSB64. I do know Link sucked though.)

Ok ok. Well at the games I was looking at:

Marvel vs Capcom 2
BlazBlue
Guilty Gear
Street Fighter 2
Bleach: Dark Souls <-its on the DS but I played it today and its friggin amazing .


MvC2 has been out for years and people still play it! Its amazing really. I guess the makers did a really good job. I dunno much about it, I've seen people in my arcade play it and its pretty cool. I'd like to play it but the one time I did some dude that's always at the arcade decides to come and ruin our fun =/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXuVNmW_CUU&feature=channel_page

^That vid is friggin amazing.

Its sorta like every other fighting game where everybody picks the same character (Magneto lol) but it still seems fun.

One thing I think makers aim for is the ability for neophytes to pick a game up an enjoy it but allows for fighting game fans to be able to get deeper into the game, applying its many techniques and moves to their game to be able to battle other competitive players. Something that would really make it good was if a new player could get as good as a vet player in a few months (not weeks, lol brawl)of a training and research.

I still dunno how Guilty Gear and BlazBlue work. I see that it can be competitive but I've never seen anybody play it irl so its kinda hard for me to fathom. There are huge combos and what not, that seems really cool. I think I could prolly get into the competitive seen of it if I had somebody to kick my butt in it and teach me how to play it

.

Street Fighter I was surprised people play this on a competitive level. It looks boring though

Bleach was fun it was easy for me to pick up.

In conclusion a great fighting game should have a good amount of viable characters and deep gameplay. By deep I mean have combos, (advanced) techniques you can apply to your gameplay to get an advantage, a way to separate the noobs from the pros, be able to punish mistakes, and actually have to train with your character to be good with them ha ha.

Anyways thats the end of my blog don't flame me if I sound like a noob lol.

 

[ndayday]

Here is some thing I posted a while back about Smash games being tactical etc. A lot has to do with smash, but I feel as though it does a decent job of explaining how a competitive game should be:

I'd like to point out that the definition of tactical is: (I have italized important parts)

1: characterized by skillful tactics or adroit maneuvering or procedure: tactical movements.
3. of or pertaining to a maneuver or plan of action designed as an expedient toward gaining a desired end or temporary advantage.
4. expedient; calculated.

Look at the italized font for the definitions. In the case of Smash, tactical movements would refer to lag cancelling, combos, as well as other "tactical movements". These tactical movements are in fact an "action designed as an expendiant toward gaining a desired end or temporary advantage." In Smash, the temporary advantage would be getting your opponent in a combo or other tactical movement and the desired end would be KO'ing your opponent. The last part of the definition states tactical is also "expediant; calculated." With Smash, this refers to the human player calculating the position of the opponents, and then carrying out a tactical movement to gain a temporary advantage, preferably ending with a KO.

-In short, a tactical Smash game would be a game that requires the human to calculate the position and movements of the opponent and then carry out tactical movements to gain a temporary advantage, and then procceeding to KO or put the opponent in a position that is hard to get out of.

Smash 64 requires the player to calculate the opponents movements, and then punish them with combos or other forms of punishment. The ultimate goal is to KO the enemy or put them in a position that gives you an advantage to KO them, or prevent them from returning to the stage. (edgeguarding) Therefore, Smash64 is a tactical game. A part that is undetermined by a definition is the level of enjoyment of the human player in carrying out with "tactical movements." Smash 64 has satisfying combos that very often result in a KO, and the feeling to the player is satisfaction. My conclusion for Smash 64 is that it fulfills the criteria of a tactical game, while pleasing the player with tactical movements.

Melee also requires the human to calculate the opponent and punish them, but it is much harder because of the tech skill involved. The game undoubtfully has tactical movements and they are also used for edgeguarding/KO'ing the opponent. The game offers tech skill, along with the combos of the previous installment, so it is fair to say it is more pleasing to the player as it requires even more tactical skill. Melee accomplishes the criteria of a tactical game, and the increased tech skill may also contribute to the popularity of the game.

Now, Brawl. Brawl requires the human to read the opponent and punish them, BUT is seriously lacking in the "tactical movements" department. As a result of, it is generally harder to accomplish the goal of KO'ing your opponent. The little tech skill that is presented is easy to do, and doesn't take much time to learn. (Chaingrabbing, Tilt Locks, Planking) As a result, the game may not be as rewarding as a game that has very high technical skill. As a further result, the game depends on mindgames:

Psychological manipulation or strategy, used esp. to gain advantage or to intimidate.

As far as I am aware, mindgames were in the two previous installments as well, but wasn't as glaringly obvious as Brawl considering Brawl lacks tactical skill. This leads me to believe that a player is attracted to Brawl because of mindgames. Of course, a variety of other subjects influence a game, such as age, graphics, amount of character etc, but lets just focus on the tactical level of the games. Brawl requires the opponent to punish them, but lacks in tactical movement. As a result, mindgames are a much larger part of the game, and it is reasonabe to think this is one reason players are drawn to the game.

Now, lets just say another Smash game were to come out. What would be the most tactical, competitive way to make the game? We need to know what the word 'compete' means first...

To strive to outdo another for acknowledgment, a prize, supremacy, profit, etc.; engage in a contest; vie: to compete in a race; to compete in business.

Now competitive is just the adjective form of compete, so something competitive is achieving one or more of the above objectives.

A great tactical and competitive game would achieve everything tactical is, in the form of Smash of course. The game would have to allow you to:

-Read the opponent, and punish accordingly
-Have tactical movements that are satisfying, but not exceedingly difficult/easy
-Be able to recover from those movements and respond with your own
-Reach a final goal, or to KO the opponent
-Rinse and repeat without it becoming boring

In turn, this makes the community more competitive; to strive to outdo eachother for supremacy, acknowledgement, and usually a cash prize. A great Smash Bros. game would be all that, and possibly even more. Until then, we have to settle for what we have, and play whatever game WE as a person want to play. A large part of what game we play depends on how you like your competitive games. Do you like combos and just a little bit of tech skill? Maybe you like a game with great tech skill required, and you are still able to combo. You may even want to play a game that requires you to intimidate and decieve your opponent to punish them. Whatever you like, play it, learn it, and most of all, have fun.

*sources: www.dictionary.com

Yep...those are my thoughts.

 

[Jam Stunna]

Guilty Gear is unabashedly aimed at the hardcore crowd. Some of the basic stuff in that game is harder than alot of the advanced techniques you find in alot of fighting games, including Melee.

I think that the creators of Guilty Gear/ BlazBlue made up their minds to make a tournament-caliber fighting game from the outset, and as a result you have one of the most balanced games out there. Yes, there is a tier list, but any character can truly be viable with enough practice. We have a Guilty Gear tournament series in CT, and both the first and most recent events in the series were won by someone using Bridget, who is a bottom tier character.

Compare that to Brawl, or even Melee. No one, and I mean NO ONE, can win a tournament with Kirby. Or Pichu. Or G&W. Or Brawl's Falcon. Both games were designed without even thinking about character or stage balance, to the point that if you go below the high tier characters, you literally have no chance to win a major tournament. Think about some of the stage imbalances in Melee:

Peach on Dreamland
Marth on Yoshi's Story
Jiggs on Mute City
ICs on Final Destination


The advantage for the character on those stages is almost unbeatable. A competent Marth is essentially guaranteed a win on Yoshi's Story.

The thing about Smash is that we, as a community, have been able to trick ourselves into thinking we have a tournament fighter on our hands. This is done in post-production basically. By that, I mean that we ban certain stages and tactics to make the game work in a tournament setting. If you compare the rules of a Melee tournament to the rules of a Guilty Gear tournament, you'll see that our ruleset is significantly longer. That's because GG players don't have a need to ban much of anything, because the game wasn't designed with broken, anti-competitive elements like how Smash is.

It was easier in the past to make Melee seem competitive, because the underlying game was a sound one, at first glance at least. Brawl's problems are much more substantial, and I would predict that as it moves forward, they will find only problems, not solutions. The reason why Marth, Fox and Sheik won almost every Melee tournament is because they're pretty much the only characters that can. We've already seen the same thing begin to happen in Brawl with MK, Snake and D3.

Smash is not balanced at all, it wasn't designed to be. I'm no expert in GG, but it does seem like the developers went out of their way to ensure balance and competitiveness. They seem to be extending that philosophy to BlazBlue as well.

 

[Mith_]

Jam I was hoping you'd respond. Thanks your post was pretty insightful.