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casual players, what do you want in your fighting games?

Talking mostly about SFV as basis of suggestion:

Lots of vs. AI modes with XP bars to fill, stats more items to purchase in game, they need to add a sense of progression. Like a crazy "Final Fight" mode that plays like Tekken Force with RPG elements to gain more stats and equipment.

Getting online only to see your LP stabilized (win here, loss there, repeat), feels like a waste of time. Progress would hook people.

Also, DAILY activities. Login rewards. This weekly mission system is garbage.
 
Better input commands and more lenient frame buffers.

I've taken the time to learn Tekken's system but overall I only felt Virtua fighter was accessible and even then I would handle things radically different.


For starters, players should be able to choose between back to block and a dedicated button.

Secondly dash and jump should be tied to a button and probably should be the same button.

Tekken had a great idea to break up throw combos but there should be options to counter throw as if this was a wrestling game.
 
1) less execution barrier. why do I have to do quarter circle and a button to do hadoken when you could just make it one button.

2) pve content that is interesting and, at least for the first half, should be an extended tutorial teaching you how to properly play the game, identify and respond to certain moves, etc. I want to learn without even realizing I'm learning if that makes sense.

3) probably the most controversial, not be 1v1. 1v1 skill based games are just a slaughterhouse for people like me that can't git gud.
 
jon bones said:
more emphasis on mind games vs. combo execution
Click to expand...

This can't be stressed enough. Nothing turns me off more than the base fundamentals causing endless frustration that steals away my attention and focus on the core of the game.

Also a meaty solo component helps. Really can't be expected to dive into the online arena without context, preparation, and hooks. I want to love so many fighting games, but so few of them want to woo me.
 
Permanently A said:
1) less execution barrier. why do I have to do quarter circle and a button to do hadoken when you could just make it one button.

2) pve content that is interesting and, at least for the first half, should be an extended tutorial teaching you how to properly play the game, identify and respond to certain moves, etc. I want to learn without even realizing I'm learning if that makes sense.

3) probably the most controversial, not be 1v1. 1v1 skill based games are just a slaughterhouse for people like me that can't git gud.
Click to expand...

I agree with 2 but strongly disagree with 3.
 
-I want stages to be physically different, not just reskins.
-I want a few of said stages (maybe 1 in 5) to have more advanced mechanics. These should always be predictable, reaction-reliant, and should not favor any particular character any moreso than layout differences can.
-I want characters to have unique mechanics. Clones are still fine as roster filler.
-Characters/skins should feel meaningful to unlock. Do not unlock a new character simply for winning a single match. It's ok if one character is substantially more difficult to unlock, it gives me something to work towards.
-Do not have extra modes if said modes aren't fun.
-Material (skins, alternate moves) related to a character should take no more than twice as much time as it took to unlock that a character.
-I would prefer to pay for an expansion as opposed to individual characters. This should also change the look and feel to adjust to the new roster size.
-Meaningful single player content
-Skins should be more than just recolors

Most of these complaints are lobbed at a mix of SF and smash.
 
There are lots of fighting games with meaty single player modes. Why not ask for recommendations instead of complaining that you don't like Street Fighter V?

Likewise, lots of fighting games have simplified inputs. Others have robust training modes. You don't have to play street fighter, nor is street fighter the beginning and end of all fighting games.

Regiruler said:
-I want stages to be physically different, not just reskins.
-I want a few of said stages (maybe 1 in 5) to have more advanced mechanics. These should always be predictable, reaction-reliant, and should not favor any particular character any moreso than layout differences can.
-I want characters to have unique mechanics. Clones are still fine as roster filler.
-Characters/skins should feel meaningful to unlock. Do not unlock a new character simply for winning a single match. It's ok if one character is substantially more difficult to unlock, it gives me something to work towards.
-Do not have extra modes if said modes aren't fun.
-Material (skins, alternate moves) related to a character should take no more than twice as much time as it took to unlock that a character.
-I would prefer to pay for an expansion as opposed to individual characters. This should also change the look and feel to adjust to the new roster size.
-Meaningful single player content
-Skins should be more than just recolors

Most of these complaints are lobbed at a mix of SF and smash.
Click to expand...

For example most of these actually are in Virtua Fighter 5. Have you been playing virtua fighter?
 
Regiruler said:
-I want stages to be physically different, not just reskins.
-I want a few of said stages (maybe 1 in 5) to have more advanced mechanics. These should always be predictable, reaction-reliant, and should not favor any particular character any moreso than layout differences can.
-I want characters to have unique mechanics. Clones are still fine as roster filler.
-Characters/skins should feel meaningful to unlock. Do not unlock a new character simply for winning a single match. It's ok if one character is substantially more difficult to unlock, it gives me something to work towards.
-Do not have extra modes if said modes aren't fun.
-Material (skins, alternate moves) related to a character should take no more than twice as much time as it took to unlock that a character.
-I would prefer to pay for an expansion as opposed to individual characters. This should also change the look and feel to adjust to the new roster size.
-Meaningful single player content
-Skins should be more than just recolors
Click to expand...
But then you'd run into the issue of splitting the online player-base, which was a problem that SFIV faced. This is why games like SFV, Smash 4, & MKX opt for separate DLC characters that you can also buy in a bundle if you so choose.
 
I just want a big roster. Coming off SF IV to V I miss a lot of characters I enjoyed playing in IV and my friends do too. When we get together we don't play SF at all anymore. :(
 
"In terms of content im guessing that an arcade mode, substantial story mode are required but anything else that would guarantee your purchase? "


That's most of it, unlocks like costumes or chars would be great too. I just want a good deal of single player content. And a combat system where I don't have to spend hours and hours in a practice mode to start getting somewhere


"Is good online vital for you? Unlockables, or everything unlocked at the start? Do you feel fighting games due to their nature should be cheaper than other games?"


Online as long as it's decently playable is fine, don't really use it though.
Unlockables are good.
Can't really say. If it's designed in a way where multiplayer is all that matters and everything else was rushed or if there's little else...I just wouldn't pick it up.


"What about number of characters? Would say 16 completely individual characters be enough or would you seek over 20 with some who are similar?"


this doesn't matter too much to me as long as I have someone I like.
 
Arcade mode, Vs CPU mode, Story mode.

Golden Arena mode from P4U2 would be nice to have. Or twists on Survival like Guilty Gear's or Blazblue's Aybss mode.

Just give me content that lets me play it by myself and lets me have fun by myself. If I enjoy it enough to have others play, great. But if you give me NOTHING to let me enjoy it by myself, how the hell can I spread the gospel?
 
Tawney Bomb said:
I just want a big roster. Coming off SF IV to V I miss a lot of characters I enjoyed playing in IV and my friends do too. When we get together we don't play SF at all anymore. :(
Click to expand...
It's really a Catch-22 situation concerning roster size. Fighting games that redo everything from scratch usually start out with smaller rosters. SFIV for example started with 16 characters for its arcade release and ended at 44 after 5+ years of updates & DLC. Same applies to SFV (started with 16, will likely end at 46 assuming they do 6 characters per season until 2020). If you want a larger roster early on, you'd either have to sacrifice visual fidelity for the character models (KoFXIV) or reuse animations &/or voice clips from older games (Tekken 7, Smash 4). You can't just get to 50+ characters on Day 1 without either the mentioned sacrifices or 7+ years of development.
 
Modes:

-Arcade
-Training
-Versus (player vs player, player vs cpu, cpu vs cpu)
-Trials (each trial is shown for you via replay and button presses)
-Tutorial mode where it actually teaches you how to play and do effective combos, all while making it fun and rewarding to do so
-Challenges (challenge tower, weapon master mode)
-Story mode (MK9, MKX, Injustice - a mode where you are forced to play with all of the characters, with professionally voiced and recorded dialog, show that you put effort into the story and not let it drag out or be lackluster)
-Extra minigames (extra battles like Soul Calibur 2, test your sight, test your might, test your strike, test your luck, grab the coins, board the platforms, break the targets, multi man smash, break car, break barrels, minigames where it tests your abilities/reactions from characters, etc)
-Plenty of unlockables (Mortal Kombat 9, Soul Calibur 2, and even Smash Bros got the single player down correctly)

Roster:

-At least 25-30 characters with different play-styles, with constant DLC adding new characters round the year, not just one character every few months like SFV.

Stages:

-Bare minimum of 20 stages to start. Ideally every character should have a unique stage but that is tough. DLC should improve on this quite a bit.

Multiplayer:

-Good netcode
-Accurate matchmaking
-Ranked matches
-Casual matches
-Private matches
-Leaderboards
-Online lobbies
-Spectator mode in lobbies
-Online training
-Ability to play mini-games online

Misc:

-Get into games as quickly as possible and start having fun (UMVC3 and USFIV for PS4 are quick to load into matches)
-Do not launch a fighting game like SFV but don’t get over-ambitious and release a game with so many modes that are broken or worst of all, not fun. Take your time and get it right!
-Good UI and menus go a long way
-Listen to your fanbase and FGC on what they want
-Cross-platform play
-Ability to temporarily unlock all characters and stages for tournament play
-Reward players for continuously coming back to the game
-Give a sense of progression for unlocking stuff in-game
-Stat tracking (like Smash does it)
-Guest characters
-Create DLC after game is complete, like Smash 4
-DLC should make players want it and not feel like it's a cash grab/order from the top executives
-No microtransactions
 
Hilbert said:
For example most of these actually are in Virtua Fighter 5. Have you been playing virtua fighter?
Click to expand...
I can't say I have played a fighting game I rarely hear of that released 9 years ago.

The premise of the thread is what you want in games going forward, I thought. Most of what I typed is somewhat in the context of improvements I want Pokken to make.
Neoxon said:
But then you'd run into the issue of splitting the online player-base, which was a problem that SFIV faced. This is why games like SFV, Smash 4, & MKX opt for separate DLC characters that you can also buy in a bundle if you so choose.
Click to expand...

Splitting the base isn't an issue provided the pool is large enough.

The most competitive buy all the characters anyway.
 
Tripon said:
You can use the analog stick on street fighter. People use dpad because they think it feels better.
Click to expand...

It does feel better because it is better. You might be able to do certain motions easier with the analog stick, but you want immediate movement in Street Fighter. Analog input doesn't provide this.
 
Regiruler said:
I can't say I have played a fighting game I rarely hear of that released 9 years ago.

The premise of the thread is what you want in games going forward, I thought. Most of what I typed is somewhat in the context of improvements I want Pokken to make.

.
Click to expand...

Just keep it in mind when the next Virtua Fighter comes out. Do yourself a favor and give it a shot!
 
2D fighters and their complicated sequence button presses are too much for me. Soul Calibur is about as intense I could go. When ai first started playing, button mashing looked like it had some effect, but it slowly trained me to be more efficient and learn movesets of other characters. But only enough to have fun.

notaskwid said:
Soul Calibur II-2
Very low execution barrier (anyone can mash away and feel like its playing good) and tons of content.
Click to expand...

This guy knows what I'm talking about.
 
Rhazer Fusion said:
I hear that a lot and I disagree. There is nothing wrong with playing causally or having fun offline against the computer. Not everyone wants to play high level gamers who study frame data and practice their technique 24/7 online and prefer to play some relaxing matches where they can experiment or just have fun against the computer. People play games for different reasons. I am not heavily into multiplayer online shooters for example, but I typically do prefer a good single player campaign in a FPS over playing with some merciless, near professional gamers online who know the game inside out.
Click to expand...

I agree. Have fun with what is there. I'm all for making your own fun. Even within multiplayer.(This may come as a shock but not everyone, even online, plays at a high level! In fact the vast majority don't and probably never will!! )

What the post I quoted was advocating for, more time and resources being spent on longer story modes with boss battles and more advanced AI mechanics all for people who will never touch the multiplayer....isn't what fighting games are about. They're designed and balanced from the ground up for multiplayer.

You're basically describing an action game at this point, and they exist and are readily available to play lol. If that's the experience you want I wouldn't waste my time with Street Fighter or Guilty Gear when I could be playing Devil May Cry or Bayonetta
 
Interesting single player modes. NetherRealm does a decent job of this from what I've played of their games.
 
Really I just want to be able to do flashy moves and cool combos easily.

Simplified controls would go a long way. I don't want to have to do quarter-circle / dragon punch motions, etc. That's just needless complexity that adds nothing to the game. A good special move system is something like smash bros has, where you just push a single direction and press a button.
 
SciencePilot said:
Really I just want to be able to do flashy moves and cool combos easily.

Simplified controls would go a long way. I don't want to have to do quarter-circle / dragon punch motions, etc. That's just needless complexity that adds nothing to the game. A good special move system is something like smash bros has, where you just push a single direction and press a button.
Click to expand...

Have you tried the automatic modes in these games. I think most if not all of ArcSys games have something like that for casual players
 
SciencePilot said:
Really I just want to be able to do flashy moves and cool combos easily.

Simplified controls would go a long way. I don't want to have to do quarter-circle / dragon punch motions, etc. That's just needless complexity that adds nothing to the game. A good special move system is something like smash bros has, where you just push a single direction and press a button.
Click to expand...

Go play Guile on SF4 3DS with touch specials and you'll understand that the bolded is wrong.
 
I used to play Mortal Kombat 2 religiously and got into SF2 and Tekken 3 (I think).

Fighting games intimidate me now and the only time I touched the genre in the last ten years was Tatsunoku vs Capcom and Mortal Kombat 9. The weird roster and crazy ultimates of the former and story mode of the latter are the things that drew me in.
 
Wow, this thread is killing it with the good suggestions! Most suggestions I had were already said by the end of the 1st page, so I'll throw in the one I didn't see.

A single-player game with difficulty that scales slowly as you improve, rather than being stopped by a brick wall when you get to a certain threshold. The jump from intermediate to master player is really difficult for some people to do, myself definitely included. It's like you get to a point where you can't improve unless you throw yourself at the game for weeks non-stop.
 
Regiruler said:
Splitting the base isn't an issue provided the pool is large enough.

The most competitive buy all the characters anyway.
Click to expand...
It kind of is, especially if you come back to a fighting game after being gone for a while & want to keep up. At least with the current method of DLC (I.E. not the Super/Ultra expansion route), you can just download the balance update & go online.
 
TheSpoiler said:
How do all of today's games feel the same if they all of completely different combo systems?

Like what am I even reading?
Click to expand...

All of them require heavy use of combos to be competitive.
Like 15-50+ hit combos.

It now boils down to who ever gets the first hit in gets to take nearly 50% damage or more.

Tekken 3 wasn't relying on juggles as bad as Tekken 6.
Super Street Fighter 2 turbo HD remix and 3rd strike are far better than Street Fighter 5.

I'm not saying combos have to be gone entirely, but dramatically reduce their damage.
Combos should reward the player with small levels of bonus damage not turn into a huge health reducing combo exhibition demonstration.

It makes matches far more entertaining.
 
Gimme a Fighting game with:

- story mode with writing like Injustice
- presentation like MK9,
- customization like Soul Calibur series
- Questmode like Tobal 2
- Tutorial like Killer Instinct
- 2v2 Mode like Street Fighter X Tekken
 
KnightimeX_Legacy said:
All of them require heavy use of combos to be competitive.
Like 15-50+ hit combos.
Click to expand...
This is simply not true. In SFV, I don't use combos too often, and when I do, they're like 4, 5 hits max because I have always sucked at combos. I'm not a pro but I'm a Super Silver player and I definitely win more than I lose. Then there's SSB4, which has mostly situational combos that are obviously nowhere near 10 hits.

I do stay away from Arcsys games and Marvel, though.
 
Glitter and Gold said:
Have you tried the automatic modes in these games. I think most if not all of ArcSys games have something like that for casual players
Click to expand...

I know Blazblue has it.

Judging from some of the posts in this thread that revolve around changing the combo system in these games instead of just adding modes and tutorials, at some point I would just admit the genre isn't for me. You gotta be mindful of the things you're criticizing. These are games and it's just entertainment. If you don't find one thing entertaining there are other franchises/genres out there for you to enjoy yourself and have a good time. If I'm not having a good time with a genre, I don't want it to change so much for me. I just realized that it's not for me and that's ok.
 
RM8 said:
This is simply not true. In SFV, I don't use combos too often, and when I do, they're like 4, 5 hits max because I have always sucked at combos. I'm not a pro but I'm a Super Silver player and I definitely win more than I lose. Then there's SSB4, which has mostly situational combos that are obviously nowhere near 10 hits.

I do stay away from Arcsys games and Marvel, though.
Click to expand...

SFV is one of the more modern games that does combos properly.
Each well placed strike feels like it has more worth and value in it.

This debate could go on forever with no one happy.
That's ok though!
There is something out there for everyone and their taste.

Tekken 7 is just around the corner.
CAN'T WAIT!
 
Diversity in characters
Lots of offline modes
Maybe a coop mode
Simplified move execution
An arcade mode (story modes are shit, force you to play with characters you hate and the story is laughable and they define character roster)

Basically alpha 3 with Ryu smash Bros controls xD
...Or just smash =P

Oh and since people mentioned KI, if you have a PC port, don't go Games for Windows
 
NR is pretty much doing it with Injustice 2. Lots of SP content to chew on when I don't feel like going online, character customization (I'd be even happier with a full character creation option), lots of unlockables and a meaty single player story mode. Those are pretty much what I want from fighters because I love the genre but i know I'm not good enough to compete online after the first few weeks and I don't have that much time to practice and study videos.
 
Professor Lexicovermis said:
More quirky character designs like FANG, Sylvie, Bedman, etc. I get tired of seeing generic martial artists in fighting games. Give me the oddballs!
Click to expand...

Yeah give me some unique characters that were never done before !

Like for example a gay black man, a fully clothed black woman, a latino trans woman who is a lawyer, a bisexual native American, a white heterosexual trans man.
 
Platy said:
Yeah give me some unique characters that we're never done before !

Like for example a gay black man, a fully clothed black woman, a latino trans woman who is a lawyer, a bisexual native American, a white heterosexual trans man.
Click to expand...
We already have a trans woman (pre or post-op depending on your region) in the form of Poison, so it wouldn't be completely unheard of.
 
I want a full-on PC/console version of Dissidia, and a new Soul Calibur.

Those two series understood how to make fighting games less obscure.
 
With advent of 3D models... What really frustrates me is that hit boxes or clipping that lead to no damage.

What I am finding with SFIV and SFV there a handful of set ups for each character and most folks rinse and repeats those until they win.

Although its very hard, but keeping a good balance is the key to have a good fighting game.

I mean drastically nerfing a select few characters due to them winning too much amongst the hardcore is the not right direction. They should be buffing up the characters are weak and leave strong characters with minimum changes.

Additionally a better match making option would be nice as well. All characters having their own stage or special intros/endings. The stages should be interactive or change during battle or have different levels.

Also and more importantly there needs to be content. Publishers should not try to nickle and dime us for stages and characters... Have seasons with everything in them instead of just a few things. Seriously its really expensive.
 
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