Why do people think fighting games are hard?

[@jasonslade6259]

The hardest part about Fighting Games is the fact that your opponent is another human who potentially has as much knowledge and capability and experience at the game as you do. No matter how long you train, there's someone out there who can train just as hard, and you just have to be ok with that.

[@no_nameyouknow]

I mean that's a nice way of putting it cuz there's also the fact that you might have put in way more time and have way more knowledge but some other dude who just started is just straight up better than you and fighting games but you face to face with the fact that some people are just straight up better than you at them. Yeah it's not very common usually the more experienced player will win but not always some people are just better than you.

[@williambencher2466]

Perspective:there are people who are vastly better than you. That's okay though, because the joy is teaching.

[@wisdomcjs250]

I think a big part of the struggle is just how much initial training you have to do period to just play these games at even a decent level. Learning on the fly is way less intuitive than most genres of games. They require you to actively practice in a training atmosphere doing literally rep after rep to learn a new skill. That just doesn't exist in something like a MOBA or shooter where you can for example see someone using a tactic you've never seen before and you can implement that effectively into your own gameplay on the spot because the gameplay in those genres are far more universal and intuitive

[@zegreenemachine8160]

@@wisdomcjs250 honestly, you really don’t have to learn THAT MUCH in order to have fun with a fighting game. I was having a blast just throwing fireballs in SF2 when I played it, or using Gief’s SPD on the opponent, and doing nothing else. When facing opponents with an equal “skill level” you can have as much fun as you want with any fighting game.

[@wisdomcjs250]

@@zegreenemachine8160 I agree with the equal skill part but being 1v1 games I find these games pretty competitive. They're just not that fun until you can start winning a few games here and there off of your own capabilities, even if it's a small %. Even after getting decent at a couple of fighting games, I find that initial labbing stage of finding simple BnB's and what move cancels into what in a new game is all work no play. One thing Strive did really well was making that stage super fast to get through because the basics were much more intuitive and obvious than most fighting games

[@skortyspice]

Real talk, if (as it seems) you record all these videos live on stream and then edit them down for KZbin, without a script, you are for real one of the most eloquent and thoughtful people in the FCG.

[@lordknightfgc]

I use an outline generally but they are mostly off the cuff. Also lord ChadDrawsThings has helped me with editing since last year 🙏🏾

[@DaneMurdock]

Reducing the mental stack is the best way to learn fighting games conceptually. Learning to execute, and knowing when to reduce execution is one of the other best things to learn in order to learn fighting games. The best combo to do is the one you can do. The best time to do it is when you know it is within your available options.

[@the0therethan]

100% agree. The only time a player should try a combo they aren’t confident in is if they’re specifically trying to implement it into their gameplay

[@TheExFatal]

nnnah I'd rather just play something else

[@DaneMurdock]

@Hunter Rayna Fighting game execution made sense to me once I realized it was like learning a musical instrument. I'm not sure the best way to help new players with that if they don't have experience learning an instrument. But I think it is super helpful for those that do. But I've played against BrolyLegs before and lost. Guy plays with his face. He knows what he can execute, and at what positions on the screen it is a good idea to try and execute them. If he can do it, so can the people who point and click at heads in other games. Most people just don't want to do anything unless it feels intuitive instantly, and Fighting games probably will never really feel all that intuitive on first try to most people.

[@Necroskull388]

A-fucking-men.

[@SalemKFox]

This is what I struggle with. My mind quickly gets overwhelmed from the inputs and my fingers go dumb. I'll spend hours trying to do a combo I made up only to find that its not nearly optimal, the optimal ones are difficult to master cause my fingers go dumb. Add that on top of during an actual match where my mind knows what it wants, but muscle memory wants me to do something else entirely. I get that you dont really need combos to win a match, since fundamentals are everything, but it's really hard when you can land a good hit but cant really convert anything off of it, cause you're too slow to react. That's probably why games like soul calibur, I can actually do pretty well at. Less focus on execution, more everything else.

[@thenotoriousstretch8245]

New players vs the vets is so rough. Getting into a game where its a discord fighter with a small playerbase is just beatdown central. 95% of people still playing gone give you all the hands lol

[@miles7112]

People who are good at fighting games shouldn't ask this question because they can't answer it. They can't understand how a person can be bad, and if you're bad you don't get to play at all.

[@slablargemeat8954]

To me the fundamental difficulty of fighting games comes down to three things: 1) Everyone is trying to win. 2) The games have a lot of potential surface area to be mastered. 3) The games are not fundamentally random. A more-skilled player will win more often than a less-skilled player. A lot of people focus on #2 as the main source of difficulty but that's a mistake. As long as #3 is true, it will still be hard to win in a game where #1 is true. Take Tetris for example -- Tetris is far simpler mechanically than any fighting game, but the best Tetris players will still stomp new players. If you get match-made against the best players, it'll still seem really "hard" and "unfair". Reducing #2 can make the game easier to learn, but that means that your mastery must be more complete to be competitive. In a game with many mechanics, you might only need to master 70% of them to be pretty solid. In a game with very few mechanics, you need to master 100% of them and execute all of them consistently to be competitive. You can reduce #3 (increase the randomness) and to some extent game developers have been doing this -- think higher damage (i.e. fewer interactions are needed to win => higher variance) and comeback mechanics. But if you turn this dial up too far, you just don't have a competitive game anymore. That's the "Mario Kart" approach.

[@DoofusLoopus]

Many people tend to ignore the most fundamental thing about the difficulty for newer players though: the timings and collision on hit (there are propably terms for it out there I'm not aware of). I'd say I was rather decent when MKIII/MKIII Ultimate was a thing but when the newer generation of fighting games started to appear even though they looked and sounded great I could never for the life of me pull off ANY chains consistenly even in the training mode because the timings didn't seem reasonable compared to a character's animations and their hit boxes felt increadibly off. People often seeing how good I am at certain games offer me to playing fighting game and I'm like 'no, bro, never'. Whether it's GG, BB, SF or any legit fighting game in general. It's weird how even the newer generation of MK just clicks with me yet I can never get in the flow with the real fighting games. I follow the cues and even the most basic chains just drop. I ain't mashing too, taking my time and...fail after fail without any gratification. People here complaining about the online stuff while most people (like me) can't even beat the campaign on normal against the CPU :D

[@slablargemeat8954]

@@DoofusLoopus it sounds like you just never learned the combo system for a game that doesn't use target combos. Different games have different mechanics, you can't expect every game to play the same as MK.

[@DoofusLoopus]

@@slablargemeat8954 i gave it my best shot multiple times and it never just clicked for me. But whatever, you ignored my main point anyway so why should I even bother.

[@slablargemeat8954]

@@DoofusLoopus As far as I could tell, your point was just that you don't like how other games' combos work because you're used to Mortal Kombat. Other games use different combo systems than MK, you had trouble adjusting and you quit the genre before you figured it out. That's fine but it doesn't mean other games input systems are wrong, it just means MK felt the most natural to you, personally, probably because it's the one you played first. Other games feel fine to me and a lot of other players.

[@BebehCookieIcecream]

LK, your eloquence and priceless encompassing knowledge in fighting games lends itself so well to videos like this. I know fans appreciate the very niche anime fighter videos like matchups, broken past chars, tech, etc., but you truly shine on the macro scale of fighting game theory and I personally hope to see more videos reflecting that on the whole. Really appreciate this, as someone with such a volatile attention span who has had tough times trying to embrace fighting games c: cheers EDIT: Like for example, your take right here on the concept of difficulty vs. constraint is the real dope shit many don't talk about, let alone showcase examples in real-time.

[@wellnvmthen5063]

I think what makes fighting games really hard and by extension niche is the amount of self-motivation you have to do before you start having fun. You have to put in lots of hours where you don't even know if you enjoy the game because you haven't even experienced what it's really like to play them. You can give someone a short 15 minute introduction to Counter-Strike and they'll get to experience the game, sure it gets a lot more complicated and deeper, but do you like clicking heads? Yes? No? At that moment they can decide if they like it or not, they don't have to gamble whether or not to put in time because they've tasted the reward. Imagine someone playing Street Fighter for the first time. They've just spent 15 minutes learning the controls and how blocking works. They start a match.. And their opponent starts throwing out hadoukens like there's no tomorrow. Now they have to go into training mode and spend AT LEAST an hour(because they're new) learning how to deal with projectiles. Cue the same thing for Grabs, Jump-ins etc. Before you can deal with projectiles, you're not playing fighting games. Before you can anti-air, you're not playing fighting games. Before you know who's turn it is, you're not playing fighting games. Playing fighting games for the first time is like playing an infinitely more complicated version of rock-papper-scissor where someone else sits across the room and tells you who won without elaborating. You have to go out of your own way to learn how to play "fighting games", to understand the rules. Luckily though, when you've gone through this once you don't have to do it again because almost all of it is transferable from one fighting game to another and you've built up intuition so if there's something you don't know you'll still have a good guess on how to deal with it. And most importantly you know you like the genre so spending hours in training mode feels rewarding. I think this is why execution is always brought up as the casual limiting factor because it is the thing that everyone has to learn whenever a new game comes out whether this is your first or 100th game. But I don't think execution is what gatekeeps new players, at least not modern ones. Execution has just become a meme nowadays. No one goes "Oh, I think that beginner dislikes fighting games because he tried to punish but failed because either 1: The normal just isn't fast enough. 2: It doesn't reach. 3:He didn't time it correctly. and he has no idea which one it is and what the possibilites even are." Instead people go "Oh, fighting games are really execution heavy something something evo moment 37"

[@fugax_vulpes1797]

This is *perfect* You summed it all perfectly

[@SkiddMcMarx]

Yeah.

[@chazaqiel2319]

I agree. It's not even that it's hard getting into fighting games, it's that it's really hard getting into your first fighting game. Personally, I think the best way to overcome this is make a tutorial mode that's actually fun. Like a very short pve campaign with boss fights that are designed to put certain skills to the test

[@XBlueXFire]

I don't quite agree with this. I do believe you can genuinely enjoy a fighting game without ever setting foot in a training mode. What you're describing is playing online against others. Ive a good few friends who just want to play through the single player content of a game, meme around in VS mode for a couple days and then dip.

[@wellnvmthen5063]

@@XBlueXFire For the purpose of this conversation I'm not going to count Single player content(Story etc) as "Fighting games". What's talked about here is the 1v1 versus/online aspect. In the same way that someone who only likes surfing wouldn't say that they like "Counter-Strike" because while technically surfing is played in CSGO client, it's not what comes to mind when someone says "I like Counter-Strike". Somebody who only plays the character stories in SFV or someone who bought STRIVE to watch the movie aren't playing the same game as someone who plays against other people. You don't "NEED" training mode to enjoy fighting games. Sure you can continue playing and try to figure out how to do it yourself but that takes a lot more time and effort. And during that time, when you're trying to figure it out, you're not playing "fighting games".

[@MarcelVincent]

Wooo another banger from LK, I find wby people find anything in life hard is the “mental calorie consumption" of an activity. When starting a new activity you consume a larger amount of mental capacity thinking about every little detail, movement or. Nuance. Ect... Muscle memory is a big part of it but there is also the mental energy expenditure, which switches focus as you get better at an activity. As a guitar player of almost 30 years I'm no longer thinking OK this finger goes here, I need to press this hard. Pick softly here. use this and this part of my hand to mute strings I'm not playing. To other things such as tempo of. Song, key, ect.. I hope I'm getting my point across Balam garden theme FTW Still my favorite fgc content -poppedandwrecked

[@roboscout64]

From the perspective of someone who struggled to get into fighting games for a long time but just recently managed to succeed. Here are my thoughts on some things why I think they are so hard 1. Movelists. Fighting games as a genre have a truly extraordinary number of ways to just "attack" someone. This is good and part of what gives them their qualities. But from the perspective of a new player just getting into things, it's extremely overwhelming and new players will just mash buttons because they don't know which ones are better than others in that situation. It can take a long time to just figure out a basic attack plan. This is often not helped by the fact that often the most visibile fighting game gamplay is often the high level stuff, and the high level stuffoften doesn't translate well to new players. For contrast lets take an fps, in an fps you have a clear primary weapon and maybe some secondary stuff that's it. While said tools have their intricacies to them, your concern as a new player is not "what do I use" it's how do I use it. 2. Motion inputs are a barrier and something that is really unique to the genre. Putting basic functions of your character behind execution barriers is going to make things harder when you are starting off. In addition the things locked behind motion inputs are often the most unique aspects of the characters, the things that can meaningfully differentiate away from mashing. They aren't difficult to overcome with patience, but it is yet another barrier that is coming in on top of the many other barriers as a new player. Again taking a look at other genres, while the controls give room for skill mastery, rarely are they presented as an obstacle to basic functions of your character. Often they are gateways to higher level techniques and optimizations. 3. Terminology. Fighting games basically have their own dictionary and it can often make some information transfer difficult. For a simple example take okizeme. It conveys a simple meaning, attacking an opponent getting up from the ground, but is communicated by a word that has no innate meaning to someone outside of the genre. There's a lot of stuff like this that can make learning new things hard for a new player as information I am trying to learn can either be incomprehensible or require me to go look stuff up online just so I can understand the tutorial. 4. Lack of low level/singleplayer engagement. Fighting games are probably the genre that leans into multiplayer the hardest. There's nothing innately wrong with that. However it does create an environment that is difficult for learning as the engaging content is stuff that requires you to be able to play it against other players. Singleplayer can be important for teaching new players as it can introduce concepts one at a time and also provide a place to practice and improve. Fighting game singleplayer content is largely limited to matches against bots (that are otherwise identical to multiplayer) and tutorial modes that are often just simon says with little application. I haven't seen many fighting games that take the care to craft singleplayer modes in the ways other games do by slowly introducing things over the course of the game and teaching you about individual mechanics. And the limited capcity of fighting game ai's is going to make any single player mode difficult. What finally got me to break into fighting games was a tutorial that told me the following. Disregard everything about the movelist, here are the 5 basic functions for moves you need to know: jab, poke, anti air, overhead, low. Press random buttons until you find a move that can do each of those. From there play some games then look back and try to learn something new, like a basic combo off your poke. Just take things slow, disregard what you don't feel like learning at the time, and focus on playing with intentionality above all else. Learning things one at a time and then applying them in a way that wasn't just simon says really the key for me.

[@shizuwolf]

Was it from a video?

[@wisdomcjs250]

That's absolutely true. These games desperately need better presentation for showing how to play the most basic common situations, letting a new player know that in any given situation you don't have a million different moves to keep track of, it's more like 2 at a time.

[@HeirofDacia]

There's fighting game motion inputs in stuff like DMC.

[@theoya]

Are fighting games hard? I don't know because no one even defines what they mean when they say "hard". There's no bar. Is it hard to play absolutely perfectly, execute everything with no drops ever, and always make all the right decisions? Yeah, sure. Is it hard to boot up the game and mash buttons? Not unless you're stuck on the "connecting to server" screen. There's such a huge spectrum in-between and every time someone talks about this topic it always feels like they pick some arbitrary spot in the middle, then they base everything off of whether it's hard to achieve this made up list of skills A, B, C, and D, or they compare one game/genre to some other arbitrary game/genre. The result is that no one that's talking about the difficulty of fighting games is even talking about the same thing.

[@lordknightfgc]

Very good point, defining things are important. I need to keep this in mind too for some of the more vague topics.

[@pockitsune6347]

People think fighting games are hard because they are lmao. No other game has the feel of the entire game change so much character to character. Playing a new character is like starting from 0 every time.

[@wisdomcjs250]

Fighting Games require probably the greatest amount of time investment to get to a point where you feel like "I really know what I'm doing", and the struggle with that is from the fact that most modern online competitive games often aren't "fun" until you reach that point as a minimum. Fighting games also have a pretty unique skill level curve in that your low to high elo levels are mostly determined by how much of the game you're actually capable of executing, whereas in most genres the execution of most mechanics exist at all levels and it's more a matter of how well you can do them, not whether you can do them period.

[@About9000]

I don't wanna spend hours repeating inputs over and over and over and over again with any hint of neglect in my practices leading to being unable to do the inputs connsistently, just to do inputs that are key to a characters's game plan. can't tell you how many times I knew what move I needed, and how to do it, and was able to do it consistantly in training, only for it to not work in a match cuz i overshot one little input

[@TheDsLeet]

At that point, I think more matches would be the best bet for improvement because it sounds more like nerves than anything. But I understand how that could be frustrating as well.

[@hmad898]

you dont have to do that though. people act like motion inputs are the hardest thing that you have to practice for ages, but honestly just play the game. You'll get them down in less than a day and become basically 100% consistent in a few more. It's not like you forget how to do them if you dont play 60 hours a day either. I've taken breaks for months from a fighting game and within half an hour I'm back in business with combos and moves.

[@About9000]

@@hmad898 can't say my experience has been the same...

[@psychodad4434]

People are very willing to help. My new roadblock is after playing FGs since Strive dropped, I've recently stopped seeking help because I feel like I'm wasting the time of anyone who tries.

[@gekinetic]

One of the hurdles when it comes to new players with no FG experiences learning fighting games is getting advice from experienced players, and it's NOT that they won't help you It's how they try to help you A lot of slightly or more experienced FG players lay out what is essentially a college thesis with notations that the new players are not accustomed to (236S, DF2, FNDF4, 632146HS, 8675309, etc), and new players can be so overwhelmed by these influx of alien language that either they drop it right then and there or get confused for few more weeks and then drop there. Ideally, those trying to help should break it down in a more digestible format (use move names more, explain situations in more simplistic terms, etc) in order to guide new players better

[@MarkoLomovic]

What is there to break down with notation it is simple to understand, and there is plenty of tutorials on every single topic newbie needs. Experenced players can tell you what you need to learn but they can't teach you how to learn it this is something every person needs to figure out for them selves because people learn differently. Issue new players have is that they overwhelm themselves and put unreasnoble expectations on themselves.

[@Jaquinus]

I personally don't think the language used is the problem, in fact, I think just getting accostumed to it can be its own enjoyment. Understanding what notation means can be, and is often, like an Eureka moment where they get what the guide/advice tells you to do. The problem comes what the text is asking you to do. "hey here's your BnB for you to start doing actual damage and not just poking like a caveman: *a 10 moves recipe that involves a 2-frame link*". Or "hey you can buffer a dash before hitting the button in this special to give it more range, *you have a 3 frame window to do it and this property literally defines this character's gameplan.*". I know it really isn't the one giving the advice/guide's fault and it's just how the game systems work but it can be a hurdle too high to spend the time learning to do it.

[@GodOfOrphans]

@@MarkoLomovic Try taking any college level course that doesn't ease you into the jargon that will put it into perspective. It doesn't matter how intuitive the jargon ultimately is, it's not the kind of thing that people can easily absorb and acclimate too rapidly. People tell you to look up the definitions of words or phrases you don't know as you encounter them but imagine being slammed with 10 different alien phrases at once many of which assume prior knowledge of each other when looking up the definitions, it's simply too dense for people to process immediately all at once. I don't disagree that new players overhwlem themselves by biting off more than they can chew and thinking if they aren't the next daigo than they must just suck, but that doesn't excuse how people throw around jargon carelessly and ad nauseum on a regular basis, and even someone like me who understands most of it still finds it ridiculous that we don't put more of this in vernacular terms.

[@triumvir021]

I highly disagree and I think this take I’ve heard before is mostly a myth. When I was a noob at fighting games back in 09 and eventually stumbled into the FGC, discovering the language that explained all the micro interactions and game design on the screen was a really exciting endeavor. Fighting games started to become more and more fun once it became less and less of an intuitive endeavor, but something you played with informed decisions-much like how a game of shooting a ball around with your friends will always be kind of fun on a visceral level, but people that actually decide to play basketball at a competitive level where universal rules are applied, strategies and plays are involved and I individual skill sets matter, you are having fun on a different level at that point. Obviously information overload towards someone that just unboxed the game is a bad idea, but I really don’t think this situation actually happens in real life...I’ve never seen a vet just unload complicated fighting game theory when talking to a noob and I think that’s a situation you’ve mostly imagined lol. And for anyone new to the game that genuinely gets their interested piqued by fighting games, it’s 2022 and they’re going to type they’re game into a twitch or KZbin search bar and go down the rabbit hole themselves eventually.

[@MarkoLomovic]

@@GodOfOrphans I see but I'm not sure that course example applie because you don't need to know complete jargon to start learning fighting games. I agree that it doesn't matter and it will take time to learn it but you start from zero and slowly build that jargon up. You learn first what is immediately necessary and go on from there right ? So even if you encounter 10 diffrent alien phrases if you understood 1 of those and it help you understand some concept or idea and remember that some of those 9 exist later down the line then it is worth the effort. I don't see why everything has to happen at once ? I personally learned it as I enocunter it, I didnt understand everything but I also realised that not everything is relevant to me just yet. I remember looking up fuzzy defense/jump(heard casters use that term) and not understanding any of it but I came back to it few times and it clicked evenentually because I saw my opponents use these techniques agasint me. Also I relised that even if I understood it back when I was looking at it, it would still be useless to me.

[@kyleflournoy7730]

It's very funny to me that blaze blue was considered to be the easy baby mode game. Because even when it first came out, I had been playing fighting games seriously for about 5 years at that point. And doing all green on command (I wasn't aware of shortcuts for that move, and I still don't know if there are any now), since I was a litchi player like LK, is still probably the hardest input I've ever had to learn for any character that I played

[@Time2GoHam1995]

I think it’s a matter of perspective. Older games are usually harder so BB might’ve been easier at the time compared to an older GG game.

[@MaulusRS]

Starting fighting games is the hardest part about them. The skill floor is pretty daunting. Just controlling the basic functions of your character and making them do what you want them to do is much less intuitive than moving a character around a 3d space with an analog stick, which basically anyone can do within minutes of picking up a controller.

[@FinalKnight1000]

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, as someone who got into fighting games a few years back and have since stopped playing to focus on university. The reason I think people find it hard to get into fighting games (to the point where you understand the game beyond just pressing buttons) is that you have to change your life to a some degree. If I play any general video game, I can just play it myself and maybe occasionally watch a guide on KZbin if I’m really stuck. To play a fighting game and keep growing at it, I have to become part of the community on some level, even if it’s just in the periphery. Once I started playing a fighting game, huge chunks of my days revolved around watching fighting game players content, checking their twitters, watching tournament matches etc. It really changes a big part of your life, and consumes a lot of time when compared to your life before. For me I found it was just getting in the way of other things I wanted to do in life, but I still had so much fun to the point where now and then I’ll come back and watch an LK video.

[@feelthepony]

I'm going to answer,and THEN I'm going to watch the video,(not my standard order,I promise) the reason fighthing games are "hard" is that you don't enjoy that much while learning,it is something that strategy games and FG have in common ( "my genres"). As opposed to SP shooters,or action/adventure games, fun and learning don't really go thogether in this genre(and sorry for being an asshole, people who have been playing strategy/fighting for long time,your views are skewed,you are too used to it,I call it the "math teacher syndrome", when something complicated just FEELS way easier because you have been doing it for a long period of time) you guys recall playing god of war,or the new tomb raiders, GTA ,or bioshock,and having to PRACTICE for days/weeks BEFORE getting to enjoy the game at its fullest? hell no. so before the fun comes the chore, the homework if you like,and we all know/recall how hard to get motivated to go through it that is. as simple as that.

[@rajstream4768]

i mean every hobby as to be challenging for it to be rewarding I do art and I firmly believe that to truly enjoy it u have to get to a certain level I'm not saying u cant dive into it and have fun but the best thing about art is that u can see your progress and appreciate your own work.

[@edivimo]

Oh yes, strategy (specially 4X) and fighting games have in common accepting you're going to suck a lot at the beginning and you need to keep learning as much as possible from your failures or else you're still going to suffer on the next gaming sessions.

[@danielmx2408]

its like going to the gym but instead of getting a healthy body you get carpal tunnel

[@Cambiony]

Motion inputs are not really insurmountable, but they frontload the challenge. As in they are at their most hardest when you start and continuously get easier. Also practicing motions alone isn't that interesting, so new people will likely get bored more easily and just leave. So imo motions can be a legit barrer for new people.

[@SLFKimosabae]

A lot of things in this video I've been saying for more than a decade on forums - since SRK lol. "Fighting Games are like going to the gym" is basically my tagline lol. If the developers and publishers understood this, they'd have better marketing strategies for their games.

[@francisquebachmann7375]

Then you realize that many people are overweight. So in the end, if they have to choose they would rather invest in a gym. Rather Than spending time practicing on a video game.

[@SLFKimosabae]

@@francisquebachmann7375 I don't know what your point is: but people can and do both. This isn't some binary thing.

[@francisquebachmann7375]

@@SLFKimosabae Simply saying, Spending too much time trying to learn a specific game genre instead of learning things that can actually make you grow, is a bad investment. I've known people who prefer games that is easy to pickup. since it doesn't require time investment on learning. If you split your tasks, you'll lose focus and you'll have to give up one hobby to another. Doing things both can only make you a sort of a jack of all trades, master of none. You'll end up losing to both

[@SLFKimosabae]

@@francisquebachmann7375 Deriding the approach of "Jack of all trades, master of none" is just a cage. It's a false premise to think that you need to be a Master of anything to be successful in a particular area. Mediocre skills succeed, literally all the time because quite often, mediocre skills are all that's needed for a task. It's all about the subject's goals and their capable time investment.

[@rickjamesia]

It’s interesting to me that people focus so much on combos. I’ve always been terrible at execution and hated spending a long time in the lab, so I’ve always focused on finding traps, and winning neutral/footsies situations. I didn’t know combos like the rest of my group in SFIV at first, but I could win a lot with just simple vortex setups and punishing with easy hit-confirms. I had to win a few more guesses, of course. I need to learn how to unlearn my ways, though… I think to some extent it is good to be able to fight and win with reduced damage output, but after 20+ years of this, I really need to figure out how to up my game. In games I threw hundreds of hours at like SFIV and BBCT, I naturally learned some real stuff, but it means I don’t ever get good damage now, when there’s great games to swap to so often.

[@notexactlyrandom1070]

I know smash isnt considered a fighting game, but it's the only fighting type of game I played for years until Strive released. And I got strive on a whim. Moving from Smash to Strive took more brain cells then I had. And I used to think "Wait I have a resource to actually manage now?" That being tension. The fact I can use burst or tension midcombos now? The me from before Strive would think that I was a madman. But it's just daunting to see stuff that you're not inherently used to. Like I wanna learn crosstag battle, and man I am not ready for what that has to offer. But I'm gonna learn.

[@ZolPsyko]

I agree with the comment that learning fighting games is like working out. I train in martial arts very regularly and there are many connections you can draw between fighting games and learning fighting irl. It's difficult no matter how good you get. For me personally, I find more motivation and benefits to drive me to workout such as health reasons and learning a new skill. For fighting games the only thing that'll drive me is ego or to do the cool shit. With so many other cool games out nowadays that are easy to pickup, it makes it very easy to drop a fighting game , and im less interested to play them.

[@SavagePandaSwag]

a lot of people dont want to work to have fun at something that is entertainment related

[@peerlessvillain]

Also LK you've been pumping out so much good youtube KZbin content in the last few months , appreciate it boss

[@CaptainStrudels]

This vid raises a lot of interesting points but I think LK generally misses the mark of the topic, that being why fighting games are perceived as hard. And fwiw, I just watched the vid from Akaraien and he missed it too (which is funny because Akaraein's video/clip was a product of someone else basically saying it when they made the comment on labbing for 10 years before playing the game). I think both LK and Akaraien are too focused on explaining why the games are hard for players at all skill-levels or high-levels, and not taking the time to realize that these comments are coming from players who are newer to the genre (which should be super obvious when you see comments about labbing for 10 years). So really the topic is "Why do newer players think fighting games are hard", not "Why are fighting games hard for all skill-levels". I don't want to use LK's comment section as my soap box, but I will briefly say that, as someone who is relatively new to fighting games (on and off over the past like 6 years) but has played games in other genres at the like top 1%+ level, I found fighting games hard to start playing (and still do) not due to all the technical things that define the meta game for high-level players like the things LK/Akaraien touch on or due to the game systems themselves (like resource management that LK touches on), but instead due to the barrier of entry on executing even the most simple of things. Even if we propose that all you really need to be able to start playing a fighting game is to learn some char's basic bnb, that is still quite a big investment for new players. Combo execution is definitely a relatively difficult skill for new players. Things like knowing what button does what (which isn't always intuitive) and motion inputs themselves are a barrier to entry. It's really easy to dismiss this and say "Oh just keep playing and you'll get used to it" but that right there is a concession that for newer players things aren't necessarily easy and require practice (the labbing in 10 years comment). And if you have to practice basically anything... then yeah it's kind of a hard genre by modern competitive game standards. Take something like shooters where you... left click the enemy player. Or mobas/mmos where you... press the ability button. Nobody says that these are the easiest games around - they have competitive scenes for a reason - but doing basic things in those genres is simple. In fighting games, it takes practice, and even after practicing you still might mess up after sinking in hours of practice. Again don't want to make a soap box out of this, but I think perhaps higher-level fighting game players have been playing for a while and don't realize the skills they take for granted over the years when making comments about how the games aren't hard for the "barrier of entry on execution" reasons that newer players cite.

[@Sparklesniff]

"I recognize my limits on execution and I build my strategy around that. I'm still doing what I have to do, I'm just not doing the hardest things; I don't need to and I don't want to mess up" I needed to hear this shit. Sometimes I get down cause I can't consistently do KBMF combos well enough to use them in matches, so I just decided I wouldn't and I'd use simpler combos that I know I can execute 100% of the time. For whatever reason, I felt like I was a scrub for doing this.

[@davidclaiborne5280]

The fundamentals of fighting games are not that difficult. The problem is I don’t want to dedicate time to learning them, because I don’t find them to be that fun. I do enjoy watching content on them though.

[@tobebuilds]

Agreed.

[@jirojairo90]

It blows my mind that fighting games still don't teach you fundamentals (or just the concept of it) in their tutorials. Tutorials should include sections that teach you to find good normals or to keep your opponent in the corner. IMO that's the hardest thing for a newbie, fundamentals and the archaic nature of the concept.

[@WaffleOnTheRun]

What makes it hard is that good players don't know what to tell new players because a lot of the stuff they do they just do automatically and take for granted. Spacing, whiff punishing, knowing when you can stop blocking and attack because some one is negative, anti-airing, these are arguably the most important things but good players just know to do these automatically so they don't even think about giving those as tips, they just tell new players to learn combos and most players can lab them and learn easy combos but have no idea when to use them or when to switch from defense to offense. Good players also go like oh when their knocked down you can oki them and then hit a meaty, and its like bro wtf does that mean, just speak in normal english. Also most fighting games have terrible in game help in tips, generally just combo trials which as I have said is just not helpful. And also execution isn't an issue in some games but some games like KOF have hard ass execution and it definitely is a barrier to entry.

[@OmarOmar-go1oo]

I just don't know how to start with fighting games.I always get overwhelmed with everything and I don't now where to exactly start if you know what I mean.

[@dixiesama]

For a beginner, execution absolutely is the hardest part of a fighting game and that's why it comes up all the time when people talk about fighting game difficulty. They cannot even begin thinking about conversionability until they can do a combo, and they can't properly reason about neutral if they can't do motion inputs. Difficulty is a moving window.

[@karayi7239]

fighting games have a fraction of the population of other genres such as mobas and shooters. This means that when you join as a beginner, the gap between you and the skill floor of the population is huge, so you'll have to get bodied for way too long before you can have fun. whereas in valorant for example, it can literally be your first shooter ever and you'd have evenly matched lobbies in less than 20hrs of playtime simply because there are so many players and a decent chunk will be just as bad as you. So yeah, small + old(experienced) + super competitive population + 1vs1 = steepest and most demoralizing learning curve for beginners

[@Shadercheg]

The hardest part for me is inputs, the amount of time and effort you need to put into game to control character without thinking is insane and even after 200hr in i am still missing my inputs, and this is really gets me frustrated and makes me want to quit for good.

[@nanashi-gaming]

Love your vids, as always. The presentation, the facts, the Balamb Garden OST in the background.

[@Rebazar]

Been trying to get some friends into fighting games and I think the input barrier is 90% of it. Seems hard to get past for a lot of people

[@medicami]

The execution and knowledge barrier. I would never say we need all fighting games to be baby tier smash bros., but smash is always fun because you don't need to practice for weeks just to participate with friends, and you don't need to win to have fun in fighting games you just need to be able to have interactions. FGs require a lot of practice to even get started, no amount of watching guides will substitute having to sit down and practice just so you can actually do damage, and that can be a lot to ask for some people. I like doing combo challenges for fun, but put me in a real match even against friends and the sheer amount of decisions you have to make is immediately overwhelming.

[@elementwheel3054]

What does "participating with friends" mean in this context? I don't really see how mashing with friends in Smash is meaningfully different from mashing in a traditional fighting game. You might be able to perform all the moves easier, but if you don't practice or study in either game, you're still not going to be establish a gameplan very well. You seem to be under the impression that you have to practice a fighting game to play them. There's nothing stopping you from entering a match with someone else you know and playing them. Even if the specials were as easy to perform as Smash (and there *are* fighting games that have that) you're still going to perform at exactly the same level in both if you don't practice.

[@eem2wavy133]

@@elementwheel3054 I think your forgetting about the illusion of control here. Mashing in smash bros is absolutely different than mashing in street fighter. In smash regardless of mash you actually feel like your achieving something ( even tho you aren’t) in street fighter or any other fighter for that matter if you haven’t ton at least some type of training your stuck in the dark throwing out random ass attacks you feel stuck and helpless it’s a different experience. Truthfully noobs in any game will mash but the genre of the game allows them to have more of the illusion of control which makes it different

[@MocnySquall]

I disagree. i am a casual and execution is really making me quit this game. The characters i like all have brutal execution barriers. Axl has axle bombers, if you cant do them you do no dmg. and goldlewis has neutral up behemoth. I droped axl and started playing goldlewis only to realize that neutral up behemoth is the best move in neutral and without being able to do it, i will never really be good with the character. Execution is definetly turn off for casual players like me. I dont say it should be hard, but this super hard techniques (for me) should not be esential to be able to play the character.

[@peerlessvillain]

The weightlifting analogy is so godlike. It really is hard at all levels. It's about having fun, and perseverance. Difficulty is an illusion. You can do it all if you put into the time. And if you're having fun that time will fly by. So as long as you're having fun difficulty fades away.

[@trevorgustavgreen8148]

There is a huge flaw to that analogy. In weightlifting, your objectives are concrete and require little introspection- you can't lift this X weight? Improve your skill by lifting more. While learning fighting games, you must dissect what you did and why you lost/won, it's impossible to improve at a specific skill set demanded by fighting games if you yourself don't know such weakness. Let's take something basic, aerial attacks. If you don't know how to react whenever your opponent tests for this specific game knowledge, they'll abuse it to win. If you don't know what you're weak at, you won't be able to improve or remove that weakness. There was a video essay detailing that fighting game skills can be broken down in three parts. Heart(instinct, reaction) / Body(execution, damage) / Mind(knowledge, matchup). This analogy seems to only cover the body component, you can only really execute combos if you put in the time by building muscle memory, timing, and finesse.

[@iliakatster]

The difficult part of learning FGCs is the lack of direction. Players will spend hours learning difficult things so long as there is a clear feedback loop telling them when they did something right, look at celeste or the dark souls series. An insane 5% of celeste players on steam have 100% the game, which involves spending hours on single screens, because the tutorials built into the levels and clear difficulty curve make it feel like you're always progressing. Even ridiculously complex games like mobas have millions of players, because when you start, all you have to do is just go support and try to harras the enemy and you'll learn how to use spells, move, and what gets you killed, and then in the later parts, just follow people around and spam your spells during team fights. Since fighting games are all about adaptation, theres no clear feedback. You press all the buttons, and at the end you either win or lose and most of the time you have no clue what was working and what wasn't. You know you pressed a button and got hit but you have no clue what you were supposed to do in that instance. I think the brilliance of GGST is the focus on providing clear tutorials.to introduce the concepts you can think about applying while playing and the clear feedback with the giant COUNTER whenever you get hit, highlighting that you really should have blocked that. FGs don't need to be simpler, they just need a clearer inroad for beginners to have a sense of progression.

[@akashicays]

I agree with the whole people will help you at any level. For some reason, there's this idea that fighting game players are gatekeepers and will call you scrubby for any reason but I haven't found that to be the case. As long as you're not coming in blaming the game for your problems, they'll gladly help (similar to Dark Souls Players) you get better

[@ArcaneMana]

I'll call someone with a bad attitude a scrub. Throwing fits, fists and controllers over a game? You're a scrub.

[@Breeze06]

Exactly. I think a lot of new players put too much pressure on themselves and expect to learn everything overnight. Even the pros ask for help. Some players will even tell you how to beat them in order to make the matches more even.

[@Dunker401]

I think what makes a fighting game hard (when it comes down to execution) is when the buffer window varies. Like having to be incredibly fast for some inputs to having to be slower on others or having a strict window to when something can be chained or converted off of is what makes it really hard for me. Like I get it it’s all a muscle memory type thing and I have to deal with it but like it’s so difficult to be able to even attempt to get my brain to learn that “ok so you have to be fast here but be slow here” or “you need to do it exactly at this time or it won’t work” is just so much for me to be able to get used to

[@AkibanaZero]

I have gone around in many circles on this topic, both with myself and others. Past me would have taken issue with your takes but now I feel I have reached a whole other conclusion as to why FGs are perceived as hard. Two things really. First, FGs are unintuitive. A lot of things about them makes no sense when you don't understand the underlying design. Take some of the 6P animations in Strive. They don't even remotely look like they would hit a jump-in yet they're the go to, universal AAs. In a time when video games are making fewer and fewer technical concessions, FGs are still saying "I know the move looks like it's touching the opponent but actually it's not". Don't get me started on frame data which has zero visual representation in almost every FG out there. The second issue is a byproduct of the first. The majority of people playing online already know these intricacies and it's why they can steamroll newer players, even if they themselves are trash. I know this well because I'm also trash yet I can tear apart fresh players by simply knowing a few principles. For sure my experience plays a role as well. The point, though, is that the majority of new players don't find these intricacies easy to accept.

[@nethstar]

Legitimate question: Do you think that as a pro player your view/perspective of thinking something is easy is because you're already well versed in it? I remember asking skullgirls peeps about if that game was easy, yes' all round, and I'm not a complete novice to FG's. I could not get it - I tried for about 2 months, I personally found it so difficult I put it down and started questioning whether they told me wrong info and it's legitimately difficult, or whether I'm just really really really bad. (Keep in mind, I'm not saying all FG's are easy or all FG's are hard, it's somewhat in the middle imo, but more challenging how people's perspectives can skew things - hence why you'll see lots of newbies all have a general view/idea/feel about something being difficult when starting out after probably being told it's easy)

[@GriFFonRec4]

When you say you tried for about 2 months, what were you doing? Mostly training mode looking up videos and tech and combos and stuff, playing other people, playing against bots? If you spent most of the time in training mode or looking up combos and stuff, then you are missing a few steps. Play the game against people (or bots) and mash for a bit to get a good feel for your character and the way they move and how buttons interact in neutral and such. The combos come easily once you are familiar with your characters movement and buttons. I think the reason why people (as in FGC people only lol) say SG is an easy game is because the combo structure is very similar throughout the cast, lights into mediums into heavy buttons then you do a special. The concept isn't very hard to grasp once you are used to it and, again, most of the cast plays very similarly in this way. I also tried SG for a while and dropped it, but I didn't actually play against people. I just did a bit of training mode, then played against the bots (arcade or story mode or whatever) and just didn't really like the way the game felt so I ended up dropping it. Again I ask, in your 2 months what were you doing? Like how much time did you spend actually playing in actual matches (whether bot or person) and how much time did you spend in training mode or watching tutorials/videos and stuff?

[@MarkoLomovic]

Depends on perspective, to him now it is easy now but he can also remember how was it like when he was struggling with "Easy" stuff and had very hard time. Yes skullgirls is easy to learn and play but if you learn to play it agasint people who are already very experianced players then it seems way harder then it acctually is. It is like if someone started playing strive and most people you can play agasint are celestials. No one is going to say that melty blood is hard game but playing agasint better player is difficult no matter which game you play.

[@nethstar]

​@@GriFFonRec4 Cheers for the reply. First thing i did when i booted up the game was ran the basic tutorial to know what the mechanics were, what I was doing for a day or two, during this time i was already looking at the roster and trying to figure out what type of team I should have, whether i should have a single, double or tripple team (this was also something that was highly conflicted in advice, some said 3 was easier some said 2, rarely heard single pick was easier). After a few hours a day just messing around in training mode I legit played as many people as I could. First match was someone who was more intermediate than beginner, but was on the "beginner" discord i joined, hah. Played a bunch more people. I'd explore other characters as well just to see what else was there on offer. I struggled to find more players to play as the pool for beginners is already quite small so also mustered up some courage to just go online matchmaking. Not a fun experience, but an experience non the less. But all the way through it I struggled to get the timing down for what would be considered the "basic BnB". It was incredibly inconsistent and made me feel like it was intentionally supposed to have a tight window to get the specific air hit > grounded hit to combo. It was even in the tutorial I landed it a handful of times but it always just FELT like it was in the realm of being frame perfect on some things to link. In the end I gave it up. Partly because of feel, like you said yourself, but also because I felt like I just couldn't get the hang of things and I'm not averse to team/Tag fighters either. I really liked MvC:I (RIP) and play DBFZ from time to time with off-meta characters and rando teams. At most I'd say I looked up combos on the wiki/dustloop equivalent for SG then looked up vids for bigband and cerebella momentarily when i couldn't really gauge how some combos 'flowed' together. But for the most part, I tried to play as much against people, practice in training mode to get used to things, and use the tutorial mode to understand aspects of the game.

[@lordknightfgc]

I think it affects my perspective but I try to do my best to be objective about it. I learned a lot about the general populace of fg from YT, the competitive scene is a bubble where you just talk to other sweats all day lmao. Also I think SG is hard af lol

[@dominiccasts]

@@nethstar Skullgirls is commonly thought of as easy partly because of the time and partly because of marketing. At the time (2011), Skullgirls was quite a bit simpler than everything else, or more specifically more consistent. As mentioned earlier, the combo structure is fairly similar between characters, but more importantly the rules for combo length were very simple: when you loop back into a lighter move to start a new L>M>H string, don't use a move you've previously used in the combo. Compared to the gravity and untech time rules of Blazblue and Guilty Gear, it's both a lot easier to think through and also easier to practice, as you can just practice the later parts of a combo knowing that they will work just as well at the end as at the start of the combo. On top of that, you had basically no additional character-specific meters to manage, no additional burst meter (which arguably makes it harder for new players, but it is simpler), and inputs were limited to quarter-circles, dp inputs, charge inputs, and 360s, which at the time was a laughably small range of input options, and gatling windows are pretty large (though not on landing, because reasons, and believe me this pissed me off too). Nowadays that design approach is normal, but in 2011 it was remarkable. The other part was marketing, in that the game put a lot of stock in the fact that relative to its peers it had simplified motion inputs and combo structure, and only had the one super meter, and had a bunch of other little input buffer quality of life stuff, so the idea of "Skullgirls is easy" was also just part of the promotional material that stuck. Honestly, I always bring up Skullgirls as an example of a game that tried to be easy in the wrong ways. They added a bunch of QoL and made the rules for combos simple, but didn't really account for how taxing 6 buttons + assist + tag buttons is to play with, how hard it is to play when everyone has 20-to-30-move BnBs because of the simple combo rules combined with having 6 buttons, and how when you mix that in with assists and resets it can just feel like you don't get to play unless your neutral is perfect, especially without a burst system (besides infinite prevention), which is the hardest thing to learn. Basically, for top-level fighting game players Skullgirls can feel simple because the technical side is streamlined and they know how to approach neutral, but for everyone else it's brutal because the neutral is so unforgiving, and the simpler technical side doesn't matter when you're still working out the unintuitive lesson that blocking *while being hit* is a required survival skill. Overall, the things the game streamlined or removed universally made defense weaker, which made it a lot harder to get into the game as a new player.

[@danielkonstantinovic6565]

i think people look at fighting games from the outside and see big flashy combos, a whole wall of terminology, and think that if you aren't playing optimally then you aren't playing correctly. they create a crazy set of expectations for themselves and bounce off fast. i dont think most people coming to the fgc know to appreciate the learning and discovery process which is a huge part of the fun in fighting games.

[@doddy1430]

I picked up Goldlewis the other week, and this is my first fighting game. After a week of doing 684H confirms, this character is easy and the inputs will no longer be a problem for me

[@codegeass7162]

I started playing in 2021, I started with SFV and I was incredibly frustrated by having to input DP to anti-air. I never had to struggle so hard with the controllers when I was learning SC2, MOBA's, shooters, etc. I was really mad at the game at some point because I felt like the gameplay was locked behind having to spend one hundred hours in practice mode practising DP, so I wouldn't get jumped. After 100ish hours, I stopped playing. Then strive came around and I've played much more, I like being able to anti-air with 6p that was a huge difference for me because I stopped feeling like the game was locked behind the controllers as much (I was also much better at inputs at this point). I think motion inputs are a bit archaic and a big barrier to doing all the fun and cool stuff that a fighting game promises. Also, the whole +/- on buttons is very difficult to know sometimes, and I think it's something fighting games should do a better job of communicating in game. I think if +/- was communicated more straight forwardly to players, that would go a long way in making new players feel empowered to take control of fights. That's my experience and the frustrations I experienced unique to fighting games.

[@Breeze06]

You don't *need* to understand frame data when your starting out. New players put that pressure on themselves. If you're struggling with motion inputs, then what's + or - should be the last thing on your mind. Baby steps.

[@codegeass7162]

@@Breeze06 I totally agree you don't need it. The argument wasn't about whether it's needed, it's about whether it's communicated. A lot of times when new players get abused by the opponent spamming a block string is simply because they have no indications to tell them at what point they could have challenged. I think fighting games could very easily have a visual effect for when a move hits - that would make it much easier to learn in game and help make it so new-er players aren't as easily exploited by something like May Dolphin spam.

[@Copperhell144]

If it helps any amount at all, depending on your character, DP's are not meant to be the first anti-air option you have to learn in Street Fighter either. If you're playing Ryu for example, crouching HP is supposed to serve you just fine until you get good enough at DP's. But of course, as you said on your own comment about +/- buttons - It's not really communicated to the player all that well.

[@aganaom1712]

i'd say it's a combination of information you are presented with up front alongside the fear and/or act of making mistakes as you play that get punished

[@fishfillet5555]

Fighting games are not for everyone

[@Mcraisins851]

I do think games made around 2000 have restrictively difficult execution for certain characters But if you are complaining about execution for modern fighting games, thats just cap

[@Tremuoso]

I never used to be an "execution" player, I would play the Zangief, the Hulk, the big puncher with the least frantic input requirements of the game almost always. When MVC3 came out I was such a Dante fan that I just set my mind to making him my main even though he had some of the most frantic motion and button input requirements in the game to move smooth and combo with him. I just stuck to it until it become second nature muscle memory. so I can backup this take

[@J_Montagu]

As someone who is new to the fighting game genre, the hardest part is the inputs. It feels like learning a new language or a new instrument because no other games require the same kind of input and muscle memory as fighting games. In FPSes and most action games, the controls are mostly mouse for the aim/camera and WASD for the character movement. So if I switch from csgo to apex, although gameplay style and pacing vary drastically, the fundamentals skills carry along. It's like picking up base after playing guitar for a long time, although the two instruments require different technics, the fundamentals are somewhat similar. While learning fighting game is like trying to learn the flute instead... Totaly different beast.

[@trapdoorbeaver]

love the intro says it all, hard at all levels need some nice peeps to help you just like any other endeavor in life

[@gabrielcamacho8739]

People don’t know how rewarding and fun fighting games are☹️

[@trapdoorbeaver]

@@gabrielcamacho8739 very true

[@victorchan1731]

LK: fighting game is like workout. Plus on that, my personal experience is that workout does help me improve my fighting game skill. Workout not only gets me more stamina, strength, but also concentration, so I can play with more focus, and longer. Workout let me know my muscle better, for example I had struggled to do instant dash towards left, cuz that input need the muscle on my left arm, which part I didn't use often enough, and workout on it solved my issue. Now when I do dashing, I can feel which part of my arm is doing the work, and it's doing well.

[@YangyChaddyDad]

Honestly I think the tedious timings and inputs are unironically hard and really annoying, not that I can't do them a majority of the time. they're just tilt me more than anything else in fighting games.

[@Yakuo]

There are no shortcuts, and that is the beauty of it.

[@samforrt2898]

It's really easy to explain why: All competitive games are supposed to have as close to a 50% win rate as possible for each player. This extends beyond games beyond the fighting genre like Puyo-Puyo or League of Legends. Because of this, fighting games statistically set you up for victory just as much as failure. Single-player games don't have to account for this. Additionally, by virtue of facing another human being, someone is going to find the game hard because one half of the playerbase will lose matches. It doesn't matter what skill level any player has due to this because someone is always on the losing end.

[@lol1013]

I like your content dude, keep it up

[@AwesomeArgonanth]

I still remember trying to learn C.Viper in SF4 and the execution requirements stopped me from learning her pretty fast. I guess you didn't NEED to get good at all her cancels but if you couldn't do them quickly you couldn't really fake people out and she became way less scary.

[@tylercafe1260]

Motion inputs can be hard. I know people who still struggle trying to operate both hands at the same time in different ways. Its like an instrument. There's a lot more naunce involved in these seemingly simple inputs. Its like patting your head and rubbing your tummy. Its mad uncomfortable at first but you get used to it after a while even though it doesnt really feel natural. I think gamers like us forget just how hard these can really be. Youre not just doing a motion input youre doing multiple in sequence with different buttons and games like SF theres now 3 versions of each move with different properties and damage. Then add things like command normals and people just get lost fast. With just 5 attack buttons you get 15 attacks minimum plus what ever specials/command normals and supers you get. Then you got to learn when where and why all 20+ moves are needed, what the lead to, and nuances like your BnBs not working on certain characters and learning new combos and neutral applications for just 1 character in a roster of 16-50+ characters that also have their own 15+ movelist. Before long they have to learn around 240+ moves to even play at all and then they have to learn how to combine those all together for almost thousands of different combinations of usages and interactions.

[@exstacyxd]

All this is true. In my case the only people I run into that have malice towards fighting games are the ones who rate how they feel about a character or game after ONE GAME OF BUTTON MASHING. I have a friend that plays fighting games and will find out what kind of character he wants to play after only playing one game with them. Doesn’t sit down and learn any combos, no mechanics of the game, nothing. It hurts seeing people do stuff like this and don’t have the patience to sit down and learn. But at the same time people learn differently, everyone doesn’t have the same patience level, and everyone doesn’t like the same thing. But when you say “This character is trash” because you didn’t win against someone who has A LOT OF EXPERIENCE, regardless of who you pick, that person will still have the experience advantage. Some of this was probably worded wrong and didn’t have a point but I just wanted to rant 😰.

[@sadetwizelve]

Because they are and people find them intimidating.

[@nan2236]

simple, because they want to play games that as soon as your start playing them you can feel comfortable and say that you will get good very soon. In comparison to fighting games where that feeling is almost non-existent to those that are new to the genre. fighting games have the same structure to the way how we work in the real word. In order to get a decent or good lifestyle you have to work your ass off for many years to see a change to your life and witness the improvement that you have made throughout those years.

[@ClassXero]

Because they are, kabooom

[@ZarelidT]

0:55 👏🏽 bravo well said this is actually the real real real truth. They are hard. But as long as you get started and can do a few things it just becomes easier to play and getting better becomes easier. Just get something started.

[@pcgeek_1862]

Fighting games make me cry. I just suck 😔

[@shizuwolf]

My issue is that I don’t feel fast enough to do the right moves and chain my combos together

[@phxhero]

Maybe show us in a video these said random inputs in other games that are harder? 👀

[@trilby3447]

I think it’s because FGs are possibly the most inherently competitive game genre and that is what the real negator for people getting into them is, the whole control scheme with multiple buttons each representing one type of attack and demanding muscle memory and the reflexes in order to make combos with them, that and it’s a 1v1 game so your on your own unless you have a tutor with you, that and tutorials on frame data and videos of the combo meter going to high numbers can be a lot I’m not even saying competitive games are bad, if you like being competitive be competitive all you want the market caters to you in multiple genres, comp is just a different type of hurdle compared to games that are seen as highly difficult like souls-likes and other games and not everyone is gonna or even want to jump it

[@FlyingTurtleLP]

14:30 what song is that? - Edit: Beneath the Mask (From Persona5?)

[@DragynFyre12]

Curious who does fall on your list of characters who do require high execution just to be able to play the game. Only examples that come to my mind are Carl Clover and a handful of and maybe some 3rd strike Urien charge partitioning stuff

[@NeoBoneGirl]

See, that's to be optimal though. You don't need godlike execution to play an okay Carl or an okay Urien, and that's the point he's making here. A lot of people get stuck on the most optimal shit being needed when, if a character has easier, less optimal routes, if you can't do the hard shit, going for the easy shit is viable to play the character.

[@wikygaming]

I've kinda seen from the casual perspective that they got turned down by the idea of inputting 236 + P to throw Fireball Not to mention they will have to deal with data frames and what not

[@xidjav1836]

My general observation and conclusion why FG are percived harder than any other genre, 1. It is very mechanically intricate almost as much as MOBAs especially in anime games with ling and flashy combos 2. Theplayerpools of fighting games are much lower than any other genre which means when you play against someone most likely you'll be fighting someone much more skilled than you. 3. The genre is known for nothing less than coneptariveness so when new players will come to the genre with the wrong mindset of grind grind grind which lead to tilts and frustration. 4. Most FG are 1v1 which means the learning burden and frustration is much much more pronounce compared to other genre that you can play along teammates/ friends to ease the tension if losing(this honestly depends on who you play with, but generally having someone tolerable playing with you lessens frustration).

[@aozakiaokobestgirl306]

Answer: Because they are I guess....?

[@tcpow6928]

while making no money so its like damn like this makes sense actually but i need to learn it

[@mercman59]

Honest question I swear. Do you believe that some people are born winners? I started believing this more and more in recent years, that I dont have this "heart of a champion" that others might. maybe it doesnt exist. I fail to visualize myself succeeding and my fears of failure materialize in its place. My opponents make comebacks that seem unwinnable. I feel the win escape my grasp more often than not. and I dont just mean winning the round or game. little things like reversals, meaties, safejumps, setups, etc. It hurts when your hands betray you in these moments. I just practiced this? Why cant I do it? I cant tell you how many times ive started a round just watching the air and see the opponent jump at me. I can SEE him in the air. He is coming straight for me. and what do? I do nothing. I block with my face. I looked for one thing, he gave it to me on a silver platter and I couldn't stop it. Im exagerating here but I rarely feel happy in whatever victories I do find. "wow you finally hit the bread and butters for once" is how I often feel about it. im getting off topic While I dont think its literally inherited from birth I strongly believe that certain behaviors encouraged in children at a young age can have a significant impact on the way we see ourselves in the world and what we are capable of. Maybe im just mindlessly believing other peoples ideas. maybe my expectations are too high for myself. maybe competitive stuff just isn't for me. or would that mean that I dont have this innate "winner". I dont believe that this idea cant be overcome, but I do think that it would take a great effort to do so and even if you do it will still be there at least in some small capacity. It is hard to be truly good at anything. I am certain of that. I have done a very bad job writing this as I dont know how to articulate my thoughts. inb4 you just need to practice more, just believe in yourself, you dont even play fighting games, stop being a bitch

[@tobebuilds]

This is a "fixed mindset." Develop a "growth mindset." Fighting games might not be your cup of tea, but for other skills in life, it'll be important to be open to improvement and not being hard on yourself.

[@Breeze06]

There is nothing mystical about this. Upbringing can play apart in one's confidence, but We've seen plenty of successful people whom didn’t have the best Upbringing. You just have mental barriers that you need to overcome.

[@Nimrod336]

New players think they have to be able to do the crazy stuff. But they don't understand you need the basics (if your new,basics for fighting games are punishment, footsies,spacing,maybe bnb combos) they want to skip what makes ppl win and just focus on doing cancels and huge weird very situation heavy stuff that will probably never happen in a real game...instead of getting angry at a problem like someone has a really good move focus on how not to get into that situation...

[@Dwish305]

When I hear people talk about how satisfying it is to beat a Souls or Souls-like game or beat a boss in that game, I hear very similar things of what it takes to be decent to good in a fighting game. For me, I get a higher high or lower low from beating a human player vs an A.I. and the satisfaction is greater in fighting games. IMO a lot people who hold the challenge of Souls in such high regard have not really experienced or given a real shot at being decent/good at a fighting game.

[@Shadercheg]

Souls games are not really that hard but they are really enjoyable, you dont need to learn any advanced stuff to have fun, you can just block/roll and strike with single button, fgs on the other hand are hard af and make you suffer, you should not compare those two things

[@Rivershield]

It is a difficult genre to learn in general compared to other genres, but I think it isn't objectively hard, but it FEELs hard because the responsability of victory is entirely yours and yours alone. I can download Counter Strike or League of Legends right now and not only play it right away and have some fun, but I can also win because it's team based and because those games, at least on casual level, aren't hard. If you are stuck on floor 10 in Strive you are still a massive casual yet the level of skill you need to consistently stay on this floor is way above other competitive genres. The solution to that, I think, is finding a way to make team play possible, to shift part of the responsability from an individual to a group. It's hard to imagine how to do such a thing without ruining 2D fighters though. I think games like Varvarian will be the way.

[@sunwiitch]

just my two cents, i think reactions might be a part of this phenomenon as well. i think a lot of new fighting game players end up thinking a lot more in fighting games has to do with reaction times than is real, which isn't to downplay how much reactions *do* matter in fighting games. i just see a lot of players who end up thinking they're hopeless because they "don't have the reflexes" for fighting games, because they think they're supposed to react to what their opponent is doing rather than sorta monitoring the game state and making sense of what their opponent is *going* to do and what they should do in that situation themselves. in short, they discount how much knowledge and game sense goes into decision-making, thinking reactions are the basis of that decision-making instead.

[@dominiccasts]

I noticed years ago that there's a difficulty in how games are discussed when they tax both mental and physical skills, where the reputation becomes that by taxing physical skills at all, there is no mental component. I found this was a lot more clear with StarCraft, particularly when 2 was in development and there was a lot of controversy over quality of life changes to the game's UI, but the main difference in perception between that and fighting games is that fighting games are expected to be braindead and purely physical, because they analogize a physical activity, while strategy games are expected to be brain-only and purely mental, so having a meaningful physical component to it is treated as a major problem.

[@RompecuelloPR]

They say are hard because they don’t have all day/time to play them and learn

[@Lord_Dargon]

I know that asuka wasnt out yet but dang i wish he had a super that gave him his mana back. I know it would be op but.... man...

[@hmad898]

I feel like newer players just dont know what to learn. They try to learn big crazy combos, when they should learn ways to actually get in and do simple and easy to execute combos. Just knowing a tod or something doesnt mean you know how to open up your opponent to get it off. Learn the neutral first, combos are secondary.

[@Time2GoHam1995]

I think “what’s hard about fighting games” comes down to what skill level the individual is at. Execution is probably the hardest thing for somebody who is new to the genre. Also, I think that when people talk about execution being a hard part of a character, they are specifically referring to the scenario where the reward for doing what they think is hard is unique to that hard thing and is significantly better than the easier version. Like Akuma in T7: His fireball fadc combos are the difficult thing about him execution wise. From his d3, he can do this or the tatsu combo. The tatsu combo can’t be confirmed and is launch punishable on block. The fireball fadc combo is hit confirmable and not launch punishable by most characters. This is extremely important as d3 only combos into tatsu/fireball if it is a clean hit. Which they can avoid with movement, so being able to hit confirm is huge. Also, if you go for the combo and drop it, then they can duck part of it and launch you, and you waste the meter that you won’t get for another round.

[@alexhudson-]

Great backround music

[@toxicskunk6159]

I like and agree with the content of this video BUT I'm new on the Fighting Game scene(floor 7 scrub in strive) and got deterred from playing Pots cuz LK said he's braindead (and I agree that he's easy)...so I picked up Nago now, finally getting into my groove...and now he's also cheese...I don't know who to pick anymore

[@I_recommend_suicide]

Pick the cheese that you think is the coolest and fuck what anyone else has to say about it

[@ONIGIRIKINGU]

Floor 7 is in no way scrub territory. Once you get to floor 5 then you aren't in scrub floors

[@streetsatire3450]

Ok these videos are kinda annoying to me because I feel like the reason people believe fighting games are hard is kinda simple When you are new to a fighting game you basically arnt playing it, with the difference between a good and competent player being so clear it demotavates people to continue as the skill floor is far higher then any other genera If you are bad at call of duty you can still shoot at the bad guys in a way that looks like everyone else but in a fighting game you are just mindlessly hitting the air before getting tod by a man in a fur suit as they rashio you on Twitter All of this talk about information not being clearly shown or being self accountable as there is no team to fall back on are inconveniences sure but only to those that have already passed the barrier of feeling like they are playing the game

[@dariusgrappler110]

"random inputs" remembering dizzy IK [2]8462P+H

[@BorderlandSkylights]

I remember joining the BBCF Rachel discord, and all the resources and mentors say shit like, "Rachel is so hard because she's technically denanding and you gotta spend hours in training mode," and I just started playing matches with 5B, lobelia, and wind go brr.

[@MrCowman57]

I whole heartedly agree with the working out analogy.

[@yourbellboy]

i think the bigger problem is that people use 'hard' to mean 'easy to fail' 🤕...they forget to have fun & see only what can go wrong 🙈. 😌 your video & all the comments seem to sense this. fighting games don't need to suck: the big challenge is distress 😰, not limits ⛔.

[@Lancelot2000Lps]

I personal find game plan hard too understand maybe that is why i play zoner the most i played in the past street fighter 2 and rival school and mortal kombat a bit, the most i played both rival schools. Sad that the game gets no remake.

[@tcpow6928]

like ive played fighting games for a long time and i dont even get it and i have to explain to myself everything so its like

[@Voxoono]

I think for the most part, time passes by faster for fighting game players because of the technical problem solving nature of the meta. Compare this on the other side of the spectrum to, let's say Call of Duty, the meta does not punish players as severely because people are not focusing on getting better but mostly having fun. and fucking around lol fighting game players want to actually have a full proof strategy

[@keithsimpson2150]

Because they are idiots who get on boarded with hundreds of hours of grind in a Skinner box in other games and can't sustain interest in something on their own unless it is a full-blown obsession. The difficulty is an excuse created by FG people in their own heads when really a lot of people just don't enjoy fighting games

[@TheDiamondSkye]

I think inputs are still a way to scale difficulty for a character, there are certain levels and categories of execution. Recent fighting games have sort of taken away certain aspects of core mechanics in a fighting game, main one is whiff punishment. Sure whiff punishment exists in strive, but when was the last time you whiff punished nago 2S or gio 2D? Also, in 3D, People don't play mishima for the sole purpose of them being hard to use at high level. You hear it all the time "damn, i really want to play mishima, but i know my execution isn't good enough." I'm not talking about some online netizen mixing people the fuck up with hellsweep. Has tekken 7 made that easier to manage, sure. In tekken, the reason people don't play mishima isn't that ewgf is hard, but that you have to do ewgf to whiff punish and with jin, if you mess that up, you don't get a combo, i think that would fall into the category of execution though as well. Qudans, arguably the best devil jin in the world, still messes up ewgf and not just in tournament either. This man broke his hands to play devil jin bro. Now, doing ewgf in training mode when the other player isn't there, sure, I don't think that's an issue. Perhaps you were talking solely about 2D games,(?) but said games after 2010. Again, I think that there's levels to execution- at a high level, everyone is expected to have it. Overall, i think you were mentioning 2D and not 3D games, which in that aspect, i think that there's discussion there, but i can agree with most of it.

[@tcpow6928]

im glad you guys get it but man like you can REALLY REALLY TELL WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE if people dont want to really learn this stuff and they just dont care about you being good