Fighting Game Community (FGC) General - The history of FGC drama, general FGC shenanigans, and directory to more eccentric individuals and subcultures within the community

The thing is that if you balance everything so people aren't getting rolled completely, they will still get rolled completely once the no lifers optimize shit. Even in the most balanced game, the players who want to grind to the top 1% are going to bully the casuals, there is no way that's not going to happen. You can reduce the game to only being Ryu with shoryuken, hadoken, and 2 normals, and if players want to take that game to the top, they'll find a way to grind it so you look like a helpless child because they have a thesis on every interactive state of the game while you're just playing by feel. Removing options until the top 1% have nothing to optimize is the only solution, is that the answer?

Like I get the idea that balancing for competitive should be good balance for casual, and I just don't see it. You give the players interesting shit to do and think about, and let all the other pieces fall where they will.

In the example of SFF2, the identity of that game is the broken shit with secret tech and glitches you learn to be grimy as fuck. I don't even like SF2 in the slightest, but the advertisement is basically "Hey do you want to play watered down SF2 where all the funky shit you learned is removed? You'll be an honorable player and earn all the e-cred from other honorable fighting game players!"
Blech.
 
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The thing is that if you balance everything so people aren't getting rolled completely, they will still get rolled completely once the no lifers optimize shit. Even in the most balanced game, the players who want to grind to the top 1% are going to bully the casuals, there is no way that's not going to happen. You can reduce the game to only being Ryu with shoryuken, hadoken, and 2 normals, and if players want to take that game to the top, they'll find a way to grind it so you look like a helpless child because they have a thesis on every interactive state of the game while you're just playing by feel. Removing options until the top 1% have nothing to optimize is the only solution, is that the answer?

Like I get the idea that balancing for competitive should be good balance for casual, and I just don't see it. You give the players interesting shit to do and think about, and let all the other pieces fall where they will.

In the example of SFF2, the identity of that game is the broken shit with secret tech and glitches you learn to be grimy as fuck. I don't even like SF2 in the slightest, but the advertisement is basically "Hey do you want to play watered down SF2 where all the funky shit you learned is removed? You'll be an honorable player and earn all the e-cred from other honorable fighting game players!"
Blech.
Isn't distilling the game down to one basic concept what dive kick did?
 
Dive kick original version/demo did that, but then it had a bunch of other mechanics on top of it once the game got released/expanded upon.

There's a game called Footsies which is the idea of a game distilled down to the absolute minimum.
 
MK1 just generally doesn't look very good. I don't think it's even some ESG thing I think the game's just hit the graphical uncanny valley and paired it with animations that are so snappy that they don't have any real impact or stylization.
I find it hard to believe ESG had nothing to do with the God awfully ugly character redesigns in Mk1. It's just too inline with ESG ugliness and homogeneity.
 
Dive kick original version/demo did that, but then it had a bunch of other mechanics on top of it once the game got released/expanded upon.

There's a game called Footsies which is the idea of a game distilled down to the absolute minimum.
Interesting. I haven't played DK since the early iterations and only watched a few videos of footsies.
 
Interesting. I haven't played DK since the early iterations and only watched a few videos of footsies.
I actually don't know much about Divekick. I never played it, though it showed up for a few nights at locals, and somebody even had one of those funny 2 button controllers for it.
All I know is that Jebailey gets a bigger head the more rounds he wins, and that makes him guaranteed to lose to one of the other characters because he can't dodge a divekick after 4 wins or so. The other thing I know is some character has some sort of item drop mechanic like Faust from GG, but to which extent and how it's used I forget.
 
The thing is that if you balance everything so people aren't getting rolled completely, they will still get rolled completely once the no lifers optimize shit. Even in the most balanced game, the players who want to grind to the top 1% are going to bully the casuals, there is no way that's not going to happen. You can reduce the game to only being Ryu with shoryuken, hadoken, and 2 normals, and if players want to take that game to the top, they'll find a way to grind it so you look like a helpless child because they have a thesis on every interactive state of the game while you're just playing by feel. Removing options until the top 1% have nothing to optimize is the only solution, is that the answer?
It isn't about "balance" in the strict sense.

It's about "balance" being tied into mechanics. Like having a certain character be decent to play as if and only if you get very good at specific hard-to-execute combos (like 1 frame links). This creates a very hard separation between a newcomer, a casual, and a skilled player for no discernable reason other than to create that exact separation for unknown reasons. Having mechanics (even worse unexplained mechanics) being core to the experience simply boils down to "A skilled player literally does more damage on the same setups" and 90% of "player skill" being "watched a video explaining the setup".

The center of fighting games should always be "what is the other person going to do" and bogging it down with anything else is pointless and having games get won or lost by "secret techniques" or obtuse mechanics doesn't make the games better. The games can only improve with both players are able to make informed decisions and hiding or obscuring information through incompetence or glitches is hurting the genre.

Alternatively - if they're going to keep the mechanics, they need to do a much better job of tutorializing them instead of "just watch a video lol" and or "lab more".
 
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I will 100 percent agree that FGs need a better job at putting stuff in tutorials. I've taught weaker players how to do karas in SF4 and it blew their minds, but once they learned how to do this they were very excited to use the mechanic. I've also taught players the concept of whiff punishing, and this also made them excited and hungry to advance.
One of those is a game mechanic/bug limited to certain characters, the other is a fundamental to the genre itself. Players in general just love learning stuff, but so few people are ready to take on a mentor role to help others it's actually kind of depressing to me. Even if mentoring was more popular, that still leaves some people out, so having in game tutorials is the correct way to go to make sure everybody has access.

Under Night is a great example of this, the tutorial goes over the basics, the combo trials tell you which scenarios are best for the combos with actually practical and optimal routes, and then the tutorials even go one step further and explain how some of the more important option selects work and even give you little trial scenarios to try them out.
 
The majority of fighting games past the 2010s dont really have hard to execute combos and even if they do they're generally not worth the investment over a standard bnb. Despite people wanting these games to be about choices they already were even when you do combos. A better player would do a safer combo that they know they won't drop over tacking on extra damage on a combo they don't have in their muscle memory cause that would put them in a worse position if not outright throw a match.

The modern fg people don't really understand how to teach beyond "yeah you do this to respond to this" that dont really hit the core issues, yet you see these 10+ vets trying to say its easy without breaking it down.

Stuff like UNI is good for doing the most important thing which is breaking down the system and the mechanics themselves while giving you a overall good spot of how the game is suppose to flow.

Even 1 frame links aren't as bad as grifters make them out to be depending on the game due to the buffer systems which for some reason is rarely explained and yet its one of the most important roles on how to stay consistent or getting moves that you want. (This is excluding +R cause the game has no input leniency which is why it feels very tight.)
 
The center of fighting games should always be "what is the other person going to do"
If you're of this mindset, you might find YOMI Hustle interesting. It's a turn based fighting game, sorta like a PvP TAS. You've got an assortment of moves and some info on them and you can select those and lock them in while trying to plan around what you think your opponent is going to do. Game knowledge and prediction are a lot more heavily rewarded than a physical barrier to entry. There's also a lot of modded characters which makes that game knowledge bit harder, but you don't have to play against them if you just don't download them and the base characters can actually stand up to most mods fine if you know what you're doing. I personally enjoy playing modded, but the game's plenty playable if you don't.
 
The modern fg people don't really understand how to teach beyond "yeah you do this to respond to this" that dont really hit the core issues, yet you see these 10+ vets trying to say its easy without breaking it down.
It's the 00s gaming issue. Top CSGO russian pros? They played out every single imaginable scenario over and over for years and found the solution to each of them. No think, only practice. Same with DotA and Starcraft. If met with x; y. Then you do that for 22 years, your game makes a second splash, and now zoomers show up "cuh fr fr what's iframes?" and you have to say something that makes you sound smarter than "just play a lot lmao".

I still think fondly of the idea of getting into fighting games but then when I watch a top pro tekken finale, it's literally just two dudes trying to get a launcher on the other to then do the exact same juggle combo as last time. It's almost insulting how that game is just reduced to two people trying to kick the other upwards. I know that's the staple of Tekken but seeing how fucking simplified that shit is has turned me off, despite knowing it's a lot easier to get into than all those autistic weeb fighters.

On the other hand you got MK11 which was just non-stop poking until one party died which is equally bad.
 
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Small update from the Test Your Might Forums, one of the oldest MK communities on the internet.
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I can't open the thumbnail but it's a pop up ad right in the middle of the screen. People are pissed about it. TYM is basically dead already, so this will probably be the coffin nail. It was a really fun place to be 10-15 years ago but they fell victim to the social justice invasion of gaming spaces in the 2010s and 95% of the tournament players that hung out there left.

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If I recall, Robocop was the former owner or head admin.
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This is a big one. CrimsonShadow is the biggest shill in the NRS community, and possibly, the world. Anything they can shit out is gold to him.
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Some people were getting security alerts trying to view the forum on corporate networks. STORMS did some stuff behind the scenes trying to fix the issues, but ultimately failed. Now he has the shut off temporarily but seems really content on forcing them onto the forum once the security issues are resolved.
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Small update from the Test Your Might Forums, one of the oldest MK communities on the internet.
View attachment 6455550

I can't open the thumbnail but it's a pop up ad right in the middle of the screen. People are pissed about it. TYM is basically dead already, so this will probably be the coffin nail. It was a really fun place to be 10-15 years ago but they fell victim to the social justice invasion of gaming spaces in the 2010s and 95% of the tournament players that hung out there left.

View attachment 6455556
View attachment 6455560


If I recall, Robocop was the former owner or head admin.
View attachment 6455568

This is a big one. CrimsonShadow is the biggest shill in the NRS community, and possibly, the world. Anything they can shit out is gold to him.
View attachment 6455579

Some people were getting security alerts trying to view the forum on corporate networks. STORMS did some stuff behind the scenes trying to fix the issues, but ultimately failed. Now he has the shut off temporarily but seems really content on forcing them onto the forum once the security issues are resolved.
View attachment 6455576
I hate the corpospeak on display here. "We're so excited to test out these new forms of advertisement delivery with you!"
 
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Ken over Ryu, interesting.
Disappointed it's coming so early but I guess the iron is hot right now.
......... why SNK, why?

I get Capcom is using Terry and Mai, but you didn't have to pull the same thing, you could have just done your own thing without using their IP.
 
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......... why SNK, why?

I get Capcom is using Terry and Mai, but you didn't have to pull the same thing, you could have just done your own thing without using their IP.
They could have done another Snk vs Capcom but I guess that is too much effort for either of the companies so they went with the lazy guest characters
 
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They could have done another Snk vs Capcom but I guess that is too much effort for either of the companies so they went with the lazy guest characters
With the rerelease of the previous games and all the fervour happening right now it feels more like the build up to a SVC 2 or CvS3.
Assuming they don't burn themselves out before then.
 
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It's more comparable to online dating.

Online Dating:
  • Person A - "Hey, this system you have in place now is not working. It's completely unbalanced where women get more special treatment than the men do, relies on microtransaction bullshit to sucker people into spending MORE money after the membership costs, and the majority of profiles are fake/bots. Let's fix this by making the system more fair and removing the things that don't work"
  • Person B - "lol you just suck, maybe do better!"
Fighting Games (and the FGC) :
  • Person A - "Hey, this system is kind of buggy and unbalanced, so much so that the top players are using the bugs and glitches to their advantage and claiming them to be 'legit' play styles. A good chunk of the characters are tossed aside for the same handful. The people that populate the online rooms are people that have been playing it for years and will just wreck any new person that comes in. Let's fix this by making the game(s) less buggy and group players in their correct skill levels so they aren't being constantly steamrolled."
  • Person B - "lol you just suck, maybe do better!"
Case in point, SSF2 The New Legacy, which completely removes the broken shit, gives lesser used character new/better tools, and tones down the more oppressive characters. Barely anyone touches it on FightCade, in fact it's lucky if it gets even double digits in the room because apparently people need their claw dive loops, and honda orichi store bugs and chunli neckbreaker loops in order to win... which really says more about the player's """skills""" than anything else.
One thing to keep in mind is that the fgc is criminally autistic, and thus will react with hostility to any change. The other thing is that New Legacy has terrible advertising and Born2spd's insistence that the game isn't done yet prevents him from going all in.
 
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