Brawl, the hundred pound gorilla in my circle of friends.
The other day, I walk into a classroom to join my friends in some video games. Of course, Smash Brothers Brawl is on the screen right now and I see four excited/dumbfounded/pained expressions looking at a projected screen as four characters beat the living snot out of each on board a spaceship.
I can sense a feeling of controlled chaos as the players know what they're doing yet don't know what'll happened next considering it is a four person free for all. Projectiles are thrown, bodies are thrown like rag dolls, and special attacks are executed. But after a few more games of this, I want to play Tatsunoko vs.Capcom. After a long class of Media Law, I deserve something new.
As soon as we start on that, all I can feel is confusion.
All the confidence of knowing what to do disappears. Sure, I can enjoy myself, but only one other person has even the faintest grasp of what to do. I cringe every time our only female friend takes a shot at TvC and figuratively flails her way to a defeat. I just don't understand what's supposed to be complicated about TvC. I wouldn't say button mashing will bring you success, but a certain amount of controlled mashing can get you a few wins.
You only have to worry about three buttons for crying out loud. It's beyond me how some people knew how to block in Brawl (which is a button) and how to block in TvC (you move away from your opponent, like 95% of other fighting games). They're even similar to each other in some aspects, as you can perform different attacks by holding a specific direction before pressing your desired attack button.
However, it's not that I hate Brawl. Quite the contrary: I love it. While I don't want to brag that I win all the time, I will say that I typically win consistently among my peers. In the end its still a party game to me and not a competitive one. If I win or lose, I brush it off either way.
The problem is how people can't (or won't) learn the game. If you can devote energy crunching the numbers in an RPG to power level your character, then why not get the hang of simple motions to throw a fireball? Don't use Brawl as a crutch to not explore other fighting games.
So Brawl, you're a good game but please: let's play something else. Don't be afraid to pick up another fighting game. Don't be afraid of other fighting games just because it uses three buttons for punching and three buttons for kicking; Or because you have to hold away from your opponent to block; Or because you have to move your joystick in a quarter-circle forward motion (from down to forward) to shoot a fireball. Don't just stick with something like Brawl: expand your horizons and you will find something rewarding
Sir....you are not taking certain kinds of players into account in your assertions and worries. Read this please
http://bitmob.com/articles/gaming-for-the-twitch-deficient-
I can't play fighting games well at all. It's painful to try and do so because they are so demanding of the twitch reflexes. Still I can play smash brothers to a rather high degree of success and know what I am doing and why i'm doing it. Tatsunoko vs capcom is also a nice thing to play every so often since I can actually do some of the combos in it, but even it is hard for me to chain combo in with any consistency.
To act as if brawl is a 'crutch' is ridiculous. Brawl is what is called an 'alternative'. Not everyone has your skill set and not everyone wants to spend their time developing that skill set in order to enjoy the concept of competitive melee combat in a game.
Different strokes for different folks. I'm sure theirs at least one genre you would like to see have a dumbed down version for you to try it out.
It was stupid of me to post this without careful consideration after seeing the shit storm this caused with my friends when I showed it to them. The end thought process I came away with that is that I probably came down too harshly on Brawl. Since you pointed it out, I guess 'crutch' is quite a strong word and pretty insulting.
I guess my personal problem is my personal quest for competition and the fact many of my friends simply fit this bill you and the writer of the linked article describe themselves to be. If it's really a problem to you guys, at least in real life, I don't necessarily want to force it down your throat.
Still, it gave me slight joy when I showed my friend Blazblue, and she was just another person anyone could relate to. I was just that person who was trying to teach her how to play, but at the end of the day, she told me she was genuinely interested in learning how to play to some extent.
That gave me a certain degree of satisfaction.
(On a somewhat unrelated note, the sequel to Blazblue, Continuum Shift, has introduced a sort of Beginner mode, where combos and special moves are simplified like Bayonetta's easy mode. http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175753 )
As for a genre I'd like to see dumbed down for me? That's an interesting question I should consider. I can't really think of any in terms of control factor though.
I guess at the end of thinking about this comment, at least as long as I'm speaking strictly about fighting games, there's a certain 'club exclusivity' satisfaction people like me (an assumption of people like me that is) derive out of this kind of 'no scrubs allowed' kind of mentality. I still have friends who share in this like me and we can jabber on for hours about frame advantage and other minute things that normal people would find inane.
Accessibility? Most definitely not. Catering to a demographic? I'd venture a guess yes.
Anyways, thanks for even reading it at all.
No problem Marcel, and I actually wrote the article I shoved in your face above so I'm rather passionate about this issue. ^.^. Don't feel too bad about the backlash. It's just a natural thing that happens with opinionated gamers.
I totally get why you like more complex fighting games. I really would love to be into them myself as my playing a lot of first person shooters has given me a taste for competition. Still i have a lot of hurdles to overcome and no real help to overcome them as far as the genre goes.
The set of short stories I write under a fictional character 'Mi' actually has a story that addresses where I think fighting game fans have gone astray.
http://bitmob.com/articles/mi-dragon-and-lynn
It basically says that fighting game fans focus too much on personal improvement and not enough on respecting and encouraging people around them to succeed. Basically that theirs no 'master and student' culture in fighting games like in actual martial arts.
You already have something to be proud of in that you are trying to teach people to play at all. So don't feel too bad about being a part of the 'no scrubs allowed' club.
Personally, I don't even consider the Smash Brothers series to be a part of the fighting genre. While hardcore tournament players would strongly disagree, it's more of a party game than a fighter in my eyes. Now this isn't to say I'm any good at fighters, quite the opposite. I'm terrible, and don't have the patience to learn.
Wait, if your friends are having problems playing Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom and are scared of complex controls, why don't they just play using the Wii-mote controls that have autocombos and one button special moves? They're the same as the Beginner Mode BlazBlue controls that you brought up, and both are the product of appealing to the Super Smash Brothers demographic that you claim to be diluting the genre.
It isn't to attack you specifically, and I prefer traditional fighters myself. It just frustrates me when people gerrymander the definition of a fighting game because of one game.
Let me think about that Chris...
Well, I can say for certain that easy mode on TvC seems to be confusing everyone, myself included. I can't say for certain that I read the instructions with hawk-ish intent, but I definitely skimmed through it once and don't really remember any explanations on easy mode. Thus, even I was confused on how easy mode worked.
Anyways, about these attempts to lower the barrier of entry for non-fighting gamers specifically? I'm just going to respond that I remember trying to handling these easy mode controls and felt that they were limiting even if they gave beginners a taste of things they can't normally do.
Looking over the beginner mode controls of BB: CS, I take away that you can accomplish most basic gatling combos (weak, medium, strong, special attack). That'll work for fun, I understand that. But there are combos out there that start with a strong attack and go from there. In most iterations of this 'beginner' mode, you don't have traditional access to strong attack unless you drum out a weak attack first.
OK, tl;dr I can see the good in giving newbies a sort of beginner mode, but it usually seems limiting in some way. Would you say it seems rather limiting as well? Or maybe is just giving them accessible controls mission accomplished? And this really comes around to what I may have failed at communicating originally, Brawl or not. I don't think a player should be compromising accessibility for fun. I think of it as the old saying, getting there is half the fun. The practice and satisfaction of learning something can be rewarding and fun.
But oh crap, I might just be making another big fat assumption.
I think TVC's easy controls were attack, special attacks using one direction SSB-style, a partner button, and hyper combos by pressing attack and special together.
Easy controls are meant to be limiting because you don't want to give a beginner the same reward for pressing one button that a skilled player gets. That would become a real problem in online play. Easy control users also don't have to worry about screwing up special attack commands, and at least in the Wii version of Capcom Vs. SNK 2 charge specials don't need a charge in easy mode. In the end easy mode isn't for the people aspiring to improve their skills but for the people who just want some quick fun. In a way it turns fighting games into party games.
If you wanted to get more people into the competitive spirit of fighting games you should probably embrace Super Smash Brothers. It may be simpler, but it does teach basics like zoning and footsies that are more important to beginners than learning combos. Plus they are playing SSB and not some limited version of it. Then when you play other games speak of the characters and mechanics in terms of SSB.
Since you mentioned that your friends are playing a free-for-all match in the article I'm wondering what their opinion of the ruleset used in SSB tournaments is.
I'm gonna keep this short and to the point for fear of being very verbose as I've been for the past few comments...
My friends (I'm in a campus club called Gaming Club) are not 'tourny****'. Casually in club, we play items with random stages.
I've held tournaments before, mostly among friends. Items were usually off but stage selection was by vote, so no stage was off limits.
If your friends are all right with the word 'tourney***,' then that is the reason why they don't want to learn fighting games. You might only mean it for SSB specifically, and there are good reason to not like those rules, but you can't expect people to practice a game if they look down on those who do.