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Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

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Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#71

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

uncletaco wrote: post #44
BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #3

One thing that's very tricky about these kind of simplified visual explanations of fighting game mechanics is that you don't capture all the strategic implications of move properties. The visualizations make simple scenarios clear, for example if you block a sweep point blank (or whatever a highly punishable tekken equivalent would be, a snake edge or a hellsweep or whatever), then you are at advantage and can land a…

Just play Dhalsim boom you can punish the block string with a standing low kick that closes the distance. Now laugh as they call you anti fun.

I really would, but I could never land those TK teleports consistently (assuming that's still a thing in 6)

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#72

Post by ranting-moth »

yamazakiwi wrote: post #62
thaumasiotes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need printer ink. You can print them in grayscale, or cut some index cards to fit into sleeves and write the name of the card you want in pencil.

I use a bag of coins I've collected, each coin represents whatever card I need at the time.

Just do it mentally and keep the game in your mind.

"I summon the Whoore Of Babylon, 70/30 flying. You're finished".

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#73

Post by chowells »

uncletaco wrote: post #46
SliceOfWaifu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to other 3D fighters like SoulCalibur, Dead or Alive, Bloody Roar, etc, Tekken is completely unintuitive for a casual button masher. Tekken, like Virtua Fighter, requires you to sit down in Training Mode for hours just to learn a single character's basic moveset, BnBs, and gameplan. Compare this to 2D fighting games, where all you gotta do is learn the basic Street Fighter 2 movelist, and you can quickly fig…

You know I find that funny. When I want to mash in tekken I just remember each button corresponds to a limb. If I want to do the thingy that uses both legs then press the two leg buttons with a direction. If I want to do a left right left combination I press left right left punch in order. You can mash around with a character to see where it leads you to get really good basic understand imo.

But if you've played another fighting game before, Tekken feels clunky as hell. If you don't know all of your character's common strings, you quickly find yourself in situations where you're just stuck in move recovery for ages. There isn't a common design pattern of making every stopping point in the string feel natural.

I think that in contrast to Soul Calibur, this happens because the attacks are so fast. Watching for every string to stop at every move makes block punishing too hard in Tekken, if everything in the string was around the same level of frame disadvantage on block. Soul Calibur, by contrast, has most moves enough slower that you can identify the string ending in time to block punish when possible. But as a side effect, attacks in Soul Calibur can recover when they look like they recover. (For the most part. There are always weird exceptions.) So as a result, even when you don't know the game, attacks feel far less clunky than Tekken.

Combine that with Tekken's really bad movement (until you learn the mechanics that exploit the way input is handled), massive move lists, and very little input portability between characters, and you get a really frustrating experience that's mostly unique to starting to play Tekken.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#74

Post by rochak »

jncfhnb wrote: post #17

Tekken feels particularly bad to play if you don’t know what you’re doing imo. It’s the least approachable. Unexpected shoutout to Thems Fighting Herds, the mlp fan spinoff turned OC quadruped fighting game. Regardless of your care for the aesthetics, the single player story was extremely good imo. Enemies were NOT just random CPUs but unique characters with formulaic strategies. Wolf that just does crouching attacks…

Thanks for warning me on Tekken. I was really digging the character design and all in the upcoming Tekken 8 but given I possess dexterity of a 10 year old, I should probably skip it and fighting games in general.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#75

Post by opan »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #2

I kind of noped out of the fighting game craze when they descended on the arcades in the 90's (?). To my eye they had abandoned the twitchy interactivity I had come to expect playing standard arcade games like Tempest, etc. Rather than a fire button and a spinner you had a joystick plus what amounted to a numpad of buttons. It seemed like maybe a game accountants or payroll managers would enjoy. (To this day, though…

Modern arcade controllers are pretty standardized. The 8 buttons on the right are your four face buttons and four shoulder buttons. That plus your 8-directional dpad means they work for just about any 2D game or 3D game that doesn't need analog sticks or a mouse.

The left half of the 8 buttons is where the four face buttons go, in their standard positions more or less, but rotated slightly. Top two are the west and north buttons, bottom two are south and east buttons. This means PlayStation Cross and Xbox A are the same button, but in Nintendo layout that button would be the B button (gets even more confusing when you consider that PS3 can use Cross or Circle for confirm depending on the region).

For the other four you have your triggers on the bottom and bumpers on the top, but right is before left. You may think that's backwards and confusing, but I think of it as putting the more important action first / on the stronger finger. You see the same with standard pad controllers vs the mouse. Left click on a mouse and right trigger on a controller both tend to be your primary fire. With that in mind you'd probably just treat it like a standard xinput controller for the bindings.

I've pretty much just gotten into arcade controllers this year thanks to the new leverless (4 buttons replace the 4-switch stick) arcade controller trend + accompanying DIY scene. They're fun for fighting games, platformers, puzzle games, shmups, whatever they can work for pretty much. With the modern firmware options you can even emulate an analog stick if required for a game. I've been using them for as many games as I can lately. They even make arcade controllers with extra buttons now to play Smash Bros and other platform fighters (e.g. Rivals of Aether).

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#76

Post by araes »

jncfhnb wrote: post #39
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But for 99% of the player base you’re going to be best off learning a few bread and butter ideas and then executing on them without much variation Yes, this is why it's not at all interesting to talk about things that apply to 99% of the playerbase. Because mindlessly spamming one thing really, really well is an effective strategy against the vast majority of the playerbase in any game. If this is the level that yo…

Shrug. Watch the finals of different game tourneys and see the best of the best and tell me it’s not bread dripping with butter still. There are interesting edge cases that only the pros can make use of, but it’s still samey.

MtG, mentioned earlier, tournament play is very similar. Unless they're draft, they usually devolve into all the decks everyone knew about on Top8 several weeks before release. People can say there's very conscious strategy or tactics, except there's not. Because of the mass share, aggregate reviews, and mob think, it all homogenizes quickly each season.

4 of with 36 non-land, and 24 land in mid-range, means you're really only choosing 9 cards unless its a weird deck. Often the whole season devolves into something like "[Delver's the best/Sword Crow's the best/ect...], all other choices are failure." Hasbro doesn't really care unless sales go down. Hasbro's only motivation is selling cards. If humans buy, Hasbro sells.

Standard Draft still tends to devolve into most pursuing 1st strat, 2nd strat, ect... depending on what gets grabbed nearby.

EDH or Commander is usually viewed as the most variety, simply because there's far too many combinations with only 1 of each among 100.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#77

Post by mmcdermott »

rochak wrote: post #74
jncfhnb wrote: post #17

Tekken feels particularly bad to play if you don’t know what you’re doing imo. It’s the least approachable. Unexpected shoutout to Thems Fighting Herds, the mlp fan spinoff turned OC quadruped fighting game. Regardless of your care for the aesthetics, the single player story was extremely good imo. Enemies were NOT just random CPUs but unique characters with formulaic strategies. Wolf that just does crouching attacks…

Thanks for warning me on Tekken. I was really digging the character design and all in the upcoming Tekken 8 but given I possess dexterity of a 10 year old, I should probably skip it and fighting games in general.

I wouldn't consider myself to have good dexterity at all but have been able to play fighting games and work my way up the ranked ladder. I'd say if Tekken 8 looks cool, give it a try.

The main problem with Tekken is that it doesn't really document its systems with tutorials or a manual. Fortunately, YouTube will teach you more than enough. Tekken also tends to reward legacy knowledge more than most fighting games, so you'll probably find that Tekken 7 tutorials get you farther than you expect.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#78

Post by dfxm12 »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #3

One thing that's very tricky about these kind of simplified visual explanations of fighting game mechanics is that you don't capture all the strategic implications of move properties. The visualizations make simple scenarios clear, for example if you block a sweep point blank (or whatever a highly punishable tekken equivalent would be, a snake edge or a hellsweep or whatever), then you are at advantage and can land a…

Target audience: Beginners who have some familiarity of Tekken and have already chosen a character to specialize in.

It's not meant for high levels of play. We have to start somewhere. I think it is perfectly a suitable to help beginners think about +/- frames or other situational info before getting into matchup specific strats.

I always go at it roughly like this: Figure out what buttons to use in what situations, get executions of special moves down first, learn a few bnbs/block strings (and other offensive strategies), oki situations, then once I really master the character do I worry about match up specifics, mind games, etc.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#79

Post by SliceOfWaifu »

chowells wrote: post #73
uncletaco wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know I find that funny. When I want to mash in tekken I just remember each button corresponds to a limb. If I want to do the thingy that uses both legs then press the two leg buttons with a direction. If I want to do a left right left combination I press left right left punch in order. You can mash around with a character to see where it leads you to get really good basic understand imo.

But if you've played another fighting game before, Tekken feels clunky as hell. If you don't know all of your character's common strings, you quickly find yourself in situations where you're just stuck in move recovery for ages. There isn't a common design pattern of making every stopping point in the string feel natural. I think that in contrast to Soul Calibur, this happens because the attacks are so fast. Watching…

This is exactly what I meant.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#80

Post by dfxm12 »

SliceOfWaifu wrote: post #25
ranting-moth wrote: post #6

Back in the day me and my buddy spent ages playing Mortal Combat on a PC. I decided to learn all the combos (crazy fast keyboard patterns). The combos gave you disproportional damage wielding power. I spent hours and hours practicing it when we were playing. My buddy won pretty much every single game, while laughing at my combo attempts. Then I mastered it one day. I won every single game. Buddy said this combo shit…

The problem with playing competitive games casually is that the moment one player actually bothers to learn anything about the game, it immediately ruins the experience for the other player if they're unwilling to do the same.

No game is perfectly balanced & no players are perfectly balanced either. I don't know about mortal kombat, but home versions of games had handicap features built in for situations like this. You can also do some out of game handicaps like "I get one free move" or "you can't use this special move".

If nothing else, the variety keeps things interesting.

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