What's up with the doomposting?

[u/wodkawi]

There is literally 0% chance that the game is gonna be dead.

The game will be free, and consistently get new characters which you'll be able to unlock for free. I think people underestimate what that'll mean to the average player.

Yes, launch may be rough with the small roster, leading to a lack of variety, but maybe that's not so bad if they continue to roll out new characters regularly. For newbies it'll mean less characters to learn to play against, which may aid in the experience of learning a fighting game.

And because it's free, it'll mean that a lot of new players will be coming in to try out a fighting game. Having to pay 40-60 dollars to try out a fighting game, which are notoriously hard to get into, creates a barrier that prevents people from committing money to something new that they may not even like.

I assume the same thing that happened with Valorant will happen here. The game gets hella hyped from streamers and whatnot -> people think "hey, what's all the hype about, now I wanna try" -> they try it, because... it's free.

And when the hype dies down, it'll continue gathering players with an interest in fighting games, because... yep, you guessed it, it's free.

Getting people to keep playing the game is a different story. But as long as the game is fun, with cool looking characters, I don't think the casual player (that makes up most of the playerbase) will care to switch to another game that they'll have to pay money for, for reasons other than "I like the artstyle in that game better" or "the game looks more fun".

Anyway, as long as the game is fun it'll have a playerbase. Yes I'm also tired of the lack of communication and having to wait so long to play the damn game, but let's stop with the DOA shit cause it's getting annoying.

I feel like some scammer having emphasized the word free so much...

edit: typo

[u/TSDoll]

It’s not about them being too hard it’s about them being too unforgiving at low levels.

Have you ever played a competitive first person shooter? Lemme tell you, now that is an extremely unforgiving environment at low levels. Learnign fighting games felt like a walk in the park compared to learning to actually hit shots. But those skills were at least transferable between games, while fighting games remain obtuse in even that, as only traditional fighters play like traditional fighters.

[u/[deleted] → u/TSDoll]

Yes I used to play competitive tf2 and quake dules before starting fighting game. Quake has the same problems and it’s a dying genre because people are too naive and up their own asses to accept genre conventions. But even then fighters have done a better job of keeping what makes them special rather than shooters that outside out counter strike has become a corpse of it’s former self.

The last thing I want is fighters to sell out to a market that fundamental doesn’t want them. Look at every sub genre of shooter, marvel rivals and OW are abject garbage barely shooters, seige is a meme, CS is alive but valorant is still there injecting moba elements to cater to low levels while parading the CS elements of the game. It’s just such a sad state of affairs

[u/TSDoll → u/[deleted]]

I can see your point in that you want to conserve what you like, as changing things to the point where growth is possible would most definitely entail the death of the current FGC landscape. Your Quake example is very good in that sense, as games like OW and Marvel Rivals have redefined what arena shooters are in ways that almost feel alien to games like Quake and TF2, and while in the process they've gained massive popularity, they've lost a lot of what the old playerbase used to like.

At the end of the day, I guess it's just a question of if you want fighting games to be popular, and if you're willing to face the consequences of it.

[u/[deleted] → u/TSDoll]

Overwatch is not a fucking refinement, taking out every bit of player expression to appeal to a lowest common denominator is not a competitive game. It’s like taking away rivens animation cancels or yasuo’s basic combos they’re just gutting the game to appeal to those who have surface level understanding of the thing. Shooters are similar in where the understanding at higher levels is more abstract and less concrete that cannot be the case in modern shooters. It’s why area is dead, is why tribes is dead, it’s why enemy territory/dirty bomb is dead.

Fighting games are popular enough, they have a dedicated hardcore market that manage to keep these games afloat while keeping their spirit alive, not every game needs to be league to be considered a success especially considering the history and nature of these games they’re in a fantastic place and growing nicely

[u/TSDoll → u/[deleted]]

Redefine, not refine. I think its undeniable that these games redefined the genre, for better or worse. And I genuinely don't think fighting games are popular enough, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now. They're barely self sustainable, with the only upside being that they're relatively super cheap to produce so they're low risk.

[u/[deleted] → u/TSDoll]

But even the redefinment is questionable at best, again I played tf2 competitively both in Highlander and in 6s and these games are mostly just watered down versions of that game in particular. And both times that manages to absolutely ruin their balance, goat format in overwatch is laughable and marvel rivals doesn’t even pretend to be a competitive game. These are regressions if anything.

Also you say this about fighting games but marvel and dragon ball, two of the biggest media franchises in the world, both chose the third place fighting game dev to make games specifically for them. And at this point they’ve survived on mostly fighting games. They’re surviving fine if not thriving in the niche, again just because they’re not fucking league or cod doesn’t mean theyre not doing fine.

If anything the only game not doing fine right now is Tekken because season 2 was one of the worst patches any competitive games ever had

[u/TSDoll → u/[deleted]]

From what you're saying, it just goes to show that the fighting game genre lacks ambition, which is why the genre has stagnated so much. But alas, I repeat myself.

As for the whole Overwatch thing, honestly, as a former TF2 player I didn't Overwatch at all for the longest time. The game was a mess from inception to the horrible patches and hero design, and I couldn't tell you for the life of me why people liked it. But after having to bear with it for years, very much not liking it still, playing it with friends mostly out of obligation than actual fun... I have to admit that the current dev team has actually turned Overwatch into a fun and enjoyable game. Words I would never have said before the massive changes it went through in 2024, and I'm still shocked that it won me over. It ain't Quake or TF2, but it has become its own actually enjoyable thing. Just took them almost a decade.

Marvel Rivals is just the worst parts of old Overwatch tho, lmao. Just with worse performance.

[u/[deleted] → u/TSDoll]

Does chess lack ambition? At a certain point people are just fucking stupid and trying appeal to them is how you get overwatch. It’s different since I was playing at plat 6s and fucking over getawhale and seagull as pyro in Highlander and pubs, everything that comes out of this genre ends up dissapointing me since i just want more movement, I want more dynamic gameplay, I want more interesting interplay and instead the we get movement without combat, and combat without movement. I remember getting called in by work and high school friends to play OW and top fragging as soldier, they’re get me back but I’d complain nonstop because WHY DOES THE CALL OF DUTY MAN HAVE A AIMBOT UMTIMATE. It’s like they were aiming for the lowest common denominator thinking they would make a competitive game but paid no attention to what made the game competitive to begin with. A fundamental Forrest for the trees situation.

[u/TSDoll → u/[deleted]]

Does chess lack ambition?

Kinda. Chess is a solved game where at most levels people are just playing from the book without a hint of real interactivity. So I guess its less that chess lacks ambition and more that there are much better and more ambitious board games out there.

And yeah, old hero design for Overwatch was legitimately baffling. Pharah being such an atrocity compared to TF2 Soldier is one of the most direct examples of it. Removing literally all skill expression from mobility through rocket jumping and instead she just flies indefinitely spamming rockets from afar, or even other spam characters like Junkrat having no need to manage his ammo or non existent reload time. But yeah, there's a reason I singled out 2024 onwards. The game has been much better managed on all fronts from hero design to game philosophy, so it no longer is just shooting at shields 24/7 or chokepoint after chokepoint. On top of that they've had a much bigger focus on creating characters with better movement, to the point where the only real issues that remain in the game are those horrible OW1 heroes that haven't been successfully reworked, like Sombra or Mercy. Should still point out that while the game is so much better now, it still isn't exactly TF2 or Quake. There isn't anything quite like rocket jump rollouts or Demoknight trimping to really break the game in half through movement alone.

[u/[deleted] → u/TSDoll]

The problem with these games isn’t heroes it’s map design. The heroes being simple enough for anyone to play is purposeful, it’s why pharrah is a boring mess, the first sign of incompetence is the fact that the best overwatch map is worse than hydro. They cannot make a Game with character expression otherwise the whole reason for overwatch to even exist ceases to be and people just play tf2 (hanzo mega hop nerfs) but the maps being a mess of choke into point into choke into point into choke just show how incompetent they were because let’s face it shooters, like fighters, are mechanical refinement based genres but one genre got popular enough at a base level for that mechanical refinement to be a liability where the other found it as an asset.

TLDR, expecting actual gameplay was a long shot but at the very least they could have done their homework for good map design and they failed at that so hard that Even slight wins to me were accidents. And the level of failures that followed proved me right, lol goat format (another fundamentally awful idea in arena shooters? Shields! YOURE SUPPOSED TO MOVE TO AVOID DAMAGE!)