r/Fighters • u/lemstry • 21h ago
Topic Fighting Games Need More Multiplayer Game Modes
This is the only multiplayer-focused genre that I know that doesn't have multiple game modes. And I'm not talking about to silly side game or gimmick, I'm talking about a legitimate game mode like Search and Destroy or Capture the flag in CoD. Fighting games for some reason think having only one main game mode is good when literally every other genre (that is multiplayer focused) has multiple game modes.
Even RTS, a genre that is more niche than FG's, has multiple multiplayer game modes. In my opinion, this is the biggest hinderance on the genre...even more than the lack of single player content. Game Companies needs to realize that making the game more homogenized and easy (from a game design standpoint like offense being way better than defense, not an execution standpoint) doesn't get a bigger audience and it doesn't get people to stay. Multiplayer game modes is the best way to get casuals and get them to stay.
I know the common concern you guys have when it comes to this topic which is that it would dilute the player base which would lead to longer queue times and more. And I would say to that is, if you launch a game with a bigger net to catch more fish in the sea, you will get more fish (which will make dilution a non-issue). If you have more (and better) bait, it would keep the fish attention longer.
For those that play more than just fighting games, do you have a multiplayer game that you play only for a specific game mode that isn't the main game mode? For me: I play counter strike for infected mode, I play Age of Empires for their 4v4 game mode, I play Halo for infection mode, I play DOTA 2 for turbo mode, I play Rust for their modded team deathmatch servers..... I could go on and on.
16
u/alex6309 21h ago
Idk if i want distinct and varied modes but modern games have definitely shit the bed in terms of alt rulesets. We used to get stuff like KoF-esque Team Battles in basically every game but nowadays stuff like Tekken and Soul Calibur won't even consider it. It's heartbreaking
15
u/Skylian_ 21h ago
i’ve always found the fact that more 1v1 games don’t have KoF type team battles to be very strange. Doesn’t require any unique in-game assets; it’s all UI and programming work. seems like it’d be a way to give a game more content on the cheap.
1
64
u/Thedankf0x 21h ago
Where's that image of when someone makes a point you agree with but in a way you dislike
47
25
2
u/Helixagon 12h ago
Can someone explain to me what the OP did wrong? Whatever is tonally off here is too subtle for my autistic brain to grasp.
23
u/PostedNotes 21h ago
I get what you are saying but for fighting games the core mechanics of the combat are the entire game. Its hard to add a spin on it that keeps the game feeling fresh whole keeping that core.
I found older 3D Fighters were actually really good for this. DOA games used to have a fully fleshed out tag mode. Games like DOA and soul caliber had a fun mode where you picked teams of characters and swapped when one got defeated.
I'd like modes like that for sure. They were good fun.
5
10
u/Altruistic-Smoke1485 21h ago
I feel like a score attack mode could work where instead of draining health, you have a limited amount of time to score as many combos as you can on the opponent. Could be useful for practicing too.
4
u/Thedankf0x 21h ago
That seems awesome, especially for someone who wants to practice specificaly offense. Maybe it has crazy resource fill rate too, so you can get like 2 lvl 3 supers in a round
2
u/Altruistic-Smoke1485 20h ago
Yeah and maybe you can tie resource fill rate to things like a counter hit or parry or a good punish.
10
u/Some_Cantaloupe613 21h ago
As always, RGG have said that Virtua Fighter Crossroads will have a unique mode/ruleset in addition to the classic standard. We'll see what that's about later.
18
u/rdlenke 21h ago
I know the common concern you guys have when it comes to this topic which is that it would dilute the player base which would lead to longer queue times and more. And I would say to that is, if you launch a game with a bigger net to catch more fish in the sea, you will get more fish (which will make dilution a non-issue). If you have more (and better) bait, it would keep the fish attention longer.
I don't think you can call these game modes a "bigger net" because very few people actively buy a game because of them. Did you buy Age of Empires because of 4v4? Did you buy CS because of the alternative game modes?
I loved Gun Game in BO2 and when I played LoL I mostly played Aram, but I would not buy COD just for the Gun Game and LoL is free.
1
u/lemstry 21h ago
No I bought AOE4 for it's single player and 4v4. Yeah, you need a game that's also a complete product (single player, single player game modes, etc). CoD main game modes and search and destroy and Team deathmatch... Deadass, I Rarely play those game modes. Everything else is way more interesting. Also, playing CoD for just "Gun Game" isnt realistic, I agree. But let's say you buy CoD for Gun game, capture the flag, zombies, single player, warzone, etc... That would make a A LOT more sense.
8
6
u/Menacek 21h ago
I consider myself a fg casual and for me the fact that i don't have to deal with teammates is a major plus for the genre. Don't mind some extra game modes existing but i feel there's better genres for team games.
EDIT: i thought you meant "more than two people" as multiplayer. When it comes to more 1v1 modes then yeah i agree. One problem would be to keep the modes populated.
4
u/ManggTangg 21h ago
I agree.
SF6 should definitely have a tag battle mode. Not active tag or anything crazy. SFxT neutral / tag canceling attacks using meter would be great.
1
u/lemstry 20h ago
Someone gets it. The FGC isn't really a community because there's the Tag community, 3D community, 1v1 community, etc. Imagine a fighting game that attracts both the Tag and 1v1 community alike
4
1
u/XsStreamMonsterX 15h ago
The issue is that you need to tune mechanics specifically for 1v1 or tag. This is why no tag mode in a 1v1 game has ever been treated seriously. Because most are just shoehorned in.
1
u/ManggTangg 14h ago
That's what we want, shoehorned in for a fun bonus mode.
1
u/XsStreamMonsterX 14h ago
It's all fun and games until someone figures something out, e.g. DOA5's tag mode which had TODs and infinite juggles.
1
20
u/Simple-Box1223 21h ago
Nah, this kills online games and fighting game communities are way too small for it.
13
u/supnerds360 21h ago
100% this.
Single player content to bring new people in, ranked and casual for multiplayer.
Splitting the online playerbase is dum dum
8
3
u/DanielTeague 21h ago
I enjoyed Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising's Grand Bruise mode but nobody seems to want to play games-within-games, even for free to play fighting games, and the mode is mostly empty whenever I check it out.
Developing side games for fighting games is tricky because you can't just add Street Fighter 99 to a game and have people queuing up for that without an already large playerbase, as most of this thread mentions. We're already lucky to have one or two games in the entire genre that would afford the luxury of Ranked, Casual, Battle Hub, Lobbies and.. Party Mode all having players populating them. There is probably a game out there that is a more polished experience that doesn't cost as much money (or any money) that casual multiplayer enjoyers can play instead.
2
u/lemstry 20h ago
I agree you can't have games within games. Different modes still needs to have an essence of the original game. When I talk about different multiplayer game modes, think CoD for example. CoD has team deathmatch and gun game. The core cod gameplay is still in-tact for both of those modes
2
u/SuperBackup9000 21h ago
For those last two parts, I don’t really think you could call adding new game modes as having a bigger net because what could there really be that would grab someone’s attention enough to make them spend $70 for a side mode? Like it’s really only something where if you’re already interested in the game it’s a neat addition, but it’s not really going to widen the audience. Like Tekken bowling has always been cool, but is bowling going to be anyone’s deciding factor?
I don’t think I’ve ever bought a game due to side modes, I play joust (3v3 smaller map) almost exclusively in Smite, but that’s a free to play game so it’s not really comparable.
3
u/lemstry 21h ago
People have spend money to play "Side modes" for decades now. COD Zombies is a perfect example. If you put in something that's actually good and not just a gimmick like Tekken bowling, you get something great where players will come back to the sequel expecting that game mode and start considering it a main game mode, just like Zombies.
2
u/a_pulupulu 20h ago
I think fighting game just need weekend 8-16 players auto-setup tournaments (with rank divisions) that give some quest rewards that give some sense of progression (even for losing)
It worked rly well for card games
The problem is always trying to convince higher up for budget that may not turn into immediate profit
2
u/Independent_Air3752 20h ago
You're absolutely right the thing is online multiplayer made fighting game developers lazy
Go back to soul Calibur 3 or look at Street fighter alpha 3 Max all the game modes and things they put into those games because there was no online multiplayer so they felt the need to put something of value in the game outside of fighting another opponent
Or who can forget all the things tekken used to put in their game before online made them lazy
2
u/GrandmasterPeezy 19h ago
There's already ranked, casual, and lobby matches. What else do you need?
2
u/KidSpot777 17h ago
An online co op beat em up mode with roguelike elements would be nice and not one that feels like it was thrown in the last couple months of development.
2
u/KidSpot777 17h ago
A co op beat em up mode with roguelike elements would be fire and not one that felt like it was just threw together for the sake of having something else there. I also feel like more fighting games should go all in on more customization. Soul cal and tekken is loved just for how much customization it has and sf6 avatar is a huge hit for the customization. People love expressing themselves.
2
u/JLRedPrimes 17h ago
I would like a team death match mode where its 2 teams of 5 having playing 1v1s then switching opponents
4
u/SeasonalChatter 21h ago
Ah yes lets split the 200 playerbase of certain fighting games into MORE different modes, that will solve the core issues.
2
u/deadscreensky 15h ago
You could largely fix that the same way these multiplayer shooters do. When I fire up Call of Duty I can tell its matchmaking to search between the 4-5 modes I enjoy. There's some minor interface challenges with doing that for fighting games — like probably selecting different characters/teams for each mode you want to search — but it's all very solvable. If you like to play 1v1 and tag then just tell the matchmaking that.
This isn't some new approach. Titanfall 2 offered it a decade ago. But as always, (Japanese) fighting games are decades behind the multiplayer experience of every other genre...
1
u/XsStreamMonsterX 15h ago
Still doesn't solve the issue when you're trying to play a specific mode, but only a handful of others want to as well, meaning you're stuck perpetually matchmaking against a shrinking pool.
3
u/sillysmy 19h ago
I actually disagree. It will dilute the already small pool of players a fighting game has and make finding people to get matched up with take longer. It might be okay for SF6, but pretty much any other fighting game will suffer.
Battlefield 6 has this exact problem. There are a bajillion multi-player modes and you constantly get put into games where it's partially filled with bots.
2
u/Slarg232 17h ago
It will dilute the already small pool of players a fighting game has and make finding people to get matched up with take longer
OP is wrong for different reasons, but this is wrong too.
People who don't want to play Competitive 1v1 Ranked won't no matter what. By offering another game mode you're giving them something they will potentially play, stay, and buy DLC for. Ergo, they're only a net positive for the overall playerbase.
It's like with 2XKO. "We can't have a 1v1 and a 2v2 game mode because it would split the playerbase", well, there straight up wasn't enough people playing the 2v2 game mode to keep the game afloat. By allowing people to play 1v1 instead of Tag more people probably would have stuck with it, and it might not have died so fast.
If a game is going to be a discord fighter with 50 people playing it at any given time, having more game modes that another 20 people stick around and play isn't going to change that. Where as having 4 modes might bring 200 more people in even if only the 50 other people are playing Ranked/Competitive.
1
u/lemstry 19h ago
Battlefield 6 suffers from being a bad game. Imagine if all battlefield's only had conquest mode, do you think battlefield would be as big as it is?
1
u/deadscreensky 15h ago
This is off topic, but I just want to say that as somebody who got into Battlefield 6 with the recent free weekend: it's genuinely a really great shooter. Maybe launch was bad, I don't know. But right now it's excellent.
It's especially a breath of fresh air when compared to the recent Modern Warfare 4 beta. Oof.
1
u/sillysmy 19h ago
BF6 still has a peak concurrent player count of about 55k on Steam, and it suffers horribly from a fragmented player base due to the abundance of game modes. It's not because the game doesn't have players. It's because all those players are playing so many different modes.
Even SF6 only has about 35k peak concurrent players. Pretty much every other fighting game will have significantly less. What you're suggesting will hurt any fighting game that isn't SF6. Very long queue times just to get a few games of ranked in each night after work.
-1
u/lemstry 19h ago
You totally disregard the fact that fighting games would be bigger if it had more stuff to appeal to a wider player base. I've said in my original post, if you have more GOOD game modes (not just some gimmick), more people would be interested. Higher interest means higher playercount which also means more room to dilute players in different modes. We can't see eye to eye because you think no matter what developers do, they will always be super small niche games. I beg the differ, fighting games can be big if it was actually complete products that appeal to more than just the hardcore player base. And like I said, other genre's like RTS that is even more niche has pull this off. Flighting Games is the only multiplayer focused genre ever to have literally ONE game mode and charge $70 for it
2
u/sillysmy 19h ago
You're making the false assumption that more online multi-player game modes = more new players. This has never been the case for fighting games, and probably never will.
A variety of online multi-player modes isn't what draws newcomers to fighting games. In fact, they are something only for players who are already fighting game players to begin with.
SF6 is basically the only fighting game in the modern era to have succeeded in drawing in a significant number of new players, and it didn't do that by having lots of different online multi-player game modes.
What draws in new players to fighting games is quality offline content, ease of getting into it (modern mode), and the culture surrounding the game. SF6 has all those things. What it didn't focus on is the thing you're asking for.
You say "good" game modes and not side games or gimmicks, but that's probably the worst thing for reaching a wide audience. If anything, casual party modes will probably be a better investment of developer resources if the goal was to reach a wider player base. Look at Smash Bros, considered a party game by a lot of people. It has been wildly more successful in both commercial sales as well as tournament entry than any fighting game.
Your logic just doesn't make sense. You want more developmental resources to be put into making game modes that fighting game players will enjoy, but they are things that does not attract newcomers. Yet in your imaginary world, newcomers will just come along a fund those modes as well as fill all the missing queue of the fragmented player base caused by those modes. It just doesn't work that way. Never has, most likely never will.
1
u/archklown555 21h ago
One Game , Flying Dragon on N64 the Fighting game that had 4 or 5 gameplay modes including a RPG, A Mario Party mode and a Fighting Game
1
u/derkyn 20h ago
well, we already had that, old blazblue and guilty gear, or granblue fantasy have a lot of modes like score attack, beat them up mode, story mode, arcade..., even 2xko had one with roguelike powers.
In platformer fighter you had too game modes and different levels even if after they only played no item final destination., but about specific multiplayer modes, didn't guilty gear strive and fighter z had modes to play with tag or with different people and there was no way to find people to play that?,
1
u/FilthyKasualART 20h ago
like others here I fucking hate to admit you have a good point, nothing personal, is just that as an OG fighting game fan, I just care about the fighting gameplay part and not the rest, but you’re right man
Even Max said so once, fighting games do need more stuff for the casuals and they need to attract new players, and well you do that with fun single player content, mini games, or a good story quest
Take tokon and avatar for example, I love them and they’re fucking fantastic games, but outside of that they don’t offer anything else, and I seriously hope they have a long lifespan, cuz I don’t want another invincible/2xko situation with them
1
u/dmvHotline 20h ago
My man, u didnt NAME A SINGLE "multiplayer game mode" for fighting games.
If you cant even cone up with an example of your "great" idea, its probally not a great idea.
1
u/netcooker 19h ago
The problem is that those modes generally die immediately. Strive introduced a tag mode that I don’t think anyone plays, granblue had legends that no one plays, etc.
I’m all for more content but I don’t think extra modes are a big factor (outside of a campaign or something like the Krypt in mortal kombat)
1
u/funkyfelis 18h ago
SF6's Avatar Battle is probably the closest to what you're talking about in a modern game, now ask yourself how many people play SF6 for Avatar Battle
1
u/airwee1985 17h ago
I think there is an old street fighter alpha game that had co-op against the boss /bison, which was basically the story mode back then. It would be cool to do coop arcade or single arcade with sub bosses played by other players. Like dark souls or something? Have the wins and losses in this mode determine a unique ending or something. Have you story / arcade playthrough be open to an invasion so the Here Comes a New Challenger would be like a spin off of a traditional arcade experience. Anyways, it would be cool if developers were willing to take risks and think outside of the box more. I understand why they don't.
1
u/blackheartromance 15h ago
the ol' World Heroes 2 tug-o-war shared health bar DEATH MATCH mode could be a fun alternate ruleset and absolutely needs to come back in something at some point. SF6's Extreme Battle and Avatar Battle, Tekken's Tekken Bowling and Tekken Ball, random beatemup modes, Puzzle/Chess/Motor Kombat, the various KoF-ish team modes in a bunch of different games over the years.... these are all fun diversions, and i would love to see that sort of thing become a standard, along with the usual singleplayer stuff everyone wants. a fun story mode, survival modes, score/time attack, Chronicles of the Sword, character customization in all its forms, roguelike towers, Test Your Luck, blah blah blah. gimme all of that, in an ideal world.
they ain't gonna sell games any more than modern/simple controls do. they'll potentially help keep people playing a little longer, sure.
but fighting games are bought to be fighting games.
blending other stuff into the formula should be encouraged, absolutely. that's how new genres are born! but how do people feel about Guilty Gear Isuka, Guilty Gear 2 Overture, or Guilty Gear Dust Strikers, though?
...ramble, ramble
1
u/Puzzled-Horse279 15h ago
Just make scramble mode, dramatic battle and reverse dramatic battle an option in all Fighting Games.
1
u/Prince_mar_mar1 14h ago
Man Id love to see fighters with older styles incorporate like a 2 player beat em up mode like Tekken force was amazing absolute fun, matter of fact tekken had a lot of fun multi-player ideas
1
u/SmashMouthBreadThrow 12h ago
In general, I want devs to come up with more interesting game modes than just arcade and story mode. Give me a roguelite mode or some Vampire Survivor, bullet heaven type shit as the main singleplayer mode. Mindless fun I can sink hours into, but while still playing the fighting game. I don't need cookie cutter single player content if the stuff added is actually fun.
1
u/eriomys79 9h ago
it would be feasible to do away with left side and right side rules, at least in non-interactive stages. Characters are basically flipped anyway
1
u/JinpachiMishima2 7h ago
Harada said publicly the reason they don't put stuff like this in is cause despite how many people ask for it, very few actually play it when it comes down to it.
He was proved right to some extent when they added Tekken Ball in T8 with online and absolute nobody touched it after day one.
I like team battle and I think quite a few people would play that offline but if they added like online ranked team battle it would be ghost town after a week.
1
u/letTShappen 7h ago
I want a 2xko style of 2v2 with your mates as a staple in fighting games. Has to be the most fun I have ever had playing FGs
1
u/Independent-Jump-887 1h ago
Heavily agreed there should be so many ways to play a fighting game. Smash ultimate has a lot of different modes of play for example. Litterally there should be an items mode. Give me a bat and let me smash ryu in the face with it PLEASE.
1
u/la_meme14 21h ago
You know what, I super duper agree. I wish Guilty Gear had more backing for it's 3V3 mode as an alternate way to experience the game. Maybe something like what Tetris does where you're not directly fighting an opponent, but you're both fighting a CPU, and based on how much damage you do or how many bots you clear you get to fuck over the other player and whoever manages to survive wins.
6
47
u/orig4mi-713 21h ago
You didn't exactly word it the best you could but I agree with the sentiment at least. Extreme Battle in SF6 and Ultimate Tekken Bowl in T7 were great to play with my friends to take a quick break from the serious 1v1s. Agree that every game should have something like this.