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 strong punish.
But many moves that are highly disadvantageous on block are not punishable when used at their furthest effective range, because the opponent does not have a far reaching & fast enough move to punish it.
At higher levels of play, this kind of knowledge of move properties is actually used against you. There are characters who have uninterruptable block strings that ends in a disadvantageous move, but the string has significant pushback on block.
Players will use these strings to push the opponent to a deliberate spacing where it looks like they can land a long range normal to punish the last move of the blockstring. But the string is designed to place the opponent just outside of the range of that normal, where it looks like it will connect, but it it will not. In this situation, the person who did the "unsafe" blockstring can watch their opponent's character model, visually confirm the startup animation of the attempted punish, and punish _that_ move's recovery on reaction. Tricky tricky!
If you’re interested in this, can I recommend Dave Sirlin’s excellent “Playing To Win” series? One of the few articles that I’ve read that permanently changed the way I think about games, both from the player’s and the designer’s point of view.
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.
I think I follow the gist of what you're talking about and it doesn't sound all that advanced at all. Deliberately missing out getting blocked to make the opponent think they have an opening is not a particularly high level play in other games. It still baffles me that traditional 2D fighting games and Tekken in particular are so complex and that it is so hard to even pull off a specific move due to control schemes that are maximally unergonomic.
Compare this with the simplicity of Mount & Blade Warband which achieves greater depth, in 3D, with a very simple and intuitive control scheme.
Motion inputs aren't arbitrarily difficult. They're intrinsically tied to the game's balance. Basic special uppercut moves like the Shoryuken use the forward->down->downforward motion to ensure the player cannot hold back to block during the motion. The player must commit to use their strong special uppercut move frames before they've actually unleashed it. Guile's Sonic Boom projectile requires the player to "charge" the move by holding back for a couple of seconds before being able to unleash it. This creates a risk factor, since the opponent is then incentivized to cross up Guile to make him lose his charge. However, this is where Guile's special uppercut, the Flash Kick, comes into play. The Flash Kick can be simultaneously charged along with the Sonic Boom, to disincentivize the opponent from attempting to jump over Guile. Mapping any of these moves to a single button press is a balancing nightmare. Street Fighter 6 has a "Modern" controls option that does exactly this, and it comes at the cost of a big chunk of the character's available movelist. Even with that huge tradeoff, the Modern versions of several characters are still considered high tier. Even then, you hardly see any Modern control players in the upper echelons of Ranked matchmaking because, ultimately, it's way easier to learn the motion inputs than it is to have a solid gameplan.
Street fighter isn't bad at all but some games and some characters are just absurd for no particular reason. Ivy in later Soul Calibur games is a good example, she has two command throws with pointlessly arcane inputs that even have a second, better mode when you do them frame perfect. So everyone who plays Ivy just grinds and grinds until they can do it in their sleep. There's no particular balance reason for that (also Soul Calibur has a block button so the usual balance rules don't apply), it's just a "you must be this tall to play this character" barrier.
You just said yourself that doing them frame perfect yields a better version of the move. The input is difficult because of the potential reward. It's like doing perfect EWGFs in Tekken. I played Ivy in SoulCalibur II, and could do the Summon Suffering input pretty consistently if I buffered it during another attack. It led to a fun mixup since the other player would hear my joystick switches actuating as I did the motion, and crouch to avoid the throw. Instead of finishing the input, I'd hit them with her 2 A+B overhead instead. God, I love SCII. It's a shame the sequels kept trying to reinvent the wheel with the gameplay.
> You just said yourself that doing them frame perfect yields a better version of the move. The input is difficult because of the potential reward.
I also said the other half of that: that the result is that people grind until they can do it 100% in their sleep, and thus all it forms is a "you must be this tall to play this character" barrier.
Unlike the example in Street Fighter it actively works against having a balanced game, since now you have to nerf the move because the people who ground it frame-perfect are too strong, which wouldn't have affected anyone who didn't stick their nose to the grindstone but now they get to eat the nerf too, so the character ends up about level with other characters when you're frame-perfect, which isn't demanded of other characters. We saw this exact antipattern happen with Ivy in Soul Calibur 6.
There's an argument to be made that the arcane input provides a tell to the opponent when it's used outside of a buffered section in some other move's lag, but that same argument would work with a less pointlessly arcane input, like a double half circle.
I don't get what you mean by "you must be this tall to play this character". Equating height to skill is a false equivalency. You can't get taller by practicing. Either way, it sounds like the devs just messed up the initial balance. It ain't the fault of the players who were serious about learning the character. That's the modern conundrum of games in the post SFIV era; constant balance patches before the full meta has been explored. Personally, I'm often dissuaded from trying to learn top tier characters in new games because of the fear that all the muscle memory I build will be useless when the game gets patched. It's gonna be interesting when Street Fighter 6 gets its first big balance patch a year in, and all the Ken and JP players take to their keyboards to complain.
Conversely, characters like Carl Clover in BlazBlue. The difficulty of controlling 2 characters seperately but in tandem is challenging but not difficult to input inherently.
Once you get used to the input style the complexity makes the character and thus the game more fun and interesting.
It is a simple concept, but I'm calling it "advanced" in the sense that people don't really do stuff like that except in the higher ranks of ranked play, because its effectiveness depends on your opponent actually being aware that they "should" be pushing a button in a certain situation.
In lower ranks, people are more concerned with the other strategic aspects of the game; there is a lot of stuff going on all at the same time.
> It still baffles me that traditional 2D fighting games and Tekken in particular are so complex and that it is so hard to even pull off a specific move due to control schemes that are maximally unergonomic.
The mechanical difficulty of certain actions is a deliberate design choice. The game tests not only your strategic decision making, but also your ability to execute difficult inputs, both under pressure, all at once.
"I think I follow the gist of what you're talking about and it doesn't sound all that advanced at all" could probably go down as a copypasta, perfectly emblematic of someone speaking confidently and dismissively about something they've never done, seen, or even studied very closely.
In Mount & Blade you don't make nearly as many decisions or utilize raw mechanical skill, it is mostly strategy and preparation. Mechanical challenge is part of what makes fighting games, fighting games.
>Compare this with the simplicity of Mount & Blade Warband which achieves greater depth, in 3D, with a very simple and intuitive control scheme.
Most of M&BW depth is outside of the combat system (whereas fighting games are generally only comprised of a combat system) thus making them hard to compare directly. Simplicity is a not a good first principle for developing a successful fighting game combat systems historically. Simple = Less Skill Expression
Did you just compare Tekken to Mount & Blade Warband? Ummm, not even the same thing man. M&B does just basic collision detection, there’s no combos, counters, supers, throws, finishers… get out of here with that nonsense. I get what you are saying (simple systems craft complex experiences) but that’s not a good analogy. Use Mortal Kombat instead.
I played a lot of tekken 1, but never enough to join any tournaments (had one heard of any in the internet less early 90s)
But what I remember being very special about tekken was how easy and logical the moves where.
It was one button, one limb and more or less only buttons that controlled limbs involved in a move was used. It was quite easy to learn many moves without consulting the manual because they flowed well with the characters.
This was in stark contrast to street fighter and mortal combat where things were as cryptic as cheat codes.
This is why I always like soul calibur. The control language of the game is consistent across characters and when you go to perform a move, you generally understand what’s going to come, only variables like range, height and speed change (thanks to the dynamics of the weapons). Stances play a part too.
Probably considered “cute” to the fighting game community, I think it’s a great option for those of us who don’t care over the minutia of frame counting.
I don't think the game you cite is the same type of game. It's even simpler to control units in Sim City, but that's just because the game isn't about fine-grained, high speed control of one character.
That's not true. Geese Howard's pretzel move is very difficult on its own. Even high level players mess up EWGFs. Complicate all this even further by playing in an arcade with a square gate. And not to mention the extreme moves like pentagram input from arcana hearts 3.
Some inputs are hard but I don't see this as a problem. There are many characters in most FG's so I don't see a problem with some characters having challenging or even extremely challenging inputs. Some players enjoy that challenge, and if you don't, you don't have to play that character, you can play one that fits your playstyle.
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 strong punish.
But many moves that are highly disadvantageous on block are not punishable when used at their furthest effective range, because the opponent does not have a far reaching & fast enough move to punish it.
At higher levels of play, this kind of knowledge of move properties is actually used against you. There are characters who have uninterruptable block strings that ends in a disadvantageous move, but the string has significant pushback on block.
Players will use these strings to push the opponent to a deliberate spacing where it looks like they can land a long range normal to punish the last move of the blockstring. But the string is designed to place the opponent just outside of the range of that normal, where it looks like it will connect, but it it will not. In this situation, the person who did the "unsafe" blockstring can watch their opponent's character model, visually confirm the startup animation of the attempted punish, and punish _that_ move's recovery on reaction. Tricky tricky!