@@ModeCoder Leffen’s gonna Leffen. It’s fun watching him explode, and it’s been nice playing smash and not having him in my feed constantly. Makes my life a whole lot less stressful.
If people are going to come up with this information anyway, just put it in the game. The days of delayed discovery are over. Mortal Kombat tells you the fatality inputs now. Nothing is secret 6 hours after the game launches anymore. Frame data and hitboxes are so easy to implement in training mode from the developer's perspective that there's no excuse for not including it. If I played you in chess and won because I knew about a secret move (maybe my queen can instant kill your king if I do the hokey pokey), you wouldn't feel good about that loss because you didn't know all of the rules. Not putting frame data and hitboxes in the game is just trying not to teach your players all of the rules, so now they have to find an external source for that information instead.
Frame data and hitboxes being hidden has often being described as "the joy of discovery" but instead what happens often is "the frustration of ignorance". Most players, especially casual ones, are going to approach the game from a view that will make sense to them rather than the general design and balance philosophy of the game. A lot of mechanics and decisions are not going to be intuitive or quick to grasp and if the player can't see them he is going to get mad and complain for it to be changed to make sense to him. As others have said, it doesn't make physical sense for the character's weapons to have hurtboxes but it totally does from a balance / design perspective. For example, a casual that only sees the character getting "hit in the sword" without seeing the hurtboxes will probably demand for the move to be "fixed" to his view, showing the mechanics right up front makes it easier to understand and figure tha counterplay than guess in the dark.
Yeah, the "joy of discovery" only really applies to a very small subset of the player base, and they can just *not use that feature* if they want to discover it themselves. The rest of us just want a clear picture of how the game works without extra homework. There is no inherent virtue in reverse engineering the game, and a lot of virtue in being able to understand the game fully when trying to get better.
I get it for a single-player game, but in a pvp I think the most immediate effect of hiding things from players is that it widens the gap between new players and veterans who just know. Sure, there are examples of things not being found even by veterans for years, but most of the time, I do feel like people end up figuring out basically essential knowledge to play the game "for real" in two days and then it's a crapshoot as to whether anyone bothers to put the information anywhere accessible as opposed to locking it behind Discord pinned comments.
You see the difference between a fighting game withholding frame data and Castlevania not telling you about the secret castle part of its game is that Castlevania is a single player experience with an entire series built off of its cryptic and secretive nature on top of the fact that you don't NEED to know there's a secret castle to play through and enjoy Castlevania even if you might miss out on a part of the game. Secrets like that in video games are charming and endearing and feel AMAZING if you stumble upon it yourself and are pretty neat if you find out about it from some other source. Frame data in fighting games ARE not some cool cryptic secret/easter egg in a video game. That shit is the shit that will literally shape and form my decision in a given situation. If I don't know that Sol's f.S is +2 or even some kind of positive block that shit literally makes me a worse player. I can't gauge a proper response to blocking that move without knowing that very crucial bit of information first. Maybe to the casual player it might not some like a big deal but uuuuhh its fucking 2022 and I'm not some casual gamer. Put the fucking frame data in there LOL.
KI had hitboxes and frame data back in 2013 (and taught you how to read both). I consider it a basic feature. If your game is suitably complex and balanced (and most modern fighters are), then there is zero chance the game gets "solved" super fast just because players don't have to guess at whether something is +1 or +2. That's a copout, and I'm pretty past the bullshit of FG devs not including basic QOL features. The idea that "good players will find it so we don't have to include it" is stupid. I shouldn't have to have my phone out to try and understand your game better, and newer or less serious players who aren't going to look at it online aren't going to have their experience ruined by it being a toggleable option. Some of them will even find the toggle themselves and wind up wanting to learn and better understand things themselves.
I think that the option for both frame data and hitboxes should be there for everyone. For fully casual people, it won't affect anything about their experience. No one is forcing them to do frame data calculus or even look at it to play the game, but it does provide an easy pathway into understanding the game further for those who want it. The barrier to entry is significantly lowered and you don't have to go looking for some sage out in the wilderness (dustloop, etc). There could even be a short demonstration of what the numbers/boxes mean when you turn it on for the first time. And for people who already know what it is, having it in game hugely improves the player experience because, if they're gonna look for it anyway, they may as well look at the source.
I think Strive even mentions at frame data but still talks about the term when bringing up punishing, gaps, frame advantage and fast vs. slow moves in the tutorial. That’s what makes it extra disappointing. You as a player see there’s more to the game than just big and small moves beating each other at different ranges and that there are many specific situations in which most of your attacks won’t work because of a frame trap, perhaps. But because the information of how fast yours are in comparison to the rest of the cast isn’t accessible to you in-game, you’re essentially told “nah, fuck you just figure it out on your own” when having that bit of knowledge at hand could save you a lot of time in training mode and during loading screens.
I think frame data should be available in the game for modern fighting games. I remember when I was first learning Street Fighter 4 and my friend explained frame data to me, it blew everything wide open. Suddenly I was able to understand how the game worked on a foundational level and how to experiment and build from there. Plus, those core concepts are applicable to all fighting games, which enabled me to explore other games. Frame data is foundational to the genre like pointing and shooting in an FPS, or accelerating and braking in a racing game. Having hidden things is fine, but I don't think information should be hidden if it teaches someone how to play the game. In fighting games 100% of the gameplay is built around the frame data and if a new player doesn't have that information it can be very difficult to learn in a vacuum. There isn't secondary gameplay, or methods of making a challenge easier like there is in other game genres. If a player has to go outside the game to understand how to play it at a basic level, while props and respect should be given to people making the data available, I would say that's a failure on the game's part. I can definitely understand how hiding this information made sense in the arcade space, but in the home console space it doesn't make sense to sell someone something and then not tell them how it works.
I feel like Guilty Gear Strive is one game that could really benefit from hitbox display. There are other modern fighting games with this problem, but I think in particular, what is and isn't a *hurtbox* in GGST can be very difficult to grok. For example, in Street Fighter, you know that you can hit Dhalsim's limbs because they're limbs and not weapons. But in Strive, you can *sometimes* hit Axl and Nago's long weapons, and this varies from move to move, and if you didn't play these characters, you wouldn't be able to easily tell "oh, this move has no hurtbox because it's an HS button". Even something universal like 6P is weird because most 6Ps don't really convey being upper body invulnerable (as compared to a rising attack like a DP or DBFZ's 2H). A great example of this is Sol's 6P, which is a low gut punch that looks rather similar to his f.S, except facing away from the screen, but has completely different properties. It's not weird to see an uppercut beat an air approach, but it is weird to see a gut punch make a fireball phase through your upper body. Hitbox/Hurtbox display would at least make this knowledge more accessible, although I think you could argue that the fact that these moves don't really convey their function well is a more fundamental issue with the intuitiveness of the game. But at the very least, you wouldn't have to rely on testing every move, or external sources like Dustloop to get this information.
Man Guilty Gear making dust attacks overheads fucked with me so hard when i started playing. I was like "What the fuck this move comes from under me??" and a lot of the big overhead swings can be blocked low no problem at all. Strive absolutely lies to the players a lot, without trial and error (or research) there's no way you'd know how to block half of this shit lol
I agree with the Reddit commenter. The frame data will exist somewhere. If it's not in the game, you're just forcing players to constantly switch between the game window and a browser window that will have the frame data. It's needlessly tedious. Dedicated players will still do it, so casual players will still be at a disadvantage, it's just less enjoyable for your most-engaged customers. It's a lose-lose situation. Put it in the damn game.
@@HellecticMojo I agree, doing it this way is more fun, I think. The whole community digging for stuff to discover bits of info is a really cool part of the FGC. Yeah casual players would be at a disadvantage, but they're, well, casuals. If they were interested in digging this stuff they wouldn't be casuals lol
@@dasein7014 The community doesn't collectively dig to discover frame data though. They dig to discover interesting interactions and strategies, but frame data is known to dataminers within the first day or two. Hiding it in-game just makes it inconvenient to use, for no benefit to anyone.
@@HellecticMojo Because it's punishing your dedicated fanbase for no benefit. Keeping it out of the game to protect casuals doesn't work because 1) casuals are bad, and will get beat by good players even if the good players don't know frame data and 2) really dedicated players will just bite the bullet and alt-tab a million times to dustloop, so they'll know the frame data anyway. Personally for me, the lack of frame data in Strive is a big reason I haven't sunk more time into it. Losing to fake stuff is no fun, but neither is having to alt-tab a million times while labbing to beat the fake stuff. Faced with two un-fun options, I choose to spend my fighting game time in games that are more respectful of my user experience. As a result I haven't bought any of Strive's DLC characters, so it's directly affecting their profits.
@@slablargemeat8954 You could say it encourages searching for external sources, which is pretty good in my opinion. I don't really see it as tedious, but I can understand where it comes from
There's a difference between not spoiling the game (what Metroidvanias do) and making it harder for the player to figure out the *rules* of the game (what hiding frame data means). It's just a mindset that some developers have, especially in Japan: you're there to provide an experience to the player, and if you show them the game's inner workings, it's like a magician revealing their magic tricks (from their perspective, anyway). Japanese players *do* like non-systematic discovery more than Westerners, in general. Here's an example: I bought a guide to Dragon Quest 9 to know what kind of skills each "job" would offer, since the game itself wouldn't tell you. I'm like "I'm not gonna level-up blind and end up with a skill tree I don't like". A Japanese friend of mine said "but don't you get excited wondering what kind of skill you'll be getting when you level up?" , and I'm like "No." I wanted to have information to know where I was heading, while he preferred the thrill of discovery. I think there's something of this in how Japanese and Western developers approach game development.
I'm not sure is even western, but more US market. European games like EYE divine cybermancy or Pathologic also exist to tell players jack squat and will give permanent dead end progression.
i think there's a huge difference between finding secrets in single player games and finding key information that's important to be able to play and understand what's going on in the game. it'd be like asking someone to play chess but refusing to elaborate on how the pieces move, much less the exceptional moves that don't fit the "basic" rules. and on top of that, it's not like the info will be kept from the player, you're just making them have to go through a frustrating process to find the information
I remember the first few times I played chess with my friend and he went SUPER easy on me. One time I was 2 moves from beating him and he "castled" and I ended up losing almost instantly afterwards lol.
When a game is competitive between two humans they should have equal access to information on how it functions and it should be upfront about the rules. Football isn't hiding the yard lines from the teams and you just gotta guess why you got first down while this other team just knows it now. In my opinion its not at all comparable a single player game's exploration.
The thing for me is this. They make you pay full price for the game. DLC. Characters and Stages. Sometimes reselling them with higher markup. The very least these developers could do is make the information free or at the bare minimum accessible.
I think 2D fighting game devs don't like to show hitboxes in part because of the cases where hitboxes clearly don't match the displayed sprites or models. Even in a best case scenario, casual players that do not understand why it happens may see it as bad design, particularly when it involves moves they love or hate. In worse scenarios, it does expose dubious design, such as hitboxes being copy-pasted across multiple characters regardless of build (I recall SFV did this for jumping characters), moves where the hitboxes have been tweaked so much that they aren't even close to the displayed characters anymore, and moves where devs just said ---k it and gave some move a giant hit box (or Smash's equivalent where DLC characters get tons of hit capsules for even basic moves). It might also expose just how silly Arc System Work's move based invulnerability looks. Because heavens forbid they actually bother to design their animations to actually look like the desired functionality when they can instead just do stuff like make any move (such as a purely horizontal chest-high strike) into an anti-air by erasing the entire upper body collision. Seriously, stuff like Guilty Gear's hit boxes can look downright laughable if you haven't fully bought into their move-based invulnerability solution to a problem they themselves created.
Them's Fightin' Herds has both Frame Data and Hitboxes built into the system. It was built off of Skullgirls' engine, so that makes sense. Both of those games have some of the best training modes I've ever used. I've always disagreed with the developer mentality of the game losing an element of discovery. I think having that data available means everyone has a single source of truth about how the game works and it becomes easier to explain how and why things happen, which is especially helpful for newer players.
As an early on Nappa player in DBFZ, the addition of frame data transformed my abilities with the character tremendously. Realizing that the frame advantage I got, restanding people with acid spit was purely based on the height my opponent was at when they got hit by it was huge. Was ranging anywhere frome +20f-44f. Also, the forced instant explosion on the final saibaman hug in high hitstun decay combos leading into unavoidable frame advantage on block. Perfection.
Man i remember finding the secret shop in dota 1, shit's buried in the trees on the left and right edges of the map. You literally have to know you can walk through those trees to even see the shop.
My opinion is that hiding stuff for entertainment value is fine, but not for games designed to be competitive. I think it is important that in a competitive gaming space, all the players should have access to the same information. Imagine if football has hidden rules that the umpires don't tell the players, and that only a select few teams managed to notice it? How fair would it be for a team to have an advantage because they know the existence of a rule that was hidden from others?
Fair point, but this is more about figuring hidden tech and information to find weak/strong stuff about your character or your opponent than "hidden rules" likes in sports i believe if that make sense... sry for my english
@@yorusan2904 There was a time when ALL moves were hidden from the player. When you had to look up info with your friends just to know how to throw a fireball, the game tells you nothing. Do you want to go back to those times? Of course not, because fighting games is already niche enough as it is without this crazy gatekeeping in making newcomers even more weak and hopeless than they already are. A newcomer should have access to all the information the pros do. They might not understand the info or doesn't have the skills to make use of it, but it is important that you don't keep new players away from having a CHANCE to know as much as the people who are already playing. Because the fasted way to kill a fighting game is to make sure new kids instantly lose every fight because they aren't taught properly.
And oh, side note. Dota 2 does tell you where the secret shop is. At least the versions I've played it. If you want an item that needs the secret shop, clicking it will ping on the map for you. The game did not told you about a side shop however, although I think that doesn't even exist anymore so...
I've been playing fighting games for a long time so I'm used to looking up Excel sheets with the frame data in them. But it is so much more beneficial to have frame data built in the game. Things like "block stun" bar, are also super helpful. In Tekken there are alot of moves that are punishable but have very little block stun, making it hard to react to and punish. If you don't have clarity on things like that, it can be tilting.
"It will shorten the discovery period" is the classic Japanese game dev non-answer. Japanese game devs of fighting games in particular have this mentality related to the arcade scene that they should leave as much of the game to be discovered by players as possible. Japanese fighting games are notorious for having bad patch notes, you will be hard pressed to find many JP fighting games that will list exactly how moves got changed in terms of damage/frame data.
For single player games it makes sense to have secret rooms or bosses for discovery purpose, exploration is one of the main attraction of those games. The exploration in FGs are combos, mix-ups and set-ups tho. Not telling the players how certain moves work just makes it inconvenient and frustrating, you always have to check other sources, or how I did it: made my own. Meaty-timings also often have different frame-data, fireballs different data depending on spacing and just having those numbers available to you is such an important part on developing strategies for and against moves. Strive at least has little videos with explainations to give an idea what moves do and they usually also tell you when something is + on block, which is something (not better than actual framedata tho). Not including framedata for "discovery" is an old developer mindset that needs to die out. Put it into the games.
The Heihachi example reminds me of how some moves in SFV have way longer or shorter blockstun than they look like regardless of how minus they are and makes punishing them really tricky if you don't know about it.
Omitting frame data in a fighting game training mode is like not including network connectivity information during an an online match. There's absolutely no reason for it not being available other than to purposefully frustrate the players.
i think hitboxes and frame data being so open was one of the reasons i was drawn to Killer Instinct. it was my first true attempt at a fighting game, and it was a little confusing at first as to what the numbers meant when i looked at my move list, (cuz it showed all of the frame data next to it) but figuring it out and understanding specifically how my moves work is a great feeling especially when in the training/practice mode
I think in RPG's secret info can actually add to the joy of playing the game. Part of the fun is discovering stuff without the game holding your hand. In fighting games there can be that same joy, but the fact remains that potential is limited in your own improvement without it. I think that's the core difference
When it comes to games hiding things from players, it can be extremely difficult to do it right. There are, like, three types of hiding from players that games utilize, frame data and the DOTA secret shop are "logic gates," there are then "rabbit hole" secrets, and, finally, "For the Player's Good." I'll get "For the Player's Good," out of the way since it's the least important to the discussion. GBA Fire Emblem games had a system in place where all rolls had a special formula that made it so chances above 50% chance hit more often than they should and chances below 50% hit less often than they should. This was never hinted to players and players, without datamining, would never know. This was designed to align with a player's perception of luck, a 99% chance to hit and then missing is memed upon, like in XCOM, even though you are going to be doing way more than 100 attacks at that luck. "Logic Gate," is a simple one, do you know it or not. A Y/N question. "Do you know where the secret shop is?" "No?" "Then good luck finding it." "Do you know what the frame data for this move is?" "No?" "Then suffer." Logic Gate secrets aren't inherently bad either, it's only when not knowing can ruin everything or lock you off from a huge chunk of the game. Do I know how long a hammer swing is in Monster Hunter? No, but it's not going to make tougher monsters invincible or impossible to beat. Do I know the frame data of this character matchup? No, and now my opponent has a huge advantage over me because they know. "Rabbit holes," are more expansive than Logic Gates, it's like finding a little nugget and using that to dig deeper and deeper. The answer to a question inquiring about this is never strictly yes or no, but basically a percentage, like how knowing how a character combos grows with playing the character and messing around with actions. This, in my opinion, is less egregious than logic gates if they are necessary or lock you off from a chunk of the game. You'll get much farther as a player who knows how to interact with an opponent (frame data/logic gate) without knowing how to do the most optimal combo than you will as a player who can pull the most optimal combo 100% of the time but can't play interactions. However, it can still gate you from the highest tier play. You'll also have a better chance of being engaged in it if you stumble into it, if you find a random treasure chest in a game by stumbling onto it, you'll be like "Oh neat," and open it, but if you find a locked chest or a key to a locked chest, it becomes a hunt for the other. The best use for Logic Gates and Rabbit Holes is for optional side content or easter eggs. They are also better when they're hinted at, but then they're no longer being hidden from players. If you have these secrets be necessary, you have a very high likelihood of having players who didn't know come around later, find out what they didn't know, and feel cheated or tricked, and no one likes that.
I support all of your videos I love the content that you push out. I'm usually one of the first few to catch you when you drop videos. And I'm over here laughing because for the longest you are always saying like And subscribe if you feel like it. So I feel Joy Of My Heart hearing you say those words. GG my man continue the road to Greatness
Gravity Rush 2, so many critics thought the game ended on a cliff hanger when they really only reached the half way point. Basically had to figure out there was more game after the fake-out credits yourself. Just came to mind when you mentioned Metroidvanias.
I come from Killer instinct which had hitboxes & frame data. That stuff should be in the game along with other advanced options. That type of stuff will only be used by hardcore players & if it isn't implemented in the game then there will be a PC mod to find it regardless. There is already tons of stuff to learn to become good at a fighting game so just having the tools accessible (and not paid for) will help the hardcore audience. All the Western & indie devs have had this stuff for so long.
I feel like the simpler these games get on the surface we need more under the hood things like frame data and hitbox viewer to add to the depth and truly see if a new player wants to close that gap.
I feel like this is a leftover mindset from arcade settings, where people were spending lots of coins just to lab stuff to get an edge over other people. There is no good reason to hide frame data. The "exploration" part hiding them creates are boring chores and nothing more.
Def think hiding stuff is ok for some games but not fighting games. If they had tutorials that explained frame data, hit boxes and everything that they say is too complex then it might get more ppl to higher levels of play. As someone who sucks at fighting games I took 1 year to learn hitboxes and frame data and that helped me improve my gameplay tons. Not having those options in training mode is just a bs excuse to make things harder for higher level players. Yeah we can go to dustloops to find the data that others worked hard to fine but it shouldn’t be that way. Give the player base the option to see them in training mode to make things easier overall for players. Just see it as the usual dps tracker in mmos. It won’t do anything for those that suck and don’t understand the numbers but it will do tons of those that do. No need to leave it out because one group won’t use it.
There are actually people in the "fighting game community" who think that the games should have FEWER OPTIONS. For WHATEVER REASON. In a competitive game in which everything is supposed to be 100% deterministic, I don't think there's any good reason for hiding information from the player.
Sometimes I wish Tekken got the same heat as SFV for literally forcing people to pay extra to learn how the game they bought works... but that's not how everyone feels so I keep quiet
The only games I can think of that have hitboxes available are Skullgirls, Rivals of Aether, and Them’s Fightin’ Herds, and of those 3, only Skullgirls and Them’s Fightin’ Herds have the option to show frame data, although they all have a slowdown feature, which all fighting games should have for practicing combos, either way, all of them should be staple features in fighting games.
Skullgirls is one of my favorite fighting games, and all of the extra features in training mode help with learning it so much instead of just flailing around waiting to learn what combos into what. Its great tutorial definitely helps with this as well. I never would've learned about Alpha Counters or DHCs without it.
if the argument to not add frame data is that the game will progress faster and that's somehow a bad thing, then your game is the problem not the frame data
4:30 Things like this kill me in fighting games. I wish games would at least add some visual effect for properties like this. Knowing if someone is super + or if you're super - isn't a fun thing to realize in the heat of the moment.
You know what happens when I have to go to a website to find out my frame data? I close the game. Multiple sessions have been cut short because I wound up having to dive into a wiki rabbit hole to get the info I wanted. Having to look this nonsense up just makes me play the games less.
Someone may have already commented this, but DOTA has an absolutely incredible tutorial that goes over everything from basics (the secret shop included) to advanced meta strategies, and also has an in-game overlay where user-generated builds walk you through your progression within a match step by step. Honestly, if anything, DOTA shames fighting games with their approach to teaching the game, and still retains an extremely high level of depth and nuance. The tutorial stuff definitely worth checking out (it's free to play) on its own if you're interested in how games teach players and for ideas on what fighting games could do better.
Legitimately the first thing I thought of when you whipped out the BlazBlue player guide was the CvS2 bible It's how I found out that multiple character in the game have a few links that I didn't know of, such as Terry's c.mp linking into itself iirc, Kyo's c.lk linking into c.mp, and all that.
i think the false ending of castlevania is completely different than a fighter not having frame data. i like that games do hidden secrets and easter eggs like castlevania did and don’t really want to see those disappear.
Not displaying frame data is annoying but I also can’t really get mad bc I’m gonna go to dustloop to check it anyway. It just makes porting the information over a lot easier, basically
If fighting games were more mainstream back in the early 2000s games company would've sold frame data, hitboxes, moves and stuffs through "Strategy Guide" books ala Super Mario games
Shout to the developers of virtual fighter 4 on the freaking PS2 (so literally 20 years ago) still teaching players how to play the game better than many Japanese made fighting games today.
not only does SG have frame data and hit boxes but it also has as graph thats generated as you do the move that shows you each frame of the moves properties (like whats invuln, when the hit boxes are active, etc) also it generates the frame data dynamically so if you end up in odd situations it will still be accurate
Like the discussion surrounding difficulty and accessibility w/ From Software games - It would be great if every game was accesseable to everyone and every FG has hitbox+frame data, but at the end of the day, it's what the developers decides and/or has resources to do to get out the best version of their game that they can.
For a competitive game, the discovery process is something that you have to keep up with other players in or you'll get left behind, and there's really not a good reason for the game to not do as much as it can to get everyone up to speed. It's especially dumb in the modern era, where people will just write an external viewer for hitboxes, or decompile the move scripts -- it's easier than ever before for top players to get the information while an ordinary joe trying to learn the game is left struggling blind. For single player games, the discovery process is something you can handle on your own time, at your own pace. You don't need to tell the player absolutely everything right out the gate, and having a few actual secrets is always neat.
Coming from Mortal Kombat it's so much more convenient to have in game frame data compared to using resources outside the game. I think this is something nowhere near enough people push for in new fighting games
The DNF Duel beta showed me the positive side of there being none of these tools and even no training mode. I waited until the second day, since the first had so many server issues. Since there was no training mode, the overall skill baseline felt more manageable and I had more fun than with most 2D FGs (being someone who grew up on 20 years of 3D FGs). Since I prefer learning through playing matches and grinding in training mode actually damages my motivation to keep playing, and when labbing is practically REQUIRED to keep up at low-level play it outright kills my desire to play, the environment that resulted from no training mode allowed me to keep up with my 20 years of genre fundamentals and ability to learn the opponent when the game itself isn't in the way so much. That said, since the full release will have training mode, I'm just going to wait and see what labbers will discover and wheather the meta will go in the usual directiin for modern fighting games or if it'll be something I can enjoy long-term and axtually be worth my time and money.
While I disagree with the specific approach taken by Daisuke in terms of outright withholding information in-engine, I am gonna go up to bat for him in terms of sentiment of wanting the meta to be approached by the player-base from a specific angle. When you compare the way talk about and play fighting games from the past 10-15 years versus the way titles older than that were approached, there is a marked incline and, arguably, obsession with optimization. While options like, say, the high-into-snapback combo in DBFZ took two years to discover due to frame data being inaccessible in-engine, I have to ask, what if that was on purpose? Had the frame data never been made available (which is silly to think about, but hear me out), how long would it have taken for that tech to be discovered? Three years? Four? More than that? A slower-developing meta might objectively sound like a bad thing, but I feel like Daisuke may actually be onto something. If you consider games like Third Strike or Vampire Savior or even Melee, their slow-building metas ultimately made them fighting game staples that still get discussed and played to this day. Competition within a slower meta doesn't mean developments still aren't made, but they tend to lean more towards mindset and matchup-focused focus rather than on option selects and character optimization. By contrast, games like Street Fighter IV or P4AU essentially became dead in the water once their successors were released and their playerbase moved over to the newer entries. People don't talk about SF4 in the same vein that people talk about 3S, and I think it has to do with the way a lot of the playerbase seem to almost try speedrunning the meta. People push as hard as they can to break past the 80-20 point, and as soon as a sequel or spiritual successor drops, the game gets put to bed. Like, when a hypothetical DBFZ2 or Shonen Jump fighter gets released, assuming the game isn't trash, what are the odds that all the tech and optimization made into DBFZ will remain relevant? What are the odds that people will still play DBFZ when a shinier successor exists? This is what I think Daisuke is trying to prevent. His exact method is somewhat misguided in my opinion, but I do think the players and developer intentions are ultimately just at odds with each other.
In other words, as long as there's discoveries left to be made in the game, people are gonna be talking about it somewhere, so it gives the community a longer lifespan if these discoveries come as more of a slow burn.
Honestly, there is a lot of fun when just figuring things out about your character WITHOUT the game hurling all of the information at you. It’s like being put in the desert, and you have to find water wherever you can, and learn where to go and how to survive in the Wild West of a Fighting Game. When everything is thrown at you, it can feel like being tossed into an Ocean. The people who do want it and are ready for it are the Sailors on a boat who have at least some good fundamentals about FG’s. There could be a balance. Maybe after some time playing with your character, the game could give you access to some more info about them, like Frame Data, Hurt/Hit Boxes, attributes, and other stuff. Not a foolproof idea, but maybe something that could be workshopped
On the idea of just hiding information from players... it depends. I feel like, as a dev, even if it's a secret you have to at least clue the player in that there's more to be discovered or else they're gonna judge what they perceive as the full experience. It's like if someone gave you a plate with a naked hot dog, and never told you that warm buns and chili were in the oven, lol. Players can only judge the game that's in front of them. So if a new player picks up Tekken, after playing Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive, they're gonna be like "this feels slow and clunky" unless someone introduces them to the concept of Korean Back Dashes. But you might have already lost them at that point. Generally, I like surprises and hidden tech SO LONG AS the game isn't made significantly more enjoyable/becomes playable with that information. Donkey Kong Country did this with that percentage meter on the screen. It was a very simple but effective way to say to the player, "No! We're Not Done Yet! You haven't seen anything! Get Ready!" This is also one reason I've had bad experiences with Dark Souls in the past even though I like the game for the most part. A lack of knowledge in that game costs you real world time if you goof your build really badly, which I did lol. Like, kara throws aren't necessary for you to have fun playing as Potemkin, but they'll enhance your experience if you are aware of them. There was a long time I didn't really understand what Blue Roman Cancels were for when playing XX before some advanced players put me on to some Baiken dust loop combos. Because that was my main, all the way back then, lol. At some levels, all that information is just noise to most players and it's a devs job to make sure that information doesn't become a friction point for players, even if it's just mentally. Although, with fighting games I feel like giving players more information (WITH CONTEXT!) helps with player retention and increases the chance of converting them to competitive players, of varying levels, which will overall increase their enjoyment with fighting games that have a core gameplay loop built around competitive play. Which is exactly what Strive does, for the most part. I love this topic and could go on at great lengths, but I'm gonna stop for now, haha. Great vid!
I land squarely in the camp of 'hiding information from the player in a competetive multiplayer game is very very bad'. I can live without hitboxes, but dynamic framedata is very important. No knowing the frame advantage on your own jumpins really hurts, now I just kinda have to guess. Also other situations where a move hits mid active frames in certain setups and so on. Lets go a step forward and say that every game should have the Fantasy Strikes hitspark system, where you can tell your rough frame advantage by the hitspark. Yellow for even, red for disadvantage and blue for advantage, spark getting bigger more minus/plus you are. For cancels just show the advantage as if you didn't cancel, that should be fine, as long as the players undestand that cancels are a thing. That kind of system would help players to be on the same page when it comes to those Axl examples. Also it should make it more obvious why Baiken doing cS walkup cS to you is different to Gio doing the same to you.
I think that, in a way, full frame data and hitbox view is a double edged sword for accessibility and discovery. for the high end players it's a very nice tool to have, but I think it can be another thing that's somewhat intimidating to new players. it also makes the games discovery faster which also is a thing that makes it harder for newer players to get in before, well, everyone knows all the stuff a lot of people feel like they need some form of mastery before they're comfortable jumping in, and seeing the numbers and hitboxes etc and seeing the 'you don't know this stuff yet' can be counterintuitive to that, something that can hamper people from actually trying the game and realizing it's not as complex as it may seem, or stop them from trying pvp and learning this stuff. its a bit of a catch 22. because its good for the top end of your audience who, all in all, are gonna be the 5% who get the most out of it, but its daunting for the baseline and for your game to be successful, you need to find a compromise for both
This problem is 100% solvable by hiding the frame data and hitboxes deep in a menu somewhere. Casuals aren't gonna go settings diving, so I don't really buy this excuse.
I have never met or heard of anyone whose played a fighting game which features hit box and frame data say that they thought all of the extra information being made available in the game was overwhelming. Chances are, if someone does feel that way, they'd feel that way regardless of whether the information is being presented in-game or on a site like dustloop. If anything most people who generally stop playing them do so because they go online for the first time, lose spectacularly, and then feel lost because they didn't have the tools or knowledge to comprehend/investigate how or why they lost. Including that information can only help players in that position, whereas not having it available only serves to make that problem worse. Rather than trying to find a compromise between having it or not having it, the goal should be to focus on how said information is presented to the player. If a new player has to spend an hour reading an in-game excel spreadsheet on frame data then I could see that being overwhelming or boring. But if the game finds an alternative method of presenting that information to the player that is less boring and more engaging, then it would be a win-win for everybody.
Main reasons to come see your vids is the excellent info and great opinions. But lowkey one of my reasons I love your content so much is is the background music. Chrono Trigger ftw
For the fighting game setting I would look at it the same way as Magic the Gathering, where in terms of mechanics nothing is hidden from the players, nor should it be. There basically isn't a good enough argument behind obscuring things like frame data or hitboxes (ie, what my tools are and how they work). I strongly believe Harada's take is wrong, and what you said about finding the DBFZ setup required the frame data proves that. A fighting game hiding frame data and hitbox data is conceptually the same as an RPG or MMO hiding your ability tooltips in the name of "discovery". I believe every single fighter should include these things. We've only just got the hang of actual move lists that tell us some of the unobvious properties a move might have, and even that's barely matching the standard of other genres. Fighting games are still one foot in the dark ages for no reason.
For me, frame data is something that should be implemented in fighting games because it allows for discovery. Realizing a move is punishable when you thought it wasn't is discovery. Finding moves that can be used in specific situations is discovery. Knowledge really is power in this case
I just think it makes no sense really to not have these mechanics in game when people are gonna lab and mod to find out these things anyway. Like why make it harder to get the information you want.
I don't know how fruitful such a discussion would be here honestly, because I think anyone who watched this video already has a certain level of investment in fighting games and therefore will already know about these concepts and how to find them, and so it will just be an inconvenience to them. Myself included. But the people on the other side of the argument, those who don't know or don't care about this information, probably aren't watching this video and we won't really hear any of their thoughts.
The Axl part of the video got me thinking, could there be a way to convey through animations how plus or minus a move is? And have it be clear enough that you could block a move you've never seen before and instantly know what situation you're in.
That dota secret shop thing is really funny because I can't tell if it's a stretch or just seems small compared to the endless other things kept obscure to confuse the hell out of newcomers from league.
On the topic of Dota, the game is actually quite extensively opened as far as useful statistics go. Base attack time, front swing, casting points, effect interactions, turn speed, collision size, you name it. For the "secret shop", you literally just need to play the game once and explore a bit. There are in-game hints as to how to find it
But then it's harder to practice, for exemple, on strive, meaty giovanna 2D, on the earlier hits it's -, but on later active frames it can be even +6, but how will i know for shure my timing is right? on framedata wikis there's only the framedata on the first hitbox. I guess i could use the framedata on the trai... oh wait a sec.
I can see the developer standpoint, though I ultimately stand in favor of in-game Frame Data. Demystifying the game with Frame Data can kill some of the "magic," but I think it's a worthy sacrifice given just how useful this information can be to competitive players. That said, I do think developers need to be mindful of how they present this information to the player. Information overload and menu bloat are real concerns, and I'm not sure how accommodating the average fighting game player is towards these things.
i think its more understandable in single player games like castlevania and darksouls than it is in a competitive multiplayer environment where people play with money on the line
This happens with monster hunter too. However i totally get the developers perspective and that it messes with the fun factor a bit. It exposes the magic and mystery a bit which takes away from the experience in a number of ways. Sort of like the analytics approach to sports.
I personally enjoy finding stuff out through matches rather than frame data when the game is new but I’m also fully on board with a game giving people access to frame data if it means more ppl are gonna play the game
Like the castlevania example, they hiding unique designs; New audiovisual experiences that evoke relatively strong emotions from the player. In this situation, the player obtains value from the discovery itself. Frame data is a tool to understamd how the game works. In this situation, the player does not obtain value from the discovery, but in how they use the information they discover. It just makes sense for devs to cut out the discovery phase and let players go straight to the utilisation phase which they actually enjoy.
"discovery period" Sir, this is 2022, everything is discovered within a week of the game launching. Just give us the numbers, so we can actually experiment with solid data. If you won't then somebody will do it anyway, but we'll be mad at YOU, mister developer.
I think giving fighting games data and even teaching new players how to make use of it could make fighting games a lot more accessible and way less frustrating to new players. I do think there is a silver lining for something like your dragon ball example. Basically not giving the data outright so people experiment at first and then giving it to them after a while, extending the discovery time by possibly giving the player base new things that wouldn't be discovered otherwise which can extend the games lifespan, though Im not saying that its the best way of doing things, it could very well just flop while waiting for the data or afterwards (because nothing new was found for example). For other games that don't require a high amount of game knowledge like the Castlevania example, I think its best to give players hints rather then outright telling it.
Yeah but imagine we had no framedata and stuff like Snapback loops wasn't discovered until after the final patch. You kinda need to find some of the broken shit sooner so it can be rebalanced or else it could kill the game outright. As soon as people hear "no more patches" they already start leaving but it's amplified more if genuinely broken stuff is still in the game.
@@caldw615 I sadly dont have a lot of fighting game knowledge so this is more of an outsider look on things, however I get what you mean fully and its a fair point
I've said and will always say: "If it's not straightforward or intuitive, it's bad game design." Now that's generalized as hell, exceptions galore, but if I can't figure it out or just go with the flow, then it's not my problem anymore. If something that looks plus is -18 and there's no frame data, it's not my fault when I get punished for it the first time. If the game tells me there is one shop and a courier for that shop and I never find the secret shop, I'm not just a bad player. If the game doesn't give me the proper tools to figure out what it wants me to figure out, then fuck them. I didn't do anything wrong, it's just obvious you didn't want me to know.
a game is a set of deterministic rules and if it was a irl sports game you'd 100% be given the full set of rules and as such you don't even get weird edge cases that are subjectively ruled on, its consistently the same situation leading to the same outcome every time, so training mode at a minimum needs frame data and hitboxes so players can understand why things happen the way they do. if a dev cares about the discovery window at the cost of informing the players about the rules of the game that implies that they don't have much faith in there design to me. if you designed a robust game then your never worse off for doing the bare minimum and telling players the rules
I think that frame data and hitboxes might help new players the "function" of moves that they would otherwise have to learn in matches through trial and error, or have prior knowledge of from other games
I think of you have a competitive game, a game where you are planning to support a tournament scene and other generally high level play there is no good reason to withhold all gameplay pertinent information from the start. You wanna screw around with secret levels and hidden mechanics, make a single player game. I love metroidvanias, but I love finding secrets when it's just me versus the computer.
Tbh before I heard your opinion about frame data not bein in-game, even before this video, I thought it was probably the biggest flaw in GGST. After hearing your opinions, well, I gotta say I do kinda agree with the fact that by not showing the "correct" path, it encourages players to open more doors. Nevertheless, I think it's a mistake not to be clear with the reasons for doing this. After all, we even got combo recipes before frame data, and frame data is just crucial, no matter what. I hope it's added by the end of S1 or beginning of S2, a whole year is enough for discovering stuff, right?
Metroidvanias have Exploration as a theme. Of course it makes sense to hide things, so you actually have to explore something. Fighting games have competition as theme. Competitions should have all rules laid bare, so every one knows them. I think where the disconnect happens is: Super high level players (like less than 1%) enjoy finding new combos and shit. But if you start out, it's not fun to have to discover this against a potentialy huge cast. In Metroidvanias, if I miss something, ok I missed out fun I could have had. I still had fun with the other parts. In fighting games, I basically get knowledge checked and loose the match in a miserable way because I have the feeling I couldn't do anything. -_- Hide this stuff in menus if you don't want to overburden everybody with it, but make it accesible for people that require it for learning.
Dont care about framedata but i struggle to accept the argument that it would "hold out on the discovery experience". Maybe for some people it would mean that but the vaaaast majority would not care. To that extent it is very different to a castlevania secret i would argue. Since most people would be happy to find a Castlevania secret but be very indifferent to figuring out framedata and/or hitboxes.