You dislike fighting games for the wrong reasons 

Just in case this wasn't clear: this video is not meant to convince you to like or even try fighting games. It merely aims to make you think about what is it that you really like or dislike about them. If any point of the video makes you go "nope, that's definitely not for me", that's completely okay :)

A big part I think is simply understanding the game. In many fighting games, especially if you're new to them, you often don't even understand what you did wrong when you lost. Why didn't that attack land? Why wouldn't I block that attack? How could he get out of my combo, but I couldn't? And it can even turn around the other way. You won. But you don't understand what you did differently from last time. Also the classic. For someone to get that super cool 50+ perfect combo win, someone else had to eat that.

The true fighting game skill floor isn't what people really think it is. Teaching a new player a hadouken is way more intuitive than teaching that same player that the heavy kick and heavy punch each have their own damage/range/recovery differences, and even stuff like that really is the most basic, because they do wanna know which button does what, etc. It isn't that fighting games have MORE information, because generally, they actually don't. It's the way it's being presented. Even in games with single-button specials, all the other stuff is there(unless you're Fantasy Strike, which died for a reason...), and it's ALL front-loaded. Presentation of info in fighting games is either done little or not at all, or in a long series of boring tutorials most players will NOT complete. Most players just want to be able to hop in and play, which is honestly one reason why Tekken does so well. I'm not saying it's a mashy series, Tekken fans, so don't get rabid, I'm just saying the way the combo system works allows two brand new players to both mash and see cool shit happen. When you mash in anime fighters and other 2d motion fighters? You just kinda throw a lot of jabs and sweeps.

My two cents as someone who has bounced off the genre multiple times: - The reason the skill floor is more daunting in fighting games than it is in learning to play guitar is because you can play the guitar on your own. You are dictating the whole experience. You can get good at guitar without getting into dozens of guitar battles with strangers where each one declares a winner and a loser. Reaching the skill floor for a fighting games means fighting other people and losing, over and over and over. It's demoralizing and exhausting. - You make an excellent point that the 'difficulty' in a fighting game just comes down to the skill gap between you and your opponent. Unfortunately, fighting games are a narrow niche with a loyal fanbase and a lot of transferable skills. Last time I tried to play Guilty Gear Strive online as a novice, there was literally nobody online below the highest level of the tower. 90% of the playerbase is people who love fighting games and have been playing them for years, so as someone trying to enjoy them casually I wander into versus mode, try to find someone at my skill level, fail, and fight ultra gods for an hour without winning a single game. Again, demoralizing and exhausting. - I don't even know what the solution to these problems is! How do I get a foot in the door when everyone inside has years of experience? That skill gap discourages new players, which in turn reinforces the gap because there aren't enough new players coming in. It's a vicious cycle, and I don't know how to fix it.

I've found that PVP is one of the biggest turnoffs to me when it comes to any genre in gaming, whether playing against strangers or friends. I can spend dozens of hours attempting to take on a difficult challenge through something like Gungeon or Monster Train, where the feeling that comes from overcoming the challenge is based around surpassing an unchanging skill threshold. By contrast, playing against other players pits you against a constantly evolving metric that only lets you gauge your skill relative to who you're facing. I get little extrinsic motivation from PVP games, which discourages me from sticking with them for much time. The fighters I've played the longest would be Smash and BlazBlue., both of which have single player modes that I played almost exclusively. I'd rather my skill get a letter grade than know what percentile I'm in.

The main thing that happens for a beginner is that they go online, get completely demolished by people who know basic neutral and pressure and then get up because they feel very overwhelmed by it all. The main problem I think beginners have is just not knowing at all of concepts crucial in fighting games beyond how to combo and lack of teaching tools that aren't player made guides

For me, what irritates me is how I can feel like I'm putting in the right directions on the D-pad/stick, the game (regardless of which one it is) will always register an extra direction, and that single "wrong" imput is enough to prevent a combo from working.

I had the opposite journey than you did. I was really into fighting games when I was younger because I had friends and family who I could play with. I had that sense of "micro-wins" and learning what works. Fighting games always felt like multiplayer games to me, so once that in-person setting went away, I became more of a casual spectator. That said, I still enjoy single-player games that have fighting game mechanics (like Speed Brawl, River City Girls, F.I.S.T., or Guacamelle)

Really enjoyed this video. I particularly like how you acknowledged the other side instead of just saying they are wrong. I get that fg content creators will approach things from a fgc perspective, but sometimes it gets in the way of having a deeper and more holistic discussion. Great work and keep it up.

Yo someone else who notices the many similarities between FGs n martial arts? YEEEEEE

As a fellow martial artist, Ive always preached the similarities with fighting games. Besides consistent execution requiring training, you have to measure distance, break up your rhythm to mess up the opponents timing, and think 3 moves ahead. Becoming somewhat competitive in Street Fighter fed my fighting spirit and inspired me to train myself again. I love the competition and learning from my defeats. Great video sir.

I'd agree that RTS usually has a lower skill floor, but that isn't the issue. The difference is player feedback mechanisms. In a strategy game, there is enough time and immediately available information someone can understand why something didn't work within the match itself. Fighting games, on the other hand, have situations like not inputting quite fast enough changing the outcome or an attack having a weird disjoint on its hitbox where it's difficult to ascertain what exactly happened in a controlled environment with a cooperative second person, let alone in the midst of an actual match.

Great video. I also think that what's seem to be the main factor of people not trying fighting game is mostly because of the perception that fighting game are impossible to get into in the first place. The FGC itself is guilty of that, which is kind of frustrating, I only really see sajam making several videos trying to break that narrative. Also, I'll steal that board game analogy if you don't mind, it's great ;) (Et ouai, c'est l'enfer de vivre en France et de ne pas trouver de gens pour jouer à des jeux dont la population est trop basse)

I'm someone who has been trying to get into the genre since 2018 and this is a great video BTW. I kinda wanna toss out a couple things since I have a unique experience with the genre due to some disabilities I have. Firstly, despite what I've tried, I kind of doubt I've even really reached the skill floor in the genre and it's part of the reason things have felt so crushing, I can't find a win satisfying when I don't get why it happened and a loss feels crushing when I can't tell what I did wrong. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that I can deal with extreme amounts of overstimulation, and plenty of these games push me to a point where I can barely tell what's happening, if I can see what's happening at all, I even had a game I clicked with ruined by its particles preventing me from being able to tell what moves my opponents were using in blockstrings so I had no hope to try and read a mixup. Any time anyone got hit you might as well of turned the screen pure white and muted the audio for how well my mind could process said information. I primarily wanted to add this since it feels there's a genuine issue with accessibility in the genre, even outside of motor and executional requirements, and I think it's the biggest thing that's kind of hampered a genre I know I could enjoy a lot without it.

I remember having this defeatist attitude back when I was playing Tekken 6 and Tag 2, where I was constantly under the impression that I wasn't making any progress and that I was underperforming. Luckily, I was given a real morale boost by someone online who thought I was doing much better than I thought. Once Tekken 7 came out, I managed to climb all the way to the purple ranks. Turns out all that grinding in the older games really had made a difference in my performance, I just lacked any sort of feedback from other players. Because of this, I feel like the communal aspect is somewhat key to the whole fighting game experience and it's something you have to actually seek out yourself, since there's no real team chat functionality like in hero shooters or MOBAs. I do get the feeling however, that some players love to gatekeep their communities and not all regions in the world are as lucky when it comes to actual fighting game scenes. The idea of having "locals" in the northern parts of Sweden where I'm from is basically unheard of. It's a barren wasteland if you're looking for a community.

The biggest thing I see frustrating new players is they don't like it when pressing a button doesn't do anything. For example, when they're in hit-stun or the opponent is doing a combo. They'll say things like "what the hell? none of my moves work!". They also hate blocking, which compounds the problem. This frustration is what leads to mashing because when they mash at least something happens sometimes.

I tried to get into fighting games a few times, it hypes me a while but it falls off very fast. This is probably going to be a rather long rant, I try to keep it short but it has many points I wanna go over. I played many PvP games and generally like to compete. Fighting games are terrible "games": You have a versus mode, a usually rather trashy story mode, sometimes an arcade mode(which is just versus but multiple in a row). If you don't like the competitive scene or have a friend you regular play with you have no reason to play for more than 20h. There is no content. I think smash bros is the best game for actually having content to play. Tutorials usually suck as well. You said knowing frame data isn't that important, but shouldn't that still be in the game? Would it be too hard to make a visual effect if a move is plus/minus on block? Would it be too far to have smash characters have one of 5 weight classes instead of assigning everyone an distinct value? It it really necessary for GG to have one singular move to change based on proximity? GG gatling system "some moves can cancel into some other moves. Which one? Figure that shit out yourself!" If fighting games truly want to make the entrance easier, they should start with the core concept, not with easier inputs for supers or that stuff what the fgc usually cries about when they say "they casuallize my game". Playing against "better" players wont help you(if the gap is too big). You end up in long optimized combos and it doesn't matter what you do, because you will spend 80% of the match time in hitstun. This is just why I quit Yugioh. The game developed into a style where the goal is to make your opponent not play the game. Finding players you can actually grow with is hard. And thats just the skill issue, there is still the part of actually getting along with them. Effective training by "not playing". I want to get better by playing the game, not spending 3h in training mode to try combos. Mechanical skill-checks don't matter for me. This might be because I literally had to rebind some keys because I frequently hit wrong buttons, that how inaccurate I am. But a game-sense/knowledge check would always impress me more than this famous street fighter clip. For some reasons every fighting game I tried just sucks at balancing. Smash Ultimate had like 15 balance patches and literally nothing changed except for 5 characters in a 80+ roster. And it just sucks to see fox being a top tier for the entire series. Pokken instantly got dropped because it didn't sold well or something(surprising the servers are still up). GG Strive refuses to nerf strong characters and only patch once a year. I know balance isn't that important on lower skill level, but if you know what you're doing you can still abuse a s-tier because they mostly have a thing that breaks the fundamentals of the game. Anji vs Sol feels bad, regardless of the floor. LittleMac vs Fox will always be one sided. Fighting games just go further to push what the community likes: Long Combos. So every game becomes like 2-3 touches and you're dead. A friend showed me a DBFighterz final and I was like "how is that even fun? Is that the reason they have 3 characters because they die in one combo?" In GG you even combo them if they block.The damage is just lower, but the one in the offense just keeps hitting buttons and the other stays in hitstun for half the match. Smash 4/5 online SUCKS The community: For every "just have fun", I hear "if you can't even do this basic combo with 5 frame perfect inputs in a row, you don't have to show up again" twice. A little exaggerated but the direction still is the same. I faced a lot of elitism and gatekeeping. Like you need a GC controller to fully enjoy smash bros...

In other games, the road from bad to good has rewards in between. You play a little bit better, you get a little bit better results. In fighting games you get none of that, you need to fight yourself through an ocean of punishment and losses until you are good enough to enjoy the game. Thats what stops me at the door. I play for fun, not to work to be able to have fun, if a game isnt fun out of the box, why bother?

Man, good video! Even though you don't have a lot of experience in FGs, your thought process about how FGs are PERCEIVED is spot on. I've been playing for 12 years and it took me a few of those to realize a lot of the points you make here. Deserved sub

For me, one of the biggest barriers to entry was just getting the inputs right. For FPS, they all play almost identical (WASD for movement, left click to shoot and so on), and as you said in your video, I couldn't transfer my experience from any other game. BUT I tried some fighting games, Thems Fighting Herds and SC5 being those with my most playtime, also some Smash, which I was very competent in, as a casual player. I didn't spend too much time in online play because I can't consistently get the inputs right. Especially diagonals and soft tilts are really hard for me. I don't get the feeling of competence when I can't even get the controls down.

FG have a similar problem to RTS. You're gonna play bots who don't actually play realistically, and then you'll play a real pvp match where the opponent just has so much more knowledge and skill that its an immediately overwhelming loss, and there's no margin to it. It's either play the campaign and be bored with how easy it is, or be the bot to a bunch of people who know every input, combo, and have the timings down like math.

As a competitive Smash player, and someone who's decent at Strive (I've won a few university tournaments at my sizable university), the most guaranteed way to make sure someone doesn't get into a fighting game is to try to teach them everything. Whenever someone attends a tournament and asks how to play, and I hear another player trying to teach them every option available to them, I can't even focus on my bracket set. Information overload will take anyone away from a game, and fighting games have a TON of information. Teach them how to attack, let them fight shitty CPUs, and they will learn new moves as they play. Even better if they have someone equally new to learn with. None of us competitive smash players started out with a tutorial on how to do everything. We were kids running around and spamming smash attacks. We learned tilts when we were sick of getting hit for smashing.

I feel like this is the other side of the Polygon video about getting into fighting games. You went over every point that friends of mine have made about why they can't get into fighting games & provided succinct solutions to each of them. Great video!

Phenomenal first video! Definitely subscribing. I've grown up with quite a few fighting games my whole life, like SF Alpha3, MvsC series, soul caliber, MK, ect. I'm not the greatest if you compare me to those who play them more often, but I loved the progression I made from playing them if I'm pushed to it. I usually thought fighting games would be the easiest to get in to for a novice, either by just sticking to basic attacks or button-mash luck. Wasn't aware people now-days think it's one of the hardest, but from what you presented, I understand why. That feeling that they either have to be the best or not try at all.

Honestly don't agree with most of this. Good reactions are integral to most fighting games either natural one's like reacting to whiffs or forced reaction checks such as dust attacks or snake edges. I also don't think most fighting games are hard, instead very inaccessible due to terrible tutorials and matchmaking. Getting into any game that isnt the most recent nrs game/street fighter/tekken and strive surprisingly enough forces you to hop on discord servers, ask for matches and get your ass kicked by people with 100 hours minimun in the game, without being able to learn anything. Add the fact that most also require text book knowledge to play at a remotely competent level, due to necessary option selects, understanding of combo theory which varies from game to game or just as simple stuff as a wakeup system. I also wouldnt undermine the skill ceiling of first person shooters, most evidently arena shooters. Most of my fighting game friends have stated they would play online shooters if they had good aim, which I would argue it alone has an almost infinite ceiling. Add positioning, 3d movement, map awareness, etc. and it all gets quite tricky. I'd say I enjoy fighting games more but after 5 years of playing both somewhat seriously I definitely still have worse aim than footsies and would recommend friends to rather get into shooters instead of fighting games as most are awful to get into, awful to find matches for, gatekeeping communities and often questionable balance. I have hope that street fighter 6 can change this for the better but we'll have to see I do think that was a great video though, despite my rant ♥

I went through your same journey in 2019 due to mk11, but moreso in 2020 due to covid. It's such a journey, 3 years in and I still feel like I am a new player. Seeing improvement is addicting though. I'm watching this for the second time after your newer video, you make great stuff! Looking forward to whatever else you have coming.

I think these video essays focus too much on new player experience, yes new player experience is important but you already have thousands and thousands of essays on that, meanwhile you have thousands of medium level players who are already pretty deep into fighting games that end up quitting for completely different reasons.

A year late to this video but my 2-cents Fighting games are vague af when it comes to learning any kind of information. Even when i was brand new to league, there are lots of subtle design choices that make learning easier. Like, if someone has a spell shield (a shield that ignores the next spell that hits them), not only do they have a blue/purple shield on their character but the health bar itself will have a fancy purple border design on it. Even moreso: once you trigger the spell shield the game will display the message "spell immune" over their character. After seeing it enough times, and seeing your spells not hit their mark, it only takes a couple of repetition before you start recognizing it. Having 2 different visual Ques and text that blatantly spells out what happens might be a bit overkill to some, but it makes teaching new players about this mechanic super easy. I didnt even have to really mention this mechanic when i introduced friends to league, its something they naturally learned about as we went on and id like to thing it was because so many mechanics are blatantly called out in the game like that, that it makes learning league surprisingly easy compared to even something as simple as street fighter. Fighting games are the exact total opposite of this, youre lucky if a mechanic is even mentioned in the tutorial. Like, ive played a crapton of fighting games starting from tekken 4 on the playstation to bb, sf4,5,6, mvc3, skullgirls. And i only just recently, like not even a couple months ago, learned that overheads....exist? Like as a mechanic in fighting games. I thought there was only highs and lows, id never even heard of the term "overhead". I never knew i could be hit while im crouch blocking, so when it happened to me, i was just confused. Did the game glitch? Is that attack just unblockable? Whats going on? Do you know how i learned about it? I played granblue versus rising. In that game, whenever you tried blocking but were hit by an overhead the game displays a thought bubble over your character with two "!!" icons. I noticed that anytime i thought i got hit by weird attacks, that that symbol would pop up. After googling what it meant, i learned it was called an overhead attack and i learned the rest from there. Which is crazy to me, that through ALL the tutorials ive played over the years, i have never ever in my life seen this mechanic mentioned even once. I flat out had no idea it was a thing because for some reason, it wasnt important enough to mention or bring attention to apparently. It feels like every fighting game just assumes you have years of knowledge already so it keeps them in the background and tries not to mention them. Even more simple stuff suffer from this. Like 360 inputs, ive never been able to pull one off, i was so confused as to why. It tells me to spin the stick and im spinning it, yet it never comes out. Why? Well, the game doesnt tell you that, doing a neutral 360 input is insanely hard and only recommended for experts. Youre meant to first use an attack, then while the animation is keeping you on the floor, you do the 360 input so that as soon as its over, you do the command grab. How would you know that? The command menu sure as hell doesnt mention this anywhere. Once again, you're just supposed to know that. And its the only genre i feel that does something like that consistently. How come after i blocked the enemies attack, they managed to hit me first after i tried to retaliate? Because they were safe on block, but good luck knowing what that is. Tutorials dont mention it, and the training mode, while it does display frame data, doesnt explain what frame data...is. You cant really expect a casual player to know frame data of all things, especially when no other game in any genre ever made, makes knowing frame data a requirement for basic play. All games have frame data, but only fighting games rely on them for combos and even stuff like frame traps, etc. Thats where all the perceived difficulty comes from. Its fairly common to play fighting games, get destroyed, and have no idea why. Because the games themselves are horrid at teaching you what the rules are. Hell, if granblue didnt have text popups on the side of the screen telling me my move is invulnerable, i would have never figured that out on my own. Good chance i would have quit playing before i ever discovered that. Having better tutorials, while helpful, wouldnt be the end-all solution to this either. Most tutorials are boring, and not many people wanna do fighting game tutorials in particular because they often are too overwhelming. Undernight in birth has a decent tutorial but after seeing it have like 30+ tutorial levels you have to go through, i wouldnt blame new players for not doing it. Instead, teach the game rules through the actual game. Have more text popups, use universal colors for certain types of moves, add more icons etc. Dont be scared of giving too much info, its better than none at all.

On the specific topic of being willing or unwilling to put the time in to learn fighting games. I less feel like I'd want "instant gratification" and more that I feel like I'd have to essentially dedicate myself to playing a single game for the rest of my life when I'm someone who likes a number of different genres. And that most of my life I've tended more towards singleplayer RPG type experiences. Though I've also gotten more into Roguelikes and Shooters which are arguably on a similar level of "you gotta take time to git gud" recently (Specifically, Skul the Hero Slayer and Splatoon 3 respectively) Edit: Also mentioning Splatoon, I think that one of the things that really helped me to actually get into shooters through splatoon is the fact that it has a singleplayer campaign that's actually really good at giving the player a basic understanding of how the game works. How to Move, How to Aim, How to handle different situations and even how Turf Control works until you are... not quite a master, but I think that once you've taken on Beyond Alterna you're probably more than ready for casual, and might even be ready for your first ranked match.

Great video! what got me into fighting games was the single player content of smash bros, especially smash bros brawl and project + then slap city. purchasing games like this garentees a full single player experience if you don't like the multiplayer

I grew up with fighting games, always a casual. I then stopped playing them somewhere between 2014 and 2020. I then booted up KOF 13 for nostalgia, and the simple feeling of the game gave me an epiphany, and I'm a dedicated player (of many games) ever since. Being part of communities like Discord also helped me SO much to have the fuel to keep pushing.

this is a damn good video, i can’t wait to finish it and check out of your vids! as someone in a similar position like you, and has thought about this a decent amount, i’m glad to see other people talk about it edit: damn this is your first vid, what an amazing start my guy!

Great video and observations. I agree that it is very much about finding the right fighting game. I largely ignored fighting games growing up but decided to give DOA a shot on a whim after trying several other titles that didn't leave much of an impression on me. I ended up really liking the hold system and I consider the back-and-forth gameplay of DOA the closest any fighting game has gotten to feeling like a real fight. I eventually ended up getting GBVS and that has gone on to become my go-to 2D fighter. The characters I play all have parries since I've come to learn I just enjoy access to that mechanic.

Great points made at 14:00 ish moment to moment is incredibly important and often overlooked! Great video, well worth the wait ♥️!

The funny thing about fighting games and their fundamentals is you're probably playing some form of them and learning tech without realizing it, other genres effectively trick you into learning the fundamentals that transfer over quite nicely. Side-stepping, side-walking or rolling to avoid a soulslike boss' attack and hitting them when they're open is straight up whiff-punishing, you can even straight up side-walk certain bosses according to handedness or their weak side to avoid most of their attacks (absolutely key knowledge and movement that transfers over to Tekken), same with the Punchout games, you're learning to punish in some form, players with deeper knowledge learn to counterhit, parry, block, or otherwise take more risks for more options, it's all fighting game tech. Things like zoning, cancelling, using knowledge of frame-data to your advantage all absolutely exist outside of fighting games, Dota 2 and GunZ heavily emphasize animation cancelling to achieve deeper gameplay, you will see plenty of zoning in arena shooters with explosive and non-hitscan weapons. I don't think the context is important, I think it's the knowledge gap in not knowing your options that makes the genre harder to approach, and not everyone has the luxury of friends who want to play and improve together.

This is a great intro video to the fighting game genre. Like you said, there are those for whom the games just won’t jive with, but I think many people can be intimidated away when they might actually enjoy the games.

I dislike fighting games because they won't nerf my best friends main

Overall i mostly agree with everything you said. But there is one thing I reaally disagree, and that is the size of the skill gap compared to other games, specifically rts. I play a lot of starcraft and age of empires, and i gotta say, rts are very similar to fighting games in a lot of ways. Both are 1v1 focussed, take a similar amount of time to get into and have a significantly lower barrier of entry than outsiders assume. But one key difference i personally see between these 2 types of games is the sheer infinity of skill ceiling in rts. You can reasonably reach mechanical perfection with a certain fighting game character, from where on further skill improvement mainly derives from your ability to make good decisions and to read your opponent. Mechanical Perfection in RTS however is not reachable by a human beeing. There is pretty much an infinity of possibilities in how good you could move your units, and moving your units is not the only thing you'll do. Micro (your ability to move units) and macro (your ability to manage your base) cancel each other out in a lot of times, making games about choosing mental priority on top of each of these 2 things beeing very complex on their own and sometimes crossing over into each other. And on top of all that strategy games also have the layer of, well, strategy. This is not to say there is no strategy in fighting games, but the net of possible things you could do in an rts is just way larger. Im not trying to make strategy games sound superior or anything, i love fighting games, just pointing out that I am 100% convinced that the possible skill gap in strategy games is not only comparable to fighting games, but way larger

Honestly, fighting games are too much of a grind and require too much outside research. You can't learn everything through play like an fps, you have to look up videos and frame data and match ups... And its all just too boring... I play video games for fun, not to research the subtleties of each character. Its why I used to play quake and unreal... Everything you needed to know for success was in the game... You learned it by doing... Not by research. Same with starcraft... You learned by doing... By playing in matches... Everything was more organic

My dislike of fighting games is more on the technical level. I just don't like how stiff they all feel to control. I prefer games where movement is very fluid with little to no end lag between animations, like fast paced precision platformers, or any game where precise fluid movement is core to the gameplay.

This video deserves more recognition specially for the gamers from both FGC and other game genre communities. Good content, dude. 😉

I liked your analogy comparing fighting games with other skills, like a sport, or an instrument, or even another game. The main difference, at least to me, is that if im bad at a sport and i decide to play against someone better than me, yes ill lose, but ill be actively building my skills and having fun because im actually playing. If im bad at a fighter and i decide to play someone better than me, often times that means i dont get TO play, because the very nature of a combo means that the one getting comboed literally cannot do anything because of hitstun. This is why i think Smash is a such a genius game, because when you lose a match in smash, you still got to actually play.

Great Video. From my own experience it is really hard to sell a Fighting Game to people as there is so much you need to explain upfront, however those that are willing to put in the effort are really fascinated by them. The biggest problem is most likely the lack of players, so even matches are way to rare no matter how good the netcode is. I am really bad at shooting games, but when I played Overwatch 1 online back in the day there were lots of players to play with who were just as bad as me. This is really rare in fighting games as they are not populated enough, which makes them even hard to recommend if there is not enough enjoyable single player content within the game.

de foq? i didnt even saw you had 204 subs, this is dead underrated

i always wanted to play fighting games, but never could get good, so just didnt like them, this video was very helpful and inspiring. Thanks!

well 'hardcore' action games such as the dmc series are fairly similar to fighting games actually. it's actually this very game series that made me realize that i will probably enjoy fighting games, and indeed i have!

I think it was in a Core A video that said that the community was a big factor in these type of games, i also practice martial arts and the difference is that you see and feel progress faster and the rewards are more palpable, in games in general the benefits are not so fast, also that you are full blame if you lose, unlike team games where you can get support from the others, algo Ego plays a big role, no one wants to get his ass kicked for too much time, in martial arts someone experienced goes easy so you can actually feel like you re progressing, being via correction in your technique or soft sparring, in FG i havent seen a dude hey i can train you, bcs everyones just want to get more wins, One solution that came to my mind while writing this was making an online gym were people train hahaha, so the skill level is kinda similar, bcs matchmaking is kinda busted in a lot of games, thats why belts exist tho, to indicate a concrete level of experience

I actually love fighting games, and I have since I was ~10. I like to see the perspective from other views, because if I'm just looking at fighting games from my own perspective, the ONLY thing I manage to come up with is that same question: "Why don't more people like these games? They're so much fun, though!" Which doesn't clarify a thing XD

thanks for linking the playist you made

Difficulty in competitive multiplayer games ahhhbapbapbap you're missing something huge here. Yes, some of these are more or less difficult than others. It's about margin of error and punishment. Maybe those aren't the best terms to use, but let's put it this way. If I'm playing Halo and I overextend by stepping around a corner, I can go "oh shit I shouldn't have done that", step back, and not lose much of anything for doing so. If I was playing CS:GO? Head blown off, round probably lost. Similarly fighting games exist on a similar scale. Part of the reason Smash Bros. feels "easier" to most people is because you have so much mobility that tiny movements don't matter so much. It's not like Street Fighter where stepping 1mm closer or farther with your slowass walk speed could be the difference between being fine and 1/3rd of your health bar disappearing. Not to mention that to most people the damage % system in that game feels a lot less punishing, because rather than just an irreversible loss you're given ample ways to recover and in a sense, your next mistakes become *less* punishing until you're at a point where you could get easily yeeted. And skill floors are *absolutely* a function of difficulty. Your thought that people look at tournaments and think "I need to do that" seems like projection more than anything, the greater question is what skill floor does the playerbase generally sit at and what does it take to hit that skill floor? And *how well is the true skill floor* communicated to the player? (Side note, I learned the same lesson as that "think, don't mash" video by reading through Gief's Gym. Basically it was about training mode reps you can do to get your FGC legs, and there was a massive focus on making your normals second-nature, learning to recognize throws and learning how to walk forward without eating shit. I now feel like I can actually think when I play SFV now. I think THAT skill floor is, in fact, a major barrier because figuring it out is boring as hell, and SFVI is going to be huge for that.) And the thing is, difficulty and the skill floor / ceiling aren't always the same. For instance I wouldn't say that Quake 3 Arena is actually a very *difficult* game. The skill floor includes strafe jumping, and matches involve you becoming extremely disadvantaged over and over again which makes skill gaps between players huge, but at any given moment you can sort of do whatever the hell you want and not instantly eat shit for it. You can continue to just hop around and learn things. There isn't so much of this "think fast, chucklenuts" vibe you get in a game where you're instantly two feet away from someone who's going to beat the snot out of you and walk away after you try *one thing* and screw up *once* before being tossed back into matchmaking.

The biggest thing that sucks about getting into fighting games to me, is conversely solved by more people getting into fighting games. If the fighting game that really draws your eye is Niche within an already Niche genre then the few players left are just demons and it's hard wanna put in the effort when just getting decent or good won't cut it, and all the effort will be to play against the same 14 people that are hopefully still there; or you just have to settle and play a game you arent quite as interested in. I guess that isnt really exclusive to fightning games but it just stings more due to the already being niche part and the required minimum investment of reaching even just the skill floor.

4:24 wow really did not expect to see one of my fav strategy games, Frozen Synapse, show up in a video essay! I feel so seen!

Honestly i never bothered to pick up an instrument because I wasn’t good at playing And i felt like i never would be no matter how hard i tried At some point i said f* it And i just started practicing without focusing on how bad i was And now people sometimes say that im good even though im still trash I also found that a similar thing happened with fighting games I was too bad and didn’t want to get stomped by the people who had thousands of games on their name But at some point i said f* it we ball, and just threw myself into gg acpr which is a brutal game to start with But i have become decently competent now I genuinely enjoyed it most of the time even when i was super bad and got destroyed it was fun to me Before i started playing +r online i also had a time where i owned it on the switch a couple years earlier and i had fun playing it locally with people when we were all new And it wasn’t too difficult for anyone in that setting

You pretty much got it to the point. Very nice video and very accurate from a perspective that isn't just saying: You're bad get good

Two main problems for me really. The first is the quality of online in many fighting games. The lack of block features/connection quality indicators/active playerbases/rollback are deterrents along with whack lobby systems. Either it takes too long to get a decent match, or you have multiple matches with crazy packet loss wasting your time. Other genres don't have that problem. The second one is the FGC in general. It's difficult to want to stick around at events like locals when all you do is go 0-2 and go home after paying venue fees. There's a lot of big talk about getting people into fighting games, but the FGC seems adamant on doing its own thing instead of figuring out how to get new people in outside of spouting platitudes. The guidance sort of isn't there.

For me at least, I don't think this addresses most of the reasons why I don't like fighting games (and I do otherwise enjoy most of the strengths of fighting games that you mentioned in this video). I tend to enjoy perfecting platformers and RPGs more than fighting games for a few reasons. -As somebody else mentioned in the comments, losing is less uncomfortable when you're not specifically losing to a person. If I run into the 1-1 Goomba in Super Mario Bros., I may feel a bit silly at worst, but it's not really embarrassing at all. But if I lose over and over again to actual people, then I feel too... vulnerable, I guess? This definitely doesn't put me off by itself, but it definitely doesn't help, especially when you can lose so many times and those losses can be so one-sided. -I feel like I need to reach the skill floor to even have fun with a game, but I also need to be hooked by the game in order to put in the effort to learn it. It's a Catch-22 in that regard. In fighting games, I usually can't reach the skill floor quickly enough to make intentional decisions before I lose interest in the game. The only exception for me is Smash Bros., which is why it's one of the few fighting games that I play. I'm not really saying that the execution barrier should be lowered though; I agree that it is what it is and that's just part of the genre. -I find it more difficult to learn the games organically. I don't think fighting games are too fast to play (as you mentioned), but I do think they're fast enough that I struggle to look back on a match and identify what my actual mistakes were or how I could fix them. If I gained more experience, I'd be able to analyze my play better, but that just feeds into my other point above; I can't reach that level of skill without enjoying the game first, and I don't enjoy the game yet. And I prefer to learn by doing and figuring things out for myself rather than reading guides online when I'm doing something for fun. -I think part of the issue is that I also don't think playing against CPUs is very fun either. You typically can't truly predict what a CPU is going to do because there's usually a (truly) random component to their decision-making, even if it's not entirely random. It feels like a different dynamic to me. Overall though, this is a great video, and I feel like it addresses the sort of complaints I hear from many people (some of whom are talking about games in general TBH). I did think memorizing combos was necessary to accomplish anything interesting, but I guess that's not entirely true.

Although I think MOBAs are the games with the highest skill ceiling, FGs are surely deep as well, and I like how you learn it and how you improve, fighting games incarnate the “Learn to get better”, and there’s only you against yourself(it’s also a matter of tastes, if you prefer solo or team). MOBAs are also difficult to get into!

Thanks for the vid, and btw this photo of your cosplay shows you as a really good-looking person

damn, this is your only video? I'd be surprised to see this video not do really well

I used to love fighting games. But as I grew older they just turned into work. I had less and less free time and fighters had less and less content. I don't have time to lab for 5 hours a day and there's zero singleplayer content. So all there is for me is to get bodied online

This! You don't need to be a pro to play the game BUT the reason people think like that is more about youtube. The fgc has no intrest watching gameplay from someone bad so all the gameplay youtubers are top 1% player and most of those are the top 1% of theat top 1%. If you watch anything about strive (except the "lets check out how bad people on floor x are" video. It's ganna be form someone in celestial but the tower has a decent player base as low as like floor 6. I'm prett sure the 50% mark of the playerbase is on the low end of floor 8. The guy who played for 2000k hours in 2 yeara is not representative of what a normal player is like. I only put in q few hour a week and i'm decent. Floor 9 is deffinitly not the same as an evo top 8 contender but that's not realy something i want. These are games. You play them to entertain yourself above all else. Btw. This was a realy good first video.

I love fighting games, and I was introduced to the genre mostly from Smash and other platform fighters, but that's also the only game I think I am actually good at in the genre. I have always been turned off by traditional fighting games purely because I absolutely suck at them. Like I went online and I just get perfected because I didn't understand neutral, or how to block well, or wake ups. My friends were so much better than me that it was never fun for either of us. I think the reason why so many people quit fighting games before they get gud is exactly this. I don't have fun getting bodied over and over again, it's just frustrating. Then me and some other of my type moon nerd friends picked up the new Melty Blood, and since we were all bad at it, I actually had fun learning the game, and although I still get bodied online, I actually am starting to understand where I went wrong in matches. So, in conclusion, I think we need more bad people playing fighting games so us noobs can learn more naturally. Or better bots, cause some of them are so removed from how humans play it's not even funny. As for me, it's not that I hate losing, it's I want to have a chance to play the game, and not just spend my time in the corner getting memed to oblivion.

this is your very first video?! damn i'm impressed

I've been playing fighting games since Street Fighter 2 in the 90's. I got into them because of the characters, fighting styles, the music and backgrounds. After a few years I just take my losses and just enjoy playing. I don't play online much unless it's with friends local or online. I suck at Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat but I love playing them regardless and I don't care about the tier list to see what the best character to play as. I play more of the arcade or story modes than anything. For me that's how I practice. It also let's me test out who I'm good with, which is usually the female Fighters. 😁 This is a cool video, man. Thanks for talking about this.

My main issue with fighting games is that the bloated controls seems unnecessary. I come to fighting games to enjoy cool fights and I don't like that I have to spend hours on memorization and execution just to even start truly enjoying a fighting game. The moment to moment strategy in the genre is great and something that I actually really enjoy, which makes games like DBFZ and Smash the best fighting games for me. Launching a new game, hitting pause, and looking at the dozens of needlessly complex inputs I need to learn and memorize just to play ONE character (out of at least a dozen or more) is not motivating. It just makes me want to play something else.

14:32 🤣 Wow, that off topic burn was unexpected, but appreciated. Great video, keep it up.

the marlinpie combos are to damn hard

I love the shot selection in this video

As a lifelong fighting game player, I was interested in this unique concept for a vid. Nicely done, w/good points & visual examples. I like Strive as well. 🙂Difficulty is always an interesting factor. The skill gap is quite the issue in the genre. The more players, the more likely one can usually find someone around their level so it's enjoyable. But smaller games like TFH can work well, depending on the community. 🤔

the reason the skill ceiling stops me is bc fighting games are pvp at their core, compared to something like guitar. some of my favorite bands in the world include people who are so far from technical masters, so it's easy to see something i can achieve and be happy with, and i'm not competing directly with others when i pick up a guitar. not saying your point is wrong though. i agree with the main idea that you don't have to be tournament to enjoy these games and I like the video! especially appreciate your observation about prediction vs reaction speed

"There is however something strange about this when it comes to gaming. In other activies, like playing a musical instrument, or drawing, or picking up a new sport. You wouldn't spend that much time thinking about how far you are from skill ceiling wouldn't you? Sure you may end up quitting if the impression you're not getting any better. But that hasn't stopped you from giving it a try right? So i ask you, when it comes to fighting games, why does this stop people at the door?" IMO its the impersonal and deeply competitive nature of fighting games. a musical instrument or drawing are not competitive environments. You can be competitive about it, but they are not by default or naturally competitive. You only really compete with yourself. You dont feel intensely bad, like you 'lost', because you can't play a solo or shade an eyebrow. In a sport you typically play with real living people, if you're new others will see that and go easy on you, they might give you advice. "work on X, but you're doing Y very well for a beginner" and that can keep you going and make your improvement more 'visible' even if you go a long time before you get even a single 'win'. Not so with fighing game, the typical fighting game experience is that you get stomped by a few names on a screen for about 10 rounds, then you quit and refund before you ever really learn anything.

This video reminded me that FGC players doesn't know/remember what is to be a beginner in the genre. Is like how in elementary school you struggle to learn/memorize the multiplication table but as you grow up you just see it as a second nature, to the point that is unthinkable that someone will ever struggle with it. "You don't need to know combos and specials to be good at the game! This veteran guy is winning just by doing normals against those beginners!", maybe the problems that new players are having are not just with other beginners. It's impossible to know something if you don't even know where to begin, and it's even worse when there's nobody that understands what you mean. It's even worse when just to get the basics can take you months.

evo moment 37 just isn't the same without someone yelling "let's go justin" :P

For me a fighting game needs A: Fun characters B: Actual players (without begging for games on discord) C: Actual depth Its very hard to find a combo of all 3 of these. You can have dumbed down games ala strive and players or a good game like blazblue and no one to play with. Street Fighter will continue to be ahead of anything else as the only actual 2D series to hit all 3 of these.

they need so much dedication and they don't usually provide quality single player content. if you're good at playing a fighting game then you can enjoy it but if you're not then there's nothing there for you. you either need to git gud or give up. the only exception is super smash which is funnily the only fighting game that i play because it can be fun even if you're bad at it. also the amount of content and variety of characters (most of which are from my favourite gaming franchises) really helped me to enjoy smash even if I'm playing it offline

All of these game analyses and video essays are so bingable. I must say, i am savvy for channels like Shounic for TF2, Marblr for OW, Core-A for fighting games in general, so on.

Well, you are assuming many people dislike fighting games because they just have never played any , when in reality they mostly had and just thought the entry barrier for being kinda decent is extremely high for an average gamer trying to just have some fun. In my case, i just hate the fact that i just cannot remember the gazillion moves a character has, or if i do, is because i am just not playing any other game whatsoever, which was the case when i was playing (and was decent) Tekken 3.

My friend spread my grey matter across the pavement for 50 hours, and now I'm decent at Street Fighter.

I like fighting games when I'm doing good. Its always easier to lean on shooters or beat em ups with friends though.

This speaks to me. I can barely remember optimal combos, or frame data, but wall game? Spacing? Basic whiff punishment? That I can definitely do. I can't really be bothered to practice motion inputs or cancels that much but I still managed to climb SC6's leaderboards with good ol' fundamentals, and this all happened because the character customisation pulled me into the game.

Took a long while for me to get into the genre but I love it now. This video missed the key thing that was a barrier for me though. For me being competitive is fun and the beginner phase isn't that enjoyable for any game, it's when to get to intermediate and above where the real reward starts, and with fighting games that beginner stage can be VERY difficult/frustrating to overcome because it often takes a lot of practice to do pretty much anything in these games consistently

My biggest hesitation when it comes to fighting games is 3 things: 1) Price. Not only are most fighters released at $60 (soon to become $70), but there's DLC fighters, so add an extra $30-50 for a fighters pass (and some games can have multiple fighters passes) and you're looking at $120+ for one fighting game out of dozens that pretty much all follow the same model. 2) Online functionality in a lot of fighters is incredibly dated. Smash Bros. (the best selling fighting game, ironically) is easily the worst offender with a MINIMUM of 10 frames of input delay on the best possible connection. Shooters figured out back in the 90s that pressing a button and waiting to see your input reflected on screen feels bloody AWFUL, which is why Id Software developed client-side prediction. The fact that most fighters still use delay based netcode just boggles the mind. 3) You're expected to just "know" things. Most fighters give you little information to work with, and in some cases, none at all. Even the ones that do try to teach you things do it in a string of long, boring, arduous tutorials, i.e. the absolute worst way to teach a newbie how to play. Sadly, it seems like neither the FGC nor developers have any interest in solving these issues.

think the fgs have 5 main problems that if fixed can make everyone happy: 1: Hiding important information This is a problem because fgs have way too much going offscreen. A basic fg will show you only the combo, counter, recovery and one or two system mechanics. (Sf only shows when the combo ends and Tekken doesnt even show counters) When important stuff like incorrect block, punish, chance to escape, plus or minus have 0 way to know if you dont read it somewhere (because even the own game wont tell you). How to fix: simply make like Dual Souls (goated game) and show it 2: Bad movement Walking is kinda sluggish, jump is unsetting and poor explored. Crouch doenst let evade any move. Also in some games you cant even air block! Is kinda hard to explain that for someone who doesnt play fgs. How to fix: Honestely i dont have many ideas, but making air block a standard, allow crouching low profile more standing moves, allow to change your jump direction more like a platformer would be a good start. 3: Confusing animations A lot of moves make no sense. Like a kick that hit your feet hits mid (looking at you Valentine) , and the most overheading thing hitting mid too (looking at you Chipp and Sol from ggac). Not only that, but a Anti Air uppercut, a crouching punch that would be reasonable hitting mid hits low for no reason (looking at every under Night character). Combined with the problems above and below kinda kills the quality. How to fix: Simply make them making sense. And if its too broken make it a littler weaker too. 4: Unbalance between high/low blocking Ok, having 2 types of blocking is kinda bad by itself, but the advantages of one ridiculously outweigh the other. If you stand block you can protect yourself of moves that hit your head a torso but leaves your legs unprotected, and if you crouch block you can protect your torso and legs at the cost of having your head exposed. This sounds balanced on paper, but there are much more low moves than high moves, and most of them dont hit crouching characters. Well, they cant block an air attack so just need to jump and hit them, right? No, because the moment you leave the floor you cant do nothing untill you reach a range that will make every move miss. On top of that lows can be 2 frames while the fastest overhead is 18 frames (makes a huge difference), meaning that you cant punish them safely even if youre plus. A the end this makes the genre very annoying and the pros will take a giant advantage of the begginers because most of them block high. How to fix: Might seem crazy, but i suggest 1 lows should be as fast as an overhead. 2 you should be able to do air attacks faster 5: Punishment for anything You die because you moved foward instead of blocking, then you die because you blocked but got punished. So you jump and die because of that, then attack with a very safe move but you die because of that too. How to fix: I have no idea, honestly 😔

Bro, i assumed you where a really big channel, well known just not by me.. but 440 subs is CRIMINAL. You did awesome bro. Got my sub for SURE

A major problem with fighting games is that in PvP, the best way to do great in fighting games is to prevent the other person from playing the game. Notice how most fighting games devolve into 5-15 second long combos where the victim just has to sit there and take it. All of it. Repeatedly. That is unbelievably demoralizing, and I struggle to think of other genres that feel that awful to lose at. Even at intermediate levels a winner will just shut out someone weaker almost completely. No other genre does it. A winner in a racing game just takes turns better, knows when to overtake, etc... They're not slamming the opponent off the road to prevent them from racing entirely. The only one I can think of is being spawn killed in certain multiplayer games with objectives. Also, good point about the skill floor being higher. There's also the mental load being much higher in fighting games, and it all has to be handled at a faster pace.

Absolutely love your description of skill floor/ceiling in fighting games!

Super pour une première vidéo, je m'abonne ! Je viens tout juste de commencer les fighting games avec SFV, c'était vraiment difficile au début(et ça l'est toujours), mais après 2 mois d'efforts constants et le niveau qui augmente de semaine en semaine je suis vraiment content d'avoir tenté de m'y mettre sérieusement. J'ai hâte de passer complétement le cap de l'exécution qui est clairement le plus gros mur à abattre pour pouvoir vraiment profiter et apprécier les jeux de combat.

There's alot of new fighting game channels coming out of nowhere and i love it! Great first video to help people dip their toes into this Incredible genre.

Fighting games are an investment, for you to get that excitement like landing a combo or winning a match you need to learn a lot of stuff to earn that excitement while other genres don’t need that much. Mashing generally doesn’t feels as great as landing a combo, zoning can be boring for some and neutral is often confusing or unpredictable for most, it is pretty daunting to approach a game that doesn’t reward you that much, kinda like you’re doing your best and the teacher keeps saying that you aren’t doing enough. Which explains why games like Smash is easier to get into, smash attacks and specials are cool to look at, there is even the casual side of things with items. Well of course not every game needs to be like that, but something like Tekken has rage drive and even input short cuts to help the player so there is ways to do it. After that, it is all about what the player is gonna do, are they going to practice to keep doing better or not

Fighting games bsically need good single player modes that actually teach you. Soul Calibur with its Mission Mode did it pretty well I think. Having certain matchups and rules to encourage and show different techniques at first. It also gives you an incentive. In one stage you get attacked by a horde of enemies with very low HP so you learn about keeping your distance. In another your health automaticaly goes down but your opponents are slow so you learn about rushdown. It has you pick locked choices of chracters to see the various gameplay implications. Honestly, even the Subspace Emissary was good. It had you use your movement and attacks in a whole variety of contexts so you learn about how to control the game

Here is another reason. Some characters have a frame or mechanic advantage that the only way to defeat them is if they make a mistake. When the player does they can "escape" from being punished.

13:25 HEMA!!! Very relatable example yes

I think the main reason why people give up when they see someone of the highest level doing something insane, yet they dont do so with other hobbies like an instrument, is that, those other hobbies arent necessarily competitive, while fighting games will ALWAYS be you against someone else, so other peoples skill is constantly relevant

I believe you are underestimating the importance of good reactions and reflexes. In my case, for example, I can't react to overhead in strive even if I'm in training mode and they are the only thing I'm looking for. Overheads are 20 frames in strive, and should be reactable by an average person, but I can't. So, what happens in game is that if my opponent uses any overhead I lose half of my health. Another thing, which is often cited in new player guide, is being able to react to your own moves to buiild a basic game plan, ie: if your move gets blocked you do A, if it doesn't you do B, but if you are too slow like me you are already in a plateau and you haven't even started to play. Great video by the way :)

Man, INSTANTLY subscribed. This channel looks SO promising. Thanks for putting this content out there! I loved fighting games since my first attempts at Tekken 2, 3, Super Smash Bros Melee, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and the likes. Never been constant in playing them (as I play a LOT of different games), so always stayed definitely on the "casual side" of things, but more and more I'm enjoying their gamedesign, and feeling the appeal of devoting more time to them. I think your channel (together with other stuff I'm finding around youtube) will be a good propeller for this. Thanks!

Hey, fellow Gio player! That video was really well done! I hope you're gonna make more! Before trying fighting games, I indeed used to think they were all about crazy reflexes. Then I somehow ended up reading a blog post by David Sirlin where he explained that it's actually mostly about opponents making decisions simultaneously. And that kind of mechanic, where all players make a choice at the same time, is a thing I really like in board games, so I decided to give fighting games a try!

I think one of the main reasons that new players get overwhelmed is the lack of extrinsic progression. Tekken for example, you need to learn how to Korean Backdash, Instant While Standing, Instant While Running, Wave Dashing, Side-stepping. Most games would give you one movement option at a time and throw challenges based on the progression, only really using the final levels as a final test and amalgamation of everything the player has acquired and learned to use through careful game design. In a fighting game, you need to use all of those techniques as soon as possible, as the challenge in this case is someone who is already employing those methods. They might not necessarily be pulling these things out of the bag on you right away, but as your matchmaking rank rises, you'll either use these techniques or hit a wall; and that wall is never far off... That said I love the lack of extrinsic progression in games. Too many games feel like skinner boxes designed to drip-feed you content over a slow period of time to keep you playing for longer. I've never had that issue with a fighting game. Guilty Gear doesn't make me unlock Roman Cancel after scoring 100 knockdowns. Street Fighter 6 doesn't lock Drive Impacts behind level 12 prestige. Tekken isn't going to force me to grind out fifteen hours to use Hell Sweeps. If I can't use a special move or pull off a combo, it's exclusively *my fault* and only *intrinsic progression through practice and improvement* will I see the positive results I want. I think that's beautiful and I want more of it. I get killed by someone in a shooter using a gun I won't get for another ten hours of grinding, I'm salty as fuck. They beat me with an advantage I don't have access to. When I'm getting mixed by a Chipp in GG, flowcharted by a Ken with better fundamentals than myself, or caught in a Mishima vortex by some fightstick wizard, I at least know I got cooked because the other player was objectively better than me and used their tools better than I did. Better hit the training mode, GOOFY

In the "once upon a time chapter" i relate so much x) in France we are litterally the first country outside of Japan to have grow up with Dragon Ball (and anime in general) to the point when Japanese people tend to joke about how we love Dragon Ball more than them. it can explain why DBFZ has one of the best Esport scene in France.

Fantastic video! I was in a similar position, I grew up playing a few fighting games like Tekken and Smash as they came out but I never bothered getting "good" or actually understanding the mechanics. Strive was the game that taught me everything I needed to know to understand how these games work and honestly this genre is one of the coolest things I've seen come out of gaming. Hoping this video joins the ranks of Core-A's channel in helping people truly understand fighting games! I'd love to see the genre flourish more

When your brother walks in and constantly sweeps you after you've been labbing all day or getting repeatedly stomped by the CPU it hits very different than not being as good as a pro guitarist. You can still feel good about mastering a basic song. Fighting games have a pretty high wall to climb before mediocrity can be fun.