I won't use the word "Casuals" much, as a lot of people that play really well tend to play games casually jut because of their work and how little time they have to play.

But one casual thing that's ruining the Fighting games in my opinion is simplicity, we see a bunch of games that use the touch screen of our smart phones to use a Special Attack, an all in special... You know, the one you should be pressing a bunch of keys just to see the animation start? Well, I've been thinking a lot about this since I LOVE fighting games, If I could inject KoF 2002 as some type of drug I would do it. I try to play everyday since the feel of doing complex combos are something that interested me as a kid and still do to this date but... The genre is becoming more and more simple, and that can be a good and a bad thing depending on how's handle.

The Good

Something doesn't have to be complex from the start or trying to hard to be complicated in order to separate "casuals" from harcore players to be good, take Guilty Gear and MvC as an example, they are easy to pick up and learn but pretty hard to master, both of them have a bunch of possibilities and depth... Also the new DBZ seems to be the same, AFAIK they made a game that's easy for people that don't have much time to learn a fighting game and everything that's in it but can still have fun and feel fine while doing simple combos, that keeps the interest up there and still leaves you room to learn a bunch more. Simplicity can work but only if It's done right!

ARMS did this right, I'm watching a BUNCH of ARMS lately and seeing that behind that simplicity hides a pretty deep and fun game, I really love it...

Smash is another example, you can say all you want about it... You can say that's not a real fighter if you want but the fact that you need skills to be really good at it says the oposite to me.

The bad

You see some companies accepting dumb decisions and implementing things like Touch Screen specials, you see this a lot in your Smart Phones and 3DS, they tend to think that because there may be a bunch of kids playing the game on that plataform they should just give them the option to press a button and abuse skills and full special attacks, what you are doing with this is teaching them to be lazy... I know they want to see flashy things on the screen but when I was a kid what got me into fighting games was how excited I got from doing a Hadoken all by myself, not pressing a buttom and seeing my character just throw a ball of light at my oponent, that would've killed the experience for me.

I used to own a 3DS and got SF 4 just to play some fighting game at my university and kill time and when I saw that one touch screen option, I raged so badly... Why? You kill the experience by doing that, what's there to celebrate if you win a match by just pressing a buttom and not by pure skill? You get nothing from it.

Yesterday I was watching a stream and some guy was playing Ultra SF 2 for Switch (Terrible game, HORRIBLE), when he was configuring his controls I saw the option to set one special or skill to a key, a SINGLE KEY! he didn't do it but just the fact that the option is there makes me SO angry, I know that some people will say "It's an option, if you don't want it, don't do it" but think about all the newcomers that are just abusing this kind of options and missing a bunch from the experience that is a Fighting game... and they adding more of this just to sell a little bit more. They are threating people like pussies...

You also get the option to just tap the screen and do a super, maybe this is why no Traditional fighters are coming to Switch because Nintendo can't accept the fact that IT RUINS THE EXPERIENCE! Game still sucks as a whole tho.

I sold the game 1 week later.

What do you guys think about this kind of things? I would love to hear different opinions! also excuse my english if there's a typo of some sort or if my grammar is lacking!

Most people manage that bar by using it to empower certain skills, you waste 1 bar to do a stronger Hadonken for example, but I have to agree in something... The cutscenes, they just take you out of the immersion sometimes.

Most Supers and Specials are there as an option to even a match, if you are getting your butt kicked during a fight and lets say you are at 10% HP, your bar charges faster by gettin' hit... Meaning you have one more option to compensate a mistake you made during the match with a well thought full combo that should take away 70% of your opponents bar. KoF does this, but their combos are SUPER hard to do most of the time and specials are pretty hard to connect after a combo. You don't get that 100 to 0% bullshit in the newer ones... and If there's a possibility I have yet to see someone take away a full HP bar in the newest KoF.

They do supervise the games that are coming to their consoles, Its Ninty after all... Before someone publishes a game on their console, said game has to come to Nintendo first... That's why I blame them, for accepting this kind of things.

I believe that you're spoiled because Smash doesn't have it. It also doesn't not share most mechanics of other fighting games. Specially specials, that are terribly implemented (it's ridiculous that a game must have part of its gameplay forbidden on championships). Landing those "super duper" specials takes skill and has its risks, that's why they are important.

Let's use KOF XIV as an example and see how a pretty good player would act. You can have up to 5 bars (depending on the round). A Neo Max special uses 3 entire bars for a roughly 40% damage. A regular super uses 1 bar for around 15% while a beefed up super uses 2 for 20 to 25%. If, like you said, you just input the combination and do one of these, most likely you won't hit your target. Specially with Neo Max, they are easy to block or dodge and you would just throw away several bars.

What a good player does is using cancels. If you skillfuly and quick input a sequence after another attack hits, you can cancel the animation (while keeping the damage performed) and land a secons strike as part of a combo. In KOF, you can use command normals to assemble combos with regular attacks. Regular special attacks can be canceled in supers and super can be cancelled in a Neo Max. That way, you can remove the risk of the supers by only using them when you're sure to hit. You define skill as doing combos (which is actually ridiculously easy in a lot of games, like SF), but the real skill is on doing combos with these high level moves and deal a big damage at once.

Other games use other mechanics. MK X, per instance, uses 3 bars where 3 do a X-ray, 2 allow to break a combo and 1 can be used to increase the damage of a single move. So it's a balance between risk and reward, using the X-ray will leave you in a situation where you can't escape a big combo (you need 2 bars). Sometimes it's better to just use 1 bar to soup up a move instead of risking losing everything in a X-ray.

If you play against someone minimally capable on one of these games with that mentality of simple combos and trying to use specials to do the work, you probably won't do well.

As for the "cutscenes", the minimum I expect when I'm able to (with KOF's Terry) hit a flying kick, cancel it in a command normal, hit a high punch, cancel it on a Power Wave, cancel it on a Buster Wolf and finally turn it all on a freaking Neo Max after inputing almost 20 buttons with perfect timing is to see my character beat the crap of the other guy while taking off 75% of its health.

Complicated motions are pretty much always the worst part of fighting games. That's why Rising Thunder was so damn amazing. By simplifying the input system, it made the game more accessible, but by balancing the game through mind games and fundamentals (spacing, footsies, etc), it was able to maintain a high skill ceiling without an insurmountable skill floor. And then it died. Fuck Riot Games.

Anyways, I welcome a change away from complicated motions. However, games do need to be designed around this concept to really work. That said, any fighting game player that knows their shit can beat the ass of someone who is just spamming specials. While there is a very tiny advantage to touch screen specials (they are instantaneous instead of requiring input time), it really doesn't mean much if there is any skill gap. Spamming specials is no different than those people who spam Hadoukens to kill noobs online. The fact that you can press a button on the touch screen doesn't really change anything.

As you said, I don't think that even if I get to use 1-button shortcuts to perform any special/super move in a fighting game it would be possible to beat an EVO finalist in a single round. Hell, I probably couldn't take 10% of its health.

Anyway, I agree with OP that 1-button specials are stupid.

Correct, you get a special but that will leave you open to everything and making your next combos weak until you build up some more bars.

Also I love watching KoF XIV matches or If I get the chance, streams... The game seems like it took the good and made some amazing changes! I'll be getting it for PC soon and try it myself! :)

I also think SF 5 became WAY too easy for me to enjoy, there are no really many options when it comes to a character, someone jump? Oh, do your only air combo, did he made a mistake, go all in with the same combo you always do... and play the waiting game until another oportunity comes... Also almost every character feels the same and I hate that!

Yep you are right, a skilled player can take a person who spam a button or a skill easily, but that's not what i'm salty about, is the fact that by doing that they are creating some sort of lazy player that will expect a game to have a 1 wonder button everytime, spoiling everything for them. (and spoiling them too.)

I also think you are right when you say complicated motions need to change but most of fighting games do not have complicated motions, you get 1 or 2 that are pretty hard to do, the problem is connecting said abilities one after another and canceling them... If you don't give it time, your hands will just dance like crazy over your control and do nothing but look stupid also taking away motions or characters with specific ones will kill the options you have at your hand when playing and making every character feel the same.

I love Arms and that game doesn't require a bunch of keys or inputs to be skill based, also Smash.

A simple solution to me seems like it'd be for developers to allow the easy-specials for casual play, but in ranked matches/tournaments have it so that that you have to do the specials manually.

Great Idea! That way you can go casual if you want but for more competitive play you will need to learn everything manually!

I'd love that too! :D

You could be right, I don't really know what's going on inside the process but I really doubt Nintendo doesn't supervise come things or is not able to tell dev to stop using these kind of things.

Again, I think you are right but some part of me believes that Nintendo has a word in everything that comes or not to their system, even if one game turns out to be bad, they can tell the devs where they failed and to not do the same thing next time for their system... Unless is a global feature. (Across Ps4-Xbone-Pc-Switch.)

It's an option, also when it comes to searching for games in things like Super Street Fighter 4 on the 3DS you have an option to not allow people using those touch screen inputs for moves.