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!
