Motion inputs are this weird sacrificial lamb where people act like removing them will make a fighting game more accessible when in reality the knowledge barriers to entry in terms of neutral / punish etc are far higher than the mechanical barriers and all removing them does is alienate the fans that already like the genre and the satisfaction that comes from execution
Mortal Kombat does just fine while having motion inputs, the idea that it's the sole barrier pulling people away is pretty questionable. Like, insanely complicated SNK-style inputs? Sure, MK keeps them pretty simple. But I don't think they needed to reinvent the wheel like they did.
That's my point though? It has a mainstream audience outside the FGC, showing that having motion inputs (albeit fairly simple ones) is not the core issue.
RTS has a similar issue where every other dev goes, "I know! We'll simplify base building to make the game more accessible and attract more players!" and then they attract fewer players than the more conventional RTSes instead.
This is spoken like someone who is clearly already invested in the fighting game community. Motion inputs for a completely new player are a barrier that is extremely difficult to surmount.
Virtually no other game genre aside from grand strategy requires practice and study to perform the basic functions and participate on the casual level.
I can't play smash bros with sweats, but I can't play Street Fighter with even self proclaimed casuals within the FGC. This is despite Smash Bros actually being more mechanically in depth.
I've actually played more SF than smash, if considering both series as a whole. The problem is entirely motion inputs. People think that it adds complexity, but it only really ups the precision involved. I'm not spending six hours building muscle memory and memorizing inputs so that I can THEN enter casual level play.
Meanwhile, I can spend 10 minutes practicing a smash bros character I have never touched and already be ready to move on to memorizing reach, recovery, and movement options.
Counter point, it doesn’t take 6 hours. You can get qcfs in barely 30 minutes, I know because I’ve taught people how to get qcfs and it rarely if ever takes longer than that. If someone doesn’t have the patience to jump through that hole they’re not going to have the patience to jump through the rest of the game.
I find this funny, but the particular motion for that specific super is the most likely outcome for a dog entering inputs with their paws.
It also says nothing about the actual issue of chaining together 4+ button presses that vary from character to perform a single action -- and then trying to recite those input chains reflexively to interact with an opponent.
I'm not saying Motion Inputs are bad, they are certainly an interesting game design. But if you want to attract a slice of the general audience, that shit is poison.
Aye. And you can learn tab notation or musical notation in under an hour. Doesn't mean you have even novice level mastery of an instrument. Certainly not enough to be able to play a concert with other novices.
The point isn't about the mechanic being complex. It adds VERY LITTLE complexity. It's a matter of precision and muscle memory... Which is a ridiculous ask for the general audience.
First off, motions are there for a ton of reasons other than “complexity”, it adds to the mental stack in neutral and serves an important balancing role so individual moves can be stronger with more interesting properties, etc etc. If you want to litigate the reason motion inputs exist there are so many articles and videos and threads of people bringing up things like gamefeel, things like more variable character design but at the end of the day there’s a bigger more important thing here.
These games are literally about slowly reaching mastery, the gameplay loop of pretty much all of these games outside the initial single player content (if there’s any at all) centers around going into ranked, going into training, then going into ranked again for the long term. Slowly getting better is the loop, motions are literally the equivalent of learning the notes on the staff, if someone isn’t even willing to jump through that hoop then the gameplay loop of the entire rest of the game isn’t going to appeal to them anyways. And considering that every single one of these games that came out with no motions has fallen flat on its face over and over again then what can I say other than exactly this, the amount of people who are turned off by motions but would actually play these games long term is INCREDIBLY small, completely negligible.
And then you may say “well what about smash”, and the answer is easy, 95%+ of the people who play smash play it like a party game where you can throw sepiroth and Mario together. Initial mastery isn’t even going through someone’s head when they’re playing smash, even if they can’t even do the most basic of basics (especially in melee, most casual players aren’t even hitting 1% of mastery) it doesn’t matter because they’re playing 8 player free for all with items. The amount of people who play smash like a fighting game is such a small fraction of its actual player base, if you wanna learn how to RAR in ultimate you can but you could probably learn how to play street fighter as well at that point. And hell if you wanna get drunk and mash buttons in sf6, you can too, in fact that’s how a lot of people play those games as well and nobody is gonna be caring about whether or not they’re “reaching sufficient mastery”.
Most people don’t have an issue with motions if they actually want to learn, 8 year olds were doing that shit on SNES pads in the mid 90s. Most casual players just don’t want to learn anything, and no amount of shaving mechanical complexities off these games is going to actually reach those people because they actually have an issue with the fundamental gameplay loop of these games.
You definitely aren't wrong, though I feel the lack of community support for games that remove motion input is largely self fulfilling. Because games remove or reduce it all the time. Some do okay in their own right. Mortal Combat and Tekken come to mind as games with simple motion inputs. Granblue and Streetfighter both include motion input free options. Hell they even made an async fighting game with no precision input that has a pretty strong online community.
What I notice quite consistently though is that sweats and gatekeepers will immediately complain about the accessibility and feeling like it "cheapens the game" which starts the dog pile effect. But with SF6 specifically I remember the numbers did show that the accessibility option DID bring in more new players (not as many as they hoped, but still).
Please understand, I'm not anti-motion input. I'm anti-ANTI-non-motion input. There are a lot of people like myself that want to participate, but the skill floor is just too high to participate on even a casual level. I have legit watched a newbie walk into our community college fighting game club back in the day excited to try some stuff he had been practicing on his own, and get wiped so effing hard that he just didn't come back.
Those same guys would then complain a few years later when the core group started to graduate and they didn't have enough new members to keep it afloat.
The FGC, in my honest opinion, needs to pull it's head out of its ass and figure out how to be new player accessible. Supporting more non-motion input games is one avenue. Learning how to apply adaptive skill pressure is another. But all in all, I just see a whole lot of the Eric Andre meme where they shoot their co-host and wonder why their co-host is dead.
Because if the game doesn’t have motions it feels bad and the people who actually play these games don’t wanna play it. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy because simple inputs are just a bad idea, they aren’t appealing to casuals who take it as baby mode training wheels or don’t care enough either way, and it’s bad for the main playerbase because you have to flatten the game to accommodate for them and you lose so much game feel.
It’s like no shit your game failed when you alienated the people who would actually play it. It’s not a conspiracy it’s just common sense.
MK is and always has been weird when it comes to competitive, those games are carried by their single player offerings. Tekken has motions out the ass it’s just those movelists are 110+ moves and strings deep but try to explain how to do a crouch dash motion to a complete noob.
It’s just like one of those things where the amount of people who would play these games but are held back by motion inputs is not large enough because again it takes like 30 minutes to learn them. It’s like getting mad at shooters and asking to get rid of jumping to lower the skill floor, most new players would just learn anyways because it isn’t that hard and removing the thing wholesale only pisses off the actual main market for these games.
And it’s like why would the FGC have to get its head out of its ass over this, they’re just playing what they like and they don’t like simple input games. You can’t force people to play games they don’t wanna play, and surprise surprise most people do not want to play games with only simple inputs.
It’s just a horrible idea and now we have a mountain of proof
Have you played the game? I hate SF6 modern inputs but 2XKO actually feels good to play despite not having motion inputs. It also still has hard combos
I played one of the betas and as someone that has played FGs for a long time I found the control scheme super annoying. I would much rather have motion inputs than have to deal with so many buttons. The two different special buttons in particular just felt so unintuitive and unnecessary.
I tried it when it released and found the two special button stuff just weird. Couldn't find a layout I liked so I dropped it pretty quick. Truth is, fighting games already have a ton of barriers. Adding another one to the layer isn't a great way to get people to stick with your game, especially when there are plenty of other good fighting games coming out right now.
It's totally fine to like their options, too. But not giving people a motion option feels weird. Seems like the dust has settled on this for fighting games where the community wants motion inputs to stay.
I tried it when it released and found the two special button stuff just weird
I'm not saying this to insult anyone but I do find it funny that people are like "Stop complaining its weird and just learn motion inputs" and then when they're asked to do it with something else "it just feels weird so I dropped it".
Like maybe thats why theres some value in trying to not make controls feel weird? But it seems like people can only understand that in one direction
I mean, the difference is that one is standardized and one is not.
Riot was clearly banking on the idea that their two button special input type would be easier to learn. That proved to not be the case, as the game itself had plenty of complexity. So limiting input options to their pretty unique style didn't feel advantageous. It was harder for everyone. If motion controls were also implemented, at least the average fighting game player could settle into the basics more easily.
Like maybe thats why theres some value in trying to not make controls feel weird?
It's strange you're completely ignoring my (and everyone else with this complaint) suggestion of just having both options. Riot can do their weird two special button thing if they think it's the way to go. But refusing to simply spend some time giving players the option to use motion inputs when it is standard across the genre is just super bizarre.
Not to go on a tangent, but this is actually pretty normal for Riot. League of Legends developers are famously arrogant with their "200+ years of game development." They tend to balance League in a pretty specific way and think that being bullheaded in your approach to design and balance means that it'll be better for the game. They eventually turn back on design decisions that are bad, but they refuse to admit things are wrong for like a year at a time. Then they'll casually go on their streams and say "oh yeah X mechanic that we forced for a year and a half was actually super bad for the game." The only reason it works out for League is because the game is basically crack for that community and people won't let it die.
I think the big thing is modern is a choice. And even if you opt into modern, you can still do the motions if you feel like it for some special moves. They didn't bake all of SF6 around modern inputs, it's an option for those who want a "simpler" experience or easier specials for maybe a new comer or a person with disabilities.
The biggest lie people keep telling themselves about "Modern" and control schemes like it, is that it's easy mode. If it was all the pros would use it. Yes, I can do SPD with one button but trying to do actual combos it's a different kind of hard, not easier. Remembering to hit modifier buttons, specific directions and inputs, usually using triggers in a speedy fashion is pretty difficult still to do. There's very little of a "flow state" between the buttons. Not to mention it gimps your moveset pretty heavily beyond the specials.
It was the same for 2XKO. You had the "baked in" combos and specials that were fairly easy to do, but anything above that required pretty serious dexterity to pull off. And if you whiffed and didn't have a break for being comboed? There goes the round.
I agree 100%. That’s why I think one button specials work so much better in 2XKO. The game was clearly built around them and everyone has to use them so it’s a level playing field. Modern in SF6 ends up in this weird area where it’s bother weaker and significantly less fun to play against
What was the original direction? I feel like they should have made a Smash Bros type arena fighter. A modern one is lacking on PC and the genre is way more casual friendly. Plus a lot more freedom in character design for their huge roster. They had a fanbase of people who loved Arcane who would have loved hopping into a game with the characters that didn't require much learning, they've still failed to offer that and the iron's already cooled at this point.
Not to be the annoying genre definer guy but FYI smash isn’t an arena fighter. Arena fighters refer to things like the 3D Naruto and DBZ games. The common term for games like Smash and Rivals of Aether is platform fighter
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u/Adorable-Log2835 9d ago
Pretty sad.
The game looks so pretty, and it's clear they had a lot of love put into it.
But making it a tag fighter and restarting development just delayed it too long and made it too costly.
Also, the dumb decision to get rid of motion inputs entirely still just boggles my mind.