Why is everybody playing 2D fighting games?

Just thought I'd throw this in here.
Ahh, the beauty of 2D art!


Street Fighter Alpa 3


Skull Girls


BlazBlue


King of Fighters 13


Mortal Kombat Trilogy

 

All I've got to say is that 3rd Strike is still the king of all fighting games.

 

More people need to play Skullgirls. That game is pretty damn fun...

 

Hm... I understand what you're saying. But everything depends on the player? I don't think an experienced player will rush in to finish off a novice and get hit by a random super/ultra and lose the match. Typically with novice players, they do the most flashy unsafe move there is for their character and typically, an experienced player, will take advantage of that fact and bait these moves. Also in KoF not all DMs have invincibility frames so you can be hit out of it. There are certain moves which have invincibility frames but then some VF characters have moves that duck under highs and certain mids!

"Holds" in DoA doesn't really make it easier for novice players to beat experienced players. If you do an unsuccessful hold and the player throws you, that does extra damage (25%~50% I think) so if you perform holds as soon as you get stunned, then the other player will stun you, wait for you to hold, then throw. They will repeat the process until you understand that you shouldn't do that.

I think what I mean is that the "one hit does loads of damage" is in every single game. With Virtua Fighter, I can think of Jacky's flip kick on counter... one hit does so much damage. Wolf's Burning hammer. The thing is, a novice is unlikely to be able to get these hits on an experienced player because they wouldn't have gotten into a situation where those would connect in the first place. Right?

 

Isn't that 12?

EDIT: Nope nevermind me!

 

Lefty, I only bring up JWong because he is a very accomplished player at many fighting games. I'm merely providing an example as to how the skills in a 2D fighter don't always transfer over to 3D games quickly since he has a very good history of picking games up quickly and dominating in them. That's it really, no need to look any deeper than that statement. JWong has my utmost respect as a player and a person.

Cheeky, "Simpler to learn" doesn't mean simple. I merely meant that when I sit someone down with SFIV, it takes me far less time to explain everything than VF. It's really hard to go through the basics of VF with someone and teach them how to apply them. Many people I try to teach about the basics of VF (like gaining a frame advantage) go right over their head sometimes. I'm not saying SFIV (or any 2D fighting game) is less complex, I'm merely saying the basics are easier to convey.

IvorB, A win or two isn't enough to keep someone interested. Losing isn't fun and it's double frustrating when you don't understand why you're losing. We like competition and improving, but that still means we have to hold L's which are sometimes very salt inducing even against friends. My guess is that if you don't keep up with the competition level, eventually you'll burn out and go do something else that is fun. I may be wrong about this, but this probably happens with any game that has some sort of competition attached to it unless their is a good match making system that works hard to match you up with someone of your skill level.

I love SC5 and it is easier to convey it's system to a lot of people than VF (I don't play Tekken so I can't make any statements about it), but when I try to teach them about the advanced options in the game or why you should do something in terms of technical detail, they usually don't understand it. Like I said, 3D games have a different engine than 2D games and it's not always easy to convey things in terms of the engine since a lot of people aren't interested in counting frames and so forth.

The 3D scene is doing alright, it is just not as much of a spectator sport as the 2D scene is currently. As I said before, I think a major part of it is just that so many 2D games exist and most people start on 2D games that they eventually like to stick with 2D games.

 

IMHO, explaining how to play a fighting game is the same for 2D and 3D. The aim is to reduce the life bar of your opponent to 0, have more health than your opponent when timer runs out or (if applicable) ring out them. Directional pad/stick controls movement of character, the buttons makes your character attack and combination of buttons will do something else. I think that covers most fighting games on how to play it. How to win is entirely different as that involves strategy and execution.

 

Freak Fighter 3rd strike (Ur out) is the handicapped "soft" son of the real SF king Alpha 3's illegitimate twisted-minded brother,always claiming the throne but never getting it.

 

You are right that there are no 3D fighters getting released when there used to be so many. That's kind of what I mean as well. 2D fighters are coming out all the time these days. It definitely seems like 2D is the in thing now. Why are developers not making 3D fighting games like they used to (new ones)? This side of the genre has become really stale.

I think the visual feedback in a 3D games is clearer and more entertaining that 2D games. Take throws for example, you can't even compare how much better they look in 3D. Take DOA with all it's theatrics. Surely that is easily as clear and entertaining as any 2D game.

 

Yeah basically I'm using Evo as a sort of barometer on what is big with the fighting game community since it's the biggest tournament.

 

Um, I'm aware many of the 2D fighters are extremely technical and heavy input demanding, having played Chun and other female characters in them since Hyper Fighting (Chizuru from KOF'98, V-Karin, 3s Elena, MOTW Hotaru, XvSF Rogue, CvS2 Sakura, etc.), but the question here is why are they still such a big deal. SFIV is like the biggest game now, and not even 2D sprite-based, but I feel the reason why so many people keep playing it is what I outlined above. Also, it becomes a snowball effect, of more players on there keeps more people going back to it.
I can literally find at least 10 people in ranked SFIV any time of the day here, over and over and over. VF the last 5 years or so on Live, it's often just stare at a blank lobby for two hours, then fight a laggy Jacky, so y'know, that's another big factor why people drift off just a few weeks after they buy it, no doubt.

Did I mention comfort zones? Cuz that's really the bottom line here: fear of the new, or indeed, unknown unknowns. Whole generation of gamers out there now, don't wanna think too hard in front of their screens, and when it comes to talking about the US market, characters like Shun or even Aoi, are always gonna have an uphill struggle for hearts and minds against Guile or Sub Zero, the X-Men, Pikachu and now Batman.

 

Hello Westtrade,

I'm not sure I'm buying this argument that 2D games are so much easier for scrubs than 3D games. I used to see loads of people jumping on Tekken 3 and having a blast. Also if this was the case then 2D games would ALWAYS have been more popular than 3D games but to me that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe before there were 3D games that were more accessible than the ones we have now....

For Evo I would love to see some VF there but my main reason for mentioning it was not to campaign for VF at Evo but just to highlight the absence of 3D games there. You've mentioned that Tekken was there but I heard it struggled for audience. Is that true?

 

Yes...every fighting game does in theory boil down to lower the opponent's life bar to 0 while keeping your life bar above 0. That much should be obvious unless we are talking about someone who has never played a FG in his or her life.

I was referring to everything else, such as strategy, execution, situational awareness, etc. Most people already know the goal of a fighting game, but learning how to win and the mechanics of exploiting the game are usually different between 2D and 3D.

 

I don't think I could say that 3D fighting games were ever more popular than 2D ones.

Sure there was a time when they were the in thing, VF2, Tekken 3 and all the pretenders that emerged around that time but it seemed more like a fad than anything. It felt like the whole fighting game genre was struggling around that time (at least here) but 2D games were still pumped out.

 

Hmm, from the UK point of view, travelling around the country and not just London, I would say 2D was gone from many arcades by around 2000. TTT, and then T5 were still gigantic though, with some of the cabs still there now around the south and east coast smaller arcades, and some northern cities. Last SEGA fighting cab I ever saw outside the capital was VF3 in the late '90s.

People playing from home, well you had Third Strike on old Xbox, that was really nice, and then DoA:U... games like CvS2, Marvel 2, ST and much of the SNK stuff had already become very cultish and largely relegated to very small offline scenes or emulation. Fast forward a few years, and then SFIV appears and all sorts of old and new players take it up. I've still never seen a cab of it though here. GG, BB, P4, think these are still fairly small circles, UK-wise?

It always seemed Tekken was really popular though, especially with urban based players who perhaps liked the dance music in it, or the boxer style characters. But it was inevitable, with Namco constantly chopping and changing it all around with each version, that older players would become nonplussed with the franchise. SC, well, did the makers ever really take it seriously after part II? Just watch the Jaxel clip above to get the low-down on what happened to that scene.

 

FOH!

 

2D fighters started the genre so they've always been more popular, I think the problem is that most fighting gamers are Capcom biased in the same way that FPS players are COD biased, personally I don't have a preference I play all fighters, though I find 2D fighters are much more competitive and as a result slightly harder to play but are more rewarding if you can get good enough $$$$ $$$$

 

I think we both agree here, but the part we disagree on is how you think strategy, execution and situational awareness somehow is easier to grasp in 2D than 3D games. Whereas, I believe its the same but they just require a different skill.

I think 2D games are perceived to be more popular because of marketing. Every time a 2D fighter comes out, I hear about it. With 3D fighters not so much, well its been better recently, with Tekken getting snoop Dog advertising and Team Ninja trying to get their games out to the western audience a bit more.

 

Yeah, especially P4 where we got the game about a year later than the Americans! Similar thing happened to BB I think and there weren't many players playing except the European guys. It was obvious who the American players were as they already worked out a lot of the stuff.

I also agree with someone earlier upthread that its about the community too. Nobody likes to play... No one. The recent Xbox sales saw quite a few people willing to buy the game and give it a go. But to their horror they go online and see nobody. Even I've had days where I go online and its like hellooo? Then I jump onto another game. If I'm someone who likes VF and does that, new players are also likely to do that but never return.

 

It's the apathy, and frankly anti-social nature of much modern gaming. They won't even add fellow VF players to their list, or ever try to send a simple msg asking to play. I was just on the console this morning making some outfits up, and a good connection Aoi from America asked me to play, so jumped on and had a nice little set. But then I worked hard to ensure the list is mainly active VF people, so things like this can happen, and it's not just sitting in ranked, basically hating the whole experience.
I play the SF games on Live from time to time, and it's a much less interpersonal environment. No one ever speaks, unless it's angry voicemail demanding runbacks. You just grind through an endless array of shoto players, like some Atlus TRPG. Many different, reasonable connection tags, but may as well be the same guy.
VF Live, some of the private matches, I have had some great conversations with old time SEGA fans, that gives me a lot of happiness.

Maybe just the presentation of a lot of 2D stuff now appeals to a younger crowd. I remember being blown away by the animation and art style of stuff like Vampire Savior or KOF'97 when I first got my JP Saturn in the late '90s as a teenager, but now, I genuinely prefer the clean, fluid look of Lion in a Hawaiian shirt, or Aoi's flowing kimono running in 60fps 720 hi-res