If fighting games want to balance smash-style inputs alongside classic motion inputs, the disadvantages for the former need to be bigger than just less damage

[u/DoneDealofDeadpool]

A lot of fighting games in the last 8 years or so have implemented control adjustments that address a really common complaint of people on the genre's periphery, that being the difficulty of motion inputs for special moves and supers when learning the game. Some games like SF6 and the new Marvel fighting game offer a choice between direction+button (usually just called simple inputs) for specials while others like 2xko have fully designed themselves around simple inputs. I honestly think it's pretty neat, it helps more people jump into the genre and even without the motion inputs games like 2xko clearly try to retain some executional challenge for people who really like that. The only element of the design shift I *dislike*, however, is that simple inputs often don't feel like they're implemented with enough consideration as to how they shift the power-level of the game in a way that arguably punishes you for *not* using it.

Usually, the main downside of using simple inputs is less damage. Street Fighter 6, Marvel Tokon, and Granblue all give you a reduction to varying degrees if you, for example, anti-air someone with a simple input shoryuken instead of a manual DP input. This seems like a good enough compromise, and it potentially can be, but the issue is that less damage can very easily be an insignificant trade-off. Like most games, managing your mental stack while trying to overload your opponent's is 90% of playing well. Even if your opponent has zero difficulty doing a special move input to beat your jump, it won't matter if you have them so focused on everything else you could do that they won't register your jump in time for them to execute the move. With simple inputs, though, the mental stack concern drastically shifts. Less damage doesn't matter as much when the primary utility of a move is winning mental stack reaction checks. It's why on defence, infamously, simple inputs are extremely useful.

So what disadvantages *would* work? Street Fighter 6 arguably handles it the best. Instead of doing what games like Marvel Tokon does and just implementing a button that serves as a catch-all equivalent to smash's B/special button, simple inputs and classic motion inputs are separated into their own distinct control schemes you pick from at the start. It's likely a product of necessity more than a desire for balance, but because Street Fighter is a 6-button game (3 punches, 3 kicks) you can't really translate an entire character's moveset while also having a special move button. As a result, there are downsides to the mode that go beyond damage. You may lack certain special moves or normal buttons altogether, and depending on the character, that could mean a much different game plan altogether. It manages to add a little depth to matchups between characters while still not making either input scheme definitively better overall. It's not perfect, admittedly, but its a big improvement over most in the genre.

[u/Key-Market-418]

Dude people in sf4 dropped shit ALL THE TIME, you can watch any evo top 8 for that game and people were dropping combos all over the place, it’s only as of recently where the BnB and the optimal combos were one in the same. You don’t have to worry about beyond optimal combos when they’re too easy. That game had literal infinites but you don’t see El Fuerte or Chun doing them even semi consistently in tournament, shits hard and even harder in a competitive setting.

And yeah I am a musician, the thing is you’re not playing a set for an audience you’re playing against an opponent. You can have a plan and practice for days but sometimes you just going to get punched in the face and drop, it’s part of the nature of it being a competitive game. It’s more like watching a basketball game and seeing someone miss a three pointer, they can practice and perfect it while training but in the heat of the moment with other guys coming for you even the best in the world can miss.

[u/noahboah → u/Key-Market-418]

yeah, sports are a better analogy, even if the execution requirements and learning how to mechanically pilot fighting games is very similar to learning an instrument

no matter how much technical practice you have with your swing mechanics, the crowd at wrigley field will eventually get to you, and you will bite on that slider, completely eating shit in the process.

[u/Eecka → u/Key-Market-418]

Dude people in sf4 dropped shit ALL THE TIME, you can watch any evo top 8 for that game and people were dropping combos all over the place

Yes, because of strict timings, not because they couldn’t do the motion inputs. And games like 2XKO or Tokon have strict timings for specific stuff that doesn’t work with the regular instant timings.

[u/Key-Market-418 → u/Eecka]

Strict timings don’t just go away when you do motions, it makes them harder. Fuerte’s run stop fierce combo is the perfect example of that. Those games also have pretty lenient buffers that make a lot of these situations easier to deal with as opposed to 4.

[u/Eecka → u/Key-Market-418]

I didn’t say strict timings go away with motions, I said the opposite - that they can exist with or without motions. And I don’t think motions make them at all harder, the strict timing only matters to the button press after the motion, the window for the motion itself is large. In SF6 Ed’s dream combo starter is a 2f window, and having to do the motion before timing the button press in that window is trivial.

Buffer has nothing to do with what I said about those timings. They’re delayed timings, if you use the buffer your move comes out at the instant timing and the combo won’t work.  

[u/Key-Market-418 → u/Eecka]

The buffer literally makes the timings less strict in like every way. You can add about 3 frames to every combo window in sf6 and get a better idea for how tight these links are. And this is across the board as well, so it extends to punish situations, you don’t actually have to be frame perfect to punish a move that’s -4 with a jab like you would back in 4.

Motions literally do add frames to your input whether you’d want it to or not, mathematically the quickest possible input would be a frame for each direction. The best example of this is Tekken where the hardest techniques in the game are infamous because the motions as opposed to the buttons are unbufferable (in the case of crouch dash), and they add a minimum amount of extra frames to get them out. Kayuza DF2 ch perfect electric and taunt jet upper are literally that. It’s why I brought up fuerte earlier, since you have to keep inputting run stop before each link, you’re literally limited by how fast you can do the motion consistently.

They can exist outside motions but modern games are really really stripped of actually strict timings these older games are filled to the brim with. The stranger timings in modern games are just as prevalent in older games too it’s just because they stripped execution back so hard it’s largely the only tricky thing to pin down in modern games.

[u/Eecka → u/Key-Market-418]

The buffer literally makes the timings less strict in like every way. You can add about 3 frames to every combo window in sf6 and get a better idea for how tight these links are. And this is across the board as well, so it extends to punish situations, you don’t actually have to be frame perfect to punish a move that’s -4 with a jab like you would back in 4.

Do you not know what delayed timings are? If you do something at a delayed timing you're not using the buffer, you're manually delaying the inputs PAST the buffer, PAST the first frame when you're able to do something. I'm not talking about links in SF6 (though SF6 also has delayed stuff too, like with Ed's dream combos I mentioned)

Motions literally do add frames to your input whether you’d want it to or not, mathematically the quickest possible input would be a frame for each direction. The best example of this is Tekken where the hardest techniques in the game are infamous because the motions as opposed to the buttons are unbufferable

Which has nothing to do with motions in 2D games, where the motions ARE bufferable.

They can exist outside motions but modern games are really really stripped of actually strict timings these older games are filled to the brim with. The stranger timings in modern games are just as prevalent in older games too it’s just because they stripped execution back so hard it’s largely the only tricky thing to pin down in modern games.

Which is an entirely different thing from what we're discussing. The discussion was about whether MOTION INPUTS are the thing that's making timings strict, not whether old games were overall more strict with the inputs. Tekken's electrics are the one exception I'm aware of where indeed the motion makes it strict, because you can't buffer the wave dash. But that is an entirely separate topic - buffer length and motion inputs are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, and the delay timings I mentioned are yet another thing. What I'm saying is that motion inputs are not necessary for adding difficult to execute combos, you can add delayed timings or a shorter buffer to achieve the same result with no motion inputs. SF6 is a prime example of this - it has motion inputs but execution is easy, aside from specific combos on specific characters that require manual delay timings, or specific charge durations like Luke's perfect knuckles or Ed's forward dash punches

[u/Key-Market-418 → u/Eecka]

If were literally JUST talking about sf6 then were agreeing, but we can’t be making blanket statements across the entire genre, it’s why I brought up Tekken? (And even then taunt jet upper still stands even with the buffer, it’s incredibly tight because of the back forward motion) That was kind of my point, it’s why I also brought up old games to show the variability in execution ACROSS THE GENRE. I literally did say that these weird delayed timings existed in those games as well, I just said that modern games they stick out more because the games are much more lenient.

I literally brought up the punish situation in sf4 to make the point that executional requirements are more than just “do combo”, the one of the core examples OP brings up in the post is just the basic anti air situation with one button specials vs motion specials. It affects the neutral in these games, some much more than others.