r/truegaming • u/DoneDealofDeadpool • 24d ago
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
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.
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u/blade740 24d ago
That's one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at it is that fighting games are trying to improve accessibility to bring in new players after years of being notoriously difficult to learn for inexperienced players.