The Worst Fighting Game Take Of 2023

I think the biggest flaw in fighting games is thinking they're solved. Like yeah sure an AI could beat any gamer easy. But we ain't AI. We have our own thoughts and wims. Sometimes I will just do MMM in neutral because I want to. Adapt or perish.

This reminds me when the director of Doom Eternal (Hugo Martin) says that there is this speedrun from clockner with 2.3 million views and they wanted to make it so everybody's footage is like that, kill the player if they go out from the fun zone and not playing the way that Hugo specifically wanted (resource management, forced weapon swapping, the player have to shoot the weakspots to not get punished), and Hugo respond to people that says that we should just let people play the way they wanna play and Hugo refutes the argument saying that there's no game that's like that. This results in Doom Eternal having issues with lack of player agency, constant enemy spams, forced weapon swapping, Marauders, etc.

The problem with this mindset is that the idea that the player should play the way that the developer intended is absolutely not true. Speedrunning, combos in Street Fighter ll, and Melee having a competitive scene with different kinds of tech such as JC grab are not what the developers are intended. However, the players find that those games are fun because the player can find new and creative ways to have fun with those games.

This is also the reason why people love games like Deus Ex, Baba Is You, GG Xrd REV 2, etc because those games gives the players tools to play the way that they wanted to be and reward people for thinking differently instead of forcing the players like how Doom Eternal did.

Yo did my mans really just reference Kazaa? I feel old as hell now 😭

its true tho. when we had custom combos it all boils down to whats optimal. even if you cant do the top tier combos your still going to optimize around your own ability(hopefully). i honestly dont understand how people tied combos to player expression. decision making is how you express yourself. i dont noe what this keeps coming up.

manletFGC if you're reading this you're an absolute clown. Had to be a melty player.

I always liked to try and get a sneaky purple throw using Bang's command grab during combos

Bro who typed that comment never seen Melee…

If you do combos you personally enjoy doing, then obviously it will make you feel good about your game, helping you stay level-headed and relaxed. But if you try optimal combos even when you struggle to pull them off, you psych yourself out mentally, and if the execution fails, you'll feel disheartened or even frustrated or stressed - that will only make your plays worse. Combo experession is an extension of character choice: you get the most fun out of your favourites, and you do your best with your preferred kit.

I love seeing all the different combos people can come up with. I’m just a filthy casual whose execution is pretty shit so I usually go for simple combos but even I can appreciate all the ways one can play a game.

I'd change varied movement to just movement. If I don't like how it feel like to move in the game I'm not going to play it. This applies to every game, even ones beyond fighting games. I play KoF and GBVS specifically because I like how it feels to move in those games. I'd play KoF even if it didn't have all the different types of jumps, just because of how nice the momentum of the movement feels in that game.
If I don't like the way it feels to move around in the game it's going to be really hard to make me check out the content in it. Simple as that

But don't worry. The FGC will surely say something profoundly dumb in the next few months. This isn't even that spicy in terms of the FGC's potential.

Hey man. Haven't seen your vids for a while (you still had hair). Glad to see you're still doing the thing. Keep it up, much love.

During the T6 and TTT2 period, an era of almost 10 years, the top level Korean Paul players were constantly doing df+2/uf+4, f2, f2, b1,2 b!, demoman combos. This was not even close to optimal, even adding a db+2 instead of a second f+2 would result in more damage not to mention all the sweaty qcf+1 stuff, but this combo worked 99.9% of the time and got results.

Jack too had almost the exact same combo.

i think combo expression doesn't even necessarily have to revolve around aesthetic preferences or a players execution capabilities. there are so many different kinds of combos that have a different fuction or utility and will lead to differing advantageous scenarios. there are combos that will have the highest damage output, but there are combos that will do less damage and result in more meter gain. there are short combos that will end in a hard knock down which facilitates oki, and there are combos that give good corner carry. there are combos that put the opponent at full screen which might be good if your character has good space control tools and zoning. even in games like blazblue or marvel there are combos that are specifically tailored towards building a character specific resource so they can make full use of their idiosyncratic sub systems. expression is important and def more complex than just optimal or not optimal. and if it isnt more complex than that, thats the fault of the developer imo.

You know, I love combo expression because I really play my own combos or variations even when they are not optimal, however 95% of the tryhard will go for the same damn "optimal" meh meh meh combo someone said should be done.
As a matter of fact I play KOF XV and have been finishing Ryo combos with the multipunch hit every single time since launch, and almost nobody else did it because the optimal was double DP, however after the patch my "old non optimal bs" is now "optimal combo" and everyone is doing the same damn combo I always did because of the style since "It is meta now".

Hey Jiyuna, would you play Arcana Heart if it got modernized? That's a game I like the movement of.

I think there's even an other layer to this discussion, What is optimal? Is it just damage? Do you want to wall carry? Do you want to build meter? Spend meter as soon as you get it? Even "what is optimal" in a given situation is part of combo expression.

I can see that guy maybe being an outcrop of like...Strive and modern era capcom games or something, cause in those games combos are not very varied or hard and the game kinda punishes you for trying to be too crazy. It sucks to say but the last BB came out like 7 years ago so expecting people to be aware of its levels of freedom of expression is unrealistic.

That twitter user also thinks vanilla SF4 is the best fighting game in the world.

combo expression being called a myth, imo as a relative newbie, happened because people who want to flex how smart they are about fighting games decided to insist xyz new game they didn't like didn't have combo expression and thus were worse... any other newb hearing that like I did would develop weird thoughts about what the fgc must think 'combo expression' is, and maybe even just dismiss it entirely.

it's good this became a topic so we could get a definition out, and people can ignore anyone who wants to say 'there's no combo expression in this game thus it's bad' as a way to turn their opinion into a fact. (see also - no player expression IE 'you can't tell the difference between two palyers of the same character, back in MY day we always knew who was playing'... just BS to make the old days/games sound inherently better.

sorry for the ramble. I think there's a lot of weird shit the fgc says without explanation and it leads to new players believing weird shit. it wasn't until I realized almost no one knows anything and I should in fact insert logic and reason when I hear something that makes no sense that I started to grasp more concepts.

edit - I'm not saying it's impossible that a game could have no player/character/combo expression, just that the times I've heard it it was bs, based on every explanation I've ever heard of the term.

When you playing some Battle for the grid ;) i heard you mention that XD

Purple grab mid combo is the way for Ragna mains ong

let's see you combo expression in the new SFVI not at all the same as SFV

But what if you do a combo... into another combo with a super... but that combo... is not landing any combo... but when it let down it still a combo?

Damn Jiyuna nearly admitted to watching a Sajam video

Hey Jiyuna, I have always wondered, what's that King of Fighters box in the back over there? Is it a book(for ants), a cologne, a pack of cigarettes or does it contain the date when Matchmaking will be fixed for KOFXV?

This tweet will be topped in less than a week, Jiyuna.

Saw the thumbnail and thought it was going to be a video about Romolla...
Shoutouts to anyone that picked movement in that tweet though

"Optimal" is good as a general guide, but like you said, there are so many factors in play that the optimal combo is not actually optimal every time. Sometimes you wanna go for meter management or to set up a specific situation after the combo, or to go for an easier combo to reduce the chance of input error, or to go for mental damage, etc.

I think using the word “expression” is what is causing the confusion about what people are referring to. They should just say “combo options” instead of expression. Unfortunately the fgc is very libtard adjacent so the strange language games/ trying to make things sound more important than they are has leaked their way into the culture.

I think a classic moment of combo expression is when you go to an anime mission/trial mode and they make you do some bull 2 frame shit and I'm like "fuck this but good to know it's possible" same with sample combos in tekken 7, it teaches me how the enemy interacts with these moves And from there I like to lab and find the funny stuff.

I have faith in this community that someone will say something worse in the next 2 weeks.

Dudes never heard of the term "reset"

Can't believe Jiyuna doxxed the man because of his dumb take. He has truly joined the dark side 😔

Unoptimized combos are THE defining form of player expression. It's like putting together your own music- and fighting game players are nothing if not in love with the metaphor of playing a music instrument.

In Tekken optimal combos change depending on the stage and where you are at that stage. Then there's also doing less optimal but more consistent combos. Or cutting combos short for setups and so on and so forth. This guy thinks you learn a single combo and that's it. Impossible in games with so many variables.

reject combo efficiency embrace the reset

Jiyuna as always speaking the truth saying that combo drip > combo effectiveness

movement in fighting games is definitely my choice
its something special when u can go into training mode and it pays to focus your practice on movement, not even attacking lol

That tweet's 100% getting topped by the end of the year

The dude is wrong, combo expression exists. But at the same time, dudes chosing combo expression as first pick tho... That's a pretty bad choice, maybe the worst.
There's so many good fighting games without good combos. It's one of the least important aspects. Looks cool for the casuals but I'd rather take a solid game with poor or no combos (Samsho, Bushido Blade, Fatal Fury, early Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Fantasy Strike) rather that some terrible games with amazing combos and only that.

in reality you need all of those options for a good fighting game

It's already been topped lol that guy that thinks anime fighters need to build their own scenes and stop mooching off SF MK and Tekken is my vote lmao

Smug Sajam fans getting roasted by Sajam will never get old

Kinda reminds me of when I was learning Valiant Crash routes for Azrael in BBCF and for the life of me I could not figure out any of the commonly used double mark routes, so I just learned a single mark route that works for me, I won't drop in a match, and maximizes damage, then make up for the deficiency elsewhere in my gameplan. It's not like I'm gonna be the next Dogura anyway, may as well make do with what I can and come up with combos I can feasibly pull off.

Even if I can optimize a combo, sometimes the oki situation is more rewarding

sweaty doesn't know there is another way to have fun lol.

i wonder if the dude was talking about tourneys.. ie. steve is extremely boring to watch as everyone does the same combos & never attempt to evade so not to get baited.
hype character played safe is so sad

I think for any fighters you pick up. Learning “optimal combos” that are 90% practical is great. But some point you should go wild once you learn the fundies about your character. GGST sol can be super wild if youre willing to save meter and spent them both to play xrd lite

People thinking about optimal vs bad combos is totally clueless about the fact than what I want to do matters more than "defeat my opponent as soon as possible". If the secound is true, than the games becomes boring, in my opinion.

Worth noting is that optimal also depends on the scenario. Meter gain, corner carry and damage are all things to be optimized for but theres rarely if ever one combo that optimizes all 3, just as an example.