The problem with these games is ranked online multiplayer. Back in the arcade days no one knew the damn frame timings. People just played and had a good time with each other in person. Console ports brought that experience home so you could enjoy it with friends and family, without needing a roll of quarters. No one had any issues with anxiety over these games because you were just hanging out with friends playing a game together. Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost. If your brother’s Ryu was too good, you just challenged him to beat you with a different character.
Online ranked play takes all that away. It makes the competition serious even if you don’t want it to be. Now you’re always being matched up against an equally skilled opponent playing their best character. You never feel like you’re making progress because every match is tough as nails. For people who thrive on competition, that’s great. For everyone else it really sucks!
This is legit. I remember playing Soul Calibur 3 I think on PS2 pretty regularly with a couple of friends. One of them owned the game and would stomp us until I asked to borrow it for a while so the other two of us could get good. A few weeks later I was doing bomb and air grab loops with Taki and we were pretty evenly matched, while other friends who would play occasionally were pretty easy to beat. There was no big competitive online play, we got better by figuring out how to counter each other because we had similar amounts of experience with the game.
I’m not sure how you replicate that experience with randos.
The problem with these games is ranked online multiplayer. Back in the arcade days no one knew the damn frame timings. People just played and had a good time with each other in person. Console ports brought that experience home so you could enjoy it with friends and family, without needing a roll of quarters. No one had any issues with anxiety over these games because you were just hanging out with friends playing a game together. Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost. If your brother’s Ryu was too good, you just challenged him to beat you with a different character.
Online ranked play takes all that away. It makes the competition serious even if you don’t want it to be. Now you’re always being matched up against an equally skilled opponent playing their best character. You never feel like you’re making progress because every match is tough as nails. For people who thrive on competition, that’s great. For everyone else it really sucks!
This is legit. I remember playing Soul Calibur 3 I think on PS2 pretty regularly with a couple of friends. One of them owned the game and would stomp us until I asked to borrow it for a while so the other two of us could get good. A few weeks later I was doing bomb and air grab loops with Taki and we were pretty evenly matched, while other friends who would play occasionally were pretty easy to beat. There was no big competitive online play, we got better by figuring out how to counter each other because we had similar amounts of experience with the game.
I’m not sure how you replicate that experience with randos.
That’s why SF6 has freak fights, MK has challenge towers and king of the hill, DBFZ has weird random modes on rotation, etc.