Even stepping apart from the commons aspect of shared 3d movement and camera control next to specifically-unique ability strings in fighting games, theyâre very different types of skills and illustrative of what makes a game or mechanic complex.
Character movement and camera control have a high skill ceiling and are operated continuously, with a wide gradient of success. They donât fall into a fail state and, absent pressure from scenario design, will wait for the player to get the angle they desire. A novice player can usually get to the state they want but through applying much more time. And because theyâre operated continuously games can support teaching and training them by creating non-contested areas or gentler areas. And they offer a ton of information on how a player can improve. Improvement clearly means becoming faster and more precise at translating intent to output and it mirrors body movement and learning, achieving greater control through repetition. (I think this is why these movements are also best at forming a pseudo-proprioception sense)
Fighting game combos are specific pass-fail tests with obscured information about the fail state. As noted, they need to be performed under duress or in modes outside of normal player goals (itâs very hard to convince a new player to enter the bare TUTORIAL ROOM; much better to pace it as part of fulfilling their normal goals/fantasy). The strings are a loose metaphor for the actions and the output (special move) isnât a combination of the actions leading into it, but a different branched output. In that way, theyâre closer to learning a language or alphabet; the meaning is not instrinsic to the instructions but requires a certain amount of brute-forcing to map to outputs. I think thatâs why it took almost a decade of fighting games before someone invented combos: they go against the natural lessons of player inputs and are a direct complication; theyâre useful despite the complexity cost because they enable much higher-skill and more interesting play.
Broadening it to fighting games in general, Iâve always thought a lot of the problem is in how most games bypass their natural learning curve. The core strong and weak punches and kicks have very deliberate roles and are intended to be the base vocabulary of the player. They also map close to the carried metaphors a player will bring with them: spacing, timing, hurtiness of different moves. But most of the people whoâll play with the player, most of the single-player modes, and even most of the tutorials will focus on the special move strings and roles. Itâs too much, too fast.
I think about the teaching failures of Sekiro. A few small rules tweaks, a drastically simplified player combat move list. The core combat relies on a very simple interaction between blocking and retaliating and a subtle change in understanding the dynamics of the block. And knowing how simple it is, they designed it with explicit complicating factors; the unblockables and undodgeables. But they couldnât quite pace how those were introduced and the complicating factors seemed most pertinent to most people, who thought they understood the core loop but didnât.
Complicating factors are dangerous mechanics to play with, especially in an action context (or in other words, a time-limited context). Whatâs interesting about action games, which are designed as simple puzzles that must be solved in a short amount of time, is that people arenât one-fifth as smart given one-fifth the time, but that they need to shift to a different mode of thought with different capabilities, and need to engage in the transfer of cognitive thought to reactive skill. And itâs really cool to play with how some things are much harder to transfer than others. And really dangerous.
