Hacker News Reader

Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

I feel like eventually most genres of competitive game will just have to end up adopting the model that the fighting game community came up with organically. Online play is fine for practice and unofficial tournaments, but if you really want to get good and make a name for yourself, you need to play at weeklies, monthlies, and in-person tournaments where the hardware and software are controlled by the tournament organizers.

It does help that cheating can only help so much in fighting games. I haven't thought about it much, but I guess you could have a macro that executes a devastating combo? Even then you need to be skilled enough at defense and hit confirming to even know when to press the "win the game" button. And most of the games I play have enough defensive options[0] that the player executing the combo might still need to react to something.

[0] E.g. bursts in Guilty Gear

View on HN

The FGC has a really interesting history with online play. Besides having a long tradition of in-person PvP in arcades, online fighting games were largely unplayable until the mid-late 2010s until GGPO/rollback[0] became popular. For a long, long time, the FGC largely (and rightfully) didn't see online play as legitimate.

Now rollback is basically standard and you do see competitive tournaments happening online frequently. Obviously the big events like EVO are still offline, but you could say the same about the majors for DotA, LoL, even Brood War, which are all very "online-first" games.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GGPO

Online play has definitely gotten bigger in the FGC, but the people I know in the community[0] still largely consider offline play king. In a game scene where individual frames matter, the preferred way to play for keeps is offline on a CRT. But, you know, halfway decent online play is fun and good for making sure you don't get too rusty.

I think the big difference between EVO and e.g. DoTA offline majors[1] is that anyone can show up at EVO and jump into the pools. For other esport events, to play in an offline event, you first have to have qualified online. If the whole process were offline beginning to end, that would be closer to the FGC model.

[0] I myself only dabble, somewhere between filthy casual and semi-serious

[1] and do correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know that much about the competitive MOBA and FPS scenes

Oh for sure offline is still king. But I mean, you look at the top of the SF6 rankings and it's Daigo, Fuudo, Tokido, Punk, Endingwalker... all the players who are winning offline, too. There's a tight correlation between being a top ranked SF6 player online and being really good at the game, to the point of winning offline tournaments. When you think about it, being able to (theoretically) get good enough that you can get matched up against the EVO champ in online play, even if you live in rural Arkansas and could never make it to an NYC local, and play a legitimate competitive game against him, is pretty sweet.

While fighting games are extremely technical in nature, they're also strategic.

I can only speak to smash really, but in smash your tech is not the most important factor. Your adjustments, reads, and mixups are. If you cover roll get up every time, you will lose. You need to, very quickly, understand your opponent's play style and capitalize on it. In addition, you need to be aware of when YOU are being exploited and strategically drop in mixups.

Many, maybe most, of the best players can't parry with high accuracy. But they don't need to either. They're the best because they're mind readers.

Because of rollback, I think it is possible cheats to work in online fighting games: you always have the ability to rollback a couple of frames and inject a block. I'm into Tekken 8 right now and have seen a few youtube videos of opponents auto-blocking/parrying/low-profiling everything.

Fighting games are also unique in that they're the cheapest to run. You just need a console and a 60hz display, and can share between opponents. While FPS gamers usually ask for at least 120hz, maybe even 240hz, and you need one per player, which can get pretty high with team 5v5 games.

Cheating would help in fighting games mostly by just having a bot play the game. No way a human can compete with a computer that always has frame-perfect inputs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com