Street Fighter Interactive Un-Tutorial Concept / Pipe Dream

[Maj]

It's become abundantly clear that the only way to bring people into fighting games again is to give newbies something else to do while they learn. The only arcade fighting game in recent memory which managed to draw a mainstream crowd was Soul Calibur 2. And it was due to the single-player mode with the map. People at my college arcade would actually take turns playing that instead of playing against each other. I presented the following idea to s-kill, hoping that it would be implemented in SF4, but apparently he had already made a similar proposal and the people in charge shot it down.

Something needs to be done in order to bridge the monumental gap between rookies and veterans. Otherwise no SF game is gonna get anywhere in terms of sales or diffusion. If someone wants to learn how to play Street Fighter, they have to learn an extensive sequence of skills. There's no way around that.

Either you have to teach it from scratch to new players, or you have to import a character that casual gamers already like and (more importantly) already know how to control. Basically we're talking about Dante. Yeah i'm not too keen on that idea either.

A much better alternative is to build a FUN tutorial. Since tutorials by nature are boring, you have to present it as something other than a tutorial. I don't think console fighting games need an "Arcade Mode" and it's basically there out of tradition but moreso out of laziness. Replace that with a mode that actually teaches players how to play the game. This might take a lot of work so in the interest of realism, let's reduce the selectable characters down to four: Ryu, Guile, Zangief, and Chun Li.

Basically you pick Ryu and you go up against a bunch of barrels rolling at you at regular speed. It's important not to make the barrels knock down like they do in SF2. They should cause hit stun but nobody will enjoy getting knocked down all the time. All you have to do to break them is find an attack that hits the right space and time it.

There's always a "0/10" type counter on the screen to show the player's progress. Also if two minutes go by without any progress, a little text box pops up which gives the player some tips. The interval gradually increases so as not to become annoying: 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 12 minutes, and so on.

Next you make the barrels fall from the sky, so the player has to find an anti-air attack. Then you mix it up so the player has to react to high or low, plus maybe take away the regular rhythm.

Finally you introduce glowing barrels and tell the player that they must be broken with special moves. Of course, you'd list the character's special moves in the same text box. Keep the barrels rolling REALLY slowly so there's plenty of time for the player to react, and you only need like five of these cuz you don't want anyone to get stuck on this part of the game. The only goal is to get the player to recognize special moves as a viable tool.

Once you've got that down, you make Ryu face a cyborg/dummy thing. All you have to do is design one extra character for this - not too much work. Right off the bat, make the dummy SUPER defensive. Basically it moves around but it blocks everything. So the player has to figure out how to beat blocking, which means either do special moves for block damage or learn how to throw. The dummy usually blocks fireballs but sometimes jumps over them. If you do Hurricane Kick, the dummy blocks half the time and ducks the other half of the time but you usually escape without harm, though sometimes you get low fierced. If you do DP, you almost always get hit when you land. So it teaches the player the value of throws but also gives them an idea of the risks associated with attempting special moves.

Once that dummy is dead, you face a more offensive dummy - one that's very very jumpy. The goal is to use anti-air attacks. The dummy will walk back/forward until it establishes the standard jumping range, and repeatedly attempt air attacks. The player will be forced to do some experimentation to find which anti-air attacks have the best priority and the highest success rate. Again the objective is to kill the dummy.

The next step is to teach the player how to block. Instead of infinite vitality/life, the round starts with 10 seconds on the clock, the player has 90% life and the dummy has 10% life, but the dummy is super reactive like SFA3 CPU Akuma when he walks towards you. Any button you touch, you get hit. Basically the goal is to survive and all you have to do is block. Maybe we can even make this more symbolic by having the dummy glowing with electricity so that if you hit him, you get electrocuted outright. That'll leave the dummy totally free to attack and do jump-ins which will force the player to block high/low. It's not too difficult because the player will have to lose 80% life in order to be defeated.

After that you teach keep-away. Give the dummy a grappler stance and make him constantly walk forward. He very rarely attacks but when he gets within SPD range he always throws you. So the goal is to use long-range attacks to keep him away. Of course if you mistime the attack and it whiffs, you get thrown. Thus it teaches timing as well. Once the dummy is low on life, he kind of almost starts to play footsies. Instead of holding forward, it walks back and forth so it gets a little tricky to land that final hit.

And so on, and so forth. You might go back to the barrel stages and teach players how to do cancels. Basically roll out one regular barrel followed closely by a special barrel, so that the only way to break both is to do normal move xx special move. There are limitless creative teaching opportunities to be explored here.

After each level, you might even show the player a congratulatory screen, and sneakily play a pre-recorded video of expert player highlights on that stage. For example with the jumping dummy, you can show Ryu walking forward slightly to anti-air with standing roundhouse ... walking under the opponent and throwing them ... going for air-to-air jumping roundhouse ... and doing a deep Shoryuken for hella damage. Basically you force the player to think on their own so it sticks, and then show them how it's really done so it clicks.

Eventually the player works their way through the dummy sessions and the game declares that they're ready to face their rival. That's when they play against a real SF character with no limitations. For Ryu it would be Ken, for Guile it would be Bison, for Chun it would be Vega, for Gief it would be i dunno maybe Balrog. Anyway once they win, they get an achievement, maybe some cool CFJ-style artwork, and it unlocks Arcade Mode - which, by the way, you wouldn't even have to get rid of because i'm sure an intern can rig that up.

I think this would go a long way towards making "hardcore" fighting games accessible to casual gamers, because it'll highlight the puzzle-solving aspects of Street Fighter. Most people never think to think of Street Fighter as a puzzle game. But that's a crucial step which must be taken long before the stylish aspects or the mindgames ever come into view. I feel strongly that something like this is necessary to bring the Halo and Madden kids into the world of fighting games, but i know better than to get my hopes up. I'll be happy with SF4 either way.

[Maj]

For a minute i entertained the notion of making a Flash game out of this, but it would either take 3 years to complete or just plain suck. Maybe both.

To elaborate on the setting a little, i was thinking maybe it would annoy veterans to have to get through a basic tutorial in order to unlock Arcade Mode. Well, Versus Mode and Training Mode should both be available by default. Also, the tutorial mode - let's call it "Battle Dojo" or something - could start with a match against the player's rival.

For example if you pick Ryu, you immediately go up against maximum AI difficulty Ken. If you win, you get a message congratulating you for knowing what's up, and Arcade Mode (which we can call "Tournament Mode" or "Story Mode" or whatever) is immediately unlocked. If you lose, then you go through the whole tutorial sequence and the final fight is a rematch on medium AI difficulty. Kinda meet the rookie players half-way, y'know.

It's more versatile plus losing up front gives people a tangible goal to help them push through the tutorial parts. Now if we separate this concept from a full-featured fighting game, we can treat it as an individual mini-game on its own. If i had any skills in making Flash games, i would totally put together this Street Fighter Battle Dojo game using SF2 sprites and give it to Capcom to put on their website for free. Or to sell it on Xbox Live.

It would help the scene grow so much. There are SO many people out there who have no idea how you're supposed to play a fighting game. Way too many of them are videogame journalists too. Not only would this help the scene directly, but it would also help reviewers understand what to look for in a good fighting game. Mortal Kombat games would stop getting good scores and fighting games in general would stop getting ignored in the mainstream press.

[ShinjiGohan]

heres the thing, we're trying to bring in casual gamers. People that didn't grow up in arcades, or even with SNES, possibly even PSX's.

and theres a good possibility that these casual fans will be like this guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km57jhEStKY

he also hates on contra for being too confusing and too hard.

however this is a good idea, but a visual aid or two might be required. like PiP with sirlins SF tutorial playing, so they can help associate whats going on the screen with the goal that they are going for.

BTW SFEX barrel mode was like that too lol.

[Maj]

But i don't care about that kid. His video had 804 ratings with a one star average. He's irrelevant as far as i'm concerned.

My goal isn't to make an easy game because Street Fighter will never be an easy game, especially when you throw human competition into the mix. My goal is simply to make it intuitive to learn the basics of Street Fighter. To that end, i don't want to be showing people a clip for them to mimic. I want them to experiment and to think on their own, because that's a far more valuable skill than memorizing any given button sequence.

Look at Xbox Ninja Gaiden, which everyone considers to be extremely difficult. Even that terrible game presents environments and enemies in a way that teaches the player one skill at a time. No Street Fighter game has ever made so much as an attempt at crafting a learning curve. So far all they've done is throw players into a match with random AI opponents and let them figure it all out. Very few people have the attention span and the dedication to make it out of that mess. Think about the number of people who would make it out if you dedicated an hour of gameplay to teaching them the basics.

Let's say someone is interested in learning Street Fighter. All i wanna do is show them the way. It's not my job to get them interested in the first place. That's all up to marketing and fancy trailers and comic books and movies and anime and cool artwork and things like that. My concern is with the vast number of newbies who buy into the commercials but then can't make it over that very first hurdle. It absolutely kills our scene to be losing them.

[Xenozip.]

Reminds me of Soul Calibur mission modes. I think it was in Virtua Fighter as well.

Basically the game had mechanics like throws and techs and counterhits and variable juggle properties and such. So in mission mode the game would tell you that you had to tech five times in a row, and the dummy would just constantly attempt a grab.

But then it got more interesting like you first had to parry, then counter-attack. Then you had to attack (which would automatically be parried) then parry the opponent's retaliation. Then the game would tell you that you had to block, and the opponent would do random high/lows. And then there was air control while being juggled and counter-hit only stuff and ground just-frame techs and all sorts of other crap.

I tell you what though, the first Soul Blade's mission mode was infinitely more entertaining than SC2/3, IMO. Since in SB1 it was basically like a real mission with a story attached to it and an opponent and such, instead of just training room crap like in SC.

I thought about this too, but in my head it wasn't "SF" it was more like "All Games", where there would be things that only appear in Marvel and MB, like delay-chaining normals to create staggered mixups, or wallslam extender combos, or whiff cancels, manipulating combos to maximize damage, or manipulating combos to sacrifice damage in exchange for optimal okizeme/mixup, or using projectiles with +F for okizeme or for midscreen control.

And all that hoobiejjang. Basically any mechanic that exists anywhere that *I* have learned (that I can think of), like evading tick throws or using them offensively, etc. Now the question is; how do you teach a mofo about yomi in an interactive way, haw haw haw.

_
[Edit] I'm with ShinjiGohan on this one too though. Like yeah I've thought about it and am kinda in support of it. But look how much the preexisting interactive "training session" modes actually help people. My first inclination with this was that it'd be a good way to teach people how to do tech-traps in SFA3 and how and why they work, as well as stuff like chain cancels and crossup unblockables and command throw unblockables/OTGs and stuff, but in the end I don't think it would actually make any bit of difference.

[Maj]

I thought about this too, but in my head it wasn't "SF" it was more like "All Games", where there would be things that only appear in Marvel and MB, like delay-chaining normals to create staggered mixups, or wallslam extender combos, or whiff cancels, manipulating combos to maximize damage, or manipulating combos to sacrifice damage in exchange for optimal okizeme/mixup, or using projectiles with +F for okizeme or for midscreen control.

Fuck all of that.

My point is that learning how to play fighting games is about learning fundamentals. What watts knows from becoming good at Hyper Fighting is infinitely more valuable and adaptable than what i know about RC Sonic Booming through baited wakeup attempts or what you know about midscreen VC resets or what Magnetro knows about pushblocking out of traps.

We need to draw a solid line between core strategy and flashy gimmicks. Anyone can learn gimmicks on their own and incorporate them into an existing gameplan. In fact, that's why the same trick never works twice on old school players. Once you know how to use throws, all you need is 10 minutes of practice to replace them with kara-throws. I learned how to kara-throw with Ryu in the arcade on the car bashing bonus stage. When you have a solid knowledge base, it's easy to add elements one by one. We don't really need to hold anyone's hand during that process. Even if you want to provide guideance, video tutorials are more than enough.

See, the real problem here is that there is no starting point to learning Street Fighter from scratch. It's more like a starting plane, with no obvious entry point. Without help, new players inevitably confuse themselves into believing all kinds of dumb shit which hurts them a lot at every step. You have to teach them the whole core at once, without letting them wander off until they at least understand the basics of how to attack and how to defend.

I've never tried the SC tutorial nor the VF tutorial. But from your explanation, i think the VF tutorial does it all wrong. It makes the same mistake that i touched on earlier - simply asking the player to mimic a sequence. Worse still, it gives the impression that no strategy is sound and that you're always supposed to be able to counter everything. That's a terrible way to approach fighting games because it doesn't teach players how to spot advantages.

We don't want to overload players with crazy nonsense. We want them to feel comfortable with the basics so that when they lose, they can actually see why they lost. If your entire teaching method is based on execution, then your students are never going to be able to respect the midgames or the puzzles. Worse still, after losing to ChoiBoy they're going to work on their CC excecution instead of working on their spacing. I'm so fucking sick and tired of rookies feeling like they NEED to RC to win or they NEED to spend a hundred hours in training mode rehearsing special moves. I would much rather focus on teaching people how to use their character's normal moves instead. Fuck short short short super.

As far as this applying to all fighting games, yeah that's obviously true but i personally care about SF so that's why this is all about SF.

[Magnetro]

I totally agree with what you said. When I watch old school SF players like watts and cole play SF3, they're playing very differently from everyone else, most of their game is based on implementing what they know from ST into SF3. Cole is a good example of what good footsies can get you in terms of placing. He isn't super crazy with charge partitioning, he's just really good with spacing and whatnot. Same with MvC2 players, the reason yipes is so good is because he's almost perfected footsies with msp along with the execution based aspect that the team demands. He scares the living daylights out of Sentinel's because he won't let you breathe and will dodge any assist call you make. The reason his offense is so relentless is because he doesn't over commit to anything, he never exposes his characters while he's attacking.

I really like the idea, Maj, but how do you plan on implementing it into a video game?

[Xenozip.]

That's basically the reason I said I don't think it'd work.

How are you going to teach a player midrange when there's about 20 different things that could happen at different intervals at any given moment? "You need to stand [x] distance away and watch for [a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, etc] and if [a] happens then you do [n], if happens then you do [o]" ?

No, fuck all that. If you can't watch a video of some one stepping pixels outside of of j.RH range, having been in the position where if j.RH happens then walking backwards is possible, and figure out why all this was done, then you probably just aren't meant for street fighter in the first place nor will you learn with some silly program.

Believe me, I try to teach people with words, with practical application experience, with video, etc. In my experience people can learn one "gimmick" at a time, but teaching core principals like spacing is unpossible, the only way I've ever known anyone to learn that stuff is self-taught experience and observation.

[Maj]

I really like the idea, Maj, but how do you plan on implementing it into a video game?

If we want it to happen we are probably going to have to do it ourselves. How? I'll let you know if i figure it out. Guess i could make an SRK thread asking for help but let's save that for a last resort.

Believe me, I try to teach people with words, with practical application experience, with video, etc. In my experience people can learn one "gimmick" at a time, but teaching core principals like spacing is unpossible, the only way I've ever known anyone to learn that stuff is self-taught experience and observation.

I disagree. Teaching spacing isn't at all impossible. Teaching someone how to outspace top players is the impossible thing. However, that is not my goal. In fact my goal is the opposite. My goal is to teach players how to get swept all day by CaliPower. Believe it or not, losing at footsies against top players is a sign of considerable skill. Rookies never lose at footsies because they don't understand enough about the game to get tricked.

If we can teach people enough spacing to break randomly distanced barrels and keep advancing grapplers at bay, that's something. Throw in two or three more training drills and i'll be fully satisfied.

Trust me bro, it's completely doable.

[Xenozip.]

Let me put it another way, I've had experience with more than one person "caught in a loop" before.

The state in which the player will do something like jump in at me over and over and over again while I'm just standing there doing nothing. And never once did the jump-in work, I anti-air them every single time (because it's not difficult, there's no variables like air parry). Not just for a round, not just for a few rounds, but hours, and not just one set but multiple sets. And then I go and do one single simple thing to set the situation where I can jump in on them in return and not get anti-aired, such as getting them to whiff something on the ground before I jump.

So, I'm showing them I can consistently anti-air them, and they still do it. I tell them "If you jump toward me, I will anti-air you." in simple laymen terms, and they still do it. I show what happens when I set the situation where they would try and anti-air me, but they fail to do it, and somehow don't try to mimic it. I point them to videos. I point them to pictures with :words:. I point them to spectate mode so they can watch some one else getting hit by it.

Do they stop? No, never. Do they stop playing? No.

I think it's safe to say that a program wouldn't help this kind of person, either.

However, I've also bumped into a few people that I thought were caught in a loop before, but actually snapped out of it. Only I didn't have to say or do anything, except just play them. Just like no one had to say or do anything for me, just beat my ass with proper tactics so I could learn correct things and stop doing incorrect things.

IMO there's no real middleground there. Either you learn from experience or you don't learn at all. So the only situation I can see this being of use is; if you don't have other players to play and need a super advanced training mode to learn "to substitute for real people" -- in which case why bother with any of that and just go for an CPU AI that isn't crap. Then it's not like you need circular logic or explanations or anything, you just give them the opportunity to try and either fail/succeed.

You know the old saying "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink".

[Maj]

You make good points and i respect you, but you're wrong here. We're not talking about A horse. We're talking about a wide variety of them. Yes, there are people who don't need anyone to do them any favors. Unfortunately, they are in the minority. Most people do need a guiding hand. The more you're willing to help people out, the more of them will stick with you.

Another thing - jumping is a terrible example. Don't worry though, it's not your fault. As experienced players, we take a LOT for granted. But make no mistake - learning not to jump is no simple lesson. It's actually a huge milestone in the progression of any player.

You see, the problem that jumpers face isn't: "How can i avoid getting anti-aired all the time?"

The real problem is: "How can i advance or attack without jumping?"

Aaaaand they've got nothing. Cuz it's actually incredibly challenging to find ways of attacking on the ground. In fact, it's the CPU itself that teaches players that jumping is ok. I jump all the time against any CPU. All you have to do is figure out when to do it and it'll work every time, and you'll get bigger combo damage rewards than you could ever get on the ground. We actually have to sit players down and convince them beyond a shadow of a doubt that jumping is bad.

It's not enough to punish them every time, especially if you're sneaky enough to find ways of jumping yourself. Also we've got games like 3S which bail out jumpy players and cultivate terrible habits. We've also got games like MvC2 where jumping is a genuine necessity. It gets confusing dude. See, the problem is that as we develop our skills, jumping emerges as more and more of a bad idea. Conversely, fighting games as a genre seem to be developing in the opposite direction wherein every game incorporates more defense mechanisms into jumping. Air blocking, air supers, air parrying, air Custom Combos, air backdashing, and so on and so forth - all of them are lies! We can see through them but new players have no hope.

[Xenozip.]

-snip-

I used jumping just because it's something that's happening a lot lately when I play casuals.

But my thing is, jumping in isn't invalid if I can create a situation where it becomes valid. And it isn't a sneaky little trick all, it's a fundamental core rule and IMO it should be blatantly obvious after experiencing it just a few times, since there's actually not much involved. It's: you do (A) to create (B) scenario which lets you (C) on reaction even, which is the same mechanic you'd apply to a lot of fundamental core rules. And if you skipped both A and B you're getting fucked out of the air. The sad thing is that there's players who don't even try sitting on the ground at all. When you say "they got nothing", how does anyone know when the player won't even try it?

But it isn't even really difficult to explain how it works to some one who is willing to listen. But what I was saying, is that in my experience the people who can listen and take direction are already past that step or don't really need to be told, they just need to experience it for themselves and they learn at their own pace, very very very few people (Iike two out of hundreds by now) that I've played just suddenly "click" after a few words. The "other" crowd is either already learning, or the one that are "caught in loop" and aren't going to learn regardless of how you present it to them. There's just some people out there who never learn even with a helping hand. I can name several of them off the top of my head and Bellreisa knows some of the people I'd list since he's played them too. I've personally went out of my way for these guys, trying to teach them in various different ways, to no avail.

Personally, the only reason I spend so much time on forums, making videos (match/combo), doing wiki entries, and blogging is mostly for myself. But I'd be a fool if I didn't make it all public. It's not like I don't try to help people, but I really just do it for myself because it just doesn't work for others. I am of the same opinion regarding training mode. Spent a lot of time analyzing the training mode knuckleheads who can dial out ridiculous combos on par with Japanese standards, but end up losing matches anyway because they can't land hits or defend themselves. So yeah I know they're out there, and of course I try to help them out, but these people tend to just stay that way anyway.

But pick another example if you want. Though I think whatever example you pick will end up back at the same point I was trying to make: either they learn or they don't, and an interactive training program is basically just "to substitute humans" in the event of lack of local players. I don't think it would be some magic key that suddenly works for them where "everything else" failed: vs human gaming experience, videos, pictures, verbal sentences, written paragraphs, etc

Meanwhile if they are learning then they probably don't really need the program to assist them unless they're solo.

[Maj]

Sorry but i just don't buy into your analysis. You're bouncing around all over the place and you really don't have a cohesive argument.

Again you're overlooking the real issue. You think it's a matter of finding people who can figure it all out themselves. I disagree. Learning how to play fighting games is like learning a whole new language. I think there are a lot of people out there with the critical thinking skills to express something valuable. Don't give up on them simply because they struggle with learning a foreign language on their own. That's only the first (and most worthless) step.

I look at the learning process as a series of steps. The skills necessary to get from intermediate to advanced are not the same skills necessary to get from beginner to intermediate. It's my belief that everyone is good at some creative endeavor. For some people it's music, for others it's math, for others it's writing, for others it's art, speech, acting, sports, whatever. For someone to become a top player, they have to have something special in them. I can't help anyone with that, but i believe i can help beginners become intermediate players. At least give our community the opportunity to see if those beginners have some true potential in them instead losing them to the idiotic frustration that is AI ST Zangief.

Right now, i think we're hanging onto less than 10% of the people who give fighting games a chance. I believe that my proposed interactive tutorial can easily raise that to 50% or more. Beyond that phase, we're likely to run into the same problems that you're facing in your experiences. I don't care. I'm more than willing to take that gamble. Furthermore, i think that even teaching people to appreciate fighting games is valuable to our community, even if they never figure out that they're not supposed to jump. Even if they never get past the intermediate level and simply become part of the audience instead of reaching Top 32 at Evolution.

Also your viewpoint on jumping needs to change. The simple fact of the matter is that anti-airs do not hurt enough to give up on the potential reward of a jumpin combo. More importantly, you have to admit that if a player asks you what they're supposed to be doing instead of jumping, your answer sucks. Because the only ultimately correct response would be, "Play Street Fighter right." Learning not to jump wouldn't be such a monumental development landmark if it was easy to adopt.

Let's look at something like dashing instead. If you punish someone with a combo every time they try to dash at you, they'll learn to stop dashing relatively quickly. They'll start being a lot more selective with the ranges and situations at which they dash, and they'll be a lot less willing to take that gamble. Mostly because it's easy to figure out that walking forward isn't such a bad alternative. It also helps a lot to hear a top player explain in one concise sentence that dashing is more risk than it's worth.

At the end of the day, the undeniable truth is that the fighting game community has taken a huge step backwards when it comes to attracting new players. Back in SF2 days all the way up to MvC2, kids would play these games until they figured out the basics of Street Fighter on their own via brute force. Nowadays there are simply too many other glittery mainstream games out there. We can no longer depend on newcomers to work through the boring beginner stage on their own. I know you enjoy discussion for the sake of discussion, but i honestly can't believe that you're actually disputing the merits of having an interactive fighting game tutorial to help acclimate new players into the fighting game genre.

[Xenozip.]

Again you're overlooking the real issue. You think it's a matter of finding people who can figure it all out themselves. I disagree. Learning how to play fighting games is like learning a whole new language. I think there are a lot of people out there with the critical thinking skills to express something valuable. Don't give up on them simply because they struggle with learning a foreign language on their own. That's only the first (and most worthless) step.

No, I don't.

I'm saying

1) If they are unable to learn, then you're both just wasting time. Or "having fun".
-) If they are able to learn, then teach them, why not.

2) If they have human players to play against then I don't think they need a program. So, one use I can see for an interactive tutorial program is to substitute for humans. People with zero other local players that are willing and able to learn might find it useful (since standard training and single player modes both suck).

3) If the only way players learn why and how things are done is by grinding a controlled situation into muscle memory, then maybe the program would succeed in teaching where others have failed.

But I personally can't fathom why it would succeed with teaching when every other method fails.

I look at the learning process as a series of steps. The skills necessary to get from intermediate to advanced are not the same skills necessary to get from beginner to intermediate. It's my belief that everyone is good at some creative endeavor. For some people it's music, for others it's math, for others it's writing, for others it's art, speech, acting, sports, whatever. For someone to become a top player, they have to have something special in them. I can't help anyone with that, but i believe i can help beginners become intermediate players. At least give our community the opportunity to see if those beginners have some true potential in them instead losing them to the idiotic frustration that is AI ST Zangief.

I am assuming this isn't your target audience aren't the people with zero potential. I mean a player whom after a year of gaming with other players learned absolutely nothing, despite all the experience with really good players who were legitimately playing and not sandbagging, plus all the verbal/written/visual aids given, no avail... nothing.

I assume your target audience is the ones that show some potential. Well, to me, I believe they are the ones that I think are capable of learning without needing everything spelled out for them and tied up with a pretty little bow. If you've made just a little bit of progress then you can continue making progress. I don't feel that an interactive tutorial will suddenly increase their growth or interest levels any more than what's already available.

Right now, i think we're hanging onto less than 10% of the people who give fighting games a chance. I believe that my proposed interactive tutorial can easily raise that to 50% or more. Beyond that phase, we're likely to run into the same problems that you're facing in your experiences. I don't care. I'm more than willing to take that gamble. Furthermore, i think that even teaching people to appreciate fighting games is valuable to our community, even if they never figure out that they're not supposed to jump. Even if they never get past the intermediate level and simply become part of the audience instead of reaching Top 32 at Evolution.

Sure, you can appreciate basket ball even if you've only played it a couple times and only understand the very basics. The more you understand the more you'll appreciate. Sure, (video)games can be spectator sports etc.

But, what exactly does an interactive tutorial provide that we haven't already been providing to make it jump by 40%?

Human opponent experience plus visual/audible/written explanations have been accessible. So you're saying squishing them together in a single package and shipping it out would change things that much? But why?

Also your viewpoint on jumping needs to change. The simple fact of the matter is that anti-airs do not hurt enough to give up on the potential reward of a jumpin combo. More importantly, you have to admit that if a player asks you what they're supposed to be doing instead of jumping, your answer sucks.

The answer given here isn't the same answer I actually give people, thanks. Why would I give a full lecture on jumping here in this forum?

Because the only ultimately correct response would be, "Play Street Fighter right." Learning not to jump wouldn't be such a monumental development landmark if it was easy to adopt.

Learning not to jump at all and learning to create the situation where you actually can jump are different things. Understanding why in regards to either of them, then building that knowledge into your game is another task.

Let's look at something like dashing instead. If you punish someone with a combo every time they try to dash at you, they'll learn to stop dashing relatively quickly.

If you say so.

I still know players who still dash even after getting consistently punished for it and never learn to stop doing it, or end up doing something worse as an alternative.

They'll start being a lot more selective with the ranges and situations at which they dash, and they'll be a lot less willing to take that gamble. Mostly because it's easy to figure out that walking forward isn't such a bad alternative. It also helps a lot to hear a top player explain in one concise sentence that dashing is more risk than it's worth.

Granted, if the player is unable to grasp the concept of trying something new in the first place then it's a moot point regardless. However, if their approach was nothing but either dashing or jumping and they were getting consistently stopped: there's two things that could happen, they could try something else or they could discover how to create the situation that would actually allow them to do either and not get punished for it.

We assume that the "try something else" for dashing is walking, but there's a lot you can do on the ground, maybe it's intuitive to turtle, or intuitive to try and go for a sweep, or to toss mad fireballs, or intuitive to try jumping instead of dashing -- who knows what they will try there's a lot there. But to me, they were already in the ballpark to ground based footsies here anyway because they were on the ground and the other player was presumably already playing on that field.

Reason being, on the flipside, the alternative to jumping is not jumping, which opens up the ballpark to ground based footsies. I mean, there's really not much you can do once you're in the air other than continue your current path and push the button on your way down, if all they do is jump mindlessly at roughly jumpin range then they probably aren't paying any bit of attention to anything other than jumping.

Besides, I picked jumping because, well, dashing isn't in every game. And most games have extremely different dash mechanics/rules from one another. And even characters dash significantly different from each other within the same game. Etc. :p

Anyway, I propose SF3:3S Makoto, disregarding any parry talk:

Her walk speed is trash. Like, super garbage. But, a Makoto player can still beat a Chun-Li player, even though Chun-Li can consistently anti-air and anti-dash Makoto for enormous chunks of damage, or at the very least a knockdown in either case. It's clearly better to dash than jump, but neither action is technically invalid provided the player understands how to create the situation where Chun-Li can't stop a dash or a jump.

So, if I'm the Chun-Li player and I know all this, and we're back in the caught-in-a-loop scenario with a person jumping and getting anti-aired all day. No, I'm not going to simply tell them "stop jumping" and leave it at that. But what I would like to do is first teach them the alternative to constant jumping instead of teaching them how they can "get away" with jumping in. I feel that if I teach them how to succeed in a jump-in then they might never bother learning anything else. Instead, I want them on the ground so that they can take that next step towards footsies. And in the event of a dash, then I can explain walking and "everything else" involved, but it allows me to first explain walking before I explain that "everything else" that could potentially get them into more trouble if they start doing it without understanding it.

I know you enjoy discussion for the sake of discussion, but i honestly can't believe that you're actually disputing the merits of having an interactive fighting game tutorial to help acclimate new players into the fighting game genre.

I did mention that I have thought of exactly the same idea before, didn't I? I wasn't disputing my own thought of course.

But see, you disputed what I said regarding "my version" so of course I took the opposite end of the discussion naturally. What can I say, I'm an antagonist.

[Maj]

You're contradicting yourself in so many places, i don't even know where to begin. We've basically reached "either you're willing to look at it my way or you're not" territory.

You've got this ridiculous strawman argument which makes it sound like none of us can do anything to teach anyone how to play Street Fighter. Either they have the inherent potential to learn on their own or they'll never be able to learn? If that's the case then why should any of us bother teaching anyone at all? My view is that there's a whole spectrum of players out there, and there are a lot of players with tons of potential for advanced play who simply don't get past the beginner stage. Potential is not the same thing as love at first sight.

"A year of gaming with other players"? Who are you kidding? What percentage of the overall gaming audience spends one year on any game, especially if they spend the first two months sucking at it? What i want to do is construct a training course which will teach newcomers the basics. You keep bringing up human competition but that's the biggest, least consistent variable in the world. I'd venture to say that less than 1% of the SF community would make good teachers. It's one thing when someone has a decent grasp of SF basics and they have a question about Makoto's ground game. It's a completely different issue when you're dealing with a player who doesn't even know that he's not supposed to be attacking with Ryu's standing roundhouse.

If you equate my little training drills with "grinding a controlled situation into muscle memory" then like i said before, you're clearly missing the point.

Reason being, on the flipside, the alternative to jumping is not jumping, which opens up the ballpark to ground based footsies.

If you can't see the problem with your whole teaching approach in this one sentence, then i don't know what else to tell you. The notion that "if i punish jumpins enough, my opponent will learn footsies" is absurd.

[Xenozip.]

You've got this ridiculous strawman argument which makes it sound like none of us can do anything to teach anyone how to play Street Fighter.

N O , not what I said.

1) If they are unable to learn, then you're both just wasting time. Or "having fun".
-) If they are able to learn, then teach them, why not.

There's two kinds of people I listed here here, the ones that CAN LEARN can be taught to play SF by people like you.

Either they have the inherent potential to learn on their own or they'll never be able to learn? If that's the case then why should any of us bother teaching anyone at all? My view is that there's a whole spectrum of players out there, and there are a lot of players with tons of potential for advanced play who simply don't get past the beginner stage. Potential is not the same thing as love at first sight.

If you consider playing with human opponents and watching videos to be "learning on your own", without being spoonfed anything. Then yes I think the player can learn on their own just by playing like the rest of us do. And if they can't then they aren't going to learn any more/faster/better with spoonfeeding them the information, regardless of the method of training.

Like I said, in my experience there's a very fine line. Either they are on their merry way already and just need to play more and observe more, or they are stuck and all the training tools in the world aren't helping. I know exactly two people out of hundreds where talking about things legitimately make a difference in how they play, more than their self taught experience&observation. They are the only two that I know of that don't fall into the other category of self-taught/not-learning.

Yeah there's a whole spectrum. A spectrum of personalities. But when it boils down to it you're either in category A or category B. With that very very rare case of category C.

"A year of gaming with other players"? Who are you kidding? What percentage of the overall gaming audience spends one year on any game, especially if they spend the first two months sucking at it?

Do you want names? I will give you the names. It's not like these people do not exist or anything and I'm amazed you haven't met any of them. I guess I spend a lot of time with casual players so I tend to meet a lot of these folk. Hell there's a whole forum of them.

They do it for fun, and not to learn. There's tons of people out there who even go to events "just to hang out", and don't improve at all, but they play games and hang out because it's "fun". You can actually have fun even when you're losing if you legitimately do not take it seriously.

What i want to do is construct a training course which will teach newcomers the basics. You keep bringing up human competition but that's the biggest, least consistent variable in the world. I'd venture to say that less than 1% of the SF community would make good teachers. It's one thing when someone has a decent grasp of SF basics and they have a question about Makoto's ground game. It's a completely different issue when you're dealing with a player who doesn't even know that he's not supposed to be attacking with Ryu's standing roundhouse.

If you equate my little training drills with "grinding a controlled situation into muscle memory" then like i said before, you're clearly missing the point.

I'm pretty sure your point is that if you set up a training session that puts the player in a situation, tell the player what the situation is, and explain what doing certain things can accomplish with interactive examples, then something will go off in their head like "oh, I didn't know that!" and learn.

And I just don't see any explanations from you as to why it would work so much better than the resources that are already out there. You're saying it will, but the only reason you've given is that SF players are bad teachers, piled up with all this other stuff about how I'm wrong.

If you can't see the problem with your whole teaching approach in this one sentence, then i don't know what else to tell you. The notion that "if i punish jumpins enough, my opponent will learn footsies" is absurd.

It IS absurd and it's not what I said, please stop doing that. I'm getting tired of this.

If the opponent is jumping in then all I can show them is me walking under them, or me walking outside their range, or me anti-airing them. But if they aren't going to stop jumping then what exactly would you do to teach them anything? The point of anti-airing them is to get them to stop jumping first, just like anti-dashing is to get them to stop dashing first. THEN once they are on the ground THEN we start teaching other things. I didn't say it was automatically learned once they stop jumping, but I am saying they won't learn anything if all they do is jump and only jump.

And it's the same with dashing. You practically said the same thing: "Let's look at something like dashing instead. If you punish someone with a combo every time they try to dash at you, they'll learn to stop dashing relatively quickly. They'll start being a lot more selective with the ranges and situations at which they dash",

So let's do what you just did since this conversation is getting ridiculous anyway: The notion that "if i punish dashins enough, my opponent will learn footsies" is absurd. [/satire]

Because anti-dashing them really does not automatically get them to start walking instead of doing other things like spamming fireballs/jumping/turtling. It may or may not even get them to stop dashing, just like with the jumping scenario.

However, like I said, I can't show them why walking is good if all they do is jump, except me using it to anti-air them. But if they are in the air then that's all I can do until they sit their butt down on the ground, and THEN if they are on the ground at least I have a better chance at showing them why walking is good. Anti-airing them is to get them to stop jumping long enough to experience the ground game, just like anti-dashing them is to try and get them to stop and try something else.

[Maj]

Fuck it, i give up. If every step of the process is going to present this much defeatist stubbornness, then i clearly don't have the stamina for it.

Well played, clerks.

[Xenozip.]

Well I admitted to only arguing just to be arguing (because of maj's post) -- so you could just ignore me -- but since no one is currently arguing with me I guess I'll argue with myself, hahaha.

I think my only real question was, how does something like this help a player like Axel_Daemon or BChan when every other resource currently available to them by a wide variety of mediums and players (like us) does not help them.

Well the unfortunate answer would be that it comes with the game. IMO, the simple fact that the tutorial would be packaged either by itself or included with the game of interest makes it automatically better, simply because people are lazy and information is too scattered. What Sirlin provided with the ST tuts in CCC2 wasn't necessarily anything different from what was currently available, all that information was already out there and he could have even released those tutorials outside of CCC2, but the main strength in it was the fact that it was on the same friggin disc the game came on.

So, let's examine a case-study. I definitely don't think BChan is the type of dude that is really incapable of learning. Like Maj pointed out, there's some sort of certain thought process among those who have talent/artistic-skill, and BChan definitely has that, being as talented and artistic as he is. He's quick witted, talented, focused, and he sure as hell isn't stupid. But he has been to quite a lot of local tournaments where top players on the east coast participate, and even goes to local gatherings with these players, which gives him additional access to high level play. I believe his in a kinesthetic learner though, which means he can only learn through hands-on practical application. Maybe because of this, he's one of the players I've seen caught in a loop for over a year.

The problem with hands on practical application is that you don't necessarily get to experience a lot of situations over and over unless you ask some one to control P2 in training mode or something, and even then the situations are one sided and bias. You certainly don't gain anything from reading about it or studying it in videos or even discussing it with some other player, so this is a problem.

And the other major problem is that anything that is actually good advice is vague, while the specific stuff that they can actually hang on to isn't necessarily correct at any given time so it doesn't really help either. You really can't even tell some one to anti-air or throw/throw-break in a specific situation despite them being good answers because any truely predictable action can be countered, but then explaining anything outside those specific situations becomes murky water for them.

So, I think a training method like this could help a player like BChan because he could actually physically experience what happens in each scenario for himself while paying attention and focused on each thing, one at a time, and also experience all the things that lead into these scenarios which allows him to experience controlled step by step results (positive or negative results) repeatedly.

Now, a player like Axel_Daemon on the other hand, I don't think this program would help. But I'll save that case-study for another time.

[Maj]

It's ok, no worries. Taking a step back, it's clear that i don't have the programming expertise to make this project a reality even if i devoted every minute of my free time to it.

Still i believe that an interactive tutorial is the only way to take Street Fighter to the next level. It's the best way to create a significant positive influx of players into the fighting game community. You may disagree but that's my standpoint at this time. Right now games like Rock Band, Madden, Halo, etc. are way too good at offering way too much instant gratification for us to expect rookies to stick with fighting games for the months it takes to stop sucking at them.

I don't think putting more videos on youtube is the answer because that only helps existing members. There's no shortage of material out there for those newcomers who like to learn by watching videos. After all, we can only expect newcomers to sit through two or three videos before they either find what they're looking for or lose interest.

That's not to say that our existing library of tutorial videos can't improve, because they most certainly can. For example, i thought the CCC2 tutorial videos were a step forward, but in all honesty they do a terrible job of showing someone where to begin playing the game. Then there's the issue of making sure that the first video beginners find is one that will point them in the right direction - not some fucking Mugen Homer Simpson video. SRK needs to have an official "How to Play" video or series.

But none of this changes the fact that watching instructional videos on a computer isn't nearly as conducive to real skill development as being forced to complete meaningful tasks in a controlled environment.

Again, i don't care about teaching advanced skills to players who have been participating in the local tournament scene for over a year. What i want to do is hold their hand from the time they buy the game up until they grasp the basics of Street Fighter. That's it, i'm not carrying them any further than that. I believe that a properly constructed interactive tutorial can accomplish this goal in such a way that leaves them believing that everything they lose to is something they can figure out how to beat. Beyond that it's up to them. Beyond that, they can go fishing on their own for character specific strategies and midscreen dizzy combos and corner traps and articles about guard breaking.

I can't teach people how to beat Valle. I can't even beat Valle myself. But i can show people how to start playing Street Fighter, bringing them all the way up to intermediate level. Beyond that it's 100% up to them. That's all i want. I want it to be up to them. When someone starts playing fighting games for the first time, i don't feel that it's up to them to decide whether or not they enjoy it. For the most part, it's out of their hands, it's a matter of luck. Which fucking sucks, for them and for our entire community. Imagine playing Guitar Hero without the colored notes on the screen. How many people would stick around for more than 15 minutes?

Yes, it would be wonderful if this tutorial was included as part of the game. But if it's not, SRK is the next best place to put it. Believe me, if this thing ever got made, i'd have it plastered all over SRK and probably on Capcom's website too. Since it's probably not gonna happen, my only hope is that someone at Capcom will have the sense to include it in SF4: Champion Edition.

[jchensor]

So I didn't read every word in this whole thread, but if we are talking about how to make scrubs decent, would I be killed if I said that a Fighting Game out there has already, by far, done the best job of teaching players how to play at higher levels without letting them know? I wanted to make a blog post about this on my blog but... HA. Like I update my blog anymore.

Frankly, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is BY FAR the best game to actually teach people how to play their game in a very subtle manner. And they trick you. Nothing is called Training. They create Home Run Contets and Subspace Emmisaries and Break the Targets and shit. Do you realize HOW MUCH you learn while playing those things? Maybe not if you are already good, but if you are a scrub, those things teach you SO MUCH about the game, it's not even funny.

If any Fighting Game needs a model to copy how to teach scrubs to go from scrub to decent, they really need to take a hard look at Smash Bros. Brawl.

- James

[Maj]

That's exactly the kind of thing i'm wishing for. I want to trick people into learning Street Fighter basics cuz right now learning the basics is fucking agonizing. The introductory experience needs to be fun AND meticulously crafted to ensure that rookies learn good habits right off the bat. Especially on the psychological end, with respect to treating obstacles like beatable challenges instead of crying foul every time they get hit by something that seems overpowered.

[jchensor]

The one key secret, IMO: Leadeboards.

If you make something like Homerun Contest and Break the Targets for SF4 with leaderboards, people will research and perfect like you can't imagine. it's amazing how much laderboards affect the common video game player.

- James

[ShinjiGohan]

just to mention other games with training modes

onimusha blade warriors
rival schools PS1 version (don't knmow if the DC project justice had it too or not)
Soul Edge world mode (must defeat opponents with a, a, a, or only juggles etc...)

[Maj]

CES 2009: Street Fighter IV Challenge Mode Demo
(if the video doesn't stream, try downloading it instead)

YES!!

Well, almost. It looks too basic but it's a start. Can't wait to try it out myself. Hopefully they actually put a little thought/effort into devising useful educational challenges. And if not, then hopefully SF4CE will make up the difference.