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The original was posted on /r/fighters by /u/Awkward_Menu7582 on 2025-07-08 00:16:07+00:00.
The YouTube algorithm recently hit me with an older Sajam video about old "hard" fighting games being surprisingly easy to get into, and it touched on something I’ve been feeling recently myself. It's great that more people than ever feel like they can play fighting games, but I’m starting to think the new generation of games can actually be more frustrating for players at the low-to-mid level.
The first fighting game I played regularly was Xrd, and while I know at the top level the game was very optimized, I remember it being very chill to play with my friends. I was easily the worst player in even my casual group, partly because I insisted on playing hard characters — it was a good day if I could actually land I-No’s IAD BnB twice in one match. But even as the worst player, I was absolutely “playing the game,” I had a lot of opportunities to interact, even if I made terrible choices and fumbles and lost most of those interactions. The other guys had a lot more experience than me and I rarely beat them, but I also rarely felt like I was completely shut out (except against Elphelt, fuck that character). At the low-to-mid level, Xrd was fun because it was hard to play optimally, both on offense and defense.
In Strive, the situation is very different. Because the damage is high and combos and pressure are easier to execute, even random floor 10 players are killing you in 2-3 interactions with Nago and Leo and Ram. Suddenly you don’t have to be LostSoul or Daru to hit someone with an optimal (or close-to-optimal) combo into a tough guessing situation.
At first it was exciting. I was finally able to execute my character’s “proper” gameplan without all the execution errors. But then I hopped on tower, and wouldn’t you know it, the other guy was executing his gameplan perfectly, too! After playing for a while, I was getting way saltier, even in matches with friends. I would get mad about losing to bullshit characters or braindead strategies, and I often felt like I was losing to a flowchart instead of another person. It was a bit of a Syndrome situation.
Now look, obviously I wasn’t any better than the people I was losing to. I’m sure I was plenty flowchart-y myself, and if I’d really gotten good, I would have been able to get more mileage out of the defensive mechanics. I’m just saying that as a low-to-mid-level Strive player, the game was subjectively frustrating in a way I don’t remember with Xrd.
More recently, I have mixed feelings about SF6 for similar reasons. I personally like the game a lot more than Strive, but it also has a lot of strong and easy-to-execute offensive options. If you’re a mid-level player, playing “real neutral” feels like a distant goal, because you have to focus hard on stopping people from going ham. Watching the Sajam Slam streamers in low Master (especially the poor Cammy players), it seemed like a lot of them were getting very frustrated with their own inability to enforce neutral. I’ll admit this is my first time playing a Street Fighter game seriously, so it’s possible I’ve just been brainwashed by footsies propaganda, but people make it sound like you didn't always have to dedicate this much of the mental stack to stop people from going ape. Or at least the apery was restricted to certain characters.
By contrast, I’ve been picking up BBCF because some of my friends are into it, and I’ve found it really refreshing. I am absolutely getting my ass beat, because these guys have been playing the game off and on for 10+ years, but I don’t feel mad at all. I feel like there’s so much to learn about the game in every direction, and even though I am nowhere close to having an airtight gameplan, I still constantly get openings to try to do cool stuff with my character, and once in a while I do something creative that works and it feels amazing. Even when I get steamrolled, at least I can appreciate how much love my opponent put into the despicable mixups they ran on me. As a beginner fighting intermediate players, I’m having a ball.
What is my point?
The discussion I see around game accessibility often seems to imply that it’s a disagreement between pro players (who want a hardcore game) and amateurs (who want a game they can actually play). But I think an "easier" game can be more frustrating both for pro players (because the better player doesn’t win as reliably) AND for amateurs (because the other amateurs also have turbocharged offense that's hard to deal with).
That’s where I’m at right now, anyway. Y’all keep me honest if I’m just blinded by nostalgia or SF6 ranked salt.