The genre is inherently competitive, making not being bad important to get any measure of success or even expression.
It's a huge payoff to see yourself improve at something and learn more, and fighting games so that as good as any other genre, if not consistently better.
I made a New Years resolution in 2016 to learn Smash Melee and street fighter v, and go get better at games in general.
I was inspired by a thread on the old place asking folks if they've gotten better or worse at games with age.
In 2019, I've made it into silver for a few minutes in street fighter v, before sinking back down to the beginning of bronze again eventually, and usually I just bob up and down in that ladder.
I feel like I learned some great fundementals, and I enjoy using them, but because I don't feel like memorizing and practicing combos, I eventually can't do as well as my opponents.
Low level opponents will repeat the cbos they've memorized as soon as the opportunity arises, but I can usually beat them at the mind games and neutral.
I slowly chip away at their health as I play good defense and punish, but my offense usually is just a hit or two.
However, eventually I get to higher level folks, I get juggled, and can't do the same back.
I gave up on Melee because it involved too much of just burning the muscle memory to do inputs no designer would have intended, and I didn't have consistent CRT access. Also most friends would rather play a newer game, while players in the local Melee scene were both bad at being teachers and also too good at the game for me to learn anything from. Their advice was usually useless, and I couldn't take a stock from them.
However, I still had a lot of fun. Especially in street fighter.
I just don't play the game regularly enough.
There's way too many other things to play, and every time I take a few weeks away, enough has changed to throw me off a bit.
Folks be lagging too.
There isn't much of a local scene, and in 2019, I don't have the space in my life to be venturing out to go find it. I want my games to be fine in my home. So I mostly just do couch matches when someone comes over, or try online matches.
So it's not always easy or convient, but fighting games are very rewarding y'all.
Nah, most folks feel bad about using a walkthrough for a single player game, let alone spending a lot of time looking up frame data and tutorials.
Folks might get into smash in some big numbers, but that's because the learning curve starts really smooth with that one.
And there's more casual modes.
Fighting game fans and everyone else want different things out of fighting games. Mostly because other game genres have conditioned them to expect to be able to learn how to play just by playing by themselves.
Fighting games fans get mad when developers want to simplify inputs, or lean mechanics towards comebacks.
It's hard for an outsider not to misconstrue that as gatekeeping.
People generally won't struggle with inputs in games anymore. If they do, it's usully a technical or design probably.
I don't think this will convince many fgc folks, but maybe that's irony of it all.
