Having grown up playing fighting games in arcades extensively all throughout my youth, my history with the genre goes nearly as far back as my gaming hobby has existed. I lived through the fighting game depression of the mid-2000's as arcades completely died out in the United States and online play wasn't yet standard for the genre, and then I rejoiced as the genre came roaring back on broadband-connected consoles. The genre is arguably the healthiest its been since its heyday in the mid-90's right now, in terms of the sheer number of yearly releases we get from both long-running series and indie upstarts. On the whole, it's a good time to be a fighting game fan.
But we're not living in some fighting game utopia. Far from it, I'd argue. Since fighting games as a whole are somewhat niche compared to other uber-popular genres like shooters, MOBAs, etc. they've had to change to fit the times we're in. Many of them have experimented with all sorts of convoluted (and oftentimes anti-consumer) monetization models, and some of the worst offenders are poster boys for how to piss off your fanbase with malicious microtransactions.
That's where this thread comes in. I'd like to make this a place for people to air out their grievances with common features, design decisions, or other aspects that seem to be finding their way into most modern fighting games. These complaints are coming from a place of fandom and wanting the best for the genre, at least in my case.
Here are a few that really grind my gears:
But we're not living in some fighting game utopia. Far from it, I'd argue. Since fighting games as a whole are somewhat niche compared to other uber-popular genres like shooters, MOBAs, etc. they've had to change to fit the times we're in. Many of them have experimented with all sorts of convoluted (and oftentimes anti-consumer) monetization models, and some of the worst offenders are poster boys for how to piss off your fanbase with malicious microtransactions.
That's where this thread comes in. I'd like to make this a place for people to air out their grievances with common features, design decisions, or other aspects that seem to be finding their way into most modern fighting games. These complaints are coming from a place of fandom and wanting the best for the genre, at least in my case.
Here are a few that really grind my gears:
- Out-of-place Guest Characters - I'm looking at you, NetherRealm Studios. The MK series in its modern form has virtually all of the issues that I'll be complaining about in this OP, and their overuse of immersion-breaking, gauche guest characters is right up there at the top of the list. It might not bother some people, but nothing takes me out of a fucking MORTAL KOMBAT match like going up against the likes of Freddy Kreuger, The Terminator, Jason Vorhees, Leatherface, etc. Like, come on. How the fuck do those slasher villains and random pop culture icon characters fit into the MK universe? I might sound like I'm overthinking what is supposed to be a "fun" addition, but it really cheapens the whole package for me. I just hate it.
This isn't MK. This is some MUGEN-looking garbage.
- Grindy Unlockables Paired with Microtransactions - Once again, MK11 is the poster child for this kind of aggravating design. Here's another clear-cut example of a fighting game series that sells well trying to milk every last fucking cent out of its fanbase by cramming the game full of cosmetic unlockables (many of which would've just been standard from the outset in previous games) that take forever to unlock and rely on RNG to make everything even more fucked in the ass. It's all designed this way to push people to simply spend additional money to try and bypass as much of the headache as they can and just get the handful of cosmetics that they'd like to use. It's capitalism creeping into game design in the most overt and shitty way possible, IMO.
Ugh.
- Garish character customization options - Listen. I'm all for being able to customize the look of your character to some extent in a fighting game. That's cool on paper, but in practice most of the time the end-result is otherwise iconic characters being unrecognizable when you're playing people online. This is exacerbated by games (e.g. Tekken) that give you inherently silly, ludicrous pieces of equipment to put on that cumulatively make your character look like an eye-gouging mess of nonsense. I'm not even sure what the solution to this annoyance is other than giving people a toggle to show or not show people's custom costumes online on your end of things.
I guess it's kind of funny, but I should be able to disable this online if I want to.
