If you aren't executing the Anti Air, even if you predicted the jump, then he's not being countered. Execution is the second half of mind games.I also think its super off base to say that all people care about are mind games. There is a reason Evo Moment 37 and "Sako Combos" are things that are held in such high regard.
I'm not saying mind games are all people care about. That's obviously not true, since the premise of this thread is that fighting games need to stop lowering execution barriers. People obviously care about those. It's just that I don't.
And I was trying to say that whenever people try to sell me or other casuals on fighting games, they always talk about how fighting games are unique because of the deep mindgames. Nobody sells casuals on fighting games by telling them that they are about spending months in practice mode doing shoryuken motions. It's not something I want to do, and I guess it's not something most casual players want to do either. Mindgames might not be the only part of current fghting games, but they are the part people point out as the reason for why the genre is different from others out there. Like you say, execution is part of pretty much every genre out there (although certainly not all of them), but competitive mindgames are pretty much only a big thing in fighting games.
So I really can't agree with the idea that casuals don't care about execution. Which might not be what you're saying, but it's what the original video and OP are about. That casuals only care about fancy graphics, not about the gameplay (which includes execution barriers).
Also Tekken is incredibly difficult in terms of execution. It might be the hardest game in the competitive scene execution-wise.
At a super high level, maybe? I honestly don't really know since it's not like I'll ever get that far. KBDs are obviously the biggest execution barrier the game has, but you don't need them at a casual level. And on a keyboard they are honestly easier to me than doing a shoryuken on a controller/stick.
But for casual play, you can learn easy BnB combos in literally minutes to the point where you will never drop them in a match. And moves for most characters are simply direction+button, with some obvious exceptions on a small minority of characters that you don't have to play. To me, it's much more approachable than most 2D fighting games, simply because you can actually do your moves without missing them half of the time. And in terms of combos, the difference between easy and hard ones is much smaller in Tekken than in something like Blazblue, Guilty Gear, or Skullgirls, where if you can't do combos you might as well not play them because you will lose 100% of the time.
Tekken, Soul Calibur and Brawlhalla are basically the only fighters where I feel like I'm actually in control of my character. And this isn't just about random input drops, it's about whether or not I even feel comfortable about my character doing what I want him to do. Compared to something like Blazblue or Guilty Gear, Tekken is way more approachable to new players.
For me, this is a way better approach than most fighting games, and probably the best thing we'll get to reconciling casuals vs. the super hardcore. Make basic moves and combos super easy, but still add in optional execution barriers for the hardcore folk. It's a compromise I think work well, but obviously going by this thread the FGC wants us moving in an opposite direction where everything should be harder.
That isn't at all the case though. People miss inputs all the time even at high level. The amount of time and precision to input the move is part of the balancing. Sajam (FGC commentator) talked about how he still sees the "oh shit I missed my anti-air, I'm gonna dp right after I block the jump-in" at tournaments a lot. If you can read or pick up on that you can integrate that into your strategy and bait it. Obviously not all of these misses are due to missed inputs alone but you sure would see it way less often if you could just hit a button. Hell SonicFox lost a MK11 tournament not too long ago because he fucked up an input in the last round. That's not to say that I think you shouldn't try alternative approaches as well but there is a reason why things are how they are.
At the end of the day, I guess it comes down to if you think this sort of balance moves by making them harder to pull off is good design or not. I don't think it is, but obviously the FGC crowd does. But to be clear, I'm 100% not saying games like that shouldn't exist. If people want hardcore, execution heavy games, that's perfectly fine with me. There's room for more than one type of game in the market after all.
Unlike this thread, which is basically about how easier casual fighting games shouldn't exist because nobody wants them (I want them, at least. And looking at the thread I'm obviously not the only one). And I don't think it would be impossible to design a game that removes execution complexity, so this sort of complexity driven design isn't an essential part of the genre the way some people think it is. And it looks like you agree with that at least.
Plus, like I said above, I'm not even talking about random input drops that happen under stress. Just the barrier of getting to the point where you feel like you're in control of your character is super high in a lot of fighting games. In something like Guilty Gear, I'd spend most of my match just trying to get my character to do what I want time to do, and no real time actually playing the game. Yeah, this is a pretty extreme example because Guilty Gear is deliberately super hard, but it's relevant because the moment ArcSys actually tries to make an easier game (like DBZ which still looked way too hard for me, Or the upcoming Granblue), the hardcore players get angry because the games aren't hard enough.
