I think they just want challenging games, and are expressing their opinion. Don't really think it's about being a good deal for developers or whatever.
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FGC pros and youtubers are asking developers to stop making fighting games easier
- Thread starter Teh_Lurv
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Haha for real. Daisuke was riding a wave making a MOBA way before dota fever hit
I was so fucking confused when I bought this after getting into the series lol
Probably better counter examples to bring up would be other 1v1 multiplayer games.
Afaik there aren't that many popular ones out there anymore that are prominent. For the longest time we had Starcraft as a big competitive 1v1 game but over time that has phased out alongside other 1v1 RTS games.
We have card games but losses can easily be blamed on card RNG, match ups and draws. And skill ceiling is no where near as high as an RTS like Starcraft or a high end FG because there is no execution or mechanical skill factor involved.
1v1 FPS hasnt been a thing since Quake.
And honestly this mimics traditional sports as well. Football/soccer, basketball, cricket are far more popular sports than tennis or boxing.
So the reasoning as to why fighting games have these retention issues may not even have to do with execution or skill barriers (you can't tell me FGs are so much more difficult to play at a high level that Starcraft)... maybe there is just simply far less demand or interest for 1v1 pure skill based competitive games. Makes me wonder why there hasn't been more experimentation made towards team based fighting games ... like a MvC game only with actual 3 players on each team.
Cool video to watch.
Afaik there aren't that many popular ones out there anymore that are prominent. For the longest time we had Starcraft as a big competitive 1v1 game but over time that has phased out alongside other 1v1 RTS games.
We have card games but losses can easily be blamed on card RNG, match ups and draws. And skill ceiling is no where near as high as an RTS like Starcraft or a high end FG because there is no execution or mechanical skill factor involved.
1v1 FPS hasnt been a thing since Quake.
And honestly this mimics traditional sports as well. Football/soccer, basketball, cricket are far more popular sports than tennis or boxing.
So the reasoning as to why fighting games have these retention issues may not even have to do with execution or skill barriers (you can't tell me FGs are so much more difficult to play at a high level that Starcraft)... maybe there is just simply far less demand or interest for 1v1 pure skill based competitive games. Makes me wonder why there hasn't been more experimentation made towards team based fighting games ... like a MvC game only with actual 3 players on each team.
Cool video to watch.
No matter how accessible a fighting game is you still need to practice a ton which casuals are not willing to do. Most will stop if they lose more than they win and since FGs don't really have 'small victories' like kills in FPS games they will never feel good about losses.
Hehe, DotA fever was already there though, it just wasn't as in everyone's face because Twitch/YouTube weren't as gigantic. DotA was around since 2003, and by 2010 it had ~7-11 million players outside of China with half of the player base being in China so 14-20 million total. That was only a few years after Overture, and Allstars was already in full swing when Overture came out so you're still looking at millions upon millions.
Has there been a drop off in active players as quick as DBFZ? Despite an immense brand loyalty and some more casual gameplay mechanics it seems like a lot of people just bailed. It might not even just be about winning, and also due to other types of games having more social appeal in their friend circles.
So it's not just a matter of hating to lose.
And yes, personally I feel that it's the practice part to even do basic moves that's the main hindrance.
As if people don't pin their losses in FG on other shit, there's a long list of scrublord quotes for that.
DBFZs main issue was simply just not enough proper support post release by ASW and not continuing the momentum it had. And this day and age, FGs can live or die by how well they are supported by their developers. Gone are the days of Melee and MVC2/MVC3 when developers can release a game and hope that a community can carry the game on their backs alone. Too many other fighting games with bigger bases, sponsorship and developer support vying for player time and efforts.
Game was engaging and popular enough in its first year that it was well worth Namco/ASW to follow up but weird decisions involving tournament organization, miscommunication on world tour and inconsistent DLC release schedule really put a damper on the momentum. Not to mention the staunch stubbornness over not fixing some of the games key issues like Super Dash and online that left players sour and on to other games like Smash U.
And I speak as someone who spent most of the year playing and enjoying DBFZ. Game had mad potential but it was squandered. Skill ceiling in games can be raised with minor tweaks and there is enough juice in DBFZ to be a long term competitive game... But ASW wont do anything about it and thus it is no longer worth my time investing in it.
Also why MVC3 was eventually phased out, players kept demanding for support and developers just couldn't do anything due to licensing. It's still among the longest running games at EVO and one of the most difficult and mechanically complex games but other shiny games out there that compete for time and space.
Those points are apt for a drop competitively, but the casual drop off might have more to do with what I was talking about. Like buying a game because its Dragon Ball and it looks visually amazing, but then they play it and discover/remember that fighting games might just not be their cup of tea no matter how accessible they seem.
There'll always be a casual drop off. That's fine. People will buy games, even "live service games," play them for a period of time and move on. That's any game out there. But what isn't fine is when the drop-off is significant for the playerbase as a whole.
I think Max makes a great point in his video about how fighting games need progression like other super popular genres. RPGs for example have a very easy to quantify progression with regards to levels and equipments and numbers getting bigger, and this is why you see so many RPG or RPG "lite" elements like levels and gear popping into other genres, fighting games included.
The difference is that for fighting games the progression loop isn't so easily quantifiable as "I got some better loot" or even "I leveled up," it's "I won with a new character" or "I finally pulled off that tricky combo." Adding stuff like levels and new moves and gear are just adding on a different type of progression onto what you're actually doing, and I doubt you're going to see the "scene" grow from that or see that translate into a growing market with growing sales.
To put it another way, people went crazy for CoD not specifically because of perks or killstreaks, but because getting better at shooting people while not getting shot (specifically CoD's low TTK, quick feedback, skirmish-style gameplay) was really, really addictive and engaging, and fighting games need something like that: gameplay that you feel like you're clearly getting better at and more importantly can continue getting better at.
That's the crux of people not wanting mechanics simplified: simplifying mechanics ends up hurting progression because, even if the skill gap was no longer there, you've ended up limiting how far novice players can progress themselves. Imagine a multiplayer shooter where every gun type does the same damage, or an MMO with just DPS/Tank/Healer as the class types. Even if they're fun to play they're inherently limited in terms of replay and variety, and those are the mainstays of building your base and generating future interest.
The difference is that for fighting games the progression loop isn't so easily quantifiable as "I got some better loot" or even "I leveled up," it's "I won with a new character" or "I finally pulled off that tricky combo." Adding stuff like levels and new moves and gear are just adding on a different type of progression onto what you're actually doing, and I doubt you're going to see the "scene" grow from that or see that translate into a growing market with growing sales.
To put it another way, people went crazy for CoD not specifically because of perks or killstreaks, but because getting better at shooting people while not getting shot (specifically CoD's low TTK, quick feedback, skirmish-style gameplay) was really, really addictive and engaging, and fighting games need something like that: gameplay that you feel like you're clearly getting better at and more importantly can continue getting better at.
That's the crux of people not wanting mechanics simplified: simplifying mechanics ends up hurting progression because, even if the skill gap was no longer there, you've ended up limiting how far novice players can progress themselves. Imagine a multiplayer shooter where every gun type does the same damage, or an MMO with just DPS/Tank/Healer as the class types. Even if they're fun to play they're inherently limited in terms of replay and variety, and those are the mainstays of building your base and generating future interest.
The casual drop off doesnt seem all that bad, game sold well and has had ok enough legs later on.
Also the DBFZ drop off was strictly from a competitive point of view. 2 thousand players at a tournament doesn't compare to the 2+ million people who actually bought the game. Based on online numbers, enough players still seem to be playing the game... It's not like it's wasteland out there.
Also not just DBFZ but BBxT and SC6 also have a similar issue where they have dropped due to lack of foreseeable support as a commonly cited reasoning. Drop isnt as sharp because these games weren't as big initially but it's still quite noticeable. And no one here is going to argue that BBxT is a simple FG.
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I guess support is pretty huge. Pokken is luckily supported by an official circuit that's competently run by TPC (which is no small company)
Smash has DLC and other new additions (though somehow Melee still sometimes seems to get more viewership from the competitive side)
I find it funny that this video is much better to explain the same topic
Simply because it is ... casual focused
a marvel game it definitely wasn't, tho I do feel like it is a good game in it's own right despite the problems. I'm pretty sad mvci was a casualty (? tho I don't know if this narrative pans out, mvci was pretty dead on arrival though I do feel like it might have made a slight resurgence if season 2 ended up happening), that game was the best fighting game I've played this gen
MVCI mostly failed at the first level of getting more people into fighting games.. which was poor visuals/art and lack of characters that people actually wanted. Content was sorely lacking as well, they went too hard on the story mode that impressed no one (barebones everything else). These two in a fighting game compounded together is a death sentence especially for a long running series. A lot of people didn't care enough about the game to get into the mechanics. Also support from Capcom was dropped like a rock and the Battle of the Stone tournament was one of the most poorly managed major event by a publisher... possibly ever.
I would also say that some of the mechanics and balancing had a lot of players wary of the game. People don't remember but day 1 Dante and Dormammu combined with Reality stone made the game SUPER unfun for everyone involved. They have since fixed that and other issues but initial impressions are everything and many people dismissed MVCI as more busted, unfun shit. That was the last thing you needed when fighting an uphill battle regarding visuals and roster choices.
I would also say that some of the mechanics and balancing had a lot of players wary of the game. People don't remember but day 1 Dante and Dormammu combined with Reality stone made the game SUPER unfun for everyone involved. They have since fixed that and other issues but initial impressions are everything and many people dismissed MVCI as more busted, unfun shit. That was the last thing you needed when fighting an uphill battle regarding visuals and roster choices.
I ultimately think it's a shame that the discussion gets hung up at execution complexity because I think it's a gigantic roadblock that keeps a lot of people from experiencing the more interesting complexity.
I'm a good example of this. I've been playing fighting games off and on for 30 years but I often still have issues nailing stuff like double hadoukens.
I like looking up frame data, learning what normals work in different situations, etc. But because I can't properly punish because I whiff on mechanical execution the rest of the interesting complexity barely matters. And now I have less time, so the problem feeds in on itself.
I'm a good example of this. I've been playing fighting games off and on for 30 years but I often still have issues nailing stuff like double hadoukens.
I like looking up frame data, learning what normals work in different situations, etc. But because I can't properly punish because I whiff on mechanical execution the rest of the interesting complexity barely matters. And now I have less time, so the problem feeds in on itself.
OP
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This is a good summation. Modern fighting games to be commercial & critically successful need to cater to all three scenes. The catering doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, but developers have to spend time crafting content to generally appeal to those audiences. Games like SFV or DBFZ will never reach their full potential because Capcom and ArcSys/Bamco neglected one of those audiences to prioritize focus on the other two.
That's what makes a game like Smash Ult so successful, the game has enough to please people from those three audiences. People still have gripes about Ultimate (repetitive gameplay in WoL, FGC'er missing advanced Melee tech), but there is enough content and polishing to draw in the casuals, pros, and viewers.
I don't think they need to make it easier, but fighting games SHOULD put in an expansive tutorial that outlines literally every single mechanic of the game. It'd be a fine compromise between those who want to play the game hardcore and those who play it casually but want to understand the mechanics better.
What do you mean by rest of the complexity/more interesting complexity?
When games offer expansive tutorials no one uses them. It's honestly waste of resources.
It tends to be the more nitty gritty nuances for me. Like, I'm the right distance away to avoid this one character's leg sweep but another characters would totally hit me from that same distance. Now I get that's more a me problem than anything else but when the average fighting has more than 5-6 characters it becomes impossible for me to keep track of nuances like that.
That's something you have to learn through experience and playing people. It's the most fun skill to learn in a fighting game for me- a lot more fun then having to not play the game and lab combos/setups.
I want a game with complex neutral, but no lab work required. Thankfully this generation has given me more options than most. The folks who want a heavy lab fighter always have plenty of options.
I want a game with complex neutral, but no lab work required. Thankfully this generation has given me more options than most. The folks who want a heavy lab fighter always have plenty of options.
As someone who loves watching fighting games and fighting game tournaments, it's one genre that I will not and cannot get into. That's perfectly fine with me though, I do not want to put the time into practicing, I don't have the patience to keep losing, it's just a genre that is not meant for a casual like me. I like playing the games with friends, but I'd never go online and repeatedly get wrecked.
It's like MOBAs to me, love watching them, but I just don't have it in me to teach myself everything. I'm not gonna ask these companies to differ from the hardcore audience they have.
It's like MOBAs to me, love watching them, but I just don't have it in me to teach myself everything. I'm not gonna ask these companies to differ from the hardcore audience they have.
I thought Street Fighter V attempted to put in a progression loop with Fight Money but it seems people really hated "grinding". I think Capcom poisoned the well by releasing SFV so barebones that people feel like they're entitled to FM to "make up" for the lack of content.
They poisoned SFV itself, but grinding progression in fighting games? Nah. MK11 has 4 different kinds of currencies people can grind, with an extensive loot system. It's basically what 80% of the playerbase always talks about; not even the actual fighting.
And even then, the actual COMPLAINT about the Krypt was the slow drip of assets needed to complete it, it's focus shifting away from being a single player progression based mode seen in earlier games to an extremely long term en devour where every reward is a rare asset and unlocking even simple things takes forever. It was an attempt at slowing casual drop off by doing the thing that Shadow of War did and make progressing in said mode so painfully slow that the play looks for any advantage they can to complete things. It was essentially taking the casual experience hostage.
And in the end it still didn't do the one thing that every fighting game should do, and that's reward actually fighting. I spent a good week just doing AI battles via steam remote play on my phone, all the whilst learning almost nothing about how that game played or worked, and eventually fell off when the core of the game turned into an economy management sim instead of a fighting game.
But as a single player mode, the Krypt is great. The Krypt in 9 and 10 had a good pace, difficult chests were interesting carrots to the stick of playing and nothing took too long. Sure you could finish it in a week if you were really grinding it out, but that's fine. Let the enthusiasts grind it out if they want and get everything quickly, while casual players take their time and always have something to come back to that doesn't feel like a slog to obtain. The excuse of "we have a 8-20 month DLC schedule that the krypt has to adhere to" helps no one and, at least in my case, only served to push people away from ever interacting with it.
SF5's economy was good for like...1 month. When Anniversary edition first launched, it was in a stable place and had new modes to both drip feed and quickly splash FM onto players.
And then they kneecapped the economy for no reason.
Is ease the issue, or is it lack of options? Cause those aren't the same thing.
A game can have really easy entry mechanics, and still stack on them significantly.
To reduce it to 'easiness' kinda fundamentally ignores that games aren't homogeneous and what resonates with playerbases is not something set in stone.
A game can have really easy entry mechanics, and still stack on them significantly.
To reduce it to 'easiness' kinda fundamentally ignores that games aren't homogeneous and what resonates with playerbases is not something set in stone.
The fight money was badly implemented because only rewarded the more experienced players, and even then the fight money awarded for each win was ridiculously low.
How do you expect to retain the casual crowd if the first dozen or hundred of matches they are gonna get beaten and won't get anything in return? They'll look at other games, like Overwatch or any other game with similar reward models and drop SFV.
I do think part of the reason Capcom felt fine releasing the game in the content light state they did was the promise of free content. So, yeah, I tend to agree. I just think that the few characters people were able to earn really easily by just doing the story and a few other modes were essentially the shorted content that would have been part of the base game if it had launched without time constraints.
Capcom got to upsell the free content angle, but it also set an expectation for players of the rate of FM/content they could earn which didn't seem sustainable in Capcom's eyes.
But anyway, I think the way to appeal to the massses is lots of unlockables, rewards via single player grinding and crap like MK11, which I personally hate in fighters. But it's becoming apparent very few companies can do this with the production values to wow a big audience, especially without treating their employees like crap.
And also to echo previous comments, we should bury the "fighting games don't sell because they lack proper tutorials." idea. We've seen much better ones like in MK11 and players don't want to be bothered. The only reason a lot of MK11 players bothered is to unlock the extra announcer voice.
I guess my thinking is fighters should stop trying to pretend they're mainstream, but gameplay should at least take online play into account in design for the userbase that does stick with the game, but are still "casual". You'll never convince me the removal of 1-frame links in SFIV is a good example of "dumbing down" a game. Good riddance to those.
This isn't true at all, what do you mean? You must be talking about post-AE when they destroyed FM gain. When it started, the vast majority of FM was gained through Survival mode. That net you a lot of FM by just going through simple AI opponents with each character.
Then the Story Mode came along, which also net you a large amount of FM for completing it (I forget if they affected the FM gain from Story mode or not; they probably did).
Then Missions, where you'd have 6,000 FM - 7,500 FM gained every week by completing mindless tasks. There were also tournament "missions," where you could fulfill tasks online when a CPT event was going on which would get you about 10k FM.
They stopped all of this, I guess because of the complaints and because they didn't want people getting a bunch of content for free. But playing actual matches for them was always, by far, the slowest way to gain FM (outside of the one time they had a double FM weekend in 2016). It's only the single player content which gave you the FM you needed.
I don't know what an easy fighting game is. Street Fighter 5 is one of the "simplest" fighting games I've played, but people still complain about how hard it is to win in it. I can actually argue the simpler a game is, the more people will get good at it, and the harder it'll be? At the end of the day, you do need skill. Not everyone plays with the same mentality. Some players clearly want to win a hell of a lot more than others, and it shows. That's the "hard" part, I guess? I've seen players stuck on the same rank for a year, while others progress to the high ranks, etc. In my experience, fighting games require a LOT of time in training, and if the game doesn't have a good training mode, that might not help you at all.
This idea becomes incredibly sketchy when you realize only 25% of players manage to beat survival mode(On normal)
I suppose I didn't consider Survival Mode on Normal being one of the things for experienced players, but I suppose that can be true. Well, Easy would still get you a lot for each character, and then there were the individual Story chapters per character, etc. Really, before they removed all of the ways of gaining FM, there was a lot to do to gain it, but those tasks weren't necessarily entertaining.
My dream is seeing the people who made the Mario Maker 2 tutorial to make a fighting game tutorial
Besides survival, Combo challenges don't award you any FM unless you beat all 10 with a character, again, only rewarding the most experienced players. A bunch of those ways of earning FM were all or nothing. At least the story mode and character tutorials plays themselves but the rest would be locked behind a difficulty wall for most true beginners.
Even if the most dedicated players found it balanced, the implementation of FM didn't managed to retain the casual crowd, and even before the nerf that made it a joke for everybody, the perception from casual players was that it was awarded in very low quantities. Just look at old conversations and there was always the experienced players arguing that it was fine, while casuals felt like they gave too little.
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the key seems to be options.
give the casuals options in terms of tons of single player content (this means more than just a shitty movie with easy fights).
give the hardcore tons of options in terms of each character's moveset so fights don't end up samey or stale after a while.
Add in a good looking game and online that works and you got yourself a stew...
but again that probably costs a lot of money and the genre simply isn't hitting like that to get said money all the time.
give the casuals options in terms of tons of single player content (this means more than just a shitty movie with easy fights).
give the hardcore tons of options in terms of each character's moveset so fights don't end up samey or stale after a while.
Add in a good looking game and online that works and you got yourself a stew...
but again that probably costs a lot of money and the genre simply isn't hitting like that to get said money all the time.
1. You're not correcting me. You're disagreeing with me.
2. It's clear based on the post you linked we are not talking about the same thing when we talk about depth, so there's no point arguing about this further.
Anyway, I think in order to get a better level of player retention and help the scene grow devs really need to start thinking outside of the box. They can't just keep doing what they're doing, but they also can't just copy ideas from other sources like Fortnite or Overwatch or CoD because those games work on a fundamentally different level.
One thing I was thinking of is to maybe mix single player and multiplayer together. Like, you have a story mode where when it's time to fight Ryu the game pairs you up with an actual person who queued for Ryu. Then the game allows you to win or lose and it doesn't really matter because the game would play a different start to the next cutscene based on whether you won or lost. The cutscene would be the same overall, because you'd need to advance the story, but it could begin with your opponent lifting you up if you lost, or bragging, or going in for the kill, etc. before the real next thing happens. That way people can have a story mode, but not be constantly playing against CPUs that do nothing to help them learn the game.
Then you could take that a step further. And the player they went up against (and probably lost to) could leave pre-set messages for them after the match to encourage them or to give them tips. Probably wouldn't want to let them type out their own message since people would take advantage of that to be jerks, but given how many examples of general tips we already know of, they could come up with several things players could say. Maybe require them to send 2 praises and one criticism. Stuff like "Good blocks!" and "But you're jumping in too much". Or "Watch out for cross-ups!" and then the word cross ups is highlighted and the player can select it to watch a tutorial video on what a cross up is. Rather than being bombarded by tutorials at the very beginning that they'll never read in the first place.
I know that's pretty off the wall, but it's not completely unheard of. Overwatch has a sort of similar commendation system, though far less detailed. And even though it sounds silly, I think, given how long fighting games have been around and how consistent this issue has been for years and years, they need to do some off the wall thinking if they wanna make progress.
Which is why i want capcom to take a go in the smash clone genre (smash clone as in platform fighter with percentage as life) because everyone that did the bare minimum seems to be doing pretty well. Get some extra money and fund SF alpha 4 with it =P
That video was long but good. Max is right on all counts. The appeal of the characters, graphics, music, cool moves and the quantity of all that that's what sells the game.
I would add that fighting is one of the most accessible genres as long as you're playing challenge at your skill level. Like... move around and press buttons to hit the other guy. These are arcade games. You're supposed to be able to walk right up and play them.
I would add that fighting is one of the most accessible genres as long as you're playing challenge at your skill level. Like... move around and press buttons to hit the other guy. These are arcade games. You're supposed to be able to walk right up and play them.
Casuals and the FGC want two entirely different games, and the successful fighters are those that can provide that, and keep the two groups largely separate so they don't have to interact with the content they don't like.
that IS the Fighting game experience... you shouldnt just be able to mash square and get a victory
Nah. Memorization of long combo strings and overly complex execution isn't the main fighting game experience. The main fighting game experience is footsies. Defense. Anti-airs. Neutral. Mind games. That's the foundation.
It's not like people are calling Samurai Shodown (2019) a poor fighting game because it doesn't have long combos to memorize.
Marvel 3 still comes off to me as one of those games with an amazing ceiling and a great hook for beginners.
Magic series allowed me to teach people who have no idea how to play fighting games how to combo. A->B->C->S jump, B->B->C->S. Just feeling that button series and the simple rhythm grabbed people's attention, and allowed me to explain how there's variables to it that are just as easy to pick up and fun to execute.
I'm not really sure why Marvel Infinite moved away from that control scheme, same people I taught MvC3's magic series to just couldn't grasp why there were 2 heavies 2 lights and no dedicated launcher.
DBZF didn't have a dedicated launcher button but they did grasp the magic series and basic air combo again after some explanation.
Magic series allowed me to teach people who have no idea how to play fighting games how to combo. A->B->C->S jump, B->B->C->S. Just feeling that button series and the simple rhythm grabbed people's attention, and allowed me to explain how there's variables to it that are just as easy to pick up and fun to execute.
I'm not really sure why Marvel Infinite moved away from that control scheme, same people I taught MvC3's magic series to just couldn't grasp why there were 2 heavies 2 lights and no dedicated launcher.
DBZF didn't have a dedicated launcher button but they did grasp the magic series and basic air combo again after some explanation.
As a super casual just give me a nonsencial dumpster fire of a story mode, arcade, and some other side modes like survival and time attack and ingame unlockable costumes not tied to real money. Basically, be DOA5 LR. I just wanna beat on braindead CPU's an feel cool doing so.
Late to the party, but I've been a community leader and TO for almost a decade. In my experience, a lot of people who clamor in argument for arbitrary execution barriers are the ones who think they deserve to beat people because they spent more time in training mode than them. I'm not a huge fan of execution requirements so tight that they are actively dissuading people from learning the games. Literally anyone who can hit buttons can learn how to do any combo with enough practice. Forcing me to spend 1000 hours in training mode to do something I copied from another player on Youtube is supposed to make me a "better player"? IMO the better players are the ones who make better decisions, who have better footsies, and who have immaculate spacing. Execution is not a requirement for any of those things, and those are a large part of the "fundamentals" of being a good fighting game player. Should execution be free? I mean, I'm not personally opposed to it. At the highest levels, we assume that every player is able to execute their moves/combos 95+% of the time anyway. I understand that execution requirements provide important benefits to some players though.
IMO, everyone should play Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. $20 brand new and their take on execution is smash style inputs (button combinations or directions + buttons instead of quarter circles or DP motions) but in a Marvel 3 style game. Combos are actually not very easy (for those who like that), but the difficulty consists of timing your buttons and adjusting to character positions on the different axes. IMO trying to time a button press to hit right when a character's falling body is at a certain level is a much better idea for an execution requirement than doing DP motions. It's easier to understand, more rewarding when you figure it out, and a LOT less boring to practice.
IMO, everyone should play Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. $20 brand new and their take on execution is smash style inputs (button combinations or directions + buttons instead of quarter circles or DP motions) but in a Marvel 3 style game. Combos are actually not very easy (for those who like that), but the difficulty consists of timing your buttons and adjusting to character positions on the different axes. IMO trying to time a button press to hit right when a character's falling body is at a certain level is a much better idea for an execution requirement than doing DP motions. It's easier to understand, more rewarding when you figure it out, and a LOT less boring to practice.