Why movement execution difficulty is good

Why movement execution difficulty is good

I want to preface this by saying that I don't mean barriers, I mean difficulty. I don't mean to imply that to simply walk around, which in all fighting games can be done by holding left or right, you need to make the player do advanced DDR steps using their left hand. That's quite silly and doesn't lead to a very fun experience at the beginner level, and if you want to make a good fighting game, allowing beginners to have fun playing each other without requiring extensive knowledge of the game system is quite important in terms of drawing them in and helping them transition towards competitive play.

I mean in the sense that advanced movement should have a lot of open-ended-ness to it, and that because the movement is so open ended, it eventually leads to the optimal movement execution becoming difficult, and why that is a good thing.

Prime candidates I have for this argument are Marvel vs Capcom 2, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and the Tekken series.  Marvel 2 and 3 are known to have extremely open ended movement options, with wavedash, and tridashes in both games, flight in MVC2 (flight is also present in UMVC3 but it's less precise; manuevering flight characters such as Sentinel in MVC2 is incredibly difficult at the highest level of play) and plink dashing in UMVC3 (both in air and on the ground). The games having such an open ended movement system leads to the skill ceiling being high and allows for the opportunity of player skill to shine through in avoiding bad positions and turning them into advantages. A prime example of tis is Yipes vs Chris G at Summer Jam 2012. Chris G plays Morrigan/Doom/Akuma and Yipes plays Dante/Vergil/Magneto as well as Spencer/Vergil/Hawkeye, and at one point during Yipes playing with the Dante team, Yipes notices Chris G called Hidden Missiles as Yipes' Dante hit Chris G's Morrigan, and he snaps Morrigan out and then wavedashes backwards to avoid the missiles then wavedashes right back in and does Stinger to pressure Akuma as he comes in from the snapback. If the ability to wavedash backwards like that was not an option, then Dante would have to block the missiles coming in as Akuma was snapped in, which would be a terrible situation for Yipes. There are also plenty of examples in high level play Marvel 3, especially with Magneto players such as RayRay and Filipino Champ, that demonstrate how having such amazing mobility as well as the players having the execution to make that mobility work for them allows them to avoid otherwise difficult to avoid situations.

An example in Tekken would be if someone's playing against a Jack player (in Tekken 6 or beyond) who knows the strength of ff+1. ff+1 is a good mid that knocks down on hit and on block provides Jack with a ranged situation where even though he's at a disadvantage, the space between the two characters allows him to maintain control of the neutral game. To avoid it consistently against good players you need to have the ability to predict the move, the ability to time the sidestep to avoid it, and the reaction time to notice the whiff and punish it with a launch. Similarly with Mishima EWGF, one of the best moves (and depending on who you're talking to, maybe THE best move) in all of Tekken history. Evading EWGF's is no easy task against players who also know how to move, and when both players know how to move and have practiced evading EWGF's and punishing them, the game becomes not about the strength of the move but the manual dexterity of the two players and their ability to move into positions where they are at an advantage.

Simply providing such free form mobility options allows people to do such amazing things and make neutral game strategies that would otherwise be too good, not so good. It should not be a requirement at the beginner level, but at a high level, providing such mobility options leads to a more dynamic and player vs player neutral game.

You might say, "Now why does this need to be difficult? Can't you just make it easy?", which to me ignores the point completely. The point is not whether it's difficult. The point is that it's THERE. Simply providing the player such movement options is all you need to do as a developer. It's up to the players to push this as far as they can. If every Tekken or Marvel player collectively decided to not do difficult movement simply because it's difficult, so many opportunities for counter play get left out because of their difficult in execution. Having dashes that are cancelable on the first frame in Tekken, Marvel, or even in Guilty Gear with FD braking allows for adjusting one's spacing in very small bits really fast, and when people get good at it, it can lead to mindgames in neutral that make the game more fun to play as well as to watch. Good movement in a sense makes a game easier to balance, since if you're able to move well, you can make otherwise really good moves on paper not as good in reality. Players who want to improve their general skill at the game will keep pushing the boundaries of movement farther and farther, and what was once considered difficult and impractical (optimal usage of UMVC3 Magneto mag blast in situations such as plink dash mag blast comes to mind) is now a standard part of a character's toolset. Though this makes the higher level of the game harder to approach for a new player and may hold back some players who are physically unable to move in such ways, in my opinion it leads to a better game compared to a game that does not provide such movement options to the player.

tldr; harder movement results from more varied mobility options and allows players to overcome otherwise really good character strategies, resulting in a better game.