What are you playing right now?

[Zevox]

I remember trying to get into Fighting Games, because the basic concept appeals to me so much. The first one I ever managed to claw open was Skullgirls, since it had a fairly extensive Tutorial that explained some of the more technical terms to me. It was still an uphill struggle.

After hours and hours I managed to weasel my way trough the Arcade Mode on Hard, and got to the point where I was not butting mashing anymore, and executing what felt like actual combos.

Then I went into Multiplayer, and was promptly roflstomped over and over, usually in a manner where it felt like I might as well put the controller down while being juggled. I never really tried it again, altough I played some Guilty Gear this week again, just in Single Player. It just feels like the ceiling for getting into any MP is so insanely high, that I would need to invest most of my week to ever get into it. Especially since I never found another game like Skullgirls that makes the initial process easier on the player.

Oh, it's certainly true that getting into the genre isn't easy. The best time by far to start with a fighting game is right when it's released - that's when the most people are playing it, and even the more experienced players are still figuring it out and getting accustomed to it, so it's when online play is at its most beginner-friendly. Jumping in at any other time though is entering a shark tank. With the exception of the select few most popular titles (Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat primarily), most of the more casual players stop playing fighting games within the first month after they come out, leaving the more dedicated intermediate and advanced players as the ones that are still on. That makes online play very rough on a newbie after the first couple of weeks that a fighting game is out. You really just sort of have to accept that you're going to lose a lot for a while and take the matches as a chance to learn and get your footing. Heck, as you saw with my remarks about how rusty I was/am in Dragon Ball, that happens even with experienced players. That's why it helps to play a game that you can genuinely enjoy even when you're losing badly.

And unfortunately, there's also really no one truly beginner-friendly fighting game out there. Various options tend to have their merits and drawbacks. Skullgirls for instance does have that truly great tutorial mode, because it's a game made by fighting game fans who honestly want to teach other players to get better at the game. Unfortunately, it also has drawbacks for that same reason - one of the games it's modeled on is Marvel vs Capcom 2, which is a very fast-paced game that is quite hard to play at a high level because of how crazy the mixups and combos become, and that's reflected in Skullgirls as well. Run into someone who knows that game well online and even a somewhat intermediate player who's familiar with the genre in general like myself won't stand a ghost of a chance, must less a newer player. Doesn't help that it also has a small roster and is kind of short on beginner-friendly characters - or at least it did when I played it, which was before the DLC characters were added. There was basically Fillia, maybe Cerebella if you were okay playing a grappler, and the rest tended to get more complicated fast.

You can get into that kind of analysis with pretty much any of them. Street Fighter 4 or 5? Not very good on tutorials, slower pace and greater emphasis on individual hits and short combos are probably better for beginners, but emphasis on links and the need for canceling to be done during the hit and not during recovery makes learning even short combos harder than in many other games. The game that I started with, BlazBlue? Good tutorials (though not as much so as Skullgirls), and chain-based mechanics and lenient cancel timing are helpful, but it's fast-paced, combos quickly get large, and the small roster in the original game I started with didn't contain a great selection of beginner friendly characters (though it was notably better off than Skullgirls in that regard). You can say similar things about BB Tag and Dragon Ball FighterZ these days, though the integration of auto-combos there, particularly in BB Tag, and the removal of more complex special move inputs in favor of just using quarter-circles and a few down + down moves are helpful to newcomers on a basic level, and they're certainly not lacking beginner-friendly characters.

In the end, it really comes down to if you find a game that inspires you to want to learn to do it beyond the very beginner level enough that you keep playing it despite whichever obstacles it has. If you do, great, you've got a new genre to enjoy in a new way. If you don't, playing fighting games outside of the casual arcade mode or the like may just not be for you.

(Also worth noting, playing single-player modes other than training mode generally doesn't help at all. There you're just learning to fight against the AI, which a very different beast from playing against another player, and could easily cause you to develop bad habits for online play that other players could exploit.)