Why most fighting games suck, JABS OF DOOM Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Most fighting games (i.e. Street Fighter, Tekken, etc) suck because they all are fundamentally based on the premise that if somebody taps you it completely stops you from completing a physical movement on any scale. This was presumably established in the days of 2d sprite fighters to make a game balance difference between fast attacks and slow attacks and also to differentiate blocking from attacking.

However, it's also completely ridiculous. You don't have to be an amateur boxer to realize that if someone jabs their index and ring finger into your ribs that isn't necessarily going to make you unable to simultaneously bring your fist down on their face with a really big swinging motion. This kind of thing is exactly what you see in most fighting games, though. The finger strike stops the motion of the big hammerfist and the person getting poked staggers backwards in total dismay.

I feel tired of this paradigm that has been in place with these games for so many years. I think it's time that somebody think of a new paradigm, one that is more realistic. I feel like someone should try and make a game that realistically represents boxing, which is the simplest combative sport and thus would be easiest to model.

In real boxing, the jab isn't used to magically negate any other punch that may be in play. You could throw your jab and hit someone but at the same time get hit harder by them and thus be worse off than the other guy. The jab is a probe and a setup, basically, and also used to punish people with a sloppy guard. I'd like to see an engine that takes physics into account where a punch is only stopped if, in terms of physics, the pounds of force hitting the puncher is enough to actually throw him off balance. Otherwise he will get hit but it doesn't stop him from completing his punch.

I'd also like to see a game represent fatigue in a better way. In a lot of combative sports fatigue can be a decisive factor. A boxer in the ring may be nearly impossible to knock out when he's fresh and all his techniques are good but when he begins to get exhausted and distracted that is when he will actually be vulnerable to a one-hit knockout. There's a real balance between effective aggression and defeating yourself by exhausting yourself...just look at Muhammad Ali and his Rope A Dope strategy.

Most games have a "vitality bar". Even though the "vitality bar" concept is flawed and abstract I'll be that it could be made a lot more realistic is if it regenerated slowly while on the other hand every movement a character made and every hit the character absorbed (even if blocked) depleted that meter a little bit. The empty meter would represent the state of exhaustion which is most vulnerable to knockouts.

I think this would be much more interesting to play and provide more in depth gameplay than the now decades-old paradigm of fast hits versus slow hits versus blocking and that's all.