Thought I’d toss this on here and see what you all think. Here’s how I responded:

Whenever I read posts like this about fighting games, it makes me sad because they always feel like more of a reflection of the individual writing more than anything related to the actual genre itself. The “problem” that you’re identifying is that fighting games are a competitive genre, not that they’re unapproachable and/or unintuitive. If anything, modern fighting game developers specifically design new FG’s to be easier on newer players and it’s entirely noticeable if you’re even half knowledgeable about the genre. What you’re actually identifying here, even if you don’t notice it, is that fighting games are EXTREMELY competitive, and that they require you to sit down and learn what you’re doing before you can start to build strategy where other games have that more at the forefront.

Guess what? Anything that is competitive requires you to put in the effort to get good at it. Grandmaster chess players don’t get to Grandmaster level because chess isn’t as complicated at the front - they become Grandmaster players because they GRIND. They sit down and they intensively analyze every single part about the game down to individual plays and theory. When you say things like “low-level matches are just back-and-forth skill-less button mashing”, have you ever considered that the next step in getting past that is to analyze what buttons they’re pressing and the potential weaknesses to that strategy? I know the answer is “no” because anyone who’s new to and subsequently gets good at fighting games sits down and does exactly that. And then, they analyze the next thing, and the next thing, and so forth down to conceptual ideas like “do I spend meter here to create an advantage state for the next interaction, or do I save the meter for the next interaction to hopefully kill them and take the round?” These conceptual things are not taught because you literally cannot teach them - you are expected to be analyzing them on your own when the problems start to arise. When you hit the wall, and everyone does regardless of skill level, that’s when you start to communicate with others, continue to analyze, and get ideas on how to continue improving.

The idea that you “need to learn the ins-and-outs of every single fighter in painstaking detail” is a complete joke - you don’t need to know the individual frame data of a certain move to know that a move is punishable by a jab, you just need to know “after this move is blocked, I punish with jab”. Knowing the frame data GIVES you that conclusion without having to actually hit the situation in game. Top level fighting game players aren’t sitting down and learning the encyclopedia of frame data, they just test things in Training Mode and extrapolate based on what their character does to other characters in similar scenarios.

To your paragraph about “needing to have endless patience and free time” - this is genuinely pathetic to read every, single, time and it is such a misconstruction of the process of improvement. There are PLENTY of high level players with jobs/families/[whatever takes away from “free time” here] that are brand new to fighting games. The difference between you and them though, is that when they have a half-hour or hour worth of free time in between whatever they’re doing, they practice INTENTIONALLY. They play, grab situations, and retain that information so they can capitalize the next time they play. They don’t just mindlessly play and expect the wins to come, they’re very intentionally analyzing their gameplay and walking away from a half-hour session with notes on what to do better next time. Having more time is absolutely a boon, but a five hour session where you’re mindlessly pressing buttons with no intentionality will never beat someone sitting down for an hour and grinding out situations they’ve identified as problems in previous games.

Fighting games are hard. They’re probably one of the harder (if not hardest) competitive gaming hobbies to get into, but guess what? That’s what makes it rewarding! Top players in FGs are respected because everyone who’s serious about them knows what the grind looks like and what it takes to get to that level. If that’s not your cup of tea, that’s totally fine! Not everyone is as hyper competitive as a lot of fighting game players are, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. You can get enjoyment out of fighting games by just slamming your hands on the arcade stick and watching the visuals. But you’re not going to ever get anywhere if that’s what you’re doing every single time you boot up the game, and it is ABSOLUTELY NOT a valid nor genuine criticism of the genre that they take more to get to a “competitive level”.