A Week In Comments

I know there are plenty of naysayers on this subject, but I welcome this addition. Mainly, because in casual situations where I have friends over who would think MvC3 is an alluring game to watch but are too intimidated to play, this mode breaks the ice and allow them to get in on the action.

In almost 20 years of playing fighting games, I can’t count how many times I’ve tried to get beginners into the genre, but they lose interest because the learning curve was too steep. Some of us have that dedication to learn our characters and master moves, but many more of us don’t. Ever notice why more casual players go for fighting series like Tekken, DoA, and Soul Calibur? Pressing buttons in those games (even wildly), can give the impression that your characters are doing great things – even if you’re a beginner and have no idea what your doing. Pure empowerment out of the gate.

But this easy mode in a (potentially) popular game like MvC3 might help to transition a new crop of what would be casual players into dedicated ones. First, those newbies would mess around with characters in the roster that look cool and play easily. Then, when they battle against other, more experienced players or CPU opponents, they will see moves & supers that they can’t do in Easy mode, which will pique their interest. At a crossroads, some of those new players will come to a decision to leave the safety of “Easy operation” and go to the “lab” (or training) in order to learn to play their favorite character(s), straight-up.

This won’t be the case with everyone, but it will help to create more fans of the genre in the end and that is a great thing if we want more fighting games down the road. I would ask of Capcom, though, that for online play that they do put a filter that would allow to exclude “Easy Operation” players and “Normal Operation” players, that way experienced players & novices can play on more even terms. I don’t mind mixing the two, but if I know the community, many hardcore players will have a baby if they have to fight newbies all the time.