There's a market for fighting games, but it's a niche with a community that's very picky. And they're already segmented into big names like Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, etc. Where each of those is nearly considered a genre unto itself, most of them with literal decades of polish.
This thing was apparently a 2v2 tag-team fighter. So the potential audience was:
League players who wanted to play something besides League.
MVC players who wanted 2 characters instead of 3?
I guess they were hoping the IP was strong enough that they could pull off what Persona 4 Arena did, but again: that would require a League player to play something other than League. They had a potential audience of dozens.
Seriously, there probably was a small audience for this. Even the most obscure fighting games have some dedicated base out there, but Riot probably pumped a shit load of money into it thinking it was going to be a big hit and that was never realistic.
One of the multitude of Riot's problems is that this game was scrapped and restarted 3 times.
First it was a 1v1 game, then it was a 1+assist vs 1+assist (think the most recent Mortal Kombat), then it became what it is now, a 2v2 tag fighter with active/handshake tag.
This game should have either stayed a 1v1 game, or if they really wanted to do multiple characters, do it KoF format where its 1v1 with alternating characters.
One of the main reasons that Marvel vs Capcom Infinite died so quickly was because it was 2v2, and playing UMVC3 on a regular basis now has made me realize that there's so much that developers of tag fighters need to do in order to match up to UMVC3 gameplay wise, that only really DBFZ has done.
Riot wanted the Arcane audience to pick up the game, like the primary reason duos exists as an options is so that casuals could play with friends, but considering the fact that they removed motion inputs and the button cluster is so crowded, it tried to appeal to everyone and appeals to no one.
MOBAs/HeroShooters generally got popular because with a team of ~5 you can always blame your loss on shitty teammates. But in a fighting game it's still inherently 1 on 1 (even tag fighters).
This is a big self-own not being able to understand the psychology of average gamers.
I'd say an additional problem with a tag fighting game is you need a big roster. 2XKO has 11 champs. It's absurd they can't knock out 20-30 champs with Riot's resources.
Technically, it wouldn't be so niche if the games weren't so niche.
Many of us have simply outgrown them because they haven't changed in three decades. The input lag has been reduced and the graphics have improved, but they're the exact same games we've played since the 1990s.
I've recently been replaying Mortal Kombat 9 and Virtua Fighter 5, and by far, Virtua Fighter 5 is the most polished-playing 3D fighter ever made, and that game came out 20 years ago!
In 20 years, there has been approximately ZERO innovations in the fighting game space. It's the exact same thing, over, and over, and over again.
I think a lot more people would be interested in fighting games maybe resembled fight scenes in movies, or properly rekindled classics like the Shaw Bros., films. Indie titles like Wu-Tang vs Shaolin 2 is a neat entry, but even it is more about the novelty of heroic martial artists doing battle than anything innovative.
Sega rolled out a pretty cool concept video for the upcoming Virtua Fighter that does kind of play into what I was talking about, making the fights look like they come out of movies, but I doubt the actual game will be anything remotely close to that.
In Riot's case, they basically took yet another tired old concept and threw League of Legends characters into the game and expected it to carry on brand name alone. At least Diesel Legacy had the gumption to try a multi-lane system and had some innovations in the story mode for different characters. From what I've seen of Riot's fighting game, it had absolutely nothing new about its design.
There's a market for fighting games, but it's a niche with a community that's very picky. And they're already segmented into big names like Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, etc. Where each of those is nearly considered a genre unto itself, most of them with literal decades of polish.
This thing was apparently a 2v2 tag-team fighter. So the potential audience was:
I guess they were hoping the IP was strong enough that they could pull off what Persona 4 Arena did, but again: that would require a League player to play something other than League. They had a potential audience of dozens.
Seriously, there probably was a small audience for this. Even the most obscure fighting games have some dedicated base out there, but Riot probably pumped a shit load of money into it thinking it was going to be a big hit and that was never realistic.
One of the multitude of Riot's problems is that this game was scrapped and restarted 3 times.
First it was a 1v1 game, then it was a 1+assist vs 1+assist (think the most recent Mortal Kombat), then it became what it is now, a 2v2 tag fighter with active/handshake tag.
This game should have either stayed a 1v1 game, or if they really wanted to do multiple characters, do it KoF format where its 1v1 with alternating characters.
One of the main reasons that Marvel vs Capcom Infinite died so quickly was because it was 2v2, and playing UMVC3 on a regular basis now has made me realize that there's so much that developers of tag fighters need to do in order to match up to UMVC3 gameplay wise, that only really DBFZ has done.
Riot wanted the Arcane audience to pick up the game, like the primary reason duos exists as an options is so that casuals could play with friends, but considering the fact that they removed motion inputs and the button cluster is so crowded, it tried to appeal to everyone and appeals to no one.
MOBAs/HeroShooters generally got popular because with a team of ~5 you can always blame your loss on shitty teammates. But in a fighting game it's still inherently 1 on 1 (even tag fighters).
This is a big self-own not being able to understand the psychology of average gamers.
I'd say an additional problem with a tag fighting game is you need a big roster. 2XKO has 11 champs. It's absurd they can't knock out 20-30 champs with Riot's resources.
I wish we had more Power Stone fans...
Yeah, that's my conclusion too.
That's just the average AAA game as of recent.
Technically, it wouldn't be so niche if the games weren't so niche.
Many of us have simply outgrown them because they haven't changed in three decades. The input lag has been reduced and the graphics have improved, but they're the exact same games we've played since the 1990s.
I've recently been replaying Mortal Kombat 9 and Virtua Fighter 5, and by far, Virtua Fighter 5 is the most polished-playing 3D fighter ever made, and that game came out 20 years ago!
In 20 years, there has been approximately ZERO innovations in the fighting game space. It's the exact same thing, over, and over, and over again.
I think a lot more people would be interested in fighting games maybe resembled fight scenes in movies, or properly rekindled classics like the Shaw Bros., films. Indie titles like Wu-Tang vs Shaolin 2 is a neat entry, but even it is more about the novelty of heroic martial artists doing battle than anything innovative.
Sega rolled out a pretty cool concept video for the upcoming Virtua Fighter that does kind of play into what I was talking about, making the fights look like they come out of movies, but I doubt the actual game will be anything remotely close to that.
In Riot's case, they basically took yet another tired old concept and threw League of Legends characters into the game and expected it to carry on brand name alone. At least Diesel Legacy had the gumption to try a multi-lane system and had some innovations in the story mode for different characters. From what I've seen of Riot's fighting game, it had absolutely nothing new about its design.