Most negative reviews show this game is not friendly to new players

[Lems_ntl]

You are not going to be able to build a growing community if you just push away new players with unhelpful comments like "skill issue" and jester rewards (quite an abundance of them). Not leaving a great impression at all and veterans not caring is absolutely not healthy for a game and its longevity.

Many of these reviews highlight the lack of support and the huge barrier to entry (and some of them still do recommend the game due to its otherwise great quality), but the threads here and the comments certainly show they don't care. Just play 100 hours before you get to be at an acceptable baseline level. Matchmaking issues so far are quite concerning because so many people are queueing just to fight noobs. Comments don't care saying it'll all even out. But you should. You're demoralising a new wave of players and cannot even welcome them properly. You've shown that you'll forgive sweaty tryhards maliciously hounding newbies for now rather than give helpful advice.

No dedicated interactive tutorials are a valid concern. Other servers' health being skewed should also be addressed. It's almost like some of these veterans forgot to consider how to make the journey to fun... fun and reasonable. Not just a game with a price, filled with skins half of the base game's value. Which... if you want as a form of support for the dev team, you'd have to have more interested players rather than the same old.

Negative reviews help open some nuance to the discussions over just glazing the game, especially those desperate to beat Smash. Game can stand on its own, but will the new players? With this unwelcoming "community"?

(There are a good few cooperative players here responding patiently, and props to yall for not being obnoxious veterans. It's fun to read their input.)

[shabingus]

The game just came out, so all of those reviews saying the game is too hard are from people who refunded the game after losing a few matches. Fighting games take time to learn, so it's no surprise that the community is calling out players who are unwilling to put in the effort to get better.

[Cadaver]

skill issue

(i had to)

[Cadaver]

Also the post is a bit funny considering the games been out for not very long so "barrier to entry" is confusing, like entry to what? the non existant established community?

Like there are no "veterans" who are you talking about

[The Hungry Werewolf]

It's not that hard though. This is the same boogeyman as "Tekken is hard". Just don't play ranked.

[shabingus]

tbf people who played the closed betas will have an advantage over people who are just now getting their hands on the game, but I still don't think that's much of an excuse

[𝐿@𝕫𝖄_ℜеnαяd🦊]

They bought the game then jump right into multiplayer then lose and head back for a negative review. Wat do we expect?

[Ereson]

This game definitely leans into the hardcore smash bros style fighter, I'm not sure how many people really care if people who give up very easily on fighting games leave right away.

You gotta realize how dumb some of these players are. Some brand new players will do no research on the game whatsoever, they won't even go into training mode to test out moves. They will then play a match online, get bodied very badly, quit the game, and refund. Now not EVERYONE complaining has done that, but I guarantee you some of those have the "I lost once, so now the game is dead to me forever!" type mentality, and I couldn't give one flying toss about them.

For those who are GENUINELY trying to put in some effort, I agree that we shouldn't immediately bash them for their valid complaints. But for anyone who has less than an hour of playtime, and left a review, they don't have valid complaints in my mind. Fighting games require more time dedicated than just about any other genre of game, if you're not into that, you probably will never enjoy fighting games to begin with.

[Agreus]

Originally posted by Cadaver:

Also the post is a bit funny considering the games been out for not very long so "barrier to entry" is confusing, like entry to what? the non existant established community?

Like there are no "veterans" who are you talking about

There are poeple who played every platform-fighter ever and the skillset is 70-80% tranferable. A total beginner cant even move "right" becourse there are techs to move in certain ways to get faster than just using the stick to run. Thats just a very basic example.

This is a problem that plagues the whole fighting game genre. Simple moves need multiple inputs in either a certain combination or simultatiously and this execution barrier is often unneedet but most people defend this way of playing.

[Malarkey]

There's a sizeable group here handing out clown awards left and right to anyone that criticized negatively. But by the looks of it, the devs will be the ones wearing white makeup with a dunce cap on.

All negative reviews I've read up to this point in time say the same, they went too hard on competitiveness and tossed aside the casual group.

For a game that requires great sales numbers and mtx consumers to maintain a healthy longevity, they're literally punching themselves in the nuts. Casual players are more likely to spend loads than tryhards, most tryhards would only buy skins for their main and at most their alt.

Most casuals don't take it too seriously and would like to look cool as any character because of the skin flex. You may criticize Sakurai for making Smash more casual friendly, but there's a reason the game is STILL a top seller for the Switch 6 years later.

The devs may be able recover from this, but not by forcing exclusively online matches, who thought that was a good idea if you were expected to sell handsomely?

[A Trap]

It is a fighting game and fighting games by default are not welcoming to new players. However, in my experience, the community/veterans have been pretty kind and willing to help if you have an issue. The people saying "skill issue" or not being helpful can be found in every game. As for matchmaking, the game JUST came out, so noobs cannot avoid fighting veterans, for now. It needs time to balance out.

[The Hungry Werewolf]

Originally posted by Malarkey:

There's a sizeable group here handing out clown awards left and right to anyone that criticized negatively. But by the looks of it, the devs will be the ones wearing white makeup with a dunce cap on.

All negative reviews I've read up to this point in time say the same, they went too hard on competitiveness and tossed aside the casual group.

For a game that requires great sales numbers and mtx consumers, they're literally punching themselves in the nuts. Casual players are more likely to spend loads than tryhards, most tryhards would only buy skins for their main and at most their alt.

Most casuals don't take it too seriously and would like to look cool as any character because of the skin flex. You may criticize Sakurai for making Smash more casual friendly, but there's a reason the game is STILL a top seller for the Switch 6 years later.

The devs may be able recover from this, but not by forcing exclusively online matches, who thought that was a good idea if you were expected to sell handsomely?

This will probably give me clowns and anger people, but instead of trying to implement mods ASAP and Workshop, they really should focus on Story Mode and finish ALL chapters, not just Chapter 1 before WS. Casual modes are a GOOD thing, and if you want to establish your game as more than just "Smash bros mugen" like the first one FROM A CASUAL POINT OF VIEW, yeah you need that. Break the targets, volleyball, all of that should take priority over that. Characters, stages and game modes are like the three key features needed to keep people playing. Don't just go like "lol here's WS, you guys do it for us" because nobody's gonna do it for you.

[Malarkey]

Originally posted by The Hungry Werewolf:

This will probably give me clowns and anger people, but instead of trying to implement mods ASAP and Workshop, they really should focus on Story Mode and finish ALL chapters, not just Chapter 1 before WS. Casual modes are a GOOD thing, and if you want to establish your game as more than just "Smash bros mugen" like the first one FROM A CASUAL POINT OF VIEW, yeah you need that. Break the targets, volleyball, all of that should take priority over that. Characters, stages and game modes are like the three key features needed to keep people playing. Don't just go like "lol here's WS, you guys do it for us" because nobody's gonna do it for you.

I totally agree, casual modes is what actually interests me A LOT about Combo Devils (another platform fighters in the works).

If that game launches with the initial features promised, and plays as polished as it looks, I predict that game having a better reception than RoA II. I want the RoA devs to succeed, but they're fumbling the ball hard and the first month is the most important for any new release.

The game having no single player mode is inexcusable for a "released" game, it behaves more like an early access type of game.

[Ereson]

Originally posted by Malarkey:

Most casuals don't take it too seriously and would like to look cool as any character because of the skin flex. You may criticize Sakurai for making Smash more casual friendly, but there's a reason the game is STILL a top seller for the Switch 6 years later.

It is quite sad that people who understand how to get in game currency effectively, and are willing to learn how to play a game well, need people who seem incapable of learning from past mistakes, and have no willingness to learn from others to play well. We require the latter to buy cosmetics and other things at a stupidly high actual price for a game to actually make money. When I saw that some people spend 100,000$ on Diablo 4 Mobile to max level a character, I lost some faith in humanity.

[Malarkey]

Originally posted by Ereson:

It is quite sad that people who understand how to get in game currency effectively, and are willing to learn how to play a game well, need people who seem incapable of learning from past mistakes, and have no willingness to learn from others to play well. We require the latter to buy cosmetics and other things at a stupidly high actual price for a game to actually make money. When I saw that some people spend 100,000$ on Diablo 4 Mobile to max level a character, I lost some faith in humanity.

Some skins are locked behind a paywall or an extreme grind, and that's fine because it does not break the game. What doesn't make sense here is the fact that the developers are pushing away a lot of potential customers.

And the "willingness to learn the game" goes out the window when the time required to learn it isn't available for many.

Some just want a casual match after a long day of work and to feel they're actually playing maybe win or maybe lose, but nobody wants feel like they're being dragged all over the place so bad that no matter what input you make, you still can't even land a hit to some sweaty tryhard.

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by Malarkey:

Originally posted by Ereson:

It is quite sad that people who understand how to get in game currency effectively, and are willing to learn how to play a game well, need people who seem incapable of learning from past mistakes, and have no willingness to learn from others to play well. We require the latter to buy cosmetics and other things at a stupidly high actual price for a game to actually make money. When I saw that some people spend 100,000$ on Diablo 4 Mobile to max level a character, I lost some faith in humanity.

Some skins are locked behind a paywall or an extreme grind, and that's fine because it does not break the game. What doesn't make sense here is the fact that the developers are pushing away a lot of potential customers.

And the "willingness to learn the game" goes out the window when the time required to learn it isn't available for many.

Some just want a casual match after a long day of work and to feel they're actually playing maybe win or maybe lose, but nobody wants feel like they're being dragged all over the place so bad that no matter what input you make, you still can't even land a hit to some sweaty tryhard.

play a casual fighter like Dragonball Sparking zero