What fighting game(s) did you guys play to make you hate fighting games so much?

[Lightspeaker]

None in particular. I'd say its just because I find fighting games too complex in the wrong ways. Fighting games always feel to me like a memory test and not of the good kind.

I don't own a lot of fighting games but I have one or two. So lets bring up one I own right now. Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection on my PS3. Practice mode. Random. I rolled Christie. Pause menu. Command list. ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE COMMANDS LISTED. Most of them with specific circumstances. Okay some make sense, there's a horrendously complicated looking combo here that says "during sidestep" which makes sense because I vaguely recall a sidestep button. Then there's a big pile of stuff saying "during handstand". What? Looking up I find there's a separate command for handstand. Why would I want to handstand? Damned if I know but apparently I can do it.

Lets go back to character select and try again. Jack-5. Eighty six moves. Lets try and pull a simple one off. Try and fail. Keep trying. Got it on about the sixth go. Okay so I can learn that move and now I can do it pretty consistently. Now I have to learn another eighty five moves. Then remember what they all do and then work out what circumstance they're useful under.

And this isn't even touching on the basic mechanics behind the game. I own Skullgirls as well and that was incredibly valuable for learning a fair few fighting game basics. I also watch SSB sometimes ever since TL picked up Smash players. That's fun to watch and I understand some of the concepts there too. But to actually PLAY to any extent...honestly its just too much.


Ultimately though I just can't play the damn things. Complex games don't intimidate me, I've played tons of different kinds of "complex" games over the years but fighting games just feel all wrong about how you learn from them. I never learn anything from playing an hour of a fighting game. The learning process begins with mashing buttons and ends when I find a particular combination that works and then repeat it over and over. To actually learn more than that I'd have to spend hours studying movelists and basic mechanics.

The flip side: pick something really complicated...grand strategy games for example. I recently started playing Hearts of Iron 3 which is outrageously intimidating to start playing. But by playing through it, making mistakes and trying to do things that I don't really know how to do (resulting in having to look it up) I'm finding myself semi-competent at not immediately losing half my army. I can play it while learning.

On reflection I think its the total lack of specific feedback that is inherent to fighting games. In most games if you lose its very, very apparent why you lost. On a simple level if you get your head blown off in Counter Strike then you know its because you didn't spot the sniper and didn't keep in cover properly. On a more complex level something like DOTA2 contains tons of weird interactions and differential damage things to keep in mind but if you outright lose a game you can usually identify points at which it went wrong; perhaps you took a teamfight in a terrible place whilst your carry was away and that cost you rax or Roshan for example, or you didn't have an answer to PL's mass of illusions. But if you get your head kicked in in a fighting game then unless you're already incredibly experienced you're unlikely to be able to spot why. There aren't different lose conditions or circumstances. There's just "you lose"; and its so damn quick you probably can't spot the point it went bad unless you already know what you're looking for.

 

[Maximum Bert]

On reflection I think its the total lack of specific feedback that is inherent to fighting games. In most games if you lose its very, very apparent why you lost. On a simple level if you get your head blown off in Counter Strike then you know its because you didn't spot the sniper and didn't keep in cover properly. On a more complex level something like DOTA2 contains tons of weird interactions and differential damage things to keep in mind but if you outright lose a game you can usually identify points at which it went wrong; perhaps you took a teamfight in a terrible place whilst your carry was away and that cost you rax or Roshan for example, or you didn't have an answer to PL's mass of illusions. But if you get your head kicked in in a fighting game then unless you're already incredibly experienced you're unlikely to be able to spot why. There aren't different lose conditions or circumstances. There's just "you lose"; and its so damn quick you probably can't spot the point it went bad unless you already know what you're looking for.

I think this is a good point and I like fighters a lot but even now in fighters I am not that proficient in it can be a case of what can I do I cant win, Its just not that apparent what I could have done and this goes doubly for games with high combos where one wrong misstep can potentially end the match. Its not nice just being bodied and not being able to do anything about it because you are that far outplayed.

In most games its good to play with someone who is at your skill level but since fighters are 1 vs 1 any discrepancies in skill are noticed much more keenly in other games there may be an amazing player who you cant touch but you may be able to kill the others and get somewhere but if your opponent is way better than you at fighters your just going to be made to look stupid and feel like your not getting anywhere and tbh if they are massively more skillful than you then you wont learn because you wont understand what happened or possibly even how they are doing some of that crazy BS they did.

Ofc in Fighters I know fairly well I can understand why I am losing and hopefully slowly adapt and patch my faults over time but it does take time usually a lot of time and dedication. Most games make you feel powerful especially single player games even hard ones but being bad at a fighter makes you feel and look especially weak and I can understand why people would say screw it at that point.

On a side note. I'm quite surprised no one complained about the community. While they probably aren't as bad as say MOBAs, the fighting game comunity can be pretty repulsive.

Meh I have had pretty terrible and awesome experiences with people I have faced from death threats up to people thanking me for the match and adding me to their friends list. Usually its fairly quiet. The times I have had the most vitriol is when the big games first come out and you go online and body someone who obviously has no clue but thinks they are hot shit because they can do a Shoryuken or Scorpions teleport and these people are the ones who soon stop playing.

I have no doubt there are some top players who are not very nice just like in all games but I dont think its particularly bad probably because it does not have a huge level of popularity. The more people play the better and worse you will find.

 

[GabeZhul]

Honestly, I am not playing fighting games for one simple reason: I have been spoiled by Melty Blood Act Cadenza. It's a TYPE-MOON themed 2D fighting game, and it is incredibly fast and frantic. I got into it from the visual novel angle, and I actually played it a lot, getting to the point where I was speed-running the arcade-mode on the hardest difficulties because I memorized most of the AI patterns and mastered all the characters.

Then I tried to move on to other fighting games, and I simply never managed to get into any other for two reasons: I didn't have the time to learn a new game inside-and-out again, and more importantly, I didn't want to; since all other fighting games felt sloooooooow and dull. As in, I tried out Street Fighter IV, and it felt like I was playing a game in slow-motion and it felt incredibly unresponsive, and the rest of my options didn't fare much better either. I still played BlazBlue and MK9 for their story modes, but once I finished with that I never played them "just for fun".

Otherwise I have no problem with fighting games, I just got acclimated to them in a way that now I just don't find them enjoyable anymore... Speaking of which, it has been a while since I played Melty Blood... oh well, there goes my next weekend.

 

[sageoftruth]

I don't dislike fighting games, but they are wasted on someone like me. The main problem is that I avoid online multiplayer in all games like it's carrying some fatal disease. That pretty much limits me to the limited single player options and couch gaming with friends.

 

[Aetrion]

I don't hate fighting games, but I don't really like them either. For me it's a combination of 1. Not liking pre-made characters and 2. Not liking games that are heavily reaction based.

I don't particularly care about playing as a character that someone made up for me. I don't even really like roleplaying games with premade characters. Since having a roster of unique fighters is pretty much standard fare for all fighting games it's sort of a meh genre for me on that account alone. If I like someones personality or looks then there is no guarantee that I like their moves either.

Secondly, I'm just not particularly good at games that require fast reaction speeds above all else. I like the ability to plan things out and think ahead, and that's something you really don't get in fighting games. I can really get into games that are slow motion duels like Naval Action, where you can't really react to anything, you just have to think ahead.

 

[ERaptor]

My biggest problem remains that I cant actually tell if I'm getting better or not.

I kept away from Fighting games for almost all of my gaming life. And then I picked up Skullgirls, because I liked the Art style and it seemed fun.

I smashed my head against the Tutorial multiple times, and It's certainly better than a lot of Tutorials (Some good explanation and they have character specific ones too). After much up and down I managed to beat the Story mode with most characters, and decided to steadily go up the difficulty while playing Arcade. My chosen character was Big Band, because he was the one were I was able to reasonably string together 2-3 hits (As noobish as this sounds, but I'm barely able to string a basic combo with most characters. I'm used to being able to just push punch->punch->punch for a basic 3-hit attack. Skullgirls quickly teached me otherwise.).

At first it went good. I soon figured out some basic combos with Big Band, and was then WAY too proud when I learned to mesh in Supers into them.

But then I hit a wall. Some of the executable Combos I looked up Online for really long, or there were so many of them that I was reasonably sure it was a lost cause to try to learn them. I played a lot over the course of maybe a month, but it never felt like I was getting better.

Multiplayer was also kind of a mixed experience. The general attitude seems to be that you have to be willing to smash your head against better enemies over and over again. But I simply dont enjoy that. I liked the even matches I had (Which happened rarely), but most of them consisted of me being thrown around like a bouncing ball.

It also seemed really hard to get into the community. I usually try to make a few friends Online while I play, just so I have some people to talk to, and ask questions. Or even just hang around a while. But I never managed that in any fighting game I played.


I later bought Mortal Kombat 9. And that was even worse. I tried for a couple hours, and I can NOT pull a single Combo off conciously. I will do most "cool" attacks by accident. A buddy is nagging me to get Mortal Kombat X, and it looks so cool! But I'm just too bad at it.


TL/DR:

I would probably like fighting games, but I'm an utter failure at everything related to them.

 

[Jandau]

I don't find a game where counting frames in an attack animation is considered a part of the fun to be a compelling experience. Games have many, many ways of delivering complexity, cheesing split second glitches isn't a form I enjoy...

 

[SquallTheBlade]

I don't find a game where counting frames in an attack animation is considered a part of the fun to be a compelling experience. Games have many, many ways of delivering complexity, cheesing split second glitches isn't a form I enjoy...

I know nothing of frame data and I still enjoy fighting games. "Faster attack beats slower attack". That's how I simplify it in my mind. You don't need to know the specifics behind the code to play the game. This applies to every game too, not just fighting games.

 

[plus2exp]

I enjoy fighting games the most when I can play them side-by-side with friends. When we were in high school, my friends and I would always spend our Friday nights at the arcade playing Soul Calibur. This was back in the early 2000's. The PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox were still relatively new, so the arcade was still a very popular place for gamers to hang out. At times it would get so crowded that you could barely walk around without bumping into the people around you. And it was the only arcade in town, so you were practically guaranteed to run into someone you knew. There were a few guys who were just insanely good at Soul Calibur, and everyone who regularly went to this arcade knew who they were. They were like local celebrities. And if you had a decent win streak going when one of these guys walked through the door, you knew your win streak was about to be over.

That's the kind of experience that I associate with fighting games. They make me long for the days when arcades were popular. These days, I don't live close to any friends that play fighting games, so online matches are my only option, and I don't like playing fighting games online. Playing against a faceless stranger on the internet feels lonely. That feeling of isolation, usually coupled with terrible input lag, just ruins the experience. Playing against the AI can still be fun, but it can never hold my interest for very long. Without motivation to keep practicing so that I can play better against friends, I usually just stop playing altogether.

 

[Zhukov]

None in particular.

I don't hate them. I'm just utterly indifferent to them. I put them in the same pile as Nintendo games. They do their thing, I do my thing, and never the twain need meet.

A large part of it is the control schemes. Any game where just getting the inputs right has a learning curve is not for me. I don't think controls should be an obstacle for the player to get over in order to enjoy the game. One of the reasons Smash Bros is so insanely popular is because it did away with that shit.

A larger part is the animations. Traditional fighting game gameplay requires them to be crazy sped up, so they inevitably just look non-lifelike and spazzy. Outside of pre-baked sequences (like grappling animations) the characters all look like they're having precise convulsions. I've never seen a fighting game where the movement looked like it had momentum and the blows looked like they carried weight.

Last fighting game I played? Either Injustice: Gods Among Us or MK9, can't remember which order they came in.

 

[Synigma]

I was a huge fan of fighting games when I played my first: Street Fighter 2. But I very quickly tired of them due to the lack of story. Every story is just an excuse to get them all together to fight, and i guess i just need more than that in my games. Still enjoyed them for years though as a multiplayer game with friends.

But then I noticed a trend in the games; they were trying to solve the button mashing 'problem' by focusing more and more on using combos to juggle opponents. But all this did, at least for me, is remove the fun when you would be on the receiving end of being juggled. It was around the time of Tekken, but after losing a match without so much as being able to make an attack (let alone land one) to a friend who loved fighters... I was done.

Still avoid them for the most part, only one I've played recently was the DC superhero one with a friend and it was okay. To be fair though I prefer strategy and slower paced games where I can plan stuff, so take this all with a grain of salt.

 

[MHR]

What fighting games did I play to hate them? Um, any of them. They're all the same and fucking boring. 2 guys beat each-other 'till one health bar runs out. It's a dumb button mash until you can get good at it, and it takes forever to get good at it. By then, once you've invested all that time to remember all those commands, what have you got for it? The people are still just punching each-other, except now you can do it on hardmode. Whoopie.

They're dumb. Sure, some of you nerds might have fun learning all the ins-and-outs and the metas, but the whole game still only revolves around 2 characters. With all that time and effort, you could have at least become good at something that changes up at least. With shooters, if you're good at shooting, that skill transfers to any number of interesting shooter. With a fighting game, if you're good at one character, you're only good at one fucking character on one fucking game and have to play catchup to incorporate others.

They're not for me.

 

[Zeraki]

I absolutely love fighting games... I just suck at them horribly so I don't play them very often.

They're really hard games to learn, and for someone like me who has very clumsy fingers and slow reaction time it gets really overwhelming very fast.

To me people who can get really good at fighting games are freaks of nature, how they can process all that information at once and not bash their heads against a wall astounds me.

 

[garjian]

Secondly, I'm just not particularly good at games that require fast reaction speeds above all else. I like the ability to plan things out and think ahead, and that's something you really don't get in fighting games. I can really get into games that are slow motion duels like Naval Action, where you can't really react to anything, you just have to think ahead.

But that exactly what fighting games are.
Predicting what your opponent is going to do will always be better than trying to react to attacks that can be as fast as 3 frames in some games. There are times when reacting is necessary, sure, but you don't need to for the majority of situations.
Planning is also also important. Getting into your opponents head, controlling where they are on the stage, managing meter, and even the timer sometimes are all helped by good planning.

Soulcalibur IV was the first fighting game I ever felt good at, and the online had a permanent, consistent, 1 second-or-so delay. Reactions were out the window.
That kind of situation, as awful as it was, teaches you that you need to be on the offensive, so you don't have to deal with blocking... To make your opponent think your going low for the 5th time, only to go mid... To go for those "cheap" ring outs by pressuring them towards the edge.
That type of thinking translates into a lag-free environment, such as Soulcalibur V, the only difference is that you have to be safer now that they can actually respond to things.


One of the most frustrating things about this thread of the amount of people who are obsessed with combos. There are several games in which combos are barely a part of it.
Soulcalibur typically has very short and simple combos that are more flexible with their outcome, besides Viola.

There are many characters in Street Fighter that get by with almost no combos. I used to play Fuerte with relative success, mostly sticking to Habanero Dash nonsense. Even now that I play Juri, I still don't really use many combos consisting of more than 2 attacks, using mostly her far kicks. I'm not good at Street Fighter by any means, but it's not for lack of combos.

Even now that I'm playing MKX, I've found that very simple combos combined with her pokes can really add up when you're playing as Venomous D'vorah. My best character at the moment though is Lackey Torr just because he's so safe, and with one of the fastest and longest range crouching jabs in the game, it really seems to mess up people's perception of when they can attack, so you can use his grab.

Combos are for maximizing damage. They aren't what makes somebody good at a fighting game, and are not the first thing you should be learning. What use do they have if you can't land the first hit?

 

[EyeReaper]

Honestly, the biggest thing that turned me off fighting games (I went from serious fan to mildly interested enthusiast) is Anime conventions.

See, we used to do this thing, where every week or so, all us cool kids would gather around and just play fighting game after fighting game. We had them all, Dbz, Naruto, Blazblue, Skullgirls, Tekken, Soul Calibur, One Piece Grand Battle, SF, Darkstalkers, etc. and we would just keep going through a "Loser passes" type motion, and I was the best there was. This got me thinking I was something at fighting games, something enough to sign up for a tourney at a convention... Let's just say this Big fish got filleted. After realizing my best character on my best game was still under mediocre outside of my group of friends, well... I just kinda gave up on the genre.

Although, I guess if you want a specific fighting game that I hate, it's the 3d Naruto games, which really just boil down to "whoever runs out of substitution jutsus first loses"

 

[SquallTheBlade]

What fighting games did I play to hate them? Um, any of them. They're all the same and fucking boring.

They really aren't. Would you say something like Soul Calibur is the same as BlazBlue? Other is 3D fighter and other is 2D. They play very VERY differently.

I actually prefer 2D ones. 3rd dimension just makes it feel bit clunky in my opinion.

2 guys beat each-other 'till one health bar runs out.

You could simplify anything like that. Even FPS games. It' just people shooting at each other 'till one health bar runs out.

It's a dumb button mash until you can get good at it, and it takes forever to get good at it. By then, once you've invested all that time to remember all those commands, what have you got for it? The people are still just punching each-other, except now you can do it on hardmode. Whoopie.

It's never a button masher if you seriously try to play the game. People tend to button mash because they don't know what to do and don't even try to learn. And when they lose they wonder why they lost and think bad of the game because their lack of knowledge. But people who are willing to learn usually find them fun anyway even if they lose.

I've introduced bunch of my friends to fighting games and everyone has always managed to understand the game in one afternoon of gaming when they were motivated to learn it. It does take time and motivation but really it doesn't take THAT long.

They're dumb.

If they are dumb why can't everyone just pick up a fighting game and be good at them?

Sure, some of you nerds might have fun learning all the ins-and-outs and the metas, but the whole game still only revolves around 2 characters.

What do you mean only around 2 characters? There is always a roster of characters and some fighters even have multiple characters which you can use in the same match.

With all that time and effort, you could have at least become good at something that changes up at least. With shooters, if you're good at shooting, that skill transfers to any number of interesting shooter. With a fighting game, if you're good at one character, you're only good at one fucking character on one fucking game and have to play catchup to incorporate others.

Wrong. Your knowledge of one fighting game transfer over to other fighters too. The same combos won't transfer over but fighting games aren't all about the combos. The mentality how you play is way more important and it can be applied to ALL fighting games.

And fighters change up all the time. From Melty Blood to Guilty Gear to BlazBlue to Persona to Uniel. They all offer different mechanics but still keep some mechanics that feel familiar so you can transfer your knowledge across them all.

They're not for me.

And this justifies calling them "dumb" and people who play them "nerds"?

 

[Lufia Erim]

I absolutely love fighting games... I just suck at them horribly so I don't play them very often.

They're really hard games to learn, and for someone like me who has very clumsy fingers and slow reaction time it gets really overwhelming very fast.

They are hard. I agree. However, once you learn one, those skills transfer to most other fighting games. For example, a quater circle will always be a quater circle regardless of if you play SF, guilty gear or KIng of fighters. The only thing to relearn is the matchups and specific mechanics. For example, after playing SF4 and learning how to Focus attack dash cancel, well i have no problem learning to Roman cancel in Guilty gear Xrd. The imput is even easier, so i didn't even have to try too hard. I can even use SF logic to do things other people don't. I'll take sol and Roman cancel his DP on hit or on block and follow up with attack regardless of on hit on block of whiff. Kind of like when ryu does a shoryuken FADC.

All that to say. Keep at it . You'll learn, and you'll get better at most fighting games the skills transfer. I recently started playing fighting games. I started with UMVC3, tried SF4, blazblue, persona 4 arena, SFXtekken , SC5, MK9, skullgirls and darkstalkers 3, SSBB.I learned my tastes, i can't do 3D fighters, i prefer fast paced games ( UMVC3, GUILTY GEAR) to slow paced ones. And applied anythig i learned in one game to the next, even while learning the mechanics. I was really bad at SF4 because the speed is MUCH slower than UMVC3, so i'd do everything too early.

There is always a game out there for you, you just have to find it.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

On the time investment thing;

Secondly, the only way to compete at anything beyond party game level is to invest just absurd amounts of time into them. Just learning one character in one game well enough to play online takes days, even weeks. It's REALLY not worth the time when there are so many other games that offer more complex and variable experiences.

I see lots of people mention this within the context of time constraints but I think it's best articulated here so I'll respond here.


You're not wrong, but, what you're saying only really applies to the VERY first fighter you "properly" learn. In fighters, skill transfers among games of a similar type (so like, 2D games such as Blazblue or Guilty Gear or persona 4 arena, if you know one of them, it's much easier and faster to learn stuff in the other one too!).

So, that being the case, while it will take a long while to learn that stuff indeed, once you have finally learned it you will be set for life and any fighting game of that style that comes out, you will be able to play learn it much easier than you did the first time. It's like learning math or a language. Once you understand the fundamental principles it's much easier to learn new permutations of them and those new permutations are learned much faster than the original building blocks of knowledge.

That being the case, if you see this not as just "learning to play game X" but instead as "learning to play the dozen or so fighters of this type", you will inadvertently feel better about investing the time.





Also, on an irrelevant topic, this needs to be said; if you wanna learn a fighter, seek out help from online places where aficionados commingle. There's libraries of collected knowledge that will solve all your issues which has been built for the sake of making it easier for newcomers to penetrate into the depth of the genre. Please make an effort to use it.

Honestly, I am not playing fighting games for one simple reason: I have been spoiled by Melty Blood Act Cadenza. It's a TYPE-MOON themed 2D fighting game, and it is incredibly fast and frantic. I got into it from the visual novel angle, and I actually played it a lot, getting to the point where I was speed-running the arcade-mode on the hardest difficulties because I memorized most of the AI patterns and mastered all the characters.

Then I tried to move on to other fighting games, and I simply never managed to get into any other for two reasons: I didn't have the time to learn a new game inside-and-out again, and more importantly, I didn't want to; since all other fighting games felt sloooooooow and dull. As in, I tried out Street Fighter IV, and it felt like I was playing a game in slow-motion and it felt incredibly unresponsive, and the rest of my options didn't fare much better either. I still played BlazBlue and MK9 for their story modes, but once I finished with that I never played them "just for fun".

Otherwise I have no problem with fighting games, I just got acclimated to them in a way that now I just don't find them enjoyable anymore... Speaking of which, it has been a while since I played Melty Blood... oh well, there goes my next weekend.

Try Under Night in Birth. It's by the same developer and Sion is in it too. It's not as air-based as MB but it's fun and fast too.


I would have LOVED to be more into that game but it being on pc kneecapped my capacity for it. Still, when people at casuals brought it, I did play it some. Half moon Seifuku Akiha ftw. Also it seems whoever made the new MK likes melty since they copied the moon system with their styles in that game lol.

Honestly, the biggest thing that turned me off fighting games (I went from serious fan to mildly interested enthusiast) is Anime conventions.

See, we used to do this thing, where every week or so, all us cool kids would gather around and just play fighting game after fighting game. We had them all, Dbz, Naruto, Blazblue, Skullgirls, Tekken, Soul Calibur, One Piece Grand Battle, SF, Darkstalkers, etc. and we would just keep going through a "Loser passes" type motion, and I was the best there was. This got me thinking I was something at fighting games, something enough to sign up for a tourney at a convention... Let's just say this Big fish got filleted. After realizing my best character on my best game was still under mediocre outside of my group of friends, well... I just kinda gave up on the genre.

Although, I guess if you want a specific fighting game that I hate, it's the 3d Naruto games, which really just boil down to "whoever runs out of substitution jutsus first loses"

Man, that's depressing!

That was your moment. You had that moment where you face defeat and then build the courage to practice for a whole year and show them in the con next year what you're made of. You could have been a god! x.x


(but yeah, seriously, after having been at con tourneys, they're nothing like actual competitive tourneys with money prizes and everyone there is horrible outside of like a couple people, lots of people have a false idea they're good when they suck and once the illusion is broken they too break with it or they resolve to become good, it's sad you broke but I fully believe that you could have also chosen to become good and this choice is still there, waiting for you to take it)


Oh and naruto fighters ALWAYS were about chakra management and kawarimi was OP. Even narutimate hero 2 on the ps2 which came out in 2004 and didn't even cover the entire pre-shippuuden anime was all about kawarimi dodgding perpetually and not wasting chakra on anything else.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

The last one I played and enjoyed was Mortal Kombat 2. Yeah, that far back. After that, I didn't get into any other, but played Soul Caliber 2 (or 3, can't remember). It made me realise I wasn't good with analogue sticks for special moves (it was on the 360, so don't even try and mention the D-pad), and I never really had a chance to learn how to play, so from there I just stayed away from fighting games.

 

[garjian]

The last one I played and enjoyed was Mortal Kombat 2. Yeah, that far back. After that, I didn't get into any other, but played Soul Caliber 2 (or 3, can't remember). It made me realise I wasn't good with analogue sticks for special moves (it was on the 360, so don't even try and mention the D-pad), and I never really had a chance to learn how to play, so from there I just stayed away from fighting games.

If it was on the 360, it would have to be the re-release of Soulcalibur 2, but that was fairly recent.
Still, Soulcalibur doesn't have "special moves" really. Even with the sheer amount of attacks in Soulcalibur 2, I'm sure about half of the characters had nothing like a quarter-circle motion.

I will now try to mention the d-pad... I've been playing Soulcalibur with those d-pads since SCIV was released, I won't tell you I've never gotten an errant diagonal, but very rarely.

3) Ultra long combos. This is the real sticking point for me. When you get combo'd in a fighting game, you might as well go out and make a sandwich because the combo will still be going when you get back. And unless the game has a combo breaker mechanic, which don't work most of the time anyway, there's jack all you can do about it except hold back on the stick and spam the tech button hoping the opponent will mess up. It's just horrible game design. Back when I played MVC3, I would roll my eyes every time I faced Dante because he had one combo that everyone used that was literally over a minute long. The individual hits didn't even do that much damage, but it just kept going and going and going. And the moment it ended, he could just run forward and start it again.

I agree, it is horrible design.
One player is reciting a combo they've done a thousand times, they're often making no decisions. The other player is simply waiting for it to end, having no real input.

That's true of Marvel and Skullgirls, and a few others, but not all.
Soulcalibur, combos are rarely more than 3 or 4 attacks. The player doing the combo sometimes has a few different options to end with for spacing, and the player receiving well... beyond air control and ukemi, they're still not doing much, but at least you're not out of the game for more than a couple of seconds and you actually have to pay some attention.
I used to play UMvC3 myself, but I got so sick of Magneto's Heavy Heavy Heavy Heavy Heavy Heavy combos that I completely stopped playing not long before SCV came out.

I'm in the early stages of making a little fighting game myself right now, as ridiculous as that ambition is, and it's something I'm very conscious of. I don't like the idea of having a BnB combo that's outright the best option, because you'll see it so often that it'll get boring, and I really don't like the idea of a player having no input for large portion of the game.
The best part of a fighting game is trying to outwit each other, and it's baffling to me that many of them waste so much time on the boring parts where nobody is really doing anything.