>>717571103
The biggest insurmountable mechanical issue with fighting games is that they're too difficult. There are many complexities to multiplayer FPS, but the key idea of running around and clicking on enemies is super simple. Same goes for MOBAs - insanely complex mechanics, but the basics are simple - click the enemies on your lane to death and blow up their base before they do the same to you. These genres grab you with a simple premise, and then drag you in deeper.
Fighting games are not like that; there's no low-level play. You can mash, but that's like randomly running around and shooting at everything in an FPS. That's not playing, that's pressing buttons, and it's not fun. Doing that with a friend can be fun, you both go apeshit and blow some steam for an hour, but coach coop is fucking dead and so are the arcades. The best you can do is play with friends on Discord, but at that point, you have far more interesting ways to waste time together, like the aforementioned shooters and mobas.
So there's no casual play, but that's not a death sentence. Games like chess or TCGs don't really have it either; you have to learn the rules before you play, but people still love them. The other issue is that rules of fightans are extremely fucking obscure. They were written by obsessive sweaty nerds, and never spelled out in plain language. What the fuck is a frametrap, for example? Well, you have frames on block, and frames on hit, and one will end before the other, so you subtrack those numbers, and the one who gets out first can hit back early, but we're talking split-second decisions so you really gotta know what to do, so try hit confirms first, but they also have frames you gotta count, and you also gotta know the combos... It all sounds like boring gobbledygook to anyone with a semblance of life even on paper, and requires surgical precision ot perform in practice. And that's the real problem, and it can't be avoided without stripping FGs of their identity.