Modren

Yeeeah... when people claim to be able to see and react to single frames, the terrifying possibilities are either that A.) they're criminally deranged and might go for my throat if I let them take their hands off a controller, or B.) they can and do see those things within a reaction window, and doing battle with them is therefore pointless.

not a super expert here but i think one key advantage of knowing some basic frame data for your character is you better understand the properties of key moves, which informs you of their general safety or lack thereof.

like if you know that your big standing strong punch is -9 on block and -4 on hit (trash!), you're going to be a lot more careful about when you deploy it even if it has some other good properties. but if you have an incredible crouching move that's +2 on hit and 0 on block, you're going to find every opportunity you can to throw that into your mix.

so that's one more basic aspect at least.

i'd say it's pretty rare to know the frame data for EVERY move but you get a lot of generalizations like "okay, that was a heavy attack, so i at LEAST have enough time after i block it to press a light attack of my own." "This move has a lot of windup, so if I press my fastest normal I can interrupt it."

and oftentimes that is not coming from studying frame data, but just from trial and error while playing matches. you block something, try one of your moves while the opponent is recovering, then take note of if it worked or not.

GENERALLY speaking, frame data in fighting games tends to work such that if a move has fast startup, it's unsafe on block, and vice versa.

i think it's good to know which of your moves are safe and unsafe on block so that you can plan accordingly, but you don't need to know the exact data. Usually people think about things in terms of "unsafe", "even", or "safe" but not much further than that unless you're getting really competitive and trying to win majors.

of course there are some players who like to memorize as much information about every character as they can, but it's definitely not the norm or required

I'm not particularly dextrous or quick on my feet (fingers?) myself, but imo there's still plenty of joy to be had in fighting games. Particularly if you have friends or a community to play with. It's always an option to be like "I'm just here for the vibes"

frame data is just the ultimate reference point of what is actually going on. it's the physics of the game engine. you can study physics offline to improve your techniques, but you don't need to know the physics of subatomic particles to kick someone's ass, you just need to know how to kick their ass.

all other things being equal, if you have bad reflexes or visual acuity then you are at a disadvantage. but rarely are all other things equal: you could have better fundamentals, you could practice combos or whatever more, you could spend your resources more efficiently, you could know the matchups better, you could read your opponent's intentions better.

when chased by a bear (playing a fighting game), you don't have to outrun the bear (play perfectly), you just have to outrun the other guy (beat your opponent)

My brain is not fast enough to perceive a single frame. Just not something that, after (counts it up) OVER 28 years of playing fighting games I've ever been able to do. I'm so bad at it that I'm not even sure it's a thing that's possible. Is this all just a mass delusion of the FGC that people are perceptive enough and can react quickly enough to follow stuff like that? No clue.

When I was younger, in my mid teens up through my late twenties, I would play fighting games allll the time with friends locally. I started out as just a button masher in each game and slowly learned which character(s) I liked best and how to pull off more and more of their moves and what their basic moves were like etc. I still never got to be any "good" at fighting games during that time, but because the friends I was playing with were of similar skill levels, we had a lot of really fun and cool matches. Because that's the thing about fighting games; no matter your skill level, and yes especially if you're playing against others with similar levels of skill, you can recognize when you've done something that feels comparatively skillful and enjoy that feeling .

Sadly I don't have anyone local to play fighting games with anymore... and playing online isn't an option because I can only use wifi for it and our wifi SUCKS. I still play single player stuff though, and a few years ago I actually started learning how to do some combos for the first time in my history in Skullgirls. Fighting games are just a lot of fun in my opinion if you treat them like a casual good time. I'm not super competitive so this has never been a problem for me. ...I mean, bit off topic but, my favorite deck in MTG of all time was one that made my opponent's deck(s) play better so I could easily steal cards from them to use as my own and it very rarely WON but was always super FUN) I love going into training modes and just using them as a sandbox to learn new things. It's a nice relaxing time and it actually does a pretty good job of getting my mind off of other things.

So no, if you DO have a lack of reaction and/or dexterity, it doesn't preclude participation in the genre in any way. IF you want to play casually or ESPECIALLY if you want to play competitively however, and you find yourself always struggling against opponents you're usually matched up against, it might be advisable to go looking for beginner communities or "learning" communities within the FGC so you can play with folks that are at a lower skill level and hopefully be able to not only have a lot of fun, but also get better over time, especially with your instincts (My instincts have, I think, been the only thing I've reliably improved upon during all these years of playing lol).

So yeah, I hope you can have a lot of fun with it, that is the whole point after all, just having fun ;) Anyway, have a good one pal, <3

Alot of folks have given good responses to this so ill just add a nice metaphor that relates to your science expertise.
frame data is the specific measurement for how fast or slow a move feels.
Like you would feel like maine during winter is cold, and 5 celsius would be the specific temperature.

During matches most people feel it out but frame data gives us exact measurements of time.

Ive been playing fighting games for half of my life and ive only looked up specific frame data once and it didnt even really help me out

If you're curious, you can test yourself here.

jumping off my own post to give you a TLDR; the point is, you only have to engage with any of this data as far as it is interesting and fun to you. If learning ANY at all isnt your thing and you wanna go off vibes, thats ok. If you feel like you can learn a little but not a lot, its ok to just chalk up certain moves as "oh no!" moves for not. youll subconsciously internalize certain timings as you play more, data or not, so data is not the be all end all.

have fun, press buttons.

I think a lot of that becomes intuition about what is and isn't safe or unsafe, and having a feel for the timing without knowing the numbers. (My problem is that my fingers can't do the basic combos the game's tutorial says I should be able to do, yet alone get consistency on directional input.) (Thanks Thems Fighting Herds)

one thing that i don't think anyone has brought up... it's really natural to struggle with reaction times when you're starting out, because you don't know what you're supposed to be reacting to. For all you know, there's 30 different things they could do here! But when you play a lot, and start naturally absorbing the patterns and flow of things, you can know in that instant that there's exactly two reasonable things they can do. And that's when you can react in a split-second at the slightest trigger, or at least take a darn good guess!

good luck with your fighting game journey, hopefully it's a fun one 😄

I remember I did not start concerning myself with Frame Data until I was trying to learn Tekken 7. I made an actual effort there because learning how faster your character's launcher is is important. Before that it was just, well I'll do whatever I think will work

And yeah what helped me in Tekken was, yeah, going "okay this move is safe to throw out whenever, I can only use my launcher in these conditions, this other is only safe to throw out in these circumstances, this move I should probably avoid at all costs," etc. and contextualizing it that way