It's like this thread was made with my relationship with fighting games in mind. I love them, but they don't love me. They beat me up and take my lunch money, and I keep coming back to them. I stopped even trying to play online years ago. But I still enjoy them. Even the somewhat technical aspects of them. I like that they're complicated; I like that you basically have to learn a whole new language just to understand what's happening in them; I like the feeling I get when the planets align and I actually do something cool. I suppose I love neat character designs most of all. Fighting game characters have lots of great little design quirks in their animations. There's so much creativity in them.
