The problem here is that YOU’re putting everything in black and white. Nobody here is saying that you shouldn’t go online. All Dan is saying is that you need to be prepared before you go into a match. This way at least you have a chance instead of instantly getting bodied by someone who actually spent their 9-5 learning stuff.
I really respect you and the OPs opinion and i think (and any sane fg player would agree) that training mode is really important but i think it may be overstated here. Spend 2-3 hours a day learning stuff in training mode? Im sorry but that is absolute overkill for a player just starting out, the only thing spending that much time in training mode will do to a newbie is make them hate the game. When i picked up cervantes in scv i had to learn the triple igdr combo and consistently doing 15mins of training everytime before i played was more than enough. Any more and i would of driven off a cliff.
Yes, landing bnbs and having good execution is absolutely essential to becoming good at this game, or any other fighting game, but I firmly believe that there are many nuanced skills that take a lot of match play to learn. I feel like this intense of an emphasis on training mode is misleading. Training mode is a good thing, but you dont just go into training mode for X amount of hours and can play the game. The transition from doing things successfully in training mode to doing them in game is just as hard as learning all the skill initially in the first place.
The thing that is lacking here is a more firm emphasis on consistency. If you do 20minutes a day of training mode then matches you will be fine, just as long as you strictly adhere to ALWAYS going to training mode before you play. I feel like the whole HOURS stressed in this entry is a bit on the intimidating side. This is a good start and i like the idea more well thought out guides written by individuals but the emphasis is a little to extreme in this case imo.
I think what @MegamanDS is saying is that IF YOU WANT TO GET TO A PROFESSIONAL LEVEL at the game, then you NEED to put in the time. 2 hours in training mode is a drop in the bucket in the general scheme of things, especially if you’re looking to go to major tourneys and compete.
I’m a professional musician and one of the things I love about fighting games is that learning an FG is a lot like learning an instrument. If you really want to get to the big show and play with the big boys, you HAVE to put in the time, learn the basics, and get the execution down to a point where you do it as naturally as you breathe. I’m talking hours and hours a day. I used to practice 6-8 hours a day when I was in school, and that didn’t count the playing I did beyond that. Sometimes I had a guitar in my hand in excess of 10-12 hours a day.
if you want to just play around online and mess around with the game, then it’s okay to disregard what he’s saying, but if you’re really looking to get not just good, but GREAT at the game, then I’d say a regimen of 2-3 hours of training mode, 2-3 hours of online, and another 2-3 hours of offline when you can get it in is the way to do it. God knows if I had the time, I’d be playing Guilty Gear, KoFXIII, or Third Strike that often. I’m sure few people have the time to be able to dedicate to a regimen like that, but if you really want to be great, you’ve gotta do the work.
How am I putting things in black and white? Did I ever say that training isn’t important? Did I ever say that players should immediately go online and never practice? Here is all I am saying. New players already put a great deal of emphasis on getting good in training and arcade mode before they will play anyone online. This was especially common on SkullHeart, where you’d see new players say they weren’t going online until they “got better” all the time. The problem is that you don’t need hours a day of practice when you’re first starting out. If you have a basic BnB and can generally get your specials to come out (which should only take half an hour a day unless you’re new to video games in general), it is most beneficial to play against real people and learn what the game is ACTUALLY about. The OP focuses too much on training mode for newbies (Seriously. How are you supposed to learn “basic tactics and advanced tactics” in training mode? Especially when you’ve never played against any yourself?).
I say all of this as a former training monkey who would get extremely anxious about playing real people. I’d train for hours a week, get online and get blown up, then immediately go back to training because I wasn’t “good enough” yet. It wasn’t until some good, old-fashioned immersion therapy (read: playing through the losses online) that I actually started to improve and really learn the game.
@fizzywoemac put it really well in his last post: “Yes, landing bnbs and having good execution is absolutely essential to becoming good at this game, or any other fighting game, but I firmly believe that there are many nuanced skills that take a lot of match play to learn. I feel like this intense of an emphasis on training mode is misleading. Training mode is a good thing, but you dont just go into training mode for X amount of hours and can play the game. The transition from doing things successfully in training mode to doing them in game is just as hard as learning all the skill initially in the first place.”
The most important thing is having fun with the game and having a sack of balls.
Picking up fighting games with the intention of becoming a professional player that pays his bills by playing the game is the worst approach you can have to a game/sports.
First you have to love what you’re doing and when you don’t have that and basically force yourself to do it anyways, you’ll never see the same results as someone who enjoys what he’s doing.
The training aspect is something that comes very natural to players.
If you love the game and get bodied hard by people there’s only two possible outcomes:
- You blame the game/lag/cheap opponents/other outside influences on your losses and stay horrible.
- You blame yourself and try to figure out what went wrong and try to avoid those mistakes, leading to progress.
Playing online/offline is a form of practice in itself.
The most important skills in fighting games aren’t execution and pulling off huge combos, it’s reading your opponents while staying seemingly unpredictable yourself and sense of distances.
Those are the skills that actually create opportunities for you and without opportunities your hard practiced combo skills don’t do jack for you since you’ll never pull them off.
These are also skills that are only acquired through hundreds of hours of gameplay against living opponents.
I’d definitely put playing online far in front of playing training mode in terms of weighing out your practice schedule.
I got to say the top level folks who are all about hitting training more first and know how to even use training mode to get the most from it all probably have been around for years, and years, and years and instantly have better grips on the core mechanics of the games they’re playing than the average Joe.
I have awful, awful execution. But in a lot of games I’m about to out think and exploit lack of knowledge. Tons of times I’ve been hated on for dropping combos, or only doing the same shit, but staying on the machine, or in the winning seat in the online lobby. Guys get mad when they could theoretically execute the BnB’s, but keep losing the footsie game, getting zoned out, thrown out of everything repeatedly, or painfully mixed up on wake up. Though I’ll admit more new games seem to be getting away from this and landing the max damage combos is going to see you through if you opponent only knows general fighting game theory or a single cheap tactic.
Still I think when you spend hours and hours in training mode and then you still get torn up and not given the proper chance to play by some bastard who knows the dumb stuff a little better than you, you’re going to get discouraged. And if you don’t have match up experience first, and a sense of what works in the game you probably don’t know what you want to be practicing anyhow. There are very few people who truly innovate in these games, that’s not for most who just want to be online warriors.
For some new players 2-3 hours in training mode, except the frustration, may cause them also thumb or wrist strain. FG are demanding.
But newbies can learn easy 10-15 hit combos, call an assist super, then do another super. this causes some good damage and requires less training. If you are playing solo though, then it would be better to learn some better combos.
I accomplished the tutorials, liked the game, only problem is those BnB combos. if on training mode 90 % of time is spent on BnB and the remaining 10 % on the rest, I prefer to focus on the 10 %
Hence I avoid games like Blazblue, Guilty Gear and MvC.
I can play at semi-beginner, low-intermediate skill just fine and that is enough.
Write the article regardless. It doesn’t matter how many people realize how good it is. If it’s good, write it. Just make sure that you don’t preach to the choir. If there was a way to make an article on “How to Play Fighting Games” to stuff like Game Informer, IGN, Gamespot or wherever all the casual gamers look at reviews and articles or something. Last time I saw a Game Informer, I saw a 10-page dick-suck fest on the development process on an upcoming ‘hyped’ game that ended up being -meh- at best. Imagine if that space could be used just ONE time to get people to understand on how fighting games work and how they can take it past button mashing, and find out that it can be a rewarding venture by seeing actual results through time and investment.
It’s hard to tell. I already know the KOF XIII community is plagued now that Juice Box is actually making tutorial videos for KOF; but, I don’t really care for XIII anymore to put further effort for it. But yeah, it comes down to taking it from a more critical, skeptical, and educational perspective.
For me, I try to find as many resources as possible, as many connections as possible, and taking it all neutrally at first. First I have to find my resources such as guides like how I have to find good sources if I write a paper. So I prioritize finding write ups, wikis, forum post compilations/FAQs, podcasts, video tutorials, match videos, combo videos, whatever I can find information about a particular game or subject.
Then after that, through connections such as through IRC groups/forums/e-mail/what have you I try to find history of the scene. I try to find how long have people been around, what kind of credibility and reliability they have, how specific people perceive each other in the scene, who made what resource for what reason, and judge how well things hold up. Like if you dig around the KOF community, you could find how certain shit heads that I won’t name because it’ll cause more of a shit storm are shitty players, put out bad info, have bad egos, won’t listen to criticism, run some shady shit when managing other players and tournaments, and already have been black listed by other Tournament Organizers and events. But yeah, I try to find out about the people of the community and more about the people that make the resources. It’s like looking up the biography of an author of a book/paper to see why he or she made the source, what stance/perspective he or she developed on the topic and through what experiences, and how peers of the same field perceive that author’s work.
After all of that, I just have to make my own judgments or simply reserve any judgment at all. If I choose to not make any judgment, then I try to put what I have learned through guides in practice to see if it stacks up. In my luck, I rebuilt my fundamentals starting around mid-09 through Maj’s Footsie Handbook and DandyJ’s Beginner’s Incomplete Guide to KOF and grinded it out ever since. Since I have a relatively solid understanding of general fighting game fundamentals, I can make my own judgments and perceptions when stepping into a new games without being lost and having to rely too much on the good word of others.
So I’d say it’s a pragmatic process. One just has to truly love and commit to learning and general and focus that educational spirit into the game itself and embrace playing the game in all its victory and failure. Then once one loves the game, one could comfortably do research and make connections while not only learning about the game, but the people that play the game. Once one builds one’s own knowledge, it becomes easier to pick out which people are utter bullshit/stupid and who are legitimately knowledgeable or at least know the limitations of their own knowledge and ability and adequately responds and helps within their level/field of practice and knowing.
It also helps knowing about argumentation, articulation, and good communication. Although it may be a cognitive bias, in my experience with these forums is that people that are so shitty at communicating concepts or making proper arguments with good refutations and coherent replies are generally also shitty players or have no idea what they are talking about in general in regards to the game. Sadly, there are exceptions to this rule but that’s just how it is.
There is no easy way to really know who is reliable to listen to or not. One just has to rely on one’s self and just grow as a critical thinker and make assessments just like in “real life,” whatever that may mean.
When it comes to practice, I just practice games that I like both in training mode and in versus. I feel that training mode becomes more rewarding for people and interesting for people that know exactly what they want/need to practice and for those that want to find new ideas and applications that simply cannot be tested that well in a versus/arcade environment. For new players that don’t know a lick of anything, training mode may be boring simply because these players don’t know what to really practice, why they should practice it, or don’t know what they should be experimenting with and finding new applications and techniques.
When I started off before I even reinvented my fundamentals, I just wanted to play Third Strike on my PS2 to beat my friend. I guess innately, I was competitive by nature. I wouldn’t really say that I am, but I guess with these games the goal is to “beat the other person” aka “win.” I can’t really just play to lose or just stupidly press buttons to have cool moves come out arbitrarily and still lose and honestly enjoy myself after a while. So while I wanted to play versus, I knew I had to practice certain things to get an edge over my friend such as combos and that’s where I started off. Sure I made my SRK account in 2010, but I knew about SRK since 04-05 (and of course I was a scrub then as I was until I reinvented myself.) It was about 2004 or so that I found a Ryu thread in the Third Strike section and learned the magic of Denjin Ryu, and initially I thought Ryu’s Denjin Hadouken was shit when I was 13-14 years old back then. When I learned what I needed to practice, practicing it in training mode became fun and was rewarding when I can execute it. Then in turn, it became even more rewarding and fun when I did it in a real match against my friend and had him call Denjin Ryu “cheap.”
So, I feel the natural enjoyment of training mode will stem from being used hand in hand with versus like I did when I was younger. What made both modes enjoyable in my youth is the same type of enjoyment that I find in a game like Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, it’s the feeling of reward or gratification. As I recall, the designers of the Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls series didn’t necessarily want to make a “hard” game, but rather wanted to make a “gratifying” game. That’s why in this time of hand holding games, the Souls series found a dedicated player base that holds strong. What makes people stay is the gratification of victory through learning and failure, much like how “true” education is. It’s the gratification of application through research, creativity, experimentation, questioning, observation, and failure.
So when it comes to having more people try to learn fighting games in general, I think the most important thing to communicate is the process of achieve the gratification that we do when we win and lose. I think a lot of people in general don’t perceive the world, let alone games, the way that we do and there will be a disconnect between mindsets.
tl;dr it’s fucking 3 in the morning and I have lost control of my life rambling about shit since it’s been forever since I typed up a Laban Wall of Text. I should re-read what I post before I post it but eh whatever.
I can understand where OP is coming from, but casuals see training mode as “tutorial stage” for fighting games. They’re not gonna spend 2-3 hours a day in training mode any more than I’m going to replay the first stage of God of War every day.
This is a really good post.
I think before you start putting in insane amounts of time, you:
1.Have to figure out what style of play suits you the best (zoning, footsies, rushdown, combofiend, etc)
2.Have to figure out what character in the game best represents that style.
Only after you really figure out what you’re really about in the game will spending that time make a difference. And there are definitely certain things you can’t learn as well in Training mode (matchups) as you can by playing people.
It’s definitely a good idea to mix it up between training mode and playing folks, if not only for your sanity, but also because there are things to be learned in both modes. But doing some time in Training mode can help you not get blown up as easily in Vs. mode.
Actually he did say that playing online wouldnt help them (newbies) at all.
And that is a mistake. He says that online wont help till they know how to play the game. But training mode wont help them learn the game either.
Its obvious what is going on here:
Bad implementation of the english language.
Danny is saying that newbs need to learn the special moves and a combo or 2 before going online… And whether that is right or wrong, the wording used is ambiguous as he says “online wont help till you know how to play the game” so we can only assume that to him, knowing the game is knowing your specials, normals, and a super simple bnb.
But… You’ll still get bodied hardcore even with that knowledge.
Which is why people are rightfully saying that this advice is dubious.
The “best” way to get better at any modern fighting game is to tackle the problem of getting better from as many angles as possible:
Training mode
Online play
Arcade mode play for combo and hitconfirm practice against a moving opponent that isnt human
Frame data
Forum setups from others that actually work people
Learn your own home brewed setups
Play, play,play,play,play and play some more.
There is no “best” way or right way to go about getting better in this day and age. Some people will take to training mode better than others whereas some will be at home learning bnbs and stuff in actual matches.
So yes, the advice is dubious because it takes away other viable options to learn and throws out a rigid system for newbies to adhere to… Which could be HIGHLY detrimental to said newbie especially if they arent the type to love the training mode grind.
I mean, newbs dont even know WHAT they should be practicing anyways so training mode isnt going to be very useful to them at first either.
They need to learn in an all around way or in one way that they acclimate well to. Which could be anything.
Throwing this in here as well: I really reccomend having a sparring partner when learning a FG. You can learn about a game in an hour of casual play than you would messing around in training mode for 3 hours. I’m not diminishing the value of training mode at all, but there’s certain elements of a real match that training mode just won’t teach you. Once you see what your character is capable of using only simple bnbs you start to get a feel for what setups/combos you can practice later on in your spare time.
It’s a roboter combo game. If you cant do 60 sec combos you are done. You are forced to learn this shit in the training mode first. In the good games like SF2 you can just pick it up and play online.
I barely know a good 30% combo (2v2 so it isn’t really even 30%) off of a clean jump in and do quite well, if you’re ignorant to both how the game is changing and how it is in its current form you shouldn’t speak.
I don’t disagree with the “advice” in the OP, but I don’t think it’s very substantive. You don’t mention anything about how a new player should spend their time in training mode, you just say “perfect your character” and “spend 2-3 hours a day learning all the characters”. This doesn’t really say anything. Anybody with as much experience as you have should know, how you spend your time is more important than how much time you spend.
What would have been more helpful is to post some links to many of the helpful resources which already exist on this subject, or post your own routine for learning a new game, or some kind of training schedule that you use to keep your skills sharp. Even though this was intended to be a brief, “testing the waters” type of post, I think you could have put more effort into it. You literally spend more time introducing yourself and bragging about your achievements than giving any meaningful advice.
I feel this is just wrong.
Mind you I’m 32 years old and my first fighting game ever was International Karate for the C64 followed by Street Fighter 2: World Warrior on the SNES a couple of years later.
The combo system is in fighting games since SF2 even if it was originally a bug, it added a further layer of depth to the game.
While you might argue that it distracts from the core game play, you can’t deny that it’s incredibly amazing to watch people pull that crazy shit off regularly and it’s very rewarding to perform it yourself.
It doesn’t shift away the focus of fighting games away from spacing, reading and mixing your own play up, it just adds another game inside the game that makes it harder to perform the game mechanically.
Knowing how hard it is to pull off all this shit makes it so much fun for me to watch people like Daigo, Justin etc. go at it and gives me a great sense of accomplishment and pride when I learn to pull hard combos off, myself.
I’m probably in the minority here when I say that I feel that SF4 is one of the best fighting game made until this day, but that’s how I honestly feel. The depth is amazing and the balance between characters is pretty damn good considering how many of them are in the game (Haven’t played a fighting game since Tekken 3 so take it with a grain of salt).
I’ll definitely give Skullgirls a shot as well since the game seems to be beautifully designed, offers great depth and has very diverse characters.
It’s not amazing when it’s done regularly. It’s only amazing when it’s rare. Doom swag combos were hype last year when only Marlinpie could do them. Now they’re just boring. Even the Doom-finite is approaching yawn-worthy status. I remember when CVS2 roll-cancels were “too hard to do in real matches”. Now everybody does them, and it’s not impressive at all. Improving execution is not so much “difficult” as it is “tedious”. Just do it over and over until you get good at doing it over and over.
I also don’t agree that it doesn’t shift away the focus of fighting games away from spacing, reading and mixing your own play up. This thread’s advice makes it clear that the execution requirements of the game present a roadblock to learning anything else. You need to learn how to “control your character” before you can begin to learn how to “play the game”. There’s always a cost. Maybe the cost is worth paying, but we can’t ignore it’s there.
U can give Skullgirls a shot now, if you pre order you get to play the beta. I only realized this today, and bought it. Did some tutorials and hopped online.
Jeez. This thread sure blew up quick.
Here is my input on it. This topic seems all the more relevant to me after playing a bunch of lobby games versus people my own level.
There’s just got to be a balance between Training mode and Online play. There are specific things that you improve on well in Training mode and specific things you can only improve versus a human opponent. Today I played a Peacock/Parasoul for just about a dozen games. I only won 2 of them initially, through adaptation and just me dropping the ball I lost the rest of my games. Each game was relatively close, only the last one was one sided when I realized my tilt was starting to sink in. Basically what happened was I just kept dropping my combo over and over. I was slowly adapting to my opponents playstyle, switching it up with mix-ups, throws, and blocking more but I just couldn’t get a good solid combo on the guy. Like literally I could have won most of those games if I didn’t drop my combo midway through.
So here comes the question. Would I benefit from completely mastering my bnb in training mode where I can solely focus on it like a robot or should I grind out games under pressure and learn to do it as I play? On one hand I’ll learn how to bang out a combo without effort, on the other I’ll learn to do it while I learn to read and adapt to my opponent.
From my experience playing other games (SC2, DotA2) just hammering out your mechanics will help, no matter what. Spending a few hours with a computer is so minuscule per the 100 - 300 games I would play with real people but it was so much more helpful in doing so. Overall I think we agree that the one thing we want to avoid most is spending hours upon hours playing a game unproductively. You can’t really spend Training mode time needlessly unless you’re doing something very dumb and repetitively to the point of it being pointless. Now compare this to someone who only plays online. No one’s perfect. We’ll get tilted after some awful losses and then begin to play like an idiot because your hormones are clouding your mind. If you don’t take a breather then that’s just time wasted, you don’t get better when you’re in blind anger. This breather could be just watching some youtube vids, or Training mode.
Now compare yourself to where you are now and where you were when you first started. You spent 50 hours playing online to get where you are, this is with little to no training mode. Do you think you can get the same level in less time with 10 hours invested in training mode? Let’s say with 10 hours in Training you reached your level in 35 hours instead. 10 + 35 = 45, which saves 5 hours of your time. This will continue to work at a certain rate depending on how talented you are. In the long run after 1000 hours spent playing this game, maybe you could have shaved off 100 hours, or even more. Now that would be quite significant.
This is the philosophy I go by when I start new games to play semi-competitively. Time is very valuable to everyone and it will continue to get more valuable as we get older. When I see someone who has played the same amount of time in a game as I have, but is significantly better, I ask why? If I can answer that question then I’ll act on it for myself, that way when I see someone else who has played the same amount of time as I have play significantly worse I can be glad that I saved time.