I’ve been playing SSF4 for about 2 weeks now, logged in about 60 hours of gameplay, and have been trying to pick up Juri as a main. I managed to get her up to a C Rank online in a few days.
Then, I was invited to an endless battle with 2 other players. I didn’t win a single match in about 30 tries, and I practically watched them duke it out in better matches than the ones I were in.
It has me thinking “I haven’t learned anything from this, and now I’m back to Square One again.” It upsets me cause I worked hard on Juri, and just to get trounced 30 times is very demoralizing.
I’m trying to prepare for a tournament in a few weeks, but if I keep getting whipped like this, I’ll be a laughing stock at this tournament. What should I do?
I’m having a similar problem learning Makoto, but I seem to not have as much motivation as you. I really can’t stand losing, even online, so I’ve gone back to playing my main from vanilla. If you really want to get good with Juri you’ll just have to stick with her and keep learning, it’s pretty much the only option I guess.
Don’t get discouraged. Maybe you were fighting Daigo and Justin Wong. You never know how good the players you played against are. They could be really good. Anyway, if you don’t lose, you don’t learn. Take it as a learning experience, not a mental beat-down.
Check out the Juri section and try to see if you can pick up a few things from there.
IMO, one of the interesting things about her is that you pretty much have to tailor your playstyle to the opposing character to a greater degree than most. While she tends to excel at zoning and footsies, there are some matches where it’s better if she gets in and goes for some rushdown pressure while others where her best option is to play keep away.
How is he doing moves that you can’t? He’s using the same character. I don’t know what kind of background or fundamentals you have in SF; but if you can perform basic combos (see: trial mode) and can at least understand what’s going on while playing, then you aren’t complete ass.
Do you know how to anti air? Do you know how to block & tech throws? If your logic is just “I suck at everything and everything I do is wrong” you wont improve. Isolate the holes in your game and work to improve it.
I think it was Miyamoto Musashi who said, “It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.” Though I’m new to the fighting game scene, I can definitely say from competing in other types of games that being the laughing stock of a tournament is the absolute last thing your should worry yourself about. We all start somewhere and it takes time and practice to learn and grow. Don’t worry too much about your pride and just put your head down and work hard and you’ll be playing with the higher-ups soon enough.
When you run into problems, the three basic steps are:
Analyze what exactly your problem is.
Figure out what you must do to remedy the problem.
Take that plan and put it into action.
If you’re sticking to Juri, you might want to head over to the Juri sub-forum if you haven’t already and do some reading on what kind of gameplay you should be aiming for. From what I’ve seen, Juri definitely seems like a more offensive character with some limited zoning capabilities. Of course I don’t really play her much so higher level players could chime in here… Whatever the case, understanding the character you play will help you form a general outline as to how you typically want your games to go. Once you’ve got a general direction for yourself, it’s a matter of figuring out what you can do to pressure the game in that direction and to apply that pressure.
If you find yourself having difficulty responding to your opponent’s play, then you may get some help on reading up on the specific matchup you’re having an issue with. Other players may be able to provide you with some insight into how to deal with a lot of the matchup specific problems that you run into. This will help you better respond to your opponent next time.
The goal of any competitive game is to try to get your opponent to play the game YOU want rather than reacting to the game that he wants to play. So take the time to learn how to apply the kind of pressure necessary to keep yourself in an advantageous situation as much as possible. Above all this, of course, is PRACTICE. Winning games is great, but losing games is important because it allows us to see what we need to work on. Play lots of games and practice your execution as much as possible so that any limits you’re facing are mental limits rather than physical. I’m sure you’ll be kicking ass in no time. Good luck. ^^
All of your problems stem from not having a game plan. With out a game plan, you might as well just be arbitrarily pushing buttons. If you have no game plan, you have to reference point with which to understand how you’re going wrong.
Whenever you approach playing a character, you really need to know answers to these questions:
What are their strengths as a character?
What are their weaknesses?
What sort of play style most lends itself to maximizing their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses?
What tools does this character have–normals, specials, etc–to support this play style?
Does this character’s play style mesh well with your own as a player?
How does this character most effectively deal damage?
What sort of range should you want to be in? Does this change depending on the match up?
There are others to consider as well, but this is a lot of the meat of the matter. If you can’t provide answers to these, yes, you really are back at square one. Check out the d3v suggested, check out the Juri sub forum.
Also watch your videos from the endless battle. Because you have access to these videos after every fight. You can go back and check out why you lost and maybe analyze your tactics. Why tactic A lost to move B and why move D lost to tactic Y etc. Also make sure you learn basic fundamentals ie proper blocking, teching, spacing, pokes, AA’s and make sure your execution is up to par. If you can’t perform your BnB’s when a punish opportunity presents itself than your not using your character to their best.
Keep in mind online battles aren’t always the best gauge either. I usually spend a good 2 hours in training mode with all sorts of dummy settings getting stuff down and even when I lose in local play I feel like it’s my own execution, but as soon as I go online it’s weird situations all over the place. Dropped combos, cross-ups that plain whiff and dont’ even produce a block-stun, seemingly ridiculous throw distances (non-kara).
As far as your game-plan and whatnot, I find myself in situations where I don’t knowwhat I’m doing wrong, and can’t see any other options so I have no idea how to practice to correct it.
Also, Check out the replay channel for other Juri players who WIN. You’ll get to see some play styles that others find effective. At the very least you’ll realize that most of the other Juri players are beneath your level. Confidence boost!
As far as your statement about getting back to square one, while I can’t really add much in reference to this game, improving and continuously polishing your abilities at the basics is important. Peyton Manning is easily the best QB in the world and everyone knows he can put the ball anywhere he wants to, but that doesn’t stop him from throwing quick slant routes and screen passes in practice over, and over, and over. Could he do it in his sleep at this point? Probably, but he continuously does it so he can continue to do so.
You might actually have to realize that the person you’re playing has human intelligence, unlike you, and can see through simple patterns. OMG, other PEOPLE playing in multiplayer? Yea, i kno. It’s like the universe suddenly doesn’t revolve around you, rite? Good thing you realized NOW that you didn’t have a fucking clue, after wasting everyone’s time first getting to C rank.
Don’t know what you’re expecting, sport. From everything you said, the only real advice anyone can give you is “stop being a retard” and to spend the next 60 hours playing like you actually have functioning cognitive faculties. It’s that simple.
Don’t get too upset about losing. Everybody loses while they’re learning, and if you’re trying to learn a new character (particularly against people who are playing characters they already used in vanilla SF4, and who already have some fundamentals down)… well, what do you expect?
What isn’t going to be helpful is getting frustrated and trying to solve everything at once. When you’re asked what you were unprepared to deal with, the answer ‘everything’ is totally unhelpful both to us and to you. Concentrate on one piece at a time. Are people jumping in on you for free? Work on your anti-air. Are you being pulverized with wakeup pressure? Work on blocking. Are your pokes not landing, and you’re constantly getting counter-hit? You probably need a better sense of spacing. Are you constantly throwing out Fierces and Roundhouses and getting countered? Learn to jab. Etc.
Yeah, it’s a lot of work, and it’s up to you to decide whether you get enough fun out of the game to put in that time, but … well, FGs are competitive, and anything competitive is hard. Try to take your losses in stride, and if you run into something you don’t know how to beat, that’s good! Record it in training mode and try to find a way around. Once you do, you’ll have a more complete understanding of what your character can do.
60 hours is nothing, although it may seem like a lot.
Everyone loses, its how you learn.
All of the fights are recorded automatically in your log. Find the matches, watch them and try to see what you did wrong. I do that constantly when I lose, so much so that when I do something in a match that causes me to lose, I knew before I did it that I would lose, and I STILL do it! Heh…pretty dumb eh?
Improvement is based on practice. If you’re aim is to improve with Juri and watching Floe play her doesn’t translate well with you, then you’re likely either going to need to figure out what he did/how to play the character on a deeper level. Shes not a beginner character, you might need to start with someone simpler.
If you really want to get good with Juri you’ll just have to stick with her and keep learning, it’s pretty much the only option I guess.