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Then go play another game.
- Man up and pick 1 or 2 characters you really want to play.
- Watch videos of better players and do what they do.
- Study how the game system works. Do your research.
- Tekkenzaibatsu.com
Go play Smash Bros.
Well, the nuggets of truth are found right in your post.
> You can’t get into most of the characters.
Well, as long as you can get into at least two characters, you have a team that you can play the game with. They’ll likely be the only characters you’ll ever need, by the way.
> Haven’t played online in ages.
Getting down on losing at something you haven’t done in a while isn’t too smart, right? What this means is you have to keep at it. 2000 fights is still a lot, but Tekken is ALL about experience and time. Very difficult to shortcut this, no matter how benevolent your intentions are as a player.
> Not knowing what to practice has never helped.
> I perfer to learn by playing instead of practicing, which leads to losing.
> I don’t learn from losing.
So this is just another problem that kinda solves itself. You want to learn by playing, but because you don’t know much right now, you lose and you claim you don’t learn from losing. To be honest, I’d venture to say that you’d learn even less from winning! Since preference is the word you used to describe how you learn, I would say you should bite the bullet and find out what you need to practice in training mode regardless of how you feel about it. We have a FAQ thread here where you can ask questions, but believe me the “what to practice” question you’ll find answered in there several times over.
> Can’t create lengthy combos.
Technically, you don’t have to create combos for this game–it’s been done for you. All you have to do is emulate those attacks and incorporate those combos into your play until you’re good enough to make your own. Unless you mean you can’t perform combos, which just means you have yet another reason to hit training mode.
All in all, I’d say if you read this post out loud in a room by yourself, you’d see the circles going on in the logic here. I understand this game is frustrating, but if you’re getting frustrated, at least get frustrated because you’re doing the right things and not seeing results. If you’re making poor out-of-match decisions and getting frustrated, then you really only have yourself to blame. Fix your issues and then see if revisiting the game doesn’t put some things in a new light (assuredly, they will be in a new light). And maybe fighters aren’t for you. They’re certainly not for everyone. You should examine the situation from a position of strength though, instead of convincing yourself that they’re not for you despite not training for them properly at all. If you remedy these things and then decide they still aren’t for you, you can sleep well at night knowing that these games are indeed not for you without having overlooked the possibility that they could have been for you had you approached them differently.
- I have done this. I only play 2 characters and ocassionally do pick other sets of 2 to just jam with (often goes better than I thought it would)
- If someone could explain what’s going on in them, maybe I could. As it is if I see something cool, I’ll try and copy it or ask the player how they did it (learnt some new things that way) or we even end up sessioning in a training session
- You mean frame data, crushes etc.?
- …
Let me explain a bit more (I wrote the text in that original post on the back of a not so successful session)
**> You can’t get into most of the characters.
Well, as long as you can get into at least two characters, you have a team that you can play the game with. They’ll likely be the only characters you’ll ever need, by the way.**
I have. I have 2 mains that I almost always use and I’m a lot better with those two than any other characters.
**> Haven’t played online in ages.
Getting down on losing at something you haven’t done in a while isn’t too smart, right? What this means is you have to keep at it. 2000 fights is still a lot, but Tekken is ALL about experience and time. Very difficult to shortcut this, no matter how benevolent your intentions are as a player.**
True. I accept that having not played in a while that would happen, just rather disheartening
**> Not knowing what to practice has never helped.
> I perfer to learn by playing instead of practicing, which leads to losing.
> I don’t learn from losing.
So this is just another problem that kinda solves itself. You want to learn by playing, but because you don’t know much right now, you lose and you claim you don’t learn from losing. To be honest, I’d venture to say that you’d learn even less from winning! Since preference is the word you used to describe how you learn, I would say you should bite the bullet and find out what you need to practice in training mode regardless of how you feel about it. We have a FAQ thread here where you can ask questions, but believe me the “what to practice” question you’ll find answered in there several times over.**
I’ve been in practice mode with Hit Analysis on to try and learn buffering and button timing for chain throws (and I do know one now which is progress). I’ve also been through it with my mains just to at least learn some moves and some new tag assault combos which I now do use (which require a bit of tag combo play before binding). I never know what to do with the filler when it’s one of my mains. I did come up with a long combo to bind, but have never used it in actual fight context
My second point doesn’t even make any sense reading it back! I prefer to learn through playing online is what I wanted to say. However, doing it that way leads to more losing than I’d like. Don’t get me wrong I can and do win fights, sometimes convincingly so, other times it’s very closely fought and we’re going at it.
I guess the third one wouldn’t be entirely accurate. It feels like I don’t learn from losing would probably be more accurate, because I lose a lot. But if I am to face the same person in a short space of time online having lost the first time, I tend to win the second time round. So I guess I do learn, but not enough to get the win rate up.
**> Can’t create lengthy combos.
Technically, you don’t have to create combos for this game–it’s been done for you. All you have to do is emulate those attacks and incorporate those combos into your play until you’re good enough to make your own. Unless you mean you can’t perform combos, which just means you have yet another reason to hit training mode.
All in all, I’d say if you read this post out loud in a room by yourself, you’d see the circles going on in the logic here. I understand this game is frustrating, but if you’re getting frustrated, at least get frustrated because you’re doing the right things and not seeing results. If you’re making poor out-of-match decisions and getting frustrated, then you really only have yourself to blame. Fix your issues and then see if revisiting the game doesn’t put some things in a new light (assuredly, they will be in a new light). And maybe fighters aren’t for you. They’re certainly not for everyone. You should examine the situation from a position of strength though, instead of convincing yourself that they’re not for you despite not training for them properly at all. If you remedy these things and then decide they still aren’t for you, you can sleep well at night knowing that these games are indeed not for you without having overlooked the possibility that they could have been for you had you approached them differently**
I can do combos using the two of my characters together as my play revolves around binds (whether or not that’s good or bad). My solo play with one of my mains is a lot better than with the other, but I see people online do stuff I’d never even thought off which gives me that ‘I’d never thought of that’ moment and their combos look pretty good and are quite lengthy and damaging
I like Tekken, so I keep coming back. Just need to know what I have to do to get the win rate up 
Hey fighting games aren’t for everyone. And Tekken is one of the hardest fighting games out there. I started way back in BR and it took like almost a year before I could say I could beat people who weren’t flat out mashing.
I started with 3, owned Advance, played Tag Tournament quite regularly, came back with Tag 2 and lost the will to live
EDIT: Just lost a couple more fights. Reason: Unknown
you should find some friends to play offline with. playing solo online can get frustrating. its hard to learn matchups when youre fighting a different character with a different playstyle every round. not to mention the lag spikes. find some buddies, y’all can argue over meta/tech and talk shit. i have more fun talking shit than winning
Only one of my friends plays fighters and he’s Street Fighter mainly. I can destroy him at Tekken, but then he doesn’t play it so there’s why. He destroys me at Killer Instinct and I’m guessing Street Fighter as well as they’re built round the same system. Maybe my first assessment was right, I just suck and was never any good
Obviously the amount of time people need to invest into learning the game and their character can vary, but I don’t think 538 hours is really all that much.
Maybe if I uploaded some fight videos (if my capture card works) you guys could help me out, and we have a Fight Lab of sorts
Or maybe fighters are too hard for me. I’m going to play something else
Yeah maybe fighting games aren’t for you. It’s like telling a basketball player to become a swimmer. It can happen but just won’t happen over night. BTW just because you played the game for over 1 year doesn’t mean anything, look at the koreans for example. Some of them have been playing tekken for over 5 years and they are still learning new stuff every time they play. Also, there are plenty of resources out there to learn how to play tekken. And if you don’t know how to practice, then ask yourself do I know how the backdash, do I know to how side step correctly, do I know what moves jail and doesn’t jail. Etc. I can tell you from experience, even with working over 50 hours a week I spend about 30 mins each night before I go to bed working on movement, breaking grabs, and just studying up on characters I am struggling against.
Or maybe they are for you? The point I was making, is that you probably haven’t actually invested enough time to find out.
Don’t get me wrong though, if you get more pleasure out of other things, then you should do those things instead. But if you truly prefer fighters over all else, and you are just down in the dumps atm because you aren’t doing as well as you think you should be doing, you shouldn’t give up.
You said you don’t really know what to practice, perhaps you should look into your local community and see if any of them play Tekken. I had the same problem, I would read guides and watch tutorials, but none of it would sink in. Then I sought out my local community, and they painted a pretty clear picture of what I needed to work on. There’s nothing quite as helpful as getting your ass handed to you and having the person that did it right there to tell you exactly what you did wrong and what you need to work on the most. If you don’t have a local fgc, maybe someone on here will go online with you and do the same thing.
Real talk, if you’re straight up not enjoying the fighting games you are playing just stop. Theres no reason to force yourself to play a genre you don’t like. That being said just saying you suck and that you’re not good is some bull shit.
Going to these forums is a big step in the right direction.
-If you dont know what to practice, which is key to you becoming good, look up things to practice!!! Look up some of your characters combos and grind them out until you can hit them consistently in training mode, then to where you can hit them in game, and then once you have those start on a new more complicated combo. If you get frustrated with the game go to training mode or just turn the system off.
-Watch videos of people better than you playing your characters, the internet is ridiculously full of matchvids. Find out what match ups bother you and focus on what you need to do with your characters to overcome these matchups.Look things up on forums to.
-Be mindful as you are playing. Take note of where you are uncomfortable in matches and where you thrive, and when an opponent hits you take note of why/how he did. You dont even have to immediately correct what got you damaged, just know why you are losing life. Knowledge is seriously power in this regard, once you know where something is coming from you can attempt to figure out how to stop it, this process is part of what makes fighting games so exhilarating.
All this self defeating talk you are giving to yourself is not going to get you anywhere. One of the most important things to do in a fighting game is to INVEST IN LOSS!! You sound frustrated and defeated, which is not where anyone should be. Understand that literally everyone that has ever played a fighting game has been in your position. Ive lost more than quintuple the games youve played total, and there are people who have lost much more than i have. Losing can be very frustrating but it should ultimately being a profitable experience, overcoming a self-defeating attitude is key to getting better and more importantly key for enjoying the game. If you really are not enjoying yourself than don’t worry about it, you wouldn’t be missing out on life by not playing fighting games. This being said if it is something you genuinely want to pursue and you just feel like “you can’t” just know that you absolutely can.
Just being realistic from what I’ve observed
EDIT: nvm
EDIT: @Fizzywoemac
Frustrated, yes. Game is very frustrating. Defeated, kind of.
But on the positive side, if I go solo Mokujin or solo Bob I do surprisingly well.
There’s a bit of random button pushing with Mokujin because I don’t know everyone yet, but it’s sort of structured, because I know I want to go high, low, when to go etc, but if he’s someone I’ve vaguely familiar with then I sort of know what I’m doing.