So listen, I know that this entire section of the forum is pretty much filled with fighting noobs saying how do I get better and yes I have read all of them. I have noticed two things in those posts as well it’s full of people saying you get better by practicing and then others saying learn the combos. Well thank you but to someone who is new at this genre those words are utterly useless. I’m not certain what you want us to do, sit in training mode and try and figure something out? I know that any time I try to look up a combo I can’t figure anything out on how to read the damn thing. Sure M M H S is easy enough to read but no one ever teaches you how to cancel and what xx means in a combo notation. I just need someone to explain this to me because I cannot get a freaking combo to work for me and If I play a game against a computer or a human I just end up running into them and I can barely get a hit because all i can do is button mash and pray to God that one hit connects. Also to those of you who will undoubtedly say that I just need to practice more in this post. Thank you. Thank you for nothing
2 Things
- Tell people what game you are talking about, I’m assuming its marvel due to the MMHS but you could say upfront which game you are looking for help with .
- The first thing I can tell you about getting help is to be mindful of the way you ask for help. You just asked a question in a pretty heavy handed way, especially considering that the answer to your question can be answered in by reading a sticky thread in this section that literally has the words “(read me!)” in the title. If this were an older version of SRK or not the Newbie dojo you’d get flamed to death for not being able to read. What you did wasn’t asking for help, it was asking to get flamed. Anyway, if you want an answer read the sticky thread that was made sticky for that purpose.
What’s fucking amazing is that today there are more access to fighting game information than back in day…and noobs still whine that it’s not enough.
Read the stickies…there are up there for a reason.
When I was getting into fighting games I didn’t have Facebook, apps, YouTube, forums, FAQ, Newsgroups. All I had was a friend with a car and a local arcade…and some other gamers to swap knowledge.
- Yeah it’s Marvel
- I apologize for the way I asked because I honestly have been trying to learn what to do and it is frustrating to say the least. The material is difficult to read and I thought most of the stickies were related to Street Fighter. I will revisit them though
pretty much all of the questions you asked are directly addressed in the sticky posts
lol how could your hand be held any more, especially on THIS SITE
http://forums.shoryuken.com/categories/ultimate-marvel-vs-capcom-3
At least 12 stickied threads about the game in that section…and 1/2 of them are quite helpful.
If you ignore his heavy-handedness, though, is it possible that there is a point buried in there? Let me give an example that has nothing to do with this forum, so it’s perfectly clear I’m not calling any of you out. I watched the old Street Fighter II Player’s Guide video on YouTube; it was this really cheesy VHS of some kid with his cap turned backwards going around the Capcom office and giving advice about combos. It was delightfully corny and certainly amusing as a time capsule of how such things were back then, but in terms of instruction, it was way above my level.
They started out by defining terms and what each button’s basic attack is called, so I’m thinking it’s gonna progress gradually along such basic lines, but then they start right in with all kinds of combos. These combos certainly aren’t terribly complex by today’s standards, but as I’ve admitted in another thread, I can’t even do a Shoryuken when I need to, so how does it help me to know a combo that includes a Shoryuken? Where are the videos that help beginners execute the basic steps better, so they would be capable of performing the combos at all? I don’t know, maybe you can’t teach it; maybe it can only be learned through practice, but it’s also true that if someone is practicing wrong, then they’re not learning anything. So how about a corny old VHS tape showing people better, more efficacious ways to practice (which would’ve been especially helpful in the era before the games had training modes)?
I think I’m getting slightly off-track in my attempt to give an example that isn’t so close to home, so let me try to bring it back. When I read the original post, what I got from it was that some veterans are giving noobs advice that would only be helpful to someone who’s not really a noob. Obviously, someone like me who can’t even do a Shoryuken needs a lot of practice; I’m already doing that. Combos are good, but someone who’s such a noob might not understand when to use a combo or how to execute it properly. I think I’m generally pretty level-headed, and I hope I’m not indicating the same heavy-handedness as the OP, but in the interest of constructive criticism, I will say that my experience is similar to his in that some of the advice I’ve seen requires the player taking the advice to already be at a skill level far above where I’m currently at, personally. At what point does it stop being beginner advice and become intermediate?
Maybe it just makes me a wuss (wouldn’t be the first time), but I wish there were more advice, instruction, guides, hints, help or whatever for people that are still basically at square one, but do earnestly want to learn the right way, right from the beginning. Along the lines of [another thread](Some people will never be good at fighting games - true? here, I’m often concerned that I’m one of those people that will just never be good at fighting games, no matter how much I practice. When you’re still starting out, it’s hard to see any real sense of progress, because everyone’s so much better than you (even the AI opponents). Then you become panicky or frustrated, and that makes it hard to think about the combo someone said was a good bnb combo to use. The thing I wonder most as I play the game is how I can ever develop the ability to think on my feet, learn how to adapt to any given situation, etc. I’m only playing against AI for now, until I get better, but it seems like whatever difficulty level I put it on is either too easy (so it doesn’t help me learn to think on my feet because I can cream them without doing so), or too hard (so I get frazzled and reactionary and can’t think). Either way, you’re not developing much instinct.
In all the forums and hints and advice I’ve encountered, I’ve never seen anyone give advice to players at that level. Maybe I’m just putting my own words in his mouth, but that could’ve been what the OP was talking about. I’m certainly not suggesting some magical shortcut to skip all the long, tedious practice and skill-building. But when I think about the fact that it could take me years just to get good enough to beat the AI on a respectable difficulty level, that just doesn’t sound worth it. If there were a way to cut that down to months (even if it’s a lot of months), I, for one, would be very grateful. So, in reply to Geese Pants’ statement that “noobs still whine that it’s not enough,” the way I interpreted the original post wasn’t demanding more, but making the point that none of it is really dealing with a core issue that a lot of beginners have.
I know I’m brand new on the forum, and I’m not trying to get into the middle of some noob vs. vet flame war. Rather, I hope I might show perhaps the germ of applicable truth that was in the OP’s statement, but with what I hope is a more calm and even (if a tad long-winded) delivery.
If the execution sticky goes over your head, please point out where it could use clarification.
It’s not that it goes over my head so much as it’s beyond my skill level in some ways. For instance, under “Tips for Developing Execution,” step 2 is “Baby Steps.” That’s certainly a good start, but it doesn’t really explain what those baby steps might be. That’s what I’d find useful. Another example is step 6:
So what happens if you practice dragon punches until your thumbs are raw, but you can still only do two in a row (even though you’ve already gone through all the basics of “Diagnosing Execution Problems”)? If you’re practicing for long periods of time and seeing no noticeable improvement, it probably means that you’re practicing wrong. I’m not saying repetition is bad advice, but the only real benefit to repeating something over and over again is if you have some assurance that you’re practicing it the right way.
I understand and appreciate that it’s hard for people who can do a dragon punch to relate to people who are confounded by it, but there must be some intermediate step between “the button command is forward > down > down-forward > punch,” and “practice until you can do ten in a row.” I don’t know what that intermediate step is, but I feel like the people who do understand it (even if it’s only subconsciously, and they legitimately wouldn’t know how to quantify it) are the ones who got to an experienced level of skill in fighting games, as opposed to the people who eventually gave up because they saw no observable progress after long periods of faithful practice. Not that I’ve done this yet, but if I spent two hours a day just drilling Shoryukens, and at the end of a month still couldn’t do ten in a row, that execution sticky isn’t gonna help me. It may be that someone who did that really should just throw in the towel, or it may be that they’re just practicing the wrong way.
But anyway, that’s just an example. The fact that it tells you to do reps doesn’t make the execution sticky bad, it’s just an example of how some things it tells you aren’t really helpful unless you already know how to do them right. Or, another way of looking at it; if someone sees that and tries to do those reps, but doesn’t have the skill yet, so they get really frustrated, they might just give up. Assuming the goal here is to help people continue playing and do better (rather than separating the wheat from the chaff), that advice might be really helpful to someone who can do five in a row, and just needs a little more consistency, but for someone who can’t even do a couple, it is pretty high above their current skill level. In fact, if you look at the wording, it kinda seems to suggest that the hypothetical player it’s advising should already be able to do ten reps on the other side, they just need a little help on their weak side. That’s not really a beginner.
So, what I’m trying to say is that the execution sticky is not over my head in terms of cognitive understanding, but it is written in such a way that it would probably be of more benefit to someone who already has a decent amount of skill, than someone who’s truly a newbie.
I remember when I first came over to this site, I didn’t touch the stickies one bit. However, I did spend lots of time reading up the wiki on shoryuken and it definitely helped out a bit.
I can see where the newcomers are coming from, the info in shoryuken is a little convulted and very out of order. Finding say how to do the crumple combo with Nova/Spencer here would require at least 5 pages to go through in the Nova Forums if I went to the Nova Combo thread. I think order is necessary, especially in a place like this where all the info is really good.
On the other hand, I can see where the vets are coming from, there is a lot of information here, even some useless ones. Newcomers, a rule of thumb, look thoroughly before you ask a question, it may be in a thread or a vid.
OP, If you are having trouble reading combo notations, combo threads always have a legend at the top to tell you what is what. Even though you have heard this a thousand times, practice is the way to go. You can’t be Challenger level in LoL in 1 week, what makes you think you’ll be Daigo in 1 week. In the real world, practice is very vital.
There’s no “wrong way” to practice doing simple inputs. There’s no intermediate step. You just do them. The only additional advice anyone could offer is that you should turn on input display so you can see where you’re going wrong, but other than that, all of the steps are laid out for you. Do :f:, then :d:, then :df:+:lp:. Three steps. That’s all there is to it. You can try holding the stick/controller in different ways or whatever works for you, but nobody can teach you how to move your fingers. You’re looking for some hidden secret of execution that simply does not exist.
Have to agree on some posts here. If you dont have the self-dependence to search and find the informations you seek, you will never be a good player. Some people perhaps just never will be, perhaps its not your thing. That isnt bad.
Yeah, search the forum for the infos, look videos of good players and try to understand!! what and why they are doing it, and yeah, practice in training mode and against equal enemies. Again, practice.
- Honestly there is a gap however ever your problem seems to be something else, you are severely overthinking this basic execution thing it’s a lot easier than you think.
- About a year and a half ago I started writing a series of articles to address issues that I felt were in the gap of where people actually start and where the advice on forums usually, begin unfortunately I have been sidetracked several times and the plan was to wait until all of them were finished, but I am free next week so maybe I will start working on them again and just put them out one at a time.
- I have taught dozens of people the execution for a shoryuken, from grown men, to little girls, to my mom. I can get someone who has never played a SF game up to 3 in a row in under a half hour as long as they are willing to learn. If you are burning out at two i a row you are doing something very wrong with the execution of that move that goes down as far as you aren’t following the directions of the button inputs.
Heres the deal, If I showed you how to properly get through doing a shoryuken in an hour or two, you would begin to see why there is a gap, It still does help get rid of the gap, but you’d understand why it is there. No one that I show fighting games to has to deal with this because its literally the day one stuff; once you get to day 2 and especially day 5 people don’t even think about the problem that you are currently having. This is why there is a gap because if you learn it right you can knock basic execution out so fast that people just skip it and move on, assuming that people are willing to put in the same few hours on the beginning as you.
That might be all there is to it for you, but for someone else, the idea of going from forward to down without going neutral or down-forward can be very mystifying. Just because something like that isn’t a problem for you doesn’t mean it isn’t for anyone else.
You can have all the self-dependence to search in the world, but if the information you seek simply doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter. Quite a bit of information for beginners is out there now (and I did find some good stuff before I finally felt like I had to post a question to which I couldn’t find any answers), but there’s quite a bit more that still isn’t. It doesn’t make a person lazy or dependent if they can’t find information that isn’t there.
So how about advice for players who over-think things? That’s kind of a joke, yes, but it is something that I’m aware of as a problem with my gameplay, but have no idea how to fix (despite any amount of practice in this and other game genres). I can’t be the only beginner who has that problem.
I’d love to see those.
Two was really just a hypothetical example. I can do more than two in a row some of the time; the problem I have is that when end up missing, I don’t feel like I did anything differently than when it was working. But lest this just become about how to do a Shoryuken properly (I already started a thread for that), let me remind myself that’s just an example of one thing that most of the articles or advice here assume people (even beginners) already have some mastery of.
First of all I would like to apologize for the heavy handedness of my OP. I was playing UMvC3 last night and it came to a point where I was getting blocked at every attack and I could not land a hit and it was frustrating. The reason it was frustrating was because I had no idea how to remedy this situation.
So let me try to put into better words what I was feeling and maybe some of you can relate (Rookiebatman (posted above) was pretty close but not exactly what I was going for.) Aside from my practicing UMvC3 I also play a video game i’m sure most of you have heard of called League of Legends (LoL). Now when I started league I was bad and obviously through playing I got better but that mindless playing and hope for a good result only takes you so far. In the ranked matchups of the game there are divisions, Bronze (loewest) silver, gold, platinum, Diamond (highest) now if you want to get pushed up from one division to the other you need to practice (just like in Marvel.) Now the difference is that I can look at the statistics of my game or re-watch my game and immediately tell you what I need to improve on because It is very straight forward. If my farm is too low then I need to practice my early game farming (farming is the process of killing minions in lane for money.) It may not be the best analogy but the point is that when I screw up and play bad, I feel like there is still hope because I know what to practice.
If I get smashed in UMvC3 it’s much more frustrating because coming from the RTS gaming community over to the fighting there is a lot less description on what is needed to happen to move forward as a fighter. Yes there are tons of sticky threads but i’m used to build orders of what to make not the (what i view as vagueness of) just take baby steps or try this BnB (with what I view as a confusing notation.)
So again I apologize and I thank all of you who were more towards the understanding side of my post. I was playing last night and I raged, I raged hard. And that kind of raging post has no business on a nice forum like this.
So basically I’m more used to a genre that is alot more spelled out in terms of basics this is all new to me and I think we can all agree that the fighting genre is not the most noob friendly. I like to feel that I am moving in the right direction, if I’m losing I dont’ care I just want to know that I’m being productive and my hours are being well spent.
P.S. I still have no idea how to cancel something or when I am doing that even after reading the stickies. This was the best I found,
"Cancel Combos
-
Firstly, all of the advice above applies. If your special is not coming out, you may not be executing it correctly.
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Not canceling fast enough. If you wait too long, the special will either not combo or not come out at all (depending on the character, combo, and distance). Some normals need to be canceled out of extremely fast."
There are two issues if you don’t think you are doing anything different when you miss one.
- You aren’t paying enough attention to the ones you get right. Pay attention to every motion in the drill, you want to use the good ones to figure out the bad ones, you want to lock in the timing of the good motion in your brain and in your fingers so that the wrong ones feel wrong.
- You need to be able to identify what doing the incorrect motion in different ways looks like and use what is coming out instead of the move you want to identify what you are doing incorrectly. For example trying to do a shoryuken and getting a hadouken means that there is too much time between your forward and the down.
Didnt wanted to be rough either.
But when I read something like this “If I play a game against a computer or a human I just end up running into them and I can barely get a hit because all i can do is button mash and pray to God that one hit connects”.
And your probably apparantly inability to find informations. I dont want to sound rough or insult you in any way. I think “competitive” gaming really is NOTHING for you. I dont know how to explain it, but most people can do all the motions at the age of 6 on day one with no problems back in the old Super Nintendo days and Street Fighter 2. Anyone I play, every friend who doesnt play figters at all, totally casuals arent mashing buttons and pray if they hit. They are THINKING!! trying to get into proper distance, jumping over fireballs, its interesting to see, how a person, that dont play fighters approaches these games, without ever having read anything about zoning or footsies. Perhaps I was at a MUUUUUUCHHH higher level directly at the beginning by knowing basic strategic elements or how to approach games through my warcraft 3 and starcraft days. I never ever had encountered problems you described. Dont know notations? Easy too google and really, selfexplaining. I started playing SF4 1,5 years ago, I think I knew that I can only cancel specials moves out of linked moves on day 1 ??
Seriously the people in this forum are very helpfull and most times friendly, it doesnt help to critique them by telling them they cant explain anything, I mean you couldnt even explain what game you play or which exactly your problem is.
Sorry but I have no acceptance for this attitude, its all here, all the informations you seek, just take some time and read through it, yes, it takes some hour and days, that is what I mean with attitude or how to approach a game, it takes time and self-employment, in a case its like studies if you want to be good.
Now see with all due respect, That’s where you’re wrong. I am a competitor and I love competition, it’s what I do and believe me I know I have a long way to go. But it’s not like i’m going to stop playing just because I’m having trouble. I intend to practice until I am better than alot of people (even you) and I will do that. Even if it takes me 10 years.
This thread should be closed it is not beneficial to anyone and most of the comments now are criticizing anything that was said earlier.
To the OP, perhaps the fighting game you chose is too complex for you to be learning how to play. UMvC3, while fun, has a ton of factors that will be overwhelming for newcomers to fighting games. If you don’t understand how to block properly (or you are one of those people that don’t even try to block/you mash lights) you are going to have a hard time blocking the opponents mixups.
My Advice: Buy Street Fighter 4 and relearn the basics, then come back to Marvel when you have.