So I’ve been playing USF4 on my arcade stick for about a whole month now. The thing that is annoying is not being able to do double qcf. I’m trying to do them but it’s not coming out correctly. On rare occasions(2-3 times), the double qcf move magically happens out of nowhere by complete luck. How do the pros even do this?! What should I do to execute this move correctly and consistently?
I could speculate that your problem is how you’re returning from the forward position of the first QCF to the down position of the second, but before we start giving advice it’d really help if you went into training mode, put input display on, and tell us what inputs you’re getting when you try to do a QCF. A screenshot or a description of the arrows that appear would let us know what you’re doing wrong.
What kind of gate does your stick have? If it’s square that might explain your issues. Square gate is better for charge characters because it’s so much easier to lock down on downback for charges. Octagonal gate is more efficient for rapid quarter circles because there isnt a very distinct corner for the stick to get caught in. You can do rapid quarter circles on a square just fine, however it takes a lot more conscious effort to dig it into the corner for the down forward and then bring it back up to forward. If you work at it you dont have to think about it as much.
Also yeah whether or not you pass back through neutral could be a problem. You could be taking the stick through neutral, but you might land on downback before you initiate the second quarter circle destroying the double qcf input and either reading a half circle or a single qcf.
I have a square gate on the stick. And you’re right, charge characters are better on square gate! Hell I can activate Chun Li Ultra 1 easily!
So I’m using Ken right now and my single qcf looks like this: "down, down forward, forward, P"
When try to do it twice it looks like this: “down, down forward, forward, back, P, downback, down, down forward, forward, P”. Ken would throw out hadouken and immediately his super is activated.
I hope this doesn’t confuse you
Octagonal gates typically have a bigger throw between neutral and the switches. You will learn how to do tight qcf motions, it just takes practice and an octagonal gate wont fix your problems. Just a heads up.
Most people play with a square gate and almost all cabinets use them.
If the above is the inputs you’re consistently getting when trying to do double qcf for supers and ultras, then the problem is simple: after the first qcf you are panicking and end up doing a hcf for the second motion instead, which is probably also a result of you panicking and instinctively trying to make up for accuracy by just doing stuff quickly. Also the fact that you’re doing fireball into super makes me think that you’re instinctively trying to cover up for mashing - apologies if I’m wrong here, but that’s what it looks like. Learn to pull off supers at will normally before learning how to do fireball xx super.
So how to fix it? Training mode.
Go into training mode and fire off a bunch of fireballs to start off with, focusing on clean inputs. I’m assuming that you can get fireballs out 100% of the time, otherwise that’s what you should be working on, not this.
After you’ve done that for a bit, walk the dummy into the corner and at point-blank range just throw ordinary fireballs at it, trying to do each one as quickly as possible after the last one disappears. If you find yourself messing up, slow down and slowly increase the speed again. Keep doing this until you’re confident that you can throw ordinary fireballs with the least delay between them that the game will allow without messing up.
Next, stay in training mode because you want to be able to see the inputs but what your character does isn’t what you need to be focusing on for this step. Practice slowly doing one qcf and then following up with another one. The idea here is to develop a nice steady rhythm, not to get the super/ultra to come out. Keep watching the input display to make sure you’re getting clean inputs - you want something that looks like down, down forward, forward, down, down forward, forward, punch with no other inputs in there. Then slowly speed it up until you are able to do it quick enough to get the super to come out. If you mess up, take a deep breath and start again from a point where you feel comfortable.
Ignore people talking about gates - the gate you’re using shouldn’t affect your execution of this. SO long as you’re not dragging the stick across the edge of the gate when doing your QCF motions you should be fine.
Thanks for the helpful advice. I’m pretty sure I am mashing the shit out of the buttons and panicking most of the time when doing it(I’m still getting used to this stick!). And I do realize that i’m riding the gate