I just made the switch about a month ago, bought the madcatz TES+. I feel as tho my defense has suffered horribly. I didn’t expect to become a better player, but I also didn’t expect my game to drop off as bad as it has.
I want to know how long it took people to finally feel confident with the stick after switching from a dual shock or a pad.
It’s going to be different for everyone. It also has a lot to do with how comfortable you are in a game in general. Discipline with the stick is something that can take a very long time, though. You can always optimize movements, afterall.
1 month
About 2 or 3 months of constant play and practice
I don’t know if it’s because I am a slow learner or I just don’t “get things” but it took me 2 months to be able to even win against human opponents and then another month to stop dropping combos altogether.
I also recommend playing every day, even if you only have enough time to play for only 10-20 minutes. Your skill will improve gradually each time you play. Spend a lot of time in training mode practicing inputs and just do not give up. You will get it eventually.
Learning a fight stick is like anything else you practice. One day you pick it up and you’re just better at it. When I first was learning my fight stick I couldn’t combo into super going from left to right, now I can do it every time without fail. It’s amazing. Just keep at it, trust me it’s well worth it. The more you get into it you’ll start looking into modding and maybe using Seimtisu or Hori Hayabusa Joysticks (Assuming you have a Sanwa initially). It’s a lot of fun modding your joystick and finding what suits you best. For example I love the Hori Hayabusa for SF and most other fighting games, but for KOF 14 I prefer the Seimitsu LS-32 as I don’t drop inputs with that stick in that game alone. Crazy right?
I’m having the same problem with left to right, I like to do chun li h kick cross up into ca. I can get it flawlessly going right to left but never left to right.
I think a lot of my issues is re training my brain. I went back and watched some of my replays pre stick and there are a lot of combos I’m just not going for and I’ve become predictable because I’m not using my entire arsenal. I guess with time the muscle memory will get back to where it was.
I made the switch to an Arcade Stick about 1 month ago. I’m slowly getting to the same execution level as I was with pad.
Let me ask you something: How long have you been using gamepads? Assuming you are from my generation, you probably used them since your early childhood.
Now imagine switching from something you’ve been doing for decades, to something you are unfamiliar with. You’re going to need time to adjust.
When I picked up my stick, I couldn’t even get a hadouken out consistently (to be fair, I still mess that up. More practice required).
If you keep trying, you’ll get good eventually.
As James Chen said recently, as long as you know you would have won if you hadn’t made an execution error, you’re okay. No need to get frustrated.
Do you think any of the pro players who use a stick would place as well if they played with pad all over sudden? Nope.
Just some food for thought. Keep at it, brother
I go back to world warrior in the arcade but most of my time was spent on consoles and there stock controllers.
Since posting this it’s starting to click. I went from 3998 down to super bronze, I’ve since gained a thousand points in the last couple days. The muscle memory is getting there
I can only confirm what everyone else has said, takes a few months of consistent practise. Some people take longer to get accustomed to a stick than others. It’s taken me a lot longer than i expected. I really had concentrate on what inputs I was doing wrong and really focus on that mind, muscle connection. Once I got the motions correct and could execute the input 90% I would just rep that bitch out everyday until I didn’t need to think about it anymore.
Going from pad to keyboard was pretty smooth for me. Then I went from keyboard to arcade stick, and that transition took months. It was hard, but I don’t regret it.
I started out learning on pad with consoles. Took a looong time to get good with that. Then when I started playing at arcades took about a solid month to develop execution with it. Surprisingly after years of play on the arcade I had a rough time trying out a fightstick for the first time. Basically I was used to the controls being solidly rooted in a cab and having it on my lap gave me the heebie-jeebies. Took about two weeks to really get really comfortable with it. Now fightstick is my weapon of choice, but there are still random things like instant air divekick that I can only do consistently on pad.
It took me about two weeks to become roughly as proficient with stick as I was with pad.
Which is to say, I was still really bad at stick. This was quite early in my FG-career, and my execution was still terrible at the time.
For me, it took about a month to learn to pull of combos at the same level of skill that I could do on a pad. I had to experiment with using different grips, and linking CA’s from a DP was hard.
Using a stick helped me stop mashing and helped me develop good timing, because I’d punch in the attack buttons. But honestly, I prefer the dual shock in the end. Takes less effort to pull of moves, dashing is easier, and I’m just generally more comfortable on a pad.
Stick also helped me learn the mechanics of charge characters. They do feel more gratifying to use than a pad, but I’ll always use a pad instead. It’s what I started off on.
I guess it’s good to use both, because you’d learn certain techniques and get a different approach on how to play the game, then if you want you can apply it to the pad.
Everyone picks it up differently, you’ve just got to keep at it. Think about when you first started playing on a pad, how long did that take you to get to where you are now, where you wanna be with the stick? Probably will take a little longer.
i dunno if this will work for everyone but i learned to play on a stick by learning to play a new game. Years ago I played SF on pad and got Tekken 5 with the T5 anniversary stick. I learned to play T5 with that stick and then went back to 3rd strike with a stick and it was a smooth transition