Of course, one learns the most by simply PLAYING - but throughout the world of sports, people train - they do X reps of this, X reps of that, spend their time practicing fundamentals, strategies, etc.
Has anyone tried to systematically come up with the best way to do such things for fighting games? I haven’t seen such a thing so far, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist…if one were training to become good, what routine(s) would you suggest? playing top players often is one thing, but there has to be more to it than that, otherwise we wouldn’t have practice modes.
i really dont think theres a routine for this kinda thing.
if your game has a good training mode like guilty gear you just go there and set up the situation you want to practice whether it be combos, reaction time, gtfo of blockstrings, etc. and just keep doing whatever it is youre trying to do over and over until you dont feel like its a problem anymore.
i guess you could say read frame data, watch videos for strategies or whatever to get better but i think if you want to get better at something (and the game is fun) youre going to be educating yourself anyways (because of interest) and youll naturally pick up on stuff.
so i dont think theres anything like 3 sets of 10 short short super on each side, then 3 sets of 10 jump airdashy happy cancel combos
although i guess you could make up a routine if you want. sometimes its more fun to practice if everything is all structured and you have some sort of numerical goal
Second to playing top players is know what you’re playing: know your character inside and out, as well as much as possible about the opponent’s character. That’s what practice mode is for :tup:
I always hear from the local MvC2 high level comp that I have the basics down, but I make mistakes with advanced techs, and it’s true; I haven’t put enough effort into learning the finer points of the system/chars,and that’s what seperates scrubs from pros.
A great Geif can beat a scrubby ken most of the time in II Turbo, the same way my Cammy can beat lousy Claw players :lol:
I had problems with inconsistent execution the whole time I was playing, but this is something that really helped me: whatever you’re having trouble with, practice it until you can do it three times in a row. Don’t move on until you have, and be sure to come back to it later in training (in other words practice everything twice). It sounds easier than it is, and you don’t want to overpractice and force yourself to do stuff 10 times in a row until 3, 5, etc are no problem for you.
What I do is this: try to do something as many times in a row as possible without messing up, as fast as possible. Count. Your goal is to beat your previous record of however many in a row.
When that becomes trivial, mix it up. Say you can do a shoryu every time, now do a shoryu - then a super, repeat. can you do it without messing up 40 times in a row? if so then make the pattern more complicated even if it’s not something as immediately practical in a real game it’s a mechanical puzzle and it’ll help your dexterity.
i repeat something till i get it right then i practice other things while im ‘taking a break’ from whatever it was i started with then i go back and do them over again but this time i run them into strings so everything works together wheter it be combo mixups and resets etc.
by doing this not only does it make my execution better and faster i can see holes/opportunities in certain tactics. it gets very repetitive i know but if you trying to get better its what works.
You shouldn’t have to “train”. If you like a game, you play it often. As you play, you master the mechanics. If you are just playing games you have no interest in, and actually have to force yourself to play them so you get good in them for tournament purposes…that’s just sad. You play a game for the love of said game.
Many people can benefit from practice regimens. There are obviously some aspects of fighting games that cannot be ‘practiced’, only learned through playing ‘real’ competition. But there are some things can be practiced, with a little creativity.
Take Super Turbo for example. Want to practice safe the timing on your safe jumps? You could go play real opponents and everytime you score a knock down, practice timing a safe jump. Or you could go into training mode, set the CPU action to jump, knock him down, then jump at him as he is waking up. If your attack whiffs, you jumped early. If the CPU is off the ground even a little when your attack hits, you jumped late. If he it still on the ground when your attack lands, you got it.
In the above example, which way will teach you safe jump timing faster, playing real opponents, or practicing in training mode. For most people, the answer is training mode.
Of course, getting your jumps timed right in training mode does not guarantee the ability to do it under pressure, so eventually you will have to graduate to real opponents.
well, i do love the game - or else i wouldn’t be here. my point is, though - you can bet if a fighting game ever moved to the level of truly massive competition - say, we woke up tomorrow and it was an olympic sport, sponsored by governments, etc, with coaching programs and the like, you can bet the top players would do more than just ‘play’ the game. there’s a whole other dimension to competitive sport, everything from the introduction of sport psychology training to repetitive practice of the fundamentals.
or, instead of using the olympic model, let’s use the model of professional board game play - specifically, i’m thinking of the game go (aka baduk/wei-qi.) this game is very very popular in asia, and has a high level of competitive play where lots and lots of players start training around the age of 5 or 6 years old and by the time they’re older, maybe 18 or so, maybe a handful of players each year can make it to the level of ‘professional’ - again there’s an emphasis on repetition of fundamental principles, an understanding of sport psychology, and years and years of dedicated study just to become a pro - and the vast majority of those who study never make it.
of course both olympic sports and board games, just like fighting games can be played for fun, and they can be played competitively at high levels. but my question is still out there - if tomorrow we woke up and SF had an entirely different level of competitive organization than it does now and much larger player base of competitive players than we saw in the early 90s even, what sorts of changes might we expect to see in competitive play?
and what sorts of changes can players seeking to be the best make NOW in order to improve the level of competition out there? most of us can’t afford professional sport psychologists, so i’m assuming that most of this would be in both increasing the caliber of opponents and also a lot of time spent in training mode, which lead me to creating this thread in the first place.
On one of the SF podcasts Justin Wong talked about setting opponents to random block in 3s training mode and practicing hit-confirming cr.MK xx Super to improve his reaction time.
But yeah, I think just playing a lot and trying stuff is what helps the most.
LunaSLave, IF we went there the full way, here’s a purely speculative rundown of “the pro fighting game scene of Super Turbo”:
Regular age of strating to train: 6-7
First test at the age of 10: display a flawless 100 repititions of the 20 “test subject moves” in super turbo. Also, a few special slots for people with just good skills but an exeptional understanding of the game for their age.
Second test, age of 13: combo test, again with the reserved special slots
Final test for the license: Basically a huge tournament where the best can earn a license, with a redemption tournament giving out a handfull of licenses to “high potentials” that didn’t make it.
Then you would have stables, basically the pro-sponsors’ house teams. Also, probably for multiple games, the ones which are currently officially broadcast.
Also, take a comparative look at Pro-Starcraft, which sorta handles the things like that. Or actually, even more professionally:
An introduction to Pro-Starcraft part 1,2&3 of 3
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first i work my biceps by doing 500 hadoukens, then my wrist muscles by doing 500 dps. i then move on to the pectoral muscles, by mashing out of hypergrav > tempest 500 reps
i start off every day eating raw eggs and i powerlift 30 pound weights with my joystick fingers and then i hit SRK up to check out the latest info on all the games I play (i currently play about 14 fighting games and excel in each and every one)
then i play training mode while watching videos of the best japanese players like Daigo then i burn some incense beneath my statue of justin wong and pray that my skills are enough to eventually ascend to fighting game godhood
incidentally, earlier in the thread, i mentioned go (known as baduk in korea) and pro starcraft actually competes a lot with baduk for attention in korea as a professional strategy game. baduk has the older generation, but starcraft the younger, so much so that both are televised frequently ( don’t know about pro starcraft but there are actually two korean tv channels, one satellite one basic, dedicated to baduk play)
wouldn’t it be awesome to someday take a fighting game, or games, to that level?
