I?m hoping some experienced players can share some acquired wisdom with me. I recently got back into fighting games since I picked up SSF4 for console having not really played fighting games for about a decade and a half since SF2 and Mortal Kombat! So obviously I?m quite old compared to the average hardcore gamer, which (unfortunately ;-)) means I have to balance fulltime work & household duties with my gaming passion. This means it just isn?t possible for me to spend many hours a day in training mode or at the arcades and I have to make the most of whatever free time I can get on weeknights after work and the weekends when it comes to Streetfighter.
The main reason I?m into the game is I love the competitive aspect and want to level up and compete against good players but I?ve recently come to a point where I?m a tiny bit disheartened due to these factors:
My main source of competition has been online and there are plenty of players that are better than me but I find the lag often kills my ability to execute moves and ruins the game experience. I?m trying to learn Rufus as my main and online with him can be pretty frustrating and horrible as his rushdown play style is badly affected by lag.
I recently bit the bullet and attended some offline events in my local scene but the skill level of the players at these far exceeds my own. Getting perfected in a mirror match in front of 40 odd people is a pretty brutal experience (happened to me last night at the arcade!) that almost makes you re-evaluate what you are doing playing at all.
So I?ve been thinking about what I should do from here. Obviously spending hours at the arcade just to play 2 games and get completely bodied in every round makes me want to stay in the comfort of my lounge but then I?m stuck with online. So I was thinking I obviously I need to generally level up my game a lot if I want to compete offline. So maybe I should go back to console and just hit up training mode, try to really nail my execution, until I can beat up the CPU using the things I?ve been practicing and when I?m at this level maybe try offline again? Or should I just swallow my pride, keep turning up to the offline events and hope some of the better players skill might rub off through osmosis and by watching them play?
what did you do wrong in the mirror match where you got perfected? What could you have done different to change the outcome? Do you watch your replays & see where you could’ve block/countered/punished?
I guess if Im going to stick with trying to compete offline my question is should I first go away and spend quite a bit of time trying to improve my game in training mode and vs cpu and then come back when my overall game is less scrub like, or despite the current gap is getting thrashed by better players a faster route to levelling up?
Don’t practice against the CPU, it’ll give you bad habits. Use training mode if you’re not comfortable or satisfied with your execution or to test things out.
Just play offline. The more you lose the easier it is to improve; well, for me it is. I can remember why I lost and fix that but I can’t remember why I win so I don’t know what to work on and become lazy. Playing around others will make you want to try harder since there’re people watching. You’ll be more likely to practice since you’ll feel the need to take down the people you meet. It’s also tons more fun and fulfilling than just grinding it out online/CPU/training mode.
You know, there are probably players just as bad as you that you can have casuals with offline. Unfortunately a lot of the newer players have your mindset and they come in and get annihilated once, feel embarrassed, and then leave. So, the scene looks as if it’s made up of all decent to good players, that’s false. I’ve perfected, nearly double perfected players who were clearly very new to the game and did I judge them negatively? No, because for one it’s just a fucking video game hobby and I was that bad too at some point. Also, I always, always help them out when they come to the other side of the cabinet with questions. Now, some of the more oldschool players can be douchebags to the new players, we have a few of those here in Austin, but there’s a lot of really nice people who don’t judge and are willing to help if you just ask. Stick around and I guarentee you’ll level up fast and meet some players around your skill level at some point.
Develop your ground game a bit more. Part of what makes Akuma so strong is that he has so many ways to get a knockdown whether it’s an untechable knockdown or not. Then as soon as Akuma starts his vortex, a lot of life can be lost. Recall from the footsies guide that every time you leave the ground, you relinquish control from your character. This is true for all characters, but less so for Akuma. He can alter his jump path ever so slightly by either throwing zankus early or dive kicking. That alone is hard to pick an anti air against because you just don’t want to whiff. Also don’t forget about Demon flip shenanigans. For what it’s worth developing your ground game is key, then your air to ground gets that much easier. Your opponents will oftentimes refuse to AA or even block out of fear.
Forget about training against the CPU. Play offline, get beaten, then ask some of the players what your biggest problems are and some advice then work on that. Sharing knowledge and getting advice from better players is one of the best parts of offline sessions. Execution is obviously something you can always work on in training mode, but the real test is whether or not you can pull the stuff off in a match.
Generally all the atrociously bad players that come to the arcade I play at will play once and stop. There were a few that just kept playing (like five times a week too) and even though they lost pretty much every match against the people who knew what they were doing, they improved drastically in a few months. Like this one dude who can’t even land his bread and butter with any character he uses will almost never jump in on you no matter how hard you goad him and his footsies are really strong. At this point all he has to do is get down his combos (way easier than learning the ground game and footsies like he has) and he’ll be able to compete with most of us.
When you play offline, even if you’re horrendously bad, you’re playing with people in person so they will be happy to have you there making their scene bigger and they know that if you keep playing you’ll be good soon enough. This is better than playing online where if you’re bad people will just get annoyed and kill you as fast as they can so they can play against someone good.
Keep playing at your local scene arcade or events frequently.
Playing Online - you get beat alot, get taunted get called noob then the learning process becomes demoralizing.
Playing Offline - you get beat alot, however someone will soon take consideration of skill level and give you tips help you progress. People will watch and critic you telling what you should do and what not to do/ the in’s and out’s. Also how to excel your mindgames.
Really keep playing local and you’ll learn. Nobody is gonna sit there and watch you continuously get bodied. The’ll soon give in, see you really want to learn and become apart of the scene and help. You cant get that type of respect on online gameplay.
Yea, he’s a quirky dude, who can be a jerk to people he beats. I remember early on one the first times I went to UFO I got lucky with Abel and ended up beating him like 3-2 (later in the night ended up winning like 35 straight on me and viet) and then I stopped playing came back and he stared at me for like 15 seconds when I sat in the cabinet next to him. I practically felt the heat of the lazer beams coming from his eyes.
Nyarlathotep doesn’t lose, he’s the messenger for the Great Outer Gods! He simply allows others to win only to make the eventual soul crushing defeats even more demoralizing.
Play offline as often as you can, but when you can’t go play online. Offline I find helps me improve faster since I get more feedback and tend to play longer. When I’m online I’ve got no connection to the other players, so I’m less likely to stick around for a lot of fights.
When someone first comes to Fight Club, their a** is a wad of cookie dough. After a few times though, they’re carved out of wood. Same thing goes for offline SSF4. Online gets even better when you meet up with your offline pals for some matches.
Having played fighting games for so long, I’ve become a firm believer that if you want to get better, suffer through your whoopings. My most recent cases (like everyone else) has been with SSFIV and BlazBlue. Now, I’m not saying I’m some kind of demolition deity or anything, but I can hold my own at times and I only got that far because I wiped my tears, set my pride aside, and muscled through getting defeated a lot (try 53 straight losses against someone online in one day). After that, I started learning, studying, watching, absorbing, assimilating, and moving. Now I can pretty much tell how I’m getting whooped as opposed to it just happening and me not having a clue because I don’t know what to do or how to stop it.
And to top it all off, I play with weird characters (not by choice, my playstyle is just jacked), so there are even MORE beatings in it for me, but out of everything, I’ve found that being defeated so many times only makes you better if you stick it out. It sure as hell sucks when it’s happening to you, repeatedly, but you’ll be stronger if you shrug it off and assess what happened in the fight for you to have merited another defeat.
Don’t be embarrassed by losing infront of a crowd, no matter how much they “Oooo” and “Aaahh” about it all loud behind you. Don’t give it up and you’ll become pretty nasty before you know it. Watch.
You’ll find people of all skill levels offline, too, so don’t worry too much about getting annihilated.
I get to play offline occasionally despite the microscopic scene we have here, and sometimes I do well, sometimes I get my arse handed to me. There are players that can defeat me 50-0 even though I’m well above your standard srk-mashing online-warrior. Playing such strong people motivates me to get better.
You should also ask for hints from the stronger player; it’s likely they found a weakness in your game and exploited that to defeat you. (Hopefully they’ll be nice enough to help you.)