Hello guys!
I’ve been casually playing fighting games since Street Fighter II World Warrior release, back when I was just a kid.
Always breezed through Arcade mode and never had much problems playing against fellow arcade players or friends; sure, I’d lose a match here and there, but my win / lose ratio was fine.
When SF IV vanilla was realeased, I kept playing once in a while at my local arcade; eventually I got SSF IV on Steam and played a few online matches. Using Blanka I was able to win 6 ~ 8 out of each 10 fights. Fun times…
Now SF V is out and I’m getting destroyed by other players.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m having fun. But when you win just 6 out of 45 matches, you start to feel a little hopeless.
Spent some time on Training mode, decided to main Rashid… 15 matches, 0 wins.
Tried some other characters, both old & new and managed to win a match here and there (6 in total), but I really don’t feel any confidence playing with any of them.
Command execution isn’t a problem, I can perform every special move on the game with 100% consistency. The problem is that, even knowing the basics of footsies / poking / zoning, I can’t seem to apply this knowledge against 95% of my adversaries; they just dominate the entire battle and ran over me like a truck.
So, I’d really appreciate some tips. 
Sorry for any english mistakes, I’m not a native speaker.
- This “confession” was written yesterday in the afternoon.
Last night I’ve played some more, using Ken most of the time; I’ve managed to get a win or two and a few close matches, but I’m still being destroyed be oponents with simple tactics. Playing this game online feels so differente than SF IV… Please, based Ono, bring Blanka back. haha /sad
You probably just got some cheap wins in SFIV because of Blanka’s top tier lag tactics.
SFV online is much closer to actually playing a fighting game against other people than SFIV online was.
Think carefully about how many hours you’ve actually played versus other human beings.
Good SF5 players are going to have literally thousands of hours of pvp experience - even quite middling players might have hundreds of hours over you. If you go online and expect to just hop over that experience gap instantly you will feel dejected and give up quickly.
Instead of saying “Why can’t I win” it’s much better to simply look at your games and figure out what you can fix about your gameplay. Are you getting jumped in on without anti-airs? Are you getting opened up because people are getting in for free throws? Are people dropping you with overheads you don’t see coming? Are you pressing buttons at bad ranges and then being punished?
Once you start to actually analyse your gameplay you will find out what it is that players are exploiting to beat you. The feeling of being run over is most likely that you are opening yourself up defensively too much, and this probably means you’re not blocking enough, you’re not teching throws and you’re pressing buttons when it isn’t your turn to press buttons (e.g. you’re being defensively pressured or on wakeup).
You don’t get good by focusing on getting good; you get better one step at a time by eliminating one problem with your gameplay at a time. As you improve you will rapidly begin to understand the context of the mistakes you’re making - oh mashing jab was getting me frame trapped here - as a more complex explanation for “I need to stop mashing jab when people are pressuring me”, and this is completely normal. All skills form in layers!
So view your replays. Even better, do it with a more experienced friend. Make a list of things to work on, then actually work on them, not just in training mode but actually in matches. You are training your unconscious, so expect to feel like there’s too much to handle at first!
