Practice. If you have no one to play with, there’s still plenty you can do. Defensive training (learn to appreciate this and don’t get bored with it.), offensive execution, and practice with in-game situations and strategies in mind. Don’t just practice with no purpose. Even with shitty AI (if that’s all you have to play against), still play them as though they’re human. You won’t get to the top this way but if you’re putting in the time, it’ll still help for when you can get comp. And another thing is stick with one character if it’s a 1v1 game. I can’t tell how many times I see newbies who go all random select and never learn a damn thing. Ever. Learn your character inside and out.
Next is obviously competition. This is where everything starts falling into place that you just can’t practice by yourself. There was always this kid who played basketball all the time by himself in jr high. He was a really good shooter. Really good. But he didn’t have a chance to play against anyone seriously because he lived in the country. By the time he got a car in high school, he’d play with the rest of us. He could shoot his ass off but he couldn’t do much else. Over time he started picking up everything else only human competition can provide and he became the best player in school. Fighting games are no different. It’s neccessary. Again, even if they’re not good players, play them with the intention of improving. Have the mentality of improving all the time. If you have a hard time playing against a certain character and you’re at a certain level of confidence in the character you play as, go practice with the character you’re not good against and learn that character, too. You don’t have to at a serious level but knwoing them will only help you. Knowing is half the battle.
Watch matches. It helps to see how other people play and you might pick up a thing or two. Plus it’s always good to scout your comp if you can.
Lastly, it takes time to get really good and depends on how much you’re putting into the game. The more you put in, the faster the results. But it still takes a long time. Top players have been playing these games for years and the only way to get to their level is to do the same. Or pray they stop playing. Don’t get discouraged. Take everything as a learning experience because that’s all it’s going to be for a looong time until your skills can really start competing at a serious level. Still play to win from the beginning to the end. But take note of why you’re losing when you do and what you can improve on.
If you have the motivation to get good and you put in the work, you’ll get good.
Imo you only really need to practice solid execution before a tournamet or other SF event/gathering. If you’re just having casuals and especially in 3s you should be concentrating more on observing your oponent, figuring them out and developing counters to all the different styles you encounter. Execution is NOT your main priority, trust me, I’ve learned the hard/long way. Of course if you like playing around and sorting out new combos then go for it, but there’s far more important things to concentrate on.
I think “whatever works for you” doesn’t quite fit, as not a lot of people have a choice whether they go to the arcade or watch match videos. If you want to improve your ideal situation would be to play as much competition as possible at an arcade. If you have a busy life… go to a gathering once a week, if no-one plays where you live… get X-Box live, if you can’t afford it… watch match videos… You see where I’m going with this? It all depends really how much you want to improve and what you’re accesable to.
The key to getting better is understanding.
You can play for 3 years, but if you don’t ‘get’ what you’re doing wrong, then you’re not going to progress much.
When you watch videos or other people play, watch closely.
Think, “Why isn’t he using this move”, “Why doesn’t he attack when I think he has an opening”, “What are his patterns” “What are my patterns and are they becoming predictable”, etc.
Avoid playing just to win. ie. Doing random ass stuff hoping you luck out a win. This teaches you absolutely nothing in the long run and only serves to help develop bad habits.
I have been made the bitch of many GG and 3S players in my time on XBL…
For Guilty Gear, I’m not improving on my strengths as much as I am phasing out my weaknesses. Like my inadvertant bursting, interjecting uppercuts into pressure strings, and some spacing problems with air combos.
In 3S, same thing, but I just don’t know any Ken/Ryu combos
Truth. One thing I had to get out the habbit of was always looking for supers. It’s true, supers get you killed if you keep going for them. It took me a while to get in the habbit of trying to preasure and out think the opponent more. Random sweeps aswell, I punnish my mates sweeps ALL the time and he never learns. Sweep, blocked… Ooops, SAII!
Personally I have a lot of knowledge and years of execution, but because I’ve never had the chance to actually go out and test my limits, my time spent practicing execution is practically wasted.
One way to look at it is, you only begin learning and improving to a conciderable level once you jump into the world of competition. Any efforts you put into it whether it be execution, knowledge, hit confirm, anything, are only a head start… You still have to go through the same “learning” process that all competetive players go through. This is where your differences lie, this is the reason why you ask questions like “how can I improve?” or “how do I beat this Hugo? What am I doing wrong?”
Well I agree with most of your points Kyokuji with the exception of avoiding playing to win…for me playing to win separates my mentality from my fellow casual gamers…
I play to be the best…for me that gives me extra motivation to find out every little quirk about the game…and go above and beyond analyzing match vids…while I find it on the contrary near me…
People who dont play to win and just play for fun are stagnant…they are stale and dont improve nearly as fast as someone playing to win and willing to do whatever it takes to get better…
Its all about dedication…I play to win so that means studying everyone’s styles and doing whatever it takes to get better…
I dont do random ass stuff hoping to win…it’s never random its always calculated for me…
To me its all about the dedication…some just wanna play for fun…and those are the people that will peak out fast…bc it is “just for fun”…people trying to be the best are the ones pushing the limits…the ones discovering infinites, glitches and things like that because they want to be the best and once they peak out they find ways to push themselves even farther…like professional athletes that train until they can’t train anymore…why?
Not for fun…to be the best at what they do…
people playing for fun might discover that stuff on accident when the latter would discover it surely quicker…
P.S. There is nothing wrong with playing for fun. I just find for me to get better and not be stale, around me I need to be around like-minded dedicated people like me… Too many around me just wanna play for fun…that holds me back…so I have to do what it takes by myself to improve…and I constantly improve…never stay stagnant…why??? Simple…bc I wanna be the best…
I don’t get what Demon Dash is arguing about. Snakedizzle already said you need execution as the basis for what you’re doing, then you need experience. Which is why you get your ass handed to you in London.
Think of it this way, maybe if you just had experience you could punish that blocked super for 20% or something. Now that you have good execution you could maybe punish for 30%. It adds up, eventually.
I hate that “playing for fun” and “playing to win” have become mutually exclusive in the minds of people here (I think Sirlin is to blame for this, despite how good those articles are). I think we all play FGs because it’s fun. I play to win BECAUSE I have more fun that way than just fucking around casually, not caring who wins. It’s a false dichotomy.
KyoKuji, If you’re playing to win, you’re not doing random ass stuff. WTF that doesn’t even make any sense. Playing to win means playing smart to win at all times. Playing random just means you don’t care what the outcome is.
NOT playing to win develops bad habits. Not the other way around.
I have always been into fighting games, but I never had the time to dig into and truely improve in any game. Nonetheless, its interesting to see the diverging opinions on execution. I can understand why some feel execution is not necessary to become a better player, but it is almost suicidal to not improve one’s ability to preform a fireball motion. In the end, I think its the focus on executing special moves and pulling insane combos that sometimes detracts from a players progress.
Execution definately opens more options, but all too often new players(myself included) almost exclusively focus on getting those dragon punches , super moves, roman cancels, or whatever the flash gimmick the given game has. As a result, these players ignore the merits of normal moves and the simpler underlying mechanics which could just as easily suffice.
Using myself as an example, I typically use Zangief when I play Street Fighter 2 (on the NES, I know its not the best but that doesn’t matter). I initialy only tried to land the spinning pile driver, which boiled down to hoping my oponent was in range and not attacking me when I finally got the 360 motion on that infernal pad. Needless to say, I got pwned. Things improved considerably when I discovered Zangief had other moves besides his infamous grab.
All in all, the only reason why top players can get by with somewhat questionable execution while others who extensively work on execution don’t win as often as they would like is because those tricky moves can be substituted by simpler means.
EXACTLY. If you have execution you can punish a blocked super for 30% instead of a 20%. But it’s the experience that means you blocked that super. Execution here provides you an extra 10% damage, while experiences gives you +40% (not being hit by that super and inflicting 20% damage afterwards).
I told my friend to learn 3s. he jumped on the idea. he learned c. MK jab srk kara jab srk, kara throw, c.LK (x3) shippu, b+MK shippu. But when he plays he has no experience. I kill him everytime with a ken that can only do c.MK shippu. Why? because he doesn’t know shit all about the game. He sits there and simply tries to learn combos and falls for the same kara throw/shippu traps over and over again. Experience my friend is way more valuable than execution.
Excuse me if I’ve reposted anything that people have already said, but I didn’t feel like I needed to read the entire thread to justify giving my two cents on how to improve.
To improve, you first of all need to know what you need to improve on. There are three big foundations of fighting games. They all go hand-in-hand with each other, though I think some are more important:
Knowledge - This is the easiest thing to improve. Knowledge is (obviously) just all the information you have on one game. This spans from little things, knowing how much damage your combos do with characters, what works on which characters, and what every character is capable of, to very specific things, like knowing the perfect spacing when zoning people out with Axl, what fireballs Ryu’s Hurricane Kick goes over in SF2, or that Zangief’s Standing Jab completely whiffs a Karin when she’s on the ground in CFE, standing or crouching. The best thing about knowledge is, it’s the easiest thing to improve - you simply learn something, and then you remember it. It’s that simple. The vice of knowledge is that it differs from game to game. in Street Fighter Alpha 3, Guy’s Crouching Fierce whiffs at point blank, but it doesn’t in CFE. Make sure to dedicate yourself to obtaining as much knowledge as you can on a game you’re serious about.
Technical Mastery - This is basically your physical skills…execution and setups. It’s a manifestation of your knowledge. Can you do C. Mk into Hadouken? Can you do a decent Custom Combo? Can you set up (and pull off) an Aegis Reflector unblockable? Are you good at pulling of False Roman Cancels? This is what dissuades a lot of people from playing fighting games seriously, because they put a bit too much stock into how important it is. Now, I’m not saying it ISN’T important; having a certain level of technical mastery is VERY important. But if you don’t know how to use all this stuff practically, it will only lead to arbitrary, chance successes. That’s the trouble with Technical Mastery; it goes hand-in-hand with your Mental Game. Once you have that Mental Game, though, being able to capitalize with all the technical stuff you’ve practiced will really pay off.
And finally,
Mental Game - In all aspects, from just having the right attitude and mindset, with knowing what to look for, being able to outthink your opponent, knowing where to focus your attention…It might seem strange, or even ridiculous, if you’ve never thought about it too much…but a lot of inexperienced players lose because they don’t think about what their opponent is doing or thinking…they’re only thinking about what THEY’RE doing (and by proxy, what THEY’RE thinking). This gets them in trouble cos they don’t think ahead, and they don’t know what to do in the middle of a battle. This is easily the most important thing to winning in fighting games, but it’s the hardest thing to improve. If you lose a lot, you’re bound to lose confidence. If you don’t play enough, you’re bound to lose focus. If you’re not challenged enough, you probly will never have to try hard enough to outthink your opponent as you would playing someone really good.
All three of these are directly related to each other. You might have a lot of knowledge about one particular game, but it won’t help you in the other; Having a good technical mastery won’t mean shit if you can’t apply it; and your mental game, no matter how powerful, can’t carry you to the top if you have nothing to back it up except ‘heart.’
It’s just like chess; what good are your moves gonna do if you don’t know what the hell you’re aiming to do? What good are your little tricks if you can’t set them up? Too many people focus on just ONE of these things, but I think to be really good, you should focus on all of them. Now go forth, fight the good fight, and all that shit.
I think the importance of technical mastery is really dependant on the game, and also on the character. Take guilty gear, you’re worth jack shit if you can’t do the combo’s. A Baiken that can’t do the dustloop is a sitting duck, same goes for Sol badguy t a certan extent. As a Baiken you should also be able to whip out the tk youzansen, because it’s the only overhead with a reasonable startup but the imput is fucking difficult and very strict, especially in GGXX#Reload.
But for example third strike doesn’t need such a high level of technical mastery, the juggling possibilities are simply not as open as in guilty gear, nor is their a range of moves which ‘shouldn’t’ be possible. Like Baiken’s youzansen, which is supposed to be an aerial move but can be used as a standing overhead. Through this the execution of sick combo’s and bizarre move imputs is just not as important, since the possibility isn’t there.
Yeah, but I think that there’s specific types of technical mastery involved in every game…like, it’s different to do jump in combos in SF2 than in other games…VCs in SFA3 take a different type of technical skills than Guilty Gear crazy FRC 80% damage combos and shit.
It’s also a matter of options. In Guilty Gear, for example, most characters revolve around being highly specialized; for that reason, most characters are very technical. Sure, there are a few that aren’t all that technical, like Ky or Axl (some people tell me that Potemkin is very easy to use, but I’ve never tried), but most of them are very technical…too technical for me to care to learn, lol. But if you take 3rd Strike, there are some characters that require a decent level of technical ability and knowledge, like Yun and Urien, while there are other characters that cater more to being able to psyche out your opponent and outthink them, like Elena or Hugo.
Of course, the mental game and technical game for all those characters are still very important, but different characters stress different things, and yeah…different games, too. My technical ability to do crazy ass combos is just downright bad, which is why I was never good at stuff like A-Groove, and V-Ism shit, and playing damn near any Guilty Gear character (though Guilty Gear characters don’t have stuff that’s too hard to time, learn, and remember…it’s just more work than I’d like to put in, honestly :P). My strength is definitely in my mental game, so I pick characters that focus on my strengths, like Guy, Elena, Axl, Zangief, etc.
