I am a total noob at this game (sure you have heard this before) and have been playing as Sagat for a few days. Now I have been watching everything I can get my hands on including streams as well as getting the official usf4 bible. Now all I have been hearing is frame data, hitboxes etc. How important is this so early on? This is my first fighting game and I am determined to get the hang of it. The problem is there just seems to be so much to take on board that I feel as though I am getting lost with it. I mean just working through the ultra trials and getting bodied on ranked/endless is fun, but hard enough as is. To think about having to learn even more just seems so overwhelming.
Frame data isn’t super important for you to worry about now. For now I’d focus on (in no particular order):
- how to fight on the ground
- how to anti air
- instead of grinding trials all the trials, practice a hit-confirm and a punish (check the Sagat board for more info)
- start learning matchups, at least some of the common ones
- get a general idea of what is safe and what is punishable (this comes from frame data, but the big picture here can be learned intuitively); for example… point blank crouching lp, probably safe; point blank crouching hk/random dp, probably punishable.
Good luck!
Tbh, even that is a bit to take in starting out. Trying to remember back to how I really started (pre-tournament), it was playing with a few people who didn’t really know what they were doing either (kind of important playing people on your skill level, so you don’t get discouraged… but eventually you’ll need to play someone higher who can push you past your limits) and looking up movelists/doing trials. Through that we were figuring stuff out and just pushing each other in our own competitive way. I met exactly 2 people during that time who were already on the other side as far as being competitive goes. I got wrecked by them, and all I knew was I wanted to get as good as or better than them (which I did manage to do btw… years later, but now there are so many other people to play on varying skill levels that that doesn’t even matter anymore).
After I started going to tournaments, that shit was on a whole other level. Half the things people would say to me I didn’t even understand at the time even though I wanted to learn.
The concept of spacing, controlling space, punishing, not recklessly pressing buttons, being unpredictable, learning frame data and general quirks/rules for specific fighting games… all that shit came over a long period of time and I’m still practicing/learning to this day.
But I wouldn’t say it’s overwhelming now. It’s interesting and satisfying getting the payoff from learning new information. So don’t think too much on it how much there is to learn starting out. Just stick with it, practice smart (little by little), have fun and it’ll all come together eventually.
With more resources available and videos being put out like crazy, there’s bound to be some Sagat tutorials and videos floating around with the essentials. But I’d personally spend more time playing for a while and then go to training/researching to see what I can figure out/retain. If you can talk to an informed person who can explain the situations/scenarios and answer questions while you’re playing, that’s pretty helpful too.
@Darklightjg1 I’m enjoying the game so I think I will just have fun with it an work the rest out when it comes.
Thanks guys x