Ive been playing ultra now since release and although i hadnt played alot in super or arcade edition it wasnt totally alien to me as i had the game and from time to time would play with my sons. I have been putting in the work in training mode and was doing okay online. It seems recently though i keep getting beat by people just doing the same thing over and over again. and when i get caught by it a couple of times it blows my confidence up.
If i play against better players i seem to fare better myself. But the kens just pure mashing and spiral arrow cammys just keep getting the better of me. I go in training and work on counter measures but when it counts it doesnt pan out. Is this normal? Cheers
What does your description have to do with the title?
On the subject of getting worse though:
Learning is not a straight curve and it dips down before going up again.
So yeah, when you learned something new and are in the process of getting better it’s very possible to play a bit worse for some time.
Also you can obviously start getting worse when you lose your passion for the game and get lazy instead of pushing yourself.
There’s tons of people who stay on a certain plateau because they get lazy and/or lose interest.
If you wanna keep getting better you got to constantly ask yourself how to and work on achieving that.
You know I’ve wondered this myself. Why am I able to go toe to toe with high ranked players but struggle against people playing mashfest? Stuff like this would bring about a lot of questions of what went wrong. Was it the connection? Is my stick not working properly? Am I just not good at the game? It would make me question my ability quite often and at times just stop playing the game altogether.
Defeating shitty players and good players are 2 completely different kinds of things.
I don’t even try 2 frame links when playing vs bads.
Just focus on playing solid and punishing their stupid shit, there’s no mind games to be had just patterns to be recognized and exploited.
There will also be points during the process of getting better where you will play worse - you’ll have learned new things and techniques, but not yet mastered them, so incorporating these incomplete improvements into your play will lead to dips in your performance.
You’ll be better once that process has completed, though.
And everyone gets to a stage where you have to relearn how to beat terrible players - UltraChen actually did a show on it, referring to it as an essential skill…
Basically if SRKs ar going through your combos, you messed up the timing and the opponent would’ve blocked them. Get them down right and you won’t get hit by them (in that way)
If you can beat better players it should be easy to beat bad players. If you’re doing better against better players it may be because they’re giving you respect that you may not deserve. Against any opponent, you need to figure out what they are doing and change your style to beat theirs. You mentioned both Cammy spiral arrow and srks. Both are powerful moves, but they are balanced because they are extremely unsafe. To beat these types of moves:
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[] You need to give your opporent an opportunity to do the move and for yourself to block them (i.e. “baiting” them). Against a srk, try leaving a hole in your blockstring when you’re not attacking. For instance, perhaps wait 5 frames to let Ken’s srk come out, and then continue pressure. If he’s mashing dp, you will block it; if he does a normal hopefully you will counterhit him; if he throws you can OS tech, etc. Against Cammy’s spiral arrow, just pause and hold downback. Don’t just walk around a lot in front of Cammy. Good or bad Cammy’s will throw out a lot of spiral arrows if they think you will be walking in front of them.
[] Once you block one of these, do a high damage punish, otherwise you won’t really discourage the move. For instance, Cammy’s spiral arrow may do 120 dmg. If you only punish with a sweep for 100dmg, Cammy may come out ahead even if there’s only a 50% chance she’ll land it. If you punish with your super/ultra for 450dmg or whatever, then random spiral arrows won’t pay off.
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About getting worse, what everyone said above is true. Also I think it’s a time thing. It takes a certain number of hours a week to maintain skills, and the exact number varies with the player. The higher your skill level is, or the lower your intrinsic talent is, the more hours it’ll take to maintain your ability. If you don’t practice (or don’t practice effectively) at least this much, then you’ll get worse.
Personally I’m struggling with this because I don’t have much free time now or natural ability. My SF reflexes and timing seem to decay pretty quickly
combos timing tend to come when you practice it effectively and just play the game and it’ll kind of become muscle memory. when you consciously try to get better at the game you’ll tend to get beaten by scrubs who don’t know what they’re doing because the stuff you’re trying to learn against them is thrown at the window when all they’re doing is jumping around or spamming reversals during block strings. Usually the best thing to do against them is just punish them all day and read the patterns in what they’re doing. As for losing to people who are genuinely just a better player, keep playing them! Learn from them until you can compete with them and that’s just how you get better.
Maybe you have adaptation issues or acceptance issues.
Either you cannot adapt to the akward kind of play because you don’t have enough experience playing jungle type players, or you might have trouble accepting the fact that there are players out there who play in a way that totally differs from the way you perceive a “smart player” should play which makes you not put in the same type of focus or respect you give a player that plays typiclly smart.
Briefly, keep playing shitty jungle players, and nomatter how jungle a player may seem to be, pretend it’s the most skilled player in the world and that you have a chance to improve yourself through that player. Eventually you will start to figure out shitty dumb jungle players quicker overtime.
You got better but never became solid. Not being solid means that players who show you respect will give you a chance to win while disrespectful players will have their way with you. Watch this series to learn how to become better vs bad players, but its no substitute for being solid: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL67062C535F54559C
#1, as you learn new skills you are going to have to adjust to having them, and will indeed play worse at first because you are trying to make sense of what you learned. #2 Beating people who play reckless and mash requires a different skill/mind set then beating informed players simply the reckless/randon/button masher will do things you shouldn’t do so you are not ready for it.
In response to #2
The second thing anyone learns in street fighter is which attacks not to throw around (the first being how to perform the attacks.) People seem to forget that once you move on to a deeper level, that you are still simply adjusting your risk reward level. When people are bad, they look for risky moves while using risky moves. Players forget as they take out the risk from their game that they are still looking for risky moves. The assumption that an opponent won’t do risky moves is the player’s fault for assuming that their idea of riskless streetfighter is the opponent’s idea of streetfighter play. Streetfighter players are not changing their mindset based on whether they are fighting a masher or an informed player, they are searching for the risky parts of their opponent’s gameplan at every level and countering it at a ratio that should win them at least the round. The point of streetfighter is to skew risk reward ratios in your favor with the tools you have at hand; this means that while its easier to bait and punish mashers/reckless players, you should be trying to bait and punish the safe options of informed players. Same mindset, different levels of difficulty…
I am getting worse, but only with my main, Ryu. I’ve seen every video, I’ve been in training mode for days practicing combos, but I’m getting worse.
However, I win more often when I pick T. Hawk and fly around with his airplane dive and his body splash > command throw or Bison when I just do some head stomps, scissor kicks, and st. HK’s, despite never practicing with these characters.
Is this because everyone is used to fighting a Ryu? Do I need to change my main? Am I just naturally better with T. Hawk or Bison?
