Kill All Humans: Guide a Beginner?

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
1

Hi guys, I wasn’t sure about making a thread, but the only related one I could find was;

and it doesn’t deal exactly with the issue I am having. My apologies if this thread is unwarranted.

I’m pretty new to fighting games, and just started playing MvC3 against other people online after feeling confident in ‘very hard’ arcade mode. I’d like to get some advice and discussion about how a player who is new to fighting real people, such as myself, can improve and what specific things they can look for.

Why a thread in the UMvC3 forum specifically? Because with this game in particular, if you do not have the tools to get space, or to close space as needed, your characters will likely be killed based on the outcomes of one to two crucial moments. For someone like me, who generally cannot recognise these moments, once things go badly, it feels like the game is lost immediately. So it’s that much more important for new MvC3 players to learn how to first see when these moments are, and work on making the most of their chances.

Execution:

This is something that was of immediate concern when learning to play against the AI, and while it’s something that I have not perfected by any means, it’s something that I feel comfortable practicing and improving slowly.

That said, specific tips on practice methods for execution, especially movement and spacing related execution would be much appreciated.

The Team:

Team synergy, and individual character strengths and weaknesses was one of the first things that I found interesting about MvC3, and I have a few teams that I am working on. Combos and resets are discussed in individual character forums, and aren’t central to the problem of fighting human opponents.

Defense:

Dealing with high-low, forward-back mix-ups is something that is completely beyond me at this stage. Once someone gets me into a block string, it tends to continue until they open me up. I believe this is where push block comes in, but the obvious question is* ‘when do I use push-block?*’ and also, ‘what do I do after that?’

What are some good ways to practice recognising which moment to use push-block, or to start blocking high/low?

Mix-ups:

In the beginning of the match, how should I think about the opening move? Is it something that comes with experience against the player, or is it more character based? What sort of options are there? (low short, throw, air throw, dash under if they jump etc)

When a character is snapped in, or comes in after the previous one dies, how do you make it out alive? I consider Skrull one of my better characters, yet when I played him in second position against someone online for about 5 matches, he rarely made it to the ground, let alone caused damage.

On the other hand, what options for applying that kind of pressure are there? Should I be working training mode to figure out some juicy cross-over trap? Or should I be watching videos of tournament play and steal what I see for my team?

TL;DR:

General advice for moving up from AI to real opponents, and how to practice what I learn.

2

First off, playing against the AI will lead to terrible habits because it doesn’t take advantage of your patterns and it doesn’t figure out ways around your approaches or mix-ups. Be very critical of your play whenever you start to slip into any routines or make the same mistake twice in a short time. I’d recommend recording your matches and rewatching them.

I would also recommend using training mode to record mix-ups and setups on yourself and see what all works against them and what doesn’t. Try all sorts of stuff. Push-blocks, crossover counters, holding up-back, mashing out supers, xfactor guard cancel, whatever. You want to see what you’re vulnerable to. Just because a setup can be countered doesn’t mean it’s useless - you just need to be aware of what works against it.

You can practice combos against the training dummy, but practice them off specific setups. No one gets hit by a slow unassisted jump in. Here are some good ones:
[LIST]
[]Practice your combos starting on an airborne opponent. Many characters (like Dante for instance) have specific combos they have to do off their common anti-air options.
[]Practice your combos off throws and airthrows.
[]Practice your combos with and without your assists to extend them. Sometimes you’ll have used the assist to start the combo, or you’ll land the combo right after jumping in or being snapped in.
[]Practice your combos off your setups and mix-ups.
[/LIST]
Setting up gross mix-ups and setups on incoming characters is one of the most important parts of Marvel 3.

Using Advancing Guard (aka Pushblock)

Pushblock is something you’re going to want to use often. It’s your best way to limit the number of mix-ups an opponent gets off an approach. **In the same way that your opponent is rapidly trying to hit-confirm an attack that connects, you are trying to “push-block confirm” an attack that’s blocked. ** If you do the motion for a pushblock without confirming the block, you’re likely to get opened up in the early frames of your backdash, so you have to be careful with it.

Don’t mash it though - there are setups that specifically punish someone for this.

Push-blocking someone out doesn’t mean you’re safe. There are many techniques or specials which can cancel the push of a pushblock. And if you pushblock an assist’s attack, you will not push the main out. Pushblocking also ties up your character for a short time, so the other player may be able to reapproach you quickly depending on who they are and what you pushblocked.

After a pushblock, you can
[LIST]
[]**Prepare to block again. **If they had used an assist right around when you pushblocked, you may still be locked down. Get ready to push them out again, and then you may have a window to escape while their assist is on cooldown.
[]Possibly get back to a neutral state, depending on what you pushblocked and the recovery they have. The ideal situation is when you pushblock someone out during a string of normals and they whiff a move with poor recovery like a standing :s:. This gives you time to get set back up.
[]Try and get some space. Taking to the air is a good way to limit the mix-up options from your opponent, but you need to have a good idea of how you’re going to come back down safely.
[]Throw some stuff out. If they’re relentlessly “going in”, throw out a high priority normal, special or assist and let them walk into it. This varies greatly from team to team.
[/LIST]
In terms of what mix-ups you should be practicing, what team are you using?

And what you do at the beginning of the match is largely determined by what characters you’re playing and who you’re up against.

3

AI to human is something you can’t -completely- prepare for as each human opponent has his/her own team and skill level, but it’ll help to at least work on execution and team setups before you play against another person.

Execution: no other way around this except to just practice a lot. don’t call it a day after you finally get that one difficult combo down, obviously. you wanna practice everything you have (resets and mixups included, not just combos) before playing a human opponent, especially if you’re playing at a tournament. do drills and warmups if you’re playing on stick.

one thing I really like about MvC is how dynamic it is. one day I can be messing around with one particular combo or reset and one week later, I can be doing something completely different and more efficient. keep practicing and pay attention to the little nuances (or “shenanigans”) that occur during your practice sessions or casuals because those can very well lead to cool things that can improve your game.

Team: can’t really say much about this if I don’t know what specific team you’re using at the moment. only advice I can give at this point is to just be creative. know what your point character can do, including tools unique to your character that are not seen in movelists: i.e. “Doom can dash cancel his normals through pushblock” or “Magneto’s trijumps are the fastest in the game, giving him self-created high-low mixups”.

assists are very important as well. good ones aren’t limited to one specific function. don’t just be stuck on one idea like “Viper’s Seismo assist OTGs and therefore extends combos”-- you can go well beyond that. it’s a good idea to just stay in training mode and try out assists in different situations. using Viper’s Seismo assist for example, by just messing around with it in training mode, I found not one, but TWO different methods for incorporating it in my Magneto corner combos, as well as a very fast throw reset.

watching the pros play is also a very good idea if you don’t know where to start. they usually know what assists to use and what their options are off a certain situation, etc. so it’s okay to watch some Top 8 action and steal some of their character/team technology.

Practicing what you learn: play offline casuals with anyone you know or hop online and go for some player matches. I don’t have the privilege of being in a place that has good net speed and online competition (yay third world technology) but chances are you do, so take advantage of that. what I do in my case is just get the feel of what an actual match is like: playing on Arcade mode. sounds weird, but it works for me because I actually get to apply what I practice in situations where there is an actual moving opponent, with a time limit, and where every hit is not free.

OP: have you checked out Viscant’s Marvel 1.0 video with Crosscounter? it’s a good idea to go see it if you’re a new player or just want to get an idea of how the mind of a pro player works. GL dude.

4

Execution: Honestly this depends on your characters specifically. Can’t help unless your talking about which character. Each needs a different mindset, and you need to learn the timing for their combos (most arent just “do fast as you can”). Can’t really help unless your focusing on 1 character at a time.

Team: This also depends on the characters specifically. And I’ll be honest, even though I love the team system in this game, it causes me more grief than anything lol. Because I have a huge identity crisis.

Typically you want to pick 1 “main” character, put him/her in the position they are best in, and then find the other 2 characters that support your main char nicely. Notice I’m not saying the 2 characters that support your main character “best” - because “best” depends on matchup and what exactly you are going for - if you try to find the “best” partners you will never be satisfied. Some will have better combos, some will have better DHC’s, some will have worse combos all around but better zoning, some will have specific strengths/weaknesses vs certain chars.

Basically choose your main character, and your 2 assists decide your strengths and weaknesses as a whole.

It gets a bit more complicated than that though. Often somes the best “assists” for your character will be characters that you arent very good with, dont mesh with your style though, or that you simply dont like. And sadly a lot of the characters who you like most may not work well with your main character. The best advice in this area is just to try to stick with the best “assist” characters until you are at least decent with them - that way you have something to compare to. Then once you trysomething else in it’s place, you will be able to compare the strengths and weaknesses of each character, and see which you are more comfortable with.

Defense: This also depends on who you are facing, but the best way to avoid mix-ups is to identify the proper setup for the mixup and avoid getting in to that position. For example if you are facing Wesker, learn the distance of his teleports and try to stay out of that distance, and if he does get in to that distance expect it and try to find a counter. Using the “recording” options in Practice helps here, because you can identify a combo (a Wesker mixup for example) and record it, and then replay it and learn how to counter it.

When do you push block? Might as well always do it if you arent sure. Certain characters can counter pushblocks nicely, in which case you have to start with mindgames and kind of mix-up your defense a bit.

Mix-ups: Again it depends on your character and the enemy character, but typically characters are strongest at a specific range. You want to stay inside your ideal range and avoid the enemies ideal range. If you get in to the ideal range for your own mixup, do it (for example we’ll use Wesker again - if you get in to teleport range for the mixup, do it).You mentioned Skrull and he’s weakest in the air or with extreme pressure up close, so you want to avoid these areas and stay in throw range. Assists to control a portion of the screen are great for Skrull because for example, if you have a Beam or Projectile assist that will push your opponent back/keep them in block stun or force them to jump, you can counteract accordingly - if they jump hit them with your air throw, if they block string you can do your ground throw.

With snaps, again it depends on who you are facing. If they are doing a throw while your coming in you can counter throw. If it’s a basic combo just block it. If your facing Phoenix well, thats an up-hill battle. With Skrull specifically, in the air is one of his weaknesses as he’s much stronger on the ground and with a little distance. I suggest if they are doing a snap and using a combo you cant block, then try Skrulls elbow-dive as that’s probably his best option in the air.

For your question about pressure - again depends on character, but you should both go in to Practice mode and see what kind of mix-up/combos you can come up with, and check the tournament vids because you can get some great ideas from those too. But also, use training mode take advantage of the recording feature and emulate any problems that arise. For example you said you had trouble with the Skrull snap - emulate that combo in recording and learn how to counter it.

A lot of people only use practice for combo practice, but it’s arguably more important to have good mixups so you can start your combos (you cant take advantage of that 1.5 mill combo you learned if you cant get it started), and if you don’t learn how to counter enemies (specifically the stronger combinations of characters) it dont matter how good your offense is if they can get a simple mixup that you dont know how to defend and take out your character instantly.

Finally on the topic of Vs AI to Humans, what someone else said is true - it does get you in to bad habits. But at the same time, the hardest difficulty does get you halfway decent at reacting to enemies. But you have to learn habits when you play other people… similar to how the CPU always falls for the same tricks, certain players fall for the same tricks too. Once you are more experienced you will be able to notice when they start to smarten up to your tricks, and if you have enough experience you can plan around that (hence start the mind games). For example if you have a mixup that allows you 2 or 3 different options, you can stick to 1 until they smarten up, then switch to the other. Then once they start reacting to the other, throw the 3rd in and do them randomly, which will confuse your opponent and even frustrate them and make them hesitant to do what they should at times.