I’m new to SS4AE and had a quick question.
A couple of friends and I recently decided to get into SS4AE, when we are together we generally spend our time between online play and training room practice.
Tonight only one of my buddies came, so we spent an incredible amount of time in the Training Room (pretty much just sparring (not sure if this is what its referred to, but basically just endlessly fighting, trying to land combos on a target that is doing the same, but not having to worry about things like meters and health, etc)); I realized that there is a point when it actually becomes a bit counter productive to do this; you get used to your partner’s play style and start developing strategies specific to their character and their play style.
I think the ideal situation would be for us to both know every bread and butter combo of every character and just spend some time trying out combos and defense strategies against what is commonly used in the meta-game. However that is most likely beyond the scope of our skill level, not to mention, if we were to attempt it, it would take an incredible amount of time to get to the point where we would actually benefit from training like that.
So my question is, with friends, what do you guys find to be the most efficient way to practice together?
So far, I think our most efficient use of time has been to try some combos out in the training room, spar for a bit, do some online fights, analyze our losses, and then go back to the training room to try and strengthen our weaknesses.
We just fight each other all the time. At some points in the match I’ll say or ask stuff like “don’t block this, focus backdash instead”, or “you need to uppercut really late to beat that”, “how do I get out of that mixup?” etc. Sometimes one of us will have and idea then we’ll just try it out and if it looks promising we’ll go into training mode and test some more. We don’t worry about combo training and stuff like that. That you can do on your own time.
Basically just fight a lot, exchange knowledge and try out new stuff.
Yeah after a while you get really used to how your buddy fights, and you end up changing your style based on this. This isn’t “bad”, so long as you understand this is player-specific strats, and you still work on your hit-confirmed combos and whatnot. It will help him not be so obvious as well.
I wouldn’t say it’s counterproductive, I’d say the way you’re thinking when you do it is counterproductive. you have the idea that because what you did works against them that it works against other players. you need to be thinking about what works against specific tactics, not “what works against Ken”. endless training mode is a good idea. unfortunately, all you’re doing is improving your fighting (what people here refer to as yomi). you’re not improving your combos or beefing up your tactics
Play Versus or online. IMO practicing your b&bs or advanced combos against an opponent standing still is not going to make you better. It’s just like baseball, you get better by hitting a ball that is thrown to you not one that is on a tee.
Spar in the actual VS mode once you both get a handle on the basics, because that teaches you better meter management and clutch situations. When you aren’t together practice and play sperately. If one of you gets a better handle on the matchup, the other person can learn a new character vs you while still practicing their old one online in order to train up to fight you again.
