Sounds like you either don’t go to down properly, or you don’t do the complete qcb properly.
Go into training mode with inputs on and try to figure it out.
Maybe you press kick/punch too early. That can also happen quite easily.
I personally struggle with the down-forward/back input on stick. I miss it quite often.
Just be precise, if that fails just do hcb, it’ll still work.
You say you have tournament experience, so how many hours do you guys practice/play a day?
got a question with regards to crossups, does it take a few frames for your character to turn around when you are being crossed?
for example cammy intentionally whiffed her dive kick to my back and if i press any buttons i immediately get blown up, is it because it takes a few frame for me to turn around before i can attack? why can she immediately attack after whiffing?
She has very little recovery if the dive kicks is done high up in the air.
As far as I know, it does take a few frames until you turn around. Not sure how SF5 handles it, should be about the same as USF4, I’d assume.
It is possible that you are getting caught by a “safe jump” though.
A “safe jump” can’t be countered, you are required to block (or the situation would require you to do an auto-correct uppercut, which is hard for beginners. You’re better off blocking).
i see, so there’s really not much to be done other than block huh, i try anti air (not a SRK) but gets thrown off by the dive kick timing.
Generally I play roughly 2-3 hours. I can be in training mode about a hour before I start to get bored. Typically 4ish hours on days I play.
how does one train against cross ups? i know how to block it but my success rate is abysmal, especially on wake ups.
Training mode. Record the funny doing cross ups with different set ups.
Well, fuck it, why not:
How does one break out of the “intermediate plateau”? Since I don’t think this question is easily answered without at least referencing said intermediate player, I’m talking about myself… A brief history:
Been playing since the 90’s, past my prime as far as reactions and time allowed to play, go.
My execution is ok. Not great, not terrible, I can do sf5 chuns bnb into mk SBK pretty easily, as an example, but it took me more than a few days of practice to get consistent.
Was never a 2d tournie player during my early days though I did go to shgl a handful of times as well as the A3 nationals in San Jose.
Got back into streetfighter with some cvs2 and ST dabblings back in 06. Had a meetup where only me and Valle showed up, so we played about 70 games of ST… I think I won 1 or 2 matches…
Fast forward to 08 and I picked up sf4 at the arcades where I met all the socal peeps like max and Valle, keno Mike Ross, combofiend etc.
Became friends with some of them, all great peeps. At about this time I was playing my best because I had access to great players every weekend. And better than that, I had players that I had trouble beating, getting beat right in front of me, showing me how to beat them.
The problem though was, I was never top player strength. I was somewhat close a few times when I was putting in mad work and practice playing. But I would always fall off or would lose access to top players to make myself better.
It seemed the best guys always knew how to beat me but I never really knew how they were doing it specifically… As an example:
Went to Denjin for some random tournie. Mike Ross and everyone was there playing casuals and stuff. Denjin was home to the best chun in the state at that time, DAE.
Well the Denjin setup had head to heads so I sat down at the mike machine, without him seeing me. We played, my chun versus his Honda… I won pretty clean, easy. So he looks around the machine to see who it is, sees its me, laughs and says he thought I was dae, then we play the second round and he kinda clobbers me (I got my hits in though) that was the day I really realized that the best guys just knew how to beat ME. the problem was… I didn’t know what it was that they knew.
Was it my spacing? My lack of ability to wiff punish? Inaccurate reads? Suspect AA? All of these things? None of these things? I just didn’t know.
The only thing I ever figured out was that on some level I was being very predictable.
So sorry for the long windedness… But here’s my question:
How does an intermediate player that has learned all the “right” things to do at an intermediate level to beat the beginners and weaker intermediates, go on to learn how to beat the better players? Like, how do we as players become less predictable while still maintaining strength of play?
Something in particular I’ve always had problems with is AAing good players.
When I’m looking to AA them they very rarely jump. Then AS SOON AS I THINK THEY WONT JUMP… They jump and catch me off guard.
So I made alterations… I would play ALWAYS looking for the AA, even to the detriment of my ground game. Things started to work out better, but the game was less fun, more hectic and I had diminishing returns. They would key on my lack of ground game cause I was overly focused on the AA.
Bla bla, I know this is the essence of what makes streetfighter hard. But if you have any tips or tricks that one can use to make the ground game easier/stronger/better I would be all ears.
@Dime_x
A lot of the time it’s the mental process of the player. Not saying you or anyone else is bad, nothing close to that, but the way they think might be so focused on certain things that they start lacking in other areas. How you explained is a good example, you look for AA opportunities only to start lacking on the ground game. Thing is you have to always look for AA while playing the ground game. It’s part of the neutral game. Naturally you can’t react to everything when doing this. That’s why some people do get away with fireballs and jump ins during the ground game. That person isn’t bad for not anti airing or doing a super through a fireball, they simply are looking at the game as a whole.
You have to multi task and have thought process through each move you do and not necessarily always have a gameplan or have patterns in your gameplay. One of the biggest strengths of a top player is adaptation. You CAN go into a match into a general gameplan on how to fight your opponent and character. If that doesn’t work out you have to be able to adjust on the fly. You also need to be able to recognize when you opponent is hitting patterns or looking for things, such as when Chun has super they will look for fireballs.
When playing someone who “has your number” that means they know in some way you are weak to a certain area you may not realize. For example lets say they notice that you always jump after about 10 seconds of getting poked on the ground due to getting kept out. Maybe you don’t realize you do it, but they do. A big part of improving is looking at matches and simply asking “Hey what am I doing wrong, how do you know what I’m doing?” etc. Furthermore if you are losing to something you know about you can replicate the scenario in training to be better prepared for it next time.
It doesn’t come over night either. It took me a while to get at a decent level, but I had luck of being with some of the best Texas players growing up. I really started to shine once GGPO was created. I always tell people that if you want to get better at SF go play ST. Learning ST will improve you ground, reversal timing, anti air, execution, and reactions. Also ST is so old most players on Fightcade are very strong.
Furthermore, look to play stronger players more than ones you know you can beat as that is key to improve. Read my article I linked also as it may help. I hope I answered some questions as it’s one of those that’s hard to answer since everyone is different on how they process the game. If you have any other questions let ask away.
Here is a video of me adapting to a local OG player using FANG:
I literally never played this match up before. Just a example how you have to change up how you play on the fly while realizing what your opponent is doing
I didn’t expect your words to actually help as I pretty much know most things about fighting games there is to know… It’s mostly the actual implementation that I get caught up on. Call it flowcharting if you will… It’s what I do. To a certain extent, except my flowchart is more like that of a good player. I flowchart walking back and forth when I simply don’t know exactly what to do next… Etc etc.
But actually, your post helped a lot. It told me things I already have grasped, but did it ina succinct kind of way:
My meter watching is abysmal.
I stand at the same spacings alot.
I don’t treat the game as if there is any kind of meta outside of what’s actually happening on the screen with respect to our characters… I get tunnel vision and don’t look at my or my opponents meter basically at all.
Also, though I’ve known it to be a weakness for a long time, I tend to watch my character more than my opponents. I saw where sako watches (the point in between both characters… He watches the spacing… I “feel” the spacing so to speak.
Watching over some videos I realized that if I watch the point that my opponents AA normals would cover… That allows me to track both their forward movement AND track jumps better since I’m looking higher on the vertical plane rather than on the ground.
This will allow me to hopefully be ab,e to footsie while watching for jumpins at the same time.
And last but not least, though I can’t necessarily give the credit to you totally, it was your words that inspired me while watching this final round stream… I saw a new footsie tactic I’d never seen before. No doubt it’s as old as I am… Which is pretty old, but using it will strengthen some of my footsies against certain players:
Players that like to jump over ground pokes. I’ve always had a pattern I’ve known about where I will walk forward into poke range and throw out a poke… Good players sometimes jump this and smack me with horrible amounts of damage depending on what normal I used.
Usually the way I would beat this is to use jab fakes or pokes that have very fast recovery, but aren’t any threat to reach far enough. But the problem with that of course is that I lose tempo against savvy neutral people.
But I saw jw walk into his opponents range… Obviously to do a st.mk with karin… But he hesitated a split second before throwing out the move. He was baiting the jump, and downtempoed his st.mk by a beat or so. If his opponent had jumped he wouldn’t have poked and would have AA’d instead. But since he still poked he didn’t lose tempo. It was better than a jab fake or something thereof, but also better than just doing nothing.
Really surprises me that I only just saw it now after more than 20 years playing… Makes me wonder how many other obvious things I’m missing.