What’s up SRK newbie support. I myself am not a newbie but I do have what I think is an odd situation, and am not sure If I should try to remedy it, or leave it as is.
A month or so ago, I bought my first arcade stick. This was following the 2 years I spent on SSF4 and a Seasons Beatings trip which reignited my flame for marvel. For some reason I can play Marvel on stick just fine. Wavedashing, quarter circles, charge moves, the whole 9 yards. But when trying to play SF on stick, the comfort I felt on Marvel with the stick went out the fucking window. In training mode things are just fine, FADC’s and all that shit. But when I get into a game I have 0% execution.
All my set up’s are gone. I lose to what I personally refer to as stupid shit. When I compare what I can do on stick to what I can on pad on SF, I realize that playing on stick set me back about a year and a half of everything that I know with Juri. For example, one of my favorite air-to-air combos is
jumping strong>jumping strong>stand close fierce xx super
On pad, I could mute the TV, walk into a completely different room, and still land that shit.
On stick, I couldn’t land it if you told me you were going to jump then gave me 15 seconds to prepare for it.
I might be rambling since it is 6am. So here is the bottomline. On SF, no matter how much I try, playing stick never feels natural or comfortable to me. On Marvel, stick felt natural and comfortable by day 2.
So should I try and persist in learning stick for SF or should I be a complete weirdo and play both sides of the fence, using pad on one game and stick on the other. Because learning stick on SF gave me my first rage quit in well over 6 months I don’t know what the fuck to do.
You can do both if you want, but I think most people find that going back to pad after switching to stick will make you play worse on both controllers. Voted option 1 because of this.
I would say keep at the stick, but the use a fightpad will develop your finger muscles which will help with the stick. I say train on both, fight on your stick.
Use whatever you’re comfortable with. You are comfortable with the arcade stick in Marvel, and a pad in SF4, so that’s what you should do. No point being stubborn and sticking with one or the other if it means you play like shit.
i sucked fucking ballsack the first week or 2 when i got stick. i couldnt even remember how to sweep.
i remember playing a bison that was A ranked was good on pad but terrible on stick when he first got it.
Point is you need to stick to it and get used to it. some people have other opinions but i am firm in the opinion there are very few chars you can play on pad equally well as on a stick. after a 3-4 weeks i was over the hurdle and i could never ever go back.
Stick with it and get used to it. no sense in spending your time learning 2 different tools for the same task get good at the stick if you already have it
I’m the same way, only the opposite…
I can’t do shit on pad in Street Fighter (Super Turbo and 3S in my case), so I can only use stick.
I play Marvel 2… and been using a stick for 10 years on that game… but I still can’t fast fly with Sentinel… On a DREAMCAST pad, I can do air to ground shit with Ironman and refly combos with Sentinel… No fucking clue… So I just stick to pad for that game, but stick for Street Fighter.
It’s fine to use both.
Well that’s the thing. I don’t have to LEARN two diifferent tools for one game, because I’ve known how to play pad for the last 2 years. I just feel like an idiot because whenever I play SF on pad now, I look over at my arcade stick and think “Did I really spend $180 on that just to play one game?” . It also confuses the hell outta me because Marvel on stick made immediate sense. I didn’t have to work at it or stick with it, it just worked and made sense to me.
Why I’m debating it is because I was thinking, what if I never catch up to where I am on stick and I lose my pad expertise because of how much I practiced stick and then I suck at SF all around the board. I’m just questioning whether or not it’s worth the time to restart when I’ve already gotten so far on pad
if you can play on pad and have no mental qualms about it, why would you want to switch to stick? pad = easy execution, no guessing, macros at your fingertips, etc.
ahh i was speed reading and i misunderstood. well anyway i think a pad for sf4 is far inferior. i couldnt imagine trying to hit the 2 one frame links in a combo without a stick online. i also after getting used to stick much prefer the stick over the analog.
however idk what char you play. wolfkrone rocks pad as does vangief i believe but if you rely on heavy links it may be worth it to learn stick.
stick felt fucking alien for the first week for me but a month later it as like once you go stick you dont go back. but different folks diff strokes so i still say stick with it
It takes a while to build the muscle memory to make use of the device instinctual. I’ve gone from pad to stick to Hitbox and I can tell you the learning curve extends beyond practice mode combos. It takes about 2-3 months of steady play to really embrace a new device without having to think through your movements. In the end go with a device that suits your preferences but acknowledge the pros and cons of the device and determine which one is worth learning. Typically 2D is going to like sticks more then pads and 3d will have a slight bias for playstation-esque pads. Sticks tend to universally be good for whatever game so it’s often worth sticking with it till it becomes natural.
If after 3 months you still feel this way I would drop it, but in all honesty by that time I don’t imagine you wouldn’t be perfectly comfortable with it. Also consider 8 gates and bat tops it 4 gates and lollipops aren’t feeling right.
I’m married to my Hitbox now, but before that option once I learned stick and got used to it, I could not ever imagine going back to pad for 2D fighters. Pads are good for taps (double taps, charging) and sticks are better for rolls (qcf’s, tk’s, srk’s, 360’s etc…). Outside of MK most 2D fighters are going to have controls that benefit a stick.
I think from now on, AE will be the last game I play on pad. Any new fighting games I pick up after this point I will start on stick. I think my muscle memory and timing for AE is too deeply rooted on pad for it to even be a rational change. Looking at my calendar of game releases, it seems the Darkstalkers re-launch will be the first I try that on.
It’s all about preference. There’s more than a few gdlk tournament players on pad like Wolfkrone and Fanatiq and a few others I think. Can we just put the fucking stick is better than pad shit to rest finally?
You’ve still got the worst name! How I miss Foolinfection’s stream.
Anyways, onto the your question.
This was just my experience. I, like you, was alternating between pad and stick, as I sucked on stick for certain games and I didn’t want to lose. After I got over the fact that I WILL lose, I spent a lot more time with my stick. It’s now the only thing I can play on. I think you need to spend more time in SF4 with your stick. Yes, you will get bodied and it will be frustrating. But look at the money you spent on it. It was quite a bit! I know with time you will get comfortable with it, you just have to stay patient.
stick being better than pad usually boils down to the game you’re playing.
I always found it really easy to play ST on a pad since I played ryu the whole time. I could execute the entire character faster than I could on a stick because the pad has a shorter throw to trigger directions. Think about a short shifter in a racing car versus a big rig. That’s what it kind of is for pad vs stick.
when you start playing your game with your pad, you just have to be able to execute everything the game demands out of a top player. My problem for pad in ST was mashing out of throws or mashing out of dizzies. You can mash much faster on a joystick than you can on a pad IMO so I while I gained certain advantages by playing on a pad, I also gained some weaknesses.
pad has advantages that stick doesn’t have and vice versa. They’re 2 different controllers with different elements that make each good. I wouldn’t necessarily stick is better than pad all day simple because of tekken which is 1000x easier to play on a pad. I guess pad\sticks are tools and you choose which “tool” will do the job the best.
dont limit yourself! try as many games as you can. Get an emulator and play with a stick the old classic fighters you used to play on a pad. it will help a lot.
I used keyboard exclusively all these years, yet when I switched to stick it took me just a few months to reach the same level of execution on a keyboard.
though I cross arms to play on the stick since I use right arm for directions and left for buttons. Sometimes when I am in a bad day and cant concentrate, I switch to keyboard. Change of controls helps sometimes in this case.
But overall a stick requires more concentration since it is much easier to slip inputs and timings, at least on the beginning.
so i still say stick with it 