I’m new to the forum, and new to trying to get decent at fighting games. I’ve played a bunch of fighting games for fun but didn’t really bother to know what I was doing until recently when I decided to try and get competent at SF4 Ultra. At this point I’ve been practicing daily for about a month, and I’ve been reading various beginner guides around the web.
I have several problems I’d like advice on. The first is that I have nobody local to practice against. All my fights against people thus have to be online. I’ve played hundreds of online matches (and lost >95% of them). I’ve also spent time in the practice room trying to improve my execution, but I’m not sure where to start. How can somebody in my position improve their skills?
Second, I have terrible habits left over from the last fighting game I was any good at: the old PC game One Must Fall. I try to sweep way more often than I should. My default response to attacks is to crouch-defend, and it’s only with effort that I can respond more appropriately. Do folks have any advice for shedding these habits? (If the advice is just “practice a load” then that was my suspicion too, and my question becomes what sort of practice ought I do a load of?)
Thanks for any help. I currently suck, and I’d like to see that change.
A little background, if it matters: I’m playing on the Xbox 360. Almost all my practice has been playing Ryu, as that’s what the guides recommend. (Ryu was is in my top three choices to main anyhow, so it works out nicely. Prior to trying to get good I mainly played Ibuki.)
When I started this project I bought a Qanba Q1. I’m not great with it yet. I’ve never used a stick before, and the square gate is unfamiliar such that even now I sometimes miss the diagonal inputs when I get excited. But I’ve gotten a lot better at using the thing in the past month. Mostly I can hit a hadouken or shoryuken when I want it now, etc…
With shedding bad habits, the optimal way is to go into matches with the intent solely on avoiding them. You ready up and you say, “no matter what, I will not do X, instead I will do Y”. Eventually these habits are replaced by better ones, through time.
Imo It’s be best to play sf2 or 3 before touching 4 if you didn’t get the chance to A stick is basically the same control scheme as controller but buttons are laid out more and the analogue’s bigger. Same motions, just with entire hand.
Character threads. Learning from trial and error from stronger players will make you better for some reason, pretty strange tbh it’ll just happen over time’s the best way to explain it. Mashing won’t work, stick’s too big for that lol when doing fadc it unfortunately has to be accurate and precise and not all over the place.
You shouldn’t play online with the goal of winning, at least at first. Focus on small parts of your gameplay like anti-airing, and try to get better at them. Practicing a lot is necessary, but quality is more important than quantity. Training mode should be used to practice bnbs and recreating situations you had trouble getting out of in match.
Getting good at a fighting game takes a LOT of time, and setting small goals in online matches is the way to go. Until you can do all the cancels and special moves without thinking, training mode is the way to go. Learn the tools, then apply them.
Finally, as the person above said, bad habits will go away when you play without them long enough. As disorganized as this post was, hope it helped.
Thanks for taking time to answer my very vague questions, folks.
Alright, I’ll do that. That fits very well with SaucySnake’s advice. So I’ll just set my own goals for online practice sessions and try to meet them.
I have played SF3, but it’s one of the games I never got good at. I could beat single player as Ibuki, that’s about all I can say for myself. Right now, though, I only own IV, and my motivation is mostly to learn IV (I have a close friend who plays, though sadly not online). How bad an idea do you think it would be continuing to learn on IV, Easilyn?
That’s encouraging. Over the time I’ve been practicing it’s been hard to detect improvement. And, as the material I’ve been reading has been forcing me to shed habits, like risky jump-ins, I think I’ve actually seen my online performance get a little worse.
Where abouts are you located? playing with someone that understand’s how to fight someone who isn’t as good while teaching them at the same time is quite good. For example if I’m playing someone in endless who I can constantly jump in on and they don’t anti-air which gives me easy wins I will carry on doing it, and if they don’t change up I may message them and mention that watching for my jumps and just placing a cr.fierce would make it harder for me to get in. Not in a arsey way just to help out.
Basically playing with someone that can exploit your weak points and give you tips to keep them from exploiting them. That seemed to help me get better with things like anti-airs, not taking risks when I shoudn’t, moves getting whiff punished and more.
I’m in Michigan, about half an hour from Grand Rapids.
I have been so very grateful the two times people have bothered to tell me what I’m doing wrong. (In general, SF IV people have been a lot more sportsman-like than I expect to find on Xbox Live.)
That’s normal, you’ve gone from doing some things without thinking to consciously performing pretty much every individual action. As you get accustomed to your “new habits” you’ll get better.
One trick is watch higher levels play. Like Daigo and Momochi and see how they play. Understand what habits they have and don’t have and how they manage to win. Don’t copy everything they do because it’s a footsies game. If you face a ken mashing shoryu and jumping a lot, these footsies are useless. You must play the fighter and the style more than anything else.
However, at higher play, you’ll need to play their style.
Hardest part to get rid off is bad execution habits and incorporation new techniques into your arsenal.
Mistakes in gameplay are easily weeded out in my opinion once you make a conscious effort to avoid them, while a move you trained 5000 times “wrong” is incredibly frustrating and hard to rectify.
But improving yourself is like 50 percent of the fun in fighting games, the other is reading minds, landing your shit and winning.
Really no easy answer here other than, observe, identify and practice, practice, practice.
When in doubt just practice.
Thanks for the pointers, guys. Perhaps in a few more weeks I’ll post a replay so that you guys can tell me what other bad tendencies I need to work on getting rid of.
A stick is basically the same control scheme as controller but buttons are laid out more and the analogue’s bigger. Same motions, just with entire hand.