Nice guide, can you make one for salty players that want to get better like me? c:
My reply below is not directed solely at you, so please don’t think there is any offense or harsh tones in it.
This is a problem for new players certainly, but perhaps not in the way you’d think. The problem is discouragement more so than anything else. Believe it or not, you’ve probably got a lot better at inputting the commands but you won’t see it instantly. Even if you practice for an hour, don’t get it, then come back tomorrow and do the same thing. Eventually something will just click in your head and you’ll get once. Of course overcoming that wall is not at all an easy thing for someone and takes time and effort that not everyone has.
Oddly enough this is where Fighting Games have a great symmetry to so many other things in life. Want to get good a playing an instrument? Drawing? Any craftsmanship? Math? Science? Just about everything else? Well guess what! It’s going to take roughly the same amount of time and effort depending on the person.
Now I’m in agreement that practicing in just about every fighting game isn’t all that fun. In fact it all fills like practicing an instrument. Most players just want to “rock out” for a bit and learn as they go. Which is totally fine, but they’ll never really get anywhere that way. Just like learning the positions of the notes on a guitar is important to being a master guitarist, learning and getting familiar with whatever input device is important to being great at fighting games. “Learning” in this context is different from “knowing.” Learning here means doing something without even thinking about it. Where the device is basically just an extension of you. Sort of like how once you learn to read, you can’t see text without automatically reading it.
This is a wall all players have to either get over or get through.
May as well reply to keep the conversation going. I want to state upfront I agree with lots of what you guys are saying, but salt isn’t that easy to break through.
I’m not sure how you’re defining small. I don’t see anyone being competitively competent without at least some combo ability (by that I mean being able to hit beyond 3 - 4k).
Also I’ve spent a good 1/3 (if not more) of my gameplay in the training room practicing combos. If that aspect is “small” what the hell qualifies to be “big”?
If you can’t execute, how do you experiment with things that require execution? There are also lots more reset windows if you can keep the combo going longer versus than one or two oppurtunities that exist in a short one. Your ability to experiment is limited by what you’re actually able to perform.
I’ve been trying to work on other things too, such as the sandwich stuff, and also barely progressing. The problem is some things are very pivotal to continuing a combo, and doing a sneeze to Fiber Upper is the method of continuing a combo off Fortune’s air super - without being able to do that properly I can’t exactly move on to the stuff directly related to it. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here, move onto something else when you can’t do it? I would come back full circle fairly quickly when it comes to combo-related things.
It’s a shitty attitude, but I see it as being unavoidable for many newcomers (I’d go as far as to say the vast majority of newcomers who actually try to get better).
My situation is if they are able to get in fairly equal amounts.
I never said that, nor would I ever say that. The videos are great, and I appreciate their existence.
Will do, but it’s simply connecting the sneeze at the right time (because you can fire it too early or too late and miss entirely) and then following up to Fiber Upper that I was incapable of doing, I wouldn’t be able to pull of the entire thing in who knows how long.
Thanks for the info, but I had looked at the video and was well aware of all that stuff. It wasn’t anything I was missing, it was merely the strict timing that goes by so fast that one has a difficult time consciously being aware of how to fix it. The head came off every time, but only hit about 1/3 of the time, and after that I was only able to Fiber Upper about 1/3 of the time.
Problem here though is how one gains enjoyment I would say. I (well at least I used to) enjoy doing art, and knowing my final piece was mediocre back in the day still didn’t defer the enjoyment of creating it. I couldn’t stand learning an instrument and that’s why I never bothered to do it.
The thing is video games are seen as a form of enjoyment. Getting good at some things can be a lot of work and very tedious, but it can be for or augment your career - that is in a completely different league than doing something done solely for enjoyment such as playing video games.
The thing about a game like SSBM that I loved so much is that one can practice their tech skill and improve their ability to “combo”(the smash kind at least) mid-match. The person typically has to hinder themselves a little bit to work the techs in due to many failures, but progression occurs at pretty much optimal pacing as you try to work L-cancelling and WDing into your game. Sure you may have to try it for the first time outside a match, but once you know what it should look like when how quickly it should be done, the rest of the practice can unfold during actual gameplay (the fun part).
With SG you have to actually go to the training room and work on stuff there, and it creates a completely different feel from just working on it mid-game. Not until you have a decent grasp in training can you actually start to try and pull the combos off in matches. And that training room time feels endless.
Obviously, all I’m saying is that newcomers are subject to execution salt (which is obvious), but I also think that salt (mixed with the time depth over which that saltiness occurs) makes a lot of players turn away in the end. They may enjoy the game shortly, but they won’t actually try to become competitive or seek out a community. It doesn’t feel like a wall, but an endless field of walls.
While I agree that longer combos give more chances to reset, players (unless conditioned beforehand) that once a combo starts, it’s going to keep going for a big. By that, I would assume that players would be caught off guard by a reset after a handful hits into a hard to guess situation. I think there was a video called the Fillia vortex (here it is.) that showed just an onslaught of constant tricky mix-ups.
By small, I mean that players spend much more time getting in, trying to read the opponent, and keeping the other player out, than hitting a sequence of buttons. Combos are the easiest thing to grasp, and the easiest things to be exposed to. They are what you SEE most of the time and are the most simple things to practice (not talking about easy-hard combos, just in general)
When I said experiment, I just meant general experimentation within the training mode. You don’t need good execution to dick around in an area with infinite meter and customizable situations. You may need it to capitalize on some ideas, or to get beyond simple/intermediate things, but experimentation is something fun that you can do regardless of skill level.
“Work on other things” simply means to practice on other aspects of the character while you can’t do what you’re trying. Fortune has plenty of other things you can do, so get used to those WHILE doing what you’re trying to do. Practice different resets, she doesn’t have enough of those yet, get used to doing her instant over head/fuzzy guard j.LK. That’s a part of the beauty of fighting games. Experiment on your own along side of the practice you want to do.
edit: I don’t have much awareness over my tone when I talk or write, so if I sound angry or anything, sorry. I don’t mean to.
I think the biggest thing that’s underestimated about learning to combo is sleeping. You can practice for hours and not see any real improvement - but if you go sleep an hour or two afterwards, you’ll see a lot of improvement when you go back to it. Sleep is vitally important. I talk about this a bunch with a friend of mine who’s a guitar player. We agree the mechanics of practicing are pretty similar between fighting games and playing an instrument. And she does a lot of research on how to practice more effectively. I could go into the neurological processes involved in learning and require sleep - but I think it’s not too important.
So what does this mean practically? It means practice what you can, thinking about the things you can’t. If you can’t get the timing right for a particular link, think about what it looks like when you do it with right timing. Try it a few times, varying your timing intentionally. It doesn’t matter if you get it right or not, just think about what you’re doing, and compare it to the results you intend. After you’ve done this a few times, you’ll probably get tired of it. In that case, move on to something else. There are always other things to practice.
And then get some sleep. And practice again the next day. Try all those situations again. You probably will have improved in some way you can notice, unless you’re really at your peak of physical ability.
But remember it’s not fast, and it requires deliberate practice. Not just practice - deliberate practice.
Fortunately, Skullgirls’ execution requirements are pretty low for moderate-damage combos. I find it easier to combo in this game than anything else I’ve played in the style.
And remember that Guitalex is probably the best Ms. Fortune player in the world. His videos of “this new thing I found” are not intended to be basics - they’re the pinnacle of what’s known. You can get a lot of damage out of Fortune with much simpler things that happen to not be building blocks of the best (known) things.
Ah, okay, got you. I agree with everything except with them being the easiest thing to grasp (if grasping includes executing).
However, the way I see it, those others things can largely be practiced during the actual match. Combos pretty much have to be restricted to training mode.The former is actually fun, the latter a boring chore.
And your tone is totally fine (also I couldn’t care less about tone to begin with).
I would concur with everything you said, and that is a helpful method.
I would place a very large emphasis on only practicing a small amount before you get tired of it, so the game doesn’t start to drag for you (unless you’re the type that enjoys practicing and failing at combos). Incremental practice is better than none, or better than practice that leaves you salty.
Haha, I’m well aware.
I wasn’t salty about failing to do what he is able to, just a small fragment of the entire thing (connecting just 2 moves actually, the sneeze from super into fiber upper).
I don’t look at a video and get upset if I can’t do the stuff in it after hours of practice. But I do get salty when I fail to pull off a small portion of the whole thing.
(And now I’m off to practice just one cycle of the sandwich combo, before hopping online.)
With easy to grasp, I just meant that it’s basic to understand “I can chain from 1 to 6, do a special, and if I want a super.” A lot of training mode is definitely about training your execution, but it also acts as an area where you can expose yourself to and inspect situations in a more controlled environment.
And I find hours of grinding in training mode endlessly amusing and fun. Though that’s just me. And even then, my execution is shit.
Though I WAS doing consistent 1f links with Cerebella RunStops so that I get an extra loop from a jump in. I THINK I was the one to find that bug in the game. I’m still claiming it because why not.
It’s strange actually. I was playing SG after release once and since I have no execution on pad whatsoever it was really hard to pull of fireball motions every time I wanted to. Also I managed to complete all tutorials. Pretty long time have passed since then. I never touched pad all that time and then couple of weeks ago I tried to play SG again and was able to pull off fireballs much more stable then before and even was able to confirm triple bangs into argus somewhat reliably. I’m not sure why it’s so but I guess taking breaks is really useful practice.
You need to take breaks to absorb and retain the information you’ve learned. It also helps you rest and prevents stress and frustration, so that you are less fatigued when you try whatever it is you are doing when you return to it.