Let me start off by saying this is my first Street Fighter game as I’m somewhat new to the fighting game genre. After watching the amazing EVO tournament, I thought the game looked really interesting and figured I’d give it a try. I have a decent of experience with games like MK and Injustice but SF feels totally different from those two. I start off with finding a character that I’d enjoy playing(Gouken) and began learning his moves, super, ultras and the like. I watch some tutorial videos on him to understand him better, and once I felt confident, I decided I’d hit up some multiplayer. Only one word explains my distraught with this game: FRUSTRATING. Getting bodied every single game is extremely demoralizing and gives me no incentive to get better. Maybe it’s just not my type of game? But this is the first time I’ve played a competitive game and wanted to give up so early. I’m fully aware that I’m horrid at this game, and need to practice, but it’s hard to know what I’m doing when the enemy is in a constant state of relentless assault. I begin to panic and mash buttons cause I’ve no idea what to do in a lot of situations. Not to mention, playing on a pad is a nightmare. Sometimes, a quarter of the game is me failing my inputs. I’m genuinely sorry if I’m coming off as whiny but my excitement for this game, has shifted to disappointment.
This belongs in the newbies section.
Also these are games of spacing and timing, think about where you are supposed to stand to prevent your opponent from doing his options.
IF you’re tired of getting bodied then play people closer to your level, but who still want to hone their skills also. Every game that is highly competitive and has a high skill ceiling is going to feel difficult to get into when you first start. You’re going to have to dedicate the same amount of effort and time as everyone else. There’s no shortcuts to becoming competitive, so either you like the game and you’ll suck it up despite your losses, or you don’t like it and you’ll play something else.
you’re playing a 5 year old game in a 25 year old genre that has a lot of overlap between game skillsets. that means when you’re starting and show up online, everyone else is a killer compared to you. people still playing SF4 online 5 years into the game are probably a lot better than where they started, which is the same place you’re starting now.
there’s two possible solutions:
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learn as much as you can, practice, play against anyone you can, keep losing and learning from your losses, and at some point you turn that corner and can play the same game everyone else is playing.
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play a new fighting game when it comes out. outside of fundamentals, people start a lot closer to square one whenever a new fighting game comes out.
If this is your reaction in a few days you should probably quit. Competitive games take a large time investment.
You can have fun without being competitive. Find people on your skill level and blast away at endless or offline sessions. Eventually if you’re still interested you can strive to get better.
Also this game is 5+ years old. You have to understand that people that are still playing it have a lot of time invested so it’s only natural you’ll get stomped online.
Thanks for the video, I’ll definitely look into it.
Since you put it into perspective, I suppose it makes sense that I’m getting destroyed because I’m getting into SF4 at such a late time. Thanks.
Just to clarify, I’m EXTREMELY competitive. As competitive as it gets and I’m fully aware of that old cliche saying, “practice makes perfect” but for the first time ever in any game, I’m having a hard time trying to get better. I’m going to try to suck it up though. I just have to learn to accept loss and learn from it.
This is a problem though. From a business perspective, Capcom need guys like this to hang around. The standard Shoryuken response of “find a new game, this is too competitive for you” is not going to make Capcom money.
Capcom really need to find a way to make things easier on new players. You guys may not care, but given Capcom’s dire economic situation, they need as many players as possible buying their games (and sticking around). If this keeps up, there won’t be any future Street Fighter games for you to complain about.
Is the answer lowering the learning curve and focusing more on fundamentals? I’m not sure, but an “easy to learn but hard to master” approach is definitely in order for future Capcom fighting games, whether you like it or not…
Edit:
In answer to the ops question, the reality is that this game is not easy to get into to. It will require a great deal of work (maybe more than you are willing to put in). Here’s what you do:
- Start with a character like Ryu, Thawk, Adon, Ken, M. Bison or Balrog. Gouken is gonna be pretty hard going, until you familiarize yourself more with the game.
- Learn the basic bnb (bread and butter) combo for your chosen character
- Learn the best normal moves for your character (check the Shoryuken character forum)
- More than anything, when on the defense practice just blocking. Learn how to block everything, you can do this in training mode
- Next learn spacing, each character has optimal distance to play from. You can learn this by watching Youtube videos
- Practice anti-airs, learn how to stop people from jumping in on you
- Learn how to Focus Dash cancel into Ultra combos
That’s just the bare basics, hope it helps.
You can’t learn from your losses yet, that’s a really hard skill to achieve. Honestly it will just make you bitter over the game.
I’m not sure how valuable this advice is since I started sf4 when everyone was picking it up, but I’d focus on something like steping stones method.
First pick a character that you like and you feel confortable playing on your pad. Go to said character subsection and ask/look around for your bread and butter combo and your punish combo. Train those for a week and eventually hop online with the mindset of landing them, win or lose. Then learn your antiairs and focus on doing those. Play matches without jumping once (punch yourself if you do), etc.
Eventually all the exposure makes stuff click. I think focusing on small steps and successes is way better than mindlessly throwing yourself to online without even knowing why you lost and what your mistakes are.
This game is REALLY hard to get into. Realize that you’re like a caveman who just landed in the 21st century. A lot of stuff that the average joe does online wasn’t there at the start because people didn’t know how to abuse it, tech developed, a fuckload of characters were added, etc.
Anything really worth learning takes time and effort, and if you expect to be good at it quickly you have unrealistic expectations. If not being good at it quickly frustrates you I think you should probably just hang it up.
Capcom should have done a better job with the game in a lot of ways to make it more accessible, but thats not something that did or is going to happen.
Fighting games are a lot harder than other genres I’ve played. People watch them and just assume they are simple.
This is honestly amazing advice. I actually like this approach a lot more than just going into online games and not knowing what the hell to do which results in me getting pummeled into oblivion 9/10 times.
OP … this video will surely help.
As stated in this video, I also agree that utilizing Ryu first will be a great move, even if you don’t like him. You can change later.
One of the biggest overlooked factors in this game, and any fighting game for that matter, is knowing the OTHER character. You don’t have to know them in depth, BUT you have to know what you can and can’t punish and what tools you can and cant punish with vs certain attacks. You also need to know how they can punish you.
You also have to get familiar with other characters combos and know when they conclude. This all takes time.
This also is why you feel you are mashing buttons and can’t get away from attacks and pressure. You can do great things in practice mode but when a live person comes at you, you don’t know the character well enough to know when and when not to strike. This is what you are experiencing because that is also what I have experience as a beginner.
So… when you lose, go into training mode and utilize the character you just lost to. That is something I have done. Learn the basics and replicate what the other player did to be successful. You can then find the weakness in that character once you become familiar.
BTW I also play a ton of MK and like you I am struggling a bit with this game. I began playing only 2 weeks ago, so I can relate on the MK situation…
Being that we come from the same background, I will tell you that your mindset has to change. MK is full of elaborate, long combos with little to no footsies… Street Fighter is the exact opposite, for the most part. In SF fundamentals will get you FAR. Focus on them.
If you want to play some games and lab let me know. You can send me a FR on Xbox 360. GT: Smash U4Fun Son
I would really hate to use Ryu but if that’s what it takes, then I will use him.
I’ll look into the video for sure. Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. Don’t actually have SF4(PC) for the Xbox but I do plan on getting it seeing as how the community is larger over there. If I do, I’ll be sure to send you a FR.
Just went back to playing some games after posting this thread a lot more level-headed and still got beat down. I didn’t get frustrated this time though, just goes to show that I’ve got a hell of a lot to learn.
@ “Priority”
Carry on. 
:tup:
As a person who just started sf4, I really would suggest on focusing on footsie and hit confirm. U need to realize that it is the CORE mechanic of the game. Even if you can land a 900 damage combo in practice mode, but if you can’t start the combo going it’s practically useless and you might as well throw that combo into the drain
Another thing is don’t take losing too hard, even top players like infiltration or daigo will lose once in a while. What matters is that you learn from your mistake and improve yourself as a player so that you don’t make the same mistake again.
Good luck on your sf journey, it’s going to be a long road ahead. Don’t give up, learn to love the game so that you will enjoy the game even if you lose ^^
Ok, first of all, the gameplay level of EVO takes natural talent for fighting games and several years with intensive training to achieve, keep that in mind.
Street Fighter is indeed much more complicated to play that, let’s say, Tekken or Mortal Kombat, and you have to give yourself some time to get the flow of the game. If you like Gouken, play Gouken. Watch Gouken videos, try to copy what they do that works, and keep playing. After 3 months you will be sure much better, you will lose A LOT, as we all did when we started, but losing or winning shouldn’t be your main focus right now, your main focus has to be to learn and to have fun, forget about the loses.
I’m also trying to learn fighting games, which is kind of funny since I was there as a kid when SF2 came out in arcade and I loved the SF series through Alpha but I never really thought of them as “serious” games (I wrongfully thought of them as buttons mashers until very very recently). The only reason I took a second look is because I started following e-sports last year and noticed SF had lots of video on youtube so I started watching and realized how much depth the game has.
Anyway OP, I have a (long winded) method of learning complex games, but it may be helpful. Two years ago I set out to learn Dota2, of course after learning what creeps were and the objectives of the game I figured I’d give a live game a shot. You know how that went. Of course I had little idea about attack animations, turn speed, cancel attacks, move attacks, etc all of which are integral to good last hits, which is what feeds your ability to buy items.
Long story short, the amount to learn and the amount of characters was seriously overwhelming, so I strapped myself in, started at the top left of the character roster and played each hero once against easy bots. By the time I had played every hero, I had learned a great deal about various facets of the game (still very basic). I then graduated on to intermediate bots, who spanked me (mostly because I had not understood ganks and positioning yet). But I went back to the top left of the roster and started playing 5 games with each hero. Again, by the time I made it through to the bottom right of that roster (months later fyi) I knew the items, I understood hero roles, and so many more things, but I learned (did not master) dota2. I can watch any game and know what’s going on, I can play any hero/role and be helpful to my team, and wouldn’t you know it my favorite hero ended up being Invoker.
I’ve just started this same process with SFIV (even though I bought SFIV the day it launched for nostalgia reasons, again I just didn’t take it as a serious game, I just played a few favorite characters to see their story and moved on). I started at the top left of the roster with Ryu best of 7 vs CPU on easy and played through the roster re-matching any character that I didn’t win 4-0 against. Currently I’m doing the same going through medium difficulty.
What this does for me is it gives me a basic working knowledge of every character and which characters are difficult for them and which are easy (now this will likely change later on against humans, but the idea is to know how I can potentially be punished vs different characters. For example I found Oni’s spin through mixup difficult to counter with Guile after a knockdown because I wanted to start charging, but the spin/charge attack (dunno the name) goes past me and hits me on the opposite side so I have to switch the side I’m blocking on in a very small window.
This process will take a while as I still have to finish the roster on medium and then on hard before I step foot in a player vs player match. I figure, if I can’t beat the CPU on hard, I can’t beat a human.
Start with Ryu and practice working on zoning, spacing, pokes & anti airing and once you feel you have a better understanding of how the game works then move on to another char like Gouken or whatever other character you think looks cool/fun.
Ryu will teach you how Street Fighter is supposed to be played as the game is designed around Ryu and he is the most fundamental.
You will soon enough get good just gotta stick with it dude also with Ryu you can play the game incredibly simple if you want to.
This tutorial playlist is well worth the watch it starts off a bit slow but goes from beginner to intermediate through to advanced:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_nS5Jj3pHY&list=PL744144A71C67D816