If you want to stop getting bodied, the first thing you need to do is accept that you will get bodied for a while. At the moment you’re trying to win; if you’re doing this badly, stop trying to win and start simply trying to block. Doesn’t matter if your opponent continues to chip you, just get good at blocking. Get good at recognizing when they’re about to attack and whether you need to block low or high, and just block. If you feel confident enough to punish, do so. You will still lose but you will be CLOSER to winning. If they jump in, you’ll need to anti-air. If you lose but forced your opponent to give up trying to jump in on you, consider that a small victory.
The goal is to get you comfortable in a fight. You don’t need to win yet; you just need to be able to slow the fight down to the point where you can understand what’s going on, and to reduce the number of tactics your opponent tries so that it’s easier to guess what they’ll do next.
When he or she starts being able to predict what his or her opponent is about to do, and can stuff/punish, I’d say. Bear in mind I’m not saying NEVER attack; I’m just saying to focus on learning defense. Focusing on defense generally makes you more focused on your opponent’s range, so you learn footsies more quickly.
Too many new players simply don’t block enough and think they should always be attacking. Which allows a more practiced opponent to simply stuff or punish every single thing they do. And counter hits HURT, so the round ends before they can learn the patterns and the rhythm, and they end up learning nothing.
The game is mostly about getting into your opponent’s head and figuring out what they’re going to do. Figuring that out is easier when you focus on defense. The OP has already learned Gouken and all his moves, and felt confident before going online, so execution is obviously not the problem. And if it’s not execution, it’s the inability to predict the opponent. And learning to predict the opponent strongly involves learning to block.
I’ve been playing the character since April 09 and I still discover new stuff, or at least new to me. I can call that statement utter bullshit on seniority alone.
Not sure if anyone else mentioned it yet, but jumping right into online PvP matches is probably not a good idea if you can’t at the very least beat the cpu in either arcade or versus mode on it’s hardest setting easily, as well as complete the majority of the combo trials for your character with decent consistency. Maybe others won’t feel the same way, but there is definitely value for brand new players in playing through arcade and versus mode against the cpu at it’s various difficulty levels. You can at least get the basic timing for moves down, learn how to defend against the various character’s moves and basic combos, and learn the mobility and defense mechanics in the game.
This isn’t a bad way to get into things if you’re new to a char imo. If you can’t beat the computer, with it’s very predictable patterns and random moments where it literally stops doing anything, you may not be ready for online. Besides Arcade Seth, who is a fucker.
The only thing the CPU does in hardest is read inputs, I do think that beating arcade mode can help to adapt to a character before jumping online, but I also think hardest will only teach them how to block and wait for the other character to throw the round away.
First thing I did was pick one character that you are comfortable learning the game with and will stick with for a very, very long time. To me it was Bison but it can be whoever you want for you.
As much as people hate him, and many do hate him, Juicebox made a footsie vid that is lengthy but it helps you understand what it’s all about. Check that out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQQCan5oo90
Once you learn footsies, apply them to your own characters’ best pokes and specials. See what top players use in match videos.
Get in touch with someone who is willing to train you one on one, whether it may be offline in your scene, a forum like SRK, or even on social media. This is bonus and not really needed if you are someone who has articulate intuition but if you can help it, this will help exceptionally.
No. there is never a good reason to play against the AI.
-It’s not a gauge of your ability to play your character/the game because playing the AI is only similar to playing the game at the most superficial level.
-It doesn’t teach you how the different characters play or what to do against them because the AI doesn’t know how to play any of the characters
-Even if you’re still at the level where you need to learn/practice the basic inputs you’ll have an easier time practicing those in training mode without the AI constantly jumping around and bothering you.
You can mess with trial mode if you want but expecting to complete “the majority of them” is pretty silly when most of them aren’t useful and, imo, you’d have an easier time checking the character-specific forums and looking up some reliable combos which are A.) guaranteed to work in Ultra B.) battle-tested by real players in real matches and C.) Probably come with documentation on how to perform them.
Basically the whole point of what I recommended is summed up right here; practicing those combos against the AI is a great way to learn how to apply what a brand new player learns in training mode, and is at least a way to build some confidence in your fundamentals as opposed to just going online and getting murdered from the get go. Board don’t hit back, man. lol Everyone dating back to SF2 started by first learning the basics of the game against the AI then fine tuning them against live opponents. Not sure why that would change even now.
The AI doesn’t anti-air, most Gief players online know how to anti-air with lariat. One thing they have in common with the AI is they rarely block and they always mash something on defense, whether it is EX GH/SPD/lariat.
One thing for sure is that Gief has disappered online, i’ve played over 100 matches in Ultra and I played against 1 or 2 Gief at the most, he was a popular character online before Ultra.
Weather your new to SF or looking to get more comfortable in the game, I have a few suggestions. I’ve trained a few people in the past few years. I’m far from mastering SF, but doesn’t stop me to help anyway.
Try to practice combos in the challenge mode for you character. It makes you more comfortable. It’s also a better version of the training room. Do this for about an hour each day. Especially before going online.
Learn your basics when you do this as well.
Play arcade mode till you feel that the game is easier.