Disclaimer: I’m essentially brand new to 2d fighters, I played MK2 when I was really young with my brothers, but that’s about it. Taking this into account, I’ve done a ok ammount of research on learning game play which includes looking for threads and watching youtube videos. I have glanced at some move charts ( not sure if thats the right term, the breakdown of frame data and all of that), but that’s kind of a foreign language to me so I’ve avoided it to this point because it won’t do me any good from where I am at.
So, I got UMVC3 the day it came out. I’ve never owned any of the games in the series before, I just played it at a friends once or twice and watched a lot of videos and streams which really pushed me to get the game.
I understand the basic mechanics of the game such as movement, basic combo structure, assists and hyper combos (executing them is a whole nother story). So when I got home after buying it, the first thing I did is one round of arcade warm up and I felt ready for the challenge that is xbox live. I thought ok well there is a ranking system this will be great I may loose a few games, but eventually I’ll get paired against people around my level. I guess it’s about 60 games later now and I’m getting completely destroyed still. My current record is I belive 10-51 T_T. I don’t have a team I’m completely set on yet, I just kind of flip between a group of characters including, Akuma, Ryu, Strider, Virgil, Dante, Hawk eye, and Iron Fist.
The real point of making this thread is to find out where I should be looking to improve my game. The one thing I know I need to work on is basic game theory/ learning the rules essentially of the things you can and cannot get away with in a game and what you should be looking to accomplish at different stages of each match. I’m having a hard time figuring any of those rules out so far.
Practice equals perfect so even though I’m getting destroyed I keep trying to play people online, the issue here is I never feel like I’m actually learning anything. The only thing I think I may have started to grasp is that it seems as though learning to block and not get stuck into a combo is one of the first things I should learn. I get endlessly frustrated getting stuck in combos, it makes me rage so much, but I understand to a point the extensive combos are what this games about. If anybody can link me to a thread or video that would go over blocking and what not that would be greatly appreciated.
Since online play doesn’t really teach me that much, I’m currently going through arcade with a variety of characters to get a basic feel for how each character works. For instance I know understand small things like that I can carry an opponent into a corner with Akumas spinning kick then launch to continue comboing. Those are the small things I attempt to implement in online play, although I’m rarely successful ( if i land a hit, I freak out and start mashing). This feels like it’s the best way to start, if anybody else has suggestions please let me know.
I played through the challenges with most of the characters I mentioned earlier. That kind of gets me the same feel as playing arcade, learning what moves I need to be throwing in to OTG and stuff like that. I also tried to learn what characters I can use their assists to otg as well.
I have dedicated sometime to try to figure out the longest possible combos for characters like Akuma (hes my favorite), but it seems like it’s pointless. Unless I can consistently execute that online it’s not worth the investment of time at the moment.
Playing Online is extremely painful. I’m 10-51 as stated before and I’m playing these 9th lords(I think thats high rated) and I’m getting crushed. I don’t know if thats a match making bug or what, but it sucks, but even playing aginst rookies and beginners is hard. I lost against some guy who was 0-10 and I thought to myself as that match started, THANK GOD, I’ll finally grab another win… I lost terrible T_T. I’ve really wanted to utilize XBL to improve my play, but it doesn’t feel like I ever learn anything. Maybe in the future after I get the basic mechanics of this game down I’ll be able to utilize it.
So that’s my basic experience so far with UMVC3. I’m really looking for any advice at all, whether it’s general or specific, my issue is I don’t really know where to start.
Thanks for reading
(I may buy some video capture software and do record myself playing with some commentary to give a more vivid idea of whats going through my head while playing.)