(umvc3) Starting from scratch

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
1

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 :slight_smile:

(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.)

2

Learn combos and the cheap abusable shit your characters have. Learn combos off the cheap abusable shit. Spam cheap abusable shit. You’re now a decent Marvel player.

Akuma has no combos that cannot be done online.

Check the character subforums for character combos. Akuma has magic series -> delayed bbcs -> divekick OTG -> magic series -> bbc xx lk tatsu xx spread fireball hyper. In the corner you can end that with a j.s for flying screen and then do an OTG beam super for more damage. Outside the corner you can land and link a grounded beam hyper

3

10-51 is far from a record that’s shameful, for someone starting from scratch you should have expected that you need to do some catching up with those that have a 9 month headstart from you. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to be good in any fighting game, you just have to ignore your win/lost record and think about what you are doing that works and what that doesn’t work.

What teams have you been using? Do you understand the basics of team construction? That is the number 1 step, and most people who get blown up don’t understand what makes a good team and how to get their team to work.

As for defense, there’s no easy secret shortcut to it, this game has tons of mixup tricks for every character and if you are not familiar with them you will get opened up. You just need to play and familiarize yourself with every teleporting/air dashing trick that is in this game, then play non stop till you know how to deal with most of the tricks in this game.

4

My main game is Starcraft 2, so the one thing I’m actually happy with so far is that that record while it feels shameful doesn’t deter me from practicing at least offline. In sc if i lose twice i’m completely tilted from playing at all.

As far as teams, It’s really random between everyone I listed. The ranked session I just did online was ryu, akuma, hawkeye and akuma, hawkeye, vergil. I have been trying to get better with hawkeye because he’s a character that allows me to generate space between players so that I don’t get comboed as easily, this works to an extent (ps: fuck Ghostrider, I can tell I’m going to hate that character more than any other in this game. His reach and ability to pull you in is so frustrating) Virgil and akuma are chosen because I feel I have more consistent combo’s with them. I like to use vergils teleports, although I’m not sure how to effectively use them, I mix them in to try and get a free combo.

5

Marvel is not an easy game to break into. As much as they have made the combo system and xfactor features encourage newcomers, foundations on pushblocking (this link may help) [media=youtube]X9wYYytq0n4[/media] and for clarity basically all system mechanics from Mvc3 are present in Ultimate btw.
True story: I’ve been playing like every fighter that came out since I was playing SF, MK, KOF, Tekken, Soul edge, Primal rage, Killer Instinct, etc. I ended up a little late to get into this game called Mvc2 (I had been playing Cvs2 a long time before I played it) In all the games I mentioned before I would basically pick a character I liked and rush down, Marvel is practically tailor made for this so I got in and picked teams w/ like Morrigan, Akuma and maybe Venom and Psylocke well I learned that people with the ability to airdash can just jump around call assists and then with beam supers like Ironman or Cable blow up your whole team. I hated the game, thought it was broke did not play it for several years. Evo 2003-05 happened and the scene exploded I became aware of marvel hype. I got back in with some friends who were tierwhores so I learned to counter Storm/Sent mags/ cable etc. I would play lame. I played Blackheart! Thats right wanna tridash me down eat sj rain of demons in your face, with dhcs to catch their assists and an improving knowledge of fundamentals cause I was playing like BH, Doom, Sent or my fav Spiral, Sent, BH I learned how to lockdown with assists, deal chip, and basically the things that were the bane of my existence became my greatest asset.
Sorry for the long speel, my advice is to pick the characters that interest you, find the situations that are giving you the most problems, wesker gunshot-teleport mixup example, or wolv rushdown etc. and set the dummy to record those situations, find a counter(alpha), pushblock(knowing when to use this can be game changing) Keep experimenting with different characters/ assists until it kind of just clicks. I’m not playing Umvc3 business teams yet but I know Nova is tailor made for me, I wanna know the ends and outs of a bunch of other characters first before I main him(but man I have these thoughts about him getting snapbacked with high red health on a combo that probably wouldn’t kill that may keep him from being viable later.

6

I would say the mvc3 series is very offense oriented (maybe not as much in this iteration as vanilla). You don’t want to sit there and actively practice blocking. I think you will naturally learn that with match up experiences as you see how different people try to mix you up.

To start getting better, I would drop everything and hit training mode. You just need to find a few bread and butter combos and get them down perfectly. You mention as soon as you get a hit in you start mashing. This will prevent that. Check out the character specific forums. They all have a combo section dedicated to that character along with youtube videos. Once you can start hit confirming into your combos comfortably, then can look for ways to open up your opponent, so you can turn them into a training dummy. You mentioned watching streams, I’m sure you’ve seen Wolverine slash + Akuma assist. It’s so good because you don’t know which way to block it, and the opponent can basically cancel any of his normal block string into it at anytime. Find things like this that will help you land that first hit on your opponent and then its combo exhibition from there. For the characters you listed, Vergil, Dante, and Strider have tons of mobility options that will help you cross up your opponent. When you throw teleports in, be sure to also call assists before you teleport to add some ambiguity. Or you can go for unblockable set ups like using Akuma’s dive kick assist while using low attacks with your point character. Keep them blocking and eventually they’ll fail to block correctly one time, and that = dead character + free incoming mix up.

TLDR: training mode bnb combos. fill screen with shit until it sticks.

Edit: assuming you still check this thread, feel free to PM me about specifics on Akuma or Dante. They were on my main team in vanilla.