Walking Forward

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
1

When I’m looking to see how I can get better at Street Fighter, most of say to simply walk forward and throw. Also to step back to trick the opponent into throwing out a move. I do this when my opponent and I are at a distance and playing a little footsies by throwing out random normals. Somehow what doesn’t work is when I walk forward, they somehow get me (even when I try to block) or don’t throw out anything (Because they either know I’m trying to trick them or turtling). When I go forward to grab them, (I main Abel so I mostly use his command throw) they get me before I use the throw.

Is walking forward situational because I really need some help on this.

2

Have you tried focus attacking at all when walking forward? If they throw out a poke and it’s recovery is long enough you could smack them into crumple and they’ll think again about throwing out a poke. You could also backdash after absorbing it. the next time you focus you could cancel it into a dash and grab, or if they think you are going to focus again and they attempt to break with an armor breaking move you just block that and punish it.

Also, sometimes the whole walk up game is a bit easier if you are just a little more patient about when you start walking up. Wait it out a little bit.

3

for people who do focus bait though, i guess you could throw out just ONE fast jab or short to get them to focus.

You can try to mix it up by neutral jumping sparingly. They may walk into a neutral jump RH -----> combo.

also if you start focusing, people may react by jumping backwards. I am sure you can also use Abel’s U2 or some other punishment if you can make them jump away

4

yes you will see alot of players bait FAs to get a surprise crumple or to get the opponet to back off.

i know what you mean the first few seconds of a match are among the most stressful. it feels like a totally even slate. if you FB they can jump over it, if you do a special they can block and punish, if you don’t move they can hit you, etc.

my best advice is to BE PATIENT. i know it is VERY hard to do in the middle of a match, but once you start doing it, you will see improvement rather quickly.

a piece of SF advice i can give you:

“Nobody can stop you from walking forward without taking a risk”

think that over for a few minutes, and let it sink in :smiley:

in short you have to walk forward at the RIGHT time, do it prematurely and you can get punished like w/ everything else.

and if you are playing as Abel, may i suggest incorporating his “regular” throw into your gameplay. his command throw is untechable yes, but it is also more vulnerable.

check the able thread in character dsicussion and pose this same question, they should be able to give you some character SPECIFIC info (walking forward implements different strategies for some characters)

Hope This Helped!

5

You’re trying to play footsies with Abel? That’s the problem right there.

Abel doesn’t have like any good normals for footsies, and his normals are way too slow for it. The only thing you should be using is f+mk, try lk roll every now and then too.
Like Ianskie said, FA is also good to absorb normals and dash thru, you can catch ppl with FA > dash in TT since Abel’s dash is realy fast at 16 frames.

6

footsies does not necessarily mean you HAVE to throw out a poke. It could be just as simple as walking, stopping. fidgeting, doing nothing, using focus, neutral jumping, and in the case of Abel like vertoxz said to use ----> MK, with the aim of keeping your opponent where you intend to. Technically Abel, and the whole cast, can play footsies, but it may not be like ryu per se where you do all the above and use low MK etc etc .

7

Whoever told you “walk forward and throw” as advice for getting better at SF is a moron.

You need to develop a more critical mind here. What if you were looking for advice on how to get better at SF and someone said “just throw fireballs” ? Would you take that seriously? Everything is situational in SF (short of punishes and chips), so you have to be able to set up any kind of damage you want to do.

8

I like bait focusing although sometimes I get baited pretty bad. (Neutral jumping is a bad idea when they know you’re gonna do it right as you stop blocking - you get crumpled, and probably get punished bad if they’re reasonably good.)

Sometimes immediately on get up (me getting up), if they’re in mid range, I dash forward and go for a throw. It’s funny how unexpected that is to some players.

9

just remember don’t use an FA as a quick AA Attack. it will work on scrubs, but if you fight someone skilled (or even semi-skilled) they will punish you for it.

this may sound stupid but alot of people seem to do it…

10

ive been watching videos on youtube of higher tier players and such. i notice a lot of good players do this thing where they are almost constantly taking a step forward then a step back (just walking not dash). what is the purpose of this? at what point in time in a fight is it safe to be moving like this? does it provide some kind of consistency im not understanding?

11

feint? ?
[feynt] Show IPA
?noun
1.
a movement made in order to deceive an adversary; an attack aimed at one place or point merely as a distraction from the real place or point of attack: military feints; the feints of a skilled fencer.

12

gotcha, thx… oh, and u could have just said feint… lol. im not completely deedeedee i know the definition. lol. thx tho =P

13

Best advice in this thread imo

Think about the how and why. Walking forward and throwing is fine but only if you feel you have your opponent completely petrified to push a button, generally facilitated by a strong footsie game. Check out Maj’s footsie articles. He touches on this exactly. Likewise, OP, you mention that when playing footsies you’re “randomly throwing out normals” I think this is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to understand the concept of footsies. You shouldn’t just be throwing out random normals.

There should be some kind of thought behind every button you press (or don’t press for that matter)

14

i agree. i play cammy and i noticed instantly that normals can be good in various reason. i.e. cammys crouch fierce isnt too bad of an anti air i notice. it seems that your forwards, or jabs, and strongs, etc., should be used for a reason, rather than just randomly picking a jab or a forward.

what im going to practice more is doing endless battles (so my player points dont drop). i wont necessarily focus on winning… but instead focus on what normals are best used when, this way eventually it will almost be second nature to know when to use what…if that makes sense to anyone else lol.

15

Ha! I like to be a helpful douche bag. It is a balancing act.

Normals are extremely important. You can learn far more about a game using normals exclusively than if you did naught but special moves.

Of vital importance is awareness of the depth inherent in a fighting game. A friend of mine, a long time sports game player, recently picked up Capcom Vs SNK 2 and SFA3 for his PSone. He’s been playing the last couple months, came over to my place and asked to play a little SSF4. I picked random characters and used 50% handicap. He played very erratically and won a few matches.

Eventually I had him stop, said I’d “open his mind” to how deep the game is with showing him one of the simplest mix ups there is. I verified that he knew you had to block high against a jumping attack, told him that I was going to jump kick him and he needed to defend, which he did. I told him we would do it again but I’d attack after, I jump kicked him, he blocked, I swept him. Again, jump kick, block, crouch lk, low block, crouch lk, low block. Again, jump kick, block, c.lk, low block, throw. Again, jump kick, block, throw. Again, empty jump, throw.

His mind was blown. He had no idea that the game was played on that level. I told him to examine every action taken by his opponent and himself and try to look for all the branching options, that everything in the game will present him with an option, even if it is as simple as blocking high or low.

If you are approaching footsies as walking back and forth and throwing moves out at random you are failing to actually perform footsies, you are simply aping what you have seen others do without any understanding of what you are mimicking.

If I throw out a “random” standing mk (Dan’s best poke) from outside of it’s range I do so hoping my opponent will try to beat my poke, say with a long range standing hk that has enough start up frames to allow for Dan’s leg to retract out of the way before the active frames allow the move to connect and that my recovery will happen with enough time for me to punish them or gain some positional advantage.

Or maybe I hope they will try to punish with a fireball, which I jump over and kick them in the face. The point is that you need to be aware of the options available to your opponent and how you will react to each.

As it sits now, I will lose to a marginal Rose player after a 10 win streak against decent players using more common characters. Why? Due to numerous holes in my knowledge of the options available to a person using Rose, not having the range and speed of her moves ingrained at that low “instinctual” level that I do for someone like Ryu, and, related to the first point, not having a database of common tendencies in choices made by a Rose player when presented with a given situation.

That “database” is when you bring your knowledge of both characters and the game engine to bear on playing the other PLAYER. Which is what fighting games are all about.