Their reply will be to stop making excuses and that you are just like the other casuals in Silver. And that you should just quit like they mentioned previously.
You are the pot calling the kettle black.
Basically not killing themselves
- Not holding Up-Forward
- Not mashing DP on wake-up
Well, it’s not particularly reasonable. Only the top ~10% of players are in silver or higher. Do you feel bad about not being in the top 10% of other things in your life?
I suspect he’s correct though, that all you need to crack into silver is basic skill in all of the fundamentals. I’m still working my way up through bronze, but what I’m discovering is that when I train myself in one of the fundamentals, my average lp increases noticeably. There’s still tonnes for me to learn, but I’m finding it better to dedicate a weekend to learning one major thing, then learn another the next weekend.
I’m also in that same situation, I can’t dedicate much time cos of work , family responsibilities etc.
If you invest time in the game eventually you’ll develop. if you don’t get any better, you are plain bad. that’s my point. it’s not about being a casual, it’s about investing time and dedication. everyone was a newcomer/casual at one point.
I’m in silver, so I still get matched with a lot of ultra bronze. I’d say the most common bad habits that keep people at bronze are:
Poor movement:
The only way they move forward is by jumping, dashing, or using a special move like tatsu, spiral arrow, or Karin’s rasenha. They never attempt to walk forward.
A lot of Ryu/Ken and Nash players do this thing where they repeatedly throw a fireball then backdash/jump-back until they are in the corner.
Bad defense:
No anti-air’s
Cant block cross-ups
Mashing buttons and dp’s
No blocking on wake-up…poor blocking in general
Bad offense:
Auto pilot jump-in’s, for example: cross-up, jab jab jab , cross-up, jab jab jab…
Mindless button pressing especially sweeps.
No hitconfirms- ending block strings with unsafe specials
Poor punishes- throwing a whiffed dp
Overall Lack of Knowledge and Experience:
Attacking when at frame disadvantage
Throwing projectiles at character with projectile invincible specials and/or supers.
Poor spacing.
Throwing out attacks with no purpose.
No knowledge of, or attempts at whiff punishing.
Difficulty recognizing patters and situations.
I’m still guilty of some of this stuff, but I’m mindful of it and actively try to correct it. You have to learn from your losses, otherwise you wont be able to make sense of what’s going on.
Well I am glad that you have changed your position. Thank you.
Stuff like drskull’s (EDIT: earlier) posts is the kinda attitude that promotes ragequitting to get a higher point score. Let’s stop treating fighting game rankings like a dick-measuring contest, eh?
Your goal should never be to arbitrarily reach a certain ranking. “I gotta get to gold because otherwise I’m not gud”. That’s not the point of the rankings.
The ACTUAL point of rankings is to get players more matches against people who are similarly skilled. If you’re stuck in a ranking, then that’s not a sign that you should stop playing fighting games or anything. It’s just a sorting system. It’s there to give you a higher chance of matches against people on your own skill level.
That there are lots of ranks above you, and presumably getting beaten to a pulp when you get the occasional fight against people above your rank, should tell you that there’s still room for improvement. So you ask yourself the question OP asked: How can I improve?
Unfortunately the rankings are still a bit borked. Right now the amount of ragequitters is kinda screwing up the skill-to-rank equation. Plus, they’re giving themselves a bad time by being higher up than they should be, and thus playing more people who will absolutely demolish them.
Character unfamiliarity is also very much a factor at this point. Thankfully I’m seeing more variety this past week, but before that it was Nash Ryu Nash Nash Ryu Ryu Ryu Chun Nash Ryu Cammy Nash Ryu. So very gimmicky players rise up to Silver ranks because a lot of people don’t know how to deal with, say, Dhalsim teleports yet.
And there will always be good players who might just be playing more casual matches than ranked, or who might have a bustling local scene and so aren’t playing online as much, and thus they’re still in Bronze because they just haven’t played that mode as much. I fought a bronze Chun who was expertly antiairing with lights, varying her offence, taking off half my lifebar in a single non-CC combo (seriously, I could have gone to refill my glass of water during that combo), keeping perfect range and having great reactions. Best damn Chun I’ve fought, and she was in Bronze and I’m in Super Silver.
TL;DR: Rather than worrying about rankings, just ask yourself what went wrong in each match you lost, and learn from that. And if you find yourself stuck in a ranking, but you’re having fun playing the game? Don’t worry about it. Keep having fun. You are where you should be, and if you get better, you’ll rise up.
100% this. When I achieve a decent jump in lp, I’ve been moving to casuals for the next several days after that. When you jump up in LP, you face better opposition, and I don’t want to throw that opportunity away by going on a loss streak in ranked. I go back to ranked once I’m winning more than I’m losing at my new rank.
100% on the nose.
Though I’ve seen people post-silver who are guilty of these very same things. Oh and by the way, about your point on poor movement and dashing too much. Nash/Bison have the two worst walk speeds in the game and consequently have the best dashes in the game. Yes people should walk more often (and that does include those two characters), but those two characters were clearly made to get around with dashes versus walking everywhere on the stage. Just look at how Infiltration plays Nash. Dashes all day. Now his dashes are properly spaced, but you get the idea.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to be in bronze for a long ass time. My goal now is to get each character up to level 20 just to get some hands-on experience with them. Each time I switch characters, it is a massive point dump.
In my experience in bronze, the big thing is people do shit that is massively unsafe… all of the time. The other day I fought a Ken who literally hp.shoryu on wake-up/block literally every time. I took a few hits figuring that out during the first round (my mind kept saying “certainly he’s done mashing…”). At least I got to practice my CC punish with a new character… a lot.
I’m talking about people who only move forward by dashing, with no conditioning in between to keep people from counter poking. These types get eaten alive by lows buffered into specials. Many silver Bison’s play this way, usually the type that rage quit.
So basically you meant people dashing unsafely. Kind of a difference there, and to that point I agree. You can’t cancel a dash mid-dash and start blocking, so someone can always hit you out of one on reaction or with a whiffed normal into special as you just mentioned. People should think about where and how they are dashing, but its certainly a FAR superior method of traversing the stage than jumping at least. Even if you do it thoughtlessly.
The difference is silver league blocks everything seems like.
Super bronze soon to be bronze, so quite frankly no idea.
Although the silvers seem to have better control over the round I notice.
I agree with this one a LOT. I’ve been bouncing right between the Bronze and Silver line lately.
What I’m good at - my combos / mixups. SF5 is not a high execution game… I got these down in the first week, and they got me to bronze. Most of this is the same regardless of my opponent.
What I’m getting good at - matchups. I am getting much better at punishing my opponents for doing something stupid. This includes anti airs, counter hits, frame traps ect. This varies a LOT based off of the opposing character, and the player behind them.
What I still suck at - getting out of the grinder. When you’re down, you’re down. You can’t always wake up pushing buttons. Sometimes you gotta block, sometimes you gotta jump… This varies a lot based off of the opposing character, and even more based off of the player behind them…
So I’d say at this point
Bronze - you play your character
Silver - You play against your opposing character
Gold - You play against the opposing player.
You always play the player. This game kinda forces that. But there are things you can bring to matchups.
Every ryu I’ve fought against has something a bit new, something a little extra that I have to recognize. Lots of times I get fucking murdered by them in the first round. Then come second round… I see what they are doing and I play to counter it. I’m getting it down now where my best spacings to chill at in the matchup are. Those spacings that are ambiguous for ryu where I can either dash in, or dash back, or jump back or jumpin or throw fireball, and where HP and ex fireballs are blockable on reaction. That’s the space I try to occupy. Since it’s a decent space away I don’t need to chase ryus all over the map like I did when the game first came out.
I can see them jump back and then I just move forward. If they jump forward I AA them. If they dash forward I’m generally out of reach. If they throw a fast fireball I can block on reaction and look for another fireball/jump/dash
If they threw a slow fireball I can neutral jump it or not.
This has given me decent neutral game against ryus in silver and also in gold. Gotta watch for the jump at all times. Once you get used to ryu it becomes easy. They usually jump directly after jumping backwards, dashing backwards or throwing a fireball. So when I see any of these I go into AA mode. Likewise, if they have me in a blockstring, once they push themselves out a bit I look for the crossup.
That’s silver in a nutshell. It’s like bronze but they block better and try to mix things up.
I just recently got silver Friday. Here are my thoughts you can get bronze around 500lp with knowing a combo. You will out damage people in low bronze and below. 500 - 1,000 this is a very troll league I can’t tell you how many times people pulled on me. How many times I got trolled how many times I was thinking to myself I should just pull to for some reason around 700 - 1k there is a huge disparity in skill what I mean by this is you can play Bronze ~ Ultra Bronze low 500lp players are very different skill wise. I was around 500lp on tilt because I lost over 1k points constantly losing and then when I was not losing people where pulling. Or I got outplayed somehow. People around 1100-1300+ they all have a bnb down at least. I would recommend learning a bnb into a super. Now Ultra bronze is a bit tricky you will fall out of leagues ultra and super bronze but don’t let it get to you because you can get it back. Ultra Bronze to Silver you are going to need to get much more solid with Anti-air let people know that know if they jump at you. You are going to smack them out the air and tell them to sit down. You are going to have crush counter combos. Something I forgot to mention is in Ultra bronze you gotta know how to play more passive and knowing when to be aggressive. Sometimes you’ll be playing a player who may be better than you. This is when you want to be more aggressive and force them to have to block your mixups and have them choke. You are also punishing better. In Silver you know how to play your character have some bnb’s you have your crush combos and anti-airs you have seen some of the shenagins I don’t feel like you know every match up I still lose to much weaker players because i have no idea how to fight a match up.
OOH and Something really really important if your ignoring everything I said above. Learn how to fight Ken and Ryu this will take you to ~Super Bronze guaranteed if you can fight just those two people maybe even ultra.
My goal is to one day get gold I don’t know how much harder Super Silver people are from Silver or Ultra Silver but I am wondering that myself or Gold players vs Silver Players.