Well I was a keyboard warrior till I moved to stick. It isn’t that hard. I still play on keyboard whilst away from home on emulators.
And there’s a ‘stickless stick’ controller going around called the hitbox. And essentially does what a keyboard can do, but arguably more efficiently.
And I read your replies. It seems as though you’re worried about wasting other folks’ time because they’re miles ahead of you in skill level.
I doubt that would be the case, because if most people stuck to this train of thought, there wouldn’t be local gatherings, and the scene would die out.
I’m glad that you’re going to try to attend, and I hope that you will enjoy it and think about going back if you do. Most if not all scenes are happy to have new players come out as long as you aren’t an insensitive prick and are reasonably hygienic. Which, from what I can deduce thus far, you’re fine. The reason a lot of posters seem a bit condescending is because it’s an online forum. In real life, the vast majority of FG players are cool down-to-earth folks. It may also be due to the fact that dismissing the offline scene is a faux pas and there’s some heat on this thread about it. Simply because the online game is quite significantly different from the offline one, and it’s the offline one that matters because of silly things you need to compensate for / you can get away with when playing online.
For your professional statement, I’d agree with your premise, but folks enter tournaments with the intention of improving upon how they did before. I doubt the majority of the thousands of EVO entries would be hugely disappointed if they ended up just one win short of getting out of pools. That itself is an accomplishment, and doesn’t require one to strictly say ‘i’m going to be a pro’. At any major, it’s hugely difficult to place high enough to play on finals day. But the goal is to do better than you did last time… so if you went 0-2, going 1-2 would be your next goal, and so forth. The top players will place, but the mindset of solely going for the prize money, when most of the time it’s top 3 who get paid… is a bit closed minded. You can be given the lists of top players and brackets, and it would still be difficult to predict who will make top 8. Feeding into your next point…
Yes, we play to win. And I can see what you meant now. There is no peak in playing fighting games because there is always room for improvement. You will never truly ‘beat the game’.
And I apologise if I called you out on an ego trip. Forum text can be difficult to interpret under the subtleties of the English language.
Eightarcs, Qanbas, etc. are borderline custom, especially considering that they don’t come with licensed PCBs.
Yes you can. SF at it’s very core is a game of space control. Focusing on combos and execution means that you just keep trying to do them instead of of learning footsies, yomi and mindgames.
Remember, back in the day. SF champ Tomo Ohira beat a dude with nothing but :lp: on a bet, in a tournament. And of course there’s in infamous Sirlin win at the finals of ECC4 where he won by prodigous use of Rose’ :d:+:mp: in A2.
Hi d3v, looks like I’m following your posts today :rolleyes:
On that note… Normals are often under appreciated among new players. Maybe they’re not as flashy as special moves, and generally do less damage?
But that’s the only way you space control. Combos are hit-confirmed into by normals unless it’s a blatant punish.
yeah dont worry about it. im fully aware of the communication problems associated with communicating via text rather than voice. people will often read something in a manner that sounds hostile. the old adage “its not what you say its how you say it” but when reading a post, “how you say it” is in the eyes of the person reading lol so dont trip. just know im not a prick (well… yeah… lol i can be… but it takes some goading to bring that out in me) and wouldnt intentionally just flame a situation. just get misread sometimes.
and yeah i know what u mean about the difference between online and off. online u have lag to worry about, as well as turbo usage, and intense button mashing. if you want to be good with someone right next to you, you cant telegraph your moves by being overtly loud and sloppy with your button presses. you have to try to make your movements a surprise. These are probably just a few among many reasons. I will definitely try to get into it locally.
And yes the pro scene is full of hopefuls just looking to have fun and place anywhere with any sort of win, but they are there spending rather large amounts of money on hotels and food and whatever other accomodations (i hear the next one is in vegas… which will definitely break the banks of anyone attending) and this isnt something a casual gamer would do. im not sure if there is an entry fee, or how many matches u get to play, etc… but im pretty sure on the whole there is a fairly substantial investment, even if you just think of the travel to get there. Id personally consider anyone that participated in a well known formal tournament “pro”. they deserve that title just having gone the distance to be a participant in such an event. i mean look at me… im barely willing to play locally in a relaxed environment. these guys went out of their way crossing thousands of miles over land, and some over water, to come out to this event and try to win. thats not just dedication, thats profound love for the game.
No doubt one of the main reasons ive always avoided normals is because i wasnt aware that they are so touchy and reliant on perfect rhythm to make strings of attacks work on an opponent. while even now, I can pull off some nice normal 3 hit chains on the practice dummy even if hes on CPU:hardest, i still cant make full out effective use of it against a real opponent. but i do make use of them online now and they have no doubt saved my skin several times since i started using them. like any tool, they have their purpose and should be used when appropriate. after playing with them a little bit, i feel like trying to go into battle without them is like trying to work on a car without a socket set. you may not always need them to finish the job, but most times you will, and if you arent able to use them well you wont be nearly as successful.
yuck… a 360… (pushes it away with a 10 foot pole) rofl
Well local tournaments are usually quite cheap and don’t require you to stay overnight because they’re done within the day.
Some don’t have venue fees and just have the $10 fee per game that is going to the pot.
And majors are almost always shown on the front page of SRK. There’s on average one each month. But people save up to go to them. And only a very select few travel out of area to go to one. The Vegas one you mention is probably EVO, and that only happens once a year, attracting internationally, so it’s a planned trip many months in advance for the majority.
You can level up quite well just through local scenes… you’ll get a lot more casual games in outside of your minimum two tournament sets. Majors bring more top players, a larger pot, and generally more hype. Until very recently, most players stuck with local majors; the advent of sponsored players have allowed a few more to travel further.
Even competing at a major doesn’t make me a pro. Competition in gaming is fun at the end of the day, and I can laugh at my 0-2 loss, but at least I’ll have learned something and supported the community.
Avoid bringing console discussion into this. For the record, 360 runs AE and MvC3 better than the PS3, in terms of both speed, frame skips, and online.
And I own a PS3, not a 360. It’s a small difference, but noticeable and adjustable to.
360 may run a few things better being that its not a true HD disc, and therefore the reader doesnt have to scan through as much information to process the same game. but generally the graphics lack in comparison. but for me its purely longevity and customer service. microsoft has the worst moral values when it comes to fair practices IMO. ive seen them flat out deny warranty exchanges over ridiculous loopholes in the warranty. Sony, on the other hand, just says “send it in even if its out of warranty and as long as you havent opened the case to mod it, we will fix it”. ive actually had that experience first hand so i know i should be able to rely on them for good tech support. just bad experiences. much like the ones ive had with madcatz products lol
but for a madcatz product, this TE stick is a godsend…
this will certainly kill a lot for me. if i cant find PS3 matches to play i just flat out wont play. i mean if the system works and im not shelling out money to pay for it, it really doesnt matter. But A: i dont like the idea of supporting the system, so going somewhere that endorses it and being a part of it would violate that moral guideline i have against supporting microsoft products. and B: I dont have a 360 stick, and wouldnt be buying one for 2 reasons, 1): too much money to just buy 2 sticks, especially for a system i dont have, and 2): the 360 TE sticks have a known issue with the PCBs due to some security chip all MS components must have in order for them to interface with the 360.
What happens if the next really big fighting game franchise turns out to be 360 exclusive? Are you not gonna play it based on principle? Are you going to deny yourself any possible positive learning experience because of your console bias? If that’s acceptable, then so be it. Just realize the only limiting factor in your quest to get better is and always will be you.
For the time being you could always:
[LIST=1]
[]Have a SRK modder dual mod your stick.
[]Practice with the MadCatz while saving up a little money and get a cheap custom case with a dual-mod board.
[*]If you end up wanting or needing to sell it, you’ll have a dual-moded custom stick that will probably bring close to your original costs.
[/LIST]
As far as actually learning to get better:
[LIST]
[]It took me a good 3 months to get comfortable on stick. Some people adapt faster than others so don’t let time be your guiding principle of where you should be. That also goes for your perception of your current skill level of the game.
[]Take azproc’s list from page 1, let dev’s post about controlling space really soak in, and try to get some local play when you can. I’m lucky enough that I get to play at work so the group of us that have been playing since Vanilla SF4 came out now have about 3 years of experience across the three different versions. We are much better than we were when we started, but it took time. Some days were fantastic and one of us would just dominate the rest, other days we’ll fall into a rut of just awful losses. Sometimes we didn’t even care about wins/losses cause it was just really fun to play!
[]Sometimes, crap is gonna happen. The hitboxes will be funky, something that shouldn’t have worked suddenly will, whatever it is, it will be frustrating. You just gotta focus on what did happen, not what should’ve happened and keep going. (I have a really hard time with this myself, especially in MvC3)
[]Realize that getting better is a process. Not like waiting 10 minutes in line at the drive-through is a process though…more like teaching a child is a process. You have to be there for both the ups and the downs. Praise the victories, find comfort in the losses, learn what caused both and learn from it. Replay mode was probably my #1 tool for this online. (wish Marvel had it…)
[/LIST]
I should stop posting in the NSD if Newbies are going to keep giving wrong advice. SMH.
Realtalk. There should be rules about advice, somehow.
/rant.
Just dual mod your own stick. That’s what most people do, especially if they own a custom.
You can also alternatively buy a PCB that inherently supports both systems like the Paewang, and rewire your TE accordingly.
This doesn’t support Microsoft if this bothers you because that board isn’t exactly ‘certified’ by them, and hence isn’t giving M$ any royalties.
The 360 TE sticks and the PS3 sticks both have issues with PCBs, at least the first run of TEs. It’s not exclusive to one or the other.
And this is not due to the Microsoft proprietary chip. It’s just MadCatz’s first run wasn’t QC’d well. This affects a minority though.
I’m not going to buy a 360 anywhere in the near future. But I’ve made sure both my sticks are dual modded because I’d rather play on my own sticks than borrowing and saves me lugging around more than I need.
Those are very specific examples. I can beat a scrub with a single button too. Imagine what a pro can do. Yes you can win if you know exactly where to use a given move and aim solely for those spots but I’d say Tomo was probably several times better than his opposition and Roses c.mp is an absolutely amazing move. There aren’t many comparable things in SF4.
Not to derail the thread, actually I think its an interesting point to bring up. Where should someone whose never even used a stick focus their attention? I don’t wanna seem confrontational but the general consensus seems to be that you should learn fundemental strategy. I think this is the kinda thinking that made the execution thread blow up into such a clusterfuck to begin with. I find if a person has not mastered their manuevers such that they attempt them where appropriate and do not want to learn them thusly - they cannot win and will not learn. That is, the first thing I always go for is max damage punishes That way if they block a shoryu they can ensure that the other guy will either stop or lose the next time he tries it. That I feel precedes the ‘fundementals.’ Recall the infamous lp shoryu lp shoryu ‘string’ that people whine about. That move is MINUS 14. If you can’t punish that how can you possible be anywhere close to doing something fancy.
Fundamentals first. That’s why they are called fundamentals. Punishing with “max damage punishes” only goes so far, especially once you fight someone who’s pretty much good enough not to get punished. Why do you think we keep emphasizing good footsies. Because there are more ways to get in an punish than simply blocking someones unsafe blockstring. I mean, how do you expect to consistently win without knowing things like, the best poking/footsie range for your character, or which pokes are best for spacing, for punishing, for anti air, etc. Most importantly, how do you expect to win if you don’t know how to read your opponent and react to them, or better yet, make them react to you.
On hindsight. This is the problem with todays training/challenge modes in most fighters and how they tend to focus on simple combos. These are teaching new players NOTHING important. What future training modes should teach is proper fundamentals (just like old VF4 EVO).
We are talking about newer players here - if you cannot do c.mk xx hadouken for instance then its all worthless. Even if you can its pretty worthless. This is the point I’m trying to hammer home. Lets say you’re playing Ken in 3s. And you can counterpoke their c.mk attempts everytime. But can’t confirm it to super. You’re now working 3x as hard on something that doesn’t have obvious value. I still think if we call footsies fundementals then again execution is line 0. Try to remember what it was like when you first started. If I told you wait outside of his range[assuming you could gauge that], throw a few jabs then counter hit his attack or dash in, wouldn’t you have said something like ‘how?’
Hell I remember when I first started. Chun v Sean. He was doing the c.lkx2 dash throw and I was dumbfounded that people would be able to defeat that. Not to say everyone was like me, but even the basics can see overwhelming. I can appreciate that the online age makes things go faster which is a damn great thing - but I think some people are glossing over what’s “common sense”
Edit: I’ll stop ninja’ing the thread now - its not really an argument they’re obviously both important, I merely question the order.
I think learning the specials just comes natural, no? Like most people (myself included) get into these games with the mindset to be good, and its a well known fact that the special moves are not only the most damaging moves, but are fun to use. So we immediately head to the special moves and work on them. We will do that regardless of what additional suggestions are made so we dont need to motivation to learn them. What i think everyone else is saying is that the normal moves are bland, and not usually something noobs like myself will readily head to without some motivation. Without this site i probably would have continued working solely on combos and specials without really trying to dig in and learn the more boring and actually often more difficult maneuvers with basic attacks. Now i implement them into my game as part of corner anti-pressure and changing up my game. Im good with things like the crMK>hado string, as well as the forwardHP>sho even in pressured battle. im working my way up slowly and will get there soon.
You’re probably right. I was of the rather moronic opinion that doing was more important than practicing so I spent all my time in matches and almost no time in training mode. Now I’m playing against the best and my consistency hurts me periodically. So many I’m projecting, large shrug.
You got a good attitude toward this stuff, when I get back to cali in 2 months I have to remember to hit you up online. See whats up.