WHAT PLAY YOU!? Version 3.0

[Donald J Trump]

Feel free to tell me to disappear if the above wasnt an open invitation, but that's a helpful piece and Ive got a couple of questions. Are these mechanics harder to effectively utilise than in previous games? I always find it chewing gum for the brain initially, then I get a basic grasp and improve until I reach my ceiling, which isn't high. With SF6, I feel I've got the basic grasp but it's all going to shit when it matters. I'm not cut out for fighting games but I enjoy them, and try and take it as far as I can. Perhaps the learning curve with this one's more protracted, so it's taking me longer to feel that I've reached that "maxed out" stage. I don't know. 

Also, insultingly basic question but what would you say is the best way to practice? Is there any value in getting hammered until something clicks? Are there any routines/drills in practice mode that you'd recommend? I niavely thought that with the in depth tutorial mode and more accessible control options I'd find this game easier, but it's not feeling fluid or intuitive yet. 

[Version1.0]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth finally finished. 108 hours.

[JLM]

Yeah this is the tough thing with fighting games, no matter how much easier they make the inputs and improve the tutorials, they are still really really hard to get good at! Also for every new game, there will be legacy players with years and years of transferable experience from previous games in the series or other fighting games. 
 

It’s also very difficult to learn by playing against random people online, particularly in ranked where it’s a short set and there are plenty of scumbags who don’t even stick around for the 2/3. 
 

I’m not sure exactly where you’re at, so my broad advice for all new players is usually these: 

- Try to learn one character and stick with them for a while if possible. Lots of varying opinions on what a good first character is. For Streetfighter people often say Ryu of course. It’s partly because he is the default character for 2D fighters and has the most archetypical tool kit, but also because the game is typically built around him as the base. The other classic SF2 characters are foils to Ryu, excelling at specific things when he’s the all rounder. Ryu can play a keep away game with fireballs quite well, but Guile does it better etc. 

However, I tend to agree with the other most common answer, which is pick the character who appeals to you the most. It adds motivation to play, it should make the game more fun and you’re more likely to stick with them even when you’re initially getting thrashed starting out. 
 

- Remember it’s a two player game! By far most common thing you will see when you watch two new players or casual players playing fighting games, is both players essentially playing their own single player game with little or no regard for what the other person is doing. Jumping, dashing, pressing every button, trying to land a combo they practised in trial mode, generally flailing like a nutter. 

- Off the back of the above, do less and observe the opponent. Again, new players are always doing things at all times. Always doing action action action for the whole round. Fighting games are partly about imposing your will and running your gameplan on the opponent, but this is only one aspect of it. Figuring out the opponent’s tendencies and habits, exploiting these and conditioning them to do what you want them to do are also hugely important. 

This sounds really wanky but it’s a useful analogy in my opinion. A round in a fighting game is an unspoken conversation between the two players. To relate that to the above, the typical fight between two players who don’t know what they’re doing is effectively two people screaming obscenities at each other until one of them passes out. 

This applies at all levels. Players who don’t have a gameplan or really know what they’re doing will still have habits and tendencies, and taking a moment to observe/listen to them before trying to do whatever you want to do can be very helpful.

For example, a common habit of new players is to jump forward constantly. They want to jump over a fireball, they want to hit you with a jumping heavy attack and do the combo they’ve learned, they want to jump in because they want to hit you and it gets them in range to do that.

If you start the round by jumping in yourself or by running face first at the opponent swinging, you might never learn that about them. If you start the round doing very little, just walking a bit and blocking, and in the first ten seconds they jump at you three times, you’ve got yourself a jumper. 

- Learn to anti air consistently with your character. Every character has dedicated anti air attacks. Luke as an easy example has two main ones: crouching heavy punch and his rising uppercut/dragon punch. If I’m learning a new character in a fighting game this is one of the first things I will learn how to do. If you can’t stop people jumping at you, you will have a miserable time. 
 

- Combining the above two points. You start a round against a new opponent, you walk and block a bit at the start, they jump a bunch of times. All I would do against that opponent initially is look to anti air. From there, you can see if there is a conversation to be had: 

them: I’m jumping 

me: every time you jump at me you will eat this anti air. 
 

them: I will continue jumping because I am not thinking. 

me: very well. Win round. 
 

If they *are* thinking, however, after the first few anti airs they might do something else. This creates a little flashpoint situation that is where conditioning/mind games can begin: 

Opponent jumped - > I anti aired -> then what did they do? 
 

Did they continue jumping with reckless abandon? Then maybe they’re not thinking/they’re very stubborn and you should focus your mental energy purely on looking for anti airs until they stop or you win. 
 

Did they stop after a couple? OK maybe they’re thinking, what are they doing instead? Did they get hit by the anti air and then block? Did they dash, did they do something else entirely? Do they always do the same thing after you anti air them, in which case is that a habit they’ve got? Add on about 100 more questions depending on how far down the rabbit hole you end up going. 

Pretty much every interaction in a fighting game can have mind games like this attached to them. The breakthrough from complete novice to lower intermediate player is to think about the “why” of your actions rather than just acting. 
 

- Combo-wise, the first thing to learn with any character is a decent punish for the opponent making a huge mistake. At lower levels the most common of these by far is the opponent throwing out their OD Reversal. 

Before that, just to cover fighting game RPS: 

You land a sweep, you knock the opponent down, you walk up next to them as they’re getting up. In this situation you are at an advantage. You have access to all of your tools, they don’t. You can throw out an attack here that is timed to connect with them as they’re getting up, referred to as a meaty attack by fighting game nerds. 
 

For example, You knock them down - > get to point blank range - > then sweep again, timed to connect with them as they’re getting up. 

The opponent cannot press an attack on this situation without getting hit by the sweep. If they press any punch or kick, your sweep will already be hitting them before their attack has a chance to come out. 
 

What they can do immediately when getting up (known as “on wake up”) is block or parry. Blocking and parrying happen instantly, so even though the sweep is already connecting with them, they can still defend it. 

However, knowing this, what you could do instead is throw them. This beats blocking and it beats parry. 

For them to defend against that, they would need to tech the throw by pressing throw themselves.
 

However, if they anticipated a throw, pressed throw, and you did the sweep, your sweep would beat their throw. 

This is the basic rock/paper/scissors dynamic of most fighting games. Hit beats throw -> throws beat block - > block beats hit. 

There are a number of other things you can do in modern fighting games, but that core principle still applies even with other variables thrown in to spice it up. 
 

- So back to the OD reversal. Almost every character in SF6 has a fully invincible OD move. Ryu and Ken it’s OD Shoryuken, Guile it’s OD flash kick, JP it’s OD Amnesia. 

One of the main purposes of these moves is to give you the option to break the Rock paper scissors mind game described above. 
 

To go back to the scenario above. Knock down with sweep - > walk up, opponent has to guess if you’re going to Hit or throw them. If they guess hit and you throw, they get thrown. If they guess throw and you hit, they get hit.  If they don’t want to guess, an option they have is to perform their invincible special move with reversal timing, so the move comes out as they’re standing up. This will beat your throw and your hit and get them out of the situation. 
 

Inexperienced/Lower level players will choose this option A LOT. It is a very very common tendency amongst new players to throw out OD reversals whenever they get knocked down or are in a disadvantageous position. 

The downside of the OD reversal is that it costs them two bars of drive gauge to perform, and if  you block it or cause it to whiff, the opponent has massive, massive recovery and you can hit them with a punish counter. Some characters are not blessed with an invincible OD move and will “wake up” with an invincible super instead. This is reliant on them having the meter and you have to know which characters. Lily and Manon are two examples. The principle is the same though, they don’t want to predict your next move and are choosing tie option to try and beat everything. 

So after you block an invincible OD move or a super and the opponent is extremely vulnerable, *THIS* is the first combo you should know like the back of your hand. You can set the training dummy to do this in training mode. You can record wake up actions, so can select the move,  knock them down, block the reversal and punish. What you do varies massively depending on character/available resources/which control scheme you use/how good your execution is. Main thing is something that does decent damage and that you can perform consistently. 

Other stuff…

 

-Try to play long sets against people slightly better than you. If someone is beating you but you feel like you have at least a small chance, that’s a good level at first. 
 

- If you have match replays I can watch that’d be the best way I could give more specific advice. 
 

- when you play randoms online, have a goal in mind. I will anti air every time they jump, if I block their OD move I will land my punish etc. incorporating the thing you’re trying to improve and using these people as live training dummies is more important than trying to win. 
 

- apologies if any of this was either far too basic or far too nerdy, but hope some of it was useful! 

 

Edited May 10 by JLM

[quote the raven]

Been stupidly addicted to Helldivers 2 since launch. 

Decided i may have missed the boat on RDR2. I played it when it first came out but played to beat it if that makes sense,

Seems i missed half the game by not really grasping the concept to make my own way around. So for £10 ive got it again and will give it another go

[Chest Rockwell]

Thanks for all that, @JLM. You've got me really hyped to dive into this game now!

The thing that's holding me off Hades 2 is because the way the story unfolds through your runs was so amazing and well done in the first, and I read that there isn't an end to the story in the early release at the moment so I feel like I'll be doing the game a disservice by ruining the pacing of the storytelling by starting to play it now.

I'm sure actual runs will still be great fun and it'd be actually quite cool to see how the game changes as updates come and weapons and attacks get rebalanced, the story is so strong in the original I don't want to ruin that for myself in the sequel.

Edited May 10 by Chest Rockwell

[Jazzy G]

8 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Going to pick up Street Fighter 6 this weekend as I have arranged to catch up with a friend over a game online and we thought we'd treat ourselves to this instead of playing 5 as it's very affordable on cdkeys.

Will happily welcome any thoughts or advice - @Jazzy G or @JLM I suspect may have some input! 

Also I see that Hades 2 is in early release. I really want to hold out to play it when it's properly finished, but I'm sorely tempted.

I haven't had chance to play it myself, but it looks very good, and I've heard mostly positive things about it and how accessible it is. 

If Hades 2 is half as good as the first one it'll be a heck of a game. 

My new Switch turned up, and I've been playing Two Point Campus. It's fun enough, but the writing in screen is tiny. I might wait until my mum's out on Tuesday and hook the dock up to her TV for some full screen play. Although if I do that I'd probably just end up playing Street Fighter, Breakers, or Waku Waku 7.

Edited May 10 by Jazzy G

[Jesse]

Fantastic posts there JLM, loved reading that. I've never been a fighting game player myself but have spent a lot of time shepherding Ketchup & Mustard around different Mortal Kombat pre-launch events for Warner Bros and I find the community fascinating. One of these days I'm going to have to dive in and really have a run at getting decent at one of these things just for the experience.

Not right now though, because I cannot escape Snowrunner. I played it a bit on Game Pass and found it interesting but not as grabby as some of the flashier stuff. But I'm in a rough spot financially (can't just buy loads of games) and mentally at work, so I bought the base Snowrunner while it was on sale knowing it'd take me months to crack through. And what a game it is, of the three maps included in the base game I'm at 100% completion on Michigan, 95% on Alaska, and I've just started cracking through the first area of Taymyr to try out the Russian trucks.

There's something so relaxing about losing eight hours of a Saturday with an audiobook on, driving trucks through the mud and snow. The frustration I felt at getting stuck the first time I played is completely gone, replaced with a real steady patience. Contracts I thought were impossible (or from looking for help online almost felt like they needed the more powerful DLC trucks) were a breeze once I let them take an hour or two rather than trying to rush it all in one go.

Delighted to know I have four years of extra maps and trucks to look forward to when I finally 100% all three of these maps.

[Merzbow]

I've started playing Stalker: Clear Sky all these years later after it not working on my old PC, I managed to get the PS4 trilogy really cheap after a price fuck up which is totally in keeping with EuroJank like this.

I'm honestly surprised the games were ever stuck on in console seeing as they're so old and barely worked without mods in the first place but after a couple of patches they aren't half bad and play good with a controller. If you ever thought Fallout felt cobbled together with PVA glue then these are even shoddier, but with bags of Eastern European charm to them.

Cheeki Breeki to you all.

[JLM]

1 hour ago, Jesse said:

Fantastic posts there JLM, loved reading that. I've never been a fighting game player myself but have spent a lot of time shepherding Ketchup & Mustard around different Mortal Kombat pre-launch events for Warner Bros and I find the community fascinating. One of these days I'm going to have to dive in and really have a run at getting decent at one of these things just for the experience.
 

Oh cool, always thought they seem like good guys. Never got on with the NRS games but I’m a big fan of Ketchup’s YouTube stuff. They have a great understanding of fighting games that applies to all games, even if I don’t play the same ones as them. Also remember Mustard proposing to his girlfriend on stage during top 8 at VS Fighting many years ago. Living the fighting game nerd’s dream right there. 

[Donald J Trump]

JLM, thank you. That's pretty much perfect for where I'm at, and I appreciate you taking the time to share that. I've played many versions of SF before, and I expect I'd fair well against most people I know personally, but for the most part I've always played it very casually and never scratched below the surface. I do some martial arts and it's a bit like reaching Dan grade, black belt feels like a big deal until you're in with the big boys, and that summit you thought you'd reached was just the path to the bottom of the real mountain. Funnily enough, I've felt at times that if I put the exact same amount of time and energy into both martial arts and fighting games, I think I'd be better at actually fighting than I would fighting games. It's slightly daunting when you first realise how deep these games actually are, but I've always tried to steer towards making sure I'm having fun more than anything, but if I can get better at the same time then why not. I've not played in a while, but this thread has rekindled my interest, and you've given me plenty to focus on. 

[Arch Stanton]

14 minutes ago, Donald J Trump said:

I do some martial arts and it's a bit like reaching Dan grade, black belt feels like a big deal until you're in with the big boys, and that summit you thought you'd reached was just the path to the bottom of the real mountain.

[JLM]

Yeah, the leap from “good enough to beat your mates” to “actually good at the game” is often absolutely massive with fighting games. The games have historically been so bad at teaching you how to play that most of us didn’t know what being good at the game even entailed until some monster online demolished us.
 

 I remember that happening to me with SF4 and SSF2 HD Remix. I had been an avid collector and player of 2D fighting games since SF2. Had a modded Sega Saturn to play X Men vs Streetfighter and the like, played hours and hours of SF3 3RD Strike on Dreamcast against my cousins. 
 

I go online on 360…

“Yeah I think I’m pretty good at Streetfighter I can do all the moves and stuff, oh noooooooooooo” 

I think that rude awakening leads to a lot of rage from new players. It’s a real fork in the road moment. I was like “ohh some of these  people are playing a different game entirely, I had no idea. I must know more” whereas others will be “they’re using cheap tactics/this game is broken/if this wasn’t online I’d be winning/they’re just SPAMMING/I was BLOCKING THAT/ this character is bullshit” etc etc etc. 

If people don’t have the lightbulb moment about the RPS, reads, mindgames, frame advantage and the fact that many of the interactions are essentially turn-based, footsies, whiff punishing etc etc. Then they can either play the game as a knock about button masher and enjoy it at that level (or play single player) or get battered in ranked matches endlessly, never understand why it’s happening and then  get very very frustrated. 
 

It’s great to see that the games are slowly improving at teaching the core concepts. it’s embarrassing that indie games like Skullgirls did a much much better job of it than the big budget releases for so many years. Guilty Gear Strive, SF6 and Tekken 8 are heading in the right direction but it has been a real slog getting here and there is still a ton of work to be done. Tekken 8 has an incredible feature where you can watch a match replay and then take over in real time at any moment, so you can explore what you could have done in the the exact scenario. The game also provides suggested punishes you could have done in that situation. I want stuff like that to be the standard going forward, because even with tutorial modes, trying to get good at fighting games in a vacuum is still absurdly difficult. 

Edited May 10 by JLM

[JLM]

Oh also this video is one of the best I’ve ever seen on the topic of fighting games. Succinctly breaks down the core concepts transferable across pretty much all fighting games in 15 minutes: 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_R0hbe8HZj0&pp=ygUXV2h5IG1hc2hpbmcgZG9lc250IHdvcms%3D

 

[Jazzy G]

Skullgirls has a great tutorial, as do the Guilty Gear games. The one in Xrd makes all the mechanics into mini-games. 

If you have a grasp of footsies, neutral, spacing etc you can pretty much make a start in almost any game. As @JLMmentioned, and I learned much too late, not constantly pressing buttons is essential. I still need to get Fightcade set up properly and see whether it runs alright on my laptop to scratch my Super Turbo itch. Or see whether I can get to @air_raidat some point to play some Alpha 2.

Anither advantage of SF6 is the Modern controls, which can make the game more accessible from the start. 

 

[Donald J Trump]

I really like the conversation approach you outlined above, and the element of rock/paper/scissors. I'm definitely guilty of becoming absorbed in what I'm doing, and I'm really looking forward to putting these approaches into action. Are there any other fighting games that would be a good fit for "King of the local arcade, Glass Joe of online gaming" types? I've tried the most recent KOF and I really enjoyed it initially, but the motivation to improve waned significantly once I reached the "fork".