Best way to get better at fighting games?

[MoltenSilver]

Hello Escapist

Recently my circle of, well friends is a bit generous so lets just call them "people whom I frequently play games with", have decided that Skullgirls is going to be the next big time-obsession for us. I love the aesthetic of the game, and I love the characters and I certainly don't regret buying or bemoan this game being chosen as the next 'we're all playing ___' among my group, but this one rather large problem:

I am utterly, irredeemably horrendous at fighting games. So I'm here to ask the Escapsist's community's advice on how to learn more the most successfully.

Now I can already guess the first thought: "Practice". And yes I know its going to come down to that and time investment and there aren't any shortcuts and blah blah blah, but practice is worthless if I don't even know what I'm supposed to be practicing about it.

One of my biggest problems, in so far as my uneducated eye can guess, is it just seems to be impossible to be consistent with input; I feel like I can press the exact same button series over and over and get a different result even when to me there nothing different I've done. If I try to perform any quarter-turn move I'll probably succeed 3/10 times. Even after spending a large amount of time just trying to practice doing a quarter-turn move reliably over and over I don't feel any differences between the times it's correct and the times it isn't, and don't seem to see any improvement in the rate I perform the move I mean to do.

If anyone cares to give advice specific to Skullgirls, I haven't picked a 'main' character, but I'm strongly gravitating towards Painwheel based just on character aesthetic.

 

[Eduku]

One of my biggest problems, in so far as my uneducated eye can guess, is it just seems to be impossible to be consistent with input; I feel like I can press the exact same button series over and over and get a different result even when to me there nothing different I've done. If I try to perform any quarter-turn move I'll probably succeed 3/10 times. Even after spending a large amount of time just trying to practice doing a quarter-turn move reliably over and over I don't feel any differences between the times it's correct and the times it isn't, and don't seem to see any improvement in the rate I perform the move I mean to do.

I hate to disappoint, but it really is about practice in this case. When a footballer swings his legs at a ball, his brain subconsciously knows precisely what angle to hit it at because of the millions of times they've spent doing that same thing over and over again in their lifetime. The same applies here, you just need to ingrain that movement of quarter-circle rotation into your brain by doing it over and over again. It won't happen overnight either, but it's guaranteed to happen if you keep at it eventually.

I don't own Skullgirls, though, so I'm afraid I have no specific advice on that front.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Oh you think learning the quarter circle was hard? Try the bullshit three quarter back to forward whateverthefuck motion they use in BlazBlue. Wisdom of the Divines? More like, JUMP C LOL!

Does SG have a proper command list now? Cuz that was pretty bad on release. Sure you can download a thing on their website but not everyone can be arsed to do it and get good.

OT: Other than practice, which is important, I have to recommend forgetting combos entirely. Fuck 'em. Worry about them later. You need to learn your movements and much much more importantly how to deal with shit with your character of choice. You could have the absolute mother of all Swag Combos but you aren't getting an opportunity to pull it off because protip, people don't sit like training dummies and let you punch them. Also Peacock ain't gonna let you do ANYTHING! Nevermind combos. That fucking keepaway...

I tried Valentine/Parasoul at first but I just had to main Valentine because teams aren't my sort of thing and holy fuck Parasoul is weird. Her movement is silly and everything she has is back to forward motions. Things I just cannot do for the life of me.

How popular is the PC version actually? I would like to get games going but i'm not sold if the game is going to burn dry soon after release so i'm holding back on buying it again. Seriously the 360 version was practically dead on arrival

 

[LaoJim]

I'd also like to have some good suggestions for this. I really enjoy playing fighting games, but tend to buy them, play through the arcade or suvival modes with each of the characters a few times, then move on to the next one. I get pretty god against the AI but then whenever I go on-line I tend to get my arse ceremonially handed to me even by supposedly low ranking players.

One problem I think is that fighting games (along with a lot of other Japanese games) don't really go out of their way to explain themselves to the player too much. The training modes tend to contain lots of combos which can take me up to 15 minutes to pull off, once I've done it there's no way I'm going to be using it in a real battle. If you look for help in forums specific to your fighting game you have to learn a whole lot of specialist vocabulary like "cancels" and "whiffs" which takes a while to get your head around.

The other thing which I have a problem with is that rosters in fighting games are getting larger and larger. In order to win in a fighting game you need to know your character, but you also know what the other character is capable of. The original Street Fighter 2 only had 8 characters, but even then it took a while to develop the best tactics for fighting each of them. (So as a Chun-Li player, if I'm fighting Dahlsim I need to get in close to him fast, while Zangief I'd probably back off and attack in the air, and it's a golden rule never to jump towards Guile). The problem I have is that these days its common for fighting games to have 25 or more characters and games like Tekken 6 have what over 40? 50? Choice is great, but it does significantly increase the amount of time you need to spend if you want to get good. Again I've not played Skullgirls, but I understand it has a smaller roster which I actually like.

So I'm probably the last person in the world to give advice about this, but some common suggestions:

If you haven't already and you are serious about playing for a reasonable length of time, get yourself a fight-stick. I got one recently and it's amazing how much quicker and more consistantly to can pull off the special moves. It also makes it a lot more fun as theres something really satisfying about hitting those buttons hard. I guess if you are playing with a specific set of friends you'll have to persuade them to get one as well or suffer accusations of an unfair advantage.

Secondly people say you should spend a little time looking at characters then pick one and stick to it. It often doesn't matter too much which one you choose, though you can look at tier lists (if Skullgirls has those yet) to avoid picking a total lemmon.

 

[krazykidd]

Oh you think learning the quarter circle was hard? Try the bullshit three quarter back to forward whateverthefuck motion they use in BlazBlue. Wisdom of the Divines? More like, JUMP C LOL!

Does SG have a proper command list now? Cuz that was pretty bad on release. Sure you can download a thing on their website but not everyone can be arsed to do it and get good.

OT: Other than practice, which is important, I have to recommend forgetting combos entirely. Fuck 'em. Worry about them later. You need to learn your movements and much much more importantly how to deal with shit with your character of choice. You could have the absolute mother of all Swag Combos but you aren't getting an opportunity to pull it off because protip, people don't sit like training dummies and let you punch them. Also Peacock ain't gonna let you do ANYTHING! Nevermind combos. That fucking keepaway...

I tried Valentine/Parasoul at first but I just had to main Valentine because teams aren't my sort of thing and holy fuck Parasoul is weird. Her movement is silly and everything she has is back to forward motions. Things I just cannot do for the life of me.

How popular is the PC version actually? I would like to get games going but i'm not sold if the game is going to burn dry soon after release so i'm holding back on buying it again. Seriously the 360 version was practically dead on arrival

This . I can't reliably do any of the shit they ask in blazblue . Tap down 3 times? Wtf? Do a half circle + foward . No way . Two QCB . No fuxking way i can do that consistantly . Marvel spoiled me .

OT: you want to learn how to play fighting games? Lose . Lose like your life depended on it . Lose matches . BUT understand why you lost . Did you not block ( this was my problem at first i couldn't block for shit ), were you not agressive enough? Were you too agressive?

The trick to learning a fighting game is to go into combat , do your best , and learn what you did wrong. The compn misconception is that fighting games are about combos . Combos are useless if you can't get a hit . Learn how your character moves , learn the range on his moves , and learn a simply bread and butter combo . Then fight against other people and see how they fight . You will lose , maybe even a lot . But ever lost is data .

You will soon realise paterns , and that most people play a character in the same way . Then, you can start predicting ehat they do and win .

 

[MoeMints]

- Watch, watch, watch videos of your characters and how top players use them
If you're able to comprehend the animation of each ability, you learn to comprehend how the character does their optimal techniques (at the moment, MvC2 was a whole different beast in its first year/learning stages for a big example)

- Every fighting game is a Prepare to Die Edition.
A lot of what amounts to fighting games' loss in popularity is that you're always facing the bulk of the community, and will be punished horribly for not adapting fast.
However, you should know adapting slow can be a blessing in itself. Don't be scared of clone matches, download what mixups people use, even take that guy who you can barely 25% a round since you learn to be on edge through it.
Combine this with the above external experience, and you should develop competence.

- Do (not) take Skullgirls and Marvel 3 as good universal training. I've been getting back into them myself but you'll get spoiled from the outrageous setups and zoning you can do.

- Forget about frame data and optimal combos....at first
While these are very good tools to assess theory and options in a match, you should never forget about the basics and your best "easy" combo over them. Persona is actually a good example where the auto combo to BnBs to meter dependent setups are progressively harder on average, but the damage is high enough regardless that you won't get bored.

- About older games....
Listen, the fighting game community doesn't work out of profit like quite a few others.
I won't tell you how to do this for obvious reasons. However, in order to play many games like Karnov's Revenge, Breakers, non-KOF SNK games, Melty Blood, and many others competitively, they require some "questionable" work. This is mostly due to the fact fighting games require consistent mass competition and very well made netcode in comparison to other genres.
Two things that are pretty much impossible at this point to upkeep in consoles.
Skullgirls is actually really lucky to not die in comparison to say, Arcana Heart 3 or Darkstalkers.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Mastery comes from repetition as, always.
Learn the moves then rinse and repeat until you are either good or bored.

 

[Razentsu]

One of my biggest problems, in so far as my uneducated eye can guess, is it just seems to be impossible to be consistent with input; I feel like I can press the exact same button series over and over and get a different result even when to me there nothing different I've done. If I try to perform any quarter-turn move I'll probably succeed 3/10 times. Even after spending a large amount of time just trying to practice doing a quarter-turn move reliably over and over I don't feel any differences between the times it's correct and the times it isn't, and don't seem to see any improvement in the rate I perform the move I mean to do.

I hate to disappoint, but it really is about practice in this case. When a footballer swings his legs at a ball, his brain subconsciously knows precisely what angle to hit it at because of the millions of times they've spent doing that same thing over and over again in their lifetime. The same applies here, you just need to ingrain that movement of quarter-circle rotation into your brain by doing it over and over again. It won't happen overnight either, but it's guaranteed to happen if you keep at it eventually.

Eduku's got the right idea. I thought I'd add on to his advice.

You might be experiencing the Centipede Effect [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede's_Dilemma], an occurrence that happens when you over-think the process of the action you want to perform. The Centipede Effect makes natural actions feel unnatural, which causes you to mess up your action.

When you over-think something you tend to pay attention to details instead of the big picture. Do you want to hit down, down-forward, then forward plus punch, or do you want to throw a fireball? By thinking about the process, you're giving yourself rope to hang yourself with as you "perform" each step of the process. You're giving yourself chances to mess up. With each step, you're slowing yourself down, criticizing yourself, and losing your focus on what's important, the match.

To avoid the Centipede Effect, you have to let your muscle memory do its thing. You can then use your mind for things that are truly important, such as strategy and tactics.

If you still can't get your fireball or dragon punch out 100% of the time, then keep practising the motions; these moves need to be further ingrained into your muscle memory. It takes time, but you will eventually become comfortable with the inputs you practice. What's important is that each fireball, or dragon punch, or whatever feels natural.

Although it's a little out of context from the source material, I'd say this Bruce Lee quote applies quite well: "Don't think, feel!"

 

[FinalHeart95]

For me thus far, it has been just playing a lot, messing around with a lot of different characters. In my case, I'm picking up MvC 3, and at first I was trying to build a main team, but now I'm just messing with everyone. At the very least you'll become familiar with what moves each character has, which is a big part of predicting the actions of an opponent.
Also, I find the "shoryuken" input to be the most difficult. It just becomes a quarter circle for me about half the time, and then like 40% of the time it just registers as a normal attack.

 

[gigastar]

For fighting games theres no convenient strategy guide on the internet that will automatically make you better at any given game.

You can look up combos, you can look up tips and hints, and you can look up what all the minor variations of a characters special moves are.

None of it matters if you dont practice.

 

[Godlikebuthumble]

Practice, after all, does make perfect.

On the other hand, there ist that maxim I like (especially when pertaining to video *games*, which are supposed to be, y'know, fun): "If you can't do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly".

 

[TrevHead]

While I like fighters I rarely make the time to play them as I'm too buzy with other arcade games like shmups, however I did pick up Skullgirls on XBLA and other arcade games require similar approaches to practising and getting good at them.

And I'm afraid that it's only good old fashioned practice and building up muscle memory that's required to get good at them. However just like learning a musical instrument or maybe learning to swim at school, practising and learning can be very rewarding as you make progress bit by bit.

When practicing for this sort of thing, Imo it's best to have daily sessions of 30-60 mins, working on various areas you need to improve on. Sometimes you will advance quickly, while others you seem to up against a brick wall and you don't see any improvement for ages, then all of sudden your brain joins the dots without you noticing and you can do it.

When I first played Skullgirls on XBLA the AI on easiest kicked my arse for the first 2-3 days until I got used to it, Skullgirls on PC just released so it's very early days yet. I would recommend Fillia as she is the noob character in the game, stick with a character until you know her quite well then think about picking a 2nd or 3rd character to balance out your roster.

Having a lag free setup is very important for arcade games, many LCD TVs are quite laggy so play on a PC monitor, CRTs have no lag in them. Also a pad with a good d-pad is recommended (analogs aren't precise enough & triggers have deadzones) or even better an arcade stick, it's best to pick wired over wireless with no adaptors to cut out input lag.

BTW how power hungry is the PC port? I was gonna buy it but my GFX card died and I'm using an old ATI HD5450 which probably won't run it correctly. Shame I couldn't grab a beta code as there is no demo to test it out.

 

[Kanova]

Probably either sacrificing a goat or small child (I hear the child works best) to our Lord and Savior Satan, and asking in return of the blood sacrifice some skills in fighting games. Or, you know, practice. Why is this even a thread?

 

[TrevHead]

Arcade sticks, good ones at least cost a lot more than a standard controller, and the good ones cost even more. I'd recommend staying on a pad unless you want to take that leap and really get into fighting games. I'm not saying to stay away, but they're more of an investment and you should be sure it'll be worth it.

That's true an arcade stick even if you go the chepo method and buy a good cheap one and swap the parts out is an investment and not worth buying if you don't play regulary. That said having good tools even if its a fight pad pays dividents in the long term, short term it might actually make you a worse player as you need time to get used to it, defo in the case of a stick which took me weeks to adjust to.

 

[Yuuki]

Eduku's got the right idea. I thought I'd add on to his advice.

You might be experiencing the Centipede Effect [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede's_Dilemma], an occurrence that happens when you over-think the process of the action you want to perform. The Centipede Effect makes natural actions feel unnatural, which causes you to mess up your action.

When you over-think something you tend to pay attention to details instead of the big picture. Do you want to hit down, down-forward, then forward plus punch, or do you want to throw a fireball? By thinking about the process, you're giving yourself rope to hang yourself with as you "perform" each step of the process. You're giving yourself chances to mess up. With each step, you're slowing yourself down, criticizing yourself, and losing your focus on what's important, the match.

To avoid the Centipede Effect, you have to let your muscle memory do its thing. You can then use your mind for things that are truly important, such as strategy and tactics.

If you still can't get your fireball or dragon punch out 100% of the time, then keep practising the motions; these moves need to be further ingrained to your muscle memory. It takes time, but you will eventually become comfortable with the inputs you practice. What's important is that each fireball, or dragon punch, or whatever feels natural.

Although it's a little out of context from the source material, I'd still say this Bruce Lee quote applies quite well: "Don't think, feel!"

Good god. So THAT's what's been happening over the time I've been trying to get through the Super Street Fighter IV trials (combo sections), I keep seizing-up halfway through combos despite being able to perform the separate parts of them perfectly fine.
After like 20 minutes of trying to get through the damn sequence, occasionally my brain has some sort of glitch I find myself thinking "wait...wait...err...what was I doing again?" until finally giving up playing another game -_-

And then I come back the next day and get the combo on my 2nd attempt without even trying. At which point I swear out loud yelling "WHY THE FUCK COULDN'T I DO THAT YESTERDAY??"

Fighting games - they teach you things you never knew about yourself :S

 

[Maximum Bert]

I used to play a lot of fighters back in the SNES era all I played was platformers and fighters constantly then I took a long break and just started to get back into them properly this gen.

So how to get better? just play a hell of a lot if you have friends learning with you then you are lucky play each other and play a lot then when you get comfortable with the basics like spacing and blocking and what moves do what try adding in special moves.

Quarter circles and Shoryuken moves may seem hard at first but with practice (lots of practice) it gets ingrained in your muscle memory.

If you are having trouble go to practice mode turn on inputs and try it if it fails look at your inputs and see what it says odds are you have inputted it incorrectly.

These specials should be performed fluidly but many beginners make the mistake of trying to get them out to fast and tense up this happens in combos later as well (which is a problem I still have with some games and characters). Yes you have to perform them at a certain speed to get them to work but its probably not as fast as you think it is.

Skullgirls is actually not that bad for performing specials its not like say KoFXIII or Arcana Hearts 3 so I think its a good place to start.

Learning new characters is hard as many have said try a few and see which ones fit your style and then when you have decided learn that character inside out you dont want to have to think about what moves do what you have to know.

I obviously am not new to fighters but I still remember it taking me ages to be able to perform a shoryuken or hadoken move in SF2 let alone the bloody spinning piledriver move but after a few months practice I didnt even have to think about it I just did it.

Recently I changed my controller to a hitbox and a fightstick which totally threw me and ontop of that I have a habit of picking characters I like but that dont fit my playstyle so I was battling the character and the controller on top of my opponent which is something you dont want (I lost a lot against stuff I knew I shouldnt be losing to) but perseverance will see you through its just it will take a long long time months in some cases.

The very best way to improve is play people who are slightly better than you and then get them to coach you thats how I got good at Soul Calibur but that is unfortunately not a viable path for many. Really though just keep playing and having fun thats how I learnt street fighter II I didnt know any combos really but my fundamentals became pretty solid.

Lastly dont expect to instantly get good these games arent designed to let you win unlike most. The better player will almost always win (almost because luck is always a small factor). The trap most fall into is getting slightly better and then losing to someone who spams and then quitting calling it cheap but really spammers are rarely hard to deal with now good zoners are another matter.

Try and read your opponent dont try fancy crap when simple stuff will work just as easily, some people dont understand the game and will try doing the same thing over and over again (pattern play) if that happens just punish with the same thing over and over again theres no need to mix it up in that case like you would have to against a decent player who adapts.

Also dont let losses bother you, you will lose lots just keep going when I started playing Soul Calibur I lost 100-1 against my friend it took me ages to close that gap and give him a decent game.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Oh you think learning the quarter circle was hard? Try the bullshit three quarter back to forward whateverthefuck motion they use in BlazBlue. Wisdom of the Divines? More like, JUMP C LOL!

Does SG have a proper command list now? Cuz that was pretty bad on release. Sure you can download a thing on their website but not everyone can be arsed to do it and get good.

OT: Other than practice, which is important, I have to recommend forgetting combos entirely. Fuck 'em. Worry about them later. You need to learn your movements and much much more importantly how to deal with shit with your character of choice. You could have the absolute mother of all Swag Combos but you aren't getting an opportunity to pull it off because protip, people don't sit like training dummies and let you punch them. Also Peacock ain't gonna let you do ANYTHING! Nevermind combos. That fucking keepaway...

I tried Valentine/Parasoul at first but I just had to main Valentine because teams aren't my sort of thing and holy fuck Parasoul is weird. Her movement is silly and everything she has is back to forward motions. Things I just cannot do for the life of me.

How popular is the PC version actually? I would like to get games going but i'm not sold if the game is going to burn dry soon after release so i'm holding back on buying it again. Seriously the 360 version was practically dead on arrival

This . I can't reliably do any of the shit they ask in blazblue . Tap down 3 times? Wtf? Do a half circle + foward . No way . Two QCB . No fuxking way i can do that consistantly . Marvel spoiled me .

OT: you want to learn how to play fighting games? Lose . Lose like your life depended on it . Lose matches . BUT understand why you lost . Did you not block ( this was my problem at first i couldn't block for shit ), were you not agressive enough? Were you too agressive?

The trick to learning a fighting game is to go into combat , do your best , and learn what you did wrong. The compn misconception is that fighting games are about combos . Combos are useless if you can't get a hit . Learn how your character moves , learn the range on his moves , and learn a simply bread and butter combo . Then fight against other people and see how they fight . You will lose , maybe even a lot . But ever lost is data .

You will soon realise paterns , and that most people play a character in the same way . Then, you can start predicting ehat they do and win .

Hey I can do the down down down ones very reliably. It leads to all the cool stuff so I have to learn it.

"AAAYSTRAAL FEEENISHHH!"

I find if you jump, do the three quarter bullshit when in the air then hit the button as you land it comes out every time.

Have you seen the movement for Hazama's Astral though? What the fucking fuck is that?

 

[krazykidd]

Oh you think learning the quarter circle was hard? Try the bullshit three quarter back to forward whateverthefuck motion they use in BlazBlue. Wisdom of the Divines? More like, JUMP C LOL!

Does SG have a proper command list now? Cuz that was pretty bad on release. Sure you can download a thing on their website but not everyone can be arsed to do it and get good.

OT: Other than practice, which is important, I have to recommend forgetting combos entirely. Fuck 'em. Worry about them later. You need to learn your movements and much much more importantly how to deal with shit with your character of choice. You could have the absolute mother of all Swag Combos but you aren't getting an opportunity to pull it off because protip, people don't sit like training dummies and let you punch them. Also Peacock ain't gonna let you do ANYTHING! Nevermind combos. That fucking keepaway...

I tried Valentine/Parasoul at first but I just had to main Valentine because teams aren't my sort of thing and holy fuck Parasoul is weird. Her movement is silly and everything she has is back to forward motions. Things I just cannot do for the life of me.

How popular is the PC version actually? I would like to get games going but i'm not sold if the game is going to burn dry soon after release so i'm holding back on buying it again. Seriously the 360 version was practically dead on arrival

This . I can't reliably do any of the shit they ask in blazblue . Tap down 3 times? Wtf? Do a half circle + foward . No way . Two QCB . No fuxking way i can do that consistantly . Marvel spoiled me .

OT: you want to learn how to play fighting games? Lose . Lose like your life depended on it . Lose matches . BUT understand why you lost . Did you not block ( this was my problem at first i couldn't block for shit ), were you not agressive enough? Were you too agressive?

The trick to learning a fighting game is to go into combat , do your best , and learn what you did wrong. The compn misconception is that fighting games are about combos . Combos are useless if you can't get a hit . Learn how your character moves , learn the range on his moves , and learn a simply bread and butter combo . Then fight against other people and see how they fight . You will lose , maybe even a lot . But ever lost is data .

You will soon realise paterns , and that most people play a character in the same way . Then, you can start predicting ehat they do and win .

Hey I can do the down down down ones very reliably. It leads to all the cool stuff so I have to learn it.

"AAAYSTRAAL FEEENISHHH!"

I find if you jump, do the three quarter bullshit when in the air then hit the button as you land it comes out every time.

Have you seen the movement for Hazama's Astral though? What the fucking fuck is that?

Yeah buffering while you jump is good for 360s and 720s . But you have to jump and i hate jumping . I'm one of those people ( like you ) that become jump happy if i start jumping , so i keep my ass on the ground . It's also why i avoid teleport characters . Why would i walk when i can teleport? Then i become predictable and get opened up .

The absolute worst , are the diagonal supers . Charge Diagonal down back , diagonal down foward, diagonal down back , diagonal down foward , diagonal down back , diagonal up foward + Button. Not sure if they have that in BB but they do in Street fighter ( and i think KOF). Whoever came up with that should be banned from making games.