I wrote this because I'm bored.
My guide to getting better at fighters and pretty much any other hobby
version 0.01
I play a lot of games competitively, and I've managed to reach at least a mediocre level. Not good enough to break into the top level, but good enough to beat people that aren't there. I've known what it takes to get to that top level, but usually some sort of logistics like time, money, travel, or competition prevents me from doing that. Nevertheless, I've adopted the same strategies that enable me to learn quicker than most gamers. Let's begin.
There are pretty much 5 stages that I adopt when learning a game:
1 - Familiarization
When you start to play a game, you actually need to play it. Get used to it and mess around with all the various systems, futz around with your favorite characters, try to do some ghetto combos, play against the computer and all that. Getting hands on with the game familiarizes yourself with the simple mechanics and feel of the game. This shouldn't take no more than a couple hours of game time.
2 - Seek expert knowledge
Guess what, you're not the best at the game even if it just came out. And since we're in the Information Age, word travels REALLY fast. Take this time to absorb any knowledge you can find. Read guides on a major fighting game website and watch expert players to see how they play the game. You can watch how efficiently they play, and you wanna try and copy that.
-"But I wanna be a creative and unorthodox player! I don't wanna copy anyone!"
Now's not the time. Creativity comes after you get deep in the system and understand it. If you don't understand how the game works on a basic level, you can't pull any crazy moves, so stop trying. Don't play Team Shoto in MvC2 if you don't understand the advantages of the top tier and how the assists work properly.
3 - Train combos and other expected things like traps by yourself
Don't spend your live competition time trying to hit that combo if you can learn it by yourself at home in training mode or against the CPU. There's too much to think about in live competition, since not only do you have to create the opening but connect with the combo, which is a lot to ask for. Break it down piecemeal and absorb it one-by-one. This might be the most boring part of the learning process, as it might take hours to learn a combo. It took me an hour to learn Jam's AC loop on training mode and another two to hit it consistently against the CPU. It's important to learn how to deal the most damage when you have an opening, or how to setup and lockdown. In other games, it's like a learning a build order in RTS or learning weapon/character spawns in FPS.
One thing that annoys a lot of players is when you ask them to help you get better, but you don't take the time to get yourself better. It's pathetic when you talk about A-groove combos and Genei-Jin when you can't even do a basic combo. So don't let that happen, do what you can first.
4 - Live competition
Play against real people. Ideally, you should play against people from a range to slightly worse to slightly better, and sprinkle it with games against people a lot better. It's a common saying in the fighting game community to always play and get raped against top flight competition, and I don't think that's good. I tried it, and the one thing you don't learn is how to win. You don't learn what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong, because you think everything is wrong. By playing people around your skill level, you get to see how to punish other people's mistakes, you know how it feels to win and what to look for, and how to create openings. By playing people a lot better than you, you can identify flaws in your own game more readily and seal them up.
This is a bit identical to familiarization. Now that you have an idea of how to play at a high level, you get to apply it.
-"The things in the videos and guides don't work in real life!"
Trial and error is all I gotta say. For example, in SF2: HD, you see a lot of fireball spam, so you get excited and go online and fireball spam too, but then the other guy just jumps over your fireballs and you eat a jump in attack. So take a step back and evaluate both the expert and yourself. Under what context does he throw the fireball? Is there any frame advantage? Any millisecond delays, fakes? Where's the opponent when he throws a fireball?
A lot of times you'll see people proceed straight to high level concepts without learning the low level stuff. You'll do X and he does Y is the best accepted response. But say he does Z, which is obviously losing, but he beats you anyway. Take a step back and evaluate why X clearly beats Z and practice it.
5 - Expert consultation and refinement
Now that you're on the path of competition, you need to be able to evaluate your mistakes and eliminate them, which is a slow painstaking process but a necessary one. Ideally, you'd have a training partner to knock out your kinks and an expert to break down your gameplay, as well as a healthy library of match footage to review.
For example, I had a lot of trouble with scrub Mitsurugis in SC4. They'd walk up to me and 2KB or 66BB and win for free. So then, I'd fire up training mode, record those moves, and practice blocking and punishing them. Or I'd find a Mitsurugi like that and just play them over and over, but if it was a simple problem like that I'd time out and practice at home.
You definitely want an expert player to take you under your wing, and just one. You don't want a smorgasborg of opinions because you get confused and lost and then you get into theory-fighting. Some people are REALLY good at breaking down your gameplay, like Markman is at Tekken. Having someone intelligent at the game to break you down is what you need, because sometimes you can't see your own flaws.
And lastly, it's good to analyze previous matches. It's kinda hard because we can't tape ourselves all the time, but if you have the opportunity, do it. Matches are really quick and forgettable, and if you don't take the time reflect and analyze your matches in-depth, you won't remember or even see what you did wrong. It's especially important in fighting games because you can play lots of matches in a small amount of time and not even notice the development of bad habits. It's practically standard in RTS, and it's something my friends and I used to do in Halo because that's a game of positioning and advantage, and we needed to identify when we were caught out of place.
Repeat steps 4 and 5, and you're on your way to greatness. Most people tend to drop out in step 5, like me. I wouldn't be able to find training partners, or I couldn't find someone to really tutor me, or I wouldn't be able to find the right competition.
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Traps to avoid falling in:
1 - Knowledge overdose
Learning about the game is great but you need to playtest everything. EVERYTHING. You can drown yourself in videos and guides but getting experience is way more important than learning that a so-and-so poke is better.
You might even get caught up in asking forums whether something is good when you can just playtest it out. When I used to play DOTA in WC3 Vanilla days, I wondered whether or not you could time all your attacks to kill a creep at the last second. All the forum people were like "No, it's too random and too hard, don't worry about it." Now I open a DOTA guide and it's being called "Last Hit" and there's tactics to make sure you can get it for each hero.
So if you're wondering why people don't play SA1 Chun or do quick hydra drop in Starcraft ZvT, go test it out. You'll discover something, good or bad.
2 - Select and trust a good expert player
General forumgoers are generally NOT trustworthy because they get boggled down in theoryfighting and what's ideal, and soliciting a group opinion is a quick way to go nowhere. If you're gonna get a coach-like figure, make sure that they have the knowledge and track record to back it up. And once that's done, you need to trust in their every word. When you get better, then you can drop them, but there's a reason why they're good at what they do and you're not. Generally this doesn't really apply to videogames because there are no coaches, but there are special cases. I kept asking my friend Orochi to teach me Soul Calibur and Tekken, but he wasn't good at teaching people, he knew it, and he just played (at a very high level, I might add). In the meantime, his friend subt-L played a much more instructional version of Tekken when I matched him, and he would've made a better teacher.
3 - If you wanna get REALLY good, don't get ADD
Yeah, sometimes we'll burnout. But the people that get REALLY good, they just get resilient to burnout. So while you're messing around with that new doujin fighting game, that pro over there is still honing his skills in 3rd Strike. While you're deciding to screw around for 2 weeks with an off-character, the pro is refining their character over and over.
Plateauing does happen, but remember that when you do break through your plateau, you might not even notice it. Keep playing and remember, the best way to break out of a slump is to keep pushing and constantly review your mistakes and correct them.
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So that's it. That's how I generally get good at anything. I'm currently applying it to Starcraft right now as I start at the bottom of that game. Sometimes it's tough, since we won't have experts where we live and we gotta drive out 3 hours to play against good people. At this point you gotta ask yourself, "Is it worth it?" And if it's not, then accept it and move on like I have with so many games, and live it out with no regret.
If it is worth it, then constantly challenge yourself to take that extra step and fly out to the tournament or drive tens of miles away to find that competition, because that's what seperates the champs from the chumps. Don't be that guy that spends all his time at the arcade and wallows in mediocrity, take that time to better yourself and push past everyone.
I've quit plenty of times. I quit 3rd Strike because the time commitment was too much and I didn't truly like the game. I quit Tekken because I didn't have the money at the time, or the time to drive out. I quit Soul Calibur because all the meets were too far. I quit Halo because my team didn't share the same drive or passion as me to get better. Yet I'm still always playing, always looking for that game that I want to take to the top.
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If anyone has any questions about the guide, let me know and I can add it and answer it. Or if it was hard to read, let me know too.
Hope you all enjoyed it. This was just a massive brain fart.
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ers in storage that I got for like 0.30 at TRU on clearance. 6 face buttons FTMFW!
