Execution/Strategy problems

[Arvoyea]

Don't know where to put this, but I need some help. Lately, I feel like I am at my limit at how good I can be at fighting games, but I definitely can get better. It's just that I have problems with executing complex combos. My hands like to go too fast and that results in me dropping lots of combos or doing the wrong thing, or even throwing out a random attack that lets the other person get a counter-hit plus huge ass combo so I can get owned for free, which is ALL the time. I'm not good at making my hands do what I'm thinking/visualizing in my mind. This happens especially when I'm losing and desprately trying to make a comeback. What can I do to get better? And I feel like deciding to just only worry about matchups instead of learning combos, you know, just do whatever, not go into a flowchart of combos for each match all the time. I'd rather just know what to do against each character, while knowing my character's strengths and weaknesses. Is that fine? Thanks to those that try to answer. And if this is in the wrong place, go ahead and move it.

[bucklemyshoe]

play fate unlimited codes I know you're thinking WTF, but play that and you'll learn how to make slower, more precise inputs. although, I seriously doubt your speed of input is too fast. I'm guessing the problem is that it just isn't accurate.

[Arvoyea]

Actually, I was planning to get Fate unlimited codes for PSP soon.

Yeah, it is that they aren't really accurate. How can I fix that? And what about stratefy and practice?

An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGfb1L-yVoc

I lost the first round because it was the first time to use my stick for #Reload. I wasn't really thinking.

[maraxusofkelds]

learn the most basic bread and butters. Those should be so easy anyone can do it. When you feel you have those down, work on more advanced comboes. That way, even if you can't execute flawlessly, you have something to fall back on. Shorter comboes > dropped comboes

[bucklemyshoe]

a game for a psp and a console game can't compare.

execution will come with time.

after watching your vid, it's clear you need a lot more work.

start here! http://dustloop.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=27

[Digital Watches]

Play SF2 BASICS.

[Kayin]

Play SF2

BASICS.

This.

Fucking this.

[Arvoyea]

Play SF2

BASICS.

But I suck in SF2 also. Usually lose a lot more than I win when I play Super Turbo on GGPO.

I guess I'll just get a japanese PS2 then. Been thinking about it anyway.

[danceljoy]

Practice! Practice! Practice! I suck so much at fighting games that it took me a month of daily training just to execute Ling Xiaoyu's 10 hit combo.

[4r5]

SF2 cuts straight to the mental game and hugely emphasizes spacing. You can build up the same basics in GG, but some people are too ADD to focus themselves away from all teh combos and hot setups straight from Nippon.

10

edit: you only really need the first 3 or 4 hits of each of Xiaoyu's 10-strings

[Arvoyea]

An update:still having some problems, and by some I mean I suck when it comes to playing fighting games against other people. All fighting games. I'm not good at Guilty Gear, Blazblue, MB, definitely not at VF, and I even have a hard time playing Street Fighter, from 2 all the way to 4(especially 4). I suck at Tekken now, 6 is too weird for me, and I'm not confident at all in Marvel. It's not like I'm trying to do stuff I see in match vids, it's just, I can't do well against others a majority of the time. What does this mean?

[Circuitous]

Take up first-person shooters.

[qwerty]

grind super turbo it takes awhile to get good mang

[Circuitous]

Actually yeah do that one.

[doragonkoroshi]

When you're doing combos, do you have the input display on? This should help you to locate your problem and show you just where you're messing up and how. Also, it can help to break it down into smaller parts. Go as far as you can in the combo, and then stop yourself and think of what is supposed to come next, then keep doing that until you can think of the next input fast enough to actually do it. Watching match videos can help you a lot with your matchups if you know what to look for. Keep at it. This may take a long time. It takes longer for some people than it does for others, but it's not impossible to anyone. My guess is that once you learn how to do a couple combos, you'll learn the concept of combos in general, which will in turn make it easier to do subsequent combos.

[vedasisme]

It means you stopped trying to have fun with fighting games and started trying to get good at them. Invest in your experience; understand the game you're playing. For example: Don't look up frame data because it's a term "good" players throw around, look it up because you have hunches about how the game itself works. Don't get good at a game because you want to beat everyone, get good at it because you love it.

[Veven]

I used to have a similar problem, and still do but to a lesser extent. I think the core issue is that what you want to do, i.e. what you want your character to perform in a given moment, isn't properly connected to the muscle memory to perform those actions. In other words, when you decide you want to do something, you have to think how to do it, rather than it just being automatic. I made my first arcade stick about two years ago, and I've been using it off and on since then, but not with the sort of regularity that you'd see from most people on these forums. It's only been in the past 3-4 months that I've gotten good enough to not have to think about how to perform the motions. I just think "back dash 360" or whatever, and my arms do the rest. Since that's happened, I've been able to free up my consciousness for other things, like strategy, mind games, and all the things that make fighting games really enjoyable. If you're constantly having to use your conscious layer, which has a limited bandwidth, for mundane, fundamental things, you can't really explore the deeper subtleties of the game in real-time. If you can only have so many thoughts in your mind at once, your basically wasting space with thoughts about execution, moving your arms and hands. For instance, let's arbitrarily say that you can have 5 thoughts in your head at once. If one or two of those spots is taken by thoughts on physically moving your arms and hands in complex motions, you're taking a pretty big handicap. And I personally believe that, using this example, the thoughts about execution actually occupy more than 1 or 2 spots; it's more like they take up your entire consciousness for that moment. So if you can only have 5 thoughts in your head (some say 7 plus or minus 2, so 5-9, but this is a pretty nonspecific set of 'thoughts' we're talking about, so it doesn't necessarily apply here) and you fill it all up with useless execution data, you're dropping a big portion of information about the overall match. You'll forget the mind games you and your opponent were having with each other before you performed those motions, because those thoughts were dropped, truncated. The point is, you won't really get better until you can free up your mental resources by getting the connection between "I want to do *this*" and actually performing it to be automatic. For myself, that just meant using a stick over a very long time, although in all I'd say I've used it for maybe 200 hours. It can take a long time to ingrain those muscle memories. When you do, however, the actual strategy of the game starts to show itself, and you get to spend your mental cycles on the interesting part of the game. It's also worth mentioning that I think using an arcade stick takes up a lot more mental resources than using a controller with a d-pad, because of the more complicated arm motions involved, compared to just fingers. That's even more true if you're moving from a controller to a stick.

[HeatEXTEND]

I used to have a similar problem, and still do but to a lesser extent. I think the core issue is that what you want to do, i.e. what you want your character to perform in a given moment, isn't properly connected to the muscle memory to perform those actions. In other words, when you decide you want to do something, you have to think how to do it, rather than it just being automatic.

I made my first arcade stick about two years ago, and I've been using it off and on since then, but not with the sort of regularity that you'd see from most people on these forums. It's only been in the past 3-4 months that I've gotten good enough to not have to think about how to perform the motions. I just think "back dash 360" or whatever, and my arms do the rest.

Since that's happened, I've been able to free up my consciousness for other things, like strategy, mind games, and all the things that make fighting games really enjoyable. If you're constantly having to use your conscious layer, which has a limited bandwidth, for mundane, fundamental things, you can't really explore the deeper subtleties of the game in real-time.

If you can only have so many thoughts in your mind at once, your basically wasting space with thoughts about execution, moving your arms and hands. For instance, let's arbitrarily say that you can have 5 thoughts in your head at once. If one or two of those spots is taken by thoughts on physically moving your arms and hands in complex motions, you're taking a pretty big handicap. And I personally believe that, using this example, the thoughts about execution actually occupy more than 1 or 2 spots; it's more like they take up your entire consciousness for that moment. So if you can only have 5 thoughts in your head (some say 7 plus or minus 2, so 5-9, but this is a pretty nonspecific set of 'thoughts' we're talking about, so it doesn't necessarily apply here) and you fill it all up with useless execution data, you're dropping a big portion of information about the overall match. You'll forget the mind games you and your opponent were having with each other before you performed those motions, because those thoughts were dropped, truncated.

The point is, you won't really get better until you can free up your mental resources by getting the connection between "I want to do *this*" and actually performing it to be automatic. For myself, that just meant using a stick over a very long time, although in all I'd say I've used it for maybe 200 hours. It can take a long time to ingrain those muscle memories. When you do, however, the actual strategy of the game starts to show itself, and you get to spend your mental cycles on the interesting part of the game.

It's also worth mentioning that I think using an arcade stick takes up a lot more mental resources than using a controller with a d-pad, because of the more complicated arm motions involved, compared to just fingers. That's even more true if you're moving from a controller to a stick.

You don't sound like a scrub at all, great little read

[TheGRIT]

^ Well said.

It comes down to expertise and automaticity. The more automatic things become, the less you think about them, and the less you need to think about them. Driving is a good example. The more you drive, the less you have to think about when to brake, how much to turn the wheel, when to start turning it back after you've made your turn, etc.

I'm pretty terrible at fighting games but having those bread & butters learned to the point of expertise can come in handy when your opponent slips up. They whiff = you punishing them, even if it's for a little bit.