Recently gotten into 2D fighters, but I'm having troubles improving.

[GlassMan]

Within the past five years, I've bought many great fighting games, such as Super Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend, Skullgirls, and Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, and since I'm now the only one who plays my PS3 at my place, I've finally had a chance to play them all. I've grown up mostly on 3D fighters like the Soul Calibur games or Dragon Ball Z fighters, but I wanted to get into 2D fighters more for whatever dumb reason. I picked up Street Fighter fairly easily, and while I was one of the people who had trouble in vanilla SFIV's Seth fight (On the easiest difficulty, no less!), I eventually overcame my frustrations once Super rolled out. I've gotten to the point where I mostly play as Cody and Hakan, and I don't have too much of a hard time beating Arcade Mode on Normal. I've gotten to the point where I'm still not necessarily great at most fighters I play, but at least I've got the system mechanics for a few of them down, and when I get over my crippling autism that forces me to mash buttons, I can usually win Arcade fairly consistently at those, as well.

But now it feels like I'm not necessarily improving that much. I realize that playing against all sorts of people can help me out, but I'm very much afraid of trying out the online modes in Street Fighter, BlazBlue, and Skullgirls. The only fighter I've been playing a lot of recently has been Guilty Gear, but since I play it on the PSP, there's no way for me to do things online, at least as far as I can tell. Since I've got basically no one to consistently play against (The only person I play BlazBlue against is somehow worse than I am, and they've been a fan longer,) I'm wondering if there's still ways for me to improve my playing, to maybe clear Arcade on a higher difficulty or start playing a bit better on the rare occasions I do have a human opponent.

So I have a few questions:

1. Would it be worth trying online mode out for certain games, just to get a grasp on how human players perform? I know that I can't necessarily ask people over matchmaking for advice on certain things, such as what I could do differently to stop my face from becoming a heavybag, but would it still be worth trying a few online matches and seeing how it goes?

2. Would it be better off for me to try just learning one game to get better at than having four+ on my plate? I'd love to get moderately good at all of them, but would it just be better to drop the games that would more be "dead weight" and try to get better at current/more popular games?

3. For some of these games, would it be better if I ditched the PS3 controllers and used a third-party setup like a fightstick?

4. Have the countless hours I've dedicated to 3D fighters (And I mean countless, since I'm not good at maths.) perhaps somewhat hampered my ability to learn the systems and playstyles in 2D games?

I'm sorry if this seems like a waste of time (Or a waste of an account, for that matter.) But after realizing that I have four fighting games I really enjoy playing, and I'm mediocre at all of them, I'm just looking for a few ways to improve. You can yell at me for being a stupid newbie all you'd like, and I'm certain this post is probably incredibly redundant.

Edited July 13, 2013 by GlassMan

[Elochai]

Responses in bold. Welcome to Dustloop.

So I have a few questions:

1. Would it be worth trying online mode out for certain games, just to get a grasp on how human players perform? I know that I can't necessarily ask people over matchmaking for advice on certain things, such as what I could do differently to stop my face from becoming a heavybag, but would it still be worth trying a few online matches and seeing how it goes?

Online can be a good way to test the waters IMO. While some would argue that it's not as good as practice in person, it can still give you a general idea of how to play against human opponents in a realistic match setting.

2. Would it be better off for me to try just learning one game to get better at than having four+ on my plate? I'd love to get moderately good at all of them, but would it just be better to drop the games that would more be "dead weight" and try to get better at current/more popular games?

I would say learn however many games at a time that you want, granted that you can allocate a decent amount of time to each game. Fundamentals and such carry over between game to game. The footsie game you learn in GG can therefore be applied to BB in some way.

3. For some of these games, would it be better if I ditched the PS3 controllers and used a third-party setup like a fightstick?

This is preference. Stick or pad is fine.

3. Have the countless hours I've dedicated to 3D fighters (And I mean countless, since I'm not good at maths.) perhaps somewhat hampered my ability to learn the systems and playstyles in 2D games?

I would think the footsie/poking aspects of 3D games would carry over to 2D's.

[Celerity]

So I have a few questions:

1. Would it be worth trying online mode out for certain games, just to get a grasp on how human players perform? I know that I can't necessarily ask people over matchmaking for advice on certain things, such as what I could do differently to stop my face from becoming a heavybag, but would it still be worth trying a few online matches and seeing how it goes?

2. Would it be better off for me to try just learning one game to get better at than having four+ on my plate? I'd love to get moderately good at all of them, but would it just be better to drop the games that would more be "dead weight" and try to get better at current/more popular games?

3. For some of these games, would it be better if I ditched the PS3 controllers and used a third-party setup like a fightstick?

3. Have the countless hours I've dedicated to 3D fighters (And I mean countless, since I'm not good at maths.) perhaps somewhat hampered my ability to learn the systems and playstyles in 2D games?

I'm sorry if this seems like a waste of time (Or a waste of an account, for that matter.) But after realizing that I have four fighting games I really enjoy playing, and I'm mediocre at all of them, I'm just looking for a few ways to improve. You can yell at me for being a stupid newbie all you'd like, and I'm certain this post is probably incredibly redundant.

1. Online play is better than playing vs the CPU, so I say go for it. It's possible to get quite good online, as long as you iron out your weaknesses in training mode and with other people occasionally. If online play is the only thing you have access to, I'd definitely recommend playing a game with a more active online scene like SF4 or BlazBlue. GGAC+ online basically doesn't exist until the netcode gets patched.

2. I would suggest not playing more than 2 games at first. It's way too daunting to learn multiple games, and it will slow your rate of learning exponentially for each additional game you try to play.

3. Pad is completely fine. If you're having trouble doing inputs on pad, you can switch to stick, but it's not going to make you a better player or something.

4. Impossible. Playing 3D fighters gives you an advantage when coming to 2D fighters, it's just not a very large advantage. "Learning bad habits" or "learning the wrong game" are basically just misconceptions about the way learning works. Your brain is naturally going to transfer all of the concepts that are relevant to both genres, like spacing and timing.

Nobody's going to yell at you or call you a noob here, that's what SRK is for. Welcome to Dustloop.

[GlassMan]

Well, it seems that the verdict here's that I can't count to 4. Also, on a more relevant note, I guess I should get to playing some BlazBlue online, then. I do want to stray a bit from the Ragna safe-zone that I seem to have, so I'll likely take some time to try that out this weekend. Thank you guys for the relatively quick response! I'm looking forward to improving, and eventually becoming a bit more active here.

[Rhiya]

1. Playing online is no substitute for playing offline, but playing real people is infinitely better (and infinitely more enjoyable) than not doing so. Definitely play online some -- especially if there's not a strong scene near you -- but keep it to good connections, for the sake of your learning and your sanity, and know that even a good online connection just isn't the same as offline.

2. You'll want to stick to one game when you're starting out. Juggling different sets of mechanics is very daunting, to say the least, and doing that while learning to use those mechanics to their full potential is next to impossible.

3. It really depends on things like what character you play, or if you feel like you, personally, want to try using stick. Pad is fine in almost every case, though, and if you haven't felt like it's an issue, it probably won't be. There -are- top US players that play on pad.

4. Nope. If anything, it might've helped you a little.