About 1 year ago I became interested in actually playing fighting games. I ordered Eight Arc Fusion Fight stick and did some mods on the buttons and stick itself.(I like to mod things, it's a hobbie). So, I want to get good at fighting games, by get good, i mean be able to lose in a match, watch the replay, learn exactly why I lost and what the player was thinking, and fix on my mistakes. I don't care about losing, I don't care how long something is suppose to take. As long as I have a goal that I know how and what steps need to be taken to work on them. I will always be happy. My first game was street fighter 4 AE after 4 months ultra street fighter 4 came out and I started playing that. I went out and read the shoryuken "how to get good at fighting games (read it twice actually)". I went on street fighter and started just practicing combo's. Over time, I learned that there are characters in street fighter that are not easy to learn, they are especially Unforgiving if you try to play them without having prior knowledge and fundamentals before picking them up. I ended up playing Guile.
As I was trying to learn guile I Went and started studying on all the games mechanics street fighter had to offer, frames, hit boxes, frame traps, plinking, mix-up etc. One day I thought to myself that i actually want to expand out and learn how to play other fighting games then just street fighter.(I mean in the fact of if I learn how to play Blazblue, then switching to persona won't be a hassle, I totally understand that a person should focus learning and getting good at 1 fighting game, there are those accstion of playing another fighting game.) I picked up King of fighters 13, king of fighters is pretty unforgiving in teaching fundamentals to someone who has no idea what they are doing (I studied alot in the meta of fighting games but other then that, not much.) Picked my "good beginners" characters and started to get to practice in training mode. I would for hours on end everyday practice getting my combos to come out, but right after that I had no idea where to go from there.(I mean I practiced my combo's to the point to wear I can hit it 30 times in a row with out fail, but when I go online, because I have not practiced in any other type of things my 90% combo consistency can go out the window because I can't get to/hit the player to begin with).
I wanted to learn how to do a fire ball game but programming the A.I to do what you wanted it to do to bring up the situation that you wanted to work on was allot of work, very hard, and on some levels impractical. I went over to try and play Guilty gear and everything went over my head. I picked up persona and once again, I felt at a totally lost on what I would need to work on to get good. Before this goes any further it should be worth noting, you will never catch me playing a fighting game online until I get down the 101 on how to play a game. Please do not tell me to go online, it's beyond stupid when you tell some one to go play online and the person has not even the slightest idea on how they would need to play their characters, how the game mechanics work, and has not even truly practiced using their character in training mode....That said 1 year has gone by (I have had a good friend teaching me how to play fighting games, I am very grateful for having me but when he would teach me to work on a certain particular thing, when I work on this particular thing I can say "I totally see how this is valuable and why I would need to learn this" but at the end of the day I always felt empty inside. I would then find myself jumping over to other fighting games just trying to desperately find a game where I can learn my fundamentals that I desperately need in the most convenient way possible. Jumping from game to game with no proper guidance is a giant waste of time. After 1 year, I was looking up at my ceiling and thinking to myself....."You know, there are people who don't know any where near as much as the meta as I do in fighting games, and yet in a matter of 2 months or less they can play way better then me". I sat myself down and thought why are people learning how to play fighting games better then me and they don't know anything of the technical stuff. Why do I keep getting borde of playing said fighting game and feeling like i am not getting any closer to "understanding" how to play.
I want to fucking practice, I want to learn, but for some reason it's just not clicking to me. I saw some video on how to play King of fighters. Started off with the guy saying "lets start by working on defense". He then goes over the fundamentals on how a person would want to utilize their normals to keeping the players out and to keep yourself safe. That's when the realization hit me, that I spent all this time trying to learn how to "Play" the character checking out there normals and seeing what they are capable of (I do study the normals of the characters). But then it sparked that this is but 1 of the fundamentals I need to learn how to play fighting games. Never did I think to utilize practicing defending myself through Nothing but normals and understanding my options and so I can learn my character's strengths and weaknesses. Theres a problem with this though, I went online and tried to fight against other players in kof13 trying to strictly use nothing but my normals so I can start learning the game. it's one thing to practice, practice practice, but i believe that to go out the window when I came to fight these players online. I would sit down and watch the replays, My guy would get bombarded by the player doing fast jump ins, getting me into the corner, I try to fight back trying to use my normals to give myself breathing space (keep in mind I know I have specials but I am trying to practice learning how to use normals....I think what this is refered to as footsies?). It was all pointless, the entire time the player would frame trap me, cross me up, condition me. This is hands down too overwhelming for some one who is trying to learn the game, and wants to learn via utilizing There normals to understand there character and muscle memory build how to use what normal and when. I spent 90% of my matches on the ground just because players would hit me up with the biggest mix ups. too much for me to handle when I am just trying to learn. I tryed to go into practice mode and record the dummy doing sertan things, but then I realized what I am doing is pretty slow and very impractical in a sense. it's kinda annoying to having to re-record the dummy to change doing something else every time. Sat down and thought to myself "how can some one with out any fundamentals, practice fundamentals?". Never came up with a answer really. but then I came cross Blazeblue CSE. I went into the tutorial mode and noticed that this game straight up started talking about Footsies the universal buttons and how I would want to utilize Ragna's Pokes at max range. (allot of this stuff was easy for me to take in sense I understood about canceling recovery frames, doing specials as early as possible that way you can increase your frame advantage when you hit with the tip, Frame traps, mix ups, block stun, and rushdown.) the game started going over the basics on how I would need to defend myself via normals. Talked about cross ups, option selects, Cancels, everything.
This was the first game Where I trully felt like I can actually learn my fundamentals. Practice mode is very nice too, I looked at all my options and they even have multiply record play backs instead of just 1 playback I would only have in other fighting games. I am getting a very good strong gist of how I can Utilize these tools. I even like how the game basically told me "Spacing your hits, go ahead and practice it in practice mode till it feels like secound nature to you, but the real exp will be when you vs online". Witch makes allot of sense for me. I also Found out ragna is the ryu to the game so he will have a tool for everything that can teach me things about this game. I did noticed that this game is more complex then street fighter, and KOF, in a beginners learning fighting games perspective, but checking out the dustloop wiki, with the convenient frame data and how all the moves function for my character, I am actually really excited and started to believe that this game is the most "convenient" game when it comes down to learning and practicing fundamentals in training mode. So here is my question, guys for some one that needs to learn there fundamentals can you list off things that I need to work on. Please don't say "work on hit-confirming" Please reply with something like "Set the dummy to random guard and start practicing hit confirming, as a beginner the general rule of thumb is 3 hits to confirm, blazblue is a little different so you can actually pull off doing 2 hit confirms. When you get really good, you will even be able to do 1 hit confirms. but stick with the hit confirm that gets your combos off 100% of the time".
Or if you say "work on footsie" please explain to me how I could work on my footsie with ragna and what would be some good practice method. I want to learn fundamentals engrave them into my head, that way when I go online I can see what I did wrong and improve on it. (if I did not practice doing say a "combo" 30 times in a row, then I can't expect for it to come out in a match). Mortal Kombat X I noticed that i was lacking in my anti airs, Sense doing combos with Kano was so easy(In practice mode I did the strict 30 times in a row and start all over if you drop it) I never even thought about how to execute the combo's they just came out, which is good for me because now i can focus on something that need more attention to. I am gonna proof read. this long ass message. Thanks for any one that took there time to read this, I have a xbox and steam and I do have blazeblue for both, and I have street fighter on steam, kof13, kof98, kof2002, on steam (i'm just saying). Of course My focus is Learning how to play blazblue. If you have any questions, please hit me up. My steam name is snake2243, if you want me to add you just leave your name. But of course Ultimately I am expecting most people to post there replys in this forums. Any advice will help. but please add depth. Fundamentals that I can practice in practice mode with ragna before I go online and such. Thank you all.
