Pad vs Stick. An odd predicament.

XthAtGAm3RGuYX

What's up SRK newbie support. I myself am not a newbie but I do have what I think is an odd situation, and am not sure If I should try to remedy it, or leave it as is.
A month or so ago, I bought my first arcade stick. This was following the 2 years I spent on SSF4 and a Seasons Beatings trip which reignited my flame for marvel. For some reason I can play Marvel on stick just fine. Wavedashing, quarter circles, charge moves, the whole 9 yards. But when trying to play SF on stick, the comfort I felt on Marvel with the stick went out the fucking window. In training mode things are just fine, FADC's and all that shit. But when I get into a game I have 0% execution.
All my set up's are gone. I lose to what I personally refer to as stupid shit. When I compare what I can do on stick to what I can on pad on SF, I realize that playing on stick set me back about a year and a half of everything that I know with Juri. For example, one of my favorite air-to-air combos is
jumping strong>jumping strong>stand close fierce xx super
On pad, I could mute the TV, walk into a completely different room, and still land that shit.
On stick, I couldn't land it if you told me you were going to jump then gave me 15 seconds to prepare for it.

I might be rambling since it is 6am. So here is the bottomline. On SF, no matter how much I try, playing stick never feels natural or comfortable to me. On Marvel, stick felt natural and comfortable by day 2.

So should I try and persist in learning stick for SF or should I be a complete weirdo and play both sides of the fence, using pad on one game and stick on the other. Because learning stick on SF gave me my first rage quit in well over 6 months I don't know what the fuck to do.

Narcowski

You can do both if you want, but I think most people find that going back to pad after switching to stick will make you play worse on both controllers. Voted option 1 because of this.

AsaCarter

I would say keep at the stick, but the use a fightpad will develop your finger muscles which will help with the stick. I say train on both, fight on your stick.

eltrouble

Use whatever you're comfortable with. You are comfortable with the arcade stick in Marvel, and a pad in SF4, so that's what you should do. No point being stubborn and sticking with one or the other if it means you play like shit.

mapleleafs791

i sucked fucking ballsack the first week or 2 when i got stick. i couldnt even remember how to sweep.
i remember playing a bison that was A ranked was good on pad but terrible on stick when he first got it.

Point is you need to stick to it and get used to it. some people have other opinions but i am firm in the opinion there are very few chars you can play on pad equally well as on a stick. after a 3-4 weeks i was over the hurdle and i could never ever go back.

Stick with it and get used to it. no sense in spending your time learning 2 different tools for the same task get good at the stick if you already have it

bkfst_sausage

I'm the same way, only the opposite...
I can't do shit on pad in Street Fighter (Super Turbo and 3S in my case), so I can only use stick.
I play Marvel 2... and been using a stick for 10 years on that game... but I still can't fast fly with Sentinel... On a DREAMCAST pad, I can do air to ground shit with Ironman and refly combos with Sentinel... No fucking clue... So I just stick to pad for that game, but stick for Street Fighter.
It's fine to use both.

XthAtGAm3RGuYX

mapleleafs791, post: 7741562, member: 69336 wrote:

Stick with it and get used to it. no sense in spending your time learning 2 different tools for the same task get good at the stick if you already have it

Well that's the thing. I don't have to LEARN two diifferent tools for one game, because I've known how to play pad for the last 2 years. I just feel like an idiot because whenever I play SF on pad now, I look over at my arcade stick and think "Did I really spend $180 on that just to play one game?" . It also confuses the hell outta me because Marvel on stick made immediate sense. I didn't have to work at it or stick with it, it just worked and made sense to me.
Why I'm debating it is because I was thinking, what if I never catch up to where I am on stick and I lose my pad expertise because of how much I practiced stick and then I suck at SF all around the board. I'm just questioning whether or not it's worth the time to restart when I've already gotten so far on pad

P. Gorath

if you can play on pad and have no mental qualms about it, why would you want to switch to stick? pad = easy execution, no guessing, macros at your fingertips, etc.

mapleleafs791

XthAtGAm3RGuYX, post: 7741719, member: 55729 wrote:

Well that's the thing. I don't have to LEARN two diifferent tools for one game, because I've known how to play pad for the last 2 years. I just feel like an idiot because whenever I play SF on pad now, I look over at my arcade stick and think "Did I really spend $180 on that just to play one game?" . It also confuses the hell outta me because Marvel on stick made immediate sense. I didn't have to work at it or stick with it, it just worked and made sense to me.
Why I'm debating it is because I was thinking, what if I never catch up to where I am on stick and I lose my pad expertise because of how much I practiced stick and then I suck at SF all around the board. I'm just questioning whether or not it's worth the time to restart when I've already gotten so far on pad

ahh i was speed reading and i misunderstood. well anyway i think a pad for sf4 is far inferior. i couldnt imagine trying to hit the 2 one frame links in a combo without a stick online. i also after getting used to stick much prefer the stick over the analog.

however idk what char you play. wolfkrone rocks pad as does vangief i believe but if you rely on heavy links it may be worth it to learn stick.

stick felt fucking alien for the first week for me but a month later it as like once you go stick you dont go back. but different folks diff strokes :/ so i still say stick with it :/

ifbpwnstar

It takes a while to build the muscle memory to make use of the device instinctual. I've gone from pad to stick to Hitbox and I can tell you the learning curve extends beyond practice mode combos. It takes about 2-3 months of steady play to really embrace a new device without having to think through your movements. In the end go with a device that suits your preferences but acknowledge the pros and cons of the device and determine which one is worth learning. Typically 2D is going to like sticks more then pads and 3d will have a slight bias for playstation-esque pads. Sticks tend to universally be good for whatever game so it's often worth sticking with it till it becomes natural.

If after 3 months you still feel this way I would drop it, but in all honesty by that time I don't imagine you wouldn't be perfectly comfortable with it. Also consider 8 gates and bat tops it 4 gates and lollipops aren't feeling right.

I'm married to my Hitbox now, but before that option once I learned stick and got used to it, I could not ever imagine going back to pad for 2D fighters. Pads are good for taps (double taps, charging) and sticks are better for rolls (qcf's, tk's, srk's, 360's etc...). Outside of MK most 2D fighters are going to have controls that benefit a stick.

fizzywoemac

Go with stick, when you start going to ae tourneys more regularly you're gonna want something to hide the boners you get landing radical combos.

ahdonye

On PSN i have one account I play with stick "ahdonye" and a secon I play with pad while my wife sleeps "jasin walraven" play all game with both.

XthAtGAm3RGuYX

I think from now on, AE will be the last game I play on pad. Any new fighting games I pick up after this point I will start on stick. I think my muscle memory and timing for AE is too deeply rooted on pad for it to even be a rational change. Looking at my calendar of game releases, it seems the Darkstalkers re-launch will be the first I try that on.

Louiscipher

It's all about preference. There's more than a few gdlk tournament players on pad like Wolfkrone and Fanatiq and a few others I think. Can we just put the fucking stick is better than pad shit to rest finally?

Intuitive2011

XthAtGAm3RGuYX, post: 7740675, member: 55729 wrote:

Snip

You've still got the worst name! How I miss Foolinfection's stream. :D

Anyways, onto the your question.

This was just my experience. I, like you, was alternating between pad and stick, as I sucked on stick for certain games and I didn't want to lose. After I got over the fact that I WILL lose, I spent a lot more time with my stick. It's now the only thing I can play on. I think you need to spend more time in SF4 with your stick. Yes, you will get bodied and it will be frustrating. But look at the money you spent on it. It was quite a bit! I know with time you will get comfortable with it, you just have to stay patient.

$houltzula

stick being better than pad usually boils down to the game you're playing.

I always found it really easy to play ST on a pad since I played ryu the whole time. I could execute the entire character faster than I could on a stick because the pad has a shorter throw to trigger directions. Think about a short shifter in a racing car versus a big rig. That's what it kind of is for pad vs stick.

when you start playing your game with your pad, you just have to be able to execute everything the game demands out of a top player. My problem for pad in ST was mashing out of throws or mashing out of dizzies. You can mash much faster on a joystick than you can on a pad IMO so I while I gained certain advantages by playing on a pad, I also gained some weaknesses.

pad has advantages that stick doesn't have and vice versa. They're 2 different controllers with different elements that make each good. I wouldn't necessarily stick is better than pad all day simple because of tekken which is 1000x easier to play on a pad. I guess pad\sticks are tools and you choose which "tool" will do the job the best.

The Martian

I'm the exact same way with Marvel. I can't play Marvel for SHIT on a stick, but I can't imagine playing Street Fighter without one.

Your situation is quite odd though...I've always imagined sticks to be better for SF games anyway.

petran79

you have a stick and you play only 2 fighters?

dont limit yourself! try as many games as you can. Get an emulator and play with a stick the old classic fighters you used to play on a pad. it will help a lot.

I used keyboard exclusively all these years, yet when I switched to stick it took me just a few months to reach the same level of execution on a keyboard.
though I cross arms to play on the stick since I use right arm for directions and left for buttons. Sometimes when I am in a bad day and cant concentrate, I switch to keyboard. Change of controls helps sometimes in this case.

But overall a stick requires more concentration since it is much easier to slip inputs and timings, at least on the beginning.

Papinguim

XthAtGAm3RGuYX, post: 7740675, member: 55729 wrote:

What's up SRK newbie support. I myself am not a newbie but I do have what I think is an odd situation, and am not sure If I should try to remedy it, or leave it as is.
A month or so ago, I bought my first arcade stick. This was following the 2 years I spent on SSF4 and a Seasons Beatings trip which reignited my flame for marvel. For some reason I can play Marvel on stick just fine. Wavedashing, quarter circles, charge moves, the whole 9 yards. But when trying to play SF on stick, the comfort I felt on Marvel with the stick went out the fucking window. In training mode things are just fine, FADC's and all that shit. But when I get into a game I have 0% execution.
All my set up's are gone. I lose to what I personally refer to as stupid shit. When I compare what I can do on stick to what I can on pad on SF, I realize that playing on stick set me back about a year and a half of everything that I know with Juri. For example, one of my favorite air-to-air combos is
jumping strong>jumping strong>stand close fierce xx super
On pad, I could mute the TV, walk into a completely different room, and still land that shit.
On stick, I couldn't land it if you told me you were going to jump then gave me 15 seconds to prepare for it.

I might be rambling since it is 6am. So here is the bottomline. On SF, no matter how much I try, playing stick never feels natural or comfortable to me. On Marvel, stick felt natural and comfortable by day 2.

So should I try and persist in learning stick for SF or should I be a complete weirdo and play both sides of the fence, using pad on one game and stick on the other. Because learning stick on SF gave me my first rage quit in well over 6 months I don't know what the fuck to do.

Exact opposite for me. The only controller I can use for Marvel 3 is either a Classic controller or Dualshock, and I use a stick on SF.

ComradeTao

I play on both. It pretty much depends whether I want to sit on a nice comfortable chair with ridiculous posture or want to sit upright.

SSblanka

do both. i play the sf and kof series on a stick, but i prefer pad for the tekken and mk series.

jpenguin77

I have been playing on a pad since the NES came out (1985... FUCK, I"M OLD!) and now because I always push so much psi into my dpads and practically break them in months, I now have problems with my left hand thumb maintaining strength (wait till all you get older). I have made the task of unlearning 27 years of exclusive pad usage to not only save my muscle strength in my thumb, but to be a better player cause FADC is a bitch to pull on a pad.

Trouble Brewing

It really doesn't seem like most of you read the first post at all. :p

TNB

Memory is associative.
You learn something on a certain control method and you will associate that technique with that control method.
And your issue sounds like nervousness that is combined with lack of association. The association and comfort with the method is built with practice.

Leggo

fizzywoemac, post: 7742647, member: 34222 wrote:

Go with stick, when you start going to ae tourneys more regularly you're gonna want something to hide the boners you get landing radical combos.

LOL! that shit cracked me up

Proxima

XthAtGAm3RGuYX, post: 7741719, member: 55729 wrote:

what if I never catch up to where I am on stick and I lose my pad expertise because of how much I practiced stick and then I suck at SF all around the board.

This really shouldn't ever be the case. Even if you practiced for a year on the stick, never touching the pad, and then you decide to give up on stick and go back to pad, even if you aren't very good at pad at first, you should be able to get as good as you were and, with more practice, theoretically better.

While I am new to fighting games, I'm not new to learning things (sounds retarded, but it's relevant). Everything is part abstraction part application. If you have the physical skills required to pull off moves on your pad, that muscle memory really shouldn't just completely devolve into the realm of impossible progress. You seem to already have the abstraction aspect down, the next part is application, SF4 and Marvel are two different games, so it makes sense that you wouldn't be able to fully apply all of your physical knowledge of one game to the next. In fact, you could be so comfortable with certain physical aspects of Marvel, that the difference of SF4 is completely wrecking your execution; however, with time and practice this should correct itself and you should be able to play both comfortably.

It's hard for me to say this accurately because I am a new player and new to stick, but my suspicion is that I've played so many games with a pad that playing on a stick is very awkward; so I think for someone who has grown up with video games, if they have built a considerable amount of muscle memory using a stick for one game, when the mechanics of another game change, it makes sense that they wouldn't be immediately good with a stick and noticeably better with a pad since that is the paraphernalia they grew up with; they have more experience with the pad on a multitude of platforms, and have probably experienced every kind of mechanic and positioning available on the pad; however, in your case, it seems that you only really know the mechanics and positioning on a stick for one game.

However, with that said, I think an arcade stick is infinitely better than a pad in almost every conceivable aspect for a fighting game. Not only is it aesthetically better for me, but, after practice, execution is more accurate; I feel much more in control when I can use my entire arm (wrist and fingers) instead of having to just use my thumb to input direction.

So, with all that said, I think you should stick it out with stick :D