Wanting to pick up fighting games seriously.

DopeSauce

I recently have become addicted to fighting games and I want to start taking them seriously to where I can compete in competitions. I like to mess around on SSF4ae and UMVC3 with my friends who are way better then me, well just at UMVC3 they do not really play SF. I want to play but I seem to have bad reactions to hit confirming combos, set ups, mix ups, and getting into the opponents mind. I know a lot of this is just experience so I am going to just go out there and get more experience. I decided I want to play SSF4 ae as my first competitive game to get good basics and mess around with marvel. I want to play a more aggressive character so I though either makoto, rufus, or ibuki any opinions on which would be a more new player friendlier character? or should I just do what everyone says and play ryu first? I want to pick a main because a lot of times I feel like I am just wasting time not practicing with who I want to be my main. I have a real difficult time choosing a main but any tips on how to practice, and I don't mean just go to training to practice but how to practice efficiently. Just in general I want to know where to get started to become competitive, because I see a lot of threads about this but nothing that really seems like a genuine almost step by step guide to learning the game. Sorry for all the text haha

density.

If you want to get serious, pick a character and learn it. Some people say you should start with Ryu to learn fundamentals (which is true, I picked up Seth as my first character and as a result I did very poorly for a long time learning fundamentals the hard way). If you're going to learn a first character and not have it be Ryu, I don't think you should learn any of those 3 characters you mentioned.

Rufus because he's heavily reliant on a 1 frame link, and he doesn't do so well against common new-player-destroyers like Zangief and fireball spam (you have to finely navigate the screen against a strong fireball game).

Makoto because her movement is also a very difficult thing to learn, learning how to get to your opponent through dashes and her forward normals takes a bit to learn, and her execution is pretty difficult.

And Ibuki, because on top of needing to learn how to have proper footsies, before you want to start winning as Ibuki you need to learn her mixups and vortex.

I would recommend Fei, Adon, Cammy, Bison, and Yun. These characters have a solid offensive game and for the most part, solid footsies and their movement is somewhat simple, although Fei suffers a bit when it comes to fireballs, I think it's a little easier than what Rufus needs to deal with. Keep in mind these are no "free ride" characters. Ryu is still an optimal pick because he's moderately good at everything. Good anti airs, good zoning game, good footsies, etc.

doubleoh

Like density said, pick a character and stick with it. Be willing to spend long hours in the training room practicing the same thing over and over and over.

Ryu is good for learning fundamentals, but he's also a newbie trap. He's got good tools for most situations but usually his playstyle doesn't translate very well to other characters. If you become overly reliant on fireballs and DPs, you'll be missing out on a lot of stuff that could help you better your game.

Personally, I'd say go with Abel but obviously I'm biased. His lack of a true anti-airs, his poor wakeup and his ability to destroy the opponent on wakeup will teach you three things, respectively: how to be patient and observe your opponent's patterns, how to block and pick your moments and how to approach a hard knockdown (which is a big part of the game).

Trouble Brewing

Ryu's playstyle translates very well to "Street Fighter" characters, but perhaps not as well to some of the new characters added in 4.

GordonsBeard

You can get pretty far by picking up Cody, he's got nothing really complex - and his combos are easy to pull off.

His most "advanced" feature is dealing with Counter-Hits and setups to produce them, but even if you ignore these and play safe you can do a ton of damage with a few moves. He has no wakeup options however so it will train you to block on wakeup.

doubleoh

Trouble Brewing, post: 7791306, member: 5950 wrote:

Ryu's playstyle translates very well to "Street Fighter" characters, but perhaps not as well to some of the new characters added in 4.

So you think that Ryu's playstyle translates well to characters such as Balrog, Blanka, Honda, Guile, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, etc?

toddler316

doubleoh, post: 7794268, member: 69866 wrote:

So you think that Ryu's playstyle translates well to characters such as Balrog, Blanka, Honda, Guile, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, etc?

Lol charge, charge, charge?

Why not just say learn guile?
I mean the dude has two moves so your really forced to learn to use very little to do a lot.

Sent from my SGH-T769 using Tapatalk 2

GordonsBeard

doubleoh, post: 7794268, member: 69866 wrote:

So you think that Ryu's playstyle translates well to characters such as Balrog, Blanka, Honda, Guile, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, etc?

He means it translates well because he has tools to zone, tools to poke, tools to apply safe pressure, and tools to stop air attacks.

He did not mean everyone in SF4 fights like Ryu.

doubleoh

toddler316, post: 7794290, member: 853 wrote:

Lol charge, charge, charge?

Why not just say learn guile?
I mean the dude has two moves so your really forced to learn to use very little to do a lot.

Sent from my SGH-T769 using Tapatalk 2

He said Street Fighter characters, so I named the ones that came to mind first that weren't introduced in SF4. It was all arbitrary. Also, Guile has those sexy normals.

GordonsBeard, post: 7794333, member: 70048 wrote:

He means it translates well because he has tools to zone, tools to poke, tools to apply safe pressure, and tools to stop air attacks.

He did not mean everyone in SF4 fights like Ryu.

Word.

Trouble Brewing

doubleoh, post: 7794268, member: 69866 wrote:

So you think that Ryu's playstyle translates well to characters such as Balrog, Blanka, Honda, Guile, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, etc?

No, but the fundamentals employed by Ryu all translate well to most of those characters.

eltrouble

doubleoh, post: 7794268, member: 69866 wrote:

So you think that Ryu's playstyle translates well to characters such as Balrog, Blanka, Honda, Guile, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, etc?

It's not the play style that's important to focus on, it's the fact that he relies on pure fundamentals to win his matches, without relying on any single one attack or pattern to do so. He has a strong set of tools to win all of his matches.

fizzywoemac

I would say mess around with characters to see who you like for a while. I would suggest always having a main in the back of your mind but you can't really know who you truly love if you have not tried everyone to a certain extent. Once you know what you really want/who you really want to get good with just stick with them. Id say this means playing them primarily but as you are learning fundamentals and starting off id say messing around with a group of characters just to get the feel of things is not bad. One of the most essential thing to learning a character is consistency, if you pick up a character and say to yourself "I want to get good with __" just accept that characters basic strengths and weaknesses and roll with the punches. Just using the character as much as possible and getting the feel for as many match ups as possible is the best thing you can do.

On another note i would say that i wouldn't worry about any character being unfriendly to beginners when you start off. It sounds like this opinion might be somewhat controversial but in the end i feel like while there are some characters that are harder to use than others that each character has strengths and weaknesses and regardless of user-friendliness it will take time to get over these obstacles. Of the characters you mentioned just go with whoever, can speak on behalf of ibuki and makoto but i started as a rufus main and have played him since always as my main. It was tough picking him up (learning the 1f took quite a while) but i feel like i didn't go through any more than i would have with any other character, bottom line with that is that i wouldn't get discouraged from playing him just because his bnb is a 1-frame link.

Bakuhakubasugasu

Hit the training room like a madman. Watch a crap load of videos on youtube. Find out if you can play locally with friends and new players. Go try tournaments out. Most importantly.. ASK QUESTIONS. Just keep at it really. Being persistent is the real way to go if you want to strive for that something. Training room once again. You don't know how much better you can get by just hitting the lab. Mess around with the training rooms options to get better. Turn on auto blocking to practice hit confirming and reactions. Put your dummy on jump and super jump to practice jump height confirms. You can setup a lot of interesting things to test from and learn yourself. Ultimate Marvel is one of the games where you can seriously just get good from hitting up training mode.

petran79

if you plan also to play Marvel, I'd suggest Ibuki really. her dial combos, anti-air and overall moves are perhaps closer to the MvC game. So you might feel more familiar.

I'd say the same for El Fuerte and C.Viper, though I'd put C.Viper out of it due to difficulty.
But if you want to take something seriously you'll have to focus on either SF4 or Marvel. Or else it will be too much at first.

I remember I did pick Rose for a main at start. Wanted to devote more time to the game but did not and now I have to get used to her game again. Now I pick Dan or Makoto mostly but dont do well with the latter, mainly just to improve execution. but I think taking time off the game made me play it better, despite the losses.

AsaCarter

don't worry man; my first serious fighter was SF3 and let me tell you, it was rough. What I truly found is, play all the character's trials or check out their move set and try it out in the training room, then go online and just try out abunch of characters (don't be scared of losing, you can't go any lower then 0 points *shrug*) and just see what you can do, once you find that one character that suits you, learn their combos, moves, and movement by heart. This is what I did and I came out with Blanka and I love blanka, his ball attacks have great escape, good zoning, and he has some good reaching attacks. I would suggest reading up on the forum and learning the terminology and other stuff so when reading on stuff and watching tournaments you know what was going on. When i started, I had no Idea what the heck was going on. (I didn't even know what a dragon punch was :P).

But either way, just play around with different character and find one that suits your playing style.

DopeSauce

Man I always have an issue with character crisis, at least I have narrowed it down to cammy, ibuki, and rufus. I do have some doubts though because just cause cammy is supposedly a top tier character that turns me away from her a little, ibuki seems intimidating to learn with all her tools, and rufus' 1 frame link combo seems like a difficult thing to get down consistently but I will try my best, hopefully I can find my main this weekend so I can get some real practice in.

ilitirit

A lot of people say "learn ryu to learn fundamentals" but the truth is that 90% of online Ryu players you'll come across have no fundamentals beyond execution. This isn't unexpected of course. Many of these players have never played an FG before the SFIV series, which automatically implies they only have 3 or less years experience with Fighting Games, and they've skipped out on titles like SFII whose gameplay revolved almost exclusively around fundamental skills. Not to mention that online play lends itself more to gimmicks than solid play because of inherent lag.

Fundamentals take a long time to learn and apply, and more often than not these skills are acquired naturally and subconsciously. Many veteran players can't even explain why they make some decisions in a match. The just instinctively "know" what to do in a certain situation because they've been there thousands of times before.

My point is that even though Ryu is a great character for learning fundamentals, the reality is that unless you intentionally force yourself to train and practice certain techniques (which aren't easy to practice in training mode) you're not likely to see much benefit in the short term. You'd probably be better off just picking a character you like and then learning to play him/her instead.

GordonsBeard

ilitirit, post: 7799987, member: 12740 wrote:

My point is that even though Ryu is a great character for learning fundamentals, the reality is that unless you intentionally force yourself to train and practice certain techniques (which aren't easy to practice in training mode) you're not likely to see much benefit in the short term. You'd probably be better off just picking a character you like and then learning to play him/her instead.

Yes, I/we probably should have made that more clear. People suggest Ryu just so you aren't trying to learn the basics with Hakan, and are left wondering how come this game is so unfairly hard. Learning Ryu is a good middle ground - but he's not an "easy" character or anything (nobody is), and you still will need to find someone you enjoy playing with.

There is a lot of required matches before you even begin to understand why you're losing, but it starts to get real fun the moment you begin to spot your flaws as they happen.

Vulpes

Rose>Ryu for learning fundamentals if you ask me. Lowlevel Ryus tend to be too focussed on the Shoryu which beats 10 options simultaneously.

eltrouble

Vulpes, post: 7801785, member: 57311 wrote:

Rose>Ryu for learning fundamentals if you ask me. Lowlevel Ryus tend to be too focussed on the Shoryu which beats 10 options simultaneously.

But that in itself is an important lesson to learn. While the SRK is a good, high-priority move that beats out most other attacks, it can't be relied on too heavily, otherwise your opponent will anticipate this, bait it out, and punish hard. It also teaches you when to use the SRK, when not to use it, and ways that you yourself can combat it whenever you're playing against another shoto.

Rose is also a great character to learn basic fighting game play, but I find her normals and light drill pressure too powerful, and I'm afraid new players will simply abuse those tactics as a crutch, and somehow trick themselves into thinking that they, as a player, have a strong ground game.

doubleoh

ilitirit, post: 7799987, member: 12740 wrote:

A lot of people say "learn ryu to learn fundamentals" but the truth is that 90% of online Ryu players you'll come across have no fundamentals beyond execution. This isn't unexpected of course. Many of these players have never played an FG before the SFIV series, which automatically implies they only have 3 or less years experience with Fighting Games, and they've skipped out on titles like SFII whose gameplay revolved almost exclusively around fundamental skills. Not to mention that online play lends itself more to gimmicks than solid play because of inherent lag.

I've found that playing against randoms online teaches bad habits in general.

+1 for this post

SpaceOutNightmare

eltrouble, post: 7801796, member: 50728 wrote:

But that in itself is an important lesson to learn. While the SRK is a good, high-priority move that beats out most other attacks, it can't be relied on too heavily, otherwise your opponent will anticipate this, bait it out, and punish hard. It also teaches you when to use the SRK, when not to use it, and ways that you yourself can combat it whenever you're playing against another shoto.

Rose is also a great character to learn basic fighting game play, but I find her normals and light drill pressure too powerful, and I'm afraid new players will simply abuse those tactics as a crutch, and somehow trick themselves into thinking that they, as a player, have a strong ground game.

I think learning Rose is more fundamental based than Ryu.

With rose, you learn normals or die, learn how to anti air or die, learn how to throw a fireball or die, and learn how to bait or die.

No comeback mechanic, nothing too wacky, just a character with great normals.

eltrouble

SpaceOutNightmare, post: 7802943, member: 74440 wrote:

I think learning Rose is more fundamental based than Ryu.

With rose, you learn normals or die, learn how to anti air or die, learn how to throw a fireball or die, and learn how to bait or die.

No comeback mechanic, nothing too wacky, just a character with great normals.

While I do believe she also teaches fundamental, her overly powerful normals and drill pressure make it difficult to learn the ground game properly without resorting to abusing powerful, basic techniques. While they are effective in a match, it limits your ability to understand the complexities of the mid-game, since it encourages low-level Rose players to abuse a few pokes and option-selects. It's the same reason why I tell people not to play Bison or Balrog if they want to learn the ground game for similar reasons.

Not sure what you mean by comeback mechanic, other than his uppercut. But like I said, there's a valuable lesson to be learned by discovering how to use the uppercut properly at higher levels of play, which should also reveal when your opponent is likely fishing for the optimal time to land the uppercut. Dealing with powerful reversals is an essential part of the game, and I believe playing as Ryu helps to reinforce that. Plus Ryu can be played in a variety of play styles, which can help teach you how to both utilize and counter the fireball game, ground game, as well as highly offensive styles of play that rely more on feeling out the momentum of the match, and how to control the pace as needed.

But hey, difference of opinion, both of which hold valid points.

GordonsBeard

eltrouble, post: 7801796, member: 50728 wrote:

Rose is also a great character to learn basic fighting game play, but I find her normals and light drill pressure too powerful, and I'm afraid new players will simply abuse those tactics as a crutch, and somehow trick themselves into thinking that they, as a player, have a strong ground game.

If you're playing as Rose, you have a strong ground game. Even a bad rose can haha

eltrouble

GordonsBeard, post: 7803939, member: 70048 wrote:

If you're playing as Rose, you have a strong ground game. Even a bad rose can haha

Yup, that's pretty much the point I'm trying to make. You don't learn the ground game, you learn how powerful Rose's ground game is, and you might suddenly trick yourself into thinking that you're a godlike footsies player.

Try playing Ibuki without abusing her kunai mixups, and stick to the ground. That's a pretty good way to learn how to find some creative attack strings.

GordonsBeard

eltrouble, post: 7804133, member: 50728 wrote:

Try playing Ibuki without abusing her kunai mixups, and stick to the ground. That's a pretty good way to learn how to find some creative attack strings.

Yeah this is the double-edged sword I run into when trying to recommend new players a character to pick up and try. Three friends I have that are new to SF4 want to pick up Dudley, and they really want to pick up Dudley, despite my calls for them to learn how to throw fireballs consistently first.

Part of me wants me to warn them away from the no wakeup, no 3S juggle shenanigans, few AA options; but the other part of me knows I started my SF4 career with Hakan (awful), and by doing so I learned how to get a strong ground game going, and can block some tricky crossups all day. If they really want to stick with a character then it won't matter who they chose, either they'll learn and get over it or give up and admit they really didn't want to play fighting games.

DopeSauce

After playing for awhile I realize i really like to crossup my opponents I am just wondering what characters has the best cross up and mix ups

0sh

How do you define 'best'? Leading to a vortex? Doing the most damage? Most options leading into/out of the crossup?

doubleoh

DopeSauce, post: 7811129, member: 40504 wrote:

After playing for awhile I realize i really like to crossup my opponents I am just wondering what characters has the best cross up and mix ups

Akuma's vortex is pretty lethal but he's not a character that you can mess up with a lot, so approach him at your own risk. Plenty of characters have good cross up / mix up games.

To name a few: Cammy, Ibuki, Viper, Abel, Rufus (his dive kick is fucking crazy ambiguous in the corner).

DopeSauce

By best I want someone with a good vortex or does really good dmg after knockdowns

hlxino

you mentioned hit confirming is difficult due to yuour reflexes, my advice is check your TV if it has input lag, a lot of plasma and LCDs have it when you play in HDTV. There is quite a large timeframe for most hit confirms (2-3 hits before committing) so it really shouldnt be due to reflexes

doubleoh

DopeSauce, post: 7815771, member: 40504 wrote:

By best I want someone with a good vortex or does really good dmg after knockdowns

Abel's your man kekekekekeke

MRnightmuffin

doubleoh, post: 7839544, member: 69866 wrote:

Abel's your man kekekekekeke

Don't use Abel, hes mainly an advanced character. I would use Ryu until you feel comfortable with anti-airing, and controlling space, then move onto Akuma . As well as that, Abel's vortex gets blown up easily by reversals which hurt.

doubleoh

MRnightmuffin, post: 7839560, member: 70241 wrote:

Don't use Abel, hes mainly an advanced character. I would use Ryu until you feel comfortable with anti-airing, and controlling space, then move onto Akuma . As well as that, Abel's vortex gets blown up easily by reversals which hurt.

dude don't encourage him to enlist in the already overpopulated shoto army lol

GordonsBeard

Too many Ables in this thread, pick up Cody. He's not complicated and he's a straight up convict.

MotM

Cammy.

High damage, fast in every respect, has a reversal, easy to learn oki once you learn how to do links.

XthAtGAm3RGuYX

Juri.

Be mid tier and be proud of it. Playing her teaches you to be cautious of everything since she has little priority, which gives you the discipline and cool headedness needed for close matches. In short learning Juri makes you think before you act, instead of mindlessly throwing specials like some new players do.

All hail to the one glorious queen.

CrystalCore

Sorry for the partial thread-jack, but I don't think my question needs a new thread, since it's partially related to the OP's post:

For anyone wanting to play SNK games (KOF, Fatal Fury, etc), what characters would be Ryu's equivalent?

Ryo, the Bogards (Andy and Terry), Kyo Kusanagi, Iori Yagami?

AirLancer

For KOF XIII the characters that are most similar to Ryu in terms of moveset would be Robert and Andy.

In terms of characters that are good for beginners to learn with, Kyo, Robert, Terry and King come up to my mind.

Kyo - Strong normals, good damage output, easy cross-up, not very difficult BnB execution, has everything but a counter.

Robert - Great fireball, good DP, good air normals, command cross-up, lots of tools.

King - Great zoning, easy execution, very easy hit-confirms.

Terry - Strong normals, easy cross-up, easy BnB execution requirements, easy hit-confirms.