I'm a beginner and I hate using Ryu (any shoto)

Sweetouch

I just got into street fighter about 2 weeks now and i picked it up because i saw an ibuki on stream and it just looked so awesome. I've been playing only with ibuki for since then and I absolutely love play as her its so much fun. But when my friends start picking on me for the way i play they say you don't really know how to play the game since you've never learned the Shoto characters. So i sat down to try them all and i just absolutely hate playing them it made me want to get rid of the game. I don't understnad why learning them is so important especially if i hate their playstyle. Ive heard from so many people that i need to learn them but i don't see why if i can just main as ibuki since i like it. will it hurt my game in the long run not learning them?

GordonsBeard

You can learn anyone you want, don't worry about what they are saying.

The reason they are worried about your pick of first character is multi-fold, and somewhat warranted however.

Note, all this assumes you are literally 2-weeks new to Street Fighter and fighting games in general.

1. It doesn't matter what you pick, you suck right now.
Right now you are new to fighting games, and knowing when and when not to jump is going to be a hassle. Do not worry! This is normal, and part of the learning process. You have to learn a lot of ways before you can find out what exactly they are doing that makes you lose. Anyone you pick at this point will be hard to use, and nothing you do will feel really great - this is why it's better to just pick a character and learn some information before worrying about "who to pick" to start.

2. Ibuki's "hard combos" way outclass Ryu/shoto's "hard combos"
This one may not come into play right now, but once you learn all of her moves (and can pull them off without question 100/100 times in a row) you will then run into the situation where you need to start doing damage. One of Ibuki's biggest problems is that she doesn't do a whole ton of damage. She's got a fun vortex* (if you don't know what this means, then this is why you're playing a wrong character) and can throw an almost-fireball from mid-air which really helps - but outside of that you really need to have your links down. While playing as Ibuki you need to get in on a character, knock them down, and then pester them for another 5 or so wakeups. If you're going up against someone with a great reversal (like a shoto), then this is going to be an uphill battle.

For a quick comparison just look at the Trials under Challenges. These are not combos that you will be using in every day matches, but they give a good insight on how complicated a character can get. Where Ryu's harder combos involve a FADC to Ultra, or some 2 frame link, Ibuki's hardest combos come with super jump canceling (another thing you need to know for C.Viper/Ibuki) into Ultras, and other shenanigans. At this point in your "career" these moves will be completely impossible to pull off, and even if you can get them off - they will leave you feeling pretty unfulfilled.

3. Hard to stop pressure
Ibuki, like a good majority of the fight streeters, doesn't have a great go-to reversal move, by which I mean her fastest reversal is a EX dragonkick, and even that starts up in 5 frames. This means anything faster (shoto uppercuts) will beat it clean every time. Under pressure all Ibuki can really do is wait and hope you're blocking correctly, while she excels at putting on her own air/vortex pressure, the little girl will quickly snap in half once you hit her with a counter-hit or two. Add in to this that Ibuki is a female in a capcom fighting game, which means you have less than average health and stun. Going up against anyone who knows their shit, while you're still learning, isn't going to give you any great options to hold them off.

4. Mindgames and meta-games you aren't aware of
*Vortex (n) - A situation and/or combo that leads to a hard knockdown of an opponent, and leaves the attacker in a position to do the same setup once again. Usually involves a hard to read jumping attack on their wakeup, leaving them unsure of which way to block.

As Ibuki not only you will need to get these situations memorized (each character wakes up different speeds), but you will also need to know how to get in and out of bad situations. This involves a lot of knowing how to read your opponent, knowing when they will wakeup with a SRK, when they will block back, when you can hit them with an overhead, etc. If you've just started 2 weeks ago then it's going to be really hard to ever tell someone when to do what, a lot about learning fighting games comes down to finding out how best to use a character that works with you. Not everyone is good with the character they wish to be good with. Not to say practice won't trump all.

But most importantly, ask questions and have fun (fuck I hate saying that, so lame, but important). If you don't know why you got hit, or why that didn't work - ask. Ask ask ask ask, do what you're doing now, ask questions and get actual answers. If you don't ask if there is any way to combo into her command throw, then you might never figure that one out on your own. In the short term though - practice. It really doesn't matter what character you pick in the beginning, just as long as you understand that they want you to play a shoto to save yourself some frustration. Trying to learn how to protect yourself from air attacks as Hakan is going to be a rough couple of first months; trust me.

klaww

Seeing as I just picked the most visually appealing character to me, Ibuki, then reading this....Thank you. That's going to save me a lot of trouble if I put her away until i learn my ground in SF. Did not know Ibuki was so much more technical. Thank you *runs off to play Ryu~*

fizzywoemac

lol then dont learn shotos. You can learn fundamentals with any characters

GordonsBeard

fizzywoemac, post: 7951141, member: 34222 wrote:

lol then dont learn shotos. You can learn fundamentals with any characters

This is very important, you can learn fundamentals with EVERY CHARACTER.

Sometimes however the lessons you learn are hard. Such as the case with Hakan/Abel, learning the lesson of "how do I stop their air attacks" is really only going to leave you with the option of "block", because they don't have many options.

klaww

But you can learn with shoto characters easier cause they have a little bit of everything?
like a shoryuken for anti-air, right?

GordonsBeard

klaww, post: 7952267, member: 83660 wrote:

But you can learn with shoto characters easier cause they have a little bit of everything?
like a shoryuken for anti-air, right?

Yeah, the idea is that while Ryu is not an easy character to play (you need to know your spacing with him to do really well), shotos come equipped with a lot of great tools.

He has a 3frame reversal SRK with invincibility, he has an ok dash, he has a pretty good sweep, he has a great cr.mk for poking. They come with fireballs for zoning, most of them have a great cr.HP for anti-airing. Their ultras combo pretty easily and they have ways of avoiding fireballs with their tatsus/etc. While you can find all these features in other characters (Rose for example), the shotos trade in some of their uniqueness for a more rounded approach.

AsaCarter

They are the true scrubs for hating on you for not playing shotos. I personally don't mind shotokan fighters, but honestly, it truly doesn't matter who you play right now. You are new to the game; focus on learning the mechanics of the game first. Pick a character you have fun with though, choose ibuki if you like her.

Komatik

One more thing about the shoto recommendation, apart from ease of use and doing a bit of everything so you can get an inkling as to how you like to play the game, is that most (Ryu and Ken especially) are very much characters built on fundamentals and little else. You don't have much in the way of stupid gimmicks. They force you to learn, and have good tools to translate that learning into success.

If you dislike shotos, but like the idea of learning with a fundamentals based character you might also consider Balrog, Chun, Bison, Guile, Fei Long, Vega. Perhaps Adon, too.

Of course, you can just as well study footsies with Ibuki. She's a bit harder on that front, but playing something you like is important.

PongBoom

Everyone should learn ryu when playing SF, he's on the box!


But actually Ryu is the guy that teaches you what street fighter is all about. Street fighter is about controlling horizontal and vertical space. He has a way to control horizontal space (fireball) as well as vertical (shoryuken). Once you have the idea of controlling space down with ryu you can use those ideas and apply them to other characters.

With Ibuki, she has more unorthodox, mobility-esque tools that are more of a offensive style play. This is different than one based on spacing because it is more about putting the opponent under pressure in blockstun and throws instead.

So it isn't unreasonable to assume that you should start off playing Ryu, because honestly it will help you in the long run.

User_

Hey, the first character I learned to play was Hakan, and i'm still playing him

So whatever floats your boat. I personally hate shotos.

M00nTiger

PongBoom wrote: »

Everyone should learn ryu when playing SF, he's on the box!


But actually Ryu is the guy that teaches you what street fighter is all about. Street fighter is about controlling horizontal and vertical space. He has a way to control horizontal space (fireball) as well as vertical (shoryuken). Once you have the idea of controlling space down with ryu you can use those ideas and apply them to other characters.

With Ibuki, she has more unorthodox, mobility-esque tools that are more of a offensive style play. This is different than one based on spacing because it is more about putting the opponent under pressure in blockstun and throws instead.

So it isn't unreasonable to assume that you should start off playing Ryu, because honestly it will help you in the long run.

Disagree. Controlling horizontal space is very doable with Ibuki but it is harder than Ryu since her footsies are ok and her walk speed is slow. But, that doesn't mean you have to play Ryu to do so. Spacing is something that is learned over time anyway. Controlling vertical space is definitely something Ibuki excels at (air throw and fast normal AAs like b.mp and cl.st.hk which can be followed up into more damaging meterless combos and mixup opportunities). So why waste time learning things with a character you don't like when you can do the same with a character you like?

The point is playing a character a person like will motivate them to do better with the character unlike forcing to play a character he/she don't like which will most likely make the person hate the game and quit playing it.Besides, the OP paid the game with his/her own money so he/she has the right to choose any character no matter the reason.

Tsobi

I'm not the most experienced player, I'm pretty much still a noob myself, but I'm maybe half a year or so ahead of the above post. Basically I've found that any character that has good normals are decently ok to play and I would personally recommend for use for beginners. Just putting emphasis on normal moves I feel helps a lot and if you basically focus on playing footsies with your normals and use ur specials somewhat efficiently (using EX moves at somewhat opportune moments) I feel you are on to a great start. One thing to REALLY avoid is jumping too often. Learn to dash or perform moves which move ur character forward. I am still a scrub like I said, but I can't tell u how many times I've won games against people much more experienced than me just because they keep jumping in randomly on me (it hurts even more since I play Ryu and the uppercut hurts more than just a normal move anti-air).

With the above in mind, I would suggest pretty much any charge character to beginners (maybe chun-li and guile are the best tbh, and characters I myself have considered playing more extensively), even though this sets up a new problem. Learning to use charge I found actually quite hard and unnatural to me at least. Maybe it's because I started trying once I already knew a bit of Ryu so I wasn't used to it, but it just felt difficult. But since charge characters usually have really good normals to compensate for the fact that their specials require charge, I still find those characters to be quite good for beginners. Chun-li has some added difficulties in that she requires u to learn how to double tap but tbh this isn't difficult and if u just learn how to do it (check youtube for plinking and double tapping if u don't know what it is) I feel her bread and butter combos are really easy and then just using her normals is a great way to learn to play the game imo. Both chun and guile ofc have projectiles which is nice just to be able to deal with fireball spamming shotos imo. Another character I quite like is cody who isn't charge, but also has great normals and really easy combos. I'll add just some very basic combos for cody, chun-li and guile if u are interested in trying them out. I'm not a pro or anything, but I've dabbled in these 3 a little bit and found these combos pretty easy to do and to use in real fights. But like I said, really focus on normals and specials imo, combos are hard to get used to at start, but I personally enjoy practicing combos when I get tired of getting my face mashed online.

Cody:
f.mp cr.mp xx Criminal Upper
cr.lp cr.lp cr.lk xx Ruffian Kick

Chun-Li:
cr.lp cr.lp st.lp st.hp
cr.lk cr.lk xx EX legs

Guile:
cr.lp cr.lp st.lp st.hp
cr.lp cr.lp cr.mp xx Flash Kick OR Sonic Boom

p.s. I totally forgot but M. Bison or Balrog are also great options imo, but I haven't played these much myself so I forgot about them!

p.p.s. One thing about all these characters is I believe most of them don't have as good a reversal as the shotos do. I am not 100% on this but I think Guile's light kick Flash Kick has ok invincibility and 4 frame start up, chun-li only really has EX Spinning Bird Kick which is really too bad since I otherwise really like chun-li but having bad reversals can be tough, m. bison I believe has quite a few, but I'm unsure of their startup and frame data, balrog has his EX headbut I believe but not too sure, and lastly cody only really has EX Zonk Knuckle but I think that is ok at least, but not really good.

p.p.p.s. ofc the shotos have great normals aswell, that's the thing with them, they have every good fundamental property and that is why they are prob the best to start with. I'm just saying these characters i find can also be quite good, but they all prob have some thing worse than shotos, but if they are more fun then I would say try them out and see if u enjoy them.

darsh_marklar

Of course you don't have to learn them, it won't hurt your game in the long run. Know how to play against them for sure. You really only like 1 character though? most people have a secondary or tertiary character

Vlad7779311

Be patient and learn fundamentals with the characters you like. I'm still learning fundamentals with Juri. There's too many shotos already online!

Kikuichimonji

When you say "I hate using Ryu" I hear "I hate playing Street Fighter."

If you don't play Ryu, at least learn to respect Ryu. A mediocre Ryu is easy to stomp, everyone knows the matchup and so Ryu has to outplay the opponent.

density.

Just don't start with Seth.

You'll get too far only to realize you trash really bad players and lose to every decent player because you never learned fundamentals so your ground game is ass and you can't get damage if they keep defending your jump ins.

PongBoom

M00nTiger said:

snip

True. But my point is that OP is obviously new, and as such wants to learn how to play street fighter. And every newbie SHOULD learn to play Ryu to a competent level. Ibuki's tools are for advanced players who can use her weird-ness to get around her lacking areas (strong pokes and footsies).

If you want to be good at FIGHTING GAMES and not just SF4, learn to play Ryu. He teaches you everything you need to know about spacing, combos, cancels, anti-airs and more. Unless you have a competent Ryu you will get stomped at higher levels of play.

ChronoJoe

I think, personally, for newer players learning characters with excellent reversals can breed bad habbits. When I started playing I was told to avoid characters like Ryu, and play characters like Abel; as this would force a better defense out of me. Which is good, if you start off on shoto characters whilst a good reversal is nice to have it can also become a crutch and it's use, a bad habbit. You might find you're having it baited out a lot, for large punishes, and it's possible you won't quicky learn to use normal anti-airs too. 

Ultimately every character has different strengths in regards to what they're liable to teach you. You can learn everything you need to by simply playing Ryu, or Ibuki, definitely, however playing other characters can force a better understanding more rapidly than you would get second hand. 

If we look at Ibuki specifically, given that she has no decent reversal this will force a good defense. However her normals are pretty good so you'll probably develop a decent understanding of pokes / footsies, and overall a solid mid-game. She's also pretty execution heavy, so you're execution on stick / pad will be forced to improve rapidly (either that or you'll just lose a lot). However she also has some techniques which are non-transferable, so somewhat useless to learn if you ever switch to many other characters such as super-jump cancelling and some of her 50/50 gimmicks. 

Ultimately provided you're going to stick with Ibuki it doesn't matter who you play, but if you're going to switch bear in mind many of her techniques are non-transferable to other characters, so it may feel like learning the game all over again. If you're okay with that possibility, stick to Ibuki. 

The Martian

Your friends are idiots.

I've never understood this mode of thinking where "you must play the shotos" to learn the fundamentals. I'm right there with you, I can't stand shoto characters. And believe me, I've tried to use them. There's just something about them that keeps me from being able to understand them, with the sole exception of AE Sakura. And I've only picked her up recently and I'm still god-awful with her.

When I got into Third Strike my main was and still is Ibuki from the very beggining, despite all of the criticism I received from trying to start with such an advanced character. Sure, it was hard, and I did have a lot of frustrating moments trying to understand her, but you just need to stick with it. To me, shotos are rarely anything besides an easy way out. Find a character who's uniqueness sticks out to you, and make it you own.

Sweetouch

Thanks to all of your responses guys!  Its been almost a month since I've started this thread, and I've made some serious progress.  I've raged hard in the beginning but now I've made it to 1000pp and 2700bp on Ibuki and Im starting to understand the game much more.  It took me a LONG time but my execution is now MUCH MUCH better, so much so that when I started the game i tried doing the trails on a few characters and i would only get to challenge 10 or so before i couldn't execute them.  But the other night i went back and now im getting to challenge 20+ on almost all the characters without a sweat on most of them!! it was insane how much I've improved and i couldn't see how much i've improve little by little on a day to day basis, but seeing a significant jump on something concrete like challenges that used to make me rage quit shut off my xbox are now laughable. It feels great guys!  I also came to an epiphany when i realized how much SF is about pressing the right buttons at the RIGHT TIME and more so important NOT TO PRESS BUTTONS at the right time.  It seriously changed my game so much.  When i began the game i would just try to rushdown my opponent so much so that it was my serious downfall and lead all of my losses.  But then i started to realize that the other player isn't just trying to physical beat me, but psychologically beat my style of play.  After realizing moments when I could capitalize and punish my opponents, I started to see that I myself am very vulnerable as much as they are.  The execution comes with practice, but the meta gaming comes with experience and that's just something I need to learn by playing the game more and more.  Thank you all so much.

fischbs

Your special mention about not pressing buttons makes me happy.

Taken from Sonic Hurricane (great website) --

"In fact as players improve, they spend less time attacking continuously and more time looking for things to punish on reaction. Since jumping mainly serves as an easy counter to heavy attacks, it works great at beginner levels and becomes progressively weaker at higher levels."

So this says two things for me

1) You're growing, because you're restraining your offense and structuring it, so its less spastic, more methodical, and overall harder to read.  Good.
2) You understand that the better players get, the less room they give you to make mistakes.  A bad player wont even be able to punish a missed fierce shoryu.  A tournament player will land the most damaging punish every time without fail.  Keep that in mind.  Patience is key.  Getting flustered and throwing out even a random sweep can mean the difference between victory or defeat.  Remember, stick to light and medium attacks to feel your opponent out, but make sure you respect the reaction times of good players, they'll wiff punish your light attacks too if you put them out TOO much.

Small digression, but seriously.  Light and medium attacks.  Safer pokes.  Completely opened my game up as a new player.  Just probing and feeling your opponent with them.  It's so weird how you get this sixth sense and are able to feel this game after awhile...god it freaks me out sometimes.  But that's why SF is so sick. :)

Zmoney2006

Honestly... being a relatively newer member of the FGC (about 2 years-ish) I can't say I've experienced everything but I can say that as time progress, things that were cloudy become FARRRR clearer; even if you feel you yourself haven't progressed that much even with all the work you put in.

HOWEVER in lieu of your question I personally feel the particular character you start off with doesn't mean much at all as long as you have one thing most scrubs have to learn or relearn:

1) DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
2) YOU'RE NOT ALWAYS RIGHT

Now I won't be getting lengthy with this but basically, I've found at least for myself that when you learn a new game you strive for progression; something to signify that you are learning, applying, and getting the results you desire. In this excitement sometimes in our haste we forget to chew before we swallow and began making bad choices in the beginning of the training process maybe like:

- Assuming the "purposed" playstyle for a character that you JUST picked up
- Assuming the best moves in the wrong situations
- etc

... but this is natural and can be adjusted with relatively easy studying. When you start getting comfortable with your character/game you might start making subconscious assumptions; assumptions that take FAR longer to fix and is far more detrimental. Examples would be:

- Assuming that the FIRST explanation to a move or a character or (*insert noun*) researched is the be-all-end-all explanation and thereby DEFINITION of that noun.

(Example: trying to find best anti air for character and seeing Cr. H is the preferred method as it's most reliable. Then getting upset when that Cr.H loses to a good player or a specific character and not understanding why. Well maybe against character x's air attack, cr.H doesn't work.

- Assuming you know-it-all when you really don't. Take air X for example. IT might be the preferred cross up attack but against "smallguy" the crossup doesn't due to hit-box size or character wake speeds (I learned that sh*t existed today!!!).

- (HUGE ONE) Knowing WHEN and IN WHAT WAY to use training room. Every one is different and allows different parameters to be altered but generally perform the same function. Knowing how to maximize TR for different uses such as player2 replay / CPU - VeryHard / etc other than go in > practice combos for 20min > Ranked matches is key.

Now I will say this in regards to picking a new character. At least for me I've found a few rules that I stick with when picking up a new game:

1) Establish BEFORE ANYTHING is this a game where I'm "Playing To Win" or "Playing for Fun"
(If you don't know what that means, you are missing a very important read [http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/])

2) NEVER pick a character if you don't like how they play. Think of it like you would a real relationship. You're about to spend the next (x) amount of time with said character training, studying, researching, practicing, etc. Looks change and you always got makeup (DLC Costume Packs) to fix the ugly. But the important stuff like the characters speed, normals, specials, and just flow should be aligned with yours. This character should be an extension of yourself in terms of what you feel comfortable using.

I've come across situations (in this case Alisa in SFxT) and in this last i found that I liked the character's aesthetics along with the length of her normals. HOWEVER, some of her combos had weird timing and some even required delayed CADC (Charge-Attack-Dash-Cancels I believe) which I found to be just too awkward and (knowing my own tendencies/deficiencies) would cause me an issue in a high-level tourney environment where mistakes cost most. So I didn't progress more then 2 hours into playing her before I could "feel" that she wasn't the best type of character for my current "level" of game understanding and execution. No time wasted.

3) In lieu of numbers one and two think about where you'll be playing this game the most and with whom. If tournies are your setting then playing characters that would be considered "lower -tier" are going to matter a LOT more than if Online was your main source of training/practice. Different levels of training are required for different levels of end game.

I got more but this is just an example of 3 things I think about when picking up a new game/character.

ArugulaZ

I think shotos are a good place to learn the fundamentals of fighting game theory (how to do fireballs, dragon punches, and the like) but if they're too vanilla for you, by all means choose someone else. Just don't be an idiot like I was when I first played Street Fighter II in 1991 and choose Zangief because he looks "big and strong." That's a really good way to waste a quarter.

I learned how to play fighting games from hanging out in an arcade. Players who see you struggling with a game will sometimes give you tips that will help you improve. I remember someone showing me how to low block in an arcade. It seems so obvious now, but twenty years ago, it was useful advice that made me a better player, and also made the games themselves more enjoyable. I also credit the original Fatal Fury for teaching me basic fighting game principles. Sure, it hasn't aged well, but its simplicity and the game teaching you moves after every fight helps prepare you for meatier experiences.

If you're sick of fireball-chucking karate champions, you might want to put down Street Fighter for a while and try a fighting game with a more eccentric cast. Darkstalkers is the first fighting game I truly loved thanks not only to its astonishing graphics, but because its characters (typically movie monsters and mythological creatures) were supremely original and just oozed charm from every pore. There's nobody in the cast that could be described as a shoto, although Demitri the vampire and Morrigan the succubus come the closest. All the others feel altogether different from the vanilla Street Fighter cast, and you're sure to find someone that's a good fit for you.

TRUEB7UE

This thread has been way more constructive than I than I had assumed seeing it blip on my recent threads radar. I had full intentions of just leaving a "congratulations?" and calling it a day however, I'm glad to see you're learning as well.

Good job on achieving your online points, but the more important question is where are your fundamentals at young player? (Here goes the tired speech) Offline > Online 10/0. Find an offline gathering if possible and go there, its as close to the arcade experience as possible. If it isn't possible (laziness is not an acceptable reason) then keep your play above the level of online play. Online, thanks in part to lag and the desire to collect points, teaches bad habits flat out.

I also started my Street Fighter saga with Ibuki, shes a fun character but to get the most out of her you'll have to work hard (still grinding mine out errday). Even though, I did go back and learn the basics with Ryu, Guile, Zangief, Fei and Chun so that I could understand the 5 other main playstyles as well as their basic game plans. It helped my Ibuki game dramatically, I finally found her place in the world so to speak.

That would be my advice to you, you can stick with whomever you like but you will be a much more well-rounded player if you at least learn the basics of shotos/grapplers/chargers/rekkas/zoners/etc

TL;DR vers- picking a non-shoto is fine, learning the shoto (or any of the other archtypes) some day will still be beneficial though.

No defence

Ninjas are fun... Don't like the guy with the head ban? :ar!