SSF4 Newbie Progress Report

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
#1

I thought this could be an interested thread, Im myself a completely new SF player when I bought SSF4 a few days after it came out. And Im guessing Im not the only one here. So basically the idea of this thread is to do a summary of our current progress as new SF players. That way, we could compare ourselves in our learning and improving as a player. Perhaps even we could share some ideas to help eachother out to keep getting better. Anyway, here’s my ‘‘SSF4 Progress Report’’.

GT: Darth Revan 666
Main: Balrog(2585 BP)
Sub: Ryu(736 BP), Juri(117 BP)
PP: 716
Location: Montreal, Canada

As for now, my PP is pretty unstable since I often go through bad streaks and good streaks. For my main, Balrog, I like the fact that I can rushdown or turtle at almost anytime really, Im also obviously really digging his godly normals. Thats why Im pretty positive about the fact that I’ll keep maining for a long time. For Ryu, I stopped playing him almost a month ago, he was basically just a starting char to get me going, I’ll probably never gonna go back playing him on a regular basis. He just doesnt fit my style. And for Juri, she’s my latest attempt at finding a good sub for the bad matchups of Balrog, and for variety sake. But Im still pretty crappy with her, Im still on the fence if I should sub somebody else at this point.

So overall Im satisfied with my progress, but I still fail to get my BnB combos for Balrog to connect properly on a consistent basis. I’ll have to work on that. I’d like to know also from more experienced players if my progress is on a good pace or not at this point.

#2

Honestly, it’s really difficult to say. The thing is, BP/PP is more or less entirely meaningless. It’s not really a good gauge of whether you’ve improved or not. Latency really can affect a lot of things, plus the level of play online is generally pretty low. I’ve seen people with over ten times your BP who just spam one special over and over again and/or random, full screen ultra.

The best way to gauge whether you’re improving or not is to find a group of locals to play with. See how you do over time in live matches. Try meeting some people in the regional matchmaking section.

#3

Yeah it doesnt mean a whole lot, but it still means something IMO, 2000 PP players have been clearly better players than 1000 PP players. Its not an eact science, but its still gives you a vague idea of your level of play.

#4

That is part practice, part online. Also BP can be fairly meaningless, I’ve seen some jump in fierce kick/sweep kens with like 4k bp and I have no idea how. If you use it as a guide, use it loosely. My Fuerte is around 3k and I feel that he’s my strongest character right now. My Makoto hovers around 1k because she’s a fairly new addition to my roster.

If you want to get better, watch some of your replays where you lose and constantly ask ‘what the fuck did i do that for?’. Also, find a local scene that’s decent with sharing knowledge. If I play people locally, I tell them when I pick up on their bad habits and I would hope they’d do the same for me.

#5

Not true. I rarely play ranked and have 600PP, yet took down a fair few with 4K and higher points than me the other day. Not everyone with high PP know their ass from their elbow.

Honestly, try to play offline against locals (Use the matchmaking section of the forum to find people in your area), generally that’s a better way to gauge how you’re getting better.
If you have local ranbats, go to them aswell, if it’s anything like the ones here, we get guys coming from a few cities away too, so you’re not always confined to one playerbase.