Hey, guys, new player here! Just picked up AE yesterday and the game was a blast to play casually right away, which is of course what I did since that is the way I’ve played games for years - casually. That, however, isn’t my intent with this beast. I want to learn this game and be as competitive at it as humanly possible for me! So here is the deal, I’m ass. The first thing I did when I got the game was jump into training mode with Ryu and learned his normals and specials and all that. After I felt comfortable with the limited amount of knowledge I gained I headed to arcade.I played on whatever the default difficulty setting was (medium) so I didn’t really expect much of a challenge, but I wasn’t really looking for one either. I’m an idiot. Match one and two were easy enough and I got through them pretty much unscathed as it pertained to life. Usually, losing at the most 25% of my health. And then…match three. Adon, I believe it was, absolutely bodied me. Not just once, but repteadly. About eight times before I finally squeezed out a victory against him. I was so demoralized after this; medium is only like the third difficulty setting from very easy.
So after getting past Adon I went two more matches and did fairly well doing nearly exactly the same as I did with the first two matches. And then…match five. Match five was like match three, only ten times worse; I wish I could remember the character I got bodied by and I want to say it was Fei Long, but I honestly can’t remember. And you know what? Maybe it’s because I erased it from my memory. I was getting more and more dimoralized and it made the matches progressively get worse. After aborting from that out of shame I basically sit in my salt bath for about ten minutes while a horrible rage educing headache sent me into a frenzy (hence the name) of frustration, anger and finally apathy. I wanted to just quit right there and then it was like running into the wall; I asked myself “Are you really going to let this stop you from enjoying yourself and doing what you want?” I refused this notion and decided to tread on. I put the difficulty on hardest and jumped back in.
The match was Ibuki and I played Fei Long (who I had also messed around with a bit in arcade) and after about ten-fifteen losses I finally beat her. All of the matches were close and this gave me some confidence that maybe the whole “losing on medium difficulty the first time you play the game” thing wasn’t so much of a big deal to me, but it was clear I had a lot of work to do. Later that night my dad and cousin (who I was hanging out with) wanted to play some casuals so I said why not - this is when I discovered Zangief. I’m playing on a pad and I found this character much more manageable with the pad as well as my playstyle. I noticed I had bad habits of jumping in too much and relying too heavily on command grabs, but I also recognized I genuinely had fun playing Gief. Even when my dad would frustratingly beat me by bashing his controller, I felt like “Wow! Maybe I can play this game!” So it ended on a pretty good note. That was the last I touched it today except for some tinkering around with Sakura, but that was more or less because I found Chris G’s play with her entertaining.
I have a long way to go, SRK, but I would love to hear your guys’ opinions on whatever you feel I should need to know. I know these threads must pop up all the time and I’ve read all of the sticky’s, but generally, how should I feel about my first experiences with this game? Anyone have any similar tough times? Is this indicative of me being a good or bad player in the future? Also, should I give Gief a real shot or should I learn more about the game before I decide on a main character? Answers to any of these questions would be appreciated and as I said, any general advice you want to offer, I’m more than willing to listen.
Inb4tl;dr.