What the hell is wrong with me?

[VidMasterEon]

I have always loved fighting games, especially 2D anime fighters, the problem is, they never particularly liked me.

When it comes down to all the unique mechanics, combos, and technical aspects of the games, I understand it to a tee, the problem with me comes from the fact that whenever I get into the heat of the action my mind goes completely blank and i cannot remember anything for the life of me. It also does not help that my execution is flawed no matter how confortable I am with a stick; It ultimately ends up with me screwing up my execution because my hands lock up and I mess up an input both button and joystick wise.

 

Seeing how the community here seems to be extremely knowledgable about fighters, I have turned to you to help me figure out what makes me a complete failure at the games and help elevate me to at least a competent fighting game player.

[StylisH]

I have always loved fighting games, especially 2D anime fighters, the problem is, they never particularly liked me.

When it comes down to all the unique mechanics, combos, and technical aspects of the games, I understand it to a tee, the problem with me comes from the fact that whenever I get into the heat of the action my mind goes completely blank and i cannot remember anything for the life of me. It also does not help that my execution is flawed no matter how confortable I am with a stick; It ultimately ends up with me screwing up my execution because my hands lock up and I mess up an input both button and joystick wise.

 

Seeing how the community here seems to be extremely knowledgable about fighters, I have turned to you to help me figure out what makes me a complete failure at the games and help elevate me to at least a competent fighting game player.

 

3 words: Play the game. 

 

The only way to get better is to practice and play.  The more you do something, the easier it gets.  Repetition is an awesome teacher.  My advice, stick to training and playing as many matches and players as possible.  Trust me, you'll see improvement, you just have to grind it out.

[Moy_X7]

There's no easy way of going about this, you have to practice like the rest of us. 

 

Set the AI to the highest level and practice everything you think you know about your character (pressure strings, hit-confirms and combos, knowing the range of your attacks and when it's safe/best to throw them out). 

 

List of things you should practice and get comfortable with (in order for better results):

1. Learn what attacks cancel into what and learn the properties of your attacks (I-frames, reach, positive/negative/punishable on block, etc). 

2. Learn BnB combos

3. Learn pressure strings and learn what the best options are to use afterwards for whatever it is that you used that got blocked. 

4. Practice said combos and pressure strings against the AI set at the maximum level of difficulty. This is how you will learn the basics of hit-confirming and how to space/time your attacks for optimal use. 

5. Learn more advanced combos

 

After you get comfortable with all of the above, you can start playing with other people. If you play with other people without putting in the time and effort that it takes to become even slightly proficient with your character, then you're going to have a bad time getting your ass handed to you and not see much progress. Don't try to run when you can't even crawl. 

[Airk]

Pretty much what everyone else said.  The people you see playing these games at high levels have invested literally thousands of hours into them. I'm a mediocre player, and I have around 2000 matches played, online only, in BBCP alone.  If we assume the average length of a match to be maybe 3 minutes (Two long rounds, or three shorter ones), then that's 6000 minutes = 100 hours of JUST PLAYING ONLINE MATCHES.  That doesn't count time spent in training mode (Current estimate: A LOT) or time spent playing offline (Current estimate: Not nearly as much as I'd like) and completely ignores all the time sunk into CS/CS2 and CSExtend (I had more than twice as many matches logged in Extend before coming over to CP.  The various features in Extend made it easier for me to find matches).  Or any time spent playing other fighting game series.  And what's more... THIS IS NOT A LOT. 

 

These games are epic time sinks if you want to be good at them.  So if you do... just play and play and play. And train and train and train.

[Narroo]

May I point out something:  Setting the AI to the highest level really isn't the best way to start if you're learning combos and what not.  Rather, playing the AI is best for practicing hit confirms and repetition once you can do the combo "most of the time" in practice mode and start getting bored.

 

If your problem is getting too excited in a match, then that's just an issue of experience.  Play the computer; you can gradually crank it up in training mode.  After awhile you'll get used to it and will choke less.  (Although high stakes always give the possibility of a choke.)

 

If your problem is combo difficulty, make sure your character isn't too hard to play, and just keep at it; the combos in fights tend to look deceptively easy. (Unless it's skull girls, in which case BnBs look deceptively hard.)

[Nemesis]

I have always loved fighting games, especially 2D anime fighters

This right here is the most important aspect of all - if you can hold on to this passion then it will see you through all the tough times - including what your going through now 

 

 

 

When it comes down to all the unique mechanics, combos, and technical aspects of the games, I understand it to a tee

 

Theory Fighting and In the moment application are really 2 different beasts - so try to recognize that just because you understand something on paper doesnt mean that youll be able to learn it quickly or even apply it well

 

the problem with me comes from the fact that whenever I get into the heat of the action my mind goes completely blank and i cannot remember anything for the life of me. It also does not help that my execution is flawed no matter how comfortable I am with a stick; It ultimately ends up with me screwing up my execution because my hands lock up and I mess up an input both button and joystick wise.

 

Im gonna let you in on alittle secret - my mind is semi blank most of the time I fight too and thats the way I like it... that is unless I am reacting to stimulus (which is all the time but that takes only a fraction of a second of processing power) but otherwise my mind is pretty blank while I fight and I suspect its not too different for other players. The point being that with a blank/clear mind you can devote that Free resource to w/e you want to do... Now if you mean Deers in the Headlights Blank stupidity, then yes I understand and thats a matter of desensitizing yourself to the strong emotional effects of the competitive play (aka its all in your own head). Like everyone has already said - take the time to desensitize yourself and play the game.

 

See Everyone above has basically told you what you need to do but imo not WHY you need too or HOW it can change things. I spend alot of time dealing with the psychological aspect of fighters so I'll share what I think I know...

 

When I pick up a new character I spend a fair amount of time drilling the use of normals and understanding how those normals revolve into other moves (other normals, when/if I can jump cancel, special/DD cancel, and etc) Thats how I start...

 

Once I have a basic mastery of the normals (by which I mean when I see someone jumping in and I want to "antiair" I will instinctively press the right combinations to get the desired result. This is not to say that I always achieve a perfectly timed result but that it resides within an acceptable margin for error) I move on to basic BnB combos, spend alot of time in training mode/AI to hone like 1 or 2 combos TOPS-- I create little challenge modes for myself like "How many times can I successfully complete 2/3rds or the combo w/o a drop" or "complete the combo 5 times successfully w/o a drop or start over" and not to mention both 1st and 2nd player sides mastery.

 

I find that this stage is the most difficult one - that mentally I am so focused on "get that proper hit confirm to start the combo" that my neutral suffers alot. I honestly believe that its REALLY BEST to NOT THINK about it very much - Dont focus on trying to get THAT PARTICULAR COMBO to land otherwise your mind will be so busy processing that attempt your gonna be already mostly dead. Work that combo in your mind so hard it becomes literally muscle memory and you can do it in your sleep - while your at a RED LIGHT waiting for it to go green you can visualize your stick in your hands and do the inputs (as correctly as possible). Hell if you can visualize doing the combo while getting a Blowjob your right were you need to be!

 

Muscle memory is just the most important part of the game - get those combos/tech so ingrained that no matter what random ass confirm you get - you can do the combo off of it - or at least PART OF IT- and youll be well on your way to feeling super comfortable in no time (or better yet - even if your nervous you'll still do the combo). Yea online/offline can be stressful - I totally agree... but the idea is to work it in so deeply into muscle memory that WHILE YOUR DOING THE COMBO your actually devoting the majority of your processing to what will happen after its over and how you will deal with it - or how many options your opponent has after the combo and how your gonna deal with that!

 

TL;DR - Grind Simple combos over and over and over (you can win with simple small combos and dont be too proud to use them either) until you can watch the awesomest boob-tastic hentai while doing said combo without even needing to look at the screen <3 I suggest Kyonyuu Fantasy (turn the hentai volume way up and the game volume down for "proper immersion therapy")

 

You get a self applied bonus for doing it one handed

[Airk]

Dude. Not...really...appropriate. o.o

[Layer]

Here's a simple tip that I find really helps me; deep breathing exercises! Sounds really stupid I know, but personally inbetween rounds I do my best to take a couple of nice deep breaths and to keep calm. Nothing is worse than when you feel like that last round was stolen from you and you're overcome with raw emotions that affect your thinking. Some people capitalize off that raw feeling however, but for most of us I don't think we're thinking our most clear in fits of anger. Anything competitive really is a huge chunk mental, so don't go in with radical thoughts and doubts. If you ever drop a combo or lose a round, have that moment of loss and disappointment but be able to analyze it and don't let it get to you. And nothing helps me more to calm down then taking a couple of deep breaths.

[Qu_Ane]

Discipline. If you feel like you've given enough effort then give 10% more. If you aren't already playing every day then do that, even if it's just for five minutes. And if you're already playing every day then play twice a day. If you think your reflexes and combos are good enough offline take that a step further. If you can't be fully conscious online then be partially conscious, or even a fraction. There's no such thing as trying hard enough.

 

"There are no limits." - Bruce Lee

[Hollysmoke]

I've actually started taking Nemesis' advice; I've just entered a few tournaments for the first time and I did okay but a lot of the time I was thinking "after the fact" IE got a confirm, didn't convert, thinking to myself "Oh I could have done X". Or when I get a successful CH AA hit, it slips my mind I could have RCed into big damage and other things like that. So now I'm just grinding out simpler things until it's just second nature (which is how I learned BB). I guess it's pretty universal advice everyone should consider. Minus the porn. That bit is optional (but still recommended).

[TheRealBobMan]

On the topic of muscle memory, a friend of mine once said:

 

"A wise Asian fucker once said that your intent to kill should be so high that if your enemy cut off your head, your body would know what to do."

 

 

 

You should be able to do at least your basic combos blindfolded (though sometimes confirming off of random hits into more advanced combos would require adjustments based on who you hit and where you hit them, which you can't do blindfolded).  Eventually you should be able to play games like this ninja.

 

 

After you've put some time into training mode to warm up, put some time into VS CPU play.  You need to build your recognition/reaction pairings.  The CPU can give you shitty habits, but you're also not going to be able to automatically 6P a poorly spaced jump-in (or even know when each jump-in is poorly spaced) unless you practice that.  I recommend playing against the same CPU consistently for a chunk of time (like a week or two) before moving on to another CPU when you're new, and ideally you should get through all of them.  Just don't overdo it training with the CPU since they might let you get away with ending block strings with a move that's really - on block, or let you wake-up super, or use some other tactic that's easy to bait and punish.  You absolutely need to get practice in with real players, but vs CPU is valuable in the early stages of learning a game.  They'll punish you for things like leaving a 1-frame gap in your block string, and also pressure you with moves almost at random.  CPUs might make terrible moves that players wouldn't, except that you wont be able to consistently punish a player that does that kind of stupid shit unless you have some practice against it.  It also helps with stage fright if you can do the same stuff vs a CPU.

 

 

Eventually you'll phase out CPU play and put more time into training mode for Research and Development purposes.  I spend less time in training mode practicing combos than I did a year or two ago, but I spend just as much time as before in training mode if not more.  I just spend it figuring out new combos rather than practicing how to regurgitate stuff other people found, or I spend time figuring out options selects and move punishes.  Going through every characters' challenge mode is great since you'll learn some of the basics of what they'll do and should easily then be able to record it in training mode to practice blocking it (great for stuff like Ram oki or Zato unblockables), and eventually figuring out optimized punishes for things.

 

 

 

Also, practice the flashy/difficult/situational stuff as a reward after you've put some time into the more widely used stuff.  It's fun to do things that way.

[Airk]

It's also worth practicing one "flasy/situational" thing as a punish. Few things make me sadder than watching someone who is otherwise capable do a basic 2000 damage BNB after blocking an Inferno Divider or something. Learn yourself some swag 5k combo for this, it WILL happen.