I feel completely crushed playing this game now.

[ZomB]

if playing a game makes you feel bad then dont play the game

The best reply in this thread. If a game that is meant to be fun, is making you emotionally unhappy -- then it's not fulfilling its purpose.

Everyone who says "You get better just from playing" are not quite right. You won't get better unless you make an effort to. If you have a hard time landing combos/hitconfirms -- it doesn't just magically go away. You need to be actively thinking about your match - how you're going to land your next hit, and how you're going to confirm that hit in to a combo. After a while that will become second nature, but at first you'll do a lot worse.

Anyways nothing feels worse than wanting to get better and not being sure how to improve - so I've been working on a "how to practice" tutorial. Keep in mind of course that you're playing a game against other people, and they can improve too!

[Omn1c1d3]

2 things: First, TC, I'm where you are. Like exactly where you are. I worked my way up to C and now i rarely win and when I do it seems like a fluke a lot of the time. But what you should walk away with is the funny stories. I main Aki and had a mirror match where I lost the first round, we literally knocked each other out and got a draw the second, and then the third round it was back and forth. Both rounds had a lot of us doing the exact same move at the same time (we both were countering each other rushing in by jump>dive so often that we both at one point jumped and dove in unison over half a screen away thinking the other was going to rush in lol). It came down to one hit for each of us in the last round and we were both full screen away. We, kid you not, at the exact same time, called Caesar with globe> duck> corkscrew, and hit each other in the middle. You couldn't see who won because the big "K.O." was in the middle but when the smoke cleared I was the victor. I messaged him and we had a good laugh about the match.

Another time, I beat a Yu who had trouble just dealing with Caesar w/ Sword but I could not call a single one of his mix-ups. I still haven't seen someone mix me up so hard. This match was my personal best: I pulled off the opening move J.C> B Killrush > B corkscrew combo that I never thought I would be able to do online. I won but I messaged him and complimented his godly mix-ups and we had a great convo.

When you get angry about losing a few in a row just take a break. Watch those replays where you were a hero and watch some of you losses to figure out what you could have down better. Message people you win AND lose to. Be humble when you lose and doubly so when you win. Don't frustrate yourself, just take a break. When you get bodied by a guy with 30 matches played and 28 wins who combos you for 6k+ in the corner because he's been playing fighting games since he was an infant, be in awe of his mastery. You and I have a long road ahead of us but later on when you get good don't forget to help the guy who got the game a week ago. Right now, we don't fight for the win. We fight for the sake of fighting and to learn.

Second, ZomB, where is this "how to practice" and how do I get it?!

[iora]

When I started playing Persona 4 online last week. I was doing well using Yu. Then I hit C rank and everything went straight to hell. Now I barely win any fights and when I do win it feels like a fluke.

I feel like my spirit is completely crushed and I'm not sure I can even keep playing this game. I want to get better, but I'm not sure it's even possible for me.

Maybe I'm just not cut out for the fighting genre anymore.

1: Stop caring about win/loss.

2: If you arent having fun, just play something else. Its a game, the point is to enjoy yourself.

But if you feeling like you dont deserve your wins, you need to actually try to improve, not just play for funsies. You dont just get handed skill, so work for it... not only will your results improve, but you wont feel like your getting fluke wins anymore.

You won at the start, then both you probably started playing harder opponents, and your opponents got 1 week better. If you dont improve with them, you get left behind... so get to work and actually try to improve, and you'll keep pace ^^

[Timother]

If you are not feeling comfortable then better switch games... maybe that game is just not for you.

[huey253]

EVO champ here....

YOU CAN DO IT!

[OFC Salty Santa]

if playing a game makes you feel bad then dont play the game

This

also, if you TRULY want to improve then stop playing win and start playing to learn

[TwilightInZero]

+1 to the oft-quoted reply above me. Playing fighting games gets frustrating for me since I'm not very good at them, so I make sure to play them minimally during the free time I have on my own. I still go to the arcade to play them, but I sometimes get frustrated there too, at which point I have to make myself stop playing. Sure, I do enjoy playing FGs with friends, and I enjoy going to the arcade... but I went back to filling my time primarily with single player games. That's how I used to pass the time before I got into FGs, and now games don't make me so miserable anymore.

The big problem with fighting games for those of us who do not have the talent, skill, or time to put in the work, is that there is way too much pressure to win, or even just to improve, and unfortunately, that just comes with the way fighting games as a whole are. It's you against someone else. That's it. And unlike other types of games, the more you try, there is a chance that you're actually going to do *worse*, because the other person is going to improve, or heck, just outright learn your habits. If you're playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and trying to wallride over to that impractically placed E, eventually you're going to get it. But imagine if that E moved further down the wall on successive tries?

Even other types of competitive games are easier to enjoy than fighting games, particularly games that are eight people or more, like FFA shooters. I'm very partial to Quake Live, myself; I've played Quake online since I was a kid. Especially with the skill matching present in QL, you have to be a special kind of bad in order to come out on the bottom of the heap every single match. More often than not, you'll be in the middle of the pack and completely satisfied as long as you enjoyed the match. That's not the case in fighting games. There are two positions in a fighting game: the winner, and the loser. You're either bottom of the heap, or king of the hill. Or rather, you end up feeling that way.

Fortunately, single player games don't have any of these problems, and even when they're similar to fighting games in how they play, they're much easier to enjoy. All you have to do is progress in the game, and you get as much time, and with recent game design ideology, as many tries as you want. (Ever noticed how "lives" aren't really a concept in modern games, or at least how there are infinite continues?) It's an experience with much less pressure, and definitely much less stress. Hell, let me go ahead and recommend a game to you right now. If you've got an XBox 360, go drop 1200 MSP on Dust: An Elysian Tail, right now. It's an Action RPG Platformer and it is so good. I'm about to start on my third playthrough, going to go for the highest difficulty. I played it because I enjoyed it, and just happened to get good.

The point I was trying to get to through that tangent above is that we need to figure out some way to play simply to play. Not play to win, because there's pressure and stress there. And not play to learn, either, because there's still pressure and potential stress. We need to figure out how to play just to enjoy the game. It's hard because these games have many ways to unintentionally, subconsciously make us feel bad. Nobody meant it to be that way, of course, but it just ended up being that way. But if we can play without worrying about winning, without worrying about learning, without worrying about getting good, we might just improve naturally... or not. At that point, we wouldn't need to improve anyways. And maybe when the game (or rather, the metagame) doesn't feel like it hates us and wants to make us miserable, investing time into learning may feel like fun instead of work.

tl;dr: Play single player games and remember how to enjoy gaming. Then, we need to figure out some way to play fighting games just to have fun. Honestly, I don't know how either. For me, that's the big missing piece. Does anyone here have any tips on how to shut out the things in FGs that make you feel bad when playing, or other ways to simply enjoy fighting games without trying to win or trying to improve?

[CupofT]

If you are having trouble handling losing, take a break from playing. A few days, a week, a month. Carefully read through all the posts the other guys have posted. During your time off think back to why you are even playing P4A in the first place. Do you play because you enjoy the game? Or are you just playing for the sake of just playing it?