Something i don't think many people realize is how important sleep is. Sleep not only consolidates things you want to remember into stronger, more efficient connections but also allows you to forget the mistakes and other things you don't want reinforced. I've spent hours trying to learn a combo and only getting it once or twice while the next day i can do it no problem.
100% this. I was having tons of trouble doing some of the combo challenges in Granblue shortly after it came out. Got a full nights rest and did most of them first try the next day. 😅
My #1 tip to learning any single difficult thing in a fighting game is to grind attempts until you hit the wall, then walk away and come back the next day.
Honestly so true. It's shocking how different things can feel / look after you've let sleep process what you've trained/labed through out the previous days.
Same. Only last year was I able to get one of my friends to enjoy fighting games, and that was through Under-Night, Guilty Gear, and Blazblue. They're the only other person in my circle who is into fighting games, but 1 is higher than 0.
This is something I learned when I started watching fighting game "Gods". I watched Daigo for SF, and JDCR for Tekken. The amount of time they ask the freaking chat for info, or when they don't actually know something about the game like what this character's frames are, or they don't know the BnB combos, etc, was very eye-opening for me. I don't mean it as an insult to them of course, they're human is what I'm saying.
I was watching Woolie's video on Skullgirls and I forget who said this but "When you're new you think you're getting hit with infinites but they're not infinites you just don't know how to react to those yet." As a new player I really needed to hear that.
Important points that I don't see people talk about in fighting games: 12:01 , 15:41 , 17:15 Big reminder: LEARNING SLOWLY OR STRUGGLING IN THE LEARNING PROCESS IS NOT A FAILURE. Different people learn different aspects of different games at different paces and there's no shame or punishment for not getting there quickly. You will also encounter points where you think you've learned something and find out later that you really haven't, or that it didn't stick; this is normal, and again, IS NOT A FAILURE. Bronze to Killer playlist: ru-vid.com/group/PL6Zpep0TMBYQ7IZfA08_y2lUmjzhgctoJ
Hey do you know what he’s talking about when he says that in KI he didn’t do combos and only did pokes? I watched this series and he did combos in bronze
@@HiNi. exactly. It's all the mindset. If you're ok with losing and learning, its gonna turn out fine. When you turn into a salty scrub because you lost, you're gonna have a bad time. It's all about the mindset.
I can't compliment them's fightin' herds's tutorial enough. it drip-feeds the right information at the right time, covers everything, leaves you room to experiment, and the text is funny/quirky. it's what I needed at the beginning and i'm glad I started fgs with it
In education, theres a huge emphasis on "Objective Based Learning" and "Backwards Design". You essentially did this with KI. Backwards design is about having a goal and creating your lessons to build up skills that work towards reaching your goal. Your goal was "Get good at KI" and so you spent all of one rank learning X or Y skill. Objective Based Learning is going into your classroom each day with a (I cant stress this enough) measurable objective that should improve the skill you've decided to work on. For example, I know I want to be good at KI so I need to work on my Anti-Airs (skill). A measurable objective I can aim for today is to land ten anti-airs before I hit ten games.
Honestly I felt all the sides of this discussion. The Skullgirls tutorial is really informative, but it's super information-dense. I loved the TFH tutorial's semi-sandbox mode on the other hand. When I tried getting into melee, I found that I got destroyed to the extent I didn't know how to learn. It was really disheartening. Seeing you get wrecked by high-level players was reassuring in a way, but it was also really instructive on how to approach learning when you're at a significant skill gap. It can be tough to get into the mindset for learning effectively but I really appreciate that you've been tackling the learning process for new folks.
I think Guilty Gear Xrds Missions really hit a sweet spot for what an actual tutorial should be. Most fighting game "tutorials" are just you learning how the character works but learning the character and learning the game are ENTIRELY different. Guilty Gear Xrd actually has two sections one for characters "Combo" and one for learning the game "Missions". Puts you in important situations you'll encounter and ways to deal with them. Dealing with a character spamming, how to option select an opponents safe jump, fuzzy guarding, using normals as anti airs, understanding your different defensive options, etc. Like I'm surprised no one talks about it more. After Xrds tutorials I don't think even half of the major fighting games even come close. It gave me the edge over most other players going into other fighting games. That's how good of tutorial it is.
I think disguising tutorials as minigames or part of a singleplayer campaign is pretty good. The best "non-tutorial tutorial" I have seen is Rivals of Aether's Abyss Mode. It's basically a survival mode except that each "win" isn't only beating up CPU's, it can be a different random minigame like "the floor is electrified, stay on the moving platforms" or "parry 5 projectiles"...
I love me some smash, and will always take playing that with friends over nothing, but I really wish I could pull some into the more typical style of fighting games! I just want to play some dbfz against actual people so I don’t deal with delay based netcode all the time!
I think many tutorial complaints boil down to: No tutorial ever encourages players to get better or teach them a competitive mindset. Thing is, today's tutorials tend to be good, it's just not what most of the new players need. Any tutorials, even if the dev turns teaching into fun minigames and add witty dialogue, are mainly informative and are for people who have the the drive to learn. None of the best tutorials are just ever actually gonna make players go online, nor encourage players that go online to keep at it even if they lose.
11:00 Part of the problem with getting new players out of this headspace is that, unless they are going and finding other players at their skill level (which brings in a whole secondary level of concerns truly new players to fgs are going to struggle with) they are still going to encounter more punishing, optimized combos being used *on* them, which makes one feel like they are playing without a complete toolset. The thought is "I need to learn these combos because even if I don't know them, that won't stop them from being used on me."
Appreciate this series, got into fighting games on MK11, now about a week into SFV, and after learning a sprinkle of tekken, dbz and gg, I feel like I have a good understanding of my learning curve for new games, partially due to your content. Usually I win my first game online after about 3 days of practice/story mode. And knowing that its really fun picking up a new game, but it took me 4 games to understand that. But love your showing the learning curve start to finish one way or another more content like this is important for the fgc. keep goin!
Thanks for taking the time to discuss topics like this. I've been playing various games with my friend for years and while I've learned so much through that, I felt totally stuck at the same relative level of skill. Your videos on how to structure offense and properly utilise training mode to find frame traps and do more than hit buttons have helped me immensely. The content you make for players like me, who have experience but don't know how to take those next steps, is really valuable.
7:50 Something I see in this debate that pops up a lot that I never see really being touched on is the perception a new player has towards players better than they are. Which is that "How do you know that this player is god tier and not just slightly above low tier? How do you know that you're getting destroyed that badly?" If someone is brand new to the game, it's so hard for them to tell what the actual skill gulf is between them and an opponent, so that anything other than extremely close matches look like domination, when the reality might be that the other guy's only been playing for 2 or 3 weeks and just knows a BnB combo and when to stop pressing buttons. I didn't really even start having this idea until I read about some new players online claiming they got touch-of-death combo'd in Street Fighter, when Street Fighter easily has the shortest average length of combos, which means that they're just messing up on the crossup, getting up while pressing buttons or something, and then they think that the domination was entirely the fault of the other player being too good when in reality they're still not learning.
I think this video complements your other video about different types of players, the Timmy, the Johnny, and the Spike. Most of the comments you highlighted seem to have the sort of Spike mentality where they need to know everything about the game and win every single game perfectly in order to have 'fun', when in reality they should adopt the mindset of Timmy where they should focus on landing a single combo or executing a single concept successfully and take incremental steps to improving when playing. I recently picked up skullgirls with some of my friends and have yet to win a single match against any of them because this is the only 2d fighter that I've put any sort of significant time into but I'm having a blast because I'm not playing to try to win yet. I was able to pull off Valentine's 1st tutorial combo in a match the other day which had me popping off super hard because a week before that I could barely land a single jab. "Rome wasn't built in a day" as they say. Seeing myself able to go from landing only jabs to pulling off a whole combo was super exciting to experience, even if I'm not yet at the point where I can take a game off my friends, because I know that if I keep at it I will eventually
"when in reality they should adopt the mindset of Timmy" This comment is the kind of thing that annoys me, and actually goes against the entire point of looking at the different types of players. The player types have no "ought" statements applied to them and are meant to describe the ways in which an audience interacts with a game to give the designers a way to think about how any given choice will affect the game through those various player lenses. The idea that someone's wrong for wanting to be as prepared as they can before jumping into an actual match is just as ludicrous as the people judging Sajam for jumping in quickly and getting hands on experience before worrying too much about the technical details. A Spike being a Spike is not a problem, they are just a portion of the player base that should be kept in mind when making a game design decision.
@@cruelcumber5317 The thing is idk how many of those players are _actually_ spikes and how many are focused on mastery because of the misconception that it's required to play at all. A lot of the people that bounce off of fighting games completely might be doing so because they implicitly thought they _had_ to be a Spike (or a "Body" player in Laugh's theory) to get into the game, and they never even _found_ the bombastic shit they'd like as a Timmy or the creative shit they'd enjoy as a Johnny, because they didn't know to look for it. Regardless of archetype, it is good advice for FG newcomers to "find their fun" within the game even before they win. Even if you ARE a win-focused player in the end, you can still find a sense of achievement in successfully using a combo or setup, before you're good enough to take a match off of a more experienced player.
There's some learning that only gets adquired through experience in combat, but not in training mode. In training mode you practice situations you encounter while playing a match, or watching it. After the whole SkullGirls tutorial, I went online and lost like 30 matches in a row.
I had a buddy growing up that would ask me to race him all the time. I asked "why, I always beat you by a long shot?" And he replied "because I want to learn to be faster". We were still in middle school and I'll never forget it, he taught me a life lesson that day. When you lose against a stronger opponent you need to learn. This strongly applies to guilty gear for sure, I was getting stomped by most players, -10% win rate, I was frustrated but kept trying. Now I'm about 50% win rate and having an absolute blast with the game. It's all perspective, you can either learn from a loss, or you can be a salty scrub, the choice is yours.
This came back in my recommends again, so I felt I needed to reply here: This is probably the most useful video I've ever watched on your channel. I used to have so much trouble getting used to the idea of "learning" a fighting game, and got so frustrated about not being able to do things in a game. This helped me take a second look at how I approached fighting games, and now take them at a different pace and learn more naturally. I just really appreciate this video.
thanks for continuing to make these great videos. ive been getting into sfv and skullgirls recently and seeing your mindset and approach towards learning new games is really cool and useful and relatable
I just started getting into fighting games with SF5 and Tekken. I have to say that your channel is a goldmine thanks a lot. Your videos really help me to remind myself to stick to the basics and learn the rest at my own pace. It is so easy to completely bloat up and overload your mental stack with all there is to learn and you just need to calm down and get back to basics and remind yourself of the learning curve sometimes.
15:47 I’ve been apart of the FGC for about a year now, and I would still consider myself a new fighting game player even though I own, 6 games, and 2 fight sticks. We all learn at our own pace even if that pace is consistent procrastination to the point of not having ever learned more than 1 combo since I started playing fighting games a year ago
I feel like the ideal fighting game tutorializer would be one that lets you just press buttons against a sensei and the game tells you what you're doing wrong/suggests new things to try based on your inputs
I'm waiting for a game that after playing a few rounds with the CPU, that you can go up against an AI version of your playstyle so you can literally play against yourself. That way you can learn your own strength and weaknesses. Would be neat.
@@Skidoosh121 killer instinct (2013) had this and it worked great. the AI I trained would even do my particular ultra combos and dance between rounds like I did.
@@SFtheWolf To quote Maximilian Dood: "I now have Skynet running in my house. Not looking forward to Terminators waking me up in the middle of the night."
Videos like this are really reassuring for me. For a while I’ve been struggling to come to terms with the fact that I’m a slow learner when it comes to fighting games. Pretty much just have to accept that fact and just learn at that pace since it seems to work for me.
It's really easy nowadays to get paralyzed with information overload, just cause so much is so readily available between Discord, RU-vid ,Twitter, etc. I remember I used to just play a fighter for fun, and naturally improved while I racked up more matches. Then I made the mistake of joining Discord channels, specially character specific ones, where you always see lab monsters discussing what's most optimal to do in situation X, which exact combo to use in situation Y, what so and so character's exact frame data is...and I was like wow, people really use all this information while playing matches? That's impressive, I should strive to be like that. It sucked all the enjoyment out and actually made me a worse player overall. I eventually realized I should let go of all that noise and just absorb information from high level matches like I've always done before, and honestly, even they don't always take the most optimal routes for every situation.
That's cuz those people enjoy knowing almost every optimal thing in X situation, but those players won't be good just based off that, cuz there's limitless situations in fighting games, and they could still drop combos etc, but since you personally don't like learning like that, then you're good, intuition could prove just as good as knowing exactly what to do
You give me a lot of hope for my content. I've been working on some videos that I want to upload to RU-vid. You showing off how far you have come has made me feel a lot more comfortable about putting stuff out there on the internet
I love your videos Sajam, you voiced exactly what I have been feeling. A little context, I started getting into fighting games back in April on a whim. I knew nothing about fighting games except I had played them in the past without knowing anything, no motions, not how to block... just to hit buttons. I had started by watching a lot of videos including some of yours to help me find mains in games. My main game became SFV because the online matchmaking worked decent enough to find games and I que for ranked and casual at the same time increasing my odds of getting matches. However I get bodied... I lose almost every game, but every game I notice I get a little better, and while I still don't win matches, I started taking single rounds or being able to make the rounds feel more even I think. That being said, I got a chance to go over to a friend's house who was also very casually into fighting games, knows motions and to block strings... and I bodied him a lot. So while I am never going to be great at fighting games, I think it is perfectly normal to get bodied and while it sucks, I do think having some friends to play with who are around your level from time to time is good to use as a barometer to know how much you have learned. However you are certainly right that getting bodied and being ok with losing and treating it as a process to get better is the perfect approach and new players and even veterans should be ok with that process. What got me to stick with fighting games so far is your and Ultra Chen's emphasis on acknowledging fighting games are hard and that it is ok to lose a lot and if you treat it as a learning experience and are having fun then it doesn't matter if you lose every game.
I play fighting games and teach high school. At the school where I teach, I run the anime and video game club. Before Covid, we would meet as a club every week and play games on Thursdays after school. I'm a 15+ year veteran of the competitive fighting game scene, and my students... are not. They want to learn, and thankfully we have an offline place to play with a bunch of beginners as well as a non-beginner who knows how to teach. It's a great thing! Inevitably, we get new members throughout the school year who see us playing and doing combos in whatever game, and they get discouraged and are certain that they can't compete because they don't know combos. I decided that the best way to teach them is to put them against me or one of the club members in a game of their choice, and their opponent is limited to only one button for the entire match. They get to have full access to the characters' tools, but never once have they won against the person only pressing one button even if that person has only the most rudimentary ideas about fundamental play. The idea that you need combos to win is harmful to beginner play. Combos can come later; my students can beat you with one button.
8:25 Skullgirls on PC got a recent update where you can "Ctrl+C" while in a lobby and you generate a link that you can paste on discord (or any messaging app of your choice) to invite people to your lobby.
I used to play a lot more FGs online than I do now and I stopped because I grew into this EXACT mindset. About not playing if I don't know full, extended combos, etc. I REALLY needed to hear this and it makes me feel a lot better about going online and learning and taking it slow. So thanks Sajam.
I recently tried learning more about SFV and there’s already a series Ceelow did doing basically what you are talking about going from Rookie to Diamond. He also has his matches so you can see how easy it is to climb. The videos are aimed for using Sakura but a lot of the tips are just in general.
From my experience learning fighting games, I've found system mechanics to be the thing that benefits me the most to learn. Like right now I'm learning kof after watching it for years, and I glossed over guard cancel rolls while watching, but while playing I kept getting hit by pressure I didn't know how to deal with, then I watched pro players and they just rolled out of it. When I was learning guilty gear I felt the same thing while learning all the defensive options, learning when to use the different blocks, throws, blitz, and burst. In uni it was using the shield to get people off of me. That was all stuff I didn't really get to appreciate until I started playing but man, that stuff ups your game and feels really great to learn and apply on the fly. I'm still shit at combos though, feels bad to lose because I could have gotten more off the hits I did get, but that'll come with time.
This is a helpful talk, Sajam. As a new FG player, input dexterity is definitely a weak point of mine, and it's been pretty frustrating trying to lab-out some optimal combos, only to link exactly none of them in real online play because my fingers get too shaky. I think I need to pick a simpler game plan with more forgiving links and focus on understanding neutral, instead. Thanks for giving chill encouraging advice to us noobs.
I've been playing fighting games for about 9 years now myself. When i was new to fighting games i never even thought of stuff like "i will never be able to do combos like that". I just really liked the characters in mvc3 so i kept playing. I did try to learn combos early on but just got frustrated that i couldn't do them and went online to have fun and play the game. I don't think i started doing basic combos til a month into me playing and being brand new to the genre. Even with all my experience i have now i can learn combos somewhat fast in training mode but actually applying them in matches often takes me a week of playing to do them consistently. Most of my early success in new games is having the basic fighting game theory Sajam talked about and knowing spacing/anti-airs not really the combo aspect. It feels like the mindset of winning and doing good fast comes from the vast amount of tournaments/pro player content there is on the internet now. You just get blasted with top level play that you almost never see noobs playing the game because why would you want to watch that?
I've been playing fighting games for something like 20 years now. Hell, maybe more. If I've learned anything about them, it's this: You'll find your place, your style, your character. Whatever. If you enjoy the game, if you enjoy the character or doing "X" thing, you'll find something that flips that switch and just feels right. It's happened to me countless times. Range with Ivy, rushdown with Taki or Jam, Testament and Dizzy just being awesome in general, Vatista's absolutely insane and fun combos, Basara's keepaway game in SSIV - there's always been *something* I've connected with, huge long combos or no huge, long combos. I've also played Absolver for something like 400 hours, which is some low numbers compared to some of the gods of that game, and that game taught me more about making a fighting game personal than any other FG I'd ever played. If you love it, you'll put the time in and make some fighting game yours. You are not your losses. You are the strength you bring to the table, win *or* lose. Find that strength, whether it's long combos, short combos, footsies, rushdown, zoning, grapplers, puppets, unblockables, or one good button. Whatever that strength is that you enjoy, find it and own it. The rest comes with time and experience.
i need to be honest with you. I only recently started liking fighting games. I always loved smash but didnt look at it as a fighting game. granblue fantasy vs came out i watched a little bit of gameplay and thought it looked cool. Now I honestly think I want to get into fighting games a tiny bit more. and your videos are honestly a huge motivation boost for me in that regard. so thank you very much!
I needed to hear this. I wish you had made this video a week ago ;). Just got into fighting game after being on the fence for a long time, and I have been on the struggle buss hard. I had a win rate below 10% for the first 150 online matches after playing single player for about 10 hours. I have never successfully completed a combo in an actual match against a human player, and I spent most of the matches in the corner getting bodied. But I am feeling like the pieces are slowly starting to fall into place, and I am starting to win more matches and having more fun. Still have not completed a basic combo yet, but I am sure once I do it will be hype as hell.
Reflecting on this video now that im deep divong into SF6. Something that has been extremely helpful is i started a journal, and every day the goal of my session is to learn at least 1 new thing amd then write about what i figured out for that day's journal entry, and if i want i write some theory crafting to get an idea of what i want to lab out. Doesnt have to be anything huge. It can be something as small as how to counter one move that one character likes to use a lot. Holy shit has this changed so much for me. It forces me to be aware and self refle tice and im now retaining information i learned rather than banging my head against the wall repeating the same mistakes i already knew the answer to but forgot about in the heat of the moment. Just reached gold 2 tonight, compared to when i started playing on launch a few weeks ago, and i was struggling to even escape bronze. Ive never escaped the lower ranks in any game before, at most id be forever trapped in a silver equivalent but this time im actually making rapid progress with my first local tournament coming up in 2 weeks. Im so excited to improve at a fighting game that i feel driven to keep pushing myself so i can someday reach master rank. Like it feels like a genuinely attainable goal for once and im so hyped to see myself achieving tangible results for once.
7:54 I wonder if there would be a market for an FCG Tinder. I feel like it would be less intimidating than just popping into to the discord and hoping to find a teacher/equal skill player.
I can see it now... "I like long korean backdashes on the beach and pina collusion in my tournaments. Looking for a serious partner, not here for friends! Must be at least 4 bars. Leroy and Fahkumram players need not apply."
Would be nice, because, to be honest, I hate public discord servers. Everyone knows *that guy* in any public server. The guy that makes you groan everytime you have to use the server.
Lots of good things to touch on here. I agree that you don't need long/optimal combos to play. I found a beginner Filia tutorial that had an ultra simple combo of launcher > aerial > special > super and that was enough for me. Now I've added length where I'm ready for it. Not optimal at all but with damage scaling and reset potential I'm not at a massive disadvantage. I wish more fighting game trials/ tutorials fit into this little niche I'm in, but I've approached every new character with this one > two > punch framework. It's working out for me.
@@illieas1 I mean if anything Danny was just learning a BnB first, then Miyagi started teaching him the more advanced stuff after he had that muscle memory trained.
something I do now is to learn characters ill just go in completely blind and just mash. it sounds antithetical to learning but nothing teaches just how safe a move is like just throwing it out and seeing if you die. ill also use it to see what moves im actually landing and then ill go into training mode and see what i can get from those moves.
Last year, I learned unist through a combination of playing a friend and watching your videos. To this day, I do not have most of the tutorial complete and everytime I open the tutorial menu up, I scroll down and then yeet right out of there.
2:49 I'll add that I've seen it a few times on Daigo's stream highlights where he'll exclaim something along the lines of 'woah, I didn't know about X', sometimes followed by '*that's* cool'. There's always going to be stuff to learn and figure out.
This was really helpful, tbh I would love to see a series where you climb from low ranks in fighting games using simple techniques and basic strategies like you said, it'd definitely be helpful to people like me, who like to visualize a rough point on how to improve
Go watch the "Bronze to Killer" playlist on this channel if you wanna see what he talked about in the middle of the vid... climbing from bronze rank using only sweep and one other thing.
I've been playign fighting games for 5 years and i still suck, im hella worse than sajam's old abel footage, and can barely take rounds off of anyone at locals. after 5 years ive lost that initial spark that compelled me to learn and get better. i lost the fun and started focusing too much on the work and training while being unable to break my bad habits. Watching these videos helps me nuture that spark and get me excited about fighting games again.
My first fighting game I actually put lots of time into us barely a fighting game, but it was For Honor. It taught me the basic ideas of how fighting games flow and is what lead me to finally try to learn others.
One of my favorite things about using discord to matchmake is seeing someone else improve, playing someone the first day, going like 13 and 2, then the next time, it's 10 and 6 and all the games are super close. Maybe it's just me but I love seeing other people get better
I’ve been a slow learner for every fighting game except GG, for some reason it clicked almost right away for me, maybe because there was multiple characters that I connected with immediately
I'll say that the Skullgirls tutorial is amazing. It's my first traditional fighting game(I'm a pretty good smash player) I'm actually getting into and I've gotten most of the lessons down. I only have trouble with ground techs, assists, and just the team system in general. I also barely push block, but all these should come to me in time playing. It's one of the better tutorials, I've tried MK a few times and SFV but never got into them. The tutorial alone isn't enough tho, I feel like that's the attitude one of the comments had. I felt good after doing the tutorial and going through the character ones to see who I wanted to play, then over the last few days, I've done most of my characters combo trials. I feel like that's a good start for really new players
I am the slowest of slow learners, after five years of fighting game experience the essence of offense is finally laid bare. The greatest hurdle I’ve ever experienced is finally passed, and FGs are way more fun
3:54 when you’re playing the tutorial and try a combo, you have to do it exactly how it’s displayed. You aren’t allowed to press any button in a combo that isn’t in the order. If press one (like say you press LP in between Cr.LP->HP in the prompted combo), that combo drops and you’re forced to start from the beginning. But yeah. Everything is spot on. Generally you don’t need long combos. Skullgirls is built on ultra fast reset combos which take some time to understand. I’ve been playing it for a few years now and I’m still bad at it
I'm finding this stuff really interesting as a new player. I picked up skullgirls after finding the mobile app and enjoying annie (lol), and my only other fighting game experience was playing smash bros. It took me actually 4 hours to start consistently do Annie's trial 1 combo without dropping it 3 times in a row (but it was hella fun). As soon as I learned this combo, I jumped straight into online mode. I got Destroyed, lost like 23 - 2, and loved it. I didn't even know what a mixup was until that Big Band - Squigly main started mixing on me. By the end, I learned how to look for low-high mixups, learned how to look for my enemy's favorite mixups, and started looking for how it *feels* when my enemy is about to go for mix. Starting to block just a few mixups in a match is incredibly rewarding, and it makes me very happy that Skullgirls doesn't use skill based matchmaking. I would've learned so much slower without meeting players who low-high then players who crossup.
nice talk and your fight game series are great there is no shortcut to learning fighting games.One needs to put in the work no matter how the mechanics are simplified
19:44 I love that this example comes up because Dekillsage and Sonicfox fought at EVO grand finals and it went to reset, final game, final round! Learn at your own pace folks
When an experienced person learns something quickly, in any game, or even walk of life, don't look at them and get discouraged. Remember that they very likely have many years under their belt to accelerate the learning process. If you don't have the same background, the process simply takes longer, and that is okay. It isn't a deficiency. You just weren't around to see their failures and it can be very easy to discount parts of people's lives you didn't witness.
And even if you think they're new, you don't know what experiences actually accelerate their learning. If someone seems weirdly good at learning, say, and FPS game seemingly from scratch, you don't know if they've got 2000 hours of skyrim archer in their brain. You don't know if they learnt reads from smash bros against frequent matches against a relative. In reality, how fast other people learn doesn't matter. The learning curve isn't linear, far from it, and it varies from person to person due to so many factors.
Asuming you can train to the point in which you can be ready for any situation is not possible. All you actually need to to start playing is being able to execute a gameplan and know the basic rules of the game (attacks do damage, how to build super, how blocking works etc) and then you can actually start. Everything else is extra. How much "extra" you want is up to you.
There's definitely some hit or miss with tutorials. In Killer instinct I actually hated having no definitions for the difference between auto doubles and linkers when it asked me to do them. (I think it was actually there but I accidentally skipped it and didn't notice). But you think about the idea that you could hit a back button on the o bring up the prompt text again or read it after you complete the trial to comprehend it in hindsight and let you keep pressing buttons during it. There's always a way to improve teaching. Teaching anything in real life is about as comple for the same reason, and people will be frustrated by a focus on one style that doesn't click with them.
I think this is an addage that should be applied not just to fighting games, but also any pursuit of personal growth. Learning is not linear. Growth is not comparable.
I'll preface this by saying that I agree that people learn in different ways. This is why good tutorials have to be inclusive and cater to a variety of learning styles. That long comment actually made some good points. Teaching and learning research shows you can introduce something before showing it off but the practical phase has to come as soon as possible. Spending too much time explaining something, especially by means of text, is more likely to overload the learner. Deliver it simply, give them a chance to play around, then go into the nitty-gritty. I disagree with the commenter about the easily skippable stuff, that should be an option...as long as the tutorial allows me to go back again. Most tutorials are linear. This is acceptable in a classroom environment (to an extent) but e-learning enables instructional designers to design the learning to be more freely explorable. The TL;DR is that you can create tutorials that follow a particular teaching style that has enough options to make the learning more personal.
Def gonna check out that Bronze to Killer series for KI so I can get inspired to actually start some KI. I've been in and out of the tutorial a bunch and liked it but I usually try and play with friends and unfortunately don't have any that own KI
I got GGXRD and I looked at the characters saw Ramlethal went into arcade mode to see what the character did and thought “meh not for me” then I saw Jack-O, and thought “Holy shit she’s adorable.” Then I played her arcade mode and thought “I know my main” so I go into online and IDFK how I cheesed that win I didn’t know she could even make small house thingies let alone that was her gimmick!
Still good to look at this, even now a year later. I got to floor 10 in strive with Nago with my only real combo being S, S, 214H, 6H or really, anything into 214H 6H. That was really it.
As an FG player primarily, with FPS on the back burner because I have friends that enjoy Halo/CoD/BF... I totally agree about playing lots of games. I play smash at a pretty high level, but I have friends that enjoy DBFZ, DoA, MK, Tekken, etc and I play them anytime I can just because it’s fun for me to play FGs with my boys! Spread the love to all the games!
My little brother plays a ton of fighting games all the time, they're easily his favorite genre of game to play, and I love to watch fighting games and every once in awhile I get that itch to try my hand at a fighting game. Obviously as a non-fighting game player I had no idea what I was doing so I asked him to teach me and so he sat there for like an hour to teach me a basic combo and I remember feeling super embarrassed at first because I used to be within the top 5% of PvP players in Destiny 2 and I reminded myself of way back in 2014 how excited I was to learn Destiny 1 and i used that to fuel my learning and now I can still only do a basic Dragonball Fighterz combo but that's more than I used to know like 2 years ago when the game came out lol
Sajam talks about combo don't matter, flashback to Kazunoko destroying everyone with the most simple combos in dbfz season 1 with just utilizing ghost mixup and yamcha assist. Now he's trying to do it again in season 3.
One little thing I wanna note for other players still hung up about combos: A lot of the fun in playing a fighting game is actually landing the move in the first place. Who cares if I can't cancel my kick into a 20 hit combo; I landed my move and that's all I was trying to do. Find some basic moves that you like, and simple combos to use with them. Don't worry it you drop the combos sometimes, we all do it it's no big deal. Have fun trying things out, making mistakes, and learning from them. If you can do that you'll find yourself getting comfortable with the game a lot faster than you expected
I'm at 15 minutes, so I don't know if you're going to mention it, but one thing that was eye opening was looking at "casual" (that is, both players are in a call talking to each other) TFH matches. And despite the fact both of them are not great at doing damage and approaching, so the games often go to time, it's still interesting, and it still looks like they're having fun
I appreciate the combo length reminder. I feel intimidated when playing against someone who can combo me for 30 seconds for a third of my health bar, and whenever I make the right decision I get 2 hits in for a sliver of damage. That's how I feel in Them's Fighting Herds, and especially with Skullgirls I appreciate games that include auto combos that I can mash out and get some okay damage in when I get a hit in the scramble, like Dragonball Fighterz. It also helps to remember there are some players call themselves the "Autocombo God" and get high ranks mostly using the auto-combos.
I feel I have a different personal experience than most people. I never had the belief I had to do combos to play the game, maybe perhaps the opposite. I often don't have time to sit in training mode to set my execution straight. That being said it doesn't stop me from playing, my friend and I usually travel from game to game playing them, and he is a long time fighting game player and is quite well veresd in theory and combo execution. I think having a personal connection with someone can make all the difference in fighting games. A mentor or a peer, because although I am roughly (literally) 800-10 with him in games, he always helps me learn the fundamental things. My combos are non-existent, but he always says that my fundamentals are there and the only thing missing is my conversions into larger damage to make the matches a lot more even. That is, despite me losing just about every match, in the year I have started playing fighting games, they have been closer and closer despite never being able to do combos. He has to really break my defense and neutral game before being able to get a chance to take the lead with combos. Regardless, playing him or others, we have fun. That's the important part, having fun and getting to know people.
11:15 If there's one thing I've learned from Sajam it's that the only thing you need to know is how to anti-air. Also 12:08 I remember when I was learning DBFZ, the first 2d fighting game I really tried to learn, learning about stuff like jump canceling and canceling moves into specials and basic stuff like that gave me those kinds of moments. Also also when I was learning Soul Calibur VI - the only other fighting game besides DBFZ I've learned at all really - for like 2 months all I did was block and counter poke as Sophitia.
