First ever fighting game, likely to be my last

[Xion]

https://imgur.com/a/OY4KPxb

There's something incredibly depressing about losing 50 games in a row.

Edit: This was all in ranked. Won my first placement match against an afk. Lost every match thereafter.

[Vigil]

if you want a train partner, hit me up
i also suck bad lol

[Swarna]

Originally posted by AnimalMother:

Is this in ranked or in casual/battle hubs? Might sound unintuitive, but ranked is the most beginner-friendly, because you'll end up matched against other beginners

This.

Also use modern controls. They are default for a reason.

[liqht]

Usually, everyone is disappointed at first. I've spent more time in practice mode than fighting and will do the same for the next few weeks since I've finally settled on a main.

If you're practicing correctly and learning the fundamentals, you'll see improvement. I'm averaging 70 perfect with Gief and 65 percent with Guile I want that higher and I know I need to improve more before I take the game seriously.

I guess I'm saying don't get satisfied, but realise you're brand new to the series.

[amigastar]

I remember playing Dragon Ball FighterZ always loosing, left me frustrated.
So i understand you OP.

[Grampire]

Don't worry - this is normal and you're doing good.

It's tempting to use Wins/Losses to measure your progress when learning fighting games. This is the wrong way to look at it.

In fighting games - especially lower levels, it's more about applying what you know than raw skill. Just keep learning and keep trying to apply what you know in a match.

It's about looking at your play and recognizing what's wrong. And the newer you are, the easier it is to find problems. Getting hit a lot? Focus on blocking and learning when to press buttons and when not to. Learn when and when not to jump.

Once you develop it gets harder to do this things, but in the beginning, just Focus on yourself and don't worry about W/L. It's going to be discouraging but you are improving as you play.

[smokeymcpot]

I feel your pain. When I started out I would also lose lose lose to the lowest ranked players and the worst was that I didn't even know why.

Take a break, collect yourself and give it another go but with the right mindset. Someone has to lose and even once you get better you'll still have a loss rate of 50% due to how ranked is set up. So stop worrying about the outcome and look into the reason that you lost. Respect your opponents even if you feel they won due to a gimmick. Practice deliberately.

"A master has failed more times than a beginner has even tried". On my SFV account I have 6000 losses. So don't worry about your 50 because it's only the beginning.

Here are a few links that will 100% help you.

https://youtu.be/lWd79O8fP-E
Ceelows Rookie to Diamond series with Juri in SFV. Some thing will obviously be different but you'll get an idea on how to develop a basic gameplan.

https://medium.com/@doedipus/so-you-want-to-learn-your-first-fighting-game-character-86d54736dfe5
So You Want to Learn Your First Fighting Game Character

https://imgur.com/a/HHwcFDX
The Roadmap

https://glossary.infil.net/
A glossary for when you run into new concepts.

If you want you could also give us your CFN name so we could watch your replays.

[Jalir]

First fighting game, and you immediately hop into online play before even attempting to grasp the basics?

[Vol'pe]

My first fighting game was Street Fighter V and, oh man, what a painful experience it was. It was the first game that made me throw a controller at full force and blinded my ability to look at things objectively. It was literally killing me mentally and for some reason I just couldn't stop.

Now it's one of my favorite genres which is the ultimate test for your patience, resilience and self-control. What people need to realize is that fighting games are about losing and learning from losses. If you win, then was probably nothing for you to learn from the match and you've reached peak of human abilities, which is not possible at all. You don't go for the objective of winning a match. You set little goals that you're trying to achieve along the way. Find a move best suitable for anti-airing an opponent jumping at you and consider the match a win if you managed to anti-air most of them. Learn a combo of 3-4 hits and focus on executing it in a match. Set a goal to answer to a drive impact with your own drive impact. And for the love of god, strive to mash as less as possible. If an opponent hits you constantly in the block, wait for 3-4 hits and then try to press your fastest punch/kick (square for punch/cross for kick on classic controls and just square for modern controls if I remember correctly), it will counter hit them. Actually, set this as your next goal for a match: blocking. Block while standing when your opponent jumps at you and block crouching by default.

Here is my PC account for SFV, click Battle Lounge tab and look at my stats. This is the result of constantly playing with my friends who are better than me. It's a 1600 loses to 600 wins.
https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/profile/VolpeNV

Then visit my PS4 account, click Casual Matches and look there. This is me trying to learn of the most technical characters in the game.
https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/profile/VolpeNV_ps4

Then finally this video of me reaching platinum rank and landing what seemed to me an impossible combo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFIqg6fLHq0

There is even a couple of public videos on the channel of people rage quitting on me.

Remember that there is always a specific answer to every move and situation, you just may not know it for now. Take breaks every few matches. Make a habit to watch high-level matches on youtube or in the replays menu in the game. You can at the very least look for "Sonic Fox" on youtube and see some videos of him playing Juri. Pay attention not to combos but to how to behave. When to not move and when to press a single button.

This is not Dark Souls where everything is scripted and you can try the same thing over and over again. You're playing real humans with unpredictable behavior without even mastering how to control your own character. This is a thousand times more difficult.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit:
I've watched a couple of your replays and here is a few basic things you should know. Special attacks (forward-down-forward punch for example) are only used as combo enders, so don't mash them. In almost all cases same goes for heavy attacks (R2 for punches and R1 for kicks), they are too slow and if your opponent mashes medium (triangle for punches and circle kicks) or light (square for punches, cross for kicks) attacks, they will simply hit you first, so start pressing light attacks after blocking. The simplest combo you should start with is "crouching light kick+crouching light punch+down-back-down kick" like shown in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peQvaStC7kM. Go to training and try connecting all three. Again, don't mash, try to find rhythm. You may use heavy buttons if you feel confident, but only at a certain range, you have to utilize light attacks when up-close.

Next, start using some drive techniques. Forget about drive rush, you need parry (holding triangle+circle), Drive Impact (R1 + R2) and maybe Drive Reversal (forward + R1 + R2 at the exact moment of blocking an attack.
- Parry literally blocks everything high and low except grabs.
- Drive Impact could be useful for you when opponent spams attacks and you don't know what to do. If it hits, then attack with (R2 + down-back-circle). Again, buttons should be pressed with certain timing, so try it out in the training.
- Drive reversal simply kicks back your opponent, you might find it useful.

Lastly, when choosing your character and control type, go to control mapping settings and apply L1 to three punches and R2 to three kicks. Then, whenever you're down on the ground, mash forward-down-forward L1. Juri will do an invisible attack, very easy to hit your opponent at low ranks.

I believe this is it for you to make at least some first steps to understanding how the game works. I'd like to add that losing was always a shame in competitive games and people tend to avoid it as much as possible. This mentality doesn't work here. Losing is not a shame and it never will be. It's not just a part of learning, you're simply supposed to go for other things while playing. It's punishing, it's finding counters for certain moves, it's landing combos, it's anything but winning. And it took me several years to understand.

And please watch the video by Seelaws that smokeymcpot provided, it's SFV and not everything works the same way in SF6, but it's probably the best fundamentals/mentality guide you can find.

I hope this was of any help to you.

[Lysamus]

I love fighting games, but I wish they offered more direction to help players who are struggling. I'll do my best to provide some for you OP.

1.) If your metrics bother you, turn them off. You can switch off stats like rank displays in the HUD and steer clear of your profile page. As someone who also wrestles with ladder anxiety, it helps. It's 100% true that none of that matters anyway because . . .

2.) Setting smaller goals and achieving them will propel you forward when wins aren't coming. Each match, even hilariously one sided ones, can be an opportunity to improve. Find something that's giving you trouble (Maybe jump ins. Maybe drive impacts. Maybe opponents who block everything, etc), find an answer to it, practice that answer in the next match. The training room has some pre-genned modules that can help you practice against common scenarios.

3.) Can't find an answer? Post here and ask for help or google it and see what others recommend. You'll have to wade through some fragile player responses but there's always someone who can help.

4.) Can't figure out what you're doing wrong? Watch your replays in the replay section. Being outside the moment can help when analyzing.

5.) Need a more specific starting point? Use the beginner combo trials to find a simple combo and a simple anti-air. Go into your next match and focus on defense/blocking. Try to guess if an attack is coming high or low and defend the best you can.
- Anti air if they jump
- Use your simple combo if they over-commit (like using a dragon punch)
- Throw or light attack if they try to throw you.
- Drive impact them back if they try to Drive impact you. You can use your simple combo afterwards.

I hope these tips help. Wins may not come right away, but feeling like you're playing better is motivational. If you keep eliminating your mistakes and teaching yourself to capitalize on opportunities, you will eventually corner victory and seize it.

[nwad]

I just watched my friend go 0-20 against an obvious pro player in the battle hub. I said it was incredibly depressing to watch, and he said it was great because he was learning important match-up knowledge. He got a little closer to winning each time. I'm not sure how develop that mindset, but I want it, because it looks a lot more fun than getting frustrated and giving up.

[Blazikasu]

Someone already linked Ceelows and that's good for character gameplans, but lemme also suggest Zaferino's series on fundamentals in youtube. There's a ton of stuff you'll have to learn because you're competing with people with experience and putting in enough effort to equalize the field is the only way forward.

[linuxgaming]

Get comfortable with the buttons first, and do repetitive actions in training mode. If you're new, don't look at stats you could view replays if you want, but went new you may not understand what you're doing wrong.



Two choices, just pound out matches and see what sticks (which will work until a point) or spend time in training.

[DiscoShark]

Decouple success with wins and losses. You're in a genre where there are a metric ton of different aspects that contribute to winning and losing and being asked to improve on all of them all at once can be a daunting task. Try to focus on small things that you can consider victories regardless of win or loss in a match, here are some examples.

1. Have you noticed your opponent getting free jump ins on you? Spend a match focusing on making sure you antiair as many of your opponent's jumps as possible. Use your antiair normals and specials to knock them out of the air for trying to jump at you.

2. Do you find yourself losing to a lot of Drive Impact? Focus on getting comfortable with using drive impact to counter your opponent's attempts. Set a training dummy to do a series of random moves with one of them being drive impact and practice getting comfortable countering your opponents drive impacts with your own.

3. Are you having trouble getting specials out when you want them to? Focus on making sure your inputs are clean and come out exactly as you wish them to when you need them, this can includes specials and supers. Success is you having as few missed inputs as possible.

Little things like this will help you improve in SF6, and your bar for success should be focused entirely on improving the little things as you first start playing.

[Box Of Fireworks]

Originally posted by Darth Revan:

https://imgur.com/a/OY4KPxb

There's something incredibly depressing about losing 50 games in a row.

Edit: This was all in ranked. Won my first placement match against an afk. Lost every match thereafter.

training mode may man. gotta put hours in on the character you wanna play and learn them combos off by heart. then set cpu level to high and try and pull of the combos under pressure. then look at good players who use your character on youtube and learn how they use the character to its fullest potential.

[Xion]

I probably should have explained a bit more in the original post. I didn't just 'jump straight into online' as some people have claimed. I have 15 hours ish in SF6, and around 10 of those are in world tour.

I've only played in ranked so apparently I'm only going against beginners, but I seem to be getting juggled a lot and stuck in combos.

I played quite a lot in practice before heading online with Juri. It's great seeing all her moves in practice, but trying to remember them all is what's getting me. I've heard a lot of people say don't use modern controls because you lose out on a lot of moves, so I'm tried with classic. I also don't really like how assisted combos force you to use your supers.

My biggest issue is trying to remember the special moves off the top of my head, and also learn / remember which moves can combo into what, and the timings of everything.