Too late to start?

[Yudan]

Am I too late to the game to start now. Aspirations to be a pro.

[Castyles]

Nowadays you start running into trouble already at like Bronze 4 and, at launch, it was at Platinum 1. So yeah. Pretty much.

It all depends on your mInDsEt and FuNdAmEnTaLz, though.

[Agoraphobic Meep]

To be a “pro”? Maybe a bit ambitious if this is literally your first SF, but it’s never too late to just drop in and have fun learning.

[Tsaalyo]

You never know how far you'll go until you try.

[Over]

is the ranking system good? how does it work?

[al64inthedark]

There are people like me who were there at the start and haven't improved much lol.
But we know the characters tho, it is really needed.

[dinaru]

Hard to say. Were you born after 2010? Kind of tough to parachute in if you're already losing young reflexes.

With regards to the game's release itself, absolutely not. We literally didn't even have our first balance patch, and depending on how that goes we might have ourselves an entire new game to explore.

[Tsaalyo]

Originally posted by Over:

is the ranking system good? how does it work?

It's okay. Golds are definitely better than Bronzes, but the skill gap isn't as much as it probably should be. Still, you'll need a few months to climb if you're new.

Above all, don't get discouraged by losses. I went through a few weeks of getting wrecked before I figured out what I was doing.

[Peddie]

Although if you go in with the idea of making money out of this you'll be disappointed. There are obviously no restrictions to entering Capcom Cup qualifiers and any major offline tournament will welcome you as long as you pay your registration fees and bring your own controller, but you have to be consciously aware that the odds are extremely high that in your first several attempts you'll just drown in pools and come nowhere near the brackets where you start making money.

Now if you live in urban America you might have odds of having a locals near you where you can gain a lot of experience fairly quickly by going against other very experienced players and playing in their tournaments for like $20 there, but if you seriously want to play this as a career choice you're frankly better off trying your luck in CS:GO or Dota. And even then it's a game of musical where maybe a hundred people can do it as their sole source of income and there's tens of thousands of participants circling those chairs.

In SF6 there's maybe 20 chairs, if we're being very optimistic. Sure top 48 through 24 will get $2000 each at Capcom Cup X but that's basically going to keep the lights on for a month in a lot of places. And if you're unsponsored you'll lose most of it on the flight and hotel costs unless you happen to live in LA. And most other tournaments only pay out to top 8, and not nearly as much.

[Ersatz]

Originally posted by Yudan:

Am I too late to the game to start now.

No, the game is great and there's still loads of people playing.

Originally posted by Yudan:

Aspirations to be a pro.

This is a bit more tricky and depends on your fighting game experience. Have you won anything in anything before? Are you a pro in those games? If not and you don't already have a storied history with the genre and are started from the position of a normal person, you're going to have commit to basically giving up your entire life and playing solidly to have even the fraction of a percentage chance of making it.

Either that or just be some sort of prodigy who immediately groks the game.

[Scrub]

If your aspirations are to become a pro and you're worried about it being too late to start, you need to have a serious talk with yourself over your commitment.

Just play it or don't

[Everchosen]

Originally posted by dinaru:

Hard to say. Were you born after 2010? Kind of tough to parachute in if you're already losing young reflexes.

With regards to the game's release itself, absolutely not. We literally didn't even have our first balance patch, and depending on how that goes we might have ourselves an entire new game to explore.

Worth nothing that a huge chunk of top players are in their mid 30s to early 40s. Fighting games don't really leverage reflexes the same way other competitive games do.

Muscle memory, experience and system mastery are far more important than having cracked reflexes. It definitely helps to have above average reflexes, but it's not a massive advantage.

[Agoraphobic Meep]

Originally posted by Everchosen:

Originally posted by dinaru:

Hard to say. Were you born after 2010? Kind of tough to parachute in if you're already losing young reflexes.

With regards to the game's release itself, absolutely not. We literally didn't even have our first balance patch, and depending on how that goes we might have ourselves an entire new game to explore.

Worth nothing that a huge chunk of top players are in their mid 30s to early 40s. Fighting games don't really leverage reflexes the same way other competitive games do.

Muscle memory, experience and system mastery are far more important than having cracked reflexes. It definitely helps to have above average reflexes, but it's not a massive advantage.

This is the answer, (most) top fighting game players have decades long history with the franchise. Even younger competitors like big bird and punk still started out with USF4 and generally older fighting games, although they didn't start placing well till they started competing in 5 and 6.

They still easily had over a decade of experience in fighting games before they even came close to being serious competitors, because that's just how long it takes to get full fundamental mastery of the games sometimes. You have the occasional prodigy that steps in, but for the most part it's dedicated long time players of fighting games that make up the pro league.

[Patrick Wayne]

If you drop college/school/work and dedicate yourself to the game 24/7 then you can still make it.

[Rando the Crit Clown]

Originally posted by dinaru:

Hard to say. Were you born after 2010? Kind of tough to parachute in if you're already losing young reflexes.

With regards to the game's release itself, absolutely not. We literally didn't even have our first balance patch, and depending on how that goes we might have ourselves an entire new game to explore.

There are no professional 10 year old Street Fighter players.

[Zeel Ara]

It doesn't matter when you start. What matters is to understand that you won't be anywhere even remotely close to pro level until you've played fighting games seriously for 5-10 years. If you're not willing to put in that amount of effort then you stand as much chance of becoming a pro as you stand of becoming the next Mike Tyson.

Or you could just play the game to have fun and then see what happens, like everyone else.