How difficult is it to be even remotely good?

[Kreddi]

My only Smash experience is from the Nintendo 64 I had as a kid.
I have close-to-zero fighting game experience as well.

If I just wanna jump into the game and fight against similar experienced, how likely is the match-maker to give me decent-quality games?

[awanderingswordsman]

Right now day 1? Not very likely. In a few days or even a week? Probably not too bad.

[Johnknight1]

Depends what you mean "good." If you mean beat the best in the world, that will takes ages.

If you mean do good in average level ranked play, probably not as tough as you think, especially while the game is fresh.

The best way to get to that point is to enter training mode or do an arcade run, play a few characters, find a character or two you like, and plug away learning. Then after that, probably do some casual online matches. Then once you get a feel for that, keep going back to training mode and figure out things you are missing. Then do ranked.

That is a bit of a time commitment, but if you treat it like what it is (a game), it should be a fun learning experience!

[SapphicSlime]

Yeah it can take a bit, but my suggestion is to find a character you like, and learn the game with them. Something odd I've learned is that if you don't want to get stomped online, maybe play ranked? You'll struggle at first but in time you'll be in your skill level and get good consistent games where you have a shot at winning.

I'll mention though that this game isn't as kind as it should be to new players. Soon enough there will be detailed and helpful tutorials like in the first game though. Another suggestion might be to learn the game with a friend?

[Many-Named]

it takes thousands of hours to become really good at these games, you have to play because you enjoy it, not to ''become good'' and then you become good over time.

[Kreddi]

I maybe should change the title: I'm fine with not being good, as long as I'm getting matched with similar skilled players. It's more of a question about how good the match-maker is, which I've already gotten some answers on.
Thank you all for letting me know!

Originally posted by Evie:

Another suggestion might be to learn the game with a friend?

None of my friends enjoy fighting games :(

[Earthworm Jim]

Originally posted by Johnknight1:

Depends what you mean "good." If you mean beat the best in the world, that will takes ages.

If you mean do good in average level ranked play, probably not as tough as you think, especially while the game is fresh.

The best way to get to that point is to enter training mode or do an arcade run, play a few characters, find a character or two you like, and plug away learning. Then after that, probably do some casual online matches. Then once you get a feel for that, keep going back to training mode and figure out things you are missing. Then do ranked.

That is a bit of a time commitment, but if you treat it like what it is (a game), it should be a fun learning experience!

Kreddi said "even remotely good", of course OP doesn't mean best in the world, why would you assume that????

[HighLanderPony]

Game's hard, buckle your pants.

Doesn't mean you can't have fun at a lower level though. Team modes and FFAs are less sweaty than 1v1s.

[The Hungry Werewolf]

Just go VS CPUs in VS mode. Start from level 1 and then work your way up. Then try casual matches online.

Fighting games take a lot of practice in general to get good. There really are no shortcuts, that goes for Smash, this game, Street Fighter, Tekken, anything really. If you want to get good and compete, you have to dedicate yourself to a lot of practice, and you have to accept that you will lose a lot of matches at first, but you will improve over time as you learn the game mechanics. Just try to relax and have fun.

So, short answer, it kinda depends.

[GiveMeCake]

You can catch up to 90% of players in about 700+ hours, but you will probably never catch up to the last 10%. The quality of your matches will be all over the place until you get a baseline of knowledge and muscle memory. There is always the chance that the game will fall off in player count and only the sweats will be playing after a month.

[The Hungry Werewolf]

Originally posted by GiveMeCake:

You can catch up to 90% of players in about 700+ hours, but you will probably never catch up to the last 10%. The quality of your matches will be all over the place until you get a baseline of knowledge and muscle memory. There is always the chance that the game will fall off in player count and only the sweats will be playing after a month.

With the promise of new character every few months, people will come back. You're gonna see random player spikes. Happened in RoA1 too. The dropoff is natural, though. Happens with all fighting games.

[awanderingswordsman]

I mean, while it happens with most fighting games, it also kills most fighting games. Outside of like strive, street fighter, and tekken, most fighting games several months old don't even get above 1k players (and many struggle to hit 100), and most the players that are there have been playing the game for that entire time and the franchise for 10+ years.

The fgc keeps brainstorming "how do we get casuals and new players" partially because a matchmaking system doesn't really work, unless theres sufficient numbers of players in all skill levels.

And yeah people will come back with new content, but they will leave faster and faster cause the average skill level will go up and up leaving the players that left and just came back further and further behind each time.

[G I N S Ξ N G]

Match-making has been god awful for at least the first few games, I lose against someone with 990 MMR and so the game puts me against someone with 1,100 in the next one - just in my second placement match. 1,049 after that, and the rest were people who played the betas and clearly knew what they were doing.

I don't expect to be good at the game since I've just picked it up, but I really wish the matchmaking would actually put me with people who are my own skill level.