I am in the bottom 10 of the entire ranked leaderboard

[Deltau]

Am I doing something wrong? Or are people really just this good? Just picked up the game, I can do basic movement tech like shorthops and wavedashing from past SSB experience, but nowhere near a great player. Yet even at stone rank or whatever it's called, people seem leagues beyond what I can do. I can't even land hits let alone take a stock on people who are like rank 500. I got matched against a couple silvers and it was an absolute massacre. I tried casual but it's almost worse, despite picking "beginner" when prompted. The only reason I can think is that a game like this is probably fairly niche to a small group of people who are already very good at platform fighters, and just not very noob friendly.

[Deltau]

jk I'm now second to last lol

[Chammy]

I down there with ya, buddy. I'm a fairly competent fighting game player, but the Rivals II community has been obliterating me. I think I might have won a single match in the previous season. Currently, I can't win any, though I have taken stocks here and there. People are extremely good at this game, even at low levels. I don't mind losing and having to work for wins, but at some point I'm starting to wonder if I'm lacking some kind of fundamental knowledge.

[ATalksToSelf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Deltau:

The only reason I can think is that a game like this is probably fairly niche to a small group of people who are already very good at platform fighters, and just not very noob friendly.

This would be correct. Most players still playing Rivals 2 have prior platform fighter experience, whether that's Rivals 1, Melee, PM, Ultimate, etc. Since it's also a smaller community, and the game currently lacks a lot of casual content, the community overall is more hardcore.

I'm currently bronze but was placed in stone for most of ranked lite (what we had before this current ranked season started). I'm probably only higher cause I've only been playing Olympia so far and people are still learning her match up. Either way, I get the feeling.

If you're looking to improve, there is a discord server for lower level players you could join (https://discord.gg/A63yMyQkDw)! It's a good place to play games with others your rank or to get tips and feedback from those in higher ranks.

[Deltau]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Chammy:

I down there with ya, buddy. I'm a fairly competent fighting game player, but the Rivals II community has been obliterating me. I think I might have won a single match in the previous season. Currently, I can't win any, though I have taken stocks here and there. People are extremely good at this game, even at low levels. I don't mind losing and having to work for wins, but at some point I'm starting to wonder if I'm lacking some kind of fundamental knowledge.

Glad to know I'm not the only one. I've noticed even the lower ranked players are spot on with their shields it has been constantly catching me off guard, that's probably my biggest weak point right now. Feels like they shield every hit then mix it up and punish when I try to anticipate and grab instead, my reaction time is just not there yet. Gonna stick with it and try to improve I suppose.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ATalksToSelf:

If you're looking to improve, there is a discord server for lower level players you could join (https://discord.gg/A63yMyQkDw)! It's a good place to play games with others your rank or to get tips and feedback from those in higher ranks.

Thanks for this! I'll check out the server.

[ATalksToSelf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Deltau:

Thanks for this! I'll check out the server.

Np! I hope it's useful to you!

[Songbird]

Some of the fundamental stuff:
Can you tech?
Do you use DI? (Generally a minimum of holding away at early percents, possibly down while grounded, and holding up + in against most kill moves.)
Do you use shield? Do you know how to jump and grab out of shield? (There are other options like up special, upsmash, and wavedash, but these are the first two to learn.)
Do you know how to recover with your character from different heights? Can you pick between the ledge and onstage when you need to?
Do you know how to walljump during your recovery?

Which character are you maining?

How are you losing stocks? Are you being killed off the sides/top, or are you failing to recover and dying off the bottom?
How long are your opponents living?
Do your opponents always get to punish you in the same way, e.g. you hit their shield and they grab or hit you, or you attack them and they jump/step back and counterattack when you miss?

[Abandon Reason]

Most people online came from Melee/Smash and they have no chill, expect to be fugged without remorse.

[Chammy]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Songbird:

Some of the fundamental stuff:
Can you tech?
Do you use DI? (Generally a minimum of holding away at early percents, possibly down while grounded, and holding up + in against most kill moves.)
Do you use shield? Do you know how to jump and grab out of shield? (There are other options like up special, upsmash, and wavedash, but these are the first two to learn.)
Do you know how to recover with your character from different heights? Can you pick between the ledge and onstage when you need to?
Do you know how to walljump during your recovery?

Which character are you maining?

How are you losing stocks? Are you being killed off the sides/top, or are you failing to recover and dying off the bottom?
How long are your opponents living?
Do your opponents always get to punish you in the same way, e.g. you hit their shield and they grab or hit you, or you attack them and they jump/step back and counterattack when you miss?

If I may at least poke my head in a little bit for these questions... What do you do if you don't really understand most of these things like DI or teching in the first place? I did the in-game tutorials, so I feel like I know some of this stuff, but most of the fundamentals you list aren't covered, especially not on a per-character basis. It makes it really hard to learn by using just what the game itself teaches you.

For instance, I'm playing Fleet and Olympia mostly now. I really like Fleet, but I feel like I have no idea how to take stocks. Opponents live until super high percentages and I sometimes get lucky with a side or up-smash. However, they hit me with a normal attack before I've even come close to 100%, and I seem to fly off of the stage no matter which direction I'm holding. Recovery with Fleet is easy, but it doesn't matter if I can't seem to figure out how to mount my offense. I can take stocks from computer opponents just fine, but players feel somehow like they just don't fly as far or take hits as hard.

Olympia is fun and feels easier to understand in terms of offense, especially once I understood that her up+special is pretty good in terms of getting KOs from the ceiling. However, I'm never quite sure what to do after crystalizing an opponent, and recovery feels really rough. Even landing blows on enemies feels weirdly challenging. So, again, they get to high percentages and seem to cling to life.

I feel like the game could really benefit from a "This is how you're supposed to play" tutorial and some kind of in-game movelist that points out good moves to use for securing stocks or gives you drills and tips for recovering with your specific character.

[Songbird]

Pretty much all of that stuff is on Youtube in beginner guides. I listed DI and teching because they're what you have to make getting hit not literally kill you from 0. If you miss techs, you basically give your opponent completely free combo extensions that would never work otherwise. If you don't DI at all, moves that send straight vertically will just combo into themselves for like 40-60 damage instead of maybe two hits, and other low-knockback moves will carry you across the whole stage.

If you prefer to read instead, there is an extremely detailed wiki with images, clips, detailed data, and so much more: https://dragdown.wiki/wiki/RoA2. In particular, the System Mechanics section goes into great detail about all the universal mechanics.

DI is just holding a direction as you get launched to change the launch angle. Because this isn't trying to change the distance, only the angle, it only works if you hold an angle that isn't parallel to your launch trajectory. If you get hit upwards and slightly away from your opponent, holding away from them, or down and away, will influence your launch angle so you get sent farther away from them. Holding up and in will mean you get sent more vertically and less horizontally. The actual effect will depend on the launch angle of the move, with holding directly perpendicular having the maximum effect of changing your launch angle by 18 degrees. This helps you escape combos sooner (by being sent out of range) and live much longer (by influencing your launch trajectory to get sent towards the corner of the blast zone instead of straight up/out the side). DI is why humans usually live much longer than CPUs (except for the ones near the end of hard arcade mode which have much better survival DI than the normal ones, even level 9s). The CPU DIs largely randomly.

There is also SSDI, ASDI, and floorhugging, which are all related to shifting yourself slightly at the exact moment you get hit by an attack, and crouch cancelling, which can nullify hits that wouldn't launch you above a certain speed; at a very basic level, the first thing to learn about these is that holding down while grounded at low percents can let you counterattack when hit by weak moves.

Teching is pressing shield just before you hit the ground while tumbling. You can tap the stick or double jump to get out of tumble when you're not in hitstun, but if you ever land on the ground in your tumble animation, you'll land prone. In this state, you can't do anything for 27 frames, then remain vulnerable until you do a getup option. During that whole window, you can be hit easily with anything your opponent wants. If you tech instead, you immediately go into an invincible faster getup, which can be in place or with a roll. Teching is still punishable, but it is much harder to do and doesn't give your opponent anywhere near as long to close distance with you. Even a very low-level player can get strings that last until lethal damage ranges against an opponent who never techs, so it is extremely important to be able to do.

Olympia usually kills with fair or up B and aims to combo into those moves, and basically everything that launches roughly upward does so pretty easily, although upthrow will stop working if you get a bit too much damage. Fleet generally kills by tech chasing with strong attacks, catching no DI on vertically launching moves and killing with up strong's arrow near the top of the screen, edgeguarding using slow fall aerials, or with back air (which has a reverse hitbox that's very strong as well).

[Vic Viper]

I feel like the game could really benefit from a "This is how you're supposed to play" tutorial and some kind of in-game movelist that points out good moves to use for securing stocks or gives you drills and tips for recovering with your specific character.

It was there in RoA 1 for each character and it's supposed to come out later, but even without those, I'm a little puzzled how the lack of tutorials is a flaw that can only apply to current RoA 2 and not to every single Smash game since 1999 (not necessarily targeted towards you, but quite a few people point the lack of tutorials as a major flaw while Smash has even less ressources). Smash doesn't even have a single interactive tutorial in over 25 years.

Back when I played Melee, I spent the first few days thinking Mario's tornado attack was a full circle + B. Only the manual clued me in, and without it I definitely wouldn't have guessed that tapping B would've made me float.

Right now we got the 101 Beginner tutorials for each character that's on their Youtube page. The Quick Start video in the ingame Tutorials tab serves the same purpose as Smash's sole tutorial for 25 years. The New Player Guide has a summary of everyone's moveset and links to the 101 Beginner tutorials. While not ideal, nobody's left with nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM5C3GlNMvg

[SwordSaint]

I used to play smash ultimate a few years back and could put any character in elite smash.. not bragging just some context. Came here and got obliterated regularly lol. I floated around 1200 ranked last season after months of grinding. A random master player will match with me sometimes in casual and just smack me around like I've never played the game its crazy. Just try to have fun but always try to improve.

[Ziack]

Man I dunno. I just played for the first time since launch and places at 965. People don't seem that good at Gold Rank if I can play better or evenly than them when I don't even play this.

[go ♥♥♥♥ myself i already did ♫]

it's hard to give blanket statements on improvement as every player has their own habits/problems -- i'd be down to help diagnose and figure out where you can focus your efforts currently if you want to add and play sometime.