Definition of beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc.

[beans]

What are your definitions of the words beginner, intermediate, and advanced?

I only ask because I've seen people of wildly varying skill levels in lobbies with these kinds of names.

[•C]

Hard to define.

You can be a beginner to Skullgirls and not be a beginner to fighters. They can be a person who has his fighting game fundamentals in check and pick up SG fairly easily. In a few days, they could have themselves a BnB and a team, but they'd be a still beginner to SG. By that logic, a beginner-to-the-fighting-genre would see the beginner-to-SG as an Intermediate, and the Intermediate could call himself a Beginner.

Neither of them are wrong, because it ultimately depends on the context you're talking about. But that discussion (at least on the Steam discussions here) rarely ever comes up. The beginner-to-fighters 9 out of 10 times will see the beginner-to-SG as a seal clubber, not recognize his own mistakes in his play, and start claiming that the game is bad because of Infinites.

Honestly, because of everything possible in Skullgirls' gameplay, I actually think it's a really bad beginner fighter. I think SF3 Third Strike is a better fighter for beginners to learn because it has a far slower pace, much less emphasis on combos, and a way less complex defensive mechanic. I get that SG gets praise on that mainly for its in-depth tutorial, but the game itself is too fast paced for people genuinely trying to learn the genre.

[Trecil]

That's a tough question to give an answer on, but I'll do my best to convey my opinion.

To me, a beginner is someone who has little to no understanding of the genre. They don't really understand the importance of spacing, they haven't figured out what their normals are and when they should try to use them, and they don't realize specials are merely tools and not the only things you should be throwing out. That should give you some idea of the type of person I consider to be a beginner. Nothing wrong with beginners (we all are at some point) or people who just want to have fun. Kudos to them for wanting to play the game.

After that step everything starts to become a bit grayer. There is a separation between knowledge and execution. For example, someone could have total understanding of every character's frame data and know what moves counter others best and still have trouble getting wins because they have failed to practice execution. I won't discredit that person's knowledge of fighting games because they have put in the time to understand how the game works. They just have trouble acting more on instinct when actually in the fight. I consider someone who has started to learn these concepts to be intermediate. Maybe not always intermediate in performance, but they have my respect.

If there is a mark of an advanced player, it's someone who has a fair amount of knowledge about the game and can execute everything with a high percentage of success. They don't have to be good with playing every character, but they know what to do and can do it (for the most part) on reaction against every character. However, it's impossible for me to know for a fact whether or not they can perform the execution unless I see them play. If I run into someone online I'll assume they're advanced, but I try to play just well enough until I can discern whether or not they actually know what they are doing (Personally I don't want to demolish a beginner and I also don't want to tell my opponent everything I know right out the gate).

TLDR
A beginner is someone who has little knowledge of the fighting genre and by that I mean fundamentals, spacing, etc. Once I know that they understand these concepts, I just assume that they are advanced out of respect.

Hope that was somewhat clear.

[UA | Receita Federal]

beginner is someone who plays fukua

[The Dave]

• Newbie: How do I launch game? What's a fireball?
  
  
• Beginner: I can has combo meter? Able to reliably perform most specials and a general bnb for their preferred team.
  
  
• Intermediate: Reliable resets, mixups, burst baits, and strategy in play; generally able to tell what's going on
  
  
• Advanced: Play well enough thta Intermediate can't tell what's going on.

Seems to me a good way to gauge your skill level is to compete in an online competition and see where you place. If you can reliably win a beginner tourney, you're probably Intermediate. If you can win Mid, you're probably Advanced. If you win Advanced, you probably already know how good you are.

Somebody better than I am is probably better suited to explaining the difference between Intermediate and Advanced, at that skill level it's all blurry spinning to me.

[beans]

Originally posted by The Dave:

Seems to me a good way to gauge your skill level is to compete in an online competition and see where you place. If you can reliably win a beginner tourney, you're probably Intermediate. If you can win Mid, you're probably Advanced. If you win Advanced, you probably already know how good you are.

Somebody better than I am is probably better suited to explaining the difference between Intermediate and Advanced, at that skill level it's all blurry spinning to me.

I haven't chimed in until now because this was more of a survey than a question, but that sounds pretty interesting. I've heard of beginner tournaments in other fighting games, but I didn't think there would be any here for some reason. I'll have to try some intermediate tourneys.

[EAiscool]

Originally posted by PeggleFrank:

Originally posted by The Dave:

Seems to me a good way to gauge your skill level is to compete in an online competition and see where you place. If you can reliably win a beginner tourney, you're probably Intermediate. If you can win Mid, you're probably Advanced. If you win Advanced, you probably already know how good you are.

Somebody better than I am is probably better suited to explaining the difference between Intermediate and Advanced, at that skill level it's all blurry spinning to me.

I haven't chimed in until now because this was more of a survey than a question, but that sounds pretty interesting. I've heard of beginner tournaments in other fighting games, but I didn't think there would be any here for some reason. I'll have to try some intermediate tourneys.

I also want to do this now. It's so hard to gauge how good I am on quick match because most of the time I'm either completely stomping someone or getting stuck in the corner by midnight hour god squigly's.

[gurlt ov ribia]

Newbie: Can not play the game on Sleepwalk. Doesn't understand the difference between light/medium/heavy punches/kicks, or how to preform quarter circles/dragon punch(/full circle)

Beginner: Can play the game on about Normal. Understands how to preform moves, but can't string hits together beyond the basic Light > Medium > Heavy or multi-hit attacks.

Intermediate: Can play the game on Hard/Nightmare. Can preform basic combos and knows how to avoid basic combos as well.

Advanced: Can flawless on Nightmare. Able to preform long combos and knows how to avoid most common mix-ups.

Em El Gee Haxorus: Plays Online. Can string together combos that last much too long for their own good, and can avoid almost all mix-ups.

[UA | Receita Federal]

lol, it is really easy to flawless on nightmare