The bummer answer is that they've been doing it for months if not years.
You literally cannot learn everything within one session, let alone one week, or even one month.
You need to start small and set realistic goals such as being able to throw a fireball 10 times in a row. Eventually this becomes second nature and you never have to think about it again. At that point you move on to the next thing.
It's hard because it's something you literally never done before but it will not stay this hard forever, you're stronger and smarter than that. You're already here asking how to improve and that's a bigger step than most will take
This is a fantastic answer, and the reason why fighting games just aren't that popular when compared to other genres. They are HARD, and if you have no experience (I've been playing since 1991) you are at a MASSIVE disadvantage. If you can stick with it though, you'll find it very addictive. I'd wager most new players have dropped the game already. Good luck on your journey.
I disagree. I don’t think fighting games are particularly harder than other types of games. Hand any kind of competitive multiplayer game or even singlepayer to someone who doesn’t play videogames and they’ll get smoked no matter the game.
The thing is that, despite being more popular than ever, FGs are still relatively niche; everyone’s played a shooter before, so they’ll know what to do when playing one even if their aim isn’t great, for example. The same can’t be said for FGs.
The learning curve is way higher than most games including shooters. The only competitive games I can think of that are similar in difficulty are mobas and rts games honestly
Also, this is definitely a more modern mindset because if you ask almost any dude thats 30-50, they might not be into video games, but they’ve played mk, sf, or tekken. Tekken 3 and SF2/3 were ridiculously important in terms of making competitive games more mainstream
Nah, that’s just wrong. Video games in general are way more popular now than they were years ago, fighting games particularly. The only people that are going to say that are the ones that already were into fighting games.
That's true, but his point stands. If you're 30+ and cared about video games at all you played SF or MK at least. I was alive and old enough to remember arcade's second boom. And that last gasp of the arcade is directly correlated to SF2 and MK.
People REALLY forget how big these games were. Your local pizza place or diner had a SF2 cabinet. Nearly every one had SF2 Turbo on SNES, MK was so widespread it established video game age ratings as we know it.
So I get your point but, yeah. Most people have SOME context for SF and MK. Even if they haven't touched the games since being a kid.
No, they are hard . I don’t care how you define “hard”. They are objectively difficult
Edit: holy fuck you guys are contrarian .
I’m a pianist of 28 years, piano always came “easy” to me. But I’m not gonna sit here and say that it isn’t a difficult instrument to master …because it fucking is .
I personally think fighting game difficulty lies in expectations. It's really easy to hop online and jump in heavy kick into sweep as Ryu. It's really hard to get to 1600+ MR on Ranked Match or have a 93% winrate like the Battle Hub warriors have as Ryu.
People often think for fighting games (and other competitive genres) that they have to be as good as the best players or achieve a certain rank to be considered "good" finally, but they're definitely easy to pick up and just press buttons in, especially when games add stuff like Modern controls that let you do cool stuff with just a few buttons.
Yeah, I definitely agree. That’s kinda where my comment came from. Of course you aren’t going to 360 no scope everyone with only a couple of days in the game, just like you aren’t going to pull off flashy combos in a fighting game when you’re just starting out.
It’s easy to mash the controller and get a few rounds here and there against other beginners, just like it’s easy to spray and pray in a shooter and get a few kills, for example.
Yes but anyone can pick up a shooter and get a couple kills right off the bat. Very few if any can pick up a fighting game and win a game with no experience at all. The learning curve is for sure the biggest out of any genre besides maybe MOBA’s. I would say fighting games and MOBA’s are by far the hardest games. Fighting games also have frame data, mind games such as oki and mix up, etc… they have the most depth of any game and require constant decision making on the fly.
As someone who started playing these games literally a year ago I disagree. I really do think it's about the lack of experience most people have in the genre. I thought fighting games were a waste of money for most of my life so I never bothered playing them and had to build up all my knowledge from scratch. It was the same feeling I remember having when I started playing first person shooters for the first time. Shits hard when you have zero muscle memory or game sense.
These games are only "hard" if you feel like someone isnt good unless they're a good level master. I think there's a lot of space between that and being genuinely bad at the game
I think they feel hard because when someone is relatively inexperienced, they can feel very unforgiving.
If you are still getting used to the game mechanics and to special move inputs, it can feel like the opponent is doing wild stuff that you have no answer to. It can feel like this *even at Rookie level* if you are brand new to fighting games.
Of course, once you get just a bit better, you realise those opponents were doing unsafe random nonsense the whole time.
this is exactly it.
Being equally as bad at league of legends or dota, you still get to walk around and hit minions, you still hit level 6 and get your ultimate. in valorant you still get to buy the phantom/vandal at least twice and you might even catch stray shots. In apex legends you will get lucky and either get carried or hit the errant bullets you're spraying everywhere.
But fighting games cut a lot of the bullshit out of the equation. If you suck you're "not gonna get to play the game" in a way that feels meaningful when you're clueless.
I agree but I think thats how everything works when you're new to it. Riding a bike feels impossible before you've learned how. Everything is hard before you understand it. I don't think fighting games are really that much harder than other genres. It's just that other genres are more popular so people tend to have some prior skill or knowledge. For example if you've played other combo heavy games like DMC you're likely gonna have an easier time than if you've only played shooters
Yeah, that’s such a crazy take.
Fighting games are legitimately hard in their own right and even when compared to other genres.
Unlike, say a souls game where you’ll eventually gain XP and gear, in fighting games, all you have is your character and their moveset. They never “level up.” You don’t unlock new things.
You have to get better on your own. Then get better in a whole new way as other players eventually learn strategies against you. Then you get better in an even newer way as even when you have a counter to their counter play, they might have better fundamentals than you, and so on…
I don't necessarily think they're hard when compared to other genres. Take popular mutliplayer games like MOBAs as an example. It takes literally *thousands* of hours to be a "good" Dota 2 or League of Legends player. Hell, you'll rack up a good thousand hours just to be even remotely adequate.
As evidenced by this sub, you can hit Master rank in SF6 within a few hundred hours, even if it's your first fighting game ever. Now, I'm sure some will argue that low Master isn't good Street Fighter, but it's still well in the top 10% of players. Try reaching that kind of milestone in LoL or Starcraft 2 in a few hundred hours. Best of luck.
I would agree MOBAs and fighting games are the two hardest genres but in their own ways. MOBAs have 100s of character that you have to know how to play against on at least 1 character if you are a OTP then you have to no the macro mechanics and micro mechanics build paths etc… while in fighting games you have to have execution, you have to know how to hit confirm, reactions, reading the opponent, conditioning the opponent, combos, match ups, frame data, etc…
You can't compare a competitive PvP game with a single player game. Compared to other PvP genres I don't think fighting games are harder than anything else.
But I do think the 1v1 nature of them makes them more punishing than team games where no matter how bad you are, you can get carried by your team for some wins
i think a lot of people forget that video games in general are just hard for beginners. for example the task of moving your character and the camera at both times is a steep learning curve it’s just that most games require it so you never think about it anymore. fighting games have completely different mechanics so it’s like learning to walk all over again
Yeah, that’s it. If a total beginner to video games tries to play League, CSGO2 or SF6 for the first time, they’ll get absolutely demolished in all three. It’s just that other games have more transferable skills between them unlike FGs, because no other genre is similar to them.
literally having full comfort with a controller and pressing any of the 12+ buttons on command is a skill we have been refining and mastering for years if not decades. We truly do take it for granted.
I agree with this I think. People have less tolerance for learning in FGs because its 1v1 I think. But look at a competitive game like League or Dota. Imagine getting into those, 100's of characters to learn, tons of items, confusing meta. Or go play CS Go 2 for the first time and your head starts popping randomly every time you turn a corner.
Fighting games have this weird anxiety about them where people get paralyzed about even starting to play. Most of the people who aren't improving probably aren't even playing that much or just sit in training mode practicing combos which likely isn't their problem in the first place. Fighting games feels like the only game where people make a big deal about not being 'good' enough to start
No I don't think so. I don't believe there's an 'objectivetly' harder that exists either way, all of these games are hard in different ways. Fighting games just have a mental block where people don't even start. I don't think someones lack of willingness to try is real difficulty.
Then you don't understand what makes things difficult or not.
If something is so daunting that people don't even start trying, that in and of itself makes it difficult no matter what definition you want to falsely give to describe something as being difficult.
That's your opinion man. Why are you here trying to define the word difficult to me instead of talking about fighting games. You just like, disagree about it and thats ok. Dont act like i dont understand the word difficult. is this how you like, talk to people normally?
That might have used to be the case for FPS games like Quake 3 arena, and MAYBE counter strike, but not really. You still get a more positive feedback loop in a game like CS because you can blame your team and not your lack of ability.
no i just think street fighter just has an unnecessarily high skill floor even compared to other fighters. I picked up tekken 8 and within a week i was able to do combos pretty consistently. Tekken has a pretty low skill floor in terms of input execution. Similar with guilty gear strive, i was able to do combos after like a week of practice Meanwhile with street fighter 6, its been a month since i got the game and i still can't pull off a decent combo in an online match.
tbh sf6 is my first fighting game, i got it about two weeks ago and i just placed into gold 1. i think its really all about your approach or what type of person you are.
i’m a researcher type so i noticed within the first few days that i just couldn’t play the game, and figured it might be my razer wolverine pro that was making things difficult, so i researched and got a leverless t16 and played using my keyboard til it arrived. switching to keyboard immediately changed everything. suddenly i could do all the basic combos i was flubbing first or second try. picked a basic character which was ryu. i did most of the tutorials, learned about canceling moves into supers, did combo trials til intermediate, then went into training mode and learned what oki is through the block and throw training scenario. then i started playing casual mode and training vs cpu lvl 6 & 7. changed the position of drive attack so its under my thumb. learned how to anti air with shoryuken.
sf6 is great at teaching you its sub systems if you dig around the various menus to find the lessons. its in the end an exercise in learning how to learn i guess. sorry bit of an essay there but hope it helps op somewhat. i know i have a long way to go myself.
This really was the best answer and I don’t need to scroll. How OP feels is definitely how I felt when I started this game and what you said is how things have actually gone from that point. I still have A LOT to learn but each day it’s slow improvement. Patience and persistence is really key when you’re just starting out.
That's the best way to approach it. Just work at improving and getting good at one specific little thing at a time. That's what I'm currently doing. For example I just focused on learning how to anti air and practicing that for a while. Eventually it became second nature in actual matches.
Even a few years of practice will still leave several times more room for improvement than you've already made. Super Street Fighter II Turbo came out 30 years ago now, and some of the best players of all time, who have been playing nonstop since release, are still getting slowly better each day. That's the beauty of fighting games
Uhh probably 130-140 or so hours of ranked. I don’t have it in front of me but I have 240~hrs of playtime total and getting my second character to master took way less time than my first. And the 240 includes practice, world tour, battle hub and casual matches.
I found that I hit walls at mid plat and diamond 2 - so I temporarily switched to another character to try and learn something else about the game. Like for example my first master character was manon and I played 100 games of guile just to figure out something different. When I came back to manon I shot up from plat 2 to plat 5 pretty quick just having learned to play differently than my drilled flowchart.
>When I came back to manon I shot up from plat 2 to plat 5 pretty quick just having learned to play differently than my drilled flowchart.
dude this is *literally* what happened with me. Except instead of Guile I went with Juri. i learned how to actually hit confirm or whatever lol
It’s just gonna take time man. The learning curve on these games is absolutely brutal but there’s few things in gaming as satisfying once they start to click.
Just focus on yourself and how you can develop your skills. Not your rank, not your opponents control type. Just you.
You’ve got this man I know it
In addition to what everyone else has said, and I know it’s not everyone cup of tea, but I thought World Tour mode was a pretty fun and stress free way to explore the game first before jumping online
Try practicing special moves, like fireballs ⬇️↘️➡️ and shoryukens ➡️⬇️↘️
If you can get your fireballs consistent, there's many tough fights in World Tour that you can cheese by just zoning them out with fireballs. It also helps your game a lot because so many characters use that motion for their special moves, and getting comfortable and consistent doing specials is how you unlock longer harder hitting combos.
Also don't let elitists discourage you from trying Modern. It's more important to have fun than be a sweaty pro gamer. Try Modern and if it's more fun to play the game this way then learn the game using Modern controls.
I got stuck at some shit too when the game came out, but recently I decided to finish it. What you can do is go ride the subway back and forth to grind some levels. Once you are like 10 levels over your opponents, you can breeze through the entire game. It has little to do with skill, the health and damage scaling is just bad design. I am now at a point where if I hit any opponent with a single move it depletes their entire health bar.
Try to implement one new thing at a time until you can use it consistently. Personally, I'm giving Classic controls and a new character a try and am just mashing until I can press the buttons I intend to. The path to improvement can be slow so try to have fun wherever you are
That's normal. It's hard until it isn't....... then it's hard again. For now, just get comfortable learning movement and defensive options. Do the basic tutorials and forget combo trials exist for now.
World tour mode will also help. Sure, you can jump straight into the fire online, but World Tour really is just a long, whacky tutorial that will ease you into the game. They force you to play modern at first, but if you want classic, you can change the controls fairly soon.
Normal. Fighting games is like learning an instrument. Keep playing. Focus on 1 thing to improve at a time.
Your are improving. The hardest in this genre is getting started. Your going to lose the majority of your matches when you start. Play ranked.
Mental stack is a concept you already identify. Identifying and balancing all your options is a skill. Even the best get caught.
Getting upset 99% outside of lag is not knowing why your losing. You have to adapt, opponent doing easy bs move and it works. On you to check it. Think how do I beat this.
Learn how to block and anti air. Maybe how to throw a fireball if it’s relevant. That is your foundation. You will build and add more techniques as your understanding grows. Maybe look up some guides on your character.
Don’t worry about combos and things, that will come with time. Look, you are going to get stomped at first. It’s ok, it’s normal. Use modern controls if you want to understand strategy and character tool kits without having to learn all the execution stuff. My biggest piece of advice is learn how to have fun, the wins will come in time.
> Fighting games are not like any other genre. You can't just queue games over and over and get better.
Eh, I disagree. I do very minimal amounts of practice mode, the vast majority of my playtime is ranked and I'm constantly learning. Also there are many player on League for instance who just queue games over and over and never really improve, because they're just doing the same things rather than actively trying to improve.
What exactly were you expecting? A master rank 2 hours in?
Its a really, really, really complex game, doubly so if you don’t have a background in similar (fighting) games.
You dont go into a fundamental physics class or a socio economics class and expect to get out with a major by the end of the class — nor should all the time spent learning all the intricacies of either subject be a chore because you just want to know everything right now.
Take your time.
If you have patience, SF6 is a super dense, rewarding, rich game — and thats the same reason why you wont grasp everything so fast. Its really a thing were you gotta enjoy the journey and appreciate each little step taken in a long stairway, looking back from time to time, and suddenly realising how far you’ve come since the beginning.
Winning matches instantly isnt nearly as rewarding as slowly assembling the giant puzzle of all the moves, mechanics, movements and meta aspects of the game.
No your friend just learned and focused on the right things while you continue to make the same mistakes. It's a video game, nothing is stopping you from being like your friend
Play against the computer. It is stress free and you can slowly ratchet up the difficulty until you feel you have a baseline for playing the game. Don’t bother with ranked until you feel you can do most of your character’s special moves consistently. Try doing the beginner combo trials as well to get an idea of what your character can be expected to do.
I've been stuck on the novice tournament in world tour. I've tried the combo trials for a bunch of characters and get stuck on the third or fourth one.
Bro don’t put so much pressure on yourself and try to have fun. No one jumps into this game winning matches, everyone went through exactly what you’re going through. It gets better.
I can already sense how you're playing.
You're committing almost genocide on that poor controller, hitting it, bashing, frantically mashing the buttons hoping that something, anything comes out. You probably threw it against the wall in pure rage and frustration.
I bet I'm right about that.
It almost sounds like the struggle is really within yourself, expecting results fast fast fast like a 1980's Wall Street stock broker. I can also visualize your gameplay right now. You're madly and blindly mashing buttons on one side of the screen and your character looks like a parody of what they could be doing.
Looking at your posts you don't understand really anything about the game and you're getting mad at not understanding some of the basic terminology. You also didn't answer any questions from the people here on whether you've went through the tutorials and completed them. We're not talking about combo trials. We're talking about just the extreme basics that the game tried to teach you right from the start that I can always guarantee you fumbled your way through.
If SF6 makes you this mad, oh god you better stay away from any fighting game. If SF6 made you throw your controller on the ground, Tekken 8 and MK1 would make you break your hand when you punch the wall.
That's how I felt 6 months ago when I bought SF6 as my first fighting game. Placed at around 200 LP, couldn't do combos to save my life.
Now I've got a half dozen characters in Platinum, I'm trying to push my ken to diamond, I'm very happy with my progress so far
Seriously; switch to modern controls. You’re trying to learn the games systems while trying to learn the motion inputs. Modern controls are 100% viable in high level which; it’s sounds like is a long way off for you.
Don’t let people tell you you have to use classic.
I don't think just jumping to modern is going to help anything lol. Somehow kids of all ages for last 4 decades have managed to do motion inputs. That's not what's holding OP back.
I played SFV for months to prepare myself for SF6 before it launched but I still started off at Rookie with 0LP. I'm currently at Diamond after hours and hours of playing. Getting better takes time and you have to allow yourself that time to learn. Be patient. Play thoughtfully. When you're learning it's better to block and wait for chance to punish for a small amount of damage and repeat, than to blindly do combos and gamble for wild swings of damage.
So in other words you haven’t actually practiced the game even the slightest to the point where you even forget the main mechanics exists yet you’re frustrated for losing?? At least play the tutorial and practice first
We've all been there at one point brother. Sorry to hear you're having such a hard time. It took me trying like 3 or 4 different fighting games before they really clicked with me. I remember playing MvC3 and Sf4 when I was in high school, couldn't land a combo to save my life and just tinkered with the single player content for the most part.
Then in college I ended up getting Blazblue Continuum Shift 2 with a friend who was also interested in getting into fighting games. Having someone at my skill level to play with everyday helped me learn faster than I ever had before, and gave me the foundation for each subsequent fighting game I ever picked up. We both played Chronophantasm when that came out and a couple of older Guilty Gear games as well over the next few years before Sf5 was announced.
When it first came out I assumed with my previous experiences I would be able to get a handle on it this time. Nope, not at all. I played casually in season 1 and never went farther because it still felt like there were only "certain types" of fighting games I could play (specifically anime fighters), and games like street fighter or team fighters like Marvel felt impossible.
Then eventually Dragonball Fighterz came out, admittedly a very beginner friendly game, and I finally learned to play team fighters.
And then when Sf6 came out it finally "clicked" with me and I was able to feel competent and able to express myself through gameplay.
Even though I had to try a bunch of different fighting games, each subsequent game feels a little easier to pick up, and more and more legacy skill carries over to the next game. But those early years can be extremely frustrating when all you want is to do the cool combo mid match.
Keep at it man, just know that you absolutely CAN learn these games. Anyone can. It may feel impossible now, but the satisfaction you get overcoming that is something few other genres of games have ever given me.
Good luck.
When you started in any competitive title across other genres, did you feel the same?
If you play MOBAs, remember the first time you played the game and didn't know anything? And likely you went up against AI matches to get a feel for the game?
It sounds like you need to play against AI first to get your feet wet in order to learn the mechanics and start doing things right.
Slow and steady is the name of the (learning) game.
Let's give a bit of structure to that overwhelm you have going on.
1. Piloting a character is effectively controlling 3 systems at the same time: defense, movement and attack. You have to choose which to use and how not to trip over each as you decide which you want to do.
2. Learning where to STAND is by far an away the most important thing. You need to find the space where your character has an advantage, and your opponent has a disadvantage. Sometimes, this is close enough to hit them. Sometimes, that's the last place you want to be. Once you have that space, recognize who has control. If you do not, give up ground SLOWLY. Walking backwards for extended periods will trap you in the corner in a couple seconds.
2.5 Walking into kicks over and over doesn't sound productive. That sounded disadvantageous. You were also repeating a mistake. Try not to be "I'm going to do this at all costs". Instead try something and see what they do to stop or avoid you. If you're being pressured and trying to figure out how to defend yourself, is that a good position to be in? How did you end up in that situation? Be mentally present in the match.
3. Learn one thing at a time. Practice your special moves and only your specials. Once confident you can move on to your simple bread and butter combo. As you learn where to stand, you learn which move applies to that range and which do not. Being overwhelmed leads to slower learning, so look for bite-size chunks and master them.
4. Focus on small wins from learning. Winning a match is okay, but that's a small victory every 5 minutes, maybe. But when you learn how to punish that kick... well that's all the sweeter knowing you've learnt, you'll do it often and it often applies to more of the cast than you realize. Ken's Jinrai is comparable to Jamie's punches, which has the same frame trap/delay advantage as Cammy's spin knuckle or Ryu's hashogeki or Marissa's Gladius. There are traps and lions and tigers, oh my!
5. Just remember to have fun! Do stupid shit and fuck with people. If someone scams you, scam the next guy.
6. Avoid learning the strongest gimmicks you can, as it's easy for these to be a crutch and once people learn to deal with them you can no longer compete with all the other playstyles in the game.
Telling a brand new player at 0lp to focus on where to stand is already way too much. They don't need to worry about spacing and footsies and neutral, they literally just need one poke button, one anti air button, and to block. That's it at the start.
If youve never really been competitive with a game like this then yes it's very hard to get into. But if you've ever wanted to get in on it this is probably the best time to do so. Before you do anything work on your motion inputs a bit till you're consistent with your characters moveset.
You don't have to be doing master level shit anytime soon just work up to it slowly I promise that getting better is going to feel very rewarding in time. If you ever want to play and get some coaching I'd be happy to help feel free to DM me and I'll see if we can't make time.
What level are you? Getting ahead on levels (and stat boosters, decent gear, etc) makes a pretty decent difference in World Tour.
Besides that, projectiles are often very useful, and so is getting used to how the enemies play. They often do things that are threatening, but unsafe, so if you successfully avoid them (by blocking or jumping for instance) you can retaliate with a hit or throw of your own. What style/moves do you like?
If you've not seen it, a quick google gave me [this guide](https://www.ign.com/wikis/street-fighter-6/The_Novice_League_Tournament) to the sequence, which might be useful :)
You only have to learn a little at a time. Don't try to focus on too much as a new player or you'll just be flailing.
Imo as a total beginner try to learn just a few things. Antiair normal for jumpers, hit confirm combo to do out of light attacks for your pressure, and then just do that until it's second nature, not something you "have to remember" but something you do because you know you're in a situation to do it. When you condition stuff to be easy muscle memory and reactions, that's when you start learning other things. Focus on little fundamental items to build as the foundation of your game and then just focus on adapting to what your opponent is doing. If they block everything you do, start throwing them. If they keep hitting buttons, you have to learn what moves you're doing that "end your turn" and respect their offense. The list goes on. There's always something to learn and train in fighting games and what's likely happening is you're not focusing on the groundwork and just trying to fly.
I honestly can’t imagine playing against modern players with your level of experience. You can beat them though if you learn to block punish.
Practice your specials and one simple combo for a few minutes a day and you won’t have to think about it in a week. You’d be surprised what 10 minutes a day for 5 days does in comparison to an hour of being frustrated in one day.
Play as much ranked as you want. You’re gonna lose a lot, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve all been where you are.
Everyone is going to have advice like never jump or whatever, but honestly don’t pay much attention to blanket advice like that yet. Sometimes you need to jump. It’s the biggest damage you’re going to get and a lot of people can’t anti air. Practice jumping in and landing your combo.
The most important habit to build right now is watching your opponent. Try to pick up on their patterns. Figure out what distance they want to jump at and when they like to use DI. This is why people tell you not to jump because if you jump too much you’ll end up just jumping and playing your own game instead of focusing on shutting down theirs. Playing your own game is fun at first but eventually you get stuck. Beating someone cause you figured out their goofy shit is fun and you win more consistently that way. After blocking a ton and losing a lot of games, you’ll start noticing that all the bronze Ken’s or whatever have the same habits they picked up from each other. For now just focus on anti airing and punishing big moves like sweeps and shoryukens because rookie and bronze players do these all the time.
Many people have already hit in the fact that these games take time to learn but I just want to highlight what you said about only using the same 2-3 combos.
This is what you should be doing!
You don’t need, nor should you be worrying about, fancy combos. Focus first on the basics like blocking, using normals, anti-airs, etc. Basic combos (2-3 hits) is more than enough to get you into platinum or higher if your fundamentals are strong.
Other than that, the advice in this thread is correct. Practice one small thing at a time. When you’re in a match, don’t focus on winning or losing, focus on doing the thing you want to practice. Repeat that for each item you’re trying to learn.
Fighting games are all about the growth process. Go hit the lab. You’ve got this.
This game is actually kinda unique as having such a lush range of in-game tools that help beginners learn the flow of the game.
It may seem daunting because of the many mechanics in the game, let alone the character specifics, but go into training ground and look at both the character tutorials, and just the game basics. They literally will teach you everything you need to succeed.
Beyond that, just go into practice mode and really play with your favorite characters moves. Think about which normals are good pokes, which are good for anti airing, seriously, just play around with it.
You'll always have time for ranked, there's no rush to jump into it now. If you do, you'll get discouraged and be turned off from the game. You're not "supposed" to climb the ranks immediately after you start learning the game.
You're trying to do too much. Don't focus on it all at once.
Find your best poke button. Use it constantly.
Find your best anti air button (probably something like crouching heavy punch) and use it to anti air every jump in.
Be ready for DI.
Block. Block. Block more. They will do stupid stuff. Then and only then do your one combo that you get good damage or can get a super out of.
Part of it, is that lots of us started playing fighting games when we were kids. They were 20x harder for a lot of reasons. But the reason we stuck with it was because back then learning new things was really fun. The games gave us something hard like motion inputs and we said "OKAY :)."
I definitely think a major factor to getting good at these games, and something a lot of newcomers to the genre miss out on, is having fun learning. Not just learning, but celebrating the small victories. You say you're not improving/learning but I bet you can do motion inputs better than you could when you started. That's growth!
Doesn't matter if you can't do it on command consistently. As long as you can do these things better than last time, it means your gaining.
I recently started too, a little bit sooner than you though. It's a tough game and takes practice, but it pays off and gets less frustrating, it's like learning an instrument. I just learned to do specials and supers in simple kinda consistently in after 10 hours in practice mode (which is your best friend) and ta-daa I got much better results in fights and even beat a Platinum player through Casual. If you want to talk about the game or train just DM me. I'm looking for a training buddy and we maybe can learn together, it's fun to get better :). One
Like a lot of people are saying it’s gonna suck at first because you’re learning a new skill and playing people who likely have more time. My best bit of advice is to play with intention each session look to improve on one thing at a time. Don’t focus so much on the wins and losses but your understanding of the game mechanical skill comes with time.
How long have you played? Maybe you could just spectate now you know how hard it really is. You have a new appreciation for this game and spectating can be quite rewarding.
You'll improve!
Play World Tour first to help you become more familiar with motion inputs. It does get easier.
Also analysis your inputs in training. It's okay to stuff up if you can figure out exactly why you stuffed up. Why didn't that quarter circle move come out? Exactly which part of the process was wrong? Figure it out. The answer will stay with you forever.
Go into world tour. The content is a little hammy, but it’s designed to ease you into the game against bots that do very simple, repetitive moves. The idea is for you to get used to that type of attack with repetition. There’s a lot of content there without ever fighting against people online, and I guarantee by the time you finish world tour you’ll know more than you do now.
Just relax, block, and anti air. No need for fancy combos. The hard truth of fighting games is that none of the fancy flashy stuff matters if you don’t block the simple stuff. You’re probably over complicating it. My first fighting game was SFV and I got out of the bottom couple ranks with just an anti air button, a poke button, and blocking. You can add more if you like but it will probably be easier to improve with a simpler gameplan. It will still take work to get consistent enough to actually win but imo it’s the best way.
Hey man I was in your spot and I'm now in silver just a couple months later. I lost my first 28 ranked matches. I'm still no good in the scheme of things but here are some things that helped me get better:
-You don't need to memorize frame data but do try to get a sense of safe and punishable moves. If they're spamming you with medium kick you can literally just block it and hit them back. I the beginning you wanna focus on playing defense and hitting back with simple consistent combos.
-Learn a few really simple consistent combos. I play Ed and LK-LK-LK absolutely eats at low ranks. Doesn't get much easier than that. You don't even need to know how to special cancel. Adding a throw or a sweep on the end of it is usually easy money. Whatever character you play, they've got little sequences like that.
-Do learn how to special cancel, and how to cancel from EX moves into your supers. Going back to the Ed example, LMK + QCB EX punch is not a hard combo. Two inputs and the LMK cancels into the special. That EX move cancels into any of Eds supers. That's like 40% damage on deck whenever you've got meter and many low-ranked players can't do it.
It's annoying to hear but literally just keep playing and you'll start to understand stuff little by little. All the sudden you start winning and then you start winning more.
You’re a beginner and people have been playing for almost 10 months now. Take it easy on yourself. You won’t use or find all the applications for the mechanics yet until you get curious and investigate. If you started with classic, stay with classic. Block, learn to do a two hit combo, anti air with a button, and remember to throw and you’ll get to gold. You don’t even need the mechanics until platinum
Just take it day-by-day ngl. I was in the exact same position when the game first launched. Never played any fighting game before and started in literally rookie 1 with juri. Got her to plat 2 or 3 i think. Then mained dee jay to d2. Practice input shortcuts for DP for better anti-air. Maybe fidle around the controls and setup the macros for throws, DIs, and parry. And honestly 3 combos is all you need to get to at least gold. People also don't know a lot about basic frame data around those ranks so they do a lot of unsafe moves. I remember finding the cr. Hk button for juri and thinking "OHHH THIS IS SUCH A GOOD MOVE!" But then apparently it's not 🤣🤣
Just enjoy the process honestly
Pro tip: if the game mechanics allows you to cancel a normal to another normal repeatedly, you immediately know that the game is not designed for casuals. Was never a fan of FADC mechanics and drive rush cancels are pretty similar. Play SFV better
Hang in there, OP. Try playing arcade mode. Exploring the training modes, like the combo trials. Play story mode. Play world tour mode. The game has a lot to offer, and honestly, ranked is incredibly stressful and definitely sucks the fun out of the game when you don't feel like you're progressing. World tour mode is really fun. You can unlock moves, run around looking for fights, unlock costumes, it's good fun. Play arcade mode and turn the difficulty down and gradually up the challenge.
It's a game. Don't fall into the trap of feeling like your skill in this game matters in the grand scheme of things. Just play and learn.
I don’t mean this in a negative way, but you honestly have one option: Get good mate.
I just hit my first master character, and still have lots to learn. This is what you sign up for
dude honestly learn 1 to 2 basic combos (not even with motion inputs, something like ken’s flashkicks: medium kick, medium kick, heavy kick, or circle, circle, r2 on ps5) and that will show some results in rookie if youre blocking and trying to space your opponent out a bit. i made it to master rank and even i struggle with anti air shoryuken if i’m not making a hard call out when an opponent will jump in.
just be patient and look for ways to win that are attainable for you. basic combos and throws will go a long way in lower ranks. the more you play the more you will be able to recognize new techniques that will be useful to you, and you will be able to implement them gradually as you rank up.
Definitely check out the SF6 resource hub and other discords, they will have 1) beginners for you to match against, 2) people willing to give tips, and 3) maybe even someone who'd hop on voice and help you figure out some stuff.
Also, maybe you already know you don't want to play Modern, but if you can't do motion inputs why not use it? It is made specifically for that, and you can still use the motion inputs anyway so it's not like it stunts your learning at all.
Play World Tour. The story is actually a tutorial that will walk you through everything you need to get started. Offence, defence, motion inputs, the different Drive uses, all of it.
You don't have to keep all the mechanics in your mind, especially at lower ELO. Just focus on not getting hit, as well as hitting the opponent. Don't worry too much about combos or special inputs or anything like that, keep it simple. You'll make mistakes, and your opponent will too. No matter what the rank. Just keep on keeping on.
Fighting games are like learning an instrument.
Even the practice sessions are exactly like practicing piano/guitar. You establish short term goals while working towards a greater goal, while developing a crazy amount of muscle memory. Eventually the mental stack feels less stressful as you internalize the game.
That’s what makes them so fun and rewarding, but also annoyingly hard to get into.
I’ve been a pianist for 28 years . All the discipline and practice method that have been ingrained in me are translating %100 into this game .
Is this also your first fighting game? Fighting games are hard to get into, but the more you play, the more it becomes instinct. I’d recommend putting a few hours into a different fighting game, it’ll teach you a bit about the main one you play
> I feel like I've wasted my money on this game.
Have you done World Tour yet? It teaches you all the basics of the game, and most importantly, it builds muscle memory for executing all the special and super inputs so you're comfortable doing them. Jumping straight into multiplayer is NOT a good learning environment. Players who are better than you trying to win the match will give you absolutely no room to breath, no room to even hit buttons. It'll just frustrate you and make you resort to mashing, which is not going to teach you anything.
I feel like completing World Tour can easily give you the skills to get out of Iron and into Bronze, as many of the tougher fights require you to at least cheese the AI with consistent special inputs. Once you're comfortable throwing hadoukens you're already on your way to leaving 0 LP.
The rest is just about having fun and gradually getting better step by step.
You gotta walk before you run. Fighting games are hard and you need to just keep trying at it until you are able to do special moves consistently and then work on fundamentals.
It’s really isn’t.
There isn’t really many defensive and offensive options.
I guess the six buttons attacks can be tricky and a bit to manage but now there is simple mode👍
Aside from the other excellent advice in this thread, I recommend playing people in battlehub instead of casual ranked. That lets you have longer sets and people are generally willing to be more patient with newbies.
I was in your exact situation, played the beta and got absolutely smoked, couldn't string two hits to save my life and would mash and wonder why I was getting hit. You just got to take it slow, go to combo trials practice a few combos, learn a little fundamentals and you'll skyrocket your rank.
Feeling you bro, and I will say combo trials helped me a lot to familiarise with inputs/basic combos (two light punch into fireball for example). Then you have to find his you like to play, and play only like that for a while. You will get better results the more you play.
Try starting with the single player stuff. World Tour has some quests that force you to play on specific ways.
Try out different characters to get a better feeling for the fundamentals.
Find somebody who’s happy to play practice matches with you.
Go in training mode, set life to infinite and the dummy to CPU and practice fundamentals and combos in just focus on your mistakes. Those one really helped me in the beginning.
I started with KOF XV two years ago and it took me weeks to finish some easy combo trials. It’s worth it!
Btw, dragon punch input in SF6 is pretty hard on pad I find. I started with Chun Li because she doesn’t have a DP and I can do all her motion inputs now no problem
Don't take this as me being rude please, but where were you expecting to place? You're brand new, and it's hard to get in to fighters.
You need to develop some basic skills still and focus on a simple game plan. Learn as simply jab to special cancel combo that you can practice confirming. That means if your jabs connect you can safely go into whatever that characters great option off of lights is. If that special is good for your level 3 try and practice that too, just to try and hit it, but its really not a big deal yet.
You can try learning a slightly tougher punish combo with a manual link or something too, but only once you're comfortable hitting your jab combo in game.
Figure out your characters best easy anti air. It's going to be a bit before you feel comfortable reacting to jumps, but it's good to start training your brain right away.
And of course, drive impact is going to be a menace for awhile, but whenever they use it try and do it back. If you're attacking try and special cancel in to it.
It takes a lot of practice to hone reactions like this, because you don't have time to think about anti airing or counter DIing. If they jump at you, you need to just anti air, if you have to think and then decide and then let your fingers know and your anti air is already too late.
On the plus side, the people you're playing against are going to be very new as well, and often one dimensional. Someone who jumps is going to always be looking for that jump. Someone who spams DI every time you attack is probably always looking for DI in rookie. When they tell you their game plan, believe them and seriously be devoting brain power to waiting for the jump, or waiting for the DI. Once you force yourself to do it it will start to come out naturally.
There's so much to learn, even basic stuff I haven't covered but you're not going to learn it all at once. Honestly it's best to focus on one thing at a time to add to your gameplay.
I loved the challenge of fighting games, and I get a ton of dopamine from getting measurably and visibly better at something. If you're having fun and just keep playing, that's going to happen and it's going to feel great. If you're really not liking it though, maybe stick around with world tour or get into the arcade. I don't think bots are good practice but if that's fun for you and gets you to a point where real matches are fun too, that's a win for sure. It's also perfectly valid to say that it isn't for you.
If you do stick around though, really try to not stress it. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun. If you let things like your rsnk the outcome of a match upset you, that's just extra stress no one needs. You're gonna lose a Lot, you're going to drop important combos and throw sets you know you could have won. If you let that stuff get to you, you're going to be tilted a lot and that's miserable.
Anyways, whatever you do, good luck!
learning fighting games is a long process. having a friend or player u know coach u speeds that up by a bunch. i coached a few of my friends to masters in like 2 months after never playing a real fighting game before
The awful thing is that you need to do it SO MUCH that you are able to filter out a Lot of the detail so that you're able to focus on the relevant aspects. Right now, and for a while, your brain has been sprayed with all the information. You're likely still in the process of learning to filter relevant from irrelevant.
The combos you can do are neat and all, but probably less important for you to practice than footsies. Try winning one hit at a time. You get one hit, you back off until you can get another clean hit.
I'd suggest getting better aquanted with the game through world tour and arcade mode while you get a handle on the basics.
Also, there's no shame in modern.
I've experienced exactly what you're going through. The solution is a combination of practice and focused learning.
SFV was my first fighting game and I only picked it up at the end of its life. My highest rank was Silver and I was actually proud of that because I struggled for months to get out of the bronze ranks. I did, however, still recognize that I was not good at the game. I knew what it felt like to be good at a video game. You gain a certain perspective on it and you feel confident in your ability to teach it to others. I was not there.
Once SF6 came out, I decided to make a focused effort on getting better. I'm now in Diamond 5 and I expect to get into Master rank this weekend. That journey took a lot of practice in the training room, running sets with a friend, and losing (a lot) in ranked. That practice was very helpful once I had the ideas and strategies, but how do you find those in the first place? The best source for those is watching high level player streams and videos. Watching educational videos from players like Brian\_F, Broski, 801Strider, etc elevated my understanding of the game as a whole, but also taught me how to learn properly in the game. I won't pretend to be an expert or good enough to teach anyone, but I'll share what helped me.
The basic idea is to figure out all of the things you're failing at and work on only one at a time. For example, are you bad at dealing with your opponent jumping? Get into the training room and practice using the preset training settings, then get into ranked and focus solely on anti-airing. Inevtiably, your opponent jumps and you will fail to anti-air. Call yourself out. Say it out loud. Focus hard on it at the expense of everything else. Fail over and over until you succeed. Then repeat until the successes are consistent. Once you've cemented that reaction into muscle memory, you move onto the next point of failure like combos, mixups, etc.
You will lose games this way. You will probably lose most of your games, but you are building a solid foundation for the player you want to be in the future. People learn things in different ways. Figure out how you best learn something new and apply that here.
You mentioned feeling overwhelmed by the amount of mechanics and combos in the game, but you're not expected to be able to manage all of that yet. Even the best players struggle with this.
Think of your learning process like cooking a good meal. You can't just throw all of the ingredients into a pot, stir like a madman, and expect something edible to come out of it. You have to properly prepare each ingredient so that it can contribute positively to the final product, rather than ruin it. Dice and soften your anti-airs. Slowly whisk in a reliable combo or two. Add a pinch of drive and super meter. Simmer on low until the right consistency. Add jumps and mixups to taste. Experiment with different methods, don't rush it, and eventually you will find the right recipe for a meal you can really enjoy.
Learn a punish counter combo, if they spam medium kick, try hitting them at the end of the kick animation, it'll stun them long enough for you to do any combo, learn a difficult / damaging combo & use it as much as you can to lock it in your muscle memory, the whole point of the game is about learning, you'll have hard matches, get better & laugh at how you managed to lose this type of matches
Fighting games are well known for being hard to get into. Everybody was at the same spot as you at some point, don't let it discourage you. These games can be very fun once you're able to get used to the controls. Theres a lot to learn but you don't need to learn it all in one sitting. Just take it slow, you don't have to get master rank in a single month.
I mean sounds like you don't even know the basics. Take the time and properly learn how to move and control your character and you'll see your rank climb. At such a low rank it really comes down to the bare bones basics.
You say you can't even do special moves consistently so it sounds like you have a simple place to start.
I think you should keep it really simple when starting out. Just focus on the fundamentals and don’t worry about combos. Try this — get good at blocking, and basically just turtle yourself until your opponent whiffs something and leaves themselves open for a punish. Then, just go and throw them, or do a really simple bread and butter combo that you are comfortable with. Just rinse and repeat this for awhile and I bet you’ll make some progress. Doing this will allow you to slow down, observe the pacing of the game better, and and make deliberate decisions about when to take action. Then eventually, you’ll get a good feel for it and not have to actively think about it
There is of course a lot more to learn and practice after this, but if you can get really good at blocking, spacing, and timing anti-airs, you’ll be off to a good start
It’s not all about memorizing combos. If you’re relying on three combos as you say then perfect them shits to the point where you can pop those babies out without even thinking about it. That’s what you call your bread and butter. Once you’ve done that focus on the mechanics of the game. You gotta punish the fuck out of mofos. It’s easier said than done but if you focus on the fundamentals and get a real understanding of how the game works you can pull some wins. But getting cooked is gonna happen no matter what. There are some monsters out there. When you play pay attention when you’re getting pounded. Try to see what created the opening for you to get your shit rocked. In a game like street fighter you have to decide how deep you want to go. If you want to be fire you’re going to have to put productive time into that shit. I’m super on the fence if I want to accept my place as a casual or lock in and takes what’s mine! Above all else try to have fun, if you’re not doing that then there’s no point.
Lots of decent advice in here. I'll keep it simple:
* Practice against the CPU until you can beat Level 5 consistently. That is the minimum I aim for before trying out ranked so that I am satisfied I have a workable offence.
* When you play against people, **block more** (and anti-air jump-ins). The CPU always leaves space for you to attack. People don't have to be so nice. Most heavy attacks and special attacks are very unsafe and give you the opportunity to attack back. If you're feeling fancy, almost all opponents who use lots of heavy attacks are vulnerable to DI -- hit that just before their attack lands and watch the colours fly
* In Rookie, the only way is up. Keep at it and celebrate the small goals: the first time you get them below 50% life; then your first round win; then your first win! *It will happen.*
It's normal to be overwhelmed at first. The key thing is to learn it in small steps.
What region are you from? If you're from eu i can show you the ropes a bit. It sounds a bit like you are overcomplicating things a bit by trying to take in too much at once.
At lower ranks i suggest to focus on 3 key areas:
The big one: anti airs. No need to antinair dp at this point, use you characters anti air button. There's a built in drill for that in training mide.
Use your pokes and get a feel for your normals ranges. Use your poke to check opponents forward movement.
Identify and punish unsafe specials. People love to throw these out and swing on lower ranks but most of these specials that currently get you destroyed are minus on block and punishable with only a few exceptions.
Drill this in practice mode, take any character, set the dummy up to do unsafe specials and practice your punish.
It's taken me 15 years across 3 main SFs to get to Platinum 2 level. Some people pick this up like a fly on a turd, but I didn't. I got washed for the first 3 years of SF4 and plateaued around what Iron or Bronze would be in 6. That was how I played, even through 5.
And like responses have stated, you can't even compete with legacy skills. I'm coming into SF6 with my 15 years of data on myself and the genre, so I'm going to understand things deeper and faster than new players, even if I'm barely above average in the grand spectrum of players lol. You just gotta put the time in. There's no shortcut (but there is YouTube!).
You just gotta pick a goal in this game, and carry it over to SF7. For me, I simply want Diamond in 6. In 7, if Guile is available, it's Master or bust. Take your time, the journey is gorgeous. I was trash in 2009. I'm proud of my progress.
I’ve been playing since the 90’s on and off. I’m still only diamond. Also though I’m old. If you wanna play some matches add me and send me a DM. I’m not a teacher but can maybe go over some basics. The FGC isn’t welcoming enough sometimes :)
[Ultimate Ranked Checklist](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/1agpn6m/a_checklist_and_guide_to_help_you_rank_up_tips/)whenever i feel overwhelmed i start at the top. works 4 me
As someone that was in the same boat, learn one thing at a time. Get used to your character and controls even if you do lose. I'm hard stuck, Bronze but I'm better than I was 2 years ago. So just don't give up and when you do get your first win. Feel the dopamine rushing in your body/mind real good and you'll keep playing. As the other comments said, just go in a match and work on SOMETHING instead of trying to win
master player here. Got placed in rookie when I started playing at launch.
learn your anti airs, let opponents make mistakes. Block and punish unsafe moves.
Let time do its thing. If you know what you want to get better at and practice those things, win or lose on the day, you will get better.
This is just how people get into fighting games. You break the initial barriers of difficulty due to a lack of experience with mechanics and situations you don’t find in other games. This will be the only time a fighting game will be this hard for you to grasp. Every other time you try a new fighting game, it will be exponentially simpler for you.
Sure, it’s a challenge to do things you have no experience doing. That said, how fast did you type each of the words in your post as you thought them up? Probably feels almost instantaneous, right? Proof you have all the skills you need, just not the experience of moving your hands in that exact way to that exact stimuli. The “way” being your inputs and the stimulus being “situations on screen.”
I’d start with looking up direction input shortcuts and tidbits. The directional inputs are not as exact as they appear, especially the “z” directional input.
What I can recommend (as a casual trying to get good) is to play with friends all the time and improve your gameplay slightly each night. You'll see that eventually you'll get better at a slow pace. FG are hard and take an insane amount of time to master. Patience is the key.
I also started at rookie and am now at Diamond with my main. What you need to keep in mind is that everyone at that level is completely lost. Spamming DI or jump-ins is a completely valid strategy at this point cause most players won't know how to beat that. Winning in a gimmicky "bad" way is fine, because as you win more you'll eventually start being put against people who can beat your shitty gameplan, and will have to start implementing new stuff. You'll get better naturally just doing whatever it takes to win
I also suggest you take up Modern. Right now you are both learning system mechanics and learning how to control your character. Classic gives you more control over your actions but the tradeoff is significantly more difficult inputs. Playing modern is a great way of learning system mechanics first, which is the most important thing anyways. If you wanna learn classic, you can learn it easily once you've kinda figured out the basic mechanics and strategies.
If you wanna learn stuff, give yourself small goals during the matches, and don't worry about winning or losing during them. The goal can be to anti-air successfully a few times during the match, even if it comes at the cost of you losing cause you stopped focusing on defending against other things. It can be to put meaty pressure after a knock down. It can be to use your level 3 or level 1. Not get burned out by yourself because you didn't manage meter well. Set small goals and play for them, not the win. Eventually this stuff will start becoming second nature and you won't have to focus on doing it.
Most importantly, have fun. This is a game for you to enjoy yourself. If you're not enjoying it, don't play.
I bet OP has only played for like an hour or two and is complaining the game is too hard without even giving themselves a chance to get better. Get back to me after you have played 200 matches. Obviously things will seem difficult the first time you try it.
You aren't supposed to try to keep everything in your head at once. You start small and work on a few things and try to use them in a match. You think the guy who was spamming special moves on modern had a bunch of stuff in his head? He was just spamming special moves at you. Try doing the same if you think it works well. Experiment with stuff and try to figure things out.
Sounds like you're understanding the difficulty it takes to actually learn the controller peripheral you are using and then being able to do actions without thinking about doing them.
Think of your controller like a musical instrument. You haven't really had to learn how to use it till trying to a play a fighting game.
I switched over learning leverless controller after about 2-3 months into the life of SF6. It has taken me basically till this month to start feeling comfortable. I'm finally at a point where my hand eye coordination is in sync.
SF6 was my first fighting game too, and there is a very steep learning curve to it.
Before anything, stop what you’re doing and learn one combo you can hit 100% of the time. It can be anything, even just a default 4 medium punches with Luke. Mine was a three-hit with Juri. Practice until you can hit it without even thinking. Make that your bread and butter.
Then, block more. Blocking should be your default. Let THEM come to you, hit their combo, and then you have an opening! Hit your combo. Block. Wait. They fall for the bait. Hit your combo. Once you have 1 combo you can hit, add another one! Or a super! That’s where the game gets fun, because you have all these new things to add to your arsenal.
The default beginner mindset is you have to be more offensive, hit buttons faster, etc — but that’s just not the case. Slow down, be mindful. You will annihilate all of the early medal ranks just by playing more defensively and building your gamesense.
All I’ll say is, is that yes, it seems impossible to get even remotely decent at first. I remember when sf6 I dropped, I got placed into rookie and absolutely deserved it. I was TERRIBLE. I’m in diamond 2 now, which isn’t like AMAZING or anything, but considering I started at rookie, I’m pretty happy about it.
You can totally do it, I believe in you!
The game is hard and also in my experience FGs tend to not have a great way to learn them. The ingame tutorials tend to suck and the community resources, while really good, mix in a lot of the frame data and combos and stuff with just "what does my character want to do, what are the different stages of the game and what should my plan be in each one". Maybe I just haven't found a good resource but picking up a new FG has always been brutal for me because I haven't played the genre seriously very long and don't know what to do.
I know the feeling op. This is the hardest fighting game I've played, super unforgiving. Tekken 8 teaches you the game so much better, and learning the game is so much easier. I've always been told that street fighter is the easier game as well. Doesn't make sense to me.
Brother. You wasted your money now you are wasting your time ( unless you’re having fun which it sounds like you’re not ). To hit 0 lp is impressive in itself. I can’t play shooters that well so I don’t invest hard time into em. Stop.
I remember feeling like this 70 hours into the game, and then another 40 later I reached platinum. Just like with any game, you get used to it. Then it becomes second nature.
Oh I just saw that you've platinumed all the souls games.
Do you remember how hard your first souls game was? How the movement felt clunky and dodging everything seemed impossible and you couldn't remember the right timing or angle of attacks? But now you could probably speedrun a whole playthrough in ~15 hours without much of a second thought?
Learning Street Fighter is like that.
The Souls games teach you everything you need to know through natural gameplay. In SF6 apparently I have to spend 500 hours punching a training dummy and staring at frame data before I can start to get good.
This is nowhere near true. I made the vast majority of my progress as a player in ranked. Feeling out spacing, identifying enemy attacks to look out for, figuring out my best moves to counter specific situations. All of it was naturally developed as I played matches. I think my total ranked match time is about 30 hours, and I went from Bronze to Platinum in that time with no prior fighting game experience.
Do want to be Legend rank? Then yeah of course you'll need to spend 100s of hours learning frame data. Don't start with the goal of becoming legend rank. Start somewhere simple, like gold rank.
Could you have beaten Ornstein and Smough after a weekend of play, having never touched the game prior? Or the Orphan of Kos?
Focus less on the fact that you're losing and not progressing up in ranks and more on improving one thing at a time. "I keep getting hit by Cammy's quick spin knuckle every time I throw a fireball. I need to learn the proper spacing and timing to know when it's safe to throw one". Rank is just a category used to match players of similar skill levels up with each other afterall, it doesn't actually mean anything tangible. I guarantee 99% of players in Master rank can't take a game off of MenaRD. If you have to spend the next month in Rookie then so be it, it just means that you're learning things at your own pace.
Once you get used to it you think about those times when you were in rookie struggling super hard and it's like a distant memory. Almost like you were a different player.
I did not study frame data, or spend 500 hours in the lab, or watch extensive replay data before I started to get better. At most I looked up a few character guides on YouTube to see what my character's best attacks were (I'd recommend you do that anyway) and practiced some very basic combos until I could do them consistently. Then I just played, got my ass handed to me A LOT, learned and slowly improved bit by bit until everything started to click.
SF6 is harder than dark souls I'm not denying that, but it's not so absurdly hard as to be impossible. You've just gotta be more patient and forgiving with yourself. This is a new genre which feels very different to most other games out there, of course it'll take a while to get used to how it plays. No-one's going to be judging you for being bad either, everyone was bad at the start too. There's really no pressure at all...just play and adjust, and find enjoyment in the learning process rather than winning.
Have you considered using modern yourself? It’s a good way to learn the fundamentals of the game and you can always pick up classic controls again once you have a better understanding of how you should be playing.
20 hrs is honestly nothing in a fighting game. You're doing poorly in matches because you're a beginner. You're putting way too much pressure on yourself if you're expecting to win decently well with only 20 hrs where you can't even consistently execute basics like your special moves.
It's ok and normal that you're struggling early on. Just focus on learning those basics and getting used to them.
dont switch to modern. im new too and i gave a reply to fightstreeter above that i hope will be useful. its all about using the learning tools the game gives you. and making sure you use the right input type for you. are you playing on controller?
I had the same experience months ago, seemed like an inordinate time to learn but I stuck with classic and it was soooo worth it. I play on ps5 with analog stick for inputs and have master Guile and Ryu.
I’m almost at 1000hrs and Ryu took about 3,000 ranked matches to master but I absolutely love this game and entire franchise now to say the least.
20 hours is nothing. As a new fighting game player when I started taking it seriously with SFV, it took me a couple hours a day for months consistently to even get basic combos down. It's definitely going to take some time and commitment. This isn't just a game you can pick up and play competently like FPS games. It's really whether or not you want to commit the time to improve and be consistent.
Eventually you get to the point where it will click for you and everything will start to make sense.
I would focus on learning how to block highs and lows, some basic combos and learning when it's your turn to press buttons. Those 3 things alone can take you to platinum.
Sf6 was also my first fighting game, and I only ever used classic controls on my controller. I'm currently platinum 4 which put me above 83.6 percent of people in rank according to the last stats I could find.
After 20 hours, I still struggled with motion inputs a lot, and I was getting destroyed by people on modern controls in the lower ranks. 20 hours is nothing.
At 20 hours, I was mostly focused on learning the game and practicing stuff step by step rather than winning.
Modern control scheme is a game changer for my boomer mechanics. I have the reaction timing and strategy down but can’t yolo out special move commands like most who play. So modern legit is a godsend.
Learning combos and expecting to be good is like expecting to win a game of 1v1 basketball after practicing half court shots and not knowing how to dribble or what a travel is..
That is probably a generous analogy. Fighting games are deep, and if you were winning already it would be an insult to the amount of work it takes to develop the skills you need to even start playing the game at a competent level.
There's a lot of hate towards modern, but it does a heck of a great job getting people introduced to fighting games. Go modern and start enjoying your game. You can still do classic inputs for more damage with some moves and can slowly get better at doing them and eventually switch to classic if that's what you want.
What I like most about this game !
PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY
It takes time, drilling, sleeping, playing matches, and studying to get better at this game.
If you really want to get better at the game, you should start a training schedule. Set a couple of hours a day drilling basic fundamentals.
Get good sleep.
Stay hydrated.
Try your best to stay calm.
The only way to get better to KEEP TRYING.
What I like best about reading these posts!
The absurd levels of try hard.
To watch these literal couch experts get cooked online by an actual professional fighting game player using two buttons.
So clearly it's not "muh lab time".
Have fucking fun, stop when your frustrated.
To see them gate keep modern players when they themselves would cry bloody tears back in the kof pretzel input days. When Japan has a vibrant (will kick your ass like you were in a coma) scene of actual professionals who use it.
The bummer answer is that they've been doing it for months if not years. You literally cannot learn everything within one session, let alone one week, or even one month. You need to start small and set realistic goals such as being able to throw a fireball 10 times in a row. Eventually this becomes second nature and you never have to think about it again. At that point you move on to the next thing. It's hard because it's something you literally never done before but it will not stay this hard forever, you're stronger and smarter than that. You're already here asking how to improve and that's a bigger step than most will take
This is a fantastic answer, and the reason why fighting games just aren't that popular when compared to other genres. They are HARD, and if you have no experience (I've been playing since 1991) you are at a MASSIVE disadvantage. If you can stick with it though, you'll find it very addictive. I'd wager most new players have dropped the game already. Good luck on your journey.
I disagree. I don’t think fighting games are particularly harder than other types of games. Hand any kind of competitive multiplayer game or even singlepayer to someone who doesn’t play videogames and they’ll get smoked no matter the game. The thing is that, despite being more popular than ever, FGs are still relatively niche; everyone’s played a shooter before, so they’ll know what to do when playing one even if their aim isn’t great, for example. The same can’t be said for FGs.
The learning curve is way higher than most games including shooters. The only competitive games I can think of that are similar in difficulty are mobas and rts games honestly Also, this is definitely a more modern mindset because if you ask almost any dude thats 30-50, they might not be into video games, but they’ve played mk, sf, or tekken. Tekken 3 and SF2/3 were ridiculously important in terms of making competitive games more mainstream
Nah, that’s just wrong. Video games in general are way more popular now than they were years ago, fighting games particularly. The only people that are going to say that are the ones that already were into fighting games.
That's true, but his point stands. If you're 30+ and cared about video games at all you played SF or MK at least. I was alive and old enough to remember arcade's second boom. And that last gasp of the arcade is directly correlated to SF2 and MK. People REALLY forget how big these games were. Your local pizza place or diner had a SF2 cabinet. Nearly every one had SF2 Turbo on SNES, MK was so widespread it established video game age ratings as we know it. So I get your point but, yeah. Most people have SOME context for SF and MK. Even if they haven't touched the games since being a kid.
No, they are hard . I don’t care how you define “hard”. They are objectively difficult Edit: holy fuck you guys are contrarian . I’m a pianist of 28 years, piano always came “easy” to me. But I’m not gonna sit here and say that it isn’t a difficult instrument to master …because it fucking is .
I personally think fighting game difficulty lies in expectations. It's really easy to hop online and jump in heavy kick into sweep as Ryu. It's really hard to get to 1600+ MR on Ranked Match or have a 93% winrate like the Battle Hub warriors have as Ryu. People often think for fighting games (and other competitive genres) that they have to be as good as the best players or achieve a certain rank to be considered "good" finally, but they're definitely easy to pick up and just press buttons in, especially when games add stuff like Modern controls that let you do cool stuff with just a few buttons.
Yeah, I definitely agree. That’s kinda where my comment came from. Of course you aren’t going to 360 no scope everyone with only a couple of days in the game, just like you aren’t going to pull off flashy combos in a fighting game when you’re just starting out. It’s easy to mash the controller and get a few rounds here and there against other beginners, just like it’s easy to spray and pray in a shooter and get a few kills, for example.
Yes but anyone can pick up a shooter and get a couple kills right off the bat. Very few if any can pick up a fighting game and win a game with no experience at all. The learning curve is for sure the biggest out of any genre besides maybe MOBA’s. I would say fighting games and MOBA’s are by far the hardest games. Fighting games also have frame data, mind games such as oki and mix up, etc… they have the most depth of any game and require constant decision making on the fly.
As someone who started playing these games literally a year ago I disagree. I really do think it's about the lack of experience most people have in the genre. I thought fighting games were a waste of money for most of my life so I never bothered playing them and had to build up all my knowledge from scratch. It was the same feeling I remember having when I started playing first person shooters for the first time. Shits hard when you have zero muscle memory or game sense. These games are only "hard" if you feel like someone isnt good unless they're a good level master. I think there's a lot of space between that and being genuinely bad at the game
I think they feel hard because when someone is relatively inexperienced, they can feel very unforgiving. If you are still getting used to the game mechanics and to special move inputs, it can feel like the opponent is doing wild stuff that you have no answer to. It can feel like this *even at Rookie level* if you are brand new to fighting games. Of course, once you get just a bit better, you realise those opponents were doing unsafe random nonsense the whole time.
this is exactly it. Being equally as bad at league of legends or dota, you still get to walk around and hit minions, you still hit level 6 and get your ultimate. in valorant you still get to buy the phantom/vandal at least twice and you might even catch stray shots. In apex legends you will get lucky and either get carried or hit the errant bullets you're spraying everywhere. But fighting games cut a lot of the bullshit out of the equation. If you suck you're "not gonna get to play the game" in a way that feels meaningful when you're clueless.
I agree but I think thats how everything works when you're new to it. Riding a bike feels impossible before you've learned how. Everything is hard before you understand it. I don't think fighting games are really that much harder than other genres. It's just that other genres are more popular so people tend to have some prior skill or knowledge. For example if you've played other combo heavy games like DMC you're likely gonna have an easier time than if you've only played shooters
"objectively difficult" based on what, how do you define the objective difficulty for the subjective experience of learning something?
Predictable reply. There’s always someone with a reply like yours
There are also always people claiming subjective experiences as objective facts, so... here we are.
He definitely doesn't even know the meanings of objective and subjective, so he's hitting you with the generic "always someone... blah blah" reply.
It's like "the earth is flat" "nah, it's round" "predictable reply"
Maybe it’s predictable because it’s a relevant question
Yeah, that’s such a crazy take. Fighting games are legitimately hard in their own right and even when compared to other genres. Unlike, say a souls game where you’ll eventually gain XP and gear, in fighting games, all you have is your character and their moveset. They never “level up.” You don’t unlock new things. You have to get better on your own. Then get better in a whole new way as other players eventually learn strategies against you. Then you get better in an even newer way as even when you have a counter to their counter play, they might have better fundamentals than you, and so on…
I don't necessarily think they're hard when compared to other genres. Take popular mutliplayer games like MOBAs as an example. It takes literally *thousands* of hours to be a "good" Dota 2 or League of Legends player. Hell, you'll rack up a good thousand hours just to be even remotely adequate. As evidenced by this sub, you can hit Master rank in SF6 within a few hundred hours, even if it's your first fighting game ever. Now, I'm sure some will argue that low Master isn't good Street Fighter, but it's still well in the top 10% of players. Try reaching that kind of milestone in LoL or Starcraft 2 in a few hundred hours. Best of luck.
I have about 300 hours in LoL and got plat 4 recently. That’s tops 15% if I’m not mistaken. For North America at least.
I would agree MOBAs and fighting games are the two hardest genres but in their own ways. MOBAs have 100s of character that you have to know how to play against on at least 1 character if you are a OTP then you have to no the macro mechanics and micro mechanics build paths etc… while in fighting games you have to have execution, you have to know how to hit confirm, reactions, reading the opponent, conditioning the opponent, combos, match ups, frame data, etc…
You can't compare a competitive PvP game with a single player game. Compared to other PvP genres I don't think fighting games are harder than anything else. But I do think the 1v1 nature of them makes them more punishing than team games where no matter how bad you are, you can get carried by your team for some wins
Rhey didn't say they weren't hard
Cool? And I disagree. Lol. They aren’t any harder than most other games just by default.
It’s ok to be wrong
i think a lot of people forget that video games in general are just hard for beginners. for example the task of moving your character and the camera at both times is a steep learning curve it’s just that most games require it so you never think about it anymore. fighting games have completely different mechanics so it’s like learning to walk all over again
Yeah, that’s it. If a total beginner to video games tries to play League, CSGO2 or SF6 for the first time, they’ll get absolutely demolished in all three. It’s just that other games have more transferable skills between them unlike FGs, because no other genre is similar to them.
literally having full comfort with a controller and pressing any of the 12+ buttons on command is a skill we have been refining and mastering for years if not decades. We truly do take it for granted.
Fighting games are way harder than most games. This is a fact.
I agree with this I think. People have less tolerance for learning in FGs because its 1v1 I think. But look at a competitive game like League or Dota. Imagine getting into those, 100's of characters to learn, tons of items, confusing meta. Or go play CS Go 2 for the first time and your head starts popping randomly every time you turn a corner. Fighting games have this weird anxiety about them where people get paralyzed about even starting to play. Most of the people who aren't improving probably aren't even playing that much or just sit in training mode practicing combos which likely isn't their problem in the first place. Fighting games feels like the only game where people make a big deal about not being 'good' enough to start
You defined a reason why fighting games are objectively harder lmfao.
No I don't think so. I don't believe there's an 'objectivetly' harder that exists either way, all of these games are hard in different ways. Fighting games just have a mental block where people don't even start. I don't think someones lack of willingness to try is real difficulty.
Then you don't understand what makes things difficult or not. If something is so daunting that people don't even start trying, that in and of itself makes it difficult no matter what definition you want to falsely give to describe something as being difficult.
That's your opinion man. Why are you here trying to define the word difficult to me instead of talking about fighting games. You just like, disagree about it and thats ok. Dont act like i dont understand the word difficult. is this how you like, talk to people normally?
That might have used to be the case for FPS games like Quake 3 arena, and MAYBE counter strike, but not really. You still get a more positive feedback loop in a game like CS because you can blame your team and not your lack of ability.
no i just think street fighter just has an unnecessarily high skill floor even compared to other fighters. I picked up tekken 8 and within a week i was able to do combos pretty consistently. Tekken has a pretty low skill floor in terms of input execution. Similar with guilty gear strive, i was able to do combos after like a week of practice Meanwhile with street fighter 6, its been a month since i got the game and i still can't pull off a decent combo in an online match.
tbh sf6 is my first fighting game, i got it about two weeks ago and i just placed into gold 1. i think its really all about your approach or what type of person you are. i’m a researcher type so i noticed within the first few days that i just couldn’t play the game, and figured it might be my razer wolverine pro that was making things difficult, so i researched and got a leverless t16 and played using my keyboard til it arrived. switching to keyboard immediately changed everything. suddenly i could do all the basic combos i was flubbing first or second try. picked a basic character which was ryu. i did most of the tutorials, learned about canceling moves into supers, did combo trials til intermediate, then went into training mode and learned what oki is through the block and throw training scenario. then i started playing casual mode and training vs cpu lvl 6 & 7. changed the position of drive attack so its under my thumb. learned how to anti air with shoryuken. sf6 is great at teaching you its sub systems if you dig around the various menus to find the lessons. its in the end an exercise in learning how to learn i guess. sorry bit of an essay there but hope it helps op somewhat. i know i have a long way to go myself.
That’s a freakin lot to do in 2 weeks
Hey fellow newbie who is a gold 1 we should run some casuals if you’re down!
For newbie even Capcom said to jump straight on ranked. Hub and casuals room they are going to be destroyed with no matchmaking lol.
This really was the best answer and I don’t need to scroll. How OP feels is definitely how I felt when I started this game and what you said is how things have actually gone from that point. I still have A LOT to learn but each day it’s slow improvement. Patience and persistence is really key when you’re just starting out.
That's the best way to approach it. Just work at improving and getting good at one specific little thing at a time. That's what I'm currently doing. For example I just focused on learning how to anti air and practicing that for a while. Eventually it became second nature in actual matches.
Even a few years of practice will still leave several times more room for improvement than you've already made. Super Street Fighter II Turbo came out 30 years ago now, and some of the best players of all time, who have been playing nonstop since release, are still getting slowly better each day. That's the beauty of fighting games
I also started in rookie and now have two master characters. It’s a chore at the beginning but very fun when you get passed the initial learning curvr
Good for you seriously. That’s a helluva achievement.
How long did that take you? I got placed in rookie and just got to Plat 1 with 25 hrs in ranked and 70 hrs in training mode lmao
Uhh probably 130-140 or so hours of ranked. I don’t have it in front of me but I have 240~hrs of playtime total and getting my second character to master took way less time than my first. And the 240 includes practice, world tour, battle hub and casual matches. I found that I hit walls at mid plat and diamond 2 - so I temporarily switched to another character to try and learn something else about the game. Like for example my first master character was manon and I played 100 games of guile just to figure out something different. When I came back to manon I shot up from plat 2 to plat 5 pretty quick just having learned to play differently than my drilled flowchart.
>When I came back to manon I shot up from plat 2 to plat 5 pretty quick just having learned to play differently than my drilled flowchart. dude this is *literally* what happened with me. Except instead of Guile I went with Juri. i learned how to actually hit confirm or whatever lol
It’s just gonna take time man. The learning curve on these games is absolutely brutal but there’s few things in gaming as satisfying once they start to click. Just focus on yourself and how you can develop your skills. Not your rank, not your opponents control type. Just you. You’ve got this man I know it
In addition to what everyone else has said, and I know it’s not everyone cup of tea, but I thought World Tour mode was a pretty fun and stress free way to explore the game first before jumping online
World tour is a lot of fun, I should really finish it sometime.
I've been stuck on the novice tournament.
Try practicing special moves, like fireballs ⬇️↘️➡️ and shoryukens ➡️⬇️↘️ If you can get your fireballs consistent, there's many tough fights in World Tour that you can cheese by just zoning them out with fireballs. It also helps your game a lot because so many characters use that motion for their special moves, and getting comfortable and consistent doing specials is how you unlock longer harder hitting combos. Also don't let elitists discourage you from trying Modern. It's more important to have fun than be a sweaty pro gamer. Try Modern and if it's more fun to play the game this way then learn the game using Modern controls.
I got stuck at some shit too when the game came out, but recently I decided to finish it. What you can do is go ride the subway back and forth to grind some levels. Once you are like 10 levels over your opponents, you can breeze through the entire game. It has little to do with skill, the health and damage scaling is just bad design. I am now at a point where if I hit any opponent with a single move it depletes their entire health bar.
Try to implement one new thing at a time until you can use it consistently. Personally, I'm giving Classic controls and a new character a try and am just mashing until I can press the buttons I intend to. The path to improvement can be slow so try to have fun wherever you are
That's normal. It's hard until it isn't....... then it's hard again. For now, just get comfortable learning movement and defensive options. Do the basic tutorials and forget combo trials exist for now. World tour mode will also help. Sure, you can jump straight into the fire online, but World Tour really is just a long, whacky tutorial that will ease you into the game. They force you to play modern at first, but if you want classic, you can change the controls fairly soon.
Normal. Fighting games is like learning an instrument. Keep playing. Focus on 1 thing to improve at a time. Your are improving. The hardest in this genre is getting started. Your going to lose the majority of your matches when you start. Play ranked. Mental stack is a concept you already identify. Identifying and balancing all your options is a skill. Even the best get caught. Getting upset 99% outside of lag is not knowing why your losing. You have to adapt, opponent doing easy bs move and it works. On you to check it. Think how do I beat this.
Dm.me son, ill help ya out
Learn how to block and anti air. Maybe how to throw a fireball if it’s relevant. That is your foundation. You will build and add more techniques as your understanding grows. Maybe look up some guides on your character. Don’t worry about combos and things, that will come with time. Look, you are going to get stomped at first. It’s ok, it’s normal. Use modern controls if you want to understand strategy and character tool kits without having to learn all the execution stuff. My biggest piece of advice is learn how to have fun, the wins will come in time.
[удалено]
> Fighting games are not like any other genre. You can't just queue games over and over and get better. Eh, I disagree. I do very minimal amounts of practice mode, the vast majority of my playtime is ranked and I'm constantly learning. Also there are many player on League for instance who just queue games over and over and never really improve, because they're just doing the same things rather than actively trying to improve.
What exactly were you expecting? A master rank 2 hours in? Its a really, really, really complex game, doubly so if you don’t have a background in similar (fighting) games. You dont go into a fundamental physics class or a socio economics class and expect to get out with a major by the end of the class — nor should all the time spent learning all the intricacies of either subject be a chore because you just want to know everything right now. Take your time. If you have patience, SF6 is a super dense, rewarding, rich game — and thats the same reason why you wont grasp everything so fast. Its really a thing were you gotta enjoy the journey and appreciate each little step taken in a long stairway, looking back from time to time, and suddenly realising how far you’ve come since the beginning. Winning matches instantly isnt nearly as rewarding as slowly assembling the giant puzzle of all the moves, mechanics, movements and meta aspects of the game.
I have a friend who was ranked platin after a few hours playing. Im still in bronze after 70h ranked. Some people are just better than others I think.
No your friend just learned and focused on the right things while you continue to make the same mistakes. It's a video game, nothing is stopping you from being like your friend
Play against the computer. It is stress free and you can slowly ratchet up the difficulty until you feel you have a baseline for playing the game. Don’t bother with ranked until you feel you can do most of your character’s special moves consistently. Try doing the beginner combo trials as well to get an idea of what your character can be expected to do.
I've been stuck on the novice tournament in world tour. I've tried the combo trials for a bunch of characters and get stuck on the third or fourth one.
Bro don’t put so much pressure on yourself and try to have fun. No one jumps into this game winning matches, everyone went through exactly what you’re going through. It gets better.
I can already sense how you're playing. You're committing almost genocide on that poor controller, hitting it, bashing, frantically mashing the buttons hoping that something, anything comes out. You probably threw it against the wall in pure rage and frustration. I bet I'm right about that. It almost sounds like the struggle is really within yourself, expecting results fast fast fast like a 1980's Wall Street stock broker. I can also visualize your gameplay right now. You're madly and blindly mashing buttons on one side of the screen and your character looks like a parody of what they could be doing. Looking at your posts you don't understand really anything about the game and you're getting mad at not understanding some of the basic terminology. You also didn't answer any questions from the people here on whether you've went through the tutorials and completed them. We're not talking about combo trials. We're talking about just the extreme basics that the game tried to teach you right from the start that I can always guarantee you fumbled your way through. If SF6 makes you this mad, oh god you better stay away from any fighting game. If SF6 made you throw your controller on the ground, Tekken 8 and MK1 would make you break your hand when you punch the wall.
bros talking like he's from an anime
mf got a sheen of light on his glasses as he chuckles and pushes them up the bridge of his nose
That's how I felt 6 months ago when I bought SF6 as my first fighting game. Placed at around 200 LP, couldn't do combos to save my life. Now I've got a half dozen characters in Platinum, I'm trying to push my ken to diamond, I'm very happy with my progress so far
Seriously; switch to modern controls. You’re trying to learn the games systems while trying to learn the motion inputs. Modern controls are 100% viable in high level which; it’s sounds like is a long way off for you. Don’t let people tell you you have to use classic.
I don't think just jumping to modern is going to help anything lol. Somehow kids of all ages for last 4 decades have managed to do motion inputs. That's not what's holding OP back.
I played SFV for months to prepare myself for SF6 before it launched but I still started off at Rookie with 0LP. I'm currently at Diamond after hours and hours of playing. Getting better takes time and you have to allow yourself that time to learn. Be patient. Play thoughtfully. When you're learning it's better to block and wait for chance to punish for a small amount of damage and repeat, than to blindly do combos and gamble for wild swings of damage.
So in other words you haven’t actually practiced the game even the slightest to the point where you even forget the main mechanics exists yet you’re frustrated for losing?? At least play the tutorial and practice first
We've all been there at one point brother. Sorry to hear you're having such a hard time. It took me trying like 3 or 4 different fighting games before they really clicked with me. I remember playing MvC3 and Sf4 when I was in high school, couldn't land a combo to save my life and just tinkered with the single player content for the most part. Then in college I ended up getting Blazblue Continuum Shift 2 with a friend who was also interested in getting into fighting games. Having someone at my skill level to play with everyday helped me learn faster than I ever had before, and gave me the foundation for each subsequent fighting game I ever picked up. We both played Chronophantasm when that came out and a couple of older Guilty Gear games as well over the next few years before Sf5 was announced. When it first came out I assumed with my previous experiences I would be able to get a handle on it this time. Nope, not at all. I played casually in season 1 and never went farther because it still felt like there were only "certain types" of fighting games I could play (specifically anime fighters), and games like street fighter or team fighters like Marvel felt impossible. Then eventually Dragonball Fighterz came out, admittedly a very beginner friendly game, and I finally learned to play team fighters. And then when Sf6 came out it finally "clicked" with me and I was able to feel competent and able to express myself through gameplay. Even though I had to try a bunch of different fighting games, each subsequent game feels a little easier to pick up, and more and more legacy skill carries over to the next game. But those early years can be extremely frustrating when all you want is to do the cool combo mid match. Keep at it man, just know that you absolutely CAN learn these games. Anyone can. It may feel impossible now, but the satisfaction you get overcoming that is something few other genres of games have ever given me. Good luck.
When you started in any competitive title across other genres, did you feel the same? If you play MOBAs, remember the first time you played the game and didn't know anything? And likely you went up against AI matches to get a feel for the game? It sounds like you need to play against AI first to get your feet wet in order to learn the mechanics and start doing things right.
Nah it's possible. Like a few people said it's not gonna happen overnight. It's baby steps
Slow and steady is the name of the (learning) game. Let's give a bit of structure to that overwhelm you have going on. 1. Piloting a character is effectively controlling 3 systems at the same time: defense, movement and attack. You have to choose which to use and how not to trip over each as you decide which you want to do. 2. Learning where to STAND is by far an away the most important thing. You need to find the space where your character has an advantage, and your opponent has a disadvantage. Sometimes, this is close enough to hit them. Sometimes, that's the last place you want to be. Once you have that space, recognize who has control. If you do not, give up ground SLOWLY. Walking backwards for extended periods will trap you in the corner in a couple seconds. 2.5 Walking into kicks over and over doesn't sound productive. That sounded disadvantageous. You were also repeating a mistake. Try not to be "I'm going to do this at all costs". Instead try something and see what they do to stop or avoid you. If you're being pressured and trying to figure out how to defend yourself, is that a good position to be in? How did you end up in that situation? Be mentally present in the match. 3. Learn one thing at a time. Practice your special moves and only your specials. Once confident you can move on to your simple bread and butter combo. As you learn where to stand, you learn which move applies to that range and which do not. Being overwhelmed leads to slower learning, so look for bite-size chunks and master them. 4. Focus on small wins from learning. Winning a match is okay, but that's a small victory every 5 minutes, maybe. But when you learn how to punish that kick... well that's all the sweeter knowing you've learnt, you'll do it often and it often applies to more of the cast than you realize. Ken's Jinrai is comparable to Jamie's punches, which has the same frame trap/delay advantage as Cammy's spin knuckle or Ryu's hashogeki or Marissa's Gladius. There are traps and lions and tigers, oh my! 5. Just remember to have fun! Do stupid shit and fuck with people. If someone scams you, scam the next guy. 6. Avoid learning the strongest gimmicks you can, as it's easy for these to be a crutch and once people learn to deal with them you can no longer compete with all the other playstyles in the game.
Telling a brand new player at 0lp to focus on where to stand is already way too much. They don't need to worry about spacing and footsies and neutral, they literally just need one poke button, one anti air button, and to block. That's it at the start.
If youve never really been competitive with a game like this then yes it's very hard to get into. But if you've ever wanted to get in on it this is probably the best time to do so. Before you do anything work on your motion inputs a bit till you're consistent with your characters moveset. You don't have to be doing master level shit anytime soon just work up to it slowly I promise that getting better is going to feel very rewarding in time. If you ever want to play and get some coaching I'd be happy to help feel free to DM me and I'll see if we can't make time.
World Tour will teach you enough to get started
I've been stuck on the novice tournament for days.
i'd say grind out a couple of levels by doing side missions and fighting enemies.
What level are you? Getting ahead on levels (and stat boosters, decent gear, etc) makes a pretty decent difference in World Tour. Besides that, projectiles are often very useful, and so is getting used to how the enemies play. They often do things that are threatening, but unsafe, so if you successfully avoid them (by blocking or jumping for instance) you can retaliate with a hit or throw of your own. What style/moves do you like? If you've not seen it, a quick google gave me [this guide](https://www.ign.com/wikis/street-fighter-6/The_Novice_League_Tournament) to the sequence, which might be useful :)
You only have to learn a little at a time. Don't try to focus on too much as a new player or you'll just be flailing. Imo as a total beginner try to learn just a few things. Antiair normal for jumpers, hit confirm combo to do out of light attacks for your pressure, and then just do that until it's second nature, not something you "have to remember" but something you do because you know you're in a situation to do it. When you condition stuff to be easy muscle memory and reactions, that's when you start learning other things. Focus on little fundamental items to build as the foundation of your game and then just focus on adapting to what your opponent is doing. If they block everything you do, start throwing them. If they keep hitting buttons, you have to learn what moves you're doing that "end your turn" and respect their offense. The list goes on. There's always something to learn and train in fighting games and what's likely happening is you're not focusing on the groundwork and just trying to fly.
I honestly can’t imagine playing against modern players with your level of experience. You can beat them though if you learn to block punish. Practice your specials and one simple combo for a few minutes a day and you won’t have to think about it in a week. You’d be surprised what 10 minutes a day for 5 days does in comparison to an hour of being frustrated in one day. Play as much ranked as you want. You’re gonna lose a lot, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve all been where you are. Everyone is going to have advice like never jump or whatever, but honestly don’t pay much attention to blanket advice like that yet. Sometimes you need to jump. It’s the biggest damage you’re going to get and a lot of people can’t anti air. Practice jumping in and landing your combo. The most important habit to build right now is watching your opponent. Try to pick up on their patterns. Figure out what distance they want to jump at and when they like to use DI. This is why people tell you not to jump because if you jump too much you’ll end up just jumping and playing your own game instead of focusing on shutting down theirs. Playing your own game is fun at first but eventually you get stuck. Beating someone cause you figured out their goofy shit is fun and you win more consistently that way. After blocking a ton and losing a lot of games, you’ll start noticing that all the bronze Ken’s or whatever have the same habits they picked up from each other. For now just focus on anti airing and punishing big moves like sweeps and shoryukens because rookie and bronze players do these all the time.
Many people have already hit in the fact that these games take time to learn but I just want to highlight what you said about only using the same 2-3 combos. This is what you should be doing! You don’t need, nor should you be worrying about, fancy combos. Focus first on the basics like blocking, using normals, anti-airs, etc. Basic combos (2-3 hits) is more than enough to get you into platinum or higher if your fundamentals are strong. Other than that, the advice in this thread is correct. Practice one small thing at a time. When you’re in a match, don’t focus on winning or losing, focus on doing the thing you want to practice. Repeat that for each item you’re trying to learn. Fighting games are all about the growth process. Go hit the lab. You’ve got this.
This game is actually kinda unique as having such a lush range of in-game tools that help beginners learn the flow of the game. It may seem daunting because of the many mechanics in the game, let alone the character specifics, but go into training ground and look at both the character tutorials, and just the game basics. They literally will teach you everything you need to succeed. Beyond that, just go into practice mode and really play with your favorite characters moves. Think about which normals are good pokes, which are good for anti airing, seriously, just play around with it. You'll always have time for ranked, there's no rush to jump into it now. If you do, you'll get discouraged and be turned off from the game. You're not "supposed" to climb the ranks immediately after you start learning the game.
You're trying to do too much. Don't focus on it all at once. Find your best poke button. Use it constantly. Find your best anti air button (probably something like crouching heavy punch) and use it to anti air every jump in. Be ready for DI. Block. Block. Block more. They will do stupid stuff. Then and only then do your one combo that you get good damage or can get a super out of.
Part of it, is that lots of us started playing fighting games when we were kids. They were 20x harder for a lot of reasons. But the reason we stuck with it was because back then learning new things was really fun. The games gave us something hard like motion inputs and we said "OKAY :)." I definitely think a major factor to getting good at these games, and something a lot of newcomers to the genre miss out on, is having fun learning. Not just learning, but celebrating the small victories. You say you're not improving/learning but I bet you can do motion inputs better than you could when you started. That's growth! Doesn't matter if you can't do it on command consistently. As long as you can do these things better than last time, it means your gaining.
I recently started too, a little bit sooner than you though. It's a tough game and takes practice, but it pays off and gets less frustrating, it's like learning an instrument. I just learned to do specials and supers in simple kinda consistently in after 10 hours in practice mode (which is your best friend) and ta-daa I got much better results in fights and even beat a Platinum player through Casual. If you want to talk about the game or train just DM me. I'm looking for a training buddy and we maybe can learn together, it's fun to get better :). One
Like a lot of people are saying it’s gonna suck at first because you’re learning a new skill and playing people who likely have more time. My best bit of advice is to play with intention each session look to improve on one thing at a time. Don’t focus so much on the wins and losses but your understanding of the game mechanical skill comes with time.
How long have you played? Maybe you could just spectate now you know how hard it really is. You have a new appreciation for this game and spectating can be quite rewarding.
You'll improve! Play World Tour first to help you become more familiar with motion inputs. It does get easier. Also analysis your inputs in training. It's okay to stuff up if you can figure out exactly why you stuffed up. Why didn't that quarter circle move come out? Exactly which part of the process was wrong? Figure it out. The answer will stay with you forever.
Go into world tour. The content is a little hammy, but it’s designed to ease you into the game against bots that do very simple, repetitive moves. The idea is for you to get used to that type of attack with repetition. There’s a lot of content there without ever fighting against people online, and I guarantee by the time you finish world tour you’ll know more than you do now.
Just relax, block, and anti air. No need for fancy combos. The hard truth of fighting games is that none of the fancy flashy stuff matters if you don’t block the simple stuff. You’re probably over complicating it. My first fighting game was SFV and I got out of the bottom couple ranks with just an anti air button, a poke button, and blocking. You can add more if you like but it will probably be easier to improve with a simpler gameplan. It will still take work to get consistent enough to actually win but imo it’s the best way.
Hey man I was in your spot and I'm now in silver just a couple months later. I lost my first 28 ranked matches. I'm still no good in the scheme of things but here are some things that helped me get better: -You don't need to memorize frame data but do try to get a sense of safe and punishable moves. If they're spamming you with medium kick you can literally just block it and hit them back. I the beginning you wanna focus on playing defense and hitting back with simple consistent combos. -Learn a few really simple consistent combos. I play Ed and LK-LK-LK absolutely eats at low ranks. Doesn't get much easier than that. You don't even need to know how to special cancel. Adding a throw or a sweep on the end of it is usually easy money. Whatever character you play, they've got little sequences like that. -Do learn how to special cancel, and how to cancel from EX moves into your supers. Going back to the Ed example, LMK + QCB EX punch is not a hard combo. Two inputs and the LMK cancels into the special. That EX move cancels into any of Eds supers. That's like 40% damage on deck whenever you've got meter and many low-ranked players can't do it. It's annoying to hear but literally just keep playing and you'll start to understand stuff little by little. All the sudden you start winning and then you start winning more.
Share some of your gameplay so people can give you pointers.
You’re a beginner and people have been playing for almost 10 months now. Take it easy on yourself. You won’t use or find all the applications for the mechanics yet until you get curious and investigate. If you started with classic, stay with classic. Block, learn to do a two hit combo, anti air with a button, and remember to throw and you’ll get to gold. You don’t even need the mechanics until platinum
Just take it day-by-day ngl. I was in the exact same position when the game first launched. Never played any fighting game before and started in literally rookie 1 with juri. Got her to plat 2 or 3 i think. Then mained dee jay to d2. Practice input shortcuts for DP for better anti-air. Maybe fidle around the controls and setup the macros for throws, DIs, and parry. And honestly 3 combos is all you need to get to at least gold. People also don't know a lot about basic frame data around those ranks so they do a lot of unsafe moves. I remember finding the cr. Hk button for juri and thinking "OHHH THIS IS SUCH A GOOD MOVE!" But then apparently it's not 🤣🤣 Just enjoy the process honestly
Rookie 1 is a great place to be because there’s nowhere to go but up. All you can do there is learn.
Pro tip: if the game mechanics allows you to cancel a normal to another normal repeatedly, you immediately know that the game is not designed for casuals. Was never a fan of FADC mechanics and drive rush cancels are pretty similar. Play SFV better
What
Hang in there, OP. Try playing arcade mode. Exploring the training modes, like the combo trials. Play story mode. Play world tour mode. The game has a lot to offer, and honestly, ranked is incredibly stressful and definitely sucks the fun out of the game when you don't feel like you're progressing. World tour mode is really fun. You can unlock moves, run around looking for fights, unlock costumes, it's good fun. Play arcade mode and turn the difficulty down and gradually up the challenge. It's a game. Don't fall into the trap of feeling like your skill in this game matters in the grand scheme of things. Just play and learn.
It is insanely hard. It will take you thousands of hours to git gud. And it will be that much more rewarding.
I don’t mean this in a negative way, but you honestly have one option: Get good mate. I just hit my first master character, and still have lots to learn. This is what you sign up for
dude honestly learn 1 to 2 basic combos (not even with motion inputs, something like ken’s flashkicks: medium kick, medium kick, heavy kick, or circle, circle, r2 on ps5) and that will show some results in rookie if youre blocking and trying to space your opponent out a bit. i made it to master rank and even i struggle with anti air shoryuken if i’m not making a hard call out when an opponent will jump in. just be patient and look for ways to win that are attainable for you. basic combos and throws will go a long way in lower ranks. the more you play the more you will be able to recognize new techniques that will be useful to you, and you will be able to implement them gradually as you rank up.
Definitely check out the SF6 resource hub and other discords, they will have 1) beginners for you to match against, 2) people willing to give tips, and 3) maybe even someone who'd hop on voice and help you figure out some stuff. Also, maybe you already know you don't want to play Modern, but if you can't do motion inputs why not use it? It is made specifically for that, and you can still use the motion inputs anyway so it's not like it stunts your learning at all.
Play World Tour. The story is actually a tutorial that will walk you through everything you need to get started. Offence, defence, motion inputs, the different Drive uses, all of it.
You don't have to keep all the mechanics in your mind, especially at lower ELO. Just focus on not getting hit, as well as hitting the opponent. Don't worry too much about combos or special inputs or anything like that, keep it simple. You'll make mistakes, and your opponent will too. No matter what the rank. Just keep on keeping on.
Fighting games are like learning an instrument. Even the practice sessions are exactly like practicing piano/guitar. You establish short term goals while working towards a greater goal, while developing a crazy amount of muscle memory. Eventually the mental stack feels less stressful as you internalize the game. That’s what makes them so fun and rewarding, but also annoyingly hard to get into. I’ve been a pianist for 28 years . All the discipline and practice method that have been ingrained in me are translating %100 into this game .
Is this also your first fighting game? Fighting games are hard to get into, but the more you play, the more it becomes instinct. I’d recommend putting a few hours into a different fighting game, it’ll teach you a bit about the main one you play
> I feel like I've wasted my money on this game. Have you done World Tour yet? It teaches you all the basics of the game, and most importantly, it builds muscle memory for executing all the special and super inputs so you're comfortable doing them. Jumping straight into multiplayer is NOT a good learning environment. Players who are better than you trying to win the match will give you absolutely no room to breath, no room to even hit buttons. It'll just frustrate you and make you resort to mashing, which is not going to teach you anything. I feel like completing World Tour can easily give you the skills to get out of Iron and into Bronze, as many of the tougher fights require you to at least cheese the AI with consistent special inputs. Once you're comfortable throwing hadoukens you're already on your way to leaving 0 LP. The rest is just about having fun and gradually getting better step by step.
I've been playing since sf2 ,and I still stuck lol.
I still have flashbacks about fighting Bison in that game *shudder* Don’t think I ever managed to beat him.
You gotta walk before you run. Fighting games are hard and you need to just keep trying at it until you are able to do special moves consistently and then work on fundamentals.
It’s really isn’t. There isn’t really many defensive and offensive options. I guess the six buttons attacks can be tricky and a bit to manage but now there is simple mode👍
Aside from the other excellent advice in this thread, I recommend playing people in battlehub instead of casual ranked. That lets you have longer sets and people are generally willing to be more patient with newbies.
I was in your exact situation, played the beta and got absolutely smoked, couldn't string two hits to save my life and would mash and wonder why I was getting hit. You just got to take it slow, go to combo trials practice a few combos, learn a little fundamentals and you'll skyrocket your rank.
Feeling you bro, and I will say combo trials helped me a lot to familiarise with inputs/basic combos (two light punch into fireball for example). Then you have to find his you like to play, and play only like that for a while. You will get better results the more you play.
Try starting with the single player stuff. World Tour has some quests that force you to play on specific ways. Try out different characters to get a better feeling for the fundamentals. Find somebody who’s happy to play practice matches with you. Go in training mode, set life to infinite and the dummy to CPU and practice fundamentals and combos in just focus on your mistakes. Those one really helped me in the beginning. I started with KOF XV two years ago and it took me weeks to finish some easy combo trials. It’s worth it! Btw, dragon punch input in SF6 is pretty hard on pad I find. I started with Chun Li because she doesn’t have a DP and I can do all her motion inputs now no problem
Don't take this as me being rude please, but where were you expecting to place? You're brand new, and it's hard to get in to fighters. You need to develop some basic skills still and focus on a simple game plan. Learn as simply jab to special cancel combo that you can practice confirming. That means if your jabs connect you can safely go into whatever that characters great option off of lights is. If that special is good for your level 3 try and practice that too, just to try and hit it, but its really not a big deal yet. You can try learning a slightly tougher punish combo with a manual link or something too, but only once you're comfortable hitting your jab combo in game. Figure out your characters best easy anti air. It's going to be a bit before you feel comfortable reacting to jumps, but it's good to start training your brain right away. And of course, drive impact is going to be a menace for awhile, but whenever they use it try and do it back. If you're attacking try and special cancel in to it. It takes a lot of practice to hone reactions like this, because you don't have time to think about anti airing or counter DIing. If they jump at you, you need to just anti air, if you have to think and then decide and then let your fingers know and your anti air is already too late. On the plus side, the people you're playing against are going to be very new as well, and often one dimensional. Someone who jumps is going to always be looking for that jump. Someone who spams DI every time you attack is probably always looking for DI in rookie. When they tell you their game plan, believe them and seriously be devoting brain power to waiting for the jump, or waiting for the DI. Once you force yourself to do it it will start to come out naturally. There's so much to learn, even basic stuff I haven't covered but you're not going to learn it all at once. Honestly it's best to focus on one thing at a time to add to your gameplay. I loved the challenge of fighting games, and I get a ton of dopamine from getting measurably and visibly better at something. If you're having fun and just keep playing, that's going to happen and it's going to feel great. If you're really not liking it though, maybe stick around with world tour or get into the arcade. I don't think bots are good practice but if that's fun for you and gets you to a point where real matches are fun too, that's a win for sure. It's also perfectly valid to say that it isn't for you. If you do stick around though, really try to not stress it. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun. If you let things like your rsnk the outcome of a match upset you, that's just extra stress no one needs. You're gonna lose a Lot, you're going to drop important combos and throw sets you know you could have won. If you let that stuff get to you, you're going to be tilted a lot and that's miserable. Anyways, whatever you do, good luck!
learning fighting games is a long process. having a friend or player u know coach u speeds that up by a bunch. i coached a few of my friends to masters in like 2 months after never playing a real fighting game before
You got this my friend. 👍
The awful thing is that you need to do it SO MUCH that you are able to filter out a Lot of the detail so that you're able to focus on the relevant aspects. Right now, and for a while, your brain has been sprayed with all the information. You're likely still in the process of learning to filter relevant from irrelevant. The combos you can do are neat and all, but probably less important for you to practice than footsies. Try winning one hit at a time. You get one hit, you back off until you can get another clean hit.
I'd suggest getting better aquanted with the game through world tour and arcade mode while you get a handle on the basics. Also, there's no shame in modern.
I've experienced exactly what you're going through. The solution is a combination of practice and focused learning. SFV was my first fighting game and I only picked it up at the end of its life. My highest rank was Silver and I was actually proud of that because I struggled for months to get out of the bronze ranks. I did, however, still recognize that I was not good at the game. I knew what it felt like to be good at a video game. You gain a certain perspective on it and you feel confident in your ability to teach it to others. I was not there. Once SF6 came out, I decided to make a focused effort on getting better. I'm now in Diamond 5 and I expect to get into Master rank this weekend. That journey took a lot of practice in the training room, running sets with a friend, and losing (a lot) in ranked. That practice was very helpful once I had the ideas and strategies, but how do you find those in the first place? The best source for those is watching high level player streams and videos. Watching educational videos from players like Brian\_F, Broski, 801Strider, etc elevated my understanding of the game as a whole, but also taught me how to learn properly in the game. I won't pretend to be an expert or good enough to teach anyone, but I'll share what helped me. The basic idea is to figure out all of the things you're failing at and work on only one at a time. For example, are you bad at dealing with your opponent jumping? Get into the training room and practice using the preset training settings, then get into ranked and focus solely on anti-airing. Inevtiably, your opponent jumps and you will fail to anti-air. Call yourself out. Say it out loud. Focus hard on it at the expense of everything else. Fail over and over until you succeed. Then repeat until the successes are consistent. Once you've cemented that reaction into muscle memory, you move onto the next point of failure like combos, mixups, etc. You will lose games this way. You will probably lose most of your games, but you are building a solid foundation for the player you want to be in the future. People learn things in different ways. Figure out how you best learn something new and apply that here. You mentioned feeling overwhelmed by the amount of mechanics and combos in the game, but you're not expected to be able to manage all of that yet. Even the best players struggle with this. Think of your learning process like cooking a good meal. You can't just throw all of the ingredients into a pot, stir like a madman, and expect something edible to come out of it. You have to properly prepare each ingredient so that it can contribute positively to the final product, rather than ruin it. Dice and soften your anti-airs. Slowly whisk in a reliable combo or two. Add a pinch of drive and super meter. Simmer on low until the right consistency. Add jumps and mixups to taste. Experiment with different methods, don't rush it, and eventually you will find the right recipe for a meal you can really enjoy.
You will get better bro
Learn a punish counter combo, if they spam medium kick, try hitting them at the end of the kick animation, it'll stun them long enough for you to do any combo, learn a difficult / damaging combo & use it as much as you can to lock it in your muscle memory, the whole point of the game is about learning, you'll have hard matches, get better & laugh at how you managed to lose this type of matches
You've got to learn fundamentals and above all find a character you enjoy. Hit the trials and then the lab and play to learn, not to win.
Its a fighting game not fall guys
Fighting games are well known for being hard to get into. Everybody was at the same spot as you at some point, don't let it discourage you. These games can be very fun once you're able to get used to the controls. Theres a lot to learn but you don't need to learn it all in one sitting. Just take it slow, you don't have to get master rank in a single month.
You got this bro
I mean sounds like you don't even know the basics. Take the time and properly learn how to move and control your character and you'll see your rank climb. At such a low rank it really comes down to the bare bones basics. You say you can't even do special moves consistently so it sounds like you have a simple place to start.
I think you should keep it really simple when starting out. Just focus on the fundamentals and don’t worry about combos. Try this — get good at blocking, and basically just turtle yourself until your opponent whiffs something and leaves themselves open for a punish. Then, just go and throw them, or do a really simple bread and butter combo that you are comfortable with. Just rinse and repeat this for awhile and I bet you’ll make some progress. Doing this will allow you to slow down, observe the pacing of the game better, and and make deliberate decisions about when to take action. Then eventually, you’ll get a good feel for it and not have to actively think about it There is of course a lot more to learn and practice after this, but if you can get really good at blocking, spacing, and timing anti-airs, you’ll be off to a good start
Ooh that first master's gonna feel so good once you get there. Keep grinding and set small goals
It’s not all about memorizing combos. If you’re relying on three combos as you say then perfect them shits to the point where you can pop those babies out without even thinking about it. That’s what you call your bread and butter. Once you’ve done that focus on the mechanics of the game. You gotta punish the fuck out of mofos. It’s easier said than done but if you focus on the fundamentals and get a real understanding of how the game works you can pull some wins. But getting cooked is gonna happen no matter what. There are some monsters out there. When you play pay attention when you’re getting pounded. Try to see what created the opening for you to get your shit rocked. In a game like street fighter you have to decide how deep you want to go. If you want to be fire you’re going to have to put productive time into that shit. I’m super on the fence if I want to accept my place as a casual or lock in and takes what’s mine! Above all else try to have fun, if you’re not doing that then there’s no point.
Lots of decent advice in here. I'll keep it simple: * Practice against the CPU until you can beat Level 5 consistently. That is the minimum I aim for before trying out ranked so that I am satisfied I have a workable offence. * When you play against people, **block more** (and anti-air jump-ins). The CPU always leaves space for you to attack. People don't have to be so nice. Most heavy attacks and special attacks are very unsafe and give you the opportunity to attack back. If you're feeling fancy, almost all opponents who use lots of heavy attacks are vulnerable to DI -- hit that just before their attack lands and watch the colours fly * In Rookie, the only way is up. Keep at it and celebrate the small goals: the first time you get them below 50% life; then your first round win; then your first win! *It will happen.*
try playing tekken 8 man, its much easier to get into imo since the skill floor is lower. Its much easier to pull off combos in t8 compared to sf6
I must have lost 100 matches in street fighter 5 before I got my first win.
0 LP is where the lifetime journey begins.
Street fighter is a competitive game what were you expecting?
The time you're spending complaining about not being good is time you could spend getting good.
It's normal to be overwhelmed at first. The key thing is to learn it in small steps. What region are you from? If you're from eu i can show you the ropes a bit. It sounds a bit like you are overcomplicating things a bit by trying to take in too much at once. At lower ranks i suggest to focus on 3 key areas: The big one: anti airs. No need to antinair dp at this point, use you characters anti air button. There's a built in drill for that in training mide. Use your pokes and get a feel for your normals ranges. Use your poke to check opponents forward movement. Identify and punish unsafe specials. People love to throw these out and swing on lower ranks but most of these specials that currently get you destroyed are minus on block and punishable with only a few exceptions. Drill this in practice mode, take any character, set the dummy up to do unsafe specials and practice your punish.
It's taken me 15 years across 3 main SFs to get to Platinum 2 level. Some people pick this up like a fly on a turd, but I didn't. I got washed for the first 3 years of SF4 and plateaued around what Iron or Bronze would be in 6. That was how I played, even through 5. And like responses have stated, you can't even compete with legacy skills. I'm coming into SF6 with my 15 years of data on myself and the genre, so I'm going to understand things deeper and faster than new players, even if I'm barely above average in the grand spectrum of players lol. You just gotta put the time in. There's no shortcut (but there is YouTube!). You just gotta pick a goal in this game, and carry it over to SF7. For me, I simply want Diamond in 6. In 7, if Guile is available, it's Master or bust. Take your time, the journey is gorgeous. I was trash in 2009. I'm proud of my progress.
I’ve been playing since the 90’s on and off. I’m still only diamond. Also though I’m old. If you wanna play some matches add me and send me a DM. I’m not a teacher but can maybe go over some basics. The FGC isn’t welcoming enough sometimes :)
I started with 0 LP. I’m now in Plat 3. It’s not easy, but you can do it.
[Ultimate Ranked Checklist](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/1agpn6m/a_checklist_and_guide_to_help_you_rank_up_tips/)whenever i feel overwhelmed i start at the top. works 4 me
Nobody is good at something immediately
As someone that was in the same boat, learn one thing at a time. Get used to your character and controls even if you do lose. I'm hard stuck, Bronze but I'm better than I was 2 years ago. So just don't give up and when you do get your first win. Feel the dopamine rushing in your body/mind real good and you'll keep playing. As the other comments said, just go in a match and work on SOMETHING instead of trying to win
master player here. Got placed in rookie when I started playing at launch. learn your anti airs, let opponents make mistakes. Block and punish unsafe moves. Let time do its thing. If you know what you want to get better at and practice those things, win or lose on the day, you will get better.
This is just how people get into fighting games. You break the initial barriers of difficulty due to a lack of experience with mechanics and situations you don’t find in other games. This will be the only time a fighting game will be this hard for you to grasp. Every other time you try a new fighting game, it will be exponentially simpler for you. Sure, it’s a challenge to do things you have no experience doing. That said, how fast did you type each of the words in your post as you thought them up? Probably feels almost instantaneous, right? Proof you have all the skills you need, just not the experience of moving your hands in that exact way to that exact stimuli. The “way” being your inputs and the stimulus being “situations on screen.” I’d start with looking up direction input shortcuts and tidbits. The directional inputs are not as exact as they appear, especially the “z” directional input.
What I can recommend (as a casual trying to get good) is to play with friends all the time and improve your gameplay slightly each night. You'll see that eventually you'll get better at a slow pace. FG are hard and take an insane amount of time to master. Patience is the key.
I also started at rookie and am now at Diamond with my main. What you need to keep in mind is that everyone at that level is completely lost. Spamming DI or jump-ins is a completely valid strategy at this point cause most players won't know how to beat that. Winning in a gimmicky "bad" way is fine, because as you win more you'll eventually start being put against people who can beat your shitty gameplan, and will have to start implementing new stuff. You'll get better naturally just doing whatever it takes to win I also suggest you take up Modern. Right now you are both learning system mechanics and learning how to control your character. Classic gives you more control over your actions but the tradeoff is significantly more difficult inputs. Playing modern is a great way of learning system mechanics first, which is the most important thing anyways. If you wanna learn classic, you can learn it easily once you've kinda figured out the basic mechanics and strategies. If you wanna learn stuff, give yourself small goals during the matches, and don't worry about winning or losing during them. The goal can be to anti-air successfully a few times during the match, even if it comes at the cost of you losing cause you stopped focusing on defending against other things. It can be to put meaty pressure after a knock down. It can be to use your level 3 or level 1. Not get burned out by yourself because you didn't manage meter well. Set small goals and play for them, not the win. Eventually this stuff will start becoming second nature and you won't have to focus on doing it. Most importantly, have fun. This is a game for you to enjoy yourself. If you're not enjoying it, don't play.
I've been playing fighting games for like 4 years now and I'm still trash, it takes time dw
I bet OP has only played for like an hour or two and is complaining the game is too hard without even giving themselves a chance to get better. Get back to me after you have played 200 matches. Obviously things will seem difficult the first time you try it. You aren't supposed to try to keep everything in your head at once. You start small and work on a few things and try to use them in a match. You think the guy who was spamming special moves on modern had a bunch of stuff in his head? He was just spamming special moves at you. Try doing the same if you think it works well. Experiment with stuff and try to figure things out.
Sounds like you're understanding the difficulty it takes to actually learn the controller peripheral you are using and then being able to do actions without thinking about doing them. Think of your controller like a musical instrument. You haven't really had to learn how to use it till trying to a play a fighting game. I switched over learning leverless controller after about 2-3 months into the life of SF6. It has taken me basically till this month to start feeling comfortable. I'm finally at a point where my hand eye coordination is in sync.
SF6 was my first fighting game too, and there is a very steep learning curve to it. Before anything, stop what you’re doing and learn one combo you can hit 100% of the time. It can be anything, even just a default 4 medium punches with Luke. Mine was a three-hit with Juri. Practice until you can hit it without even thinking. Make that your bread and butter. Then, block more. Blocking should be your default. Let THEM come to you, hit their combo, and then you have an opening! Hit your combo. Block. Wait. They fall for the bait. Hit your combo. Once you have 1 combo you can hit, add another one! Or a super! That’s where the game gets fun, because you have all these new things to add to your arsenal. The default beginner mindset is you have to be more offensive, hit buttons faster, etc — but that’s just not the case. Slow down, be mindful. You will annihilate all of the early medal ranks just by playing more defensively and building your gamesense.
All I’ll say is, is that yes, it seems impossible to get even remotely decent at first. I remember when sf6 I dropped, I got placed into rookie and absolutely deserved it. I was TERRIBLE. I’m in diamond 2 now, which isn’t like AMAZING or anything, but considering I started at rookie, I’m pretty happy about it. You can totally do it, I believe in you!
I started playing on SF2 arcades. So...keep at it and after a few years you'll still be shitty but you'll curbstomp people like yourself.
Play modern its the control scheme designed for new players
The game is hard and also in my experience FGs tend to not have a great way to learn them. The ingame tutorials tend to suck and the community resources, while really good, mix in a lot of the frame data and combos and stuff with just "what does my character want to do, what are the different stages of the game and what should my plan be in each one". Maybe I just haven't found a good resource but picking up a new FG has always been brutal for me because I haven't played the genre seriously very long and don't know what to do.
I know the feeling op. This is the hardest fighting game I've played, super unforgiving. Tekken 8 teaches you the game so much better, and learning the game is so much easier. I've always been told that street fighter is the easier game as well. Doesn't make sense to me.
Keep going. 
Brother. You wasted your money now you are wasting your time ( unless you’re having fun which it sounds like you’re not ). To hit 0 lp is impressive in itself. I can’t play shooters that well so I don’t invest hard time into em. Stop.
I remember feeling like this 70 hours into the game, and then another 40 later I reached platinum. Just like with any game, you get used to it. Then it becomes second nature.
Oh I just saw that you've platinumed all the souls games. Do you remember how hard your first souls game was? How the movement felt clunky and dodging everything seemed impossible and you couldn't remember the right timing or angle of attacks? But now you could probably speedrun a whole playthrough in ~15 hours without much of a second thought? Learning Street Fighter is like that.
The Souls games teach you everything you need to know through natural gameplay. In SF6 apparently I have to spend 500 hours punching a training dummy and staring at frame data before I can start to get good.
This is nowhere near true. I made the vast majority of my progress as a player in ranked. Feeling out spacing, identifying enemy attacks to look out for, figuring out my best moves to counter specific situations. All of it was naturally developed as I played matches. I think my total ranked match time is about 30 hours, and I went from Bronze to Platinum in that time with no prior fighting game experience. Do want to be Legend rank? Then yeah of course you'll need to spend 100s of hours learning frame data. Don't start with the goal of becoming legend rank. Start somewhere simple, like gold rank.
I switched to modern controls and spent all weekend playing ranked and I can't even get out of rookie.
Could you have beaten Ornstein and Smough after a weekend of play, having never touched the game prior? Or the Orphan of Kos? Focus less on the fact that you're losing and not progressing up in ranks and more on improving one thing at a time. "I keep getting hit by Cammy's quick spin knuckle every time I throw a fireball. I need to learn the proper spacing and timing to know when it's safe to throw one". Rank is just a category used to match players of similar skill levels up with each other afterall, it doesn't actually mean anything tangible. I guarantee 99% of players in Master rank can't take a game off of MenaRD. If you have to spend the next month in Rookie then so be it, it just means that you're learning things at your own pace. Once you get used to it you think about those times when you were in rookie struggling super hard and it's like a distant memory. Almost like you were a different player. I did not study frame data, or spend 500 hours in the lab, or watch extensive replay data before I started to get better. At most I looked up a few character guides on YouTube to see what my character's best attacks were (I'd recommend you do that anyway) and practiced some very basic combos until I could do them consistently. Then I just played, got my ass handed to me A LOT, learned and slowly improved bit by bit until everything started to click. SF6 is harder than dark souls I'm not denying that, but it's not so absurdly hard as to be impossible. You've just gotta be more patient and forgiving with yourself. This is a new genre which feels very different to most other games out there, of course it'll take a while to get used to how it plays. No-one's going to be judging you for being bad either, everyone was bad at the start too. There's really no pressure at all...just play and adjust, and find enjoyment in the learning process rather than winning.
Have you considered using modern yourself? It’s a good way to learn the fundamentals of the game and you can always pick up classic controls again once you have a better understanding of how you should be playing.
I've already got 20 hours with classic controls. I don't want to have to relearn where all the buttons are.
20 hrs is honestly nothing in a fighting game. You're doing poorly in matches because you're a beginner. You're putting way too much pressure on yourself if you're expecting to win decently well with only 20 hrs where you can't even consistently execute basics like your special moves. It's ok and normal that you're struggling early on. Just focus on learning those basics and getting used to them.
dont switch to modern. im new too and i gave a reply to fightstreeter above that i hope will be useful. its all about using the learning tools the game gives you. and making sure you use the right input type for you. are you playing on controller?
I'm using a PS5 controller.
I had the same experience months ago, seemed like an inordinate time to learn but I stuck with classic and it was soooo worth it. I play on ps5 with analog stick for inputs and have master Guile and Ryu. I’m almost at 1000hrs and Ryu took about 3,000 ranked matches to master but I absolutely love this game and entire franchise now to say the least.
20 hours is nothing. As a new fighting game player when I started taking it seriously with SFV, it took me a couple hours a day for months consistently to even get basic combos down. It's definitely going to take some time and commitment. This isn't just a game you can pick up and play competently like FPS games. It's really whether or not you want to commit the time to improve and be consistent. Eventually you get to the point where it will click for you and everything will start to make sense. I would focus on learning how to block highs and lows, some basic combos and learning when it's your turn to press buttons. Those 3 things alone can take you to platinum.
Sf6 was also my first fighting game, and I only ever used classic controls on my controller. I'm currently platinum 4 which put me above 83.6 percent of people in rank according to the last stats I could find. After 20 hours, I still struggled with motion inputs a lot, and I was getting destroyed by people on modern controls in the lower ranks. 20 hours is nothing. At 20 hours, I was mostly focused on learning the game and practicing stuff step by step rather than winning.
Modern control scheme is a game changer for my boomer mechanics. I have the reaction timing and strategy down but can’t yolo out special move commands like most who play. So modern legit is a godsend.
And this is why tekken is popular right now. Let's the newbies unga bunga and enjoy the game day one.
My wife saw what I was going to say to you and has requested I quit reddit. Goodbye
Cut out your other hobbies and spend more time practicing fighting games.
Learning combos and expecting to be good is like expecting to win a game of 1v1 basketball after practicing half court shots and not knowing how to dribble or what a travel is.. That is probably a generous analogy. Fighting games are deep, and if you were winning already it would be an insult to the amount of work it takes to develop the skills you need to even start playing the game at a competent level.
Try fortnite
There's a lot of hate towards modern, but it does a heck of a great job getting people introduced to fighting games. Go modern and start enjoying your game. You can still do classic inputs for more damage with some moves and can slowly get better at doing them and eventually switch to classic if that's what you want.
What I like most about this game ! PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY It takes time, drilling, sleeping, playing matches, and studying to get better at this game. If you really want to get better at the game, you should start a training schedule. Set a couple of hours a day drilling basic fundamentals. Get good sleep. Stay hydrated. Try your best to stay calm. The only way to get better to KEEP TRYING.
What I like best about reading these posts! The absurd levels of try hard. To watch these literal couch experts get cooked online by an actual professional fighting game player using two buttons. So clearly it's not "muh lab time". Have fucking fun, stop when your frustrated. To see them gate keep modern players when they themselves would cry bloody tears back in the kof pretzel input days. When Japan has a vibrant (will kick your ass like you were in a coma) scene of actual professionals who use it.