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Do I Just Flat Out Suck?

Saxton Hale

President and ceo of Mann co.
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Circustricksterl
Valentine Peacock Cerebella
Now before you say "NYEH U A SCRUB NYEH" let me get this out of the way. I love this game a lot I love it so much the art is beautiful, the fighting is solid, the story is interesting! But why do I feel like I can't even play this game outside of the single player? Now I played the training I played arcade all the way up to nightmare mode. I trained my ass off but I just can't seem to get 1 win out of 500 it angers me how there is no ranked matches and if there is i'm not seeing it on my version. I also find it extremely aggravating how when I start a lobby for BEGGINERS I seem to get nothing more than pros. Of course I could just kick them out but I shouldn't have to too begin with there should be a filter for this kind of stuff. I train so hard try to learn there moves but I just end up getting my ass handed to me and I continue to question myself. "Arent games meant to play?" well I can't seem to play the game when that first hit just goes onto an endless combo so I just end up setting my controller down because why bother? Now I know there is an easy way too break these combos but...remember when I said I did do the training I did but only by guessing which buttons because I don't speak "Fighting game" and when I mean by this is how it says "Press O while twirling the joystick" and i'm like ok I get the joystick but the hell is O? I have a controller with the basic X,A,B and Y buttons with LB and RB buttons. And it just tears my hair out how I cannot figure this out. Am I an idiot maybe I am and I really wanna learn I really do! I don't wanna be a scrub I don't wanna be a button masher I wanna get better! I don't blame the game I blame myself for not understanding it I blame myself for being a console fanboy. So please tell me do I just suck? or what is it? Because I need help either way.
 
Nah, the thing is in the lobbies a lot of people just leave everything on default when making the room. That's why there are so many mismatched titles/regional settings. Select Quick Match (Ranked Match) and after playing 10-20 matches, the game will try to match you with people of your skill level. Quick Match is the ranked match I believe... Also pressing O sounds like you have the playstation version? Not sure about that version since i only play the PC version. There are 6 attack buttons Low Punch, Medium Punch, Hard Punch, Low Kick, Medium Kick, and finally Hard Kick. I don't think your controller would suffice for this game. It doesn't have enough buttons.
 
Try talking in person to someone in the fighting game community(you can usually find some in conventions), hopefully you'll find a nice person to find how they got involved and can help getting you on the right track.
 
Nah, the thing is in the lobbies a lot of people just leave everything on default when making the room. That's why there are so many mismatched titles/regional settings. Select Quick Match (Ranked Match) and after playing 10-20 matches, the game will try to match you with people of your skill level. Quick Match is the ranked match I believe... Also pressing O sounds like you have the playstation version? Not sure about that version since i only play the PC version. There are 6 attack buttons Low Punch, Medium Punch, Hard Punch, Low Kick, Medium Kick, and finally Hard Kick. I don't think your controller would suffice for this game. It doesn't have enough buttons.

Quick matches affect your lobby listings? Even in the PC version?

And to OP, yes you do suck, but everyone sucks when they start and I've been playing in beginner lobbies so I know that you are not alone. I can confidently say this because I suck too, but fighting games are very difficult to get into at first, especially if you're not familiar with fighting games. But just keep practicing and playing, even if it's just little by little, and trust me you'll see improvements!

This is the first traditional fighting game I've really gotten into. Before this I played Smash Bros. Melee which is really different and beyond some mentality and very basic fundamentals, really basic important things like stick motions, chaining, or move buffering is brand new to me. I'm assuming you come from FPS games since you got good ol' Saxton Hale as your avatar (I'm a TF2 player too, as I would guess many others are on this forum). What you have to realize is that even if you totally get bodied, you're actually still improving believe it or not. In TF2 where there's multiple reasons why you can lose since it's a team-based game. You can be playing your class's role perfectly and still lose if your teammates suck, or if you flip things around maybe you could be totally sucking but you still win because your teammates carry you. To top it all off the maps are big with a lot of corners and you're playing from a first-person perspective, so you can't really see what your team is doing most of the time, and if you play pubs chances are there's not enough communication going on so you'll just have to cross your fingers your team is playing right, or at least playing better than the other team. A fighting game different because it is extremely intimate 1v1 battles in a tight box, so there's no corners to hide behind, barrels to take cover with, or long corridors to snipe across from as you can always see everything your enemy is doing. You have no one to carry but yourself and no one to carry you, and the only one person you need to worry about is the individual standing across the screen.

That also means that you can learn more through losing than in some other games, particularly team-based shooters, and honestly that's how I've mainly gotten better. Through losing really. If I keep losing to Filias doing j.HP then I start catching on to what I need to do to prevent that. Or if I know that Cerebellas are spamming supers waiting for me to drop a combo, I need to have an answer to that. This you can only really get through playing real people, and just like in shooters playing bots all day isn't really going to help besides give you hand warmers or keep your bread n' butter consistent. Just stay alert and think about why you're getting owned. Be particularly observant in the neutral game, see what enemies are doing as mix-ups and how they're approaching you which starts combos. From there you can find some possible openings in their approach, or maybe even a flaw you can exploit in their combo! If you can, perhaps record your matches and watch them later. With or without recordings, compare matches with other matches and you'll start to see patterns that you can respond to. This means after a few matches, maybe go into training mode and play around with some ways you can counter some of the enemy's options. Try to use the macros to replicate their combos/approaches and see if you can answer to it in a test environment. Then bring what you learn back into real matches. Just remember to keep playing real matches because it's easy to get lost in training mode theory land for too long.

Anyway this community is really nice and I'm sure that you can add people online and talk with them to help you get better. In fact going to the forums is another good method in getting help! Post footage or talk about your general strategy with people and we can help and give you critiques! Don't forget there's a Skullgirls subreddit as well where you can also ask questions and find more resources.

Also... DON'T GIVE UP! You can do it! Losing is just a part of the learning process! :D

remember when I said I did do the training I did but only by guessing which buttons because I don't speak "Fighting game" and when I mean by this is how it says "Press O while twirling the joystick" and i'm like ok I get the joystick but the hell is O? I have a controller with the basic X,A,B and Y buttons with LB and RB buttons. And it just tears my hair out how I cannot figure this out.
What version are you playing? As what Doctor Cursed said, it sounds like the PS3 version but I'm not sure. I play on PC as well as I've never seen O come up. Either way, you should be able to remap your keys so can can specifically see what the equivalent to O is. If you're on the PS3 version and your buttons aren't X, O, square, and triangle then I'm guessing you're using a third party controller?
 
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Quick matches affect your lobby listings? Even in the PC version?

And to OP, yes you do suck, but everyone sucks when they start and I've been playing in beginner lobbies so I know that you are not alone. I can confidently say this because I suck too, but fighting games are very difficult to get into at first, especially if you're not familiar with fighting games. But just keep practicing and playing, even if it's just little by little, and trust me you'll see improvements!

This is the first traditional fighting game I've really gotten into. Before this I played Smash Bros. Melee which is really different and beyond some mentality and very basic fundamentals, really basic important things like stick motions, chaining, or move buffering is brand new to me. I'm assuming you come from FPS games since you got good ol' Saxton Hale as your avatar (I'm a TF2 player too, as I would guess many others are on this forum). What you have to realize is that even if you totally get bodied, you're actually still improving believe it or not. In TF2 where there's multiple reasons why you can lose since it's a team-based game. You can be playing your class's role perfectly and still lose if your teammates suck, or if you flip things around maybe you could be totally sucking but you still win because your teammates carry you. To top it all off the maps are big with a lot of corners and you're playing from a first-person perspective, so you can't really see what your team is doing most of the time, and if you play pubs chances are there's not enough communication going on so you'll just have to cross your fingers your team is playing right, or at least playing better than the other team. A fighting game different because it is extremely intimate 1v1 battles in a tight box, so there's no corners to hide behind, barrels to take cover with, or long corridors to snipe across from as you can always see everything your enemy is doing. You have no one to carry but yourself and no one to carry you, and the only one person you need to worry about is the individual standing across the screen.

That also means that you can learn more through losing than in some other games, particularly team-based shooters, and honestly that's how I've mainly gotten better. Through losing really. If I keep losing to Filias doing j.HP then I start catching on to what I need to do to prevent that. Or if I know that Cerebellas are spamming supers waiting for me to drop a combo, I need to have an answer to that. This you can only really get through playing real people, and just like in shooters playing bots all day isn't really going to help besides give you hand warmers or keep your bread n' butter consistent. Just stay alert and think about why you're getting owned. Be particularly observant in the neutral game, see what enemies are doing as mix-ups and how they're approaching you which starts combos. From there you can find some possible openings in their approach, or maybe even a flaw you can exploit in their combo! If you can, perhaps record your matches and watch them later. With or without recordings, compare matches with other matches and you'll start to see patterns that you can respond to. This means after a few matches, maybe go into training mode and play around with some ways you can counter some of the enemy's options. Try to use the macros to replicate their combos/approaches and see if you can answer to it in a test environment. Then bring what you learn back into real matches. Just remember to keep playing real matches because it's easy to get lost in training mode theory land for too long.

Anyway this community is really nice and I'm sure that you can add people online and talk with them to help you get better. In fact going to the forums is another good method in getting help! Post footage or talk about your general strategy with people and we can help and give you critiques! Don't forget there's a Skullgirls subreddit as well where you can also ask questions and find more resources.

Also... DON'T GIVE UP! You can do it! Losing is just a part of the learning process! :D


What version are you playing? As what Doctor Cursed said, it sounds like the PS3 version but I'm not sure. I play on PC as well as I've never seen O come up. Either way, you should be able to remap your keys so can can specifically see what the equivalent to O is. If you're on the PS3 version and your buttons aren't X, O, square, and triangle then I'm guessing you're using a third party controller?


I have both the PC and the PS3 version but the one I am playing more of is the PC version the whole O is just an example to the M,L,H,MP and HP thing the controller I am using is the Logitech gamepad so basically it is a third party controller. It's just that when I'm playing in online with someone whos kicking my ass pretty hard I have to try to remember the button combination to break the combo. Because I have been playing consoles for so long in my life I guess you could say I sorta just adapted to it's controls and i'm just not use to the whole M,L,H,MP, J.HP. But nether the less I really appreciate the advice all of you are giving to a semi-noob like me and if physical hugs could be sent through the internet I would send them to all of you :P.
 
I have both the PC and the PS3 version but the one I am playing more of is the PC version the whole O is just an example to the M,L,H,MP and HP thing the controller I am using is the Logitech gamepad so basically it is a third party controller. It's just that when I'm playing in online with someone whos kicking my ass pretty hard I have to try to remember the button combination to break the combo. Because I have been playing consoles for so long in my life I guess you could say I sorta just adapted to it's controls and i'm just not use to the whole M,L,H,MP, J.HP.

Ah. For me what I do is that I associate the type of attack with the button. Take the Xbox 360 controller for example:
  • I associate X, Y, and RB as punches because they have buttons below them (A, B, and RT respectively) which fits the fact that anatomically arms are higher on the body than legs. That makes A, B, and RT kicks.
  • Then I need to remember the strengths of each type attack, so I just make it grow progressively with the button layout. So X is light punch, Y is medium punch, and RB is heavy punch. The kicks follow the same idea making A light kick, B medium kick, and RT heavy kick.
  • For LB and LT I make them macros. Everyone has difference preferences on macros and I can't really help you there since to be honest I use a fightstick more than the controller.
  • The right analog stick is what I use for assists.
Basically then I just practice in training mode until I get a good feel of the controls. Then I go online and usually I lose track of the controls again because I'm under pressure when fighting a real person. But eventually after a few rounds and maybe a few back and forths between training mode I'll eventually get the confidence and consistency for the controls. This actually kinda describes how I approach learning and practicing new combos too. It certainly doesn't come naturally at all. Everything requires practice!

But nether the less I really appreciate the advice all of you are giving to a semi-noob like me and if physical hugs could be sent through the internet I would send them to all of you :p.

It's no problem. That's part of the reason why the forums are here, people are here to help! :)
 
i'm one of the worst players i know Australian manly guy.

add me on steam and i can at least offer you an easy victory (or even a challege if you're on my level)
 
Umm
The bad news is yes you do suck. Good news is you don't have too! Before I continue I have two questions for you.
1) Are you willing to spend time on your own to grind combos and improve your execution? and
2) How much do you really want to improve? Do you just want to beat some people online or do you want to compete with the best?

I'm willing to help you get on your feet when competing against others, but how good you will get is entirely dependent on you and how much damage you'll do when you hit an opponent is reflected on the amount of time you spend practicing in training mode by yourself.(Properly)

Add me on steam http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198096563438/ and we can start this weekend :)
 
Umm
The bad news is yes you do suck. Good news is you don't have too! Before I continue I have two questions for you.
1) Are you willing to spend time on your own to grind combos and improve your execution? and
2) How much do you really want to improve? Do you just want to beat some people online or do you want to compete with the best?

I'm willing to help you get on your feet when competing against others, but how good you will get is entirely dependent on you and how much damage you'll do when you hit an opponent is reflected on the amount of time you spend practicing in training mode by yourself.(Properly)

Add me on steam http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198096563438/ and we can start this weekend :)

Ok cool!
 
Pfff, welcome to the club. I have been playing fighting games since I was a lad. I still have pics of myself playing MK2 on a Genesis when I was like 5 years old and I still suck at the game, I usually win against friends because they just don't care, but I'm always trying my best here...

And I still suck :D I get pwned way too much when online.

Also, Skullgirls seems way easier to play with an stick to me. I have both a 360 controller and a stick and I'd never be able to do combos on a controller :3
 
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Is this this lets suck at fighting games together thread? I'm in. Looking for some SG companions. Steam-me :)

Btw, awkward time zone... so I'll probably be laggy...
 
Only you can truly answer to yourself if you suck or not. The first step is acknowledgement. The real question is are you gonna do anything about it? That is what separates the easily frustrated players and the more composed players. The path is long and unforgiving, but the journey will yield rewarding results if your dedicated enough.


Stand up and live strong.
 
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Now before you say "NYEH U A SCRUB NYEH" let me get this out of the way. I love this game a lot I love it so much the art is beautiful, the fighting is solid, the story is interesting! But why do I feel like I can't even play this game outside of the single player? Now I played the training I played arcade all the way up to nightmare mode. I trained my ass off but I just can't seem to get 1 win out of 500 it angers me how there is no ranked matches and if there is i'm not seeing it on my version. I also find it extremely aggravating how when I start a lobby for BEGGINERS I seem to get nothing more than pros. Of course I could just kick them out but I shouldn't have to too begin with there should be a filter for this kind of stuff. I train so hard try to learn there moves but I just end up getting my ass handed to me and I continue to question myself. "Arent games meant to play?" well I can't seem to play the game when that first hit just goes onto an endless combo so I just end up setting my controller down because why bother? Now I know there is an easy way too break these combos but...remember when I said I did do the training I did but only by guessing which buttons because I don't speak "Fighting game" and when I mean by this is how it says "Press O while twirling the joystick" and i'm like ok I get the joystick but the hell is O? I have a controller with the basic X,A,B and Y buttons with LB and RB buttons. And it just tears my hair out how I cannot figure this out. Am I an idiot maybe I am and I really wanna learn I really do! I don't wanna be a scrub I don't wanna be a button masher I wanna get better! I don't blame the game I blame myself for not understanding it I blame myself for being a console fanboy. So please tell me do I just suck? or what is it? Because I need help either way.

You don't suck. You'll get better. It's ok to lose from time to time because you can learn from what you did wrong.
 
This may help answer your "O" question :D

710Pbr7Ty0L._SL1500_.jpg

And like others have said, you'll get better. NOONE is good at fighters right off the bat due to so much to be learned. Fighting the CPU is worlds different from fighting real opponents and uses a whole 'nother skillset such as reading your opponent, forcing mixups, and even baiting certain moves. Just keep at it and instead of getting flustered at your losses, try to understand the why of the loss, not the how. It's easy to say "oh I lost because that guy knew way longer combos." But WHY was he able to start them on you? Was it your blocking ability? Was it a poor ability to read his patterns/quirks? etc etc. Once you recognize the "why" you can see what you actually need to improve on.

Take a player like Desk for instance. The guy has some of the most godlike execution in the FGC, but he himself has stated he doesn't go to tournaments and is pretty ass at playing other people because of these sorts of things. Anyone can spend hours in training and learn long combos and still lose horribly to someone with good fundamentals. ;)
 
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Now before you say "NYEH U A SCRUB NYEH" let me get this out of the way. I love this game a lot I love it so much the art is beautiful, the fighting is solid, the story is interesting! But why do I feel like I can't even play this game outside of the single player? Now I played the training I played arcade all the way up to nightmare mode. I trained my ass off but I just can't seem to get 1 win out of 500 it angers me how there is no ranked matches and if there is i'm not seeing it on my version. I also find it extremely aggravating how when I start a lobby for BEGGINERS I seem to get nothing more than pros. Of course I could just kick them out but I shouldn't have to too begin with there should be a filter for this kind of stuff. I train so hard try to learn there moves but I just end up getting my ass handed to me and I continue to question myself. "Arent games meant to play?" well I can't seem to play the game when that first hit just goes onto an endless combo so I just end up setting my controller down because why bother? Now I know there is an easy way too break these combos but...remember when I said I did do the training I did but only by guessing which buttons because I don't speak "Fighting game" and when I mean by this is how it says "Press O while twirling the joystick" and i'm like ok I get the joystick but the hell is O? I have a controller with the basic X,A,B and Y buttons with LB and RB buttons. And it just tears my hair out how I cannot figure this out. Am I an idiot maybe I am and I really wanna learn I really do! I don't wanna be a scrub I don't wanna be a button masher I wanna get better! I don't blame the game I blame myself for not understanding it I blame myself for being a console fanboy. So please tell me do I just suck? or what is it? Because I need help either way.

Everyone has problems starting out in fighting games, you need to get used to the flow of the game, how the mechanics work and all, it takes some time. I have met such wonderful people that helped to make me better, all it takes is some time, and some dedication. So don't loose hope, everyone starts out bad, but only the great ones keep fighting to get better. So keep up the hard work and feel free to add me on steam if you want some friendly matches. Take it easy.
 
This is what @IsaVulpes told me when I was in a similar position. I think it's simple but great advice.

Mastery-Curve.png


Keep playing.