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700 hours in, still don't feel attached to any particular characters

Nowhere Man

Nowhere Man

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I like the game a lot, but have hard time making consistent team, thus I'm not good at playing any character. I enjoy playing almost all of them, but commiting to just 1-3 seems impossible for me. How did you choose your team?
 
Skullgirls 2nd Encore also known as Team Crisis 2. :P

Team Crisis is very common!

Most people don't have too hard of a time at least picking one main and then building a team around it.

Pick one character you are drawn to more than the others and then focus on trying to make that character as strong as possible by giving it all the tools in the world.

Try and pick an assist that works the most for your point, whether it locks people down, makes something safe, converts off a certain move, stops the opponent from doing a certain thing.. jumping... poking you.. hitting you with a reversal... etc etc etc.

That's how I started building my teams.

I really like Parasoul and I try and find a bunch of things that make her better at doing what Parasoul does.
I try and look at the cast list very objectively and just look at what their assists and DHC's do for her.

After I find a character that does helpful things for my point, I try and look at how my point can help my assists characters.

So I guess the advice I'd offer from my personal experience:

Try and find someone you like more than everyone else, and give them things that make them better, and try and find team orders and that satisfy all your needs.
If it's not working, try something new or brain storm with others on the forums to find something that suits you.
 
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I've actually always picked characters by their design and personality first, without much thought about gameplay. I started playing my entire team solely because I love their designs.
Try to narrow it down to characters you enjoy the most, or like the most. If you can settle on one character, you can build the rest of your team around them.
 
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@Skarmand I rarely use assists at this point, most of time it results in worse results than solo, even if the character isn't "suitable" for solo.
@mcpeanuts That sounds like a great idea...except I'm not good at any character.
@Meow-Professor I like all characters. The only 2 I don't play much are Double and Painwheel, because of personal stuff.
 
Nowhere Man said:
I rarely use assists at this point
Then there's your next step! Maybe you can decide on a team based on assist synergy. Pay attention to what setups good players use and see what feels good to you. Also, since you like playing everyone, you could just hit random three times and look like a god.
 
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I actually like most of the cast too except for double and painwheel too. I'm still struggling to pick which team I'd like to play. So I'd like to share my experience and my friend's who doesn't play anymore.


First is mine and fairly long. I always enjoy trying new characters relative to their release dates and I have a slight bias to DLC characters hence my teams. Most of my motivation to play a character comes from spending time with that character in the training room alone solo. I spend time listening to their voice and imitating them. I try making my own combos and doing silly impractical things with them. Anyways that's how I spend my time with that character. Eventually, my time spent grows with my love with that character or not and I build a team with that character.

There are times when my decision to play them is largely influenced by the competitive scene. It goes like "Wow I want to be able to do that", but that isn't enough for me to play that character. I have to like the character in some way. For Big Band, after seeing Bang play him, Hell yeah! I always loved his voice and his silliness. Robo, Beo, BB. I may not like Robo's voice as much as I like Beo's and Big Band's, but the silliness is there. With Squigly, I fell for her charming interactions with Leviathan. Simply that. The decision on my current team(Robo, beo, BB) is that they feel good in weight. It sounds kind of stupid, but it did contribute to my decision. Squigly jumps too high with double jump. Double feels heavier than the earth. Everyone else lightweight is too fast for me excluding painwheel. Cerebella, Eliza, Parasoul I've played and the I enjoyed the most was Parasoul. However, I couldn't enjoy their dominant air neutral. Cerebella with dj j.hk, Eliza with j.mk, Parasoul with her j.lp j.hp. Oh and did I mention I naturally gravitate towards what I see as less popular characters. Though big band is an exception cuz he's big band.


As for my friend, he always enjoyed two things. The character looked cool doing cool things and he was attracted to power. If you play LoL you'll understand why he plays all the in meta and strong champs. Sadly in a game like this he's gated by his own skill so he quit. Moving a step ahead and making an assumption, don't quit a character because you don't do well with that character or you think the character sucks(which I don't think you do, just sayin). Part of me didn't like robo because she did so little damage per string, but her puns are so awesome. That didn't make any logical sense did it? That can be part of your decision as well.
 
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MysteriousJ said:
Then there's your next step! Maybe you can decide on a team based on assist synergy. Pay attention to what setups good players use and see what feels good to you. Also, since you like playing everyone, you could just hit random three times and look like a god.
My most common used assist is Updo, mainly because I find Filia easier to use than characters with similar assists. That being said, I hesitate to call it most of time because when in corner it's unreasonable, and in the "middle" of stage more often than not it whiffs/gets blocked and punished too often. I know one can't learn to properly place assists overnight, but I'm at the point where I don't even want to try because even if it hits I'm too nervous to actually convert from it .
Randoming isn't an option for me because I don't enjoy playing Doulbe much, and Painwheel's too much work when I already struggle at less demanding characters.

@Kyugetsuki That's a pretty interesting story, thanks for input! As for me, I find all characters interesting in their own ways and try to learn a combo for each of them, but beyond that I seem to not gravitate towards any particular ones. I like Robo - Fortune too, but I haven't played her much since release (didn't have time because exams and stuff).
 
When I started out, I picked some characters I liked and put them together(didn't start with Peacock, for some reason, even though she was always one of my favourites and I always play zoners in fighting games). I just so happened to end up with team Taluda before I even knew who he played, but I played in the exact opposite order of Bella/Painwheel/Fortune, which isn't nearly as good. I ended up switching to Fortune on point, though, and it worked a lot better. A month or so into the game, I missed playing zoners, so I finally decided to go for a Peacock team. It helps that I had experience with playing everyone in the cast, and enjoy playing everyone at least a little, so it wasn't hard for me to decide how I wanted to go about the team.

I'm not good at advice, but I'll give it a shot!

The best I can say is to just find a character and try to settle on them, then decide on who works well with them and build a team around them. You say your most common used assist is Updo, so you must play Filia a lot. Maybe try and build a team around her. Filia/Bella is really good because Bella can help her offense be that more difficult to deal with using Lock 'n Load assist, you can make a lot of reversal attempts from your opponent unsafe because of a well timed assist, and you get better combos and damage with it. A sub team I used to play is Parasoul/Filia/Bella. They all work well together in any order - to varying degrees. Bella's a better anchor than Filia and Parasoul, for example - and all benefit from one another's assists.

Though you don't want to play her, I'll use Painwheel as another example. What works really well with her? Well, her grounded defense isn't great; her reversal is in the air. So a good assist with invincibility is great for her. Pillar, Beat Extend, Hurting Hurl, Updo, L Hornet Bomber, etc etc. Lockdown assists work really well too, because it already makes her smothering offense that much harder to get away from. I used to use French Twist because, not only is it a lockdown, it's also a low, so I had some really dirty resets with it because of it. Cerecopter is amazing for her as well, and Butcher's Blade, and H Platonic Drillationship, and so on and so forth.

Now Peacock as an example. She has a really strong zoning game, but her reversal isn't the best around; it only hits directly in front of her, so it's easy to bait simply by jumping, and is vulnerable to throws. The same goes for her grab invincible throw: It only goes directly in front of her, so a simple jump can bait it, and it's vulnerable to hits. So, again, a good DP assist works well with her, but it's not necessary; right now, I don't use one anymore. Not only that, DP assists can really help her reset game, as most of them can let you charge an M SoID and get a completely safe mixup afterwards. Or you can compliment her already strong zoning game with an assist to help improve what she already does really well, and use something like Lock 'n Load - which helps even more with her poor solo resets - Brass Knuckles, M Forever a Clone, H Hornet Bomber, or H Theonite Beam to cover the dead zone in her zoning patterns.

These may not be what you're interested in, but they're just some examples to get you to think about some good ways to put a team together. And to reiterate, you can just random every time and see who you like playing together. There isn't a problem with this because if you random Double or Painwheel, you can just press select and random again.

Also, the fact that you don't use assists very much because it ends up going poorly is something I'm pretty sure everyone goes through. I know I did; I think I've seen more double snaps in my earlier matches than in all the Skullgirls sets I've ever watched. The more you play the game, the better you'll get, so the better you'll be at calling assists. It's just something you have to do to get better. There's some things people are better at faster than others, and some things they're worse at longer than others. The things you're worse at just means you have to fuck that stuff up that much more to improve in it. The more you call assists badly the quicker you should be able to realize those situations where you shouldn't. It'd also do you some good to watch top players and see how they call DP assists. Also, you don't need to be afraid to experiment and just try things out with assists in the middle of a match. That's what casual matches are for; you have nothing to lose but a friendly match, and losing is learning.

Hopefully this helps even a little bit.
 
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ShakyFingers said:
snip
Thanks for advice! My main problem, though, is that I can't decide on a point character. My current flavor of the month is Eliza, supported with Updo assist because of lack of non-lvl3 reversal. I originally planned to make it Grand Orchestra team (Eliza/Squigly/Big Band), but then found out I have big trouble doing stancels consistently, and Big Band has specific combo distances, so I drop middle links 50% of time.
 
Nowhere Man said:
Don't really have answers to questions from the article yet. How did you choose your current team?
After trying everyone in Story, Arcade & vs, I liked their art/animation, personalities (Fukua a bit less XD), moves, & playstyles the most. And I seem to get the best results with them. I really enjoy Robo, Peacock, Fortune & Bella too, though.

Also I tend to like grapplers in fighters, armored & charge moves, and heroes (or at least neutral).
 
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>700 hours in
>not already having a waifu
>not being mad that Scythana didnt get in the game

get it together OP
 
stop that green text shit on this forum

i picked my characters based on their power and appearance.
so my first pick was cerebella, ayy lmao.
you can make any team work, even the ones that look like they're completely bad!
you'll just have to work a little harder.

i'd start with just one, though. learn your character like the back of your hand and don't take on too much at once. it'll fry your brain.
 
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It may not be really helpful but I generally pick characters based on them having something super gimmicky that I find really fun.
Cerebella's kanchou/Pummel Horse, and Big Band's Lv5, for example.
 
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XthAtGAm3RGuYX said:
>700 hours in
>not already having a waifu
>not being mad that Scythana didnt get in the game

get it together OP
Wouldn't want to marry any of the girls, and I have no idea how giantess would work in a fighting game.
SecretlyEngarde said:
snip
My first character was Ms Fortune, but I dropped her soon because her playstyle doesn't fit me well, then the cycle repeated many times. I'm trying Eliza at the moment, but not sure if I'll end up playing her most of time.
Mike_Z said:
It may not be really helpful but I generally pick characters based on them having something super gimmicky that I find really fun.
Cerebella's kanchou/Pummel Horse, and Big Band's Lv5, for example.
I find all characters fun in their own way, which is probably why I have hard time making decisions. As for gimmicks, I like Fukua's taunt, it expresses my outlook on the situation very well.
 
If you seriously can't make up your mind, try this:
1) Go to random.org, set the min to be 1, the max to be 3 and then generate. This is how big you want your team to be.
2) Depending on the size, go to training mode, and random select your characters.

Nothing beats randomness. If you find yourself being like, "Nah I'll retry I don't like this", then you have at least some preference towards something.
 
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Yomabudd_y said:
If you seriously can't make up your mind, try this:
1) Go to random.org, set the min to be 1, the max to be 3 and then generate. This is how big you want your team to be.
2) Depending on the size, go to training mode, and random select your characters.

Nothing beats randomness. If you find yourself being like, "Nah I'll retry I don't like this", then you have at least some preference towards something.
Tried that before, got bored of my Fukua/Filia duo eventually. Now I'm learning a combo for each character and hope something will click.
 
Nowhere Man said:
Tried that before, got bored of my Fukua/Filia duo eventually. Now I'm learning a combo for each character and hope something will click.
To be fair, combos are only a small part of the character. You've got to look at their kits, neutral, and resets on top of combos. Just because you don't enjoy doing a combo for a certain character, you shouldn't give up on them. If you do that, you could potentially miss out on a character you might like otherwise.
 
Meow-Professor said:
To be fair, combos are only a small part of the character. You've got to look at their kits, neutral, and resets on top of combos. Just because you don't enjoy doing a combo for a certain character, you shouldn't give up on them. If you do that, you could potentially miss out on a character you might like otherwise.
I agree. But it's easier to play when you know a combo and a few resets for a character.
 
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SecretlyEngarde said:
stop that green text shit on this forum
Fuck you.

and people ask why I dont come to this place anymore. you guys stopped being cool after the IRC died

EDIT: Also I find it unlikely that you've played this game for 700 hours and you dont feel attached to a character. Were you just hitting random select or what?
 
This just means your main is random select.
 
@XthAtGAm3RGuYX My training progress was following: Fortune>Peacock>Filia>Valentine>Fukua>Big Band>Eliza>Cerebella>Squigly>Robo Fortune, if we cut it down to characters for which I know a combo and/or some resets. While I enjoy these characters (and played all other), I unfotunately haven't found personal reason to fully dedicate myself to any of them.
majorgalaxy said:
This just means your main is random select.
Maybe, though I dislike jumping between characters too often. Right now I'm focused on Eliza/Beowulf.
 
XthAtGAm3RGuYX said:
and people ask why I dont come to this place anymore. you guys stopped being cool after the IRC died
The IRC is alive and well

We stopped being cool because we don't want random shit waifu bollocks in the Gameplay section (anymore)? Apologies, I guess?

Nowhere Man said:
While I enjoy these characters (and played all other), I unfotunately haven't found personal reason to fully dedicate myself to any of them.
The main things I look for in a character are
1) Their movement
2) Buttons that are fun to press / Specials that are enjoyable to use

In the end, the core part of the game is ~the neutral~, so I just go into training mode and do like
- Jumpforward Doublejumpback Divekick
- Wavedash
- Dashjump
- IAD Airthrow IAD Airthrow
- Movement specials
And see for which characters this feels the best and most fun.

Then I look whether they have other neutral options that I enjoy.
Eg I dislike mega stubby cLKs that force me to be in the opponent's face; I want some nice midrange button with a decent hitbox to be able to press (Fortune sHP!!)
I like having some throw range because it makes tickthrows / dashup throw which I enjoy a lot easier, etc blabla

So I look at stuff and then I pick Peacock since she has cool mobility options with basic airdash/doublejump in the air, and cHK slides, and jHP to gain distance;
and some nice buttons that are fun to press in cHP and cHK and jMP and jLP and jHP and jHK and M.Bang which basically is a button;
as well as a general playstyle of chip pressure and longrange zoning with Georges and SoID. Seems fun!

(And then she is fun but I kinda suck at her after playing her for a bunch of time, so I drop her again and go to the next char to see whether they are similarly fun without me being ass at them, but that's a different story)

------

Basically, just look for ANYTHING that you enjoy in a character (be that fancy combos, or neutral buttons, or that you like doublejumping, or etc), and then pick your chars based on said anything.

You say you got bored of your Filia/Fukua Duo. WHY!! Here lies the secret.
- Because they look kinda bland? Then maybe you pick chars based on visuals, and want to run Robo/Squigly/Double, who look quite fancy
- Because you dislike their cLK range and rather have a long ranged quick low for neutral/mixup purposes? Then you may want to run Fortune/Bella/Eliza
- Because you aren't a fan of going in hard with RTSD queen Filia? Then maybe you could look into other zoners (Robo/Para/Pea)
- Because their playstyle is too basic for you (Filia doesn't do anything fancy sans resets, Fukua isn't exactly known for her magic plays either)? Then maybe you want more complex characters like Squigly/Parasoul

------

Another possibility is that you never get past "Stage 1" with your characters - if you never learn to appreciate subtleties in your chars movesets / movement abilities, never really try to delve beyond the most obvious, all chars get rather boring rather quickly.
You can play every character in SG to ~some~ effect with a mega simple "Press my 2-3 good buttons/specials, upback a lot, call assist some, hit people who get impatient into combo-reset-combo-kill" gameplan, and if that's all you do it's only natural you never get attached to a character -
[Big Band doing upback Cymbals and sometimes Brass and sometimes jHK into basic combo + some assist calls here and there] ends up feeling the exact same as [Parasoul doing upback jHP and sometimes dash sLP and sometimes dashjump jLP-jHP into basic combo + some assist calls here and there]

------

The moooooooooooooooooooooooooost basic idea if you can't figure the cause of your character crisis out at all + are bothered by it, would be to just randomly pick a character (be that due to their looks, or because your favourite SG "top player" runs it, or since they are #1 on the tier list, or via random.org) and PUT IN WORK with them. Just, seriously practice the character and play it exclusively, and solo, for some say 6 months.
At this point maybe you haven't grown attached to the char per se, but it is your by far best one, so you won't want to drop it again as it brings in ~results~!
There was a time when I wasn't sure anymore whether I'd like to keep playing Parasoul, but then I dropped her and my results PLUMMETED, which pretty much cemented that I'd rather not all that work go to waste and stick with the character instead.
If you just similarly get a character to a level far beyond your other ones, you'll keep it around, and then can go from there - if you "like all other chars equally", you can build the 'perfect team' around your character X and just pick those other two characters based on who fits your X the best.
 
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@IsaVulpes That was a very interesting read, thanks!
My results are worse since I've stopped playing Fukua, but I don't want to play her at the moment. Not saying I'll never ever play her again, but I don't really mind losing a lot. As for assists, I try to not use them too much because I don't always see opportunity to convert from them + risk of losing 2 health bars at the same time if it fails. I know assists are a very big part of Skullgirls, but I haven't dedicated that much time to any character to truly benefit from them.
 
Nowhere Man said:
@IsaVulpes That was a very interesting read, thanks!
My results are worse since I've stopped playing Fukua, but I don't want to play her at the moment. Not saying I'll never ever play her again, but I don't really mind losing a lot. As for assists, I try to not use them too much because I don't always see opportunity to convert from them + risk of losing 2 health bars at the same time if it fails. I know assists are a very big part of Skullgirls, but I haven't dedicated that much time to any character to truly benefit from them.
I mean, some assists are riskier than others. Invincible uppercut assists tend to be the riskiest assists just cause of the nature of when you want to call them. Assists that you would call at neutral like Big Band H Brass or something tend to be safer. Lockdown assists are even safer since your opponent will be in blockstun while you're calling them. Assists you only call in combos are basically immune to getting happy birthday'd! (but it's sort of a waste to have an assist just to extend combos, in this game anyways).

There's also the option of playing solo of course. If you really don't want to call assists you may as well have more health and damage and never have to deal with incoming situations. The only other advantages of teams is like, being able to tag to get red health back (which solos can do now anyways with snapbacks so whatever) and DHCs, which IMHO is not enough to offset the drawbacks of having a team if you're not using assists.
 
@mcpeanuts I only play solo when I feel like practicing some things against AI in arcade, or want to give myself a handicap. Didn't say I never use assists, just that I'm very careful with calling them. They're still a big part of gameplay to completely ignore, in my opinion. I'm not confident with going trio yet, but having an extra option with duo is a huge advantage over solo.
 
Nowhere Man said:
@mcpeanuts I only play solo when I feel like practicing some things against AI in arcade, or want to give myself a handicap. Didn't say I never use assists, just that I'm very careful with calling them. They're still a big part of gameplay to completely ignore, in my opinion. I'm not confident with going trio yet, but having an extra option with duo is a huge advantage over solo.
It's only a huge advantage if you call your assists well. Otherwise it's a gimped version of playing solo. Your call.
 
mcpeanuts said:
It's only a huge advantage if you call your assists well. Otherwise it's a gimped version of playing solo. Your call.
Can't improve my assist calling if I don't call them at all. Seems like circular logic to me.
 
I think I like Eliza, now that I've spent quite some time trying to develop my team, but I begin to question my other two character choices. Maybe my learning speed is slow, maybe I don't utilize 2 assists enough, but it feels like all my Beowulf useful for is chair toss and getting combos due to pure luck despite all the approaches I try, and Bella's very hard in neutral as well. It's possible that I've chosen full team too soon when only one of those characters "clicks" with me. I now think adding Fukua back and making her point again, or should I try Big Band for those sweet cymbals? Choices, choices...
 
Oh hey, i have the same struggle, not 700 hours (76 hours on steam, probably something between 20 ~ 30 hours on console), but i can't find my character.

And i don't know what it is, and there is also my laziness on properly learning a character to decide if i want to keep with said character or not, and is funny, because in all other fighters, i would see a character by its design, or play a bit, and would quickly say: "here it is my main" or at least "here is a character that i want to use a lot", and i am not in that spot in specific.

Hey, i'm going to grind the training mode and cycle trough characters to see if i get to an answer.
 
Sotherius said:
Hey, i'm going to grind the training mode and cycle trough characters to see if i get to an answer.
Hayo! I say, before going too deep into character specific setups/resets and other tech, try to learn a combo and then play some matches solo (or with additional character for more options), that way you'll have all health bar to it and will see how you like them. Took me some time to get used to all characters that I play.
 
Man, team crisis. What I've had since SG was a thing. I still have it to this day. Not a fun experience.
 
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