The Fighting Game topic

I tend to like flashy fighting games, often anime-esque. Conversely, I'm not very good at those games because of their difficult controls and combo-orientated gameplay. Through the same trend, I choose characters based on coolness more than anything else.

I like Fightan Gaems, but I sick horribly at them. I can't remember combos to save my life and even if I did, I would just screw them up anyway.

"Who wants to hear about good stuff when the bottom of the abyss of human failure that you know doesn't exist is so much greater?"-Wraith

Not a big fan of fighting games, as I mentioned before. Aside from Smash Bros, anyway. To complex a genre for me to grasp. >_>

My best fighting game, I'm ashamed to say, is probably Arcana Heart. I main Maori and Lang-Gong.

My second-best is Capcom Vs. SNK 2.

I wanted to import Arcana Heart 3 after seeing a tournament (on live stream) involving the game, but I kept hearing some odd rumor that it may actually get localized (which I doubt). At the moment I'm just going to wait until some of my other imports get here and learning more about the game before going through with importing.

Wavedashing is not the only skill that can be learned. However, if two players are equal in every way except that one is much better at wavedashing, it does provide a significant advantage.

Also, combos were an accident.

Yeah, I overreacted to your comment. Sorry. More evidence as to why fighting game fans need restraining orders.

edited 7th Feb '11 5:35:49 PM by Scardoll

Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.

Yeah, but they also immediately tried to contain it afterwards. Essentially, every fighting game afterwards has been attempting to keep combos balanced and in check. (For example, damage scaling, juggle limits, air control, etc.)

You know, I see this used a lot in fighting game conversation, especially in Smash Bros. conversation for some reason. I've always been a little thrown by it.

I've never seen a video of, nor met, nor heard of two players of the exact same skill level, so personally that never struck me as a good example...

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Technically, Brawl did keep Wavedashing in check... By removing it entirely. Yay?

Generally, hypothetical situations always use people of equal skill because otherwise, you're not discussing the game anymore, you're discussing how well two people play the game.

Which also brings up the issue of playstyles. Not all people play a character the same way, after all.

edited 7th Feb '11 6:10:44 PM by Scardoll

Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.

I finally figured out the trick to that damn Somersault Strike motion that makes it surprisingly easy to execute-it might even be the proper way.

What the icons in the command lists suggest is that you have to move from down-back (1) to down-forward (3) without pressing directly down (2). Turns out that you CAN move through the central down position, thus you're basically going 123219 + kick. For some reason, this ends up being much easier on a D-Pad than the more straightforward Sonic Hurricane motion of 4646 + punch.

Does this count as a Guide Dang It! due to those misleading command list motion icons?

I was once good enough to lose gracefully to world-class Tekken players. I mean, they would usually win, but it wasn't embarrassing. I would win local tournaments, and at least get a few matches in when I went to a major tourney.

I tried to play T6 after being away from the game for years...damn I suck. It's unbelievable how bad I am. Luckily, I don't keep in touch with the people I used to hang with when I was playing seriously, so I don't have to face their scorn.

I'm still kind of new at this whole genre (excepting Smash Bros., which of course is very atypical). As such, I have a few questions...

Is it normal for most of a character's combos to be opponent-specific?

What's a mixup?

Is a blockstring sort of like a combo you expect to be blocked?

"Only now, after being besieged by a flock of talking ponies, did he really understand what he'd lost. "

1. Depends on the game, but typically not. Some larger characters may be able to be the target of longer combo strings.

2. A mixup is when you place your opponent into a situation where they have to guess your next attack or take damage. For example, if you descend at your opponent with Magneto in Marvel 2, you can use a light punch to whack them in the face and start a combo or anticipate their attack, let them whiff, and then combo them.

3. Not sure, but a series of attacks to hit a blocking opponent so they get pushed out of your range.

The reason I asked that first question is that I can't seem to find any combos for Carl Clover that aren't either (a) difficult-looking to pull off or (b) character-specific (usually just two).

How should I go about main selection anyway? For some reason I'm amazing at playing Iron Tager, despite his CT incarnation being firmly on the Difficult end of Difficult, but Awesome.

"Only now, after being besieged by a flock of talking ponies, did he really understand what he'd lost. "

Main Selection:

First, watch matches with mid-level and top-level players. Lots of matches. Find videos of all the characters you possibly can. Keep in mind that the more you see a character in high-level play, the higher tiered that character probably is. In any case, note what these players are doing. Note the attacks they use most often, which ones they never use, and which ones the opponent has trouble dealing with.

Pay attention to what looks fun. If you see a character winning because he threw simple, easy fireballs the entire match and he mostly wins by time-outs, then decide if that's what you consider to be fun. If you see a guy doing all sorts of fancy stuff and constantly being on the attack, does that look fun to you? What about when they're on the defense? Does the character have a lot of options when being rushed down, or do they rely solely on keep-away?

Next, ask yourself where your "fun level" is. If you're not interested in being a pro, then don't worry about beating everybody. What you want to do is find the area where you're comfortable with the amount of practice and execution you have. If all you can do is an easy four-hit combo, then don't try to pick the character that revolves on the 12-hit combo that takes perfect timing to pull off. Figure out which character can give you the most reward for your particular style of play. Sure, people will call you a scrub, but fuck what they think.

How do you guys deal with your fav/best fighters getting steadily getting nerfed? All in the name of "balance". Plus the whole thing of you watching them steadily get weaker and weaker and weaker in some cases. I wouldn't mind if I had other characters that I liked that I would use instead but I usually just pick on guy/girl and stick with them.

edited 12th Feb '11 3:28:37 PM by HellmanSabian

IIRC, Rachel players did not take it lightly. And you should probably pick an alt for just such a case.

edited 12th Feb '11 3:49:25 PM by AweStriker

"Only now, after being besieged by a flock of talking ponies, did he really understand what he'd lost. "

Hm. I guess the perfect example for me would be Samus in Smash Brothers. I've used Samus ever since Melee, but she was nerfed something terrible in Brawl. However, I used her anyway. Eventually, I got good enough to consistently place in Top 10 in local tourneys.

Occasionally, I used higher-tier characters like Wario or King Dedede, but mostly as ways of gauging and refining my skill. Using a low-tier character is more demanding than using a high-tier character because you need to compensate for the character's weaknesses and play much more intelligently, but using a high tier character means you lose the edge of novelty. A lot of tournaments I played, everyone knew how to fight Meta Knight, Snake and Dedede, but no one knew how to fight Samus.

If you don't want to abandon your character, just do the best you can with them, but accept that you'll have those days when you lose to someone whom you think you were better than. Them's just the breaks.

I generally do pick alts, though in some cases I do not as they're is no one else I like on a particular game's roster.

I know dude, though it gets abit jarring sometimes. I don't pay attention to tiers so I wouldn't know whetehr a character I am using is high-tiered or what not.

edited 12th Feb '11 4:10:41 PM by HellmanSabian

Hey, I'm considering buying a PSP fighter.

Should I get Darkstalkers or Blazblue? Or should I not bother at all?

<3

In Virtua Fighter 5 I became decent with El Blaze. In Super Street Fighter 4 I did the best job with T. Hawk (even though I still can't fight a good Cammy player at all and I hear Zangief is better stat-wise). In Tekken 6 I mained Dragunov for awhile (though it might have been more a case of the shitty connection and some opponents who don't understand the concept of crouching) before switching to a weird combo of Wang and Jack-6. And in Blaz Blue CS I've been maining Tager with a side of Valkenhayn. I would say that this makes me tend towards grapplers, but I'm not entirely sure. I think it's more of me trying to learn powerful characters with minimal effort because I have too many video games on my shelf.

I feel like I'm at this weird valley of talent where I can beat up any of my friends online or offline but if I ever tried fighting someone better I'd get my ass kicked.

edited 13th Feb '11 10:41:45 AM by DocHaus

Sums me up quite well.

That depends, what are you looking for in fighting game?

edited 13th Feb '11 4:46:16 PM by HellmanSabian

Darkstalkers is on PSP?!

Yes. Search for Darkstalkers Chronicle in google for more info.

Darkstalkers (which was the very first game I had gotten for the original PSP back when it was released), Street Fighter Alpha 3, Soul Calibur, Power Stone, and Blaz Blue are the ones I've got on my PSP and I find them all pretty fun. I find that they're easier to pick-up-and-play while I'm waiting for something while out on the road.