New Player

[Shinsok]

Hi everyone, I just picked up SCV for the PS3 and I'm having such a hard time learning the game. First I'd like to say that I have little to no experience at all with any games in the fighting genre (except non-competitive/childish SSBM). I have been looking around on the net for tips and understand the notation that most of you guys use, but I still have no idea what I'm doing... In fact, I'm so overwhelmed that I don't even know where to begin (Sorry!). The first thing I want to learn is how to actually learn the basics of this game. One of my biggest problems right now is that I'm a huge button spammer regardless of what combos I test during training. How do I improve on this? I know it sounds like I'm not trying to improve, but I really am and I just don't understand how you're supposed to know what to use and when! I've read a lot of the frame advantages for attacks, but I can't incorporate it when I'm actually playing at all. Are there a couple of combos that you'd always use as your "main" combos for every character or do you actually incorporate all of them? I think I'm trying to learn too many things at once. The other problem is that I can't even execute some moves correctly especially the BE's. I suppose that takes practice anyways... I'm trying to learn Pyrrha at the moment and I have a hard time against Kilik during legendary (no chance at all against Nightmare). Sorry for this lengthy post, but I really wanted to pick up this game after watching EVO 2012 and I'm really at a loss right now. By the way is the D-Pad better or analog, I find it really hard to use either of them for specific things so I'm not sure which one I should be learning. I heard most people don't need a fighting stick for this game so I don't have one of those! Thanks for the help.

 

[Wandrian]

Welcome to our home for the sanity-challenged, sir. On the things you're having difficulty with...

Mashing: Try playing Aeon, Alpha Patroklos, or Ivy for awhile and see if you start mashing less. Aeon's BBB is one of the easiest attacks in the game to deal with, so mashing it out habitually will guarantee you receive a painful punishment(and hopefully deter you from continuing that habit), Alpha Patroklos and Ivy require much more than mashing so playing them even at the lowest level should hopefully help you break your mashing habit.

Combos: It depends on the character, but basically try learning only one or two combos at a time and practice them in Training Mode until doing the input is a habit. It's probably best to focus on combos that are easy to perform at first, especially launch combos. For every character not named Ezio or Raphael, 3B is a launcher of some sort and you can play around with what keeps damaging them without giving htem a chance to escape from there, it varies wildly with different characters. Maybe you want a wallsplat with Pyrrha's 236B, maybe you want a tech trap with Tira's 44B, or maybe you just want a badass throw like Cervantes b2. Play around with it. The combo lists for the most part aren't anything other than a list of possible followups, play around in Training Mode(preferably with Air Control and Ukemi set to random) until you discover which combos are easy enough to guarantee while under pressure and hurt your victim more.

BEs: Keep A+B+K on a single button to make this easier. I'm betting the problem you're having is that you're pressing the button too soon. Try delaying it just a little bit. A couple of good moves to practice BE timing are Tira's 3AaA+B+K and Ivy's 6b8A+B+K. The former can be hit confirmed to give you a better idea of how long you can delay the A+B+K input, the latter has a bit of a tricky input with a fairly tight window to get it right which I'm imagining will help with your execution a bit---if you can consistently do Ivy's 3B ~ 6b8A+B+K combo you should probably have no issues with any BEs.

Legendary Souls and AI in General: In my scrubby observation, the AI is all about efficiency and frames. Whore out your safer moves and don't give the AI a chance to get onto the offensive. Just Guard will also be helpful against Nightmare, as slow as many of his attacks are.

Controllers: S'allgood. D-pads are fine as long as they're not in such a sorry state that they read inputs incorrectly(like the awful one the 360 controllers have). It's probably not going to be worth spending money on another controller or practicing using the analog stick instead if you're comfortable with the D-pad. Everyone tends to swear by whatever kind of device they use for the most part, so with all those varying input types surely whatever's working for you should be fine.


Oh, and as you said you may indeed be trying to do too much at once. There's a lot of info to take in and habits to break/form to reach a real competitive level. If you feel like you're being overwhelmed, slow down and focus on something smaller. If your head's spinning, you're probably trying to do too much at once :P

 

[Shinsok]

Thanks for the reply! Okay, so I've been getting the hang of using some BE's and I'm steering away from button mashing, but still there. I think my main problem with button mashing is that I'm not quite sure of what moves to use when I'm not comboing. For example what would you use in general? Like do I try to block and wait for an opportunity to AA/BBB/launch and try to setup for a combo? Or is that generally personal preference and situational? I know most people are saying to use safe moves but, I think I'm doing it "wrong" since it seems really awkward (maybe because I button mash too much). Maybe you could give me like three different scenarios so I can get a general idea of what I should be doing during a match. Something like (although this is probably too simple) Nightmare : Block Opponent's Attack > BBB (BBB being the main thing I would use when not comboing even though it's simple). I guess what I'm basically trying ask is are there bread and butter moves that you'd use mainly during the time you aren't comboing/you're trying to deal some damage to your opponent. Last thing in this post I wanna ask about is how do I get out of an opponent's combo? I've read on ukemis, but they seem to actually make it worse sometimes. I've also tried waiting before I get back up, but doesn't really help out. Or perhaps once you get stuck in certain combos there aren't really any chances afterwards (obviously low health means there really is no chance, but I mean high health (this is mainly against CPU I might add)).

 

[Xeph]

That's a sick icon. Welcome.

 

[Zekki]

I seriously wrote a 6 paragraph explanation of mixup tactics and using mixups to set up your combos for the new dude, and Google Chrome shuts the window and I lose the lesson. Dammit.