A lot of people are introverted and shy. Over coming that is hard but once you do it's great. Like imagine how hard it is asking for help for some people. some people were raised not traumatized

Knowing the theory isn't gonna do you any good if you don't put in the hours and I think that realization is what drives some people away. Fighting games are like sports, drawing and music. You gotta commit what you learn into muscle memory, not just do it once or twice, but do it again and again until it becomes instinctual.

I spent a great amount of time in my early days in character discords (generally lurking, but occasionally asking questions). I learned SO much from so many helpful people. My biggest mental hurdle that I've most recently overcome I did by applying a technique I learned in art. Be open minded and be willing to use all of the resources available to you.

it can be hard to find the specific information you need to get over the hump you're currently facing in fighting games. For example it's pretty common to see people ask a question along the lines of "how do I beat Ram?" -- A five word question with no context, we have no idea what that person already knows about Ram, we have no idea if they are getting frame trapped or wakeup supered or zoned out or 5[D]ed or safe jumped or whatever. it could be literally anything. it's not even worth taking the time to try to give this person a nuanced answer because they can't even take the time to come up with a nuanced question. 99% of people ask a generic question without even providing replay footage.

I love FGC discussions and chats like this. I think you and LK do a really good job at talking and teaching through guides, discussions (like this video) and overall anything in the FGC. Getting a perspective is something that I benefit from more than being told “get good. Don’t get hit” could do. My biggest issue is always my mental. Thinking a character is too hard for me, or losing hard and blaming myself getting frustrated time and time again at my lack of improvement. I see so many people pass me in FGs and I always feel like I’m in a rush to keep up. I see people get top 8 or top 16 in a game they just picked up like KOF or something and while it’s their first KOF game (like myself) I struggle to do anything in the game. I feel like it takes me so much longer to learn the most basic things in any game as well. My mental is definitely holding me back.

I've actually found people in the FGC to be far quick to try and help. Lots of people really want to sound wise and helpful when they're not. For instance, I have a very bad habit of panicking and then mashing without thinking of what I'm trying to do. Not all the time, but it does happen enough that it is an issue. So once I decided to ask on a forum specifically about the issue of panic-mashing and how to calm yourself if it happens and ways one might prevent it. And while I did get a couple of decent responses, I actually got far more people coming in to the thread and posting moot advice and mostly talking to me as if I'd never played a fighting game before. Some of the responses were "Just calm down," "practice an hour everyday," or my favorite "anti-air jumps." Lots of parroting advice I'm sure they all heard before many times and believe that is probably the answer to everything when the thread was opening a dialog to a more specific issue. I think lots of people want to help, but they're quite bad at it. As was mentioned in this video, teaching is a skill in itself. And most folks in the FGC are lacking in that department even if their intentions are good.

Resources are definitely way better than they used to be. I like very casually played stuff back in MvC/MvC2 days and that was pretty much me just figuring things out and going to some locals. Recently I just got back into the FGC with Strive and there are definitely a lot of content creators that go the extra mile with the resources they put out, real talk I was having issues picking up a character for Strive but your I-no guides helped me out a lot because they're just so informative and well done since I was basically starting off from scratch again. Even lurking in stream and seeing questions answered on certain match-ups/mechanics helped a lot too -- a lot of it is just having the initiative even though learning the game can be a struggle. Keep it up man

The best way to teach someone to get better at a fighting game show and tell. Show the inputs, explain the mechanics and logic. It’s pretty straightforward. The problem is finding that information for the character you want to play as.

I think the person I've learned the most from about fighting games as a whole is Sajam. His KZfaq clips teach a lot of important concepts to understand when you're a low/intermediate player. This video feels a lot like his. So yeah I'd love it if you'd upload more stuff like this!

I enjoyed the vid and I mostly disagree with the tweet. Fighting games are basically the only video game content that I watch online, but I play them very casually. I don't even play the multiplayer, just pick the characters I like to beat the story and maybe some AI matches or other content, then move on to another game. The reason is that I have an appreciation for the amount of work that goes into "progressing" as a player and it's not something that I'm willing to put in the time/effort/consistency to do it justice. That being said, there's so much content available to learn from for people who do want to progress... character/game specific guides, tips for fighting games in general, replays from other/top players to self diagnose, discords, streamers, etc.

There's personally been a lot of invaluable advice that a lot of top players don't even think about. They don't talk about it cause to them it's kinda just assumed knowledge. I've had to stumble across some 5k views video randomly popping up on my recommended or had paid for coaching and had to squeeze it out of them or they happen to mention it offhand without thinking about it much. If the teacher doesn't think to mention it and I don't know about it so I can't even ask about it in the first place, it just goes unmentioned. I think it's less just that they are unwilling but that the skills to become a top fighting game player isn't the same as to be a good teacher (and that's okay) and with a genre as often vague to approach as fighting games it does make sense that it may be difficult for someone to break down everything they know about them.

It’s hard to determine what level he is at, but you’re right being at the top level takes a lot of work that not many people are willing to do. There’s also the fact that some states don’t have a tournament scene for the fighting game you want to play so you’re stuck playing online and can’t talk to players in person and learn from them.

I learn the most from watching top level tournament play and slowing down things I don't really understand. It helps a lot to know what you're looking at and it's easy to miss small things in fighting games because of how fast they are. For example, I noticed recently that a lot of top level Ky players use 2s on oki and I had no idea why. 2s is not very active and there isn't a lot of options/gatlings after it so it seemed bad to me. Why would I use 2s instead of 5k or close slash or throw? I got curious and started labbing it out and realized that it's a very solid option if you do it slightly after meaty timing right outside of throw range and block for a moment. It can scoop back dashes, jump startups and c.h. throw mashers. You can also block for a few frames and bait out wake up dp's/supers/mashes/counters(worst case you end up blocking a 5p or something) which can lead to a lot of conditioning. They would have to commit to a really delayed or slow button to actually hit you. After you've conditioned them you can stop just short of throw range to make it look like you're going for another 2s and dash up throw. It's not all mighty, but when used properly it is extremely strong when combined with your charged stun edge and other oki options.

My experience of the FGC, as someone who has played fighting games all my life (because I really like those) but never competitively, is that there is good content out there these days and there are a lot of helpful people but the discourse is skewed way too much towards high level play to feel relevant to me. I do look up tech and try to improve, but I will spend typically a few hours a week playing (potentially across a few games too), so my growth is tied this way. I'm cool with it, that's how I choose to live my life. But that doesn't seem to compute with a lot of FGC people. I'd be tempted to think that most people are like me (most adults who have a day job and a family at least), but having joined a bunch of Discords, it feels like they're dominated by the 1% that dedicate a lot of time to 1 game to really get good, and while I can relate to that, I can't be part of it. That creates a gap in my experience and it makes it pretty hard for me to actually find people I enjoy playing against through these channels. Essentially, while I'm a long time fighting game enjoyer (a serious hobbyist shall we say), I still don't feel like I belong in the FGC.

i like videos like this because it opens up concepts for fundamental skills that you might not have thought of before. and if you dont know it exists you cant work on improving it.

i think he's mostly correct when you sit down and read a guide and watch a bunch of videos on how to play a game you are still teaching yourself how to play the game those resources are there to help but it isn't the same as someone giving you active feedback as you play telling you where you need to improve you still have to figure that out for yourself, the guides will give you helpful pointers for the VERY early stages but after that you are on your own and have to figure things out almost entirely on your own unless you find someone who is willing to train with you and help you improve you are still teaching yourself the game in that respect. For example: a guide may tell you 2m is a good combo starter because of it's scaling but never tell you how to set it up or that 2m is negative on block and if it does it may not tell you what to do if it is blocked, a guide could tell you this is your bread and butter combo and what tools characters have but learning when and where to use them is up to you individually. TLDR: resources are great but it still isn't the same as someone actively helping you learn the game as you play with feed back.

Speaking from experience, because I absolutely have this problem -- I think the main thing that holds people back is that they just don't know how to improve. It takes a LOT of mental energy to constantly be questioning every single decision you make and thinking about how it fits into the framework of the situation, and most people are just not disciplined enough to consistently maintain that level of focus and force it to become second-nature. It's why people want to be coached and told what to do in every matchup and situation. They aren't fully internalizing and scrutinizing their own actions and aren't able to analyze a situation and draw their own conclusions. And even if they get answers for one situation, they will just continue to have other fundamental flaws in their play that they won't recognize, because they haven't developed the analytical skills to identify and fix their own errors. It's why someone can consume many many hours of FGC content and still not see much improvement after a certain plateau. At a certain point, only you can feasibly know what you need to improve at, and if you aren't identifying and fixing specific problems, then you stop improving. The consistent quality that top players have is the ability to precisely identify flaws in their approach, and create solutions to those problems. I think that's the most important thing any newbie can learn, and it's something that I just started learning when GGST came out, despite having played other fighting games in the past. I'm basically starting from square one trying to re-learn my entire approach to fighting games, and it's extremely difficult.

Yo, this is why you’re my favorite player/content creator. Keep it up, big love dawg!

So, I don't agree with the tweet or this sentiment in the FGC, but I think I can understand why people end up developing this mentality. Just from personal experience trying to self teach myself how to get better at fighting games, even with all of the resources out there it can be really difficult understanding what the specific areas are that you need to address and improve on. I feel like a lot of players get lost trying to figure out how they should tackle particular problems, so instead we end up doing a mix of different things. Like what I personally do is 1)Play a lot of matches (either online or with someone I know) 2) watch a couple replays 3) Look at the things that hit me or gave me trouble in practice 4) Watch videos online either for tournament play of my character, discussion, guides/tech so I can (hopefully) learn something new. That feels like an okay starting place as far as learning goes, but let's say I want to get even more intense with this. Like maybe I want to start making drills so I can practice against specific setups/moves/etc more frequently. I'm most likely going to have to first figure out how to recreate the setup in training mode, and pray that the game I'm playing has a feature that lets me do this and replay it with ease. If the game doesn't have that feature then what do I do? If the setup requires higher execution with my opponents character than I have, is there a way for me to still recreate the situation in an easier way? It can feel like hitting a brick wall at times trying to fine tune things like this and I think most intermediate players don't know where to begin. Every game is different and the systems you may want to use might not be available in the training mode in the game you're playing. Or there might be a similar feature that you are unaware of. It's really just figuring out the complex shit or being able to find someone who has the answers your looking for that can make learning at the intermediate level kind of rough at times. Another thing that I don't often see is people giving super specific information about matchup knowledge, at least not on KZfaq. Like let's say I want to know all of the moves/situations in the Axl/Baiken matchup where I can punish Axl's moves either on whiff or block and what moves I need to use to do that. I could try and look to see if someone's made a video on the subject, but I might have to poor through hours and hours of KZfaq content that doesn't cover the subject first before I'd find it. If I wanted to look through discord servers or forum posts for the answer it could take just as long to find the relevant info, because even if people had a discussion about the subject there might be no recordings of it on a word doc anywhere. Or you end up looking in places where the people having that discussion and compiling that information aren't there. Basically what I'm getting at is, sometimes, it's really difficult finding the information you want. Same thing if I wanted to study strategy or forming gameplans. The videos available might be more general and less specific than what I'm looking for, or the resources might exist but I'd have to go learn about a completely different fighting games where someone made that content and then find a way to relate it back to the game I'm playing. There's definitely a lot of great resources out there for all skill levels; I think we just need more of it to be organized. It's like what you said, not every high skill player is a great teacher. So because of that, I'm not really sure what the best solution to the problem is. I'm more than fine doing the legwork for learning specific details like this on my own time, but I think the convenience of having that information readily available or knowing where to find it is what a lot of intermediate players really want.

A lot of people believe the myth that only the young can compete in video games professionally. And it feels that way to a lot of people but that's because the most high profile esports are relatively new games in the history of video games, and so it has attracted a younger audience. League of Legends released in 2009. If you were 15 or 16 when that game came out you were the perfect age to start making money competing at that game right out of high school. But if you were in your mid-20s you already had a job and bills. By contrast in the FGC there are people who still play SF2. Or guys who grew up with that game and they still play fighting games now. And they've got those 20+ years of experience backing them up. Even the players who got into fighting games when SFIV came out were called "babies" by the old heads. But if you are relatively young right now, compared to even a game like Starcraft 2 it seems like the player base for fighting games is a lot older. And it can make you think that it's because of something wrong with the fighting game community instead of understanding that it's an artifact of how well the FGC has persisted.

I remember when you streamed the first day of bbtag rollback and we talked about that matter of mental state in FGC through chat, I’m really glad you made this video because we both know how hard it can be for beginners to get into fighting games. It’s nice you keep in touch with your community, Keep up the good work diaphone ^^ thanks

I don't know who are you, this is the first time I've seen your channel, but I loved the video. It clicked on something that I've been thinking about recently while trying to improve, so it really resonated with me. Thank you for the video.

This is straight up not true. There are so many useful discords, vod breakdowns by strong players like Hotashi and generally people who are willing to help. To be fair to this person, the hard part about any game on top level is that you HAVE to still learn stuff like fuzzy defense on your own in the lab. Learning to recognize problematic situations, setting them up in training mode and managing to come to realize how to deal with the situation is hard work. But in that case its just about if you can or cant put the work in to learn it. It sucks but its part of the experience. As Hotashi said himself: "Knowing and picking the right option to answer what you think your opponent will do is THE most important thing about fighting games. And even if your option gets beaten and theres not a good reason to bounce offa why, you shouldnt get down. Its just fighting games being fighting games at the end of the day." This quote has stuck with me really well, Im still trying my damn best even though I tend to get knowledge checked on fuzzy almost every time I fight a good zato. Its a struggle to "git gut", as they say, and knowing tech is just as important is being able to read your opponents move. In the end, its about the journey and not the destination. P.S: Smol edit but you can also be a very strong player and dont have to be a pro at all, or even get involved with the inner tryhard gfc circle. You just really need to like what youre doing and enjoy it. If you dont like Strive competetively, then thats fine. But complaining about diversity with one of the hardest competitive genres outside team fps shooters and MOBA is just asking for being taken apart. Top players are top for a reason, not coz of lack of competition in the scene.

Great video. Though I think there's 2 differen't problems and it's too easy for both sides to blame the other. As you say in the video, yes there is a mental/commitment aspect to it and quite a lot of people I meet are unwilling to spend the time necessary. Having said that, compared to other genres, fighting games seem to have very little tutorial content compared to others. I remember when I tried to learn super smash as someone who has played other fighting games for like 2 decades, it took ages for me to read/hear somewhere that, oh there's drop frames on unshielding which is why I couldn't punish a lot of moves. I can assure you (because I've gone through almost all of them) very few guides tell you this, along with a lot of other things. The community itself is also not great on helping new players. Personal experience learning KoF for the first time, no one would be willing to lobby with you and you get booted. I don't care about losing, but most people don't want to play a rank 2 new player.

If you don't know where to look it's a totally understandable sentiment, particularly with SFV. On the SF Reddit so many times I've seen someone earnestly asking for advice and just getting a bunch of replies that amount to some variation on "git gud, scrub, lol".

I think some other parts of getting advice that can be hard is that some people love giving advice and are better players but mis-identify the asker’s problems. Why someone struggles with an aspect of the game can come from a bunch of different sources and it’s not always clear just from playing matches with them Another is that sometimes a better player will give good advice but the way they talk about it just doesn’t click for the asker. This has happened to me a few times where I’ve looked back and been like “damn they were totally right, I just didn’t get it at the time”

Fun video with a good take. Here's a algorithm booster

I feel the resources is great and all and can really give you a different perspective on things you might have not considered but I feel that more than anything it's about the work. You can have every secret that every top player knows and still be garbage. I think more than anything it's about getting out there and getting worked for a while. I feel it's great to find that info but you can't be scared to get beat. I stopped playing fighting games for a while and was self-conscious to go online for a while cause I didn't want to keep getting beat. I eventually got over it and enjoy getting online again and now I'm way better than I was.

I had no idea what a Safe Jump was and agonized about how to practice it for a while and was annoyed there were no videos telling me how to practice it. Then, I just made a Reddit post about it, and I got an answer in less than 5 minutes. People are very willing to help! If anything the FGC is very willing to nurture the next top player

I’m just an ok Anji who doesn’t lab shit but just “feels” everything out… I know what I can do to get better but I’m lazy lmao

Great points, it’s a lot of work and it never stops. As long as there is change, you have to adapt. Imo, 1 if the biggest reasons people are stuck is not listening to others or not watching others and understanding why something works. Keep doing the same thing that worked, without acknowledging that the mechanics or opponents have changed is a recipe for being intermediate forever..just my 2 cents..gotta have a positive, self critical and open mind to really improve

What helped me get over the fear to ask for help was when I finally got good at a game. Albeit a PvE game in my case (Monster Hunter), I think this idea generally applies. Asking for help from someone who's better than you allows that better person to think about the scenario as well. If someone asks me for help with the game I know, I like the challenge of having to come up with the answer. It's like taking a quiz after going through the lesson so many times. It helps to refresh my knowledge. It might not apply to everyone, but just knowing that some people benefit from being *asked* questions helps me to ask them.

I can see the original person's point; getting good in fighting games is very difficult. This is just a guess, but I would say that a large number of professional players in the FGC have a high amount of natural talent--they may be predisposed to developing certain skills more easily than others, and thus, they don't make good teachers. At the risk of making a weak analogy with some foundations laid, I taught myself how to read as a toddler. It's likely I had some natural aptitude for it. But that doesn't mean that I can teach someone else to--least of all someone with dyslexia; that person would be better off learning from someone who is qualified to teach them or has had dyslexia and learned in spite of it. The same is true for fighting game players, I think--learning from someone who has had similar problems to you is beneficial. I also think some of us rookies need to ask better questions. For example, in Dead or Alive, I main Lisa and have a hard time against the ninjas, Ayane in particular. Instead of asking "How do I beat Ayane?" I'd do better with "When Ayane starts spinning, what moves will she generally go for, and what moves in Lisa's arsenal counter those?" Just asking the right questions goes a long way. That, and fighting games teach you how to play, but don't teach you how to play, if that makes any sense. They might show you how do certain moves/combos, but do little about teaching you how certain situations that arise in matches. (i.e, how to deal with offense pressure, zoning, neutral game, etc.) My apologies for the essay.

I come from Fantasy Strike and in that discord people are super eager to help usually. A noob asks a question and like five people jump them immediately and give a boatload of advice. Lots of other FCG places seem to have people willing to help, but depending what you ask, the quality of the help might vary a lot.

I do feel like there isn't much content / resources for the floor 10'ers like me. Hotashi is really the main person holding it down for the intermediate+ skill bracket in terms of content. It also doesn't help that the general consensus is that its pretty easy to get into celestial, yet at this point I don't see myself getting there any time soon. This is definitely relevant for the mental game aspect you talked about, but I do feel like there is a cliff that I'm trying to climb that other players just passed with ease. My main issue is that if I haven't labbed a specific scenario, I struggle adapting in a tower BO3 scenario to people that have an extremely refined level 1 game plan. I can go back and watch my replays, but I already know I didn't handle the situation on defense correctly. So is it really just, suck it up and learn every possible scenario? Is there a better way to adapt on the fly? Not sure if there is much content available for the answer to this.

I feel like there's a lot of fundamental concepts in fighting games that you do kinda just have to have that eureka moment to really understand, like you can read guides and watch videos about a concept but it still takes practice and actively thinking about it to really understand it. Which in my experience is similar to every skill, you don't watch one youtube tutorial and become a master programmer.

Glad you talked about this. I got into the fgc starting around when covid happened, before that I'd played mk11 for a few months, and before that 33 years thinking they were too hard for me lol Anyone who has taken this journey in the last couple of years and can't find resources... I don't wanna be mean but idk where they looked. My bookmarks rn have insane amounts of tech even for games I know I'll never play like that. This doesn't make it easy, there's still a shit load of work to put in. But idk that anyone can 'help' you past that. You have to get the knowledge into your head, then shorten how fast it takes to have each thought and pass it to your hands... I don't think the best teacher can shortcut this but maybe I'm wrong. Edit one small thing... The way jwong or punk etc pick up a new game and immediately seem good at it makes it FEEL like they have some specific gem of knowledge that if you could just access it you could be like them! But... It's not really like that. It's much more logical how their skill carries over

I think a more fitting topic would be ‘people being oblivious or refusing to use the ample amounts of resources that have been established throughout the years, and instead always find time to complain or unnecessarily voice a statement/opinion where they could find the solution relatively easy’. There’s not much discipline from people when they say “I wanna get better” but simply don’t do what it takes or use anything. Or even some people will “use” it or take the Advice of a top player, but then never adjust or never change all while doing the same things and wasting time. Ending in this endless cycle of insanity. But to say there aren’t many resources or many people don’t want to help us kinda wild to me, especially considering I’ve used so much To get where I am and continue to use them.

I think there are good people and bad people in every community. I occasionally went to the fighting game club meetup in the university. One night, I saw a new guy in the club who just start play fighting game for two weeks. After the newbie introduce himself, some guys start playing with him using their BEST character. On top of it, they keep playing mechanically complex games with him. To my best knowledge, the newbie did not hit over 15% of his opponent's life in the whole night. This is a totally different experience from mine. When I started playing GGST about a couple of months ago, I joint a Chinese fighting game online community. People are nice there. After matches, they would offer some tips like how to deal with certain move or even how to construct a matchup from scratch.

I saw that tweet too, and I cannot say that there is no ressources or nobody who wants to help. The only Issue I had as I restarted playing fgs in the end of 2019 was finding the places where I could ask. But that was more like I did not know how to find, like a Google search when you type in the wrong words for the question you are searching an answer.

this was very helpful

Actually I'm thinking the issue is with the lowest level. People truly struggle with qcf motions or even jumping consistently. And I'm talking about people who game all day, just not ever on FGs. i don't have a solution, I've tried to teach the basics of MK11 (super easy learning curve) to friends that mostly play shooters and it felt like i was speaking a different language

Anything hard ends up turning into mental at some point. Eventually you'll get so capable at your basics that you have to put in the work and mental energy to really improve. On top of that, you have to do one of the hardest things anyone can do: check your ego. You could apply this to school (especially mastery- style learning), career advancement, video games, sports. Doesnt matter. Some level will be your cap until you put in the right kind of time instead of just putting in time.

it’s weird because in the really early 2000s/late 90s. guides were good. really good. almost better than they are now. long before i ever played fighting games i would scroll through text based guides for games like sfa3, tekken 4 etc. they didn’t have frame data very often but they would usually say stuff about “advantage” and were otherwise super in depth and well written. there’s a guide for sakura written in like 2000, the year i was born, that i still go back to because it’s such a good read. then in the 2000s-early 2010s. those guides basically stop (i think a lot of the forums that were popular at the time just don’t exist anymore) or they’re super solid data wise but really poorly written and basically just a list of moves and frame data. where we’re at now, there’s a decent number of guides but the majority are like. super stretched out ramble-y stream vods that are barely scripted. but at least they actually explain game plans and have connective tissue beyond just “this is a list of normals, this is a list of special moves”.

I kinda expected to hear some disagreeable argumentative opinion that just yelled at bad players for not accepting they don’t put in enough effort or something but the takes were extremely good faith and I agree with a lot of them. Wonderful video and presentation so here’s an algorithm comment keep it up!

Usually the people that are really good at doing something aren't always the best at teaching you. That goes for a lot of things not just fighting games. People most of the time will always practice something in a way that will become easier for them to do on command without really thinking too much about it. Because overthinking something usually makes things worse when you are in the thick of it of the process.

this is also partially based on who you play for some games, if i didn't find a great server that helped me out and taught me how to play guilty gear, i wouldn't have been able to get into the game, as people either banned elphelt (my main, and only character i really cared about at the time) or refused to fight me for it because they didn't want to deal with her, so i never got to really learn or ask about stuff. what actually helped me out later in learning was just finding someone else to teach, it allowed me to get a new perspective and get practice on stuff i needed to work on something that isn't a stationary target

Very good video 👍🏾

legit my issue coming up was literally feeling like i was wasting top players time even dealing with me i still struggle with this more and more but then i randomly get the balls to do it and i get the matches/ help everything is starting to come around like even when you were offering help and i took it my wife had to literally put a gun to my head to make me do it

I do think it can be hard to know where to find the resources and whether the resources you do get are reliable, especially if you're looking for more specific information. I find a lot of the time that information is funneled into Discord servers, and I feel like that's not great because that's one extra layer you have to figure out just to get access to what you're looking for. I find that wikis can be great for this, except there seems to have been a period between 2015 and 2020 where people just stopped contributing to wikis, and that period happened to be when I started playing fighting games again for the first time since I was a kid. For example I'd try to learn BBCF and I'd have to go to the BBCPEX section and just kind of hope that the information translated reasonably to the later version. The state of wikis has gotten better again these days, though some DBFZ pages are still entire seasons out of date.

Strive is the first fighting game I've put more than 30 hours into, I lost a lot at first and by chance, a player friended me after swamping me in the millia mirror match up. A couple weeks later, this same guy hits me up to play some games, afterwards we're talking about the match and giving some general advice to each other and im like "hey can i give you my discord? This is easier to do over voicecall." Anyways this guy who i had just talked to for the first time sat down in player match Training mode with me for the next 2 hours and taught me basics of the game, a corner combo and the barebones millia midscreen air combo to wall break. I can't stress enough how cool that experience was and how fundamental it was to me being able to develop technically and mentally as a player. Since then, we keep in touch and whenever we play we give each other pointers, or send each other tech that might be useful, whenever we see the other's improved something about our gameplan we hype each other up too. Recently i got a different friend to pickup the strive, she has some limited fighting game experience and ive been filling a similar role to the guy i mentioned earlier. She'll shoot me questions whenever she gets stuck and I'll respond or send her links to a pro answering a similar or the same question as her's and when we play, I give her advice and hype up her achievements. Overall I've found that, as a newcomer, people are excited to help you improve, in general. There may have been a time in the fgc where top players closely guarded secrets, like the days when Hbox was the only high level puff melee player, but as far as i can see, every Fighting game pro that creates content will talk openly about strategy and tactics in an extremely transparent way these days. And even if they didn't you can always check out dust loop and you can always compare pro replays to yours. I think there's so much information out there, and so many people that want to see you succeed and grow, like diaphone said, you've just gotta form those social connections yourself.

i don't know how to not get hit or how to hit the other person, I get double perfected every time I go to battle hub just trying to be able to complete the battle pass and it makes me wish I never bought this game and especially not played any of the single player modes because they are not the same game and made me trick myself into thinking i was learning how to play the game

Yeah the hard part is going from I know what I'm doing kind of I know what I should be doing to win but I can't pull it off I can't compete with the super high level players. And the secret is at that point you just have to be really dedicated practice a lot in ways that will actually help you improve not just grind games mindlessly over and over and over. Analyze your losses which I don't like to do and I imagine a lot of people don't like to do either. And practice practice it's going to take time to get over that hurdle it's not easy the people who are beating you have put in thousands and thousands of hours and have been dedicated for years. There is no teacher who can replace a ton of hard work and effort. It's the same with like learning an instrument yeah you can have a good teacher but you have to practice a lot or you're never going to get to that elite level. People want to get to an elite level and fighting games without putting in the time and that's just impossible it has nothing to do with top players not giving out secrets or any b******* like that.

One time I got match-up advice from Justin Wong at one of the Big E tournaments because he sat next to me at the hotel bar and we chatted.

Liked this

"i PlAyEd wItH fRiEnDs" Oh, fuck you. Srsly fuck you. "Hey, what did I do wrong?" "Lol, dunno"

Drop more vids like this 100%

As someone who's been out of fighting games since DragonBall raging blast 2 and SFXTekken, I find it difficult to ask for help. Mostly for me its a matter of being an antisocial introvert with no friends who play fighting games. I imagine there are a good few people who are the same way.

I think its hardest for me due to playing with a disability with cerebral palsy. One hand idk if it's possible for me to do well in fighting games

There are sometimes amazing guides, you just need to find them. I was struggling with KoF XIII in 2015, but I found guides by JuiceBox and those helped me progress a lot.

Good take

I wish I could dedicate as much time as I'd like to truly getting good at a fighting game but irl stuff takes priority over that. I feel like if the fgc had a generally bigger monetary incentive to it, then way more people would take the leap and dedicate themselves to getting better but as it is now, it's not a very reasonable option outside of just being passionate about it.

Oh, I asked people for help. “Get good” “Just jump” “Hold back to block” Basically no help from my FGC scene. So I just went back to smash.

i don't have anybody outside of myself to play these games with and i just feel scared of discord servers because I run into people who say really prejudiced things a lot and it's made me become really paranoid about just interacting with other people in general

Honestly being in the intermediate range is kinda tedious. It's not that top players not wanting anything to do with you since im completely fine with that, but the fact that it doesn't take much for fighting game beginners to quit forever if you beat them too badly. Once that happens, a fighting game kind of starts to either have a harsh skill ceiling(since all there's left are pros, which makes intermediate players not want to deal with them and just move on to the new game) or just flat out dies and becomes a discord fighter. I try to prevent this by telling them their bad habits and the options that character has and sometimes they do log back on the next day or 2 for some matches. Pro players are obviously not obligated to do anything, but I do feel like taking like 30 seconds to tell someone "stop doing this" or "start doing that" goes a long way. The main issue imo isn't the lack of resources, but the lack of players for a lot of games that isn't Street Fighter, Tekken, or Smash.

Great video man it's the same concept for souls game oh the learning curve is to high. But really no it's not some ppl enjoy need for speed while others prefer Gran Turismo. Hitman use to be like this but now it's just another shooter

sure they are great videos out there but its not enough to get to the the level i would love to get i have watched countless videos on guilty gear sure i know the basics and a little neutral and my combos but its not enough i dont see progress even tho i play a lot i just feel like all i need is someone whos willing to help me improve and do it with me and teach tech and different things i can use against other players. maybe im stupid or trash but thats just the way i function, with other people i improve i cant do it with videos and myself.

I'm a maths teacher, i think fighting games suffer the same thing that maths does. Just like maths, fighting games are seen as hard to the general public but actually it is not that hard(a lot of fighting games is just maths tbh, frame data is literally just maths). But the thing is... People are terrible at teaching it, it is not the players fault, it is that teaching is hard. Teaching is hard, it is not by accident that you have entire college courses dedicated to learning how to teach, and studying what goes behind it. Teaching requires patience. Teaching is not for everybody, but if you are trying to teach you have to put in the work. You gotta know how to give enough information for the person to improve, while not giving too much information and confusing people. You need to be affectionate to be a good teacher too. You have to shelter people in their insecurities and to be honest, fighting games players are not that great at doing that, they're just a bunch of dudes who haven't moved past high school behavior and it sucks.

I don't understand that tweet at all it doesn't line up with reality at all espcially today. First of all we are not self thaught and there is so many places where you can ask for help and find people to play with you and help you and plenty of people will go so extra mile to help. Reason why top players are same is because they have years and years of experiance and rising up to them requires extra ordinary dedication and right mentality and there is many people who do so not just some, only thing is people often don't hear about them.

like the video and the topic buuuuttt... no background music??? is that on purpose?

To get better at fighting games all you need is the will to do it and practice. Their isn't a shortcut or magical answer the real answer is to problem solve. If your having problems with something you need to think and or lab a consistent answer to dealing it. Then once you fix that problem you will improve untill you run Into another problem then rinse and repeat the process. Sometimes the answers you come up with will be wrong the key is to just keep trying untill you figure out the right answer. Fighting games are easier when you learn them in a group or have a mentor but it can be done alone. You need the will/mentality to keep moving forward and understand their Is nothing magical or different about top players they are the same they just solved more problems and have more experince but you can do the same thing if you want. Stop looking for outside answers and shortcuts play the game and lose then analyze why you lost and then fix it. That's all you need. Also keep and open mind.

Bro you are NOT kidding about the limited resources back in the day… learning MvC3 combos from a 180p youtube video who doesn’t even show the input info so you gotta try to see what move he did in the middle of a cluster fuck of supers & explosions 😭😭

In my experience, at least locally, the best players in the game may not be able to explain or teach you like a tutorial, but the beast local guys (in MY experience) they MORE than willing to get into a game with a bad player or newbie and kick your ass until you've had enough for the night or you git gud, which ever comes first. And unless they're in a tournament, they're always down to play. The FGC us pretty toxic, but it isn't League of Legends or Overwatch bad, so there is DEFINITELY help out there if you're willing to take your licks. It just isn't going to be packaged in the family friendly way that tries to spare your feelings. Be ready to take some L's lol

Remind me of this video where go1 was play testing against this jp pro player on stream of SFV. This pro player keep boosting his own ego and act like go1 is just a scrub which is true since hes new and keep saying like he wont ever be good enough. He was taunting with half looking back to his baby while in a match. He was like, everyone is trying hard too and you wont ever be as good even if ure the best at this other scrub game. When he lost 1 round he was like, wow youre playing a cheap character. And the comment section was like, wow this guy is goated he slayed go1 while not paying much attention.

"The most popular thread was just people posting feet pics" Ain't that what people call footsies ? 🙄

Good vid. I-No gang rise up.

This a sooo untrue. FGC has in fact so much places to learn that it made be lazy. I used to lab a lot, and now when a game ir character is out I just way for 2 days knowing that a top tier guide will be made and that this guide will be really well thought out ans put together. The FGC is litteraly a mine of content. So much that I often ask myself how all those dudes even get some visibility. It's almost too much. I can Google any game and any character and literaly learn everything from beginner to expert. Players don't even hide their tech anymore. They straight up post it. Come on now

I interact with good content :)

I will say, there are some levels of ego within quite a few players. I don't know if they're tired of the same questions, or what. But a few I've tried to ask on Guilty Gear pros have responded with very snobby remarks, and almost backhand advice. To which you then get flamed by their chat. The issue isn't resources, I think alot of the top players show a false bravado that they stream to chill, interact and HELP players. Yet shut down the help and always say "honestly, just play more." That advice is literally awful, and it's not like they're asking you to solve the rubix cube or terrible at coaching, because 9/10 it's very simple "what is my go to pressure" or "what is the optimal route for combos" for the character THEY main too, even then they won't even acknowledge you're in chat.

That guy on the tweet is capping. FGC is extremely helpful when giving advice to newcomers, I've done it myself, gone out of my way to even upload youtube videos with combos and situations in them.

Whoever made this tweet has completely ignored how every competitive sport has worked for at least the last 100 years. The best players will be the best for long periods of time and will only get better during their prime. Fighting games in particular have such a strong emphasis on legacy skill that it makes sense new players wouldn't crop up constantly. But that said, new people are hitting the top level all the time. Punk, IDom, ProblemX, AngryBird and so many more barely made waves prior to SFV and are now insanely successful players that are routinely beating the world's best. I can't imagine a dumber tweet

The type of players that get good to a top level are idiots. They have no idea what you're even asking, "just learn dipshit, worked for me". They're generally not conscious of their gameplay on that level, their skill lies in a strange amalgamation of technical nonsense, meta-choices and nebulous 'gamesense'. Which is why the best teachers are usually found one step down. There you have the people smart enough to build themselves to the point they're at, but they lack the hollow head to grind it so mindlessly that their grasp of cognition fades away.

Leffen lecturing about mental game is really rich. I have never seen someone so sad and salty

please, i'm full on Gatekeeping! get off my fighting game lawn!!!!!

This tweet is cap. There’s an over abundance of resources to learn at the pace that you’d like nowadays to such an extent that I believe that it’s actually creating a problem where intermediate players are lacking intuition and individuality in their playing styles. Nobody is self-taught nowadays, there’s way more hand-holding then there ever was before in the fgc.

JURI SRK EXPOSED

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I think ppl spend more time complaining than labbing.

Straight up not true (the tweet). I went from completely new FGC player to a weak Celestial Anji in a few months and I still got tons of resources that allow me to get better - anji discord, strive streams, dustloop. Just stop being lazy lol.

Underappreciated seekrit tech to get better at fight games: learn to play a musical instrument

1:00 that is just a bad take. The fact that you have to spend hours and hours reviewing tutorials that 80%-90% repeat each other and do not necessarily answer your question is a good thing somehow?

Dude people like you make this statement ridiculous. Practice and Research. Dedication. Want to learn League of Legends? Put in 80 hours to be crap. Why do people think fighters don't need the work?

I Stopped fightinggames because noone was willing to help or give any advice at all.worst community by far

yeah this is not true. I was having trouble with KOF inputs (I am new to the game) and went to random streams and asked questions. So many people were willing to help, add me as a friend and give me advice lol

It's honestly strange that a tweet like that gets traction now, as there are a lot of creators both big and small who actively engages with the FGC community and gladly teaches what they can. Also like you mentioned, the various discords where people gather and share information with eachother. However it would have held water if we were talking about the USF4 / UMvC3 / beginning of SFV era, where there were top players (ironically Arturo/NYCfurby were one of the main offenders) who _actively_ refused to share tech with the community in order to gain an edge at tournaments. It's funny how things change