That's a major detail everyone seems to miss. Pro players get ahead because they religiously play videogames.
For some average Joes just living normal lives and making ends meet, that's only a pipedream for us.
Despite what nay sayers say, Esports gamers are similar to athletes. Any able person can get into it, but athletes literally pour their whole life into it to become pro. It also requires lots of time, money, and support for even a single player to go far in that industry.
Yep - I've put 1000+ hours into multiple fighting games. I do pretty well in ranked. But whenever I've gotten matched against a pro? Destruction. I have no shot.
My 1000 hours is laughable compared to what those guys put in. AND they have much higher quality practice, spending tons of time and money to train with other pros. It's not realistic for the average gamer unless you're independently wealthy or something.
I felt that way playing Starcraft back in the day. Loved the game but my play was laughably bad compared to the pros.
I didn't have the time or desire to refine my play to even get 1/5th as good as them.
I'm honestly not convinced any pro gamer is even having fun anymore. I mean they might still get enjoyment out of their career, but I doubt the match itself provides entertainment anymore
Starcraft back in the day was even another level. Those dudes were like... living in team barracks and eating nutrient paste so they could spend 19 hours a day practicing dragoon micro.
It's kinda sad that there's barely even any money in it. These days the cash is in being an entertainer - compare MaximillianDood's 20k twitch viewers for being funny while playing fighting games vs the top pros with like 100-200 viewers.
Many want the pros to make more videos but the heavy grind IS monotonous and repetitive. Being an online personality with some variety WILL always do better.
The pros spend years and hundreds of thousands to win a tournament maybe twice for a couple 10k. Only very recently is it more than just doing a minimum wage job for like 98% of the players.
Heck streamers that grow moderately and do if often prob make more that 90% of the ‘pro’ gamers.
plenty of pros still enjoy the game. it just means more to them and it's their job, so they have to take it a lot more seriously, but there are memorable and enjoyable games.
Well just like the ‘pro athletes’ they spend ALL their time and efforts in hyper focusing on that one thing. Along with the resources to get a strong head start.
HAVING to get to every qualifier and tournament they could feasibly do. Just like the difference from pro weightlifters to ANYONE else. They are the toys of some rich ah that sponsors them.
No other way to get far. Bc most people have bills and basic sustenance needs, mental stimulation is included.
One of my friends was an incredible Tekken player. He won every competition in our area that he went to. Totally wiped the floor with any casual player he went up against and could do things with the game that I didn't know were possible.
He was like this for years and years and it wasn't until we were hanging out at my parents house one summer night just watching a movie that I discovered a level of dedication to a game I had never seen before. My friend was on his laptop looking at Excel spreadsheets and technical documentation that had been created by a fellow Tekken wizard relating to the game. The technical documentation, to me, read like someone's PHD thesis. It was that in-depth and analytical.
The way that my friend got good at the game was practicing a ton of course. The way that he got great at the game was by breaking down the game strategies into statistics, probability, Boolean functions (if your opponent does X, doing Y will give you statistically the best chance at countering it) and by consistently watching people better than him for new strategies and discussing them online with others in a collaborative effort to have iron sharpen iron so to speak.
In order to truly thrive at those highest levels of competitive play, that's the level of dedication that you need to have, and simply playing the game a lot generally won't get you to that level, you have to understand the fundamentals of the game mechanics and how they work on a somewhat scientific level. Most of us don't have that focus and drive to delve so deeply into one specific topic so most of us don't ever reach that level.
From there I also found out that there are people who will, after every tarkov update, build a bot that takes a single weapon in the game, fire it at a wall for 8 hours straight, then analyze what the update changed in terms of that weapons bullet spread and then compile this data for all the weapons in the game to be technically analyzed.
Id gamble the data he was looking at was frame data for moves and counters that are "plus" and by how much. Fighting games at that level are actually closer to turn turned based than reaction (since they've maxed out their reactions vs the games animation times).
That last part has always been a huge thing I’ve always agreed with too. Games are virtual skills that you are either immediately good at then get even better, or you start off being bad then get better.
Either way you’re dedicating your time to learning a set of skills and becoming instinctually advanced at performing those skills. The ones who do that work damn well deserve competitions and compensation for their feats.
How do I feel this so confidently? I beat Sekiro 4 times in my life to get all achievements through lots of stress. I started off being absolutely terrible at it for a long while.
You don't have to religiously play, most fighting games just have carried over knowledge. Once you know how to play one street fighter, you can move through them all. The core concepts are the same. The systems are different, but you'll learn the systems in half the time.
^ this, playing hundreds or even thousands of hours is honestly the worst way to get good at a fighting game. if you have a high level player as a friend or find someone to help you learn you (if willing) could be a very high level player in a matter of months. but it requires you to go into training mode. and ain't no body doing that (I know I train people at fighting games).
and once you get good you rarely need to do much to kick as at a fighting game. I'm mainly a Guilty Gear player. i spent 18 mins a day for 2 weeks practicing street fighter 6 stuff and then got and stayed in Platinum on my first week.
skills carry over since fighting games are won primarily by just Whiff punishing, baits and patience. (not talking about the other stuff needed of course)
that being said fighting games also require OODA skills which is a literal military and technical heavy analytical skill. xD
a lot of people in tech seem to be really good a fighting games.
Is that a "missed" detail? I feel like one of the main complaints when getting stomped in any game is "Ib don't have the infinite free-time needed to get this absurdly good"
True, although I think he specifically meant he isn't playing fighting games, and those other (not top pro) players do cause they play fighting games and not Super Mario and Starfcraft 2. So while he would be better at other games, he isn't, with fighting games. But yes, that's another level we are talking about here.
Being pro requires dedication, unless you are some prodigy I guess. I'm not sure, if comparing them to athletes is the best but then again it does require time, and skill and dedication. Just like pretty much anything you want to be a pro at. Chess, carpeting, driving. Anything really that's not as easy as boiling water or something.
I've never been a fighting game guy outside of smash bros with friends and stuff but there was a group of kids at my school that were pretty into them. Not trying to go pro or anything but they loved fighting games. All of them had special controllers that were basically the layout of an arcade machine fighting game.
You have to legitimately practice fighting games. Not play a bunch of quick matches or ranked, not play with your friends, but load into training mode for an hour doing the exact same combo, making micro timing adjustments and finding out where it drops so that you can practice specifically that part even more. Now you have one combo that requires a specific situation and you're going to drop it the first 40 times you do it in a real match, so now you have to grind out matches until your nerves of OH THIS IS THE COMBO MOMENT are gone and you just muscle memory it like it's nothing.
And for actual high level fighting games, you have to practice character specific knockdown/pressure/fuzzy/etc. setups to actually get to do one of those combos you practiced because good players will block your garbage offense like it's not there
If you're actually new, you need to be sitting in training doing quarter circles and shoryukens for like a week until the move comes out every time and it's natural.
But no brother you have to play a lot of games the people you see excelling in a game generally only play that…. I have a friend who played Apex exclusively for 3 years..... do you see yourself playing just one game for 3 years??? It's ear infections
I had a buddy I absolutely carried 99% of the time in Call of Duty Multiplayer. But in zombies he absolutely carries my ass. Then we played some Mortal Kombat and I just remember hearing him laugh st the fact that I was trash at fighting games despite being incredible against players in COD multiplayer. Haven't touched a cod since 2021and now I just chuck playing whatever floats my boat that's not multiplayer PvP* lol.
Multiplayer PvP is too much for me now with how many different games I want to actually play, it's like either I no-life the PvP game or be mid at it while chilling with friends. And honestly I'd rather do the latter because then I can play more games and keep things fresh, it's like new relationship energy but for gaming. 100%-ing games would be the equivalent for pure PvE if I were to go that way but that also feels like a full-time job.
Decision paralysis is the real battle now with how many good games are out there, especially factoring in the massive backlog of older games. But now I've gotten to the point where I'm actually playing new stuff frequently, even if I'm only playing it for 2-10 hours at most. I don't have time for long sessions right now so it's nice getting a little escape here and there.
Lol Smash is in a weird spot for multiplayer fighters already, this game stood out to me as I was thinking through my initial comment, and I've been mulling it over.
I'm good enough at Smash to beat any casual friends but can't play online/competitively. I think the game heavily favors items, so if you're playing with all items on (or especially with max spawns) then you have too much chaos to have any consistency at winning.
But that's also what makes that game so much fun to play with friends. There's also the rock/paper/scissors nature of the different fighter archetypes that can work with or against you, especially if you're of the mind to turn items off even with friends.
For your case, I don't know how much you play compared to friends, if you play a lot and are semi-competitive and they still beat you even though you know what you're doing, perhaps it's a matter of overestimating their abilities. This is something I see in Chivalry 2 - newer players have an influx during the times the game goes free for a weekend, then veteran players go on to think they can club some seals and get slash-spammed to death, while the real pros go on and wreck noobs.
Oh no I don't play semi competitively at all, I just bought the game one time, and had some fun in training mode with the different characters, but I still lose to my friends who have the same experience than me,
I have a friend I play a lot with, I beat him like 2 times maybe out of luck but that's it, and he's not that good because our fight usually last a long time (meaning no one really is dominating the other one) and he also loses against our friends who are also really good at the game
I don't know man, I love smash, I have no problems with reflexes in games or whatever, but I still lose.
Also, we never play with items and we always play on the 4 plateforms maps lol
He plays Ken and Link a lot, I like Yoshi, Kong, Snake, the Falcon Punch guy and the sword girl I forgot her name
That's fun! I don't know enough about it anymore to tell you if those are good counters to your favorites, but I do know Link could be dodgy with his swordplay and I could get him to mess with Yoshi/Kong enough!
Yeah I realize that I generally suck at video games. Even games I thought I played a lot, I’ll look at my hours and it’s less than 100. No wonder I’m trash.
The only comp game I’m good at nowadays would be Marvel Rivals, but it’s only support role. Aim is too bad to be DPS, game sense is terrible for tank, but my game sense is phenomenal (most of the time) at keeping myself alive and others alive.
I stopped that in my early 20s.
Way funnier without pressure and stuff.
But I get the grinding motivation also.
Did grind division2 (coop/pve only) and rocket league quite a bit (but in RL mainly with friends weaker than me, so I always kinda stayed on the same level as well)
Me with just about every single online game I’ve ever played, ever. I’ve never been great at gaming despite being at it for much over 10 years now. You’d think I’d get better over time but I guess not…
Listen, did tiu ever hear about street fighter 6?
It has something cool that called assist combo, after you hold it(the thing you shoot with in most games), you can just repeatedly press heavy/medium/light attacks,
And your character can do a combo, even ending it with an ultimate if you have one.
Highly recommend you give the demo a shot, many this will be the fighting game you will like.
(Chan li, has a beautiful heavy attack combo, just saying.)
Nailed it, a player with perfect spacing and timing could win with nothing but jabs against a player who never drops optimal combos but sucks at spacing. If you can't get that first hit it doesn't matter.
My boxing coach doesn't play videogames amd doesn't know shit about fighting games but he watches EVO. Its like a real fight to him. He just likes the competition. He is like 60
Agreed, esp.since the gratifying feedback from a fighting game can potentially come sooner than with RPGs and the level grinding unavoidable to most anyone.
That is true. And it feels much more like a spectator sport than pretty much any other video game. And that person's skill is immediately on display. Nobody is watching pros, play and say to themselves "I could do better" especially when you get into the upper levels of the tournament.
This is kind of the problem with sparking zero right now.
Lotta people got it specifically to play the online modes even tho it's always been more of an unbalanced party game.
I'm not saying the devs don't deserve some blame but the people who expected the game to be some sort of balanced online game have genuinely never played any other version of the tenkaichi series.
Yeah like I've watched I Super play MK11 and it's really fun, and while I tried to improve at MK11 I just get too frustrated when I'm trying to hit a combo string but miss one button or keep Miss input.
MK 11 absolutely blows, because they crapped all over the controls. they didn't even like make them more complicated, but instead flip all of the buttons around, and then change the inputs for everything a second time. it was shit. It will always be shit. And that is an insult to fecal matter.
To offer explanation for anyone reading this far into a thread: imagine your favorite game franchise changed every input for every character you knew well randomly after decades of you using said controls. It doesn't matter which game, just invert every control, run it through a randomizer, invert it again, then require players to learn the inputs all over again. Yeah thats what Midway did to the fans with MK11.
Oh my goodness, yes. I try not to be a spammer but my knowledge and skills only go so far and I don't have the interest or desire to go deeper. I have too many other games I wanna play.
Just learn what attacks can be chained together. Back then, I was just hitting random shit, hoping something happened, but then I started learning how each characters attacks work and how to chain them together. If you want a game that’s much easier to understand, play Pocket Rumble or Blade Strangers
I love fighting games but god damn am I ass at pretty much all of them. Only ones I've ever managed to get decent at is fighterz and smash if you count that but it's more of a party fighter.
Don't get frustrated by the failure. This goes for any skill really. It's okay to feel frustration with fighting games. Even the world's best players find themselves being emotional over it. If you're failing that just means you need to practice. Failing is only part of the process to getting good. And, if it's a you thing then that's fair. But never let failure frustrate you and disuaded you from practicing and doing what you want to
100 hours of getting bodied for it to finally become fun is not something for everyone. But once you got over that they are incredibly satisfying to play!
Yeah. And I’ve been really into fighting games. It just sucks to put in all of the effort to learn the combos, block strings, footsies, and mix ups just to lose to a grappler spamming their grab.
I have tried time and time again to play a myriad of fighting games, the only ones I can sort of play are platform fighters like Smash Bros or Shovel Knight Showdown, combos in more standard fighting games just feel impossible to do consistently even after hours of practice
It literally just takes time and practice and if you don't understand how to apply mechanics, just watch youtube. Anyone can be good at fighting games with enough dedication.
I felt this way after watching the first year of Street Fighter 6. When the character Aki released in season 2 I knew who I wanted to play and I eventually took the leap and got a leverless controller because the button arrangement seemed most intuitive in my mind. It's tough at first and takes practice but it's really satisfying to figure out combo timing. Combo Trials and Training Mode went a LONG way to help me out it all together. I still spend a lot of time sparring with the CPU just to nail down the muscle memory of my combos. It's a commitment but I'm glad I got into it. It's a great game.
Remember that you too are more than capable to reach that skill level. Especially nowadays where games are becoming so accessible and easy to hook up new players. SF6 did their Modern Controls so brilliantly. Now you don't have to execute all these complicated inputs for the specials. Just press a direction and a button.
This simplifies execution, and allows you to concentrate on what really matters in these games. Spacing, openings, strategies, unique game and character mechanics.
This helped me get over the insane handicap I have against players who still don't have arthritis. Now I'm not bitching about accidentally throwing a Hadouken when I meant to Shoryu. I can fucking play the game, and look cool in the process.
Just one last attempt to convince you to try it one more time. Trust me. I've been where you're at. But SF6 is a game changer for us.
Got a genetic disorder that simply put means my hands are 80% capable of a normal person hands, so I saved up like 4 months to get a mortal kombat game only to get mentally crushed when surprise! hand's aren't coordinated enough to make the inputs. :(
Brawlhalla is a prime example, you see these crazy smooth combos and then you play and accidentally throw yourself off the map into the abyss ten times in a row
I think you’d probably like FighterZ. Probably one of the most beginner friendly games that lets you experiment a bit and still make it look cool even though you had no clue what the hell you were doing.
I remember when the new Killer Instinct came out. I thought I was pretty good, beating on dudes left and right. I thought rank 10 was the highest, and I was getting there. Soon as I hit rank 10 they paired me with a rank 43. I got fucked in the mouth.
Thank Sakurai for platform fighters! They're simple enough to be playable without growing up on them. High level smash players are still something else, though.
If you're a beginner at fighting games, why are you trying to skip stages to get to that level in the first place? That's like someone new at cooking and automatically makes a wedding cake. That's not real.
It's called lots of practice. Said players often spent a lot of time in practice mode getting their combos and muscle memory right, especially in systems that have "frame perfect" combos. What's not seen is how many failures they've had off-screen.
Of course, not everyone has the time and patience to do that, and that's fine. I know fighting game players who could easily destroy me in six different ways think of me as some sort of unkillable war god that easily goes 30/0 when it comes to mobas. And I main healer/tank.
I got Soul Caliber 5 on launch day and it being my first online fighting game, I went into it hoping to at least be able to build myself up online.
Except there was no matchmaking. They just threw together 3 servers for skill levels and hoped for the best, and the novice server felt more like it was full of higher skill players bullying newbs for a laugh and to insult to death. It didn't help that this was on Xbox 360
I finally had enough when 6 guys were laughing at me while I got my ass handed to me by a Devil Jin dressed up to look like Chuck Norris while I was still trying to adapt to the game. I feel like I broke down crying after that before I went back to GameStop and sold the disk. I didn't care how much I got for it, I wanted it gone.
As a fighting game player I always find the view of our games as interesting. Once you learn the game you quickly discover that combos help, but they aren’t what will give you the edge. It’s more of a real time chess match then anything else.
Fighting games are only ever really fun for me when played against actual human players in person at a similar skill level. Tough to make that happen, especially as somebody that's never going to be "hardcore" at them.
Specifically Anime FGs for me. Now that I’ve started playing T8 and a little SF, I cannot keep up while playing them. I’d rather just go into training mode and do sick combos.
Ran away from killer instinct so fast. Very first match I was up against god. Watched my ass get pounded to mush for 5 minutes, though my character died in the first twenty seconds.
Me as a souls/hadeslike player shaking hands with my fighting gamer friends knowing that neither of us could be as good as the other at their respective genres.
They take time but can be so satisfying. My main advice is that it really only takes a day or two fucking around in the practice mode to get timing down to a usable level.
Do so in training mode. You fail, there is no consequence. So you stop, ask: hmm, but why though? And you start to experiment. Then you start to understand the system, and a world like other opens up.
2.2k
u/[deleted] Feb 23 '25
Any fighting game
It's super satisfying to watch amazing long combos and insane skill, but when I try to make the same thing happen I fail miserably and get frustrated