So - How do YOU 'do it'?

Happy New Year to you all.

Being a confirmed button-masher, I've always stuck to characters with memorable button strings (Lau's, Jacky's etc - hence the Username ). But I've decided to make the effort to branch out and use some of the more 'complicated' characters. Akira's getting the treatment at the moment and I'm having a blast - whilst wondering if I'll EVER be able to pull off a SPoD in an actual fight...

My question is - how do you guys 'learn' a new character? Do you just repeatedly practice every move in Sparring until you commit them to 'muscle memory' and then play the character - or do you get a few moves down, start fighting and then keep dipping into Sparring to widen your arsenal?

Final question - do you concentrate on one character until you have them 'down' before moving on, or do you spread yourself around - so to speak.

Just remember - I'm a noob, you could all kick my ass, I can't even DLC - so flaming me ain't gonna prove shit.

Thanks in advance.....

PPPK

 

Just to start things off. Lau and Jacky can be labeled as newbie characters. But nonetheless there are many high level players who use those characters. So if you are having success with them, maybe you don't need to move on to other characters. You just need to learn how to play differently than the way you are playing currently. To learn a character you obviously have to know all the moves arguably. You should know how long each move takes to execute, their hit level, special properties like if it sabakis or if they are hit throws etc. After that is done, experiment with the moves and find what is useful and when you should execute them. After that you should learn some combos. Know the strengths and weaknesses of you character, and utilize them to your advantage. Be inventive is all I can say, though how to go about that is up to you. From my experiences, however, knowing a character inside out is secondary to understanding the system of VF4. Understanding the basics and the rules that applies to all the characters is imo the most important part of playing this game. Go out and get yourself a home version of this game and dedicate yourself to playing it and being original in your play. Good luck. /versus/images/icons/laugh.gif

 

I can't speak for how a character SHOULD be learned, but I learned mostly by playing people. You quickly figure out which moves kick ass and are effective, and which moves should be avoided. It's essential you play people who are better than you are though. Otherwise you'll get away with horrible stuff and think you're using skillful, abuse-able attacks (when in reality a good player would crush you every time you tried them).

A good example of this is something like akira's charge attack
- a scrub eats it
- a moderately-scrubby guy might block them but still get staggered and eat a stagger combo
- a decent player might dodge them on reflex, but not always in the correct direction
- a good player will dodge them correctly every time on reflex
- a very good player will interrupt them for a float combo or something similar every time on reflex.

You get the picture I guess.
If you want to learn a character you should probably run through the command training so you have an idea of what every move does, then go to free training and practice all the bread-n-butter combos for that character. Once you have all the basic strong combos down, read the movelist to see which throws are most damaging and learn to use those.
The rest comes from playing stronger human opponents.

 

Creed/Ninjinsan,

Thanks for the advice.

I should have said - I'm limited to PS2 VF4 - without human opposition - so I'm destined to become a scrub, I fear.

The point about high level Jacky's/Lau's is taken - I've seen some awesome players on Daioh - I tend to abuse the canned combos too much though :O)

Oh well - back to Training Mode. By the way Creed, I was re-reading your Step1 VF3 Akira guide on the train home. Seriously cool guide - perfect for noobs (esp with regard to performing DLC and SPoD). How much of it do you think still applies to VF4 Akira (pre-Evo of course). And where's the Step2, eh?

Once again - thanks for taking time to reply, guys.

 

hrm, I forgot about that step 1 guide. Most of it should work for VF4 version C, but instead of f,f,f+P -> DLC you do f,f,f+P -> f,f+K,K /versus/images/icons/smile.gif
Other than that, I don't have a step 2 guide. I could maybe write one, but Akira isn't my primary.

 

well really the best thing is to go against actual people, but since your mainly solo on the ps2 i would sugest staying in free training and just set the computer to a certain level and note moves that work and what doesn't, after all if your going to go against the computer then you might as well train with it too.

as far as character selection goes personaly i chose two, one that im just naturaly good with due to simpicity or whatever, and then one that i think would be really kick butt to learn. usually one will fit the mood your feelin (ieissed or happy) /versus/images/icons/tongue.gif

only other advice ....... have fun.