Learning From Square 1

I'm trying to teach myself this game. I'm trying to break it down into bits like a teacher would, but I need help.

I am starting with what I think is integral for beginners as well as everyone else- movement.

With that said, what are some basic movement patterns that I should practice? I can walk, hop about, cd, backdash, and I can chain bd's and cd's into themselves. I've also found this:

http://gohnotes.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/4-clever-stepping-maneuvers/

and the overarching stepping guide which it comes from.Are there any other basic patterns that it doesn't go over? Do tell.

 

Stepping is not really a priority when you're on square one...
Everyone will agree that you should read the system pages a few times. It's boring but tells you what you really need to know first, like how to throw escape and what the purposes of Defensive Move and Offensive Move are.

Then learn how to play the character of your choice. You can study a little bit of every character to get an idea of what they can do, but this is not Tekken, you can do fine for a good while by just playing a solid game with your character.
It's easy to memorize what other characters can do by just playing against other players, and learning the specifics is really not as primordial as in Tekken.

I think my post makes me sound like a scrub, but VF is in great part about mind games. So get your basics down and enjoy the ride while you're learning.

 

Well, spacing and movement is a good part of mindgames in most fighters. I'm an sf player, and I don't have a lot of people to play in vf, so I don't fully speak vf yet... But it seems to be about 3 things on mindgames- spacing, poking, and mixups (or nitaku and santaku- if there is such a thing as a 3 way mixup in vf). Am I right there? It also seems to have a lot of safe or semi safe moves for a 3df, and even some of the "unsafe" moves you can throw out on block and then just dodge the counterattack later (I'd still have to watch out for om, quicker pokes that would beat it clean spinning attacks, and throws though). I'm kind of wondering about frame data in 3df's- as in, does it play a huge role in mindgames?

I'm playing on vf4 evo (no vf5 until FS) and going through training exercises btw, so it's teaching me some of this. Not as good as a real person but it helps.

 

Ahh, so you're coming from SF! Sorry, for some reason I assumed you were coming from Tekken.
I'm not confident to talk about all the mixup situations in detail, so I will more or less skip over that...

The frames in VF are different from Tekken and Soul Calibur at least. I don't know about DOA.
In VF, indeed most attacks are safe, and yes it plays an impact on mind games.
In short, at minor disadvantage people can fuzzy guard, and if your opponent has a habit of doing this, you have to guess whether they will or not. Likewise at any disadvantage as long as the attack was safe, people can use a Defensive Move, and you again need to read the opponent and choose your next move properly.

By the way, unsafe means 100% unsafe. If a move can be punished by or something bigger, it will and there's no question about that... unless the opponent does not take the free damage, of course, like in any other game.

Spacing can make a difference, but I think it's somewhere in the middle of "square one" and "stepping".
I would say that ring position awareness plays a bigger role, and it will be even more true in FS because of the nasty wall combos. It means learning to stay away from the edges of the ring, and learning specifics about your character. Throws send opponents in which direction (and to a lesser extent, where do escaped throws send you both), which attacks force the opponent a little bit to the front or to the back of your character, etc.
...But there is not much sense in studying that kind of stuff yet before FS because those specifics will have changed.

If you come from SF, I would urge you to get the simple habit of using DMs and OMs. Learn to hit check your attacks. When your poke was blocked, try a DM and if you successfully evaded something, either poke again or try to start a combo. Otherwise if your first poke has successfully hit AND leaves you at frame advantage, go for an OM.

In real play, you don't want to do those ALL the time, but it's important for 2D fighters to develop a habit of side stepping.

 

Just to throw my 2 pennies in cause I absolutely love stepping and it was one of the first things I worked on too. And just to note, you don't have to be great at stepping to be great at VF, but it was just one of those things I personally wanted to get good at cause it's how I wanted my style of play to be/revolve around.

Also, I think some things with stepping have been removed, so i'm not sure how much of this still works lol.

What you linked is some good stuff for you to work on. That pretty much covers about everything for you to practice with movement. I'm sure there's other stuff, but from those things you can use and start adding in your own style/combinations of dashing and evading.

/ to / to are real good ones to work on in my opinion. Try and do the diagnols quickly as ya can after the evade attempt. If they attempt to delay an attack or throw, your failed evade will cancel into a crouch dash which can duck under a throw for a split second, and the gaurd can block against a delayed attack (except lows). So it's pretty much an evade into a fuzzy gaurd. Fuzzy gaurds blocks mids and ducks under throws at the same time.

Then a another input you could add onto that, is doing a throw escape after the evade into the crouch dash to to escape a throw attempt if they decided to go for a throw without delaying it. So i.e. to + to to

There's some other weird stuff you can do that's called ARM I believe (All Range Movement) where you evade into a low jab or something. I didn't really look that deep into it hahah. But it's supposed to be a very good defensive move.

Another for you since you're coming from a SF background like me. You can also crouch dash by doing shoryuken type inputs. This will let you bypass the need to charge for the moves that require that, so you can just do em instantly. This is called buffering. You just have to hit the / on the way down and on the way back up. So your inputs will look like . So evading into that is a good drill too so you can evade into those type of moves, or into to still get the fuzzy gaurd. Which ever you decide.

But still practice getting those and 's out there fast too. Being able to do your inputs, and I mean any inputs, even just as fast as possible will help a ton, in my opinion. Maybe it's cause I started with akira is why I feel that way. You don't have to be fast to be great, as the smart decision is what will help the most, but being fast at the sticks definently won't hurt.

I'll come back later to throw some other stuff out here too. Learn in all directions also, up to left and right, and down to left to right.

Also, I pretty much self taught myself this game and these methods. It's not that anyone won't help, people are more than willing to if you ask. I just never asked ego thing I guess lol. So anyone feel free to correct me or whatever.

A real good player named Stl TM wrote a mini guide for stepping somewhere around here. Maybe he'll see the thread and point you to it. I definently don't know where it is hahah.

 

Here's some inspiration for you mang. Watch the Akira player And to note, this clip is from VF5R and not VF5:FS

 

Spacing seems quite important in VF but it's something I haven't paid too much attention to till recently, simple patterns like ... can be used to create distance from your opponent so you can bait whiffs etc. Replace the backdash in that pattern with a forward one and you have a good tool for closing the distance on your opponent, you might find this pattern makes some opponents freeze up letting you get a free throw attempt.

I'm not so sure stepping/spacing should be your first priority in VF though, the mid/throw game is VF at it's most basic imo. Here's a link that explains how this works...

http://virtuafighter.com/wiki/doku.php?id=vf5:system_part_2#strategy

If you follow that link and scroll a bit further down to Advantage and Disadvantage you'll find a basic explanation of how frames work in VF too. Just remember that a lot of this stuff has changed in FS

 

Oh I can ss alright. It's not so much as I've never played 3d as it is I never played it on the competitive "I'm gonna play tournaments" level. For a long time I just played my games at home post arcade era- I didn't know about big tournaments. I play 2d and 3d, so I'm kinda coming from sf/some tekken/some kof/some vf.


I hear about rock paper scissors as a fighting system here what is that?

In sf it would be something of attack beats neutral, blocking beats attack, throw beats blocking.

That would be the barest, most basic framework with the exceptions cut out.

From what I see it's just a ton of mixup because pressure is safe.

This is actually kind of odd, 3d used to come to me more easily than 2d. More common sense, I guess. Learning high level sf is like learning a language- the language being footsies and the under-cover mindgames, the meaning behind each punch.

Here it would be moreso like-

Throw some safe pressure to test the waters (jab string etc)

Back off a little, begin fuzzy, prepare for throw break if throw since you are guarding, look out for mixups.

IF jab- elbow strike. Proceed with pressure and High low. If blocked attempt throw or command throw if advanatge is sufficient or opponent is flinching due to being conditioned to block.

If from here a gut stun is gained or hits of a juggling string connect, proceed to combo

at knockdown- attempt down attack. if this isn't safe at the moment, proceed to spacing related mindgames to try to find a better position.

^Sounds like Robert D. Jr's Dr. Holmes.

Maybe I'm dreadfully wrong here. A lot of it just seems to be straight guesses or reads. Or just reacting.

And I know about positioning in regards to danger zones. I played Soul Calibur 2 a lot. Game is a ring out party. I also liked Tekken 4. Tekken with safe pressure and less juggles.

 

Well considering that the other 3D games are basically all namco games, theres something important that has to be understood about sidestepping in VF compared to sidestepping in namco games. In VF, defensive move (what is referred to as evade or sidestep) is NOT hitbox dependant. If something is evadable (it doesnt track to that side aka is not semi/full circular) you can evade it. Even if you were at -9 and stuffed to a corner of the arena with a huge Taka-Arashi on your skin trying to do dirty things to you. You tap up and evade the move. VF's game system is very robust, meaning that most of the time, stuff thats supposed to happen will happen.

This is also why stepping is not as crucial in VF as it is in namco games, although stepping always brings about more options.

This is really different compared to namco games where sidestep is hitbox dependant. On the other hand, offensive move in VF is on the other hand hitbox dependant, and does bring a little bit of randomness with it, like evading non-evadable moves .

As for rock/paper/scissors, indeed in VF it means the basic trinity of mid attack/block/throw. And in my opinion its emphasized a bit too much by people teaching the game. There are ways to go around the basic guessing game (fuzzy guard for example, allows you to defend against two options at same time). There are always answers to your given situation. Even if the mixup would be extremely strong, you can survive if you make the right guess.

Technically yes, although if I guess how you are going to defend, I can do something that beats your defense basically, or the next move you will do. Applies most of the time, although in some cases it requires change of timing.

For example, you do a 'safe' mid, and fuzzy guard afterwards. I guess correctly that you are going to fuzzy, so I will delay my throw, so you stand up straight into it. On the other hand, if you think I will delay my throw, you can just remain in crouching longer to avoid the throw, but then you will be vulnerable to the mid attack that was the other part of the mixup fuzzy is supposed to help you against.

Or if you read I will delay my throw, you can skip fuzzy or block completely and continue to attack from disadvantage. This is very high risk though if I would have chosen to do a big launcher instead.

On top of this there are character specific options, like low throwing you straight from the fuzzy or Akira mid guard break.

This is a small scratch of the advanced guessing games involved in VF. And it all started when a 'safe' attack hit block.

This is relatively advanced stuff however.

On a basic level following is important for people coming from other fighting games: The basic mixup of VF is not mid/low. Majority of lows are pretty sucky, except for a few characters. The basic mixup is between mid and a throw. This means that the "rock/paper/scissors" is bit more important in VF than it is in say, namco games.

VF players poke to either see what the opponent is gonna do, make them freeze long enough to get a throw through, or to instill them into doing something predictable so they can be punished.

ooooontopic:
Movement patterns, okay.
is the fastest way to guard after a canceled evade in Vanilla (couple frames faster than canceling the evade with a crouch dash), I dont know how important it is in FS. Stepping in general is going to be a higher risk in FS, due to tracking hits hitting an evader counting as counter hit. It also offers bigger reward due to at least the new sideturned pressure and bigger advantage after succesfully evading something.

... aka stair step should be a good way to put some distance between you and opponent.

I do sometimes to make stuff whiff and attack when Im coming back in.

I use if I want to back out from rising kick range after Ive knocked someone down.

In all above you can replace with to sidestep in the other direction.

Oh and theres two different types of defensive move, succesful and unsuccesful. Only the unsuccesful (opponent doesnt attack into it) can be canceled with dashes. If the evade is succesful, your character will make a sound (like Jacky: YEAH! Aoi: HAI! etc) and the sidestep will be longer and you recover faster, but cant cancel the succesful evade with anything. The advantage after a succesful evade will be greater than in VF5 vanilla.

 

I've actually learned a lot since asking this by playing vf4 evo in trials and vs the excellent AI (it's so pro after the first few fights).

What throws that rps thing off a bit is sabaki/reversal/"parry"/"hold", but it's slow and you have to guess correctly. I'm playing vf4evo (I have a ps3, waiting for 5 fs). I know the major system changes- bounds (helps lion a lot.. despite his >>annoying<< voice hes ok), no multi throw escape.

Another question... Lion doesn't have a sabaki in 4 evo does he?

Maybe I'm just missing it. In 5 FS he seems to have a ton more tools, such as spinning attacks, Sabaki, stun/guard breaking (dunno the official term, Akira has a ton of em) moves outside etc. The bound system helps a lot. Chibita made him look so darn impressive vs fuudo, that's why I picked him up. And he looked liked DMC's Dante a bit (not emo ninja theory dmc the real dmc), but with SVC evil ken's afro.

I'm liking wolf as well, lol, so much damage. He reminds me of Alex from third strike. Especially with his flash chop, it seems alex took inspiration from wolf.

And then there's Kage, who is just plain good. In fs, is his TFT a command throw? I hope it is.

 

Lion has a sabaki in VF4 EVO. It's exactly the same command as well.

 

Very well put. Its actually helped me a lot.