Learning to avoid/punish cheesy moves?

So, i’ve recently started playing vf again after almost 20 years. I used to think I was good at the game, but thinking back now I think I really wasnt anything special. I’ve been playing ranked for a couple of weeks now and after a couple of early losses I have been slowly starting to get the hang of things - i blasted to Hunter rank with a 45 win streak and for a week I really thought I was ”the man” lol.. But luckily, I got schooled by a few good players and now things have toughened up a little. Which is a good thing, I enjoy fighting with opponents who are more my own level. And better than me, as that’s the best way to learn.


However, with some of the opponents I’m getting now I seem to struggle a lot with some really cheap moves. Today I went against a Jean who wiped the floor with me, basically just doing one annoying move over and over again, and maybe throwing a low punch in every now and then. He was doing this very fast, very powerful punch, that seemed to cover a huge amount of distance, and was so quick to recover that even if I managed to block it he just repeated it so quickly that I had a really hard time trying to punish it. I mostly got pushed to ring out without being able to avoid getting hit or stun.


It’s the first time i’ve seen that move being used, so I didnt know how to counter it with. I tried dodging but it was so fast that the player could just keep on repeating it and I kept getting caught. I think I won 1 round of 6 or something. The match also suffered from some lag, at least on my end, and that didnt help either as I had a really hard time trying to figure out the timing of the attack.


I got to thinking that I’d really need to school myself on some of these cheap moves that can wreck you if you’re not familiar with them. I don’t mind losing to someone who plays well, but it’s utterly frustrating losing to someone who keeps exploiting a single, powerful move, knowing that it would most likely not be that hard to counter if I got some way of practicing how to fight against it.

Sometimes it takes me 20+minutes to find a game, and most people keep playing the same 3 or 4 characters so I really don’t get to play against a whole lot of different styles and characters.

The CPU opponents are really dumb, and they keep doing the same stuff over and over again, so practicing against the CPU wont cut it.

I’ve tried playing room games but it seems that most times the connections are awful, or then people just leave the room if they lose one fight. In two weeks I’ve only managed to find a good room to play in maybe two or three times. I’m in northern europe, so perhaps there just isnt enough players around.


So, I’m thinking, have you got any tips for what would be the best way to learn other characters’ ”stupid” moves and how to avoid them? Learning how to play each character is one way obviously, but to be honest I’m not that invested in the game - nor do I have the time - that I’d want to go hardcore and spend all my time learning everything.


If there’s people from europe willing to spar with me and let me learn, I’d be down with that. I’m currently level 22, and I know that in order to keep getting better I really need to, well, start getting better. Learning some of the biggest pitfalls of each character would help immensely, so any sort of advice would be appreciated.


Like for instance, how in the hell do I avoid getting rolled over by that Jean move?

 

the cool part about VF is there is always a pretty simple answer to beating anything. It's always that thing you totally forgot about in match. You can probably just evade it when you see it coming or something like that.

Try finding the move in training mode, check out how punishable or if it can be evaded. Then set a dummy to keep doing it while you practice defending.


Everytime I think I'm good at this game some wacky player humiliates me. Then it's back to training mode to fill another hole in my defense!

 

@Munk
Which punch attack is it, is it the one akai mentioned above?

 

Thanks for the replies - been a busy weekend so havent had the time to play or respond!

Good stuff with all of the links and suggestions, I’ll look into these and report back when I have the chance to sit down and get to playing again.

Thanks!

 

Had to take and quick look and yeah, you nailed it - that’s the one!
I tried evading it a bunch of times but I just couldn’t get the timing down. I believe it might have had something to do with the connection being pretty poor for that particular match.


Also, that page is a really good resource, thanks!!

 

Thanks again. There’s some really good info to be found it seems.

i hate that move lol

I need to practice avoiding this with the CPU. I think moves such as this one are the ones that really help push new players from getting into the game. I’ve played vf a lot as a kid, and I already have 100+ games with this game and I can usually hold my own pretty well…
Yet a single move (added to the fact that the net connection was lagging) single handedly destroyed everything I know.

I know that learning to avoid and punish it will feel really good, but just the fact that a somehow ”experienced” player can get caught up in it is kind of shady. I can imagine someone totally new to the series facing an opponent who keeps exploiding the move would feel like crap. I know I did.

Also, players who only use 2 moves to win games should check themselves. I know it’s all about winning, but at the end of the day it really isn’t tho.

A good opponent is someone you can respect. Not someone who goes by the cheapest way possible.

Thank you so much for helping me out, i really appreciate it!

now only if i could find the time to actually play…

 

The interesting thing is, power punch attacks are always made to be cheap, cheesy and unfair, in every Japanese fighting game. I think that is a traditional trend, with Japanese game devs.

 

As they say, the cheese,.....................is real!

 

One good way to learn how to deal with cheesy moves from certain characters, is to pick that same character in arcade mode, make sure the game is set to a harder difficulty, and constantly do the cheesy move over and over, and observe, how the cpu deals with it. That is how I learned to deal with Lau's annoying attacks in VF4 Evo. I was surprised to see the number of openings in Lau's attacks.