I think another big part of my character crises is learning to accept that I just don't "have it" with a particular character. There's like this moment I've experienced so often when someone will play my main for a week and do well and I'm struggling with the character and every time, it has sparked a realization that this character just isn't who I'm built to play. I envy people who can just pick the character they thinks looks coolest and live life.
Same for me. A lot of the characters I think are the coolest to watch and play as/against are not characters I actually do well with in a competitive setting. I can put 100 hours into them and not do as well as another player who's got less than half the time but just matches with them mentally. But then I just accept it and play the character who isn't cool but I'm good at and I can get to high level fairly quickly.
The biggest thing that contribute to a character crisis with me in games is that I can't ever just choose a single character. I actively feel like I'm missing out by not playing more than one character and it gets to a point where I end up losing motivation because I know I can't be equally skilled with all the characters I want to play.
This is SUCH a great video. I just did a hard switch in KOF from Betty to Shermie, and I’ve enjoyed playing the new team way more even though sometimes I’ll mess up as her.
One other thing that I've always associated with "Character Crisis" is just not being able to find a character that you really mesh with. I struggled with this a lot in both MBAACC and GGST where I didn't find a character where I liked enough to feel like "This is my character" so I felt like I had to settle on a character I only kind of liked because there wasn't anyone I truly enjoyed
Sometimes switching gets you out of doubting your old character. I remember grinding Kage in SFV and I was just getting so frustrated by his fragility and his fireball game being weak so I switched to Ryu for a good amount of time. The thing was, after playing Ryu for a few weeks, not only did I miss Kage from a gameplay fun perspective, I realized exactly what the character's strengths are as far as being able to viciously call out bad defensive habits. Rationally I knew SFV was an incredibly balanced game and that as a pot monster my problems were definitely a skill issue, Kage's not Zangief, but on an emotional level it took me switching to internalize exactly where my character was strong and to feel good playing him.
Thanks so much for this video. Every game I play, I face character crisis 'cause characters that I want to play dont have the playstyles I wanted to play. This video HELPS a lot!
Man I gotta thank you for this video LK. I was going through a character crisis and just didn’t fully realize it. I got completely cooked by a celestial baiken ( I main baiken as well) and I felt so bad I started trying other characters. I wasn’t complaining about baiken but I was genuinely questioning if I could play the character. I think im gonna keep pushing baiken as far as I can and stay dedicated
Kinda in the same situation here. I play Millia but I can’t reach celestial with her so I’m trying out Zato, but I do tend to go back to Millia whenever there is a match I can’t win with Zato cuz I’m still learning him Sometimes I want to quit playing Millia, other times I want to believe and keep pushing the grind with her
@@pulguitadavid1608Millia grind is so real bro I get your pain. But you are WAY further than I am. Zato is super fun, my Millia switch is either I-No or Bedman if I’m feeling strange. Keep striving bro!
Man, this one hit close to home big time! I’ve been feeling exactly this with Anji. Love the character, but damn is it hard toughing it out with my spinny-boy and I’ve been in that exact character doom scenario.
@@FatherCerebellum I understand the frustration and I know you're joking but if you got dpd that many times it's actually just a skill issue if you don't adapt
@@keiyosx I am well aware of how to adapt to DP, but 3/4ths of the follow-ups are reactable with DP, so Leos and hitbox monsters will just DP you when they see it happening, and a lot of better players know the visual tell for when I'm baiting (particle effects around Anji go away), feels bad But yes also skill issue, just look at Jiro
This is exactly what happened to me in DBFZ, I said this in your video about the meta in that game being too strong and forcing you to pick certain teams, character crisis ruined that game for me, I wanted to pick a good team as I play competitively but also play characters I liked as Im a huge fan of the show cuz otherwise what is the fun of it lol I would spend hours just trying to pick a team and when I thought I picked a good team I would realize "oh no I need at least one beam assist" or "damn that character gets fuzzied", eventually I just said screw it and quit the game entirely. Its the main reason I never tried DBFZ again, you were so right about team games having especially strong meta, maybe Ill try again when DBFZ2 comes out but that was honestly the worst character crisis Ive ever went through in a fighting game lol
This is really helpful. I've been going through a character crisis with Anji basically since Strive released and I still haven't really solved it. His weaknesses were really pronounced when he released and the season 2 patch changed him into such a different character that I didn't really enjoy playing him anymore (losing HKD on Kou, losing charge Fujin bounce, etc.). I am waiting for Asuka before I commit to a new character completely.
Same here, man. I don’t mind the changes too much, but damn is opening someone up with him difficult sometimes. I feel like most other characters get free safe pressure while Anji loses his turns way too often.
@@gpanameno I think Anji is mostly fine after the most recent patch. He has really scary stagger pressure and Nagiha is now an option that people have to respect because of how much better the knockdown is. Fujin being -6 and all the options he has out of it makes it a really good stagger point. I think he is pretty good now but lacks a truely degenerate tool on offence (spin is plenty degen in neutral though).
@@zappelins8942 100% agree. Spin is almost there, but definitely not abusable. That’s where my crisis comes in with him. Give my boy a fast F. S like Baiken’s, make spin truly degenerate and active faster, make Kou a true reversal! Give him SOMETHING! I just want to be a scumbag like a everyone else!
@@gpanameno Nah he doesn't need any of that. Just give Kou HKD back and Anji will probably become pretty degen. Butterfly oki is already decently powerful and all he lacks is good access to it. Kou would give him access to it anywhere as long as he can connect a 5HS or if he has meter without needing to give up that much damage. That combined with his high health and damage will probably make him quite a menace.
I usually play alot of the cast because i find them fun but i pick like a top 3 to main. Strive was the first time ive ever had the problem of finding a main and until yesterday i had zero success because of it. Axl was the character that got me past the floor 9 wall so i can finally breathe a sigh of relief hitting my goal of floor 10
Great video, it's all so true. When I played melee, i was the puff guy for years but hated doing rest setups and eventually decided to switch to Falco. And it was all there, the temptation to go back just to beat one guy, the dip in results, peoples expectations getting thrown off. I think i was the only guy in the region who made a full switch like that. Character devotion is such a huge part of getting better that making a switch feels strangely risky and taboo. You've really gotta dig deep to make sure the switch is right for you, but if it is and you stick with it, it can make all the difference. For me, the game became way more fun, and once time had passed and i developed the new character there was a big catharsis from having the playstyle and learning style that fit what i wanted.
I don't think I've stuck to a single character for more than like 2 months at a time. I don't even think it's because I doubt them, although surely that has happened, but I just see what a different character does and want to try that. Especially if the gameplay of a character involves a lot of fishing for 1 particular win condition, I feel like I get bored and want to try something new too often which feelsbad because then I never push any of my characters 😥
I do this a lot with new games too. I don't feel like it's a bad thing because you get a much more rounded view of how all the systems interact with each other. What you lack in obscure match-up knowledge, you make up for in stronger game fundamentals.
6:28 you were a milia player in guilty gear XX, you were a milia player in XRD. Saying it's not easy to change characters in this context is an understatement
Reminds me of Brian's video on character loyalty. I honestly wish I could switch characters more. I'm no pro player though, I just like the variety. Still... I played Bison for all 7+ years of SFV. Tried playing G, Zeku, Akira, all characters I loved design-wise, but then I defaulted to cMP as my main poke, held down back too often like I was playing a charge character, couldn't open anyone's defense. And then I went back. I actually _want_ to break out of this shackle, lol
I've gotten character crisis many times before, and each time i just switch to a character i do believe in. Sometimes i even end up going back after not seeing the success i wanted from the new character and doing a lot better haha. New perspective and stuff I guess.
Nice topic. I started Strive with I-No, took a break for a year, came back, improved, had a bit of a character crisis, tried a bunch of other characters and eventually returned to I-No :-) It took playing other characters to realise that I-No really is the character I mesh with best in the game :-)
I've been waiting for something like this. Thank you so much for your content. I'm having a crisis with Zato, Chipp, Anji, Sol, etc. and honestly don't know who to main. Thank you for fgc content as always.
I remember at the start of strive, faust was really not great but fun however, it had me doubting if I even wanted to play strive because he felt so underwhelming compared to the best characters at the time. So I decided to play other characters and while I did better, I wasn't having as much fun with them so I stuck it out with faust and just accepted that i need to be better. Now he's buffed and I'm glad I never dropped him
My definition of character crisis is struggling through the process of finding the character “for you” Traditionally I play characters with above average movement & I naturally like to focus on movement and whiff punishing. In GGST my favorite character by far is Nago but he’s the opposite of how I want to play the game Same for Tekken 7. Kazuya to me is too cool not to play but he’s high risk, high reward, committal and has below average neutral/poking. So again he’s the opposite of my inclinations So I’ve been playing both games less lately. The character I am most interested in and excited about don’t “click” with me that well
Love the video, really helpful because I'm in a character crisis in GGST, the thing is I don't know what character I want to play, and that's what bothering me the most. I feel that no character is really for me or have that thing that makes me want to play it. But I hope that I will find what character I want to play and dedicate my time in this game.
Great video as usual! I'm lucky enough to have never experienced a true character crisis in my short FGC career but I've def seen first hand how much of a toll it takes on other players. Also I see you joined beard gang now 💪
This happened to me with Strive. When the S2 patch dropped, Potemkin got some nice stuff, but everyone else made it past him in power level. And I was super conflicted because my tag has potemkin in it. I ended up taking a whole break from strive because I doomed so much. I didn't really get better until a month or two later, and eventually the S2.5 patch dropped, and I won my first tournament two days later with Potemkin! Then at Frosty 2023, I tried my best and went 4-2, which isn't bad, but I was tired of having to put in a lot of work as potemkin to still be miserable in a lot of matchups. So I started learning Leo after, and within a few months, I started beating my bracket demons. I'll never forget a quote someone said that I think about often. "The scariest thing is when a good low tier player picks up a top tier."
Ive gone through this before, and its sometimes made me stop playing a game. But I was never aware that was the problem, so maybe it wont be an issue moving forward.
This happened to me with Zangief in SF5. After the grey health nerf and the roster growing but not in favor for Geif, after a while I wasn't having fun with my main and no other character really caught my attention at the time when I quit. I just came back to learn how to play on stick (I was a long time fight pad user) and now I'm just playing SF5 to get comfortable with using my new controller. Also I just picked up Strive so that'll be a whole new experience of new characters to check out.
At some point I realized I tend to have character crisis without even realizing it. After I've stopped playing certain games for whatever reason I often look back and realize in retrospect I'd stopped enjoying my main and in friendlies had been frequently playing anyone else but I didn't noticeI was avoiding them at the time.
idk if i would say doubting your character is a character crisis in and of itself. i would consider that more in line with something like learning pains, plateaus and the like. to me, a character crisis is when you've made the decision to search for a character to play but cannot find one that clicks with you enough to want to invest further time in them. this can happen after you lose confidence in a previous character you have played but not until you take steps to move away from playing the character altogether use myself as an example i would say by this point people might recognize me enough in this comment section to consider me a diet konakon with how much i talk about sol and his presence in the game. i think i've been pretty clear about my opinions on the character, namely that the purpose of his nerfs (especially the more recent ones) have been misdirected and that he is overly focused on clean hit routing to the detriment of his overall stability. am i losing confidence in the character? yeah do i doubt the character's potential? i want to say yes but that comes more from me thinking other people rate him higher than i do i don't really consider that to be a character crisis even though i'm not happy with the way sol is right now. that being said, if his trajectory remains consistent i may very well enter a character crisis (though even then, i might be more inclined to stop playing strive entirely depending on how sol is nerfed next patch assuming he does get nerfed again for the 6th time consecutively) i will say tho that i've already gone through a character crisis in strive but that was during the betas. i was coming off of xrd and i played millia and ky back then. i don't like how they feel in this game, millia's basic air movement is too blocky and stiff and ky lost grinders which was the entire reason i played him in xrd. i jumped onto sol because i didn't have anyone else at the time and i was lucky that he clicked as naturally as he did cuz otherwise i would have had to wait until baiken came out to find another character that even comes close to that initial click that i felt with sol
Thank you so much for this video. I was struggling so hard with my main and was bouncing between playing them and another character to test the waters. This gave me the push to just go ahead and jump into the new character full force
Has happened with me about twice. Some series I'm just deadset on a character and won't change no matter what (Ryu in SF series, Honoka in DoA, Law in Tekken, or Mitsurugi in Soul Calibur) Others since it's not feeling like a given, I have considered it. About two times. First was Smash Bros. Melee -- main Mario with pocket Kirby (yeah, very weird); Problem with having Mario is being easy prey to Falcons and other top-tiers. While other games can lead you to believe that tier lists are merely suggestions, Smash Melee is one of those games where the tier lists just... don't lie. When your main is "Doesn't show many tourney results" and your pocket is "Don't play" -- you start feeling it despite trying to power through. Instead of finding something out or switching characters.. instead I just put the game down. I did play other characters but not in tourneys, only friendlies/casual matches and the amount I could win did go up, but just couldn't think about separating from my main Second was MBAACC -- which, I put the game naturally thanks to external factors so I didn't quit from the end result of a character crisis, but I still had one. Discord server had Melty Tourneys every weekend and my main at the time was like.. C-Kouma. What really makes you feel as if you're not doing right is when suddenly, there's a bunch of C-Koumas that are wayyyyy better than you and absolutely dust ya. Any opponents you had trouble with for weeks -- immediately tossed to the side with his penultimate command grabs. You wonder what they're doing differently from I and you were already stagnating your play. Your judgment calls are judged heavily and then you just consider that the character just might not be for you -- after all, I only picked him because he was cool, and I chose the Crescent Moon cause I think learning big combos would be cool. He was your first character you picked for the game, and some people had me believe that I lacked certain mechanics BECAUSE I didn't play other characters. I ended up switching. I switched to a considerably more difficult character because I did the whole "I picked her because she looks cool" -- and boy you just don't know what hellhole you're getting into picking F-PowerD Ciel... I lost interest in MBAACC with how the communities around me were and all that so I never really learned-learned her, but I still fucked my fingers up learning her rock loops. Don't know if those count but not feeling comfortable with your character is always something that sucks.
I had a character crisis before a GGST tournament, but thankfully I decided to keep playing my main until I overcame my OWN inherent weaknesses as a player. BTW, Rensen Geki ⛓️💣
i was in the character crisis for a while. i went from may, to bridget, zato, millia, chaos, anji, baiken, ky, may again, axl, potemkin, and nago. i decided to stop and take a break for a moment because i was getting to a point as nago where i was anxious about losing, and that, to me, meant that i wasn't comfortable with my character. so, i decided to wait for asuka because i watched a massive series based on simplifying and explaining the lore, and fell in love with asuka. i saw him in the story mode and his character really grew on me. saw his trailer and guide and utterly fell in love. so, i guess i'll be a wholehearted asuka main now, as he REALLY scratches that itch for me. i play zoners and strive's lack of zoners that were interesting to me allowed me to actually learn how to play offensively and maintain pressure, which was something i genuinely lacked because i play zoners lmao. with this? i can play in my natural element WITH what i've learned.
I really feel this hard right now cuz I’m currently feeling pretty bad about Testament in tournament. Their match up chart overall is actually really good, but the problem I’m facing is ALL their bad match ups are popular in tournaments. Every tournament I enter I have to fight Jack-o or Axl or HC or Ram and all of them make it really hard for me to get my game plan going. I love testament too much to truly ever switch so it’s really disheartening playing these MU’s in bracket every week. While I have MU’s like nago, Leo or Gl which I win and get to fight fairly often in bracket, I will inevitably have to face one of these bad MU’s no matter how far I get in bracket. It also doesn’t help that my losing MU’s are characters that get high return fairly consistently and have really strong winning situations so if I mess up and get back thrown in the corner off a fuzzy mash or they do wake up super 1 time I get put in guess for game situation or die. Currently I’m takin a break for competing and I’m hoping that season 3 will give testament something to alleviate these MU’s. Not out right win cuz I’m fine with having losing MU’s, just something to help me play the game like a new neutral tool, another way to proc stain state or (daisuke willing) a meterless reversal
I had this going on with Jam in GGACR. She has the least range of any character and some very modest hitboxes. But, I always have to remember that her whiff punish game is great and she deals huuuge damage, so I never get into too bad of a stink.
Swapping from Millia to Jack-O' was one of the best things i could've done for my mental. I love Millia, and I still play her, but I just couldn't stop doubting her.
When I was first really getting into fighting games beyond just mashing/playing casually I had a lot of character crises but that was moreso in a "Idk who I wanna play" type of way and not a "I think I should switch to get better results". I'd love characters for aesthetics and some for gameplay and would constantly flip flop between them. As I've gotten older and more experienced though I've leaned more towards gameplay being the primary appeal, though the character aesthetics still need to be alluring to some degree for me to commit. I'm able to boot a new game up, figure out the core mechanics/gamefeel and then decide what playstyle I want in that particular game (either setplay or grappler in most cases). BBTag is a game that despite enjoying I'll never really be able to commit to though because the P4A and BB characters I like most aren't in the game, same with UNI. The roster absolutely said "fuck you" to me in particular.
I have a character crisis every fighting game I play. Not because of character power or anything like that, I just always think there are so many cool characters. Picking a character is one of the most fun things about the games for me.
Completely agree, great video Character crisis can be a real issue since it halts your growth in strength with a character nevertheless you do learn about what makes each character you've played good or bad which improves your knowledge of the game overall I've been struggling with it in every game I play but in Strive for like 6 months and it's still on going I do recommend for most to just play what makes them play the game and enjoy the experience
This is not the video I expected. At least among me and my friends we've always referred to Character Crisis as being uncertain what character to main, usually bouncing between a whole bunch of potential options.
I’ve had a Character Crisis on quite a few occasions, I sort of still consider myself having one with Strive with a Faust and Potemkin. But I think the game I had the worst Character Crisis was with Smash Ultimate since I wanted to main Ganondorf and while I had other characters to play as well, Ganondorf was the character I wanted to play most and just struggling to do stuff with him kinda just lead me to quitting Smash Ultimate because of the Character Crisis I was dealing with and other problems that the game has. I think what can also lead to a Character Crisis is motion inputs. I think Leon Massey explained a bit of a problem that fighting games in general kinda have problems like if a character you want to learn and commit to playing but has inputs that don’t work for the player.
I really feel you, for a long time in Under Night I was simply unable to switch off of Gordeau despite him kinda getting worse over time/versions. I had put so much time into learning his complicated routes and getting used to his gameplan that the sunken cost just felt so so high. Sometimes it feels better to struggle slightly long term than to struggle astronomically short time, It's just our nature as humans. Its gotten to the point where I quit UNICLR instead of switching lmao. He isn't as bad as some low/low-mid tiers in truly unbalanced games but still, playing against Vatista/Byakuya etc is pain when you have slow buttons and no reversals. I managed to dabble a little in Hilda cause she fit my playstyle as well but I never got nearly as proficient as I was with Gordeau, who was a character I truly loved. I imagine it felt the same way with Millia since you are like THE MILLIA GUY
I got a huge character crisis in MBAACC several years ago, but in the end I stayed with the one that I liked the most because of playstyle. She doesn't give me the best results, she's not top-tier either but she's the character I wanna play, and many people in the LATAM recommunity of the game already recognize me as the only player of that character in the whole continent LOL.
I think there are a few more ways to go about the character crisis right, so for me, I was struggling on may for the longest time and just couldn’t fully understand the structure and stuff since I was still new to fighters in general. I took a full on break from the game at a point because I got to a spot of just tryna figure out what to do. The break worked really well and it helped give me some time to just recover from the stress of not understanding her.
I feel like I'm in a situation that you didn't quite cover in the video. I've been through this character crisis a couple of times in GGST. I main Faust. And he's always been one of the weaker characters, even with buffs. He's a lot better than he was before, and when I try to be objective, he's not way worse than any of the other characters in the game. I've had times where I tried out stronger characters and realized that their playstyles just didn't fit me, so I kept coming back to Faust. I'm sure now that there's no other character in the game that I will be as comfortable playing as, so I'm not interested in trying to switch anymore. But I still have those moments of doubt, where it feels like most other characters get more reward for catching stray hits, or have safer offense, or stronger mix, etc. Where it feels like my character sucks and I have to work way harder than my opponent and take more risks. It's a really unpleasant feeling, and it does suck some of the fun out of the game. But I don't have fun playing other characters either, and I don't want to drop the game just because I'm struggling with my main right now. I don't want to get stuck in this doomer mindset, and I don't want to switch characters. So what do I do?
You gotta make a choice. Either you commit to playing Faust until someone else you enjoy comes along, and you just gotta change your mindset to stop doubting him, or you switch to another character that you feel has more potential but you don't enjoy as much. By being kinda stuck in the middle you're only getting the worst out of either choice, so it's best to just choose.
Felt this way in every fighting game I've played, lol. I've learnt to deal with it now, but I have some advice for those that are still dealing with it: Maybe try getting some more experience with the character. I know that in both Tekken and Strive, I was really close to giving up on my mains, but it was actually just because my defense and fundamentals as a new player was still ass. So I just played the character more, got more comfortable with different match ups and situation, and I felt a lot better about my character pick.
Honestly, a character crisis happens for me when I change priorities Usually it goes like this. I want to zone and confirm off of big buttons; maybe I want to sit back dash-dance, and whiff-punish; or I want to do big epic combo; or I want to shmix I usually playing trying to learn every aspect of the game, and I think the characters that fufill as many priorities as possible characters I trend towards. The swiss army knife characters
I trusted Nago since launch, but I played Testament and Ky for quite sometime due to fatigue. There was a time my Ky is way more consistent than Nago, then the server exploded and I have no time to deal with that shit so I'm kinda sad I can't enjoy strive until they fix it.
I also played Millia when the game came out. I always struggled but i always felt like i had a good chance when i just adapt. However, when i fought Nago it just felt plain unfair. It made me quit the game.
Yeah, character crisis is a big thing and it legit made me switch from Baiken to I-no, because I didn't believe in my own character. Idk why, maybe Baiken tournament representation, maybe how sraightforward she is or just her general toolkit. Idk, I know that she's stupidly strong, but I didn't believe in her. Happily, I feel better with I-no at least for now.
The temptation to go back to your main really is a sunk cost fallacy. I spent x amount of time on y character, I dont want to lose all of it by switching.
Had to drop Goku Black in FighterZ for this back in the day. He was so cool but playing him pissed me off when i knew if i switched to practically anyone else id do much better. And I did. It wasnt so much about winning all the time, as rather feeling like I had a terrible handicap whenever he was out.
I also think it depends on the person's mentality since for someone like me once I learn a basic gameplan I can play that character at at least a base level so by switching between characters like Peach and Fox when I used to play Melee I'm able to play often enough to keep them from being rusty but also switching between them regularly enough to not get overly focused on any one thing since I don't gave time to think Peach sucks against Falcon because I've already switched to Fox. This keeps me not only from being as frustrated with annoying matchups but also more engaged with the game since I'm not solely relying on flowcharts. And I try to do this in most games now like switching weapons in Monster Hunter or classes in FF14
I want to play another character besides Ky in Strive, but I feel no real motivation to do so. But a character crisis? Maybe. I can't argue one way without acknowledging the other way.
I changed my character in strive, i was pushing into celestial with 1 character, but swapped, and i haven't been higher than floor 7 in months, but im playing who i want, dispite how hard they are to play.
GGST is the only fighting game in which I felt like none of the characters really fit my usual playstyle (balanced + rushdown) until Bridgette was released. For other games, my main was usually quickly found and rarely replaced by something better (for me). I've been lucky enough that my mains have never been low tier but they're also almost never top tier. Jin in BB, Yuel in GBVS, Bridgette in GGST, and Kunoichi in DNF (RIP game).
I think another definition for a character crisis is never being able to pick a main character to begin with - either because none of them click, or at least none click more strongly than any other character in the cast. This was the case for me in xrd. I liked so many characters, to the point that I didn't want to main any of them. They were all so cool, and learning any one came at the opportunity cost of all the other ones, and I certainly don't believe I could learn every single character with the low dedication I have to the game. To me, the character crisis came before I even had a character to begin with. The farthest I got learning the game was with ky, because ky is relatively simple, and it was the easiest to execute a basic gameplan with him. But I really didn't want to only play ky. I wanted to learn venom setups, I wanted to learn answer's scroll shenanigans, I wanted to shinken loop people with kum, style on people with slayer or johnny, flood the screen with bedman's deja vus, unga bunga with leo, and special special cancel with sin. These characters were all so cool that I felt like I could never learn any of them to the full extent that I wanted to. It's possible this would be alleviated with the right friends to play with, but I did not personally have this luxury. I'd also like to point out that the character crisis problem isn't unique to fighting games, it's just much more apparent because of the 1v1 nature and the reduced agency of picks in other games where this problem exists - for example, you probably wouldn't pick riven if you got assigned support in league of legends (even as a riven one-trick), unless your goal is to have fun over competitive viability. Great vid regardless, love your analytic PoV as always
My personal experience with character crisis is that you can't commit to a character, either because you don't like any character enough, or you can't choose between the characters you do like. For me its rarely about an individual character that's holding me back
I never had a character crisis til Strive Potemkin. In previous games I was content to just swap characters freely but not really be bothered by it til I finally found and settled on one I liked, but as Strive went on, Potemkin felt worse and worse to play. Garuda oki was strong but it was boring, his defense was so weak that it felt like suffering (though I'd been more than happy to play defense in GGXX back in the day) and just generally I was not feeling the character. Thankfully Bridget was super fun and still had a command grab, so once she hit the roster it was over, but I was so exhausted trying to keep on with Strive in the meanwhile. Nobody else was really working for me.
I remember starting ggst with Nago cause I thought he was cool as fuck but then after a couple weeks I realized just how busted he was at the time so I switched to ky…
This is a really weirdly timed video -- I just committed to switching from millia to jacko after dooming about how awful millia feels for like, two and a half months, and it's legitimately like having a giant weight lifted off my shoulders. I would agree, anyone who currently doesn't believe in their character should just commit to swapping, even if it's just temporary.
For me, character crisis for me is just finding a character thats fun. I dont really care about whose good (I actually prefer not knowing tier-lists for that reason) but I just want a character that fits me. Interestingly, I had a character crisis in Dengeki Bunko cause no one really 'felt right' to play as. I didnt know who I wanted to play cause I didnt really like playing anyone. However, learning the system mechanics did help a little bit with that and now I can jump between a few characters in that game. I have done the thing where "dang, I wish this character had a better X" or "I wish they buffed YZ" but I wont switch off the character for it. I usually just wont be interested in playing the game online if the character I want to play is just unusable (Darkstalkers 3 or UMvC3 come to mind). Luckily most modern games are balanced well enough that even a 'low tier' is still usable until you get into high-level play
My Strive character trajectory has been: >Pick Nago because of his link to Slayer, my main in XX and Xrd >Find out Nago's top tier, feel bad for not "doing well" with him and letting the shitposting about him get to me >Tried out different characters, gave Bridget a shot for 6 months after her launch >Go back to Nago because that initial link with Slayer had me still invested in the character even though I find Bridget to be pretty fun. Been happy ever since! Now I know what signs to look for in my next fighting game when I pick a main in my next fighting game. I also learned how to ignore what other people say about a character and just play. A character crisis can be instructive!
Would you say that in modern fighting games, given developers have a better idea of how to ensure most or all of the roster is relatively playable, sticking with a character you think weak is less of a risk? It seems that nowadays devs are better at responding to balance issues (likely a result of different game dev approaches, how quickly info and tech spreads online, and the reams of data devs collect on matchups and other gameplay statistics).
Bruh I've been in a character crisis ever since i started fighting games. I think i played about 15 different characters in tournament in the sf4 days lmao. Genuinely feel like I'd be such a better player if i could stick to one character but I've got commitment issues 😭
My character crisis for basically every fighting game is based on fomo. I always feel like by now playing other characters, I'm missing out on the "content" of the game. Just a weird perspective from my dumb brain.
I generally don't like team games as much because having to choose three characters that work together is a recipe for constant character crisis. I am never able to find a team of characters that I like that I also feel is strong.
strive was my first fighting game and I got to floor 10 with Potemkin then got the nagging feeling I was being carried witch put me off playing for like a year stitched to May because she still has the rely big meme damage I like but has the mobility Pot didn't and I rely felt like lacking it was holding me back very happy after I made my switch
Seems to me that the current DLC model does extend a game's lifespan but it also exacerbates the character crisis for a couple reasons. First is that changes in character balance and mechanics are more gradual, you don't get something like SF3 where Second Impact and Third Strike are so vastly different that they actually have distinct competitive scenes, with Sean being top tier in one game but bottom tier in the other. Even if your main on launch is a completely different character than your main after a few years of updates, the gradient that a live service model provides makes it less noticeable. And the other would be that not having the entire roster out of the gate barring maybe one or two extra characters makes the shiny new thing look more appealing, especially if it's a game where the new characters tend to be slightly overtuned as a means of selling the DLC (not every game does that though). Maybe someone actually wanted to main the DLC character but since they were playing the game for longer then they don't change because they don't want to learn a new character. Some people might always have the feeling that a character they like better may be somewhere in the next season.
You should only ever play every character casually, but if you go to tournaments that have prize money than i always say play the best characters. Top 5 characters are the only ones you should play. I play low tiers, but high tiers are high tiers because they have better options, make it easiers to win, and often times preventing your opponent from playing and winning. (Called 1-player mode or 1-player game.)
I think i'm having a secondary character crisis? I still believe in Testament as my main and I still want to push them But i'm not sure what exactly it is that's driving me to try and play another character Particularly because I wanted to try to help my personal worser matchups that I struggle against with Testament (Millia, Faust, Axl, and Jack-O to be specific) So I've bounced around from Ram to Baiken to Ky to Sin to Anji to even I-No and Leo Haven't found someone I really want to stick to as a secondary pick
Playing the same character gets a bit stale. What I like to do is learn how to play with a big roster. Maybe eventually that new character is "the one i should main"
I am politely asking you to subscribe (or else)
But I already was
@@TheZiadShow ive done it
Done been subbed but I will yell at people for you.
OK
I see LK is in his Idris Elba phase.
Let's be real here, everyone would do it if they could.
Elaborate
😮
😅
Tbh LK looks so damn good
I think another big part of my character crises is learning to accept that I just don't "have it" with a particular character. There's like this moment I've experienced so often when someone will play my main for a week and do well and I'm struggling with the character and every time, it has sparked a realization that this character just isn't who I'm built to play. I envy people who can just pick the character they thinks looks coolest and live life.
I can relate to that
Same for me.
A lot of the characters I think are the coolest to watch and play as/against are not characters I actually do well with in a competitive setting.
I can put 100 hours into them and not do as well as another player who's got less than half the time but just matches with them mentally.
But then I just accept it and play the character who isn't cool but I'm good at and I can get to high level fairly quickly.
I can't play Sol worth a damn, and he's who I thought i was going to main in Strive
The biggest thing that contribute to a character crisis with me in games is that I can't ever just choose a single character. I actively feel like I'm missing out by not playing more than one character and it gets to a point where I end up losing motivation because I know I can't be equally skilled with all the characters I want to play.
This is SUCH a great video. I just did a hard switch in KOF from Betty to Shermie, and I’ve enjoyed playing the new team way more even though sometimes I’ll mess up as her.
One other thing that I've always associated with "Character Crisis" is just not being able to find a character that you really mesh with. I struggled with this a lot in both MBAACC and GGST where I didn't find a character where I liked enough to feel like "This is my character" so I felt like I had to settle on a character I only kind of liked because there wasn't anyone I truly enjoyed
Sometimes switching gets you out of doubting your old character. I remember grinding Kage in SFV and I was just getting so frustrated by his fragility and his fireball game being weak so I switched to Ryu for a good amount of time. The thing was, after playing Ryu for a few weeks, not only did I miss Kage from a gameplay fun perspective, I realized exactly what the character's strengths are as far as being able to viciously call out bad defensive habits. Rationally I knew SFV was an incredibly balanced game and that as a pot monster my problems were definitely a skill issue, Kage's not Zangief, but on an emotional level it took me switching to internalize exactly where my character was strong and to feel good playing him.
Be like me and just play whoever you want to play that day
Thanks so much for this video. Every game I play, I face character crisis 'cause characters that I want to play dont have the playstyles I wanted to play. This video HELPS a lot!
Thank God the only thing I do is enjoying my grappler paint. It's too satisfying to swap to something else for the moment.
Man I gotta thank you for this video LK. I was going through a character crisis and just didn’t fully realize it. I got completely cooked by a celestial baiken ( I main baiken as well) and I felt so bad I started trying other characters. I wasn’t complaining about baiken but I was genuinely questioning if I could play the character. I think im gonna keep pushing baiken as far as I can and stay dedicated
Kinda in the same situation here. I play Millia but I can’t reach celestial with her so I’m trying out Zato, but I do tend to go back to Millia whenever there is a match I can’t win with Zato cuz I’m still learning him
Sometimes I want to quit playing Millia, other times I want to believe and keep pushing the grind with her
@@pulguitadavid1608Millia grind is so real bro I get your pain. But you are WAY further than I am. Zato is super fun, my Millia switch is either I-No or Bedman if I’m feeling strange. Keep striving bro!
Man, this one hit close to home big time! I’ve been feeling exactly this with Anji. Love the character, but damn is it hard toughing it out with my spinny-boy and I’ve been in that exact character doom scenario.
If I get DP'd out of my fuujin followup for the 600th time I'm loading a round into the chamber I'm really gonna do it this time
@@FatherCerebellum I understand the frustration and I know you're joking but if you got dpd that many times it's actually just a skill issue if you don't adapt
@@keiyosx I am well aware of how to adapt to DP, but 3/4ths of the follow-ups are reactable with DP, so Leos and hitbox monsters will just DP you when they see it happening, and a lot of better players know the visual tell for when I'm baiting (particle effects around Anji go away), feels bad
But yes also skill issue, just look at Jiro
This is exactly what happened to me in DBFZ, I said this in your video about the meta in that game being too strong and forcing you to pick certain teams, character crisis ruined that game for me, I wanted to pick a good team as I play competitively but also play characters I liked as Im a huge fan of the show cuz otherwise what is the fun of it lol
I would spend hours just trying to pick a team and when I thought I picked a good team I would realize "oh no I need at least one beam assist" or "damn that character gets fuzzied", eventually I just said screw it and quit the game entirely. Its the main reason I never tried DBFZ again, you were so right about team games having especially strong meta, maybe Ill try again when DBFZ2 comes out but that was honestly the worst character crisis Ive ever went through in a fighting game lol
DBZ may as well have been renamed Character Crisis Z Fighterz for me, I was constantly dealing with a character crisis.
This is really helpful. I've been going through a character crisis with Anji basically since Strive released and I still haven't really solved it. His weaknesses were really pronounced when he released and the season 2 patch changed him into such a different character that I didn't really enjoy playing him anymore (losing HKD on Kou, losing charge Fujin bounce, etc.). I am waiting for Asuka before I commit to a new character completely.
Same here, man. I don’t mind the changes too much, but damn is opening someone up with him difficult sometimes. I feel like most other characters get free safe pressure while Anji loses his turns way too often.
@@gpanameno I think Anji is mostly fine after the most recent patch. He has really scary stagger pressure and Nagiha is now an option that people have to respect because of how much better the knockdown is. Fujin being -6 and all the options he has out of it makes it a really good stagger point. I think he is pretty good now but lacks a truely degenerate tool on offence (spin is plenty degen in neutral though).
@@zappelins8942 100% agree. Spin is almost there, but definitely not abusable. That’s where my crisis comes in with him. Give my boy a fast F. S like Baiken’s, make spin truly degenerate and active faster, make Kou a true reversal! Give him SOMETHING! I just want to be a scumbag like a everyone else!
@@gpanameno Nah he doesn't need any of that. Just give Kou HKD back and Anji will probably become pretty degen. Butterfly oki is already decently powerful and all he lacks is good access to it. Kou would give him access to it anywhere as long as he can connect a 5HS or if he has meter without needing to give up that much damage. That combined with his high health and damage will probably make him quite a menace.
I usually play alot of the cast because i find them fun but i pick like a top 3 to main. Strive was the first time ive ever had the problem of finding a main and until yesterday i had zero success because of it. Axl was the character that got me past the floor 9 wall so i can finally breathe a sigh of relief hitting my goal of floor 10
I started strive at the xbox launch and literally only played bridge since then, tried a little bit of bedman but bridget is my gem.
Great video, it's all so true. When I played melee, i was the puff guy for years but hated doing rest setups and eventually decided to switch to Falco. And it was all there, the temptation to go back just to beat one guy, the dip in results, peoples expectations getting thrown off. I think i was the only guy in the region who made a full switch like that. Character devotion is such a huge part of getting better that making a switch feels strangely risky and taboo. You've really gotta dig deep to make sure the switch is right for you, but if it is and you stick with it, it can make all the difference. For me, the game became way more fun, and once time had passed and i developed the new character there was a big catharsis from having the playstyle and learning style that fit what i wanted.
I don't think I've stuck to a single character for more than like 2 months at a time. I don't even think it's because I doubt them, although surely that has happened, but I just see what a different character does and want to try that. Especially if the gameplay of a character involves a lot of fishing for 1 particular win condition, I feel like I get bored and want to try something new too often which feelsbad because then I never push any of my characters 😥
My king mikey D. on a LK video? Awesome hope you doing well cool guy!
@@gentlekef8653 haha been a while my dude! Hope you're doing well
I do this a lot with new games too. I don't feel like it's a bad thing because you get a much more rounded view of how all the systems interact with each other. What you lack in obscure match-up knowledge, you make up for in stronger game fundamentals.
Def understandable depending on the game!
I have no mains in all games i play, not even favourite guns. I blame my adhd for that
6:28 you were a milia player in guilty gear XX, you were a milia player in XRD. Saying it's not easy to change characters in this context is an understatement
I've been in the crisis for months now and really needed this video, thank you
The realest information right here, I remember you having major doubt about Millia, I could hear it with the way you’d talk about the character
Reminds me of Brian's video on character loyalty. I honestly wish I could switch characters more. I'm no pro player though, I just like the variety. Still... I played Bison for all 7+ years of SFV. Tried playing G, Zeku, Akira, all characters I loved design-wise, but then I defaulted to cMP as my main poke, held down back too often like I was playing a charge character, couldn't open anyone's defense. And then I went back. I actually _want_ to break out of this shackle, lol
I haven’t watched any LK content in a while and I swear to god the beard jumpscared me holy shit. It looks good, I just wasn’t expecting it lmfao
I've gotten character crisis many times before, and each time i just switch to a character i do believe in. Sometimes i even end up going back after not seeing the success i wanted from the new character and doing a lot better haha. New perspective and stuff I guess.
Nice topic. I started Strive with I-No, took a break for a year, came back, improved, had a bit of a character crisis, tried a bunch of other characters and eventually returned to I-No :-) It took playing other characters to realise that I-No really is the character I mesh with best in the game :-)
I've been waiting for something like this. Thank you so much for your content. I'm having a crisis with Zato, Chipp, Anji, Sol, etc. and honestly don't know who to main. Thank you for fgc content as always.
Low key zato is so fucking sick, I wish i had the spare brain cells to learn him
@@FloraOfTheCats yeah he looks cool and has a cool playstyle as well
been switching from Ky to I-No in Strive and this video came at the right time lol
I remember at the start of strive, faust was really not great but fun however, it had me doubting if I even wanted to play strive because he felt so underwhelming compared to the best characters at the time. So I decided to play other characters and while I did better, I wasn't having as much fun with them so I stuck it out with faust and just accepted that i need to be better. Now he's buffed and I'm glad I never dropped him
My definition of character crisis is struggling through the process of finding the character “for you”
Traditionally I play characters with above average movement & I naturally like to focus on movement and whiff punishing.
In GGST my favorite character by far is Nago but he’s the opposite of how I want to play the game
Same for Tekken 7. Kazuya to me is too cool not to play but he’s high risk, high reward, committal and has below average neutral/poking. So again he’s the opposite of my inclinations
So I’ve been playing both games less lately. The character I am most interested in and excited about don’t “click” with me that well
Love the video, really helpful because I'm in a character crisis in GGST, the thing is I don't know what character I want to play, and that's what bothering me the most.
I feel that no character is really for me or have that thing that makes me want to play it. But I hope that I will find what character I want to play and dedicate my time in this game.
Great video as usual! I'm lucky enough to have never experienced a true character crisis in my short FGC career but I've def seen first hand how much of a toll it takes on other players. Also I see you joined beard gang now 💪
This happened to me with Strive. When the S2 patch dropped, Potemkin got some nice stuff, but everyone else made it past him in power level. And I was super conflicted because my tag has potemkin in it. I ended up taking a whole break from strive because I doomed so much. I didn't really get better until a month or two later, and eventually the S2.5 patch dropped, and I won my first tournament two days later with Potemkin! Then at Frosty 2023, I tried my best and went 4-2, which isn't bad, but I was tired of having to put in a lot of work as potemkin to still be miserable in a lot of matchups. So I started learning Leo after, and within a few months, I started beating my bracket demons. I'll never forget a quote someone said that I think about often. "The scariest thing is when a good low tier player picks up a top tier."
I only play monsters and robots in FGs lmaooo, when aestetics are everything you cant be picky these days since most FGs only have 1 of those per game
The guy with the ky PFP at 1:00 always cracks me up on twitter
Ive gone through this before, and its sometimes made me stop playing a game. But I was never aware that was the problem, so maybe it wont be an issue moving forward.
This happened to me with Zangief in SF5. After the grey health nerf and the roster growing but not in favor for Geif, after a while I wasn't having fun with my main and no other character really caught my attention at the time when I quit.
I just came back to learn how to play on stick (I was a long time fight pad user) and now I'm just playing SF5 to get comfortable with using my new controller.
Also I just picked up Strive so that'll be a whole new experience of new characters to check out.
Subbed. I've been running into this with Baiken recently and Hilda in UNICLR and it's just really hard to break out of.
At some point I realized I tend to have character crisis without even realizing it. After I've stopped playing certain games for whatever reason I often look back and realize in retrospect I'd stopped enjoying my main and in friendlies had been frequently playing anyone else but I didn't noticeI was avoiding them at the time.
idk if i would say doubting your character is a character crisis in and of itself. i would consider that more in line with something like learning pains, plateaus and the like.
to me, a character crisis is when you've made the decision to search for a character to play but cannot find one that clicks with you enough to want to invest further time in them. this can happen after you lose confidence in a previous character you have played but not until you take steps to move away from playing the character altogether
use myself as an example
i would say by this point people might recognize me enough in this comment section to consider me a diet konakon with how much i talk about sol and his presence in the game. i think i've been pretty clear about my opinions on the character, namely that the purpose of his nerfs (especially the more recent ones) have been misdirected and that he is overly focused on clean hit routing to the detriment of his overall stability.
am i losing confidence in the character? yeah
do i doubt the character's potential? i want to say yes but that comes more from me thinking other people rate him higher than i do
i don't really consider that to be a character crisis even though i'm not happy with the way sol is right now.
that being said, if his trajectory remains consistent i may very well enter a character crisis (though even then, i might be more inclined to stop playing strive entirely depending on how sol is nerfed next patch assuming he does get nerfed again for the 6th time consecutively)
i will say tho that i've already gone through a character crisis in strive but that was during the betas. i was coming off of xrd and i played millia and ky back then. i don't like how they feel in this game, millia's basic air movement is too blocky and stiff and ky lost grinders which was the entire reason i played him in xrd. i jumped onto sol because i didn't have anyone else at the time and i was lucky that he clicked as naturally as he did cuz otherwise i would have had to wait until baiken came out to find another character that even comes close to that initial click that i felt with sol
Thank you so much for this video. I was struggling so hard with my main and was bouncing between playing them and another character to test the waters. This gave me the push to just go ahead and jump into the new character full force
Has happened with me about twice. Some series I'm just deadset on a character and won't change no matter what (Ryu in SF series, Honoka in DoA, Law in Tekken, or Mitsurugi in Soul Calibur)
Others since it's not feeling like a given, I have considered it. About two times.
First was Smash Bros. Melee -- main Mario with pocket Kirby (yeah, very weird);
Problem with having Mario is being easy prey to Falcons and other top-tiers.
While other games can lead you to believe that tier lists are merely suggestions, Smash Melee is one of those games where the tier lists just... don't lie.
When your main is "Doesn't show many tourney results" and your pocket is "Don't play" -- you start feeling it despite trying to power through.
Instead of finding something out or switching characters.. instead I just put the game down.
I did play other characters but not in tourneys, only friendlies/casual matches and the amount I could win did go up, but just couldn't think about separating from my main
Second was MBAACC -- which, I put the game naturally thanks to external factors so I didn't quit from the end result of a character crisis, but I still had one.
Discord server had Melty Tourneys every weekend and my main at the time was like.. C-Kouma. What really makes you feel as if you're not doing right is when suddenly, there's a bunch of C-Koumas that are wayyyyy better than you and absolutely dust ya. Any opponents you had trouble with for weeks -- immediately tossed to the side with his penultimate command grabs. You wonder what they're doing differently from I and you were already stagnating your play.
Your judgment calls are judged heavily and then you just consider that the character just might not be for you -- after all, I only picked him because he was cool, and I chose the Crescent Moon cause I think learning big combos would be cool.
He was your first character you picked for the game, and some people had me believe that I lacked certain mechanics BECAUSE I didn't play other characters.
I ended up switching. I switched to a considerably more difficult character because I did the whole "I picked her because she looks cool" -- and boy you just don't know what hellhole you're getting into picking F-PowerD Ciel...
I lost interest in MBAACC with how the communities around me were and all that so I never really learned-learned her, but I still fucked my fingers up learning her rock loops.
Don't know if those count but not feeling comfortable with your character is always something that sucks.
I had a character crisis before a GGST tournament, but thankfully I decided to keep playing my main until I overcame my OWN inherent weaknesses as a player.
BTW, Rensen Geki ⛓️💣
i was in the character crisis for a while. i went from may, to bridget, zato, millia, chaos, anji, baiken, ky, may again, axl, potemkin, and nago.
i decided to stop and take a break for a moment because i was getting to a point as nago where i was anxious about losing, and that, to me, meant that i wasn't comfortable with my character. so, i decided to wait for asuka because i watched a massive series based on simplifying and explaining the lore, and fell in love with asuka. i saw him in the story mode and his character really grew on me. saw his trailer and guide and utterly fell in love. so, i guess i'll be a wholehearted asuka main now, as he REALLY scratches that itch for me.
i play zoners and strive's lack of zoners that were interesting to me allowed me to actually learn how to play offensively and maintain pressure, which was something i genuinely lacked because i play zoners lmao. with this? i can play in my natural element WITH what i've learned.
I really feel this hard right now cuz I’m currently feeling pretty bad about Testament in tournament. Their match up chart overall is actually really good, but the problem I’m facing is ALL their bad match ups are popular in tournaments. Every tournament I enter I have to fight Jack-o or Axl or HC or Ram and all of them make it really hard for me to get my game plan going. I love testament too much to truly ever switch so it’s really disheartening playing these MU’s in bracket every week. While I have MU’s like nago, Leo or Gl which I win and get to fight fairly often in bracket, I will inevitably have to face one of these bad MU’s no matter how far I get in bracket. It also doesn’t help that my losing MU’s are characters that get high return fairly consistently and have really strong winning situations so if I mess up and get back thrown in the corner off a fuzzy mash or they do wake up super 1 time I get put in guess for game situation or die. Currently I’m takin a break for competing and I’m hoping that season 3 will give testament something to alleviate these MU’s. Not out right win cuz I’m fine with having losing MU’s, just something to help me play the game like a new neutral tool, another way to proc stain state or (daisuke willing) a meterless reversal
as a comp Faust player I definitely feel ur matchup struggles, but I love Faust too much to ever switch off of him
I had this going on with Jam in GGACR. She has the least range of any character and some very modest hitboxes. But, I always have to remember that her whiff punish game is great and she deals huuuge damage, so I never get into too bad of a stink.
For me character crisis is deciding which character I should play cuz they all look cool
Swapping from Millia to Jack-O' was one of the best things i could've done for my mental. I love Millia, and I still play her, but I just couldn't stop doubting her.
Jokes on you I play 3 main character crisis that
When I was first really getting into fighting games beyond just mashing/playing casually I had a lot of character crises but that was moreso in a "Idk who I wanna play" type of way and not a "I think I should switch to get better results". I'd love characters for aesthetics and some for gameplay and would constantly flip flop between them. As I've gotten older and more experienced though I've leaned more towards gameplay being the primary appeal, though the character aesthetics still need to be alluring to some degree for me to commit. I'm able to boot a new game up, figure out the core mechanics/gamefeel and then decide what playstyle I want in that particular game (either setplay or grappler in most cases).
BBTag is a game that despite enjoying I'll never really be able to commit to though because the P4A and BB characters I like most aren't in the game, same with UNI. The roster absolutely said "fuck you" to me in particular.
I have a character crisis every fighting game I play. Not because of character power or anything like that, I just always think there are so many cool characters. Picking a character is one of the most fun things about the games for me.
Completely agree, great video
Character crisis can be a real issue since it halts your growth in strength with a character nevertheless you do learn about what makes each character you've played good or bad which improves your knowledge of the game overall
I've been struggling with it in every game I play but in Strive for like 6 months and it's still on going
I do recommend for most to just play what makes them play the game and enjoy the experience
Right now my character crisis requires a time machine, I need those season 3 changes as I wait in the Dizzy waiting room.
This is not the video I expected. At least among me and my friends we've always referred to Character Crisis as being uncertain what character to main, usually bouncing between a whole bunch of potential options.
I’ve had a Character Crisis on quite a few occasions, I sort of still consider myself having one with Strive with a Faust and Potemkin.
But I think the game I had the worst Character Crisis was with Smash Ultimate since I wanted to main Ganondorf and while I had other characters to play as well, Ganondorf was the character I wanted to play most and just struggling to do stuff with him kinda just lead me to quitting Smash Ultimate because of the Character Crisis I was dealing with and other problems that the game has.
I think what can also lead to a Character Crisis is motion inputs. I think Leon Massey explained a bit of a problem that fighting games in general kinda have problems like if a character you want to learn and commit to playing but has inputs that don’t work for the player.
I really feel you, for a long time in Under Night I was simply unable to switch off of Gordeau despite him kinda getting worse over time/versions. I had put so much time into learning his complicated routes and getting used to his gameplan that the sunken cost just felt so so high. Sometimes it feels better to struggle slightly long term than to struggle astronomically short time, It's just our nature as humans. Its gotten to the point where I quit UNICLR instead of switching lmao. He isn't as bad as some low/low-mid tiers in truly unbalanced games but still, playing against Vatista/Byakuya etc is pain when you have slow buttons and no reversals.
I managed to dabble a little in Hilda cause she fit my playstyle as well but I never got nearly as proficient as I was with Gordeau, who was a character I truly loved. I imagine it felt the same way with Millia since you are like THE MILLIA GUY
btw the beard is looking fire dude
I got a huge character crisis in MBAACC several years ago, but in the end I stayed with the one that I liked the most because of playstyle.
She doesn't give me the best results, she's not top-tier either but she's the character I wanna play, and many people in the LATAM recommunity of the game already recognize me as the only player of that character in the whole continent LOL.
I think there are a few more ways to go about the character crisis right, so for me, I was struggling on may for the longest time and just couldn’t fully understand the structure and stuff since I was still new to fighters in general. I took a full on break from the game at a point because I got to a spot of just tryna figure out what to do. The break worked really well and it helped give me some time to just recover from the stress of not understanding her.
Thank you for this video. I needed it.
I feel like I'm in a situation that you didn't quite cover in the video. I've been through this character crisis a couple of times in GGST. I main Faust. And he's always been one of the weaker characters, even with buffs. He's a lot better than he was before, and when I try to be objective, he's not way worse than any of the other characters in the game. I've had times where I tried out stronger characters and realized that their playstyles just didn't fit me, so I kept coming back to Faust. I'm sure now that there's no other character in the game that I will be as comfortable playing as, so I'm not interested in trying to switch anymore. But I still have those moments of doubt, where it feels like most other characters get more reward for catching stray hits, or have safer offense, or stronger mix, etc. Where it feels like my character sucks and I have to work way harder than my opponent and take more risks. It's a really unpleasant feeling, and it does suck some of the fun out of the game. But I don't have fun playing other characters either, and I don't want to drop the game just because I'm struggling with my main right now. I don't want to get stuck in this doomer mindset, and I don't want to switch characters. So what do I do?
You gotta make a choice. Either you commit to playing Faust until someone else you enjoy comes along, and you just gotta change your mindset to stop doubting him, or you switch to another character that you feel has more potential but you don't enjoy as much. By being kinda stuck in the middle you're only getting the worst out of either choice, so it's best to just choose.
@@gonemad_r6404 I’ve made my choice. I want to stick with Faust. I just don’t know how to change my mindset
I personally can't relate to this problem (I just pick whose personality and looks I like), but my friend has gone through this.
Felt this way in every fighting game I've played, lol. I've learnt to deal with it now, but I have some advice for those that are still dealing with it:
Maybe try getting some more experience with the character. I know that in both Tekken and Strive, I was really close to giving up on my mains, but it was actually just because my defense and fundamentals as a new player was still ass. So I just played the character more, got more comfortable with different match ups and situation, and I felt a lot better about my character pick.
Honestly, a character crisis happens for me when I change priorities
Usually it goes like this. I want to zone and confirm off of big buttons; maybe I want to sit back dash-dance, and whiff-punish; or I want to do big epic combo; or I want to shmix
I usually playing trying to learn every aspect of the game, and I think the characters that fufill as many priorities as possible characters I trend towards. The swiss army knife characters
Was that the 3 Dirty Dwarves shotgun sound effect in the beginning?
I trusted Nago since launch, but I played Testament and Ky for quite sometime due to fatigue. There was a time my Ky is way more consistent than Nago, then the server exploded and I have no time to deal with that shit so I'm kinda sad I can't enjoy strive until they fix it.
I also played Millia when the game came out. I always struggled but i always felt like i had a good chance when i just adapt. However, when i fought Nago it just felt plain unfair. It made me quit the game.
Yeah, character crisis is a big thing and it legit made me switch from Baiken to I-no, because I didn't believe in my own character.
Idk why, maybe Baiken tournament representation, maybe how sraightforward she is or just her general toolkit. Idk, I know that she's stupidly strong, but I didn't believe in her. Happily, I feel better with I-no at least for now.
The temptation to go back to your main really is a sunk cost fallacy. I spent x amount of time on y character, I dont want to lose all of it by switching.
Had to drop Goku Black in FighterZ for this back in the day. He was so cool but playing him pissed me off when i knew if i switched to practically anyone else id do much better. And I did. It wasnt so much about winning all the time, as rather feeling like I had a terrible handicap whenever he was out.
I also think it depends on the person's mentality since for someone like me once I learn a basic gameplan I can play that character at at least a base level so by switching between characters like Peach and Fox when I used to play Melee I'm able to play often enough to keep them from being rusty but also switching between them regularly enough to not get overly focused on any one thing since I don't gave time to think Peach sucks against Falcon because I've already switched to Fox. This keeps me not only from being as frustrated with annoying matchups but also more engaged with the game since I'm not solely relying on flowcharts. And I try to do this in most games now like switching weapons in Monster Hunter or classes in FF14
I want to play another character besides Ky in Strive, but I feel no real motivation to do so.
But a character crisis? Maybe. I can't argue one way without acknowledging the other way.
yeah.. you made me realize i need to switch my main lmao, the timing of this video was crazy.. btw i play gio
I’ve been having that with Type Lumina since it came out 😭
I changed my character in strive, i was pushing into celestial with 1 character, but swapped, and i haven't been higher than floor 7 in months, but im playing who i want, dispite how hard they are to play.
The facial hair is the look king. Seriously. Keep it.
GGST is the only fighting game in which I felt like none of the characters really fit my usual playstyle (balanced + rushdown) until Bridgette was released. For other games, my main was usually quickly found and rarely replaced by something better (for me).
I've been lucky enough that my mains have never been low tier but they're also almost never top tier. Jin in BB, Yuel in GBVS, Bridgette in GGST, and Kunoichi in DNF (RIP game).
Loved this video. Keep up the great work
He does have a point about dragonball tho. I never thought about how similar Goku is with Goku or Goku
I was thinking this was just me. Kinda wish my love for May in the older games transferred into the newer ones.
I choose the option of downpla- honestly expressing weaknesses of my main so they would finally give him buffs
/s......unless?
I'd argue that character crisis is not doubting your character, but doubting yourself.
I think another definition for a character crisis is never being able to pick a main character to begin with - either because none of them click, or at least none click more strongly than any other character in the cast. This was the case for me in xrd. I liked so many characters, to the point that I didn't want to main any of them. They were all so cool, and learning any one came at the opportunity cost of all the other ones, and I certainly don't believe I could learn every single character with the low dedication I have to the game. To me, the character crisis came before I even had a character to begin with. The farthest I got learning the game was with ky, because ky is relatively simple, and it was the easiest to execute a basic gameplan with him. But I really didn't want to only play ky. I wanted to learn venom setups, I wanted to learn answer's scroll shenanigans, I wanted to shinken loop people with kum, style on people with slayer or johnny, flood the screen with bedman's deja vus, unga bunga with leo, and special special cancel with sin. These characters were all so cool that I felt like I could never learn any of them to the full extent that I wanted to.
It's possible this would be alleviated with the right friends to play with, but I did not personally have this luxury.
I'd also like to point out that the character crisis problem isn't unique to fighting games, it's just much more apparent because of the 1v1 nature and the reduced agency of picks in other games where this problem exists - for example, you probably wouldn't pick riven if you got assigned support in league of legends (even as a riven one-trick), unless your goal is to have fun over competitive viability.
Great vid regardless, love your analytic PoV as always
My personal experience with character crisis is that you can't commit to a character, either because you don't like any character enough, or you can't choose between the characters you do like. For me its rarely about an individual character that's holding me back
I live and breathe chracter crisis
specifically when finding a second/third chracter to play (to cover bad mus/team games)
(and joker in smash)
I never had a character crisis til Strive Potemkin. In previous games I was content to just swap characters freely but not really be bothered by it til I finally found and settled on one I liked, but as Strive went on, Potemkin felt worse and worse to play. Garuda oki was strong but it was boring, his defense was so weak that it felt like suffering (though I'd been more than happy to play defense in GGXX back in the day) and just generally I was not feeling the character. Thankfully Bridget was super fun and still had a command grab, so once she hit the roster it was over, but I was so exhausted trying to keep on with Strive in the meanwhile. Nobody else was really working for me.
I remember starting ggst with Nago cause I thought he was cool as fuck but then after a couple weeks I realized just how busted he was at the time so I switched to ky…
It happened to me 7 6 months ago. All i just need to pick easy to learn chars and done . even if they are low or suck.
im in char crisis in kofxv now😢
yo the beard goes hard
This is a really weirdly timed video -- I just committed to switching from millia to jacko after dooming about how awful millia feels for like, two and a half months, and it's legitimately like having a giant weight lifted off my shoulders. I would agree, anyone who currently doesn't believe in their character should just commit to swapping, even if it's just temporary.
For me, character crisis for me is just finding a character thats fun. I dont really care about whose good (I actually prefer not knowing tier-lists for that reason) but I just want a character that fits me. Interestingly, I had a character crisis in Dengeki Bunko cause no one really 'felt right' to play as. I didnt know who I wanted to play cause I didnt really like playing anyone. However, learning the system mechanics did help a little bit with that and now I can jump between a few characters in that game. I have done the thing where "dang, I wish this character had a better X" or "I wish they buffed YZ" but I wont switch off the character for it. I usually just wont be interested in playing the game online if the character I want to play is just unusable (Darkstalkers 3 or UMvC3 come to mind). Luckily most modern games are balanced well enough that even a 'low tier' is still usable until you get into high-level play
My Strive character trajectory has been:
>Pick Nago because of his link to Slayer, my main in XX and Xrd
>Find out Nago's top tier, feel bad for not "doing well" with him and letting the shitposting about him get to me
>Tried out different characters, gave Bridget a shot for 6 months after her launch
>Go back to Nago because that initial link with Slayer had me still invested in the character even though I find Bridget to be pretty fun. Been happy ever since!
Now I know what signs to look for in my next fighting game when I pick a main in my next fighting game. I also learned how to ignore what other people say about a character and just play. A character crisis can be instructive!
So important to make the choice on your own in the end.
Would you say that in modern fighting games, given developers have a better idea of how to ensure most or all of the roster is relatively playable, sticking with a character you think weak is less of a risk? It seems that nowadays devs are better at responding to balance issues (likely a result of different game dev approaches, how quickly info and tech spreads online, and the reams of data devs collect on matchups and other gameplay statistics).
Bruh I've been in a character crisis ever since i started fighting games. I think i played about 15 different characters in tournament in the sf4 days lmao. Genuinely feel like I'd be such a better player if i could stick to one character but I've got commitment issues 😭
My character crisis for basically every fighting game is based on fomo. I always feel like by now playing other characters, I'm missing out on the "content" of the game. Just a weird perspective from my dumb brain.
I generally don't like team games as much because having to choose three characters that work together is a recipe for constant character crisis. I am never able to find a team of characters that I like that I also feel is strong.
strive was my first fighting game and I got to floor 10 with Potemkin then got the nagging feeling I was being carried witch put me off playing for like a year
stitched to May because she still has the rely big meme damage I like but has the mobility Pot didn't and I rely felt like lacking it was holding me back
very happy after I made my switch
Seems to me that the current DLC model does extend a game's lifespan but it also exacerbates the character crisis for a couple reasons. First is that changes in character balance and mechanics are more gradual, you don't get something like SF3 where Second Impact and Third Strike are so vastly different that they actually have distinct competitive scenes, with Sean being top tier in one game but bottom tier in the other. Even if your main on launch is a completely different character than your main after a few years of updates, the gradient that a live service model provides makes it less noticeable.
And the other would be that not having the entire roster out of the gate barring maybe one or two extra characters makes the shiny new thing look more appealing, especially if it's a game where the new characters tend to be slightly overtuned as a means of selling the DLC (not every game does that though). Maybe someone actually wanted to main the DLC character but since they were playing the game for longer then they don't change because they don't want to learn a new character. Some people might always have the feeling that a character they like better may be somewhere in the next season.
Man, this sounds like advice for how to handle a bad relationship/break-up.
BeardKnight lookin drippy
You should only ever play every character casually, but if you go to tournaments that have prize money than i always say play the best characters.
Top 5 characters are the only ones you should play.
I play low tiers, but high tiers are high tiers because they have better options, make it easiers to win, and often times preventing your opponent from playing and winning. (Called 1-player mode or 1-player game.)
I think i'm having a secondary character crisis?
I still believe in Testament as my main and I still want to push them
But i'm not sure what exactly it is that's driving me to try and play another character
Particularly because I wanted to try to help my personal worser matchups that I struggle against with Testament (Millia, Faust, Axl, and Jack-O to be specific)
So I've bounced around from Ram to Baiken to Ky to Sin to Anji to even I-No and Leo
Haven't found someone I really want to stick to as a secondary pick
Playing the same character gets a bit stale. What I like to do is learn how to play with a big roster. Maybe eventually that new character is "the one i should main"