immediately after watching this i loaded up tekken 8, jumped on my asuka, threw out the fancy combos i was practising, and simply sidestepped four times more than i ever would just to see what happened. the number of times people sailed passed me and i was able to get a real simple 1+2+4 punish on them was staggering i eventually started encountering people who seemed to catch on to what i was doing. but by then i was so used to it - and my mental stack was so free from worrying about big long combos - that when i started noticing the lows i could start anticipating them, when they started to block too much i could grab them, when they started using homing moves i could block and punish them. un-fucking-real how this adjustment not only got results right away but even when i lose i still feel like im learning
That's awesome to hear Samurai! There's nothing more satisfying than stepping around a desperate hop kick ha. And yes, like you say in your comment, learning to sidestep is not a magic button to start getting you wins right away, because of course there is a lot of counter play to it like homing moves, throws, half homing moves, and just good timing on your opponents part. But you are on the right track now because what is going to happen is that you are going to find methods to counterplay their counterplay, like sidewalking baiting out homing moves and blocking them, and as you develop you are gonna develop a much more solid and reliable (and frankly fun) playstyle. Then the combos will start to come to you much more naturally. I'd also recommend looking into developing your up close jabbing game. That mixed with a strong sidestep game is going to shut down all the spammers in the early ranks because you are able to suffocate out their big swings with your jabs and fuzzy guarding, then one they start trying to poke you back with mids and linear pokes, your sidestep game will be ready. Because sidestepping is at its most powerful when you are up close and baiting out those linear pokes. At a distance it's advantage is harder to capitalize on other than the desperate hop kicks and so forth.
As a beginner, using different sources of beginner guides, fundamental videos, etc... This is the most organized and important video in piecing all that info together. Thank you for this.
Yes, using different sources is so important, no doubt about it. Different sources can help piece together information that might be missing. One really important tool to learn though, beyond just tutorials, is match footage and match analysis. I do think so much about how the game plays and how the mechanics fit together can be learned from match footage, if you know what you are looking for. And I hope this video can at least get new players started in understanding what they should be looking for :-)
i hate watching a begginer guide and its someones stream of unorganized thoughts with no button notations or organizational skills at all but this guy is a breath of fresh air . the bare minimum of a script makes me astonished. goes to show the content creators of tekken 8 are mostly garbage . elec underground keep it up ya earned a sub man
The best advice I ever got: "Stop learning full combos when you're new to the game, learn your bread and butter starters and counter moves and then focus on learning how to get those off as often as possible, once you do learn how to avoid letting all of your enemies do the same. THEN worry about your damage output and doing combos Chipping an enemy out is still a win" This video expands on that simple advice so much and My god I wish you were in my life few years ago, let alone a few weeks ago when I picked up tekken to pick up fighting games as a whole again after a damn decade.
Memorize every single move and string in the game and what they look like and their frame data and hitboxes and followups. Alternatively, block and then do a jab that will sometimes work@@VarsityAthlete04
This is huge advice, honestly. I haven't played a fighting game without looking up vids or comments talking about combos. Until now, I realized that I was shooting myself in the foot. Now I can do long combos in certain scenarios, but will lose overall due to my lack of fundamentals. So, thanks to your comment and this video, I'm gonna work on my movement and counters. I'll use the simple BnB's from the game itself until I get extremely comfortable. Then I'll move on to longer combos and decent wall combos:) So thanks man!!!
@@VarsityAthlete04honestly (as a new player myself) probably just this. play super safe and for pokes/punishes and learn the characters movesets along the way. thats pretty much the fundamentals of defense
@@VarsityAthlete04 get your ass beat by a move in a match? (My rule of thumb is if I fall for it more than 3 times in a a match) take that character into the lab/replay system Learn to reliably block/punish the move. Once I can do it 10 times in a row twice with no mess ups. I move onto the next fight and move to Lear.
this is how I've been approaching fighting games I actually like for a good while now, instead of going for combos I slowly learn how to get hit less and getting some small pokes in when they drop their defense then when I'm getting comfortable try stringing in a few more hits then after a longer time maybe try a fancy combo and so on honestly in some games I don't even reach the point of trying a full combo because I find the mind games of getting around the opponent's defenses while preventing them from beating me more enjoyable(though there is a point where not learning any combos means just hitting a wall because there's no way to fully predict all other players and not beating them fast just gives them more chances to make a comeback)
I mean some ganes do rely more on learning combos than others due to offense and defense working a certain way, example undernight Even if its barebones as hell, you need some type of bnb that lets you set up your oki or you wont even reach the point where GRD matters
I mean it only takes like a day or even a few hours to learn some BnBs if you have decent enough execution, it takes far longer than that to learn everything else.
Amen to that, for me its way more satisfying whenever I shimmy a move or force someone into a throw loop situation than it is to just wombo combo and do the same shit on repeat lmao
This is exactly how SonicFox learns fighters actually. He focuses on how to land the hit first (movement, neutral, block and whiff punishment first and foremost), and then learns about how to make the most out of those hits (combos). If you can't land hits in the first place, it doesn't matter how impressive your combo is.
Absolutely spitfire! This incremental approach of learning the neutral game took me a long time to develop as a player, but I think it is a stronger long term solution because otherwise you end up developing a lot of bad habits that you have unlearn, which can be much more difficult than learning to play properly in the first place ha.
Yeah playing tekken casually since I was 6 has definitely but I never could get the timing for combos so I just made up my own way to win with panda been working since😂💯
Agree, Tekken 8 is my first Tekken game and I do think it's really important to understand your own character first and what the character can do. Jun Kazama combo challenges took 30 minutes to complete and it's really enjoyable (spent ~1 hour just practicing it) in addition to allowing the player to see the potential of the character. With PhiDX videos and 20 hours in, introduction to frame knowledge + poking + punishment. 30 hours in, using the replay feature to learn the available punish and counter-hit opportunity from ranked matches (sample learning about what the other characters can do). 40 hours in, I started to make adjust on some sample combo to make it natural so my punishment is more deadly when there's a LNC. Just passed 50 hours mark, and note for myself to learn opponent's throw animation, because some 1+2 and 1_2 throw break is hard to differentiate... found it overwhelming to be learnt in a short time. We haven't even go into calculated sidestepping yet. So, focus on the faster ROI knowledge first is good advice. I believe once I know what the other character can do, I will eventually know when to sidestep to punish those moves.
Yes but like I said in the video, you don't want to start off trying to learn to get easy wins because the playstyle you develop will have to be unlearned later on. Because let's say you learn all the beefy combos first, but you understand nothing about the neutral game. Then in terms of risk reward, you are naturally going to start to go for big risk combo starters in your neutral game because you only have to hit 1 or 2 of them to win a round. You see this in lower ranks all the time, where players are constantly throwing launchers and so forth because their opponents are also unskilled in the neutral game. So this playstyle is viable and gets a lot of wins early on. But as you advance as a player, these tendencies become more and more of a liability and then stop working. At this point you've spent potentially hundreds of hours in the game learning how to play the game incorrectly, just so that you could get wins against fellow newbs as soon as possible. This is the point where a lot of people quit playing tekken and even start disliking it. So instead of doing all of that, I think it's much better to start as a new player from a strong neutral game and taking the big damage combos off the table for new players is actually healthy because they then don't use them as a crutch.
i'd say sidestepping and sidewalking is a trap early on because you have no clue what any of the enemy moves are or when they come out or if the player you're playing with is even understanding their own moves, that's why block punishing and whiff punishing is basically the first step into tekken after learning your movelist somewhat, it's only when people start to jab up close and understanding the importance of the quickness and safety of jabs that the game actually evolves into a more full experience, because then you're looking for whiffs and or trying to create whiffs or this general frame advantage to press your advantage and that's when ducking and sidestepping and sidewalking comes into play just as you start to understand spacing and timing of moves and how moves work that the further away you are the easier they are to block and also easier to sidestep/sidewalk so you don't get punished as easily for sidestepping or sidewalking. and because how many mid attacks there are if someone is simply mashing and not bothering to jab it makes it kinda pointless to sidestep up close because it's practically like they are constantly trying to punish a sidestep without understanding that they are doing that and also not understanding they are giving away free frame advantage and also free punish so why do the extra work that isn't gonna be applicable yet when you can just block and punish. but it's round about there you also start to take advantage of frametraps and looking for holes in the opponents strings which only comes later because of knowledge and your expanded visual library so you can recognize moves, what move will come out after the next and seeing if it's sidesteppable or duckable so even if the enemy does have frame advantage you can turn it around and from there the mindgames expands. so it's just several layers of rock paper scissors getting more complex the deeper you go. so the question i think you should always ask yourself when you see a move the enemy does over and over again is how do i punish that because every move has a flaw. and the questions are, can i punish it on block, can i attack at all after i block, can i duck to dodge it, can i sidestep it. now you could do that as early as you want but because mashers are extremely unpredictable it's gonna be a situation you will lose most of the time but you will get far more knowledge doing that. however with that said it's gonna be rough. so just knowing that doing a regular stand block into a very easy block punish is gonna be the answer most of the time and all you have to do is wait out the mashers til you get to opponents who doesn't mash out random strings and attacks.
the problem in this approach is that in tekken 8 there is a lot of decent player starting with yellow-orange rank, so you can't rely on punish and need to learn sidestep, there is no way around it in this game. especially with character like victor or azucena that are very safe if you don't sidestep
@@aldofer8832i'm not saying NO to sidestepping, i'm saying WAIT til you meet players that don't push buttons randomly so you can start to identify their gameplan and the few moves that they do use because they are using a tactic. a masher will use every attack at random times where it doesn't make sense and trying to identify every flaw for every move straight from the get go is madness. someone who is intentionally using moves will use a very limited set of moves in a specific order, there isn't gonna be random launchers, there isn't gonna be random whiff punish moves or block punish moves or homing moves that is just randomly thrown out that shouldn't be thrown out for no reason. so at that point you can actually start categorizing the moves they use and label them in the visual library you've established as "ok those are their jabs" and "those are their whiff punishers" and "this is the tactic they use" etc.
@@aracystic28 well there are several ways of learning how to play fighting games, this is just the more defensive option for those who block more than just spam buttons, i wrote a little quick thing for those who mash aswell, it's basically "pick a move to mash until you know what it does" which is more about being more intentional with your mashing.
While this video was a great explanation, I actually think this comment outlines a much more streamlined way for a noob to start grasping and understanding the mechanics as a whole.
I watched most of this and I have to say I’m loving this. I’ve been playing melee for 12 years for example. When I was new I would read posts on the forum, look at guides, grind execution all day and I actually had decent execution. But it was not until like 4 years later did I truly understand a key part of converting neutral into an advantage state-overshooting vs under shooting approaches. In terms of tekken think of undershooting in melee like keep out and overshooting as whiff punishing the opponents keep out but with movement (this is different from whiff punishing, it’s attacking your opponents space/calling out their retreat. Kind of like Mishima wavedashes…only works if your opponent selects not to press & you read them being on their back foot). It’s a fundamental part of the game but it’s not written down anywhere. And once I got that my eyes opened up and as I got better I felt like I could actually “play the game” and play vs anyone. I wasn’t necessarily winning all the time but I was actually “having the conversation” with my opponent in game. That’s the level I think everyone wants to get to. And I only got better since then. I’m new to tekken and I feel like I’m in tutorial hell. You watch a 30 min - 1.5 hour “beginners guide” and all it really does is factually list off a bunch of things that 1) you probably already know or 2) way too many things that you clearly cannot take in if you are a beginner. What people want is to learn how to “play the game” not the properties of 47 different attacks. Even something simple as talking about ranges in tekken to me was eye opening. I heard some players casually mention range 1/range 3 etc and while it’s so simple I never thought about tekken that way. And it’s just like dude, why is this kind of thing not in guides for BEGINNERS. You have to play the game not just the character. There’s a massive lack when it comes to building game plans and basic strategies unless you’re playing extremely simply characters EDIT: And I’m not even a fighting game scrub, I was a competent celestial level strive player. I wasn’t winning tournaments but I was better than most the player base. This game I feel like an ~absolute~ ignoramus lol
I know, people who make guides don't understand that they see the same totally different than a new player. The knowledge you get from years of playing make it seem like the game is really easy at early ranks. So when I try to look up how to play a character and it's guy with a bad microphone/shitty webcam in an unflattering position listing off every move off with no button prompts on talking about how " oh this move is bad because strings that end in high aren't as good." I'm like FUCK IT WHO CARES ILL FIGURE IT OUT MYSELF. I got red rank on one character, you know how? Just learn to grab, low attack, couple mix ups, and a small combo. That's all I had to do. That's all new players need to know, figure out the nitty gritty punishable stuff later.
I'm on a Tekken journey myself (started last week I think?) and it's nice to read other people's stories. The only fighting game experience I have is Tekken 3 as a kid, but I never got super into it. I have similar gripes about the tutorials and what annoys me most is when they don't even explain why something is bad or good. For example a lot of them mention Korean Back Dashing and electrics, but none of them explain why I should bother with it. What has helped me climb instead has been just playing the game and taking it one step at a time. I might find something that works well for a rank or two and when I hit a wall I'll go back to the drawing board or copy my opponent. It's been working for me so far.
in Tekken the "knowing how to play part" comes after you understand what properties moves CANT have and why you use the move you use instead of another one understanding how small moves support the big ones and how movement provokes responses is not something that neatly fits into a tutorial even if you teach that to beginners and intermediates they wont be able to use it
@@Senumunu but at that point i'd argue it's a pretty simple concept to understand, long ranged moves shouldn't be used up close, the same way when you whiff with a short range character, you're obviously too far, im sick of people busting their asses for tourists when the game lays the groundwork for you, stop trying to learn every single thing at once, you will never retain the information unless you're a veteran player, take it step but step, and people will still complain that fighting games are hard when every fg creator has made hour long videos on how to play the game, developers dumbing down games, giving characters seemingly infinite advantage in games like dbfz or strive because theyre trying to be the best off rip, play the game and learn as you go and stop worrying about advanced mechanics, this fast attack also pops them up for a combos, must be very good for quick engagement and advantage, take it online, if you spam it, then understand basic human psychology, im mashing this same move but it's so good, so why is opponent being able to punish me for it >:(, idk, just doesn't seem to difficult to understand what works and what doesn't because you can see right in your face why what doesn't work, doesn't work
Forget fighting games, this problem of teaching applies to damn near everything. I studied music for decades and realized to late that I was taught the scrub way. Here's an instrument here's your notes now play this big famous song that sounds super hard and impressive. The moment you wanna do something that isn't a sheet of notes you realize you know absolutely nothing about MUSIC. I was taught an instrument. Not music. This video hit me way deeper than I thought a video on Tekken could.
I'm glad you appreciate that my dude! Yes I have been analyzing the sidestep systems of both games really heavily ha, I think it's much more important to understand how the sidestep works at a code level than is typically explained in tutorials.
One of the strongest player of our city used a complete different approach to the game. He on purpose never side stepped. His approach was playing a linear tekken based on wiffs and strong safe moves to control the round basing his game on very solid foundamentals like blocking lows and frame data. Also, he ALWAYS took the most broken character on the chapter he was playing. For example Feng Wei in Tekken 5 or Lars in Tekken 6. His game plan was, mostly, pittbulling the opponent with the broken and safe moves of the character (Feng Wei's b4, df1, ss3, b1ch for example) forcing the game in oppressive sets where he could control you just with very few options. Combo wise is more important not to drop them instead of maximize the damage. Great video btw
Also, shout out to you for citing VF so much. VF 4 singlehandedly taught me fighting games on a deeper level. Still to this day, there hasn't been a tutorial as good as VF 4 and VF 4 Evo.
I'm really happy to hear from another VF fan! VF is my favorite fighting game series and I think tekken players can learn so much more about how tekken works by studying virtua fighter ironically ha. Since tekken shares a similiar foundation that is taken from VF, but has a lot more noise that is distracting. So by learning the heart of VF, you also learn the heart of Tekken but without as much distraction of stuff like electrics and giant juggle combos.
Vf Evo. Definitively made me a better player in fighting games! Slowing down, studying, pacing, timing, motion and movement. Had T7 and always felt its was just about hitting the flashy rage art for a cool finish.
good video. this is actually a concept from educational psychology called the depths of knowledge; its about learning how to learn! the first depth DOK1 is "recall/reproduction": who does the move? what does it do? where do i use it? when is appropriate to use it? DOK2 is "basic application": how/why was this executed? how does it work, and why? DOK3 is "strategy": how can you leverage this understanding, and why? what is the resultant cause and effect? what is the reason things work in certain contexts, and what is the end result? the final depth is DOK4, "extended thinking": what is the aggregate impact of the aforementioned? what are its influences? what are the resultant relationships? what would/could happen if...? might be easier to think about these different stages of thought like ascending a staircase where you must have your foot firmly planted on a lower step before rising to the next. the issue described in the intro is that people commonly attempt to imitate higher level results (DOK3 or 4) without grasping any other facet of the decisionmaking that accompanies the greater depth of knowledge that theyre mimicking. in education, you cant skip steps. its horribly inefficient and oftentimes crippling to attempt to understand a complex subject by *starting at the end* and trying to reverse-engineer it. to learn anything abstract, its much wiser to build up to it - methodically - because all the higher steps rest upon the lower ones.
This is such an underrated comment. By nature I think humans sort of understand this, but it's not always clear I'm screenshotting this because I love knowing how to work optimally. Thank you!
That's one of the many models for the phenomena of learning. I would say "where do I use it?" does not belong on this first level, but on DOK2. One might also call this a "rule" in the intellectual skill outcome of learning. Intellectual skills have four essential levels: 1. Discriminations (hey that kick move was different from the last kick move) 2. Concrete concepts (that kick move is called this; that kick move has -8 on block) 3. Defined concepts (a power crush is a move that keeps its active frames going through any strike that would normally stagger (maybe a mediocre definition, I'm still new lol)) 4. Rules (low moves tend to take the longest to come out compared to mids or highs) Rules building upon prerequisite learning of other rules are called higher-order rules, which can of course recurse to get more abstract. Like if you used that rule about low moves combined with other rules to make a further generalization.
I ran into this issue a couple of days ago. I could do almost everything under the sun, but after getting dunked on by another player I realized my knowledge on core fundamentals was completely absent. I was trying to go for things that would net me a win without knowing HOW I could even obtain it. Nothing really worked on my opponent and they kind of just watched me embarrassingly flail about stupidly and fail at nearly all my attempts to the point that I just gave up and let them have the final round of the final set. I didn’t rage quit per se; my controller died, but I felt so defeated that I just forfeited anyway and let the 60 second timer tick down since I felt I didn’t deserve to win. As painful as those matches were, I appreciate that player for humiliating me enough to make me go back to my roots and return to the basics that will inevitably carry me further. I’m now doing everything I can to learn about vanilla neutral gameplay instead of trying to play around it. Even if I lose, my focus is only on getting better fundamentally and I feel much more rewarded when I’m able to best an opponent without using all the flashy cheese that most people rely on at lower level play.
Exactly Professor, I went through the same experience myself as I pointed out in the vid during tekken 7 ha. This moment as a fighting game player is painful, but I completely agree that it is a healthy step towards understanding that just getting low rank wins is not actually teaching you anything, and that it's much more important to win in a way that is fundamentally sound so you can build towards higher calibur gameplay in the future. You don't want your entire approach to the game to be a house of cards that comes crashing down the moment your opponent picks up on your gameplan. A really solid style of play will be dangerous, even when they fully understand what you are trying to do.
This is a great mentality. Getting better at tekken is a long and incremental process. You'll feel good looking back truly feeling the progress you've made. Best of luck dude, it made me happy to see someone respond to crushing loss like this
As someone just getting into tekken after playing 2D fighters, and as someone learning Lili, thank you for that sidestepping breakdown. I’d heard that it was one of her strengths but could never figure out how to capitalize on it. This should be super helpful.
Finally someone who answers the real questions about Tekken and how it is to be understood. You are the True Undergound my dude, well made video and looking forward to the next one.
It has many flaws, from my experience teaching, in theory this is very refined, but in practice, a lot of people quit cus they dont feel like they are having fun while learning. The method I use does both and it shows!
Thank you very much JP. Yes, these are question that I have had about how to play the game for years and never really found that solid of an answer for how the game works fundamentally, so I actually ended up studying it and trying to reverse engineer how the mechanics work myself ha.
I've been watching Tekken 8 streams since release and finally decided to buy it 2 days ago on PC and youtube recommended this video today. the scrub sandtrap is quite similar to how people start doing cheese builds in Starcraft before even being able to hit proper macro timings and builds. fundamentals are important if people actually want to get better at what they do. very appreciate this video, great stuff.
17:48 I literally never knew this! This is such a good tutorial more games need stuff like this. I’m also teaching people fighting games at my school, and this video has inspired me to teach in a radically different way. Thank you!
This is not a beginner’s video. This is an intermediate player looking to become an advanced player guide. Beginner’s should absolutely start with the basic combos, jump in matches and play. They will naturally gain basic understanding of the things mentioned. After this stage is where the player will decide whether they want to know more or not based on their interest
depends on what you mean by beginner, if you consider a blue rank and below player beginner then sure, but as you reach green and yellow ranks those are also kinda beginners since they have no fundamental knowledge. So i think this video is more towards them. By all means when you start off in fgc games go all out an spam your way to understand atleast the basics. For you paul deathfist spam and law db+4 spam is good enough and know when to do those.
I think I agree! This wouldn’t be the very first vid I’d tell someone to watch but after like a week or month of play (depending on player goals/previous fighting exp/etc) this info could be so powerful. Wish I’d watched this before right now lol!
I disagree. I've tought 20 or so players fighting games at various levels and I think assuming players will pick up fundamentals on their own is a big reason retention is so low for fighting gawithna begginers interest won't be peaked if they just learn combos and try to giess their way into fundamentals. I find teaching players about they "WHY" of fighting games gets them a lot further and keeps their attention longer than teaching them the "WHAT" of fighting games. Landing a combo will get stale once you run into obstacles. I instead teach players how to properly punish players and how to feel like they're actually making real decisions. You'd be surprised to see how much more excited newbies get when they've consistently controlled their opponent via neutral, basic mix, and regular punishment than they do when they hkt somebody with a random launcher. I think a fundamentals first game plan is the best way to get players started.
Great video, I have started to main Jack 8 and have been watching Rooflemongers guides which do focus on 10 fundamental moves to master rather than combos. As a street fighter player I do tend to think in 2d and need to take your position and spacing advice into my gameplay.
Arslan Ash just posted a real good one on Azucena. He went over what tools he likes, and when he uses them, and at the end mentioned literally one combo with 2 enders depending on distance to wall.
Yes, the way the spacing game works in 2d and 3d are pretty different from each other, so I'm really glad this video can help you understand this concept. Because in a 3d fighter, long range linear pokes can easily be stepped around, whereas in a 2d fighter they cannot. So 3d games have this extra dimension of tracking on all the frame data of the moves that does not exist in 2d games. So in street fighter, the basis of you spacing is your poke, whereas in a 3d fighter the basis of your spacing is your jab/throw :-)
It is Glizz, I've been there myself. In street fighter 4, pretty much 60% of my practice time was just combo practice. It's also very self reinforcing because if you can land big damage combos with some basic setups, that skill will take a good deal out of the beginner ranks. But then once you start to enter the more advanced ranks, the rest of your game will suddenly feel under developed. I def understand that because I've been there myself many times ha.
Lot of concepts I didn't even think of as a beginner, this video expanded my mind a lot! Keeping the opponent under your frame barrage and allowing the damage to come naturally rather than playing the back and fourth mid trading game is a good lesson. Amazing video, I usually never leave comments but I truly do hope you make another like this about Tekken it's very interesting to listen to you talk and hear your conviction!:)
Thanks for sharing. Reminds me of this guy on the Tekken subreddit who climbed all the way to red ranks with Alisa back in tekken 7, by learning all of his gimmick bs and cycling through each move until he found the one that the opponent didn't know. Then once he reached a rank where everyone is good enough that they know all his knowledge checks, he asked how to counter that, as if fundamentals was another gimmick that he didn't know about. Not sure if that guy ever got enlightened... Some characters just doom their users to the sandpit, haha.
Unpopular opinion: this is actually the way to make people not fall in love with the game. Hear me out. This has been my formula and it's been working 100% with my friends. They all are invested in Tekken now. Here's the formula. I teach them all the bullshxt, cheese, cheap flowcharts etc. Why? My logic is that getting good at this game takes a decade at least. It's a long haul. Most people don't have the long term commitment and probably think "why would I commit to that?" So to sustain long haul development I give them the tools that bring fast enjoyment and a measure of success. My friend was not interested in Tekken at all because he saw it as too convoluted and hard. I taught him cheese and frame traps with Bryan. Snake edge etc. he started actually beating scrubs in ranked. He started enjoying the game so much that he committed more time to it. Then he hit a wall. Cheese stopped working. But he had enjoyed the game enough to actually want to take the next step and learn fundamentals. This is the formula I think that sustains players for the long haul. Invest in their enjoyment first! Teach the cheap scrub killer tricks. Then allow them to unlearn and progress at their own pace. This was my.progression as well. Now I'mma semi decent player and won my first University tournament not long ago. Been playing like 3 years.
I agree with you. This is also my approach when getting my friends have a go with the game. Combos, cheese, stuff that they'd most likely find fun, enough for them to invest more time in the game. This was what JimmyJ (top player) meant with "BNBs and then expand" at 4:00.
I would disagree with u. Bcz yes ur right it takes long but 10 years is too much. My cousin started in tekken 7 around 2 to max 3 years ago. He has now made himself capable of the local scene and winning tourneys and shit. And we are pakistanis so he has faced some PLAYERs, like giants of tekken. (he has played friendly sets with arsalan and tourney set with atif butt). And he learned the game this way. OFC for casual players yh just spam combos, but the video is about learning tekken. So learning tekken requires commitment and a gameplan like all games require, it would tkae you 1 - 2 years to get good at valo from scratch id say the same about tekken. I just started my 1 - 2 years jounrney with tekken 8 like a week ago, assuming i stick through it ill come back and tell u pplz lol
Interesting take. I had a similar story with getting a friend playing Counter Strike Global Offensive. He couldn't get into the game because of the accuracy mechanic. In CS, your shots miss when you move or when you hold fire for too long. But Valve introduced a broken cheap and very accurate handgun: the R8. He started using it, getting easy kills and had fun. Eventually, Valve heavily nerf the gun but my friend had time learning the mechanic and sticked to the game to this day.
@@fireitup3674 I'm not saying this approach works for everyone. But you have to remember the average person doesn't want to enter tourneys! They don't want to be an elite player. They just want to be good enough to have fun in ranked and make slow progression without losing interest. And in those cases I feel like my approach is most appropriate and yields the most results. Everyone isn't a gaming savant. They don't want to jump in head first and spend every day getting better so that in 3 years they are tourney level. They want to just be decent.
The bottom line of this video is how to become better at the game and other 3d fighter's in the most effective way over a period of time. How much you love a game etc varies from person to person and their personality. Your logic of people becoming good taking "at least a decade " is debunked by so many high level players that are winning tournaments in T7 and getting top 8 when it was their first Tekken. Same with MK and SF. You know why these players are so hood so quickly?....time invested and effort put in. With anything in life, if you want to become great, you MUST invest the time and effort. The more you put in upfront, the faster you will evolve if you're training properly. You're speaking on behalf of people who don't want to play seriously. This video is not for them, hence him giving advice for the long haul and your own logic of 10 yrs+. If someone only wants to play casually, that's fine. They just need to understand that they will always be at the bottom of the barrel and shouldn't be frustrated at getting stomped by players who put in more time. The problem is when those casual players get pissed for losing so much, but also sat they don't have time to learn etc....well tough shit. That's life. I've been playing since Tekken 1and have LOTS of friends who played over the years. The vast majority are just like your friends who only want to learn a little bit to be decent but a few few were equally as dedicated as me and we were in the lab for hours in each game to become our absolute best as time permitted. At the end of the day we all have 24 hrs in a day and we Choose how we spend it. If something Is important enough to you, you'll make it happen. If it's not, you won't. If you want it bad enough, then put in the time. If not, then be realistic, accept your rank on the totem pole and move accordingly.
I haven't been playing Tekken with any kind of seriousness since Tekken 2, which had no side stepping barring a few specific moves of a few specific characters, so this is incredibly helpful fundamental teaching. Like you said, most guides completely side step that aspect.
Glad to help my friend! Yes tekken 2 was such a linear game ha, it also didn t have Korean backdash either! The series basically didn't come together until tekken 3, which is one of my favs despite being so crazy
this video is genuinely doing a good job at explaining the nuance of what i need to look to achieve with a sidestep. I have known for a long time that my missing factor is sidestepping. it is quite a punishing technique to try learn as I always felt i was getting hit on anything i tried to sidestep. the breakdown is doing a great job explaining things
FGs are always funny when talking about new players. If they come from a FPS, for example, the first thing they do on Valorant or CS2 is to get in training mode or deathmatch and start to test guns, characters and improve their aiming. Good aim plus some map knowledge can lead you to a good gameplay, but doesn't mean they are good, just means they have enough tools for winning a bunch of games until they reach some elo that needs more knowledge. In FGs, we use to spend more time learning, labing, discussing and watching VODs/replays to learn the game than actually playing the game. Just a week ago I started playing SF6 ranked matches. I still bronze, I still new to the game since I bought it a month ago, but man there were some Kens and Cammys that could do a full 20 hit random combo on me and I was like "What?", lol, we are bronze, and I checked them almost everytime walking foward or back with my sweep (I am a Jamie player, need to drink). I wouldn't be concerned if bronze to gold players were more focused on learning spacing, defense, anti-airing and punishes, but, as we see, they are really too focused to win as soon as they touch the game.
It's actually crazy just how far fundamentals can carry you in a fighting game. Like you can know how to do amazing fancy powerful combos but it's useless unless you know the core fundamentals of the game itself. Combos are definitely of a 'end game' type of thing to learn imo
that is so true astjuly ha. I think part of that comes from fighting games being more mechanically complex than FPS (typically) so new players are completely at a loss as to what to do or how to start playing. I think this is why new fighting game players, no matter what game you want to play, should be forced to spend a new months playing Street Fighter 2 and Virtua Fighter 5. That way they can get a more solid understanding of how fundamentals work before digging to much into game specific mechanics lol. I'm half joking about this, but I do agree that "labbing" is really over-rated and players should get started just trying to grasp the fundamentals of the combat system, before they get too hung up on combos and advanced mechanics. Like a lot of tekken players know how to do the max damage combos, but still don't know how to tech a knockdown.
The reason we used to spend more time in lab than fighting people is because matchmaking used to be difficult and just finding someone to play on your own was difficult too. Training mode was the only thing you had that didn't require waiting.
@@TheElectricUnderground Honestly just bought tekken 8 today, first fighting game ever, all these videos and tutorials is too much for me. Is it possible to just get good by playing the game instead of having to study it? I just want to enjoy fighting people but I'm also extremely competitive - i'd rather learn through actually playing
Thanks a lot for your thoughts! Ever since I started learning the game (I'm a total Tekken noob), I kind of fealt something was off. The movement in Tekken 8 feels very sluggish, so I didn't put a lot of effort into learning it, but now I believe that I'm making a huge mistake.
Yes the linear movement of tekken 8 is fairly nerded (though devil jin is still pretty fast) but the lateral movement had been buffed from tekken 7 and the big swinging pokes have more whiff lag, so it makes the neutral more jab and throw focused like VF, which I am enjoying a lot 😊
I really want to say thanks for this video. Most of my experience playing fighting games is playing them offline by myself, and with Tekken 8, especially with the release of Lidia, I told myself I'd get into playing online more. I thought I was doing alright until I came across a Lars on a 57 win streak that I simply couldn't do anything against, I was lucky to get the occasional jab in. It just crushed my motivation to play. I haven't touched the game for a week because nothing I could find felt like it gave me an actual pathway to addressing the issues with my play style. Your video is the first that actually got me feeling like there was a concrete way to improve.
Earning your big heavy hits is a term I've never heard before and I think that's an amazing way to put it. This video was super helpful! I can see how most tutorials teach a strong offense, seeing as it just teaches people how to get easy wins. But learning to defend is so important, and it's something that's so easy to sleep on, but it's so crucial to like, truly leveling up
I'm glad you enjoy my turn of phrase Dizzy! Yes, I think most tutorial content is very offensive oriented because, just like you say, offense earns you wins early on --- which is what most new players are hungry for. But once you get out of the early phases and start facing off with players who know defense and how to play fundamentally, you'll find your entire style of play has been built on a house of sand ha. I know I definitely had that experience in tekken 7 and I had to re-evalutate my approach to the game in order to advance into the higher ranks.
Started playing Tekken 8 couple of days ago, but didn't know really what is the right way to go about it, so have been just watching couple of youtubers here and there with their "For Beginners" videos. But out of all those, your video goes into detail the the most needed mindset and philosophy needed for it. Thank you for this, and just subscribed after watching.
I've noticed some big improvements in my play recently and I think I maybe have 2 pieces of decent beginner to beginner advice for others: 1. Stop caring about your rank. Not just telling yourself you don't care. Not just accepting you'll lose sometimes. I mean get to the point where you see yourself lose 800 points or drop back down a rank and go "eh whatever I just wanna play good matches". I have no advice for how to do this; it just kinda clicked for me the other day. 2. Check your opponent. Don't even try to kill them. You may even give away the match. Doesn't matter. Check them with jabs/dick jabs/df1, then just block and see how they respond. Force them into crouch and just see what they go for. Think about why they do what they do, why it might hurt you, how to circumvent their habits. I've found it really surprising how intuitive this game can be when you're not running on autopilot trying to score an easy win with a game plan. Do understand your frame data, tho. Theory is still a part of the equation and you just won't get far without it.
I was stuck in Eliminator rank and had a bad losing streak night and it took me back down to Vanquisher. Rage quit. Went upstairs sat down on my couch with my cat and watched this video. Afterwards I got a huge boost of perseverance and decided to try it out. One three hour session later I made it to Garyu. I couldn't believe it.
As someone new to the series, and 3D in general, it is insane how many people just throw out random unsafe mixup strings and yolo launchers, and the insane amount of how much work it has been to learn how to deal with it. It's absolutely no surprise to me so many people get stuck in Garyu. The side stepping stuff is really insightful, though. I've been having trouble with the tracking, so these nuances and sidewalking might be the solution there 8) Great philosophy in general with this video. Not enough people appreciate what makes a fighter work. Thanks a bunch for making this.
One thing that makes learning way more annoying is that sets are limited to 2 out of 3. Makes enough sense in ranked, to at least make farming points harder, but having it be limited in quick match is ridiculous to me. You play 2-3 matches (or 1 if they leave), which as a new player is barely enough to start forming a picture of what your opponent is doing, and then bam you're forced to wait again so you can accidentally say yes to a wifi player playing a different character. Learning would be way easier, and fun for that matter, if they just allowed people to rematch without a limit in quick matches.
Yeah, it certainly doesn't help. If you start picking up on someone's gimmick they won't rematch either most of the time. Or you finally get it after 2 matches, even practice it a little in replay, then you never see it again until you've forgotten about it because a lot of people are just throwing out a ton of random stuff from their arsenal. @@AirLancer
Hi Ushi! I'm glad my analysis of the sidestepping system was helpful. How i came across this info was basically I got really fed up with the lack of information on how the sidestepping system of the game works, and so spent weeks just researching and testing out how to sidestep consistently in real matches in a way that doesn't feel niche or risky. I remember after figuring this out instantly enjoying my online tekken matches much much more ha. Now more getting caught by stupid hop kick setups (for the most part lol).
That's awesome. All I hear from most places is that it's broken and not worth it / a meme. Which I was starting to believethat too because I didn't understand how things were tracking. But it's kind of like a tool similar mixup options; just need to use it on a read you might have. But I've been able to sidestep dodge into many launches now, so getting the hang of it >:D Definitely makes the game more enjoyable. @@TheElectricUnderground
This video is exactly what I was looking for. I would ask my friends (who have been playing fighting games for years) how do you know which combos work together, how do you know when to duck or back step, are frames important,etc. and they’ll give me some bs answer like “it’ll come with playing the game.” Which is true! But I was wanting to know fundamentals. And when I came to RUclips, I was met with basically combo guides. Which is fine, but if I don’t know when to use said combo, feels like I’m still at square one. Great video!
I think usually that is because a lot of people don’t really know how they learned or don’t remember And that they can’t really explain the things they have learned to grasp on a more abstract level
Very good video, and I have a little story that developed my mindset of "fundamentals first, flashy combos later": Back when I used to play Melee, I mained Dr. Mario, not the best character I know, but I learned a lot from using him over the years. Because he's a very punish-heavy character, I had to learn my fundamentals, in particular my spacing, pokes (jab, ftilt, uair), and analyzing what my opponents are doing in order to find an opening and go for a big punish, usually chain-grabs. Even when I tried out top tier characters I wouldn't go for the flashy stuff cause of how unsafe they are. Thank you for explaining that fundamentals are key.
That's awesome nightelf! Yes, if you are playing more fundamentally based characters, like Doc in melee, the concepts end up getting learned more quickly and are ironically more transferable between games. For example, my big break through on a lot of these ideas did not occur in tekken, it actually happened in VF. But after learning all this stuff in VF and improving at the game, I found that when I returned to tekken, my understanding of this series had also increased massively. So i got the fundamentals down from VF and then had already learned how to wavedash and throw electrics from playing tekken 7 and tag 2 ha.
good video, but i think it applies to a minority of ppl; the ones with previous experience in other fighting games and VERY patient people. someone playing t8 as his first fighting game might not be able to endure the loss streaks while trying to master positioning and frame traps. its hugely complicated and requires time and accepting not having a good time for a long while and that will filter the player base more than the skill plateau you mentioned in the video. you also discourage switching character but i think you're wrong, it is the best way to improve character knowledge in a non-tedious way at the beginning of the learning process. my point is, players absolutely need to incorporate the concepts like position awareness and frame data but depending on their personality, they will do it as effectively and less tediously while having fun
In a sense my video might be aimed at a minority of players, the players who want a strong neutral game and to understand the game at a deeper level than just the surface elements of doing launchers, combos, and rage arts, and that's fine with me. I really mean that. My channel is a bit more niche to begin with ha, so if most tekken players don't follow the style I recommend that's perfectly fine with me. Some people play tekken for the story mode and stuff like that, so if that's what your into then just relying on big risk mix ups and so forth is perfectly fine. Not all ideas are meant for mass consumption. On the point of switching characters, we're going to disagree here because I do not think it's a good idea at all for new players and I can't tell you how many people over the years that I've played with both irl and online who are stuck in this sandpit of switching characters. Because what you are doing when you are switching characters is that you are re-learning everything you've already learned again with no deeper development on the fundamentals. Tekken is a well made balanced game, most of the characters are balanced to the point of winning with anyone consistently based on skill is viable (maybe not panda, but pretty much everyone else) so in a fundamentals sense, you are not going to gain much by learning a new character. Your going to relearn all your mix ups and punishes and so forth, but your not going to develop a better understanding of fundamental concepts. You are also going learn a bunch of irrelevant information as well. Like let's say I, as a devil Jin player, learn how to play Nina (a character I find interesting). Competitively, this is a reset. I am going to go back and redo all the work I've done up to this point with devil jin. It is possible that deep in my heart, I am meant to play nina and that was the right choice. But that's a big time investment if that is not the case. Then what often happens, is that this leads to a pattern of character indecision over and over. So I switch to nina, still not right, so now I switch to Drag, but that doesn't feel right, so then Brian. So on and so forth. Relearning what you already know and what is easier to learn is much more comfortable and I understand the temptation to do this, but the debt of knowledge tekken requires to learn 1 character is already so high, that for new players constantly resetting this debt is definitely a bad idea.
Bro this is so true. Everyone I play busting out massive combos but they can't even hit me with the three launchers required to kill me because their fundamentals are trash. Really informative video.
I love this video, this is exactly what I did with tekken 7, instead of farming kills I tried( and im still trying) really hard to nail down the fundamentals but usually no one (but aris) tell you to do this. Keep up the good work bro! very well done.
This is a really good tutorial. I took this approach to the Soul Calibur series. Got a really solid understanding of the fighting system and fundamentals while memorizing moves. It only benefited me once I started fighting online (I had way more "tools" in the tool chest.)
I really like this video a ton, and it really resonates with me when tekken 8 started to click as my first fighting game. Focusing on playing footsies, punishing, and side stepping to see what i can beat while relying on a simple gameplan of low commitment pokes has really helped me a ton, and has made me wanna really commit to the game
That's exactly what I like to hear Kara. I'm glad I gave you some encouragement because at times it can feel really frustrating to know where to go next in terms of gameplay.
Thanks for this. First real tellen for me was 7. Was told by some og's I was good and played "traditional " whatever that means. Decided to start from the barebones in 8. This is very useful imo👊🏾
In defense of learning combos: they help me learn the moveset at a fast rate, to see the properties and gist of 1-200 moves. So you can learn in bulk, and have mobility n strategy with offense
Yes but you would have learned the neutral game faster without the crutch of the combo is my point. Because let's say you know how to do a basic high damaging combo as a new player. When you are first starting out, you really only need to land a few of them to win a round right. And that becomes a self-reinforcing concept where now you are losing in the round and you need to come back, what are you gonna start doing? Your going to start pushing for that combo damage. It will be effective in the short term. However, in the long term, if you as a player need to get wins through neutral game and solid fundamentals, you will develop that skill set faster. Playing VF really brought this home to me because VF is a game of fundamentals and doesn't have this long juggle reset combo game like Tekken. So to get better at VF, i had to start working on my fundamentals and focus on these concepts and i improved not only at VF, but by extension tekken, so much faster than I had prior to playing VF where I was just focused on finding those launchers and mids. I think the combo game in Tekken is OP all things considered so new players are always going to gravitate towards it because it will give wins early on with a lot less study or needing to think about fundamental concepts like frame advantage and position advantage.
There are points in the video where it could have been made more concise and it would cut down the length considerably (there was a fair bit of rambling or points being repeated unnecessarily, which is also something I probably would do as well). Scripting it would probably have helped a lot but overall your main point and the examples shown in particular with side stepping and gaining positional advantage was great!
Only on the first part of the video so far but you hit the nail on the head, I'm 40 hours into tekken and I've never intentionally input a sidestep because I don't understand how that could help me win
This guy basically says the equivalent of "don't learn playing the piano first with one hand, learn both from the first lesson! Because otherwise one day you'll wake up, realize that you need to press keys with your other hand but you can't! Learning something later doesn't work! If you want to learn how to play Moonlight Sonata just open the sheets and start practicing one note at a time!". Only scrubs need wins or dopamine or any boosts to their motivation, "real players" have infinite unwavering motivation to learn the game and had already decided beforehand to put couple of thousand of hours into Tekken no matter what.
There is a point to what he is saying though, But i think you are misconstrueing it a bit in your analogy A better comparison would be to not learn your favorite songs using those vidual synthesizer videos and replicating what you see but to rather focus on learning how to read sheet music which will be harder at first but will be a fundamental skill that will be useful throughout your life as a musician
Love that i found this. one of the first things i practice now in any new fighting game is the movement options and just trying to get comfortable with moving around in the game before i try to learn any combos
Great video! I agree with all of this, because I just experienced it lol. I’m new to Tekken and learned the way the typical videos say to. It worked great, until I hit high orange crossing into red. That’s when that, “I don’t really know what I’m doing” hit. So I picked a new character and started over with a different mentality and approach. It’s a slower progression this time around, but I feel like I’m actually learning something
That's awesome stephen. Great timing too because I do think t8 (so far) is the best tekken since tekken 5. I think what helped pull this game together is that it has a bit more Virtua Fighter influence than the other modern tekkens do, and I think that helps the fundamentals of the game feel more balanced and less spammy than t7.
Tekken 8 pretty freaking dope. I'm stuck in the scrubby-sandtrap of orange ranks though. Trying to figure out what's going on. This video helped me. ....I'm a refugee of MK1.
Hey sir... I just want to say thank you for this video. I don't think you understand what you made here, but it's possibly the best video on RUclips right now. Cheers.
Never seen any of your content before, but I'm subbing just because of this video. THIS is what I keep trying to tell people about fighting games in general and you explained it very nicely.
I love to hear that KDE! Yes, these concepts are very hard to explain to people who don't play fighting games or are newer to them, so I'm very happy to be a resource you can share with other players :-)
So what your saying is your a complex scrub? Scrub is a term we use for people who do not know the core function of tekken we have been using the term since the arcades in 1996😅 sorry to tell you your misinformed
@@thetrue_mishima8374 That's incorrect. A scrub is someone who keeps making excuses for their failures. A low-skilled or inexperienced player is better described with noob.
I bought this game yesterday and decided i wanted to play Reina. I heard that EWGF is a good move so I spent about 2 hours in practice arena just trying to learn it. I'm glad I got recommended this video because i probably would have been stuck in the practice arena for a week or 2 learning it, just to get into a match and not know when to use it lmao. Great video
Watching this has changed how I approached Tekken. I used to be one of those guys who would always look for the B&B off the launcher. My spatial awareness was OK, but it wasn't great. And alot of the time, I'd get wrecked for not checking the low, or getting stepped on after just swinging. What I'm finding is that I'm picking up more wins by not even thinking about combos, and instead just looking for consistency with landing hits.
3 minutes is all it took from me to leave a like👏🏾 I'm an experienced player that spent too much time in Forums, YT and Reddit searching for info about matchups, fundamentals, etc... Tekken guides are good...but it requires the player to be aware of the things they need to research...if the player lacks that awareness, they won't be able to learn many things. Tekken match analysis on the other hand are amazing and really display the depth of the game. For example Peacecrab's analysis of Knee's defense...It really showcases how you should use movement, not the when(like guides do). The best guides I've seen exist on Reddit: Prepping for Tekken 8 And Weekly Anti-Character Discussion
Thank you very much my dude! Yes, we are definitely of the same mind when it comes to match analysis. Match analysis is also my primary study tool as well. it's a much more informative way to understand how the game works than disconnected tutorials on the mechanics alone. Because a tutorial can tell you how a sidestep functions in terms of commands and so forth, but it cannot contextualize how it interacts with the other mechanics of the game, whereas match analysis can give you this information. This is why the korean players have always been pretty protective of their match footage historically ha.
I learn 1 or 2 consistent and good combos that work at all times, then I learn one or two consistent punishes, then learn a couple moves that are safe/plus, maybe one counterhit launcher, THEN I consciously learn side stepping and back dashing to create openings so that I can take most advantage of the openings I do create.
Yeah, basic combos are not that hard to learn. And it completely changes the risk reward of the game if you can’t do them. Why not just throw out random Matterhorns and snake edges if my opponent can’t punish them with anything more than a 2 hit combo?
@jfleminator Exactly this. Not having any combo doesn't scare the opponents and let's you throw out whatever the hell you want knowing you're getting away with murder. Part of getting good at a game is forcing your opponent to respect you or be respected, eating a fat combo teaches the opponent that they can't fuck around.
I was struggling playing Tekken because I didnt really look into what I was playing. There’s no way to improve unless you could understand how it works. There are shit load of vids with crazy combos, crazy comeback and all the fancy stuffs, but I found this vid is the most useful to me! Thanks man! Great Vid !
This tutorial is actually timeless. This can apply to all fighting games in the past, present, as well as the future. This tutorial has application where most other tutorials don’t. They’re all about execution which can create noobs.
Thank you very much eric! That is exactly the idea 😊 where instead of focusing on the surface level I want to help players think about the genre more,fundimentally when it comes to how you get hits, avoid hits, and press your stage and frame advantage, which I think is universal to the genre :-)
Just got the game last week and I haven't even played any matches against people yet, but I've been watching so many streams/videos/tournaments of T8 that I honestly feel like I'm already ahead of the game (or that I at least will be, after all the research put in). Thanks for this video ^^
I... think this might be a bad advice sand trap. I understand the thought process, learning frame data and stepping makes your neutral safer and opens up opportunities for launches, and combos are easy to add once you have that background knowledge, but the fact is sort of inescapable that your advice here is "learn every move in the game in order to beat it with the correct option", and that's why you even made the video in the first place, dissatisfaction with that advice. For stepping your advice breaks down to learning what individual moves can be stepped via training mode or seeing it until you recognize it, except that those characters also have answers for sidestep that you have to account for so you need to learn their their moves and strings with homing, and because it's about moving around a 3D hitbox like you're saying, just learning frame data for it isn't enough, you have to be able to visually recognize the steppable move and step the correct direction as well as anticipate their potential counterplay. Now that you've done all of that homework and successfully executed your sidestep, you... don't get anything off of it because you didn't learn how to do the combo first. Effectively you're teaching these players to think they need the most high level Tekken tools in their arsenal before they're allowed to play the game, and I know this because my friends started to do this with 8, and I did this as well in 7 to the point that I nearly quit. I spent an extensive amount of time trying to figure out my pressure sequences, how to move and make reads, how to defend, familiarizing myself with all of my moves and how to apply them because T7 was my first fighting game I really took seriously and I just couldn't do a combo in the heat of the moment yet, and I did nothing but eat losses for weeks and months without seeing any real improvement. Then I forced myself to practice one near universal combo until I could do it in my sleep, and suddenly the game started making sense, not because I was a god in the neutral but because I could do actual damage to an opponent off of all the hits I was constantly getting from day 1. It wasn't until I had a combo as an actual source of threat that any of that frame data I'd been memorizing got to come into play, since without that danger to back it up no one had to respect my neutral on any level. My suggestion to them and to everyone else watching would be instead of making yourself miserable like I did learning very hard things you won't get to apply for 200 hours, learn your moves and a universal combo, and then learn to blockpunish properly into that combo. Blocking is the correct choice the majority of the time even with chip damage now in the game, while also being orders of magnitude easier than timing a sidestep to the startup frames of an attack you're predicting they'll make, with the added bonus of not causing you to lose constantly while you develop the other aspects of your skillset.
I agree. I've been competing in FGC tournaments for over a decade, and I think the learning path outlined in this video would be very discouraging to the wave of new Tekken 8 players. Not every player is trying to attend the Tekken World Tour. I'd say the vast majority just wants to play online and maybe with friends. They should be learning the inside outs of their main (combos, frame data, etc). That will be enough for most people. If they do want to go deeper and attend tournaments, then they're clearly invested and will likely be less miserable learning the more advanced nuances of Tekken.
I take this vídeo as a sort of "next step" on tutorials. For when you already learned the combos, pokes and the overall moveset and gameplan for your character. Those tools will get you to red ranks easily, then you need to go into more in-depth techniques, which this delivers.
There's a middle ground, you should learn your pokes, a couple punishes and some BnBs, but also be thinking about your neutral game. It doesn't have to be knowing specifically when to sidestep, but you should be looking for opportunities to make a sidestep work. Throw out a poke and see if that gives you an opportunity to create a whiff with a sidestep because your opponent likes to press buttons. Approach aggressively and block. Poke and back step, or back dash if you've got it down. But definitely know how to capitalize on creating whiffs because you want to be working on committing the reactions to muscle memory. Just winning neutral will get you far. But if you can't capitalize well it'll be a real slow burn.
I have to agree with you. I think this video is, while not totally incorrect, developing a "this is how you SHOULD learn" narrative that doesn't work for everybody.
I absolutely agree. His points would make sense for T3 to T5 but you're not getting ANYWHERE in Tekken 6 - T8 without knowing combos. The amount of damage per hit is just too low compared to a single combo, you will need to capitalize at least to some extent on those punishes. There are some good points in this video but I think he is missing the point that people want to have fun with this game, and not being able to do any serious damage is the quickest way to frustration.
Just for the explanation in the first section of the video I’m subscribing. Picked tekken 7 back up and couldn’t find any thorough content about the basic principles of the game. I already know the rest of the video about to be 🔥
I mentioned combo trials which I guess I'm not surprised that you and a few others discounting as much as I can name my reasons or examples... How about movement trials or defense trials then? While most fighting games seem to teach aggressive mechanics then expand into combos even complex ones, but outside of UnclePunch Training Mode 3.0 (latest afaik) for Melee which isn't even official, it seems really rare to teach players how the defense and movement works. Third Strike Online Edition did try with a few parry trials at least and I know unofficial stuff from CrystalCube can get interesting but it is mainly offense. Being able to take over shared replays (+R and Tekken 8) or to share combo recipes (Yatagarasu and Strive) is nice, but having a way to have it built into the game without needing a network connection is where its at.
Oh i love defense trails! VF5 has some of these and they were legit really useful. On your thoughts on combo trials gogeta, I don't disagree with them in principal. I think learning tools of all kinds are important. But I disagree with them being presented in isolation of other skill trials, because that is indirectly emphasizing new players to focus on the combo game first. I think if you had a trial mode, and it ran you through all kinds of really well made neutral game and defensive trials first, and then combo trials at the end, I think that would be a better way to structure things.
I remember learning Korean backlash from your old videos and learning how to play with stick, time flies hope you are doing good and everyone in this video too.
It’s really crazy how you spoke my whole experience in this video hahah. My whole entire Tekken career I’ve sort of mashed and played Hwoarang. I’m learning frame data more and more these days. Especially in street fighter and it’s been a bit of a struggle but this video is really amazing. Thank you for this
I’m starting to try counting the moment I see an input come out. The moment I see a low mixed into the combo I punish and get them to back off. Make them respect my space. Now I just need to learn what to do against wild running moves. Those plus frame traps are pretty strong. Edit: Just realised sidestep usually works on wild running attacks effectively. Who knew. lol.
Oh awesome stuff! Yeah running moves are a bit tricky because based on the situation sometimes you can side walk around them (their tracking is terrible) but if they are too close and you are at a frame disadvantage, sadly you are just gonna have to block them and take the frame disadvantage. The good thing is that there aren't many mix ups that can be done out of a run, so your pretty safe holding block in a lot of situations ha. But if you can get out the sidewalk the run has absolutely no tracking so it's easy to get around.
its going to take longer than i thought to learn, but after watching i played a few matches online during my lunch break i see how it applies. i didn't get to play very much since release but i was way too aggressive and now that i'm playing a bit more conservatively using your tips i'm starting to get better, quicker. when you're playing in real time its much harder to think on the spot but i'll get used to it. thanks for the video
I find it's more of symbiotic relationship, learning combos alone isn't going to get you anywhere, but they are useful for seeing how the character moves in general. Learning fundamentals is more important but being able to use combos to captialise on that whiff punish for example is also important. For absolute fighting game beginners, I think they can also be a fun, general way to learn execution. Possibly this is less of an issue in Tekken as a lot of the hard execution is more timing based than input based. I think people focus on learning combos too much, but i'd also caution against going too far the other way, the reality on both sides is that eventually you will have to learn everything.
what I did in the beginning was mashing then combo then pokes then punishment and then sidstep then other char labs and I still have to learn perfect electric and Korean backdash but the learning processes of Tekken are fun and even if you lose it's not like I lost but what have I lost too and how can I solve this
Different games have a different degree of "how badly do you need a combo to be effective" A lot of anime fighters for example rely heavily on having a decent bnb because the pressure and knockdown parts of the game are more important than neutral
It depends on the game but i think that it also depends on how hard combos are to execute If combos are really difficult its best to ignore them until you ger better when learning combos will become easier
Ive been playing 8 since launch (first tekken game) and I am a great example of "you're learning you're learning and you realize everything you learned sucks"
this video contains all the depth to mechanics that I need to push through the beginner plateau. It really feels like I'm learning 'Why things work', I thank you so much for this video!
I'm happy to find a like minded player like you, I always had the same view on tutorials and how poor most tutorials and tekken players are at mentoring/teaching. I'm only 170 hours in Tekken 7+8 and I'm finna learn the game properly I already scrubbed my way to purple that's more than enough. Time to learn the game for real now I'll definitely lose a lot but it's ok.
Exactly my dude. I am undertaking the same process myself ha. And ever since I have been focusing more on the fundamentals that I discuss in the vid, the process of playing and learning tekken has become much less frustrating because even if I find myself getting caught by some mix up or stray launcher, its much less frustrating than before because I know what I can do to combat this stuff now. Where before it felt like I had no idea how to play the game properly at all ha, and that was after playing the game for years since tag 2.
Thank you so much for this video!! I am a brand new tekken player, but I have been watching tournaments for years, so I kinda knew what some of the fundamentals were, but never saw any teaching on it. This is a really good explanation of how to "Play Tekken" as opposed to how to "Play a Fighting Game". Learned a ton of stuff in this video and I can't wait to start using it in my ranked play.
i was just thinking someone needs to re-do david sirlin's "play to win" street fighter article for the modern age because the kids on the forums don't seem to understand what to even learn to be good. i'll have to watch this later.
That is a great idea! I remember hearing about that book years and years ago. I should give it a read, but from what I understand it is also very fundamentals based, which makes sense since it comes from super turbo --- the most fundamental 2d fighter of all time. I love that game, as insane as it is.
To be fair, there are already a lot of videos covering intermediate/high level concept. So if u spent alot of time calling out on beginner tutorials, then u should explain more why people are likely not searching beyond "how tekken button works", or why people are not doing what it takes to learn properly, how much one will lose at the beginning, how much time it will take, how irrelevant beginner ranks are, how satisfying the progress feels, etc. That being said, the informative side of this video offers a lot of must must must know concepts. Some of them i as a beginner myself didnt know or forgot. My favorite is the emphasis on Side Walks (instead of single side step) to observe self aligning strings. Nice work!!
Yeah im new to Tekken but played tons of 2D, ive been practicing my electrics non stop and relying on basic fundamentals from other games, i really do not get the times you should sidestep and times you shouldn't, also literally any moves are new to me so idk what to duck or not, this was super helpful for teaching the stuff most dont
Same man its my first Tekken but i do play other 3d fighters personally i come from Doa and Soul cal so its not too far off but Doa and Tekkens punishment is so different Doas mostly throw punishment meanwhile Tekken is mostly strike punishment which is so different
This video is longer than the time it look me to learn a basic combo. Knowing what the character's combo looks like and whether it appeals to me thematically and how it feels to execute is also important if I'm going to be playing a character in the long run.
haha good point i agree with him but he also lacks perspective about the mental states of beginners and what they need its a great video for the intended audience but not for beginners as a whole
Yes but you are missing the point of the video entirely. I'm not saying that this video is the quick path to getting wins right away. If you want that, then absolutely what you should do is spend as much time as possible learning max damage combos and then the basic mid or low 50/50 mix ups of your character. This is the style of play you see dominating the lower ranks of tekken. The point I am getting at is that this mentality is a sandpit if you want to continue to improve in the game past the lower or mid ranks, because behind all the flash and rage arts and electrics and hop kicks, tekken is still a game of fundamental 3d combat. The issue with tekken, design wise however, is that it has a very powerful combo system that incentives high risk play for newer players. So it's very easy to get sucked into that sandpit if you aren't aware that it is a sandpit. That's what I'm getting at in the video. If you put the combo game later on in your priority list, and instead start by focusing on learning the fundamentals, as I explain in the vid, your going to have a much more natural growth as a player and be ready to play the game properly when you do end up rising to the higher ranks. Rather than what often happens (and happened to me) where you are relying on big combos and mix ups to get to the higher ranks, but once you get there you just have to go back and relearn the fundamentals of the game anyway ha. Also during the course of this video you could have learned how to sidestep, tech, throw break, and studied the frame data of you jabs and pokes. I think that would be a better use of your time as a newer player rather than worrying about the thematic implications of your character's combo game.
@@TheElectricUnderground I didn't miss the point at all, I simply disagree and I would appreciate it if half your reply wasn't putting words in my mouth. Taking 30~ minutes to learn a basic combo isn't hampering growth at all. Focusing on nothing but combo damage is, sure(nobody is implying otherwise.) But you go on to talk about how you should instead focus on sidestepping. You even poke fun at other people being unable to explain it. Then you...don't explain how to sidestep at all. It's this vague and hard to understand high level mechanic that'll cause you to get hit more often than not but a new player should somehow focus on it? It's something you'll naturally come to learn over a long period of time since defense in tekken is just difficult. Frame data is important, alright. So is being able to damage your opponent after a sidestep or they use a very negative move. In fact half the game is juggling or getting juggled after someone makes a mistake. These things aren't mutually exclusive anyway. I learn a combo, get thrown a lot online. Alright let's look up those throws breaks and be more attentive to them next match. I get demolished by plus frames I've never seen before? I go to the replay feature or practice mode to figure out any counter play. A move looks really linear? I'll try sidestepping and keep it in mind whether it worked and to what side. And none of this hampered by me learning a combo first. Oh that move is really negative or I sidestepped something, I launch and do my little combo, that felt good. I feel like I progressed in a worthwhile manner. It's not about getting cheap and easy wins as you keep trying to imply. And even if it was, so what? This is ultimately a video game, media meant to be enjoyed. I'm not going to Evo, neither are 99.9999% of players or viewers. Currently I'm taking a lot of loses simply because I'm trying to focus on my defense game and seeing what I can sidestep or backdash out of to cause a whiff. And I'm doing this after learning a combo, still having fun. At the end of the day there are casual players that will quit in a month, people that will keep playing or have been playing for thousands of hours yet will never improve, and a tiny subset of people that will take the time out of their real life to learn the game properly over an extended period of time. I think these groups of people are decided long before falling into any sort of sandtrap.
Thank you ! This is the first fighting game tutorial i ever upvoted, because you are the only person that seems to understand what the problem is that new players really have. They don't even know how to play the game, they don't even know what the game is about. They don't know how to use these tools. Because it is not about what basically all tutorials out there teach.
I pretty much completely disagree frame one. TL;DR, Stop attributing things you only learn from "experience" and trial by fire, as "fundamental" Tekken knowledge. The people who are better than you at the game almost unanimously have more experience than you at it. There's no clinical secret path towards improvement that isn't simply harnessing the experience you gain from your matches. You talk about the "Scrub Sandtrap" as if it's something you can fall into by misdirection. When in reality, it's the starting point of all Tekken players. If you want to win against an opponent in this chaotic sandpit, then you need to find a successful strategy that works UNTIL it stops working, after which then you need to level up those tactics. Those scrub tactics WORK precisely at the ranks you are at because people lack the knowledge, and more specifically, the experience to deal with it. You don't get proficient and beating those tactics until experiencing them a lot of times. And as I will say many times: There is no substitute for experience. People at higher ranks will naturally break all throws, duck your high stings, and low parry your canned lows, and it's NOT because they are playing better "fundamental" Tekken. It's because they've seen it before from thousands of scrubs before you. You fail to acknowledge that getting your scrub tactics defended against and defending against them yourself IS LEARNING THE GAME. It's how every pro player got to where they are now. You just think you're doing it "better" because you're deliberately not going for those tactics yourself. A conclusion you would get to naturally if you did use them and eventually got them hard countered. Like what happens when you start climbing ranks. The attacks and tactics used at high level Tekken is a result of parsing out what doesn't work against people with similar experience. THAT is why they are using the moves and strategies they are using, and that doesn't apply at all ranks of the game and all strategies of play. For instance, if someone is using high risk strats, it doesn't make sense to only match them with low reward options. You need to MAKE the opponent's options risky or they flatout aren't risky. That means throwing out a hopkick or big CH option to temper their approach. That is literally the correct answer to this strategy. You don't often see it in pro play, because people aren't using high risk strats at that rank. Go to any stream and watch a high rank player play a low rank. They will often use a single strategy and simply laugh that their opponent can't stop them. Literally laugh as they are spamming grabs or some plus on block move. What they are doing is teaching them the game the same way they were taught. By forcing you to adapt. That's the true way to improve in this game. Experiencing something, and forcing yourself to come up with the answer. I see so many guides out here that like to pretend that there is a "proper" way to learn Tekken that isn't trial by fire. When in reality, (almost) everything there is to know has to come with experience first, which you only get from getting your ass beat by stuff constantly, not by reading or watching guides and not by studying frame data. No amount of reading guides on how to ride a bike will actually teach you how to ride a bike. You need to risk getting in the saddle and the same is true of Tekken. For as accurate and on point your sidestep and frame data sections are, How useful is it for a newbie to know any of it without sound experience of their opponents moves or strategies? Sidestepping for instance without that experience makes you perfect prey for scrub strats. I am on the combos first train. In fact, I'm on it more than anyone else. More so than punishes. More so than movement. More so than anything. Why? Because combos (As well as throw breaks) are just about the ONLY thing in all of Tekken that don't require any bit of experience to become proficient in. Don't pretend that it's something you can get by without having. EVERY Tekken player needs them in order to be successful. If you think about it, the entire game's balance of Risk & Reward is predicated on combos and combos alone. Your reward, a well as your opponent's risk is completely and utterly determined on your combo damage. At the lower ranks, this is a concept that is more important than ever, as your opponent is throwing out ALL kinds of risky moves, but they aren't risky at all if you don't have your combos locked down. There is this fear that all players are going to want to do is go for launches. Well why shouldn't they when they work at those ranks? When they stop working, those launches gradually and naturally stop coming from random hopkicks, and start coming from Counterhits, whiff punishes, and ducked strings. Launchers all the same, and yet the combos you practiced will persist all throughout from the very beginning of your journey. You keep bringing up this concept of "scrubby wins" when a win is a win. You are trying to beat your opponent in a match. How you beat them is intrinsically tied to how they lost to you. In other words, the tactics can and should wildly vary on the opponent. I get you are trying to improve at the game "properly", but you are pretending that "scrubby wins" are only effective at getting "empty calorie" wins and not effective at teaching you "proper" Tekken. Which is only true if you never fight someone that forces you to change those strategies. In other words: only low rank players. When you start climbing and then get enough of your raw rage arts and snake edges blocked and you might start thinking about applying said strategy differently. Again, you'll be forced to adapt. But someone hitting you with a raw rage art for the win isn't a "scrubby win" it's someone exploiting your "scrubby aggression". There is a place for a lot of "scrubby" tactics and that place is: When your opponent doesn't or can't handle it. It's a far better lesson for newbies to realize what their opponents are doing and responding accordingly. Are they passive? Then they are open for mixups. Are they aggro af? Then they are open to CH launches and RA. This is far more useful advice than simply telling people to watch and try to mimic pro level play. Your thesis at the end of the video (And I did watch all of it to be fair) more or less agrees with my sentiments. You compare the unbabunga gorilla to Poindexter. In that, eventually the gorilla strats stop working (Because you gain experience enough to stop them). The only difference is that you think you're learning the game faster or better by NOT using gorilla strats yourself and instead, are just mimicking the pro players. You admit, that you will lose a lot more often this way. The problem with that is, the gorilla gets to higher rank faster and thus adapts much faster to human civilization while you're stuck on bonobo island getting run over by all the cheese on the planet while clinging to "fundamentals" whatever that means. I'm in the blue ranks myself, still climbing. I tell you, those ape strats still work, and they are still being used up here. If you think you're winning by being patient and trying to play "proper" Tekken like the pros. You're in for a rude awakening. You need to answer what your opponent is bringing to the table. Not just mindleslly copy what the pros are doing without thinking about why.
Completely agree. Learning combos getting in there and pressing buttons is a part of the learning process for most people. This hyper analytical approach will work for some people, but calling the right way to learn doesn't make a lot of sense.
I actually agree here. This video serves more as a guide to advanced Tekken rather than how you should approach the game as a complete beginner. Phidx said it best, "don't play high-level Tekken by yourself".
Thanks for this. I knew this was the case, but I needed to see this. I recently entered my first tournament as a Garyu rank, and got absolutely trashed. Didn't win a single round in a double elimination. I knew my opponents were much better than me, and to be honest it was exceptionally discouraging. I thought I was doing pretty good, then considered dropping the game altogether. I'm going to keep going, though, and work more on my fundamentals(such as sidestepping, poking, throw breaking, etc).
I don't even know anymore how many times I saw this video, and oh man, thank you for this. It truly changed my approach and I'm loving every bit of knowledge I'm slowly gaining everyday. Of course I still gets frustrated sometimes while playing online, but I'm committed to learn and get better instead of getting easy wins...I know it will come eventually 🙂 again, thanks for this.
You should write a script or at least bullet points before you record, the video is very repetitive. But it’s good overall and I totally agree with your philosophy and approach. Subbed.
@@artrimiks I’ve seen a couple of his other videos now and he definitely has a problem with length (that SF6 review was very long and not very deep in content). But I think it’s his style. He’s like a radio guy, able to fill airtime with chatter. I will continue to watch his videos, but as background noise while labbing Tekken 8
So happy to hear this. I was an "anti-juggle" player for a long time for this exact purpose, but I got sucked into the feels of winning and lost that mentality. This is great encouragement to get back to it. Get better at the game instead of getting 'strategically lucky' with wins. Thanks for this! Also, thanks for the movement suggestions that I hadn't considered before!
Can you make a more in depth guide on using sidesteps to get to people's vulnerable areas while they're facing the wrong direction? Thanks, solid video!
As a relatively new player to fighting games I must say that combos are genuinely some of the easiest things to learn comparatively (and very fun too). Tekken 8 combos especially have been pretty easy, I got Alisa's within an hour and after 2 days can already get all 11 consistently. The trouble comes when playing online as that is a completely different thing, the punching bag is both moving and hitting back. I'm currently trying to get 2 combos that I can do reliably in a match without thinking, so that my focus can go to more important things like dodging, blocking, or getting the punishes.
This is excellent, far too many people, tutorials, videos...etc think that the biggest barrier to entry in FGs is execution when really its not. No amount of "Modern Controls" or "Special Styles" will make scrubs into experts.
Exactly burning phoenix and all this modernization is often doing is just crushing the depth of the game for the top players. I agree completely because a skilled player who understands these fundamental concepts will continue to beat new players who swing wildly. But with all the reduction in the higher execution skills, this then starts to flatten the game design among the top players. So basically no one is happy. The new players are still getting beaten down and the top players are playing with reduced depth. Rage arts are a perfect example of this. This one button ultra reversal has turned new players into a bunch of desperate gamblers (just look at how many raw rage arts even mid ranked players were throwing) and at the top end now top players have to constantly play around this atomic bomb of a mechanic, which overrides the fundamentals of frame advantage and so forth.
@@TheElectricUnderground Yeah, Rage Arts are wild to me since the last time I picked up Tekken was TTT2 way back when. A one button Ultra is so tempting for a scrub like me and I've gotten a lot of cheap wins off of fellow scrubs with it, literally just reacting to a slow attack but it doesn't really help me against anyone with even a modicum of knowledge of the game.
Cloud805 did a Dbfz tutorial couple years ago and said a line that resonates with this a bit. "Lab your mix, lab your defense then lab your damage" Damage means nothing if you can't get the hit or if you are getting hit.
immediately after watching this i loaded up tekken 8, jumped on my asuka, threw out the fancy combos i was practising, and simply sidestepped four times more than i ever would just to see what happened. the number of times people sailed passed me and i was able to get a real simple 1+2+4 punish on them was staggering
i eventually started encountering people who seemed to catch on to what i was doing. but by then i was so used to it - and my mental stack was so free from worrying about big long combos - that when i started noticing the lows i could start anticipating them, when they started to block too much i could grab them, when they started using homing moves i could block and punish them. un-fucking-real how this adjustment not only got results right away but even when i lose i still feel like im learning
That's awesome to hear Samurai! There's nothing more satisfying than stepping around a desperate hop kick ha. And yes, like you say in your comment, learning to sidestep is not a magic button to start getting you wins right away, because of course there is a lot of counter play to it like homing moves, throws, half homing moves, and just good timing on your opponents part. But you are on the right track now because what is going to happen is that you are going to find methods to counterplay their counterplay, like sidewalking baiting out homing moves and blocking them, and as you develop you are gonna develop a much more solid and reliable (and frankly fun) playstyle. Then the combos will start to come to you much more naturally. I'd also recommend looking into developing your up close jabbing game. That mixed with a strong sidestep game is going to shut down all the spammers in the early ranks because you are able to suffocate out their big swings with your jabs and fuzzy guarding, then one they start trying to poke you back with mids and linear pokes, your sidestep game will be ready. Because sidestepping is at its most powerful when you are up close and baiting out those linear pokes. At a distance it's advantage is harder to capitalize on other than the desperate hop kicks and so forth.
BRING BACK HEIACHI, BRING BACK HEIACHI.
Welcome.
@@adrienpressey7439 "Heiachi is completely DEAD"
@@jimyurripe4029 ITS A SHAME. THAT GUY WAS A COMPLETE BEAST.
As a beginner, using different sources of beginner guides, fundamental videos, etc... This is the most organized and important video in piecing all that info together. Thank you for this.
Yes, using different sources is so important, no doubt about it. Different sources can help piece together information that might be missing. One really important tool to learn though, beyond just tutorials, is match footage and match analysis. I do think so much about how the game plays and how the mechanics fit together can be learned from match footage, if you know what you are looking for. And I hope this video can at least get new players started in understanding what they should be looking for :-)
i was like, i don't remember commenting this. Agreed and nice pic!
i hate watching a begginer guide and its someones stream of unorganized thoughts with no button notations or organizational skills at all but this guy is a breath of fresh air . the bare minimum of a script makes me astonished. goes to show the content creators of tekken 8 are mostly garbage . elec underground keep it up ya earned a sub man
The best advice I ever got:
"Stop learning full combos when you're new to the game, learn your bread and butter starters and counter moves and then focus on learning how to get those off as often as possible, once you do learn how to avoid letting all of your enemies do the same. THEN worry about your damage output and doing combos Chipping an enemy out is still a win"
This video expands on that simple advice so much and My god I wish you were in my life few years ago, let alone a few weeks ago when I picked up tekken to pick up fighting games as a whole again after a damn decade.
Whats the best way to learn defense?
Memorize every single move and string in the game and what they look like and their frame data and hitboxes and followups.
Alternatively, block and then do a jab that will sometimes work@@VarsityAthlete04
This is huge advice, honestly. I haven't played a fighting game without looking up vids or comments talking about combos. Until now, I realized that I was shooting myself in the foot. Now I can do long combos in certain scenarios, but will lose overall due to my lack of fundamentals. So, thanks to your comment and this video, I'm gonna work on my movement and counters. I'll use the simple BnB's from the game itself until I get extremely comfortable. Then I'll move on to longer combos and decent wall combos:)
So thanks man!!!
@@VarsityAthlete04honestly (as a new player myself) probably just this. play super safe and for pokes/punishes and learn the characters movesets along the way. thats pretty much the fundamentals of defense
@@VarsityAthlete04 get your ass beat by a move in a match? (My rule of thumb is if I fall for it more than 3 times in a a match) take that character into the lab/replay system Learn to reliably block/punish the move. Once I can do it 10 times in a row twice with no mess ups. I move onto the next fight and move to Lear.
this is how I've been approaching fighting games I actually like for a good while now, instead of going for combos I slowly learn how to get hit less and getting some small pokes in when they drop their defense then when I'm getting comfortable try stringing in a few more hits then after a longer time maybe try a fancy combo and so on
honestly in some games I don't even reach the point of trying a full combo because I find the mind games of getting around the opponent's defenses while preventing them from beating me more enjoyable(though there is a point where not learning any combos means just hitting a wall because there's no way to fully predict all other players and not beating them fast just gives them more chances to make a comeback)
I mean some ganes do rely more on learning combos than others due to offense and defense working a certain way, example undernight
Even if its barebones as hell, you need some type of bnb that lets you set up your oki or you wont even reach the point where GRD matters
I mean it only takes like a day or even a few hours to learn some BnBs if you have decent enough execution, it takes far longer than that to learn everything else.
Amen to that, for me its way more satisfying whenever I shimmy a move or force someone into a throw loop situation than it is to just wombo combo and do the same shit on repeat lmao
This is exactly how SonicFox learns fighters actually. He focuses on how to land the hit first (movement, neutral, block and whiff punishment first and foremost), and then learns about how to make the most out of those hits (combos). If you can't land hits in the first place, it doesn't matter how impressive your combo is.
Absolutely spitfire! This incremental approach of learning the neutral game took me a long time to develop as a player, but I think it is a stronger long term solution because otherwise you end up developing a lot of bad habits that you have unlearn, which can be much more difficult than learning to play properly in the first place ha.
They tell you to learn your combo because it's absolutely the easiest thing to learn, and you need game experience to learn context for anything else.
I’m just
Yeah playing tekken casually since I was 6 has definitely but I never could get the timing for combos so I just made up my own way to win with panda been working since😂💯
Game experience vs combos for sure because combos aren’t always going to be in the same area usually you have to optimize them for distance
Agree, Tekken 8 is my first Tekken game and I do think it's really important to understand your own character first and what the character can do. Jun Kazama combo challenges took 30 minutes to complete and it's really enjoyable (spent ~1 hour just practicing it) in addition to allowing the player to see the potential of the character. With PhiDX videos and 20 hours in, introduction to frame knowledge + poking + punishment. 30 hours in, using the replay feature to learn the available punish and counter-hit opportunity from ranked matches (sample learning about what the other characters can do). 40 hours in, I started to make adjust on some sample combo to make it natural so my punishment is more deadly when there's a LNC. Just passed 50 hours mark, and note for myself to learn opponent's throw animation, because some 1+2 and 1_2 throw break is hard to differentiate... found it overwhelming to be learnt in a short time. We haven't even go into calculated sidestepping yet. So, focus on the faster ROI knowledge first is good advice. I believe once I know what the other character can do, I will eventually know when to sidestep to punish those moves.
Yes but like I said in the video, you don't want to start off trying to learn to get easy wins because the playstyle you develop will have to be unlearned later on. Because let's say you learn all the beefy combos first, but you understand nothing about the neutral game. Then in terms of risk reward, you are naturally going to start to go for big risk combo starters in your neutral game because you only have to hit 1 or 2 of them to win a round. You see this in lower ranks all the time, where players are constantly throwing launchers and so forth because their opponents are also unskilled in the neutral game. So this playstyle is viable and gets a lot of wins early on. But as you advance as a player, these tendencies become more and more of a liability and then stop working. At this point you've spent potentially hundreds of hours in the game learning how to play the game incorrectly, just so that you could get wins against fellow newbs as soon as possible. This is the point where a lot of people quit playing tekken and even start disliking it. So instead of doing all of that, I think it's much better to start as a new player from a strong neutral game and taking the big damage combos off the table for new players is actually healthy because they then don't use them as a crutch.
i'd say sidestepping and sidewalking is a trap early on because you have no clue what any of the enemy moves are or when they come out or if the player you're playing with is even understanding their own moves, that's why block punishing and whiff punishing is basically the first step into tekken after learning your movelist somewhat, it's only when people start to jab up close and understanding the importance of the quickness and safety of jabs that the game actually evolves into a more full experience, because then you're looking for whiffs and or trying to create whiffs or this general frame advantage to press your advantage and that's when ducking and sidestepping and sidewalking comes into play just as you start to understand spacing and timing of moves and how moves work that the further away you are the easier they are to block and also easier to sidestep/sidewalk so you don't get punished as easily for sidestepping or sidewalking.
and because how many mid attacks there are if someone is simply mashing and not bothering to jab it makes it kinda pointless to sidestep up close because it's practically like they are constantly trying to punish a sidestep without understanding that they are doing that and also not understanding they are giving away free frame advantage and also free punish so why do the extra work that isn't gonna be applicable yet when you can just block and punish.
but it's round about there you also start to take advantage of frametraps and looking for holes in the opponents strings which only comes later because of knowledge and your expanded visual library so you can recognize moves, what move will come out after the next and seeing if it's sidesteppable or duckable so even if the enemy does have frame advantage you can turn it around and from there the mindgames expands.
so it's just several layers of rock paper scissors getting more complex the deeper you go.
so the question i think you should always ask yourself when you see a move the enemy does over and over again is how do i punish that because every move has a flaw.
and the questions are, can i punish it on block, can i attack at all after i block, can i duck to dodge it, can i sidestep it.
now you could do that as early as you want but because mashers are extremely unpredictable it's gonna be a situation you will lose most of the time but you will get far more knowledge doing that. however with that said it's gonna be rough. so just knowing that doing a regular stand block into a very easy block punish is gonna be the answer most of the time and all you have to do is wait out the mashers til you get to opponents who doesn't mash out random strings and attacks.
the problem in this approach is that in tekken 8 there is a lot of decent player starting with yellow-orange rank, so you can't rely on punish and need to learn sidestep, there is no way around it in this game. especially with character like victor or azucena that are very safe if you don't sidestep
@@aldofer8832i'm not saying NO to sidestepping, i'm saying WAIT til you meet players that don't push buttons randomly so you can start to identify their gameplan and the few moves that they do use because they are using a tactic.
a masher will use every attack at random times where it doesn't make sense and trying to identify every flaw for every move straight from the get go is madness.
someone who is intentionally using moves will use a very limited set of moves in a specific order, there isn't gonna be random launchers, there isn't gonna be random whiff punish moves or block punish moves or homing moves that is just randomly thrown out that shouldn't be thrown out for no reason. so at that point you can actually start categorizing the moves they use and label them in the visual library you've established as "ok those are their jabs" and "those are their whiff punishers" and "this is the tactic they use" etc.
Honestly. This is the best comment. It took me 3 weeks of frustration to get to this point.
@@aracystic28 well there are several ways of learning how to play fighting games, this is just the more defensive option for those who block more than just spam buttons, i wrote a little quick thing for those who mash aswell, it's basically "pick a move to mash until you know what it does" which is more about being more intentional with your mashing.
While this video was a great explanation, I actually think this comment outlines a much more streamlined way for a noob to start grasping and understanding the mechanics as a whole.
I watched most of this and I have to say I’m loving this.
I’ve been playing melee for 12 years for example. When I was new I would read posts on the forum, look at guides, grind execution all day and I actually had decent execution.
But it was not until like 4 years later did I truly understand a key part of converting neutral into an advantage state-overshooting vs under shooting approaches. In terms of tekken think of undershooting in melee like keep out and overshooting as whiff punishing the opponents keep out but with movement (this is different from whiff punishing, it’s attacking your opponents space/calling out their retreat. Kind of like Mishima wavedashes…only works if your opponent selects not to press & you read them being on their back foot).
It’s a fundamental part of the game but it’s not written down anywhere.
And once I got that my eyes opened up and as I got better I felt like I could actually “play the game” and play vs anyone. I wasn’t necessarily winning all the time but I was actually “having the conversation” with my opponent in game. That’s the level I think everyone wants to get to. And I only got better since then.
I’m new to tekken and I feel like I’m in tutorial hell. You watch a 30 min - 1.5 hour “beginners guide” and all it really does is factually list off a bunch of things that 1) you probably already know or 2) way too many things that you clearly cannot take in if you are a beginner.
What people want is to learn how to “play the game” not the properties of 47 different attacks.
Even something simple as talking about ranges in tekken to me was eye opening. I heard some players casually mention range 1/range 3 etc and while it’s so simple I never thought about tekken that way.
And it’s just like dude, why is this kind of thing not in guides for BEGINNERS. You have to play the game not just the character. There’s a massive lack when it comes to building game plans and basic strategies unless you’re playing extremely simply characters
EDIT:
And I’m not even a fighting game scrub, I was a competent celestial level strive player. I wasn’t winning tournaments but I was better than most the player base. This game I feel like an ~absolute~ ignoramus lol
I know, people who make guides don't understand that they see the same totally different than a new player. The knowledge you get from years of playing make it seem like the game is really easy at early ranks.
So when I try to look up how to play a character and it's guy with a bad microphone/shitty webcam in an unflattering position listing off every move off with no button prompts on talking about how " oh this move is bad because strings that end in high aren't as good." I'm like FUCK IT WHO CARES ILL FIGURE IT OUT MYSELF. I got red rank on one character, you know how? Just learn to grab, low attack, couple mix ups, and a small combo. That's all I had to do. That's all new players need to know, figure out the nitty gritty punishable stuff later.
I'm on a Tekken journey myself (started last week I think?) and it's nice to read other people's stories. The only fighting game experience I have is Tekken 3 as a kid, but I never got super into it.
I have similar gripes about the tutorials and what annoys me most is when they don't even explain why something is bad or good. For example a lot of them mention Korean Back Dashing and electrics, but none of them explain why I should bother with it.
What has helped me climb instead has been just playing the game and taking it one step at a time. I might find something that works well for a rank or two and when I hit a wall I'll go back to the drawing board or copy my opponent. It's been working for me so far.
A Tekken tutorial sucks, just the usual.
in Tekken the "knowing how to play part" comes after you understand what properties moves CANT have
and why you use the move you use instead of another one
understanding how small moves support the big ones and how movement provokes responses is not something that neatly fits into a tutorial
even if you teach that to beginners and intermediates they wont be able to use it
@@Senumunu but at that point i'd argue it's a pretty simple concept to understand, long ranged moves shouldn't be used up close, the same way when you whiff with a short range character, you're obviously too far, im sick of people busting their asses for tourists when the game lays the groundwork for you, stop trying to learn every single thing at once, you will never retain the information unless you're a veteran player, take it step but step, and people will still complain that fighting games are hard when every fg creator has made hour long videos on how to play the game, developers dumbing down games, giving characters seemingly infinite advantage in games like dbfz or strive because theyre trying to be the best off rip, play the game and learn as you go and stop worrying about advanced mechanics, this fast attack also pops them up for a combos, must be very good for quick engagement and advantage, take it online, if you spam it, then understand basic human psychology, im mashing this same move but it's so good, so why is opponent being able to punish me for it >:(, idk, just doesn't seem to difficult to understand what works and what doesn't because you can see right in your face why what doesn't work, doesn't work
Forget fighting games, this problem of teaching applies to damn near everything. I studied music for decades and realized to late that I was taught the scrub way. Here's an instrument here's your notes now play this big famous song that sounds super hard and impressive. The moment you wanna do something that isn't a sheet of notes you realize you know absolutely nothing about MUSIC. I was taught an instrument. Not music. This video hit me way deeper than I thought a video on Tekken could.
Wow. I've been playing vf for ages and never heard such a clear explanation of the sidestep differences. Thanks
I'm glad you appreciate that my dude! Yes I have been analyzing the sidestep systems of both games really heavily ha, I think it's much more important to understand how the sidestep works at a code level than is typically explained in tutorials.
One of the strongest player of our city used a complete different approach to the game.
He on purpose never side stepped.
His approach was playing a linear tekken based on wiffs and strong safe moves to control the round basing his game on very solid foundamentals like blocking lows and frame data.
Also, he ALWAYS took the most broken character on the chapter he was playing. For example Feng Wei in Tekken 5 or Lars in Tekken 6.
His game plan was, mostly, pittbulling the opponent with the broken and safe moves of the character (Feng Wei's b4, df1, ss3, b1ch for example) forcing the game in oppressive sets where he could control you just with very few options.
Combo wise is more important not to drop them instead of maximize the damage.
Great video btw
Also, shout out to you for citing VF so much. VF 4 singlehandedly taught me fighting games on a deeper level. Still to this day, there hasn't been a tutorial as good as VF 4 and VF 4 Evo.
I'm really happy to hear from another VF fan! VF is my favorite fighting game series and I think tekken players can learn so much more about how tekken works by studying virtua fighter ironically ha. Since tekken shares a similiar foundation that is taken from VF, but has a lot more noise that is distracting. So by learning the heart of VF, you also learn the heart of Tekken but without as much distraction of stuff like electrics and giant juggle combos.
@@TheElectricUndergroundit’s the original. Hopefully sega makes a new one very soon and Nintendo can leave it alone.
7@@M3TALG0DS
Vf Evo. Definitively made me a better player in fighting games! Slowing down, studying, pacing, timing, motion and movement. Had T7 and always felt its was just about hitting the flashy rage art for a cool finish.
good video. this is actually a concept from educational psychology called the depths of knowledge; its about learning how to learn! the first depth DOK1 is "recall/reproduction": who does the move? what does it do? where do i use it? when is appropriate to use it? DOK2 is "basic application": how/why was this executed? how does it work, and why? DOK3 is "strategy": how can you leverage this understanding, and why? what is the resultant cause and effect? what is the reason things work in certain contexts, and what is the end result? the final depth is DOK4, "extended thinking": what is the aggregate impact of the aforementioned? what are its influences? what are the resultant relationships? what would/could happen if...?
might be easier to think about these different stages of thought like ascending a staircase where you must have your foot firmly planted on a lower step before rising to the next. the issue described in the intro is that people commonly attempt to imitate higher level results (DOK3 or 4) without grasping any other facet of the decisionmaking that accompanies the greater depth of knowledge that theyre mimicking. in education, you cant skip steps.
its horribly inefficient and oftentimes crippling to attempt to understand a complex subject by *starting at the end* and trying to reverse-engineer it. to learn anything abstract, its much wiser to build up to it - methodically - because all the higher steps rest upon the lower ones.
This is such an underrated comment. By nature I think humans sort of understand this, but it's not always clear I'm screenshotting this because I love knowing how to work optimally. Thank you!
That's one of the many models for the phenomena of learning. I would say "where do I use it?" does not belong on this first level, but on DOK2. One might also call this a "rule" in the intellectual skill outcome of learning.
Intellectual skills have four essential levels:
1. Discriminations (hey that kick move was different from the last kick move)
2. Concrete concepts (that kick move is called this; that kick move has -8 on block)
3. Defined concepts (a power crush is a move that keeps its active frames going through any strike that would normally stagger (maybe a mediocre definition, I'm still new lol))
4. Rules (low moves tend to take the longest to come out compared to mids or highs)
Rules building upon prerequisite learning of other rules are called higher-order rules, which can of course recurse to get more abstract. Like if you used that rule about low moves combined with other rules to make a further generalization.
I ran into this issue a couple of days ago. I could do almost everything under the sun, but after getting dunked on by another player I realized my knowledge on core fundamentals was completely absent. I was trying to go for things that would net me a win without knowing HOW I could even obtain it. Nothing really worked on my opponent and they kind of just watched me embarrassingly flail about stupidly and fail at nearly all my attempts to the point that I just gave up and let them have the final round of the final set. I didn’t rage quit per se; my controller died, but I felt so defeated that I just forfeited anyway and let the 60 second timer tick down since I felt I didn’t deserve to win. As painful as those matches were, I appreciate that player for humiliating me enough to make me go back to my roots and return to the basics that will inevitably carry me further. I’m now doing everything I can to learn about vanilla neutral gameplay instead of trying to play around it. Even if I lose, my focus is only on getting better fundamentally and I feel much more rewarded when I’m able to best an opponent without using all the flashy cheese that most people rely on at lower level play.
Exactly Professor, I went through the same experience myself as I pointed out in the vid during tekken 7 ha. This moment as a fighting game player is painful, but I completely agree that it is a healthy step towards understanding that just getting low rank wins is not actually teaching you anything, and that it's much more important to win in a way that is fundamentally sound so you can build towards higher calibur gameplay in the future. You don't want your entire approach to the game to be a house of cards that comes crashing down the moment your opponent picks up on your gameplan. A really solid style of play will be dangerous, even when they fully understand what you are trying to do.
This is a great mentality. Getting better at tekken is a long and incremental process. You'll feel good looking back truly feeling the progress you've made. Best of luck dude, it made me happy to see someone respond to crushing loss like this
As someone just getting into tekken after playing 2D fighters, and as someone learning Lili, thank you for that sidestepping breakdown. I’d heard that it was one of her strengths but could never figure out how to capitalize on it. This should be super helpful.
Finally someone who answers the real questions about Tekken and how it is to be understood. You are the True Undergound my dude, well made video and looking forward to the next one.
It has many flaws, from my experience teaching, in theory this is very refined, but in practice, a lot of people quit cus they dont feel like they are having fun while learning. The method I use does both and it shows!
@@IANDURBECK who are you what are you talking about
Thank you very much JP. Yes, these are question that I have had about how to play the game for years and never really found that solid of an answer for how the game works fundamentally, so I actually ended up studying it and trying to reverse engineer how the mechanics work myself ha.
I've been watching Tekken 8 streams since release and finally decided to buy it 2 days ago on PC and youtube recommended this video today.
the scrub sandtrap is quite similar to how people start doing cheese builds in Starcraft before even being able to hit proper macro timings and builds. fundamentals are important if people actually want to get better at what they do. very appreciate this video, great stuff.
17:48 I literally never knew this! This is such a good tutorial more games need stuff like this. I’m also teaching people fighting games at my school, and this video has inspired me to teach in a radically different way. Thank you!
This is not a beginner’s video. This is an intermediate player looking to become an advanced player guide. Beginner’s should absolutely start with the basic combos, jump in matches and play. They will naturally gain basic understanding of the things mentioned. After this stage is where the player will decide whether they want to know more or not based on their interest
depends on what you mean by beginner, if you consider a blue rank and below player beginner then sure, but as you reach green and yellow ranks those are also kinda beginners since they have no fundamental knowledge. So i think this video is more towards them.
By all means when you start off in fgc games go all out an spam your way to understand atleast the basics. For you paul deathfist spam and law db+4 spam is good enough and know when to do those.
I think I agree! This wouldn’t be the very first vid I’d tell someone to watch but after like a week or month of play (depending on player goals/previous fighting exp/etc) this info could be so powerful. Wish I’d watched this before right now lol!
I disagree. I've tought 20 or so players fighting games at various levels and I think assuming players will pick up fundamentals on their own is a big reason retention is so low for fighting gawithna begginers interest won't be peaked if they just learn combos and try to giess their way into fundamentals. I find teaching players about they "WHY" of fighting games gets them a lot further and keeps their attention longer than teaching them the "WHAT" of fighting games. Landing a combo will get stale once you run into obstacles.
I instead teach players how to properly punish players and how to feel like they're actually making real decisions. You'd be surprised to see how much more excited newbies get when they've consistently controlled their opponent via neutral, basic mix, and regular punishment than they do when they hkt somebody with a random launcher. I think a fundamentals first game plan is the best way to get players started.
Great video, I have started to main Jack 8 and have been watching Rooflemongers guides which do focus on 10 fundamental moves to master rather than combos. As a street fighter player I do tend to think in 2d and need to take your position and spacing advice into my gameplay.
Arslan Ash just posted a real good one on Azucena. He went over what tools he likes, and when he uses them, and at the end mentioned literally one combo with 2 enders depending on distance to wall.
Yes, the way the spacing game works in 2d and 3d are pretty different from each other, so I'm really glad this video can help you understand this concept. Because in a 3d fighter, long range linear pokes can easily be stepped around, whereas in a 2d fighter they cannot. So 3d games have this extra dimension of tracking on all the frame data of the moves that does not exist in 2d games. So in street fighter, the basis of you spacing is your poke, whereas in a 3d fighter the basis of your spacing is your jab/throw :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground I love this way of putting it.
Very informative, I often get frustrated with my tendency in fighting games to just zero in on combos, its hard to get out of that habit.
It is Glizz, I've been there myself. In street fighter 4, pretty much 60% of my practice time was just combo practice. It's also very self reinforcing because if you can land big damage combos with some basic setups, that skill will take a good deal out of the beginner ranks. But then once you start to enter the more advanced ranks, the rest of your game will suddenly feel under developed. I def understand that because I've been there myself many times ha.
Lot of concepts I didn't even think of as a beginner, this video expanded my mind a lot! Keeping the opponent under your frame barrage and allowing the damage to come naturally rather than playing the back and fourth mid trading game is a good lesson. Amazing video, I usually never leave comments but I truly do hope you make another like this about Tekken it's very interesting to listen to you talk and hear your conviction!:)
Thank you very much ceeka! I really do appreciate the kind comment and yes, I will make some more tekken vids in the future :-)
Thanks for sharing. Reminds me of this guy on the Tekken subreddit who climbed all the way to red ranks with Alisa back in tekken 7, by learning all of his gimmick bs and cycling through each move until he found the one that the opponent didn't know. Then once he reached a rank where everyone is good enough that they know all his knowledge checks, he asked how to counter that, as if fundamentals was another gimmick that he didn't know about. Not sure if that guy ever got enlightened... Some characters just doom their users to the sandpit, haha.
Unpopular opinion: this is actually the way to make people not fall in love with the game. Hear me out. This has been my formula and it's been working 100% with my friends. They all are invested in Tekken now.
Here's the formula. I teach them all the bullshxt, cheese, cheap flowcharts etc. Why? My logic is that getting good at this game takes a decade at least. It's a long haul. Most people don't have the long term commitment and probably think "why would I commit to that?" So to sustain long haul development I give them the tools that bring fast enjoyment and a measure of success. My friend was not interested in Tekken at all because he saw it as too convoluted and hard. I taught him cheese and frame traps with Bryan. Snake edge etc. he started actually beating scrubs in ranked. He started enjoying the game so much that he committed more time to it. Then he hit a wall. Cheese stopped working. But he had enjoyed the game enough to actually want to take the next step and learn fundamentals.
This is the formula I think that sustains players for the long haul. Invest in their enjoyment first! Teach the cheap scrub killer tricks. Then allow them to unlearn and progress at their own pace.
This was my.progression as well. Now I'mma semi decent player and won my first University tournament not long ago. Been playing like 3 years.
I agree with you. This is also my approach when getting my friends have a go with the game. Combos, cheese, stuff that they'd most likely find fun, enough for them to invest more time in the game. This was what JimmyJ (top player) meant with "BNBs and then expand" at 4:00.
I would disagree with u. Bcz yes ur right it takes long but 10 years is too much. My cousin started in tekken 7 around 2 to max 3 years ago. He has now made himself capable of the local scene and winning tourneys and shit.
And we are pakistanis so he has faced some PLAYERs, like giants of tekken. (he has played friendly sets with arsalan and tourney set with atif butt).
And he learned the game this way.
OFC for casual players yh just spam combos, but the video is about learning tekken. So learning tekken requires commitment and a gameplan like all games require, it would tkae you 1 - 2 years to get good at valo from scratch id say the same about tekken.
I just started my 1 - 2 years jounrney with tekken 8 like a week ago, assuming i stick through it ill come back and tell u pplz lol
Interesting take. I had a similar story with getting a friend playing Counter Strike Global Offensive. He couldn't get into the game because of the accuracy mechanic. In CS, your shots miss when you move or when you hold fire for too long.
But Valve introduced a broken cheap and very accurate handgun: the R8. He started using it, getting easy kills and had fun. Eventually, Valve heavily nerf the gun but my friend had time learning the mechanic and sticked to the game to this day.
@@fireitup3674 I'm not saying this approach works for everyone. But you have to remember the average person doesn't want to enter tourneys! They don't want to be an elite player. They just want to be good enough to have fun in ranked and make slow progression without losing interest. And in those cases I feel like my approach is most appropriate and yields the most results. Everyone isn't a gaming savant. They don't want to jump in head first and spend every day getting better so that in 3 years they are tourney level. They want to just be decent.
The bottom line of this video is how to become better at the game and other 3d fighter's in the most effective way over a period of time. How much you love a game etc varies from person to person and their personality. Your logic of people becoming good taking "at least a decade " is debunked by so many high level players that are winning tournaments in T7 and getting top 8 when it was their first Tekken. Same with MK and SF. You know why these players are so hood so quickly?....time invested and effort put in. With anything in life, if you want to become great, you MUST invest the time and effort. The more you put in upfront, the faster you will evolve if you're training properly. You're speaking on behalf of people who don't want to play seriously. This video is not for them, hence him giving advice for the long haul and your own logic of 10 yrs+. If someone only wants to play casually, that's fine. They just need to understand that they will always be at the bottom of the barrel and shouldn't be frustrated at getting stomped by players who put in more time. The problem is when those casual players get pissed for losing so much, but also sat they don't have time to learn etc....well tough shit. That's life. I've been playing since Tekken 1and have LOTS of friends who played over the years. The vast majority are just like your friends who only want to learn a little bit to be decent but a few few were equally as dedicated as me and we were in the lab for hours in each game to become our absolute best as time permitted. At the end of the day we all have 24 hrs in a day and we Choose how we spend it. If something Is important enough to you, you'll make it happen. If it's not, you won't. If you want it bad enough, then put in the time. If not, then be realistic, accept your rank on the totem pole and move accordingly.
I haven't been playing Tekken with any kind of seriousness since Tekken 2, which had no side stepping barring a few specific moves of a few specific characters, so this is incredibly helpful fundamental teaching. Like you said, most guides completely side step that aspect.
Glad to help my friend! Yes tekken 2 was such a linear game ha, it also didn t have Korean backdash either! The series basically didn't come together until tekken 3, which is one of my favs despite being so crazy
this video is genuinely doing a good job at explaining the nuance of what i need to look to achieve with a sidestep. I have known for a long time that my missing factor is sidestepping. it is quite a punishing technique to try learn as I always felt i was getting hit on anything i tried to sidestep. the breakdown is doing a great job explaining things
that sidestep suggestion of the video oh my god it's like finding the one piece LITERALLY this explanation is so good
FGs are always funny when talking about new players. If they come from a FPS, for example, the first thing they do on Valorant or CS2 is to get in training mode or deathmatch and start to test guns, characters and improve their aiming. Good aim plus some map knowledge can lead you to a good gameplay, but doesn't mean they are good, just means they have enough tools for winning a bunch of games until they reach some elo that needs more knowledge.
In FGs, we use to spend more time learning, labing, discussing and watching VODs/replays to learn the game than actually playing the game.
Just a week ago I started playing SF6 ranked matches. I still bronze, I still new to the game since I bought it a month ago, but man there were some Kens and Cammys that could do a full 20 hit random combo on me and I was like "What?", lol, we are bronze, and I checked them almost everytime walking foward or back with my sweep (I am a Jamie player, need to drink). I wouldn't be concerned if bronze to gold players were more focused on learning spacing, defense, anti-airing and punishes, but, as we see, they are really too focused to win as soon as they touch the game.
It's actually crazy just how far fundamentals can carry you in a fighting game. Like you can know how to do amazing fancy powerful combos but it's useless unless you know the core fundamentals of the game itself. Combos are definitely of a 'end game' type of thing to learn imo
that is so true astjuly ha. I think part of that comes from fighting games being more mechanically complex than FPS (typically) so new players are completely at a loss as to what to do or how to start playing. I think this is why new fighting game players, no matter what game you want to play, should be forced to spend a new months playing Street Fighter 2 and Virtua Fighter 5. That way they can get a more solid understanding of how fundamentals work before digging to much into game specific mechanics lol. I'm half joking about this, but I do agree that "labbing" is really over-rated and players should get started just trying to grasp the fundamentals of the combat system, before they get too hung up on combos and advanced mechanics. Like a lot of tekken players know how to do the max damage combos, but still don't know how to tech a knockdown.
The reason we used to spend more time in lab than fighting people is because matchmaking used to be difficult and just finding someone to play on your own was difficult too. Training mode was the only thing you had that didn't require waiting.
FGC is so cool, they gatekeep you this much
@@TheElectricUnderground Honestly just bought tekken 8 today, first fighting game ever, all these videos and tutorials is too much for me. Is it possible to just get good by playing the game instead of having to study it? I just want to enjoy fighting people but I'm also extremely competitive - i'd rather learn through actually playing
Thanks a lot for your thoughts! Ever since I started learning the game (I'm a total Tekken noob), I kind of fealt something was off.
The movement in Tekken 8 feels very sluggish, so I didn't put a lot of effort into learning it, but now I believe that I'm making a huge mistake.
Yes the linear movement of tekken 8 is fairly nerded (though devil jin is still pretty fast) but the lateral movement had been buffed from tekken 7 and the big swinging pokes have more whiff lag, so it makes the neutral more jab and throw focused like VF, which I am enjoying a lot 😊
I’ve been consuming a lot of T8 content and this is a masterclass. Thanks for sharing.
I really want to say thanks for this video. Most of my experience playing fighting games is playing them offline by myself, and with Tekken 8, especially with the release of Lidia, I told myself I'd get into playing online more. I thought I was doing alright until I came across a Lars on a 57 win streak that I simply couldn't do anything against, I was lucky to get the occasional jab in. It just crushed my motivation to play. I haven't touched the game for a week because nothing I could find felt like it gave me an actual pathway to addressing the issues with my play style. Your video is the first that actually got me feeling like there was a concrete way to improve.
Earning your big heavy hits is a term I've never heard before and I think that's an amazing way to put it. This video was super helpful!
I can see how most tutorials teach a strong offense, seeing as it just teaches people how to get easy wins. But learning to defend is so important, and it's something that's so easy to sleep on, but it's so crucial to like, truly leveling up
I'm glad you enjoy my turn of phrase Dizzy! Yes, I think most tutorial content is very offensive oriented because, just like you say, offense earns you wins early on --- which is what most new players are hungry for. But once you get out of the early phases and start facing off with players who know defense and how to play fundamentally, you'll find your entire style of play has been built on a house of sand ha. I know I definitely had that experience in tekken 7 and I had to re-evalutate my approach to the game in order to advance into the higher ranks.
Started playing Tekken 8 couple of days ago, but didn't know really what is the right way to go about it, so have been just watching couple of youtubers here and there with their "For Beginners" videos.
But out of all those, your video goes into detail the the most needed mindset and philosophy needed for it.
Thank you for this, and just subscribed after watching.
I've noticed some big improvements in my play recently and I think I maybe have 2 pieces of decent beginner to beginner advice for others:
1. Stop caring about your rank. Not just telling yourself you don't care. Not just accepting you'll lose sometimes. I mean get to the point where you see yourself lose 800 points or drop back down a rank and go "eh whatever I just wanna play good matches". I have no advice for how to do this; it just kinda clicked for me the other day.
2. Check your opponent. Don't even try to kill them. You may even give away the match. Doesn't matter. Check them with jabs/dick jabs/df1, then just block and see how they respond. Force them into crouch and just see what they go for. Think about why they do what they do, why it might hurt you, how to circumvent their habits. I've found it really surprising how intuitive this game can be when you're not running on autopilot trying to score an easy win with a game plan.
Do understand your frame data, tho. Theory is still a part of the equation and you just won't get far without it.
I was stuck in Eliminator rank and had a bad losing streak night and it took me back down to Vanquisher. Rage quit.
Went upstairs sat down on my couch with my cat and watched this video. Afterwards I got a huge boost of perseverance and decided to try it out. One three hour session later I made it to Garyu. I couldn't believe it.
This was the best guide on how to learn Tekken I’ve come across. Will link this to every new player who needs guidance.
really good stuff. as a BJJ coach learning Tekken, it's the exact same thing where its so easy to learn backwards and end up in a massive plateau!
As someone new to the series, and 3D in general, it is insane how many people just throw out random unsafe mixup strings and yolo launchers, and the insane amount of how much work it has been to learn how to deal with it. It's absolutely no surprise to me so many people get stuck in Garyu.
The side stepping stuff is really insightful, though. I've been having trouble with the tracking, so these nuances and sidewalking might be the solution there 8)
Great philosophy in general with this video. Not enough people appreciate what makes a fighter work. Thanks a bunch for making this.
One thing that makes learning way more annoying is that sets are limited to 2 out of 3. Makes enough sense in ranked, to at least make farming points harder, but having it be limited in quick match is ridiculous to me. You play 2-3 matches (or 1 if they leave), which as a new player is barely enough to start forming a picture of what your opponent is doing, and then bam you're forced to wait again so you can accidentally say yes to a wifi player playing a different character.
Learning would be way easier, and fun for that matter, if they just allowed people to rematch without a limit in quick matches.
Yeah, it certainly doesn't help. If you start picking up on someone's gimmick they won't rematch either most of the time. Or you finally get it after 2 matches, even practice it a little in replay, then you never see it again until you've forgotten about it because a lot of people are just throwing out a ton of random stuff from their arsenal. @@AirLancer
Hi Ushi! I'm glad my analysis of the sidestepping system was helpful. How i came across this info was basically I got really fed up with the lack of information on how the sidestepping system of the game works, and so spent weeks just researching and testing out how to sidestep consistently in real matches in a way that doesn't feel niche or risky. I remember after figuring this out instantly enjoying my online tekken matches much much more ha. Now more getting caught by stupid hop kick setups (for the most part lol).
That's awesome. All I hear from most places is that it's broken and not worth it / a meme. Which I was starting to believethat too because I didn't understand how things were tracking. But it's kind of like a tool similar mixup options; just need to use it on a read you might have. But I've been able to sidestep dodge into many launches now, so getting the hang of it >:D Definitely makes the game more enjoyable. @@TheElectricUnderground
This video is exactly what I was looking for. I would ask my friends (who have been playing fighting games for years) how do you know which combos work together, how do you know when to duck or back step, are frames important,etc. and they’ll give me some bs answer like “it’ll come with playing the game.” Which is true! But I was wanting to know fundamentals. And when I came to RUclips, I was met with basically combo guides. Which is fine, but if I don’t know when to use said combo, feels like I’m still at square one. Great video!
I think usually that is because a lot of people don’t really know how they learned or don’t remember
And that they can’t really explain the things they have learned to grasp on a more abstract level
Very good video, and I have a little story that developed my mindset of "fundamentals first, flashy combos later": Back when I used to play Melee, I mained Dr. Mario, not the best character I know, but I learned a lot from using him over the years. Because he's a very punish-heavy character, I had to learn my fundamentals, in particular my spacing, pokes (jab, ftilt, uair), and analyzing what my opponents are doing in order to find an opening and go for a big punish, usually chain-grabs. Even when I tried out top tier characters I wouldn't go for the flashy stuff cause of how unsafe they are. Thank you for explaining that fundamentals are key.
That's awesome nightelf! Yes, if you are playing more fundamentally based characters, like Doc in melee, the concepts end up getting learned more quickly and are ironically more transferable between games. For example, my big break through on a lot of these ideas did not occur in tekken, it actually happened in VF. But after learning all this stuff in VF and improving at the game, I found that when I returned to tekken, my understanding of this series had also increased massively. So i got the fundamentals down from VF and then had already learned how to wavedash and throw electrics from playing tekken 7 and tag 2 ha.
good video, but i think it applies to a minority of ppl; the ones with previous experience in other fighting games and VERY patient people. someone playing t8 as his first fighting game might not be able to endure the loss streaks while trying to master positioning and frame traps. its hugely complicated and requires time and accepting not having a good time for a long while and that will filter the player base more than the skill plateau you mentioned in the video.
you also discourage switching character but i think you're wrong, it is the best way to improve character knowledge in a non-tedious way at the beginning of the learning process.
my point is, players absolutely need to incorporate the concepts like position awareness and frame data but depending on their personality, they will do it as effectively and less tediously while having fun
In a sense my video might be aimed at a minority of players, the players who want a strong neutral game and to understand the game at a deeper level than just the surface elements of doing launchers, combos, and rage arts, and that's fine with me. I really mean that. My channel is a bit more niche to begin with ha, so if most tekken players don't follow the style I recommend that's perfectly fine with me. Some people play tekken for the story mode and stuff like that, so if that's what your into then just relying on big risk mix ups and so forth is perfectly fine. Not all ideas are meant for mass consumption. On the point of switching characters, we're going to disagree here because I do not think it's a good idea at all for new players and I can't tell you how many people over the years that I've played with both irl and online who are stuck in this sandpit of switching characters. Because what you are doing when you are switching characters is that you are re-learning everything you've already learned again with no deeper development on the fundamentals. Tekken is a well made balanced game, most of the characters are balanced to the point of winning with anyone consistently based on skill is viable (maybe not panda, but pretty much everyone else) so in a fundamentals sense, you are not going to gain much by learning a new character. Your going to relearn all your mix ups and punishes and so forth, but your not going to develop a better understanding of fundamental concepts. You are also going learn a bunch of irrelevant information as well. Like let's say I, as a devil Jin player, learn how to play Nina (a character I find interesting). Competitively, this is a reset. I am going to go back and redo all the work I've done up to this point with devil jin. It is possible that deep in my heart, I am meant to play nina and that was the right choice. But that's a big time investment if that is not the case. Then what often happens, is that this leads to a pattern of character indecision over and over. So I switch to nina, still not right, so now I switch to Drag, but that doesn't feel right, so then Brian. So on and so forth. Relearning what you already know and what is easier to learn is much more comfortable and I understand the temptation to do this, but the debt of knowledge tekken requires to learn 1 character is already so high, that for new players constantly resetting this debt is definitely a bad idea.
@@TheElectricUnderground What about Kuma? lol
Bro this is so true. Everyone I play busting out massive combos but they can't even hit me with the three launchers required to kill me because their fundamentals are trash. Really informative video.
I love this video, this is exactly what I did with tekken 7, instead of farming kills I tried( and im still trying) really hard to nail down the fundamentals but usually no one (but aris) tell you to do this.
Keep up the good work bro! very well done.
This is a really good tutorial. I took this approach to the Soul Calibur series. Got a really solid understanding of the fighting system and fundamentals while memorizing moves. It only benefited me once I started fighting online (I had way more "tools" in the tool chest.)
I really like this video a ton, and it really resonates with me when tekken 8 started to click as my first fighting game.
Focusing on playing footsies, punishing, and side stepping to see what i can beat while relying on a simple gameplan of low commitment pokes has really helped me a ton, and has made me wanna really commit to the game
You made me feel alil better about myself and gave some wonderful pointers. I can’t wait to get to T8 today🙏🏿
That's exactly what I like to hear Kara. I'm glad I gave you some encouragement because at times it can feel really frustrating to know where to go next in terms of gameplay.
Thanks for this. First real tellen for me was 7. Was told by some og's I was good and played "traditional " whatever that means. Decided to start from the barebones in 8. This is very useful imo👊🏾
In defense of learning combos: they help me learn the moveset at a fast rate, to see the properties and gist of 1-200 moves.
So you can learn in bulk, and have mobility n strategy with offense
Yes but you would have learned the neutral game faster without the crutch of the combo is my point. Because let's say you know how to do a basic high damaging combo as a new player. When you are first starting out, you really only need to land a few of them to win a round right. And that becomes a self-reinforcing concept where now you are losing in the round and you need to come back, what are you gonna start doing? Your going to start pushing for that combo damage. It will be effective in the short term. However, in the long term, if you as a player need to get wins through neutral game and solid fundamentals, you will develop that skill set faster. Playing VF really brought this home to me because VF is a game of fundamentals and doesn't have this long juggle reset combo game like Tekken. So to get better at VF, i had to start working on my fundamentals and focus on these concepts and i improved not only at VF, but by extension tekken, so much faster than I had prior to playing VF where I was just focused on finding those launchers and mids. I think the combo game in Tekken is OP all things considered so new players are always going to gravitate towards it because it will give wins early on with a lot less study or needing to think about fundamental concepts like frame advantage and position advantage.
Came back to this video to say I hit my first sidestep launch punish last night and it felt amazing ^^
There are points in the video where it could have been made more concise and it would cut down the length considerably (there was a fair bit of rambling or points being repeated unnecessarily, which is also something I probably would do as well).
Scripting it would probably have helped a lot but overall your main point and the examples shown in particular with side stepping and gaining positional advantage was great!
Indeed. Bit of a shame since he makes some great points but he keeps going in circles too often.
Only on the first part of the video so far but you hit the nail on the head, I'm 40 hours into tekken and I've never intentionally input a sidestep because I don't understand how that could help me win
This guy basically says the equivalent of "don't learn playing the piano first with one hand, learn both from the first lesson! Because otherwise one day you'll wake up, realize that you need to press keys with your other hand but you can't! Learning something later doesn't work! If you want to learn how to play Moonlight Sonata just open the sheets and start practicing one note at a time!". Only scrubs need wins or dopamine or any boosts to their motivation, "real players" have infinite unwavering motivation to learn the game and had already decided beforehand to put couple of thousand of hours into Tekken no matter what.
There is a point to what he is saying though,
But i think you are misconstrueing it a bit in your analogy
A better comparison would be to not learn your favorite songs using those vidual synthesizer videos and replicating what you see but to rather focus on learning how to read sheet music which will be harder at first but will be a fundamental skill that will be useful throughout your life as a musician
Love that i found this. one of the first things i practice now in any new fighting game is the movement options and just trying to get comfortable with moving around in the game before i try to learn any combos
This is the first tutorial video that was actually helpful and informative and there’s so much of it! Thank you
Great video! I agree with all of this, because I just experienced it lol. I’m new to Tekken and learned the way the typical videos say to. It worked great, until I hit high orange crossing into red. That’s when that, “I don’t really know what I’m doing” hit. So I picked a new character and started over with a different mentality and approach. It’s a slower progression this time around, but I feel like I’m actually learning something
38 and haven't bought a Tekken since Tag Tournament; this got me.
That's awesome stephen. Great timing too because I do think t8 (so far) is the best tekken since tekken 5. I think what helped pull this game together is that it has a bit more Virtua Fighter influence than the other modern tekkens do, and I think that helps the fundamentals of the game feel more balanced and less spammy than t7.
Tag tournament is the greatest Tekken of all time
Wild. Same, 38... first Tekken owned was TTT. Love Tekken 8
Tekken 8 pretty freaking dope. I'm stuck in the scrubby-sandtrap of orange ranks though. Trying to figure out what's going on. This video helped me.
....I'm a refugee of MK1.
Hey sir... I just want to say thank you for this video. I don't think you understand what you made here, but it's possibly the best video on RUclips right now. Cheers.
Never seen any of your content before, but I'm subbing just because of this video. THIS is what I keep trying to tell people about fighting games in general and you explained it very nicely.
I love to hear that KDE! Yes, these concepts are very hard to explain to people who don't play fighting games or are newer to them, so I'm very happy to be a resource you can share with other players :-)
New to Tekken as a whole and after everything I’ve scoured to improve this is, imo, the definitive best video hands down.
The term scrub does NOT mean low-skill player. Scrub describes attitude
So what your saying is your a complex scrub? Scrub is a term we use for people who do not know the core function of tekken we have been using the term since the arcades in 1996😅 sorry to tell you your misinformed
@@thetrue_mishima8374 That's incorrect. A scrub is someone who keeps making excuses for their failures. A low-skilled or inexperienced player is better described with noob.
I bought this game yesterday and decided i wanted to play Reina. I heard that EWGF is a good move so I spent about 2 hours in practice arena just trying to learn it. I'm glad I got recommended this video because i probably would have been stuck in the practice arena for a week or 2 learning it, just to get into a match and not know when to use it lmao. Great video
Watching this has changed how I approached Tekken. I used to be one of those guys who would always look for the B&B off the launcher. My spatial awareness was OK, but it wasn't great. And alot of the time, I'd get wrecked for not checking the low, or getting stepped on after just swinging. What I'm finding is that I'm picking up more wins by not even thinking about combos, and instead just looking for consistency with landing hits.
3 minutes is all it took from me to leave a like👏🏾
I'm an experienced player that spent too much time in Forums, YT and Reddit searching for info about matchups, fundamentals, etc...
Tekken guides are good...but it requires the player to be aware of the things they need to research...if the player lacks that awareness, they won't be able to learn many things.
Tekken match analysis on the other hand are amazing and really display the depth of the game.
For example Peacecrab's analysis of Knee's defense...It really showcases how you should use movement, not the when(like guides do).
The best guides I've seen exist on Reddit:
Prepping for Tekken 8
And
Weekly Anti-Character Discussion
Thank you very much my dude! Yes, we are definitely of the same mind when it comes to match analysis. Match analysis is also my primary study tool as well. it's a much more informative way to understand how the game works than disconnected tutorials on the mechanics alone. Because a tutorial can tell you how a sidestep functions in terms of commands and so forth, but it cannot contextualize how it interacts with the other mechanics of the game, whereas match analysis can give you this information. This is why the korean players have always been pretty protective of their match footage historically ha.
I learn 1 or 2 consistent and good combos that work at all times, then I learn one or two consistent punishes, then learn a couple moves that are safe/plus, maybe one counterhit launcher, THEN I consciously learn side stepping and back dashing to create openings so that I can take most advantage of the openings I do create.
Yeah, basic combos are not that hard to learn. And it completely changes the risk reward of the game if you can’t do them. Why not just throw out random Matterhorns and snake edges if my opponent can’t punish them with anything more than a 2 hit combo?
@jfleminator
Exactly this. Not having any combo doesn't scare the opponents and let's you throw out whatever the hell you want knowing you're getting away with murder.
Part of getting good at a game is forcing your opponent to respect you or be respected, eating a fat combo teaches the opponent that they can't fuck around.
I was struggling playing Tekken because I didnt really look into what I was playing. There’s no way to improve unless you could understand how it works. There are shit load of vids with crazy combos, crazy comeback and all the fancy stuffs, but I found this vid is the most useful to me!
Thanks man! Great Vid !
This tutorial is actually timeless. This can apply to all fighting games in the past, present, as well as the future. This tutorial has application where most other tutorials don’t. They’re all about execution which can create noobs.
Thank you very much eric! That is exactly the idea 😊 where instead of focusing on the surface level I want to help players think about the genre more,fundimentally when it comes to how you get hits, avoid hits, and press your stage and frame advantage, which I think is universal to the genre :-)
Do more general tutorials. Unless I missed some
Just got the game last week and I haven't even played any matches against people yet, but I've been watching so many streams/videos/tournaments of T8 that I honestly feel like I'm already ahead of the game (or that I at least will be, after all the research put in). Thanks for this video ^^
It helps, but you will have to recontextualize/build up all of that knowledge once you gain hands on experience
@dj_koen1265 True... I'm still learning all of Xiaoyu's moves and this rabbit hole goes so deep, there's so much to remember in this game 😭
I... think this might be a bad advice sand trap. I understand the thought process, learning frame data and stepping makes your neutral safer and opens up opportunities for launches, and combos are easy to add once you have that background knowledge, but the fact is sort of inescapable that your advice here is "learn every move in the game in order to beat it with the correct option", and that's why you even made the video in the first place, dissatisfaction with that advice. For stepping your advice breaks down to learning what individual moves can be stepped via training mode or seeing it until you recognize it, except that those characters also have answers for sidestep that you have to account for so you need to learn their their moves and strings with homing, and because it's about moving around a 3D hitbox like you're saying, just learning frame data for it isn't enough, you have to be able to visually recognize the steppable move and step the correct direction as well as anticipate their potential counterplay. Now that you've done all of that homework and successfully executed your sidestep, you... don't get anything off of it because you didn't learn how to do the combo first.
Effectively you're teaching these players to think they need the most high level Tekken tools in their arsenal before they're allowed to play the game, and I know this because my friends started to do this with 8, and I did this as well in 7 to the point that I nearly quit. I spent an extensive amount of time trying to figure out my pressure sequences, how to move and make reads, how to defend, familiarizing myself with all of my moves and how to apply them because T7 was my first fighting game I really took seriously and I just couldn't do a combo in the heat of the moment yet, and I did nothing but eat losses for weeks and months without seeing any real improvement. Then I forced myself to practice one near universal combo until I could do it in my sleep, and suddenly the game started making sense, not because I was a god in the neutral but because I could do actual damage to an opponent off of all the hits I was constantly getting from day 1. It wasn't until I had a combo as an actual source of threat that any of that frame data I'd been memorizing got to come into play, since without that danger to back it up no one had to respect my neutral on any level.
My suggestion to them and to everyone else watching would be instead of making yourself miserable like I did learning very hard things you won't get to apply for 200 hours, learn your moves and a universal combo, and then learn to blockpunish properly into that combo. Blocking is the correct choice the majority of the time even with chip damage now in the game, while also being orders of magnitude easier than timing a sidestep to the startup frames of an attack you're predicting they'll make, with the added bonus of not causing you to lose constantly while you develop the other aspects of your skillset.
I agree. I've been competing in FGC tournaments for over a decade, and I think the learning path outlined in this video would be very discouraging to the wave of new Tekken 8 players. Not every player is trying to attend the Tekken World Tour. I'd say the vast majority just wants to play online and maybe with friends. They should be learning the inside outs of their main (combos, frame data, etc). That will be enough for most people. If they do want to go deeper and attend tournaments, then they're clearly invested and will likely be less miserable learning the more advanced nuances of Tekken.
I take this vídeo as a sort of "next step" on tutorials. For when you already learned the combos, pokes and the overall moveset and gameplan for your character.
Those tools will get you to red ranks easily, then you need to go into more in-depth techniques, which this delivers.
There's a middle ground, you should learn your pokes, a couple punishes and some BnBs, but also be thinking about your neutral game. It doesn't have to be knowing specifically when to sidestep, but you should be looking for opportunities to make a sidestep work. Throw out a poke and see if that gives you an opportunity to create a whiff with a sidestep because your opponent likes to press buttons. Approach aggressively and block. Poke and back step, or back dash if you've got it down. But definitely know how to capitalize on creating whiffs because you want to be working on committing the reactions to muscle memory. Just winning neutral will get you far. But if you can't capitalize well it'll be a real slow burn.
I have to agree with you. I think this video is, while not totally incorrect, developing a "this is how you SHOULD learn" narrative that doesn't work for everybody.
I absolutely agree. His points would make sense for T3 to T5 but you're not getting ANYWHERE in Tekken 6 - T8 without knowing combos. The amount of damage per hit is just too low compared to a single combo, you will need to capitalize at least to some extent on those punishes.
There are some good points in this video but I think he is missing the point that people want to have fun with this game, and not being able to do any serious damage is the quickest way to frustration.
Just for the explanation in the first section of the video I’m subscribing. Picked tekken 7 back up and couldn’t find any thorough content about the basic principles of the game. I already know the rest of the video about to be 🔥
I mentioned combo trials which I guess I'm not surprised that you and a few others discounting as much as I can name my reasons or examples...
How about movement trials or defense trials then? While most fighting games seem to teach aggressive mechanics then expand into combos even complex ones, but outside of UnclePunch Training Mode 3.0 (latest afaik) for Melee which isn't even official, it seems really rare to teach players how the defense and movement works. Third Strike Online Edition did try with a few parry trials at least and I know unofficial stuff from CrystalCube can get interesting but it is mainly offense.
Being able to take over shared replays (+R and Tekken 8) or to share combo recipes (Yatagarasu and Strive) is nice, but having a way to have it built into the game without needing a network connection is where its at.
Oh i love defense trails! VF5 has some of these and they were legit really useful. On your thoughts on combo trials gogeta, I don't disagree with them in principal. I think learning tools of all kinds are important. But I disagree with them being presented in isolation of other skill trials, because that is indirectly emphasizing new players to focus on the combo game first. I think if you had a trial mode, and it ran you through all kinds of really well made neutral game and defensive trials first, and then combo trials at the end, I think that would be a better way to structure things.
I remember learning Korean backlash from your old videos and learning how to play with stick, time flies hope you are doing good and everyone in this video too.
I found this so helpful. I didn’t know about how tekken stepping worked and been dying for someone to explain it to me as a VFer.
It’s really crazy how you spoke my whole experience in this video hahah. My whole entire Tekken career I’ve sort of mashed and played Hwoarang. I’m learning frame data more and more these days. Especially in street fighter and it’s been a bit of a struggle but this video is really amazing. Thank you for this
I’m starting to try counting the moment I see an input come out. The moment I see a low mixed into the combo I punish and get them to back off. Make them respect my space.
Now I just need to learn what to do against wild running moves. Those plus frame traps are pretty strong.
Edit: Just realised sidestep usually works on wild running attacks effectively. Who knew. lol.
Oh awesome stuff! Yeah running moves are a bit tricky because based on the situation sometimes you can side walk around them (their tracking is terrible) but if they are too close and you are at a frame disadvantage, sadly you are just gonna have to block them and take the frame disadvantage. The good thing is that there aren't many mix ups that can be done out of a run, so your pretty safe holding block in a lot of situations ha. But if you can get out the sidewalk the run has absolutely no tracking so it's easy to get around.
its going to take longer than i thought to learn, but after watching i played a few matches online during my lunch break i see how it applies. i didn't get to play very much since release but i was way too aggressive and now that i'm playing a bit more conservatively using your tips i'm starting to get better, quicker. when you're playing in real time its much harder to think on the spot but i'll get used to it. thanks for the video
I find it's more of symbiotic relationship, learning combos alone isn't going to get you anywhere, but they are useful for seeing how the character moves in general. Learning fundamentals is more important but being able to use combos to captialise on that whiff punish for example is also important. For absolute fighting game beginners, I think they can also be a fun, general way to learn execution.
Possibly this is less of an issue in Tekken as a lot of the hard execution is more timing based than input based. I think people focus on learning combos too much, but i'd also caution against going too far the other way, the reality on both sides is that eventually you will have to learn everything.
what I did in the beginning was mashing then combo then pokes then punishment and then sidstep then other char labs and I still have to learn perfect electric and Korean backdash but the learning processes of Tekken are fun and even if you lose it's not like I lost but what have I lost too and how can I solve this
Nah man, you're still missing the point here. All these people in the comments seem to have not actually watched the video.
Different games have a different degree of "how badly do you need a combo to be effective"
A lot of anime fighters for example rely heavily on having a decent bnb because the pressure and knockdown parts of the game are more important than neutral
It depends on the game but i think that it also depends on how hard combos are to execute
If combos are really difficult its best to ignore them until you ger better when learning combos will become easier
Ive been playing 8 since launch (first tekken game) and I am a great example of "you're learning you're learning and you realize everything you learned sucks"
I cant explain it but i feel like his glasses are animated on
this video contains all the depth to mechanics that I need to push through the beginner plateau. It really feels like I'm learning 'Why things work', I thank you so much for this video!
I'm happy to find a like minded player like you, I always had the same view on tutorials and how poor most tutorials and tekken players are at mentoring/teaching. I'm only 170 hours in Tekken 7+8 and I'm finna learn the game properly I already scrubbed my way to purple that's more than enough. Time to learn the game for real now I'll definitely lose a lot but it's ok.
Exactly my dude. I am undertaking the same process myself ha. And ever since I have been focusing more on the fundamentals that I discuss in the vid, the process of playing and learning tekken has become much less frustrating because even if I find myself getting caught by some mix up or stray launcher, its much less frustrating than before because I know what I can do to combat this stuff now. Where before it felt like I had no idea how to play the game properly at all ha, and that was after playing the game for years since tag 2.
Thank you so much for this video!! I am a brand new tekken player, but I have been watching tournaments for years, so I kinda knew what some of the fundamentals were, but never saw any teaching on it. This is a really good explanation of how to "Play Tekken" as opposed to how to "Play a Fighting Game". Learned a ton of stuff in this video and I can't wait to start using it in my ranked play.
i was just thinking someone needs to re-do david sirlin's "play to win" street fighter article for the modern age because the kids on the forums don't seem to understand what to even learn to be good. i'll have to watch this later.
That is a great idea! I remember hearing about that book years and years ago. I should give it a read, but from what I understand it is also very fundamentals based, which makes sense since it comes from super turbo --- the most fundamental 2d fighter of all time. I love that game, as insane as it is.
I think you mean discord not forums
To be fair, there are already a lot of videos covering intermediate/high level concept. So if u spent alot of time calling out on beginner tutorials, then u should explain more why people are likely not searching beyond "how tekken button works", or why people are not doing what it takes to learn properly, how much one will lose at the beginning, how much time it will take, how irrelevant beginner ranks are, how satisfying the progress feels, etc.
That being said, the informative side of this video offers a lot of must must must know concepts. Some of them i as a beginner myself didnt know or forgot. My favorite is the emphasis on Side Walks (instead of single side step) to observe self aligning strings. Nice work!!
Yeah im new to Tekken but played tons of 2D, ive been practicing my electrics non stop and relying on basic fundamentals from other games, i really do not get the times you should sidestep and times you shouldn't, also literally any moves are new to me so idk what to duck or not, this was super helpful for teaching the stuff most dont
Same man its my first Tekken but i do play other 3d fighters personally i come from Doa and Soul cal so its not too far off but Doa and Tekkens punishment is so different Doas mostly throw punishment meanwhile Tekken is mostly strike punishment which is so different
I've been rewatching this since release and gaining more from it each time. Thanks!
This video is longer than the time it look me to learn a basic combo. Knowing what the character's combo looks like and whether it appeals to me thematically and how it feels to execute is also important if I'm going to be playing a character in the long run.
haha good point
i agree with him but he also lacks perspective about the mental states of beginners and what they need
its a great video for the intended audience but not for beginners as a whole
Yes but you are missing the point of the video entirely. I'm not saying that this video is the quick path to getting wins right away. If you want that, then absolutely what you should do is spend as much time as possible learning max damage combos and then the basic mid or low 50/50 mix ups of your character. This is the style of play you see dominating the lower ranks of tekken. The point I am getting at is that this mentality is a sandpit if you want to continue to improve in the game past the lower or mid ranks, because behind all the flash and rage arts and electrics and hop kicks, tekken is still a game of fundamental 3d combat. The issue with tekken, design wise however, is that it has a very powerful combo system that incentives high risk play for newer players. So it's very easy to get sucked into that sandpit if you aren't aware that it is a sandpit. That's what I'm getting at in the video. If you put the combo game later on in your priority list, and instead start by focusing on learning the fundamentals, as I explain in the vid, your going to have a much more natural growth as a player and be ready to play the game properly when you do end up rising to the higher ranks. Rather than what often happens (and happened to me) where you are relying on big combos and mix ups to get to the higher ranks, but once you get there you just have to go back and relearn the fundamentals of the game anyway ha. Also during the course of this video you could have learned how to sidestep, tech, throw break, and studied the frame data of you jabs and pokes. I think that would be a better use of your time as a newer player rather than worrying about the thematic implications of your character's combo game.
@@TheElectricUnderground I didn't miss the point at all, I simply disagree and I would appreciate it if half your reply wasn't putting words in my mouth. Taking 30~ minutes to learn a basic combo isn't hampering growth at all. Focusing on nothing but combo damage is, sure(nobody is implying otherwise.) But you go on to talk about how you should instead focus on sidestepping. You even poke fun at other people being unable to explain it. Then you...don't explain how to sidestep at all. It's this vague and hard to understand high level mechanic that'll cause you to get hit more often than not but a new player should somehow focus on it? It's something you'll naturally come to learn over a long period of time since defense in tekken is just difficult. Frame data is important, alright. So is being able to damage your opponent after a sidestep or they use a very negative move. In fact half the game is juggling or getting juggled after someone makes a mistake. These things aren't mutually exclusive anyway. I learn a combo, get thrown a lot online. Alright let's look up those throws breaks and be more attentive to them next match. I get demolished by plus frames I've never seen before? I go to the replay feature or practice mode to figure out any counter play. A move looks really linear? I'll try sidestepping and keep it in mind whether it worked and to what side. And none of this hampered by me learning a combo first. Oh that move is really negative or I sidestepped something, I launch and do my little combo, that felt good. I feel like I progressed in a worthwhile manner. It's not about getting cheap and easy wins as you keep trying to imply. And even if it was, so what? This is ultimately a video game, media meant to be enjoyed. I'm not going to Evo, neither are 99.9999% of players or viewers. Currently I'm taking a lot of loses simply because I'm trying to focus on my defense game and seeing what I can sidestep or backdash out of to cause a whiff. And I'm doing this after learning a combo, still having fun.
At the end of the day there are casual players that will quit in a month, people that will keep playing or have been playing for thousands of hours yet will never improve, and a tiny subset of people that will take the time out of their real life to learn the game properly over an extended period of time. I think these groups of people are decided long before falling into any sort of sandtrap.
Thank you ! This is the first fighting game tutorial i ever upvoted, because you are the only person that seems to understand what the problem is that new players really have. They don't even know how to play the game, they don't even know what the game is about. They don't know how to use these tools. Because it is not about what basically all tutorials out there teach.
“Stop learning combos before everything else.”
Me deciding if I’ll learn Bryan: “I’ll learn Taunt Jet Upper. If I like it I’ll learn the rest.”
Ha this was my mentality learning devil jin at first. Electrics and hellsweeps all day. It does get old pretty quick though.
Fantastic video, nice seeing someone breaking down the more important longer learning process.
I pretty much completely disagree frame one. TL;DR, Stop attributing things you only learn from "experience" and trial by fire, as "fundamental" Tekken knowledge. The people who are better than you at the game almost unanimously have more experience than you at it. There's no clinical secret path towards improvement that isn't simply harnessing the experience you gain from your matches.
You talk about the "Scrub Sandtrap" as if it's something you can fall into by misdirection. When in reality, it's the starting point of all Tekken players. If you want to win against an opponent in this chaotic sandpit, then you need to find a successful strategy that works UNTIL it stops working, after which then you need to level up those tactics. Those scrub tactics WORK precisely at the ranks you are at because people lack the knowledge, and more specifically, the experience to deal with it. You don't get proficient and beating those tactics until experiencing them a lot of times. And as I will say many times: There is no substitute for experience.
People at higher ranks will naturally break all throws, duck your high stings, and low parry your canned lows, and it's NOT because they are playing better "fundamental" Tekken. It's because they've seen it before from thousands of scrubs before you. You fail to acknowledge that getting your scrub tactics defended against and defending against them yourself IS LEARNING THE GAME. It's how every pro player got to where they are now. You just think you're doing it "better" because you're deliberately not going for those tactics yourself. A conclusion you would get to naturally if you did use them and eventually got them hard countered. Like what happens when you start climbing ranks.
The attacks and tactics used at high level Tekken is a result of parsing out what doesn't work against people with similar experience. THAT is why they are using the moves and strategies they are using, and that doesn't apply at all ranks of the game and all strategies of play. For instance, if someone is using high risk strats, it doesn't make sense to only match them with low reward options. You need to MAKE the opponent's options risky or they flatout aren't risky. That means throwing out a hopkick or big CH option to temper their approach. That is literally the correct answer to this strategy. You don't often see it in pro play, because people aren't using high risk strats at that rank.
Go to any stream and watch a high rank player play a low rank. They will often use a single strategy and simply laugh that their opponent can't stop them. Literally laugh as they are spamming grabs or some plus on block move. What they are doing is teaching them the game the same way they were taught. By forcing you to adapt. That's the true way to improve in this game. Experiencing something, and forcing yourself to come up with the answer.
I see so many guides out here that like to pretend that there is a "proper" way to learn Tekken that isn't trial by fire. When in reality, (almost) everything there is to know has to come with experience first, which you only get from getting your ass beat by stuff constantly, not by reading or watching guides and not by studying frame data. No amount of reading guides on how to ride a bike will actually teach you how to ride a bike. You need to risk getting in the saddle and the same is true of Tekken. For as accurate and on point your sidestep and frame data sections are, How useful is it for a newbie to know any of it without sound experience of their opponents moves or strategies? Sidestepping for instance without that experience makes you perfect prey for scrub strats.
I am on the combos first train. In fact, I'm on it more than anyone else. More so than punishes. More so than movement. More so than anything. Why? Because combos (As well as throw breaks) are just about the ONLY thing in all of Tekken that don't require any bit of experience to become proficient in. Don't pretend that it's something you can get by without having. EVERY Tekken player needs them in order to be successful. If you think about it, the entire game's balance of Risk & Reward is predicated on combos and combos alone. Your reward, a well as your opponent's risk is completely and utterly determined on your combo damage.
At the lower ranks, this is a concept that is more important than ever, as your opponent is throwing out ALL kinds of risky moves, but they aren't risky at all if you don't have your combos locked down. There is this fear that all players are going to want to do is go for launches. Well why shouldn't they when they work at those ranks? When they stop working, those launches gradually and naturally stop coming from random hopkicks, and start coming from Counterhits, whiff punishes, and ducked strings. Launchers all the same, and yet the combos you practiced will persist all throughout from the very beginning of your journey.
You keep bringing up this concept of "scrubby wins" when a win is a win. You are trying to beat your opponent in a match. How you beat them is intrinsically tied to how they lost to you. In other words, the tactics can and should wildly vary on the opponent. I get you are trying to improve at the game "properly", but you are pretending that "scrubby wins" are only effective at getting "empty calorie" wins and not effective at teaching you "proper" Tekken. Which is only true if you never fight someone that forces you to change those strategies. In other words: only low rank players.
When you start climbing and then get enough of your raw rage arts and snake edges blocked and you might start thinking about applying said strategy differently. Again, you'll be forced to adapt. But someone hitting you with a raw rage art for the win isn't a "scrubby win" it's someone exploiting your "scrubby aggression". There is a place for a lot of "scrubby" tactics and that place is: When your opponent doesn't or can't handle it. It's a far better lesson for newbies to realize what their opponents are doing and responding accordingly. Are they passive? Then they are open for mixups. Are they aggro af? Then they are open to CH launches and RA. This is far more useful advice than simply telling people to watch and try to mimic pro level play.
Your thesis at the end of the video (And I did watch all of it to be fair) more or less agrees with my sentiments. You compare the unbabunga gorilla to Poindexter. In that, eventually the gorilla strats stop working (Because you gain experience enough to stop them). The only difference is that you think you're learning the game faster or better by NOT using gorilla strats yourself and instead, are just mimicking the pro players. You admit, that you will lose a lot more often this way. The problem with that is, the gorilla gets to higher rank faster and thus adapts much faster to human civilization while you're stuck on bonobo island getting run over by all the cheese on the planet while clinging to "fundamentals" whatever that means.
I'm in the blue ranks myself, still climbing. I tell you, those ape strats still work, and they are still being used up here. If you think you're winning by being patient and trying to play "proper" Tekken like the pros. You're in for a rude awakening. You need to answer what your opponent is bringing to the table. Not just mindleslly copy what the pros are doing without thinking about why.
bro missed the point of the video
beautiful scrubquote
Completely agree. Learning combos getting in there and pressing buttons is a part of the learning process for most people. This hyper analytical approach will work for some people, but calling the right way to learn doesn't make a lot of sense.
Big yap
I actually agree here. This video serves more as a guide to advanced Tekken rather than how you should approach the game as a complete beginner. Phidx said it best, "don't play high-level Tekken by yourself".
Thanks for this. I knew this was the case, but I needed to see this. I recently entered my first tournament as a Garyu rank, and got absolutely trashed. Didn't win a single round in a double elimination. I knew my opponents were much better than me, and to be honest it was exceptionally discouraging. I thought I was doing pretty good, then considered dropping the game altogether. I'm going to keep going, though, and work more on my fundamentals(such as sidestepping, poking, throw breaking, etc).
"don't worry about walking away from your opponent, that's just for advanced players... just keep walking forward until you win"
I would fuc u up if u walked forward on mee
I don't even know anymore how many times I saw this video, and oh man, thank you for this. It truly changed my approach and I'm loving every bit of knowledge I'm slowly gaining everyday. Of course I still gets frustrated sometimes while playing online, but I'm committed to learn and get better instead of getting easy wins...I know it will come eventually 🙂 again, thanks for this.
You should write a script or at least bullet points before you record, the video is very repetitive. But it’s good overall and I totally agree with your philosophy and approach. Subbed.
right? i feel like the tutorial doesn’t even start until 18 mins in
@@artrimiks I’ve seen a couple of his other videos now and he definitely has a problem with length (that SF6 review was very long and not very deep in content). But I think it’s his style. He’s like a radio guy, able to fill airtime with chatter. I will continue to watch his videos, but as background noise while labbing Tekken 8
by far the best beginner vid ive seen, really opened my eyes to what i should be focusing on vs ez wins with combos
Should’ve posted this in 2005 😂
Underrated comment
So happy to hear this.
I was an "anti-juggle" player for a long time for this exact purpose, but I got sucked into the feels of winning and lost that mentality. This is great encouragement to get back to it. Get better at the game instead of getting 'strategically lucky' with wins.
Thanks for this! Also, thanks for the movement suggestions that I hadn't considered before!
Can you make a more in depth guide on using sidesteps to get to people's vulnerable areas while they're facing the wrong direction? Thanks, solid video!
As a relatively new player to fighting games I must say that combos are genuinely some of the easiest things to learn comparatively (and very fun too). Tekken 8 combos especially have been pretty easy, I got Alisa's within an hour and after 2 days can already get all 11 consistently.
The trouble comes when playing online as that is a completely different thing, the punching bag is both moving and hitting back. I'm currently trying to get 2 combos that I can do reliably in a match without thinking, so that my focus can go to more important things like dodging, blocking, or getting the punishes.
This is excellent, far too many people, tutorials, videos...etc think that the biggest barrier to entry in FGs is execution when really its not. No amount of "Modern Controls" or "Special Styles" will make scrubs into experts.
Exactly burning phoenix and all this modernization is often doing is just crushing the depth of the game for the top players. I agree completely because a skilled player who understands these fundamental concepts will continue to beat new players who swing wildly. But with all the reduction in the higher execution skills, this then starts to flatten the game design among the top players. So basically no one is happy. The new players are still getting beaten down and the top players are playing with reduced depth. Rage arts are a perfect example of this. This one button ultra reversal has turned new players into a bunch of desperate gamblers (just look at how many raw rage arts even mid ranked players were throwing) and at the top end now top players have to constantly play around this atomic bomb of a mechanic, which overrides the fundamentals of frame advantage and so forth.
@@TheElectricUnderground Yeah, Rage Arts are wild to me since the last time I picked up Tekken was TTT2 way back when. A one button Ultra is so tempting for a scrub like me and I've gotten a lot of cheap wins off of fellow scrubs with it, literally just reacting to a slow attack but it doesn't really help me against anyone with even a modicum of knowledge of the game.
Cloud805 did a Dbfz tutorial couple years ago and said a line that resonates with this a bit. "Lab your mix, lab your defense then lab your damage" Damage means nothing if you can't get the hit or if you are getting hit.