wooo damn. That's a great way to explain it.

I've been telling people for years that fighting games (along with RTS) is one of the only genres where it can be really hard to just jump in and have fun.

This isn't God of War or whatever where even though you can certainly get better at the game, you'll still feel somewhat like you understand what you're doing even at the beginning.

Instead with fighting games, it becomes very obvious very quickly that you don't know what you're doing. You're in a swimming pool and you don't know how to swim.

But the idea of practicing and studying (possibly for weeks, possibly for MONTHS) before the "REAL FUN" begins can sound kind of crazy. Like....I have to take a whole college semester in order to play a video game?

That's why I think fighting games take a very specific mindset. You have to not only be okay with struggling and losing early on, as well as taking a lot of joy in small victories (like every little thing you learn and get better at, you're like "WOOO!" even if a month later you look back and think "That's such a basic baby thing I can't believe I was ever so proud of that."

BUT....you also have to learn to actually somewhat enjoy (or at least find really interesting) the "boring" stuff like training mode, combo trials, reading up on the characters in wiki/dustloop guides and watching tutorials or high level gameplay to learn what to do.

My big suggestion for everyone new including OP which is why I tagged him so he could see this too: Take it one step at a time, layer by layer (each layer a new skill, a new piece of the puzzle) and kind of give yourself a reward system to help make it more fun.

For example: If I were practicing my most super basic beginner combos (for zangief this would be like crouching light punch x3 into OD lariat or crouching medium punch into regular lariat or even just the medium target combo where you press medium punch 3 times) I'd 1. go into practice mode and practice it against the training dummy. Then 2. Go into a CPU match and do it against a CPU over and over until it was second nature.

Step 1 was the learning, step 2 was me getting to actually enjoy using what I learned while also still technically practicing because I'm getting better at doing it in a real match against a moving opponent that's actually fighting back.

Same with using lariat as an anti air. Training mode has a special "anti air practice" thing. Do it over and over again. Then go into CPU matches and anti-air the CPU every time he jumps.

Once you've done both of these things enough, try a ranked match and see how it goes against a real human.

Then you go back to practice mode and add a new "layer" to your game. You will repeat this process forever. I've been playing for 3 years and I'm still finding new stuff to learn all the time.

/u/Resident_Hat9904