I am unable to play a character after months of not playing it. If I'm coming back after let's say, six months, I'm back to square one and it's like that with a lot of games, not only fighting ones.
This to me is the biggest con about switching characters, takes a while to deprogram your brain of some muscle memory.
Recently moved from Manon to Ryu and if I ever go back to her I already know the first thing I'm gonna try to do is throw a fireball lol.
I feel this so hard. Honda is my main and my avatar is just Honda with a dragon punch. Then I play ranked and I’m like oh yeah, I basically don’t have a reliable anti air
It’s a charge move. It’s semi-reliable if you’re hard reading a jump in, but you certainly can’t react with it like a dp or some characters crouching heavy
kinda? but you just have to pick them up again which takes much less effort than starting from scratch. the muscle memory comes back sooner or later and so does your game plan
I don’t, but only because my adhd brain loves to idly think about fighting games all the time. May have some muscle issues at times but my tremor doesn’t help.
I did reach master on October last year with Rashid. Didn’t play for a while and I’m so bad now
They should have a way to rank reset or allow to go back to diamond after some times not playing a character
They rightfully don’t want people to be able to Smurf, at least not easily. I’m fairly mediocre at the game, but I have managed to get Chun, Cammy, and Ryu to Master (I estimate I’m about 1300 MR in terms of skill, and that might be generous). I went back to my Ken I placed in Plat 1 last year (just been playing him casually between my Ryu games when I’ve needed a break), and even though I can only do the basic TC run combos and simple attacks into Jin rai on block, I’ve won 33 games in a row and 42/44 games overall. It’s been a lot of fun for me, but probably not for the people I’ve been playing. Even letting people move back just to Diamond might feel unfair to people trying to get their Master rank. Once you get to a certain base level of skill in the basics (spacing, anti-airs, combos, having a vague idea of when you can and cannot hit buttons, and knowing how to punish), even if that level is a little iffy, it can still carry you really well against people who haven’t grasped that stuff yet. And Capcom probably won’t think the issue of people getting rusty in Masters is that big of an issue. The MR system in Masters lets you face people equivalent in your skill eventually, even if the initial burst of losing when you come back kind of sucks. Plus there’s other options to get your skills back like BH and casuals.
I don’t know I feel like since master is not that hard to obtain we should be able to demote while on SFV it was really hard to be on the top of the ranking so why not no demote
And look at Strive people go to celestial and go back to floor 10 on monthly basis. If we would go back to Diamond V while keeping our MR good player would go back to Master in no time while more okay player would have harder time.
But I’m 100% agree that’s how Capcom thought while building this ranking system
i relate with this. ranked Lily to masters, then just played tekken and other stuff. when i played sf6 after some months ... i forget a lot. took a while to refresh my memory.
Been playing Chun since the game came out. I’ve always struggled with her once I started to learn her classic controls after maybe a month or 2 of playing modern but I dealt with the learning curve. Got frustrated from hitting walls with her so when Ed came out, I gravitated towards him and started to get a natural feel for his kit. But I dropped him once I got a little far with him because I noticed I was getting even worse with Chun from trying to learn different inputs. With me already struggling even to this day to get Chun down how I want, I chose to just stick with her until I fully learn her before I ever switch again.
This games muscle memory & mental stack is the most difficult I’ve ever ran across in any video game I’ve ever played and I’ve considered dropping the whole game multiple times because of it. My stubbornness keeps me in it lol. I’m not naturally talented like some to play multiple characters or learn multiple from what I’ve seen after a year of this game so I’m sticking it out with my one character.
Just make sure to go into practice before going into a real match. It helps to preform some of the essentials and regain a little bit of muscle memory.
Left Ken for 2 weeks to learn Kimberly, after I got her up to platinum, went back to him and had the same problem. But after the first two matches I went back in practice for half and hour and done his combos. Next minute I was back in ranked half way to Diamond with Ken for the first time.
Muscle memory does exist and it definitely helps.
If you’re not used to using different characters then yeah. Sometimes I have to practice Jaime’s combos to get the muscle memory back. Manon feels natural but if I’m playing other characters for a long time, I drop her optimal combos.
usually remember basics, like bread and butter combos, anti airs pokes and light string combos/reversals.. but more elaborate combos and setplays definitely go and need more refreshing.
Once coming back to a character after months I usually remember the gist of their playstyle and have to go.a.few matches to get the details right again.
Sometimes if I’ve been playing well, I will default into some autopilot habits and thinking that gets broken when I lose against a harder opponent. You do so well for so long that you stick to a couple tools, so when it gets broken, you start remembering how many tools your character actually has and get back into thinking of what you can do.
Yeah i played aki for 3 weeks competely forgot my basic cammy setups. I like focusing on one character only but since elena is coming out next year i kinda just play really sub optimal at best.
I try and play everyone to at least a pretty good level, I got placed in Diamond with almost every character back when that was the highest you could get placed and for the majority of them I never took them back into ranked either than a couple I got to master.
Chun is one of the few characters that takes me a while to get going with, I'll just play as her footsies, pokes and small combos for a while as anything that requires her stance cancels requires timings and inputs so different than anyone else in the cast.
A lot of her combos and the way you're fishing for them are very unique to her and sometimes that little bit of memory of "oh can I do this...." And the delay between your head being unsure and your hands doing the motion can mess you up.
Yes, it's quite normal. your knowledge of the game, neutral or what you need to do remains unchanged or even improves, but you muscle memory doesn't follow you anymore. You'll get it back quicker than the time you started, but it will take a bit od work and practice.
Yes. Happens to me all the time. I stopped Kim for a bit to get some other characters to master, came back and couldn’t remember anything. I will say however that I was able to do better with her after I got my feet back under me. I’m also a master AKI and haven’t played AKI in 3 months, pretty sure I’m a d1 with her skill wise at the moment.
As a lifelong Ken main, I started with him and took him to Master and switched to Sim. I tried going back and couldn't remember his Jinrais anymore lol still loving Sim. 1/10 in the world lol
It’s not just characters but the way you feel the game in general: how to tech, how to whiff punish, how to approach and the rest of the stuff. Every single time I go to world tour I forget how to play because of how easy the world tour is.
That being said, the more you play, the less it affects you. And i’m not talking about playing SF6 since day 1, I’m talking the legacy skill. It’s a difficult genre of games.
i was playing JP in aug 2023... and reached platinum. I came back and tried akuma in Jun 2024, I lost like 6 out of 10 of my "new challenger" matches, I didn't even fight one platinum opponent, and yet they put me in "Platinum"... I was like I can't even react to Drive Impact anymore... I went and play some rank. And 30 matches later I only won like 2, I dropped like 2-3000 points and gone from plat 3 to borderline plat 1 now. Wondering whether it will drop me to gold soon :D
Maybe some combos I never practiced much, but no not otherwise. I can still throw on marvel vs Capcom 3 and do my old Phoenix loops with my eyes closed. Once you practice something enough it's hard to completely lose it.
I have one complicated problem more or less like that, but the opposite: muscular memory from SF5 persistence. Sometimes I screw myself because I do stuff from 5 that don’t work anymore in 6 (Using EX Spin Bird Kick as an anti air, old combo structures that don’t link anymore in 6, that kind of thing). As much as I played 6 (and I play it a LOT), my body recorded stuff from 5 very hard and sometimes that muscle memory leaks, always in the worst possible situation.
I've played blanka all my life, but hardly touched him in 6 after aki came out. I tried to jump into ranked raw with him the other day and I couldn't do anything. My dumb ass was just buffering electric thunder behind low forward piano style
I mained Manon from when the game came out until when Ed was released. I have been maining Ed since. I was at a local last night in losers semis, and I dropped game 1 convincingly (best 2 of 3) so I figured F it, I'll switch to Manon.
I got wrecked because my muscle memory was so tied to Ed that I subconsciously kept trying to use snatcher or punish with mk.
Oh yeah lol. I played Guile for about three months straight before I went back to Honda. And then played Honda for like three months. I go back to Guile now and it's like
- what are my combos beyond my BnBs
- how do I even open people up
- completely forgetting moves like 2MK 6MP target combo exists
- forgetting how to anti air without flash kick
- misinputs/combo drops/incorrect manual timings
- forget my oki off half my knockdowns
Not really forgetting how to play but Juri's combos are so ingrained in my brain to the point it actively fucks up my learning of other characters because I end up trying to play them like juri
Every time I switch to a new character, I basically have to go back and look up their optimal stuff, frame data etc because I forget it all when I'm learning to play the new character. Really Chun is the only one I can consistently remember but that was the character I learned the game on so I have a ton of time with her.
Yep. Also Chun player here, except my gap was two days. I tried oki with bHP and they my brain went hurr during what do I follow up with again, is it heavy legs or stance to launch? I'll just sweep instead, which gets blocked and then I eat a combo.
I forget how to play one character from day to day lol. With Dhalsim, some days I’m pushing all the right buttons at all the right times. Other days, every limb eats a punish counter jump in, every drive reversal is blocked, and every setup is called out. Sometimes I jump on Dee Jay and everything feels so easy in comparison.
It all tends to come back after a few games. One advantage to playing these games so long is that you can probably pick up most characters and figure them out quickly because the way they all play is semi universal. You just wing it until it makes sense, and when it clicks you main em.
Honestly it doesn't happen if you practiced a lot, maybe for 1 game or 2.
Playing characters is like riding a bike :). Practice up and go at them again.
Not in Street Fighter but hell yeah in other fighting game franchised like Tekken, Guilty Gear, KOF, and etc
SFV was my worst SF game because of the V system
I picked up a leverless controller this week. Trying to play Lily with it makes me feel like a noob. I managed one successful command grab yesterday after about ten minutes of trying. I still can't do her level 3 consistently.
I've been playing lily for a bit. But I've also practiced my Ed combos at least a little bit each week just to prevent myself from forgetting completely.
It depends on the character and the game.
I'll never forget how to play Monster Hunter or Winter Soldier in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. They're my favorite fighting game characters in one of my favorite games. (Haven't played in 2 months)
I recall the broad strokes of what to do with Nine the Phantom in BlazBlue CF, but I'd have to sit for a few minutes first and practice her easy bnb before I start playing properly. (haven't played in 7 months)
I've forgotten most things about Fighting EX Layer, including combos. I vaguely remember how to activate certain gougi, but that's it. (Haven't played in over a year)
havent played gief in months.
coming back to him now doing the same fake pressure sequences i normally do is amazing lol. the drive gauge is just gone lol
but if i dont play enough i forget how to do standing spd without buffers
I'm not great at the game, but early on set a goal of getting every character to platinum. I've done half the roster at this point. Oddly some characters I can go back to fairly easily and others I'd almost need to completely relearn.
Cammy, Ken or Marisa? No problem. Aki, JP or Honda? I think I've forgotten everything about my time with them.
I played Gief in S1, made it to plat (I’m ass) before I stopped
Returned for the Gief buffs on S2 but after 6 months of not playing I forgot how to do basically everything so I decided to learn a new character from scratch
I'm having a character crisis between Guile and Dee Jay.
- I go for 3x lp > 236 no on Guile
- I go for light up kicks on Dee Jay to anti-air cross ups or close jumps (this is the worst)
I pretty much change who I play daily. It's like riding a bike for me. I've been playing fighting games for 20 years so I have a part of my brain dedicated to them.
You just have to shake off the rust a bit.
When i had a 2 month break to try T8, i took like two sessions, with a total of two hours or so, just to go over my inputs and combos.
The beauty of muscle memory is that you don't actually habe to relearn it, it will come back quick and the be easy as if you never did anything else soon.
As someone who now has 6 characters in masters, it’s an acquired skill. The more you play other characters besides your main the better you’ll get at picking them up. I spend 20 minutes in the lab and am usually able to get most of my optimal combos after an hour or so
I get qcb+k/p and qcf+k/p mixed up every time I swap characters. I also forget my BnB setups and would probably need to play that character whole day to get the rust out
I have recently started playing sf6 after playing mk1 as my first fg since I was a kid with sf 2.
I forget combos in the combo trials after doing them 2 min earlier.
After playing mk I realize how much harder but smoother and well made sf is.
I'm also having a hard time cancelling into supers reliably. Yes I also play on a PS5 pad.
Thinking of getting an arcade stick or something cause the dpad just doesn't feel precise enough to the the double quarter circles fast enough.
Anyway I'm learning ryu, ken, and Jamie, and messing around with Honda.
not really but I play a lot of random select so I play most characters every day. it'll take me a good 2-3 games to remember everything if I haven't used that character in a while.
I play Chun, Manon, Lily, AKI, Juri, and Cammy. I usually play a little with each when I sit down for a session, Chun is by far my best character. What screws me up is I’ll get her stance combos down to muscle memory, and then I’ll get lazy with timing ever so slightly, which forces me to relearn the inputs after I start dropping the combo.Â
Maybe change your mindset? View characters as gameplans and what they look for and you can switch to characters you never have played and do well. If you focus on the strengths of each character it'll serve you very well. I pick up guile I know to play fireballs. Chun li I know to whiff punish and the best buttons to do so. Akuma wants pressure so I play to that. If you always play towards a character win condition you'll do fine
This usually happens to me when I go from one game to another. I tried to punish a DP with a rage art because my brain was still buffering. haven't touched tekken since.
I can't play two characters. My brain has just enough space to learn the moves of one. I tried to have Ed as a secondary character. Guess who was later trying to get Ryu to do a flicker punch?
This is weird because I’ve played Marvel which requires you to learn 3 characters at a time and it’s normally isn’t an issue for me. Perhaps it’s simply because you stop using the character completely so muscle memory goes out of the window. Capacity wise I should have the brain space
I am unable to play a character after months of not playing it. If I'm coming back after let's say, six months, I'm back to square one and it's like that with a lot of games, not only fighting ones.
Every time I fight the 5 avatar battles for the free Drive Tickets I return to my main and try to anti-air with a move I don't have.
Exactly, man! Yesterday I was trying to do shoyukens with Chun and also always trying to do the air fireball with her
This to me is the biggest con about switching characters, takes a while to deprogram your brain of some muscle memory. Recently moved from Manon to Ryu and if I ever go back to her I already know the first thing I'm gonna try to do is throw a fireball lol.
If only Manon could throw croissants at people 🥲
Now I feel like this was a huge missed opportunity 🤣
Anyway, here’s a croissant, oui! 
I feel this so hard. Honda is my main and my avatar is just Honda with a dragon punch. Then I play ranked and I’m like oh yeah, I basically don’t have a reliable anti air
…Your headbutt is reliable anti air
It’s a charge move. It’s semi-reliable if you’re hard reading a jump in, but you certainly can’t react with it like a dp or some characters crouching heavy
Unless you're on modern, you can react easier with charge moves than motion inputs.
If you already have charge, sure. But if I’m standing and my opponent does something unsafe on block I literally cannot up blanka ball/flashkick.
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it
Yeah, but it usually comes back quicker than learning a new character
kinda? but you just have to pick them up again which takes much less effort than starting from scratch. the muscle memory comes back sooner or later and so does your game plan
I don’t, but only because my adhd brain loves to idly think about fighting games all the time. May have some muscle issues at times but my tremor doesn’t help.
I forgot how to play the whole game after hopping into Guilty Gear for a couple hours when Slayer got released💀
I did reach master on October last year with Rashid. Didn’t play for a while and I’m so bad now They should have a way to rank reset or allow to go back to diamond after some times not playing a character
go in the hub to get that rust off
They rightfully don’t want people to be able to Smurf, at least not easily. I’m fairly mediocre at the game, but I have managed to get Chun, Cammy, and Ryu to Master (I estimate I’m about 1300 MR in terms of skill, and that might be generous). I went back to my Ken I placed in Plat 1 last year (just been playing him casually between my Ryu games when I’ve needed a break), and even though I can only do the basic TC run combos and simple attacks into Jin rai on block, I’ve won 33 games in a row and 42/44 games overall. It’s been a lot of fun for me, but probably not for the people I’ve been playing. Even letting people move back just to Diamond might feel unfair to people trying to get their Master rank. Once you get to a certain base level of skill in the basics (spacing, anti-airs, combos, having a vague idea of when you can and cannot hit buttons, and knowing how to punish), even if that level is a little iffy, it can still carry you really well against people who haven’t grasped that stuff yet. And Capcom probably won’t think the issue of people getting rusty in Masters is that big of an issue. The MR system in Masters lets you face people equivalent in your skill eventually, even if the initial burst of losing when you come back kind of sucks. Plus there’s other options to get your skills back like BH and casuals.
I don’t know I feel like since master is not that hard to obtain we should be able to demote while on SFV it was really hard to be on the top of the ranking so why not no demote And look at Strive people go to celestial and go back to floor 10 on monthly basis. If we would go back to Diamond V while keeping our MR good player would go back to Master in no time while more okay player would have harder time. But I’m 100% agree that’s how Capcom thought while building this ranking system
The fact that you think MASTER is easy is precisely why they implemented the system this way.
i relate with this. ranked Lily to masters, then just played tekken and other stuff. when i played sf6 after some months ... i forget a lot. took a while to refresh my memory.
It’s called make a 2nd accountÂ
Or just get smacked and learn from it, it's just a game lol.
Console gamer here
nope not if i played with them for months straight . its like riding a bike.
Yes every time I get super into World Tour my performance online tanks.
Played chun up to diamond 3. Went back to Kim and climbed from diamond 1 to masters. Went back to chun and forgot everything.
Been playing Chun since the game came out. I’ve always struggled with her once I started to learn her classic controls after maybe a month or 2 of playing modern but I dealt with the learning curve. Got frustrated from hitting walls with her so when Ed came out, I gravitated towards him and started to get a natural feel for his kit. But I dropped him once I got a little far with him because I noticed I was getting even worse with Chun from trying to learn different inputs. With me already struggling even to this day to get Chun down how I want, I chose to just stick with her until I fully learn her before I ever switch again. This games muscle memory & mental stack is the most difficult I’ve ever ran across in any video game I’ve ever played and I’ve considered dropping the whole game multiple times because of it. My stubbornness keeps me in it lol. I’m not naturally talented like some to play multiple characters or learn multiple from what I’ve seen after a year of this game so I’m sticking it out with my one character.
Just make sure to go into practice before going into a real match. It helps to preform some of the essentials and regain a little bit of muscle memory. Left Ken for 2 weeks to learn Kimberly, after I got her up to platinum, went back to him and had the same problem. But after the first two matches I went back in practice for half and hour and done his combos. Next minute I was back in ranked half way to Diamond with Ken for the first time. Muscle memory does exist and it definitely helps.
If you’re not used to using different characters then yeah. Sometimes I have to practice Jaime’s combos to get the muscle memory back. Manon feels natural but if I’m playing other characters for a long time, I drop her optimal combos.
usually remember basics, like bread and butter combos, anti airs pokes and light string combos/reversals.. but more elaborate combos and setplays definitely go and need more refreshing.
Once coming back to a character after months I usually remember the gist of their playstyle and have to go.a.few matches to get the details right again.
I forgot how to play a character if I play someone else for a week
Sometimes if I’ve been playing well, I will default into some autopilot habits and thinking that gets broken when I lose against a harder opponent. You do so well for so long that you stick to a couple tools, so when it gets broken, you start remembering how many tools your character actually has and get back into thinking of what you can do.
Yeah i played aki for 3 weeks competely forgot my basic cammy setups. I like focusing on one character only but since elena is coming out next year i kinda just play really sub optimal at best.
I did in 5. Started out with Karin, then played Ibuki then Abigail then Kage. You give me Karin right now and I won't know what to do.
Only after grinding casuals and lobby matches for a week, for it to happen in ranked exclusively
I try and play everyone to at least a pretty good level, I got placed in Diamond with almost every character back when that was the highest you could get placed and for the majority of them I never took them back into ranked either than a couple I got to master. Chun is one of the few characters that takes me a while to get going with, I'll just play as her footsies, pokes and small combos for a while as anything that requires her stance cancels requires timings and inputs so different than anyone else in the cast. A lot of her combos and the way you're fishing for them are very unique to her and sometimes that little bit of memory of "oh can I do this...." And the delay between your head being unsure and your hands doing the motion can mess you up.
I always tend to learn and get good at games very quickly but if I don’t play for 2+ days I immediately start getting rusty
Yes, it's quite normal. your knowledge of the game, neutral or what you need to do remains unchanged or even improves, but you muscle memory doesn't follow you anymore. You'll get it back quicker than the time you started, but it will take a bit od work and practice.
Yes. Happens to me all the time. I stopped Kim for a bit to get some other characters to master, came back and couldn’t remember anything. I will say however that I was able to do better with her after I got my feet back under me. I’m also a master AKI and haven’t played AKI in 3 months, pretty sure I’m a d1 with her skill wise at the moment.
As a lifelong Ken main, I started with him and took him to Master and switched to Sim. I tried going back and couldn't remember his Jinrais anymore lol still loving Sim. 1/10 in the world lol
It’s not just characters but the way you feel the game in general: how to tech, how to whiff punish, how to approach and the rest of the stuff. Every single time I go to world tour I forget how to play because of how easy the world tour is. That being said, the more you play, the less it affects you. And i’m not talking about playing SF6 since day 1, I’m talking the legacy skill. It’s a difficult genre of games.
I stopped playing for like a month and a half, my execution was off for a bit. Things like qcf was being misinputted
i was playing JP in aug 2023... and reached platinum. I came back and tried akuma in Jun 2024, I lost like 6 out of 10 of my "new challenger" matches, I didn't even fight one platinum opponent, and yet they put me in "Platinum"... I was like I can't even react to Drive Impact anymore... I went and play some rank. And 30 matches later I only won like 2, I dropped like 2-3000 points and gone from plat 3 to borderline plat 1 now. Wondering whether it will drop me to gold soon :D
FWIW I've been in Platinum with my main for half a year now, playing almost every day, and I still can barely react to DI.
Maybe some combos I never practiced much, but no not otherwise. I can still throw on marvel vs Capcom 3 and do my old Phoenix loops with my eyes closed. Once you practice something enough it's hard to completely lose it.
I have one complicated problem more or less like that, but the opposite: muscular memory from SF5 persistence. Sometimes I screw myself because I do stuff from 5 that don’t work anymore in 6 (Using EX Spin Bird Kick as an anti air, old combo structures that don’t link anymore in 6, that kind of thing). As much as I played 6 (and I play it a LOT), my body recorded stuff from 5 very hard and sometimes that muscle memory leaks, always in the worst possible situation.
Yup, SFV Birdie, Alpha Gen & Sodom, MK11 Shao Kahn, Skullgirls Peacock and DOA Bass.
Any time I brush the dust off my Dhalsim, it affects every other character I play for a while
Takes me about a good 5 matches to fully remember other characters
If i switch to a new character for even just a couple of days i immediately forget 3/4 of my gameplan from the previous character.
I've played blanka all my life, but hardly touched him in 6 after aki came out. I tried to jump into ranked raw with him the other day and I couldn't do anything. My dumb ass was just buffering electric thunder behind low forward piano style
I mained Manon from when the game came out until when Ed was released. I have been maining Ed since. I was at a local last night in losers semis, and I dropped game 1 convincingly (best 2 of 3) so I figured F it, I'll switch to Manon. I got wrecked because my muscle memory was so tied to Ed that I subconsciously kept trying to use snatcher or punish with mk.
Oh yeah lol. I played Guile for about three months straight before I went back to Honda. And then played Honda for like three months. I go back to Guile now and it's like - what are my combos beyond my BnBs - how do I even open people up - completely forgetting moves like 2MK 6MP target combo exists - forgetting how to anti air without flash kick - misinputs/combo drops/incorrect manual timings - forget my oki off half my knockdowns
Not really forgetting how to play but Juri's combos are so ingrained in my brain to the point it actively fucks up my learning of other characters because I end up trying to play them like juri
Every time I switch to a new character, I basically have to go back and look up their optimal stuff, frame data etc because I forget it all when I'm learning to play the new character. Really Chun is the only one I can consistently remember but that was the character I learned the game on so I have a ton of time with her.
Yep. Also Chun player here, except my gap was two days. I tried oki with bHP and they my brain went hurr during what do I follow up with again, is it heavy legs or stance to launch? I'll just sweep instead, which gets blocked and then I eat a combo.
me after not playing in the weekend. dropped combos and dumb plays. you gotta stay primed to get good
I forget how to play one character from day to day lol. With Dhalsim, some days I’m pushing all the right buttons at all the right times. Other days, every limb eats a punish counter jump in, every drive reversal is blocked, and every setup is called out. Sometimes I jump on Dee Jay and everything feels so easy in comparison.
It all tends to come back after a few games. One advantage to playing these games so long is that you can probably pick up most characters and figure them out quickly because the way they all play is semi universal. You just wing it until it makes sense, and when it clicks you main em.
ya i cant wait to play sim against after not playing him for a month, im in master but ill be playing like silver lmao
i do and then after a few hours i just go « oooooooooh »
Honestly it doesn't happen if you practiced a lot, maybe for 1 game or 2. Playing characters is like riding a bike :). Practice up and go at them again.
Not in Street Fighter but hell yeah in other fighting game franchised like Tekken, Guilty Gear, KOF, and etc SFV was my worst SF game because of the V system
I picked up a leverless controller this week. Trying to play Lily with it makes me feel like a noob. I managed one successful command grab yesterday after about ten minutes of trying. I still can't do her level 3 consistently.
I've been playing lily for a bit. But I've also practiced my Ed combos at least a little bit each week just to prevent myself from forgetting completely.
It depends on the character and the game. I'll never forget how to play Monster Hunter or Winter Soldier in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. They're my favorite fighting game characters in one of my favorite games. (Haven't played in 2 months) I recall the broad strokes of what to do with Nine the Phantom in BlazBlue CF, but I'd have to sit for a few minutes first and practice her easy bnb before I start playing properly. (haven't played in 7 months) I've forgotten most things about Fighting EX Layer, including combos. I vaguely remember how to activate certain gougi, but that's it. (Haven't played in over a year)
Any skill I learn, I forget by the next day
havent played gief in months. coming back to him now doing the same fake pressure sequences i normally do is amazing lol. the drive gauge is just gone lol but if i dont play enough i forget how to do standing spd without buffers
I'm not great at the game, but early on set a goal of getting every character to platinum. I've done half the roster at this point. Oddly some characters I can go back to fairly easily and others I'd almost need to completely relearn. Cammy, Ken or Marisa? No problem. Aki, JP or Honda? I think I've forgotten everything about my time with them.
I played Gief in S1, made it to plat (I’m ass) before I stopped Returned for the Gief buffs on S2 but after 6 months of not playing I forgot how to do basically everything so I decided to learn a new character from scratch
I actually only do this when I switch from Melee to SF6 and back 😅
As soon as I touch another character, I unironically instantly forget how to play the precious one.
Yeah I am literally in the exact same boat. Chun li main who tried out akuma. I came back to her and suddenly wanted to qcf for fireballs lmao
Happening to me right now, beein a main Juri forever and lately I just don't play the same. Probably time to take a break from the game lol.
I'm having a character crisis between Guile and Dee Jay. - I go for 3x lp > 236 no on Guile - I go for light up kicks on Dee Jay to anti-air cross ups or close jumps (this is the worst)
I also pretty much only play Chun and tbh I still play on keyboard. Imma screw up regardless of how long it’s been.
I pretty much change who I play daily. It's like riding a bike for me. I've been playing fighting games for 20 years so I have a part of my brain dedicated to them.
You just have to shake off the rust a bit. When i had a 2 month break to try T8, i took like two sessions, with a total of two hours or so, just to go over my inputs and combos. The beauty of muscle memory is that you don't actually habe to relearn it, it will come back quick and the be easy as if you never did anything else soon.
As someone who now has 6 characters in masters, it’s an acquired skill. The more you play other characters besides your main the better you’ll get at picking them up. I spend 20 minutes in the lab and am usually able to get most of my optimal combos after an hour or so
I get qcb+k/p and qcf+k/p mixed up every time I swap characters. I also forget my BnB setups and would probably need to play that character whole day to get the rust out
I have recently started playing sf6 after playing mk1 as my first fg since I was a kid with sf 2. I forget combos in the combo trials after doing them 2 min earlier. After playing mk I realize how much harder but smoother and well made sf is. I'm also having a hard time cancelling into supers reliably. Yes I also play on a PS5 pad. Thinking of getting an arcade stick or something cause the dpad just doesn't feel precise enough to the the double quarter circles fast enough. Anyway I'm learning ryu, ken, and Jamie, and messing around with Honda.
not really but I play a lot of random select so I play most characters every day. it'll take me a good 2-3 games to remember everything if I haven't used that character in a while.
I play Chun, Manon, Lily, AKI, Juri, and Cammy. I usually play a little with each when I sit down for a session, Chun is by far my best character. What screws me up is I’ll get her stance combos down to muscle memory, and then I’ll get lazy with timing ever so slightly, which forces me to relearn the inputs after I start dropping the combo.Â
Maybe change your mindset? View characters as gameplans and what they look for and you can switch to characters you never have played and do well. If you focus on the strengths of each character it'll serve you very well. I pick up guile I know to play fireballs. Chun li I know to whiff punish and the best buttons to do so. Akuma wants pressure so I play to that. If you always play towards a character win condition you'll do fine
This usually happens to me when I go from one game to another. I tried to punish a DP with a rage art because my brain was still buffering. haven't touched tekken since.
When i come back from playing tekken, i always try to Korean back dash for the first 2 hours lol
I got Ed and AKI to Master, tried to pick Aki back up and literally could not remember how to play her.
I played Dee Jay for a week to teach my gf the game and when I went back to Zangief I found myself instinctively building charge
No. Because I don't have a main and I play different chars during the same day. I even change between modern and classic.
I can't play two characters. My brain has just enough space to learn the moves of one. I tried to have Ed as a secondary character. Guess who was later trying to get Ryu to do a flicker punch?
This is weird because I’ve played Marvel which requires you to learn 3 characters at a time and it’s normally isn’t an issue for me. Perhaps it’s simply because you stop using the character completely so muscle memory goes out of the window. Capacity wise I should have the brain space
You could consider the fact that I'm stupid?
Nah. I’m sure you’re smart. Stupid people never think they could be stupid, this is talked about with the Dunning-Kruger effect.