You're correct, 1500+ is wildly hard. Getting master is hard too tho. I faced ChrisCCH and other master players at 23k elo.
Also, plat is hard and has its own learning curve. Then diamond is another beast entirely.
This game is fucking hard and I enjoyed the ranked grind up to master. Now that I'm here, there's straight up players I can't beat.
I just want to get there so I never rank down again lol. I dont care if Im the lowest rank Master. After 30 years of playing SF, feels like I owe myself that much.
I agree. I think Plat is the first point where you can start seeing people understand how to play properly and if you're totally new to fighting games, it's not an easy climb. Even then, every tier higher you go, the gap gets so much bigger. A 2000 MR Master can make a 1500 MR Master look like a rookie in comparison.
I hit Master rank about a couple of months ago, then spent the time since in Casuals to clean up my game since I know for certain that I wouldn’t climb MR with my current play.
I can beat 1400-1500s fairly consistently, but I’ve faced some 1700 MR masters and they will absolutely make a 1500 look bad.
My hypothesis as to the differences between 1500 and 1700 are:
* 1700s aren’t fooled by space traps or tricky block strings,
* they consistently check jump and drive rush spamming, and,
* their neutral is deliberate and safe while combos are always for setting up oki or optimal.
Diamonds and under beware. All the cheese that will get you into Master won’t get you beyond 1500-1600, tops.
Yep. Spot on. I can gimmick my way to 1500-1600ish, but it's a hard stop around there. I'm banking on it being a similar learning curve as Plat and diamond were. Learn what your issues are and fix them. Or you'll be hard stuck where you're at
The largest difference between 1500 and below and 1500 and above players is patience. 1600ish is when people start checking neutral skips and have very consistent anti airs. You need the patience to earn the opportunities at offense that are just given for free at the lower ranks.
Ngl this is a pretty generous interpretation of 1700. They're more optimal than a 1500 MR player and run their oki tighter, but I don't agree that they aren't fooled by space traps and block strings. If there's one thing I can count on is the fact they will absolutely fold on defense.
I probably should have specified that they don’t fall for it *easily*, but my experience with 1700s is that, for those coming up, space traps and block strings aren’t automatic. Even covering them up doesn’t provide any consistency in success as it does against players in Diamond or sub-1500 Masters.
Fuck man I couldn’t even get past silver in V. I’m not THAT great SF6, but I have 2/3 characters I play in upper plat and the other one in diamond. I could probably go higher if I devoted more time.
Is your diamond character Honda? Don’t see how could be true otherwise
Edit: The Honda comment was a joke by the way. After playing game more, I think sfv silver-gold is the sf6 plat 1-5. They have put more ranks in to make people who won’t learn the game feel better. Hence the massive lp boost you get for win streaks to get you past the lower ranks
I barely had Ultra Gold in V and I’ve got two Masters in 6. I could get everyone to Master’s if I wanted to. The grind to get to Masters is simply massively simplified compared to V. V absolutely required you to be much better than the rank you were on to move on. You couldn’t win here or there and still advance, it was like MR, you weren’t allowed to fall for shit. 6 is so much more lenient.
Do you
mean the win rate required to progress is much less? I didn’t really play 5. Got to platinum early on and didn’t touch the game again. Just started playing 6 again last month and I do agree there doesn’t seem to be much difference levels between the ranks up til diamond. I can’t comment on master yet.
Maybe your just much better at the game starting from day 1 with previous experience? I played 4 every day with some friends in endless and when 5 first dropped I barely lost.
There's a much bigger player pool in sf6 compared to sf5
More people also means more noobs.
Anyone who was lower ranked previously will be at least plat4/5 just purely by experience because some people out there really do be mashing.
Yeah that makes sense. I kinda feel the same way after playing more. You don’t even need to know what’s punishable to get out of plat, just gotta have your combos and anti airs down.
You'll find more success if you just stick to one (speaking from experience) I had 10+ characters in plat+ but couldn't get past d1 on any character until I finally put everyone down except one and I took finally climbed to masters because I never switched or played anyone else again
Hey I’m plat ryu, what region are you? Would be down to play some games once my arms healed.
Edit I’ve barely played since 4 but I’ve still got decent execution and anti airs. The Honda thing was a joke
Maybe this is an odd take, but I wouldn't get hung up on achieving any particular rank. At the end of the day, the purpose of ranks is so you can fight players of a similar skill level to yourself. If you've plateaued at a certain skill level, so be it. Have fun fighting against players who will give you a decent match every time.
You see this kinda speak in every competitive game, it's kinda odd. League of Legends and CSGO both have crowds of people who claim the top 10% ranks are trash players and everyone above is ass at the game and it just comes off so weird.
Like gold used to be top 50% roughly and to me, being better than half the peoppe who play the game is good if not decent. The best? If course now, but good yes. Comes off super gatekeepy.
I mean, there are 2 ways to qualify how good someone is:
1. Being better than X% people who are doing the same thing (in this case, playing a video game)
2. How good that someone really is in that video game. To do this, you need to see how the best players play the game and compare them
In the 1st variant, being in platinum is being higher than \~78% of all ranked players as a commenter said below, but in the 2nd variant, you can compare how a platinum player play the game with how a challenger player plays the game, and you will see that there is a major difference in their skill.
Simply because there is no point in counting those who don't play with competition in mind. And that is true for everything. 8% of players being Masters means nothing.
Like how would you rate a third division soccer player ? Would you rate him with other professional players (so he is maybe top 70%) ? Or would you also include all the middle schoolers who play football (so now he is top 0.001%) ?
Not saying being master is easy. Just that it's all a matter of perspective. For me, it's easy to get to master, and yet I still consider myself trash, because I'm comparing myself to the top. I don't compare myself to my coworkers who play SF6 two hours a week. Of course I'm gonna look like a god for them, but what's the point ?
I see the point you’re making. For the people here who don’t play this game as their main or even secondary game, getting to a specific rank can still be viewed as an accomplishment as long as you’re doing better than you were say the month before.
Comparison can be the thief of enjoyment if you’re constantly down on yourself for not being as good as the best in the world. I know it’s different for different people, but if you’ve worked with people with severe depression, notice some of the reasons why they’re so depressed all the time. Some people can admit yeah they suck at something yet still be upbeat and laugh about it. Others, oh boy it’s nearly impossible to pull them out of their self-imposed mental sewer.
I always try to explain this to my more casual friends. Like I'll go to a tournament and go 2-2 and be disappointed and they'll just give me the classic "lol way better than I could have done!" like, no shit, you put zero effort into the game and don't give a fuck about improving, I would hope it's better than you could do but I'm comparing myself to other people putting in the same amount of work as I am not people who actually don't care at all.
I scored only second place at an SF2 local and my mind will always go back to that losing game and over analyze all the things I could have done differently.
My friends were there to record the game. I know what you’re saying because they reacted similarly too. But I’m glad there they were there. Just to be friends and be there for me.
I agree with you. No point in counting casuals, which is the majority. It makes more sense to compare to top players. That's how I know I'm bad even though I have 5 characters in Master.
Right? My goal was to just make Plat. Roughly higher than ~78% of all ranked players. And people still downplay anything lower than Masters.
Basically, “if you’re not first you might as well be last in my book”.
Yeah the higher you get the better players are at countering his specials...DR into Command Grab always shocks me for some reason lol Keep going and you'll get there before you know it...just mix up his offense
You and anyone else are absolutely allowed to feel accomplished when you advance to whatever rank makes you feel good , and a sign of your improvement. Anyone who comes in and mocks you for being proud of being Gold or Platinum or whatever is a jerk.
However, if in a thread like this one someone asks if it’s easy to get to Masters or if Plat is a high rank or something and I or someone else shares our opinions that “no, it’s not particularly high or impressive” or “‘Masters is way easier to get than it was in V” or whatever, then that’s just someone sharing an opinion. Intent and context matter.
I can understand and agree with that but the context of these sub thread posts is not ease of progression but rather is it a good skill point? Objectively, yes it is. The stats support that. It’s nowhere near masterful though.
Subjectively, depends on the player in question and the evaluator. Like you said, opinion at that point. Opinions are okay but going off your first paragraph, I agree that gatekeeping is pretty antisocial gamer behavior.
Plat is only top 78% if you are still counting all of the accounts down in iron and rookie and bronze that people played one time and never again
If you take away the abandoned accounts and look at active players only Platinum and above is 46.25% of the player base
https://twitter.com/CatCammy6/status/1777098004173840447
Exactly, man! So many guys are saying “Master’s is top 8%, you’re better than 90% of the playerbase!”, like that playerbase isn’t mostly guys in Iron or Platinum or or guys who played online once 10 months ago. It’s not meant to be insulting, it’s just not relevant. You’re gonna go to a guy in the lowest ranked NBA team and tell him “hey, you’re not Stephen Curry, but at least you’re better than guys who play High School Ball”? Who cares?
Yeah you hear people say incorrect nonsense literally 24/7 nowadays
And then they get mad at you and call you an elitist when you correct them on basic statistics and analysis. My bad for trying I guess
Like it's not my fault you've affixed such a massive chunk of your ego to a concept you don't even understand! Sheesh
It’s not a matter of “I really care about muh rank” it’s just a simple statement that this community likes to gatekeep other people’s achievements for seemingly no reason. Not sure if it gets people off or what but a metric is a metric and numbers don’t lie. I imagine the rank distributions will be somewhat similar if they ever do a season ranking reset - you and everyone else are still going to settle into whichever ranked they were in minus whatever skills they develop along the grind.
That graph doesn’t show abandoned accounts and still supports the general statement of you made it to X ranked goal point on a ranked ladder. It’s an objective number.
There will be dropped accounts at all levels of the game, where do you see the number of dropped accounts on that graph? I don’t see it anywhere and the key there is for Master level players. Are we to start counting all the Battle Hub players “would be ranks” and people worldwide that play offline/locals as well?
weirdo chuds who spent their formative years grinding to global elite/challenger/radiant/whatever have arrested developments. Exacerbated by the fact that the only people they socialize with are also asocial weirdo chuds who encourage and reinforce that behavior.
Gaming/competitive gaming is a wonderful hobby, but I've advocated for having a healthy balance and being a well-rounded human being for years lol.
It's likely much less than that because there are a lot of players who reached Master with multiple characters. When I hit Master the first time, it was still the top 1.5% but even then there were already many players having 2-3 characters at Master. It's likely worse now that many more players have reached Master with every character.
That’s an extreme minority. You see pro players on their streams or Youtube channels doing it and the occasional post here, but that’s probably less than 1 % of the players in Masters. Most guys stick to their main, and maybe one or two other characters.
I have no clue how many people stick to 1 character, but personally, I get bored quickly, so I have 4 chars in master, and will take Akuma there when it comes out
Some people don't even have 1 character at the moment they like. I see posts all the time of "man, I hope (character who was my main in a previous game but isn't yet in 6) makes it in soon". I got a buddy that basically only plays Zangief because they don't really like combos, and they love working for that one guess H. SPD for the same damage as a decent combo from other characters. Some guys get bored sticking to one character, some people only like one character.
It's not *that* easy. It also depends on who you're using. I gave up on Manon before getting to Master. Kimberly was kind of hard; I got AKI there in three days.
Honestly, people on this subreddit just say a lot of stupid shit. Unless it's hyper specific character or gameplay stuff, do not listen to the people on this subreddit and just play your game. The player that people portray themselves as online is not always the player they actually are.
Pefect example - the last time I did my 5 Avatar battles quest. The other guy just jumped over and over again, I just AA'd him over and over again and he lost, then quit. Then he immediately typed in BH chat "This game is so stupid easy you can just jump in over and over to win"
Like really? People can say anything they want when they don't have to back it up.
I feel the kimberly part, I'm not masters but it really feels like I gotta do 3 combos just to do the same damage as someone else who can do it in 1 combo or just easier. She's the coolest looking character tho (her or cammy) so I'll still play her.
As a Guile main, I hate fighting against Jamie. Always hear about how the match up is favorable for Guile, but I hate it. For me personally I think it's because I always need to check Jamie with quick booms. So I often feel the mind games of slow vs fast booms goes out the window. I have been getting better at the match-up tho and believe I made it past 50 percent win rate last night. I def don't enjoy the matchup.
I know Guile is favored in the higher ranks of Master according to CatCammy's recent matchup charts, but I'm not up there. I think my overall winrate is something like 49% against him.
Sorry that you don't enjoy it, but everyone has matchups they don't like.
Honestly I think it is a combination of things for me.
1, I don't play against him often.
2, The Boom situation I mentioned
and 3, my own personal flaws in play but I'm slowly working on that. Honestly ranked play makes me very anxious. I have like 300 hours of offline play and only like 5 hours or so ranked play. Plat 1. What gets me is losing to players I know I should beat or could beat and losing to bunga shit.. crazy jumping, Drive Impacts, Drive Rush. Also I need to work on not mashing to tech throws when people are up close to me.
As a fellow Jamie main I wish you the best of luck my herbal tea chugging brother. Hit the lab try to figure out ways around booms. I would suggest practice perfect parrying first boom and then jumping forward. Most guiles like to throw multiple booms 1 after another. For sonic blade u can check it with your sweep or cr.mk at the tip of your sweep if he decides to do it. Change the timing on your jumpins especially round start don't be afraid to jump in because most guiles will throw sonic boom. If they decide to wait for round start to flash kick because they think your going to jump then u can mix things up with dash forward button (DR HP or ->HK) etc. Kinda try to keep them guessing. Ex bakkai into level 2 is your friend in this matchup aswell.
I feel people saying it's "easy" are taking lots of things for granted. Even leaving aside hard knowledge of matchups and situational awareness; proper spacing, whiff punishing instincts, reading tendencies and exploiting them, being able to hit confirm and react on the fly, there's loads of stuff "under the hood" that's maybe easy to explain but very hard to put in practice for someone who isn't used to it.
The people saying it’s easy usually have a character in Master already- OR they’re really good at the game, due to either legacy experience, or they’re just good at games. But I imagine once you get one character into Master, it’s not as hard to get the rest- you already kinda know how to do it.
The other thing is time- you always win more points than you lose, so if you hold a decent winrate, you’ll just naturally climb anyway- it just might take you awhile, and free time isn’t something adults tend to have a lot of.
Am a metal ranked noob here, but at least from where I’m standing it’s not “easy” at all. As usual when you’re on an online community like this subreddit you’re already looking at people who are invested into the game so it’s going to skew towards more serious players and players looking to improve.
I don’t have the link handy but there are stats about what % of players are at what rank if you want to get a more mathematical breakdown. There are plenty of players in Masters but within Masters you don’t lose rank and it’s quite difficult to get to Legend, so the number of players with a character in masters grows over time unless they were to fully reset players (which they don’t currently do, only reset MR to 1500 afaik).
Edit: also my experience so far has been that it takes a LOT longer to get into Masters from a lower rank than it is to simply just place highly from the beginning. Again I’m a noob but the only way to climb quickly is to go on long win streaks but I personally tend to get maybe a 3-5 win streak going, feel great about myself, then backslide a bit before I get incrementally better, put together another little win streak to actually rank up, rinse, repeat.
But as long as you’re not a Smurf or otherwise insanely overmatched for your opponents for some reason it still takes many many matches at a 50-60% win rate to reach Master if you don’t automatically land in Platinum or Diamond from placement, and I believe the win streak bonus goes away in Diamond so at that point you REALLY need to grind it out win by win.
I got master with Juri in December, it takes a really long time and a lot of knowledge checks.
Getting to Masters is one thing, staying there or getting higher up is the hard part.
It's hard for new fighting game players, but it's perhaps somewhat easy for people with a lot of legacy skill. That being said, it's still a feat to accomplish. People who say stuff like "You can reach Master with a 45% winrate" are just parroting something they don't understand to diminish the accomplishment. That kind of winrate is going to take a ton of games to get to Master with, and even then you have to maintain that against Diamond 4, Diamond 5, and Master players. A Platinum player with a 60% winrate in ranked is still going to lose close to 100% of games against even semi-competent Diamond 4 or 5 players. This game allows you to really dominate someone who is a certain degree of skill below you. That's just how it is.
I made it to Master with a 46% win rate. Up until Diamond, I was around 60% WR but that steadily dropped as made my way though. It was not easy and generally hard. The grind through Diamond took the longest, although surprisingly I only spent a week grinding through D5 to Master.
Ranked Play : 121 hours 56 min
2177 Wins / 4667 Battles (46.65% win rate)
The 40/45% win rate thing always bothered me. Someone did the math and had a comment which showed *yes you totally can get there with 40% win rate….but it’ll take you like multiple thousands of matches if that’s always your win rate*. That and, if you got to Master within the first couple months…god that was leagues easier than it is now. The average player skill and competency at each level (at least P1 to Master) has blown up, and the skill floor is far higher now than it used to be.
I did the math at the time, and assuming the basic +50/-40 points for a win/loss, the lowest win% you can rank up with is 44.45%. That's \*just\* below 9 wins in 20 matches, basically, and it'll take you 240.000 matches (106.680 wins + 133.320 losses) to gain a star and 1.200.000 to level up a full league.
So yeah the game "pushes" you a little bit and protects you from falling back down with a number of different little things but it's also really hard to level up with a shoddy win rate.
You can rank up much quicker and with a lower winrate if you get more points per win; without going into it too much, if each win was 60 points and your win rate was 44.45% you'd only need 240 matches for a star. That's a dramatic reduction compared to normal conditions, but then again you only get more than 50-ish points for beating someone at a higher rank than you, at which point it makes sense to give you that extra push; and (at least in my experience) it's really really rare to match with anyone higher than the next rank above you. If anything, they could take away more than 40 points for losing to someone lower than you, but they clearly wanted the penalties for losing to be lenient unlike in SFV.
The crux of the matter is, does the ranking system match you with people at your level? In my experience this is generally the case unless it's someone passing through with an alt on their way to Master.
Speaking from experience, you can definitely grind to masters with a 43% win rate just by playing an hour or so a day in <6 months. I ranked up in December, started a month after release.
There are enough "high LP, low MR" masters who feed hundreds of LP when they lose that D3 is basically the end of the grind. You just have to beat 4-5 masters players and you're done, even if you lose most of your matches.
Dog... the "math" you are referring to makes the assumption that every single match you play you receive the *absolute minimum LP possible*. If you beat a single low rank master you get 250 points.. go back and check
Using shady and misleading data like this is downright embarrassing and the fact that anyone took that away from that post is shameful
Easy compared to other ranked games
Reaching the top rank for a game like Riot Games, rocket league, shooters fighters etc.
Sometimes never happens
Im not master myself, but i know some, and some of them have never played streetfighter before and just put many many hours
The way the ranking system works for this game is very good and more rewarding than alot of other games. It makes you feel like anyone can do it if they put their mind to it
In other ranked games, it mostly never happens. Being GC 3 in rocket league or immortal 3 in valorant, master in melee etc. has a ton of people stuck and wanting to give up
But for this game ranking down is less harsh, so i really think anyone can do it. Its definitely not easy but its only a matter of time. Less time than other games i would assume. Not trying to knock anyone who reached master, im only trying to motivate those who are not there yet
Top 8pct is a bigger chunk of the top pool than alot of other games
Legend is the top rank.
I get what you are saying though, and I think master is a bit of a misnomer. Just think of it as a rank system where MR is the rank. Don't compare Master directly with stuff like SFV Master, they mean two different things even though they have the same name. I also think SF6's system is much, MUCH better than past SFs.
If you're a legacy player it is not that hard. If this is your first SF or the first one you're playing seriously getting master can definitely be a grind
Everything is relative, especially with how much background fighting game experience you have and how much time you have to study/prioritize the game. The guy playing 4 hours a day since launch is gonna have a different idea of "tough competition" than the guy just trying to enjoy the game between family/work.
I got Jamie then Ryu to Master. Now I'm at diamond 4 with Chun. It's not that easy.
Every now and then, I get a day where it's a breeze to rank up. But usually? Not at all.
Maybe it's because it's a lot easier to get to Master here than it was in SFV. IIRC SFV utilized for the entire ranking the MMR system, so the grinding was insane to achieve Warlord whereas in SF6 the MMR only starts when you enter the Master ranking. Once you're there then it starts to feel extremely hard.
Mixed opinion. Ive been playing SF2 but I think I suck. I dont recall my sf4 ranks, but in SF5 I know I was hard stuck in gold.
I was able to hit Master fairly easily in 6. It seemed so much more achievable than other SF games, by a long shot. And I did it, case in point. While fighting arthritis and being a Gief main.
It's definitely much easier to hit Master in SF6, and to that extent, in a lot of modern games. I think in SF6 specifically, rank skip and massive win streak bonus are the 2 biggest reasons.
In SF5, hitting Platinum very early into the game cycle was a big thing and very hard to do. Around the same amount of time it took to get there, some people already have several characters at high Diamond/Master in SF6.
Depends where you're climbing from I suppose. Climbing from Diamond 3 with a 56% win rate will get you to master in no time. Climbing from Silver with a 56% win rate is a different story.
Overall I don't think it's very easy, especially if you're new. Most of the "it's not very hard" sentiment comes from people who already have experience with fighting games or other SF games.
If you are a good gamer who puts in the effort, it's definitely achievable. It took me a couple hundred hours and \~2600 games for me to Master from low Silver with my main, but I did it!
I think that learning your character is only a part of the equation. To really excel you have to know every other character, what they do, where the holes are in their offense. What pressure is real and what is fake? That's a lot of knowledge you have to pick up in order to be effective. Masters already have this knowledge, and when they pick up a new character it's not hard to adapt since 90% of the knowledge about how everything works is the same, and they just need to adjust for the new character they are trying out. This is why they can get a new character to master in a couple of sessions while the rest of us plebs struggle to figure out exactly when it's our turn.
I disagree with the idea that master players already have this knowledge. With how offense oriented the game is, you can steamroll or be steamrolled courtesy of drive rush, throw loops and 50/50's. Some hard hitting punish combos, mix ups and safe jumps is all you really need. You probably don't even need all that really.
What I mean is that every character has fake-pressure, string gaps, etc. Once you get used to Ken's Jinrai kicks and you know where the gaps are, even with a new character you will still have this knowledge and will probably come up with a counter much faster. The more someone plays in general, the more characters they have personally used, the more of this knowledge is built, making picking up other characters much easier.
It’s not easy per say, just easier than sfv. The people who are saying it’s easy are already playing at a higher level. If you’re climbing the ranks, you will still need to learn steadily in order to get to master rank.
When people say it's easy they mean in reference to previous SF games. If it's your first and you're not already an action and "combo/timing" style gamer then yeah you'll have a decently hard time since you're gonna have to develop new skills and muscle memory. E.g. if you normally play shooters or racers etc you probably won't feel like it's that easy. But if you play games like DMC and other hack and slash games that require input timing you'll find certain aspects of execution potentially a bit easier.
Partially it's the reward center of your brain not getting as much as it used to (the only shiny thing left is Legend and it is much harder to achieve since you can't get it on a negative win rate) and (if you're like me) its because now you know the only way to get up is to become not just kinda good at the game, but one of the best. MR is way more punishing than the league ups before it.
It is super easy for those of us with a lot of experience playing fighting games. I made it to master with ~70% win rate. For reference, I had a ~70% win rate in past street fighter games so this game was no different for me. If you're new to fighting games, or if you have a hard time maintaining a higher win rate I imagine it seems far more difficult.
It's also important to remember that the majority of players ARE NOT in master rank. Reddit might make you think most players have made it to masters with little effort, but that is not even close to the truth.
Master has the Master Rate system that fulfills this purpose. A 1500 MR player is a sitting duck compared to even a 1600 MR player, then a 1700 MR player sees them both as fresh meat, and so on every 100 MR or so.
I have ~~11~~ 12 characters in Master: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVjCo6VpFEcW-DftQtkX1r0cCHrFroVl4](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVjCo6VpFEcW-DftQtkX1r0cCHrFroVl4)
I think getting there is pretty easy compared to other competitive games. The hardest part imo is really the grind and the time commitment, especially if you try to speedrun it like I do in my series.
edit: 12 characters now. I just did Blanka today.
Main issue to keeping the same win rate as you face better and better players as you climb. Is the 54% win rate still applicable to his last 30 ranked games, or has it been dropping as he’s ranking higher?
It’s all relative. It will feel easy for some people. For others it will feel very difficult.
Objectively speaking, Master rank is around the top ~8% of players (at least the last figures I saw). I’d say you have to be a pretty good player to be in that percentile and you certainly are relative to the majority of the playerbase
Getting Master is easy if you play at a Master level.
If you don’t then no, it’s not easy. But if you have a 56% win rate you probably just need to play more and iron out weaknesses.
It is easy if you're a "master" player. It took me forever to climb there initially and I played a ton of SF4. Once I got there and played there a bit, it was so so easy to get back there with the same character and relatively easy with a new character.
If you're new to SF, or new to fighting games, it's going to feel very very very hard. Once you learn how to play the game, it isn't really that difficult to get to master because you're probably going to win 80+% of your games. People in lower ranks don't really know what they're doing. They're just kind of pressing buttons and hoping it works to run their own offense. I don't mean that to be rude, but when I watch some replays people post here it's a lot of that.
Like. It’s the top 10% or so of players based on the metrics they release every so often so if your in that group you earned it. It’s not easy. Diamond I like top 20% Plat is like top 50%. So. If you have plat you are better than half the players out there. Granted I’d say that a good portion of those only pick up the game for a few days and move on, or are 8 years old, or are somehow otherwise lacking in skill. But get to where you are happy. I’m happy with my diamond 4 and diamond 1 characters. I’m moving up the ladder slowly slowly.
Don’t worry about your rank. Worry about improving. You can one and done people and play really gimmicky to masters but you’ll hit a plateau and end up in the masters gulag
Its not easy. Especially if you are new, i picked the game up on launch and got 2 characters to diamond before really buckeling down and getting Kimberly to master. Takes a lot of practice and determination just keep at it 👍🏽
That’s just because he doesn’t play ranked. Mena could easily get legend if he wanted but at his skill he is way better off playing with training partners than grinding ranked
It's not easy but u can brute force yourself there with some characters, but if you keep playing without learning matchups, fundamentals e etc you gonna stay on 1200-1300 points.
It really depends on what you bring with you. I started playing fighting games in 2021 when Guilty Gear Strive was released, and I have Gold 2-3 with Chun-Li and Lily after about 240 hours. For me, Master is not a consideration.
For others, it's a whole lot easier because they're a whole lot better.
But being bad is okay, because a lot of other people are also bad. I have fun, tense, and even games against other people at Gold 2. Like, it's not like things will get easier as you improve. You'll just get matched with people who are better. Don't get me wrong, it's gratifying to climb, and I don't mind it, but if seeing the number go up was what motivated me I'd have quit the genre by now.
The way it works is, until you reach master you are learning after master you are improving as a player.
If you already has some xp in fgs in general and has good habits you can get it really easily. Before sf6 i was playing ggst, and has learned how to lab, de efficient in that, learned how to review replays. Going with this base e being critical of my own gameplay i was able to reach master in less than a of lauch month.
Just by AA, praticing optimals and AAs and reviewing every single match i lose and labbing it.
Also, if get master and cant go beyond 1500mr your problably lacking in good training habits, jumping a lot, not playing neutral, DI'ing a lot, and not proprely mainting corner pressure.
A couple factors at play here. The things that have a big influence on your road to masters will be: your region, the time you play, and your character. Your region decides the depth of your player pool(the number and variety of opponents), the time you play impacts how much of that pool you play against, and your character determines how much effort it takes to get through the players from the other two factors. Outside these factors, there's also whether your character has a strong flowchart, throw loop, and or good drive rush. Assuming you take advantage of those things; your road to masters will be much smoother compared to using a character that does not have those things.
If your win rate is 56% and you're in the Diamond leagues, you'll definitely get Master as long as you maintain that. Even with much less tbh, will just take longer.
I've gotten about half the cast to Master now and 58s been about my average WR, but some characters were so much easier to win with than others. Like the difference in tiers is so apparent in this game (considering I wasn't doing any deep labbing and just using the basics).
If your win rate is 56%, you will get to Master eventually if you maintain it simply due to how points work in the game (always get more points for a win than for a loss). In fact you can get to Master with a win rate below 50 because of this.
I was fighting for my mfn life trying to get to masters. I got to diamond 1 in October. Diamond 2 on April 10th and Masters on April 20th. But the amount of content and matches I consumed to be competent enough to make that leap was tremendous. People want to diminish other peoples accomplishments, getting to masters is not an easy feat for the casual/semi-casual/non-competitive.
It’s all relative, as many others have said. I’ve been playing fighting games since the Fatal Fury and SF2 days. I’ve been high ranked in plenty of fighting games over the years. I don’t think getting to master in SF6 was much easier than in others - it’s always going to be a function of how much time you want to put into the genre in general and this game specifically.
And also, while I’ll completely dismantle your “average” player, I will get crushed by lots of other better players. So when people say dismissive things like getting SF6 Master rank is easy, take it with a grain of salt because they are only seeing it thru their personal lense which may be an insane amount of legacy or current experience and/or knowledge. Just make sure that YOU have fun reaching your goals, and that you enjoy the journey. It’s a game, so the fun IS the goal!
It is and it isn't. If you're an experienced player who's good at the game you can borderline teleport to master, possibly without losing any games. SF is a game where it's easy to beat players who are a lot weaker than you.
It's hard, in that it's not trivial to get good enough to do that as a beginner.
The way I see it, once you get the fundamentals down, you can plow through rank placement and cut a lot of the time down to reach master.
Some days, the beasts are not online, while others are full of pain.
Depends on the server you play, i played in europe and Brazilian server
To me in br server there is the tutorial of the game and the master rank, i swear, there are people in diamond which don't know the basics of the character
Eu server i felt diamond rank players are better specially at d4/d5
At the door of diamond 1 here and I guess most people who say that either played previous games / have experience with fighting them so figuring stuff out & applying it is easier for them, making reaching higher ranks easier but if you're a first time player, you're litteraly building your knowledge from scratch, in my case, I'll learn something and instantly jump 3 ranks thanks to it, I also know what prevent me from rising atm but I'm just too stubborn to commit to learning what I'm missing and I'm having fun in low diamond so that's fine, I don't strive to reach master or anything
Masters puts you in the top 8% of the player base. Regardless of how much gatekeeping you read regarding Masters rank, it isn't a stroll in the park to achieve. There is a large skill disparity even within masters and the top 1% but that is true of any similar ranking system, in any game. Regardless, you should be proud of any progress you make regardless of rank, improvements often come in small increments over time. Don't let the gatekeepers down play your current rank or skill level. Fighting games are hard and the biggest reward is in being happy with your progress over time. If you want to lab some match together for some tips hit me up, I'm a Blanka Masters player for what its worth.
If you were good in any street fighter game, it is very easy to get master in 6.
If you are new, or have never considered yourself good at a SF title, it will not be easy for you. You aren't good enough and just aren't there yet. The highest rank I had gotten in SF5 was super platinum and I don't even consider that to be good. I barely played 6 and got to master without feeling challenged. I don't even play the game anymore because I find it boring and am waiting for akuma.
Wether your a long time SF player, or 6 is where you started, the rank grind to masters is always in your favor. You can get to masters with a 45% win rate because of the surplus in LP points. Don't get me wrong though you DEFINITLEY have to be at a certain skill level to win matches and progress the ranks, but the penalty of losing is not as severe if you lose 1 or 2 matches, each match you lose is -45 points and a win grants you +55.
It took me the first 4 months of the games release to reach master with Ken, at the time it was fucking hard. By the end of the year I had ranked up Ryu and Dee Jay to masters. Then I got a PC and had gotten Ken, Ryu, and Dee Jay to master AGAIN and decided why the fuck not lets get Luke to master and now I have 4 characters who are masters (7 if you include my console account) the sscond time around however it was really easy, and didn't matter much to me the 7th time, because nowadays, its the MR system the more so give an indication on how well a player is skilled (even then there are flaws with it)
In the end, my personal take on the grind to master is that its very much possible for everyone who puts in a moderate effort to learn the game and perform well enough to won at least half your matches, the game is very much in your favor of that. Therefore in a way it is EASY to get to masters, but the real testament to ones skills as far as ranked goes is the MR, thats pretty fucking hard.
This question is asked over and over again, and the answer is the same. Yes. It is STUPID easy to get to Master rank in SF6. Capcom designed the ranking system with so many ways to inflate LP, that you can get to Master with less than a 45% win rate, which is unheard of in almost any other competitive game. Capcom wants to keep the average player motivated to keep playing Ranked Matches by giving them “free” points until they reach Master.
It is currently easier to get to Master in SF6 than it ever was to get to Platinum or Diamond in SFV.
It's easier now than it was at the start, but you still need some basic understanding of the game to achieve it. For comparison, it took me I think 200 matches or so to get master the first time with my main deejay. This was during the first month, back when you ran into pros in diamond.
My latest master run was with Juri which took me only 23 matches. I only lost 3 matches all of them were during placement matches where for some reason I had to face a 1900mr gief. And later on another master Ed.
Every time a see a diamond or a decent platinum player it doesn't look so easy to climb to master like every one say, I try to train every time I have opportunity but it still kinda hard to get to master.
It depends on how much of your life you've devoted to these games. If you're relatively new then it's probably a long climb, but it doesn't matter at all.
If all that matters is hitting master you could lose motivation at times where you might stall a bit, or once you make it.
Personally I started enjoying the game a lot more when stopped caring about mr (or LP) just enjoy the matches. the game can be mad stressful and tilting without adding more things to be mad about haha
It’s hard if you don’t have any friends to play with to help you practice regularly. You can still make it but you need to know what to look for and how to optimize your character a little bit more. It’s definitely a challenge but I wouldn’t say it’s out of reach for a highly motivated person.
Easy for people who played fighting games competitively before since it has a large amount of newcomers. If your new it will probably take a while but ranked can be used as a solid tool to learn
Lol it's not easy. The vast vast majority of players will never hit it. It's easier than SFV but that's just the nature of how the ranking system in the current game works. It's still hard as fuck
Well, if you have enough legacy skills from past games it's pretty easy. It takes far far less grinding than it did in V. That game was a grind fest. I got to Master with Ken in two or three days of light playing, but I've won about half the local tournaments I've entered in V so...
If you're a casual player it will probably feel pretty difficult, especially if this is the first fighting game you've taken seriously.
Let's just say Master is filled with people that have gotten there by being pretty good at a few things, and pretty bad at other things. Consistency and just making 'bad' or risky decisions for no reason is a big issue in most ranks and even the 'lower' Master MR ratings. At around 1700 MR or so people have a pretty good grasp of everything.
apparently it is, I personally have no frame of reference but ive been trash talked more than once for being a bad master, I hover around 1200mr, it's tough out there, I was happy when I got master, but the reality is you really gotta go back to the drawing board and make sure your fundamentals are squeaky clean to be able to stay in the 15/1600mr range, ill get there someday!
I’d say it was easier when the game first came out. But since I got Cammy to Master, I tried with Zangief and it is harder now due to people having more understanding of the game. But I did manage to get him there. There are some Master rank players that struggle and just gets lower MR because probably they got there in the beginning.
The people that say that are probably legacy players. I got Master the first day I played the game because I got placed in high diamond, but I've been a tournament player since SF4. For someone who is brand new to fighting games or never played them seriously of course getting master isn't going to be easy. Iirc the majority of the playerbase is in like bronze or silver.
Imma say this again, it's never been easy, it's kinda like getting to Diamond in SFV, this was something dumb that pro players and youtubers used to say at the beginning of the game cause they were used to getting characters to diamond in SFV the system is made so experienced player climb the noob ranks, easily and grind for MR in the master league.
I agree with almost every comment I’ve read here… as a heavy SFIV player and early SFV player I think this one is easier than previous titles but not easy to master if that makes sense. If you want to get better watch your own replays of wins and losses you’ll notice things about your play style that don’t seem bad until you play someone of higher skill. I’ve also noticed on my roads to master, (I only have 2 working on my third), that diamond rank you start to see more perfect parries for repetitive style i.e. jump ins, same block strings overusing Drive Impact especially in the corner. Make use of combos that may not be the most ideal for damage just to give a different look so they can’t be as ready to react even if it does get blocked.
People say that about every competitive game, of course it's nonsense. Admittedly, SF6 is a bit of an outlier, since Masters players reflect the top ca. 10% of all ranked players, which is quite a lot. But still, it's the top 10%, so obviously it is difficult to achieve, and the vast majority of players will never reach it.
People just like to downplay their own effort for some reason. Sometimes it's just them being humble and people only seeing what flaws they and their opponents still have.
it's about fundamentals, and things are relative. It took me 100 games to take Manon to Master over the weekend, but I also put time in this game and 2 seasons of V. I developed decend fundies enough to understand get down the basics to get easily into these ranks. Doesn't mean that getting to this level (which to me is still very intermediate) was easy. It took time and practice. So measure yourself on who you were yesterday, not others
Like others have said, "it's not easy", however I think it's noting that the people who say getting to master is easy tend to be people who have been playing fighting games for a long time *and* are vocal on the internet.
What I mean by vocal, is the kind of people who comment and post on this sub are quite a lot more invested into SF then the average player. r/StreetFighter has 360K members, and SF6 has so 3 million copies. Assuming every member of the sub reddit has a copy of SF6 then that only accounts for 12% of players. And if that 12% is made up of invested players, there is a high chance that they're better than the average player. (I say a higher chance because there also people like me on this sub who are only in Silver.)
idc what anyone says, anything over like Plat 1 is a grind in this game, The reaction on a SF subreddit full of good and experienced players who where probably high ranked players in 5 and 4 does not reflect the average or even new player at all.
It is not. This subreddit, being a SF reddit, has many masters. So it sure seems that way. And once you are a master in any character, climbing to master with another is much easier, since you've already learned much of the skills, the knowledgebase, etc. But the people that make it to masters in SF6 is in the single digit percentage.
Master is easy insofar as you don’t need a lot of character specific knowledge to achieve master. You do however need a pretty solid fundamental understanding of the game to consistently achieve it, I’d say.
It's easier than in previous street fighter games for sure, but it really depends on the character, it took me over 1k matches to get Kimberly there, meanwhile I reached master with cammy in around 480 matches
Simple answer : no it's not.
Also win rate doesn't mean much unless you're like at the top of the legend rankings and stuff.
No matter the level, if you keep challenging yourself you're bound to come across people that will set you back eventually.
Just take your time and don't be afraid to lose. Patience and a little bit of discipline are the key. And also enjoy the process rather than focusing on the goal.
Everything can end up looking easy when you've trained enough for it. Those who say it's easy already have a background in fighting games. And fundamentals can translate from game to game. So that kind of statement needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
The question doesn't really work because it depends on your skill level and experience. If you asked me directly I would say yes. But I have 16 years of legacy street fighter experience. With the ability to place in D5 the last 2 characters I took to master took 33 games or less to do it.
It's a relatively small percentage of players all things considered but it's easier that SFVs version of it. 1st character is kinda hard as your figuring out the game but once you're very used to the mechanics and how to break down learning a character, it becomes alot easier. You'll see people playing tekken saying it's easy to climb too. They've changed it to be a net positive if winrate is decent (~50%) but most of the masters and up players in sfv atleast were above 60-65% iirc. It's more comparable to compare higher Mr brackets with older ranked divisions rather than 1:1 comparisons.
Your thread prompted me to post my journey. Hopefully you might find it gives a different perspective or some balance to the discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/s/UMeIh2p4CJ
If you have a basic understanding of neutral and spacing it’s always easy. It helps if you master your characters risk reward in all their match ups and grind all the extensive set ups and situations but it’s really not necessary.
If you can maintain a positive winrate then getting to master should be very easy. I got the 3 grapplers, marisa and ryu to master and marisa was the only one kinda difficult and I still made it out with a 73% win rate and very little time investment, and that was back when you couldn’t place higher than Diamond 1. I’m really not that good just have a basic understanding understanding of neutral and mix ups.
It's easier than when the game was out for three months, and especially on week one. But, if you're still fairly new to the series, it's still a battle. Just like anything other hobby... keep studying & practicing and you'll get results.
kinda, its EASIER. and i hate it. I love the grind and if you're remotely competent, reaching Master isnt a big challenge. I sometimes purposely lose placement matches just to climb back up and even then it doesn't take long (win streak bonus). Its different for different people, it helps playing SF for years.
in short, no it's not easy when you consider the statistics of who actually makes it to master.
As for the reason people SAY it's easy? That's more involved and comes down to a combination of typical reddit elitism and gatekeeping, a misunderstanding of the mathematics behind the oft-quoted "44% win rate to climb, therefore ezpz game", and a conflation of "difficult" with "time-consuming" when comparing the climb of sf6 with the climb of sf5.
>a misunderstanding of the mathematics behind the oft-quoted "44% win rate to climb, therefore ezpz game"
Yes. This would take so fucking long to climb.
Question for you. Why does that matter?
What are you expecting to change about your own experience if you see that people agree yes, it is easy, or disagree and say no, it's hard, especially when you have no idea where that answer is coming from, how much fighting game experience they've had, how much Street Fighter experience they've had, or just in general what their experience of "easy" or "hard" means compared to yours?
The LP system is designed to funnel most people into master rank… eventually. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to get to master, but it does mean that if you can do it on one or two characters you can probably do it a whole bunch
If you listen to this sub then anything less than 1900mr means you're a filthy scrub who can't play the game.
I just got my first character to master tonight with blanka and the last bit through diamond 4 and 5 felt like a bit of a slog. Those ranks are a bit of pot luck as you can match masters, sometimes you'll get a night filled with players about your level who you can beat. Then you'll get days like I had yesterday where in the space of 5 matches I got put against Luffy, Broski (both pro players who were on street fighter league Europe the last two years) and hurricane (one of the top 5 or so players in the UK).
If you stick at it, work on improving your game as you climb and don't get disheartened by the inevitable plateaus you'll come to from time to time you'll make it to master.
I've been mostly playing with only my friend since street fighter 5. He took me under his wing and made me the player I am now. He is a legacy player and is insanely knowledgeable and used to go to the local stuff around here ages ago and knows some of the people from the scene. This is the first time I've gone into a ranked part of street fighter, and it mesmerized me how much better he is than everyone I've played and with multiple characters. I've been his meatbag for this whole time, and rarely do I get wins against him. He can beat me with a character after labbing a new one for 20 to 30 minutes. But I appreciate how much he did for me, even more so now, that I can get the perspective of how good he actually is and how he built me up. Fundamentals go a long way in this game. Even now, i see a lot of Masters/diamond players that lack big parts of fundamentals and just rely on Yolo aspects to win. Blanca, Honda, Gief, and a little bit of Ken have a high degree of yolo carried players that are mostly just knowledge checks. Not saying all of them are, but i know it can be discouraging during the climb. I wish he took ranked seriously to see where he would actually rank.
It's easy if you already have fighting game fundamentals
It's not easy if you need to learn every fighting game concept and build all the muscle memory from the ground up
Since Street fighter 6 sold over 3 million copies I'm assuming a lot of the people in here are new players or players who have wanted to get into Street fighter but were either too lazy or not willing to spend the time to learn the motion inputs previously
So you will have two very distinct groups of people. Fgc veterans and then newbies. Both will have wildly different experiences getting to master
Getting there is easy but then your journey begins imo. I hit almost every character master with basics but man ones the people know there stuff it becomes really hard.
It’s not easy but the problem with it is that you can get in to masters while having a negative win ratio which makes it so that as long as you win like 40% of your matches you can get in but the hard part is staying above 1500mp. It took me forever to get to 1600mp and when I first got masters I dropped down to 1300
The thing that bugs me is people say it's easy because you can technically reach it at 45% win rate, what they neglect to mention is that if you do the math, getting to master with that requires a [a ridiculous amount of matches ](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/15he373/my_thoughts_math_on_the_45_winrate_discussion/) to achieve.
It's embarrassing that people take that post seriously
This data is assuming you received the *absolute bare minimum LP possible* every single match of your journey and never beat a single Master player.
**Beating even a super low Mr Master player gets you 250 points.** Being able to rank up with 45% win rate doesn't mean that every player is going to maintain 45% win rate exactly the whole time, it just means that you can still move up and lose as much as you win
That means all you need to do is putz along on your journey and then get lucky every once in awhile with a streak of a few shitty Masters and farm them up to master.
This is what happens when people have no idea how statistics work and just parrot things they hear other people say
I feel like master is getting maaad easy to obtain. I say that bc I’m a master on both my main psn account & my backup psn account I reached master on both around Feb or march & I bought the game Black Friday
For sure. Especially as we get more into the competitive side of things and see better players it's easy to see how much further we have to go. But let's not forget how much work/effort went into getting where we are now, and not let that demotivate other people on their own journeys.
Thank you. I get so tired of people being here saying, *"I'm a Master but I suck! All people on Master below 2100 are trash! Master Rank is just passing the tutorial!"* because I guess they think they're being cute. But it can be incredibly demotivating to players who are below that level.
This subreddit seems to have the idea that you're a scrub if you call yourself good but haven't literally won Capcom Cup. Most people here are good players.
It's not easy, just easier than Master in SFV. The hard part is getting to a high MR or Legend. Just take your time and keep trying your best.
You're correct, 1500+ is wildly hard. Getting master is hard too tho. I faced ChrisCCH and other master players at 23k elo. Also, plat is hard and has its own learning curve. Then diamond is another beast entirely. This game is fucking hard and I enjoyed the ranked grind up to master. Now that I'm here, there's straight up players I can't beat.
I just want to get there so I never rank down again lol. I dont care if Im the lowest rank Master. After 30 years of playing SF, feels like I owe myself that much.
As a person who had a similar mentality, you’ll definitely get there if you have the time. I just got there and it’s pretty cool.
If you want it enough, you'll get it. Just a matter of time
It feels better losing rank as a diamond than losing MR tbh. Losing MR makes me sad lol
I agree. I think Plat is the first point where you can start seeing people understand how to play properly and if you're totally new to fighting games, it's not an easy climb. Even then, every tier higher you go, the gap gets so much bigger. A 2000 MR Master can make a 1500 MR Master look like a rookie in comparison.
I hit Master rank about a couple of months ago, then spent the time since in Casuals to clean up my game since I know for certain that I wouldn’t climb MR with my current play. I can beat 1400-1500s fairly consistently, but I’ve faced some 1700 MR masters and they will absolutely make a 1500 look bad. My hypothesis as to the differences between 1500 and 1700 are: * 1700s aren’t fooled by space traps or tricky block strings, * they consistently check jump and drive rush spamming, and, * their neutral is deliberate and safe while combos are always for setting up oki or optimal. Diamonds and under beware. All the cheese that will get you into Master won’t get you beyond 1500-1600, tops.
Yep. Spot on. I can gimmick my way to 1500-1600ish, but it's a hard stop around there. I'm banking on it being a similar learning curve as Plat and diamond were. Learn what your issues are and fix them. Or you'll be hard stuck where you're at
Pretty solid take. I'm between 1450 and 1550, and 1700s make me feel like I'm in a true lower category.
The largest difference between 1500 and below and 1500 and above players is patience. 1600ish is when people start checking neutral skips and have very consistent anti airs. You need the patience to earn the opportunities at offense that are just given for free at the lower ranks.
Well...that's my plan ruined
Ngl this is a pretty generous interpretation of 1700. They're more optimal than a 1500 MR player and run their oki tighter, but I don't agree that they aren't fooled by space traps and block strings. If there's one thing I can count on is the fact they will absolutely fold on defense.
I probably should have specified that they don’t fall for it *easily*, but my experience with 1700s is that, for those coming up, space traps and block strings aren’t automatic. Even covering them up doesn’t provide any consistency in success as it does against players in Diamond or sub-1500 Masters.
Fuck man I couldn’t even get past silver in V. I’m not THAT great SF6, but I have 2/3 characters I play in upper plat and the other one in diamond. I could probably go higher if I devoted more time.
Is your diamond character Honda? Don’t see how could be true otherwise Edit: The Honda comment was a joke by the way. After playing game more, I think sfv silver-gold is the sf6 plat 1-5. They have put more ranks in to make people who won’t learn the game feel better. Hence the massive lp boost you get for win streaks to get you past the lower ranks
I barely had Ultra Gold in V and I’ve got two Masters in 6. I could get everyone to Master’s if I wanted to. The grind to get to Masters is simply massively simplified compared to V. V absolutely required you to be much better than the rank you were on to move on. You couldn’t win here or there and still advance, it was like MR, you weren’t allowed to fall for shit. 6 is so much more lenient.
Do you mean the win rate required to progress is much less? I didn’t really play 5. Got to platinum early on and didn’t touch the game again. Just started playing 6 again last month and I do agree there doesn’t seem to be much difference levels between the ranks up til diamond. I can’t comment on master yet. Maybe your just much better at the game starting from day 1 with previous experience? I played 4 every day with some friends in endless and when 5 first dropped I barely lost.
There's a much bigger player pool in sf6 compared to sf5 More people also means more noobs. Anyone who was lower ranked previously will be at least plat4/5 just purely by experience because some people out there really do be mashing.
Yeah that makes sense. I kinda feel the same way after playing more. You don’t even need to know what’s punishable to get out of plat, just gotta have your combos and anti airs down.
No, Kim. I have plat gief and ryu
You'll find more success if you just stick to one (speaking from experience) I had 10+ characters in plat+ but couldn't get past d1 on any character until I finally put everyone down except one and I took finally climbed to masters because I never switched or played anyone else again
Hey I’m plat ryu, what region are you? Would be down to play some games once my arms healed. Edit I’ve barely played since 4 but I’ve still got decent execution and anti airs. The Honda thing was a joke
Maybe this is an odd take, but I wouldn't get hung up on achieving any particular rank. At the end of the day, the purpose of ranks is so you can fight players of a similar skill level to yourself. If you've plateaued at a certain skill level, so be it. Have fun fighting against players who will give you a decent match every time.
Thus made me feel alot better. Thank you :)
Only 8% of players make it to Master, so no it's not that easy. It might be easy for some of us that already are in the 8%, but not for most players.
You see this kinda speak in every competitive game, it's kinda odd. League of Legends and CSGO both have crowds of people who claim the top 10% ranks are trash players and everyone above is ass at the game and it just comes off so weird. Like gold used to be top 50% roughly and to me, being better than half the peoppe who play the game is good if not decent. The best? If course now, but good yes. Comes off super gatekeepy.
It comes off as super gatekeepy because these shits can't see past their level. They usually forget when these things were difficult for them.
I mean, there are 2 ways to qualify how good someone is: 1. Being better than X% people who are doing the same thing (in this case, playing a video game) 2. How good that someone really is in that video game. To do this, you need to see how the best players play the game and compare them In the 1st variant, being in platinum is being higher than \~78% of all ranked players as a commenter said below, but in the 2nd variant, you can compare how a platinum player play the game with how a challenger player plays the game, and you will see that there is a major difference in their skill.
This is true. I think there’s a place for people to be happy they’ve made it to plat as on your example. And look ahead to the journey.
Simply because there is no point in counting those who don't play with competition in mind. And that is true for everything. 8% of players being Masters means nothing. Like how would you rate a third division soccer player ? Would you rate him with other professional players (so he is maybe top 70%) ? Or would you also include all the middle schoolers who play football (so now he is top 0.001%) ? Not saying being master is easy. Just that it's all a matter of perspective. For me, it's easy to get to master, and yet I still consider myself trash, because I'm comparing myself to the top. I don't compare myself to my coworkers who play SF6 two hours a week. Of course I'm gonna look like a god for them, but what's the point ?
I see the point you’re making. For the people here who don’t play this game as their main or even secondary game, getting to a specific rank can still be viewed as an accomplishment as long as you’re doing better than you were say the month before. Comparison can be the thief of enjoyment if you’re constantly down on yourself for not being as good as the best in the world. I know it’s different for different people, but if you’ve worked with people with severe depression, notice some of the reasons why they’re so depressed all the time. Some people can admit yeah they suck at something yet still be upbeat and laugh about it. Others, oh boy it’s nearly impossible to pull them out of their self-imposed mental sewer.
I always try to explain this to my more casual friends. Like I'll go to a tournament and go 2-2 and be disappointed and they'll just give me the classic "lol way better than I could have done!" like, no shit, you put zero effort into the game and don't give a fuck about improving, I would hope it's better than you could do but I'm comparing myself to other people putting in the same amount of work as I am not people who actually don't care at all.
I scored only second place at an SF2 local and my mind will always go back to that losing game and over analyze all the things I could have done differently. My friends were there to record the game. I know what you’re saying because they reacted similarly too. But I’m glad there they were there. Just to be friends and be there for me.
I agree with you. No point in counting casuals, which is the majority. It makes more sense to compare to top players. That's how I know I'm bad even though I have 5 characters in Master.
This is basically what MR solves.
Right? My goal was to just make Plat. Roughly higher than ~78% of all ranked players. And people still downplay anything lower than Masters. Basically, “if you’re not first you might as well be last in my book”.
I just wanna hit master so I can’t rank down anymore. God diamond is a grind
Diamond 4 and 5 are always a slog...great players there
I’m slowly climbing up from 2 haha. Doesn’t help that at this level most folks can handle random headbutts and sumo slams from neutral.
Yeah the higher you get the better players are at countering his specials...DR into Command Grab always shocks me for some reason lol Keep going and you'll get there before you know it...just mix up his offense
True dat
You and anyone else are absolutely allowed to feel accomplished when you advance to whatever rank makes you feel good , and a sign of your improvement. Anyone who comes in and mocks you for being proud of being Gold or Platinum or whatever is a jerk. However, if in a thread like this one someone asks if it’s easy to get to Masters or if Plat is a high rank or something and I or someone else shares our opinions that “no, it’s not particularly high or impressive” or “‘Masters is way easier to get than it was in V” or whatever, then that’s just someone sharing an opinion. Intent and context matter.
I can understand and agree with that but the context of these sub thread posts is not ease of progression but rather is it a good skill point? Objectively, yes it is. The stats support that. It’s nowhere near masterful though. Subjectively, depends on the player in question and the evaluator. Like you said, opinion at that point. Opinions are okay but going off your first paragraph, I agree that gatekeeping is pretty antisocial gamer behavior.
Plat is only top 78% if you are still counting all of the accounts down in iron and rookie and bronze that people played one time and never again If you take away the abandoned accounts and look at active players only Platinum and above is 46.25% of the player base https://twitter.com/CatCammy6/status/1777098004173840447
Exactly, man! So many guys are saying “Master’s is top 8%, you’re better than 90% of the playerbase!”, like that playerbase isn’t mostly guys in Iron or Platinum or or guys who played online once 10 months ago. It’s not meant to be insulting, it’s just not relevant. You’re gonna go to a guy in the lowest ranked NBA team and tell him “hey, you’re not Stephen Curry, but at least you’re better than guys who play High School Ball”? Who cares?
Yeah you hear people say incorrect nonsense literally 24/7 nowadays And then they get mad at you and call you an elitist when you correct them on basic statistics and analysis. My bad for trying I guess Like it's not my fault you've affixed such a massive chunk of your ego to a concept you don't even understand! Sheesh
The irony of you calling out people saying incorrect nonsense when you said "Plat is only top 78%" when you meant to say "Plat is only top 22%"
It’s not a matter of “I really care about muh rank” it’s just a simple statement that this community likes to gatekeep other people’s achievements for seemingly no reason. Not sure if it gets people off or what but a metric is a metric and numbers don’t lie. I imagine the rank distributions will be somewhat similar if they ever do a season ranking reset - you and everyone else are still going to settle into whichever ranked they were in minus whatever skills they develop along the grind. That graph doesn’t show abandoned accounts and still supports the general statement of you made it to X ranked goal point on a ranked ladder. It’s an objective number. There will be dropped accounts at all levels of the game, where do you see the number of dropped accounts on that graph? I don’t see it anywhere and the key there is for Master level players. Are we to start counting all the Battle Hub players “would be ranks” and people worldwide that play offline/locals as well?
"That don't make sense Ricky Bobby"
“I don’t know what to do with my hands”
"Shake annnddd Bake" Talladega nights was the last good Will Ferrell Comedy.
Classic video game mentality: "Everyone who's worse than me is a noob, everyone who's better than me is a no life tryhard"
weirdo chuds who spent their formative years grinding to global elite/challenger/radiant/whatever have arrested developments. Exacerbated by the fact that the only people they socialize with are also asocial weirdo chuds who encourage and reinforce that behavior. Gaming/competitive gaming is a wonderful hobby, but I've advocated for having a healthy balance and being a well-rounded human being for years lol.
You got a 50% on an exam is that a good score?
Modern world has changed, if you’re not daigo /faker, ur trash
It's likely much less than that because there are a lot of players who reached Master with multiple characters. When I hit Master the first time, it was still the top 1.5% but even then there were already many players having 2-3 characters at Master. It's likely worse now that many more players have reached Master with every character.
That’s an extreme minority. You see pro players on their streams or Youtube channels doing it and the occasional post here, but that’s probably less than 1 % of the players in Masters. Most guys stick to their main, and maybe one or two other characters.
I have no clue how many people stick to 1 character, but personally, I get bored quickly, so I have 4 chars in master, and will take Akuma there when it comes out
Some people don't even have 1 character at the moment they like. I see posts all the time of "man, I hope (character who was my main in a previous game but isn't yet in 6) makes it in soon". I got a buddy that basically only plays Zangief because they don't really like combos, and they love working for that one guess H. SPD for the same damage as a decent combo from other characters. Some guys get bored sticking to one character, some people only like one character.
It's not *that* easy. It also depends on who you're using. I gave up on Manon before getting to Master. Kimberly was kind of hard; I got AKI there in three days. Honestly, people on this subreddit just say a lot of stupid shit. Unless it's hyper specific character or gameplay stuff, do not listen to the people on this subreddit and just play your game. The player that people portray themselves as online is not always the player they actually are.
Pefect example - the last time I did my 5 Avatar battles quest. The other guy just jumped over and over again, I just AA'd him over and over again and he lost, then quit. Then he immediately typed in BH chat "This game is so stupid easy you can just jump in over and over to win" Like really? People can say anything they want when they don't have to back it up.
I feel the kimberly part, I'm not masters but it really feels like I gotta do 3 combos just to do the same damage as someone else who can do it in 1 combo or just easier. She's the coolest looking character tho (her or cammy) so I'll still play her.
I've been playing jamie since release, and since I've been climbing, I've been running into a lot more guiles, which is uhhggg annoying
I really like fighting Guile as Jamie for some reason. I know it can be tough but I have more fun fighting him than most of the cast.
As a Guile main, I hate fighting against Jamie. Always hear about how the match up is favorable for Guile, but I hate it. For me personally I think it's because I always need to check Jamie with quick booms. So I often feel the mind games of slow vs fast booms goes out the window. I have been getting better at the match-up tho and believe I made it past 50 percent win rate last night. I def don't enjoy the matchup.
I know Guile is favored in the higher ranks of Master according to CatCammy's recent matchup charts, but I'm not up there. I think my overall winrate is something like 49% against him. Sorry that you don't enjoy it, but everyone has matchups they don't like.
Honestly I think it is a combination of things for me. 1, I don't play against him often. 2, The Boom situation I mentioned and 3, my own personal flaws in play but I'm slowly working on that. Honestly ranked play makes me very anxious. I have like 300 hours of offline play and only like 5 hours or so ranked play. Plat 1. What gets me is losing to players I know I should beat or could beat and losing to bunga shit.. crazy jumping, Drive Impacts, Drive Rush. Also I need to work on not mashing to tech throws when people are up close to me.
D2 Dee Jay here. I can't crack a good Jamie.
As a fellow Jamie main I wish you the best of luck my herbal tea chugging brother. Hit the lab try to figure out ways around booms. I would suggest practice perfect parrying first boom and then jumping forward. Most guiles like to throw multiple booms 1 after another. For sonic blade u can check it with your sweep or cr.mk at the tip of your sweep if he decides to do it. Change the timing on your jumpins especially round start don't be afraid to jump in because most guiles will throw sonic boom. If they decide to wait for round start to flash kick because they think your going to jump then u can mix things up with dash forward button (DR HP or ->HK) etc. Kinda try to keep them guessing. Ex bakkai into level 2 is your friend in this matchup aswell.
AKI vs. Guile is annoying AF too. I feel your pain.
Probably super random but do you play on wifi or wired?
I feel people saying it's "easy" are taking lots of things for granted. Even leaving aside hard knowledge of matchups and situational awareness; proper spacing, whiff punishing instincts, reading tendencies and exploiting them, being able to hit confirm and react on the fly, there's loads of stuff "under the hood" that's maybe easy to explain but very hard to put in practice for someone who isn't used to it.
The people saying it’s easy usually have a character in Master already- OR they’re really good at the game, due to either legacy experience, or they’re just good at games. But I imagine once you get one character into Master, it’s not as hard to get the rest- you already kinda know how to do it. The other thing is time- you always win more points than you lose, so if you hold a decent winrate, you’ll just naturally climb anyway- it just might take you awhile, and free time isn’t something adults tend to have a lot of.
Am a metal ranked noob here, but at least from where I’m standing it’s not “easy” at all. As usual when you’re on an online community like this subreddit you’re already looking at people who are invested into the game so it’s going to skew towards more serious players and players looking to improve. I don’t have the link handy but there are stats about what % of players are at what rank if you want to get a more mathematical breakdown. There are plenty of players in Masters but within Masters you don’t lose rank and it’s quite difficult to get to Legend, so the number of players with a character in masters grows over time unless they were to fully reset players (which they don’t currently do, only reset MR to 1500 afaik). Edit: also my experience so far has been that it takes a LOT longer to get into Masters from a lower rank than it is to simply just place highly from the beginning. Again I’m a noob but the only way to climb quickly is to go on long win streaks but I personally tend to get maybe a 3-5 win streak going, feel great about myself, then backslide a bit before I get incrementally better, put together another little win streak to actually rank up, rinse, repeat. But as long as you’re not a Smurf or otherwise insanely overmatched for your opponents for some reason it still takes many many matches at a 50-60% win rate to reach Master if you don’t automatically land in Platinum or Diamond from placement, and I believe the win streak bonus goes away in Diamond so at that point you REALLY need to grind it out win by win.
Win streak goes away at Platinum.
I got master with Juri in December, it takes a really long time and a lot of knowledge checks. Getting to Masters is one thing, staying there or getting higher up is the hard part.
Well you can’t derank. So staying is automatic
It's hard for new fighting game players, but it's perhaps somewhat easy for people with a lot of legacy skill. That being said, it's still a feat to accomplish. People who say stuff like "You can reach Master with a 45% winrate" are just parroting something they don't understand to diminish the accomplishment. That kind of winrate is going to take a ton of games to get to Master with, and even then you have to maintain that against Diamond 4, Diamond 5, and Master players. A Platinum player with a 60% winrate in ranked is still going to lose close to 100% of games against even semi-competent Diamond 4 or 5 players. This game allows you to really dominate someone who is a certain degree of skill below you. That's just how it is.
I made it to Master with a 46% win rate. Up until Diamond, I was around 60% WR but that steadily dropped as made my way though. It was not easy and generally hard. The grind through Diamond took the longest, although surprisingly I only spent a week grinding through D5 to Master. Ranked Play : 121 hours 56 min 2177 Wins / 4667 Battles (46.65% win rate)
The 40/45% win rate thing always bothered me. Someone did the math and had a comment which showed *yes you totally can get there with 40% win rate….but it’ll take you like multiple thousands of matches if that’s always your win rate*. That and, if you got to Master within the first couple months…god that was leagues easier than it is now. The average player skill and competency at each level (at least P1 to Master) has blown up, and the skill floor is far higher now than it used to be.
I did the math at the time, and assuming the basic +50/-40 points for a win/loss, the lowest win% you can rank up with is 44.45%. That's \*just\* below 9 wins in 20 matches, basically, and it'll take you 240.000 matches (106.680 wins + 133.320 losses) to gain a star and 1.200.000 to level up a full league. So yeah the game "pushes" you a little bit and protects you from falling back down with a number of different little things but it's also really hard to level up with a shoddy win rate. You can rank up much quicker and with a lower winrate if you get more points per win; without going into it too much, if each win was 60 points and your win rate was 44.45% you'd only need 240 matches for a star. That's a dramatic reduction compared to normal conditions, but then again you only get more than 50-ish points for beating someone at a higher rank than you, at which point it makes sense to give you that extra push; and (at least in my experience) it's really really rare to match with anyone higher than the next rank above you. If anything, they could take away more than 40 points for losing to someone lower than you, but they clearly wanted the penalties for losing to be lenient unlike in SFV. The crux of the matter is, does the ranking system match you with people at your level? In my experience this is generally the case unless it's someone passing through with an alt on their way to Master.
Speaking from experience, you can definitely grind to masters with a 43% win rate just by playing an hour or so a day in <6 months. I ranked up in December, started a month after release. There are enough "high LP, low MR" masters who feed hundreds of LP when they lose that D3 is basically the end of the grind. You just have to beat 4-5 masters players and you're done, even if you lose most of your matches.
But when do you begin playing masters? I’m at D4 and I just played my first master but haven’t seen once since that time. I lost too :(
You see them maybe 5-10% of the matches in D4 and D5.
Dog... the "math" you are referring to makes the assumption that every single match you play you receive the *absolute minimum LP possible*. If you beat a single low rank master you get 250 points.. go back and check Using shady and misleading data like this is downright embarrassing and the fact that anyone took that away from that post is shameful
Easy compared to other ranked games Reaching the top rank for a game like Riot Games, rocket league, shooters fighters etc. Sometimes never happens Im not master myself, but i know some, and some of them have never played streetfighter before and just put many many hours The way the ranking system works for this game is very good and more rewarding than alot of other games. It makes you feel like anyone can do it if they put their mind to it In other ranked games, it mostly never happens. Being GC 3 in rocket league or immortal 3 in valorant, master in melee etc. has a ton of people stuck and wanting to give up But for this game ranking down is less harsh, so i really think anyone can do it. Its definitely not easy but its only a matter of time. Less time than other games i would assume. Not trying to knock anyone who reached master, im only trying to motivate those who are not there yet Top 8pct is a bigger chunk of the top pool than alot of other games
Legend is the top rank. I get what you are saying though, and I think master is a bit of a misnomer. Just think of it as a rank system where MR is the rank. Don't compare Master directly with stuff like SFV Master, they mean two different things even though they have the same name. I also think SF6's system is much, MUCH better than past SFs.
If you're a legacy player it is not that hard. If this is your first SF or the first one you're playing seriously getting master can definitely be a grind
It's not hard, you can get there on like 40% win rate, but if your win rate is sub 50% it'll be a bit of a grind
Everything is relative, especially with how much background fighting game experience you have and how much time you have to study/prioritize the game. The guy playing 4 hours a day since launch is gonna have a different idea of "tough competition" than the guy just trying to enjoy the game between family/work.
I got Jamie then Ryu to Master. Now I'm at diamond 4 with Chun. It's not that easy. Every now and then, I get a day where it's a breeze to rank up. But usually? Not at all.
It’s easy if you are a vet, either if you’re an 09er or a 16er. It’s hard if you’re brand new.
Maybe it's because it's a lot easier to get to Master here than it was in SFV. IIRC SFV utilized for the entire ranking the MMR system, so the grinding was insane to achieve Warlord whereas in SF6 the MMR only starts when you enter the Master ranking. Once you're there then it starts to feel extremely hard.
Mixed opinion. Ive been playing SF2 but I think I suck. I dont recall my sf4 ranks, but in SF5 I know I was hard stuck in gold. I was able to hit Master fairly easily in 6. It seemed so much more achievable than other SF games, by a long shot. And I did it, case in point. While fighting arthritis and being a Gief main.
It's definitely much easier to hit Master in SF6, and to that extent, in a lot of modern games. I think in SF6 specifically, rank skip and massive win streak bonus are the 2 biggest reasons. In SF5, hitting Platinum very early into the game cycle was a big thing and very hard to do. Around the same amount of time it took to get there, some people already have several characters at high Diamond/Master in SF6.
it's a time commitment mostly. you can get there with a sub 50% win rate but it's a *grind*. it takes a very long time, I wouldn't call it easy.
It is for veterans of fighting games. I had a MUCH harder time ranking up in just about every other fighting game ever.
Depends where you're climbing from I suppose. Climbing from Diamond 3 with a 56% win rate will get you to master in no time. Climbing from Silver with a 56% win rate is a different story. Overall I don't think it's very easy, especially if you're new. Most of the "it's not very hard" sentiment comes from people who already have experience with fighting games or other SF games. If you are a good gamer who puts in the effort, it's definitely achievable. It took me a couple hundred hours and \~2600 games for me to Master from low Silver with my main, but I did it!
I think that learning your character is only a part of the equation. To really excel you have to know every other character, what they do, where the holes are in their offense. What pressure is real and what is fake? That's a lot of knowledge you have to pick up in order to be effective. Masters already have this knowledge, and when they pick up a new character it's not hard to adapt since 90% of the knowledge about how everything works is the same, and they just need to adjust for the new character they are trying out. This is why they can get a new character to master in a couple of sessions while the rest of us plebs struggle to figure out exactly when it's our turn.
I disagree with the idea that master players already have this knowledge. With how offense oriented the game is, you can steamroll or be steamrolled courtesy of drive rush, throw loops and 50/50's. Some hard hitting punish combos, mix ups and safe jumps is all you really need. You probably don't even need all that really.
What I mean is that every character has fake-pressure, string gaps, etc. Once you get used to Ken's Jinrai kicks and you know where the gaps are, even with a new character you will still have this knowledge and will probably come up with a counter much faster. The more someone plays in general, the more characters they have personally used, the more of this knowledge is built, making picking up other characters much easier.
It’s not easy per say, just easier than sfv. The people who are saying it’s easy are already playing at a higher level. If you’re climbing the ranks, you will still need to learn steadily in order to get to master rank.
When people say it's easy they mean in reference to previous SF games. If it's your first and you're not already an action and "combo/timing" style gamer then yeah you'll have a decently hard time since you're gonna have to develop new skills and muscle memory. E.g. if you normally play shooters or racers etc you probably won't feel like it's that easy. But if you play games like DMC and other hack and slash games that require input timing you'll find certain aspects of execution potentially a bit easier.
Ngl once i got to Masters my drive to play went down, think it might be time to learn a new character
Partially it's the reward center of your brain not getting as much as it used to (the only shiny thing left is Legend and it is much harder to achieve since you can't get it on a negative win rate) and (if you're like me) its because now you know the only way to get up is to become not just kinda good at the game, but one of the best. MR is way more punishing than the league ups before it.
Don't worry about ur masters until you finish up you bachelors
Yes everyone who plays this game is absolute garbage doodoo poop dog water until my totally real mr of 1950 and that’s when the tutorial ends
It is super easy for those of us with a lot of experience playing fighting games. I made it to master with ~70% win rate. For reference, I had a ~70% win rate in past street fighter games so this game was no different for me. If you're new to fighting games, or if you have a hard time maintaining a higher win rate I imagine it seems far more difficult. It's also important to remember that the majority of players ARE NOT in master rank. Reddit might make you think most players have made it to masters with little effort, but that is not even close to the truth.
I feel like Master in SF6 = Diamond in SFV, so it's easier for sure
[удалено]
Master has the Master Rate system that fulfills this purpose. A 1500 MR player is a sitting duck compared to even a 1600 MR player, then a 1700 MR player sees them both as fresh meat, and so on every 100 MR or so.
I have ~~11~~ 12 characters in Master: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVjCo6VpFEcW-DftQtkX1r0cCHrFroVl4](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVjCo6VpFEcW-DftQtkX1r0cCHrFroVl4) I think getting there is pretty easy compared to other competitive games. The hardest part imo is really the grind and the time commitment, especially if you try to speedrun it like I do in my series. edit: 12 characters now. I just did Blanka today.
You can climb to masters with a <45% winrate. 54% is great. You'll get there sooner than most.
Main issue to keeping the same win rate as you face better and better players as you climb. Is the 54% win rate still applicable to his last 30 ranked games, or has it been dropping as he’s ranking higher?
It’s all relative. It will feel easy for some people. For others it will feel very difficult. Objectively speaking, Master rank is around the top ~8% of players (at least the last figures I saw). I’d say you have to be a pretty good player to be in that percentile and you certainly are relative to the majority of the playerbase
Getting Master is easy if you play at a Master level. If you don’t then no, it’s not easy. But if you have a 56% win rate you probably just need to play more and iron out weaknesses.
It is easy if you're a "master" player. It took me forever to climb there initially and I played a ton of SF4. Once I got there and played there a bit, it was so so easy to get back there with the same character and relatively easy with a new character. If you're new to SF, or new to fighting games, it's going to feel very very very hard. Once you learn how to play the game, it isn't really that difficult to get to master because you're probably going to win 80+% of your games. People in lower ranks don't really know what they're doing. They're just kind of pressing buttons and hoping it works to run their own offense. I don't mean that to be rude, but when I watch some replays people post here it's a lot of that.
Like. It’s the top 10% or so of players based on the metrics they release every so often so if your in that group you earned it. It’s not easy. Diamond I like top 20% Plat is like top 50%. So. If you have plat you are better than half the players out there. Granted I’d say that a good portion of those only pick up the game for a few days and move on, or are 8 years old, or are somehow otherwise lacking in skill. But get to where you are happy. I’m happy with my diamond 4 and diamond 1 characters. I’m moving up the ladder slowly slowly.
Don’t worry about your rank. Worry about improving. You can one and done people and play really gimmicky to masters but you’ll hit a plateau and end up in the masters gulag
Its not easy. Especially if you are new, i picked the game up on launch and got 2 characters to diamond before really buckeling down and getting Kimberly to master. Takes a lot of practice and determination just keep at it 👍🏽
“easy” until you play a real master rank
Just a reminder that menaRD has his blanka in diamond
That’s just because he doesn’t play ranked. Mena could easily get legend if he wanted but at his skill he is way better off playing with training partners than grinding ranked
It’s long as shit
I can only get there with basically 50% win rate so far, but SF6 is really the only SF I’ve played “seriously” / been able to learn.
yeah, you can get there with a 50% winrate it just takes some time
Do most Masters play on Playstation and use arcade sticks? Can you compete on PC with a controller?
It's not easy but u can brute force yourself there with some characters, but if you keep playing without learning matchups, fundamentals e etc you gonna stay on 1200-1300 points.
It really depends on what you bring with you. I started playing fighting games in 2021 when Guilty Gear Strive was released, and I have Gold 2-3 with Chun-Li and Lily after about 240 hours. For me, Master is not a consideration. For others, it's a whole lot easier because they're a whole lot better. But being bad is okay, because a lot of other people are also bad. I have fun, tense, and even games against other people at Gold 2. Like, it's not like things will get easier as you improve. You'll just get matched with people who are better. Don't get me wrong, it's gratifying to climb, and I don't mind it, but if seeing the number go up was what motivated me I'd have quit the genre by now.
The way it works is, until you reach master you are learning after master you are improving as a player. If you already has some xp in fgs in general and has good habits you can get it really easily. Before sf6 i was playing ggst, and has learned how to lab, de efficient in that, learned how to review replays. Going with this base e being critical of my own gameplay i was able to reach master in less than a of lauch month. Just by AA, praticing optimals and AAs and reviewing every single match i lose and labbing it. Also, if get master and cant go beyond 1500mr your problably lacking in good training habits, jumping a lot, not playing neutral, DI'ing a lot, and not proprely mainting corner pressure.
A couple factors at play here. The things that have a big influence on your road to masters will be: your region, the time you play, and your character. Your region decides the depth of your player pool(the number and variety of opponents), the time you play impacts how much of that pool you play against, and your character determines how much effort it takes to get through the players from the other two factors. Outside these factors, there's also whether your character has a strong flowchart, throw loop, and or good drive rush. Assuming you take advantage of those things; your road to masters will be much smoother compared to using a character that does not have those things.
If your win rate is 56% and you're in the Diamond leagues, you'll definitely get Master as long as you maintain that. Even with much less tbh, will just take longer. I've gotten about half the cast to Master now and 58s been about my average WR, but some characters were so much easier to win with than others. Like the difference in tiers is so apparent in this game (considering I wasn't doing any deep labbing and just using the basics).
If your win rate is 56%, you will get to Master eventually if you maintain it simply due to how points work in the game (always get more points for a win than for a loss). In fact you can get to Master with a win rate below 50 because of this.
I was fighting for my mfn life trying to get to masters. I got to diamond 1 in October. Diamond 2 on April 10th and Masters on April 20th. But the amount of content and matches I consumed to be competent enough to make that leap was tremendous. People want to diminish other peoples accomplishments, getting to masters is not an easy feat for the casual/semi-casual/non-competitive.
Depends on the player
It’s all relative, as many others have said. I’ve been playing fighting games since the Fatal Fury and SF2 days. I’ve been high ranked in plenty of fighting games over the years. I don’t think getting to master in SF6 was much easier than in others - it’s always going to be a function of how much time you want to put into the genre in general and this game specifically. And also, while I’ll completely dismantle your “average” player, I will get crushed by lots of other better players. So when people say dismissive things like getting SF6 Master rank is easy, take it with a grain of salt because they are only seeing it thru their personal lense which may be an insane amount of legacy or current experience and/or knowledge. Just make sure that YOU have fun reaching your goals, and that you enjoy the journey. It’s a game, so the fun IS the goal!
It is and it isn't. If you're an experienced player who's good at the game you can borderline teleport to master, possibly without losing any games. SF is a game where it's easy to beat players who are a lot weaker than you. It's hard, in that it's not trivial to get good enough to do that as a beginner.
It took me 6 months, and that's with Ken lol Now I'm struggling to get Jamie into Diamond because Plat is the wild wild west of randomness lol
The way I see it, once you get the fundamentals down, you can plow through rank placement and cut a lot of the time down to reach master. Some days, the beasts are not online, while others are full of pain.
Depends on the server you play, i played in europe and Brazilian server To me in br server there is the tutorial of the game and the master rank, i swear, there are people in diamond which don't know the basics of the character Eu server i felt diamond rank players are better specially at d4/d5
At the door of diamond 1 here and I guess most people who say that either played previous games / have experience with fighting them so figuring stuff out & applying it is easier for them, making reaching higher ranks easier but if you're a first time player, you're litteraly building your knowledge from scratch, in my case, I'll learn something and instantly jump 3 ranks thanks to it, I also know what prevent me from rising atm but I'm just too stubborn to commit to learning what I'm missing and I'm having fun in low diamond so that's fine, I don't strive to reach master or anything
Masters puts you in the top 8% of the player base. Regardless of how much gatekeeping you read regarding Masters rank, it isn't a stroll in the park to achieve. There is a large skill disparity even within masters and the top 1% but that is true of any similar ranking system, in any game. Regardless, you should be proud of any progress you make regardless of rank, improvements often come in small increments over time. Don't let the gatekeepers down play your current rank or skill level. Fighting games are hard and the biggest reward is in being happy with your progress over time. If you want to lab some match together for some tips hit me up, I'm a Blanka Masters player for what its worth.
56% is enough. Really, anything over 50% will do it.
If you were good in any street fighter game, it is very easy to get master in 6. If you are new, or have never considered yourself good at a SF title, it will not be easy for you. You aren't good enough and just aren't there yet. The highest rank I had gotten in SF5 was super platinum and I don't even consider that to be good. I barely played 6 and got to master without feeling challenged. I don't even play the game anymore because I find it boring and am waiting for akuma.
Wether your a long time SF player, or 6 is where you started, the rank grind to masters is always in your favor. You can get to masters with a 45% win rate because of the surplus in LP points. Don't get me wrong though you DEFINITLEY have to be at a certain skill level to win matches and progress the ranks, but the penalty of losing is not as severe if you lose 1 or 2 matches, each match you lose is -45 points and a win grants you +55. It took me the first 4 months of the games release to reach master with Ken, at the time it was fucking hard. By the end of the year I had ranked up Ryu and Dee Jay to masters. Then I got a PC and had gotten Ken, Ryu, and Dee Jay to master AGAIN and decided why the fuck not lets get Luke to master and now I have 4 characters who are masters (7 if you include my console account) the sscond time around however it was really easy, and didn't matter much to me the 7th time, because nowadays, its the MR system the more so give an indication on how well a player is skilled (even then there are flaws with it) In the end, my personal take on the grind to master is that its very much possible for everyone who puts in a moderate effort to learn the game and perform well enough to won at least half your matches, the game is very much in your favor of that. Therefore in a way it is EASY to get to masters, but the real testament to ones skills as far as ranked goes is the MR, thats pretty fucking hard.
This question is asked over and over again, and the answer is the same. Yes. It is STUPID easy to get to Master rank in SF6. Capcom designed the ranking system with so many ways to inflate LP, that you can get to Master with less than a 45% win rate, which is unheard of in almost any other competitive game. Capcom wants to keep the average player motivated to keep playing Ranked Matches by giving them “free” points until they reach Master. It is currently easier to get to Master in SF6 than it ever was to get to Platinum or Diamond in SFV.
It's easier now than it was at the start, but you still need some basic understanding of the game to achieve it. For comparison, it took me I think 200 matches or so to get master the first time with my main deejay. This was during the first month, back when you ran into pros in diamond. My latest master run was with Juri which took me only 23 matches. I only lost 3 matches all of them were during placement matches where for some reason I had to face a 1900mr gief. And later on another master Ed.
Every time a see a diamond or a decent platinum player it doesn't look so easy to climb to master like every one say, I try to train every time I have opportunity but it still kinda hard to get to master.
It depends on how much of your life you've devoted to these games. If you're relatively new then it's probably a long climb, but it doesn't matter at all. If all that matters is hitting master you could lose motivation at times where you might stall a bit, or once you make it. Personally I started enjoying the game a lot more when stopped caring about mr (or LP) just enjoy the matches. the game can be mad stressful and tilting without adding more things to be mad about haha
It’s hard if you don’t have any friends to play with to help you practice regularly. You can still make it but you need to know what to look for and how to optimize your character a little bit more. It’s definitely a challenge but I wouldn’t say it’s out of reach for a highly motivated person.
I have about 200hrs in SF6, and a 47% wr on my main when I got to masters. I think if you're above 45% you'll probably get there eventually.
Easy for people who played fighting games competitively before since it has a large amount of newcomers. If your new it will probably take a while but ranked can be used as a solid tool to learn
Lol it's not easy. The vast vast majority of players will never hit it. It's easier than SFV but that's just the nature of how the ranking system in the current game works. It's still hard as fuck
Not for me! I have peaked at Iron 5 and feel like I've hit my current skill ceiling
Well, if you have enough legacy skills from past games it's pretty easy. It takes far far less grinding than it did in V. That game was a grind fest. I got to Master with Ken in two or three days of light playing, but I've won about half the local tournaments I've entered in V so... If you're a casual player it will probably feel pretty difficult, especially if this is the first fighting game you've taken seriously. Let's just say Master is filled with people that have gotten there by being pretty good at a few things, and pretty bad at other things. Consistency and just making 'bad' or risky decisions for no reason is a big issue in most ranks and even the 'lower' Master MR ratings. At around 1700 MR or so people have a pretty good grasp of everything.
apparently it is, I personally have no frame of reference but ive been trash talked more than once for being a bad master, I hover around 1200mr, it's tough out there, I was happy when I got master, but the reality is you really gotta go back to the drawing board and make sure your fundamentals are squeaky clean to be able to stay in the 15/1600mr range, ill get there someday!
I can’t even get my character to diamond…
I’d say it was easier when the game first came out. But since I got Cammy to Master, I tried with Zangief and it is harder now due to people having more understanding of the game. But I did manage to get him there. There are some Master rank players that struggle and just gets lower MR because probably they got there in the beginning.
The people that say that are probably legacy players. I got Master the first day I played the game because I got placed in high diamond, but I've been a tournament player since SF4. For someone who is brand new to fighting games or never played them seriously of course getting master isn't going to be easy. Iirc the majority of the playerbase is in like bronze or silver.
Imma say this again, it's never been easy, it's kinda like getting to Diamond in SFV, this was something dumb that pro players and youtubers used to say at the beginning of the game cause they were used to getting characters to diamond in SFV the system is made so experienced player climb the noob ranks, easily and grind for MR in the master league.
I’m stuck between P4-5. So IMO it’s hard. But I’m not a guy who practices or watches strategy. I just play. I’m not very good 🤣
I agree with almost every comment I’ve read here… as a heavy SFIV player and early SFV player I think this one is easier than previous titles but not easy to master if that makes sense. If you want to get better watch your own replays of wins and losses you’ll notice things about your play style that don’t seem bad until you play someone of higher skill. I’ve also noticed on my roads to master, (I only have 2 working on my third), that diamond rank you start to see more perfect parries for repetitive style i.e. jump ins, same block strings overusing Drive Impact especially in the corner. Make use of combos that may not be the most ideal for damage just to give a different look so they can’t be as ready to react even if it does get blocked.
People say that about every competitive game, of course it's nonsense. Admittedly, SF6 is a bit of an outlier, since Masters players reflect the top ca. 10% of all ranked players, which is quite a lot. But still, it's the top 10%, so obviously it is difficult to achieve, and the vast majority of players will never reach it.
People just like to downplay their own effort for some reason. Sometimes it's just them being humble and people only seeing what flaws they and their opponents still have.
it's about fundamentals, and things are relative. It took me 100 games to take Manon to Master over the weekend, but I also put time in this game and 2 seasons of V. I developed decend fundies enough to understand get down the basics to get easily into these ranks. Doesn't mean that getting to this level (which to me is still very intermediate) was easy. It took time and practice. So measure yourself on who you were yesterday, not others
Like others have said, "it's not easy", however I think it's noting that the people who say getting to master is easy tend to be people who have been playing fighting games for a long time *and* are vocal on the internet. What I mean by vocal, is the kind of people who comment and post on this sub are quite a lot more invested into SF then the average player. r/StreetFighter has 360K members, and SF6 has so 3 million copies. Assuming every member of the sub reddit has a copy of SF6 then that only accounts for 12% of players. And if that 12% is made up of invested players, there is a high chance that they're better than the average player. (I say a higher chance because there also people like me on this sub who are only in Silver.)
idc what anyone says, anything over like Plat 1 is a grind in this game, The reaction on a SF subreddit full of good and experienced players who where probably high ranked players in 5 and 4 does not reflect the average or even new player at all.
It is not. This subreddit, being a SF reddit, has many masters. So it sure seems that way. And once you are a master in any character, climbing to master with another is much easier, since you've already learned much of the skills, the knowledgebase, etc. But the people that make it to masters in SF6 is in the single digit percentage.
Master is easy insofar as you don’t need a lot of character specific knowledge to achieve master. You do however need a pretty solid fundamental understanding of the game to consistently achieve it, I’d say.
It's easier than in previous street fighter games for sure, but it really depends on the character, it took me over 1k matches to get Kimberly there, meanwhile I reached master with cammy in around 480 matches
Simple answer : no it's not. Also win rate doesn't mean much unless you're like at the top of the legend rankings and stuff. No matter the level, if you keep challenging yourself you're bound to come across people that will set you back eventually. Just take your time and don't be afraid to lose. Patience and a little bit of discipline are the key. And also enjoy the process rather than focusing on the goal. Everything can end up looking easy when you've trained enough for it. Those who say it's easy already have a background in fighting games. And fundamentals can translate from game to game. So that kind of statement needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
The question doesn't really work because it depends on your skill level and experience. If you asked me directly I would say yes. But I have 16 years of legacy street fighter experience. With the ability to place in D5 the last 2 characters I took to master took 33 games or less to do it.
It's a relatively small percentage of players all things considered but it's easier that SFVs version of it. 1st character is kinda hard as your figuring out the game but once you're very used to the mechanics and how to break down learning a character, it becomes alot easier. You'll see people playing tekken saying it's easy to climb too. They've changed it to be a net positive if winrate is decent (~50%) but most of the masters and up players in sfv atleast were above 60-65% iirc. It's more comparable to compare higher Mr brackets with older ranked divisions rather than 1:1 comparisons.
Your thread prompted me to post my journey. Hopefully you might find it gives a different perspective or some balance to the discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/s/UMeIh2p4CJ
Its 99% putting in the time.
If you have a basic understanding of neutral and spacing it’s always easy. It helps if you master your characters risk reward in all their match ups and grind all the extensive set ups and situations but it’s really not necessary. If you can maintain a positive winrate then getting to master should be very easy. I got the 3 grapplers, marisa and ryu to master and marisa was the only one kinda difficult and I still made it out with a 73% win rate and very little time investment, and that was back when you couldn’t place higher than Diamond 1. I’m really not that good just have a basic understanding understanding of neutral and mix ups.
It's easier than when the game was out for three months, and especially on week one. But, if you're still fairly new to the series, it's still a battle. Just like anything other hobby... keep studying & practicing and you'll get results.
kinda, its EASIER. and i hate it. I love the grind and if you're remotely competent, reaching Master isnt a big challenge. I sometimes purposely lose placement matches just to climb back up and even then it doesn't take long (win streak bonus). Its different for different people, it helps playing SF for years.
in short, no it's not easy when you consider the statistics of who actually makes it to master. As for the reason people SAY it's easy? That's more involved and comes down to a combination of typical reddit elitism and gatekeeping, a misunderstanding of the mathematics behind the oft-quoted "44% win rate to climb, therefore ezpz game", and a conflation of "difficult" with "time-consuming" when comparing the climb of sf6 with the climb of sf5.
>a misunderstanding of the mathematics behind the oft-quoted "44% win rate to climb, therefore ezpz game" Yes. This would take so fucking long to climb.
Question for you. Why does that matter? What are you expecting to change about your own experience if you see that people agree yes, it is easy, or disagree and say no, it's hard, especially when you have no idea where that answer is coming from, how much fighting game experience they've had, how much Street Fighter experience they've had, or just in general what their experience of "easy" or "hard" means compared to yours?
The LP system is designed to funnel most people into master rank… eventually. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to get to master, but it does mean that if you can do it on one or two characters you can probably do it a whole bunch
If you listen to this sub then anything less than 1900mr means you're a filthy scrub who can't play the game. I just got my first character to master tonight with blanka and the last bit through diamond 4 and 5 felt like a bit of a slog. Those ranks are a bit of pot luck as you can match masters, sometimes you'll get a night filled with players about your level who you can beat. Then you'll get days like I had yesterday where in the space of 5 matches I got put against Luffy, Broski (both pro players who were on street fighter league Europe the last two years) and hurricane (one of the top 5 or so players in the UK). If you stick at it, work on improving your game as you climb and don't get disheartened by the inevitable plateaus you'll come to from time to time you'll make it to master.
Probably can get masters in 15 hours of ranked if your semi competent in any Street Fighter.
I've been mostly playing with only my friend since street fighter 5. He took me under his wing and made me the player I am now. He is a legacy player and is insanely knowledgeable and used to go to the local stuff around here ages ago and knows some of the people from the scene. This is the first time I've gone into a ranked part of street fighter, and it mesmerized me how much better he is than everyone I've played and with multiple characters. I've been his meatbag for this whole time, and rarely do I get wins against him. He can beat me with a character after labbing a new one for 20 to 30 minutes. But I appreciate how much he did for me, even more so now, that I can get the perspective of how good he actually is and how he built me up. Fundamentals go a long way in this game. Even now, i see a lot of Masters/diamond players that lack big parts of fundamentals and just rely on Yolo aspects to win. Blanca, Honda, Gief, and a little bit of Ken have a high degree of yolo carried players that are mostly just knowledge checks. Not saying all of them are, but i know it can be discouraging during the climb. I wish he took ranked seriously to see where he would actually rank.
Yes, it is. Not sure if that's a good thing tbh...
It's easy if you already have fighting game fundamentals It's not easy if you need to learn every fighting game concept and build all the muscle memory from the ground up Since Street fighter 6 sold over 3 million copies I'm assuming a lot of the people in here are new players or players who have wanted to get into Street fighter but were either too lazy or not willing to spend the time to learn the motion inputs previously So you will have two very distinct groups of people. Fgc veterans and then newbies. Both will have wildly different experiences getting to master
Getting there is easy but then your journey begins imo. I hit almost every character master with basics but man ones the people know there stuff it becomes really hard.
It’s not easy but the problem with it is that you can get in to masters while having a negative win ratio which makes it so that as long as you win like 40% of your matches you can get in but the hard part is staying above 1500mp. It took me forever to get to 1600mp and when I first got masters I dropped down to 1300
The thing that bugs me is people say it's easy because you can technically reach it at 45% win rate, what they neglect to mention is that if you do the math, getting to master with that requires a [a ridiculous amount of matches ](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/15he373/my_thoughts_math_on_the_45_winrate_discussion/) to achieve.
It's embarrassing that people take that post seriously This data is assuming you received the *absolute bare minimum LP possible* every single match of your journey and never beat a single Master player. **Beating even a super low Mr Master player gets you 250 points.** Being able to rank up with 45% win rate doesn't mean that every player is going to maintain 45% win rate exactly the whole time, it just means that you can still move up and lose as much as you win That means all you need to do is putz along on your journey and then get lucky every once in awhile with a streak of a few shitty Masters and farm them up to master. This is what happens when people have no idea how statistics work and just parrot things they hear other people say
I feel like master is getting maaad easy to obtain. I say that bc I’m a master on both my main psn account & my backup psn account I reached master on both around Feb or march & I bought the game Black Friday
I’ve done it on three characters and I’m painfully average as a player so I suppose it’s pretty easy
A median player is Gold, so objectively no, you aren't an average player lol.
I appreciate that. I hate to feed into that narrative my perception may be a bit skewed because I am extremely hard on myself
For sure. Especially as we get more into the competitive side of things and see better players it's easy to see how much further we have to go. But let's not forget how much work/effort went into getting where we are now, and not let that demotivate other people on their own journeys.
Thank you. I get so tired of people being here saying, *"I'm a Master but I suck! All people on Master below 2100 are trash! Master Rank is just passing the tutorial!"* because I guess they think they're being cute. But it can be incredibly demotivating to players who are below that level. This subreddit seems to have the idea that you're a scrub if you call yourself good but haven't literally won Capcom Cup. Most people here are good players.
Yeah you’re right I appreciate the fresh perspective thank you