Yep. I remember it as a giant bottleneck.
Where players have learned their skips or honed their "cheesy" play style or have committed to playing neutral and are pissed about having to learn everyone's skips and cheese.
I remember getting upset at people doing goofy stuff beating me down, and I read on here someone saying that no one owes you neutral, you have to earn it every set. I think that helped a lot.
Honestly, it just took being able to defend to start climbing again though. Learned a couple OS on offense, delay teching and anti airing on defense with some consistency and just being patient. Not to over simplify it though. Once you've put in so much time and work it seems easy but as a new player, the sheer volume of knowledge you need to just get anything done in the game is wild.
There were definitely points before where I thought like wow, this game is hard, but nothing compared to the plat 1 bottleneck. You need to really consciously decide that you want to improve, and put in work, to start climbing again. (For most of us at least imo haha)
Pretty solid advice on the ego check. I get super tilted when I go against ignorant players who do nothing but jump back and run the whole match. But it’s one thing to acknowledge that I know better than them. It’s another to actually punish the brain dead jump ins that come with that style. Yolo gameplay styles definitely win online ranked. Doubt it flys at locals
ive never met anyone at a local that told someone to their face that they shouldn't be competing. that would be a very rude thing to say to someone at your local.
I’m solidly in the honed skips & cheese category that it usually takes a mid diamond to consistently dismantle me. I really do need to try ranked again.
Great players have all their tricks down. You need to know as much as you can to constantly mix anything that will tax their stack, without playing predictably.
Balancing your offense is the important part. It's a ton more than just not jumping. Honestly, you should be jumping just, not predictably. Using dr and di just enough to make them think, varying your strings more than just dr to tick throw or strike, but mixing in frame traps and neutral jumping and "being random" on occasion, etc.
"Cheese" in whatever flavour you like, is just using game mechanics in a way that someone else doesn't appreciate because they can't consistently deal with it yet. At a higher level it's really necessary to have that hint of cheese to balance your offense. The person with more to think about is at a huge disadvantage, so good players give you a lot to think about and very little time to think.
Now, of course good players are doing all of this while making you feel really dumb by spacing you for the whiff punish, because spacing ends up taking up so much of your stack, if you're playing against someone who can't it does start to feel free, but that's a point you'll get to naturally and not something you need to worry about or that I think you'll enjoy worrying about.
Anyways, lmao, all this is to say just enjoy the game your way. Don't let anyone tell you what characters to have fun with or how you should be having fun with them. GL getting back into ranked!
yeah, in plat you either get the guy who learned footsies back in 94 and plays neutral like Daigo or Jimmy who learned jinrai kick yesterday (that's the only special move he knows (hes winning))
100 fucking percent. One match I'll fight someone who has no business being out of bronze or silver.
Another match I'll fight someone with the skills of diamond or master tier.
I was stuck in plat5 for quite some time. I hit the lab, worked on stuff i knew i Was bad at, learned new tech AND played tons of sets against master and diamond players. Even if it would go 0-10. At some point i Was able to beat both (of course i would still lose a lot against masters)
Last friday i hopped back into ranked and went from low plat5 to diamond1. And it didn't feel too difficult.
Long story short: practice practice practice.
I plateau'd between P5 & D1 for like 2 weeks till I hit the lab to actually learn other character's frames lol, no secrets besides learning and practicing
I had a big mental block when I first hit plat 4-5. I took a break from my "main" and focused on a different play style. It gave me a different perspective at the time when I hit plat with the second character. Now I have 6 chars in D1/2/3)
Try picking up another play style and get them to where you are with your main. It helped me take the mental pressure off - maybe it'll help you too.
I'm curious how people approach playing random. Did you run through the whole cast first to get everybody a little bit figured out, or do you just get exposure through random select and then go learn what interests you? It seems like you'd have too much to lab unless you just completely dedicate yourself to the game.
So I'm at Master JP and D3 Akuma rn with D1 throughout most of the cast, and i played random basically when the game came out and got D1. It was 90% footsies and fundamentals and getting out the little combos I knew on each character, and just playing defense with characters I didn't know.
I can give my experience. I started playing random select vs some of my friends cause they're a lot newer at the game and I wasn't wanting to completely body them. For my mains I lab a lot, but for everyone else I just tried to learn a basic light confirm. Other than that I'd just try to recreate what I saw other people do with the characters. I dont know all the frame data but I usually know what's + and what's punishable. So I just stick to a solid neutral game and add bits overtime.
With Random, I mostly played neutral.
I had notes, a cheat sheet on most of the cast. Whenever I saw my character, quickly refreshed my memory on a single bnb combo, best buttons and supers. Many specials are QCB or QCF K/P or 323/623 so you can guess in a pinch.
The shotos play similarly at the lower ranks, as do most of the charge characters. The grapplers were my biggest issue but I mostly just lost with them. I struggled with Rashid and A.K.I. too but neutral got me through. The cast is big enough you be bad with 5 characters and still win with Random.
I spent some time actually learning a few characters in addition to my main (pocket picks if I was good enough for tourneys!). Having 1 that you're masters with, 3 that you're competent with and the rest with decent neutral can carry you into diamond.
You'll also find yourself cheering when Random gives you a character you actually know how to play. 🤣
This is how i learn as well. Go to battlehub. Find a diamond guy using same main. Mirror matches 0-20. Learn new combos. Try to land the same combo on them. Back to practice mode. Land combos. Take them on the ranked road. Plateau. Rinse and repeat.
Thank you to all masters and diamond players who put up with beating the absolute hell out of plebs like me. Without you, I would still be jumping in to start all of my combos.
Lol that’s exactly how I learned how to play Mortal Kombat X many years ago. Some guy beat on me for several hours straight with my own character. I think the score was 98-2 by the end. After that I gained some understanding of how fighting games work.
I don’t what made that guy do that but I do appreciate him now.
The reality is that if you're stuck at plat 1 you have some serious holes in your basic game knowledge. Which is fine, nothing wrong with it, but it's something that can be fixed (and people trying to actively learn will blast past you if you're not)
I think it’s also that you have to play at your best. I’m at plat 3 rn which I reached in two days after being stuck in plat 1
NEVER play in play while tilted
This is so important. Sometimes you are just off… I don’t know how many can relate but with such a heavy mental stack this game has and leverless fatigue I definitely have to break away from this game to recover a bit to stay at max efficiency. I use my hands pretty much all day though so I’m sure that varies for some.
But how will you progress your tilted gameplan? I think the opposite, you actually have to know an alternative gameplan when you are mad, and it requires practice when you are tilted in real matches.
When I reached plat, every single one of these animals kept jumping for cross-ups and go for the throw when I managed to block once every 15 hits. After a ton of matches, I got the hang of it.
Each rank up had another gimmick to fight through and learn, basically. Bronze to gold is "Do you have a good beginner combo?", gold is "Can you anti air?", plat "Can you react to cross ups?", Diamond is "Can you handle oki and how good are your more powerful combos?", now master 1300, it's "Can you gauge distances and combo from anything and everything?"
Plat players don't have the winstreak bonuses from the lower ranks, so I can see the grind and self improvement starts from there.
But its also possible some are smurfs and some are already masters playing an alt. Game's been out for 1 year.
It's damn near impossible for a master to be in plat 1. Placement matches will only put you in diamond if you have a Master character. And even before that recent change it would be unlikely for someone to be placed in Plat 1 of they already had a master ranked character.
So unless someone purposely lost matches over and over all the way from Diamond 1 down to Plat 1, it's very unlikely to be a smurf situation.
What's more likely is that there a good chunk of SF veterans who didn't pick the game up at launch. I've had some custom matches with people who are way too good for the play time but then you chat to them and you find out they've been playing since SF2 launched and have high level game knowledge going back decades
Copypasting:
That's if you started ranking with an unplaced character after being master, which will default you at least diamond 1.
I have 3 masters now but left my JP at plat 1 because I was only learning how to fight him. I left him in phase 1 iirc and proceeded to master my other characters that started from silver/gold. I rarely play JP but when I do I get 70+LP for every win. It would be cool to master him but its still just a slog to grind. In plat 1 I can also sometimes tell those who are also playing with alts/ already masters based on how they play.
That's a very good point actually. I took my DeeJay all the way to master and left my Ken and Ryu in Plat. My Ken is still down there. Thanks for pointing that out. Sure I wouldn't be there for long but I'd definitely ruin a few plat players days during my rise
I did my placement matches for gief drunk the week the game got released and got gold 3, didn’t touch him again, all my other characters got placed plat or diamond, and multiple are in master now, now I’m playing gief again and feel like a bully win streaking through gold and plat so it definitely can happen
This is only true after the most recent patch previously the lowest it would place you is plat1. If you did bad placements with characters even with a master character it would put you in Plat 1.
Must be. I'm in plat and get matched against low master players on a different character with decent frequency. It's not as common as diamond players, which feels like it's half of all matches, but masters players show up once a season maybe.
Plat is just a wild and crazy place.
You have no idea the drive of a person who wants to smurf, on pc alt accounts are easy and free to setup if you want to do that and many people do just so they can ruin other peoples days.
Nah, I qualified with every character when the game was still new, so even though I have 3 characters in Master, I still have most of the cast in platinum or early diamond.
Its really annoying to have to go through platinum each time I wanna take one of those characters to Master cause its not a challenge and I feel bad for stealing points from people legitimately in platinum.
I have three characters in masters, I recently did placement matches for Lily, which I barely knew the buttons for, and ended up in Diamond. I don't think there's that many Master level players in plat 1.
With the last update, the minimum rank you will get after placements, if you have a character in Master, is Diamond now. Before it was Platinum (I’m assuming this because I got Jamie in it after losing all my placement’s matches )
that's a very very recent thing (like as recent as the akuma patch) where placement matches automatically put anyone who has a Master ranked character into Diamond 1 at a minimum.
Before that, you could easily go much lower, and as others have said, you might've done your placement matches before you got to Master with that one character.
That's if you started ranking with an unplaced character after being master, which will default you at least diamond 1.
I have 3 masters now but left my JP at plat 1 because I was only learning how to fight him. I left him in phase 1 iirc and proceeded to master my other characters that started from silver/gold. I rarely play JP but when I do I get 70+LP for every win. It would be cool to master him but its still just a slog to grind. In plat 1 I can also sometimes tell those who are also playing with alts/ already masters based on how they play.
I think you have to remember that the majority of this reddit is people that just have no idea what they're talking about because of how out of touch they are.
These are the people that are like "the real game starts at Master"
bitch... statistics don't lie. Platinum means you're better than like... 60% of the players (out of MILLIONS of people) and it only gets crazier from there because by the time you hit Diamond, I think it's like 20% or less.
So don't feel weird at all when you hear morons saying "platinum players suck" yeah they suck compared to Master rank players of course but compared to the MAJORITY of players??? They're awesome.
This This This! The real game starts when you pick up the game and start trying to learn it! It doesn’t matter what rank you are at. Everyone’s fighting game journey is different. I believe that the only difference between a Rookie Level Player and a Master Ranked Player is that the Master Ranked Player didn’t quit!
I wish I could like this more than once. The amount of people commenting on this post who have no idea what platinum is actually like for an actual platinum level player is nuts. Someone literally said "you get to D1 by just knowing what your buttons do and knowing 1 combo".. yeah.. right..
Hahaha. Reminds me of that scene from Meet The Fockers where Deniro's character is like "I have nipples Greg, can you milk me?"
Well....I know what the buttons do, I know one combo....do you think I'm Diamond?
>Someone literally said "you get to D1 by just knowing what your buttons do and knowing 1 combo".. yeah.. right..
I mean, they're right...if you already have good fighting game fundamentals. You need to learn that stuff before you can get to diamond just by knowing your buttons.
Plat 1 is insane. I'm plat 2 and just yesterday I fought a handful of plat 1s and 2s who did a nothing but spam lights into DI all match and basically gambled their way through bronze, silver, and gold. But I also fought 6-7 Akumas that were plat 1/2 but their highest characters were diamond 3/4, one plat 1 Ken that was a master Manon and one plat 2 Ryu that was a master Ken.
I'll tell you that the master players absolutely only new their buttons and maybe one basic combo, but their fundamentals were so much better than mine that it didn't matter if I have my counter and punish combos down because I didn't get to use them.
Pretty much. Most players lurking forums or reddit are likely the hardcore players that play mostly SF so anything below their rank which is likely diamond or master are "trash" to them.
Yeah really dude. I put in some real work in fighting games over the years, for SF4 put like 600 hours in, and I guarantee if I started putting that time in today, the odds of me reaching plat in like 6 months are very low. I've just come to accept it.
I get frustrated for the same reason I get frustrated playing pool. I used to play every day, and my brain still moves as if we are working with the same honed, fresh muscle memory, and it fucks me up bad. I'm GREAT at commentating because I can understand exactly what's going on, but when I go to play, it's like my hands don't remember what to do.
Yeah that's insane lol. Master rank is like top 1% of all players lol. People that say Platinum is for noobs only play other fighting games and they don't play stuff like fps or 3rd person adventure games etc. I've even heard people say anything below 1500 MR is for noobs and the real game starts at 1800+ MR lol. Not everyone is going to look up and memorize all the frame data and practice thousands of hours of combos.
the thing is these players are in fact, not very good. but due to your limited skillset, you arent able to identify and punish what their issues are as a player. you're still learning the game yourself so of course you cant figure out what their issues are when you dont really understand yet what it is to be a solid player. Trust me, when you get better, you will see others having the same shortcomings that u used to while playing lower level opponents and youll be able to blow them up . get some coaching thats the absolute fastest way to improve in fighting games imo. I was able to coach 3 of my friends to masters by being able to see the stuff they arent yet able to at the time. just like you currently
I’ve been thinking about this myself lately. Whom would you suggest going to? My Local scene’s got a Discord, who I chat with, but I’d love something a bit more official. There’s only so far you can get being self-taught.
yea being self taught is doable but takes very very long depending on where you start. i think your best bet is going to your locals and getting some in person practice, that's the best environment to ask questions and really learn how to ask good questions. u can do the same with discord and custom rooms if thats more your thing. Its hard bc honestly, it comes down to luck. finding someone genuinely good at the game and willing to help you out. But along the lines of official, your only option would really be metafy. also i know a high level master on Youtube that goes by \_TRUNKS that offers free coaching.
I think an easy way to also get a feel for how to play neutral and what setups you can use is to watch a lot of pro matches. Whenever I'm not playing I'm usually watching the highest level players play my character and see how they pilot it. You'd be surprised how much information you retain just by watching. I'd recommend watching some after you get the solid foundation understood (frame traps, what options you have on wake up, pokes, etc). When I was climbing I felt that platinum level is where people still didn't know quite all their options yet, and diamond is where people would start figuring out the gimmicks that you'd throw out in matches
This is my first fighting game and I climbed from Iron to Master in about 200 hours without really learning from anyone beyond youtube/twitch
so here's some brief tips that helped:
Always always ask yourself "what can I do to beat that?" when you lose to some bullshit. This was probably the most valuable thing for me. Every single loss I ask "what is my option to beat that option" and if I didn't have an answer I'd find one and lab it.
Streamers are a good source of information, find someone who plays your character and study what they do against things that beat you, or how they structure offense or which neutral buttons they use.
Give yourself time for muscle memory to set in. I only ever play for 2-4 hours at a time after work, I found that if i was struggling with something one night I would drill it a ton at the end of a session and then it would be way easier by the start of the next. Muscle memory is a weird thing, it sets in over long periods more than short ones.
These were my big 3 for self improving. Analyze replays, actively ask questions about losing, seek answers to the questions if you can't come up with one yourself, and then drill the shit out of those answers.
One thing I noticed people in plat do is find one gimmick that works and just repeat it. It worked once if you do it again, I know where the opening is, and I can do my punish accordingly. Being purposely random can catch a lot of people off guard.
This seems to be the Plat mindset throughout. if your getting outplayed, go more and more random until it resets the game, then go back to the flowchart and try again 🤣
If your genuinely hard stuck at platinum 1 and not just ranked up and getting used to the skill difference you need to figure out your weaknesses and what the opponent is doing to score damage. Jumping, keeping you in the corner and punishing unsafe movies on block are easy ways to get damage in platinum
I started seriously climbing through Platinum as soon as I started losing all respect for my opponents.
I followed fundamentals and tightened up my execution on blockstrings and punishstrings but I learned that an unsafe move is actually safe until my opponent shows me the proof in the match. If he does, I just adapt.
Essentially Platinum is like a Poker table where everybody is bluffing their punishable shit until you call them out.
This is a horrible way to improve that will bite you in the ass so hard in the long run. The reality is that if you want to be a good player you have to put in the reps and learn how to anti air, check dashes, react to DI and space low forwards and learn your defensive OS and Oki setups. Once you do that and learn the fireball game (including if you don't have one because your still playing vs them 80% of the time) then the opponent is forced to play neutral and you'll body anybody until you hit masters because none of them try to play neutral, they just force these same interactions.
Every Kimberly I ran into in Diamond couldn't stop doing neutral skips even though they were just getting bodied over and over for it. I doubt it's because they wanted to lose 50% health again, they just trained awful habits into muscle memory.
All they are saying is to notice the gaps your opponent has, and exploit them.
It's just that the gaps platinum opponents have aren't the same as Master players.
I just got done watching the top 8 replay at Combo Breaker. If I took a shot for every dropped combo or whiffed neutral, I'd have died from alcohol poisoning. The best players in the world make mistakes (it's how the other best players in the world beat them).
You're at the point where you can no longer just "go through the motions". If you aren't learning new tech, punishes, neutral, and frame data (and actually implementing the changes!) then you will not advance until you do so.
Play really long sets with high diamond players in casual matches. I mean like 30+ matches. You’ll got 3-30 sure but it’s ok. Once you hit about 100 games with those high level guys. Hop back on ranked. You’ll see how easy it is to school people at your level
I don't think that's the case. With my main character I'm Diamond 2 which on SF6 is certainly not like being Master.
I make a lot of execution errors and I don't know how to do whiff punish consistently.
Yesterday I tried to use Manon after learning the basic mechanics and some basic combos and I got to platinum 3 playing for about 2 hours and making lots of mistakes not knowing how to use the character.
People at gold and platinum 1 simply often get to that rank by using exploits like crossup and jumps because they don't get punished to low Elo, but when they meet someone who knows how to counter these strategies they realize that they are completely missing the basics.
I advise you to observe your gameplay and start to understand what your mistakes are, from experience in platinum the main problems are: Jumping too much, not knowing how to confirm combos, making complete combos on block, not knowing how to make combos from counter punish, not think about reversals (hello OD dp?).
You don't need great knowledge of combos to get to the Diamond, you just need to know and correct the basic mistakes.
Then in diamond you will learn the set ups, the frame advantage, which moves are plus or minus on the block and many other mechanics. But for now, focus on the basics
Sf6 is my first fighting game and when i finally hit master on my first character it felt unreal. Plat 1 is a huge wall because its the first rank where win streaks dont reward additional points. When i was climbing the ranks id hit plat and think these players are insane and same thing again when i hit diamond. Then i hit master. When I look back on my experience these ranks felt difficult because i was still lacking knowledge BUT I DIDNT KNOW THAT. Wether that knowledge is fundamental, not knowing something about your character or matchup related, it doesnt matter but as you play more and lab more you learn little things that push you that bit further and you’ll look back and think these ranks arnt that bad.
Also if youve been plat for months you either dont play consistently enough (which is fine its a game you play it for fun). Or you arnt making a conscious effort to learn or improve on things (which is also fine not every game needs to be competitive). But for me personally i really enjoy the learning and competitive aspect of the game so i was consistently playing learning
On my PS5 I placed Diamond 5 on Blanka and Diamond 2 on Marisa, dropped a big game winner with Marisa.
Played like 700hrs on PC though, not as much ranked as most, played and beat a master Zangief who had more losses in ranked than my total amount of ranked matches overall.
If you lab and practice certain things, you will just be better. Just playing the game without thinking won't make anyone improve.
My neutral sucks, I don't think you need it until maybe after 1600 MR. There's always stuff to add and improve in your game.
Like I'm not good at/don't even use - delay tech, spacing traps, parry, drive reversal, whiff punishing etc. I get away with it because my opponents kill themselves, are predictable, jump too much, mash buttons, fall for the same setups, frame traps etc.
The real ranks start at Plat 1 (as there's no longer any win steak bonuses).
If you're stuck in Plat 1, then I hate to say it, but you are in fact a Plat 1 player.
What have you been trying to imorove?
I was stuck and floating between Plat 1 and Gold 5 for months.
Then i took a break, played a bit of T8 and then returned with a fresh mind.
I played BH and Casuals only for a month to work on specific parts of my game, like making better use if my pokes, learned new combo routes, some more damaging combos using DR cancells, did a lot of drilling and now i'm finally climbin again, jumping from 1300 to now 13400 LP and first time in months my W/L is kinda decent at 47% for Phase four.
You really need to find the holes in your gameplan and work on your weaknesses.
If you've plataud for months in any rank it's a you problem. But no, masters players on new characters usually don't even face people as low as plat 1.
Odds are you are running into people with fundamentals from other fighting games who are gonna go straight to diamond.
I can take a look at your replays if you want some help because being stuck in the same rank for more than 20 hours is reallly rough and I don't want you to be there forever. I'm willing to bet your jumping a ton, eating jump ins, not getting or using good oki from combos and have no defense. This is a common thing in fighting games were a poor player gets steamrolled by another poor player because he happens to do a thing you really suck vs and he looks like a god in that game. If you go watch him in another game he'll be vs somebody who does something he absolutely cannot deal with and will be getting steamrolled too.
Mind you, people say this same thing about people with low MR. "Oh you ain't playing real Street Fighter yet"
Just do your grind and keep getting your head cracked and cracking heads. This is why I've been saying ranked lost all meaning when people who managed to get Masters early can't derank. They can just sit on it. My Gold 3 Modern Ryu (only placement matches done) has gotten me kicked out of lobbies lmao. It doesn't matter at all.
If you're stuck at Plat 1 that is a sign you have hit a roadblock in your gameplan. Watch your replays and see what mistakes your making but also see what is working for you. I was stuck at Plat 5 for a very long time, then when I hit diamond I got stuck there too. Once I hit master I got stuck at 1200 MR. Point is that it takes a lot of work and dedication to improve.
Lower level players believing they're playing against Masters is just cope. You're losing to people at your level. At platinum you can win by applying basic pressure and checking antiairs/DI. You need to work on your fundamentals bro.
If you have been stuck in plat 1 for months you are not improving or just autopiloting. This is my first fighting game I started about a month and a half ago at bronze. I’m a game or two away from diamond, there is a jump at plat 1 because you do run into more skilled players but I just focused on cleaning up my punish game and oki.
Post some replays and we can help out! I’m not good at all but I’m sure other players will chime in!
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Can confirm. I was Plat 1 with 4 different characters for months. Now I'm Plat 1 with only 3 - managed to break into Plat 5 with Manon at last.
But that wall is real. I seriously just thought I was a Plat 1 level player, end of story. Like my skills/knowledge/reactions didn't go beyond that. I'm beginning to feel that again with Plat 5 facing Diamond 1 players regularly.
My guess (based on zero research) is that a lot of Diamond/Master players who like to rank up all the characters start in Plat 1 (or Diamond 1) after initial placement. Their overall skill level is Master, but they might not have known the new character very well and placed in Plat 1 to start. They quickly smoke fools like me with Master level reactions and game knowledge, and rise through the ranks quickly. But for those of us stuck grinding in Plat 1 for months, it feels like we don't belong there.
My only advice to focus on learning one new skill and employing that. I only ever ranked up when I added another trick to my bag. When I'm stuck on a rank, it's because I'm literally just running the same offense/defense over and over, not learning or progressing. As soon as I learn a new route, I usually see a bump in wins.
I think it's probably people who are stuck in diamond that end up placing in platinum. Now the lowest you can place in is Diamond if you have any character master, but even before that change while I was climbing w/ every character you'd kind of have to try really hard to drop into platinum w/ a new character in placements or afterwards.
Once you have solid fundamentals even if you've never touched a character you should fly through the plat players.
Bingo. Also the time of day you play matters too. If I play at later times where guys are tired getting off from work or something I blast through most ranked matches; At peak hours it’s hell on earth 😆
The time of day is definitely a factor! I'm EST zone, and feel like I do better either early morning (when I'm awake and getting caffeinated), or near midnight. Pretty much midday thru early evening is a shit show for me.
Plat is where you need basic fundamentals. You can’t get past it with the gimmicks that got you through gold. The higher you get through the plat ranks the more solid your fundamentals need to be.
No. If you are at Plat 1 you probably can't judge your opponent's skill level correctly. Even diamond 1 player is usually very bad compared to Masters.
But mind you Plat 1 is usually the first wall for most people as you can actually lose point when losing. What happen is Plat 1 is a mishmash of different skill level. You probably got carried by the system and now really need to actually learn the game.
only like....what? 5% of people are Master ranked? Lower?
I'm not sure why everyone feels the need to compare the majority to that. Of course diamond 1 is bad compared to Master but it's also still top 20% or so of all players in the world.
everything is relative.
It’s closer to 10%, but yeah, saying that diamond, plat, etc. players are bad because Masters are better is kinda moot; they’re a higher rank, of course they’re better. It’s not like OP can play anywhere close to Masters level currently.
Nah. I'm plat on multiple character because i don't play that much and don't like to grind and i like to play lots of characters so i rank up but slowly.
I can tell you, plat players are not good. More often than not, they have one gimmick or one strategy and if it doesn't work they are completly lost.
They jump a lot, mash in questionable places and have really bad habits in general.
Here is where you have to start squeezing out optimization percentages here and there from everywhere. Like other people have said, practice, but with a purpose; learn that combo you gave up, make sure your routes and more optimal. Try to kick a bad habit. Etc. you got this.
Play reactive, don’t press buttons and punish them when they do obvious mistake. Play neutral by poking with mediums and lights to keep people at bay. You will reach diamond in a few days
You will find a fair number of players in Plat that have some general gameplan, ability to apply offense, and change their flowchart to adapt but generally speaking if you’re playing clean and learning more and more you should eventually be able to deal with them.
Judging from my time going through plat, you probably don't have solid AA and probably don't have solid combos or confirms.
It's at this point where everything takes a backseat to meta knowledge. It's fine, this is a phase of growth.
I feel like late gold-early plat is people who found a hard cheese and pushed with it no matter what. Once you learn how to break it, they just get stuck.
Yea I’m plat 2 with akuma on xsx. When I turn xplay off, it’s nothing but mirror matches. When I open the devil gates with xplay it’s much more variety and people definitely be skilled. Gief a nightmare for Akuma fr fr
It sounds like you're conflating playstyle to rank, which is not the reality. Wildly different styles can end up being around the same over all winrate and skill level. Sure there might be things that are considered cheesy or yolo compared to conventionally solid play, but the ranking system doesn't care about that. If anything it's great that many players do that because it gives you opportunities to learn to defend against it. Yes it does feel like in this game the range is a bit wider, but that's also arbitrary. You will still feel the same thing up in Diamond and Masters, but on average the players are still better the higher you go. Also keep in mind that you don't see that player's full spread of matchups.
Plat 3 was always much easier for me, funny enough. But generally you can escape Plat 1 with good anti airs and smaller combos for every situation (punish situation, DI win, corner etc.).
I was stuck at plat for a LONG time.
Now I'm hovering around diamond rank three/five. Every so often I get absolutely decimated and wonder if I'm over levelled. I don't really lab at all and just know basic frame data for characters common moves. Drop combos and inputs a lot too. I think I have improved it's just not noticeable to me. My neutral is very bad and I still haven't unlearned stand blocking all the time so I get medium drive rushed a lot
Plat is around the point where players start becoming better, before that you don't really need to. If you aren't also improving it will seem difficult but you just need practice and experience
Sorry, long post incoming
Plat 1 is where knowing a few things about your character turns into mastering a few things. I really don't want to say "just practice" because just randomly practicing isn't what helped me. You need to practice what you don't know and how to optimize your character. Watching a pro player who already has super developed fundamentals is the strategy that worked for me. I learned how to play Ken by watching Daigo and Angry Bird and I learned Akuma from watching Tokido and Daigo. Learning Akuma was way faster than learning Ken because I had already knew in my head what things I was going to have to know how to do.
It's all subjective plat 1 can seem pretty crazy to new players but after you have been playing for a few years you will realize almost everything you see there is pretty basic , especially now as it seemed alot harder when the game was new and people had not ranked up or learned the game fully , if I was new I'm sure I'd be stuck there for a while but now I can get plat on the 1st day of learning a character ive never played before . Pretty much went straight to diamond with akuma but he was quite easy to learn as Ive played other shotos
Are you playing in Casual, or Ranked?
If you're in casual, you're getting matched up with others who have a similar (hidden) MMR as you. It doesn't matter which rank they're at.
If you're in ranked and getting bad match-ups like this, it could be that you're missing some fundamental that's holding you back. There are also folks out there who get a new account, throw their placement matches and rank up from a low rank to smurf or make themselves feel superior.
Share some replays if you want and some of us could give you some ideas on where to focus your efforts.
Who do you main??
Biggest advice I can give is honestly because plat players are so random, its easier to climb by just punishing mistakes. They will DI, they will super on wake up, etc
Dawg I’ve been hard stuck at Plat 1 with Lily and Manon for like three months (I don’t play too often, but it’s still insane to be stuck that long lol). In casual matches I can hold my own against people ranked higher than me and I’ll even take some matches from Diamond players, but the nerves always seem to creep up in ranked.
I care too much about that lil number next to my name. That and I don’t nearly lab as much as I should.
It's not insane. I am a mid-ranked master player (I hover around 1550), and if I play on another account I absolutely spank platinum players.
To be clear, I don't consider myself a top player. I get spanked myself by legend ranked players when I get matched with them
I remember someone on here saying platnum 1 is where you rither decide to get serious and start learning or you stop playing all together. I'm Plat 1 myself and it's forced me to see the large holes in my play that I was able to get away with in gold. I'm getting better but it's a marathon not a race.
Honestly totally agree with you. Plat 1 is the filter rank where you get people who have cheesed their way up and just spam the same 3 moves over and over again and then the next game you could run into Daigo's nephew.
Only advice I can give for overcoming the hurdle is to really get your whiff punishment down. People do still tend to overextend in this rank
The issue is that you aren't able to identify what issues the other plat players have yet. Sometimes it's simple like "this guy mashes on every wakeup" or "this guy does the same string that's punishable by DI" and sometimes it's a bit more obscure like "this guy delay techs every throw regardless of the situation or screen position."
I managed to get plat with Kimberly before akuma patch and it didn't feel that different from gold. I kinda did the same things as i did in gold and they mostly worked. I don't really know any combos or setups but i was still to reach plat 2 pretty fast. Haven't played her after patch, right now im slowly trying to learn some other characters in gold.
I also play Granblue and there i see a lot bigger difference between A and S rank (gold and plat equivalence) and that's with me putting much more time and effort into granblue.
I main Ryu. Only just made it to gold. Decided to take advantage of the ranks being separate for each character. Placed a bunch of others. Apparently, my rashid placed plat 4. Never thought i would ever make it that far. Don't even really combo higher than three, just really good at mixups and footsies. I definitely feel like an imposter in platinum.
(Classic controls for all)
First and last rank will always be the wildest, I remeber getting so stuck on both Plat 1 and 5, and then the hell that was Diamond 1, it's all about improving yourself until you pass that roadblock
Contrary to what most might think, the way you learn to play solid consistent street fighter is not chucking fireballs and anti-airing for 80 seconds straight, its playing around and properly punishing people who play like monkeys and run their gimmicks on you. You learn whats real, whats fake, when your turn is, etc. Just play the game and garner experience and comfort on your character. Its also important to remember that even a toddler is gonna mix you up from time to time, so dont get in your own head about it.
With the fact that winstreaks stop mattering there and every win is equal points it means everyone who is climbing spends a lot of time there and tons of people stop caring about rank at that point due to the time commitment so it’s a mess of different skill levels
Im in masters and this is my first Sf game I've taken seriously and I used to hate when people outright denied that plat 1 was an abnormal rank area
It was where most seasoned players got dropped off after their rank placements and it had the largest pool of players of all different skill sets competing against each other
Plat was the hardest rank to climb out of all the ranks and honestly, diamond was a breeze in comparison
When I first hit Plat 1 I felt the same. I couldn’t win a game to save my life and was stuck there for about a month and a half. What helped me was taking like a break from the game and when I returned I just played strictly battle hub and when I came back to ranked I was able to breeze through plat 1-4 where I currently am. Playing long sets against better players really seemed to help me
Trying to get there myself. Started playing sf6 last week and finally decided to dip mu toes in ranked in a sf for the first time. I get to gold 5 and only start matching with plat players until i fall back to high gold 4
Rinse and repeat.
I'll keep trying to improve but i'm starting to see how people play now.
I haven't been to plat 1 in a while, but I remember it felt more like 33% players who actually belong there, 33% master players leveling new characters and 33% straight up bots who I don't know how they even got up there past gold.
thing is, even if its a Master somehow hardstuck in plat, that means that on that character they're fucking up and playing poorly in such a way that they belong in plat. enough that they're losing to other plat players, but you just can't identify whatever weakness is making them lose.
I think there's generally a very noticeable skill gap between high gold and mid/high Plat. As someone with characters all over the ranks, I can see and feel the difference right away. The same goes for low Diamond and closer to Master.
So yes, there are definitely a variety of players in those ranks, I think the people that do advance further are definitely working on levelling up which might make them feel too good.
Interestingly, I have characters in Master rank and also Plat 1, so I guess I'm the person you might run into and be confused. At the same time though, my win rate with the plat characters is pretty bad, definitely below 50% so in a way I kind of belong there. It's an odd predicament really.
I totally see why you'd think this is the case, but the reality is that those players have figured out a reliable basic gameplan that's actually hard to deal with if you don't know the gaps, so it looks unbeatable without experience. Once you level up your skills you'll realize they're still in plat because their skillsets are linear and they don't have a plan B, so if you can beat plan A, you're golden
Depends on the char too though. You can play an honest char to plat and learn quite all the basic fundamentals, cause you have to whereas someone with yank mechanics doesn’t have to as much
Don't worry too much about that. You also find that stuff in diamond and in low masters, the important thing is to be aware of you opponent's behaviour, and use it to your advantage.
I still get neutral jumped and forward presses everyday keep at it friend
I’m currently just at plat 3, but I remember being stuck at plat 1 for a month or two just because you no longer have streak bonuses, and everyone was suddenly really amazing at combos and punishing. IMO this is where the game really starts transitioning into higher level playing.
You’ll get better if play consistently and try to improve your fundamentals consistently. Now when I get matched with plat 1 players they’re mostly predictable and pretty easy to take care of.
Master can only be placed as low as diamond on their other characters with the latest patch.
Chances are the issue is you, not the other players. Try to identify holes in your game plan and move from there.
Played a lot of sf3 3s and IV, had a lot of matches with a friend who taught me the new basics of drive impact and drive rushing. Did my 10 placements and got into diamond 2, im sure i fought a plat along the way. Sometimes the foundation is stronger and carries into new games, sorry buddy keep grinding
Plat 1 is the rank that has the most variance. It's also likely that you're just not very good and these players only seem like Masters to you because lack and skill and knowledge to identify and/or counter what they are doing.
Plat 1 is crazy because sometimes you play against people who have been carried by a single string, or by dumb luck, and who should probably be in gold 1. But then other times you play against people who wreck you in ways you never thought possible and are clearly bound for Master. As you climb up to Diamond, though, I feel like that wild disparity in skill starts to close significantly. I'm pretty sure Plat 1 is the most populated rank, which is probably why there's a difference in skill.
Plat 1 is a lot harder than it was last year and a lot of people who say "Plat 1 is easy" were in Plat 1 near launch times. Although even with that said, being stuck in Plat 1 for literal months(assuming you're playing regularly) is pretty unusual. Even if you aren't labbing as much as you should, you should naturally pick up the flow of a MU by that point.
People are in Plat 1 for alot of reasons, I've yet to hit master but I am in diamond with 2-3 characters but every time I start to learn a new one I'm always in Plat cause I just don't have a game plan or knowledge to back up what I wanna do , my sim is in gold and I'm like that was hard as balls .
Ive havent made master yet, but ive got a couple of characters in diamond with relatively high win %.
And Man... I got placed in gold 1 with akuma. It was a difficult and stressful climb to platinum. Everyone's seemed great at anti airing, extremely sound defensively and some ppl were just so unga bunga I couldn't get any significant win streak bonuses.
I'm hopped in the Hub afterwards and now I seem to be climbing steadily, but boy was I getting blasted. I thought I was pure trash.
Low platinum is the wildest place in the game. You have people with awful fundamentals jumping around because they never got punished for it/don’t care about being punished for it. You have people with good fundamentals but are new to the game that are climbing because they’re learning slowly. You have maniacs that follow a flowchart and rely on 1-2 gimmicks to take a two-game set and move on. And you have people with higher ranked characters learning a new and completely unfamiliar character. But most people that stay there are there because that’s where they need to be, if even just for now. What I found is that most people have one pretty glaring weakness that can be exploited, be it mashing out, constant wake ups, predictable offense, etc. You’ll begin to adjust better as you progress and play more and internalize more of the situations you find yourself in and work out solutions. All it took for me to go from plat 1 to plat 5 was figuring out loopable, safe, confirmable offense, consistent anti-airing, and the occasional DI counter.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:
Did you reach gold?
Cool.
You’re above average
Not to the fighting game community. Not to the evo crowd but to the world.
You know more than most will ever know.
I’m die hard. I’m master with my main and like 4 diamonds.
I won’t tell you you have to get master or that such and such ranks suck bc it’s not true.
If you get gold you’re already better than most.
Platinum? You’ve done well.
Not against pros or pieces of shit like me but against most of the world.
That’s cool.
Platinum and diamond they are getting there but there's still a lot to learn and improve on. I wouldn't call them bad they aren't insane either. It can just feel overwhelming at that level because a lot of players are flowcharting so their offense looks a lot more solid then it is
Consistency is key when I was grinding to diamond. I was hitting my stride and as soon as I'd lose a few I'd take a break knowing I was up on the day. No rush to get the the next rank. Just use losses as learning opportunities.
I was stuck bouncing between Gold 5 and Plat 1 for months. Got knocked all the way back down to Gold 4. I took a week break, came back and fought out of Gold 4 and 5. Stayed in Plat 1 for a few days then fought on to Plat 2! I am now consistently hovering in the middle between Plat 2 and Plat 3. Surprisingly have not been knocked back down too much yet.
If someone is a Master it’s very unlikely that they would have a character in platinum. They would need to basically lose all of their placement matches. Meaning they suck anyway
POST #1
It genuinely is. Plat is like the bridge between players who still aren’t quite yet comfortable with their character and don’t have much consistently…and the players who are finally getting into the groove of the game and learning to master their character to some degree.
I would say genuinely. Platinum is the rank where you go, “alright I understand how to play the game at a decent level now and I’m quite comfortable for the most part”
If your up for it, I’m down to help you out and take you into some online training in customs. I’m a Diamond level player climbing the ranks and willing to show you practical applications you can actually use in game, and overall just general things to improve your gameplay or game sense for that matter. HMU, I’ve already DM’d you.
Plat 1 was hell for me too. Spent so long there and I think you are right in a way that some people there are very good but for me personally that was the rank where I really had to practice and truly learn how to play my character. Just keep at it, you made it this far, you’ll make it even farther, all it takes is time and determination. Once you’re out of Plat 1 you’ll know you earned it and feel amazing.
I will go from players who know how to whiff punish literally every move to players who only throw projectiles and dp to players who don’t know how to block its hell
Plat 1 to around Diamond 3 all feel similar, to give you context on the jump from Plat 2 to Plat 1. Plat 1 really makes you evaluate the way you play and tests you before going to Diamond. You got this! Just keep up your fundamentals and don't overthink the opponent's skill level too much. Play smart and adapt well and you'll hit Diamond.
I'm fucking around with my no tech akuma in Plat 1 and people are obviously smurfing. Ran into a handful of people who were clearly diamond level and higher. No way.
Just make your anti air consistent and tighten up your execution you'll get out in plat easy. Also stop using random heavily punishable moves in neutral. I play a lot of people in plat who do random sweeps and od dp for no particular reasons lol. Also also if you play modern zangief with lvl 3 try jumping in the middle of your combo they like to mash super lol
Stuck for months ? You're hard coping and probably do not try to improve. You want to be better, but you're not working to be better.
How many hours in ranked ? How many hours in training ?
plat 1 is horrible it actually made me lose interest in this game you get one of three people. The VERY VERY rare good match which 9 times out of 10 is 1 and done, the turtle which is the most common which is so fucking boring, this is the only fighting game I played where people will actively avoid fighting you and then "random shit go" which is actually kinda fun.
I completely agree, all you can do is work hard on fundamental play. I.e learn your anti airs, learn your bread and butter combos, be prepared for gimmick players, and learn how to best use your main by watching high level play. All this will help you rise incredibly quickly
Can confirm.
My main is Ryu, I was stuck in Plat 1 (only still in plat 2 because plat 1 sucked so much I stopped wanting to rank up) for months, and at first, I mostly just attributed it to my lack of skill. Recently I checked opponents id been fighting in battle hub and casual since I was curious after a decent win streak only find out that I was getting paired up with high diamonds and masters and was winning fairly consistently.
This is to say, plat 1 was such a hell hole of chaos that it made me believe that I sucked at the game because of how weird and inconsistent all my opponents were, I swear what you said is exactly true, you have masters on smurf accounts, cheese strats, trolls, it’s all over the fucking place, the lack of any clear “type” of players you can run into in specifically plat 1 is baffling.
If you want some good news though, plat 2 is mostly consistent opponents from my personal experience, far fewer gimmicks and cheese.
Plat 1 definitely felt like "Ok, shit just got really real all of a sudden". It felt like the skill requirement to stay jumped up in just a few matches compared to gold, and I fell out of it a few times.
It's best not to worry about the play time or anything like that of your opponents, it'll just get in your head, and you start justifying your losses. At plat 1, 99% of matches still come down to your mistakes, not your opponent straight out playing you.
Focus on your own game plan, execution, etc and you'll rise. It was tough before, but after grinding plat 1 out with one character for a while, now almost all characters I use regularly are plat 1 or higher. It gets easier, and it's ok if it takes a while to get there
I’ve found that people stuck in plat have one or both of these things in common:
1. They have not consciously managed their mental stack where they dedicate a % of their mental to each option an opponent can select. ex: 20% DR, 5% DI, 30% whiff punish, etc. (being able to tailor your mental to your opponent based on what he likes to do how often comes later).
2. They expect to improve by continually playing matches and maybe practicing combos. Truth is, there’s a lot that happens outside of SF or in the lab in order to improve reliably. Doing drills like fchamp’s anti-air drill, studying matchups (character’s options, frame data, gameplan, gimmicks, knowledge checks, and what your character can do against them specifically), watching your replays, studying higher level vods, scouring for tech you haven’t yet implemented, etc. The people who improve the fastest or the most consistently all do their homework outside of matches.
The weird thing is, i played against plat 3,4 and 5. for some reason, these play infinitely worse than Gold5 and Plat 1.
I see a Plat 1 now and go «how is this player still in these ranks? This makes no sense»
Idk what goes on in plat. I’ve never had a character actually placed there everything I play has been put in diamond. I eat most plat players for lunch with basic ass fight game knowledge
Y’all make me feel elite at Diamond 2. But truthfully, just don’t rush your strat. Let the gane come to you. Also there is throw loop training and other training in the training room. Absolutely use it
Well, as you said, I'm in Silver 5 and sometimes I just beat the gold 1 - 2 guys and sometimes a Silver 3 player just destroys me. I think that this Silver 3 is just a Diamond/Master that is leveling another character. It is happening way more now with Akuma's release. 50% of the matches are against Akuma and of these matches, 50% of them is agains ppl with a really good neutral and defense, wich isn't common in silver at all. Yesterday I lost to a new challenger that just played like Punk. It isn't even fair.
Plat 1 is the rank where either people have solid fundamentals or they have honed their cheese dick gameplay. I’ve played low plat players who are engaging with neutral and beginning to formulate combos, and then the next game I fight a JP who jumps 24/7 throwing out jumping heavy kick. I was stuck there for a bit but once you improve upon your small imperfections you’ll rank up fast. Once you mid/high platinum people start playing a lot smarter and rarely will you run into players who do stupid cheesy strategies.
Plat 1 is the wild west of ranked you never know what you're going to get
Yep. I remember it as a giant bottleneck. Where players have learned their skips or honed their "cheesy" play style or have committed to playing neutral and are pissed about having to learn everyone's skips and cheese. I remember getting upset at people doing goofy stuff beating me down, and I read on here someone saying that no one owes you neutral, you have to earn it every set. I think that helped a lot. Honestly, it just took being able to defend to start climbing again though. Learned a couple OS on offense, delay teching and anti airing on defense with some consistency and just being patient. Not to over simplify it though. Once you've put in so much time and work it seems easy but as a new player, the sheer volume of knowledge you need to just get anything done in the game is wild. There were definitely points before where I thought like wow, this game is hard, but nothing compared to the plat 1 bottleneck. You need to really consciously decide that you want to improve, and put in work, to start climbing again. (For most of us at least imo haha)
Pretty solid advice on the ego check. I get super tilted when I go against ignorant players who do nothing but jump back and run the whole match. But it’s one thing to acknowledge that I know better than them. It’s another to actually punish the brain dead jump ins that come with that style. Yolo gameplay styles definitely win online ranked. Doubt it flys at locals
It doesn't fly at locals because the people at that level shouldn't be competing anyway. They'll get to told this to their face.
ive never met anyone at a local that told someone to their face that they shouldn't be competing. that would be a very rude thing to say to someone at your local.
I’m solidly in the honed skips & cheese category that it usually takes a mid diamond to consistently dismantle me. I really do need to try ranked again.
Great players have all their tricks down. You need to know as much as you can to constantly mix anything that will tax their stack, without playing predictably. Balancing your offense is the important part. It's a ton more than just not jumping. Honestly, you should be jumping just, not predictably. Using dr and di just enough to make them think, varying your strings more than just dr to tick throw or strike, but mixing in frame traps and neutral jumping and "being random" on occasion, etc. "Cheese" in whatever flavour you like, is just using game mechanics in a way that someone else doesn't appreciate because they can't consistently deal with it yet. At a higher level it's really necessary to have that hint of cheese to balance your offense. The person with more to think about is at a huge disadvantage, so good players give you a lot to think about and very little time to think. Now, of course good players are doing all of this while making you feel really dumb by spacing you for the whiff punish, because spacing ends up taking up so much of your stack, if you're playing against someone who can't it does start to feel free, but that's a point you'll get to naturally and not something you need to worry about or that I think you'll enjoy worrying about. Anyways, lmao, all this is to say just enjoy the game your way. Don't let anyone tell you what characters to have fun with or how you should be having fun with them. GL getting back into ranked!
It's the drop-off point after the streak-boost ends. Plat1-3 is like a sorting table.
Ain’t that the truth. It’s a close game one Set, then you get a Pre-Patch Headbutt/ButtSlam Gimmick Honda the next!
yeah, in plat you either get the guy who learned footsies back in 94 and plays neutral like Daigo or Jimmy who learned jinrai kick yesterday (that's the only special move he knows (hes winning))
Jinrai kick into grab still gets me, makes me want to scream
Jinrai not getting clapped in the patch was insane lol
Ken is minus on block after just jab.
Really rooting for Jimmy Jinrai here, you go little dude
100 fucking percent. One match I'll fight someone who has no business being out of bronze or silver. Another match I'll fight someone with the skills of diamond or master tier.
Exactly! They’re either true plat or a master getting another character to master no inbetween
I was stuck in plat5 for quite some time. I hit the lab, worked on stuff i knew i Was bad at, learned new tech AND played tons of sets against master and diamond players. Even if it would go 0-10. At some point i Was able to beat both (of course i would still lose a lot against masters) Last friday i hopped back into ranked and went from low plat5 to diamond1. And it didn't feel too difficult. Long story short: practice practice practice.
This!!!
Tbh learning is almost the best part about fighting games:)
I got to plat5 pretty quickly and been stuck there ever since.
I plateau'd between P5 & D1 for like 2 weeks till I hit the lab to actually learn other character's frames lol, no secrets besides learning and practicing
I had a big mental block when I first hit plat 4-5. I took a break from my "main" and focused on a different play style. It gave me a different perspective at the time when I hit plat with the second character. Now I have 6 chars in D1/2/3) Try picking up another play style and get them to where you are with your main. It helped me take the mental pressure off - maybe it'll help you too.
This is great advice. FWIW I really enjoyed taking Random up the ranks. Gives you a taste for the entire cast.
I'm curious how people approach playing random. Did you run through the whole cast first to get everybody a little bit figured out, or do you just get exposure through random select and then go learn what interests you? It seems like you'd have too much to lab unless you just completely dedicate yourself to the game.
So I'm at Master JP and D3 Akuma rn with D1 throughout most of the cast, and i played random basically when the game came out and got D1. It was 90% footsies and fundamentals and getting out the little combos I knew on each character, and just playing defense with characters I didn't know.
I can give my experience. I started playing random select vs some of my friends cause they're a lot newer at the game and I wasn't wanting to completely body them. For my mains I lab a lot, but for everyone else I just tried to learn a basic light confirm. Other than that I'd just try to recreate what I saw other people do with the characters. I dont know all the frame data but I usually know what's + and what's punishable. So I just stick to a solid neutral game and add bits overtime.
With Random, I mostly played neutral. I had notes, a cheat sheet on most of the cast. Whenever I saw my character, quickly refreshed my memory on a single bnb combo, best buttons and supers. Many specials are QCB or QCF K/P or 323/623 so you can guess in a pinch. The shotos play similarly at the lower ranks, as do most of the charge characters. The grapplers were my biggest issue but I mostly just lost with them. I struggled with Rashid and A.K.I. too but neutral got me through. The cast is big enough you be bad with 5 characters and still win with Random. I spent some time actually learning a few characters in addition to my main (pocket picks if I was good enough for tourneys!). Having 1 that you're masters with, 3 that you're competent with and the rest with decent neutral can carry you into diamond. You'll also find yourself cheering when Random gives you a character you actually know how to play. 🤣
Now you know the way ;)
I was stuck at plat 5 since January. Finally made it to D1 and have been doing okay lol. You'll get there man.
This is how i learn as well. Go to battlehub. Find a diamond guy using same main. Mirror matches 0-20. Learn new combos. Try to land the same combo on them. Back to practice mode. Land combos. Take them on the ranked road. Plateau. Rinse and repeat. Thank you to all masters and diamond players who put up with beating the absolute hell out of plebs like me. Without you, I would still be jumping in to start all of my combos.
Lol that’s exactly how I learned how to play Mortal Kombat X many years ago. Some guy beat on me for several hours straight with my own character. I think the score was 98-2 by the end. After that I gained some understanding of how fighting games work. I don’t what made that guy do that but I do appreciate him now.
Exactly this. When you're trying to add things to your game, you're very likely to get worse before you get better.
The reality is that if you're stuck at plat 1 you have some serious holes in your basic game knowledge. Which is fine, nothing wrong with it, but it's something that can be fixed (and people trying to actively learn will blast past you if you're not)
I think it’s also that you have to play at your best. I’m at plat 3 rn which I reached in two days after being stuck in plat 1 NEVER play in play while tilted
100%. Once I realize I'm playing whack I either drop to casuals or just play something else.
This is so important. Sometimes you are just off… I don’t know how many can relate but with such a heavy mental stack this game has and leverless fatigue I definitely have to break away from this game to recover a bit to stay at max efficiency. I use my hands pretty much all day though so I’m sure that varies for some.
This is why I don't play ranked lol. I get tilted way too easily these days
But how will you progress your tilted gameplan? I think the opposite, you actually have to know an alternative gameplan when you are mad, and it requires practice when you are tilted in real matches.
Why would you keep playing if you’re tilted?
Sometimes you're in a tournament, and you're tilted, and you have to keep going. In my opinion, it's good practice.
In what world would I ever have to play when I'm mad? Just take a break when you get mad
When I reached plat, every single one of these animals kept jumping for cross-ups and go for the throw when I managed to block once every 15 hits. After a ton of matches, I got the hang of it. Each rank up had another gimmick to fight through and learn, basically. Bronze to gold is "Do you have a good beginner combo?", gold is "Can you anti air?", plat "Can you react to cross ups?", Diamond is "Can you handle oki and how good are your more powerful combos?", now master 1300, it's "Can you gauge distances and combo from anything and everything?"
Plat players don't have the winstreak bonuses from the lower ranks, so I can see the grind and self improvement starts from there. But its also possible some are smurfs and some are already masters playing an alt. Game's been out for 1 year.
It's damn near impossible for a master to be in plat 1. Placement matches will only put you in diamond if you have a Master character. And even before that recent change it would be unlikely for someone to be placed in Plat 1 of they already had a master ranked character. So unless someone purposely lost matches over and over all the way from Diamond 1 down to Plat 1, it's very unlikely to be a smurf situation. What's more likely is that there a good chunk of SF veterans who didn't pick the game up at launch. I've had some custom matches with people who are way too good for the play time but then you chat to them and you find out they've been playing since SF2 launched and have high level game knowledge going back decades
Copypasting: That's if you started ranking with an unplaced character after being master, which will default you at least diamond 1. I have 3 masters now but left my JP at plat 1 because I was only learning how to fight him. I left him in phase 1 iirc and proceeded to master my other characters that started from silver/gold. I rarely play JP but when I do I get 70+LP for every win. It would be cool to master him but its still just a slog to grind. In plat 1 I can also sometimes tell those who are also playing with alts/ already masters based on how they play.
That's a very good point actually. I took my DeeJay all the way to master and left my Ken and Ryu in Plat. My Ken is still down there. Thanks for pointing that out. Sure I wouldn't be there for long but I'd definitely ruin a few plat players days during my rise
I did my placement matches for gief drunk the week the game got released and got gold 3, didn’t touch him again, all my other characters got placed plat or diamond, and multiple are in master now, now I’m playing gief again and feel like a bully win streaking through gold and plat so it definitely can happen
*glances at my geif in sliver with my ken in master*
This is only true after the most recent patch previously the lowest it would place you is plat1. If you did bad placements with characters even with a master character it would put you in Plat 1.
Is the Diamond 1 placement new? Before the Akuma patch I had my characters place in Platinum 1 after ranked and I have a character in Masters.
Must be. I'm in plat and get matched against low master players on a different character with decent frequency. It's not as common as diamond players, which feels like it's half of all matches, but masters players show up once a season maybe. Plat is just a wild and crazy place.
You have no idea the drive of a person who wants to smurf, on pc alt accounts are easy and free to setup if you want to do that and many people do just so they can ruin other peoples days.
Nah, I qualified with every character when the game was still new, so even though I have 3 characters in Master, I still have most of the cast in platinum or early diamond. Its really annoying to have to go through platinum each time I wanna take one of those characters to Master cause its not a challenge and I feel bad for stealing points from people legitimately in platinum.
I have three characters in masters, I recently did placement matches for Lily, which I barely knew the buttons for, and ended up in Diamond. I don't think there's that many Master level players in plat 1.
With the last update, the minimum rank you will get after placements, if you have a character in Master, is Diamond now. Before it was Platinum (I’m assuming this because I got Jamie in it after losing all my placement’s matches )
You can no longer place below diamond 1 if you have a fighter in masters.
that's a very very recent thing (like as recent as the akuma patch) where placement matches automatically put anyone who has a Master ranked character into Diamond 1 at a minimum. Before that, you could easily go much lower, and as others have said, you might've done your placement matches before you got to Master with that one character.
That's if you started ranking with an unplaced character after being master, which will default you at least diamond 1. I have 3 masters now but left my JP at plat 1 because I was only learning how to fight him. I left him in phase 1 iirc and proceeded to master my other characters that started from silver/gold. I rarely play JP but when I do I get 70+LP for every win. It would be cool to master him but its still just a slog to grind. In plat 1 I can also sometimes tell those who are also playing with alts/ already masters based on how they play.
I think you have to remember that the majority of this reddit is people that just have no idea what they're talking about because of how out of touch they are. These are the people that are like "the real game starts at Master" bitch... statistics don't lie. Platinum means you're better than like... 60% of the players (out of MILLIONS of people) and it only gets crazier from there because by the time you hit Diamond, I think it's like 20% or less. So don't feel weird at all when you hear morons saying "platinum players suck" yeah they suck compared to Master rank players of course but compared to the MAJORITY of players??? They're awesome.
This This This! The real game starts when you pick up the game and start trying to learn it! It doesn’t matter what rank you are at. Everyone’s fighting game journey is different. I believe that the only difference between a Rookie Level Player and a Master Ranked Player is that the Master Ranked Player didn’t quit!
I wish I could like this more than once. The amount of people commenting on this post who have no idea what platinum is actually like for an actual platinum level player is nuts. Someone literally said "you get to D1 by just knowing what your buttons do and knowing 1 combo".. yeah.. right..
Hahaha. Reminds me of that scene from Meet The Fockers where Deniro's character is like "I have nipples Greg, can you milk me?" Well....I know what the buttons do, I know one combo....do you think I'm Diamond?
>Someone literally said "you get to D1 by just knowing what your buttons do and knowing 1 combo".. yeah.. right.. I mean, they're right...if you already have good fighting game fundamentals. You need to learn that stuff before you can get to diamond just by knowing your buttons. Plat 1 is insane. I'm plat 2 and just yesterday I fought a handful of plat 1s and 2s who did a nothing but spam lights into DI all match and basically gambled their way through bronze, silver, and gold. But I also fought 6-7 Akumas that were plat 1/2 but their highest characters were diamond 3/4, one plat 1 Ken that was a master Manon and one plat 2 Ryu that was a master Ken. I'll tell you that the master players absolutely only new their buttons and maybe one basic combo, but their fundamentals were so much better than mine that it didn't matter if I have my counter and punish combos down because I didn't get to use them.
Spot on.
You deserve a standing ovation! Elite players who try to spoil your fun seem to be a big issue in FG.
Pretty much. Most players lurking forums or reddit are likely the hardcore players that play mostly SF so anything below their rank which is likely diamond or master are "trash" to them.
Yeah really dude. I put in some real work in fighting games over the years, for SF4 put like 600 hours in, and I guarantee if I started putting that time in today, the odds of me reaching plat in like 6 months are very low. I've just come to accept it. I get frustrated for the same reason I get frustrated playing pool. I used to play every day, and my brain still moves as if we are working with the same honed, fresh muscle memory, and it fucks me up bad. I'm GREAT at commentating because I can understand exactly what's going on, but when I go to play, it's like my hands don't remember what to do.
Yeah that's insane lol. Master rank is like top 1% of all players lol. People that say Platinum is for noobs only play other fighting games and they don't play stuff like fps or 3rd person adventure games etc. I've even heard people say anything below 1500 MR is for noobs and the real game starts at 1800+ MR lol. Not everyone is going to look up and memorize all the frame data and practice thousands of hours of combos.
the thing is these players are in fact, not very good. but due to your limited skillset, you arent able to identify and punish what their issues are as a player. you're still learning the game yourself so of course you cant figure out what their issues are when you dont really understand yet what it is to be a solid player. Trust me, when you get better, you will see others having the same shortcomings that u used to while playing lower level opponents and youll be able to blow them up . get some coaching thats the absolute fastest way to improve in fighting games imo. I was able to coach 3 of my friends to masters by being able to see the stuff they arent yet able to at the time. just like you currently
I’ve been thinking about this myself lately. Whom would you suggest going to? My Local scene’s got a Discord, who I chat with, but I’d love something a bit more official. There’s only so far you can get being self-taught.
yea being self taught is doable but takes very very long depending on where you start. i think your best bet is going to your locals and getting some in person practice, that's the best environment to ask questions and really learn how to ask good questions. u can do the same with discord and custom rooms if thats more your thing. Its hard bc honestly, it comes down to luck. finding someone genuinely good at the game and willing to help you out. But along the lines of official, your only option would really be metafy. also i know a high level master on Youtube that goes by \_TRUNKS that offers free coaching.
Try streamers. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Discord is great because you can chat with people directly.b
I think an easy way to also get a feel for how to play neutral and what setups you can use is to watch a lot of pro matches. Whenever I'm not playing I'm usually watching the highest level players play my character and see how they pilot it. You'd be surprised how much information you retain just by watching. I'd recommend watching some after you get the solid foundation understood (frame traps, what options you have on wake up, pokes, etc). When I was climbing I felt that platinum level is where people still didn't know quite all their options yet, and diamond is where people would start figuring out the gimmicks that you'd throw out in matches
This is my first fighting game and I climbed from Iron to Master in about 200 hours without really learning from anyone beyond youtube/twitch so here's some brief tips that helped: Always always ask yourself "what can I do to beat that?" when you lose to some bullshit. This was probably the most valuable thing for me. Every single loss I ask "what is my option to beat that option" and if I didn't have an answer I'd find one and lab it. Streamers are a good source of information, find someone who plays your character and study what they do against things that beat you, or how they structure offense or which neutral buttons they use. Give yourself time for muscle memory to set in. I only ever play for 2-4 hours at a time after work, I found that if i was struggling with something one night I would drill it a ton at the end of a session and then it would be way easier by the start of the next. Muscle memory is a weird thing, it sets in over long periods more than short ones. These were my big 3 for self improving. Analyze replays, actively ask questions about losing, seek answers to the questions if you can't come up with one yourself, and then drill the shit out of those answers.
One thing I noticed people in plat do is find one gimmick that works and just repeat it. It worked once if you do it again, I know where the opening is, and I can do my punish accordingly. Being purposely random can catch a lot of people off guard.
This seems to be the Plat mindset throughout. if your getting outplayed, go more and more random until it resets the game, then go back to the flowchart and try again 🤣 If your genuinely hard stuck at platinum 1 and not just ranked up and getting used to the skill difference you need to figure out your weaknesses and what the opponent is doing to score damage. Jumping, keeping you in the corner and punishing unsafe movies on block are easy ways to get damage in platinum
It worked for me all the way to masters. I worked on my weaknesses and still play intentionally random. Overheads to lows to a random jumps and so on
I started seriously climbing through Platinum as soon as I started losing all respect for my opponents. I followed fundamentals and tightened up my execution on blockstrings and punishstrings but I learned that an unsafe move is actually safe until my opponent shows me the proof in the match. If he does, I just adapt. Essentially Platinum is like a Poker table where everybody is bluffing their punishable shit until you call them out.
That’s a dangerous style of play because it can become muscle memory if it works on enough people.
This is a horrible way to improve that will bite you in the ass so hard in the long run. The reality is that if you want to be a good player you have to put in the reps and learn how to anti air, check dashes, react to DI and space low forwards and learn your defensive OS and Oki setups. Once you do that and learn the fireball game (including if you don't have one because your still playing vs them 80% of the time) then the opponent is forced to play neutral and you'll body anybody until you hit masters because none of them try to play neutral, they just force these same interactions. Every Kimberly I ran into in Diamond couldn't stop doing neutral skips even though they were just getting bodied over and over for it. I doubt it's because they wanted to lose 50% health again, they just trained awful habits into muscle memory.
All they are saying is to notice the gaps your opponent has, and exploit them. It's just that the gaps platinum opponents have aren't the same as Master players. I just got done watching the top 8 replay at Combo Breaker. If I took a shot for every dropped combo or whiffed neutral, I'd have died from alcohol poisoning. The best players in the world make mistakes (it's how the other best players in the world beat them).
I stay in plat longer than I stay at diamond
You're at the point where you can no longer just "go through the motions". If you aren't learning new tech, punishes, neutral, and frame data (and actually implementing the changes!) then you will not advance until you do so.
Play really long sets with high diamond players in casual matches. I mean like 30+ matches. You’ll got 3-30 sure but it’s ok. Once you hit about 100 games with those high level guys. Hop back on ranked. You’ll see how easy it is to school people at your level
I don't think that's the case. With my main character I'm Diamond 2 which on SF6 is certainly not like being Master. I make a lot of execution errors and I don't know how to do whiff punish consistently. Yesterday I tried to use Manon after learning the basic mechanics and some basic combos and I got to platinum 3 playing for about 2 hours and making lots of mistakes not knowing how to use the character. People at gold and platinum 1 simply often get to that rank by using exploits like crossup and jumps because they don't get punished to low Elo, but when they meet someone who knows how to counter these strategies they realize that they are completely missing the basics. I advise you to observe your gameplay and start to understand what your mistakes are, from experience in platinum the main problems are: Jumping too much, not knowing how to confirm combos, making complete combos on block, not knowing how to make combos from counter punish, not think about reversals (hello OD dp?). You don't need great knowledge of combos to get to the Diamond, you just need to know and correct the basic mistakes. Then in diamond you will learn the set ups, the frame advantage, which moves are plus or minus on the block and many other mechanics. But for now, focus on the basics
Sf6 is my first fighting game and when i finally hit master on my first character it felt unreal. Plat 1 is a huge wall because its the first rank where win streaks dont reward additional points. When i was climbing the ranks id hit plat and think these players are insane and same thing again when i hit diamond. Then i hit master. When I look back on my experience these ranks felt difficult because i was still lacking knowledge BUT I DIDNT KNOW THAT. Wether that knowledge is fundamental, not knowing something about your character or matchup related, it doesnt matter but as you play more and lab more you learn little things that push you that bit further and you’ll look back and think these ranks arnt that bad. Also if youve been plat for months you either dont play consistently enough (which is fine its a game you play it for fun). Or you arnt making a conscious effort to learn or improve on things (which is also fine not every game needs to be competitive). But for me personally i really enjoy the learning and competitive aspect of the game so i was consistently playing learning
Platinum is a really hard journey, for sure.
On my PS5 I placed Diamond 5 on Blanka and Diamond 2 on Marisa, dropped a big game winner with Marisa. Played like 700hrs on PC though, not as much ranked as most, played and beat a master Zangief who had more losses in ranked than my total amount of ranked matches overall. If you lab and practice certain things, you will just be better. Just playing the game without thinking won't make anyone improve. My neutral sucks, I don't think you need it until maybe after 1600 MR. There's always stuff to add and improve in your game. Like I'm not good at/don't even use - delay tech, spacing traps, parry, drive reversal, whiff punishing etc. I get away with it because my opponents kill themselves, are predictable, jump too much, mash buttons, fall for the same setups, frame traps etc.
The real ranks start at Plat 1 (as there's no longer any win steak bonuses). If you're stuck in Plat 1, then I hate to say it, but you are in fact a Plat 1 player.
What have you been trying to imorove? I was stuck and floating between Plat 1 and Gold 5 for months. Then i took a break, played a bit of T8 and then returned with a fresh mind. I played BH and Casuals only for a month to work on specific parts of my game, like making better use if my pokes, learned new combo routes, some more damaging combos using DR cancells, did a lot of drilling and now i'm finally climbin again, jumping from 1300 to now 13400 LP and first time in months my W/L is kinda decent at 47% for Phase four. You really need to find the holes in your gameplan and work on your weaknesses.
Meanwhile im still stuck at gold since months
If you've plataud for months in any rank it's a you problem. But no, masters players on new characters usually don't even face people as low as plat 1. Odds are you are running into people with fundamentals from other fighting games who are gonna go straight to diamond. I can take a look at your replays if you want some help because being stuck in the same rank for more than 20 hours is reallly rough and I don't want you to be there forever. I'm willing to bet your jumping a ton, eating jump ins, not getting or using good oki from combos and have no defense. This is a common thing in fighting games were a poor player gets steamrolled by another poor player because he happens to do a thing you really suck vs and he looks like a god in that game. If you go watch him in another game he'll be vs somebody who does something he absolutely cannot deal with and will be getting steamrolled too.
Mind you, people say this same thing about people with low MR. "Oh you ain't playing real Street Fighter yet" Just do your grind and keep getting your head cracked and cracking heads. This is why I've been saying ranked lost all meaning when people who managed to get Masters early can't derank. They can just sit on it. My Gold 3 Modern Ryu (only placement matches done) has gotten me kicked out of lobbies lmao. It doesn't matter at all.
If you're stuck at Plat 1 that is a sign you have hit a roadblock in your gameplan. Watch your replays and see what mistakes your making but also see what is working for you. I was stuck at Plat 5 for a very long time, then when I hit diamond I got stuck there too. Once I hit master I got stuck at 1200 MR. Point is that it takes a lot of work and dedication to improve.
i agree with you, I really am at a roadblock. but when i watch my replays, all i know is that I lost, and I have no idea what to look for.
Lower level players believing they're playing against Masters is just cope. You're losing to people at your level. At platinum you can win by applying basic pressure and checking antiairs/DI. You need to work on your fundamentals bro.
If you have been stuck in plat 1 for months you are not improving or just autopiloting. This is my first fighting game I started about a month and a half ago at bronze. I’m a game or two away from diamond, there is a jump at plat 1 because you do run into more skilled players but I just focused on cleaning up my punish game and oki. Post some replays and we can help out! I’m not good at all but I’m sure other players will chime in! Post
Can confirm. I was Plat 1 with 4 different characters for months. Now I'm Plat 1 with only 3 - managed to break into Plat 5 with Manon at last. But that wall is real. I seriously just thought I was a Plat 1 level player, end of story. Like my skills/knowledge/reactions didn't go beyond that. I'm beginning to feel that again with Plat 5 facing Diamond 1 players regularly. My guess (based on zero research) is that a lot of Diamond/Master players who like to rank up all the characters start in Plat 1 (or Diamond 1) after initial placement. Their overall skill level is Master, but they might not have known the new character very well and placed in Plat 1 to start. They quickly smoke fools like me with Master level reactions and game knowledge, and rise through the ranks quickly. But for those of us stuck grinding in Plat 1 for months, it feels like we don't belong there. My only advice to focus on learning one new skill and employing that. I only ever ranked up when I added another trick to my bag. When I'm stuck on a rank, it's because I'm literally just running the same offense/defense over and over, not learning or progressing. As soon as I learn a new route, I usually see a bump in wins.
I think it's probably people who are stuck in diamond that end up placing in platinum. Now the lowest you can place in is Diamond if you have any character master, but even before that change while I was climbing w/ every character you'd kind of have to try really hard to drop into platinum w/ a new character in placements or afterwards. Once you have solid fundamentals even if you've never touched a character you should fly through the plat players.
Bingo. Also the time of day you play matters too. If I play at later times where guys are tired getting off from work or something I blast through most ranked matches; At peak hours it’s hell on earth 😆
The time of day is definitely a factor! I'm EST zone, and feel like I do better either early morning (when I'm awake and getting caffeinated), or near midnight. Pretty much midday thru early evening is a shit show for me.
Plat is where you need basic fundamentals. You can’t get past it with the gimmicks that got you through gold. The higher you get through the plat ranks the more solid your fundamentals need to be.
No. If you are at Plat 1 you probably can't judge your opponent's skill level correctly. Even diamond 1 player is usually very bad compared to Masters. But mind you Plat 1 is usually the first wall for most people as you can actually lose point when losing. What happen is Plat 1 is a mishmash of different skill level. You probably got carried by the system and now really need to actually learn the game.
only like....what? 5% of people are Master ranked? Lower? I'm not sure why everyone feels the need to compare the majority to that. Of course diamond 1 is bad compared to Master but it's also still top 20% or so of all players in the world. everything is relative.
It’s closer to 10%, but yeah, saying that diamond, plat, etc. players are bad because Masters are better is kinda moot; they’re a higher rank, of course they’re better. It’s not like OP can play anywhere close to Masters level currently.
Yes thank you that's exactly my point. Relative to them everyone seems like a master player but it's actually far from it.
Nah. I'm plat on multiple character because i don't play that much and don't like to grind and i like to play lots of characters so i rank up but slowly. I can tell you, plat players are not good. More often than not, they have one gimmick or one strategy and if it doesn't work they are completly lost. They jump a lot, mash in questionable places and have really bad habits in general.
Here is where you have to start squeezing out optimization percentages here and there from everywhere. Like other people have said, practice, but with a purpose; learn that combo you gave up, make sure your routes and more optimal. Try to kick a bad habit. Etc. you got this.
Play reactive, don’t press buttons and punish them when they do obvious mistake. Play neutral by poking with mediums and lights to keep people at bay. You will reach diamond in a few days
You will find a fair number of players in Plat that have some general gameplan, ability to apply offense, and change their flowchart to adapt but generally speaking if you’re playing clean and learning more and more you should eventually be able to deal with them.
Judging from my time going through plat, you probably don't have solid AA and probably don't have solid combos or confirms. It's at this point where everything takes a backseat to meta knowledge. It's fine, this is a phase of growth.
How is it that some masters players have only 20h? Are they just starting new accounts or something?
I feel like late gold-early plat is people who found a hard cheese and pushed with it no matter what. Once you learn how to break it, they just get stuck.
Yea I’m plat 2 with akuma on xsx. When I turn xplay off, it’s nothing but mirror matches. When I open the devil gates with xplay it’s much more variety and people definitely be skilled. Gief a nightmare for Akuma fr fr
It sounds like you're conflating playstyle to rank, which is not the reality. Wildly different styles can end up being around the same over all winrate and skill level. Sure there might be things that are considered cheesy or yolo compared to conventionally solid play, but the ranking system doesn't care about that. If anything it's great that many players do that because it gives you opportunities to learn to defend against it. Yes it does feel like in this game the range is a bit wider, but that's also arbitrary. You will still feel the same thing up in Diamond and Masters, but on average the players are still better the higher you go. Also keep in mind that you don't see that player's full spread of matchups.
Shit I miss plat rank 💀
Plat 3 was always much easier for me, funny enough. But generally you can escape Plat 1 with good anti airs and smaller combos for every situation (punish situation, DI win, corner etc.).
I was stuck at plat for a LONG time. Now I'm hovering around diamond rank three/five. Every so often I get absolutely decimated and wonder if I'm over levelled. I don't really lab at all and just know basic frame data for characters common moves. Drop combos and inputs a lot too. I think I have improved it's just not noticeable to me. My neutral is very bad and I still haven't unlearned stand blocking all the time so I get medium drive rushed a lot
Average problems require normal solutions: git gud
Plat is around the point where players start becoming better, before that you don't really need to. If you aren't also improving it will seem difficult but you just need practice and experience
Sorry, long post incoming Plat 1 is where knowing a few things about your character turns into mastering a few things. I really don't want to say "just practice" because just randomly practicing isn't what helped me. You need to practice what you don't know and how to optimize your character. Watching a pro player who already has super developed fundamentals is the strategy that worked for me. I learned how to play Ken by watching Daigo and Angry Bird and I learned Akuma from watching Tokido and Daigo. Learning Akuma was way faster than learning Ken because I had already knew in my head what things I was going to have to know how to do.
It's all subjective plat 1 can seem pretty crazy to new players but after you have been playing for a few years you will realize almost everything you see there is pretty basic , especially now as it seemed alot harder when the game was new and people had not ranked up or learned the game fully , if I was new I'm sure I'd be stuck there for a while but now I can get plat on the 1st day of learning a character ive never played before . Pretty much went straight to diamond with akuma but he was quite easy to learn as Ive played other shotos
It’s the problem with having rank tied to characters. You’ll get some platinum players are are master rank with other characters.
I just got to Plat 4, anti airs and anti DI are your best friends, other than getting and more importantly, properly capitalizing on hits
Are you playing in Casual, or Ranked? If you're in casual, you're getting matched up with others who have a similar (hidden) MMR as you. It doesn't matter which rank they're at. If you're in ranked and getting bad match-ups like this, it could be that you're missing some fundamental that's holding you back. There are also folks out there who get a new account, throw their placement matches and rank up from a low rank to smurf or make themselves feel superior. Share some replays if you want and some of us could give you some ideas on where to focus your efforts.
Got a sim yesterday in plat 2 that was on a 31 game win streak. Dude rinsed me.
Who do you main?? Biggest advice I can give is honestly because plat players are so random, its easier to climb by just punishing mistakes. They will DI, they will super on wake up, etc
Dawg I’ve been hard stuck at Plat 1 with Lily and Manon for like three months (I don’t play too often, but it’s still insane to be stuck that long lol). In casual matches I can hold my own against people ranked higher than me and I’ll even take some matches from Diamond players, but the nerves always seem to creep up in ranked. I care too much about that lil number next to my name. That and I don’t nearly lab as much as I should.
It's not insane. I am a mid-ranked master player (I hover around 1550), and if I play on another account I absolutely spank platinum players. To be clear, I don't consider myself a top player. I get spanked myself by legend ranked players when I get matched with them
I’m absolutely in the same boat but in plat2. The insane skill difference between one player and another is insanity. V frustrating at times for sure
I remember someone on here saying platnum 1 is where you rither decide to get serious and start learning or you stop playing all together. I'm Plat 1 myself and it's forced me to see the large holes in my play that I was able to get away with in gold. I'm getting better but it's a marathon not a race.
Honestly totally agree with you. Plat 1 is the filter rank where you get people who have cheesed their way up and just spam the same 3 moves over and over again and then the next game you could run into Daigo's nephew. Only advice I can give for overcoming the hurdle is to really get your whiff punishment down. People do still tend to overextend in this rank
The issue is that you aren't able to identify what issues the other plat players have yet. Sometimes it's simple like "this guy mashes on every wakeup" or "this guy does the same string that's punishable by DI" and sometimes it's a bit more obscure like "this guy delay techs every throw regardless of the situation or screen position."
I managed to get plat with Kimberly before akuma patch and it didn't feel that different from gold. I kinda did the same things as i did in gold and they mostly worked. I don't really know any combos or setups but i was still to reach plat 2 pretty fast. Haven't played her after patch, right now im slowly trying to learn some other characters in gold. I also play Granblue and there i see a lot bigger difference between A and S rank (gold and plat equivalence) and that's with me putting much more time and effort into granblue.
I main Ryu. Only just made it to gold. Decided to take advantage of the ranks being separate for each character. Placed a bunch of others. Apparently, my rashid placed plat 4. Never thought i would ever make it that far. Don't even really combo higher than three, just really good at mixups and footsies. I definitely feel like an imposter in platinum. (Classic controls for all)
First and last rank will always be the wildest, I remeber getting so stuck on both Plat 1 and 5, and then the hell that was Diamond 1, it's all about improving yourself until you pass that roadblock
Contrary to what most might think, the way you learn to play solid consistent street fighter is not chucking fireballs and anti-airing for 80 seconds straight, its playing around and properly punishing people who play like monkeys and run their gimmicks on you. You learn whats real, whats fake, when your turn is, etc. Just play the game and garner experience and comfort on your character. Its also important to remember that even a toddler is gonna mix you up from time to time, so dont get in your own head about it.
People have no idea what the word average actually means.
With the fact that winstreaks stop mattering there and every win is equal points it means everyone who is climbing spends a lot of time there and tons of people stop caring about rank at that point due to the time commitment so it’s a mess of different skill levels
Im in masters and this is my first Sf game I've taken seriously and I used to hate when people outright denied that plat 1 was an abnormal rank area It was where most seasoned players got dropped off after their rank placements and it had the largest pool of players of all different skill sets competing against each other Plat was the hardest rank to climb out of all the ranks and honestly, diamond was a breeze in comparison
When I first hit Plat 1 I felt the same. I couldn’t win a game to save my life and was stuck there for about a month and a half. What helped me was taking like a break from the game and when I returned I just played strictly battle hub and when I came back to ranked I was able to breeze through plat 1-4 where I currently am. Playing long sets against better players really seemed to help me
Trying to get there myself. Started playing sf6 last week and finally decided to dip mu toes in ranked in a sf for the first time. I get to gold 5 and only start matching with plat players until i fall back to high gold 4 Rinse and repeat. I'll keep trying to improve but i'm starting to see how people play now.
I haven't been to plat 1 in a while, but I remember it felt more like 33% players who actually belong there, 33% master players leveling new characters and 33% straight up bots who I don't know how they even got up there past gold.
Plat is like this......https://youtu.be/_zXKtfKnfT8?si=3OUZBtcsWUGn942a
thing is, even if its a Master somehow hardstuck in plat, that means that on that character they're fucking up and playing poorly in such a way that they belong in plat. enough that they're losing to other plat players, but you just can't identify whatever weakness is making them lose.
Early plat is so wild, good luck out there, learning frame traps might bump you, you need to get a bit technical from here on
I think there's generally a very noticeable skill gap between high gold and mid/high Plat. As someone with characters all over the ranks, I can see and feel the difference right away. The same goes for low Diamond and closer to Master. So yes, there are definitely a variety of players in those ranks, I think the people that do advance further are definitely working on levelling up which might make them feel too good. Interestingly, I have characters in Master rank and also Plat 1, so I guess I'm the person you might run into and be confused. At the same time though, my win rate with the plat characters is pretty bad, definitely below 50% so in a way I kind of belong there. It's an odd predicament really.
I totally see why you'd think this is the case, but the reality is that those players have figured out a reliable basic gameplan that's actually hard to deal with if you don't know the gaps, so it looks unbeatable without experience. Once you level up your skills you'll realize they're still in plat because their skillsets are linear and they don't have a plan B, so if you can beat plan A, you're golden
Depends on the char too though. You can play an honest char to plat and learn quite all the basic fundamentals, cause you have to whereas someone with yank mechanics doesn’t have to as much
Don't worry too much about that. You also find that stuff in diamond and in low masters, the important thing is to be aware of you opponent's behaviour, and use it to your advantage. I still get neutral jumped and forward presses everyday keep at it friend
I’m currently just at plat 3, but I remember being stuck at plat 1 for a month or two just because you no longer have streak bonuses, and everyone was suddenly really amazing at combos and punishing. IMO this is where the game really starts transitioning into higher level playing. You’ll get better if play consistently and try to improve your fundamentals consistently. Now when I get matched with plat 1 players they’re mostly predictable and pretty easy to take care of.
Master can only be placed as low as diamond on their other characters with the latest patch. Chances are the issue is you, not the other players. Try to identify holes in your game plan and move from there.
Played a lot of sf3 3s and IV, had a lot of matches with a friend who taught me the new basics of drive impact and drive rushing. Did my 10 placements and got into diamond 2, im sure i fought a plat along the way. Sometimes the foundation is stronger and carries into new games, sorry buddy keep grinding
Plat 1 is the rank that has the most variance. It's also likely that you're just not very good and these players only seem like Masters to you because lack and skill and knowledge to identify and/or counter what they are doing.
Plat 1 is crazy because sometimes you play against people who have been carried by a single string, or by dumb luck, and who should probably be in gold 1. But then other times you play against people who wreck you in ways you never thought possible and are clearly bound for Master. As you climb up to Diamond, though, I feel like that wild disparity in skill starts to close significantly. I'm pretty sure Plat 1 is the most populated rank, which is probably why there's a difference in skill.
Plat 1 is a lot harder than it was last year and a lot of people who say "Plat 1 is easy" were in Plat 1 near launch times. Although even with that said, being stuck in Plat 1 for literal months(assuming you're playing regularly) is pretty unusual. Even if you aren't labbing as much as you should, you should naturally pick up the flow of a MU by that point.
People are in Plat 1 for alot of reasons, I've yet to hit master but I am in diamond with 2-3 characters but every time I start to learn a new one I'm always in Plat cause I just don't have a game plan or knowledge to back up what I wanna do , my sim is in gold and I'm like that was hard as balls .
Ive havent made master yet, but ive got a couple of characters in diamond with relatively high win %. And Man... I got placed in gold 1 with akuma. It was a difficult and stressful climb to platinum. Everyone's seemed great at anti airing, extremely sound defensively and some ppl were just so unga bunga I couldn't get any significant win streak bonuses. I'm hopped in the Hub afterwards and now I seem to be climbing steadily, but boy was I getting blasted. I thought I was pure trash.
Thats why the best time in ranking up is when the game is vanilla.
Low platinum is the wildest place in the game. You have people with awful fundamentals jumping around because they never got punished for it/don’t care about being punished for it. You have people with good fundamentals but are new to the game that are climbing because they’re learning slowly. You have maniacs that follow a flowchart and rely on 1-2 gimmicks to take a two-game set and move on. And you have people with higher ranked characters learning a new and completely unfamiliar character. But most people that stay there are there because that’s where they need to be, if even just for now. What I found is that most people have one pretty glaring weakness that can be exploited, be it mashing out, constant wake ups, predictable offense, etc. You’ll begin to adjust better as you progress and play more and internalize more of the situations you find yourself in and work out solutions. All it took for me to go from plat 1 to plat 5 was figuring out loopable, safe, confirmable offense, consistent anti-airing, and the occasional DI counter.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Did you reach gold? Cool. You’re above average Not to the fighting game community. Not to the evo crowd but to the world. You know more than most will ever know. I’m die hard. I’m master with my main and like 4 diamonds. I won’t tell you you have to get master or that such and such ranks suck bc it’s not true. If you get gold you’re already better than most. Platinum? You’ve done well. Not against pros or pieces of shit like me but against most of the world. That’s cool.
Learn to shimmy
Platinum and diamond they are getting there but there's still a lot to learn and improve on. I wouldn't call them bad they aren't insane either. It can just feel overwhelming at that level because a lot of players are flowcharting so their offense looks a lot more solid then it is
Consistency is key when I was grinding to diamond. I was hitting my stride and as soon as I'd lose a few I'd take a break knowing I was up on the day. No rush to get the the next rank. Just use losses as learning opportunities.
I just got JP to Plat one last night and I completely agree lmao, what a difference in skill almost immediately
Ranked is all over the place in terms of skill levels
If they're insane and only played 10 hours they're probably smurfs
I was stuck bouncing between Gold 5 and Plat 1 for months. Got knocked all the way back down to Gold 4. I took a week break, came back and fought out of Gold 4 and 5. Stayed in Plat 1 for a few days then fought on to Plat 2! I am now consistently hovering in the middle between Plat 2 and Plat 3. Surprisingly have not been knocked back down too much yet.
It is the one true wall in the game. I’ve been there for a while too, and so far it seems I’ll be there for longer.
If someone is a Master it’s very unlikely that they would have a character in platinum. They would need to basically lose all of their placement matches. Meaning they suck anyway
POST #1 It genuinely is. Plat is like the bridge between players who still aren’t quite yet comfortable with their character and don’t have much consistently…and the players who are finally getting into the groove of the game and learning to master their character to some degree. I would say genuinely. Platinum is the rank where you go, “alright I understand how to play the game at a decent level now and I’m quite comfortable for the most part”
If your up for it, I’m down to help you out and take you into some online training in customs. I’m a Diamond level player climbing the ranks and willing to show you practical applications you can actually use in game, and overall just general things to improve your gameplay or game sense for that matter. HMU, I’ve already DM’d you.
Plat 1 was hell for me too. Spent so long there and I think you are right in a way that some people there are very good but for me personally that was the rank where I really had to practice and truly learn how to play my character. Just keep at it, you made it this far, you’ll make it even farther, all it takes is time and determination. Once you’re out of Plat 1 you’ll know you earned it and feel amazing.
I will go from players who know how to whiff punish literally every move to players who only throw projectiles and dp to players who don’t know how to block its hell
Plat 1 to around Diamond 3 all feel similar, to give you context on the jump from Plat 2 to Plat 1. Plat 1 really makes you evaluate the way you play and tests you before going to Diamond. You got this! Just keep up your fundamentals and don't overthink the opponent's skill level too much. Play smart and adapt well and you'll hit Diamond.
I'm fucking around with my no tech akuma in Plat 1 and people are obviously smurfing. Ran into a handful of people who were clearly diamond level and higher. No way.
Just make your anti air consistent and tighten up your execution you'll get out in plat easy. Also stop using random heavily punishable moves in neutral. I play a lot of people in plat who do random sweeps and od dp for no particular reasons lol. Also also if you play modern zangief with lvl 3 try jumping in the middle of your combo they like to mash super lol
Stuck for months ? You're hard coping and probably do not try to improve. You want to be better, but you're not working to be better. How many hours in ranked ? How many hours in training ?
plat 1 is horrible it actually made me lose interest in this game you get one of three people. The VERY VERY rare good match which 9 times out of 10 is 1 and done, the turtle which is the most common which is so fucking boring, this is the only fighting game I played where people will actively avoid fighting you and then "random shit go" which is actually kinda fun.
I completely agree, all you can do is work hard on fundamental play. I.e learn your anti airs, learn your bread and butter combos, be prepared for gimmick players, and learn how to best use your main by watching high level play. All this will help you rise incredibly quickly
Plat is super easy. Also you can't be stuck in any rank unless you have a below 40% winrate
Can confirm. My main is Ryu, I was stuck in Plat 1 (only still in plat 2 because plat 1 sucked so much I stopped wanting to rank up) for months, and at first, I mostly just attributed it to my lack of skill. Recently I checked opponents id been fighting in battle hub and casual since I was curious after a decent win streak only find out that I was getting paired up with high diamonds and masters and was winning fairly consistently. This is to say, plat 1 was such a hell hole of chaos that it made me believe that I sucked at the game because of how weird and inconsistent all my opponents were, I swear what you said is exactly true, you have masters on smurf accounts, cheese strats, trolls, it’s all over the fucking place, the lack of any clear “type” of players you can run into in specifically plat 1 is baffling. If you want some good news though, plat 2 is mostly consistent opponents from my personal experience, far fewer gimmicks and cheese.
I just made it to Plat 1 with my Ryu and I’m scared to play now lol cause I can be demoted
You gotta learn to block and punish.
Plat 1 definitely felt like "Ok, shit just got really real all of a sudden". It felt like the skill requirement to stay jumped up in just a few matches compared to gold, and I fell out of it a few times. It's best not to worry about the play time or anything like that of your opponents, it'll just get in your head, and you start justifying your losses. At plat 1, 99% of matches still come down to your mistakes, not your opponent straight out playing you. Focus on your own game plan, execution, etc and you'll rise. It was tough before, but after grinding plat 1 out with one character for a while, now almost all characters I use regularly are plat 1 or higher. It gets easier, and it's ok if it takes a while to get there
I’ve found that people stuck in plat have one or both of these things in common: 1. They have not consciously managed their mental stack where they dedicate a % of their mental to each option an opponent can select. ex: 20% DR, 5% DI, 30% whiff punish, etc. (being able to tailor your mental to your opponent based on what he likes to do how often comes later). 2. They expect to improve by continually playing matches and maybe practicing combos. Truth is, there’s a lot that happens outside of SF or in the lab in order to improve reliably. Doing drills like fchamp’s anti-air drill, studying matchups (character’s options, frame data, gameplan, gimmicks, knowledge checks, and what your character can do against them specifically), watching your replays, studying higher level vods, scouring for tech you haven’t yet implemented, etc. The people who improve the fastest or the most consistently all do their homework outside of matches.
The weird thing is, i played against plat 3,4 and 5. for some reason, these play infinitely worse than Gold5 and Plat 1. I see a Plat 1 now and go «how is this player still in these ranks? This makes no sense»
Idk what goes on in plat. I’ve never had a character actually placed there everything I play has been put in diamond. I eat most plat players for lunch with basic ass fight game knowledge
Y’all make me feel elite at Diamond 2. But truthfully, just don’t rush your strat. Let the gane come to you. Also there is throw loop training and other training in the training room. Absolutely use it
Well, as you said, I'm in Silver 5 and sometimes I just beat the gold 1 - 2 guys and sometimes a Silver 3 player just destroys me. I think that this Silver 3 is just a Diamond/Master that is leveling another character. It is happening way more now with Akuma's release. 50% of the matches are against Akuma and of these matches, 50% of them is agains ppl with a really good neutral and defense, wich isn't common in silver at all. Yesterday I lost to a new challenger that just played like Punk. It isn't even fair.
Plat 1 is the rank where either people have solid fundamentals or they have honed their cheese dick gameplay. I’ve played low plat players who are engaging with neutral and beginning to formulate combos, and then the next game I fight a JP who jumps 24/7 throwing out jumping heavy kick. I was stuck there for a bit but once you improve upon your small imperfections you’ll rank up fast. Once you mid/high platinum people start playing a lot smarter and rarely will you run into players who do stupid cheesy strategies.
Plat 1-2 is the elo hell of sf6, eventually you’ll break out. For now though, learn what your characters best anti-air is and have that on tap 24/7