Q: I'm a beginner/extremely rusty, and I'm totally lost. Where do I begin?
A: http://shoryuken.com/wiki/index.php/Marvel_vs_Capcom_2#Introduction is a good place to start. It has a lot of valuable general information about the game. It features the tier list, which is the compiled opinions of the best players in the game regarding how each character ranks in effectiveness, characters at the top being more effective and characters at the bottom being less effective. It has a handy section that lists the 6 best assists in the game, and assists that are very good but not quite top 6 material. It also lists some tried and true tournament teams, some more popular lower tier teams, and some other teams that deserve mention. The FAQs on Gamefaqs should be checked as well. They can be very helpful.
Q: Okay, but there's so many options. I'm having trouble choosing a team. Are some teams and characters easier for beginners than others?
A: Yes indeed. The team of Cable Anti-Air/Sentinel Ground/Captain Commando Anti-Air is dubbed "Team Scrub" because it is a great team for beginners to learn with, but don't worry because it's also a great team in general. Sanford Kelly won this year's Evo tournament (the biggest fighting game tournament in America) with Team Scrub, so it's clearly not just for beginners. Another popular team "Scrubclops", which is Cable/Sentinel/Cyclops Anti-Air.
The characters I've personally had an easier time learning to be halfway decent with are Cable, Sentinel, Captain Commando, Cyclops, Dr. Doom, Iron Man, War Machine, Blackheart, Psylocke, IceMan, Juggernaut, Guile, Mega Man, and Ken, and I also tend to see a lot of beginners flock to Jin.
For your convenience, here are the other teams from the above link that I found easier to play:
Juggernaut Dash/Tron Bonne Projectile/Dr. Doom Anti-Air
Blackheart Anti-Air/Cable Anti-Air/Sentinel Ground
Blackheart Anti-Air/Sentinel Ground/Captain Commando Anti-Air
Iron Man Anti-Air/War Machine Anti-Air/Dr. Doom Anti-Air
Blackheart Anti-Air/Cable Anti-Air/Dr. Doom Anti-Air
B.B. Hood Anti-Air/Juggernaut Dash/Captain Commando Anti-Air (this team's concept is that it's Team Hyper Combo can kill enemies clean if you simply hit them with it and they aren't blocking.)
On the other hand, I personally found Magneto, Storm, Strider, Spiral, Dhalsim, and Anakaris hard to learn, as well as practically any character from low tier or bottom tier. The ones I mentioned specifically, however, are because Magneto, Storm, and Dhalsim are very combo-oriented, and I'm not very good at combos or rushdown yet. Strider and Spiral are difficult because their gameplan relies on execution-based traps, which you need to have the timing down pat on. Anakaris is kinda weird in general. If you find yourself good at doing combos, though, Magneto and Storm are excellent.
Q: I know a bit more now, but where can I find information on specific characters?
A: Check Gamefaqs' character FAQs, as well as some of the general and advanced FAQs. Also, at http://forums.shoryuken.com/forumdisplay.php?f=100 there are character-specific forums with a wealth of information. (Make sure to click the dropbox on the bottom and change it to "from the beginning" to see all of the threads.)
Q: I don't like the characters or teams you mentioned. Why not pick my characters how I want, instead of based on some tier list?
A: Well, this game features 56 characters, and you're free to use whoever you want. Just know that a lot of characters in mid tier or lower are gonna be an uphill battle to learn how to play, due to having less options, and less information readily available on them because less people play them.
Q: I don't like the tier list at all. Why do people seem to treat it like it's infallible?
A: It's not infallible nor written in stone. A tier list is the compiled opinion of the very best players of this game, but it is largely based on opinion, nonetheless. You're free to disagree, and in fact many skilled players think that some of the lower tier characters should be higher on the list, considering it hasn't been updated in a long time. However, every single game that has multiple characters with different gameplay mechanics will have some characters that are superior to others, there's no way around this. You may disagree with the tier listings, and that's your prerogative, and you may even be right, but claiming that every single character is just as good as any other is factually incorrect, because they do not all play the exact same way.
Also, bear in mind that while the list is largely opinion-based, the people who hold these opinions are vastly better players than you are. They've had more experience than you have, so it would be foolish to dismiss their opinions entirely, because they are simply more educated guesses than yours are.
Q: This game is a broken, unplayable mess.
A: This is usually said by people with very little knowledge of how the game actually works. The two most commonly cited reasons for such an opinion is based on the character roster, and on infinite combos.
Roster: People complain they don't wanna face the same team over and over, and they dislike how some of their favorite characters are not as good as the higher tier characters. The truth is that there are at least 15 characters that see frequent play even at the very highest level of competition, and that's a lot of variety, compared to most other fighting games. The link above doesn't list 1, 2, or 3 teams that are considered viable, it lists dozens. Just like any fighting game ever made, there are some characters that simply aren't easy to play at a high level of competition, but MvC2 offers an excellent amount of variety.
Infinite combos: The biggest misconception about "infinite" combos is that they're not actually truly infinite. There are a great number of infinite combos that will work in training mode against a dummy not trying to escape from them, but in actual play, things are a little bit different. The way damage scaling works in this game, is that the more you do a particular move, the less damage it deals. For this reason, infinite combos require "resets" where you end the combo then quickly try to start another combo.
Resets can be avoided, even if to a beginner it seems impossible. Truly infinite combos in fighting games are a "touch of death" type of combo where once you nail the first hit, you are guaranteed to kill your opponent as long as you don't mess up, but the "infinites" in MvC2 are not inescapable, thus not truly infinite, thus not broken.
If a fighting game is broken merely for having tiers and non-infinite combos, then every fighting game ever made is "broken".
Q: I think something in this game is cheap/spamming/cheesy/broken/overpowered/cheating/a glitch.
A: First of all, Capcom ported this game several times. They had several opportunities to change this game, and they deliberately chose not to. That's because they want everything in this game to be how it is, and you do not have more say in how this game should be than it's own creators do. Furthermore, the best players in the world also disagree with you. What makes you more qualified than they are, that your claim is true and theirs aren't? If something is deliberately in this game, it is fair play, plain and simple. If you weren't supposed to "spam" assists, there would not be assist buttons. If you weren't supposed to choose a specific character you think is "cheap", he would not be in this game, or he would be banned at tournaments. If you weren't supposed to use one move over and over, then the game designers would have made it so the move comes out much more slowly. Calling legitimate tactics cheap or cheating is in direct opposition to the very definition of the words you're trying to use.
There are glitches in this game, but the ones that are harmful to competitive play ARE banned, like glitching off of the screen so your opponent can't hit you. Then there are glitches like Juggernaut being able to keep his power-up active the entire round, and Tron Bonne's projectile assist doing more damage than it should. These are irrelevant because they aren't harmful to competitive play. WITH the glitch, Juggernaut is still only mid tier, and neither Tron Bonne's assist nor Juggernaut's glitch have been changed by Capcom because they think they are fine as-is, and add something positive to competitive play. As it is, Juggernaut has extreme trouble getting in on good keepaway players, and Tron's assist is very low-range.
This is also vital reading on the subject: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html David Sirlin is a very skilled Street Fighter player, and he was the one who was in charge of making Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, and this is his view on why the "cheap" mentality is a very, very bad thing.
Q: I don't care, I will just disconnect if my opponent plays with more skill than I have.
A: This is an immature decision for many reasons. First of all, if other people in the online room are waiting to play, disconnecting in the middle of a match can cause a glitch which makes the room unresponsive or crash, disrupting the play experience for everyone, not to mention your opponent probably wants to play someone, not watch someone disconnect. It's harmful to your own MvC2 experience, though, because instead of learning how to deal with a tactic, you make an excuse to rudely just up and leave, so you reinforce negative personality traits, and give up a valuable opportunity to learn how to counter that strategy. "Ragequitting", as this is called, is not respected by the fighting game community, and for good reason.
Q: Are the assists the game labels as "recommended" always the best ones?
A: Absolutely not. Almost every character I play has a better assist than the one the game recommends. Some of the recommended assists are the best one, but usually not. Consult the FAQs or the other links I provided to find which assists are considered superior. In general, if a character has an Anti-Air Assist, it's almost always the best one for that character.
Q: I wanna make my own unique team. Any advice?
A: Team dynamics is one of the most important aspects of this game. In a team, you usually want strong Anti-Air support (through strong Anti-Air Assists), a "battery" character that's good at charging up your Hyper Combo meter without needing to rely on using the meter that much, and most teams tend to go with at least one character with a really strong assist, rather than all 3 of the team being characters who are good fighters.
Let's take Team Duc as an example: Spiral/Cable/Sentinel. Spiral is the on-point character, the one that comes out first and sees a significant amount of play. Spiral's moves charge up the meter quickly, so Cable can take advantage of that with his very powerful Hyper Viper Beam. Sentinel's assist supports Spiral's strategy.
(I also posted this on Gamefaqs' Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 360 board.) |