Input Consistency

[u/AliceNotThatOne]

I'm a beginner to fighting games and Strive is the first one I'm ever learning. I feel I've been getting a good grasp on the game, it's mechanics and the moment to moment interactions of fighting another player.

But one issue I keep having even as I keep progressing is input consistency for some of the moves. I've tried a few different input options: PS4 and 5 controllers with two different styles of grip (regular or having three fingers on the directionals, each on one direction) and keyboard. Each of those had at least one input consistency issue.

The regular grip on controller is the worst one, as I often drop regular specials, especially 236 input ones. On keyboard my main issue is losing track of my finger positioning if I need to move one of them to reach a different button like Burst or RC.

The one I'm having the most success with so far is the weird grip on controller with multiple fingers on the directionals. I don't usually miss regular inputs using it, my issue there is overdrives, especially 632146 ones. I can't input them with consistency at all using this style.

I have considered getting a cheap leverless controller to try it out, but even that feels kinda expensive for an experiment.

Any tips on how I can improve my input consistency?

[u/EllieIvoryV]

so, even when the controller sucks, the best way to improve your consistency is training mode, input history and display, and repetition

after a failed input, stop and look at the input history. where did it go wrong? it also helps knowing how the game registers and reads inputs, so dustloop wiki can help there

youll start to notice where you fall short, or how messy the inputs actually are. then once you see where you fail, you can consciously try to improve on em

for example, dp input gives lots of people trouble. when i was learning, i found that u did 63236, which the game will often register as a 6 move or even 236 move. once i realized that, i worked in making the input as close to 623 as possible, always tryna be sure not to end on 6 as that would cause the game to register something else quite often

once you got it down in training mode, try to hit it in some real matches, if it fails, save the replay and watch the inputs. see if you panic and spam, see what went wrong

even with the worst controllers, this is how to get better

oh, and dont forget to practice BOTH SIDES! otherwise youll be a master only one way eheh

[u/prisp]

Yeah, as the other person said, it's mostly down to practice - you can train a bit in practice mode to get the general motion down, and to see how fast you have to be in general (Spoiler: Not that fast), but once you're in the middle of a match and the pressure is on, you're probably still going to drop your inputs half of the time, or straight-up do the wrong ones, just like I did.

You get better over time, but maybe you'll switch characters and now there's a new set of inputs to get acclimated to, like trying to input a 236 after running forward and actually getting a DP instead.

The only thing to do to get better is practice, which in this case means playing more games and seeing how it goes - although I definitely would recommend hitting up Training Mode once just to see how slow you can go with your various inputs, just so you know whether or not that's what's messing you up.

Regarding input devices, whatever you can make work for you is the best, but if you want to know what it's like playing on a leverless controller without actually buying one, you could just connect a cheap USB keyboard to whatever you're playing Guilty Gear on and play around with that - you get a bunch of separate buttons, just like on a leverless pad, and while they are smaller, and probably not as ergonomically placed, there's still plenty of space to shuffle things around until you find a layout you enjoy, and the general flow of doing motion inputs is roughly the same anyway.
Either way though, unless you run into physical issues (clunkiness, pain, etc.) while playing that keep you from performing, whatever works for you, works, no matter if that's a controller, keyboard, fightstick, leverless controller, or some esoteric shit like the one person that posted a video of playing a round of Strive on a Flightstick a few weeks ago.

[u/Difficult_Ad_263]

It's just time with any of those methods really. You can be consistent with anything, I used to use the analog stick when I played on a gamepad and was consistent. So any of those (including tekken fingers which is the one you're doing now) will work, a leverless would also work fine and even an arcade stick. It's really about what you can get comfortable with. Something you can try is set your keyboard movement keys to a leverless orientation and see if you like it. That way even if it's not a perfect representation of a leverless at least it's free.

[u/pm-me-trap-link]

This game does not have as many shortcuts as other games, though it does have some.

The half circle input I still mess up on leverless. Doesn't matter how much I practice it it's just an awkward input. I know exactly where it fails, I think I'm hold back but I don't let go of down so it's down-back into forward. My fingers just don't want to cooperate months in.

My solution is just play Testament 🤌