Back in the day of the arcades we had this thing called character loyalty. It meant that no matter the version of the game, you were going to play that character because they looked hype, spoke to you on some level, or they were too good. Character loyalty can also be looked at as a way to save your hard earned quarters by not branching out. You don’t know how to play that character, why bother wasting the money when you can body fools with your main stay?
As I got further into a “professional” career, if I may be so bold as to call the flailing I did professional in any way, I found that having a few side characters went a long way in match up knowledge and being able to broaden your horizon in FGs. Also, defeating someone with a character you consider your second or third in a serious match feels really, really good.
When you try to play and learn every character in the game, you will never get as good as you would if you just tried to learn one character at a time.
Maining a single character gives you more time to learn that character’s strengths, weaknesses, and techniques – but will also make it easier learning how to fight against every character in the game. Since you only have to play one character, you only have to focus on one “Match-Up Set”.
For an example: I main Jago, so I only have to worry about the Jago vs. one of the other 20 chars. If I played as all 20 chars, then I would have to focus on all possible Match-Ups in the game – which is a lot!
Basically, maining one character will allow you to get better with that character WAY faster than you would have when you played them all. It will also simplify and shorten the possible Match-Ups you would have to fight. Lastly, I feel like focusing on one character (especially Jago) will help learn the entire game in-general faster, and will help improve your fundamentals.
Trust me, playing as one character is not a disservice to yourself. There are plenty of people who only play one character and end up becoming a Killer online. It depends on what you want: Do you want to have fun, or do you want to actually learn faster and win more?
90% of my matches online has been with Jago. I’ve played about 300 matches. Have things gotten boring and not fun anymore? Nope. I still have a ton of fun playing the game.
About 90% of my matches in USFIV was with Ryu. I know I played over 100 matches. Things were still fun.
Go ahead and main one char. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. But maining one char doesn’t mean you have to exclusively play that char.
Like you said, you play 90% of your matches with Jago. With the other 10% you must have experimented and gained data from it. That is a good thing and that is what I’m talking about.
I main Tusk, but when I get bodied by some char, I pick him in training and check him, and reading about chars on Complete KI guide is useful as hell, I recommend it.
I use characters that feel natural. Some characters just don’t feel right with me. Their controls are just weirdl i am not used to them. Some include Sadira,Glacius,Orchid,Tj,Maya,Kan-Ra,and Hisako.
It’s more because I can’t be competitive with other characters. Right now I am on a mission to become Killer Rank with Shadow Jago. I cannot play as anyone else at that level, well maybe Jago and Thunder (but I haven’t learned the new tech for them). I tried Kim Wu but I started getting destroyed as people learned her. I really like other characters, but I cannot be competitive right now unless I really grind out and practice a bunch. I use to play TJ combo but then he lost half his AD animations which really turned me off.
It depends on the person. I for example will only play characters I want to play. I don’t care if Tusk (just an example btw) is SSS+ tier, no bad matchups, best character in the game and I could win with him 99.9% of the time etc. I won’t use him because I don’t really like him, I want to use and win with the character(s) I actually like.
So if I only like character A, B and C for whatever reasons, those are the ones I am going to use. Obviously this is not good for competitive play as it limits you and your options, but I don’t plan on going to EVO anytime soon so I can get away with it lol
During S2, I had a selection of fighters I picked from: Jago, Shadow Jago, TJ, Cinder, etc.
Now that we had an entire balance change as well as system change, whereas you no longer play in the same way - at least not like before.
With that said, as of right now I am only currently playing Jago.
TJ is fun but its a pain with him now, Rash looked promising until I got a sense of how annoying he is, Shago is great but is overused online, Spinal had a complete rework that ruined some setups and prioritized others, etc. etc.
I’m not saying these changes are bad, while they certainly are for debate. I’m only saying they no longer appeal to me as much as Jago still does. So, yeah, relying on one character helps you learn a variety of tech but it also narrows your roster.
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But, maybe… I will find my true second character, assuming he maintained his certain ranking…
I’m slowly learning a single character at a time in order to expand my playable list, but before Season 3 I pretty much only played Thunder, who I picked up in Season 1 for two reasons; I like his look/design/theme music/stage, and his playstyle was one that I found easier to understand and had fun with.
