Hiya!

Well, well! I guess you can now call me a Street Fighter 6 professional! You can insert a clip of Karin doing her “Ohohoho!” laugh here. Seriously speaking, though. I never, ever thought I would ever get any of my characters to Master rank in Street Fighter 6. In fact, I already gave up on ever making it to that point almost a year ago! There were a ton of things standing in my way to ever getting to Master rank. So, you can imagine my surprise how I unexpectedly climbed the ladder all the way there!

I’m so proud of myself and, while it may not seem like much to a lot of Street Fighter 6 players out there, this is a milestone for me! I never thought I would be able to get here! However, I will say getting to Master rank was a surprise to me. That’s mainly because I didn’t even realize I was going to get there until my promotion match to Master!

So, to give a very brief summary as to why I never thought I would get to Master rank is because Capcom made getting there extremely difficult for someone of my caliber and situation. My biggest issue was, in my opinion, how many matches I could get during a play session. I am a WiFi player and a lot of Street Fighter 6 players would ignore my match requests like the plague! I can’t really fault them as there is a stigma of not using a wired connection on games which require split second reactions.

WiFi connection will definitely have some connection issues and some teensy bit of lag so I get why they don’t play me. However, that does mean I really don’t get to play that many matches as a good chunk of them will avoid me. At best, I can play against other WiFi players but those are few and far between. Even if Street Fighter 6 is very playable using wireless, us WiFi enjoyers are treated like lepers or something like that.

Another issue I have is, well, my general skill when it came to playing Street Fighter 6. I would never, ever consider myself as one of the greatest fighting game players ever. I still think of myself as a scrub even after playing the game since the Beta came out! So, I will happily admit I wasn’t that good of a player before so I never really deserved to get the Master rank before.

However, the biggest issue I had was the climb to Master rank. For me, it’s so easy to get out of the Silver and Gold ranks when the game came out. That’s because Capcom gave you something like an experience boost if you had a win streak in those ranks. Once you got to the Platinum and Diamond ranks, things become a slog as the win streak bonus wasn’t available then!

So, even if my 2-Star Diamond rank Blanka had a 9-win streak, I would still just get around 40 to 60 points added to my rank. Between the long waits for matches and my skill level at that time, I would just bounce around this rank. I would get a win streak and then lose a couple of matches. This meant my Blanka was just wallowing in that 2-star Diamond rank for ages!

So, since I felt I would never get to the prestigious Master rank, I essentially stopped playing Ranked matches regularly. I would pop into Ranked here and there but I would have a rule. I would just play 5 Ranked matches. Win or lose, I would quit after the 5th match. I would also stop playing Ranked if 5 people would choose to fight me. You can actually decline Ranked matches and I’m guessing a lot of the would automatically run for the hills once they see that WiFi indicator. So, generally, to get my online match fix, I would pop into the game’s Battle Hub and get a match from there. That way, they can’t really escape me since they’re the ones sitting on an arcade cabinet looking for challengers! I’m only happy to oblige!

Fast forward to a few days ago. I was playing late at night and all I could find in the Battle Hub were those Grand Master and Ultimate Master ranked players. I was looking for some people more my speed. As my Blanka was a 2-star Diamond, I was looking for someone around Diamond as well. I got frustrated and opted to do a few Ranked matches following my stipulated rules, of course.

When I did finally get a Ranked match, I did notice from the corner of my eye how my Blanka had a 9-game win streak. I never really cared because, like I said before, I don’t really play Ranked. What did kind of surprise me was the match I was going to play was an opportunity for me to Rank up. I did win that match and I got Blanka to 3-star Diamond, which was a pretty cool feeling. What I didn’t know was the only reason why I ranked up that time was because, from winning that match, I got my win streak to 10… and it gave me a whopping 1,000+ points!

I’m not one to really check out whenever Capcom updates Street Fighter 6 unless is a balance patch. So, at that time, I didn’t know Capcom updated the Ranking system so that, if a Platinum or Diamond player get a 10-win streak, this earns you bonus points! This point increase is nothing to sneeze at as it almost assures you to level up because of how huge the payout is!

Normally, I would have gotten nervous with this realization… but I didn’t know it worked like this yet! So, I had a rematch with the guy I just fought and I won again… and I leveled up again! I got my Blanka to 4-star Diamond and I honestly thought I glitched the game! This is when I started getting nervous… because I thought there was a bug and I was going to get booted back down to Platinum or something when Capcom fixed this “bug” I experienced!

Anyway, I played another match, won the next couple of them and I ranked up again! It was at this point when I had to look this up to see if this was a glitch and how Capcom was handling it. This was the time when I learned about the bonus, which made me nervous for the next match because, with the way things were going, all I just had to do is win this upcoming match to get to Master rank! All of a sudden, my palms got sweaty. I heard that familiar “plink” sound effect that the game makes when checking if I wanted to play a new Ranked match. I nervously opted into the match…

…and I won!

Sure, I promptly lost to this Ryu and he probably gained a ton of points for beating a newly minted Master ranked Blanka. It didn’t matter that I lost this time to me because I finally did it! I got a single character to Master rank in Street Fighter 6!

I understand this isn’t a huge accomplishment to a lot of Street Fighter 6 players. I’ve seen a lot of players in the Battle Hub have gotten multiple characters to Master rank. I can only assume these players are much more skilled that I as I cannot envision myself doing that. I’m just not skilled enough to meet that accomplishment. I’m perfectly fine with just one, even if Blanka is technically my secondary character.

However, this did sort of make me realize how far I’ve come in Street Fighter 6. I still consider myself a scrub in a way. I can’t front as I pretty lucked out as had a 9 game win streak already when Capcom updated the game to give bonuses for 10 straight wins. Even so, I still had to beat 4-Star and 5-Star players to get to Master. I did that by myself and it does show I have improved a whole lot. I guess if a lowly scrub like me can reach Master, then pretty much anyone can… as long as they incrementally get better over time.

Byee!

What’s your rank in Street Fighter 6? Better question, if you’ve hit Master rank, how long did it take you to do so? Let me know in the comments section below!