Hiya!

This will come to no one who’s read my posts but I’ve been playing Street Fighter 6 daily ever since it came out. Okay, maybe not every day. There was this one time when I was just super sick so I couldn’t be bothered to boot up the game. Besides that, I’ve consistently logged into Capcom‘s latest entry into their longtime fighting game franchise each and every day. I’ve logged in numerous hours playing through the World Tour campaign, having my Avatar duke it out in the Battle Hub and completing each new characters’ story mode in Fighting Ground.

I’ve dished out so many Spinning Piledrivers, Hadoukens and Sonic Booms. I’ve also eaten a lot of these moves as well. Street Fighter 6 has been out for more than 2 years and I’ve been playing Street Fighter 6 for that length of time.

It’s time for me to take a break. I am officially going to stop playing Street Fighter 6 for the time being.

I know a lot of you won’t really care or even thing it’s a big deal. It’s just someone going to stop playing a video game. Why is that something anyone should care about? To me, however, this is a big change for me and not something I take lightly. I had to search inside myself to really think if this is right for me at this moment. After some real introspective, I believe it is. I believe it’s time to take some time off Street Fighter 6.

First off, you have to understand playing Street Fighter 6 has become a habit already for me. I come home from work, do a little exercise, watch a little television or YouTube, eat something, think about something to write and whatnot. Before bed, I would log onto my laptop, double-click on that sneering icon of Luke on the bottom-right corner of my screen and play an hour or so of Street Fighter 6. As I’ve been doing this consistently for the past couple of years, it’s become a habit. It’s become something I have to do. If I don’t, then it feels like something is wrong. I wouldn’t call it an addiction or anything. It’s just something I have to do because I’ve been doing it daily. That is exactly kind of the problem, however.

Lately, it’s felt like I’ve been logging in more because of duty to keeping the routine rather than actually enjoying myself playing it. I still get excited when new content pops up. I was super hyped when C. Viper came out. She was a new character and something fresh in Street Fighter 6. Not only that, her introduction meant there were new things to explore in World Tour and, as someone who actually enjoys World Tour mode, I grinded through C. Viper portion of the story. Quick review: it was pretty boring as she doesn’t interact with any of the other Street Fighter characters. I get she’s a secret agent but Capcom really needed to connect with the other characters in a way to make her story feel more attached to the lore.

After I completed that, though, I felt kind of empty. Yes, I guess I can really grind out C. Viper’s Combo Trials since I just don’t have the skill to get through the last few. The problem is I just didn’t have the burning urge to do so. This wasn’t like the other DLC characters as I felt the compulsion to really complete them. I do believe I can level up my skill with C. Viper. The problem is I don’t have the desire to do so. It felt, well, pointless. This was my first sign showing me something needed to change.

The second sign came every time I would go play Ranked matches. A good while back, I wrote about how I got my Blanka to Master Rank without even realizing it. This was a very big accomplishment on my part as I’ve already given up on getting any character to Master Rank. Well, for a time, as I didn’t put any conscious effort in doing so, there was a time when I was dealing with Impostor Syndrome. I eventually got over it. How? I managed to get more characters to Master Rank!

First, it was Blanka, the pure accident. That did get me thinking if I could take E. Honda, a character who fundamentally plays like Blanka, and bring him all the way to Master Rank. This time, I would really focus on grinding it out. My E. Honda was at 1-star Diamond back them. So, this should take me a week, right?

It took me less than an hour to get my 1-star Diamond E. Honda to Master Rank.

To be fair, I got there pretty quickly thanks to the new bonus you get for a 10-game win streak. Still, on my way through this win streak, I even fought against a Master Rank JP near the end. Mind you, JP is my worst matchup regardless of who I’m controlling… and I beat him twice! This, in my mind, was unheard of! I now have, not one, but two Master Rank characters in Street Fighter 6! I then tried with Guile, Dee Jay and even Juri. If you’ve noticed, most of the characters I’ve mentioned are “charge” characters as I prefer using them. Juri is the outlier… and I still got her to Master Rank as well!

This is when I kind of fell into a slump. Maybe I was getting a little too full of myself as I somehow got several characters to Master Rank level. Maybe I thought I was just that good. Ever since then, I just haven’t been able to consistently get wins with other characters. Even my Master Rank characters were losing to Diamond ranked players. There was something wrong with me. What happened?

So, I did something I haven’t done ever while playing the game. I watched my replays. I looked through my wins and my losses to see what happened. Why did I win and why did I lose? What were the things I could continuously do and the things I could improve on? There had to be something I wasn’t seeing. Hopefully, my replays would help me spot whatever happened to me.

After checking through my replays, I noticed something really bad and why I kept losing. I wasn’t improving anymore. In fact, I was getting worse!

There’s something I didn’t mention during my mad rush to get those characters to Master Rank. I really felt a huge improvement in my skill level. I could react to a Drive Impact. I could instinctively know when someone would go for a throw and break it. I could anti-air with great consistently all the time. During that period where I kept losing, I noticed I wasn’t reacting to Drive Impact with a counter Drive Impact. I was getting thrown a lot. My anti-airs were sloppy and inconsistent.

What’s even worse is my offense was just bad. I was dropping even simple Drive Rush combos. I would do ill-timed Drive Impact attempts, despite seeing how my opponent would be able to counter them consistently. I would do stupid things and do a wake-up Super when it was obvious my opponent wasn’t going to attack.

My Street Fighter 6 skills were deteriorating. Why?

This is when I really took some time to analyze my games. While doing this, I realized something. Something really important to playing Street Fighter 6 or any other video game for that matter: I wasn’t having fun anymore.

Like I mentioned earlier, I was mostly logging on and playing Street Fighter 6 because it was just something I did. I wasn’t really eager to boot it up and have a good match anymore. I was doing it because it was my duty to do so. That’s not a good reason to play Street Fighter 6o any other video game. In fact, that’s a terrible reason! Video games are supposed to be fun and enjoyable. You’re supposed to anticipate your gameplay session! I wasn’t anymore. This is when I realized I needed a break from the game.

It’s not like I’m going to totally quit playing Street Fighter 6. I may boot it up once in a while but not every night before bed anymore. If Capcom releases a new event or a new DLC character for the game, sure. What I won’t be doing is just blindly logging in because of some false sense of duty. There are other things I can be doing. Maybe I’ll try replaying Resident Evil 2 Remake as it is nearly Halloween. Maybe I’ll start writing that novel I wanted to do for so long. Maybe I’ll exercise a bit more. Whatever it may be, I will be taking a break from Street Fighter 6 in the meantime. I do think I need to refresh and take my mind off the game a bit. Hopefully, this time away will make me hungry again to go online when I do eventually return… whenever that may be.

Byee!

Have you ever had to take a break from a video game? Let me know in the comments section below!