Training Mode
This is the best training mode in any fighting game to date. Capcom deserves a huge amount of credit for paying attention to strong features in other games and including (almost) all of them here.
The star of the show is the frame data display gauge. This thing is incredible for several obvious reasons. You immediately know the duration of every move in the game and can use this data to find frame kills or safe jumps. An easy-to-read data display above the gauge tells you frame advantage and it's dynamically calculated, so it takes into account meaties and spacing. The gauge tells you when moves are invincible or not, and gives accurate timing measures for how long buttons were held down or released, which lets you practice, for example, perfect parries or just frame moves. The display is clear and can even help teach beginners about how frame data works.
But it's also even better than I first thought, the more I used it. It shows you the gaps in your pressure, since you can look at when player 2 returns to neutral. You immediately know the size of your gap and exactly where it overlaps in your pressure. You can use it to easily test, for example, burnout pressure strings or frame traps after drive rush, and you can tell whether you timed a move like a dash on the first possible frame you could have moved or not. If a sequence goes longer than 60 frames, it wraps around but leaves a ghost image of the previous 60 frames so you don't lose information (that is, the last 60 frames are always visible). And if you let a second or two pass before doing a new move, the meter restarts from the left edge again, so you don't need to restart training mode to fix it.
The only thing it's potentially missing is cancel windows (maybe a second small bar above the main bar that indicates when a move can be canceled? That seems possibly easier to use than the separate cancel window bar above your character's head), but you can test this yourself simply by slowing the game down to 50% speed (!!) and trying cancel windows until it works or doesn't work, and then looking at the frame count on the main bar. I learned more in 5 minutes about how SF6 worked than I would have learned in a day from older training modes. This is really an A++ feature.
I also want to specifically shout out the Function button. When you map a button on your stick to Function, it acts kind of like a Control key on a keyboard, which lets you press any other button to do a training mode feature (fully mappable by the user), effectively doubling the buttons on your controller. You can, for example, switch the dummy's block mode from block all to block none simply by pressing Function + a button, without entering a menu, and it pops up a little display telling you the new setting. The things you can map as Functions was really big and seemed to include basically all the useful things (controlling dummy playback and recordings, etc). This is also an A++ feature.
I quickly want to point out one thing I want changed about this, though: when you press and hold Function and then press another key (say, medium punch), it executes your mapped function. But then if you release the Function button before releasing the MP button, your held MP button will give you a MP normal. This can mess up some recordings or spacing you're trying to test. You have to be very careful in releasing the MP button before releasing the Function button to keep your character from acting. Hopefully Capcom can adjust this so that you don't get an attack if you just happen to let go of Function first.
Training mode was a joy to use for several other reasons, which I'll outline in point form here:
- you can customize character specific gauges (like Jamie's drink meter)
- you can quickly change where your characters respawn at restart (left corner, center, right corner), including swapping left/right position, by holding directions while pressing the restart button
- you have immediate presets for beginner practice, like anti-airing or dealing with drive impact, and you can save your own presets too
- you have individual control over block reversal and wakeup reversal (and for the first time, on hit reversal); you can set it to an individual move (eg, a crouching LP or an EX shoryuken), or you can get it to play a recording. You can even choose individual delay on each setting, so you can do reversal jab, or jab after 1 frame delay (or any number you choose), and mix and match however you like
- you can set how often each recording plays if you have multiple active recordings. For example, reversal jab 75% of the time and jab with 1f delay 25% of the time.
- you can save and load save states to allow you to practice specific things much more quickly
- you can press L1+R1 while on any training mode menu and immediately jump to "exit training", so you don't have to stumble through menus when you're done
- setting health is done at a default of 10% increments but you can press a button to switch it to 1% increments, making it easy to test anything you want but not cumbersome to use in general
Many of these functions have been present in other fighting game training modes, so not all of these are revolutionary, but it hasn't been common for fighting games to learn from and incorporate features from other games. This time, Capcom seemed to have made a concerted effort to copy basically all of the good features they could find in this game, and they deserve praise for that.
There is, however, one important missing feature I would love Capcom to implement, and that is hitbox/hurtbox display.
Many fighting game developers have been nervous to show us their hitboxes for reasons I can't quite understand, because it's such an invaluable tool and doesn't require much development work, since it's already in the game as a debug feature. With Capcom's willingness to patch hitboxes into Capcom Fighting Collection recently, and their willingness to show us inner workings of the game with the frame data gauge, I hope hitbox display will be a feature of SF6 as well. I hope it also shows up as an option when watching replays or spectating, since it's often there that you want to rewatch a strange interaction and see what the hitboxes were doing.
As an extra ask, it would be awesome to have the ability to play online training mode with your friends. I think this is maybe the hardest ask from a technical/manpower point of view, but I think it will be especially useful as a teaching tool when trying to get people into the game. Hopefully at some point in SF6's lifespan, we'll see this feature added.
While these missing features would be extremely wonderful to have, it should not take away from the excellent work Capcom has done with all the other features of training mode. I hope their work here pushes every fighting game developer to have training mode at least this good in every future game.