> What does your friend mean by fundamentals? Your second sentence is mostly it, although it really generalized and lessened what it means to learn your fundam

> What does your friend mean by fundamentals? Your second sentence is mostly it, although it really generalized and lessened what it means to learn your fundamentals; learning your character's options are and what the basic flow of combat will be based on those options. Fundamentals gives you the tools and skillset to play the rock-paper-scissors metagame you've described (Team Fortress 2 also behaved like that). Things that would fall under fundamentals for something like Street Fighter would be: - learning basic ranges on the stage (SF4/5's "grid" stage highlights this really well) - learning the range of your character's moves (i.e., Chun Li's standing heavy punch/fierce has considerable reach, more than 1 square on the grid stage) - using your jab/short to "check" aggression - using your anti-air moves to catch your opponent's jump-in attacks - rudimentary okizeme (after you knock the opponent to the ground, you can catch them with either damage or block pressure) - what general actions beat other general actions (blocks beat moves, grabs beat blocks, jumps beat grabs) The list goes on to some extent before it starts mingling with more refined actions. While it's rarely a 1:1 translation, things like the above have plenty of carry-over between 2D fighters, and the concepts themselves apply to 3D fighters like Tekken. I'd also go so far as to include knowing what bad habits are as part of fundamentals, like mashing fast buttons while still blocking or after getting up from being knocked down. It's been buried in the comments but someone posted a link to Richard Garfield's MTG paper about "metagame" and I like his definition of metagame: "It is how a game interfaces with life". The game of rock-paper-scissors doesn't exist in a vacuum: even at a low or casual level, understanding the fundamentals allows a player to make educated guesses about how an opponent will behave during that game of rock-paper-scissors. It's not concrete, obviously, but noting what fundies the opponent has and which ones they're not good at or are completely missing can change how a player approaches the fight over the course of the game.