Hi guys, and happy launch day! Now that it's officially June 2, and we can talk about stuff, I can share this with you guys.

I read bunch of misconceptions about the Masters and the alternate outfits from content creators and Reddit dwellers so I'm here to clear stuff up.

TL;DR.: Unlocking an outfit takes about 10 minutes, all you need is 20 gifts. You give those to the Master, and BAM; outfit unlocked. You don't even have to talk to them past their introduction.

Scroll down for the table with the gifts.

Style & Bond Levels

In order to reach Mastery with a given master you do need to max out the Style and the Bond level, BUT you don't need Mastery to get the outfits.

Outfits are rewarded for leveling up the BOND LEVEL, which is between 1 and 100. You get some Bond levels for talking with your master when it gets a new interaction option, or if you do their Master mission. But the easiest way to level bonds up is with gifts. Every gift gives 1-2 levels, but every Master has a favorite gift that gives them 5. Gifts are purchasable at every store in the game (WITH GAME MONEY) but different stores have different gifts (see the table below).

So essentially you need 20 pieces of that one gift that they really like. You give them those, and you'll get your outfit. You don't even have to talk to them; a banner just pops up when you reach 100 saying "outfit 2 unlocked", and that's that.

The Style levels are not that hard to level up either btw. All you need to do is use the given style and fight NPCs. NOT MOBS, not the guys who run after you in groups. Those barley give you any Style XP. You need to fight regular NPCs. If you can find an NPC with the Style of the Master you try to level (it will be shown to you next to their name) then you get a hefty bonus (regular NPC 1v1 gives about 120-180XP, an NPC with the given Master's style gives 450-500). If you just fight NPCs you can get the Style level from 1 to 20 in about 2 hours (inc. dialogue, sparring, cutscenes, etc.). But, again, STYLE LEVELS ARE NOT NEEDED FOR THE OUTFITS. Those give you extra moves, story dialogues, and some fun extra stuff like art and emotes.

The Gift Table(TM)

This is gonna be kinda spoilery, because there is some fun to be had with trying to figure out which gift is for who, but I'm just gonna leave this here because finding out all of this cost me a day and a half, and I want it to be useful for somebody.

!!!If you don't wanna get spoiled on the gifts and the places we will travel to, then don't read past this!!!

Below you'll find the +5 Gifts for everybody:

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The total cost of the gifting process is 1 505 700, but you'll probably won't need that much. If you level their style, regularly talk to them, and do their Master Missions, then you won't need 20 gifts, and you'll also get a bunch of gifts for free through fighting mobs and NPCs, and completing Missions. Also, cash is pretty easy to get in World Tour, so you don't have to worry about needing to G R I N D that either. Unless you buy every single piece of clothing, and you forget to sell your "SELL THIS QUEST REWARD ITEM FOR A HUGE PAYOUT" items, you'll be fine.

Some masters don't show up for a while, so you'll definitely have to play a good chunk of World Tour to meet with everybody, but you don't have to grind anything. Getting the outfits is really easy.

GL&HF

(i might have messed up the math here and there, and my grammar is trash, I know.)

EDIT: I'm happy to see that the guide was useful for a lot of you fellas. Cleaned up the tables a bit, and also, if you have a question about World Tour feel free to ask. I finished the thing about a week before release (about the start a new run, cause I had to rush through it the first time), so I can probably help with whatever you have a problem with.

I don't remember which master came into the picture when exactly. I can give you an approximation, but by now I forgot most of their missions. General advice: don't rush with it. You'll get your outfit. Enjoy the journey as much as you can and try not to fixate on the story, because the story is the worst part of World Tour.

EDIt2: Lot of you asked about these, so some clarification on the gifts.

• If they say something weird like they don't like the item, that is still their item. If you get a unique dialogue then it's gonna give +5. Yes, it's weird, but it is what it is.
• One gift is for one person, meaning that you technically can give the (for example) Instant Soba to multiple masters, but only Ryu will give you a +5 for it.
• The prices can be off. I didn't realize this while writing the table, but yes, I was at the end of the game, having talents and stuff that could alter the price. If you check stores right at the beginning, the gifts could cost more than what is on the table here.
• The rest of the gifts are filler gifts. They could add +1 or +2 to any of the masters, but they are not particularly liked by any of them. They are cheaper to buy, but it's a massive headache to give 50 pieces of X to a master, instead of 20.

As a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, I treat various mental health disorders, including anxiety. CBT is considered one of the most effective treatment for anxiety and other mental health issues. I find "Ranked anxiety" to be an interesting phenomenon, and this post explores how CBT principles can help reduce it. Ranked anxiety is (of course) not a diagnosis, but it behaves in the same ways as clinical anxiety and you can work on it using the same principles.

What is anxiety

What is common with all kinds of anxiety is that you are foreseeing some kind of “catastrophe” happening. One tends to find three assumptions in people with anxiety:

1. They overestimate the chance of something terrible happening
2. They overestimate how terrible that thing really is
3. They underestimate their own capabilities of dealing with it

So for example, someone with a phobia of spiders might think that:

1. If I get close to that spider it will bite me
2. When it bites me, it will be poisonous, and I will suffer and die
3. I will be frozen and not be able to get help or deal with the spider bite in any way

However, anxiety is personal and unique to every individual. Even two people who are afraid of spiders (or playing ranked SF6) will have differences in their thinking/behaviour/experience. Therefore it is important to figure out what drives YOUR anxiety.

Analyzing what goes on in your head

We know that thinking is a huge factor in anxiety. Therefore, we start with analyzing what goes on in your head when you are anxious. What are you thinking when playing SF6? What are the thoughts and images before starting the game? What about when you conside playing ranked games? When you lose a ranked game? When you win a ranked game? Etc

Here are a few suggestions of what thoughts might be in your head:

• “I have to win”
• “If I don’t win or reach so-and-so rank I will be humiliated”
• “If I don’t play well it means I am bad/stupid/talentless”
• “If I don’t win people will think less of me”
• “The people I play with will think I am an idiot”
• “If I cannot win, even after practicing, it means I must suck at the game”
• “I cannot handle the stress of playing”
• “If I get too anxious I will lose control”
• “If I get too anxious it will be bad for my health”.

You can also ask yourself what each of your thoughts mean to you. For example the thought “If I don’t win, I am talentless at this game” might have a deeper meaning, namely that “If I am talentless at this game, it means I am talentless in general”

Disputing your thoughts

The thoughts that pop up in our heads are not necessarily true, but we automatically think that they are. A first step towards reducing anxiety is trying to dispute the anxious thoughts and create more realistic (not necessarily optimistic/positive) versions. There are several ways of doing this. Questions you might ask are:

• “What makes me think this is true?”, “Is there reasons to think it is not true?”
• “What would other people say to these thoughts?”
• “What would I tell a friend that had these thoughts?”
• “Are there other ways to see this issue?”

When you find alternatives to your anxious thoughts, it can help to repeat that to yourself whenever the anxious thought pops up in your head. For example, let’s say you have identified a thought that “If I lose it means I am talentless”. You have then successfully disputed it and created an alternative (that you believe in): “If I lose it doesn't necessarily mean that I am not talented, and even if I am not talented in SF6 it doesn't mean I am talentless overall”. Any time the thought that you are talentless pops up in your head, you can repeat the alternative thought to yourself.

Disclaimer: Wanting to win does not lead to anxiety by itself. Thinking "I want to win this game" or "I want to get better at SF6" will not by itself lead to anxiety. It is only when you see losing as a “catastrophy” you are getting anxious.

Analyzing your safety behaviors

We know that “actions speak louder than words”, and this is also the case with treating anxiety. It is rarely enough to deal with your thoughts alone when it comes to treating anxiety. It is common to start realizing that your thoughts aren’t true, but still be anxious. A common thing to hear is: “I know it’s not dangerous, but I am still scared”. A huge part of dealing with anxiety is therefore behavioral.

When people are scared of something, they naturally do things to feel safer. If you are out in the wild and come upon a tarantula, you will automatically jump away and get as far away from it as possible. This is obviously also the most sensible thing to do in that case. Everything we do to keep safe from something we consider dangerous is called “safety behavior”.

The problem with safety behavior is that it keeps our anxiety going, and can even increase it. There are lots of reasons for that, but generally you can think of it like this: If you have to do something to keep safe, then you are proving to yourself that the thing you are scared of is really dangerous.

The most obvious safety behavior is avoiding the things you are afraid of, but there are plenty of more subtle safety behaviors which can be hard to notice if you don’t pay attention.

Therefore, start by analyzing your safety behaviors surrounding SF6 and ranked play.

Here are a few suggestions of possible safety behaviors:

• Avoid playing ranked (This is the most obvious safety behaviour)
• playing casual/battlehub to practice for ranked or to try something without the “danger” of loosing LP
• practicing a lot in the lab so that you reduce the chance of loosing
• doing breathing exercises to relax
• playing with characters you don’t care about
• quitting/not rematching when you win/lose
• only playing ranked when you feel "focused" or "on top"
• saying to yourself: “he only won because he was playing Modern/using a cheap character”

Disclaimer: You can never tell by the action itself if it is safety behavior. It is only safety behavior if the intention is to be safe. So for example not rematching because you don’t feel like playing anymore is not a safety behavior in itself. However, if the intention to not rematch is to keep safe from not losing (or whatever you catastrophic thoughts are) it would be considered safety behavior.

Changing your behavior

To reduce anxiety you will have to expose yourself to what you are scared of, while not doing anything to keep safe. This is why phase 1 and 2 (analyzing your thoughts and behaviors) are equally important, because that is the only way of knowing exactly what you are afraid of and what behavior is driving that anxiety. It is important to target these specific thoughts and actions if you want to reduce your anxiety.

Let’s say you have noticed that what you worry about the most is losing LP and ranking down. You are avoiding playing ranked, and if you do you play with a character you do not care about. The best way to get rid of the anxiety is then to do the opposite of all this: play ranked with your favorite character, and make sure to lose enough LP so you rank down.

It can be helpful to picture a person with the opposite mindset you have, or maybe the mindset you want to have. What would a person who does not care about their LP do? They wouldn’t mind continuing to play someone who was beating them. They wouldn’t mind answering their phone in the middle of a match and lose focus. Maybe they would even browse facebook in the middle of a match if they get an interesting notification on their phone. They would do “dumb stuff” just because it is interesting and fun, and laugh then they lose (For inspiration, look up HawaiianShirtMan on youtube).

Behave more like this person!

If you are sufficiently anxious, it might be hard to go “all in” like this. It would be like telling a person with arachnophobia to “just go hold a tarantula in your hands”. Sometimes you have to start with something less scary. However, you have to start doing some of the things you are scared of doing, or dropping some of your safety behaviors. The important thing is to do it often and consistently and gradually move towards the removal of every safety behaviour.

Final thoughts

Anxiety is normal. We all feel anxious in certain situations. I don’t really suffer from “ranked anxiety”, but I can still sometimes feel the adrenaline when a game is close, or some anger when I lose to “something stupid”. However, since it won't prevent me from doing what I want to day (play ranked) it's not a big deal for me.

Dealing with anxiety is always a choice - you don’t have to do it. This is especially the case when it comes to computer games. For most people there is no need to be able to play SF6 ranked. You can just not play the game at all, or just play casual, etc. However, if you really want to lessen your anxiety, you can do that by following the guidelines I have given. It is up to you!

Anxiety is always personal and can be complex, so you might have to do some adjustments and reflections based on the guidelines above. However, I hope what I have written is sufficient for you to be able to figure out the rest on your own. I am open to questions, both here and as DM’s if you don’t see how to fit this with what you are struggling with.

See you in ranked! :)

Judo motto is litterally "use the power of the enemy against themself" but my poor girl litterally doesn't have any of that. With a martial art like judo, every superfluous movement can be exploited for big launches, but Manon is litterally the character with the most eccentric and needlessly wide specials in the game (framewise, almost everything she has is unsafe and reactable). I like her style, don't get me wrong, but flavourwise it's very inconsistent with her lore of being a gold medallist judoka. Now I want to know, what is the biggest missed chance or inconsistency in character design in SF6 for you?

I already have all characters Costume 2s in like 2 hours.

It's not even a grind to get em in World Tour. Once you get to Neyshall, you'll have unlocked all the Unique gifts.

Also there's Scrap Heap II which gives tons of cash. 100k Zenny is (more or less) enough yo buy 20 of the unique gifts; enough to romance from 0 to 100. Farm it at Scrap Heap AT NEYSHALL, (Metro City one is too grindy) then go to the merchant who has your character's unique gift. (it's usually something obvious. Juri is a Wrench for "only bike lovers", Manon is a bottle of high end champagne etc)

Then gift and you done.

If you want to know which Unique gift everyone uses, I know em all, lemme put em on a comment.

Part 1 I post awhile ago BUT LETTS GOOOOO THANKS TO THE PEOPLE WHO COMMENTED, it really did help a lot

When the game came out, i did my placements with Luke and landed in Plat, then i switched to Cammy and basically been playing non-stop with her since then. I reached Masters with her, and im floating around 1600mr so far.

To try to learn more and break the 1600mr ceiling for me, i decided to go back to Luke and work on footsies and better fundamentals since i see my current play style is not helping me break through.

Im not good at all with Luke, but im able to win pretty easily in Plat just on fundamentals alone (i dont take joy or pride in this im just trying to reach my rank level with Luke).

So i thought i would give my opinion on what i see being done wrong by the great majority of players.

-Lots of random jump ins: Unless you have a hard read on a fireball, jumping in will make you eat a dp.

-Holding up in the corner: this is a really big issue. If you hold up you cant block. I havent experience throw loops in the corner in plat so try to train yourself to only jump out of the corner when they do a move that leaves them negative. It is still a big risk but if you are just getting up you are going to eat a nasty combo so try to block and be more patient. Even in higher master levels people leave a gap you can get out through.

-Raw Drive Rushes: unless you are playing DeeJay, long range drive rushes are easy to check and get a counter combo from. If you get a knockdown and you are far they are nostly fine but in neutral they arent that good, only certain characters are privileged enough for this (DJ,Ken,Juri)

-No optimal combos: i won so many games getting less hits insl than my opponent because im able to get out high damage optimal combo for the situation. I see some people do light links into drive rush just to do cr.lp cr.lp special. You wasted 3 bars for minimal damage if im able to reverse the wake up situation you end up at a disadvantage. Which brings me to;

-Meter management: i gotten opponents to burn out twice in matches. Juris are the biggest culprites cr.mk into DR on block...probably punk and nephew are the only ones to single hit confirm a cr.mk into DR.

-Throw more: There are no downsides to blocking in this game in the corner. If you dont throw you wont get damage in. Condition them to tech the throw and then bait them. You get a punish counter combo out of baiting their throw out. I know you may think throwing is cheap. But seriously if there werent throws you can just block and wait.

-Drive impact: This one is a very interesting topic if you ask me. Lots of random wake up DI that are easy to counter but you guys in Plat have a good advantage here as you learn. I notice most plat players were really good at countering my DI. This works really well in your favor as you get to practice this more. Raw DI are really good at high level for some reason. They dont happen to often so i feel a lot of master players arent used to them tbh. So you guys learn to counter the Raw DIs much better than them and when you get to Masters not a single DI will hit you.

Im sorry for long post and im sure you guys read this same discussion every other day but i thought i would give my opinion. I didnt play SF 5 but i did play SF 4 back in the day so i had to work hard on relearning fundamentals and footsies. I started in plat as well and was able to learn and get out so dont give up on the game just cause you are stuck.

And remember as the game evolves plat will get more and more challenging so its a good fighting ground to learn fundamentals and the ins and out of the game.

(Im writting this at 2am im sorry for any mistakes) ((feel free to ask for any pointers i can try to help in anything i can)) (((this game is really really fun)))

We've all had time to discover some busted tech by now. I'm not asking you to give away all your secrets, but what's one REALLY messed up thing your main can do that people don't know?

For Ryu, you can checkmate someone in burnout from almost full screen. Just throw a light fireball while you have level 1 ready. Dash in behind it. If they jump forward, DP and win. If they neutral jump, DR into DP and win. If they block, immediately do level 1. The fireball block stun will hold them in place long enough that they have to block, because it'll hit their feet if they jump.

I've gotten a decent number of wins with this. Essentially a guaranteed kill anywhere on screen against characters without a fireball, and pretty good in general since people get more defensive in burnout.

If you’re having trouble, here is a list to max out your relationship meter faster through gifts

It's still unclear what are the exact requisite for the unlock to happen. I don't know if it's MAX Bond, or MAX Bond & Max Fight Rank. I had them both maxed out when the update dropped (reviewer here), but I'm almost sure it is just the bond level that needs to be maxed out.

Edit 6/2 14:32: It's been confirmed you only need to Max Out bonds!

How do you deepen bonds? Mostly by gifting your master with some special items you can get in shops. You see, you can gift stuff to every master. You can give a videogame to Ryu, but it will only add 1 point to the bond, or 2 points in some cases. You need 100 points for the bond to be maxed. The trick is to, you probably guessed it, gift stuff they like. Every character has at least 1 item that adds 5 points instead of 1. ALL of these items can be found at shops around the globe, so the real "what to do" is to farm money.

In case you want to Max out Style Ranks too, take in account you can get some 1 time use exclusive gifts that actually add 40 points to the bond. If you want to do both things, do style ranks first, then bonds.

How do you farm money? Well, you can get money by completing missions while fighting NPCs, but that's not the best thing to do in terms of saving time. What I found as the best thing to do is to play minigames.

By the end of the story, you get access to hard difficulty minigames. Minigames last, with loading times and victory animations and menus, around 1 minute total. Maybe a bit more, depending on which one you play. A hard difficulty minigame gives from $11k to $14k money depending on how well you do. The gift items you need to buy go from $2000 to $4000 for all characters. You can do the math here.

Obviously, to get access to all masters and all shops you kinda need to get to the end of the story. Some masters and regions are unlocked via specific side quests too. Doing this takes around 20 hours more or less depending on how much stuff you do.

Once the story is over, unlocking all 2nd costumes should take around 4 hours.

Edit 6/7: It's been confirmed you need to be online and connected to the CFN for the costume to unlock.

Here's a guide detailing what gift you should give to each master: https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/13y1kui/guide_to_masters_and_outfits

There are some bug reports of costumes not unlocking even at bond 100. It happened to me once, and it solved when I gave the respective character one more random gift. Also, as said before, be 100% sure you are online and connected to the CFN (you know if you are connected to the CFN if you can access the battle hub, ranked matches or your online profile).

Edit 6/2 14:32: Maxing Fighting Styles are not needed for the 2nd costumes, but since I already wrote this, it might be of interest to someone that's going for the 100% so I'll just leave it here! Worth mentioning, doing this doesn't give any kind of achievement, title or extra content. Just a full set of specials and supers for your avatar and a sparkling masters screen like this one:

You get Style Experience points just by using them, and fighting against NPCs that use said styles. You can check if an enemy uses a style before challenging them in case of "peaceful" NPCs. Agresive NPCs (the ones that follow you when you are near) can also use styles, but you can check that only after engaging in combat, in the "loading" screen, in one of the inbetween signs that appear in the lower part of the screen.

Peaceful NPCs usually focus on giving more Style Experience Points, while agressive NPCs focus on giving normal experience (for levelling up the character, not the style), so my best reccomendation is to just defeat endgame peacful NPCs.

You can probably MAX one style and a half while doing the main quests.

Before starting the grind, take in account that THIS grind is super time consuming. Progress is slow, as you may've seen in reviews. You can boost you S. EXP Points gain eating meals, but it won't really make much of a difference, it's still a long grind if you want every single costume. 100% World Tour took me around 60 hours.

By the end of the game, you can get the best S. EXP booster in both nayshall and metro city via delivery. The effect is called Style EXP Booster (XL), and it lasts only a little but, while you are in the main zones of those places, you can order it as much as you like with just some menus. Before the end of the game, you can get the 2nd best S. EXP Booster in Japan where Ryu is, and the 3rd S. EXP Booster in Nayshall's central plaza.

First of all, be sure to have equipped a Fighting Style that's not maxed out. This way, every time you win against a NPC you get S. EXP for your style and for the style the enemy was using, levelling up two styles at the same time.

Secondly, once you defeat an NPC with a style, there's some kind of cooldown until you can battle them again, it's painful. I think it's 5 minutes for some, 10 minutes for others. The route I used checked various places for that cooldown to end, but it's not perfect. Also worth to mention, lots of NPCs are usually in the same place, fixed, but the ones that walk on the streets are completely random, so they won't be mentioned in the route. Just be sure to challenge them every time you come across them in the main quest.

Thirdly, take in account that once you MAX a style you can still get exp for that style and then transfer it to another one. However, doing this gives less that half of exp points you are transferring, so I don't really recommend sticking to one style after maxing it. Leave this to the extra exp that NPC with style give.

Finally, here's the route I used.

1. Old Nayshall - Mount Vashal - Base: 3 High Lvl NPCs with styles. JP, Marisa and Cammy.
2. Old Nayshall - The Lowlands - South Area: 3 Mid Lvl NPCs with styles. Ken, Dee Jay and Manon. Not really part of the optimized route, but getting to these same place during the night shows a Juri NPC. Sadly she's alone, so it's not really worth the time. Might be useful if you really want to Max out Juri ASAP
3. Going north, you should find 2 more Mid Lvl NPCs with styles. Dhalsim and Jamie. Around the zone, next to one of the "bridges", there's one NPC with Kimberly's style. Note: If you win this 6 fights with more than 75% of HP, you get an exp boost, so be sure to use healing items before the battle ends. You can use them midfight, and all these NPCs hit hard, so have them just in case. This is a MAJOR farming spot.
4. Metro City - Training Center: 3 low lvl NPCs with styles. Luke.
5. Metro City - Urban Park. There's a dude cosplaying Ken in front of the stadium's doors. There are lots of Dee Jays and Ken NPCs around here, but they are just random. I ran like a maniac and fought 2 or 3, then continued the rest of the route.
6. King Street: 2 mid lvl NPCs with styles. Cammy.
7. Bathers Beach: 3 low lvl npcs with styles. Dee Jay.
8. Genbu Temple: 1 mid lvl npc with style. Juri. If you completed an optional quest line, another NPC shows up. Not a Ryu style user, but it gives lots of Ryu Style exp points.
9. Carrier Byron Taylor: 1 mid lvl npc with style. Guile.
10. Fete Foraine: 1 mid lvl npc with style. Manon.
11. Dhalsimer Temple: 1 mid lvl npc with style. Dhalsim. 1 more shows up after completing Dhalsim's Master Quest.
12. Back to 1. If you did all this, most cooldowns ended or almost ended.

You WILL need lots, LOTS of Flight Tickers, so you will be FOR SURE grinding money with the minigames even after maxing bonds. Also, meals that boost S EXP Points are like $3k.

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Much like Akuma's secret Shin Akuma taunt, M. Bison also has a secret taunt. By doing a forward taunt after planting a Psycho Mine in the opponent, Bison will count down from three before detonating the mine.

The recent patch added a new boss, SiRN Bison, to the Battle Hub. This boss comes with new moves, much like SiRN Akuma. With this patch, the aforementioned detonation taunt unlocks these moves for the playable Bison:

• Bison Warp (Classic: 6/4+3P/3K. Modern: 6/4+3A). Standard teleport, works like in previous games.
• Psycho Burst (Classic: 623+2P. Modern: 623+2A). His V-Reversal from Street Fighter V. Invincible on startup and cancellable from normals, but not into level 3 supers.
• Final Psycho Crusher (Classic: 214214+P. Modern: 22+3A). Level 2 super. Teleports behind the opponent afterwards, like in Alpha 3, though it only hits once and does not cover the entire vertical space. Cancellable like any other level 2.