The new submission system in UFC 6 can seem intimidating to beginners at first glance. Mastering it can significantly improve your chances of winning matches, especially against other players unfamiliar with the ground game aspect of mixed martial arts.
This guide for UFC 6 is all about the gameplay mechanics in the new submission system, with tips on stamina depletion, grapple advantage, as well as transitions and their denial.
Stamina Depletion Through Strikes
Submission success relies heavily on your opponent being fatigued enough, and you can accomplish this by depleting their stamina as quickly as possible in a short span of time. If your opponent is passive, you will have to repeatedly strike them in the torso by holding the left trigger and pressing the relevant face buttons for your platform. Facial strikes without holding the left trigger only serve to chip away at their health, but have no effect on stamina depletion.
Be wary of mashing strikes though, as this will have the negative effect of draining your own stamina, potentially to the benefit of your opponent via a transition. Moreover, strikes cannot be cancelled, thus preventing you from denying their transition attempt.
Transition Denial
Opponents that are actively trying to escape will naturally attempt to transition. This presents a far better opportunity for you to drain their stamina in large chunks each time the attempt is made, by denying it. Pay close attention to the prompt indicating a transition denial quick time event. You will need to be quick on the right trigger as you push the right stick in the indicated direction.
The ideal tactic is for you to simply do nothing yourself, including body striking, thus baiting your opponent into attempting transitions, and allowing you the opportunity to then deny them for massive reductions in their stamina. You can accomplish this by simply holding on to the right trigger and patiently waiting for the deny transition prompt indicating the specific direction to push the right stick. With enough observational practice, you may eventually even be able to proactively predict the direction by watching the animation itself.
Repeated transition denials will widen the timing window within which you can pull off further denials due to the increasingly reduced stamina of your opponent, and holding the right trigger in anticipation should make it even easier to pull off successfully every time.
Success in online matches depends on your ability to successfully read the transition animations, as the button prompts are not visible in multiplayer. Also bear in mind that based on your positions, there really are only two possible contextual directions in which you could possibly be prompted to push the right stick.
Grappling Advantage
In the top middle of the screen is an easily missable meter indicating which fighter has the grapple advantage. The meter is very sensitive in direct response to the ongoing context of the fight itself, and fills red in your favor, and blue for your opponent. Always attempt to press any advantage gained, as your speed for accomplishing moves is enhanced, allowing for faster completion of transitions and submissions.
Submission Selection
Once your opponent has been fatigued sufficiently in the moment, you will have a fairly short amount of time to attempt a submission. Do this by holding the left trigger and observing the contextual button prompts for the position you and your opponent are in at the time. You will have seconds to do this successfully, while both the grapple meter is in your favor and the stamina bar of your opponent is at its lowest.
Fighter Ground Game Rating
Fighter selection also plays a role in how wide the timing windows are during submissions. A higher ground game rating will afford you a lot more time to pull off button prompts, and this is in addition to any advantage gained through depleting the stamina of your opponent.
Your own submissions will trigger faster as can be observed from the red dial that rapidly closes on the left side of the screen.
Time Dilation
A lot of the on screen button prompts during submissions have slim timing windows within which to press them, and you can mitigate this through the bullet time or slow motion setting known as Time Dilation. While only available in offline modes, this hand-holding mechanic can accustom you to the timings involved in pulling off the moves displayed on screen.
That is everything there is to know about successfully using submissions to win matches in UFC 6.
