yeah I know All The Stuff about how to improve at the vidcons, but I’m just really not good at implementing any of it. You can always say the lp doesn’t matter because the goal is to improve, etc., but the simple fact is if you don’t move up you aren’t improving and that’s hard to shake. I spent literally two years playing league of legends at the same MMR. at that point I had enough game knowledge, both from playing and from following the league scene extensively, to know exactly what I was fucking up, and most of what my teammates were fucking up. once I figured out that none of that was helping me get even a little bit better at the game I mostly stopped playing.
I’ve played fighting games at some level or another for basically as long as fighting games have existed. at this point I more or less know what kinds of things I am not going to get better at, so I try to ignore them and do things I can maybe do. for example, if I haven’t done a combo probably a hundred thousand times, there is no chance I will be able to execute it at anything above 50% consistency in a real match. I played Balrog in SFIV, and while I more or less stopped playing that game from Arcade Edition on, before that I played a lot. There is not a single Balrog combo in the game I can execute, say, 90% of the time. so I try to play in a way that at least minimizes my terrible mechanics as best I can, but it really fucks with your mindset when you know you can’t rely on yourself to do any of the shit you want to do unless you are already in control of the match.
right now in SFV I’m playing a super basic, claw only vega. literally all I am doing is trying to space and pressure with the range of his normals. drop one of the like two combos claw vega has? whatever, poke some more. dude does something unsafe? great, poke him. dude does something that I’m not sure if its safe or not? poke and find out. guy spends the whole match running away because welcome to low elo ranked? ok, walk forward and poke him. he wants to jump in? great, my anti airs suck, lets block and try to poke him after his block string. sick of poking? fine fine, lets neutral jump. dude plays laura or bison? ok I lose. 20th Ryu in a row? yay lets block some cross up into standing strong block strings all day.
This is exactly how I play, and in super turbo and third strike, it seemed like a viable approach. With 4 though, the game seemed more reliant upon complex inputs and online became a chore.
If tech alone won matches, there wouldn’t be the disparity of players that there currently are. It is, undoubtedly, the easiest thing to learn. Meanwhile I find most players tend to get stuck when it comes to building a mental game, because they’re not looking for it or don’t understand it.
Another way of phrasing it is, the best players are the ones that are the ones who are the best at playing the game that exists. This is often pretty different from the game that you envision in your head; and all players that try to improve are striving to change themselves to better match this reality.
It’s just that technicals are only a part of the story. They combine with other skills to form larger plans. If you don’t recognize what those skills are, you can’t improve them to get those in the first place.
Thinking on a higher level is just sort of a catch-all for having enough breadth of experience that you can level up universally, rather than locally. So diversifying what you do is a big deal in the long term.
Many can pull off the flashy combo in training mode. But like an instrument, instinctual command and deep understanding of the (physical and gameplay) mechanics allows confidence and is a prerequisite to creativity. But I think, especially in the context of Nedge’s Old Hand Can’t Hack It laments: this is what most fundamentally separates bad and good play. Good and Great? Who knows, perhaps another debate.
You’re not getting stuck at 1000 points because you can’t out think the jumpy Ryu or the flowchart Ken. You’re getting stuck because you’re cracking under pressure and leaving too many opportunities on the table. This is not the talent level where mindgames determine victory.
I can relate to this. I spend a lot of time watching/thinking about competitive fighting games, but I’m generally terrible at them, mainly because I overthink things and don’t have the time (or patience, perhaps) to refine my execution. But I think sfv really exacerbates these issues - from mechanics, to aesthetics, to the accumulative nature of online play, it clearly embraces its core audience while resisting casual players and newcomers (for reasons many people have identified). I mean, it’s legitimately fucking embarrassing showing characters like mika and laura to anyone new to the franchise. As my partner put it when she saw mika for the first time recently, the message she receives is basically “this game is not for you.” The game is full of those messages.
Incidentally, in the months leading up to sfv’s release, I was playing a lot of ssb4 on my freind’s wii u, and had the opposite experience. In terms of execution, there’s a super low-barrier of entry, so you can start playing the mental game quickly. There’s also a lot of improvisation involved in combos and set-ups, so it doesn’t feel too formulaic or prescriptive. I even started watching competitive ssb4 matches online and found that, for a newcomer, I could follow things relatively easily.
I guess the disparity between ssb and other fight man games is pretty well established by now, but it really struck me when I started playing sfv. In fact, I think the reason I was enjoying ssb4 so much in the months prior to the release of sfv is that it satisifed all the things I want to enjoy about street fighter, but never can in practice.
Anyway - going back to rashid; most of the rashids I’ve played against are super random. I wonder if he’ll go the same way as c viper in sfiv; popular to begin with, but less and less viable as people become familiar with his set-ups?
I don’t know anything about Nu Smash, but while Melee had a low barrier of entry it was actually a very demanding mechanical game once you got into it if you wanted to be good
every bison I play is at least 1000lp above me, probably because he’s a brainless character. he invinci-dashes into close range, where every move in his entire kit is plus on block and roundhouse crush counters with like a 3 frame start up, so if you feel like hitting a button anyway you eat his full punish, which is about a third of your health bar. if by some act of god you manage to space him he just does his command fierce move, which near as I can tell beats everything and moves him forward.
You should play Birdie. Good normals, high damage output off of easy inputs, hit confirm off qcf+p into super, arguably best normal antiair in game. The Can -> Jump Throw will catch people sleeping, EX jump throw un-reactable. Can be played more layed back and read-based effectively. Not just easy-mode, actually good. Also Bison has defense gaps you can’t let him get in.
all bison can do on offence is go for a frame trap or throw so you can pretty much just hold down-back + tech occasionally & his own def is really bad, very situational/unreliable aa & no ‘fuck off please’ stuff besides alpha counter
Yeah, he’s strong as heck but not “braindead” by any stretch of the imagination. It doesn’t seem like you can really levy that charge against anyone in the game right now, which is very impressive to me.
I really like this Cool Ghosts intro podcast to SFV, very level-headed intro to basic match flow and psychology:
I dunno, I think Vega is a pretty thematically interesting character in this game. I’ve never been a Vega player before (outside of messing around with him in ST because he was so busted why wouldn’t you) so I’m not sure why he’s appealing to me here, but he is.
