Hate Speech: Stop Playing (Mindgames) With Yourself

[soakrates]

Getting over the crippling fear of "unsafety" is something a lot of people, myself included, need to work on. The u-word gets thrown around so much (especially around here) that a lot of potentially useful tools get written off.

One thing I've started doing more of is throwing out 4BB with Maxi to see if the opponent ducks, expecting the high kick afterward. If they do, this tells me that (A. they know more than the average player about how Maxi works and (B. they might be playing in a predictive manner instead of a reactive one. This in turn opens up more lockdown possibilities. In my experience, players who are more familiar with Maxi tend to block more and look for opportunities to interrupt or punish, so when I throw something at them they don't quite expect, they tend to do the smart thing and keep blocking to avoid getting counter hit. This is good for Maxi because he has a pretty strong guard crush game, and can quickly push opponents to the wall or ring edge, where he gets really scary.

The snag is that it sometimes requires me to do something risky, such as a stance transition that could be interrupted, potentially for big damage. I just need to remind myself that there's a good payoff for taking these risks and that I have plenty of other options should the risks start to cost me.

 

[caly555]

I love your articles, but this one really stuck with me today. I had been playing online and was feeling kind of down after getting beaten mercilessly by yet another Pyrrha. I pretty much experienced all of those self mind games in one sitting and I think the worst one I have is pride which leads to blaming losses on bad connections or some other sort of lame excuse. I can proudly say I have never sent any hate mail to someone for losing a match, but that doesn't mean i don't sit in my living room yelling obscenities at the TV like a Jackass. I'm not proud of it, but this article has helped me to realize 1. its a popular fighting game and just because I've been into SC competitively since SC1 doesn't mean that I am automatically better than someone else who just started with IV or V. and 2. Instead of getting unreasonably angry at a loss, I could look at things that need to be improved. I never really take the time to look at a match constructively. This would be a much better use of my time online. I think I am also waisting valuable time in ranked matches. They are the devil and i think they are an un-needed obstacle to improvement.

Thank you for yet another great article.

 

[mneme]

Nope knowing moveset,frames and combos does make you automatically better than the guy who never heard of them and just plays casually twice a week...

It kinda doesn't, actually.
You're better if you win, you're worse if you lose.
So if the casual guy who doesn't know from moveset, frames, and combos is consistently beating you ragged with, say, nothing but Pyrra Omega's BB...and I certainly have beaten someone by picking up Pyrrha O, and knowing nothing of her moveset except "it's a bit like Sophie's", beaten them entirely on BB punishment, tac-b (no JFs, even), and the occasional random move.

It is true that certain behaviors make you more -likely- to improve over time. But then, part of what the OP is about is not engaging in behavior that makes you lose before the match is destructive.

My Maestro (in fencing) once asked us the question "when does the match begin". The correct answer, more or less, which he didn't confirm until years later, is "when it begins"--In other words, it begins when someone starts fighting it. In fighting game terms...

A match might begin when the start music goes on.
It might begin when you size up your opponent and decide that you're going to lose -- or that you're -not- going to lose.
It might begin when you realize you're going to have to play this person at your next tournament and start watching videos and/or training against the tactics they tend to favor.

 

[ZeroEffect317]

So... what about the people who see and know what they need to change, but can't manage to make their hands do it in a real match? That happens too.

 

[mneme]

So... what about the people who see and know what they need to change, but can't manage to make their hands do it in a real match? That happens too.

Train? The way you get yourself able to do stuff in a real match is to set it up as a trained response by drilling until you do it without thinking (and ideally with varied inputs with different "correct" responses so you're responding to the actual input, not just repeating something mindlessly). Once you do it without thinking, you'll also do it without thinking in a match -- and if you have several trained responses to the same input you've got a lot more perceptual time to choose one of them.