First off feel free to discuss this on a future episode of the scumbag podcast (hoping there is one.) Its something that has been burning in my mind since I started playing 3s and I think it merits open discussion with the few of us that still visit this forum regularly.
TLDR below if you dont wanna read my preface
A good friend and good player once told me that one day you’ll just have this awakening about the game. I think he meant a moment where everything comes together (full comprehension of the meta, I guess, feel free to add your own interpretation.) But for me, in anything I’ve worked hard at be it academics, martial arts, music, or other games it has been the little milestones that you should really embrace and oftentimes they are smaller than you think. I like to use the example of music games because that was the first series of games I put a lot of time into and got good at: basically you strive for perfect scores on every song, and you naturally see those milestones the closer you get to perfect. The euphoria you get from getting a AA for the first time on a 12 in Beatmania IIDX or 5 perfects from a AAA on a 10 in DDR that first time is phenomenal (at least for my teenage mind it was at the time.) Because you were that much closer to perfection. And the high you got when you actually got a perfect score on something difficult, well I’d imagine its the same feeling you’d get from winning a major. (if you’re one of the kids that AAA’d max300 on DDR or a hard 12 on IIDX you know what I’m talking about.)
So here’s my question for the older players.
Did you yourselves have an “awakening” in 3rd strike? (A moment where this game just became clear to you.) Or is it really about recognizing and acknowledging those milestones which build up to this enlightenment you acquire about the game? If you did have a moment like that or specific milestones you’d like to share I want to know. In a complex fighting game those milestones might not be so apparent. Obviously motivation is really important for improving in this game, especially in 2013. I’m just curious whether I should just have faith that some day I will be as good as these great players (that awakening or enlightenment) or if I should be paying more attention to my own little milestones as a generator of motivation to keep striving for that perfection.
i started playing this in 2005 and my “road to damascus” moment was in 2010
i remember it very vividly and i always tell people about it
well,not on this site so :
it was rikimaru explaining stuff about the game to a bunch of younger kids
i couldn’t understand what he was saying,but what he was doing to that poor dudley was clear enough
he wasn’t simply winning or annihilating him with his supreme "auto-pilot"
he was playing super smart,hello let me live inside your head for a while,no auto-pilot,ultimate level third strike
somehow,watching it “live”,in front of me…i don’t know,it was a huge 3s epiphany
that “awakening” probably happened because in those previous 5 years i had passed several “milestones”,though
and,in 2011,i understood kuroda and how he plays and why he said what he said to me/us/the world
it was great and i improved my game a lot but i feel like i’m regressing nowadays
i need to go back to japan a.s.a.p.
I only started playing this game the way I did because I caught that moment of enlightenment early on. After that it was just figuring out my opponents and optimizing my strategy.
i’ve hit some milestones while asleep.
awakened i am not.
i think the first milestone is character comfortability.
knowing everyone’s moves without having to remember anything. you know the recovery of stuff, the angles things hit at, what cancels and what doesn’t.
that’s the first bit of ignorance that you overcome imo. and once you do then you easily see how wild things get.
all you need is a pair or ram sticks that make up 2 gigs and hypercam. Maybe a slightly faster processor if you don’t have a core duo. That’s like 18 bucks. With processor it would be like 100+.
edit: Actually, I think you can stream right off of vlc.
My moment of “awakening” came when I went back to the game after playing SFIV for some time. It was then where I realized just how much most everything in the 3rd Strike makes sense in the context of the game and how it’s played. Sure there are things that could maybe have been done better, but the game as it stands is just about perfect as it is.
I don’t think there’s any one thing you can learn that will “enlighten” or something. It’s really a culmination of data collected and just plain old experience. It comes along really subtle for me and ironically, it’s usually when I take a break and come back that I feel as though I may have leveled up.
That’s just my take on it anyway, I’m far from a veteran though, so take everything I say with a pinch of salt.
This is something we used to say in the regency/ffa/ai days over here in socal. There would be times when a player would be disappear from the scene for a while and suddenly come back and find himself doing better than we he had left.
It reminds me of the bethesda games and leveling up. You would increase in level and had to “meditate on what you learned” by resting in a bed. Once you did that you could distribute points to your abilities.
that’s definitely true.
taking breaks i think lets you come to the game fresh and invigorated. you approach things with excitement which makes a big difference in how well you progress and feel you are progressing.
For me it has been small steps followed by a big step. So I make small incremental steps until I run into chaitea and he parries every wakeup attack I do because I wakeup jab or strong every time. So I realize my defense is really poor and have to come up with new solutions. Then I keep making small steps for a while and then I run into Dander who makes me aware that my offense is gimmicky and centered around dash throw. Reorganize and rethink things. Small steps after that. On and on.
Small steps usually come from watching footage or thinking about things. A new setup I see 5 star do in a video or something I think would work. Big steps usually come from playing people better than me. Because then all my weaknesses are on the table and I have a better roadmap of what to do next.
Which reminds me, I wonder if he is ubermensch enough yet to come back and answer some questions. I’m afraid he just left us to ponder his posts as a broken sentence in an attempt to be “le deepeur”.
Every so often I just “zone in” and feel like I can read the other player perfectly and play an awesome, focused, well executed game…and then it’s gone again and I’m left thinking “how the F do I do that again???”. I imagine the awakening would be a more permanent state of whatever that is…but for me it’s sadly always fleeting
I’ve always played 3s according to a “gut feeling”. What I mean by that is… I’ve learned combos and techniques that work within the game in an encyclopedic fashion, but as far as how to approach the game and my opponent, I have always operated on “what feels right” or “whatever the fuck I want” in each situation. And that works A LOT in 3s because of the parry, especially if you’re skilled at reading your opponent. This is why Daigo was a god at 3s even though he didn’t really know much about the game like hardcore players Boss, K.O and Nuki. That ume factor is what makes this game so amazing in my opinion! This is why if you see my videos, you just see me going crazy. I don’t want to win so much as I want to win in the sickest possible fashion.
I love my aggressive shenanigans: Jump in shoryu, grab setups on the opponent’s wakeup for the entire match, parryxpunish… those are the situations that I find most satisfying about this game: choosing the most ridiculous and crazy option at every possible opportunity. To most people, that is stupid and scrubby (and if you are looking to be a top player and WIN, then it is stupid and scrubby to choose this style). To me, it’s hype. I may not be the best or win tournaments, but damn have I embarrassed a ton of players throughout my career for trying to play the conventional way. I love that. I love embarrassing my opponent for not being able to handle the “jungle strike”, kamikaze style.
One of my biggest strengths is my parry ability. I never had an epiphany so to speak. It was very gradual and natural. As I played, I learned what the vast majority of tendencies are, especially below the top level. For instance: a lot of scrub kens try to punish my low forward with their own low forward (which is impossible)… so any time I throw out a low forward at max distance, I always tap down because I know that scrub is always going to try a low move. And then when they do, I get a free parry into low strong super.
I wonder if it means it’s a really big thing that’ll help people hear you.
By the way, I think mio might be on to something. I disagree with it being scrubby despite the win not being the most important thing. I think it makes you the teacher without you really understanding it to be so. By constantly choosing the sickest situation and using what you know without a full set of instructions to guide you in doing so, you can “teach the opponent a lesson”. I think this is the opposite of scrubby, because in the scope of a match, the sickest thing is never repeating a single step. This means, constantly fleshing out something new with an understanding of one’s self and using what is apparent about the opponent. This means if you can ensure that your next action is the most, usually, difficult (see: sick, ridiculous (see: kuroda/hayao)) thing you could do. The result proves to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the game and the ability to execute on a moments notice. That is true mastery. To win without such an understanding simply involves patience and the ability to consistently undermine a counter strategy. While patience may be a virtue in and of itself, patience really only means that you were willing to wait around all day instead of play the game even if waiting around all day is a viable “strategy”. In a tournament setting, I guess, it’s okay to say that “to be sick” makes you in turn the scrubby player but if one were to consider the meticulosity of the knowledge of the game and the “sick” player’s application of the knowledge it would be readily apparent that the “sick” player is indeed the better player.
Why do you think no one but the scrubs think that JR is so good at the game, while all the top players and even some of the intermediate players can see he is simply running routines? I know it might win more often “because the ‘sick’ player was too proud” but in all honesty I think it’s really that the “sick” player respects the opponent so much that he takes the hard way while JR is content with simply beating the other person so he can taunt or hopefully land a cross up jab demon.
