Accidental Victories

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
1

There are many times when we get accidental victories, or basically, anytime you win the round or exchange by doing something you did not intend to do.

We usually play fighting games by doing two things:

  1. Strategy - putting together a strategy of things we intend to do, and how we plan to react to what the opponent does with his own character

  2. Execution - try and actually implement 1) by Executing it (often much easier said than done)

So “Accidental Victory” is any time you win an exchange by messing up your Execution. You had a specific strategy in 1) you intended to do, but weren’t able to do 2), yet still came out ahead in the exchange. You can count accidental trades that work out in your favor as well for these.

The question is, when this happens, did you win by playing an honest game? Or was it more, just a bunch a bullshit and you got lucky. You can argue it was “honest enough” because you can make note of it for next time you play the game and improve based on it (if you can remember all the details of what just happened, after all, you messed it up). It’s fair to argue this, since many people don’t even seem to mind “figuring out” learning where the hitboxes are instead of getting to view them. However, you still got rewarded for something you did not even intend to do.

So I am leaning more towards “bunch a bullshit” because Volition is not adequately represented in these cases.

Examples in ST:

The best one is probably Ryu’s towards+fierce (hard punch) move, the 2 hit rush-in punch, but getting a throw instead. This makes people sad. This punch move is usually done at the beginning of Ryu’s big damage combos, eg: Ryu dizzies opponent, great, so he goes for 8 or more hit combo OH SNAP I threw them instead because I slightly mistimed the rush-in fierce punch move by a frame or two. Even if you have the timing down for the bigger combos beginning with rush-in fierce punch, that all gets thrown (literally) right out the window. Sadness ensues and later games alleviate the sadness-from-throw problem by implementing more sensible volition recognition TWO button throws. In A3 for example this allowed for an interesting air throw game.

A lot of times when I tried Fei’s chicken wing kick arc kick move, I get standing roundhouse or the normal kick but that would hit anyways.

At least one of Ken’s new funky kicks sometimes comes out when I intended a low kick instead (do any of the funky kicks end in down+towards?). That usually does make me sad, as the intended low kick really was what would have been better for me, but I get hit instead. Occasionally, though, the opponent outfoxes my INTENDED strategy of low kick, so he jumps, but since he underestimated my ability to fuck up a simple basic move, and he got hit instead.

2

im never sad when i throw someone

3

Luck is a part of competition. You win, you win. That’s all.

4

even if I do something by accident, the look on my face always says “I meant to do that”

5

I beat seth with Abel on accident and I’m not complaining. But like the other guy said I’m never sad when I throw someone or hado when I meant to shoryuken.

6

I would say I dont feel too bad, simply because if i did a move that still attacks/hurts the opponent/even by accident, the burden of being able to defend/counter everything I do is on THEM, not me.

I would sort of equate it, on very, VERY general level, to ringouts. It’s up to the opponent to be completely aware of their surroundings and all possible atatcks and defend against them all.

7

Stop playing games with random damage/scaling/dizzies.

8

The first time I actually won a MvC match on GGPO was by an reversal throw was just a golden moment of hilarity. Heck, I didn’t even know you could do that.

9

Parried the first hit of Dudley’s sa3 on wakeup and did raging demon out of it for the win. Oh… and I was mashing really hard

10

I won a round of sf4 with Abel by hitting a Ryu out of a dizzy (i was dizzied) with a full ultra. that was pretty sweet

11

If i win, i take it. Its one thing to feel like crap because you messed up and lost, but if you messed up and won whats there to complain about?

I was playing Sagat in CvS2 one time, and i couldnt handle this Balrog(not enough rog users >_<) and somehow near the end with both of us having a sliver of life left, i messed up and did a jumping light kick. The other guy c.hp trying to counter it but my hitbox is too small in the j.lk pose and i hit him and won. Sure accident…but i still won.

12

bunch a bullshit

So it seems we will take any win we can possibly get and pretend we earned it.

In a tournament, as Syxx573 mentions, of course you try to play it off as if you fully knew what was going on, “yeah I knew, that you knew I knew what you thought I was going to do, so I did that last move instead- had the whole thing planned out, cause I’m just good like that”. It’s like those times when you’re walking on the street and trip on a crack in the pavement, and immediately try to play it off with a dance move/pimp walk/ go into a jog for a few steps, type maneuver. Or when you walk into a spider web and people watch you freak out for two seconds, so you go into random martial arts stances like you’re just training.

Most people go for 3 or 4 hit combos in real rounds, even for dizzies because they don’t want to mess it up. With tech throws however, there’s a good chance they’ll tech it as they try to mash out of a dizzy, and once you get up to higher levels of being able to do combos more consistently in real matches, it’s more of a risk you take on. So you might not be (as) sad but if you accidentally get a throw, your opponent could be happy. (He’s also sad to know that you tried some move that would have failed but got a throw instead… might have been completely avoided if he were playing a 2-button throw game)

Two-button throws represent Volition better (I value Volition). When you get thrown in a 2-button throw game, you know it was intended. One exception to this might be Zangief in A3 on the ground; usually people try 3x punches or 3x kicks at once to get throws, so there is going to be some overlap there however with other characters-- and in 3S-- there isn’t the overlap. I like how 3S did throws with jab and short.

Yeah but deep down, you know if you were in the same situation again, there’s at least as much chance you’d have lost the exchange. The more this happens, the less people probably play the game, and want to go on to the next newer shiny one. But everyone else is probably thinking the same thing. Next thing you know, as soon as everyone wants to sell all of a sudden, the housing market collapses, the stock markets’ a roller coaster and fighting game skills suffer from inflation unseen for many years.

You’ve NEVER been sad when you hado when you meant to shoryuken? Even at basic intermediate levels of play, I don’t believe you. That still happens to me occasionally and it certainly makes me sad. It’s due to my own Execution of course, so I don’t think it needs some fix. Do you mean, you meant to srk but did a hado instead, but the hado hit them anyways? Because usually in those situations, you get hit out of the hadoken.

More common these days for me is when I mean to shoryuken but a super comes out instead.

That is a good point, and a win is a win after all. However, I’m talking about those situations where, what you meant to do is something that your opponent expected and responded to accordingly, however, he underestimated your ability to fuck it up, which you do, and he gets punished for doing the right thing (who’s .sig says how that’s what creates a supervillan? get punished for following the rules). If reading your opponent’s next move is important to the gameplay, which it tends to be in most all fighting games, underestimating one’s ability to mess up trumping the read is sad (however rare).

Are you talking about ST? ST seems less random to me than any game since, but maybe that’s because it’s been my favorite or second favorite for so long. Even when I thought it was my second favorite, HF’s easy dizzies and damage scaling was far inferior despite its better balance (that wasn’t clear to me until AE).

13

You did earn it.

Sometimes our subconscious second guesses us and we may mess something up by what seems like accident when it wasn’t. Maybe on some level you realized that F+FP was going to be blocked and delayed your timing that fraction of a second necessary to throw.

Or maybe you need to know what Option-Select is. Far more likely answer. Some moves are better than others not just for how good that move is alone, but what other options overlap it.

14

I meant for the purposes of accidental victories. Sure when I’m trying to counter someone with a Shoryuken and I Hado I’m sad. I guess I should have worded it differently. As you can tell my execution is still sloppy if I’m getting hado Instead of Shoryuken but it’s getting better.

15

Understood, but those exact situations apply too, as far as I’m concerned.

Even if you ‘read’ an opponent, and knew what they were going to do, you still MUST be aware of the possibilty of the situation not arising exactly and be ready for it.

I think the real issue here is games that allow for such unintended things to happen. There’s no game that will let you ‘do what you intended’ flawlessly and perfectly each time. If that were the case, noobs/scrubs everywhere would be a LOT better at fighting games: they have ideas of attack and defense in mind, they simply dont know how to execute them properly. Noobs sometimes beat experts, when this happens, it’s usually a fault on the expert’s side, where they’re not ready/expecting attacks they usually expect.

Not sure if that makes sense…it kinda does to me. :wonder:

16

Not only ST. Do you believe adding more technical things and systems/subsystems to games adds more of a random factor? I don’t. However, the problem with those kinds of games is that people tend to and could often rely solely on all those extra factors added to the game. The fundamentals are still there but the game is being played differently and the game is harder to play at a higher level. I’m sick of people calling things ‘random’ when they have set values. They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t magically appear either. Therefore, they aren’t random.

17

With Ken, once I 2-in-1’d a short hurricane into SA3 when I was just trying for short short super, in tournament. Looks pretty goofy.

The best is mashing out of a dizzy right into an EX SRK.

I hit people with weird shit all the time in Marvel cos of my basic playstyle and shitty execution – Fugee calls it the Ghaleon Factor.

18

As a side note, perhaps this is the reason why the “drunk monk” style is largely mythical and reserved for purposes of story and amusement. From what I understand, this style of martial arts takes a lot of discipline to Execute, which sort of discredits its image and fundamental approach of a drunkard who’s next move is hard to predict.

For what it’s worth, I think this still happens at the high levels all the time too. Maybe not quite as much as avg. levels, but nobody’s Execution skills are perfect every time. The pressures (in tournaments etc) mount higher and higher as a distraction to any skill.

Fair enough. And since my last post, I also considered just how rarely this happens, at least in the games I know well, but it’s probably rare in any fighting game. That is to say, I still believe it’s winning an exchange by bullshit instead of skill, but the numbers eventually pan out in the better player’s favor with all the other exchanges so it’s a minor point. But it’s a forum of text and theory so I get to do that. :slight_smile:

I mostly agree but actually you are not crediting the “noob” where you said credit is due, by your own standard. I.e. I think it is an unfair double standard to say, “that loss doesn’t count, because he was playing a noob/scrub”, but if he were playing someone else that was better, “well he should have been watching out more, he lost fair and square”. So I’d say that, in both cases, you ought to be consistent and say he lost fair and square, and credit be even to the hated “noob/scrub”, however much of an upset.

Adding more technical things doesn’t necessarily make a game more random, I agree with you on that. Particularly in the case of games with 2 button throws; in those games, if you got thrown, you know it was basically because that was what your opponent wanted, and not something else. But I’ve certainly complained about things seeming random in games before- I tend to prefer more simpler, straight-forward games where it’s at least easier to comprehend, especially to be able to state “I just lost, but I understand why”.

19

You know how some people do reversal SRK in 3S but get wake up parry instead? Or if they’re buffering a move and they end up getting a parry instead? I HATE THAT SHIT.

20

I thought I was actually :lol:

Maybe to clarify what i meant, the win is still no less important; it still counts just as much.

It’s just more that the expert ‘lost’ as opposed to the noob ‘winning’.