On a random binge of Wikipedia, I found myself reading about Nash Equilibrium in game theory. You know, from the schizophrenic mathematician John Nash, the subject of the movie “A Beautiful Mind”? You can think about it as stripping away the rock-paper-scissors element of reading your opponent and finding what strategies are innately dominant.
The more times you can prevent your opponent from reading your next move, the more often you should use the strongest options!
Yesterday out of boredom I put together a strategy grid that assigned a bunch of values to each of the possible outcomes. It was all based on the situation where you and your opponent land next to eachother at the same time.
For example, id give the decision to attack vs block points of 60 vs 40 since you can start a frame trap, and delaying a grab vs an instant DP I give 200 vs -100, since the delay lets you block the unsafe move and punish for full damage. It got really messy with random numbers out of the top of my head, and I had to fudge it just a little to make “Delay DP” lower because it orginally was #6.
Here’s what it churned out based on most points:
From best to worst decisions:
S-Tier
#1 Delay Safe DP (Tag canceling to make safe, delaying enough to block reversal shoryu)
A-Tier
#2 Safe DP
#3 Block
B-Tier
#4 Backdash
#5 Delay Attack
#6 Delay Grab
#7 Attack
C-Tier
#8 Delay DP
#9 Grab
F-Tier
#10 DP
Agree/Disagree? What other tiers of decisions are there in other situations?
(And yes the whole grid thing is really just a convolution of my personal opinion, haha)
[edit]Thanks for the comments Roager, yeah i would want to post a tier matrix of options vs options for different situations and have discussion about how much each option wins out. However, the topic is so complex and in-concrete that its not worth the effort for its usefulness or interest so I’m not going to bump this thread :). Well… at least not right away. I’ll remake it if I do.