Rarely have I beaten someone ranked above me in USFIV. Sure, I’ve beaten a couple of C+ ranked people with a C ranked character, but I’m talking about, let’s say, a D ranked beating an A ranked. It seems like 99% of the time you get matched-up against someone higher ranked than you, defeat is inevitable. I did once beat an B ranked E. Honda with a D ranked Ryu, though… but that’s because the connection between me and the other player(I’m from western Europe and he was from Japan or Korea, don’t recall) wasn’t very good and the game lagged like hell. In fact, I pulled some moves without really knowing what I was doing and I bet he did as well. We blocked a lot and kept our distances. It was kinda funny, to be honest.
Anyway, I dunno about other fighting games, but it seems to me that you can’t really depend on luck in USFIV at all. The only “luck” you might have is your opponent making mistakes. Although, obviously, a B ranked opponent will not really make many mistakes, especially not against a D or even a C ranked opponent. Even if you begin timing your blocks well, you’ll still feel like you’re facing an immovable object. I guess it depends on the series, too. I would not be surprised if in a game like Mortal Kombat, per example, a player could depend more on luck. But feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
In my opinion the games with the least luck is ultrasf4 and kof13.
In tekken and doa, making a comeback is actually common while comebacks in 2d fighters is highly unlikely.
Mortal kombat though, by far the most lenient fighter I’ve played in quite a while.
Odds are pretty low unless your opponent decides to take it easy on you/underestimates you and goes for stupid stuff/is a booster i.e. faker/it’s their friend playing.
But you can force stronger players to play a guessing game with you. Which will help you out, because the luck involved, adds variance.
For example, a weaker player or noob, would love to take a coin flip against a pro
While, that pro, wouldn’t welcome a coin flip from the noob, as they figure their chances are far better than that.
At the highest level of the game, its all about guessing, giving your opponent odds and accepting risk. This happens because everything has a counter. And if you know it, you can take the appropriate counter measure.
I always give my best regardless, but ye it can be a bit discouraging to face an opponent that you’re very unlikely to beat. I guess one should just give their best when they’re the underdog and use that experience to learn something new out of it.
Anyway, it’s more of an ego crusher to lose against a D ranked player with like 20PP. Although if he is good it probably means he has a couple of high ranked characters and just decided to pick a new one. Doesn’t necessarily mean he’s been playing SF only since yesterday. Hell, some of the strongest players I’ve faced have been low ranked ones in the Endless mode.
In a set longer than 2 games, probably not much. In ranked SF4 anything can happen. The “guessing game” that @Evansgambit is talking about only works once, unless for some reason you’re a computer with no brain, only a random number generator that throws out moves. Higher ranked players will simply figure out your patterns and train you to react to things a certain way, then punish you.
Also, rank isn’t always the best predictor of skill, especially below the 3kpp point range. I play within the high 1000-low 2000 pp range, where everybody has like 5k BP with their main and still sucks, myself included. I might be able to get out if I stuck to one character instead of the whole cast, but that’s irrelevant.
The way to beat higher ranked players is to out-think them, which requires good defense and nerves of steel. If your defense, mostly anti-airs, is solid, then you can focus on your opponent instead of your character. Then you make them scared to press buttons by DPing on their wakeup successfully at least once, and proceed with a sick throw game. Works every time cause throws online have a -50% tech rate modifier.
Blanka can be a pain to face, but actually he’s the 3rd opponent I have the highest winning percentage against online. I did, however, face a couple of A ranked Blankas in the past. Yikes!
Also, fun fact, Blanka was the first character whose special move I’ve learnt in SF2 The World Warrior back when I was 5-6 years old. He felt pretty accessible.
Also, George was the best Seinfeld character!
Judging from your avatar, I’m guessing you main Cammy? Because I do. Her cannon spike really helps, and I’ve lost count how many rounds I’ve won by finishing off the opponent with a sudden cannon spike.
Only way your beating a higher ranked opponent when your a beginner is a. Pure luck from randomness or b. They are trolling or not taking the match seriously. Even then thats only one match set up in ranked…in a setting where its first to 5. Or best of 3, they get a chance to adjust to your tendencies (or lack thereof) it can get ugly pretty quick after that first match (or sometimes even 1st round). Experience is a large difference in players…they know more about matchups and execution than the player that just came into the gm has probably even been exposed to yet…and the more you guys play, the more evident it becomes…just focus on improvement in the beginning…any high profile win would be cheap and not worth celebrating.
Unless your opponent is bad, there is almost no actual fighting game where you can “depend on luck” to win, especially not consistently. If your opponent is better than you and actually knows what they’re doing, you can try to play as random as you want, you’ll still get outplayed and get your back blown out.
Also, for the most part, online ranks are not an actual viable way in which to gauge someone’s skill level. Online is online, after all.
Finally, please stop thinking like this. Not be a holier-than-thou asshole, but you should be focusing less on worrying beating better players through fraudulent means, and more on actually improving and growing in the game. I feel like people placing more importance on winning versus learning and improving themselves is part of the reason why so many players wallow around in the purgatory of fraudulence almost indefinitely.
When i was a mid-level player i would lose occasionally to a worse player by not adapting quickly to BS in a round or maybe 1 match. Going from lower mid-level to a solid player is really identifying player habits and capitalizing. A GOOD player will know how to do that for a given game so you might take a round or maybe 1 match but in a 2/3 or more your going to lose.
I’d say 49 times out of 50 you’ll lose to a higher ranked player, but I had the weird occurrence tonight of winning a match against a Rank 50 player in SFIII: Third Strike. What makes it weirder was that I accidentally chose Alex instead of Ryu (my usual choice). So…maybe it was an off night, maybe he was drunk, who knows. There’s always a chance to win. No reason you can’t shoot for that million to one chance.
rank doesn’t mean anything on 3SOE. there are less than 10 good players on XBL, and less than 5 on PSN (IMO). rank 50 on 3SOE just means you played a lot of games, since you can gain rank points but not lose them.
not saying the general content of your post was wrong, just that there’s not much value in paying attention to rank in 3SOE.
I will make this note though- in watching the replay, it occurred to me that since I don’t know any of Alex’s special moves, I was pretty much forced to play conservatively and rely on fundamentals.
In any case, while there may be a microscopic number of good players on PSN, the fact is even the lousy players are largely better than I am. And that’s why I’m here- to get better.