It's not about how much you play or win. It's about how you play to win

Regional Matchmaking Northwest
21

But would you rather win at life, or Street Fighter?

Other than John Choi, I don’t really know any “big name” guy in Street Fighter IV that really has any fallbacks or career plan if the whole “pro street fighter player” thing doesn’t pan out.

Sure, we might be “Freeattle,” in Street Fighter IV but on the other hand, I bet most of the players in our scene become (or are already) generally-sucessful people who have managed to carve out a good life for themselves, compared to other scenes who’s players spent exactly 100 percent of their time becoming the best at a game that can be, at best, be described as “transient.”

22

Dedication and perseverance, the ability to detach from your ego in order to truly learn, the genuine want to seek challenge and rise above it, the passion to truly become the best…these are all mentalities that are not enveloped by the players here in Seattle. What’s worse, some will say that they do have such mentalities by meager justifications, yet they are oblivious as to how blind they truly are (hence why detaching one self from your ego is so vital).

It goes far past “treating SF like it’s a job” or “finding a handful of like minded players who are dedicated”…these are mere fractions of what it takes to truly succeed in this game. But in all reality, you just aren’t ready to hear it…this very understanding is what gave birth to “You think your hungry, you’re not.”

That is the plight of our scene right now, the major fact that we do not (or choose not to) understand competitive psychology enough to become competitors. I’m fine if you play for fun, I’m fine if you play to become the best, I’m fine if you use an excuse of “playing sf” to hit on cute Asian girls who have boyfriends. What I’m not fine with is when you are not in touch with the reality that you manifest in or better yet chose to have the audacity to say that you do…so with that…Be real with yourselves. That is really all I ask in this thread for the Seattle scene to take a good hard look and be REAL with yourselves.

If you win a match where you weren’t even remotely challenged, don’t pat yourself on the back and stroke your ego as if you’ve made a true accomplishment. When someone offers advice or tries to give a helping hand, don’t shrug it off at first glance as if you are “higher” than the information you’ve been given…even when we try to beat it into you it doesn’t work, so where’s the redeeming factor? If you come out to sessions and play “hard core,” don’t for one second tell yourself that you’re dedicated until you’ve completely accepted the mentality of a competitor…it’s easy to justify dedication through coming out to events consistently, but are you dedicated to challenging yourself? Are you dedicated to learning new things? Are you dedicated enough to let go of how you look at things in order to learn different perspectives? How dedicated can you be if you don’t have a goal to strive for? Maybe you’re just dedicated to having a fun time and enjoying yourself over wanting to play seriously…ever think of that?

In this post, I’m not meaning to put anyone on blast or take shots at anyone (except Matt…lol)…but there’s only so much you can do for a person who’s blind and deaf before becoming frustrated that your efforts are futile.

For those who are trying to rebuild this community to become competitive again, collaborate with us and help if you can. Things are being done behind the scenes in order to “fix” the issue at hand. All I ask is for the community to be real with itself…we’re ready to fix things when you are.

23

i too have hit the wall. i lost my drive to play. i lost my drive to win. so, why do i still play? well, i play for me. i know i dont have the time or dedication to get to the levels to take on the best. do i have the talent? yes. i sure do wish i could drop everything, break up with my girl, live with the parents, and train in fighting games so i can win tourneys (this is a lie to a certain extent). but honestly, were not going to have players of high level calibur because no one is willing to do so. i dont think this game is honestly worth the sacrifice.

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I don’t really think it’s a matter of how much you play, as much as it’s a matter of HOW you play. People play all the time. That’s never really up for debate I think.

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I don’t have much I can say in this thread. I CAN give good advice sometimes, but this is something that I am just going to sit back and enjoy. I’ve been working on building this up since I last played Seattle peeps online. Both mentality AND gameplay.

It’s hard goings, though.

26

everyone is talking as if the ONLY street fighter goal possible is ‘beat Justin Wong and win evo’.

To do that this year? I completely agree with every post. Nobody is going to put this game AHEAD of life. Nobody is going to go from where Washington is at right now and immediately make a career out of street fighter.

Why don’t people understand a competitive mentality around here? As long as you strive yo IMPROVE and are willing to work for it you WILL. Goals are stepping stones. My first goals in street fighter are to simply take a round and win a match in tournament. Yes. One set. This may not seem lofty goal to anyone - but it’s a start and it’s a big deal for me! I have maybe 3 months of traditional 2d fighting game experience vs most of you having years. I’m still learning the basics of the game but you know what? I’m willing to wager that do are all of you. Or at least you should be.

All I’m saying is that you should have goals. Didn’t any of you play any sports in high school? The goal doesn’t start at ‘win a national championship.’ Well before that you have a series of goals that over time mau make that a possibility.

Frustrating topic lol

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Edit: I think we should all watch rocky 1-4 & Balboa. Eye if the tiger baby lol

Sorry for double post but editing from my Droid is dumb

28

:rofl::rofl:

It this point it should be and It should have been last year. We’ve had a huge lead in SF4 with the help of Narrows actually getting the game before most of America. If It didn’t happen last year it won’t happen this year. It’s cool to have personal goals like you have but overall, if this was a city were people were ready to play this game, having the number one spot in the US should always be the goal overall.

The scene is similar to 3s back when less than 5 people played the game. We have more people now but still 5 people play the game:rofl:. But like Elliott was saying I’m not really trying to play this damn all day. I need to be enjoying life, rather than sitting in front of a LCD all day. Different city maybe I would be into burning hours playing for a reason.

29

I am going to say something, but my guess is it will fall on deaf ears…

First, Dugg’s post was great. It touched on a lot of good points.

The difference in people about “Playing to win” and “Playing to improve” are very different. I would like to say there are people that can beat me by doing the same thing over, and over, and over, and over again by doing the same 2 moves for weeks at a time. Don’t get me wrong, you beat me, but I would not feel proud about that. The point in my practice regime is a matter of experimentation in casuals and local tournaments, because nothing means shit here. I only feel that Evo makes any difference. As if I give a shit about whether I’m winning every tournament in the NorthWest, if I don’t experiment and lose now, what happens when I go to Evo? I’ll get raped.

I just have to fuck that. I don’t “do” training room for more than about 5 minutes every few weeks, maximum. The “training room” for me are casuals and local tournaments. I practice in those settings because I want to see what works, what are my options in what situations, what do people use or abuse, and play-styles. I’m spending my money to enter a tournament because I want the nerves and tense situation that you can’t recreate in your front room in training mode. You can’t feel nervous in that because it doesn’t mean shit. I’m playing to improve myself in my own way, and I am still a student of fighting games, in no way do I feel confident enough to try and teach anyone anything.

I focus on my way of playing, I am learning what a person may or may not do in what situations (If I’m aggressive, defensive, reactive, zoning, blocking) and what their options are.

Gotta go, no point in typing anymore because I know about 40% of you will look at this and say “That’s stupid” or say “You’re wrong to pretend that will work”.

30

Just wanted to pop in and say I disagree with this 100%. There were a fucking shitload of online randoms at evo last year, you can bet your ass this year will be the same. If you don’t want to get randomed out by some scrubby playstyle that catches you off guard, you should probably play some online to get an idea of what they’re doing. Online, while it obviously has its drawbacks, is good for learning (at least) 2 things:

  1. Matchups
  2. How to adapt quickly to “wild” players

But I come from the Trinh Nguyen School of Absolute Offense, so what do I know… Anyways, good post Dugg.

31

After leaving ncr, i can not stress the importance of this post by trace. Arguably the best living tekken player in the world came to ncr with 2 other very strong korean players. These matches where high level death-chess battles (one wrong move or read is half life or more).

i wanted to think that i had the mindset to play this type of " chess " match with my opponents, and guess what? I got scrubbed out by the most unsafe strats by a known good player from Cali, and a good Seattle player. I was looking for that high level spacing strat that didnt give me any opportunities , and ran into every unsafe thing that no good player would EVER think of doing in a tourny ( as i thought in my own mind).

All in all, be prepared for randoms by having that “radar function” that notices unsafe and wild strats for what they are a.s.a.p. Some players sense of anticipation is uncanny, but if you have ever watched any old matches that you have personally lost, you probably said to yourself , " i cant believe i feel for that".

if you play hard and lose to J - Wong or some other talented player @ EVO, i think you will be able to sleep @ night and learn from the experience - but if some random Blanka player who balls every time they get knocked down keeps you from getting out of your pools, its not something you will ever want to remember and i promise folks wont let you live it down either.

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That’s why they call it “random.”

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I guess I shouldn’t down online play so much because it does help improve players knowledge of matchups and what most “randoms” are going to pull out. I just feel that it would greatly improve the scene and yourself if we had serious training sessions in person often. It’s the only way to get on the level we need to be at. I train with Dugg pretty frequently and we never have a dull game. We know each others options and tendencies so well that the game is played on a very serious level even during casuals. I don’t feel that when playing against alot of people if it’s not in tournament and sometimes not even then. It’s pretty rough to try to convince an entire community to shape up or get scraped up without alot of people getting defensive. But, the cool part is that almost everyone posting has agreed that we should try to take the game more seriously if we want to have a chance at the majors.

In the end dugg is right, although I was a strong believer of ultimate offense, the answer overall to winning will always come back to ultimate defense. Eventually someone has to leave themself open to push an offense, and when that moment presents itself know your options well enough to answer that opening with the appropriate answer. After that even the best players will have a hard time tricking you to let them have another offensive opportunity. Tekken players understand this all too well which is the reason you see alot of tekken matches where 90% of what is happening is waiting for an opportunity. You got 99 seconds son, use em. I love styling on people but I gotta start taking this game more seriously and start winning. I got do that with just flashy combos and rushdown.

34

Thanks for reading, some thoughts on the discussion:

This isn’t about the amount you play, nor about how much time you spend in the training room. In fact, I generally preach the opposite. It’s about playing smarter, removing all of the free damage you might just give up to an opponent instead of making them earn it. It’s about practicing the game the way it’s played at a higher level (which in the end is everyone’s current goal, with scope and scale differences) so that we can all improve each other and actually get ready for an out of state performance.

Exactly. You can practice what you do by playing every day, reading up on frame data, working out your setups in the training room, or whatever it is you do; but if you’re just playing habitually and taking your wins while dismissing your losses, then you’re just treading water. You would attain more by striving to improve your game each time you sit down to it, and really paying attention to how you took damage, how you dealt damage, asking questions to your opponent throughout your set. That is where the real improvement happens.

Thanks Trace, and you’re completely right about online play. It’s the perfect way to gain knowledge and improve your play, but if you just do your thing, again, you won’t learn anything. Don’t expect to be able to perform high reaction based maneuvers, save that for in person play. Practice reading your opponent, being ready for what he’s trying, and execute the counters as necessary. This is the benefit of online play. As well as, of course, matchup and playstyle experience. Don’t dismiss online play like I did for the longest time, it’s still vs humans and thus is an infinite source of knowledge if you know how to pry it out from a match.

…and anyone from a school of offense very likely has their defensive degree, at least at the level these posts are talking about. You said it yourself, that there’s going to be a lot of randoms, and unless you really get that basic defense down…you might get heartbroken come EVO.

Being ‘randomed out’ is just an excuse for failing at one aspect of your game or another. The sooner you come to terms with this and adjust your game as needed, the better. The longer you just call it that and get back to whatever it is you want to do…well, yeah. =(

later.

edit:
Tony: It’s not about improving in general, we all have small goals and start there. It’s about improving by practicing what’s needed, and not the superfluous habits that you’re only going to drop eventually on your path of improvement.

The goals are fine. The way you can attain them without proper play only feeds the feeling of competency that hinders our scene.

…and thanks to all who pm’ed about this topic and want to get more into detail about it…i got your pm’s, im just lazy and mass replying here. Your words are all kind ^^

35

So I disagree with hella shit here but at the same time I’m well aware that my defense needs alot of work. At NCR I realized alot of my flaws as a player, in doing so I know the only way those flaws are going away…experience. I mean I know I need to cHP tech opselect but when I play rufus’s I don’t think, I panic and just try and either jump away, focus backdash, or block. Non of those is the smart choice, I know the smart choice but I’m not doing it because I’m not FORCED to do it. I’m not saying I’m gonna be pretentious and only play people who force me to play smarter but it’s like in seattle we’re missing this “edge” I can’t quite put my finger on but I know we need it. Tanaka was saying it while we were eating once. He was talking about how even the scrubs in cali have some sense of higher play than we do. Online is super useful for big events like evo where you are going to run into alot of randoms and those randoms will be really dangerous if you don’t know how to deal with them. What I’m gonna do now is work on being more aware of what my opponent wants to do and try to interrupt that. Defense is a good fundamental but no matter how absolute your defense is you can block and tech for entire rounds and lose to chip. I’m a pure offensive player right now and it works. The best defense is a good offense because if you are assaulting your opponent they can’t attack you with anything but a random reversal. Those are readable and punish/opselectable. The way I got to understand proper offense wasn’t thinking about it. I have played thousands of matches and sometime in December/January something “clicked” in me and I had his new understanding of the game. I know it came from experience rather than thought. The same is going to happen to my need to be calm and defense side of my game and I know now I have to just wait for it. You can’t force and understanding. I remember the first time I talked to Tanaka and I asked him what I should work on. He said “play smarter”…that pissed me off, but I now understand where he was coming from. He wasn’t talking about just fix urself and play smarter but rather his understanding of the game was influencing his playstlye and my inexperience lacked that.

So to the people who want to get better. Just play. Reflect on what went wrong in your loses and what went right in your wins. Learn from yourselves. No one can just help you along. Telling someone to AA jump ins is just plain common knowledge. The more you play the more you’ll be aware of your opponents options and the more instinctively you’ll shut them down. This is a game that can’t be played on just defense alone though. Be aware of your opponents defense and exploit the flaws, everybody has them.

I learned alot about myself at NCR. Best believe those are experiences that not only were necessary to myself as a player but those will shape me into a player that will be getting alot better soon. I’m not as gung ho that much as much as I just want to beat good players and remind them that there is always someone better, including better than me…09 proud.

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The idea of absolute defense is merely a mentality and starting point for the players who need somewhere to start to begin to really understand street fighter.

Nice. Exactly what I’m talking about.

Exactly. So why it works for me up here is the source of my frustration. Once all players are up to speed on simply not GIVING the match up to their opponent and in turn properly defending themselves, then and only then will we be able to push and improve each other further in the aspects of this game that the majority of our scene is lacking.

You and I play this game completely differently, that’s for sure, but even all your hours of play, training, frame knowledge, setups, and matchup knowledge; you’ll hit a wall soon enough. You’re a big reason for this post because I know you can beast, but here there are few players challenging you and your offense because they aren’t approaching it correctly, and in turn you get great results and are satiated. (and nothing wrong with your results, the product of your hard work is great. ^^)

All I want is a scene that can learn and adapt within a match without needing to know what to do ahead of time via lots of time and knowledge gained from others. One that can push each other to grow through true matches that are in the moment and naturally evolving, and not one with predetermined answers to your opponent’s actions…that’s not going to happen against any real contender.

Pennies for all.

In other news,

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I Think this is pretty important. The real breakthrough I’ve made lately is realization I’ve made lately is the huge difference between tournaments against people you play constantly, versus Major’s such as NCR where you are playing players you’ve never played before, and often times never heard of. And to do this effectively you really need to be an active thinker during the match. I was talking to Rob about this the weeks coming up to NCR i.e right way to practice ect. And that the one thing I really wanted to go into NCR with, a big mental checklist of things to do/actively think about during the match regarding my opponent.

I feel I really accomplished this goal at least partially for NCR. This was my first big tournament/ tournament with people I dont play constantly, and I am pretty happy about going 6-2. I think I kept that active mind during all my singles matches and brought back most of them from being 1 match and 1 round down by adapting, but I think the mindset really kicked in when things were looking grim, and I did do a good job of collecting myself a reminding myself to get in the mindset I told myself I was going to be in and not just playing the matchup basics, or even worse playing the match closed mindedly like you would against a particular player you see alot (I played 4 boxors, and had to catch myself multiple times and remind myself im not playing future). the next step is to have this mentality all the time. Just personally I think I lost my match to make top 32 because of nerves, and not any sort of mental failing (Ricky Ortiz watching…knowing it was last match of pools ect…) I don’t think theres anything I could really do about that, first major it was going to hit me.

But yeah MOST IMPORTANTLY I think my next big challenge will be to carry over that way of playing back to a practice setting with players I play with alot. It’s one thing to go into a situation where I its do or die and I need to implement something, its another thing to force myself to be that way day in and day out. I do argree this is more hard to do if players arenty changing their gameplan activly during a match because it allows people to fall back on matchup knowledge/playing a pattern

SAdly I think I might start practicing playing sober…

haha…I think this might help my nerves problem in so far as that how I played in NCR/plan to play at evo, and maybe I should start practicing this way and working on nerves the natural way. But yeah, looking forward to practicing hard and smart for evo.

EDIT: Maybe the thread for this, maybe not, not so much about mentality but more about good tournament prep, but I really need to work on tournament endurance too/not letting shit get to me too. While I was pleased about single I didn’t like how i played in team’s at NCR. I let a opposite team commenting on the match really get to me, and also a poor tournament organization thing reguarind resinding a DQ really get to me, and this along with being late in the day really took over how I played. I also brought up to some people here how a certainly player commenting on my matches here in a negative way while I played got to me in NW tournaments/sessions as well, so I am starting to see a pattern and I really wanna deal with it. I really see no solution other than exposure more to this sort of thing though, it would be tight to have loud commentary the players can hear like on some of the cali tournament streams, and by tight I mean not tight but helpful…hahah.

Then again maybe only I have this last problem.

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As good as fundamentals are, pure defense will only get you so far in this game. You have to understand SF4 to play it at a high lvl. Playing some of America’s best then talking to them was very insightful. I got to talk alot to lamerboi about his defense and how he approaches matches and situations and his understanding of the game is immense. Which probably contributes to his success in his defense. The crazy thing was, almost all of the top players I played had decent defense…but I lost to their offense, which has got me pumped for seeing how the next lvl and knowing how to get there. Lamerboi was more of inspiration to my learning of a defensive playstyle. All I’m sayin is I found a way for my offense to evolve, I’m never satiated really…I want double perfects all the time. Realistically…hard to do. But yeah if I can sit on a life lead in this game…and defensively hold it…I won’t have most of the problems I do against most of the people that beat me. I’ve got to a point where I know my options, now I am going to evolve those options. If I have an answer for every one of someone’s options…I can’t lose.

The wall I’m gonna hit, is the ceiling.

Know all you can know, learn all you can learn, evolve all you can evolve, every aspect has to be taken into consideration.

39

Great Post everyone. I hope everyone learned a good lesson at NCR. The things you guys are talking about is hard for people like myself and tanaka to explain without you really expierencing it for yourself.

The one things that hurts Seattle the most, is excepting the truth and not letting their ego’s or emotions get the best of them when they hear it.

Yes SEATTLE is NOT THAT GREAT AT SSF4. Yes we do have great and smart players. I’v been trying to set up places like the Dojo in order to help people play smarter. Me pushing the Dojo since back in narrows has always been about intellegintly improving seattle so we can compete at a high level. The dojo has always been about building a team and setting an enviornment to breed players. The Dojo is just a tool for players to use. I dont think I ever truly sat down and made a thread that really explained what the Dojo was about, but after this tourney I see it needs to be done.

There are a lot of people here in seattle that really want to take their game to the next level and play smarter. We have everyone working together on a universal strategy guide personal to seattle. Written by all our character specialists. Just taking it that serious is one step closer to being able to improve.

A lot of you are right when you say, its not about playing a lot. You also have to understand that any expierence is good expierence, even the random games at TournamentWars. Every week I have to say each player comes with something new and a little bit more wiser. We need to “Play Smarter” thats all.

Another factor people are forgetting about is that Seattle kind of lacks major tourney pressure expierence. A lot of people lost simply cause they were shaking uncontrollably and not able to think and play right. You must get that out of your system. The good thing about LA, is nobody is afraid, they all play with the mentality that they can over come anyone. When they play someone out of state, they take it very serious. Like gimpfish said, its your mental state of mind that people need to truly change

We play a lot, im sorry people at the Dojo play everyday. People at the Bunker play everyday, we just need to play smarter and not shit on anyones parade that tries to do something positive.

Another thing that hurts seattle is this Seattle Freeze bullshit. someone doesnt like you, they will be cool during tourney wars, "but they are not trying to let u come to the “high level private session”. People shun people out around here, and its not cool at all. Its like, keep your two cents to yourself if u have nothing positive to say, people wanna get good and u cant be angry at those people just cause your real life situation is in shambles and wont allow u to participate.

We need to help each other, we need to get more inolved (for those who actually care to do well and improve). yes people have lives, but u know what the E-Sport era is really on the rise. What im trying to do for the Dojo, is set it up so we cater to E-Sport gaming. From SF4, to tekken, to GGXX, we will generate smart play and push towards everyone improving.

Remember, Dojo is just a tool for players to utilize. I have heard many people sit here and say “oh why u forcing people to go to dojo” or " oh its to far, i refuse to go" ok thats fine, if people feel that way, keep it to yourself. I am NOT forcing people to come to dojo. In fact I encourage people to go to whatever close practice spot they can and to just play, learn improve. Online play is excellent as well, which is why Im trying to get east coast, nor cali, atlanta and portland on bored with the 5v5 stream battles. So we can get more expierence and just get used to seeing different shit so we dont trip over ourselfs come major day.

Anyway, I am so thankfull of NCR this year cause I think It really showed our true seattle players what they need to do. So im hear waiting to get things started. Myself and tanaka tonight are doing character specific breakdowns. Anyone is free to come and help in the practice. Myself, Tanaka, bowflexmike and Peachy have been translating the Japanese Technical Guide mook and we have a lot of good info that we will be putting into document form for seattle to utilize.

Its time to get real its time to play smart and its time to let the Ego and emotions go Seattle. We still have a chance, NCR was a wake up call.

Sorry about typos, im to lazy right now

Cole

ps- We will also be going over video footage of the NCR tourney. I believe we got about 70% of everyones matches here in seattle. Between black steeve , slash 5150 and Bryce with the camera work

Also another word of advice for people. Yes we have busy lives, if you know you can only dedicate maybe 1 or 2 hours a day or maybe only 3 times a week…make that practice count for something. Dont just be like…ok i can play for 2 hours…im gonna go to tourney wars, get fucked up, mingle, play one bullshit game with dan and call it a day. Then come back home and bitch about not being able to practice cause of real life. Fuck that shit, come with a game plan. Work by yourself and figure out your hard matches, then come to a place like tourney wars and go up to those people who play the characters u have trouble with and ASK them to play. Get some games set up, ask questions, tell them to do specific things. Utilize your play time wisely.

If everytime you played, even if it was only an hour a day, but u played with purpose and with a goal…I guarantee you will improve. No more blind matches for nothing.

Currently, a lot of people are involved with turning the Dojo “improvement Rankings” into a player card “round robin” system. I hope this will be a first step into helping people create opportunities to play and learn from others. We will be able to really extract good data in order to help you improve as a player.

The time is NOW!

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Alright guys, no more random shoryukens :wink: