I’m getting really frustrated at a lot of online players…the mentalities of them are just horrible, there does not seem to be any care to truly learn the game, and this isn’t just directed to the US, but actually more towards the latino players (mexico, colombia, chile, etc).
First, on to the US players…there’s a bunch of people in the kof rooms idle but always refuse challenges. If you aren’t going to play, then DON"T stay in the rooms. I can understand if someone is say, waiting for a friend and I just happened to have challenged them when they entered the server and waited, but this happens with almost every player from US/Canada. And the ones that actually do accept the match, play as if they’ve never seen a fighting game before…
Now on to the latino players…i don’t know who has been teaching them these things but the vast majority of them have horrible habits that just don’t seem to go away no matter what.
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jumping across the air with jumping attacks that don’t even connect 90% of the time - these players are constantly trying to guess when I will jump so they can intercept me, except that they almost always guess wrong. This just shows laziness and lack of ability to react to a jump and intercept it on reaction. Sure, some guesses need to be made in some situations, but all these latinos do is try to guess, every time. No patience or confirmation ability whatsoever. You can punish a lot of their whiffed kicks with low weak attacks (Kim’s crouch B is good for this) but even still, it is a risk to try it because if mistime, these abusers will just throw you when they land
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going for tick throws (either through something like crouch A, throw or jump attack, throw). Obviously these guys just haven’t heard of alternate guard, but the puzzling thing is that even if I use the alternate guard glitch to avoid AND punish them, they continue to do them. If anything, I will get hit by their tick throw after the third or fourth try because I assume they had been paying attention.
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people that keep going for Orochi Yashiro qcb+A or Chris dp+A. These are lazy players that don’t actually want to work for their damage and think these two moves are one of the best moves in the game. You will see them especially go for these moves when their health is low, showing desperation and laziness
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rolling…it seems like almost every single mexican online has this one similar pattern and it goes like this - they do a jump attack, generally out of range. The moment they land, they roll, and try to combo you in the back. Generally speaking, there are many combo maniacs online but most of them don’t really know how to play kof…most of their fishing for combos is done by rolling around in circles, which shows they don’t really know how to create a good offense in the slightest.
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them trying to command throw after they have blocked a jump attack - this is pure lag tactics in most cases, even if your jumpin was deep, if you mistime the followup ground attack just slightly due to lag, you will get thrown with no accuracy required by the opponent to reversal throw you. Sure, it’s necessary to do in some situations, if the opponent is actually doing really early jumpins and then trying to combo you afterwards but most grapplers online will ALWAYS do this.
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doing semipunishable moves, followed by some kind of reversal attack. You really want to stay away from laggers that do this…they are basically making mistakes on every single action, then hoping the lag would bail them out. So, in many situations, instead of you punishing for say, 30-50% like you should, you can get hit with random dps or DMs/SDMs that can go from 15-50% damage. Some possible gimmicks that resemble this which you should watch out for are:
kof98:
- Takuma charge back D kicks into super, into possibly another super. One guy even did like 3 supers in a row to me(all of which missed)
- Iori dp+A into super or another dp or scumgale
- Ryo dp+A into another dp+A
- Kyo df+D, then dp+A or super (the dp usually hits me if I try to run forward and block in the last moment to close the distance)
- Athena D phoenix arrow into crystal bit(2k2)
- using strategies, (generally patterns) over and over again, even though you’ve not only shown them you are aware of their pattern, but you’ve even punished the pattern on a few occasions. Instead of changing it up, they just keep doing it, as if thinking that I will eventually screw up punishign it and will get hit by it. How can someone be satisfied with playing like this?
Generally speaking, there is just no mental game going on because these guys just have combo on the brains, and they rush constantly, jumping/rolling over anything to combo. There just seems to be no respect for any situation that the opponent puts you in, no matter how dangeorus, because these guys show no patience and just hit buttons quickly when in danger (usually mashing crouch C) and rolling around.
I really don’t know what to do to improve the ability of these players, but it seems like constantly punishing them isn’t working. So far from the players i have played, Japan (as I expected) has shown the most self awareness of what’s going on. They are patient, they wait for the right time to attack, they respect the dangers of the situations they are put in, and they remember what’s been going on in the matches previous in the set. Generally these are the onlyl players(aside from rogueyoshi and some others) that I’ve faced where I felt like I can atleast display multiple layers of mindgames that I have, because going into higher layers of mindgames when the opponent doesn’t even understand the basic layer, isn’t going to work out for you.
Overall the matches just have no flow…it’s like a story where the same page just keeps repeating over and over and no progress is made. My opponents are just jumping/rolling all around the screen, hoping something connects(hopefully a combo! an angel infinite even better!) and there’s just little basis for any of their choices. Regardless of what you do to them, they just continue to stick with whatever poor metagame they have developed from who knows where and just refuse to advance to a higher level.
I’m considering quitting kof because of this, unless I happen to run into a dedicated group of kof players at lovegetty or something.