I don’t
Next question?
Tired/Lag/My wife speak to me and/or against crazy Law/Hwo team
I lose to top tiers only because you know…they just outclass my characters completely. No matter how solid do I play…a Nina BnB can even things up nicely for my opponent’s mistakes. Great game, great experience.
But to be serious I mostly lose when I dont play seriously (pick troll teams/characters or im just in a troll mood) or havent played the character I’m playing for a while (or havent played the character yet, like when i was learning Alisa)
Damn creativecell, that was harsh… had to flag his post? lol! XD
My main team is Julia x Juri, with Cammy switching in here and there for one or the other when I need her walkspeed, AA and footsies for the likes of Vega, Bison, etc. Any other characters I play, I play for fun as well as certain tools (Nina, Law, Poison, Marduk, Alisa, etc.)…
My main reason for losing… well, there’s a few, but after looking over a ton of my matches, it really boils down to my execution, and my nerves. On the days where my execution is on point and nothing is dropping, I look very competent, and it shows in my ground game and AA as well because there’s a lack of fear of dropping things and I’m not nearly as nervous. More commonly however, is when I play nervous or panicky, I either shell up and let myself get ran over, or I drop even the simplest game-winning boost combos.
More execution practice is needed to help with the consistency, which I’m looking at now. Also, reviewing my own matches has been helping me quite a bit lately, and I’m working on realizing simple patterns and my opponents better and faster. On the other side, I’m struggling with not expecting every single thing to go perfectly, and learning to adapt better when it doesn’t - this is quite honestly more of a personality/psychological thing, as I tend to be very fearful of doing things if I don’t feel they’re perfect or absolutely right. But when playing FGs and especially this game, being too fearful will lead to either doing something silly out of panic, or doing nothing at all and eating two mixups into death.
For now I’m focusing on getting more experience, and working on my mentality and approach to matches, recognizing when and where I’m starting to react out of fear rather than slow things down and think… but it is a fairly hard thing to do consistently. One day at a time I suppose.
This is also not to take away from my opponents: if I lost, they saw something that I did incorrectly and took advantage of it. Plain and simple. Its irritating to admit at the time it happens, but usually when I step back and think about it, it comes down to that, even if it just amounts to “they were just mashing” (because clearly I didn’t recognize it soon enough to matter), or “if I didn’t drop that combo” (because clearly I did and I was punished for it).
None of this is new, as its always been a problem since I first started playing somewhat seriously even amongst just me and my friends and especially prevalent when I actually started going to local tournaments as far back as '05. It’s just now I’m really starting to try and address it, I guess.
When someone is better than me (obvious), when I get impatient, when I want to land a certain move or setup and keep trying to force it to happen, etc…
I find that I beat myself more often than not really. I know what I’m supposed to do in most situations and just don’t because of wanting to see if something else will work, trying to surprise s he shit out of some one to steal a win, and sometimes brain and hands go dumb and I don’t react in time. I also play when I’m too drunk too often (my free time with XBL usually overlaps with the time I am drinking). Trying to learn too many characters right now and not learning any of them enough to use properly before jumping to the next. I guess the other reason is a combination of the last two reasons together which will make me loose embarrassingly. I really do vary day to day from totally horrible (anyone on here could school me) to pretty decent/clever and difficult to crack. The first happens more often than the second sadly.
Wow. After reading my own post I see why I loose so much lately lol.
Edit: When I’m drunkI also loooove me some YOLO raw launch. Especially for the KO. I’ve thrown away plenty of matches I had in the bag going for just that over and over.
For me it’s impatience and the tendency to play how I “feel” like. I do really random things at times, which is good every now and then because I randomly find new setups or other tricks (safe jumps for example). But most of the time I lose because of it (when a random safe jump attempt fails for example).
I can do pretty well, when I really focus on being patient and stop jumping at the worst of times. That way I can win matches against good players with top tier characters in their team even with Sakura/Rog, which leads me to this:
Learn your match up and try to get the best out of your own team. Optimize it. Can’t say you are getting outclassed until you have done that.
When I lose, I always blame myself as a player first (unless I fight shitty DLC gems).
I play Hwo/Nina, OMG CRUZ YOU SHOULD WIN LIKE EVERY GAME, YOU GOT THE GAME KILLING OP SHIT! WRONG! I tend to lose to good boost characters and my inability to tech throws on a consistent basis. I try to play a footsie game that becomes a losing battle among the chronic jumpers. Also people who can down back. My game can get very predictable since I play very familiar characters,sometimes its hard to loosen the reigns when your characters have these tools people consider “OP”. Ok Dynamite Heel is +1,hasn’t stopped people from just mashing buttons on me,or my frame traps just ain’t tight enough. My reactions are slow at times and I don’t adapt to well. I try to play frame data fighter at times instead of just looking for openings to attack. Ugh! I sound like such a scrub 
.
I usually lose as Niner/Kaz because:
• Dhalsim players.
• Trying to anti-air everything instead of just blocking. Kaz’ cr.fp isn’t as solid as I try to make it.
• Dropping links, eating punishes.
• Disrespecting the opponent’s willingness to reversal on every single wakeup. Every. Single. One.
• Getting simply outplayed, as there are people that keep Niner’s T-Rex limbs and Kaz out.
• Mashing ewgf against people that know how to counter it.
• Pressing buttons after opponent’s move even though I don’t know the the frame data.
• Not knowing when it’s time to stop playing, it’s too warm outside and I’m tired, but whatever, let’s go and lose some more.
And many more things I guess, stuff I should get rid off.
Even though the Dhalsim thingy won’t change in future.
I mostly play Elena/Nina lately and I lose when I get pressured by really agressive players. I play mostly defensive but because of my slow reactions to jump ins mostly I get jumped in on a lot and end up playing on defense constantly the whole match. The characters I have a hard time against are Jin, Xiayou, and Hwoarang because of the constant pressure they can put on opponents and because I don’t really play the characters much. I also get reversal happy and start mashing between block strings and may lose a round because of that easily in seconds. Plus I think I give too much respect to my opponents and sometimes even after knockdown won’t start my mix-up on them because afraid of the wake-up reversal and give up space and pressure. What is funny to me is I have the hardest time against people that don’t press buttons at all because I rarely ever throw to open the opponent up. Gotta start doing that more…
Goddamn Juri players…
Just getting back into this somewhat. My partner plays Juri!
I play Claw and am thinking of learning Nina.
The game has really passed me by. So much to learn/relearn.
Just going to throw out how amazingly well Christie’s handstand copter synergies with Elena. Since Christie remains on the screen for so long after a tag she can create a artificial corner for Elena from anywhere on the screen <3.
[details=Spoiler]
After s.HP(both hits) xx Handstand>Helicopter
[480] Elena [MP Mallet Smash, c.MP xx MK Rhino Horn, s.MK>c.HP, HK Scratch Wheel]
[480] Elena [MP Mallet Smash, c.MP xx MK Rhino Horn, s.MK>c.HP, cMP xx HK Scratch Wheel]
She might even be able to do s.HK, HK SW after the target combo but haven’t had time to test it yet[/details]
And if you’re in the corner already and feel like burning 3 bars
Spoiler
After s.HP(both hits) xx EX Handstand>Helicopter
[530] Elena [MP Mallet Smash, c.MP xx MK Rhino Horn, s.MK>c.HP,(Perch Flop Kick hits here), cMP xx HK Scratch Wheel]
[530] Elena [MP Mallet Smash, c.MP xx MK Rhino Horn, s.MK>c.HP,(Perch Flop Kick hits here), HK Scratch Wheel]
In fact it feels like Christie would work really well as a combo starter for any character that got a good corner carry and that can capitalize on that corner.
Funny. Balrog’s lp overhead has 23 startup frames and people call it slow. But Xiaoyu’s overhead is only 1 frame faster o:
First of all, great topic to discuss here. I’m just going to put my long answer in a spoiler tag only because my answer is quite long and I don’t want people to read through a wall of text if they don’t need to. Everyone has a choice. That said in short, I lose because:
My mentality isn’t the greatest
I’m stubborn
Mistiming of AA attempts or lack of AAing at times
Playing a low health high/risk high reward team where pretty much one mistake can = death.
Bad block/whiff punishment
Playing too safe for a team like this
Throw breaking skills aren’t good
Bad decision making skills
Online making me a nervous wreck.
Why all of these reasons? Well then read on below in the spoiler tag.
[details=Spoiler]]My main team has been Akuma/Lili from day 1 and this, in itself I believe, is a problem.
I don’t really have too much experience with playing as other characters against human opponents. Whilst I do know a handful of what most characters can and can’t do and how to punish their stuff. I find that sometimes, some of that information is lost on me whilst I play. I think this is mainly because I don’t really use the other characters against people, I don’t have the knowledge of say someone who actually plays that said character when fighting against them. This has been a problem in past where I have missed key punish opportunities against characters or I’ve been brain-dead in punishing them such as throwing out Akuma’s sweep every-time I block something.
The 2nd problem is myself, my problems and my mentality. Allow me to explain. As someone who has stuck with this team for quite a while, I’ve become quite stubborn in trying to learn new characters simply because:
A. It’s outside of my comfort zone.
B. Because I play other fighting games other than SFxT (Smash Bros. Brawl, TTT2), I fear that if I play a new character in one fighting game, it’ll completely affect my knowledge of the other fighting games and vice versa. Hence the reason why tend to be pretty stubborn with branching out to the rest of the cast. Oddly enough, I only have this problem with SFxT though. Whereas in TTT2 and Smash Bros., I have no problem in playing and learning someone that I don’t know how to use or to broaden my character knowledge.
Because of these factors, I tend to be extremely loyal to my characters a lot and I’m not a big fan of playing a ‘secondary team’ only because I feel that I’m holding myself back against my opponent. I play fighting games because I want to play and unlock my maximum potential against people; to reach levels, which I thought were impossible to attain. So playing a secondary team to me feels as if I’m playing with weights in my hands. So by the time I switch to the main team and take the weights of, my hands start to shake and I feel nervous simply because, it’s the ‘main team’; the team which people will probably know you by so effectively, I’m expecting the result to be much better than last time. It’s a pressure, I don’t want to put myself under so as such I’ve stuck with this team since forever.
The 3rd problem is the actual weaknesses of my team for which I’ve come to accept. Low health means I die in 2 mix-ups tops against anyone who can do optimized combos. The team is a very high risk/high reward team. As whilst pressuring someone, they have next to no reason to respect your pressure because hey why not, I can kill these characters in 2 mix-ups tops. So a lot of the time YOLO tactics have killed me because of this.
Because of these reasons, one has to be fundamentally strong i.e. good AA skills, good whiff/block punishment skills, good reading skills (the latter being the most important) and good execution in order to use them to their greatest potential.
Of course, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t play this team 100% to their greatest potential. I mistime AA attempts, sometimes I don’t even AA at all in some games, my block/whiff punishment is sometimes lacking and my reading skills are not the greatest at this game as well as throw breaking. I think FengShuiEnergy once asked: ‘how can you be auto-pilot on mix-ups?’. For me I just think this is a problem, because I’ll think that because the opponent was hit by one tactic one time, I think the same trick will work again or I’ll try to do something different, land the mix-up, get too excited about mind gaming my opponent and then drop the combo or I’ll mix it up and then they’ll do something I didn’t expect them to do e.g. neutral jump when I’m trying to overhead them after going low on their wake-up a couple times. So often I’ll tend to take the option which I can do the best in the given situation.
Or at times, I will play completely safe and not take any risks which pretty much siphons away the potential of the team especially against footsie heavy players who know not to jump at you from certain ranges. Their potential being pretty much their very simple, effective and damaging high/low mix-up game, wake-up set-ups, damage as a team and solo. Pretty much losing most of their combined skill-set (having almost every kind of move in the game minus having an armored attack or stances to play with) and boiling it down to footsies and AA. Which I don’t intend to down in any way shape or form because as shown countless times, having good footsies and AA skills can take you far.
But in my case, if someone just holds down-back against me in the neutral when they have a life lead per say, my mind tends to go blank and the closer I get the more wary I get of the opponent just sticking out a limb, catching me and taking over half my life because of it. This is probably the reason why I like both of my characters’ overhead attacks as they have long range and can pressure from ranges where poking would just lead to the opponent getting whiff punished and killed. This presents another problem in the fact that I’ll rely on it a lot and it becomes very predictable especially over longer sets of games with people.
Online also does play a role in my decision making as I tend not to go for anything different in fear that the roll-back will kill me, lag can happen making me drop my combo and making me annoyed. This in turn makes me a nervous wreck whenever I go online as I’m worried about the frustration of gaining momentum in a match and then losing it because of rollback or a lag spike in combination with all of the 3 problems I’ve mentioned can lead to me losing a tonne. Fortunately the silver lining which can be drawn from all of this is that I am good at taking a loss and dealing with the saltiness afterwards, I just go do calming/stupid stuff like go and watch TV or look at flowers on Google Images lol.
In summary
I lose because:
My mentality isn’t the greatest
I’m stubborn
Mistiming of AA attempts or lack of AAing at times
Playing a low health high/risk high reward team where pretty much one mistake can = death.
Bad block/whiff punishment
Playing too safe for a team like this
Throw breaking skills aren’t good
Bad decision making skills
Online making me a nervous wreck. [details=Spoiler]
Why do I lose? Well, before it was mostly because I would respect the players way too much but as of recent I find myself playing much better if I’m not scared of the opponent even if they’re 100 times better than I am. Other reasons are:
not anti airing as much
trying to style every single time with harder combos instead of doing some basic stuff as well
dropped combos that can cost me the match
lack of matchup knowledge
being predictable at times
can’t tech throws consistently
tag cancelling after a blocked boost chain
getting hit by a cross up due to not blocking correctly after a knockdown
When you fight against a good player (not some decent random, but a true master of a character) that’s when you get your reality check about the situation. There’s only so much a player can do. No matter how much work or thought you put into playing solid, it is not like your going to magically change the frame data or magically get your damage increased due to your skills. Only variable you can manipulate is your gem loadout, but if you wish to have an offline mindset you must stick to the presets which sucks to be honest.
The only thing I am considering now is switching from Power to Meter for one of my characters. If not I might drop one of my characters. I dunno. I am just frustrated.
And alright, I will unflag Dex’s post by popular request. The people have spoken.
Well, I feel like I lose for 3 main reasons:
Being reckless. This hasn’t been a huge problem as of late (unless I’m just getting frustrated in which case I should be taking a break anyway), but sometimes in certain match-ups I get really impatient and start doing stupid stuff, like jumping in repeatedly, or throwing out stuff at really bad times (e.g. slide boost with Cody outside of footsie range or Heron Dancing with Asuka at distance where the first hit would never connect). There’s also recklessly charging in on a zoning character when I have the life lead because I just want to finish the match, though being able to cr.mk under fireballs with Cody and Asuka has helped me to deal with that issue.
Not finishing my plate. There’s soooooooooooooooooo many games I’ve had where I would have won, but I end up dropping the game winning combo, or not paying attention to the damage scaling + opponent’s health + my meter leading me to not tag cancelling a juggle combo that could have won me the game, or in some cases overestimating how much damage I can deal and essentially wasting meter.
Respecting my opponent too much. I hate DP mashing a lot, so much so that I get too stubborn to do it myself when I get pressured (heck, I started with Cody in SSFIV for the sole reason that he didn’t have a DP so I would force myself to learn to deal with options without really relying on an invincible reversal, didn’t want to train myself to rely on DP mashing to get out of things), and I hate losing to DP mashing so a lot of times I’ll just stop my pressure in fear of the reversal, even if my opponent hasn’t done one all game. I think this is the area that I need the most work, as I can’t seem to find a middle ground between respecting and not respecting my opponent’s wake-up. Like in my games against @SolidRose, he almost never did a reversal DP, yet I kept backdashing vs his wakeup and losing positioning (which ends up being a big problem for Asuka) almost half the time because I was giving his DP too much respect. But then there’s the other side of the spectrum where I don’t give my opponent enough respect and get hit by an invincible every time they go for one. Reading my opponent’s tendencies on wake-up has never been one of my strong suites.
Not using Juri
Completely off-topic, but this is just in. I heard the next character in USF4 is…[details=Spoiler]
http://www.blastingart.com/media/images/sharingImages/937.jpg
[/details] 100% legit.