how was my position silly? actually nvm, its gonna get dumb.
@blitzfu: yea i hate turtling opponent. wish the game can be more aggresive.
@1hit parry: the 0-1 second… is like how fast you can react assuming 0.3 sec is 20frame. i don’t really play hdr i don’t know much
but assuming from tekken point of view its really means a lot for someone who can break 10frame grab properly and blocking/parrying move that comes out in less than 20frame. and stuff such as focusing sagat tigershot dash in grab/shoryu/c.mk followup is really hard to get it right.
Shari, most likely, he’s getting into this particular forum through the posting of the article on the front page of the website. He didn’t realize that this post originated from inside the HDR forum. I guess it’s the price of Thelo’s fame.
And, yeah, in case anyone has forgotten, I hate turtles, too, but I realize that my turtle-shell-cracking game (I.e. My ability to fit intimidating and powerful combos/mindgames into any openings I can find) has to step up. Much easier to do when a full Ultra bar isn’t staring me in the face, though, which was why I was against that thing from the first day it was announced in SF4. That’s why I love HDR. Spacing. Knockdowns. Throws. Supers. They all actually matter in HDR. You certainly can’t turtle for free in HDR…unless your Honda is fighting Cammy.
So I reread the 0-1 second thing again and it still doesn’t make sense to me.
My original and current reading is:
“What time frame do you consider a move to be a reaction and what time frame do you consider a move to be a prediction?”
Under that reading, I would say that reaction and prediction are independent of any time window. Reaction and prediction depend on the intention of the move executed. As I mentioned before, are you committing to a move because you see your opponent do something, or whether you think you saw your opponent do something. If you’re playing Boxer vs. Ryu and you super 5 frames after Ryu starts his fireball, it could be reaction or prediction. You might have noticed that your opponent has a fireball pattering, so you think he’s going to throw a fireball and you want to super through it. Or, maybe you’re really good and you actually see Ryu start to throw a fireball and you know that super will go through the fireball. Even though the timing is the same, whether the super was executed as a prediction or as a reaction to Ryu’s fireball all depends on the intent of the Boxer player.
But that’s assuming I understood your post correctly. If not my bad. Just ignore what I’ve written above.
Great post 1hitparry. I agree with everything you’ve said, but I just wanted to flesh out the definition of prediction a little more. While it’s true that you have to commit to an attack without any visual evidence, there is other evidence, such as mental evidence, or what is known as “acting on a hunch”.
Predicting an opponent’s behaviour is not just some ESP type stuff, but is actually a science IMO. This is where matchup knowledge comes in, and helps greatly in predicting your opponent’s next move. For example, some characters, in certain matchups and specific situations, have only one option that they can do. To make an over exagerrated example, if Zangief or Hawk have knocked you down in the corner, there is only one correct option for both players to perform during wakeup. By “correct” I mean high level strategies.
Say it’s Guile vs Zangief: Guile knows he’s facing either a safejump tick into SPD or grounded tick into SPD/Running Grab or some other throw. A beginner or mid level Zangief may just give up the advantage and jump back or do something equally stupid, but you can be guaranteed that high level Zangiefs are going to be performing one of those 2 options, which are really the same option if you think about it. They both end in a throw of some kind.
Guile has only one option: reversal Somersault. Either on wakeup or after blockstun if it’s a grounded tick. Which is why Zangief actually only has one option: safejump. He could bait Guile by whiffing a normal or just empty bait, but then he faces the possibility of Guile doing nothing, or rather, waiting for the grounded tick that never happened. And now Zangief has lost the momentum and has to regain it.
So, in that situation, both players truly have only one option against each other: safejump, SPD vs reversal Somersault. In this case, Guile could hope that Zangief messes up the safejump timing and will get hit by the Somersault, or if it’s an early safejump, reversal throw him. If he doesn’t mess up however, Guile will always lose, as he has to block the safejump high, therefore losing Somersault charge, which is his only invincible on startup Special to beat SPDs.
Or, Guile could take the safejump hit and then reversal Somersault, but he would have to rely on the Zangief player being unable to hit confirm into a combo. Which is why I sometimes take the hit with Guile and other charge characters vs safejump 360s. Or try to sac throw, but it’s incredibly hard. But I do that if I feel my opponent is not good at hit confirming.
This is the definition of prediction IMO. It’s not so much as guessing what your opponent will do next, but more like narrowing down the possibilities based on matchup knowledge and the assumption that your opponent is high level. If you do it this way, prediction becomes more like guaranteed knowledge. And when you add to that the ability to read your opponent’s mind, depending on how predictable they are, even high level players can be read easily. I’m not saying all, but some. And then it’s pretty much a lockdown as to what your opponent will do next in any given situation once you know how to read them. Well, that’s how I see it anyway.
When it’s in that “gray area” where it could have been a really fast reaction or prediction, I chalk it up to prediction. Why? Cuz a good opponent that can predict my next moves is much more dangerous than the fastest execution in the world. It could be both, but I assume prediction, just so that I remind myself to try to be more unpredictable.
turtling is skill in itself and encompassed both the prediction and reaction techniques that have been discussed in this thread. I dont see why turtling get so much amonisity since it is a legimate strategy that capcom have endevored to weaken in SFII.
turting is not simply sitting in the corner and waiting for ur opponant to jump in. Turtling effectivly requires a decent knowledge of spacing, zoning and a knowledge of counter attack options. I’ll try and give some example from experience as a guile player:
vs zangief:
I know zangief has to get in in order to win the match, he dosnt have fireballs, but he does have powerful normals. To keep gief out effectivly takes knowing what speed boom to throw in order not to allow gief to spin through it and forcing him to block it, if he jumps it then you can zone him a with a cr.mk. Many gief players get wise to this strategy and will green hand through a boom instead, now from here a turtling guile will need to know not to boom and must accuratly judge the distance that gief is green handing from to detemine if a sweep or flash kcik is required. Maintaining and reseting this cycle is essential against a good gief player, if you are unable to maintain the cycle then gief can safe jump and spd you into oblivion. But the advantage remains in guiles favour since he can counter anything gief can do, but he must also be able to counter attack if gief does something outsode the norm or manages to break the cycle. If gief gets close then a slow boom followed by a jumping firece will force gief backout cos of the double blocked impacked. This is a classic example of corner turtling, but is not the only example. The main thing here is that gief and simular characters only have a limited amount of options in which they can get in, which all can be countered if the cycle is maintained.
midscreen - corner trapping turtling.
This usually works well against shotos, because the have a projectile you cant you cant rely on the fact that they have to come to you, so in order get things in ur favour you have to offensivly position yourself at a distance where you can counter anything they do, this easier against ken than ryu. If you can get a shoto so that most of the screen is behind you then u can effectivly offensivly turtle again shotos, how? bcos u are at a distance in which any attack they throw can be countered. If they try a fireball u can hit them during the startup, hirricances can be upper cutted or flash kicked. Now in this scenario you are being positionally offensive but still turtling bcos you are relying on counter attacks, this style of turtling can be broken easier as comapred to the style of turtling against gief because shotos have more options to break the cycle…if they walk towards you they could have the intention of jab dp any defensive poke, they could hurricane through a boom or even try a walk up throw, so an amount of prediction is required to maintain the spacing in guile favour.
both these styles of play can be maintained at little risk to the turtler aslong as you predict and react accordingly.
then you have scenario’s where turtling does not work at all. These are usually considered guiles bad match ups because the opponants have special moves or normals which simply over power guile or are two quick for him. Balrog is a good example, although balrog can be zoned by guile, it is extremly difficult to maining zoning against balrog cos he has some many powerful options to gain ground and once he’s in its virtually impossible to get him out without sustaining heavy damage and guiles defensive/zoning moves are not reliable. In this matcup, prediction is more effective than reaction. You can cant react against balrog cos he can over power guile by spamming normals, so you have to guess when to flash kick a rush down, when to boom, its diffucult for guile cos those characters have powerful counter moves of their own.
so in conclusion my points are that
(a) turtling does require skill in the forms of reaction and prediction
(b) turtling is not simply sitting in a corner throwing the occasuonal boom and praying for ur opponant to jump, its putting ur opponant in a situation where it seems to him that his best option is to attack when u have all ur bases covered (a counter of each form of attack)
Bah, you guys are over-thinking things. Just do this:
START —> DO NOTHING
LEVEL 1: POSITION YOURSELF TO LESSON OR ELIMINATE COUNTER OPTIONS DOWN TO 2 OR MORE --> DO NOT JUMP-IN. CONTINUE TO WORK TO ACHIEVE LEVEL 2 OR 3.
LEVEL 2: POSITION YOURSELF TO LESSON OR ELIMINATE COUNTER OPTIONS DOWN TO 1 OR NONE --> JUMP-IN FOR 50/50 IF LIFE AND TIMER IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE
LEVEL 3: POSITION YOURSELF TO LESSON OR ELIMINATE COUNTER OPTIONS DOWN TO NONE --> JUMP-IN FOR AND DO MAX DAMAGE COMBO THAT POSITIONS YOU FOR ANOTHER SETUP
LEVEL 4: IF YOU END UP AT LEVEL 2 OR 3, REPEAT IF NECESSARY.
Bah, you guys are over-thinking things. Just do this:
START —> DO NOTHING
LEVEL 1: POSITION YOURSELF TO LESSON OR ELIMINATE COUNTER OPTIONS DOWN TO 2 OR MORE --> DO NOT JUMP-IN. CONTINUE TO WORK TO ACHIEVE LEVEL 2 OR 3.
LEVEL 2: POSITION YOURSELF TO LESSON OR ELIMINATE COUNTER OPTIONS DOWN TO 1 OR NONE --> JUMP-IN FOR 50/50 IF LIFE AND TIMER IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE
LEVEL 3: POSITION YOURSELF TO LESSON OR ELIMINATE COUNTER OPTIONS DOWN TO NONE --> JUMP-IN FOR AND DO MAX DAMAGE COMBO THAT POSITIONS YOU FOR ANOTHER SETUP
LEVEL 4: IF YOU END UP AT LEVEL 2 OR 3, REPEAT IF NECESSARY.
