I sandbag in Windjammers.
Now that is true sandbagging
I don’t even know if I can play seriously anymore, sandbagging has become second nature to me with the “competition” in my city. Plus I have a horrible net connection, so all I have are people in my city to play against.
I play at 100% every time I play someone. I believe that if I play at 100% when I fight someone and they actually beat me, it means I need to train more to improve my skills and learn to adopt new strategies.
I don’t sandbag… at all, not even against my scrub friends, I don’t have the patience to do half-assed fights as it holds me back (Playing to Win keeps you focused), imo if I’m gonna teach someone how to play a fighting game I’m gonna beat them into the ground, if they ask for a rematch it’s all good, if they give up then they probably never had the drive to get good to begin with, hell I have sets on 2DF/GGPO and I get my trumped all the time (ST, 3S, 98, 2K2, RB2, MOTW, etc) but I won’t chalk it up to sandbagging…
personally i wouldnt spend the time effort or money to travel to play someones fuckaround team
2 type of “sandbagging” I use
- Pick characters I’m not as good with but still play seriously otherwise
- I’m so bored of winning constantly that I just start doing more experiments and silly things to entertain myself.
I agree this thread should be in FGD if it isn’t KOF centric.
That’s all in competitions though, and with the intent to fool people to get advantage, this is what your definition lacks.
You can’t just say not playing 100% is sandbagging, by your own definition a lot of people would be sandbagging unknowingly, and almost 100% would be in casuals when there is nothing at stakes.
How would people find new stuff if they didn’t try anything? Trying things by not playing to win isn’t sandbagging.
Then there’s the method.
In fighting games, if you’re in a tournament you’re expected to know the basics of the gameplay. So, there is no reason to try to hide things that are already known, unless you’re sandbagging to beat scrubs that don’t expect their opponent to be any good. Or if you know your bad habits can kill you and change chars to hide them but that would only mean you’re not as good as you think you are, and wouldn’t necessarily win if the tourney had more matches.
If you have a new counterpick, strategy or trick, sure, hide it until you can use against a good player if need be. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need any warm up before the tourney, play but just stick to the basics they’ll probably do the same anyway. Hell, if you’re really good, your warm up is the pool matches.
You can play badly on purpose, with your main or not, but that doesn’t really work if you are a known player.
Your method of “sandbagging” was weird, that’s probably why Emil called you out on it. If you knew your definition wasn’t shared by everyone, it would have been better to say so earlier. It would have spared us all a few pages of stupid shit.
Now, I don’t know you or MightyMar nor the context for those fights, but fighting him using bosses, playing randomly while rushing down and trying to punish with BC combos knowing that he doesn’t even own the game. Totally crushing him, isn’t really what I would have called sandbagging.
But if your definition of it is not playing 100% to win, then OK sure, why not.
That’s not sandbagging. You just don’t play seriously, that’s it. I doubt you’re playing badly on purpose to fool them and win later when it matters by surprising them.
This isn’t sandbagging either.
The Bison player isn’t doing anything really different in any round, he is still spamming specials whenever he can and using throws in close range, he just messed up the throw the first time.
Both player just have a ridiculously bad defense. The Bison player just messed up and DSP was able to attack him in the first round, and didn’t block anything. Then in the later round, DSP couldn’t even get offensive, but the Bison isn’t doing things differently, he just didn’t have to try to block this time.
Now it’s true he doesn’t use cr.lk to cr.mk/throw after the 1st round, could be because he messed up, or because he saw DSP spam counter attacks but in the end, he just adapted and stopped doing it.
Playing badly isn’t necessary to adapt to your opponent, I fail to see where purposely getting kicked in the face and losing helped him win the match when he could just have blocked it.
I didn’t watch the vid with sound, I don’t know if there is any lag involved and if that affected throw breaking and blocking. I’m not saying those players are bad, surely not based on one video.
I understand this completely, I remember back in the day even if I tried to play hard (EVEN IN CAPCOM GAMES) my buddies would get mad and quit…so I completely understand this. But as someone else said, you find out real fast if someone can handle that or not.
Thanks for your contribution Starwin. I look forward to playing you guys again in KOFXII etc! You got skills!
Thanks for your input, it’s always good to see how other people think about these things, because as I tell people, both ways work just fine.
I understand that. I would if it’s a means to get better and that’s the purpose. But for tournaments my goal is mainly to win, so I’m just getting warmed up in casuals mainly, while testing out the competition until it’s time for tournament matches. You for sure don’t wanna enter the tournament cold…
I do both of these without a doubt like 150% of the time. When you have like no competition around you like me and you gotta go 14 hours to Mexico for competition, pretty much this is the only way you keep from getting too bored while you ain’t hopping the border. So I do silly things A LOT in casuals, but the funny thing is the “silly things” end up leading you to discover something GOOD from time to time! I do many silly things in casuals I wouldn’t do in tournaments…because to me that’s what casuals are for…testing stuff out, getting warmed up (at a tournament that is).
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To me in my own definition of sandbagging, when I am not playing 100% then to some people I am fooling them because they think that’s how I am gonna play in the tournament. So once again those people that think I’m playing 100% will get fooled come tournament time when I play them completely differently.
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To me it is, because to me there are two schools of thought. Those that play 100% all the time irregardless, and those who pretty much save their best for when it counts.
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To me it is, because if you are playing 100% you aren’t testing out new things. To me, tournament matches AREN’T times to test out things. You stick with what you know in tournament matches, thus casuals are essential for me to test out new things, because I will in turn review that in the match vids and keep it in mind for future reference. I don’t believe in taking chances like that in tournament matches.
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This is what I do. Everytime I go to a tournament even if it’s against people I play alot in tournaments, I ALWAYS have new strategies, counterpicks, etc. So I use casuals to try new stuff out so I can see how it works, but yet hide my counterpicks, strategies etc until tournament time.
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To me it’s not playing 100%. If it was 100% trust me what you say would be quite worse. It’s not 100%, I think it’s at a level MightyMar can understand, plus I think it’s something he can continue to adapt to. I’m a tough teacher, Ill hit you with some hard stuff (ala what krazykone said, I wanna find out if you are gonna waste my time and punk out, because if you are save me the time and go whine to someone else.), but at the same time it wont be too hard. I want every student of mine to be exposed to as much as possible, so I even make sure to try to play as many characters as possible so they can be exposed to as many as possible. To me, if you show people stuff enough, if they dont punk out and quit (like krazykone said), then they will adapt and find ways around it. Also about playing the bosses, that’s what casuals are for to me, since we know for sure you aren’t gonna be able to play them in a tournament. When I am training my students I don’t like to leave stones unturned…I want them to be prepared for like almost anything.
Good post though KMP.
That’s exactly what I was saying, it seems you misunderstood my post, we just don’t agree with the definition of sandbagging.
I agree with all these posts. Just don’t really see a point to it as well.
I’ll quickly admit though that part of it maybe that I don’t play many characters when I stick to a fighting game (stick to a small set religiously) so that may limit my ability to sandbag even if I wanted to.
My two conclusions are that, A) The Bison was sandbagging, or B) DSP was just playing really badly, I happened to main Dictator in SFIV and while I haven’t fought that many Gouken’s that Dictator did switch it up in the following rounds, It’s at least a even match-up since Gouken can zone and counter you until you have meter, anyway the difference is I saw is that he started to use EX PS to stuff fireballs, EX headstomp to bait counters with LP/MP/HP follow up… and throws to break what could be counters, j. MK to stuff what would probably have been a Air tatsu, etc… but DSP was also playing bad, Gouken can zone like a monster… but he didn’t zone, or break throws, no do any well placed counters, or even EX ground tatsu to knock him away, he just sat their getting owned…
Yeah I agree I’ve also found a lot of good things by messing around doing experiments and silly stuff. Sometimes you find a move has a property you didn’t know about etc