What is the difference between 'random' and mixups?

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
1

I feel like quitting this game again because I thought I had improved when I learned more stuff about Sakura and my options in situations but now when I ex shou through a throw attempt and do different stuff with my neutral jumps I’m told that I’m being random and unsafe and relying on gimmicks.

If I try to play ‘solid’ I more likely lose cos I’m just sitting there waiting for a chance and end up being knocked down and raped to death.

So it seems when I used to do only the little I knew I lost alot more but when I started being more ‘random’ I won a bit more but its not enough to beat people with 4k PP upwards so where do I go now from here?

EDIT:
Latest vid of me with annotations where I think I was random or using gimmicks.

[media=youtube]g1qVziRu-4M][color=purple]Hopefully My Last Gimmicky Sakura Video (See Description)[/color[/media]

2

im having the same problem. but on the opposite side, i keep losing because of people just randomly throwing in moves and my block decides to not work. i got beat by a ken last night when all he was doing was jumping and kicking. everything i tried got beat out by a stupid kick.

sometimes im sure this game is broken. especially when i beat someone with 2300 on endless and get beat by some guy with 125 pp because of constant luck.

3

As an El Fuerte player:

Random and mix-ups are two sides of the same coin, at least to me. As Fuerte, I’m going to seem random by my opponent, but I’m actually mixing up my strategy so as to keep my opponent scared and confused. When you’re mixing up, you need to make educated guesses for what you’re opponent is going to do and for what he’s going to expect. You also need to be aware of the potential risks in going for a certain mixup option. For example, if I’m going against Ryu with Ultra available, I have to take into account that I can’t go for Tostada or Tortilla as much as I’d like because he can DP me and go into Ultra, with or without FADC.

But be aware that you cannot rely on mixups alone. Footsies, pokes, etc. are still important, no matter how few of those are available to you.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

4

I think when you’re being random, you yourself aren’t quite sure about what you’re doing and why. When you’re doing mixups you anticipate what your opponent thinks you will do and then do something else to counter the move he’s gonna use to beat the move he thinks you’re gonna use. If that makes sense.

5

random play has no intelligent reasoning, mixups do.

being random in that you’re keeping the other guy guessing by not being predictable is not the “random” people talk about in the negative sense.

6

step 1 of getting past this plateau you’re at:

stop caring about what people perceieve as your playstyle

haters gonna hate - just sit back and pile up some wins, if you’re making calculated guesses that aren’t losing you matches(or wouldn’t lose them if someone was on point with their punishes) then keep it up. playing “random” and playing solid aren’t mutually exclusive, you need to be able to do both to win since you need to be able to get a life lead to turtle

7

random is just doing shit without any thought to the consequences and the possible outcomes
mixups are when you purposely put your opponent in a situation when he has to make a choice and if he makes the wrong choice, you can capitalize on it hard but if he makes the right choice, the risk should be minimal.

Doing an ex shouken through a grab isnt really a good situation because if your opponent decides to block or do a move with more invulnerability, you lose a shitton of health yet if you hit them with it, all you did was hit him with a shouken and pushed him half screen away.

A better example of mixup is akumas vortex in the corner. Once he knocks you down akuma can go for either a flip throw or flip palm option select grab/dp or even flip kick which will hit from the front but make him land behind you. He can do an ambigious and hard to block j lk and on top of having to decide what side to block high on, you have to see what side he lands so you can block low on the correct side. And to make matters worse he can option select a DP to catch backdashes, jumps and most moves with invulnerability.

This is a proper mixup because you force your opponent to commit to an option which might mean he blocks one of akumas attacks, but if he blocks the wrong way, he’ll end up getting knocked down and it starts all over again.

8

I’m going to start off by saying first and foremost, relax seriously. This game isn’t broken, your block didn’t “refuse” to come out, and the world isn’t coming to an end. Also, anytime you use any of the above excuses mentioned (including my all-time favorite: LUCK), you seriously need to re-evaluate your own playstyle and critique your own gameplay.

With that being said, it’s quite simple really.

Being random:
-This involves throwing out moves or actions that require no thought or planning to it, but can be categorized as shenanigans. In short, being random just means using moves that catch your opponent off guard once or twice (and if they don’t know any better, alot more), but won’t really work against players who know how to defend against such a shenanigan.

Using a mixup: This MIGHT involve throwing out a random move, however, it’s a mixup is not used the same way a random move is used. A mix up is just that: a mix~up. It’s used to confuse your opponent, to keep them guessing, and to hope they weren’t expecting/don’t know how to react in time to the new move.

Really, I’d say mixups have to do with mind-games, where random moves have to do with the act of surpising your opponent. You can use a random mixup effectively, but you cant effectively mixup random moves (against players who see it coming).

I.e. With Ken, you can catch people in between blockstrings by using kara Throw. Eventually, they will start to catch onto your patterns, and then you can mix it up by throwing a SRK when you might expect them to try to throw tech. This isn’t random because you know why you are doing it. On the other hand, it you simply walked up and did SRK and caught someone off guard, that’s just being random. It may work once or twice, but beyond that, unless you’re doing something with a purpose, its totally random.

9

Damn Right, Good example. My advice to you to you flowers even though it sound simple but you’ll get it in a long run.

Excel Your MindGames (Proper timing & safest mixups that put you in the least amount of trouble as possible) threw out each character fight against, It may take time but it well worth it, get them reactions down and learn to do the right tactics and moves in the right situations, that how i helped myself out

  • (Hell theres even mindgames/mixups in just proper blocking if you get what im saying. IMO)*.

Dont quit my dude…TRUST.

Side note it seems you play makato. IMO if you want (and im sure you have before) you should go to the makato fourms and see who can help you out furthermore with you character.

10

When people get a good mindfucking, the first thing they wanna do is say it’s random.

11

mixups have purpose, random is just your fingers moving whatever way is comfortable.

the only one who can say whether youre random or not is yourself. If you know what youre doing is unconventional and probably will mess with people, then thats simply a strategy.

12

Well, simply put, mixups are intentional setups to keep your opponent guessing, while being random is just throwing out just about anything that more or less doesn’t make any sense in hopes of catching your opponent off guard.

Being random isn’t a bad thing unless you rely on it.

Random = Gimmicks

Regardless if you lose with them, you’re teaching yourself bad habits. Instead of using gimmicks you should improve your footsies. Solid footsies beats pretty much everything but footsies comes with exp so you won’t learn it over night.

13

Mixups is not the same as gimmicks with is not the same as random.

Mixups involve understanding of your options, pressure, and forcing to opponent to react (or guess) wrong.

Gimmicks involve exploiting the ignorance of your opponent with something that is actually wildly unsafe or stupid if they actually know how to deal with it.

Random is just pushing buttons without a clear reason why.

14

Smart random stuff is usually used as a way to keep people honest. Like say after you are knocked down, I do a hurricane kick with ryu. You back dash and committed to it, and I catch you with my hurricane kick. You might ask yourself “why do that, and not go for the cross up, overhead, throw, dp like everyone else?”

With viper, sometimes I just throw out a DP. It’s not a reaction DP, it’s an anticipation DP. Why do this “random” move? Because fools like jumping, and I can get an ultra if I catch you. Ryus do this too to get an ultra.

Or when I play as cammy vs bison, when a Bison does scissors kick that’s blocked, I just do a spiral arrow to catch the walk back.

Or as Abel, I just do a “random” DP throw to put you on the ground.

15

Thanks so much everyone for helping me to clear this up so that I know how to progress now.

I think I’m getting it now. I’ve added my latest vid of me using my main sakura in endless and I put some annotations in places where I think I was using gimmicks. See my first post.

If anyone has time to watch please do let me know if I am using other gimmicks too and where I can improve on stuff (bad execution aside lol).

I’ve never been able to break 4k PP and I had hoped to get there by the time I reached rank A but never did. I also often lose like 15-0 to other players who are over 4k PP and its frustrating because sometimes to me it looks like we are doing the same stuff yet I always somehow lose tha match in the end.

16

Is a random lp shoryuken or ex tatsu a smart move? Ask yourself why you did that. I think if you anticipated them walking forward, or sticking something out, or maybe to keep them honest and make them respect you to send a message, they are smart moves.

17

I think people get too caught up in these loaded terms like random and mixup and gimmick. If you are playing in a way where you are making context sensitive decisions about how to beat what you expect your opponent is about to do, then just keep doing what you’re doing. Sometimes there are multiple options to beat something, and some options bear more risk than others, so by committing to a riskier option, it might look random to someone, or they might be more apt to complain about it, but who cares?

I also think its detrimental to simplify something like playing solid down to “blocking more”, or something along those lines. To me, playing solid means playing in a manner where you are competent in all aspects of the game. Just blocking and punishing is a pretty simple concept and isn’t really the mark of a solid player on its own.

18

The meaning of “random” really depends on the context IMO.

The positive connotation of “randomness” usually implies that it’s a technique that’s difficult to counter because part of it relies on prediction. (eg. Daigo’s fireball game).

The negative connotation implies that a move which under normal conditions has a low probability of success (and/or high probability of getting punished) was performed without sufficient reason. (eg. most full screen Ultras, preempting a jump by doing DP against a player who doesn’t jump). Interestingly enough, when this does work it’s called “a good read” lol.

When it comes to mixups, randomness means that the opponent has to guess between several (more-or-less) equally probable options (eg. Gouki and Abel’s okizeme)

When it comes to gimmicks, it usually means landing high-risk, high-reward move that relies on the opponent’s ignorance. This isn’t necessarily random, but it is sometimes used pejoratively in this case to denote that the player who landed the gimmick got lucky.

My wording sucks, but that’s just my understanding of it.

19

You’re using gimmicks if your answer to this queston is yes: “If they blocked this correctly would I get punished?”

Obviously there are still times you’ll answer yes to that question without it being a gimmick but, those are calculated risks you take when you need to. Not as a general strategy.

In the video you did a few random DPs and called some gimmicks and some calculated risks but, the truth is… what damage can you get off of a random DP other than the damage from the DP? It was a unnecessary risk that gave you no advantage at all. It hit but, it didn’t even matter. It’s not like it does enough damage to make a difference in the match.

20

Random is something you did with no consideration as to why you’re doing it or what will happen after. You could get punished massively or put in a bad position if it doesn’t work, and the gains are really not that great if it does work. It’s what happens when the player feels like admitting he has no fucking clue what he’s doing, or what he should do, but likes dem special moves. Whether or not it’ll actually “work”, as such, is random; the person doing it sure as shit doesn’t know and the person on the receiving end has no reason to expect anyone to do something so colossally stupid. It’s a staple for online play because the real counter to randomness is being able to do things on reaction, which doesn’t happen online.

Gimmicks are very similar in the sense that they specifically take advantage of how unreasonable it is for the other person to expect, and therefore, plan for them. They’re also similar in that once they are expected, they can be reacted to and punished. This is why even pros work them into their game sometimes AND why they’re used sparingly. Again, these are online staples because doing anything on reaction under lag is often not feasible.

Things that are “good reads” actually have a significantly higher chance of both working and putting the person doing it in a better position. They’re similar, but they’re related to mindgames, adapting to what the other player has done previously, and training the other player to put himself in a position that increases the chance of success for whatever’s being thrown out. Random doesn’t involve ANY of that shit.

Mixups, as everyone’s said, are like Akuma’s vortex. It’s generally a situation where one player has several options of attack, the defender has an answer for all of them, and the position forces both players to make guesses – educated or otherwise – which option to pick and leave the attacker in a relatively safe position if the defender guesses right. Like with Gief’s vortex, the other player really just hopes to get out of the situation with his skin.