Like most things it is a cross between genetics and experience. Talent will determine the rate of learning and the upper limit you can reach. Some people will hit a wall no matter how earnest their practice.
Think of it this way: some people can take their alcohol better than others. You can increase your tolerence to alcohol by drinking more. But some people, no matter what, will always be able to drink more than you can.
Of course, believing as you do will make sure that no limits exist in your head, and you won’t psychologically restrict yourself. But that doesn’t mean there are no limits.
And even if there were no limits, you may just die of old age if your rate of learning is low. Some people take a year to master something, whereas another takes a week.
I’d say the health of your nervous system has a lot to do with how well you perform in a fighting game. These things are affected by genetics, diet, environmental stressors, and the ageing process.
Genetics just always seems to be a cop out by those who don’t want to take responsibility and admit they lack the dedication and proper training methods. I don’t think anyone could look a Jwong and Marn and think Great Genitics, and a good diet o_O
1- amazing execution (you can come to that by practice if you’re not blessed enough).
2- patience : the fact to be dedicated to some thing,to tend to be better at it,requires to be patient A LOT.
3- motivation : what drives every-one to accomplish successful things.
it’s not a contradiction to accept responsibility and know that there are some limits you are not responsible for.
Hereditary advantages exist. If one person has twice as good execution as me, that doesn’t always mean he put twice as much time in or tried twice as hard or was twice as disciplined. What if he didn’t and wasn’t? What if he puts in 1 hour a day and I put 10 hours in a day and he still comes out ahead? Do you really think that all that separates us is how hard we try?
Erm, you can be disadvantaged or advantaged in more than one area. I thought this was obvious, but there’s the remark about player’s obesity and now this.
Funny how people emphasize reactions in a genre where there’s often tools that completely mess with them. The most simple example is that higher level players often whiff jabs/shorts as a feint for stuff like fireballs, pokes, etc…
Exploiting a player’s especially twitchy reactions is a fundamental mentioned in the Sonic hurricane footsie guide.
What about JWong’s magical ability to play any fighting game? I mean he literally played KOF XIII for a week before competing.
Of course we also have examples of hard ass work. Obviously there’s Broly but I think people take for granted how much effort Daigo put into the game when he was young. By the time he made his debut in SFA3 he had already played for a long ass time. Considering how long Daigo’s been playing, it makes me feel too old to become someone important (19), but then I look at someone like Alex Valle who is well aged.
Edit: Of course, how old was Valle when he started playing?
What about JWong’s magical ability to play any fighting game? I mean he literally played KOF XIII for a week before competing.[/quote)
I must have had a magick ability to pick up a guitar and start playing in a band on stage in front of a crowd with only a weeks training when i did it, or could it have been the 12 years I played Bass before that and the skills transfered. And who cares how fast you can press a button? it’s all about the how and they why of pressing that button. And there is nothing in genetics that can limit how good you will be at fighting games. This argument ended when Art invoked the name Broley Legs. If you lose it’s 100% your training.
This thread isn’t stupid, but I feel the direction the thread is heading is south…
The truth of the matter is that pro players use every advantage they have as often as possible. Those advantages can be in game, play area, scene, player accessibility, tournament accessibility, footage accessibility, game knowledge, match up knowledge, genetics, opponent data, opponent readability, ect…
If you want to be at the level of a top player, you just have to put the time in. Best example is Sanford, he had nothing and grind-ed out his marvel 2 skills. He will always say players ain’t hungry enough, for the most part its true. A lot of the top players mentioned were around before the internet footage equalizer, where you had to write or remember some shit you saw in tournament. Training mode was not as good back then either. But they practiced with whatever tools they had and learned pretty much everything about the games they played. These days, everything just fall in our laps and players still don’t train out their defenses in training mode. Genetics is continually proven by studies to matter less in everything competitive than expected. Usually it boils down to opportunity, health, relationships (in the good or bad people you hang out with sense) and dedication. If anything, opportunity (usually financial based) is the catalyst for professional success. If you can’t afford the tournament, can’t practice because you’re always performing overtime, can’t afford that xbox, can’t travel to play good players in person; those are the real reasons players can’t dedicate and elevate themselves to pro status. Don’t forget brand opportunity. Wasn’t there some sort of controversy about pro players getting their hands on vanilla sf4 first. People were complaining that they had an unfair advantage in those early high payout tournaments. That happens because of the opportunity of either already being a pro player, knowing a pro player or being a known popular player. We can also talk about the scenes. People like to talk about Justin Wong, but fail to speak about where he came from and where he moved to. Would JWong be as good as he is if he came from say, PA or AZ? How about AL? The thing is, your scene and the hungry players in it are what elevate their top players to pro status. Also, hungry locals get elevated by their top players as well, once a again, look at Sanford and everyone’s favorite IFC Yipes. They say they became what they are because they were tired of JWong winning. How good would they be if there was no Wong and vice versa. I can say more but that book would never get read… This thread is focused on the wrong thing, it should be about how we can level each other up to pro player status as opposed to studying how elite and untouchable they are…
Genetics only play a part in how talented you’ll naturally be when first starting out. Due to genetics, it’ll take one person longer than the next man to master something. Doesn’t mean that person can never be on the next man’s level with hard work and dedication.
Genetics and natural talent will only take you so far. At a certain point, its those with talent and drive that excel.
Talent + Practice > Practice
Talent with no practice < Practice
It applies to pretty much everything, from sports to music to games.
Some pro gamers just have crazy drive. Others made it with just talent. Some have both, and those are the ones that are consistently placing first at tourneys…
Only a pro player can really say what separates them from everyone else tbh.
There has to be SOMETHING they have the ordinary players don’t have. Do the top 5 marvel even practice the game anymore? Not many intermediate players have the ability to not practice a game, and still place in top 8.
This thread is pretty old, but haven’t been through in a while. and some of this was making my head hurt.
The genetics argument gets taken down pretty hard by the geographic clusters of top players. If the main factor is genetic then why are so many top players playing with each other or living in the same city. Why is it that guys who couldn’t make top 8 six years ago move to NY or Socal and start blowing up. The FGC is littered with people who have great reactions and can’t make it out of pools to save their own life.
The biggest difference between pro players and everyone is are their access to other top players both as training partners and educational resources. Playing against higher level competition forces you to play better, playing against the best players or a character, all the time makes other people who use that character seem not as bad. Three months of grinding alone online doesn’t come close to spending a week at a top players house. Top players can teach you on day one what it could take you years to learn on your own.
Now once you look into these cluster of top players things like better smarter use of resources,better execution, sharper reactions come into play, but for the base reason on why pro players are different that the average players it because they have access to better players and more high level knowledge than the average player does.