Why is it that some people are inevitably better than others?
I understand that there might be a genetic reaction time variance and things along these lines, but why are people like Tokido and Infiltration always on top?
What exactly do they understand that the rest of the plebs don’t?
I always see posts about how the way to improve is to watch matches and improve weak areas, etc. But, this doesn’t explain any real fundamental foundational theory of the game.
It’s almost like being “self-taught” in other fields, and yes you’ll get good at certain areas but you will also likely have gaping holes in your knowledge base, and your skill amounts to a bunch of techniques as opposed to a real knowledge of what is going on and what you are supposed to be doing.
Is there a universal approach to the game? Or is it literally a completely different strategy for each character and beyond that player tendencies? Is this whole game simply a matter of learning ALL the characters, and trying to keep ahead of your opponent with trickery, rather than straight-up sound direct theoretical approach? So yeah, is there a universal approach? Or does this game require you to learn every character and player tendency? Or is this a dishonest game of trickery?
Watching pros, have you ever caught yourself reading their play better? The spectator sees more of the game and all that. Besides the capacity that our brains reserve for execution, that’s mainly because we have no influence.
Once I do, I often make the mistake of overrating the importance of pressure, placing the onus on myself to command the flow of play rather than follow it. That sort of thinking leads to tunnel-vision and predictability, because I’m too busy thinking about what I might be able to do to him and not vice versa. You might go through a bunch of stuff you’ve practised in training, noting what works and what doesn’t, but if you win the battle with that approach you’ll lose the war.
If it feels safe to, whiff moves on purpose and note if they would’ve blocked them or not. If not, maybe commit to one later on; or if so, perhaps you can feint with something. It’s all about testing to see what they do in as many situations as possible, building up a profile on them. Training-room combos are worthless if you can’t draw a mistake, and I think most non-pros (I’m guilty) try to probe their opponents’ defences with a dictionary list of setups, centring the focus of the match on their own actions while giving away tons of free info on their habits.
So it’s largely about leaving your combo-monster ego at the door until your opportunities come, and having enough self-control to let things happen instead of trying to force them. It’s not about you - it’s about the other guy, and the more questions you’ve been able to ask without compromising your safety too much, the easier it is to trap him. Does he jump often? If not, when he does jump, why? Can you replicate the situation? And so on.
The trick is to make unthreatening play seem threatening enough to prompt actions, and then remembering those responses for later. But against the very best, you have to be careful that they’re not selling you tells.
The difference between good and bad players is all in the mindset. A good player will be able to identify and correct his mistakes much faster than a bad player; he will understand that he’s getting bodied because the opponent is too free to jump in or because he’s not punishing specific things and will change his gameplan according to that.
I think a good player is always in a learning mindset, which is what enables him to continuously increase his knowledge of the game. That knowledge is extremely important because without it you might not be able to “see” your own mistakes. If you don’t understand the concept of a frame trap you will keep getting tagged during pressure without really knowing why; the mistake will simple not “appear” to you.
If you’re not up to study stuff you’ll probably never get better at fighting games, but if you are up to that you might improve faster than you think.
It’s mostly a combination of 2 things. Player reactions and smarts.
The better your reactions the less smart you have to be and smarter you are the worse your reactions can be. But generally to be a top player you need to be top class in both. Neither alone is probably going to make you into a top player unless you are heads and tails above what anyone else is in that class… so your reactions would have to be like 100-120 ms (most top players have reactions between 150-220 ms)my reactions in my younger 30’s were around 245 ms and now they are around 260 ms.
Reactions has a lot to do with how well you execute, it isn’t the end all, but it’s a lot.
Smarts is very broad subject. It incorporates but is not limited to:
Ability to practice smart and get full value out of training mode
Ability to identify patterns and recall them (remembering everything that happens in a match is a key point of this)
Ability to use opponent psychology against them to make reads and classify types of players so as to be better able to deal with them with fewer reads.
Creativity when it comes to problem solving. Just about every problem in a fighting game is solvable. Sometimes it’s as innocuous as taking a step forward or backward where you usually wouldn’t, but being able to adapt isn’t only about identifying what is wrong… but it’s identifying how to fix the problem… and that’s hard because the adaptation won’t be the same for everyone even against the same problem since not everyone has the same skills.
In skullgirls a problem I faced was what to do when my opponent turtled up at the upper away corner of the screen and then super and double jumped over me when I pursued them and resumed turtling at the opposite upper corner of the screen? He could just turtle as long as he wanted and then get in at his leisure cause he had control of the match. I never found a solution I though adequate so, after months of playing against it, and not finding answers, I stopped playing. That goes to my lack of smarts. But it is what it is, I’m not a top player.
There are definitely huge gaps in knowledge across the playerbase, in fact it’s such a known element that the first thing you should be identifying in an opponent is in what areas he is bad and then ruthlessly try to steer the match into those areas. Like if your opponent doesn’t know about delay throw teching then you should ruthlessly frame trap him to death. If he’s not good at AA then you should jump at him a lot. If he can’t protect against dashes because he’s to worried about AA then you should dash at him a lot. If he’s very good at stopping the jump/dash mixup then he may be over focusing on defense and may allow you to walk in on him and wiff punish him for near free etc etc
@Dime_x I think you’re confusing reactions and cold blood. Almost everyone is able to do “something” in specific situations, but good players will be able to do exactly what they need to counter the situation and punish.
Indeed, reactions get mechanically better with the game knowledge. Knowing that at the range s and with n EX bars the opponent can only do x or y greatly helps in reducing the hazard and therefore in being able to have an appropriate reaction to the possible outcomes.
I think it’s safe to say that most of what we call “reactions” are in fact extremely quick reads.
Not going to argue the broad point of what reactions are and are not. But the ability to call on reactions is a talent innate. You will never go faster than what you are born with. You can do things to speed them up like drink coffee, play in the afternoon, be well rested, not hungry but not have a full stomache etc etc etc
But what you are born with is generally what you have. Using twitch over various other reactions is both a part of smarts and your reactive ability. Not everyone can call on the same attributes which i said up top.
The whol misconception that people “react faster” once they know a game is, bullshit. The thing is that when first playing a game or getting used to it, people are reacting VERY SLOWLY. Not at their normal reaction rates, as they get better at the game thye eventually get to the point of being able to use their innate reactive abilities.
But never does their innate ability ever get better… that’s just biological.
That’s absolutely untrue. You can train your reaction time to get better. Also you use coffee as an example, but a few people use drugs much harder than coffee.
Someone who drills their reactions constantly against specific moves and in general, high as a kite on adderol is going to out-perform their own biologically given genetic reaction times.
But this is e-sports, no-one is going to call for drug testing - yet …
Evidence of this? I’ve “researched” (meaning I’ve googled it a lot over the years) the ability to improve ones reaction time and it is generally agreed that outside of real world events such as meditation in a super quiet environment/drugs/shit that we all know should be off the table because reasons… there is nothing that will improve your reaction speed past it’s biological potential. It could certainly be that you or someone may not be performing up to their biological potential… but getting there doesn’t mean that you have improved your reaction speed. It’s just that you got where you were supposed to be all along.
If I took a human benchmark test and barely concentrated I could easily score 300-320 ms. Does that mean if I take things serious all of a sudden and get 250 that I’ve improved?
Not to me.
But to others that like things like participation awards and rewards for doing what they would normally be able to do, I guess it would.
It’s possible to shoot yourself in the face and live and fall out of a plane with no parachute and survive and get bitten by a lethally poisonous animal and not die…
But let’s not start to teach exceptions to rules as the rules themselves. Nothing is 100%.
There is no known way that I know of for the average person to transcend their inherent reaction time. Freaks of nature might be able to do it…
Now show the laymen how they can.
Oh you can’t? Then what’s your argument… that there exists mutations among the human genome? Thanks, we already knew that. It doesn’t prove your point though.
…Aren’t you just saying the same thing in another way? Nobody here argued about biological limits, but reactions - as any other faculty - can be properly trained/exploited or not. I might be great with foreign languages, but if I don’t learn any my potential will be unexploited.
As for reactions… once again, we should know what we’re talking about. If we’re talking about being able to react to overheads with jabs or by blocking high then it can definitely be improved both by training and by improved understanding of the game and of your opponent’s patterns. Reacting in fighting games implies 1. being able to identify the current situation 2. knowing which is the most appropriate answer to that situation, and none of those stem directly from your “biological” or “innate” reactive ability. Without learning or training you will never know how good you really are at reacting.
The point is that you guys are arguing that people can increase reactions in a competitive setting, where anyone that is already competitive, has already been increasing their reactions to their limits, FURTHER than that. Just by trying. Because the increase in reaction time happens naturally as one gets experience at something till they hit their biological limit.
You can try to go past this natural point, but I’ve read studies/articles by doctors/informed scientists where they say there is basically very little the average person can do to increase their reactions past that point by any meaningful measurement past huge quantities of time invested for increases that are generally less than 5-10% over the general populace.
Getting past that limit requires very hard work and tends to be unsubstainable past a certain point.
This article as an example cites overspeed training, which is the equivalent of swinging 3-4 bats a time right before your next at bat to make the single bat you use feel lighter in comparison… this thing can be applied to fighting games as well, like play snes streetfighter on turbo 8 which is stupid fast… then go back after 10 minutes and play the regular game speed and shit seems like it’s slow motion… but the affect doesn’t last and is largely a placebo. As soon as you get used to the slow speed your reactions slow down with it. And unfortunately aside from reactions, everything else about your game will be off. You press your jump attack way to early miss reversals cause your timing is dumb bad. Etc etc etc
The “improvement” in reaction time you guys are talking about is the natural improvement anyone gets at doing any task repetitiously. This improvement is only a thing for beginners. Once past that stage improving noticeably more is quite difficult save for very few exceptions.
Your overhead reaction example is bad because reacting to overheads is never your fastest biological reaction because you don’t even know what you are reacting to. Yes in that circumstance you can “improve” your reaction but you aren’t really improving, you are just getting to where you should be in the first place.
Again you’re just turning over the argument. Saying that you’re improving your reactions or that you’re getting closer to your “natural” reaction time means concretely the same thing. You’re simply having a Platonist approach to it. It’s like saying that an infant doesn’t learn to speak but develops his natural faculty of speaking.
The very fact that reactions can be clouded or enhanced by drugs as well as other specific states (lack of sleep, etc) shows that the “natural” reaction time is not necessarily something that you have 24/7 and that there are ways to help you “reach” it or exploit it faster.
And since the author is probably relatively new to fighting games talking about how to improve your reactions is totally relevant.
You’ve got to realize that these people work hard at what they do. They’re playing more hours per day on average than just about anyone. Geography has something to do with it as well, larger populations in smaller areas usually produce better players.