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What constitutes character mastery/high level play?

Dhoppler

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This thread serves two purposes.

The first is discuss and agree on a general outline for what it takes to be a top level player in this game. This ranges from minor things like spacing, normals, and hit confirms to more advanced things like mix ups, incoming mix ups, and resets. There's always room for improvement so it's good to know what that improvement needs to be. I'd like answers to be in a list format with an explanation for each item.

ex:
3 BnBs: You should be able to confirm and maximize damage in ideal situations, air to airs, and off of a stray hit from a heavy punch (this last one was purely a hypothetical)
Resets: You should know the ideal drop points for each of your combos so you can plan a reset or mi xup accordingly.
Incoming mix ups: If you don'[t have these, you're leaving damage on the table. If you leave this out of your game play, then you might as well be playing KoF or Mortal Kombat or some other game with on the spot round 2s.


The second purpose is to discuss what you should be able to do with each character and how that would relate in the meta game. All opinions are welcome. Ultimately it's important to have goals when in training mode. I've made the mistake of valuing experience over practice and mastery when they should be equals that go hand in hand. Otherwise it's easy to plateau and stagnate. With that said, what do you all think?
 
This thread serves two purposes.

The first is discuss and agree on a general outline for what it takes to be a top level player in this game. This ranges from minor things like spacing, normals, and hit confirms to more advanced things like mix ups, incoming mix ups, and resets. There's always room for improvement so it's good to know what that improvement needs to be. I'd like answers to be in a list format with an explanation for each item.

ex:
3 BnBs: You should be able to confirm and maximize damage in ideal situations, air to airs, and off of a stray hit from a heavy punch (this last one was purely a hypothetical)
Resets: You should know the ideal drop points for each of your combos so you can plan a reset or mi xup accordingly.
Incoming mix ups: If you don'[t have these, you're leaving damage on the table. If you leave this out of your game play, then you might as well be playing KoF or Mortal Kombat or some other game with on the spot round 2s.


The second purpose is to discuss what you should be able to do with each character and how that would relate in the meta game. All opinions are welcome. Ultimately it's important to have goals when in training mode. I've made the mistake of valuing experience over practice and mastery when they should be equals that go hand in hand. Otherwise it's easy to plateau and stagnate. With that said, what do you all think?


1. To be a top level player has nothing to do with knowledge but everything to do with results.

IMHO, top players make up about 10-20% of there respective communities. Ie the top 20% of a popular game or the top 10% of a not so popular game.

Another litmus test is top 8 appearances, anyone who gets into top 8 or finds themselves there consistently, is to me a top player.
But the most basic and real litmus test is: can you beat other top players. If the answer is no, then no matter how high you generally make it in tournaments, you aren't a top player. You of course won't ever be making it out of top 8 with no ability to beat people there... This is of course subjective and open to interpretations and common sense logic... Ie a tournie of 8 people means one is auto top 8, but doesn't mean the guy that got last is a top player.

As far as mixups, spacing etc etc etc are concerned, those are just entry barriers you will need TO COMPETE AGAINST top players. Because without those things there is no competition, there is just major ass wooping.

2. Maximizing damage is good, and is ALWAYS the best option until meter comes into play, but there are different forms of maximizing damage:

Reads
Actual optimal combos

If you have super sweet reads then you are maximizing your damage ability to get into combo, and you may not have the most optimized combos but you can still beat others with better combos since you are in combo 2-3 times more than the opponent.

Whereas someone that has a master blaster combo, but can rarely land the firt hit... Is basically impotent, and has little bearing on the match.

3. Plateaus and stagnation


Generally happens with smaller communities quicker. The reason being because we all steal stuff from one another. And as long as we are stealing stuff or creating it ourselves, we feel like we are getting better via accumulated knowledge and new insights into the game.

But that process truncates itself with smaller communities since people generally stop really advancing past a certain level and need to copy more in order to fill that "I'm leveling up" feeling that we are all addicted to.
 
20% of the playerbase are top players
WHAT.
Try
0.0001%


We aren't talking about strength of player, we are talking about the highest winning percentages. Strength of player is relative to the player base so it isn't quantifiable by anything.

Also, I would only consider sg's top 10% as top players. The community is small. In sf4 however I would consider the top 20% to be "top" there are so many killers that can beat each other at that level that leaving them out would be stupid.


Unless of course you go the hard road and say that only duck is a top player in sg... But no one would listen to you anyways so... I don't really get that point.

Like I said, there are different litmus tests, one of which is being able to beat a top player. Negus lost to duck 3-2 which means he was able to beat duck. Now, anyone that can beat negus at a relatively close to even level, is auto a top player, or top player strength. And so on and so forth and such and such.

I'm not a top player cause I lost to negus 10-0 and I lost to duck 7-1
I lost to worldjem like 5-2? Mr.peck like 3-0 etc etc etc

But I consider all of them top players even though only one has won evo.
 
Top 20% of the TOURNAMENT PLAYER BASE is something very different than 20% of the PLAYER BASE.
An SF4AE tournament with 200 entrants has around 40 people that one can call "Top Player"?
That sounds a bit much, but alright. I would probably call a bunch of these 'Not quite there', but it's passable.
However, this is VERY different from "AE sold 400k units, so we have 80k top players".

Communities are *big*, and you are a ton better than *almost everyone* if you're not complete shit.
1950 I think was the "DotaBuff Rating" to be in the Top 1% of players in Dota2.
I had 2050. That would put me in the top .1-.5% or something.
And I'm pretty much trash at the game.

The MAQL SG online tournament had 1000 Entrants. Good Luck finding 100 people in that which you'd call "Top Players".

(And this is *NOT* yet taking into account that the 'good' SG players are still bad when compared to the good players of other FGs)
 
SG top players aren't really amazing when you take all fighting game players into consideration, tbh. It's a pretty bottom of the barrel community. =/
 
STRAWMAN argument.

Of course I'm talking about the tournament player base. We were talking about TOP players, not overall community.

And yes sg's best are bottom of the barrel when it comes to fighting game skills. I managed to take a game off of duck and I don't think I've EVER beaten Valle in sf4 even though at my peak of sf4 ability when I was still frequenting arcades that housed the best so cal players I was much better than I am at sg.

There comes a point where I know I'm playing against a "true" top player by how fucked up I get on the regular, and only tj and peck made me feel that way at evo. I didn't play sev, but I'm pretty sure he would have done it with those damned combos, wing zero was for all intents and purposes impossible for me to beat, but didn't have the sustained cheese and super reads that the best of the streetfighter world have.

The best in streetfighter will KNOW you, or the average intermediate player, in at most a quarter of a round. And at that point you have little choice but to just die horribly. Or figure the shit out.

In sg players still give there opponents LOTS of chances out of pressure on the regular. And have a hard time getting pressure in the first place.
 
There comes a point where I know I'm playing against a "true" top player by how fucked up I get on the regular, and only tj and peck made me feel that way at evo. I didn't play sev, but I'm pretty sure he would have done it with those damned combos, wing zero was for all intents and purposes impossible for me to beat, but didn't have the sustained cheese and super reads that the best of the streetfighter world have.

I completely agree with your original statement that the mark of a top player can be judged on his win results. In fact, this could very well be the BEST way to judge whether a player is a top player.... not only how many people he/she has bodied, but also WHO was bodied by him/her. However, while the sentiment you stated (and I quoted) above is true for top players, don't forget that this sentiment is equally true for intermediate or even novice players. I don't think I've ever played you online before but I bet if I played you 10 games right now, I would feel the same way towards you as you do towards sev, duck, wing zero, and all the rest. By that definition, I would consider you a top player. Would that assertion be true?
 
I don't think we should sell the top SG players TOO short, they're still very very good at the game.

Maybe if Chris G or JWong or any of the other top FGC players really put some serious time into Skullgirls they would destroy Duck and the rest of evo top8, but I'd put money on them still making it into the top 32 of a 1000 man SG bracket full of FGC killers.

That said, the SG playerbase is pretty shallow. Beyond the top 10 or 20 players there's really not a lot of depth there. See - Chris G making top 8 at SG tournaments despite hardly playing the game.
 
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This game is stuck in the "I wont play this game unless more people play it" loop. If everyone who's said that actually played the game we'd have like 10 people!!!!

I really don't understand that sentiment. I'd love to be able to go to any SG meet up I could find but unfortunately I'm stuck in "Middle of Nowhere, Canada".

But especially with good netcode and a solid online community (Note: Plz don't run back to consoles when they get the squigly update, I don't want to be alone) there's no reason why more people can't pick it up and try it.
 
are we taking average skill level of the FGC into account, or just SG? Because compared to the rest of the FGC, even on mean average, I think SG top player base is quite a low average
I think it depends on the game.

Marvel and SF4 have some of the biggest gaps in actual skill.

Tons of good players in Marvel are SOOO GOOD at that game, just, so much going through their head.

And then you see pool play.

Overall, I think the best players on average come from GG or VF.

I have yet to meet someone who has put time into either of those games and just be outright idiots.

I personally believe SG needs to be around a little longer before we start ranking how we fight in on the average with everyone else.

I think around 5 years you can start to say "okay, this game's playerbase as a whole is just not as good as this other one".
 
@iLoli

Thats an unusual way of looking at things, but I like it. It's a good explanation anyways, though I don't know if I would consider gg and VF the best players, I would just say that they require different skillsets than streetfighter.

Which is why tokido,Chris g and justin w are so scary... To be so good at so many fighting games is crazy.
 
I think it's weird that you consider mix ups/resets more advanced than spacing/hit-confirms. To me, combos and mixups are things you can look up after someone else has figured them out. People who can create stuff in the lab aren't necessarily the best at putting them into practice in matches, so the key to being a top player is something else.

My list:
- Execution: The ability to have the character in the game act exactly as you intend it to, or as close as possible. Important, but doesn't make someone a top player by itself

- Game/Character knowledge: Optimized damage, meter management and awareness of all the tools at each player's disposal helps min/max your play but can only build on fundamentals.

- Adaptability: Being versed in defense, offense, zoning, timer abuse etc. also being able to switch approach quickly when something isn't working or to abuse the opponent's patterns.

- Player knowledge: The ability to recognise patterns and make reads against new opponents, as well as being able to mislead other people who might try to make reads against you.

- Spacing/timing: Having a good sense of these is vital to winning neutral game and also feeds into execution.

That's for fighting games in general. In SG specifically:
- be aware of all the matchups
- have some decent combos for each situation including double snaps or after reversals
- be good at using your assist to protect yourself as well as protecting your assist

To be a character master, you probably need to have optimal combos from at least all of the most common starters, a variety of mixups and resets that are solid (multiple options from the same situation), and a few good gimmicks (stuff that is a risk if the opponent knows to look for it, but without prior knowledge is hard to defend). Be able to move around projectile spam, or use your own to lock down movement. Be able to hitconfirm well enough to stay safe in offense for the most part. Defense is probably more of a general skill, but if there's character specific stuff like managing napalm pillar charging you need to be good at that too.
 
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In my mind the biggest keys to being a top player are:

1. Really good reads, meaning really good pattern recognition. Being able to to know that the opponent likes to walk forward half a step then walk back half a step then walk forward a quarter step is pattern recognition and the good players have this down without thinking about it. It's also critical for knowing your own patterns and being able to "see" them and thusly being able to change them. Against age he has a bunch of reads against me, cause he just knows how I think in certain situations. Unfortunately I don't know the patterns so I keep doing them and losing.

2. Super fast reactions

This is self explanatory, but if you can block filias iad j.lk on reaction... It diminishes filias game highly.

Likewise, opponents that can reactively do things that are very hard or uncommon, generally have a pretty big advantage over those that cannot, it's just a war of attrition and the person with less options will get hit more and has less options since he doesn't have the option to block filias overheads on reaction... He has to guess and guessing will guess wrong sometimes.

2. Execution

All other things being equal, execution makes all the good shit you do, better. And can even allow you to play more recklessly than others since you have the execution to bust out of bad situations, or your damage is so high you can afford to give up some damage and fish for weird stuff.


And that is pretty much it. Almost everything else is a facet of one of those things. How well you mix your opponent up and how well you defend against unseeable resets has to do with your reading ability.


How well you space has to do with reading ability and reaction times.
And how good your bnb is and how well you've memorized all the combo situations and use them to there fullest has to do with execution.
 
This is self explanatory, but if you can block filias iad j.lk on reaction...
.. you should meet up with axshu and guitalex.

It has 16f startup. In Frameskip 6 = 13-14 actual frames. Good Luck.

♠♠♠

I would say that knowing a matchup, how to construct a proper team, in what situation to press which button (..footsies! Woo!) etc etc are part of being good, and I don't think any of that is any of Reads/Reactions/Execution.
 
how well you've memorized all the combo situations and use them to there fullest has to do with execution.
I wouldn't say memorising combo situations constitutes towards being a better player (although it would, but it's a bit of a ridiculous task), it's more of being able to see how to respond to different combo situations as they crop up, then all you need to memorise are especially weird cases.

Everything else Dime said plus what Isa contributed are things I agree with
 
@IsaVulpes

It's an example dude, a non realistic one because "it's an example"

Sigh.... If I put up something that everyone could easily react to it wouldn't be a good example. Some people out there CAN block and/or wiff punish hard to punish things etc etc etc


I guess a realistic example would be painwheel hitconfirming from a double mk bomber assist midscreen.. I find it hard to do cause you get little to no reaction time to confirm and fly forward and hit with the otg j.mp. But domo does it pretty consistently, I can only do it by preconfirming which means knowing my opponent will get hit by it ahead of time cause they were stuck in the middle of a wack move or something. Anyways... Not sure why such an obvious and simple thing is being argued.
 
Going back to the argument at hand, I would say that it's a little hard to argue "what constitutes a top player" when we are not even in agreement to "what *IS* a top player". Some say it's the top 10%.... some say it's the top 1%, and some don't derive it based on percentages.

IMHO, a top player is quite a subjective term, and is open to opinion and interpretation. Of course, there are those who are undeniably top players, but a lot of people fall into grey areas where some would consider them top, and others would not. This consideration is most often based on the skill level of the player doing the evaluation. There are skills that we observer all top players possessing, and I see we're attempting to quantify that here, but I feel that it's going to be hard to swing this argument either way since we can't agree to what a top player even means.

Anyway, that's my $0.02
 
.. you should meet up with axshu and guitalex.

It has 16f startup. In Frameskip 6 = 13-14 actual frames. Good Luck.

♠♠♠

I would say that knowing a matchup, how to construct a proper team, in what situation to press which button (..footsies! Woo!) etc etc are part of being good, and I don't think any of that is any of Reads/Reactions/Execution.
If you're implying you can't block Fortune's shit on reaction, I'm going to have to disagree.

I've played enough of Alexis in person and online to say that you can react to her old airdash fierce.

Reacting to that one thing isn't the problem, it's calculating all the other nonsense going on at the same time WHILE blocking on reaction.
 
Don't think humans can react to 13 frame moves. If they can its very few people and its hard as ****. Good luck
 
What I DO think is in the unreactable range is Fortunes jab.

That shit is silly.
 
Don't think humans can react to 13 frame moves. If they can its very few people and its hard as ****. Good luck
I remember watching a stream with JWong and he said a top players can react to 12 frame overheads, but you have to take into account some moves are tough for your brain to register "Oh shit, that's a overhead." That's why people get hit by Akuma's overhead in SF4 so much.
 
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If you're implying you can't block Fortune's shit on reaction, I'm going to have to disagree.

I've played enough of Alexis in person and online to say that you can react to her old airdash fierce.

Reacting to that one thing isn't the problem, it's calculating all the other nonsense going on at the same time WHILE blocking on reaction.

IAD Fierce is like 25 frames which is easily in the range where its reactable.

Anything faster then 20 is a very hard or impossible to react to unless your reactions are very good. If you've played Millia Blocker, that will give you an idea of how fast your reactions actually are for the purposes of blocking overheads.
 
If you're implying you can't block Fortune's shit on reaction, I'm going to have to disagree.
Yeah, stating that you can't block Filia's IAD j.LK on reaction implies that you can't block Fortune's IAD j.HP on reaction.
Right.

PLEASE TRY TO MAKE SENSE OUT OF WHAT YOU JUST POSTED

I remember watching a stream with JWong and he said a top players can react to 12 frame overheads
I dunno whether he said that, but it's wrong

In an actual game scenario (so no "Push a button when light switches from green to red") your reaction time is generally >20f unless you're watching out for something.
Viper's overhead in SF4 eg is 20f startup and pretty much always hits. If you watch out for something, you can lower said time, but you're still not going far below that.
Realistically blockable ingame are 18-20f moves. Below that are flat reads.
 
Something people need to take into account that reaction time can differ depending on the situation.

For example, if you had to react to a large black dot appearing on a white background, you would probably be able to respond pretty soon to something obvious like that.

Now lets say you have to react to to a purple dot to appear on a white background, but various colored dots also appear, which means you have to watch for a specific thing to react to and distinguish if that is the thing you are supposed to react to. Naturally, your reaction time for this will be slower compared to the previous example because you have to confirm with yourself if that is indeed the correct reaction.

What does this mean in fighting games? Well, you can use your foresight and knowledge of the opponent's habits to be able to react to certain things, since you are looking for them to happen.

I'm not making an claims, just putting that out there for people to think about when it comes to how fast a human can react to something.
 
your reaction time is generally >20f unless you're watching out for something.
Viper's overhead in SF4 eg is 20f startup and pretty much always hits. If you watch out for something, you can lower said time, but you're still not going far below that.
Realistically blockable ingame are 18-20f moves. Below that are flat reads.
I said "top player" reactions. Justin said most normal fighting gamers react around 16-18 frames, which makes sense to me. More then 20 frames seems a bit slow but i can see it.
 
You know who I'm talking about when I'm saying that "Viper's overhead always hits", right?
This is not talking about 200ms online on PS3 between two 500 PP players, this is *major tournament grand finals*.

This is a top player:
vpaEZ.png

(Milia Blocker statistics of Veserius, the best US Blanka in SF4)

And this is still a million times easier than an actual ingame situation where you're forced to watch out for more than high/low and actually have to act at some point rather than gluing your eyes to the screen and reacting to one of two overheads.

If you find me a single top player on this world that can reliably react to 12f overhead in a game setting, I'll buy you an island to live the rest of your life on.

Here, science:
The pioneer reaction time study was that of Donders (1868). He showed that a simple reaction time is shorter than a recognition reaction time, and that the choice reaction time is longest of all. Laming (1968) concluded that simple reaction times averaged 220 msec but recognition reaction times averaged 384 msec. This is in line with many studies concluding that a complex stimulus (e.g., several letters in symbol recognition vs. one letter) elicits a slower reaction time (Brebner and Welford, 1980; Teichner and Krebs, 1974; Luce, 1986). An example very much like our experiment was reported by Surwillo (1973), in which reaction was faster when a single tone sounded than when either a high or a low tone sounded and the subject was supposed to react only when the high tone sounded. Miller and Low (2001) determined that the time for motor preparation (e.g., tensing muscles) and motor response (in this case, pressing the spacebar) was the same in all three types of reaction time test, implying that the differences in reaction time are due to processing time.
http://biae.clemson.edu/bpc/bp/lab/110/reaction.htm#Mean Times

Complex reaction = 384ms (23f). Top players are faster than that, but an FG is *WAY* harder than a stupid reaction test, which actually about evens out.
23f is generally expected to be blocked, 18-20f is hard but doable if you look out for it, anything below that is flat impossible.

You can now do like this one guy on the Steam forums and show me your DEFINITELY A REACTION result on the Milia blocker to 'prove me wrong', I'm sure it'll convince people.
Wait, I'll save you the trouble. Here, my actual reaction:
c6qkjwnw.png
 
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You know who I'm talking about when I'm saying that "Viper's overhead always hits", right?
This is not talking about 200ms online on PS3 between two 500 PP players, this is *major tournament grand finals*.
Of course Viper's overhead always hits. You can have a reaction time of 16-18 frames and still be hit by 20+ frame overheads everytime, it takes a few frames for your brain to register "That is a overhead" and after that is when reaction time kicks in.
I understand what you are trying to say though and it all makes sense. That Milia link is mad cool lol
 
1. To be a top level player has nothing to do with knowledge but everything to do with results.

While that may be true, it doesn't exactly get at what I'm looking for. You can be at the top before high level play is developed. If the community can barely scratch the surface of high level play with its top players, then the next tier down will never reach high level play.

IMHO, top players make up about 10-20% of there respective communities. Ie the top 20% of a popular game or the top 10% of a not so popular game.

Another litmus test is top 8 appearances, anyone who gets into top 8 or finds themselves there consistently, is to me a top player.
But the most basic and real litmus test is: can you beat other top players. If the answer is no, then no matter how high you generally make it in tournaments, you aren't a top player. You of course won't ever be making it out of top 8 with no ability to beat people there... This is of course subjective and open to interpretations and common sense logic... Ie a tournie of 8 people means one is auto top 8, but doesn't mean the guy that got last is a top player.

This ties into my previous point. You can beat nearly everybody else, but is the thing you're doing high level play, or is it simply intermediate and everybody else sucks?

As far as mixups, spacing etc etc etc are concerned, those are just entry barriers you will need TO COMPETE AGAINST top players. Because without those things there is no competition, there is just major ass wooping.

This is what I'm looking for in this discussion. What's the entry barrier? What are the components? What are the things you need to be able to grasp to even be able to approach high level play? What needs to be understood to start making reads of the highest caliber and to be able to profile players and act accordingly?

2. Maximizing damage is good, and is ALWAYS the best option until meter comes into play, but there are different forms of maximizing damage:

Reads
Actual optimal combos

If you have super sweet reads then you are maximizing your damage ability to get into combo, and you may not have the most optimized combos but you can still beat others with better combos since you are in combo 2-3 times more than the opponent.

Whereas someone that has a master blaster combo, but can rarely land the firt hit... Is basically impotent, and has little bearing on the match.

There's a discussion raging on and I love that. But the primary question I want to frame isn't "How do you recognize a top player and how do I become one?" It's more "What are the building blocks of playing this game to its highest possible level?" or "What do I need to know, understand, and be able to do to reach the deepest levels of the meta game?" What should a player master and already know in the back of their mind so they can focus on what's in the forefront of their mind? What should be on the forefront of a player's mind?

If you took all of the game's mechanics into account would you be able to understand what a player is doing in a video? Why they're doing it in that match? Is it a good or bad thing? Was a it a smart or dumb move regardless of the results, as in was it a safe bet too take before you knew what happened?

So far from this post we have:
meter managment
hit confirms
reads/yomi
mix up knowledge
 
are we taking average skill level of the FGC into account, or just SG? Because compared to the rest of the FGC, even on mean average, I think SG top player base is quite a low average


I'd like fighting game fundamentals to be taken into account and then applied to the possibilities in SkullGirls. It might lead into the discussion of what fighting game fundamentals are, but if we can hammer that out and apply what that means when it comes to playing SG and what you should strive for as a competitor in this game then that's alright too.

Honestly, why is this community so bad? What do we as a unit lack that other communities have?

I remember once, Severin said that not a lot of people understand SkullGirls theory so it leads to a lot of stray hits, dropped combos, and missed opportunities.
 
I think it's weird that you consider mix ups/resets more advanced than spacing/hit-confirms. To me, combos and mixups are things you can look up after someone else has figured them out. People who can create stuff in the lab aren't necessarily the best at putting them into practice in matches, so the key to being a top player is something else.

The reason I consider mix ups and resets more advanced than spacing and hit confirms is because they build off of those things. Your mix up is no good if you get one hit and then drop the rest of your combo. The same as a reset. And to do a proper mix up you need to understand how your spacing will affect the outcome. Like with Peacock's incoming mixup, you have to know where the incoming character is going to land and stand there so it's ambiguous which way they need to block. Once that's done you can play with when to trigger your attacks or decide which attacks to use. You also have to consider the time it took for you to get there so can choose what attacks you'll use to attempt a mix up or decide if you'll go for pressure so you can enter a mix up situation after they make it on screen. Then you need to be able to confirm off of whatever you're going to hit them with. Can you combo off of George at the Air Show? What about a non charged SoID? A medium charged SoID? What if you do a block string in the air and now it's time to do a landing mix up? Can you combo off of throw from the air or on the ground? Can you combo off of cross up j.mk? If not, then the mix up leads to nothing and may even put you in a bad position.

My list:
- Execution: The ability to have the character in the game act exactly as you intend it to, or as close as possible. Important, but doesn't make someone a top player by itself

- Game/Character knowledge: Optimized damage, meter management and awareness of all the tools at each player's disposal helps min/max your play but can only build on fundamentals.

- Adaptability: Being versed in defense, offense, zoning, timer abuse etc. also being able to switch approach quickly when something isn't working or to abuse the opponent's patterns.

- Player knowledge: The ability to recognise patterns and make reads against new opponents, as well as being able to mislead other people who might try to make reads against you.

- Spacing/timing: Having a good sense of these is vital to winning neutral game and also feeds into execution.

In adaptability you mention being well versed in offense and defense. What does that mean in SG? What are components in a well versed offense. And what are they in defense?

That's for fighting games in general. In SG specifically:
- be aware of all the matchups
- have some decent combos for each situation including double snaps or after reversals
- be good at using your assist to protect yourself as well as protecting your assist

What are some key mechanics for mastery/abuse that would give you an edge?

To be a character master, you probably need to have optimal combos from at least all of the most common starters, a variety of mixups and resets that are solid (multiple options from the same situation), and a few good gimmicks (stuff that is a risk if the opponent knows to look for it, but without prior knowledge is hard to defend). Be able to move around projectile spam, or use your own to lock down movement. Be able to hitconfirm well enough to stay safe in offense for the most part. Defense is probably more of a general skill, but if there's character specific stuff like managing napalm pillar charging you need to be good at that too.

I don't need much elaboration for that one. Thanks for the insight.
 
In adaptability you mention being well versed in offense and defense. What does that mean in SG? What are components in a well versed offense. And what are they in defense?

There's a few great guides on this very topic by Jason and worldjem....
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=172072817
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=172074812

I don't consider myself great or even GOOD at this game, but if you're looking for a hard list, I would say mastering the content contained in those guides is a subset to said list of what a top player knows in terms of both offense and defense.
 
Yeah, stating that you can't block Filia's IAD j.LK on reaction implies that you can't block Fortune's IAD j.HP on reaction.
Right.

PLEASE TRY TO MAKE SENSE OUT OF WHAT YOU JUST POSTED
You mentioned Alexis.

And to the best of my knowledge, Alexis DOES NOT play Filia seriously.


Goddamnit, this is reminding me of the "you can't tech throws on reaction in persona 4 arena" argument with lk.
 
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I mentioned guitalex because he made famous remarks of the sort "Filia resets are predictable and easy to defend against" and "HK.FiberUp has a ton of startup, you can just reaction block it"

P.S.
What I DO think is in the unreactable range is Fortunes jab.

That shit is silly.
Wtf at this statement
 
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This is a top player:
vpaEZ.png

(Milia Blocker statistics of Veserius, the best US Blanka in SF4)

Psshhhhhhh.
isj.png
 
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While that may be true, it doesn't exactly get at what I'm looking for. You can be at the top before high level play is developed. If the community can barely scratch the surface of high level play with its top players, then the next tier down will never reach high level play.



This ties into my previous point. You can beat nearly everybody else, but is the thing you're doing high level play, or is it simply intermediate and everybody else sucks?
I cant beat "nearly everyone else" :) there is a rather famous in the sg community player that is good but kinda gets the raw end of the stick... he beat me pretty badly, I just got out footsied hard.

my personal skillset is intermediate and...everyone else sucks... pretty much. also, I had like the easiest pool at evo, well one of the easiest anyways. which means that myself and jem were the only "killers" in my pool. im not particularly worthy of the title killer... but... er moving on



This is what I'm looking for in this discussion. What's the entry barrier? What are the components? What are the things you need to be able to grasp to even be able to approach high level play? What needs to be understood to start making reads of the highest caliber and to be able to profile players and act accordingly?

one of my best fighting game friends from early sf4 was shizza. hes the only sf4 chun to make top 8 at evo. not only that, but he was beating players like valle, online tony, Justin wong etc etc etc in tournament. WITH LESS THAN A YEAR of fighting game experience.

we had a lot of discussions. and you would probably think that getting knowledge from someone so naturally gifted would help immensely...but the most I ever took away from any of it was "I can just tell what other people want to do and I stop them from doing it" or something of that sort


so as I said its just reads and pattern recognition, its ALL mindgames. seriously, we can over analyse this stuff and I find it quite fun when im bored, but the reason why good players laugh at these types of statistical analysis is that they didn't use these types of things to get good. if you are good and have the potential, you will learn most of these things automatically (once you see them) which is how shizza got so good so quick... he was a sponge and absorbed everything that valle was "teaching" him. valles teaching btw is just to play you, if you learn from playing him, you have potential, if not, then you probably don't.

bottom line:

play the game, if you are good it will be obvious pretty quickly... within like a month or 3 you will be beating or able to somewhat hang with players that have much more fighting game experience. if not but you still love fighting games (like myself) then just continue to play and try your best to level up in whatever increments you can. fighting games are still fun even when you aren't the best player in your scene.


There's a discussion raging on and I love that. But the primary question I want to frame isn't "How do you recognize a top player and how do I become one?" It's more "What are the building blocks of playing this game to its highest possible level?" or "What do I need to know, understand, and be able to do to reach the deepest levels of the meta game?" What should a player master and already know in the back of their mind so they can focus on what's in the forefront of their mind? What should be on the forefront of a player's mind?

there is no "learn this before that" stuff. even knowing and being able to do the moves is somewhat secondary to just pressing buttons against another human opponent.

everyone is different, so while one player might have devastating mixups and really good reads on where and how to apply those mixups, he might have trash footsies. or another player might have great reads and footsies, but have shitty execution.

in general you want to practice whatever it is that you aren't good at. not that I actually take that advice myself... I find it boring to practice wiff punishing, blocking overheads on reaction etc etc etc... but I love to find new move synergies as relates to point character and assists.

If you took all of the game's mechanics into account would you be able to understand what a player is doing in a video? Why they're doing it in that match? Is it a good or bad thing? Was a it a smart or dumb move regardless of the results, as in was it a safe bet too take before you knew what happened?


that's a lot of questions:

1. yes and I think im one of the better players at gleaning info from actual match video, well at least when commentators ask "why did he do that" or some such, 90% of the time I know why it was done.

2. yes generally unless its some sort of weirdo matchup that is never seen or a very original type of player like cisco back in the day or rikers nowadays.

3. good or bad is relative. if it works its good and if it doesn't, its bad.

4. the last question is a 2 parter. and its hard to quantify.

sometimes its worth it to do something really stupid like a crazy reversal out of nowhere, just to get the move "on the board" and have your opponent respecting it as an option. whether they respect it or not, you get good info on the opponents psychology. are they reckless and don't care? let them hang themselves. are they super cautious? throw/airthrow/walk them to the corner etc etc etc


I don't know if any of that helps... but like I said up there, the only real way to get better is to play the game and play the best players that you can and as big a variety as possible so you are exposed to as many different styles of play and thoughts as to how the game is played, as possible.

I was thoroughly surprised by how far I got at evo when one takes into account that I had at the time only 2 other players to play against to get 95% of my game knowledge from and I was weaker than BOTH of them...

but good players have a way of elevating the other players around them up, which I was the recipient of through age and folks
 
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In adaptability you mention being well versed in offense and defense. What does that mean in SG? What are components in a well versed offense. And what are they in defense?

By well versed I mean having something beyond "IAD j.hp until it hits, or I get hit". So for Filia's offense that can be;
- an instinctive understanding of her IAD ranges
- a fast wavedash for when the horizontal space is open
- being able to use air hairballs as approach tools or as set ups for an assist mixup
- good timing on all of her frame-trap options, as well as tick throws (such as the jab-throw plink)
- having varied blockstrings that let you do mixups, or bait pushblocks (for example using the j.mk j.hp quick drop on air-to-air blocks, or the j.hk adc j.hk for crossups against people on the ground)
-having high chip damage blockstrings to finish off opponents

These are not all things that you might use in a single match, but the more tools you have and are comfortable with using, the more you can adapt your offense to the situation.

Some examples of defensive options for Filia:
-spacing with assists to stop the opponent's pressure
-using high priority moves like hk, dp+p, mp, j.hk etc to avoid the opponents hitboxes and take the momentum
-spacing qcf+p to interrupt predicable zoning and dodge projectiles
-using jump arc changing moves like j.hk, air dash, air hairball and gregor to avoid dangerous situations
-knowing what can be punished on block and with what
-using pushblocks to get out of lockdown, nullify multi-stage mixups, avoid tick throws
-using pbgc to punish predictable blockstrings
-using alpha counter to punish predictable blockstrings/avoid chip damage
-knowing typical reset points, or points where the opponent often drops combos so that you can either mash something like throw or tag or gregor etc without giving advance warning (in offline situations), or can concentrate on reactively blocking

When it comes to adaptability, it's not so much having a complete list of whatever aspect of the character, it's more about not limiting yourself to *always* doing something that works *most* of the time.
 
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