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
