As you become increasingly proficient with a character, you naturally develop a repertoire of attack strings that just plain work. Whether it’s a sweep after a low short or an uppercut after a blocked fireball, everyone seems to fall for certain patterns.
Free damage for minimal effort is always nice, but the inherent danger is falling into the trap of playing footsies on autopilot. What happens when you face someone who sees it coming and knows the counter? How quickly do you adapt? Are you prepared to adapt? Have you taken the time to plot out and practice the counter to the counter?
The truth is, you can get pretty far just by watching top players and mimicking their combat maneuvers without understanding the active thought processes behind them. Many beginner and intermediate level players will have trouble overcoming refined tournament tactics.
There’s nothing wrong with relying on proven, successful strategies. However, running into someone who can beat you will set you two steps back – not just one. After all, how can you neutralize their rebuttal if you don’t even know why your gameplan worked in the first place?
That’s why whenever you stumble onto something effective, it’s important to ask yourself why it works. Answering that question will give you a better understanding of the tactic. More importantly, it’ll reveal possible weaknesses which need to be compensated for in advance.
Of course, a lot of this goes back to the central concept of staying focused while you play and pushing yourself to improve. It’ll take much longer to absorb the same amount of material if you compete passively. In fact, you can play absentmindedly for an entire evening without learning a single thing.
Everyone knows when they’re trying hard and when they’re taking it easy. There’s a clear line between hit-confirming difficult combos for maximum damage, and simply resorting to safe combos to use without checking for success. There’s a huge difference between making sure an opponent takes the bait before counterattacking, and routinely going through the motions regardless of the result.
Anytime you catch yourself coasting on cruise control, either grab the wheel and make some turns, or pull over and take a break. Otherwise you’re setting yourself up for bad habits. Practicing while zoned out is a waste of time.
Regarding the title – a lot of CvS2 Guile players would throw a slow Sonic Boom and follow it up with B+HK stepkick. If the opponent blocked or got hit, the s.HK would connect too. If the opponent rolled through, B+HK would double as a throw command instead. I used to call that “autofootsies.”
It certainly works as a bootleg option select, but it’s so robotic that it usually leads to bad habits. I think lots of players are guilty of taking this shortcut and it ends up getting in everyone’s way. So that’s what this article is about.
i always think of that when i do corner strings if sf4 with sagat. the usual tiger knee s.lk kiger knee block strings and when they jump i usually don’t react to it and continue with my routine and never take the analysis to counter the counter. nice article.
Improving in these kind of games to me seems awakrd at most occasions. practicing execution & block strings/reaction is pretyt straight forward, you practice.
When it comes to strategy & mix up it varies from character to character, & player to player, i know plenty of times i’ve played an Akuma who slow played throughout so i could get away with throws because he was eagre to block. Some others however played dangerously so i could attempt a safe SRK -> Shaku/throw (after FADC) to give myself some momentum.
That said i always end up trading one habit for another. first it was not SRK’ing pointlessly on wakeup, thatsaid i stopped foing that & started leaving myself to open to throws.
then i progressed from that to attempt throw techs, this leaft me vulnerable to meaty strings on wakeup. eventually i’ve given myself an even balance but it seems to equate to everything.
after practicing my SRK’s again AA, that said i do it quite well, but i do it at times when a crouch HP would have been the greater option.
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I seem to find it very difficult developing without burdening myself with a varying flaw in my gameplay. At present i’ve noticed i am doing Block string SRK’s (As in, i mash SRK during block strings or lengthy hitting combos, say Akumas HK shit) I know this is a bad habit, but it works so well i don’t stop doing it.
it’s peculiar. & when it’s the reason you lose it’s annoying :P
It’s funny you mentioned “block strings” because that fits into the point of this article perfectly. I totally agree with jchensor when he says that thinking in terms of block strings is counterproductive. It’s just a bad approach to Street Fighter. You should never be trying to get the opponent to block stuff.
Anytime you’re attacking, you should be trying to hit them! Don’t just push buttons that might work or are difficult to deal with or whatever. Use mixups to actively figure out a way to score damage. You should always be trying to get inside their head and searching for a weakness or a clue to show you how to pierce their defense.
Maybe the best example of “active vs passive” is the bait low short to sweep thing i mentioned above. You’re supposed to whiff c.LK or make them block c.LK, then wait until they push a button and react by sweeping whatever they whiff. Whenever people get lazy, they just push low short, wait the “usual” amount of time until the opponent is most likely to push a button, then sweep no matter what.
The lazy version takes way less focus, way less effort, and works “pretty well.” But it’s a fucking terrible habit for reasons that should be obvious. You’re taking a reliable reactive tactic and turning it into a decidedly mediocre anticipatory gimmick.
I’ve got a tourney coming up on Thursday – SSF4 it’s at the local Game Station retail outlet – the top prize is a free copy of SSF4… It aint EVO but in 20 years of playing the series this is the first competative event I’ve ever entered. I needed the kind of training my m8’s couldn’t provide me, so I wen’t down the arcades for the first time in years to get some offline practice and recieved the whooping of a life time. I’d been practacing mixing up block strings with throw attempts to great success :-) and found myself getting option select crouching tec’d to hell and back. Everytime I tried to overhead the start up frames would open the window for the light kick – and as a pad player I’m no where near good enough on stick to use the option select myself and was wiffing everything left right and centre anyways. I thought about a couple of options during the match – FA the light kick, or pause then reversal dp fadc for safety/punish. After trying it a couple of times my opponent got wise and I started getting Galactic Tornado and ex Messiah Kick. So in short the difference between myself and my opponent was that he had the preparation to adapt to my adaptions – and he wasn’t wiffing like a pile of manure. I totally agree with MF KRINK! & Maj about countering the counter – that’s a couple of levels above me currently but totally something to aspire to. You have to train your mind with worthy opponents to level up to that state. Baiting someone into thinking that they have an answer when it’s exactly what you’ve been waiting for is very tricky to achieve and to deal with. Ed Ma couldn’t do it to Wong at evo 09. The last 50 sec’s of the last round was Ed trying to work a bait, and Justin holding off the ex messiah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1m9O8QkOvE
“You get stronger, by fighting stronger opponents”
I’m paraphrasing because i don’t remember the proper quote, but a chessmaster said that & it holds true to basically everything.
I’m fully aware that the difference between online play & real play is massive. That said there isn’t a large SF scene in the UK so i feel if/when i enter a tourny i won’t be fighting the greatest elite. However i am probably over-estimating myself. TBH i’ll never really know until i get some reallife play.
I want to convert to stick because playing pad is like driving a car with buttons. But i’ll get to that when i find a cheap one. I just can’t justify paying £100 for a controller that i’ll use for only one game.
A cheap but proper one… tournement edition for example, i certainly don’t want the potential of blaming my stick for my own shit play.
@Pokey86
Yeah I’m in the UK too there’s a Game Station Tourney in Enfield on Thursday. I hate online play – I hardly ever do it so I can’t get used to it, I’d probably like it more if I could get decent connections all the time but that just comes with the UK territory too :-) Do you play on xbox or Ps3?
I’m in the UK too. I recently changed from PS3 to Xbox. XBL is way better. I never have any trouble finding games and if I start a game, It doesn’t take more than about 10-15 seconds before someone with Yellow or Green ping joins. I know it’s pricey, but definitely change to Xbox if you’re on PS3.
Yeah I’m uk ps3 too hoping for good things from ssf4 online.
Do you know if your a Sanwa or Semitsu parts man? I hear TE for Sanwa or Hori for Semitsu – there are a couple of decent Semitsu part Hori sticks out there i.e. real arcade pro 3 SE (playstation 3/pc) or real arcade pro ex SE (x-box). Of course the cheapest way to a decent stick is moding anything that’s easy to mod – maybe an older Hori for £45 then buying the parts online for about £10 – £15 including del. But that’s if you can be bothered to mod a stick in the first place. The sticks with decent parts all retail at around £100 at the mo with the exception of the Real Arcade Pro 3 SE (an absolute unicorn of a stick) which is around £60 to buy in Japan but £185 to get it imported – it’s almost worth taking a trip to the land of the rising sun – oh and if you do pick us up one :-)
I know what you mean about playing on pad – but I’ve played on pad for so long now that I feel my stick game could never catch up. I’m getting too old for this ****
@jamheald
Yeah me too! They say that they’ve optimised the net code rather than scraping it for a new one. And they have also tried to pair people up with similar bandwidth for random matches so that people with good broadband get a consistently good experience and people with rubish internet don’t spoil everyone else’s game :-D The new modes sound cool too.
@Killweir
Umm, what you said above about sticks was like talking italian to a me… I want a stick, hell i didn’t know there was more than one kind of Stick.
Amazon UK recently had an offer for a £77 stick that was reduced from like £15o apparently, a few people mentioned it was good so i was going to get it, but then an unexpected bill crippled me & i lost out :P That said i’ll get one eventually, but i to also worry that i may be to late to hone any skill on a stick.
Besides when i was younger, with friends. I’ve never had the real life experience. No one i know is in to SF or even fighters. Hell i only have 2 gamer friends (One of which is an easy mode player, on EVERYTHING!) So online is a bit of a godsend to me. & Doncaster is hardly the gaming centre of the planet, i don’t even think it has one of those gaming arcades in its town centre. (Call them lanpads or something daft like that)
Makes me wish i still lived in London, but that’s a pretty meagre reason to go back to that ****hole.
Still i’m not bad on pad… certainly my execution is respectable, just from what i hear plinking turns one frame links in to two frame links, that to me sounds like a giant improvement.
People overstate the difficulty of transitioning from one to the other. Of course it’s gonna take time to relearn super advanced stuff, but the basic stuff will still be there.
Street Fighter didn’t exist on console when i first tried it. I think that was around CE or HF, and i completely sucked at everything except the Psycho Crusher command. And i was a little kid so i didn’t have the kind of money to learn execution at the arcade.
So i kind agave up on SF until SF2CE came out on the Genesis and my parents bought it for me as a birthday gift. I learned how to play on a 3-button pad and didn’t go back to the arcade for months. When i finally did get to try it again, i could pull off basically everything on the first try. Granted i didn’t know any advanced combos back then, but still, i think most of the execution challenge comes from timing and that timing will still be there no matter what controller you’re using.
That is a good point, well, given i don’t think i ever used a stick almost ever. I remember once i played SF Rainbow edition in an arcade when i was very young but that was it.
Maybe it is overstated, i hope it is :P
Took me about a week to get better than I was on pad. I’ve been modding my stick now, putting some dee jay on http://s691.photobucket.com/albums/vv272/jamheald/Stick%20art/?action=view¤t=Bare.jpg&newest=1 , and as a result been using my dualshock, I’m actually better on it than I used to be but i struggle (Hate shoulder buttons, circle gate, no click on directions on joystick, so i end up using dpad to dash.)
Great article, short and sweet. It’s inspired me to honestly dive into the world of hit-confirm and option select.