It’s that time again. Let’s see what players have been writing lately around the fighting game community. Expect one of these round-ups roughly every three months from here on out.
leverage (and clutch) in street fighter at nothingxs.net
Being able to hold and maintain the momentum of a fight allows you to create higher leverage situations. A player who is on defense in a high leverage situation — in other words, he has a very low amount of life remaining, or is at risk of losing a large amount of it — is mentally forced to decide whether to make riskier decisions knowing that making a mistake results in losing the most important resource you have (life) …
Eyeballing Your Opponent at Being a Scrub
One deceptively simple question that I’ve yet to find an answer to is: where do you look at on the screen during a match?
What to Practice in Training Mode at Juiced Up
Hit-confirming, if you didn’t know, is the ability to turn a sequence of attacks into a combo on reaction. The simplest example is with Ken’s cr.LK, cr.LP string. If this string is blocked, Ken is safe and can go for throw mixups, overheads, or defensive play. But if it hits, Ken can go into a HP Shoryuken. The basic skill here is seeing and recognizing that the two light attacks connected or were blocked.
Once again, if you find these articles insightful and informative, leave them a polite comment to show your appreciation or better yet ask a question to further the discussion.
The eyeballing your opponents article was actually pretty interesting. I have a tendency to look at different things at different ranges. At mid range in a footsies battle, i look inbetween the two characters for spacing. At long range I look at the enemy character until he throws a fireball. After he throws the fireball i look at the fireball to decide what strength fireball they threw, then immediately go back to watching them. however, no matter what happens, when i actually get in, I only watch myself. Make sure I’m mixing things up or im not fucking up my frame trap, block string, or combo.
Yeah i think i usually watch the opponent’s character when i’m zoning, or scan the screen otherwise. It’s hard to say for sure though, because all this happens unconsciously now. It would make an interesting interview question to ask Evo finalists, but i bet a lot of them couldn’t even tell you without thinking about it or requesting to play a game.
Hm … “Mandatory Reading” sounds too imposing for a title. I’m going to mellow it down to “Suggested” instead.
It’s an honour to be linked to your site Maj.
Hopefully this sparks some nice discussion. I also think it would be interesting to ask the Evo finalists about. Even if some of them might not be able to really explain it, it would be interesting to me to see the difference between the answers from the more technical players, like perhaps Ed Ma, and the more “play by feel” players like Valle.
Finally, congratulations on your award at Evo sir, I will continue to be a huge fan.
@Maj
I was going over a few counter attacks with a friend in Super Turbo, and I find that a lot of times I am looking at my opponent’s distance relative to me when I’m zoning. But when I played Cammy, I was usually looking at the space between myself and the opponent. And that would all shift during a knockdown, because if I was going to press the attack, where I was standing became MUCH more important. If you, say, want to cross up Blanka in ST as Guile, you need to make a very precise, well timed safe jump because if you don’t he’s just going to up-ball and knock you down.
The risk is high, the reward is huge… and I find more often than not I’m backing up and just throwing a sonic boom because “man, maybe I just don’t want to take that risk.” I do wonder what goes through player’s minds when they see a common situation and go “This cannot stand, I cannot lose to this, I have to do something different.”
It was amazing that even when I was zoning, while I was looking at my opponent’s character, it was never with any meaning. If Blanka slides at you in ST, and I think I said this at Evo, there are 3 very specific frames you have to look for if you intend to DP and Flash Kick on reaction. I still can’t conceive inputting a dragon punch as quickly and as accurately as that would allow. How much you leave to “chance” or your own gut feelings can be funny as a player. I know a lot of folks treat this kind of stuff as a science… and sometimes, I know players that just do a fucking dragon punch and I’m completely at a loss as an observer and a player.
“Why did that work?”
Guts, man.
I play grapplers and the area I’m always looking for is the footsies ground between us, and depending on the game, it can move; in SF4 with Zangief I watch the middle of the screen for fireballs I can Banishing Flat/EX Banishing Flat through (or safely Lariat), obvious move inputs they might have that I can poke out. My eyes will stay on my own character (Gief) if I’m going for a safe(ish) jump-in, so I can see if I’m going to clear a fireball, or if I can even connect with the opponent. When I start a chain or am going for a link, I’m generally looking at my own character.
3s with Hugo is a bit different. Air games are a bit faster so I have to watch for flying crossup tatsus and the like, and yet I can parry or OS parry on jump in, so that stays about the same – probably the same for all characters in any fighting game. Hugo is also really, really tall, and without moves that take him through fireballs like Zangief, you need to be watching your opponent more, to watch for the parry opportunity. I’m also looking at the ground more to score knockdowns or parry low. Perhaps not as much with Hugo, I gotta watch the stun gauge as well, so there’s always that. Once you play for awhile, you can also realize when your gauge fills up just by listening (same with SF4, though knowing when you have Full Ultra is still tricky, I think).
So yeah, I guess that’s pretty basic; the space between characters until the distance closes, watching the other guy…never really watching my own character except a few times in sf4 or maybe even SFA2/CvS2 where ground CCs are possible (don’t have to watch the opponents altitude) and be mindful of gauges as well – know what you can punish with, and know what your opponent is going for.
Thanks for the link. I’m actually about to peek around the rest of those links. I personally have a lot of reading to do to level my game up in SF4; otherwise everything I talk about are fringe ideas.
muttonhead: If i ever do any more interviews, that’s definitely a question i’ll be asking. Missed my chance with Valle though, so someone else will have to cover that one.
Tarnish: Hahaha guts!
onreload: Yeah Hugo’s kinda hard to miss. Depends on the matchup but i guess grapplers are usually looking for two distances: SPD range so they can do walk up SPD, and max range of whatever poke the opponent uses to keep you out of SPD range. So it usually makes sense to look down the middle. Then fireballs add another layer to that.
nothingxs: Nothing wrong with fringe ideas. They make for good discussion. It’s not like you can get any closer to writing a complete startegy article by shifting to basics. There’s no such thing as “comprehensive” when it comes to SF strategy.