Gameplay video critiques

[Cynical]

importance you place on winning and the outcome instead of understanding you just started playing this game a month or so ago.

What else am I supposed to be placing importance on?  In a competitive game, winning or losing is the only measure of improvement there is -- to quote David Sirlin, "The great thing about competitive, zero-sum games is that they offer an objective measure of your progress.  If you are able to win more (that is, more consistently defeat highly skilled players), then you are improving. If not, then not."

[desmond_kof]

importance you place on winning and the outcome instead of understanding you just started playing this game a month or so ago.

What else am I supposed to be placing importance on?  In a competitive game, winning or losing is the only measure of improvement there is -- to quote David Sirlin, "The great thing about competitive, zero-sum games is that they offer an objective measure of your progress.  If you are able to win more (that is, more consistently defeat highly skilled players), then you are improving. If not, then not."

Place importance on learning and how you are performing in the actual matches than just outcome. When you do that, then you'll start to win more and if you lose, you can use the experience as education for the next match.

That David Sirlin quote is good but I don't personally agree with it 100%. You can still improve by losing to highly skilled players only if you take the time & patience to find out whats going on in the actual match and using that as information for the next battle either against that player or another player.

[Cynical]

By that measure, there's still zero improvement in my play at all.

Look at the Shen close C conversions.  I'd say that close to half, maybe even more, of the the time I've spent in KoF 13 has been spent practicing those under various conditions -- starting with the dummy just standing there with 1-hit guard on, to random block, to practicing it off of jump-ins, to practicing it vs. CPU.  

0% success rate with it in those three games.  Lots of other random crap (close C -> jump B, close C -> HD activation, close C -> jump B with a simultaneous HD activation, close C -> Foward B -> nothing), but 0% success rate.

And you can see this everywhere.  Successful anti-airs with Billy 2C?  Zero.  Success rate on King 5B, 3Dxx236B strings?  Only slight better.  Successful 63214B Drive Cancels after Trap Shot?  Zero.  Number of successful punishes of obviously terrible blockstrings?  Yep, you guessed it -- Zero.

And that's not even really talking about the neutral, where I have no clue WTF is happening when I watch those matches.

[desmond_kof]

By that measure, there's still zero improvement in my play at all.

Look at the Shen close C conversions.  I'd say that close to half, maybe even more, of the the time I've spent in KoF 13 has been spent practicing those under various conditions -- starting with the dummy just standing there with 1-hit guard on, to random block, to practicing it off of jump-ins, to practicing it vs. CPU.  

0% success rate with it in those three games.  Lots of other random crap (close C -> jump B, close C -> HD activation, close C -> jump B with a simultaneous HD activation, close C -> Foward B -> nothing), but 0% success rate.

And you can see this everywhere.  Successful anti-airs with Billy 2C?  Zero.  Success rate on King 5B, 3Dxx236B strings?  Only slight better.  Successful 63214B Drive Cancels after Trap Shot?  Zero.  Number of successful punishes of obviously terrible blockstrings?  Yep, you guessed it -- Zero.

And that's not even really talking about the neutral, where I have no clue WTF is happening when I watch those matches.

Keep playing and keep trying. That's all I can say.

[Emil_kof]

Yes, maybe you are the worst player in existence. Work on changing that.

What you need to learn is combos. REAL COMBOS. Many people are giong to mention improving fundamentals and spacing, etc etc...the reality is that those improve as you play more matches, but combos do not. Many of the players that you are fighting against do unsafe moves. At the very least, if you block such a move (or have it whiff), you need to punish them as hard as possible. You must must must have your combos down.

Your gameplay is also not threatening...almost all the time the opponent is pressuring you and you're jumping backwards with jump CD or something similar. You are almost never pressuring them in any way. It's going to be very hard to beat someone with just stray hits here and there from a fireball or air to air. You need to impose yourself onto the opponent.

[Crazy Li]

Been a while since I posted in this thread. My older videos were a lot of me getting beat by people who used unsafe or bad tactics. I thought I'd come back with a match against a respectable player at the very least (even though I'm sure he's not playing me seriously here).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjqPNvV5EUQ

Against the advice of many, I took a break from trying to drill combos into myself because I realized I wasn't even putting myself in positions to start combos often enough. Sure, against low level players, I can just block all day and wait for a punish opportunity... but whenever I play someone better than me, those chances are few and far between. Instead, I need to learn how to open them up myself... to go on the offensive.

So my focus in the past couple of months has been more centered around trying to figure out how to get combos started. No, I'm not doing big damage and I'm not doing anything fancy. I don't think that's measuring my success right now. I'm not trying to win matches necessarily at this point... just improve my ability to see/create openings for myself. That said, all my combos are going to be small and basic since I'm just practicing the theory behind things... if I can get myself to a point where I can get a lot of chances to break off basic combos, I can always substitute those basic ones for larger ones. Knowing the full combo ahead of time isn't important IMO... I can always grind that out at a later date once the technique is in place. If you know any given combo with your character is likely to start from the same low or jump-in normal... you can replace what comes after the initial hit with anything. But if I never get to a point where I can begin inputting the motions in the first place, I feel practicing the better/optimal combos is a waste.

Obviously, I'm nowhere near there yet. As the linked video clearly illustrates, I have glaring holes in my neutral and don't really go on the offensive at all... I'm always running and defending and need to find a way to turn the tables and begin applying pressure to the opponent instead. Once I achieve this goal, I think I'll put serious effort into increasing the damage I'm converting... but first step is to convert in the first place.

I appreciate any thoughts on the matter.

[BodyOrgan]

Just sweep.

[The Good Loser]

Just sweep.

cheeky little devil aren't you X)

[BodyOrgan]

Just sweep.

cheeky little devil aren't you X)

Na, I'm just giving the best advice you'll ever receive.

[erythrocytes64]

https://youtu.be/8hFmwgDrxxA

First time against a good grappler player online in KoF '98 (Fightcade). There was some lag so if occasionally I do something really stupid (like Terry's f+A), that's probably it. (Plus it was my 5th game vs a living opponent overall)

I admit I don't usually use grapplers, but playing against Vice made me reconsider. My biggest avoidable mistake was not blocking low, I realized it halfway through the games. Vice can and does cancel cr.B, and that hurt me more than anything else.

But beyond that, there are certain tactics I'm not sure I know how to respond to: for the most part, the player used rolls to get behind me while I did standing attacks, then use an invincible throw. I didn't know Vice very well, so I assumed it was not invincible, but on the 10th grab it became apparent that it was (confirmed through FBA with collision boxes turned on).

It's pretty hard to react to, and I didn't use throws as much as I had to in that match. But what surprised me was how easily he could roll behind me and just do a throwâ€"I never could hit him on the ending frames of the roll. I again checked this in FBA: the results were inconsistent, but 50% of time I could roll behind a player who mashed cr.B or cr.A and grab him with an invincible throw.

The obvious choices are to hop with/without attack, or simply move away from them. But it requires reaction, or maybe better reads. Plus, something irks me about just escaping from a grapplerâ€"I wish their actions made them eat a dip hit and a combo off it, but it just doesn't happen, plus grab whiff animations are ridiculously short. People also suggested meaties to me… but it requires a precise timing, because the character has to attack in the correct direction. With a normal grab, this isn't a problem, because you can press forward or back and the grab will still come out.

So I think like I'm in an unequal situation here… Please help!