Why You Play Well* Against Good Players but Not Bad Players 

Lol. Love punk but probably the last name I'd wanna see 🤣

I’d say that’s more of an extreme because it’s hard to play well against one of the best players in the world if you aren’t one of the best players in the world

Dude is known for his reactions. I legit cant think of one character nor playstyle I have under my belt that could land three hits on him. Esp while he is using Cammy.

This is a bad way to see it. You didn’t play against a better player, you played against one of best players in the world. Only a few people can actually play him without looking dumb

Bro I had a mirror match against Moke's Chun-Li in the Japanese servers once in battlehub. Let's just say that I only had one round where I got a single hit on him. Out of 5 matches I had against him, I got perfected. 4 matches were double Ps. Is this normal?

I concur (and thank you for checking Twitter so we don't have to). As such, I'm only replying to remind you that for italics to work on RU-vid, the underscore has not be touching punctuation unless it's containing it. So _Airplane!_ will italicize while _Airplane_! won't because RU-vid.

_hey thank you!_

You love to see the underscores

Sure. But my problem is that bad players are chaotic and throw random shit, so I don't know what they are doing because they don't know it themselves. So I will lose match or 2 but then they will never win again. But they usually win once or twice and gtfo. Usually using cheap gimmicky characters you never see, so it takes a bit to adjust. I'm specifically talking Tekken, which is hundreds of times more complex than 2d like street fighter. I do get blown up by bad players sometimes and do better against good players because it's what I'm used to and it surprises Me. It has nothing to do with looking good against daigo or weaknesses being exposed. Leaving aside that bad players play on wifi with trash connections and abuse the shit out of it...

@@kato093but the point being is that if the good player opponent that you're used to fighting decided "fuck it" and played risky and randomly like a bad player does, you would still lose to that because you lose to that style of play, the better player just assumes you're also a player that knows how to deal with that and doesn't do it and instead plays less risky and more solid. It does expose the weakness that you can't deal with that playstyle, you're doing well against people who choose not to play like that, and usually good players choose not to play like that cause they're assuming their opponent can deal with it, but you can't, so you're being given unearned respect.

I laughed way more than I should've at "Johnny Donuts the silver Ken player"

"Johnny Donuts the silver Ken online" could be a legit nickname lmfao

That is the funniest name I have ever seen 😂😂😂

This is honestly the best piece of advice ever. I think this is what I needed to make sure to think again when up against those kind of players

I remember playing a freind of mine in tekken and it was this exact exchange, me going in enforcing frames and and ducking and backdashing and wavedashing and my friend literally yoloing rounds left and right. After a few losses and close wins, it legit clicked.. "what if i spam, CH launchers" ... saw him popping like a fire cracker.

I'm sure he was just going to the lab to learn some new tech. /s

Something that always gets in my head about this stuff is i can never tell "is this *supposed* to be what he's doing or am I getting scammed" lol i guess the reality is i'm getting hit anyway and it doesn't matter if they're playing 'right' or not i was the dope that got smacked

One of the best abilities is adaptability 😬

where can I find that video?

@@pluviaaeternumalmost a week late but it’s called this twitch chatter talked trash it’s from about 2 months ago, it’s got the guy with the hat and came in the thumbnail

Self-awareness as a life skill is sorely underrated. Things like social media and being able to play online with virtually 0 “feedback” has made people feel themselves just for realizing a Twitter account is (still) free, and they can say the least curated take for instant attention

Sounds like striker vs dragon link

Yeah, win rate in a long set is a much better indicator, since it's less vulnerable to that kind of cognitive bias. Like, if you felt like you were doing really well the whole time but still got washed 10-1. There's probably a reason the opponent was able to consistently close out the matches even if they all felt to you like they were close.

What the fuck are you talking about

This is why every Burn/Mill deck feels bad to play against even if you do well against them. 90% of the time they're going to come within an inch of killing you but if you're patient you can consistently win when they're within an inch of taking you out with their wincon. But BOY does it always feel as sweaty as trying to Lame out a competently designed Rushdown character with a Zoner.

You said card games but I think you might want to specify yugioh bc a handful of things make it seem to me like it only really applies to yugioh

Yeah, the way you would beat a random player in that type of scenario would be to learn proper frame traps/pressure routines with no gaps, and to respect the player enough to not over-extend your pressure, where as if they were super respectful of it, you would do things like unsafe pressure strings, mix in overheads/grabs, and if they’re teching it’s time to shimmy them, the important part is to understand very clearly, “this person is doing this, so I should do something else” this is probably one of the most important skills in a fighting game, learning to adapt

As a decidedly "slightly above the average," intermediate player, this shit right here. I'll let you hit buttons and just block 27 times if it means that on that 27th time you're in minus 47 and I'm GUARANTEED to punish with lock, stock, both barrels, good fucking NIGHT, before I'd press a single button that I'm not at least 70% sure is a good idea because I just don't KNOW yet how plus or not you are.

Plat is so weird man. I'm glad I'm out of there now but it made me so mad at the time. One game I get a Ken that tries to space his HP perfectly, the next I get one Dp'ing in neutral.

Least aggressive Zangief main on wakeup with a Level 3 bar maxed out:

​@@leithaziz2716blud is almighty. Bro's loyal fans

​@@Caleb-zl4wkhomie got no mercy. buddy has no remorse

To me, there are more yolo players in Diamond than Platinum. Even in masters, people mash jab after getting hit.

And then when you get to the high ranks you can harness some of that chaotic scrub energy in a controlled way to surprise the top rank players. Then you end up in situations like Punk playing that one top rank Kimberly in Japan and calling him "the worst player he's ever played" even though in the best of 3 he only won ONE more round. That's gotta mean Punk is the second-worst player then, right?

He can hit that OD DP like nobody else

Even quite good players will like drop the first round against a crayon eater who goes absolutely HAM. They just take the next four rounds straight. Sajam has a good segment about that I think when he was doing Lily to Master where he ran into a Rashid like that.

This. Comment. Right. Here

should be pinned.

Nah Ken always had good wake up options. You try to shimmy? Sweep. You try to throw? Dp. You try to do nothing? Now it’s back to neutral

@@hands-ongaming7180 this is true for every character though

@@rivahs Zangief with no wake up reversal: bruh

​@@hands-ongaming7180Sajam has made a video about the exact same set of excuses you're making. All you're saying is that every option has an answer, that does not mean the opponent is going to choose the right one every single time.

@@X19Virus that doesn’t stop the fact that Ken can use meterless DP as a reversal and Zangief has to use meter that will leave him very unsafe if he messes up.

i used to be that guy who didn't want to learn combos, setups etc because i thought it was some form of cheating to learn all this before i had a solid neutral. i had this idea in my head that it was scrubby/dishonorable so i kept stubborny trying to "practice my neutral" against players who either press every button simultaneously, or who had learned a couple of solid tech and kept getting me with it. needless to say, i wasn't making any progress and i was only frustrating myself and blaming opponents for my mistakes. now? if i can win the entire match off off the same looping oki, then i will. if a player is not capable of adapting to that, if that much is enough to beat a player, then i figure i have nothing to learn from their neutral. i'll ride the winstreaks as far as they'll take me up the ranks, because then, once i get to a rankl where people enough that my simple setup no longer works and i'm forced to play neutral, then it's neutral worth playing. plat 1 players aren't the cream of the crop, but it's probably the minimum level where you can start playing neutral with any kind of intentionality, and learning combos and setups will absolutely take you all the way up to plat. besides, it's not like it's autopilot, especially in SF you'll still have plenty of RPS and stuff and you can't take half of someone's lifebar away without spending resources besides, you won't learn neutral properly, you won't learn why certain moves are good and the importance of getting certain kind of knockdowns if you can't do a simplr bnb combo and its ensuing oki. i used to not understand why cammy's cr.HP was so good until i learned her bnb combo and the simple setup that derives from it. now that i get it, it's making me fish for opportunities to place it and it's giving my neutral a purpose -- i'm no longer just trying to get hits more or less randomly, i'm looking to get kd's to get my oki started, and once the opponent is conditioned to look out for these kds i'm starting to see how it opens up other options. if i didn't know my bnb combo, my opponents wouldn't respect my offense because it'd just be a stray hit. now it's 2100 damage and you have to guess a mixup afterwards; THAT's something people look out for. tl;dr: don't be arrogant fellow newbies, learn your combos like everyone else and let yourself be carried up the ranks despite having no neutral. you'll eventually hit a point where you need to learn neutral anyway, and then you'll be learning it against players who have some idea what they're doing + you'll have some idea of what YOU'RE supposed to be doing when you win those interactions

@@jambondepays1969 In my case, I don't like learning combos because it's not the fun part of the video game. I will jump into ranked with the most jank-ass combos imaginable, and just say "screw it, the average player is so bad at fighting games that I'll just hit them more times than they hit me." Eventually, I'll run into people that understand 2+2 = 4 and have to learn better combo routes to keep up, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with jumping into pvp just after learning what your character does. That said, there's nothing "honorable" or "dishonorable" about either approach. It's a matter of what you're willing to put in, and what you're looking to get out.

​@@caliburnleaf9323 i hate learning combos too, that's why i recommend learning a simple bnb and go ham. cammy's bnb is literally just 3 hits. i'd argue that knowing your bnb is part of "learning what your character does" tbqh. a big part of what Cammy does is get in, get a kd, and start pressuring at close range, and you need the basic bnb for that but yeah, i definitely agree, it's not a question of honor or dishonor, but rather of do you want to get better at the game or just jump into games and have fun? both approaches are valid and i'd even say complementary. starting out by just pressing buttons online is absolutely fine and will get you a feel for the game, but if you want to do more, you can learn the bnbs and basic setups and jump back online to press buttons, and you'll get an even better feel for the game because you know why you want to press certain buttons the whole thing is a rather stress free approach to getting better at fighting games really. i barely lab, once i get the gist of a new tech i just jump online and practice it even if it makes me lose ranked matches. not caring about losing ranked matches is another huge thing to improve tbqh

I think it comes from a lot of experience. For example, if you notice your opponent _always_ instantly reversals you if you drop a link, then they're probably mashing reversal while being comboed. You could purposefully stop your combo on a move that's safe and just block their DP/Super, then proceed to punish again with reset scaling. If they tech a lot, try shimmying more. If they often wakeup DP, try to bait it by cutting a DR short, spacing DR > block, walkup block etc. It's about pattern recognition, setting expectations, seeing how they react, then defying those expectations on purpose. Conditioning is related to reading and predicting, and reacting is easier when you have a read on how to prioritize your mental stack.

It's ok man, I get cooked by everyone too in blazblue.

I would have died more if Sajam put his hair on Pep.

The no mixup mixup

When your opponent outsmarts you by doing nothing. We've all felt that at some point.

And then I run into a Hwoarang or Lei player.

The run-up DP, a true classic.

its a full vid on his channel i believe

What you're desrcibing is that in those types of games, usually the much older ones, knowledge checks are everywhere, and knowing how to stop moves is a bit unconventional. Try to figure out when Slayer in Xrd ISN'T plus and to counterattack without checking a guide or wiki explanation, because from pure playing, I usually can't tell what I'm missing besides "use Just Block more". You can really get far (at least to somewhere in intermediate level) with just throwing out moves that the opponent likely doesn't know the solution agaisnt.