It's a good month now, and so far... well, my record hasn't been good at all. It's been a while since I actually won anything in a tournament, and that was by taking my friend out in the Loser's Bracket.
So it's around 5:12 AM here, and I'm still awake. I came back from Local Battles a while ago, but the last loss I took is still replaying in my head. A few hours ago, I was just salty that I lost to that guy and just kept coming up with excuses. But honestly, after a few hours of thinking, the loss is attributed to a lot of things.
1) Lack of Practice. I keep saying I'll practice Marvel, but I don't, and somehow I expect I'll do well the next tournament. No. Right now I have to stop kidding myself and stop thinking that just because I'm going to tournaments, doesn't mean I'll level up without the effort before it. As much as I love Local Battles, paying 15 bucks to go 0-2 every week is not the most confidence-inducing thing. The only way to really be good at a game is to put forth effort into it. Now, I'm not saying I should completely shut myself in and learn every single frame, or rather just spend hours in training mode. I'm still under the impression that, if you do something and it feels like a chore, you're not going to learn anything
2) Lack of Seriousness. When I see NYChrisG lose, he takes it bad. Sometimes real bad. And while I get a laugh out of it, honestly, it's evident that he took this game seriously enough to learn everything (or at least the things needed to learn), and he plays to win. The past few weeks, I've been half-assing it. I'm still all smiles when I play in tournaments, and honestly I shouldn't be in that mode if I'm really thinking of taking competitive fighting games seriously. There's a reason why people who win are people who "play solid." That's because when they play, they're as solid as a rock. Their expressions don't say anything. They don't laugh shit off, they take it and go on, like a fucking rock. It's understandable to have fun expressions when playing casuals, but when you're playing with money, you'd best be on your A-Game and think nothing but winning. When you put yourself into a reality check and realize that "Hey, I'm about to lose 15 dollars plus the gas I bought just to get here," suddenly, you don't WANT to make mistakes. And suddenly your mistake ratio goes down, and you play more solid. Now imagine telling yourself the same thing I just said, only this time, 15 dollars is now 50. Yeah. That shit is mad serious.
3) Lack of Perspective. Press buttons. Press forward. Profit. That was my subconscious mindset whenever I played. And obviously, when you read it, it looks wrong already. When I came into the world of fighting games last year, the one thing I really felt I had, only because of fear, was the ability to read. I didn't know one damn combo for Ken back in Super Street Fighter IV, and the only way to compensate for that back when I was a real scrub was to read opponents. I would always ask myself how I open myself up.
Suddenly, I learned how to combo, and my original mindset completely turned around. These combos do damage, and I want to do damage, so I'm gonna use this combo to do damage. I was no longer thinking about the repercussions of certain moves. I just wanted that move to hit, cause if it hits, you're fucking dead. But I completely forget in the midst of my newfound ability to combo how to read opponents.
There was an article by Daigo Umehara where someone asked him how you basically get better at the game. Daigo simply said, "When you put a move out, a lot of people only put that move out because they're thinking of what happens when that move lands. But a lot don't think 'what will happen if this move doesn't land?' What if it's blocked or whiffed? The way to get better at a game with your character and in general is to not think how your actions will benefit you, but rather how your actions will be detrimental to you. Don't think of what this move will do for you, but think of how this move will hurt you, and you'll live a lot longer."
4) Lack of Flexibility. I play Ken for AE. I play Chris/Nova/Vergil for UMVC3. I play Julia/Poison for SFxT, and I play EX Iori/King/K' for KOF XIII. When I started playing Super, I stuck to Ken. That's good. The bad part? I didn't bother trying anyone else. That's a major, major mistake right there. How are you ever going to learn a matchup if you only know one side of the coin. This might count as Lack of Perspective, but my inability to be flexible and just TRY other characters just makes it all the more harder and impossible for me. Vic and Andrew (my buddies who chill with me at LB) couldn't help but shake their heads at me when I lost to that Zero player last night. But Vic hit it dead on when he mentioned that maybe, just maybe, I should stop playing Chris/Nova/Vergil and try other characters. Would I really have lost to that Zero if I played Zero? Probably not. It would probably be the same chances as a K' beating me in KOF. It's probably not going to happen. I know K' so goddamn well that I don't even think Bala himself could open me up that easily. I'm not talking out of my ass either. K' is almost 10 years of experience under my belt.
When it comes to K', I think that's where I'll stay inflexible. I'm completely and utterly loyal to K' in every KOF incarnation he's been in. Eddie (my friend who I played fighting games with before I took it seriously and still play with) knows damn well that my knowledge of K' is insane, and I'm not afraid to boast it. While I'm inflexible to the idea of changing K', here's a funny little thing no one really knows:
I picked up K' by accident.
Yep. When I first played KOF 2000 on my MAME emulator back in the day, I only played the game because of one reason: Fatal Fury. My brothers and I have always been huge fans of Fatal Fury, especially me, when I thought Kim was the coolest fighter in the planet. Now Terry, Andy and Joe are in this game? Fuck. Yeah. Then by some chance, I accidentally picked K' since I was mashing buttons when I lost against the Level 9 CPU and K', being the star of that game, had the cursor on him. I didn't feel like restarting, and just thought I'd play and lose and repick my Fatal Fury team.
I fucking landed a Heat Drive combo by mashing, and I never looked back. This fucker was awesome. Suddenly I backtracked to KOF '99 and from there learned K' in every way. If only he had his Sniper Slide from KOF XI in KOF 13, I'd die a happy man.
But that's what I mean by flexibility. Now, K' is my best character by far. Always has been, all because I picked this guy by accident. If that didn't happen, I'd probably be playing Terry, Andy and Joe right now. Maybe Kim.
And MAYBE, just maybe, if I wasn't so goddamn stubborn, I'd have been better at CVS2 if I stopped being an idiot and kept picking just SNK characters. My friend Joe kept blowing me up cause all I knew was Rock Howard and a handful of characters. By refusing to play ANY Capcom character, I lost the battle right there. My mistake.
That's what I mean. If I just took the time to get out of my comfort zone and look at other characters, shit like that Zero loss last night wouldn't have happened, maybe even that Level 5 Frank West thing, too.
5) Lack of Realism. I'm not going to win this tournament if I don't win a match. So I gotta stop thinking I'll win this tournament and hype a crowd up, and START thinking that I have to win this match. It's shit like that, that makes me kind of respect things like Daigo and Momochi using Yun, or Viscant using Vanilla Dark Phoenix, and ChrisG and Dieminion using Morrigan. There's money involved, and no one wants to lose money. Instead of focusing on winning it all, I gotta focus on just winning this one set. I'm tired of going 0-2. I'm learning, yes, but I'm at that point where I now realize that I'm spending $60 a month plus gas going to Local Battles. Yes. I'm spending $60 bucks just to lose? Hell no.
So there you have it. It's now 6:01, and I spent nearly an hour typing all this out. But yeah, if I'm going to really take all this shit seriously, it's about time I really hold those Ls to my chest and stop being free.
-FM Sway
No comments:
Post a Comment