Tournaments and casuals VS at home?

Nutrient

I'm sure everyone suffers from this but, just for the rare cases I'll explain

Do you ever feel as though you under perform when taking part of big events like qualifiers, inferno etc but when you play in your own place you perform fine, sure a few normal hiccups but better then it was from the events.

Got home yesterday after participating in the SSF4 con tourney [Wasn't a massive hype fest but still a tourney i guess] and when i put on SSF4 here I was doing great!

Getting all my combos, cross ups were solid, carefully read the opponent and came up with counter strategy on the spot, you know all the stuff you expect to do and have to do to win at the events.

I know i don't play AE as much as I could but I've come up with 2 possibility's

1. I need more time to get adjusted to the Community [Tourney, competitive scene]
2. Train more and work on mistakes

Seems like a cry for help but really i just want some input plus the reason I put this up was out of curiosity to see if you guys have this issue too and if so did you just deal with it using option 1 or something else?

Interested in the responses lads!

UberPrinny_Baal

I can give you more possibilities for your list. You can choose some or all of these:

3. In a loud room with lots of people watching you is not a very comfortable environment which makes you nervous
4. Being at home is a comfortable environment which makes you play more relaxed
5. People online are not very good
6. People at tournaments are very good
7. Your television at home may have slightly different lag to the ones you encounter elsewhere
8. Tactics which work online, don't always work offline

Nutrient

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

I can give you more possibilities for your list. You can choose some or all of these:

3. In a loud room with lots of people watching you is not a very comfortable environment which makes you nervous
4. Being at home is a comfortable environment which makes you play more relaxed
5. People online are not very good
6. People at tournaments are very good
7. Your television at home may have slightly different lag to the ones you encounter elsewhere
8. Tactics which work online, don't always work offline

Well 5 is a bit untrue, 7 is a rare occurrence on me, 4 and 3 seem likely but it's not them , Could be the unfamiliar style of play in tourneys like when fireballs are used excessively online its called spam but in tourneys its called spacing[little untrue but u see my point]

Naphiel

It's called spamming by people who call certain tactics cheap.

I personally think it's a valid tactic, what works works. Felt great beating a Zangief player by time out earlier.

Nerves get to me when I'm playing in the company of high level players, but that'll wear down a bit when I just sit down and play more.

D4RK ONION

Punishing is sometimes difficult online, or the people may not know what is punishable and what isn't.

People going to our tourneys know what is punishable, and we know how to make you hurt for doing something unsafe. You do unsafe things. And you get punished hard for them.

Myself and a few others have said to you (as nice as we can!) that you have to play safer, and you seem to think we are attacking you personally. We really really aren't. We're just trying to help you get better at the game.

When you do a move and it gets punished, you should make a mental note that your opponent knows this move is unsafe and they know how to punish it. And you should do that move sparingly from then on.

That's my advice anyway.

stev0knev022

First of all stop doing gouken rush punches outside of combos or to punish fireballs, just stop.

Now thats been said, i know exactly how u feel bro, i feel much more confident in my execution playing online on my tv than i do playing at tournaments. Couple of factors at play i think

Tough to adjust to the timing of a new tv on the fly, when the timing your used to suddenly changes it can seriously fk u up.

If you learn the game online your essentially learning a different game albeit a very similar one, but it's different nonetheless.

UberPrinny_Baal

Nutrient wrote: »

when fireballs are used excessively online its called spam but in tourneys its called spacing[little untrue but u see my point]

Without going into the finer points here, I think Onion is probably right in that it's a combination of 6 and 8. The guys in the scene are really good, and if you've trained yourself to do stuff in Street Fighter that is ONLY effective online, the guys in the scene are going to wreck you offline.

It's a simple matter of lag and reaction time. The best example I always complain about is a Ken player doing LP Dragon punch, into LP Dragon punch.

Online, even if you see the first one, block it, and know the second one is coming, any attempt to punish it will get you Dragon Punched.

Offline this is actually quite easy to deal with.

So fireball spam online might be more effective because lag can mess with people's jump/focus/invincible move timing; but offline fireball spam is easier to punish and is only effective if you can force the opponent to stay standing where you want them to be.

Making the opponent stay where you want them to be? That's called zoning.

Sagat06

3. In a loud room with lots of people watching you is not a very comfortable environment which makes you nervous

I think this has a lot more to do with it than any lag or other such nonsense, as they say both players have to suffer the same lag so both are at the same disadvantage! But if a guy cant handle the pressure of tournament play then it doesnt matter how good or bad his execution is. I see people beasting online and not getting out of groups in tournaments. Pressure will affect your decision making, its how well you can cope with it. Doom is the perfect example, there are a players he beats with stronger execution and technically more proficient, but the guys is as solid as a rock in his head, he beats guys by never getting flustered and keeping his cool also air throws are broken but you will learn this.

Doctor DooM

Nutrient plays exactly like I did in Vanilla, just I was playing with a character which is intrinsically safe outside of Flash Kick, which to this day I still really over use when I am not concentrating.

Your unsafe play is working on line because a) the AVERAGE player you meet online is not amazing and b) It's harder to block... well, anything online.

Thus you get offline and you have to realise people are analysing you as you play. When someone tells you "stop doing that" in casuals it means they've downloaded your pattern and offering you some advice which is good.

Except for me, people tell me to stop doing sonic boom all the time for other reasons

...anyway, you need to hit up SRK and find what better Goukens use as their safe offence. I also learned alot from really looking at videos of how Deiminion and Modinside, two really good Guiles, play. Listen to what the commentators are saying about the Gouken play, what's good and bad. You'll pick up loads of different things and play subtly different over time.

Interesting final thing to note- one thing these two confirmed for me is it;s actually ok to OCCASIONALLY throw out a random crazy move. Teaching your opponent they can't pressure you for free is a great tool, but you have to learn the rule of being safe before you can break it.

Learning to punish hard, IMO, comes after this. Most characters have what I like to call "scrub punishes" which are simple high damage cancels. For example, Ryu's close hp into SRK. Two minutes in training room, and acceptable damage.

You should get used to using something like that which is quick and easy while working in training room doing reps of whatever better combos Goukens got (again, videos and SRK will show you these). I myself didn't bother my arse for a year to learn any form of combos and it's cost me in the past. To this day you'll hear the odd person on commentary going "Doom? Doing a combo?" So I know of what I speak.

FutureGuy

It's a completely different environment. At home you are used to a certain amount of lag (or lack thereof), you are used to the quiet and you are used to your seating position.

Speaking of the last point (seating arrangement), this has caused me so many problems recently. I'm used to playing on a couch which is low to the ground which means that when my stick is on my lap, it's usually tilted upwards. When I play in a tournament, the chairs are usually much higher which means my stick is usually facing downwards. Out of habit, I use the minimum movement needed to press up for antiair upkicks. At home this is fine, but outside of this, it means I am barely putting the stick to neutral, let alone up, and so my upkicks won't come out. Noones fault but my own.

To combat this, I have started playing at home while sitting on a higher chair. Hopefully it makes a difference.

Changing the topic slightly, I see a few players listening to music on headphones to block out the background noise? I am wondering if you do this all the time or are there certain characters you need to hear? For example, when I play Honda, his headbutts have different sound bytes when executed which gives an idea of whether they can be punished or not.

UberPrinny_Baal

FutureGuy wrote: »

To combat this, I have started playing at home while sitting on a higher chair. Hopefully it makes a difference.

Changing the topic slightly, I see a few players listening to music on headphones to block out the background noise? I am wondering if you do this all the time or are there certain characters you need to hear? For example, when I play Honda, his headbutts have different sound bytes when executed which gives an idea of whether they can be punished or not.

Chair thing: I have this problem sometimes as well. I noticed that a lot of players at tournaments, Daigo especially, sit on the floor, because their lap is more consistent than different chairs would be. Not sure I'm willing to do this from a comfort perspective.

Headphones: I know some people play music, and claim it just eliminates the ambient noise and not the character voices. Not to sound like a broken fanboy again, but Daigo says he uses noise-cancelling headphones without any music playing for much the same effect.

Different brands of noise cancelling headphones would obviously have different effectiveness. I picked up a pretty entry-level model of noise cancelling headphones in America, and it ONLY eliminated ambient noise (the whoose of airplane engines, or the general murmur of far off conversations); I could actually hear people speaking next to me CLEARER. So in a tournament setting with someone shouting in the crowd, it seems like they'd be louder.

bush

Sagat06 wrote: »

both players have to suffer the same lag so both are at the same disadvantage!

People handle lag differently though. Ive seen fergus do mad combos during the worst lag ever online but I cant do anything in lag.

The problem here is gouken.

Doctor DooM

Listening to the Shadowloo Stream and a few other things I have seen recently it seems in some situations the top players learn visual queues from the very start of moves which are character specific but better than sounds (Mike Ross can apparently punish a yoga fire with Honda U1 simply by watching how Sims head tips backwards at the start of it). I'm often being told I should hit throw when fighting Rogs as soon as I see them flash yellow at over alf screen distance because it's not like they're going to be doing a headbutt.

It's weird to me because I am so used to punishing things on whiff or block but hey I gots to learn what I gots to learn

TVSAdamwest

Me and joe were having this conversation at arcadecon. Everybody is godlike playing at home Joe reckons he could beat daigo if it was in his gaf.
Its a combination of skilled opponents and not being comfortable in my opinion.
I still crumble at tourneys. There is no easy fix for this, over time these issues will go away just dont get frustrated.

Kirby

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Mike Ross can apparently punish a yoga fire with Honda U1 simply by watching how Sims head tips backwards at the start of it).

This is so true. The best pro's use Animation cues.

I remember watching Iyo back in Vanilla....he would reaction punish loads of fireballs on startup with Dhalsims standard fierce. It would beat or trade in favour every single time. Twas sick. So i totally believe Mike Ross can do that.

On a slight tangent, as a Rugby fan I find it hilarious that one of our best new players for the Irish International Rugby team is called Mike Ross. During the six nations, I was sitting in a pub and randomly said without thinking "I believe in Mike Ross". Nobody I was with had the foggiest what I was talking about.

Jun_DP101

Hey Ciaran, Hound, one of the best players in Ireland supposedly suffered from stage fright the same way you say you do. Although he had excellent execution and match up knowledge he wouldn't progress as far as he potentially should. Now the story is completely different. I assume it goes away the more tournaments you attend , getting used to playing in front of anybody.

Also practice mode is rly good in this game. The record function is excellent to know which of your moves are unsafe and will be punished/how to punish other player's unsafe moves.

So before you head of to a tourney next time Practice mode>xbox live battle

Sairus

3. In a loud room with lots of people watching you is not a very comfortable environment which makes you nervous

This has been said a bunch of times already, but I reckon this plays a huge part.
I virtually always play better in tournaments than I ever could at home in casuals and I actually love the sound of the crowd talking and hyping up in games, but when it comes to those game turning moments and the crowd is really going I've noticed I botch my game horribly - anyone at the @rcade-con finals can probably name at least one moment where this happened :pac:

I'm fairly certain that many people suffer from nerves in tournaments in Ireland at least - I had always thought that I thrived on crowd reaction, but recent tournies have shown me I still haven't learned to tune it out when I need to.
As said above though, the more high pressure public matches you play, the more used to it you're going to get.

Doctor DooM

Does anyone else get this thing were sometimes they enter this zone of total concentration where you seem to make decisions much quicker and your execution becomes robotic?

It's happened to me a few times, it's like your subconcious takes over and you play like a machine.

AJ gave it the nickname "hyper c*nt mode"

D4RK ONION

Daigo mode engaged :P

Doctor DooM

D4RK ONION wrote: »

Daigo mode engaged :P

But seriously though... the only time I think it happened when I was recording was against Mike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6L5lfTKeeE

Like, first fight he just destroys me, second we're trading but in the last round of the last round I swear to god I just switched off and I don't remember a single one of those booms. I had totally phased the room out (which was hyper noisy, which is why it came to mind).

Placebo

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Does anyone else get this thing were sometimes they enter this zone of total concentration where you seem to make decisions much quicker and your execution becomes robotic?

It's happened to me a few times, it's like your subconcious takes over and you play like a machine.

AJ gave it the nickname "hyper c*nt mode"

This cognitive behavior happens in several other aspects of life too,
sport, exams/thesis, angry complaint to bus eireann, an actual fight.

Also compared to 'when slightly tipsy'


On topic, i still have not gotten over my tournament fright. I alway play poorer when subject to an audience. This happened to fergus on his first tournament, nerves got to the boy.

Doctor DooM

Placebo wrote: »

On topic, i still have not gotten over my tournament fright. I alway play poorer when subject to an audience. This happened to fergus on his first tournament, nerves got to the boy.

Funny, you out of everyone I would expect to not get nerves for some reason.

UberPrinny_Baal

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Does anyone else get this thing were sometimes they enter this zone of total concentration where you seem to make decisions much quicker and your execution becomes robotic?

It's happened to me a few times, it's like your subconcious takes over and you play like a machine.

AJ gave it the nickname "hyper c*nt mode"

Sirlin's written an article about this before.

He called it "Hyper focus" or "Slowing down time" and equated it to a skill that takes a little time to warm up, and is then a limited resource (too straining to do for long).

Couldn't find a link but it was kind a ....... weak article.

Doctor DooM

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Sirlin's written an article about this before.

He called it "Hyper focus" or "Slowing down time" and equated it to a skill that takes a little time to warm up, and is then a limited resource (too straining to do for long).

Couldn't find a link but it was kind a ....... weak article.

That's exactly how it feels. I'm always wrecked after it kicks in. Only ever lasts for a match, maybe two if I am lucky.

EDIT: Looks like it does happen to other people all right- from Sirloin's forums...

Not a bad link, but that guy has some hard-to-parse grammar mistakes. Anyway, he mentions a good concept that might be new to non-experts. Conscious thought is slow and you don't want to rely on it in timing-intensive situations like a fight or a virtual fight. So what you need is the ability to make quick unconscious decisions that are of high quality. How to achieve that is beyond the scope of a post, but that is what you need.

Before the finals of Evolution last year, the players (including me) were waiting in a staging area. I asked them (including Justin Wong and John Choi) how much conscious vs unconscious decision making they did during a tournament match. The only debate was whether it was 100% unconscious or 99% unconscious. I think 99% unconscious (1% conscious) was what most agreed on.

So it looks like, if you want to up your game in tournaments, you need to train your subconcious.


the effect seems to have the rather hippy new age name of "the flow".

UberPrinny_Baal

Doctor DooM wrote: »

That's exactly how it feels. I'm always wrecked after it kicks in. Only ever lasts for a match, maybe two if I am lucky.

For you Doom, I found it:

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2008/8/17/evolution-2008-results-and-stories.html

chueytoo

Doctor DooM wrote: »

the effect seems to have the rather hippy new age name of "the flow".

yeah, its called flow, I'm writing my thesis on it. It happens when are mind is focus on the thing ahead of us. That anything around us is cut off.

But like everyone says, Tourneys will always be different to how you play at home. Everyone after a tourney will usualy go home do the combos and be like'' why they hell was I not doing/playing this '' Its the comfort zone really.

everyone is godlike at their own home, till someone comes and expose you

Doctor DooM

chueytoo wrote: »

yeah, its called flow, I'm writing my thesis on it. It happens when are mind is focus on the thing ahead of us. That anything around us is cut off.

But like everyone says, Tourneys will always be different to how you play at home. Everyone after a tourney will usualy go home do the combos and be like'' why they hell was I not doing/playing this '' Its the comfort zone really.

everyone is godlike at their own home, till someone comes and expose you

I did it in a tournament, see above it seemingly happens at random times and it doesn't matter if there's a huge amount of distraction or none.

Nutrient

Right so what I've gathered from all this is the following;

Getting used to playing at tourneys takes experience and playing in the moment may improve over time

Learning which moves are safe and which are not need to be assessed especially when fighting faster characters

Playing online is bollocks[well, different], and because of it your play style can be altered if you mix you online play style with your offline

"If you learn the game online your essentially learning a different game albeit a very similar one, but it's different nonetheless"

I have read the through the thread and I think was been said couldn't be any closer to the truth

"People going to our tourneys know what is punishable, and we know how to make you hurt for doing something unsafe. You do unsafe things. And you get punished hard for them"

I've done this to many players countless times, i know it won't work but its like an automatic response!

"First of all stop doing gouken rush punches outside of combos or to punish fireballs, just stop"

I'd say yes and no to this

First off, it shouldn't be done off the spot against a character like Dudley or Makoto for e.g
Second, it can be great for punishing projectiles IF it's timed correctly

And from what Doom said I'd say about 100% of what it says is true I could never argue xD

I'm gonna check out some vids on SRK

Try to practice more and work on Safer tactics

Get used to playing in different places[not really stage fright just uncomfortable]

Cheers from everyone who provided input, I do listen to everyone that has provided advice and I understand its help, I know you guys are helping:P

Really Appreciate the help guys

K.O.Kiki

We gave "the flow" a proper name back in the 90s (playing basketball).

We called it "The Zone".

A-Trak

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

We gave "the flow" a proper name back in the 90s (playing basketball).

And then a couple of guys that were up to no good, starting making trouble in my neighbourhood.

The Hound

In tournies you have 2 games to win in whats usually a best of 3. When people sit down to play and adjust to the environment, T.Vs, get comfortable etc it can take a few games. When ya sit down in a tournie you dont have to time to "be in the zone" in your 1st game or even 2nd.

Last tournie I had to play 4 games in a row. 1st Gramo, then Blag, then Azza and then the Final vs Stev0. As the more matches I played the better and more comfortable I got.

Its always nice to sit down and play some games, get warmed up before the real deal starts.

Like bush said, some people handle lag differently. Some people can hit 1 frame links with eyes their eyes close simply because they know the timing and are so used to it. Others watch and know by animation which can be different on each character.