Dude, I'll say something that I saw in another forum, and helped me in the beginning.
In fighting games there are 3 parts to train, and if you only train your moves execution, you're missing 2/3 of your game.
- Execution: You learn in practice mode, trainning your BnBs, corner and midscreen, also your character's shenanigans and other stuff, you have to know how to deal with every situation, air to air punch, after AAing, after neutral punch, etc... If you play online, I highly recommend you find more practical combos in that mode, since the delay is very high, or start playing offline, by trying to get people close to you in to de game mechanics.
- Strategy: That thing you just can't practice in trainning mode, you just have to know it in theory, and how to apply it in a fight, you have to know that you can do, with Kitana (for example), Iafs and then when your opponent is duck without block in footsie distance, you can blow them up with f1 2. Or that after 3 3, you can either cancel in to fan, to catch him trying to jump, poke with d3, b2 to cause your opponent's poke to whiff, etc....Strategy is about knowledge of the match, what are your options, and your opponent options, and trying to apply them. You just can't practice that in trainning mode, so here, you'll need to know the theory and have a real match experience, if you're losing against Raiden, for example, try to find someone that plays him, and figure out what to do in all kind of situations, here you'll have to lose, lose and lose, but it doesn't matter at all, you're practicing. What I do, when I have no clue of the matchup, is just watch him, in the first round, just do your things in "auto-pilot" and pay attention of what they're doing, so you can formulate a strategy. And is based on this that we go to the next 1/3 of what needs to be your game.
- Adaptation: I'll give and example, outside of mortal kombat here, to explain this, when Daigo came to the East, to play SSFII, there was some characters, in the arcades version that didn't existed in japanese's arcades, so in the first place he just lost every single match against these characters, but after 3 or 4 times losing, that was it, he started to win, win and win. And you have to agree with me that this is not Execution or Strategy, he adapted his game, just by watching his opponents in the middle of the match, so you adapt to figure out an strategy against it, if your opponent is easy to read, your adaptation becomes more fast and easy.
So basically, what I'm saying is, 2/3 parts of your game, you learn by losing, so lose, lose and lose, a winner is a winner, but when your opponent wins he didn't learn a thing, and better than that, he's teaching you, and telling what you're doing wrong.
PS: Sry about the book I just wrote
