i guess technically this belongs in fighting philosophy but nobody reads that forum so LET'S GO
so on many occasions, i see big names in this community swear that an online beast who's never been to a tournament will place top 8 if not outright win their first major. it rarely ever works out that way, and merely results in the community calling this player a fraud and doing everything they can to discourage them from attending more tournaments (even if that isn't the intention, as it usually isn't). yet it still happens, and it's not just a NRS thing - witness all the final round hype for KDD in killer instinct!
people got angry with me in the stream chat there when i said that online alone will never fully prepare you for that kind of environment. i fully stand by this opinion, so i figured i'd go more in-depth to explain it!
first off, netcode quality is irrelevant to the specific points i am making here. people were using KI's great netcode as an argument against me, but that misses the main idea. input lag is not the only reason you can't take online too seriously!
the reality is that people will play much differently when money & pride are on the line, and people will also play much differently when in unfamiliar situations! using this to your advantage is an entire skill in itself, one that i like to call "tournament psychology". it is woefully unexplored in the available writing on competitive fighting games, and it is *the* skill that tends to be most lacking in players without live tournament experience. and you cannot win a major without a solid grasp of this, period.
in my estimation, there are two main components to tournament psychology: choking or avoiding choking, and recognizing & exploiting your opponent's choking.
i've followed the sports analytics community (think moneyball etc.) for most of my life, and they always used to push the talking point that "clutch" (improving your game in the biggest moments) and choking were both myths. there has been quite a bit of psychological research on this subject since this began. indeed, there has been no solid evidence of Magical Clutch Powers, but choking has actually become pretty damn well-established now!
choking generally results from a combination of the two factors i mentioned previously: high stakes and unfamiliar situations. the former is what's virtually always missing from online play, and it can also make familiar situations into unfamiliar ones (again, people play differently when more is on the line!). besides the aforementioned money & pride in tournaments, "high stakes" can also include playing against a big-name opponent; yes, folks, there is psychological evidence for The Wong Factor! in fighting games i find that when players get nervous they will change their general game in one of two ways - either they panic and throw out too many whiffed moves and reversals, or they get scared to press buttons or approach at all. in my experience the latter seems to be much more common (it's what happens to me personally), but i can't say for sure.
thus, people whose only experience in fighting games comes from online play will fall prey to this in some form during their first live tournament, and almost certainly for multiple tournaments thereafter. it can take years to really get comfortable with tournament psychology, but incremental improvements do happen after a few tournaments. choking will likely still happen no matter how much experience you have, but with experience it will become less common and you will be better able to recognize it and adjust on the spot.
taking advantage of opponents' choking is trickier than managing it in yourself, i think. it's more obvious against someone who goes all wildman: play footsies and/or zone depending on your character's strengths, and be willing to stop blockstrings early to bait reversals. dealing with the passive players comes less naturally since you have to do a lot more things that seem "scrubby" in a vacuum. my own specialty here is the walk-up -> throw or dash -> throw in unexpected spots. here's an example from evo 2008 super turbo:
in losers bracket of top 32, i play balrog against a solid ryu. he goes up 1-0 on me and is on match point. we both have around 20% life, and i have him in the corner. i throw out a random super since it's safe and will beat any poke or a fireball, but he blocks it. balrog's super has a moderate disadvantage on block and pushes me just out of ryu's low MK range. the guy has been on the passive side and none of ryu's pokes will hit me at that range, so i decide to go for a whiffed dash upper -> throw. this is normally a bad decision since it's still safe for ryu to poke in this spot, as balrog can't hurt much with a whiff punish. but i figured he would stay in his shell and block low, and that throw started me on the comeback that won me the set!
there are plenty more examples of this. heck, i've seen people win matches in arcsys games by dashing in from literally half the screen away and landing a throw without any resistance! another similarly "nutty" way to exploit passive players is to use unconventional ways of getting in - scared players are normally looking to react to your one or two most obvious approaches, so use something gimmicky if your character has it (e.g. akuma's EX demon flip in SF4) or just very gradually work your way in with small steps so that the opponent doesn't even recognize your attempt to get close. the latter is especially strong with a good ranged move...think of how many times justin & ricky work their way into range for rufus's rolling kick normal and use that to start their offense!
when you've only played online, or even only played live against people with similar experience & mentality, you won't think of this stuff. the talented but less experienced players tend to just focus on what's "optimal" in a given situation, without awareness of all the ways in which players with far less game knowledge can take you out of the comfort zone where you make those optimal moves!
to go back to the killer instinct example, i watched KDD's elimination match at final round. i don't know this particular game, but it definitely looked like he was the "scared to approach until it's 100% safe" type in this match. given that his opponent was another sadira (read: the character with by far the best movement), KDD's tepid play led to too many easy approaches for his opponent. it takes a hell of a lot of 80% combos to overcome that in a 3/5 set!
when i brought up this topic in the stream chat after the match, people immediately cited grimmmz as an example of an online player who won his first major in KI. there's a crucial difference here, though: grimmmz had a bunch of real-life tournament experience against the best, years before KI came out!
you can't blame anyone for not knowing this, so i'll explain. grimmmz was a regular in the norcal scene for SSF4, at a time when norcal was *THE* dominant force in the US. ricky, filipino champ, & vangief were all at the top of their game at that point, and it's hard to imagine a much better way of getting past tourney nerves than playing against those guys. grimmmz also went to evo the one year they had SSF4, and beat sanford to win his pool! that was actually when i had first heard of him, as this was one of the biggest upsets of the weekend and people kept talking about "that pad ryu".
so while he may have been new to offline KI, he was definitely not new to offline tournament matches against top players. when it comes to developing tournament psychology, it's much more about experience with fighting games in general than it is about experience in the game you're playing at that moment.
in short, please stop predicting instant greatness for online warriors unless they have a significant live tournament history. becoming even an above-average tournament player, much less an elite one, is a much longer & harder road than some people here & elsewhere seem to believe. this sort of "hype" does a disservice to the players themselves and reflects a lack of understanding on the part of those involved. thank you! =)
so on many occasions, i see big names in this community swear that an online beast who's never been to a tournament will place top 8 if not outright win their first major. it rarely ever works out that way, and merely results in the community calling this player a fraud and doing everything they can to discourage them from attending more tournaments (even if that isn't the intention, as it usually isn't). yet it still happens, and it's not just a NRS thing - witness all the final round hype for KDD in killer instinct!
people got angry with me in the stream chat there when i said that online alone will never fully prepare you for that kind of environment. i fully stand by this opinion, so i figured i'd go more in-depth to explain it!
first off, netcode quality is irrelevant to the specific points i am making here. people were using KI's great netcode as an argument against me, but that misses the main idea. input lag is not the only reason you can't take online too seriously!
the reality is that people will play much differently when money & pride are on the line, and people will also play much differently when in unfamiliar situations! using this to your advantage is an entire skill in itself, one that i like to call "tournament psychology". it is woefully unexplored in the available writing on competitive fighting games, and it is *the* skill that tends to be most lacking in players without live tournament experience. and you cannot win a major without a solid grasp of this, period.
in my estimation, there are two main components to tournament psychology: choking or avoiding choking, and recognizing & exploiting your opponent's choking.
i've followed the sports analytics community (think moneyball etc.) for most of my life, and they always used to push the talking point that "clutch" (improving your game in the biggest moments) and choking were both myths. there has been quite a bit of psychological research on this subject since this began. indeed, there has been no solid evidence of Magical Clutch Powers, but choking has actually become pretty damn well-established now!
choking generally results from a combination of the two factors i mentioned previously: high stakes and unfamiliar situations. the former is what's virtually always missing from online play, and it can also make familiar situations into unfamiliar ones (again, people play differently when more is on the line!). besides the aforementioned money & pride in tournaments, "high stakes" can also include playing against a big-name opponent; yes, folks, there is psychological evidence for The Wong Factor! in fighting games i find that when players get nervous they will change their general game in one of two ways - either they panic and throw out too many whiffed moves and reversals, or they get scared to press buttons or approach at all. in my experience the latter seems to be much more common (it's what happens to me personally), but i can't say for sure.
thus, people whose only experience in fighting games comes from online play will fall prey to this in some form during their first live tournament, and almost certainly for multiple tournaments thereafter. it can take years to really get comfortable with tournament psychology, but incremental improvements do happen after a few tournaments. choking will likely still happen no matter how much experience you have, but with experience it will become less common and you will be better able to recognize it and adjust on the spot.
taking advantage of opponents' choking is trickier than managing it in yourself, i think. it's more obvious against someone who goes all wildman: play footsies and/or zone depending on your character's strengths, and be willing to stop blockstrings early to bait reversals. dealing with the passive players comes less naturally since you have to do a lot more things that seem "scrubby" in a vacuum. my own specialty here is the walk-up -> throw or dash -> throw in unexpected spots. here's an example from evo 2008 super turbo:
in losers bracket of top 32, i play balrog against a solid ryu. he goes up 1-0 on me and is on match point. we both have around 20% life, and i have him in the corner. i throw out a random super since it's safe and will beat any poke or a fireball, but he blocks it. balrog's super has a moderate disadvantage on block and pushes me just out of ryu's low MK range. the guy has been on the passive side and none of ryu's pokes will hit me at that range, so i decide to go for a whiffed dash upper -> throw. this is normally a bad decision since it's still safe for ryu to poke in this spot, as balrog can't hurt much with a whiff punish. but i figured he would stay in his shell and block low, and that throw started me on the comeback that won me the set!
there are plenty more examples of this. heck, i've seen people win matches in arcsys games by dashing in from literally half the screen away and landing a throw without any resistance! another similarly "nutty" way to exploit passive players is to use unconventional ways of getting in - scared players are normally looking to react to your one or two most obvious approaches, so use something gimmicky if your character has it (e.g. akuma's EX demon flip in SF4) or just very gradually work your way in with small steps so that the opponent doesn't even recognize your attempt to get close. the latter is especially strong with a good ranged move...think of how many times justin & ricky work their way into range for rufus's rolling kick normal and use that to start their offense!
when you've only played online, or even only played live against people with similar experience & mentality, you won't think of this stuff. the talented but less experienced players tend to just focus on what's "optimal" in a given situation, without awareness of all the ways in which players with far less game knowledge can take you out of the comfort zone where you make those optimal moves!
to go back to the killer instinct example, i watched KDD's elimination match at final round. i don't know this particular game, but it definitely looked like he was the "scared to approach until it's 100% safe" type in this match. given that his opponent was another sadira (read: the character with by far the best movement), KDD's tepid play led to too many easy approaches for his opponent. it takes a hell of a lot of 80% combos to overcome that in a 3/5 set!
when i brought up this topic in the stream chat after the match, people immediately cited grimmmz as an example of an online player who won his first major in KI. there's a crucial difference here, though: grimmmz had a bunch of real-life tournament experience against the best, years before KI came out!
you can't blame anyone for not knowing this, so i'll explain. grimmmz was a regular in the norcal scene for SSF4, at a time when norcal was *THE* dominant force in the US. ricky, filipino champ, & vangief were all at the top of their game at that point, and it's hard to imagine a much better way of getting past tourney nerves than playing against those guys. grimmmz also went to evo the one year they had SSF4, and beat sanford to win his pool! that was actually when i had first heard of him, as this was one of the biggest upsets of the weekend and people kept talking about "that pad ryu".
so while he may have been new to offline KI, he was definitely not new to offline tournament matches against top players. when it comes to developing tournament psychology, it's much more about experience with fighting games in general than it is about experience in the game you're playing at that moment.
in short, please stop predicting instant greatness for online warriors unless they have a significant live tournament history. becoming even an above-average tournament player, much less an elite one, is a much longer & harder road than some people here & elsewhere seem to believe. this sort of "hype" does a disservice to the players themselves and reflects a lack of understanding on the part of those involved. thank you! =)