without exaggeration, I've had an experience where I won the first round against a smelly opponent, and the guy took off his jacket and I genuinely could not focus on the second match. I ended up losing the second round and throwing the third round to get away from him. I can vouch that it works irl
Bro if something like this happened to me at an offline major, IDGAF I am calling over a TO and telling them to sit in the chair and tell me what they think. There are rules against this these days. I'm not making it to top 8 anyway, I'll go into losers bracket over this. People need to start putting their foot down. Obviously, at a local, maybe handle it a bit differently.
This reminds me of when the Japanese players were playing the SF6 demo vs each other. Bonchan blocked Daigo’s wakeup DP and Daigo was confused because he made the DP input really quiet. But Bonchan said he knew because his stick was too quiet lol.
the crazy thing is like in CS or valorant offline, they now try to have counter measures, but sometimes if you look at the other team, while a flashbang is thrown because the flashes are so bright, you can see the lighting change as it hits someone's face in real time and you know that they are exactly where you threw the flash.
dont forget that playing the crowd is a whole literal mindgame in and of itself because crowd reactions are so strong at cs events that it literally physically shakes the booths so you can use it to "confirm" whether someone is behind a wall or not. but also conversely the crowd can betray you by making noise when nobody is there and you chase ghosts and get your position revealed. i mean fuck apparently someone on one team cheered after their teammate faked the bomb leading the last person on the other team to believe they were sticking the defuse and they got caught for it lmfao. its a whole thing there too and i love it
@@ScorchedEclipse well typically at that level in league objectives are never being snuck like that, almost always theyre either already giving it up or contesting it. itd be more like if a pro player was playing twitch and was stealthed and tried to gank mid but the crowd being so energetic made the midlaner back off and caused the gank to fail lol
@@Ixs4i I remember back in 2017 when FlyQuest had Moon on jungle it would be a risk for him to play his Evelynn because the crowd reactions would sometimes potentially give away when he was looking for a pick or coming in for a gank (I was an Evelynn main at the time and it was really rare to see Pre-Rework Eve in pro which is why I remember following him so closely that season lol)
i don't remember who exactly, but i vividly recall a tournament set during the 00's that someone lost because their opponent literally pulled the "you are now breathing manually" on them
I was at a local a while ago and my opponent mashed wake up super so hard, I could hear it over the sounds of the venue. Another old head will just mash an empty button during every combo. Offline play man. Love it, it’s such a good time
When I think of offline strats, I think about that mike haze clip. Smash brawl, the character he’s against has an infinite grab and to mess up the other player, as soon as he got grabbed he would scream as loud as he could to distract them. It’s on UA-cam if you’re interested, horrible audio, be sure to turn down your volume.
This reminded me of a sesh Phidx had with Lilypichu and she was already saying ouy loud that she was doing lows so they didn't work. But then later, she attempts it again but this time said something like "HERE I GO I'M GONNA DO A... LOW" and because she said it late along with Lili's big low, the timing messed Phi up so bad it actually worked 😂
I'm so glad that more and more people are getting involved with the scene, but it's honestly so funny how often well established aspects of these games are regurgitated online like they're this "crazy new trick." I love it. Mashing buttons while your opponent combos you is like some day one offline tech. This whole concept of a fighting game is more about mind games and clocking/manipulating the emotions of your opponent than anything else. That's just how it is on the streets.
Why in the bright purple fuck would I or anyone find any form of enjoyment reveling in manipulating their opponent's emotions? If that's what fighting games truly are at their core, they're horribly designed at a fundamental level.
I love this. People are always asking why I did something so stupid when it was a tactic to simply test if they could maintain their mental fortitude 😂
Back in SF4, I set a button to no action, to bait reversals I was Deejay and so many of his special moves were so bad, my opponent just needed to know I was doing SOMETHING, but not WHAT i was doing. Their reversal would beat it I joked it was my "Guile flash kick" macro
Only somewhat related, I have a buddy irl that plays stick and he would mash on his stick in rhythm with long specials and super cinematics, even when it doesn't do anything like in marvel. When I asked him why, cause it was super distracting, he went "I'm playing the beat so I know when I'm actionable again" and my mind was BLOWN. Dude was like "This super is 2.5 measures long in a 7/8 time signature. I can now safe jump."
Used to be a player in my local Project M scene that would grab and pummel until he heard you mashing to break grab, then he would watch your stick for DI before the throw to always guess right. It was as nefarious as it was effective.
I stopped competing in a game primarily because I lost a set as some guy in the audience was getting into my ear intentionally screaming as loudly as possible into it when I was playing against their region's boy, I asked him to stop several times and he just kept getting louder until there was one screech in the last game where I had to unplug halfway through shake my opponent's hand and walk away because it was so loud it make me physically flinch. I went to talk to their TO about it and he told me off, I assumed it was some kid doing it but it turned out it was their region's TO lol. So depending on a game's scene I really prefer online a lot of the time these days. But a lot of offline scenes are cool.
An excerpt from one of my favorite Magic the gathering articles that I can only find translated from Japanese for some reason: “When Mike Turian, Hall of Fame player, renowned bluffing expert, and current Wizards of the Coast employee, was once asked if he had ever played a perfect game of Magic, he was quick to reply, "All it takes is blinking at the wrong time to disqualify you from a perfect game.” Everything is the game.
You can only find the translation because Wizards of the Coast did an oopsie and deleted decades of game design articles from industry-leading designers when they moved data centers recently :)
I learned real quick at locals that looking like you're always doing something always makes it harder to tell what and when you're actually doing something I play on pad too so I have the advantage of being able to hang my controller really low between my legs which means in order to actually know what I'm doing, my opponent has to look down from the screen to see my hands and pad doesnt make nearly as much noise as boxes usually do
Not a lot of things make me feel old, but the necessity of a video like this to explain these concepts that were like the very first thing you learned in fighting games when offline was the only way to play
Anyway, if you play Tekken on stick or hit box, set one of your 8 buttons to back so you can dash block and make people think you hit a button. I put it right next to my rage art button for extra bait.
Somewhat related, but as a kid I had a friend who would watch my fingers as I typed in my passwords. At one point, he admitted he would log into my accounts for online games and play on my characters. After that, not only did I learn to type faster, but whenever he was around I would fake-press keys to throw him off. He gave up trying to figure out my passwords after that.
the controller I use to compete in Fighting Games is the same controller I use to compete in Platfighters, and as a result it has waaayyy more buttons than necessary for trad fighters. This means at any point while playing Guilty Gear I have about 6 completely blank buttons that all make slightly different sounds that I can mash if I think the opponent is paying attention to me instead of the game they're supposed to be playing.
I remember during the SF4 era where Daigo modded his arcade stick to have silent buttons so opponents could not get an audio cue of when he would do a shoryuken
Pressing dead buttons is a nice deterrent to people listening to your buttons. They'll be reacting to something they hear and they commit to the counterplay, but they won't see it because the button doesn't do anything. There's also pressing more buttons than necessary for the commands you're doing, as well as silent buttons. You can listen and react to what's happening, but like in martial arts with feints, you can also be faked out for relying too heavily on these things too.
My wife and I play Street Fighter 6 together. I realized I could fake DP buffer to get her to shimmy because she will always react to the sound of my reversal. It's funny to see this same thing is also true at in person tournaments.
EDIT: Remember that scene from Rush Hour 1, where Detective Carter and Inspector Lee meet up with Detective Johnson while she's in training to disarm a bomb. Suddenly! Carter purposely Slams the glass door, and yells out "JOHNSON! Detective Johnson loses her concentration, and the bomb blows up. She fails the Bomb Training. Johnson tells the Trainer, "I was Distracted, sir." And her Trainer replies, "Distractions will be there on the battlefield." Yeah, that was a good movie, and sorry this has nothing to do with "Secret Techniques of Offline FGC." My bad and have a good day.
I know it was loosely touched on, but Tokido was probably the literal master of that. Dude was implementing full options selects while being combo'd. You drop your combo, he dps your ass, if you drop it thinking he was mashing dp that hard, he'd just throw you. You'd think he was playing gief with all of that stick movement too.
It's so wild to see this stuff pop up and younger folks are buggin coz like... if you're old enough... you grew up with this stuff in the arcades and it's part of the experience and environment.
Sometimes it's just gross though. Getting thrown off because someone hasn't showered in weeks and smells like Shrek's jockstrap is just nasty. Same for a player with a cold/flu practically coughing their biohazard vapor ON YOUR HANDS while you play and you fight every urge not to spew or swing at them. Fuck that shit. That's not even about moment to moment mind games in the actual game, that's just disgusting.
@caldw615 oh absolutely - I always forget that part of the problems folks have are the things like dude smells terrible, is sick and blowing snot onto everything. I can only speak from the side of a casual playing in the arcade. I'm sure my opinion would be much less nonchalant if I were actually competing
I used to fake wavedash right before the round call on Tekken so I give the impression of an offensive round start, but my favorite has always been to input DP before the buffer timming on wake-up. Now a day because I’m on hitbox I have my friend that just DP on reaction to bouton press when I’m just pressing movement bouton, opening them for free
You would never be able to guess what inputs I'm doing. In first place, my button mapping is really different than normal. In second place, I'm just mashing every button all the time.
One of my all time favorite IRL strats is in Super Smash Bros. A not uncommon situation (at low level, good players don't do this) is one player charges up a smash attack trying to do a timing mixup and expecting the opponent to just run into it, and then the opponent doesn't. The opponent usually just waits for them to do the attack and then punishes the really long endlag. My trick though, is that while still holding the charge, I'd do a big jerk/lean and wiggle the stick around to make some noises. The opponent would almost always react to that and run straight into me after I did that and I would hit them with the fully charged attack, often securing a ridiculously early kill. Works on almost everyone at least once.
I played someone in bracket the first year SF6 was at EVO and we pick our characters, fist bumped then he scooted back just outside of my peripheral view so he could see my hands and i couldn't see his
funny story: at CB2024 mystery tournament, I had to play Zatch Bell against someone who clearly had already played the game a bit before I won game 1 by projectile spamming, but game 2 they started whooping my ass with these crazy long combos. when it was clear on I was getting bodied, I stopped watching the screen ENTIRELY and started watching their controller. I copied their inputs exactly (they were just mashing an auto combo I didn't know about) and I won the set and went on to make top 8 LMAO
I'm surprised chat didn't bring it up, but my first example of the side by side metagame is Melee Lots of players do it but There's super clear footage of Hbox grabbing someone, doing down throw During the down throw, looking at his opponent's hands to see what way they DI, and then chasing the DI to get the "guaranteed" rest If you want an easy example, if you look at Grands of Shuffle V like ten years ago (vs m2k) he does it twice in the first two minutes
I remember when people would talk about Hungrybox looking at the other person's controller, because if he knows which way they're holding the stick to DI, a guaranteed early kill with a throw into Rest is so much easier.
TO me the most OP side by side technique is HBox STARING at his opponent controller when he lands a grab to see which way they'll DI and catch them with a rest. absolutely diabolical.
reminded of that one blazblue clip where the opponent jumps a tager's 720 because they could hear the churning over voice chat, so the tager mutes their mic and does the super again and it works
I play offline tekken. During especially wake up situations and I’ll mash the tech roll button the purpose way earlier than I actually need to tech or commit to a wake up. And then at the last moment actually decide on a wake up option. Works very well.
This is what I miss most now that everything is online. So many things feel like they were balanced around your opponent at the very least being on a head to head Versus City style cab where you'd still feel the vibrations of them churning butter.
In tekken players listen to buttons when being chain thrown and I leaned to input the variations I wanted in a way they they all sound roughly the same.
In games like street fighter, even though i still have performance anxiety- i’ve been able to deliberately spam on my leverless to fake a wake-up DP and steal a match. I learned this all the way back from Jiyuna that it’s sometimes helpful to have extra hollow buttons to make more noise with xD
I used to play Strive with a friend who mained Anji and this guy was really eager on the wake-up counters and... can confirm. Avoided plenty of them because I heard him mashing for that super
My leverless buttons are pretty quiet. I've also used membrane keyboards my entire life so I don't have the habit of pressing keys or buttons very hard. However, you CAN purposefully mash hard enough so that they make a very noticeable sound. One of the buttons also makes a very specific spring sound but only if you press it in a certain way (some lube would probably get rid of it, but I pretty much never press it like this by accident so I didn't bother). I legitimately consider this a huge huge HUGE advantage in offline tourneys.
Valle is a known rule bender/breaker. He won a Texas Showdown ST tournament by inferring that the first match was a button check...on an arcade setup. I could have fought him on it to the TO, but I left it alone. MF went all the way though.
I remember playing MvC2 at the arcade and having a friend or a complete stranger mashing on the corner of my eye and it never crossed my mind that they were mashing at the time. I completely ignored it. Fastforward 10 to 15 years later, it STILL never crossed my mind. (Even in competitive play)
honestly when i use that "side by side seeing or hearing their buttons" information to my advantage, i feel bad about winning. It also makes me play un-naturally. Something definitely should be done to ensure 100% of winning is in the game and not outside information. I dont think i know of any other e-sport that allows you to win based on "outside information"
I haven’t really noticed it with sticks, but some leverless controllers are super loud. I definitely didn’t get how impactful it was until I went to an offline event. Friendly reminder to support your locals if you have them. It’s a great place to shoot the shit with like-minded people and it’s a nice change of pace from grinding ranked.
The Xiaohai example is a bad one. He wasn't covering his stick so his opponents couldn't see what he was doing. He was covering it because that golden stick reflected the stage lights directly into his opponents' faces.
An old boss of mine and I went out to play some SF2CE in town a couple years ago on a cab we found at a pho place. He's a big dude, and side by side I can tell you I would have blocked all those DP's *free* if I weren't standing so far to the side and pulling UP back on the stick trying to just walk back lmao
A buddy of mine from my local like to yell SHORYUKEN or HADOKEN whenever he does those moves but every once in a while he will yell it and not do it lmao
I've never had this issue because my brain kinda removes all sensory input once the game starts. I literally cant hear anything, unless people are talking which breaks through the focus.
I shit you not, the yoshi players at my local react to you techrolling by hearing you mash in order to hit you with a tech trap. It is also meta to be a controller player since the buttons are quiet.
I think the opposite problem for online players is thinking that they a good player won't notice a 100% macro'd option or (as a smash player) a lag switch. I come from cod, and cheating is rampant because people will pick the best gun (character) in the game then not be able to hit a single shot (land a single hit) etc etc. I love the FGC because they forces this kind of outside of the game meta. I have lost games to people who, after the match, pointed out I took my hand off the controller to scratch my nose, and it made me realize how bad my hands sweat and how hard it is for me to play while uncomfortable.
In smash (Project M), for luigi you had to MASH the Down B SO HARD. My friend for YEARS had to reposition his hands to mash hard enough. And subconsciously I start to edgeguard different whenever he readjusted. I didnt really notice till he asked me one time how I knew he was going to recover EVERY SINGLE TIME. I told him and in game 2 he tried to NOT adjust but he couldnt mash as well so he didnt go as high. big OOF
It’s part of the magic, dog. You can’t reasonably litigate something as subconscious as where someone is looking, and you can’t un-hear your opponent mashing on the stick. A lot of the most memorable FGC moments come precisely _because_ the players are playing in person, side by side with a crowd just a couple feet behind them. “What are you standing up for?!?!?” loses a lot of the impact when it’s someone popping off in their home office with the hentai poster in the background.
This stuff is so real lol especially the comment about the burst, I've definitely fallen for the same thing. IDK how I feel about it honestly, it's kind of dumb but also just like a logistical inevitability for now and part of the culture.
Actually been thinking about building a stick with speakers in it so I can blast my favorite music mid set. I listen to Speedcore BTW, if you don’t know what that is think loud, distorted, fast(obviously) and potentially disruptive.
There are mind games on head to head setups as well. If it's an arcade cabinet, some people mash so hard that they shake the whole cabinet, I've beaten people with that knowledge before (never had someone fake-shake the cabinet though, usually if they're mashing that hard, they mean it lol).
I put a fake button on my box that's right next to my RA button for Tekken. Catch sooo many people slipping by mashing it loud AF then going for a low or throw 😂
without exaggeration, I've had an experience where I won the first round against a smelly opponent, and the guy took off his jacket and I genuinely could not focus on the second match. I ended up losing the second round and throwing the third round to get away from him. I can vouch that it works irl
Bro if something like this happened to me at an offline major, IDGAF I am calling over a TO and telling them to sit in the chair and tell me what they think. There are rules against this these days. I'm not making it to top 8 anyway, I'll go into losers bracket over this. People need to start putting their foot down. Obviously, at a local, maybe handle it a bit differently.
The stink meta claims another
Nurgle tech irl
Ah, a smash player
It's a thing in wrestling too. Some wrestlers stop showering and eat garlic before tournaments to be extra stinky.
This reminds me of when the Japanese players were playing the SF6 demo vs each other. Bonchan blocked Daigo’s wakeup DP and Daigo was confused because he made the DP input really quiet. But Bonchan said he knew because his stick was too quiet lol.
Is there a video for this?
the layers!
the crazy thing is like in CS or valorant offline, they now try to have counter measures, but sometimes if you look at the other team, while a flashbang is thrown because the flashes are so bright, you can see the lighting change as it hits someone's face in real time and you know that they are exactly where you threw the flash.
IIRC at the old Dreamhacks they made walls between setups (CS team setup is 5 PCs side-by-side) specifically for that.
dont forget that playing the crowd is a whole literal mindgame in and of itself because crowd reactions are so strong at cs events that it literally physically shakes the booths so you can use it to "confirm" whether someone is behind a wall or not. but also conversely the crowd can betray you by making noise when nobody is there and you chase ghosts and get your position revealed. i mean fuck apparently someone on one team cheered after their teammate faked the bomb leading the last person on the other team to believe they were sticking the defuse and they got caught for it lmfao. its a whole thing there too and i love it
@@Ixs4ii wonder what this is like for bigger crowds like in league, like is a dragon or baron play a lot more obvious cause of the crowd? 🤔
@@ScorchedEclipse well typically at that level in league objectives are never being snuck like that, almost always theyre either already giving it up or contesting it. itd be more like if a pro player was playing twitch and was stealthed and tried to gank mid but the crowd being so energetic made the midlaner back off and caused the gank to fail lol
@@Ixs4i I remember back in 2017 when FlyQuest had Moon on jungle it would be a risk for him to play his Evelynn because the crowd reactions would sometimes potentially give away when he was looking for a pick or coming in for a gank (I was an Evelynn main at the time and it was really rare to see Pre-Rework Eve in pro which is why I remember following him so closely that season lol)
This is why moment 37 is so cool, Justin was slapping those buttons and diago didnt drop
He has said before that he did it on purpose. Making noise and shaking the table to try and mess him up.
@@pretzels1208 yeah thats... what the comment was about
i don't remember who exactly, but i vividly recall a tournament set during the 00's that someone lost because their opponent literally pulled the "you are now breathing manually" on them
lmao did they have a fucking panic attack and hyper-ventilate when they got told that wtf?
@@SnuggsMcDuffyou manually breathe when told to, and it's something you have to pay attention to now over paying attention to the game
Good trick, imma do that
@@FigAndFriends i know what it is, it just sounds stupid and hilarious
@@SnuggsMcDuff mental stack is real
I was at a local a while ago and my opponent mashed wake up super so hard, I could hear it over the sounds of the venue.
Another old head will just mash an empty button during every combo.
Offline play man. Love it, it’s such a good time
I refuse to believe that Apologyman is sorry for anything he has done in a fighting game.
It is too late to apologize (for playing that horrific firebrand team) It's too lateee
Masking at offline events has made me immune to the stank strat
As an 09'er gief player who went to locals, I learned VERY quickly to leave one of my buttons on my TE disconnected so I can do the 720 bait. So fun
I used to beat so many people once I knew how certain inputs by sound alone can even works online in calls
I play leverless and my partner plays stick
His mashing is so obvious LMAO
Reminds me of Aris shitting on hitbox players "typing up a storm" to do giant swings lmao
"Writing a TPS report" lol
A joke a friend would say to me is "they are typing out an explanation on how your ass" lmao
When I think of offline strats, I think about that mike haze clip. Smash brawl, the character he’s against has an infinite grab and to mess up the other player, as soon as he got grabbed he would scream as loud as he could to distract them. It’s on UA-cam if you’re interested, horrible audio, be sure to turn down your volume.
i forgot about this that shit was hilarious
That's a bit borderline tho
The funniest part is it (seemingly) actually worked.
@@Sapreme nah that’s past the line. That’d actually hurt to be subjected to.
@@Blustridetotally agree bro, those infinite grabs were agony.
i get by with just yelling out my characters' special move names to distract my opponent
Oh, so that's why they do that in DBZ uh?
@@zoso9391 and Naruto
That's just anime in general
This reminded me of a sesh Phidx had with Lilypichu and she was already saying ouy loud that she was doing lows so they didn't work. But then later, she attempts it again but this time said something like "HERE I GO I'M GONNA DO A... LOW" and because she said it late along with Lili's big low, the timing messed Phi up so bad it actually worked 😂
I'm so glad that more and more people are getting involved with the scene, but it's honestly so funny how often well established aspects of these games are regurgitated online like they're this "crazy new trick."
I love it. Mashing buttons while your opponent combos you is like some day one offline tech.
This whole concept of a fighting game is more about mind games and clocking/manipulating the emotions of your opponent than anything else. That's just how it is on the streets.
Why in the bright purple fuck would I or anyone find any form of enjoyment reveling in manipulating their opponent's emotions? If that's what fighting games truly are at their core, they're horribly designed at a fundamental level.
I love this. People are always asking why I did something so stupid when it was a tactic to simply test if they could maintain their mental fortitude 😂
Back in SF4, I set a button to no action, to bait reversals
I was Deejay and so many of his special moves were so bad, my opponent just needed to know I was doing SOMETHING, but not WHAT i was doing. Their reversal would beat it
I joked it was my "Guile flash kick" macro
Feint before sf6 lol
When your opponent comes to play with homegrown chemical warfare, it’s truly a miserable experience.
Only somewhat related, I have a buddy irl that plays stick and he would mash on his stick in rhythm with long specials and super cinematics, even when it doesn't do anything like in marvel. When I asked him why, cause it was super distracting, he went "I'm playing the beat so I know when I'm actionable again" and my mind was BLOWN. Dude was like "This super is 2.5 measures long in a 7/8 time signature. I can now safe jump."
Used to be a player in my local Project M scene that would grab and pummel until he heard you mashing to break grab, then he would watch your stick for DI before the throw to always guess right. It was as nefarious as it was effective.
Diabolical behaviour.
I stopped competing in a game primarily because I lost a set as some guy in the audience was getting into my ear intentionally screaming as loudly as possible into it when I was playing against their region's boy, I asked him to stop several times and he just kept getting louder until there was one screech in the last game where I had to unplug halfway through shake my opponent's hand and walk away because it was so loud it make me physically flinch. I went to talk to their TO about it and he told me off, I assumed it was some kid doing it but it turned out it was their region's TO lol. So depending on a game's scene I really prefer online a lot of the time these days. But a lot of offline scenes are cool.
Yeeep. My one appearance at Evo had his homies behind me yelling all my frames mid-match. Killed my whole interest in the game and scene
An excerpt from one of my favorite Magic the gathering articles that I can only find translated from Japanese for some reason:
“When Mike Turian, Hall of Fame player, renowned bluffing expert, and current Wizards of the Coast employee, was once asked if he had ever played a perfect game of Magic, he was quick to reply, "All it takes is blinking at the wrong time to disqualify you from a perfect game.”
Everything is the game.
You can only find the translation because Wizards of the Coast did an oopsie and deleted decades of game design articles from industry-leading designers when they moved data centers recently :)
@@Malao558Common WotC oopsie.
In CS, people would throw a flash and look to see how many faces lit up from the white flash of the screen.
My favorite old lore is that valle had extra buttons bound to nothing to mess with people
I learned real quick at locals that looking like you're always doing something always makes it harder to tell what and when you're actually doing something
I play on pad too so I have the advantage of being able to hang my controller really low between my legs which means in order to actually know what I'm doing, my opponent has to look down from the screen to see my hands and pad doesnt make nearly as much noise as boxes usually do
Not a lot of things make me feel old, but the necessity of a video like this to explain these concepts that were like the very first thing you learned in fighting games when offline was the only way to play
Anyway, if you play Tekken on stick or hit box, set one of your 8 buttons to back so you can dash block and make people think you hit a button. I put it right next to my rage art button for extra bait.
@@alexonstott4954 evil genius
Somewhat related, but as a kid I had a friend who would watch my fingers as I typed in my passwords. At one point, he admitted he would log into my accounts for online games and play on my characters. After that, not only did I learn to type faster, but whenever he was around I would fake-press keys to throw him off. He gave up trying to figure out my passwords after that.
the controller I use to compete in Fighting Games is the same controller I use to compete in Platfighters, and as a result it has waaayyy more buttons than necessary for trad fighters. This means at any point while playing Guilty Gear I have about 6 completely blank buttons that all make slightly different sounds that I can mash if I think the opponent is paying attention to me instead of the game they're supposed to be playing.
I remember during the SF4 era where Daigo modded his arcade stick to have silent buttons so opponents could not get an audio cue of when he would do a shoryuken
Pressing dead buttons is a nice deterrent to people listening to your buttons.
They'll be reacting to something they hear and they commit to the counterplay, but they won't see it because the button doesn't do anything.
There's also pressing more buttons than necessary for the commands you're doing, as well as silent buttons.
You can listen and react to what's happening, but like in martial arts with feints, you can also be faked out for relying too heavily on these things too.
I appreciate side by side tourneys because they unlock the unplug your opponent's controller tech
My wife and I play Street Fighter 6 together. I realized I could fake DP buffer to get her to shimmy because she will always react to the sound of my reversal. It's funny to see this same thing is also true at in person tournaments.
Hbox used to watch his opponent's controller to see their DI and punish with a rest
EDIT: Remember that scene from Rush Hour 1, where Detective Carter and Inspector Lee meet up with Detective Johnson while she's in training to disarm a bomb. Suddenly! Carter purposely Slams the glass door, and yells out "JOHNSON! Detective Johnson loses her concentration, and the bomb blows up. She fails the Bomb Training. Johnson tells the Trainer, "I was Distracted, sir." And her Trainer replies, "Distractions will be there on the battlefield." Yeah, that was a good movie, and sorry this has nothing to do with "Secret Techniques of Offline FGC." My bad and have a good day.
Good movie tho
"Heaven on earth? Can u direct me to heaven on earth massage parlor?"
Hell ya, i love the rush hour series
Hearing about fake bursts and fake dps make me want to fake a dp with the dp motion while playing a flash kick character
I know it was loosely touched on, but Tokido was probably the literal master of that. Dude was implementing full options selects while being combo'd. You drop your combo, he dps your ass, if you drop it thinking he was mashing dp that hard, he'd just throw you. You'd think he was playing gief with all of that stick movement too.
One time apologyman did item super input but instead of finishing it he dumped an actual box of donuts on the table in front of us
He won the set
It's so wild to see this stuff pop up and younger folks are buggin coz like... if you're old enough... you grew up with this stuff in the arcades and it's part of the experience and environment.
Sometimes it's just gross though. Getting thrown off because someone hasn't showered in weeks and smells like Shrek's jockstrap is just nasty. Same for a player with a cold/flu practically coughing their biohazard vapor ON YOUR HANDS while you play and you fight every urge not to spew or swing at them.
Fuck that shit. That's not even about moment to moment mind games in the actual game, that's just disgusting.
@caldw615 oh absolutely - I always forget that part of the problems folks have are the things like dude smells terrible, is sick and blowing snot onto everything.
I can only speak from the side of a casual playing in the arcade. I'm sure my opinion would be much less nonchalant if I were actually competing
Sajam got hit by poison irl in a tournament
got hit with the DoT
I used to fake wavedash right before the round call on Tekken so I give the impression of an offensive round start, but my favorite has always been to input DP before the buffer timming on wake-up. Now a day because I’m on hitbox I have my friend that just DP on reaction to bouton press when I’m just pressing movement bouton, opening them for free
3:08. Ah yes. Smell so bad your opponent can't think straight. A classic smash bros technique.
Weaponizing the opponent’s muscle memory … this is Baki the Grappler level play.
As someone who is a casual to the FGC tourney scene, this was a really interesting aspect of competitive play I hadn’t thought of.
You would never be able to guess what inputs I'm doing. In first place, my button mapping is really different than normal. In second place, I'm just mashing every button all the time.
bring your s.o. to the local to cheer you on for the aura boost. the gary technique
I once looked at my opponent's hands to check when they hit a M/H air slasher, so that my SA2 wouldn't get baited. Hand tech is real as fuck.
One of my all time favorite IRL strats is in Super Smash Bros. A not uncommon situation (at low level, good players don't do this) is one player charges up a smash attack trying to do a timing mixup and expecting the opponent to just run into it, and then the opponent doesn't. The opponent usually just waits for them to do the attack and then punishes the really long endlag.
My trick though, is that while still holding the charge, I'd do a big jerk/lean and wiggle the stick around to make some noises. The opponent would almost always react to that and run straight into me after I did that and I would hit them with the fully charged attack, often securing a ridiculously early kill.
Works on almost everyone at least once.
Wolfkrone can play on both stick and pad back in prime SSF4 but he played all of his tournaments on pad cause the opponent can't hear his inputs.
cant wait to use my durian scented perfume at locals
The FGC equivalent to screen peaking
I played someone in bracket the first year SF6 was at EVO and we pick our characters, fist bumped then he scooted back just outside of my peripheral view so he could see my hands and i couldn't see his
funny story: at CB2024 mystery tournament, I had to play Zatch Bell against someone who clearly had already played the game a bit before
I won game 1 by projectile spamming, but game 2 they started whooping my ass with these crazy long combos. when it was clear on I was getting bodied, I stopped watching the screen ENTIRELY and started watching their controller. I copied their inputs exactly (they were just mashing an auto combo I didn't know about) and I won the set and went on to make top 8 LMAO
gotta have those unbound buttons to mash on to throw off your opponents
And there's cheerleaders behind the person trying to tilt you.
Menrd tech
I'm surprised chat didn't bring it up, but my first example of the side by side metagame is Melee
Lots of players do it but
There's super clear footage of Hbox grabbing someone, doing down throw
During the down throw, looking at his opponent's hands to see what way they DI, and then chasing the DI to get the "guaranteed" rest
If you want an easy example, if you look at Grands of Shuffle V like ten years ago (vs m2k) he does it twice in the first two minutes
I remember when people would talk about Hungrybox looking at the other person's controller, because if he knows which way they're holding the stick to DI, a guaranteed early kill with a throw into Rest is so much easier.
TO me the most OP side by side technique is HBox STARING at his opponent controller when he lands a grab to see which way they'll DI and catch them with a rest. absolutely diabolical.
reminded of that one blazblue clip where the opponent jumps a tager's 720 because they could hear the churning over voice chat, so the tager mutes their mic and does the super again and it works
A classic one in smash is Hungrybox (allegedly) looking at his opponent's DI whenever he'd get an up throw to make it easier to combo into rest.
I play offline tekken. During especially wake up situations and I’ll mash the tech roll button the purpose way earlier than I actually need to tech or commit to a wake up. And then at the last moment actually decide on a wake up option.
Works very well.
moving your body to make them panic burst/dp/dodge is a classic
I always notice when people strategically sit a little further back than me in side-by-side setups. Like come on man you're not trying to hide it lmao
Stealing a round off of a friend who is much better than me by mashing a fake DP is one of my favourite memories from playing fighting games.
This is what I miss most now that everything is online. So many things feel like they were balanced around your opponent at the very least being on a head to head Versus City style cab where you'd still feel the vibrations of them churning butter.
The empty button strat has tricked so many of my friends and I have 0 shame about it.
In tekken players listen to buttons when being chain thrown and I leaned to input the variations I wanted in a way they they all sound roughly the same.
Sit opposite to a mirror so you can see which buttons your opponent is pressing
Frigging Randal in the thumbnail
MISS FINSTER MISS FINSTER
In games like street fighter, even though i still have performance anxiety- i’ve been able to deliberately spam on my leverless to fake a wake-up DP and steal a match. I learned this all the way back from Jiyuna that it’s sometimes helpful to have extra hollow buttons to make more noise with xD
I used to play Strive with a friend who mained Anji and this guy was really eager on the wake-up counters and... can confirm. Avoided plenty of them because I heard him mashing for that super
I can't believe sajam didnt show the thomas the thank engine costume
I played side-by-side recently and maybe it's because of my venue's general volume but I never noticed my opponent's inputs
My leverless buttons are pretty quiet. I've also used membrane keyboards my entire life so I don't have the habit of pressing keys or buttons very hard. However, you CAN purposefully mash hard enough so that they make a very noticeable sound. One of the buttons also makes a very specific spring sound but only if you press it in a certain way (some lube would probably get rid of it, but I pretty much never press it like this by accident so I didn't bother). I legitimately consider this a huge huge HUGE advantage in offline tourneys.
Valle is a known rule bender/breaker.
He won a Texas Showdown ST tournament by inferring that the first match was a button check...on an arcade setup. I could have fought him on it to the TO, but I left it alone.
MF went all the way though.
I remember playing MvC2 at the arcade and having a friend or a complete stranger mashing on the corner of my eye and it never crossed my mind that they were mashing at the time. I completely ignored it. Fastforward 10 to 15 years later, it STILL never crossed my mind. (Even in competitive play)
This first happen to me against punk when I realized he could hear me mashing reversals
honestly when i use that "side by side seeing or hearing their buttons" information to my advantage, i feel bad about winning. It also makes me play un-naturally.
Something definitely should be done to ensure 100% of winning is in the game and not outside information. I dont think i know of any other e-sport that allows you to win based on "outside information"
I wanna get selfies mid set to mess with my opponent
I haven’t really noticed it with sticks, but some leverless controllers are super loud. I definitely didn’t get how impactful it was until I went to an offline event.
Friendly reminder to support your locals if you have them. It’s a great place to shoot the shit with like-minded people and it’s a nice change of pace from grinding ranked.
The Xiaohai example is a bad one. He wasn't covering his stick so his opponents couldn't see what he was doing. He was covering it because that golden stick reflected the stage lights directly into his opponents' faces.
Pad player supremacy. I remember the complaints some players had that pad players could react to them but they couldn't react to pads.
This has a hint of N64 4-player Golden Eye.
I played gief in sfv and my stick made so much noise when i spd that i had to fake spd every time to actually make the 50 50
An old boss of mine and I went out to play some SF2CE in town a couple years ago on a cab we found at a pho place. He's a big dude, and side by side I can tell you I would have blocked all those DP's *free* if I weren't standing so far to the side and pulling UP back on the stick trying to just walk back lmao
I haven't told my practice partner I can hear him wake up super on discord and it's been like 4 years
A buddy of mine from my local like to yell SHORYUKEN or HADOKEN whenever he does those moves but every once in a while he will yell it and not do it lmao
I've never had this issue because my brain kinda removes all sensory input once the game starts. I literally cant hear anything, unless people are talking which breaks through the focus.
alex valle taught me the fake tatsu, where you input QCB and hit punch instead of kick so nothing comes out lmao
I think my opponents listening to my stick is making me land more wakeup megalos, if anything (it sounds identical to wakeup reversal)
I shit you not, the yoshi players at my local react to you techrolling by hearing you mash in order to hit you with a tech trap. It is also meta to be a controller player since the buttons are quiet.
my first round at evo I played against a Kazuya and every time he went to hellsweep I heard it and reacted I felt like the smartest man ever
I think the opposite problem for online players is thinking that they a good player won't notice a 100% macro'd option or (as a smash player) a lag switch. I come from cod, and cheating is rampant because people will pick the best gun (character) in the game then not be able to hit a single shot (land a single hit) etc etc. I love the FGC because they forces this kind of outside of the game meta.
I have lost games to people who, after the match, pointed out I took my hand off the controller to scratch my nose, and it made me realize how bad my hands sweat and how hard it is for me to play while uncomfortable.
In smash (Project M), for luigi you had to MASH the Down B SO HARD. My friend for YEARS had to reposition his hands to mash hard enough. And subconsciously I start to edgeguard different whenever he readjusted. I didnt really notice till he asked me one time how I knew he was going to recover EVERY SINGLE TIME. I told him and in game 2 he tried to NOT adjust but he couldnt mash as well so he didnt go as high. big OOF
00:30 If you weren't old enough to grow up in arcades.
Screen looking in splitscreen FPS is legal, change my mind.
It’s part of the magic, dog. You can’t reasonably litigate something as subconscious as where someone is looking, and you can’t un-hear your opponent mashing on the stick. A lot of the most memorable FGC moments come precisely _because_ the players are playing in person, side by side with a crowd just a couple feet behind them. “What are you standing up for?!?!?” loses a lot of the impact when it’s someone popping off in their home office with the hentai poster in the background.
This stuff is so real lol especially the comment about the burst, I've definitely fallen for the same thing. IDK how I feel about it honestly, it's kind of dumb but also just like a logistical inevitability for now and part of the culture.
The Randall thumbnail 😂
Actually been thinking about building a stick with speakers in it so I can blast my favorite music mid set. I listen to Speedcore BTW, if you don’t know what that is think loud, distorted, fast(obviously) and potentially disruptive.
There are mind games on head to head setups as well. If it's an arcade cabinet, some people mash so hard that they shake the whole cabinet, I've beaten people with that knowledge before (never had someone fake-shake the cabinet though, usually if they're mashing that hard, they mean it lol).
I think sitting across people is the way to go. Even certain buttons are loud AF and you can't control that lol.
I put a fake button on my box that's right next to my RA button for Tekken. Catch sooo many people slipping by mashing it loud AF then going for a low or throw 😂