I’d love to see a video on “how to learn a matchup”. It’s just that so many top players mention that people “aren’t playing the matchup right” and never explain how to actually play the matchup. How would one go about learning the matchup?
Find the strongest options of your enemy, then build a plan around them. Like learning when to FD/IB to build distance and which of your moves punish it. Generally you want to be able to see a move/strategy from an enemy and know your character's answers to those options.
it's difficult to specify through a video because it's very situational depending on the type of matchup. but the most common mistakes people make is trying to force their own gameplan without respecting the other players - even in "good" matchups, you can just lose by doing this. it also depends on the risk/reward: sol vs faust risk/reward is extremely different than sol vs nago, but they still require a different understanding of how to move and where to challenge due to this. most of the time, it's people not respecting their opponent's options or doing overly committal options because "it's hard". usually, if your response to damage difference, range difference, or anything similar is to commit harder, you probably are not playing the matchup correctly - which is a vast majority of strive players. for a less specific video on matchup interactions --- this is it! same with my others on risk/reward.
The weird thing is that this is lowkey what these videos have talked about, at least the last few. Making good decisions with respect to risk reward in the context of THEIR character AS WELL AS in the context of YOUR character, as well as with respect to both YOU and YOUR OPPONENT's strengths. Anecdotally, the biggest thing I not when I switch between Zato and Nago is likelihood of mashing from my opponent after certain buttons, and how that skews risk reward. Nago with blood available will just explode you off of any stray touch since I have decent hit confirms, whereas last patch when I played Zato, the incentive to mash is much higher. With Zato, if you mash appropriately (see high health characters, Leo last patch, that sort of thing), you can kill Eddie, and potentially kill Zato if you get a knockdown, or a solid conversion. By contrast, if they respect, they likely get opened up, or command thrown into the situation reseting, (often) incentivizing challenging until I demonstrate gapless pressure (at a mid/low level). By contrast, when I play Nago, respecting gets you bitten, but the situation loops (Nago is back in low blood), but mashing might get you exploded easily. As a result, against nago, with people that have some familiarity, forcing the opponent to demonstrate disrespect gives higher payout, and is what you're trying to condition towards. The above are two examples of what essentially amounts to one quarter, probably 1/5th of a matchup for each character. In each case, they show (highly simplified) gameplans, or what the characters want to do. Combine that with how two characters interact (Leo or Pot might want to try to challenge Nago pressure more because they has the health and the reversal tools ((DP or megafist)) to do so, skewing how often Nago might look to show gapless pressure instead of bite) comprises another fifth. This tends to be a majority of what I think top players mean when they talk about people not playing matchups properly, cause the player strengths bit can get more complicated. If I, as a Zato, have fallible execution but can react well to doubling down on my opponents respect, them my opponents are more likely to challenge as well since mashing might be more successful, and respecting gets punished harder, skewing how the player matchup might get played, especially if they have strong execution on when to mash. These are the other 2/5ths. The reason why I chalk less variance up to this comes down to how strong top players are, and more what THEY mean when they talk about the matchup. Romolla is known for her execution, so challenging hers, as an example, is probably a bad idea. However, is challenging Hotashi's, or BnBBs, or Infiltration's, THAT much of a better idea? Or take Hotashi, who is great at doubling down and gambling effectively. Is high rolling against SQ, Umisho, or Apologyman a good idea since they aren't known for it? Top players are so consistent and strong in ALL areas that their tolerances for how much they might vary are probably a lot smaller than what you or I might be dealing with in the tower, which in turn seems to be why they mention this stuff less when it comes to matchups, and more the former 3/5ths or so with respect to characters.
@@RomollaCh Hey Romolla I've been thinking about this as well. I don't know if you would be interested in doing it, but something like this or a character guide would be incredibly useful. I've learned so much about risked reward, and RPS from you. However, I've reached a point where it feels like I'm trying to rps, with only scissors, and I have no idea what my rock or paper is supposed to be. I thought this especially when you talked about overlap since any option could be another scissor in a given situation. At least one for aspiring testastanent players 😋. Really love the content
Stability is also a huge reason why meter is important in GG. It turns moves that are high risk medium reward, like stun dipper, into low risk high reward options.
I think risk/reward is the most valuable thing that I’ve learned from fighting games. Like having that better understanding of so many other games like League and competitive shooters. Having better awareness and better decision making is universally beneficial.
Reminds me a lot of what I've learned playing ranked online mahjong. The game features a strong element of luck, so in any individual match, optimal play is no guarantee of placing high and bad play is no guarantee of placing low. Instead, strength reveals itself in what your record is over a larger amount of games; if you're stronger than the rest of the table, you can consistently maintain a positive overall record by managing risk and reward better than your opponent, even if you occasionally lose. As fighting games rarely involve explicit random factors in their game design, players might be tempted to think of performance as a result of absolute skill alone where winning means you played better, and thus if you lost you should've done something differently. But the unreactable speed of many interactions and the inability of anyone, not even the greatest top players, to consistently guess with perfect accuracy what the opponent will be doing means there is an element of luck. You must guess, which means that to be strong, you must play the odds well, like you would in mahjong or any other gambling game. You have to understand which risks are worth taking, and take only those risks. The element of luck doesn't make the game less skill-based, it just shifts the fruits of skill more towards win rates rather than outcomes of individual matches. Consistency becomes the measure of your strength. This has the side effect of making improvement require a bit more insight than just looking at the outcome of a particular choice and deciding it was a good choice if it had a positive result and a bad choice if it had a negative result. Sometimes, choices that lead to defeat are nevertheless correct, and choices that lead to victory can be terrible. It takes thoughtful analysis and a wider perspective on how frequently different outcomes happen in what kinds of situations to truly tell whether a play was the right call or not, and how to adjust if it wasn't. Nobody can be right every time; if you were to change the way you RPS such that you'd win all the games that you lost, it might mean losing more of the games that you'd currently win. Be it mahjong or fighting game RPS, you cannot remove the possibility of defeat, you can merely shift it around. The best you can strive for is to find the most consistent path to victory.
I'd like to mention that this is the best advice for any anji player struggling to win the neutral. You have a mechanic that allows you to at least get something out of dance reads.
One of the best ways I've found to help contextualize the risk/reward of fighting games is to treat each interaction like a hand in poker. You gotta know when to put the chips down and when to back off. When to go for the huge pot and when to just take your calls. You're not gonna have the perfect hand all the time for every situation, especially when you have to start reacting. And sometimes, your opponent is just gonna be dealt a better hand. Even then, the better player will still know how to make them fold.
I’d love to see a video on “how to learn a matchup”. It’s just that so many top players mention that people “aren’t playing the matchup right” and never explain how to actually play the matchup. How would one go about learning the matchup?
Find the strongest options of your enemy, then build a plan around them. Like learning when to FD/IB to build distance and which of your moves punish it.
Generally you want to be able to see a move/strategy from an enemy and know your character's answers to those options.
it's difficult to specify through a video because it's very situational depending on the type of matchup. but the most common mistakes people make is trying to force their own gameplan without respecting the other players - even in "good" matchups, you can just lose by doing this. it also depends on the risk/reward: sol vs faust risk/reward is extremely different than sol vs nago, but they still require a different understanding of how to move and where to challenge due to this. most of the time, it's people not respecting their opponent's options or doing overly committal options because "it's hard". usually, if your response to damage difference, range difference, or anything similar is to commit harder, you probably are not playing the matchup correctly - which is a vast majority of strive players. for a less specific video on matchup interactions --- this is it! same with my others on risk/reward.
The weird thing is that this is lowkey what these videos have talked about, at least the last few. Making good decisions with respect to risk reward in the context of THEIR character AS WELL AS in the context of YOUR character, as well as with respect to both YOU and YOUR OPPONENT's strengths.
Anecdotally, the biggest thing I not when I switch between Zato and Nago is likelihood of mashing from my opponent after certain buttons, and how that skews risk reward. Nago with blood available will just explode you off of any stray touch since I have decent hit confirms, whereas last patch when I played Zato, the incentive to mash is much higher. With Zato, if you mash appropriately (see high health characters, Leo last patch, that sort of thing), you can kill Eddie, and potentially kill Zato if you get a knockdown, or a solid conversion. By contrast, if they respect, they likely get opened up, or command thrown into the situation reseting, (often) incentivizing challenging until I demonstrate gapless pressure (at a mid/low level).
By contrast, when I play Nago, respecting gets you bitten, but the situation loops (Nago is back in low blood), but mashing might get you exploded easily. As a result, against nago, with people that have some familiarity, forcing the opponent to demonstrate disrespect gives higher payout, and is what you're trying to condition towards.
The above are two examples of what essentially amounts to one quarter, probably 1/5th of a matchup for each character. In each case, they show (highly simplified) gameplans, or what the characters want to do. Combine that with how two characters interact (Leo or Pot might want to try to challenge Nago pressure more because they has the health and the reversal tools ((DP or megafist)) to do so, skewing how often Nago might look to show gapless pressure instead of bite) comprises another fifth.
This tends to be a majority of what I think top players mean when they talk about people not playing matchups properly, cause the player strengths bit can get more complicated. If I, as a Zato, have fallible execution but can react well to doubling down on my opponents respect, them my opponents are more likely to challenge as well since mashing might be more successful, and respecting gets punished harder, skewing how the player matchup might get played, especially if they have strong execution on when to mash. These are the other 2/5ths. The reason why I chalk less variance up to this comes down to how strong top players are, and more what THEY mean when they talk about the matchup.
Romolla is known for her execution, so challenging hers, as an example, is probably a bad idea. However, is challenging Hotashi's, or BnBBs, or Infiltration's, THAT much of a better idea? Or take Hotashi, who is great at doubling down and gambling effectively. Is high rolling against SQ, Umisho, or Apologyman a good idea since they aren't known for it? Top players are so consistent and strong in ALL areas that their tolerances for how much they might vary are probably a lot smaller than what you or I might be dealing with in the tower, which in turn seems to be why they mention this stuff less when it comes to matchups, and more the former 3/5ths or so with respect to characters.
Sajam has a video like that but it's for sfv but you can use it for strive
@@RomollaCh Hey Romolla I've been thinking about this as well. I don't know if you would be interested in doing it, but something like this or a character guide would be incredibly useful. I've learned so much about risked reward, and RPS from you. However, I've reached a point where it feels like I'm trying to rps, with only scissors, and I have no idea what my rock or paper is supposed to be. I thought this especially when you talked about overlap since any option could be another scissor in a given situation. At least one for aspiring testastanent players 😋. Really love the content
Stability is also a huge reason why meter is important in GG. It turns moves that are high risk medium reward, like stun dipper, into low risk high reward options.
I think risk/reward is the most valuable thing that I’ve learned from fighting games. Like having that better understanding of so many other games like League and competitive shooters. Having better awareness and better decision making is universally beneficial.
Why do so many of your videos get tagged as "League of Legends"?
Why is this website like this?
LOL
testament
League is now a text based game, and the video has a lot of text. It's been happening a lot since league went text based. Strange decision I know.
Reminds me a lot of what I've learned playing ranked online mahjong. The game features a strong element of luck, so in any individual match, optimal play is no guarantee of placing high and bad play is no guarantee of placing low. Instead, strength reveals itself in what your record is over a larger amount of games; if you're stronger than the rest of the table, you can consistently maintain a positive overall record by managing risk and reward better than your opponent, even if you occasionally lose.
As fighting games rarely involve explicit random factors in their game design, players might be tempted to think of performance as a result of absolute skill alone where winning means you played better, and thus if you lost you should've done something differently. But the unreactable speed of many interactions and the inability of anyone, not even the greatest top players, to consistently guess with perfect accuracy what the opponent will be doing means there is an element of luck. You must guess, which means that to be strong, you must play the odds well, like you would in mahjong or any other gambling game. You have to understand which risks are worth taking, and take only those risks. The element of luck doesn't make the game less skill-based, it just shifts the fruits of skill more towards win rates rather than outcomes of individual matches. Consistency becomes the measure of your strength.
This has the side effect of making improvement require a bit more insight than just looking at the outcome of a particular choice and deciding it was a good choice if it had a positive result and a bad choice if it had a negative result. Sometimes, choices that lead to defeat are nevertheless correct, and choices that lead to victory can be terrible. It takes thoughtful analysis and a wider perspective on how frequently different outcomes happen in what kinds of situations to truly tell whether a play was the right call or not, and how to adjust if it wasn't. Nobody can be right every time; if you were to change the way you RPS such that you'd win all the games that you lost, it might mean losing more of the games that you'd currently win. Be it mahjong or fighting game RPS, you cannot remove the possibility of defeat, you can merely shift it around. The best you can strive for is to find the most consistent path to victory.
I'd like to mention that this is the best advice for any anji player struggling to win the neutral. You have a mechanic that allows you to at least get something out of dance reads.
Blocking beyblade is my favorite thing now, at least close enough. Grabs are the best thing you can get as anji.
Thank you for all of the amazing fighting game content, your takes are really refreshing ~
Truly the best cow-girl around uwu!
One of the best ways I've found to help contextualize the risk/reward of fighting games is to treat each interaction like a hand in poker. You gotta know when to put the chips down and when to back off. When to go for the huge pot and when to just take your calls. You're not gonna have the perfect hand all the time for every situation, especially when you have to start reacting. And sometimes, your opponent is just gonna be dealt a better hand. Even then, the better player will still know how to make them fold.
Thank you for the homework cow lady, I'll have the assignment handed in before next week.
I wasn't ready for that intro
What is this COVER??? ITS SO SMOOTH!
Oh, its in the description. ITS SO SMOOTH THOUGH! THANKS AKITO BASS!!!
No Evernote attached to video?
This topic is what I've been wanting to focus on as Nago. However, I have found a struggle fighting my own character.
I hate Nago.
Really wish I could understand 🥲
So far above my head