Ranked vs Player Matches

When I first started playing Virtua Fighter, I found ranked matches intimidating. I had no ranking whatsoever, so I was starting at the bottom of the barrel, and every loss that I would accrue weighed heavily on my mind. "Oh my god!", I thought, how can I be this bad?

Thinking that you suck is one thing, but having a win/loss ratio sitting on your screen as evidence of that fact is something else altogether. So, I would spend the majority of my time online playing in player matches. This offered me a few benefits. First and foremost, I would not have any idea as to how good my opponent was prior to playing them. Seeing someone with an impressive win ratio join your game can have a psychological effect right off the bat, and set you up for a loss you might not normally take. Second, without a rank showing on my opponent, I was much more willing to request rematches, and, thirdly, in player matches you can request rematches.

Rematches present a great training opportunity. The most frustrating thing in the game is having your opponent steamroll right over you, but if you really want to improve, these are the people that you need to keep pestering for rematches. As frustrating as it is, keep requesting a rematch and trying to break down their offense and see if you can hang in there. Whenever I request a rematch, I'm usually thinking about a few things before the next match starts:

• How did the opponent beat me?




Was he using some move that I've never seen before, in which case I need to block more? Was I getting predictable, and letting him exploit that? What about evades? Was I using that crutch far too often? Did he beat me using only 2P?




• How can I counteract the above?




If I'm being predictable, I try to figure out new ways to achieve the same effect. For Brad players, a large part of our game revolves around moving in and out of his stances. If I'm constantly using KP to enter his stance, then I know that it's time to either take a shift away from his stances and going for more juggles, or start using different strings to enter his stances, like 4P, 4PK, and 6P. Is my opponent always successfully blocking my moves? Then it's time to start mixing up my rhythm and introducing some throws and charge moves into my offense.




• Was I frustrated after losing? Why?




Usually the simple act of asking myself this question helps quell my frustration. Usually I'm frustrated because I lost, and I think that I'm capable of playing better. But how can I play better? What should I be doing differently? Return to the top two questions and reiterate.

Back when I spent a lot of time practicing funk styles and dancing, many of the old schoolers would persist the following statement: "To each one, teach one". The idea is that everyone should take the time and effort to spread the knowledge, and teach someone else the tricks that you have learned moving forward. Do you find that you're on the other side of the fence, and absolutely crushing someone in player matches? If a rematch is requested, go for it again. My attitude is that I don't pull my punches when I'm playing newer players, because that will not help them improve the same way that forcing them to think under pressure will.

If you don't like aggreeing to rematches just because it's helpful to the other player, do it for yourself. It is important to play both stronger and weaker players; stronger players will force you to adapt quickly under pressure, but weaker players will allow you the opportunity to make use of the skills you have practiced, and to properly set up for the moves and combo strings that you want to use regularly. I wrote earlier that failure is only a failure if you don't learn something from the experience, and by the same token, a victory is hollow if you don't understand why you won. Make sure that you are winning because you are executing your game plan, not because you are flailing or taking advantage of a lower player's bad habits. Take playing weaker players as an opportunity to practice fixing the bad habit that drives you nuts. It is by aggreeing to rematches in player matches that I have been able to slowly eliminate some of the wreckless dodging I'm doing, and fuzzy guard consistently after connecting with the last hit of Brad's PPK string.

That's a pretty strong case for player matches. Why even bother with ranking then? Jerky VFDC captured some of the essence of ranked matches for me, when I asked him for advice and he told me, "Play ranked matches against strong players. They will build up your mental endurance". Ranked matches will force you to accept that you are playing someone with a proven track record, and, with something on the line, you will find that your play style changes considerably.

Suddenly you'll notice that you start consistently falling back to your perceived safe moves whenever you are down a round in a ranked match. For the longest time, I could not shake my habit of spamming 3PP as soon as I noticed that I was getting low on life. Why? It's not a good move, but for some reason, I mentally perceived that it was safe and would get me out of trouble. Against good players, it just led me to more punishment.

One other benefit of ranked matches - you can do chores in between each match. I manage to get everything done around the house and play Virtua Fighter because I can complete everything I need to do in between each match. Yah, this is a silly reason to play ranked, but it makes a difference to me.

Train in player matches, and then put what you've learned into motion in ranked matches. In player matches you will get the opportunity to play consistently against the same person, and this will provide you many opportunities to adapt to their style, exploit their weakness, and then have the tables turned as they adapt to you. Once you feel like you're winning consistently, switch over to ranked and play there for a while. When you start to feel like you're getting stale and predictable, switch back into player and play multiple matches against people that are able to pick apart your game. You will be stronger for it.

Above all, remember the importance of requesting rematches - everytime you feel yourself getting frustrated, force yourself to reflect on why you are frustrated, how you lost, and hit that button to request another match.

That's all for now. As an aside, if anyone reading has something specific that they would like me to cover, drop a comment and let me know. I very much enjoy the opportunity to write about different aspects of Brad Burns and Virtua Fighter as a whole, and every chance to write about something is a chance to learn it a second time, as I'm required to break it down and think the whole thing through from start to finish.

Lastly, if you're looking for matches, don't hesitate to add me on XBL. My gamertag is Deathsushi, and I'm always up for games.

My crutches

I'm going to do something that tournament players are often not able to afford doing. I'm going to expose what I perceive my own weaknesses to be.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to Tony Familia about Brad, and some of the tricks that he finds useful. We were talking in the Shoutbox at VFDC, a chat program that everyone on the site can see from most of the pages, but Tony requested that we switch the discussion to PM. His logic was fairly sound - he didn't want to have his opponents gain too much of an insight into how to defeat him right before NYG7, a decent sized tournament and Virtua Fighter gathering (that I couldn't make).

I don't fault Tony with this at all, and would probably take the same approach if I was going to be playing in an upcoming tournament. However, I'm a firm believer in what I call the "liquid strategy" approach to gaming. I believe that if I can expose my own weaknesses to people, that will encourage them to exploit that part of my game. In turn, I will be forced to either continue losing, or adapt my strategies to adjust with what my opponents are now using against me. This process of adaptation is what makes for a strong player, and so this is what I hope to do.

Virtua Fighter can in many ways be seen as having an optimal way of playing. All though there are many different choices that you can make at any given point in the game, for specific situations, there is almost always one "best" action to take (naturally once your opponent starts to get wise to this, you will have to adapt, but let's keep things simple for now).

The flipside to moves that I use too much are moves and techniques that I use when I shouldn't. As an example, Brad is disadvantaged by 5 frames after he hits his opponent with the last kick in his PPK string (two jabs followed by a low kick). At 5 frames of disadvantage, Brad is able to perform a fuzzy guard, and avoid any throw attempt while still managing to block any mid-attack that the opponent can hit him with (for those new to the game, a fuzzy guard is performed by holding down just long enough to have Brad enter his ducking animation, then releasing down while continuing to hold guard). The problem is that I'm cheating these optimal plays, and am resorting to tricks that work against lower level players, but get me crushed against players of higher skill.

Let's get on to my crutches:

• Tech-roll recovery

Almost everytime I recover with a tech-roll, I automatically input Bra'd PK string. There's a couple of reasons that I do this. The string starts with his fastest move, an 11-frame jab, meaning that it can interupt a lot of heavier moves that opponents will throw out. It is also semi-circular, which can punish a lot of people trying to evade to crush whatever rising attack I'm doing. Generally speaking though, there should never be an automatic combination or input that I'm entering upon tech-rolling, aside from holding down the guard button (and even then I should be careful).

How can you beat this? Easy, knock me down with a move that I can tech-roll, feint a follow-up attack, and then just duck and guard. As the entire combo string is high, I'll whiff both attacks right over you and find myself in the undesirable position of being about 11 frames at disadvantage. Almost enough for a guaranteed throw!



• Lack of defense, too much abare

Abare is a japense term used by the Virtua Fighter community, and means (I believe) wreckless. The term is generally applied when someone attacks from a disadvantage. The greater disadvantage you have, in terms of frames, the less likely you are to successfully hit your opponent, and the more likely they are to successfully hit you.

My big problem is that whenever my opponent successfully blocks or ducks under my PK string, I instinctively either evade and attack or enter 2P. This will work some of the time, but if we go to the command list and look up how much disadvantage I have on PK being blocked, it's quite large - 8 frames. The upshot of this is that the opponent has a very large window to hit me out of either of these two approaches. What's the correct thing to do? Evade, enter a throw-escape, and guard. This will allow me to avoid being thrown, evade any initial attack (thus leaving the opponent at a disadvantage) and block and circular attack.

How can you beat this? Easy. Since I'm playing wrecklessly whenever I whiff or get a PK blocked, start by going for your fastest mid, which, at 14 frames, will crush my low punch. If I get wise to that and start evading, you can use either a circular, or delay your attack (which will cause me to enter a failed evade animation, and let you hit me successfully).



• Always evading to the background

For whatever reason I always evade to the background (up on the controller). This is more a force of habit than anything else, and is generally because I find it easier to guarantee an evade with this direction. Hitting down on my controller makes me feel more inclined to enter a duck rather than to successfully evade.

Why is this bad? Because a very skilled opponent knows that some of their moves are only half-circular, and will automatically hit me when I evade in a specific direction. By adjusting their stance to ensure that the circular property of their move matches the direction that I'm evading in, they will ensure a large number of free hits against me.

How can you beat this? Determine which moves your character has that are half circular, and learn to recognize which direction they will sweep through based on your stance. Brad has a half-circular move that is the start of his Lumpini combination, executed with 4P. By learning which direction this move will come out in (circular through the foreground or the background), you can adjust Brad's stance accordingly and guarantee free hits against me when I evade up.



• Reversal everytime my opponent rises

Brad has only one really useful reversal, and it's mostly only applicable in one scenario. By inputting 1P+K, Brad is able to catch mid-kicks and reverse them. The only time you can really rely on seeing a mid-kick from the opponent is when you have knocked them down. In this situation, Brad can reverse almost every rising mid-kick. This is a great boon, and really intimidates your opponents. By using good yomi, you can scare your opponents into rising holding the block button, opening up your entire wake-up game.

However, too much of anything is bad, and that applies in droves to Brad's reversal. First of all, this is a gamble at the best of times. Even if I know that my opponent will always use a rising kick, I still have to guess whether or not they will go mid or low. If they go low and I enter the reversal input, I will get hit with a counter hit, taking extra damage and finding myself at an even worse disadvantage. If my opponent elects simly to rise, I still enter the failed reversal animation, and my opponent gets to be the first one to press the attack.

How can you beat this? Easy. Just rise with low kicks. Don't feel like doing that? Just rise and wait for my failed reversal animation (Brad will raise his knee and hit his elbow against it). Once you see that, throw my ass across the ring. That's all there is to it. This is really the worst habit I have, and there is no excuse for throwing reversals out more than once or twice a match, or if the opponent really has no ability to play intelligently. Punish me for this and help me learn!

Okay, those are the major crutches that I'm currently working through. I have a lot of things that I think I do fairly effectively, but the next post I want to focus on moves and stances of Brad's that I don't use enough and would like to introduce more into my standard arsenal. Top of that list? Sway-back (4P+K+G). Stay tuned!