On Losing

COMmon said:
I was not aware there was a "place". I just saw a response to my post in a thread. But thanks I will PM him instead.
Click to expand...

Welcome to a forum where we have threads that pertain to a certain topic. There are to stay on that topic. If arguing and flaming ensue then that thread has become "off topic", such as the case here. I thought that would be common sense (no pun intended).

Sucks that we cant have one fuckin thread here that isnt infected with flaming, arguing and the like. WELCOME TO GAME FAQ'S YALL!!
 
HRD said:
Welcome to a forum where we have threads that pertain to a certain topic. There are to stay on that topic. If arguing and flaming ensue then that thread has become "off topic", such as the case here. I thought that would be common sense (no pun intended).

Sucks that we cant have one fuckin thread here that isnt infected with flaming, arguing and the like. WELCOME TO GAME FAQ'S YALL!!
Click to expand...
Right, I'm familiar with forums, but maybe you're not familiar with flaming or arguing? Nothing I posted suggested either, I was merely asking a question. btw OUR case here is "off topic", perhaps to actually prove a point you should have PM'd me.
 
COMmon said:
Right, I'm familiar with forums, but maybe you're not familiar with flaming or arguing? Nothing I posted suggested either, I was merely asking a question. btw OUR case here is "off topic", perhaps to actually prove a point you should have PM'd me.
Click to expand...

Your right. Today is my first day here. I must not know what Im talking about. My bad.

I give up on the youth of today....yall are on your own. Good luck
 
On losing and "bullshit".

I used to call BS on my buddy's incredible anti-wakeup game with IVY. He knocked me down once, and at least half of my health would be gone because I always got mind-fucked trying to block, roll, whatever. For some reason I would get caught all the time, and his attacks would usually result in me staying on the ground because of a CH delivered to me trying to get up!

The reason I failed at this basic defense for the longest time was because I tried to defend based on anticipation. As soon as I recognized a pattern, he would do something else. It wasn't until I was blocking or rolling on reaction when I finally started to overcome this, and take half of the damage from wakeup that I was before.

Sure, not everything can be reacted to, but the more moves you can, the better.

So yeah, there is no such thing as "bullshit", it's just that some characters are harder to fight is all, and none of them can't be beaten. And as much "bullshit" as you think a character may have, they all have weaknesses that can be exploited. You have to play to your opponent's character weaknesses just as much as you play to your character's strengths.

It's the reason why I love Sieg so much. He's not considered to be a strong character by most, yet I find him very good if you know how to play to his strengths. Against most of the cast, I can out-range them.

Just remember this: There is always a way to play a character that minimizes the weaknesses and maximizes the strengths of said character. Winning a tournament with Aeon might be extremely tedious and difficult, it can still be done nonetheless.

And another thing: Fuck tiers. That's right, I said it, they don't matter. Every character speaks to a different kind of player. Sure, NM might be objectively "better" than Sieg, but his style doesn't speak to me in a way that Sieg's does, so I can't play NM as well. Don't switch characters because of "tiers", switch characters because of how they best compliment your style of play.
 
Haha, when I get salty I punch holes in my basement walls. Those Apat JF's mis-inputs make me want to throw chairs at my windows. But alas, those mis-imputs are a result of my ability to not get the proper JF timings. So then I go into practice mode and practice for incredulous amounts of time (like 30 min :P) A lot of my loses during my runs with Apat were mostly due to MY inability to do JF's properly, and every other time I lost was because I was being too damn impatient. Then I found out I love to backstep and switched to Nightmare. Need to stop switching mains haha. Now since I play NM I have to play more cautiously against characters like Pyrrha who can punish a lot of Nightmare's tools. Most of the times I lose to her is simply because I'm throwing out unsafe moves, not because her 236B:4 is broken as hell (which it isn't). The ability to learn and adapt is what separates good players from bad players. I still suck at this game, but I still want to get better. If all you do is complain about how broken something is without trying to overcome it, then you won't get better at all. If there's something in your way and you just sit and cry about it, it's still going to be in your way.

I always love finding tourney players and other high level players online. I always enjoy battles with these people the most because I feel like I learn the most from these battles. My battles with Xephukai, KrazieCD, and Drake himself taught me many things, like the importance of JG'ing certain attacks (Pyrrha 66B BE, Ivy 1B BE, Nightmare 22AA, etc). I won't say I'm a good player because I'm certainly not (I'd at least like to say average though :P) but I believe I am a hell of a lot better than I was day 1. Also, only viable tier list: Edgemaster>Kilik and Elysium>Rest
 
There is no need for a tier list like some understanding people have said who cares about them anyway , it is a rare thing for someone to complain about what character should be used or not pick whatever character you want and i empathize with that point clearly yes there are some bs moments but that "bs" is your own error.

It's your own lack of understanding the game if it is a challenge to you to confront a certain tactic then use that to get better. I know i have since i have been beaten before by loads of different tactics which i didn't like at the time, and then eventually overcame them because i wanted to play the game to it's full potential...to get better.

Which is why i play more characters helps me understand their moves and therefore improves my play on a multitude of different ways i hope this encourages any player to not give up.
 
There's also another factor: Potential disrespect from opposing players (or the community as a whole) that sometimes comes with losing matches.
 
ZeroEffect317 said:
There's also another factor: Potential disrespect from opposing players (or the community as a whole) that sometimes comes with losing matches.
Click to expand...
Ah yes. The "haters".

Everybody has to deal with this in their own way. There are multitudes of tracks on the subject. I like this one, and this one, and this one, and...

Now, really- the disrespect- the people that just don't like you- shouldn't matter. Yeah, it's easy to say that, talk is cheap and all, but lemme explain myself.

I follow a Buddhist precept-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_in_Buddhism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_(concept)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha

As it relates to fighting games, or any form of conflict or combat in general, anyway- there is a short quote from Musashi's Book of Five Rings that sums it up for me.

"... think only of cutting."

It is a destructive force, a killing intent- and there's not any room for anything else in it.

If you are thinking about how you are going to win, you lose.

If you are thinking about your execution, you lose.

If you are thinking about how the person playing next to you is your friend, you lose.

If you are thinking about your feelings, you lose.

If you are thinking about what other people are thinking about you,

you lose.



There is no consciousness. No self. No emotion. Just cutting.



The battle is... not from without, but from within. Keeping your ego at bay, preventing it from changing your actions. Mastery of the game is magnitudes easier of a task than mastering yourself.


Ultimately, loss, or people not liking you, is completely unrelated to your self-worth. It says nothing about you as a person. And given that nobody goes so far as to break the law in their dislike for you, it shouldn't matter to you at all. Some people are going to hate you just for existing. They're going to hate the idea that you stand for- or maybe they just hate your face, who knows, but they're there, and they're never going to treat you reasonably. And that's OK. They're just part of the background. It shouldn't affect you playing the game.

If anything- when people disrespect you when you lose- in a weird way, it means they're interested in you, that they care about what happens to you. That you actually do mean something to these people. Because if they didn't, they'd just leave you alone.

The opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy.


Anyway-

There's gonna be some players that like you at least. Somewhere in the world. You can probably find somebody that's gonna be on your team.

And if not, that's what's great about the whole thing, it's a fighting game at the end of the day! Train up and kick everyone's ass! You don't have to like me.

"I run &^%$ here. Y'all just live here!"
 
DrakeAldan said:
Ultimately, loss, or people not liking you, is completely unrelated to your self-worth. It says nothing about you as a person. They're just part of the background. It shouldn't affect you playing the game.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I'm just saying that it's another mindset to consider for the one losing. Not necessarily others disliking them as people, or making them de-value their self-worth, but more along the lines of "they probably think I'm a scrub" or "I don't wanna go in there and look free" or whatever.

Me personally, in tournament, my only thought is I have to beat whoever is sitting next to me. But I'm just saying, in general, most people don't like losing because somewhere deep inside they HATE the idea that they couldn't measure up to the level player that they feel like they should be. Or, maybe they HATE the idea that they lost to someone who they feel they shouldn't ever lose to based on their own "player tier list" in their mind. (EX: they don't mind losing to a top 8 player at EVO, because hey, they placed top 8 at EVO. But this guy they beat in the last 2 tournaments? RAGE!)

At the end of the day, people play to win. True, you learn from losses, and you want to see where you are weak in order to improve upon it. But at some point, they need to win to begin to see that progress. Otherwise it begins to feel less like training for improvement and more like perpetual failure.

I'd say in this case, for many of us, it's more than just a game though... (Resident Evil is just a game to me. Fun game, but I wouldn't travel for it, or spend money at a hotel to go to a major) This is competition. And that's, imo, what changes everything.
 
I want to start off by giving a big thanks to DrakeA for designing this thread. I added the first page to my favourites and more or less think that the first post should be MANDATORY reading for anyone thinking of picking up this game competitively or just for handling the warzone known as Real Life even. Despite a little, umm, "dirt" tampering the earlier pages, there was some interesting discussion.

When I started playing this game a few months ago, I was wondering why about 70% of the people I faced were Natsu and I was wondering why almost everyone of them were using me as their personal cannonball. Yeah, I was eating a healthy diet of her Bombs of Doom, and yeah it was royally annoying as fuck, but then a couple days afterwards, I decided to take her to the lab to see what the fuss was all about.

Low and behold, I figured her out and actually found her rather entertaining to use. Bombing scrubs into oblivion seriously never gets old. The ensuing salt that spills out afterwards is priceless. Instead of whining about Natsu, I decided to try and figure her out so that I can understand why she's annoying as fuck instead of just saying that she's annoying as fuck.

I did the same thing for Nightmare, Algol, Mitsurugi and Astaroth and now am looking into Maxi & Voldo. To put it in perspective Maxi and Voldo seem at least 25% less annoying after I looked over their movesets to learn their many strings and stances (and yeah, Maxi is a button-masher's dream -_-). Actually, I'm convinced that the truly best way to learn how to fight against Maxi or Voldo, for instance, is to use them for a week or more. Step into their boots.

As for how I handle losing? I yell obscenities and racial slurs at the TV like any normal person of course. Well, and then I go to the replay lab, and view the match again. I can't count how many times I called myself a dumbass for falling for the same Yoshi gimmicks. Hell, I've made a habit out of the replay lab. I even check out replays when I basically dominated the opponent or narrowly won a close fight, or just to watch my epic Double Knockout for the 42nd time. Seriously has a Double KO ever happened to someone in the 5th round of a match???

So overall, whenever I lose a match, I think about what went wrong, then I think about what went right. Since I play online mostly unfortunately, the lag feels like an opponent in itself, but a good 5 bar match feels like a bowl of skittles in my mouth. From what I've experienced so far, I've noticed that I actually enjoyed losing 10 straight matches to an exceptional player, than winning 10 straight matches against scrubs. Not only do you get some good replay material and can ask for feedback, but I barely try and play like ass against scrubs bordering on shameless trolling. Players that kick your ass continuously improve your overall play so, so much.
 
A wise short saying from Pocky Yoshi:

I fight. I fall. I cry. I come back harder from support. I triumph. And then I'm content for the moment. Repeat.


Just another regurgitated saying he goes by. No need for water philosophies or whatever...though Pocky Yoshi likes them haha.
 
ZeroEffect317 said:
At the end of the day, people play to win. True, you learn from losses, and you want to see where you are weak in order to improve upon it. But at some point, they need to win to begin to see that progress. Otherwise it begins to feel less like training for improvement and more like perpetual failure.
Click to expand...

This is a pretty good point. On one hand, if you're always winning, you don't really learn anything new because well... you think that you're doing everything right and thus become complacent. However, if you're always losing, you think that nothing can go right and thus develop low self-esteem and mope around with a defeatedist attitude.

What I think works best is that the scrub or noob-ish player train with a veteran who analyzes what they did wrong after every loss and then explain to them what areas can be improved in. What I do is make my Friends Lists full of players who are better than me, and players that are essentially at my level. When I'm ready to improve I invite in one or more of the veterans and get my ass-kicked for a session. In another session, I only invite in players around my level and have friendly competitive matches with them. You'll be surprised how much you notice your self's and your peers improve. I personally saw one of my buddies go from a total GC punching-bag scrub to a solid scrubcleaner.

ChaosK said:
Since i play against yoshis a lot, this is rather common for me. Dam trolls always doing sepoku.
I have this scenario in mind were i JG the suicide, oh the salt will be endless.
Click to expand...

You are a cruel, cruel person...

That would just completely destroy the Yoshi player's soul.
 
Force_of_Nature said:
If you're always losing, you think that nothing can go right and thus develop low self-esteem and mope around with a defeatedist attitude.
Click to expand...

Mmm, I think this is something that varies with the individual. I know whatever the plethora of reasons be I still lose more than I win, but nine out of ten matches I'm having a blast anyways(the rare few matches I don't enjoy are usually the ones where I win; go figure >.> ) so it doesn't always work that way, I think.

Okay, not eeryone is so crazy but we're out there dammit!
 
I think enjoying the battle regardless of the outcome is necessary to be good at fighting. The defeatist mindset is just another hurdle to over come: acceptance that we aren't unique beautiful snowflakes; power is refined and built over time through perseverance and self reflection.
 
Sp1d3r said:
I think enjoying the battle regardless of the outcome is necessary to be good at fighting. The defeatist mindset is just another hurdle to over come: acceptance that we aren't unique beautiful snowflakes; power is refined and built over time through perseverance and self reflection.
Click to expand...
I was under the impression that power was built through ducking me and making excuses like a sad little girl?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom