Pro-Gamers' Theory of Improving in Games

[Dinosaur]

This is mainly about fighting games, but can be roughly applied to your general midset for any other game(like PSO2).

original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guiltygear/...ighting_games/

Based on recent tweets of Minami & a recent blogpost by Machaboo. Very quick & rough translation

by Minami

Tendencies in people who have difficulties in getting better at games:

• Thickheaded/close-minded
  Autopilot the same stuff over and over again
  Too much pride
  Doesn’t listen to advice
  Often blames the opponent when losing
  Doesn’t research stuff
  Weird fixations
  Prefers weak or troll characters
  Doesn’t accept situations where the opponent forces mindgames/rps on them
  Too fixated on the current ongoing match instead of long term
  More fixated on winning, than the contents of a match
  Prioritizes winning over learning
  Narrow field of vision
  Likes wakarangoroshi (beating the opponent with things they don’t know about/understand)
  Having excess confidence in ability to read the opponent
  Low patience
  Getting mad and having that affect the game in a negative manner
  Not thinking from the opponent’s point of view

Tendencies found in people who improve fast:

• Open-minded
  Honest
  Flexible way of thinking
  Always trying out new stuff
  Very patient
  Steadily training without a hurry
  Doesn’t dislike losing to the extreme
  Focuses more on the contents of a match than the outcome
  Objectively looks at their own merits and demerits and overcomes them
  Enjoys the game
  Is interested in other characters and other people’s matches

Machaboo’s improving in fighting games theory source:

The first thing is to decide on a goal. Without a goal, it’s hard to stay motivated, and losing interest makes it hard to improve. The smaller the goal, the better. If you aim too high, it’ll feel impossible and there’s a risk of losing motivation midway, when it doesn’t feel like you’re getting any closer to the goal. If you look at a top player’s match and try to be like them, you’ll end up disappointed. It sounds harsh, but you have to realise that you’re a beginner and have tiny goals and slowly enjoy the game at your own pace. That’s the shortest way to get better. Even the top players were all bad at first, so don’t hurry.

The next thing is to be able to control your character freely. For example in Guilty Gear, if you’re told to do an air dash, there’s a huge difference in being able to and not being able to perform it. If you’re good at all the basic motions, it’s easier to pick new things. When you’re being taught new things, if you can execute them immediately, your rate of learning will speed up.

How to improve execution then? Only by playing around with the controller. It’s okay to play tons of matches, and it’s okay to do tons of training mode, as long as you’re doing something with the controller. As a side note, when I (machaboo) was playing the Street Fighter series, I used a character with a mash-special as a sub character, but I couldn’t do the special move well at all. After I understood the right way to do it, I’d even shadow train it whenever I had a spare moment in the train or wherever and tap the timing against my leg. And the next time I played, I was able to do it. This kind of image training is also important.

Lastly, understanding the opponent’s feelings and what they’re thinking. This is the hardest part, but also the most important part. You can learn things about your opponent by looking at the screen. For example, there are projectile specials in fighting games, like hadouken. To counter hadouken, you have to jump forward. Consider the following situation, where your opponent jumped forward after two hadoukens happened in a match. Thinking about why did your opponent jump forward, in about 8 or 9 cases out of 10 the reason is that they don’t want to block the hadouken, they want to jump over to beat it. The hadouken example is simple, but understanding the opponent’s thoughts from their movement works for all kinds of situation in a match. If you can understand the opponent based on their movement like this in different situations, you’ll excel in mind games, the game will be more fun and you’ll definitely get stronger. If you can understand what the opponent is thinking, but they can’t understand what you’re thinking, you’re at a huge advantage, controlling them like they’re on your palm becomes easy. When there’s a difference in skill and a player gets beaten really hard, this is the main reason.

By the way, it’s often said that you’ll get stronger faster by using a standard character. The reason for that is that you get to play the mind games and learn them. If you use peculiar characters, and win because the opponent didn’t understand your character, there are no mind games involved. In this case, you won’t be trained in mind games, and it’ll hinder your ability to get strong. Standard characters are easy to understand, so basically you need to play at least some sort of mind games with them to win. The reason why I recommend standard characters to new players apart from them being easy to control, is this.

Grasping the opponent’s intentions from the moves they used requires lots of knowledge and experience, so you won’t be able to do it immediately, but in the end that is the most important thing in fighting games.
So after growing accustomed to the controls, playing while paying attention to what the opponent is thinking about is the way to go. If you play against a strong player, put your intentions into the moves and use them. You’ll definitely see them answer to your intentions, and that is a lot of fun.

After learning these things, you just have to think, think and think while playing and having fun. The victory condition In fighting games is that you have to beat the opponent in 99 seconds, or have more health than them after 99 seconds. Keep that in mind, and think while you play. Having fun makes playing easier, and getting better easier.

Also, these days it’s very easy to receive advice from top players. While it’s of course not bad to receive advice, if you rely too much on receiving advice, your own thinking won’t grow up. Before asking someone for advice, it’s important to think it through the best you can by yourself.

Did you find this interesting or mind opening toward your vision of gaming? Let me know!

Personally, I have been playing competitive games(local tournaments and online) as well as being involved in many gaming communities for almost 10 years now and have been through all of what has been written down here, whether it be my own experience or seeing someone else go through it. All I can say is that it's all very true throughout any game you play, whether it is competitive or not. The best players are always the nicest with very positive mindsets! And the toxic players are always on the bottom of the food chain.

[Shinnomura]

I agree completely. I used to have a team that played games together and we went into a game thinking "what is the game? How would it typically be played? And how can I improve strengths and remove weaknesses?"
That mindset made it where every time we lost or died in an unexpected way we came up with a sort of desensitizing training where you create an extreme version of the scenario on a scale you will never encounter and have to overcome it with every possible disadvantage. Even a small margin of improvement in that situation means a vast improvement in practical use and you learn very quickly from the frequent losses what not to do and what exactly leads to success.

Thinking "I'm the best and can handle anything" leads to no improvement. Thinking "I want to be able to handle anything and everything no one else can" leads to vast improvement. Also a desire to help others improve along with you helps especially if they can be rivals. You all get better and have to improve even further in order to win against each other.