The TOJ.LFL MssngPrsn Chronicles | Diary of a SF4 player

T

TOJ.LFL | MssngPrsn

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Thanks Tek for letting me create this thread. I figured this might interest some people and help me sort out some things I experience during my play. If anyone has questions, feel free to ask.

So, about me. I've been playing the SF4 series since it released on the consoles in 2009. Before that, I played SF2 in the arcade, and became forever enamored with the game series. I missed out on SF3 until WAY late in the lifespan, but the announcement of SF4 brought me back in. Now, my main since Vanilla has been Chun-Li, but recently, I learned Balrog is a natural fit for me as well, and I've been building up him as a strong secondary for Chun's bad matchups, because he at least closes the gap on many of them.

I don't consider myself pro, but definitely not casual. This for me isn't just a chill out type thing, even though it is. This game is a competitive avenue for me, something where I can do well at when I put my all into it. It's about problem solving for me, finding gimmicks and ways around them in new ways. Since going in depth in this game, my problem solving skills have improved. Any competitive gamer knows that understanding the game mechanics is key to success, and being able to break down game mechanics translates well into daily life.

But most important, I think, more than the competition, more than problem solving, this game really forces you to look at yourself. Even being about defeating your opponent, this game truly sends you inward to see what condition you're in mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I think I see more of my relationship with God in this game than I'd care to think. If I'm rushing in too fast in situations where I shouldn't, getting hit with wake up reversals for sticking out too many limbs, unsurprisingly, I tend to look at myself and find impatience with God as well. So this game, regardless of the reason it was made, tends to keep me seeking in all aspects of my life, not just about hitboxes and frame data.

But beyond all that, the game is just fun and hype for me.

Over the last couple years, my play had been scaled back. It wasn't that I didn't want to play. However, I moved from America to Northeast China. Then my stick broke. Then I had forgotten to replace my credit card, and it expired, thus crippling me from getting Xbox Live Gold and playing online. And the nearest arcade is a two hour bus ride away. So I played sporadically (and a lot when I head to Korea), but not as much as I used to, and thus I developed rust on every aspect of my game.

A week or so ago, I decided I couldn't take it anymore and found a way to get my Gold renewed, and just started pad warrioring it. Of course, my execution was flawed due to the restrictions in movement I inherently had by being used to joysticks. However, in a way, this was a blessing. I started to see myself still growing as a player.

And it was in this match that I truly realized it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJGq6iMsb1s

One thing that I always felt like I lacked was footsies. I felt like I did alright at them, but I was never ultimately winning footsies battles. But this time, I felt like it was clicking. And one of the reasons I felt like it just suddenly started clicking was because it had to. I wasn't going to style on anybody on a pad. My max punishes weren't coming out. I just had to play footsies.

The importance of this aspect of the game just nailed me in the head during that match. And now that my stick has been revived, I'm working to keep that aspect in my game.
 
An excellent read! Bravo, sir!

Looking forward to the next installment. :)
 
"Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent." --Proverbs 17:28

Played a pretty long set last night. One thing I noticed is I'm getting into a lot of trouble in the same situation across multiple opponents. This is especially against Shoto characters. (Shotos: Ken/Ryu/Akuma, slightly Dan & Sagat)

One of my favorite punishes to use as Chun is Hazanshu. It's quick, it travels over fireballs, and provides decent damages. Heck, even with her multiple cancels into the move, it's just one of my go to moves in a lot of situations, for both punish and mixups. She doesn't have great mixups/punishes off of Focus Dashing in.

However, I'm getting blown up for them. They know they're coming. Why?

1) I'm telegraphing them. They know I'm looking for fireballs. so they know when I'm getting antsy enough to Hazanshu. Another thing that I use to try to bait them is something I learned from Shizza: empty jump over a fireball then Hazanshu over the next one. It has to be properly spaced so your empty doesn't get denied by a anti-air, but if you learn the spacing, it's a great way to get in.

But they can see this. #1 isn't really the core problem, it's only a symptom to #2.

2) I bring out all my tricks way too early (refer to the scripture above). Another good quote to go along with this is "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and erase all doubt."

Simply put, from the start of the match, I bring out everything I know trying to blow up my opponents quickly. Now, in the arcades, or even in ranked online, this isn't terrible. It's one match vs. someone and whoever can out-gimmick their opponent usually wins.

Once you go to Endless, or you go to a tournament, or the arcade slows down and it's just you and a couple other players, unless you adapt, you're going to get eaten alive.

I can't remember who it was at Evo 2012 but I think it was Gamerbee vs. Xiaohai, one of them had completely shut down a highly punishable yet effective tactic from the other. It was really early in the set, not even game 2. And for the rest of the set, that tactic was never used again. Seth Killian literally said, "He did too good a job at shutting that down, now he has to find another way to punish otherwise solid play." So if I'm shutting down their fireball game super quick with Hazanshu pressure, then I'm defeating myself by shutting them down if they're a good player. They know to change it up and adapt.

There was a reason that a long time phrase in the Street Fighter community is STSFN (Save That Stuff For Nationals). Because your best tricks may be ones that could destroy someone early, but if you're rely on them solely, you're going to see them countered. If you have no other fallback for if that happens, you're dead and wondering why.

So moving forward, my goal is to find more punishes for fireball pressure going in, and to hold off on using it so effectively until I've got them conditioned to keep throwing them with no pause for concern.
 
Man, I know that feel. I know it all too well. Countering shotos as Chun with something OTHER than Hazanshu is difficult. Let me know what you come up with as I'd be interested in improving my anti-shoto game, too. :)

I also have to say that it's a pleasure to read commentary from a fellow Chun player. I still just barely rank above total noob, but I've learned a lot of the theory from playing and watching. The real challenge is execution and making decisions in the moment.
 
Thanks man. I'm considering the possibility that from the neutral, focusing through and using her target combo may work. I'm not sure on the frames, but I think it may work. Another one is double fierce in the air, but that's only good at the neutral as well.

From long range, the only options you really have are hazanshus, and dash ultra 1. That's pretty much why every Chun in the world will sacrifice being able to hit confirm their ultra at any point on the screen to use U1. You either get unscaled punishment off of it when they throw errant fireballs (and when you know how to dash ultra, every fireball they throw is errant), or you make them shut down their fireball game completely outside of blockstring cancels. From there, it becomes a footsies game, which I honestly believe Chun can win if you stay in that sweet spot, around s.mp range. Against Ryu at least. Ken has a few more tricks, as does akuma, which make those matchups a little more difficult. Even against Sagat, I feel like she can do alright in the footsies game.
 
Okay, so I haven't had any chances to really play a Ryu that opens with fireballs a lot (my new sparring partner plays Ryu, but he varies his openings a little more, and usually moves back from neutral if does open that way, so it's tougher to counter), so I just took a look in training mode while recording.

Here's my findings:

FULL PUNISH: Focusing through and doing her target combo (b.mk, mk, d, u.mk) does connect and does between 160-180 damage depending on spacing, so my theory was correct. However the timing on this is tight. If you do it a single frame slow, you're trading in Ryu's favor at best and getting beaten clean at worst.

EASIEST PUNISH: Focusing through and doing c.mp. The timing on this is super loose. Most of the time, I was beating Ryu clean, either before he threw the next fireball or even ducking under the next fireball to hit him clean. Any other time, I traded in Ryu's favor, and I was never beaten clean. This only does 60 or 75 damage, I forget, and c.mp is not cancellable, so you cannot go for a hazanshu mixup.

NEXT BEST PUNISH: Focusing through and doing s.mp. Same damage as c.mp, but it is cancellable. You don't have charge time to do kikoken, but you can hazanshu, or if you're really good at piano, you could use ex legs for a pure combo (if you have meter), which would maybe elevate this to max punish. However, the timing is more strict than c.mp, so I was maybe winning clean 60%, and trading 20%, and losing 20%.

WORST PUNISHES: Focusing through and c.hp and sweep. Sweep never wins, always trades in Ryu's favor. You can beat him with c.hp and do a hazanshu cancel, but barely.

Nothing else punishes at that range.

I had never really thought about finding this, but since my hazanshus are getting read, and I saw Infiltration get crazy with fireball punishes off the neutral, I knew there had to be some room to innovate with Chun a bit.
 
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Sorry for the lack of entries, but I haven't played much this week.

Here's the highlight of my play this week:

[video=youtube_share;CrvWTTIxHsA]http://youtu.be/CrvWTTIxHsA[/video]

You guys might not be too familiar with his name, unless you're an Adon player. He's one of the top Korean players, but he's not known because he hasn't traveled a lot.

I got a chance to play him a short set. I was expecting Adon and got hit with Ken. I've always struggled with Ken, especially since Arcade Edition, because of one thing: Lack of patience. I loved to come in, and ate SRKs for it. Even worse when they expanded the hitbox for them in AE.

I've definitely started to find my happy medium between relentless aggression and timidity. Perhaps a certain level of maturity is emerging. The same I guess is true in real life. I feel less inclined to do mindless things now than before. I find myself thinking about the consequences of my actions a lot more before the actions take place.

Hopefully this isn't just a phase, both in game and in real life.
 
Intense matches, man. I was on the edge of my seat for that last one. :)

I wish I had half your self-control when it came to playing Chun. It seems that one really does have to walk a fine line between defense and offense with her. Well played, sir.
 
Thanks!

For a long time, I was easily the most aggressive Chun. Back in Vanilla, I really played uber cautious, relying mainly on solid AA. I started to change up a little. Like you said, there really is a fine line. With some characters, you can switch gears, not switch gears, doesn't matter too much. With Chun, you HAVE to constantly.

Great Chun players are better than other characters at playing when the opponent is advancing and when the opponent is on the run. The biggest detraction from playing her is how badly she gets destroyed if she gets caught in a vortex. And just trying to stay out of those vortexes, make you have to walk that line a lot more tightly. Once characters like Cammy, Ibuki, and Akuma get that one hard knockdown, you've got a really hard uphill battle in order to save yourself.

Here's a little more of my history in the game, just as a laugh:

When I first got the game, I was living with a friend who was a competitive Smash player. We didn't have internet, so we just kind of dove in not knowing what we were doing. I picked up Chun because I had always played Chun, and used her to prepare for the Gamestop tournament. Didn't advance in the tournament, dropped her.

I tried out Bison, Sagat, Sakura and Guile, none of them sat well with me (Re: I took them to tournaments and just got tore up.) Honestly, it was the fact that they didn't fit, and the fact that I didn't have a clue what I was doing when I thought I did. I knew how to cancel stuff, but we didn't learn about FADC until much later. When I got my own place and got internet, I started playing Cammy. I was doing...ok, but this was way before all the Cammy tech was discovered that made her such a threat. Wasn't winning still, played a friend who told me to learn a real character.

I went back to Chun, played a long set with one of the top players in my local scene at the time, he gave me a TON of advice for my game. I pretty much followed every single thing he said to the letter for two or three months, and focused on that. Didn't touch a single character besides Chun from June 2009 until March 2010.

I now have a few pocket characters, but of course, Chun is still who I feel more comfortable with. All those ranges are second nature to me now. Let me see if I can find that post he wrote for me, because I feel like it's a great compendium to start with for any Chun player. It's pretty much how I got descent.

Rex0r said:
Corey- my sf4 write up for yah!

Ok well i have alot of critisism. Basicaly it feels like you are unfamiliar with sf, so your gonna have to work on stuff alot of people take for granted. Find a style that fits you to begin learning the game, do you wanna turtle, rush, zone, etc. Eventualy you will use all these styles together at any time during a match, but for right now i think you should choose a focal point.

Basic things like- Knowing what beats what, and how the engine in the game works. I often dont realize that not everyone can see and instantly know what will happen if you do x and opponent does y. This is VERY important. With chun know when you can ultra, know what moves you can anti air with and at what distances, know what pokes you wanna use, and most definatly know your combos.

Backdash is realy good with chun, any time u would wakeup jump do a backdash instead. Pretty safe vs anything they do that isnt a backdash bait. Could even try backdash and then fp to try to catch recovery idk. Just things like that you should think of and try out. Add a little spice, and at your level now try something new every match to get a feel for what will and wont work. Right now your strategy was basicaly walk back, fireball, or jump in. It wont take long to progress, just keep trying to play good players and working on basics.

Your jump ins were bad, were u using lp and lk? Find what jump ins are good. Chun can jump in and do fierce, then do a late second fierce. Its pretty good, hard to block and you can mix it up with doing just one fierce, then landing into clk.

You did use ex bird for anti air which is pretty solid. But dont fall into the trap of using a ex bird kick on wakeup every time, easy to bate. When i knocked you down and it gained you the ex stock, i knew it was coming.

For combos, practice basics like clk, clk, ex legs. Theres others, check the chun li forums idk her that well. When u focus remember to dash with it. Chun is up more frames than most characters after a blocked focus attack xx dash in. You have time to do clk that they must block, u could throw, you could dash in and then haizansu(overhead kick) which will beat throw attempts/throw breaks, or maybe dash in and dash back out as a bait.

SF4 is pretty cerebral now that the execution barrier has pretty much been lifted, its no longer a question of if they can get the reversal....now its if they will try >_<. So alot of the game imo revolves around baiting reversals and seting up situations that are almost geussing games in your favor. The more you play and understand the engine, the more you will even know that you are being buttered up for baits, or entering a geussing situation(such as after a blocked galaxy tornado with rufus....its like rock paper scissors then).

TBH you need alot of work, just practice and learn the system and you should be ready to learn the game. You dont mash which is a very good start, your already ahead of half the people that play this game(maybe all, mashing is legit in this :/ ).

I would say go to the chun forums and check out the basics thread. Im sure it has a rundown of her normals, specials, ultra and super, her anti airs, her combos, etc. Then practice that stuff, eventualy your gonna need to learn dash ultra too which tbh i suck at....i dont know why. But its a huge part of chuns game.

Practice some and let me know when you wanna play another set to evaluate how the training is going.
Click to expand...

There's only slight deviations from this, whereas backdash used to be an awesome way to get out of the majority of pressure then, this was before Option Selects were known. Still, her backdash is pretty good against certain characters, and even certain things characters that do have OS against her backdash can do that eliminates the possibility of using them.
 
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This thread excites me! I'm gonna try to make time later to actually read it all. Thanks for sharing!
 
Nothing big to report lately. I'm still grinding out matches, regaining my footing. Definite see some progress with Chun. I'm not as confounded as I once was, and feel like I can hold my footing against tough players now. Not consistently winning now, but I feel like my patience is growing so that it's possible.

I was watching a stream of the Taiwanese location test for USF4 this week. These location tests have been...controversial in the FGC. Lots of people are elated to see their characters getting buffed. I would be one of them, Chun looks like she has a really strong chance in doing well in the new iteration.

However, a few characters got the nerfs really hard, such as Bison and Fei. Ryu never really got touched at all. So, as they say, let the salt flow, and flow it did.

But watching that stream, Zhi, the commentator, said something that had been on my mind for a while. He's kind of known for not really caring, and speaking exactly what's on his mind at any given moment. He's sort of a polarizing figure in the community, so much so that there's threads specifically about him on forums. But what he said probably caused more salt to flow.

Someone had asked him what he thought about people complaining about nerfs: "They need to get a life. You know, this is a game. Things change in the game, but that's life. And you're going to sit there and cry about, 'Oh, Bison got nerfed, my life's over,' like this is some kind of travesty? You don't even know the first thing about travesties. Go out and volunteer for UNICEF or something. Learn what a real travesty is, from people that are dying in wars and are starving to death. People that are angry about the changes in Ultra have no clue what's important in life."

That's somewhat paraphrased, but the bread & butter of it. And we all know he's right, deep down. I used to be one of those guys.

Garou MOTW came out with a shoddy port on Xbox 360, I complained heavily. If there were things I didn't like about a game, I complained. Then almost three years ago....

I started feeling God calling me to go do volunteer work with a church in Seoul that helps North Korean refugees. I remember one night distinctly. I was sitting in my apartment in America, and my Internet wasn't working. I was getting the runaround from Frontier repeatedly about getting it fixed. I remember getting angry with the support agents who kept telling me a different story each time I talked to a new one. I wound yelling at one of them, "Screw this, I'll find another ISP!" and hanging up.

I had rented a DVD earlier in the week. Part of my preparations for going to Korea, it was a documentary about the North Korean refugee crisis (Seoul Train, if you're curious about this kind of stuff, I would recommend it, as well as Kimjongilia), and I put it on, since I was neither going to be playing any matches or trying to stream anything on Netflix until I got my new internet. And, watching it, I just broke down. Seeing what people had to go through just to eat, or find freedom or not die or be arrested for something that we do daily, and I was complaining about my internet? A luxury item?

It really changed what I thought about things. Now, things get into a perspective. "Is this life or death? No? Then I ought to be OK." I'm not perfect in this. But, yeah, complaining about something so virulently? It no longer sounds like a good idea.
 
So yesterday, I went out to an arcade. In the city where I live, that's a big deal.

No subway, only a really unreliable bus system. Depending on traffic, it can take anywhere between an hour and a half to two hours to commute to the arcade from my door to the arcade. This is the only place with AE in the city, and one of the only arcades I've encountered here that maintains their cabinets. So when I'm there, I make a day of it.

Played for about 5 hours. Had a bountiful amount of matchups to play, just from what I remember:

Oni
Ibuki
Bison
Ryu
Balrog
Vega
Akuma
Ken

My Rog still has good spacing, but what I know I need to work on is regaining composure after I'm knocked down. Once my spacing is obliterated, I have trouble getting back in my butter zone.

My Chun is still solid. I need to work on some better meterless combos. I don't pay close enough attention to what my EX stocks are, and end up trying mash out shorts into EX legs, only to find I have no EX to use and get normal (punishable) legs.

Blame it on matchup inexperience, but Deejay did fairly well. I was also executing better with him than I ever have, at least since 2010 when I was training him as a secondary. Maybe with his buffs in ultra, now's the time to bring him back up.

I always find it amazing when I go to an arcade, especially in an area where you can't speak the language well, how international the Street Fighter culture is. You can learn about people without speaking to them, just by pushing buttons. There's a level of respect between players regardless of race or language or nationality, just because you show up to play.

There really is something electric about this game.
 
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