I find that I have very few opportunities to implement footsies, sure I’ll still hit with the attacks on occasion but the actual act of walking in and out of range to bait attacks among other elements are either ignored by the player or I’m simply not presented an opportunity to use them that often.
Am I doing something wrong, or are footsies just not as applicable at lower levels?
Implementing footsies?
SMH.
Footsies is the whole game. Any time you are anti-airing people with normals or poking them, you are playing footsies. If you’re opponent wants to do stuff, be smarter than them and don’t hit buttons. Just because you’re opponent doesn’t know what’s happening doesn’t mean that you don’t.
Man up, shake it off and poke the shit out of people that that Ryu cr.mk.
Footsies… what do you think footsies is?
Footsies can be generalized as this: You watch what your opponent does and you counter attack. If you’ve ever punished a mistake, you’ve done footsies.
Unless you’re only focusing on what your character is doing and not what your opponent is doing at all, you’ve played footsies.
It’s not that they’re not applicable at lower levels, but footsies can be beat out by random play. Footsies is very important when you KNOW ranges, options, etc. But when you’re playing against someone who say doesn’t know, they might do something that seems “stupid” or “random” that you wouldn’t see in high level play precisely because they don’t know. However, this is also a question of “good” footsies versus just “footsies”.
Good footsies recognizes all the options and even if randomed once or twice will win out through superior play because superior footsie play will eventually expose randomness for what it is and will punish it accordingly. Footsies is the most obvious when two people are playing them effectively yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not being played when someone is being blown up, in fact that happens most when one person is playing solid footsies and the other is not. You don’t “See” it as much because one person is doing it and the other isn’t and it looks like a blow up.
seems like you missing being patient. walking back and forth isnt that applicable when a person is derping and doing random shit. hold your ground, get in a range you know works for your best poke and wait out something dumb that you can punish…
get right out side of range of something you noticed they have been mashing, or right at the angle for a good anti air, and wait his randomness out…cause obviously he’s pushing too many buttons…
just sit and wait…no need to walk…sit.
I guess I was thinking more a long the lines of the typical shoto medium range footsies.
[media=youtube]5kAnluubeO4[/media] essentially this.
I didn’t realise the term was so broad, but what you guys are saying makes sense.
At high levels footsies only exist based on the matchup. The are clearly characters who are good who don’t even need to bother with footsies like Seth, Viper, Abel, Rufus. But they need to understand footsies, but not necessarily play them.
I never really considered trying to maintain an optimum range to make their attacks less effective, well outside of for anti airs and fireball zoning, thanks for giving me new perspective.
I guess I’ve been doing it subcouncious for certain things but really thinking about it just broadens my mind to the ways I can apply it further.
Walking in and out of the range of your/his pokes to whiffpunish / create openings / etc of course doesn’t work if
So yes, this is not really applicable at low levels.
If you’re sufficiently good at controlling ground space the only way an opponent can ignore you is by not doing anything. Jumping or moving backwards means they’re giving up space. Poking means they’re trying to stop you from advancing. Jumping forward means they’re being beaten on the ground. This doesn’t apply to all matchups though, and it certainly doesn’t apply if the opponent is just doing random things.
Footsies are also more complex than just dancing around a certain area trying to score a whiff punish, and sometimes one technique can serve two purposes. For example, an important part of footsies to get the opponent to act incorrectly by creating false patterns in your play. A basic example is if your character has a good normal that beats most of the opponent’s, you can walk forward, press the button out of range their punish range, then walk slightly forward and do it again. This basically establishes the space you want to control with that move, and it works towards creating a pattern in the opponent’s mind. Now either they’re going to hold their ground and challenge that normal, or they’re going to give themselves space by walking backwards. If they hold their ground, you have the advantage (on paper) cos your normal beats most of their options. If they walk backwards, you gain positional advantage (an important concept in general). But now a simple mindgame has been created. When you’re at a similar distance again, whiff that normal. A sufficiently aware player may try to predict that you’re going to walk forward and do it again, so they might to either jump over it, or twitch react in order to whiff punish, or try to counter with some other tactic. So instead of pressing the same button, you whiff a jab or a short instead and confirm a punishment opportunity. Or you don’t press anything and you walk up and do a focus attack. Or you dash up and throw etc etc. These decisions of course should be based on how your opponent reacted to you earlier because obviously there is risk attached, but the point was just to show that footsies encompasses much more than just dancing around the at the edge of poke distance hoping to score a punish.
I’m unsure whether that was directed at me, but if it was - I just noted that as an example.
Mindgames only work with people that think. What you’re describing is already at least mediocre level. At low level there is hardly a ground game at all.
In the first paragraph I said it doesn’t apply to certain matchups or if the opponent is doing random things, which can imply low levels of play, or simply that they are doing random stuff (a legit tactic in some cases). And no, it wasn’t directed at you. You posted while I was still typing up my response.
you guys are kinda talking over this dudes head. somebody link him to maj’s footsies guide if i dont find it and edit into this post myself
Edit- here it is
as far as answering the OP’s question; footsies, and the concepts that are employed are largely ignored by low and intermidiate level players, but they exist even if you dont understand in words whats going on
try not to get frustrated if youre trying to land pokes, and the other guy keeps jumping around doing stuff. at the bare minimum basic level, try to understand that if you hit a button and the other guy jumped over it, that you either
A) were predictable about when you like to stick out your button
or
B) he was going to jump in no matter what and you should have been allowing him to kill himself
If you want to start applying footsies, don’t be so complicated with all this subtle bullshit about trying to get whiff punishes etc.
Basically all footsies boils down to is you want to keep yourself spaced proportionally to your opponent in a way that you really like… or a way they really don’t like.
If they are playing Dhalsim, you want to keep them far away obviously. If you are Zangief then you want to spend your time in or close to throw range,
That’s footsies at it’s heart, put yourself where you think you have the best odds of winning. Expand upon this basic thought process into more complex things based on what the character does, but more importantly what your opponent does. Learn matchups, figure out your zones, etc. it can get as complicated as you want.
EDIT: don’t forget the classic shoto trap. Fireball to force them to jump, shoryuken to punish when they do.
The whole game revolves around spacing at poking at your opponent trying to find the opportunity to get off a max damage combo. That is footsies, footsies is using your normals, the only time a game has no footsies is if two players just spam special moves, which is stupid, but not above a scrubby Gief who only knows how to Lariat and SpD
Spd is a great footsies tool. No shitting on spd. That one move dictates the whole match.
I play Gief when I feel like trolling, I admit, SpD is a lot of Giefs footsie game, he still has normals though and he is required to use them once in a while, his standing strong is a fantastic poke.
Footsies are applicable at every level (except full retard level, which doesn’t count, aka where people just jump in over and over). Footsies can be as elementary as, ‘he’s walking forward to approach and therefore not blocking so I can hit a button to beat his walking forward.’
The problem with players such as yourself you get this preconceived idea of what footsies are. Really at a base level footsies create mix up situations with pokes and spacing. The higher level play you go the more complex footsies get. At the most basic level it’s just good to think of footsies as something like this:
Eventually once you fully understand how to read a players basic movement and button pressing you can start trying to whiff punish pokes. And then after that once you start confusing your opponent with your superior footsies you can even get away with some jump ins. BTW, that Akuma video is a poor example of how to practice whiff punishing and footsies in general. It’s dumb to go into a match with the mentality of “I’m going to specifically do X to my opponent.” First of all, that Ryu didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, he was randomly pressing cr. mk and when there’s no reason or logic behind the button press it’s VERY difficult to read making whiff punish attempts almost worthless. Secondly, what if that ryu decided to not press cr. mk? Footsies and fighting games in general is about reading your opponent based on their options and tendencies so going into a match saying, “I’m only going to look for X,” is antithetical to how high level fighting gameplay works.
Yeah that’s another thing I find happens every so often, sometimes I’ll try to employ a mid range footsie game, and my opponent will just jump,
this is good in a way because they usually get pretty predictable with it and are easy to punish but it’s not exactly beneficial for increasing
my skill. I guess I need to start playing against higher level opponents more, on average I find myself fighting people with around 1500pp
and many of them don’t seem to adapt much.