Transforming negativity/salt into something constructive?

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
#1

Hey all, I’ve decided I’m taking a much needed break from this game, and you can probably tell from the title. I dunno why, but SSF4 has got me more pissed off than I ever have in my life, and I used to think of myself as quite a calm person. People could go at me for so long saying the most offensive shit and it wouldn’t bother me, but this game? Damn, it’s like there’s a beast within me lol.

So today I lost to the most bullshit Ryu and Ken in history, like I’m not even gonna talk about it because I’m sure you people have played these people, the majority of people I know will have just laughed it off and played another match, but me? I got pissed off to the MAX, like this guy was playing so bullshit and I genuinely felt like getting up and snapping my SF disc in half, that’s how angry this game gets me sometimes lol. After 2-3 minutes of calming I’ll think about how much of a twat I am for seriously getting annoyed over a video game but I dunno, I’ve never experienced anger at a game before I played SF lol. The same happens against characters like Dhalsim or extremely turtles like Guile and Chun, where not getting in will push me over the edge, which is fucking dumb but that’s just how I am lol. Sometimes I just feel like putting down my stick and not bothering to play the game. But how do some of you stay so calm, but more importantly, learn from your losses against bullshit/randomness etc. etc. I never get angry if I lose to someone genuinely better than me, or if I get outplayed, but when it’s someone playing so stupid it’s unreal it gets on my nerves…BAD. Now instead of me nearly breaking my console or punching my stick or something incredibly stupid, how can I learn from my mistakes. Because honestly, when I look back at the replay, I’ll just be like “WTF, how the hell did I lose” and that’s it, I won’t gain anything nor lose anything from it.
So I pose two questions.

  1. How the hell do you guys not get incredibly pissed off at this game and just break everything in your view?
  2. How do you take something back from your loss and learn from it, ensuring you don’t lose to that same randomness/bullshit again

Apologies if this is in the wrong area of the forum, I usually just post in a character specific ones. Thanks for the taking the time to read this and the replies that will be posted in advance :slight_smile:

#2

First off, I quickly realize that if I break something I will regret it later and be pissed off at myself. I used to break stuff, I even put a hole in my wall when I was an angsty little teenager but over time you’ll learn that isn’t very smart.

In every situation you can analyze what you did and what the opponent did and what the outcome was, it’s your job after that to change things up and test what works. For some, it may take awhile to even understand why you did something and why it didn’t work and you may need to watch your replays a few more times.

My friend and I play ranked matches taking turns and I realize he was pretty bad against anyone with fireballs. He would make constant mistakes such as jumping backwards into fireballs due to the opponent walking forward forcing the camera to move back and have the fireball hit him, not focusing fireballs correctly, wasting EX moves to attempt to run through them (Guy), and doing risky special moves to get through them, etc. I suggested playing against me while I played Ryu, he grudgingly accepted. After an hour or so of tips and constant matches with my Ryu he started to take less risks and actually avoided most of his past mistakes.

If you can specifically figure out what is causing you problems, I’d suggest finding a buddy or attempt to set up Training Mode dummy to figure out different ways to overcome them. For those off the wall random people, just try to play defensively and punish them until they are afraid to do anything then open up your offensive game. Hope that helps.

#3

I only somewhat get mad at ranked modes and when I start to get mad I calm myself down and usually blame it on myself. I go to the training room and try out the stuff that I couldnt block or punish then start up again. You cant win em all so why beat yourself up about it.

#4

I get angry when I play SF as well, not destroy-everything-in-sight mad. But yell at the tv and be salty for the rest of the session mad. It doesn’t happen often but when I do I blow up lol.

I don’t think being angry is bad sometimes. I feel that when I get angry at bs it’s not that the move is bs- Its that I fell for it and didn’t counter it. I get angry because I know I can be better and I didn’t adapt fast enough during the match and it gave them a free win.

But just as a general rule when you get mad just stop playing for at least an hour, most people play worse when angry so taking a break will help.

When I try to learn from my mistakes by watching the replay. I don’t try to watch it and look for all the things I did wrong all at once, I try to remember the thing that pissed me off the most then look for it in the replay. Afterwards I either go to training mode and work on fixing that mistake or I try to spar with a buddy to work on it.

For Example: A month ago I was having trouble beating most shoto characters when I’m playing as Guy. more specifically, beating Ryu and Ken. I would get a good chunk of health off of them and would get them in the corner with a knockdown, and as I was getting ready to put pressure on them BOOM wakeup SRK every time. The momentum of the match would shift in their favor and they would beat me as I went apes*** in my room.

But after a while I started to watch my matches and you know what I saw? I was either standing over them like an Idiot or trying to time a focus attack for when they stand up. And their SRK, being the meaty attack that it is, would severely punish my dumb self for even trying ether one. So from now on I try to bait out their wakeup SRK’s by getting close for a second, then back dashing before the SRK so I can punish it.

Hope this answer isn’t to long XD

#5

I don’t particularly regard myself as the most chilled or laid back person, but, I really, really don’t understand game rage as an adult - literally don’t understand it, to me, getting angry as fuck over a video game is something you do when you’re a frustrated kid, not when you’re an adult and have far more severe problems to deal with. I work all day, I’m not going to spend my evenings angrily screaming at a controller because I can’t get a grip on my emotions.

Sure when I was a kid (like 10), I would get upset and smash my SNES controller over stupid shit. Now, I take losses and negative aspects with a pinch of salt, I’ll either shrug it off or drop a quick sigh. Mostly, you’ll see me grin or chuckle when I screw up, drop a combo, get punished etc because I’m laughing at my own silly mistakes and what they cost me whilst mentally telling myself “yep, don’t do that again!”.

It’s the same as if I lose to someone that many of the one-stop ranters on this site consider to be ‘scrubs’ or ‘spammers’, same deal - shrug it off, know what you should have done, move on. I think that’s the difference, most ragers won’t even bother to identify their mistakes and instead will get angry and blame the other player.

There is no positive impact for me in getting angry and raging over a loss or something generally not going your way in a video game.

#6

I don’t know about you, but to me it’s a lot better to be angry than to be bored. If I am angry that game is doing something right to make me care, while a game that bores me is very close to being dropped to the dustbin.

In your case you always have to remember something: if you lose to a scrub and you can’t be bothered to figure out why you lost to him, you are going to turn into a bigger scrub than him. If you lose to something basic and simple that means your fundamentals are not good enough, and complaining and trying to sweep it under the rug is the first step to ensuring your fundamentals will never be good enough. You need to calm down, figure out your opponent’s plan and how you can get pass that plan. If you think you should be allowed to jump in and hit buttons without respecting your opponent’s options then you can enjoy eating your shoryukens. Tip: try winning with the same stupid things that your opponent does and very often you’ll find out that it’s not as simple as it looks.

#7

It’s one game to win matches, it’s another game to pick out your mistakes and improve on it. Why should that be boring?

#8

The thing is, I have tried playing fucking random and it doesn’t work. And also, I’m not a scrub (I don’t mean to brag), I have played with some of the UK’s best online (don’t really have a big offline scene) and I’ve done well if not beaten some of them, and that is the reason why I get pissed off. I know I SHOULDN’T be losing to them, but I am.

#9

And why doesn’t it work? Why do others beat those playing random while you can’t? It’s because you are not good enough.

Perhaps you can start by explaining what that guy is doing? We can then tell you how to beat him.

#10

And there you have your answer to question 2: “How do you take something back from your loss and learn from it, ensuring you don’t lose to that same randomness/bullshit again?” We ask people how to beat randomness and don’t assume that we won’t lose to randomness.

I mean, there’s a very simple rule in fighting games, if you don’t respect them, they will show you why you need to respect them. And once you respect them very often they will not be worthy of your respect.

#11

Did I say that? Apologies for being a dick, long night man. Damn, I sounded like an asshole , sorry once again.

So, this is the problem. When I play against really good people, I play completely different. I’m on the ball, my setups are on point, everything. But when I come across the scrub, this is what it is. I play stupid, I play like I’m complacent and I start doing stupid stuff. Like these scrub will empty jump in hk tatsu or srk or something dumb like that, and why do I get hit, because a normal player would tech so I try to tech a throw only to get blown up. I really don’t know what’s the problem, it’s just that it’s so random it defeats me. If this is Endless after about 2 games I figure them out and I beat them, but it’s in like Ranked and so on. Like I’ve yet to fight someone good on Ranked, it’s like a scrubfest.

#12

You need to reassess your play and your believed level of skill if you are saying you can go against top players yet lose to bad ones. It sounds like you skipped fundamentals and went straight to learning combos and the fancy stuff, leaving everything important out in between, like spacing. I don’t know what else to say, when you’re losing to the “scrubfest” as you call it, you’re not the better player in the game.

#13

It sounds like you need to read this, specifically the part about how Fuudo beat Poongko and why Poongko was able to beat Daigo. Janken (paper-rock-scissors) is janken. If you read other’s move wrong, that’s it. There’s nothing you can do about it. So if he’s throwing random tatsu or srk and you think he’s going to throw you have read wrongly. In fact it’s not something random, that guy knows that you are going to be pressing buttons, and he has read you correctly. Solution is simple, read correctly. That’s why like I said, you need to respect those scrubs. Once you do so they won’t be worthy your respect.

#14

Well an example of this is a while ago, I think I saved both replays.

I played Dawgtanian, if you don’t know him, he’s probably the best Elf in Europe, definitely in UK. So I had a match with him and I beat him (it was one match, he’s much better than me, not claiming he’s better than me in anyway) but back to the point, I beat him. It was a very solid match and we both played brilliantly.

On the other hand, about 2 weeks later I came across this Elf who had just got the game like 2 days, it was very visible, but he beat me. That loss pissed me off a lot, so this is my situation, it’s why I don’t play Ranked any more. I prefer Endless as the skill level is much higher, on Ranked I ALWAYS lose to scrubs. I’ll try and find them two videos and upload them to YouTube so you can see the difference. One against the best Elf in Europe and other the worst Elf in history.

#15

I can relate man. It doesn’t make sense to play when outside of your prime mindset. Music helps me sometimes. It’s impossible to get upset with some music.

No post is too long on SRK… trust me :lol:

#16

Don’t use Akuma if you are planning on taking online matches seriously.

#17

Back when I use to just be a ken dp masher, when I lost I would throw controllers at the ground. My bank account got pissed at me and I stopped.

#18

The way I see it, you have to play to your opponent’s skill level. If your opponent hasn’t demonstrated high level play, don’t expect them to do high level tactics. I play ranked matches like that. If I come across a Ken who has the DP motion plus heavy punch on auto-pilot I’m not going to try anything fancy with him because I’ll eat a heavy SRK and instead play a bit more defensively baiting out the DPs and punishing accordingly. However if I’m playing someone with some skill, I will approach the match differently and try for more fancy stuff. In the end, why tick throw someone when you could easily walk up and throw them? I mean I understand that you want to use all these high level tactics against some people, but even if it works its overkill and a button masher may just end up mashing through your nonsense anyways.

#19

Lol I don’t literally destroy everything in my path, it was just a statement to emphasise my point more. I don’t really do anything but when I get really mad I’ll punch my memory foam mattress which I sit on when playing.

I’m thinking of going SvB this time round as the one last month I couldn’t make, so I’m trying to practice online as it’s my online training ground so I can do well there. A lot of people that made Top 64/32 I can beat pretty consistently so I think I would do quite well, I just need to learn how to beat the randomers lol.

#20

The best reply yet. I will keep that in mind, thank you kind Sir :slight_smile: