LEARN and APPLY: Dealing with infuriating playstyles

I’d like to tell you a story about an idiot that turned the tables on another idiot. As history is written by the winners as so prominently said by… huh turns out no one can really be credited for it, whatever, I won so I declare the other guy to be the sole idiot. I might or might not have lost a set previous to this one, three matches straight in fact, but he ran off after I showed him how big of an idiot he is!

A matter of perspective

No trash talking, saying GG at the end of a match, no taunting and never hitting crouch in quick succession, should you care about any of these guidelines? If they’re even that, they’re definitely not rules after all. I don’t think it matters and if it did, well look at Smash Bros, they’ve disabled taunting for parts of their online environment, because as we all know, taunting can lead to the person on the other end to commit sudoku IRL, right?

In all seriousness though, how you choose to play your game, how toxic you are within the realm of the game, which does include trash talking in my opinion at least, is completely up to you. There are hard limits of course, like personal attacks on someone’s identity, race, religion, heritage, you know the drill. If you engage in any kind of that garbage, which has nothing to do with what’s happening within the game, then yes I do hope you’ll get permanently removed. Pressing the taunt button though, something that’s been added by the developers, I don’t see how that is something we should avoid. “Because it’s disrespectful” I can hear some argue in the background, well yes, that is precisely why it’s called a taunt.

If you get enraged by being taunted, in whatever shape or form, be it the actual taunt button, crouch mashing, and no I am not going to use the actual term here or running into every single invincible reversal your opponent throws at you, then I would argue that it’s 100% working as intended. How do you deal with it? I think this is just a matter of perspective. A taunt is supposed to attack the mental state of your opponent. You are essentially casting a debuff on the person that’s controlling the character you’re fighting off right now. That is also the major reason why the actual in-game benefits of taunting in 3rd Strike always felt like they kind of defeat the purpose of the taunt itself. If you get a measurable benefit to your stats for taunting, you’re not doing anything that transcends the game, you’re just straight up buffing your character. That is not a taunt, that’s no different than any other special that alters your character’s capabilities.

The same goes for someone throwing out one DP after another, if you keep getting hit by it, it’s not all that hard to imagine that your patience will run thin, while the other player is probably laughing their arse off as they’re continuing to get away with it. You cannot control what the other player does, but you can manage your own mental state and analyse how to deal with the situation. You are in charge of allowing your opponent’s taunt to be effective.

Apply what you’ve learned

First of all, I don’t actually think all Leo players are idiots, just the majority of them. I do imagine that most Leo, Sol and Pot players sit together in a corner sniffing glue all day before they hop online to be at full power, but I have no evidence of that actually being the case. So to cover my bases, again, no I don’t think all of them are idiots. Secondly I also don’t think that this person in particular is a bonafide idiot, but the way he plays though; well, you can’t fault him for doing what’s working right. Plus as I had eluded to in the beginning, I did lose a full set to him just before this one. That’s when I was the idiot. The point of the video isn’t to show how sick I am, because I am not, you would know if you checked out my stream, every Monday, Wednesday and either Friday or Saturday btw, come by and liven up the chat, leave a like on the stream and help me make that stream more entertaining overall, ahem… where was I? Oh right, I lose, a LOT! Ever since I made it to the celestial floor with I-No, my win rate sits at around 15% to 20%. That’s right, I win less than one in five matches at the moment. I am making visible progress. My anti air and safe jump game has improved drastically compared to how I was playing in August. There are still some very simple things I am not doing, like using 2D, ever. I’ll get there eventually.

The way this Leo was playing was actually infuriating and it kind of got to me. So in the second set I wanted to intentionally focus on curbing the things he kept throwing out without any sense or reason. Namely the run through and his invincible reversal. Both are easily dealt with as long as the situation isn’t too heavily stacked against you. To illustrate this particular instance a little better, you do not know if he’s going to do an invincible reversal on wake up or not, you just don’t. Even if the likelihood is very high, the chances of it are still 50/50, as there can only be either A or B in this case. Either he does it, or he doesn’t. Once you have established that he’s happily throwing this move out there, at this level of play, and with that I mean at this low level of play, making any further educated guesses, which is still guessing, serves no purpose. Your job is to find a way, to encourage him to do it again, while at the same time allowing you to punish it, or in case he doesn’t use it, to be safe. Which means you want to force safe jump situations. The run through is a little more finicky as it does require you to react, which can go horribly wrong if your reactions are as bad as mine.

I have won this one, because this Leo might or might not be an idiot, who knows, right? I might not win the next time I come across something like this and you might or might not win after analysing and applying everything you’ve learned either. That is not a bad thing though, the whole point is to learn and to apply what you’ve learned. You have done what you’re supposed to do, so just keep doing and practicing it whilst picking up new skills along the way. Plus, the better you get at dealing with what people usually call “random” playstyles, the quicker your wins will start to pile up. Also you will be a lot less likely to boil over when you are presented with this particular breed of players.

Closing Words

After all is said and done, a Ky player will show up to ruin my day. I really hate Ky, I don’t understand what the buffs did for him, but it didn’t change anything for me when going up against him. I’ll figure this out eventually. So tell me, what are your thoughts on taunting, disrespectful playstyles, randomness and which character you hate to fight the most and why? Let me know in the comments! My name is Sasa and I will see you next time.