Fighting Games Explained - Do You Need Fast Reflexes To Be Good at Fighting Games?

[@DragonflySwamp]

I'm so happy to see you back, man. Your videos are great. Great taste leading with Gill's theme from Second Impact. The only thing I didn't like about this video was the section about hit confirming, since you didn't mention how hit confirms are different from one game to another. An anime/airdasher hit is usually easier mechanically due to gatlings, for instance, but you might need to weigh going for a burst safe combo or not against your opponent's burst habits, burst gauge, and your own character resources. At 8:45 you mention "Evil Ryu hit confirming crouching medium kick and Hadouken into FADC", but this is a 2-hit confirm sequence which is way easier than a single-hit or "raw" hit confirm. I wouldn't even put them in the same category; the FADC decision by E-Ryu is more like a combo route decision rather than choosing whether or not to do the combo in the first place. Then there are other factors like looking at the stun/life gauge to see a visual cue on frame 1, or having a monitor with a 240hz refresh rate, or having input lag in certain versions of the game. I can see why you wouldn't want to focus on external factors, but I think they deserved a small mention at the least. I hope your next video is just as good as this one. You have a really nice mix of production values and genuine insight. 10:40 Hey, come on now. I don't like getting hit by Greed Sever any more than the next guy, but don't give people the wrong idea.

[@scrublord4019]

"The only thing i didn't like about this video was the section about hit confirming, since you didn't mention hit confirms are different one game from another." Totally true. With some awareness i can single hit confirm in anime games, but in SFV i feel myself helpless. Like i can't stop opponent's from dash throwing me as they -7(as i remember) after a dash on reaction. Even if i totally aware about that option, not talking about hit confirms, that mostly turn in "hope confirms" or just dealing much less damage without any oki.

[@KillahManjaro]

No but it helps. You just have to put yourself in all sorts of situations so then when the time comes you don't have to think about it.

[@inky2412]

Glad you're back! I've missed your Ed shenanigans so much I decided to start maining him

[@Dracobyte]

Glad to have you back!

[@PipeRetrogamer]

As a rookie, that's what you think when facing more experienced players. Truth is, they know the game and are prepared in advance for what's more likely to come next. Very good vid.

[@cookiestar3069]

Thanks for your insights! Helping a newcomer like me understand.

[@wren8253]

RETURN OF THE KING 🎉

[@JFLunch]

Mental stack is a huge one. The less mental stack you give someone during offense, the more likely they are to react or read you correctly. For example, in DBFZ Piccolo has a crossup mix post lvl 3 in the corner. Some people cannot react to the regular situation. However there are people that can react or option select the side you go on since it's not same frame. So how do you open these people up? Simple, you add options. They are extremely focused on blocking the correct side. They aren't gonna tech you sneaking in a dragon rush if they are respect the situation. They will get bonked on the head with an overhead. Along with all the other mix tools Piccolo has. Now going for the original version of the mix, they are more likely to get hit by the regular low because they are looking for WAY more at once or gonna try to disrespect you because you're making them guess what you're gonna do rather than making them react to one type of mix. Also since it's not consistent what side you're gonna be on, it's way harder to reflect, DP, reversal super, etc since they have to be correct on what side you're going on unless they have specific character answers for it. This is how you break people's reflexes and reactions.

[@predeterminedmeat5024]

Sick video. Channel deserves way more subs.

[@fernandozavaletabustos205]

I missed you videos so much!

[@NaoyaYami]

The King's Avatar (a chinese series about tournament-level MMORPG PvP players) has a very distinct character: The Magician (it's of course his fanmade title/alias). He's known for being very slow even outside the game (which was used for few comedic scenes) but he's still one of the best players in the game due to one reason: his ability to read his opponents. Unless you literally trap him with moves that can't be avoided without actual reflex, he'll most likely beat you - he will simply wait for an opening he knows is coming and then strike (just like the example given in this video, where Daigo dropped his combo and got punished for it). In fighting games, you may be able to perfectly execute the most damaging combos 100% of the time but it won't matter if your opponent simply does not allow you to pull it off. That's where stuff like mix ups (varying your attack patterns and even delaying some moves in a combo to feint the opponent into counter-attacking) or setups (doing stuff that on it's own seems useless but limits your opponent actions to give you advantage or even straight up "setting up" your opponent for a combo) comes in. There are even a few turn-based fighting games that are entirely based around decision making and eliminate your reflex as a factor completely.

[@starkflame86]

I'm so happy I subbed. I watched your last video a few days ago and I saw it was a year old. Subbed just incase you came back, and I'm happy you did.

[@GodlyForgotten13]

I always hear Yipes singing the Nova Force theme every time I hear it. Great video!

[@waseyute]

I'm glad to find this channel as you came back 🙏🏾🙏🏾

[@lSlicerl]

Woohooooo new video, let's go :D

[@FigAndFriends]

Great video m8!

[@sabastianpummill2446]

As a grappler main. Big grab always do trick.

[@skrawl8374]

Nice video! I am new to guilty gear strive so this was very informative for me thanks!

[@Mcbeanindahouse]

Thanks for posting!!

[@superc466]

You’re alive

[@SoundBoiFGC]

Welcome back

[@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149]

Depends on where you draw the line of "good", and the line of "fast", I'd say. Some people are at the low, far below-average line of the bell curve. That kind of makes things pretty hard for them, even if they're well practiced. And with reflexes like that, getting into the top 100 or whatever would be very, very difficult. But if your reflexes are around average and you want your online ranking to be somewhat above average? Don't worry about it, reaction times won't be a major issue. The general point of "when you get better at fighting games your brain reacts faster because it now knows what it's doing" is a very good one though. That's very much true, and good to know if you're getting into fighting games.

[@RetiredE-Boi]

i feel i keep having fights with myself about fighting games. its so hard to have the patience to practice how to fight in these games. i really wish i could find ways to circumvent this because i really want to get into them instead of playing them casually.

[@no_nameyouknow]

You don't need to practice that much, just enough to know your characters moves and maybe a couple of simple combos to start. Just play against people online, you will lose a lot until you start not losing a lot. At this point you are playing seriously. You lose some, you win some, you get better over time. It's the initial learning part that people have trouble with, learning while getting beat is tough on your ego, and can feel pointless. Focus on just blocking as much as you can at first, then just landing a hit every now and then, then just winning a round. Then trying to win matches. If you start out trying to win matches, you are going to get frustrated, and even if you win, you might develop horrible habits and/or simply not learn other fundamentals like blocking effectively. Start small, realize that losing is a part of playing the game. Focus on what you did well, rather than what you messed up or what you could have done, there is a time for that too, but generally it doesn't help while playing, that is more after the set is done and you want to know what to work on next, not like "arg I should have punished that, I could have won I know I can do that", more like "Ok, let's think on what I can work on to improve, okay my punishes are not that reliable, I should work on the timing for punishing some moves that people use a lot".

[@isaaccordova5320]

@@no_nameyouknow I will try to learn like this thank you.

[@PIMKAMINA2]

Specifically curious to me because im getting into SF and KoF but my reflexes are bad due to physical illness, i get fatigued very easily and my wrists in particular cant handle a lot of stress or tense movements.

[@WOBBLEMASTER]

2:31Banjo Kazooie Mains: W I N G

[@broJakka]

hope you will upload more videos🎉

[@gwen4557]

Absolute banger video

[@stewl6329]

Most important thing is to sleep well. My sleep routine has been bad for years. I can't even play properly the match. There is an awful brain fog when I play.

[@metalgeartrusty]

You failed to mention one aspect of the tokido buffer. He presses that st lk outside of its range. Either ken runs into it, or tokido’s attack whiffs. This mitigates the possibility of his buffer being blocked. Tokido is so great at this.

[@JonathanRiverafrickinnice555]

Great video.

[@squishy1970]

Hola como está

[@powertrip8676]

yes you do need fast reflexes. you will get steamrolled by a lot of reactable mixups

[@lunamaster123]

It feels like you were more trying to answer, "Are fast reflexes the only thing needed to be good at fighting games?" The important bit of that question is _the only thing_ . In this video, you literally have an entire section dedicated to hit confirming... which is *reacting* to whether or not your attack connects. Later, you bring up reacting to a characters cross up. It is pretty apparent that reaction speed is an important aspect of high level play. Is it the only thing? No. Being able to understand and predict your opponent is also important. You need to able to do both to order to be considered good (as it is impossible to rely solely on either). And in the end, your answer is yes despite spending most of the video pretending it is no. Even then, you tried to reframe it as "You'll suck at the beginning, but you'll get better," as if it changes the answer from yes. Getting better at reacting is the same as getting a better reaction speed. The answer to the video's title is still yes.

[@LuxeVue]

good read

[@arcfieri5965]

I mean, you can still succeed even without super great reaction speeds, but you have to build strategies around your reaction time. One way to do this is using fuzzy guard fuzzy mash, and fuzzy jump since fuzzying doesn't rely at all on reactions, just knowing the situations where to apply it. And also skills like hit confirming are important, but there are ways you can kind of side step that issue, you could play a character who has a safe buffer off their pokes and go for that instead, or you can play characters who just in general don't rely on hit confirming. Overall having better reactions will help, but it isn't at all necessary to play or be good, I mean look at players like Jonathon Tenne who have said themselves they have below average reaction times but they play in a way where they mitigate that weakness and focus on what they are good at (which in Tenne's case is technical setups)

[@lunamaster123]

@@arcfieri5965 Your first paragraph has a good tip, but it doesn't really go against my point. I mentioned that understanding your opponent and predicting is also an important aspect. Knowing when to fuzzy guard would fall under this category. Your second paragraph... is just coping. It demonstrates how much of a disadvantage not having a good reaction time is. Pick a character with a safe buffer? Ignoring that this implies having a poor reaction time limits your character selection, most safer buffers deal less damage than their hit confirmed counterparts. In addition, they are far less versatile than hit confirming. You see more hit confirming in high level play because it is better overall. Also, what character _doesn't_ hit confirm? Hit confirming is merely choosing to follow up on an attack after confirming that the opponent got hit. Unless your character doesn't have a combo game at all, this applies to basically everyone. Finally, your first sentence missed the point of my comment. I never implied you need a good reaction speed to play... just to be good. There are a lot of times that you just need to properly react in order to gain an advantage. As I mentioned before, you can't rely solely on prediction or reaction to win. As for your example... it doesn't mean much. How do you know that he has a below average reaction speed? Did he do a test and post the results? Him _saying_ it doesn't mean much as he could just as easily be underestimating himself or overestimating the people he's comparing himself to. (Think that smart kid who insists that he isn't all that smart.) As mentioned in the video, you can improve your reaction speed just by playing. The likelihood that he actually has a bad reaction speed is low.

[@arcfieri5965]

@@lunamaster123 those are all fair points, but some of them felt a little semantics heavy, like yeah every character relies on hit confirms, but most 2 hit+ hit confirms are easy to do even if you have shit reaction times, I was saying specifically characters like Karin who rely on one button hit confirms in neutral, which in sf is still most of the cast, but that's even less important in anime games where you can do safe 2+ hit strings in neutral for easy hit confirms (or you could play xrd may who can do that, or just end most strings in her -1 sweep that leads into most of her combos. But also no one is acting like you don't need reaction times to be good, fast reaction times can only help. But in some games raw reaction times alone can't save you, good luck trying to block may dolphin cancel mix-ups or +r millia pretty maze mix-ups 100% of the time with only reactions. But most people look at the genre and assume you have to be some kind of reaction god to even step a foot in the door which isn't at all true. Also I don't believe Jonathan Tenne has ever posted a reaction time test, (not that those are the best indicator you can block mixup# anyways due to mental stack) so I will give you that one

[@arcfieri5965]

Like I'll admit I did misread your initial comment and thought you were saying reaction times were the most important thing, but even for people like me with rather below average (in the context of FG players) reaction time, you can play in a way which mitigates that weakness. And for.people who are scared to try out these games it is important to show that while good reaction time definitely helps, it isn't the most important thing and strong game knowledge and situational awareness will be much more important than raw reactions.

[@domomitsune5920]

I'm sorry, but as an old-school gamer this is still too Technical and confusing to do. Between your different terminologies like buffering and just countering continuously without being knocked out, it's just beyond my scope of command input. To be honest, I don't possess anywhere near the flexes at my age anymore to compete with how games are now. Sure I was around when streetfighter first came out, but now I can't compete with what street fighter is now. And to be honest, if I was to go up against a average or Pro Gamer, they are going to probably annihilate me with a perfect game because I couldn't even touch them. So I'll leave these games to the professionals are those who are crazy enough to actually play them.

[@colbyboucher6391]

This is going to come across as overly negative, but my point is that most of the people who complain about this are absolutely capable. Things that actually involve reactions rather than just timing and reads: -Blockstrings (you need to be capable of reacting to overheads to punish them properly rather than just throwing the opponent), and ideally cross-ups as well -Teching throws (In SFV, at least, they are supposedly reactable, ties into reacting to overheads) -Hit confirms -Stufing jump-ins -Wake-ups, again, in SFV where people *might* do a quick get-up -A big one is knowing what to do after a certain normal. Doesn't matter how many times I do links / cancels in training, in a real match I'm gonna just punch them and let them walk because wait, could I get something off of that button I just pressed? Probably. *I'm autistic.* I have been specifically singled out as being very slow to process things, because my brain's noisy in general, random signals getting shot everywhere like white noise. You'll see me not respond to shit everyone and their mother should be capable of responding to because I simply can't think fast enough. Everyone has a mental stack to manage, and in my case it includes the stage background moving and some shit I read on Wikipedia last week. I was explicitly given extra time on tests in school becase the state recognized I'd never finish in time otherwise. I'm also uniquely clumsy as a result. Even buffered, you need to do a special input pretty fuckin' quickly as a follow-up. A buffered DP is a whole different beast than repping raw DP a bunch, at least to me. I *will* wildly waggle the stick, regardless of how much I practiced, and probably just dash into them, after hours of practice. My raw reaction time on that little site everyone loves, where all I have to do is wait wait for the screen to turn green (and that's the only thing that happens) is 333ms, about *20 frames.* That is on the uniquely garbage end of the bell curve, and many things that are meant to be reactable are out of my reach as a result. The majority of people are at more like a 12-frame reaction speed, some lower. I just watched a video of a dude who had never touched traditional fighters climb up the GGST tower shockingly quickly (to me, at least). Like, multiple floors per day, from the day he hopped online. Granted, he had a pro coaching him, but no amount of coaching can help your brain re-wire itself to start seeing the game slow down, that just happens when it happens. (Remember the first time you played an FPS or what it looks like when you hand your little brother the hand-me-down controller?) To most it was inspiring, to me it was demoralizing. My point is, the average person can *absolutely* think and respond quick enough, you don't need to be a twitchy god to handle this shit, just a regular-ass human being. You can climb into Silver and then start complaining about reaction times again as an excuse for your lack of game knowledge. Meanwhile I only feel like i'm playing the game when I find other 0LP opponents (no, I have not won once, it has been weeks) yet I keep playing, because I'm a masochist like that.

[@BinaryHedgehog1]

I will say some of this stuff can be somewhat mitigated with experience. If you know an opponent is likely to throw you, you can choose to throw them instead. If they did try to throw, you’ll tech. If they didn’t, they get thrown. I get what you’re feeling a lot, as well. I would drill something in training and then forget or autopilot without it in the heat of a match. It’s harder but it can still be somewhat overcome with some effort, and this is coming from someone with ADHD.

[@downsjmmyjones101]

Note: This only applies to traditional fighters and not games like For Honor where reactions ARE important.

[@polarchibi]

Right...

[@squirrel1331]

Not a fighting game

[@downsjmmyjones101]

@@squirrel1331 What are you talking about?

[@babytricep437]

@@downsjmmyjones101 it’s not. It’s trying to be a war simulator

[@downsjmmyjones101]

@@babytricep437 How is it not a fighting game? There's blocking, footsies, combos, etc.

[@a5tr3x53]

You sound like google translation guy.