Morale

[Skye Veran]

I've been playing BlazBlue since only a couple months after getting my Vita almost every day. That's over a year of near-constant BlazBlue. Granted, most of that is against the AI ( since I have a bad connection and... well, the Vita ), and I've barely dabbled in fighting games before then, but I feel like I have invested quite a bit of time and effort and skill into this game.

So when I go online and get my butt handed to me again and again and again by three different players in a row, it feels incredibly discouraging. To say the least.

Do you high-level players ever remember being on the bottom percentile? How did/do you cope with frequent losses?

[Rhiya]

Practice, analyze matches, figure out why I lost, fix it.

Also, I'll choose to play to learn rather than play explicitly to win sometimes, especially if I'm new to a game.

And finally, note: versus people is a whole different ballpark than versus AI, so what someone learns playing AI may not transfer well at all to a more adaptable human opponent.

[TheGreatReptar]

When I first started playing Blazblue, I honestly just never expected to win. I assumed that I wouldn't stand a chance at all and playing after accepting that made losses not such a big deal. If I got a round on someone, I was pretty happy. Heck, even if I could just get the other person low on health I was pretty content. Then I eventually started winning a match or two here and there, and I just used my win % as motivation from there, continually playing to watch it slowly rise over time.

And yea, playing against AI is a really good way to pick up a lot of bad habits fast. If you only play against people occasionally and mostly against the AI, you're going to spend your time playing against people mostly just trying to shake those bad habits.

[Effenhoog]

In any match, one player will win and the other player will lose. That's just how it is, and you should not concern yourself too much with reading anything out of that other than the result. Someone wins, someone loses, it does not mean the loser is worthless shit garbage as a person or that the winner is a shining example of humanity to inspire awe in lesser beings.

Playing fighting games is a journey of self-improvement, which cannot often be measured in winning and losing. Even when you finally start "winning" it can just as easily mean your opponent was weaker than what you have faced before rather than an improvement in your own skills. Even if it was someone who normally beats you, they could be tired/distracted/hungry or even just not in the right mood or mindset to play to their full potential. All you should worry about is figuring out why you are winning/losing and determine what you could be doing better, then improve on it.

[DerQ]

Focusing on the result of a match is kind of meaningless when you start to play against people. What's more important is trying to understand what lead to the defeat. Chances are that when playing against a player often times, you'll get hit in a way or be put in a bad scenario pretty frequently. If you aren't aware of it and just see the loss, then you are completely unaware of a recurrent problem in the way you play. If you don't know the cause(s) that determines the outcome of a match or a set of matches, then there's hardly any reason to be mad at the loss itself as it was beyond your understanding of what you did wrong. Basically, you make abstraction of the whole process why you lose and just focus on the loss itself.

And btw, it's okay to not understand something or see what problems you might have right away, but going back and explaining why either you won or loss will help you deal with the result and provide you with something meaningful to improve upon

Another conception to drop IMO is that time investment is directly related to either skill level or win percentage. I get that playing a lot would lead to believing you have reached a certain skill level, but again it ignores the whole process of improving and just gives you a meaningless number value. To put it in a metaphor, I could say I've been cooking instant noodles for 3 years now, have tried stuff left and right and because of those 3 years of eating and cooking instant noodles on a daily basis, I can safely say that I feel confident I'm a good or at least ok cook. Then you ask me to cook some filet mignon and I wonder why I can't do it. In this little comparison, the instant noodles is the AI and the filet mignon (or any other dish) would be the people you can play on netplay.

TL:DR; I think you attribute value to stuff that doesn't provide you with a solution or meaningful way to go about it.

[The Katz]

So when I go online and get my butt handed to me again and again and again by three different players in a row, it feels incredibly discouraging. To say the least.

Do you high-level players ever remember being on the bottom percentile? How did/do you cope with frequent losses?

It depends on what kind of person you are. If you're a machine you'll be able to follow Dusk's advice pretty well Just kidding sort-of.

Very few people remember what it's like to be new, or just bad. They might remember that they were bad but I don't believe many of them remember what it was actually like. How it felt, I mean.

I remember being REALLY bad. The first 'wake up' I had was running into a Ragna's 6A xN with instant-air-dashes and random jump-in attempts. Ahhh, dumb times. It bothered me enough to spark an interest in bettering myself at the game. The mistake was pretty simple to 'fix', but in itself opened up another layer of problems to deal with. After getting past one obstacle I'd have to leap over another and another... We all have these hurdles but not everyone can jump over theirs (or in some cases want to regardless of having the ability to).

Everyone plays for different reasons so dealing with losing is always the hard part. Enjoying the journey (the learning and improving part) tends to be valued higher than winning, but I think that it's good to just enjoy yourself either way. I tend to enjoy both because of this. My words of advice on this, however, are that you should care more about why you won instead of winning in general.

Another problem I've noticed is that other people can place certain issues into your hands that you aren't good enough to deal with yet. This creates yet another problem where you have to be able to recognize if the reason why you are losing is in your control or not. Most lower-leveled players have trouble noticing this and it just ends up making them feel worse.

How I coped with losing so much I just took some time to relax, drink some tea, and watch combo videos that were silly. tried to use those feelings to improve. It didn't work very well for me, so I just went into training mode and goofed off a lot. Eventually I reached the point where how I was doing in matches was bothering me. Since it actually bothered me instead of making me kind of sad I had more motivation to fix my bad habits and work on improving.

To answer how I'm coping with losing to better players today? Well... I have a confidence that I've developed over time that helps somewhat, but I still get really depressed when I lose to the tough kids like A3Religion, Mynus, Bags, Blitz, etc. (Guilty Gear players) but I manage to shake it off later and try to smooth out the rough spots in how I play. It's a very slow process for me, but I manage to make progress. I'm not sure what else to say other than everyone has their learning speeds so maybe you will be better off than I am.

I hoped this helped a little bit.

Edited October 5, 2013 by The Katz

[Skye Veran]

Wow, so many replies. Thank you all for your input; some of what you said applies to me closely, and I think I can work that into my outlook on matches. And I'm starting to think the time I currently spend fighting AI (still trying to beat Unlimited Mars >_> ) would be better spent in Training brushing up my combos and mix-ups.

Thanks again, you guys rock.

[Dreize]

I'm kinda surprised to hear that you're getting beaten a lot on netplay.

We actually got a chance to play today (I was that Valkenhayn player) and you seemed to be pretty decent and you definitely had your combos down.

Keep at it.