Bad Teacher?

[Sadeyo]

So I'm currently in the military and I play games and watch anime, lets fast forward pass that and say that I'm currently overseas and doing the same thing but this time with players that want to actually play the game or watch anime with me. I remember just mashing one night on BBCP or even Extend and people will just come over to watch but you could say they were possibly overwhelmed with the execution and preferred the spectator seat when I'm online or offline with my best friend (This was before S.Korea).

 

I have a friend that gotten into the game sometime in December last year with BBCP and they're clearly interested, enough to buy it themselves like two weeks later. Plenty of nights since he's down the hall from me he would come over to watch some game play against the online scene or mash a couple of buttons with me. Don't get me wrong I did explain the buttons to him on an elementary level and how to look at the character command chart, shown him challenges, and how important it is to look at videos and go through the training room. Of course I knew he wouldn't be at my level of expertise within the first week or two but I worked with him countless nights (3-5 nights out of the week) just telling him how to do this or that or find a character that he's comfortable with.

 

He first went in with Terumi for like two weeks and eventually jumped to Bullet after those two weeks. Shortly after he's trying to learn Azrael and eventually moves to Kokonoe and Ragna to return back to Terumi after a month. Now he's trying Bullet again and says that he's improving but I clearly keep telling him of his same mistakes I've been repeating since half a year ago. How many times do I have to repeat myself or how often do you need to get bodied before it clicks in your head that this is a bad idea; most of our nights 0-50 in my favor and that's alternating between three to four characters to change the match-up. I understand online is not the best place to turn to but I suggest that he goes through them for different match-up experience and have himself realize that his own approach is too flawed and you can't keep telling yourself that you're improving when someone else bodies you other then me.

 

Half a year of training this dude and he's like a level 2 smash character out of 9 and I don't know if I'm doing it wrong or what. I've visited countless scenes and I'm content with my performance I don't mind passing it off to other players to enjoy the game, I believe I'm fairly knowledgeable at fighters and if you could beat me at least 80% of the online community should be a cinch.

 

To make matters worst I expressed interest in UNIEL and made my choices on which character to play and now they're interested in the title. I think it's too soon to get into it because he'll just end up overwhelming himself with two fighters when he can't play BB at an intimidating level. What extra tips can I provide this dude with or is it just a lost cause? Remember half a year of providing my experience of BB, I've been an active fighter since 06' playing MB at a competitive level but we could ignore that part but if it helps it helps.

[TeeJay]

Everyone develops at their own pace. While tutoring music theory, I'm often like, how can these college students still struggle this much in elementary parts of theory (3rd/4th semester and still counting intervals on their fingers). I think it's an amazing thing that they are interested. In fact, the best thing to do is to let them enjoy themselves and develop together. I'm probably low-mid level (who knows how to measure that), and I started BBCT as my first fighting game. I remember starting 3-36ish online and it took me about 6 months with an online training community of about 10 people to become competent-- including TokyoWillExplode/AdmirableKorngold, Kaeru, and others. I think I was the bottom feeder of the group. Eventually Vice-Taicho started teaching me Litchi basics in a room when I switched from Ragna. 

 

I had 2 roommates in college that learned BBCSEX because i was playing the game a lot. They never were as good as me so I found myself in the same position as you. I just kept playing them, often with characters I don't play at all (day 1 Carl, Hazama, Rachel.) One day, one of them decided they were seriously going to learn Hazama. I remember he started practicing everyday and I would play Hazama mirrors with him. Eventually, his Hazama surpassed my bs Hazama and he started linking Jayoku Houtenjin dash 214D~C on his own, doing chain combos and other things. I congratulated his first 4k combo which is a big deal when I never thought he would get Ragna's 5B 5C 5D(2) GH/CS or something. I'm not sure if he's better now but he bought BBCP. But at least I do know that he really started to understand why I enjoyed fighting games so much. 

 

I think the best thing now is that he is interested. If he is still enthusiastic about the game and has some cognitive appreciation of the depth in the game (doesn't have to be in practice), then he'll keep playing and grow eventually. I wish I had a teacher since I've never had another serious BB/GG/PAU player to play regularly.

 

My most practical advise:

 

Keep it simple. Bug him about one thing at a time because he's probably gonna process and assimilate it slowly. Maybe mixup one day/week, neutral another (like don't jump so much), frame trapping or stagger pressure another day, oki, tick throws and throw setups, etc. The light bulb will slowly click. 

For a very (bad) habit player like myself, I even have to write out my pressure strings to avoid redundancy. 

 

I hope this helps from a not-so-high-level perspective. 

[TD]

show his this forum and combo notations and videos and all of that shit

 

encourage him to ask his questions facing the world... the bb world.

 

have him post and ask questions and look up his own stuff.

 

combo videos help alot. let him set his own goals by doing competitive combos, aka not challenge mode. get him a terumi combo video, none of terum's combos are particularly difficult, and let him practice.

 

I consider myself a fast learner, and when I first started ct, it took me two weeks to do just a few of litchi's intermediate combos on command. If I went back and played ct right now, I bet I would get those combos the first time, 100% of the time. This is from looking at a 'competitive' combo videos, setting a goal to practice said combos. Getting those combos consistently was the best feeling in the world... at the time.

 

Anyway. A person will remember anything so long as an emotion is attached to it. Make it a stong, positive emotion of Achievement.

 

Learning how to play neutral sort of comes next, but in the meantime, he can flail around but do a combo if he recognizes the hit. That will be an advance.

[Sadeyo]

Believe me I linked him the whole world outside of my presence and left it at that (including dustloop, character threads, popular Japan players, and essential bnb combo videos). I just find it redundant after half a year and possibly some more that there's no menacing force behind his approach, once in a while he'll get a good 3.3k to 4k combo but it's not enough so there's some form of hope I guess. I'm in the same boat like you TD about learning a game rather quickly if it holds my interest, I was competent within myself after two weeks and slowly starting grasping extra mechanics and capitalized on them as the years gone by. The fact that you win or you land that one practiced combo you did in the training room successfully is a fun feeling, I can symphatize with that.

 

I even did your approach too TeeJay. One night will be telling him to apply counter-assaults, another is teching throws, blockint mix-ups, etc. I think roughly a month ago I just decided to stop giving advice and just body the whole thing into him because of repeating myself was getting nowhere. I did change my style before hand to give him a fighting chance so don't consider me too heartless, nowadays I still accept matches from him but I'm playing other fighters while (AH3LM and DOA5U) biding my time for UNIEL.

 

He's pretty good at his job and he brags about his Smash experience being somewhat necessary for the game. I believe I told him one night it could be played competitively but in general the game is more a party then fight for money or kicks. I admit that I was pretty dangerous with Peach but overall I don't think much will carry over into BB like other experiences.

 

Please feel free to provide advice because one day I'll have him read this whole thread and something will click. I think he's still going by Mimeos on DL but I don't know when's the last time he signed on.

[mixedmethods]

Yeah, I don't know that you're doing anything wrong. Thing is, I basically am your friend, except I'm a month into the process, not six, so when I go 0-40 against my trainer, I'm not expecting much else. I'm looking for the following things:

- Under pressure, do I freak out and do something mad unsafe? Am I actually watching my opponent and choosing a good time to aim for a reversal or am I just mashing and praying that I get lucky?

- Following from the above, am I doing that because I'm thinking "oh god don't let me lose AGAIN" instead of focusing on improving? Because winning is not the goal right now.

- At neutral, can I actually keep my friend off for any period of time or am I hanging up a "come kill me" sign?

- When I'm applying pressure, am I letting myself get blown up or am I actually locking him down?

- Are my jump-ins ridiculously unsafe? Am I failing to block on approach?

- When my opponent has a huge life lead (and in the case of the game and characters we play, a huge offensive advantage due to a character-specific meter), do I walk into my death or try to stall? (Regardless of the inevitable outcome, I should still be trying to play smart instead of just being an idiot.)

- Can I take a round/put him at low health/do anything other than get hit and deliver myself to be killed?

- Am I using all the tools at my disposal? Yes, whiffing a throw is bad times and generally gets me killed, but I'm not going to get comfortable using them unless I start going for them and learn which set-ups work, timing, etc.

- Did I take advantage of opportunities to punish his shit or did I forfeit momentum? Did I force him to change plans from set to set by making it clear that I can and will put up a fight and/or win the neutral game?

- If I did win neutral, did I choke? Whenever I'm at advantage, am I capitalizing on it or am I epically throwing away the opportunity because "wtf, I'm not in the corner, how did this happen"?

So even if I lose, I win. We are miced, so I get immediate feedback. ("One thing I've noticed is that when you're being pressured, you start trying to get out immediately and you're not even watching your opponent." That was a lightbulb moment.) And I play other people, but for working on core skills, yeah, having a trainer is invaluable. ("I'm going to keep dragon punching you until you learn not to walk into it" -- it sounds mean, but I laughed so hard because he's absolutely right: I walk into that fucking thing so often you'd think I need to put in a call to a suicide crisis hotline, and it's not his job to go easy on me. Sometimes we'll do sets that are clearly training -- experimenting with ways my character can react to and punish the DP, e.g. -- but mostly it's just fights. I get a little better each time, and that's all I'm looking for.)

The only concrete thing I can offer is to tell your friend to stick to his main, if he's actually decided on one. I thought I was going to be maining one character but found out I was much better with a different character, which was a valid shift, but my trainer called me out on playing someone I want to sub instead of using my main, because... I was being chicken. Even though I can't see it, my main is more solid than my sub. (I just feel like my mistakes are more transparent with my main, but that's my problem.) But I was losing all that valuable MU experience and practise by screwing around with my sub, and I was doing shit with my sub (going for throws, air throws, other game-related shit) that I wasn't trying with my main, because I had some kind of block on being creative. So I'd force your friend to play whoever the hell it is he plans to main in every MU, no matter how painful, because learning MUs is how you learn to take advantage of all of your character's tools. (When my trainer had a different main, I could just anti-air him on approach and force him to find a way to get in, since he couldn't do shit to me at range. Now that that's not an option, I've had to learn whole new ways to play... there have been spectacular failures and resounding successes.)

That being said, if he won't go online and try fighting other people -- if he isn't willing to lose -- he isn't going to learn. I mean, yeah, I've had some wins online doing stupid shit, but against strangers (not my trainer or the other DLers I train with), I've mostly had narrow losses or losses where I took a round, which is invaluable experience. Sometimes it's ... frustrating ... because I should have the round sewn up and then I choke, but I guess ... this is where it comes down to attitude?

I got into FGs knowing it would be a long haul. I have no experience to pull from, so it's only been a month or so of taking things seriously (and less than a month with my main). I have a bunch of skills I need to bring up -- your standard fundamentals: blocking, dealing with pressure, applying pressure, going for mixup, execution work, bringing up input speed, etc. -- before I'll be anything but "totally free," although there's some improvement. (I will block about half the shit that gets thrown my way; I can apply some decent pressure of my own; I will reliably AA jump-ins; I don't just sit in block from half/full screen away and wait for death... it's a start.) I can do some very basic, baby combos and combo fragments, but I know learning a 4k combo isn't going to do me shit unless I can actually keep people off me as well as get in on opponents, not panic/chase a win, etc. So, fuck, I don't care if I lose so long as I put up a fight, and my frustration is with myself for knowing better but not playing better -- and the only way to bridge that gap is by -- you know it -- losing more. And while I didn't intend for it to happen, I wound up maining a character that most people find very tricky (I ... don't think she's that bad) and who relies on very precise execution -- I don't have the latter yet, so improvement isn't as easy to see with my main. (It's not that I'm not improving so much as that with a different character, I could probably nail down some of their basic combos and see more obvious results -- "I pulled off the full combo and won the round" is easy to see; "I improvised some cool mix-up while my character was at her weakest and managed to lock down my opponent for a full ten seconds" is actually ... pretty fulfilling, but it's easier to remember the part where I ended up taking that round but losing the match.) Am I getting better? Yes. Am I going to be winning anytime soon? Oh, hell no. But I watch tons of matches and see what I can steal. I take comfort in my own benchmarks ("I didn't die straight out the gate/I got my own pressure going/I stalled to time out"), I play more, train more, and I remember that as bad as I may be now, I'm not who I was a month or two ago. So who knows where I'll be in another month? I just have to keep learning -- and if learning means losing, then that's just what it is, but I didn't get into FGs to "win," and that's something I try to keep out of my head during matches (and away from my self-esteem). I've joked that my goal is to be "respectably free" in the next few months: I won't be a huge challenge, but I will block and punish unsafe shit, I will make you regret letting me get in, and you won't be able to just do an auto-pilot mix-up to collect your win. If that sounds like a low goal, it's because I'm a realist. Obviously, top-level players will dominate me for many months and years to come, and I don't expect anything else, but against same-level players and lower-level intermediates, I would like to be able to hold my own, win or lose -- if I lose, that's fine, but I want to be able to put up a fight.

... and it sounds like none of the above applies to your friend. And that may be the problem, honestly. If you just learn a combo but don't know how to get in on someone, your combo isn't going to do you any good. If you're too scared to go online and make a fool of yourself, you won't learn. So... I think you have to make the call, actually: either tell him you won't train him until he goes online for more experience (fuck, I was constantly telling my trainer to fight people other than me, because I didn't want him to get used to exploiting my bad habits) or tell him that for now, you've taught him all you can and he needs to use single player options. Go to Versus, Hell, and practise trying to get in and land a combo (you'll lose, but you're learning your safe/unsafe entry points against various opponents). Tell him to do Versus or training and block for as long as possible, upping the difficulty. If he's mashing, tell him to do block practise without putting fingers on buttons. (I do it.) Versus is good for AA and even air-to-air -- for AA, tell him to stop all jump-ins without ever jumping himself; air-to-air -- stop jump-ins by meeting them head-on with an air combo. (It'll help with timing, distinguishing between when to AA versus go air-to-air, etc.) But if you're teaching him well -- and it sounds like you are -- the rest of it is up to him. Six months is a long, long time. And I won't lie -- I get complimented on my attitude but my attitude came from reading about FGs and committing to slogging along the path to improvement. If I wasn't willing to listen to my trainer and take my lumps, he'd have dropped me a month ago and I be just as shitty a player now as I was then.

tl;dr You can lead a horse to water.... You've got to decide whether you want to keep pushing that horse's head into the water or whether to let him park his ass by the lake until he realises he's thirsty.