Bolverk-GTM

Okay, a safe jump is one of the simplest option selects in the book. Some people don't consider it an OS, but I do only because both possible outcomes of a safe jump are in your favor and if any good player says that they aren't holding back for even 1/10 of a second upon landing from a jump-in, they are LYING. In other words, there's no real way to screw up a safe jump once you commit to it. Before I continue to explain how it's done in a simplified manner that even you can understand, let me say that in KoF, there are a couple of supers that are safe jump-proof (the biggest one being Saiki's DP super since it's active on the first frame). While not many characters have them, they are something that you should be aware of. Don't let this discourage you from using safe jumps though because they're still REALLY good. This is how to safe-jump simplified: Score a knock down > wait briefly > jump/hop and do an attack. If you do it right, one of two things will happen as the opponent's getting up: 1.) They'll either block or get hit by the deep jump-in. 2.) The opponent will attempt to do a reversal (like a DP or a super), forcing the jump-in to whiff, but letting you land fast enough to block the reversal and punish it with a full combo for free. I said that none of your characters can deal with safe jumps because none of them have a super that's active on the first frame, which would beat a safe jump clean. Do you understand safe jumping now? Er...ideally you want to block just about anything when the opponent has offensive momentum. Just block when they're pressuring you and look for the right opportunity to steal their momentum. It's okay if you don't know what the right opportunity looks like now. It matters that you're at least trying to LOOK for it instead of just holding down and back in the corner like some kind of zombie. Over time, the opportunities to disrespect the opponent become more and more clear as you learn your characters and the match-ups. Well one striking difference between KoF and BB or SF4 is that many unsafe moves in KoF don't look like they're unsafe. You're probably not aware of it, but block stun in KoF isn't as long as it looks. Your character animation is telling you that you're recovering from block stun, but truth be told, you can actually attack or move in the last recovery frames of the block animation (sometimes, not always). Perfect example is Kensou's qcf.K (that forward flying kick where he does some kung-fu shit to your face when it hits), which looks unpunishable on block because it pushes him to what looks like a safe distance. Truth be told, almost right after you block the kick itself, you're free to run up and punish the hell out of Kensou. Another example is K's qcf.P~f+B (flame > fireball). When that's done up close and you block it, he may not be punishable 100% of the time, but there is NO WAY for him to continue pressure because you have just enough time to get the fuck out of there and he can't do anything about it. On the other hand, if it's the EX version of qcf.P~f+B, you better stay where you are and god help you if you try to move or press a button. K's qcf.P~f+D (flame > upward kick) though? That is extremely punishable on block and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. To be fair, KoF has always had a relatively high execution barrier. You have to commit more often in KoF because the hit stun doesn't last for a decade like it does in a certain BlazBlue. So honestly, it's not surprising that hitconfirming is troubling you in KoF. On the other hand, you should practice even more in KoF for that reason. Why do you think I'm in training mode so often? I'm grinding out combos and then when I finish doing that, I go into Versus and play against the AI for an hour or two to make sure I can do the combos in a match. That's pretty much all the AI is good for after all. I'm sorry, I tried really hard to understand what you mean by this statement. As I type this message, I still have no clue what you're talking about. You'll have to explain what you mean. Well if we're going to do a chat that way, you'll have to wait until roughly early or mid February. My laptop hard drive failed last week and I'm waiting on tax return to get a new one plus some more RAM. The computer I'm currently posting on DustLoop with is 10 years old and has only 6 GB of free space left. I'd rather not make it even slower than it already is by installing Steam on it.

You did get a little better. You started disrespecting hop pressure, which is good. Honestly, I think the part about reacting fast enough is because I'm playing a completely different team apart from Kensou since we last played. Your problem wasn't reacting late, rather it was reacting the wrong way. I hit you as many times as I did mostly because you kept making bad guesses against me. If anything blocking related occurred, it was the fact you never do it on wake-up. You're trying to reversal (god, I don't know why because nobody on your team can beat safe jumps), trying to poke, or trying to do SOMETHING. I have no idea what you're trying to do on wake-up, but it's definitely NOT blocking, which is what you should be doing. This can be categorized under a big problem I see in you: Impatience. I understand, you want to punch EX Kyo in the face because he hurts and has stupid good rushdown, while I want to punch Mai in the face because her pokes make her absolutely annoying to fight against. On the other hand, I'm hitting you more than you're hitting me because I know when to hit you and you don't know when to hit me, but you try to hit me anyways, which just gets you counter hit for your efforts. That's a big problem and one of my favorite problems that I have myself sometimes. I've said it once already: Impatience. BB netplay can condition you into thinking that the best openings to attack are the really big looking ones after specials or command normals, I know too well because BB was the first fighting game I actually attempted to get good at. There's one problem here: This isn't BB netplay. When you're fighting against someone for the first time, you never know what to expect. Should you attempt to attack them like you do know what to expect from them? Definitely not. I mean you could, but it's not the brightest idea all of the time. You need to spend more time observing your opponent before deciding what to do against them. You've started being disrespectful, but that's not doing you much good without the knowledge of when and where to be disrespectful. It would be hype if you learned to hitconfirm into it so that you're not putting your HD meter to ultimate waste by jumping back and doing HD activate j.C at the start of a round. I was initially confused, but then I wanted to smack you for the mistake you made. and that's why you learn to hitconfirm into it. You don't just "stop" a HD combo after you activate HD. When you activate HD, you have to commit to the combo or else you just completely wasted your Drive meter and you look like a damn fool. For that reason, you have means of hitconfirming into HD combos. You would be crazy to not take advantage of that.

Want to play tomorrow? *snicker*

He IS harder to learn. XIII Kyo is by far the easiest incarnation of Kyo yet. He has a history of being a pretty difficult character to use and EX Kyo brings that history back in XIII. He was and still is hard to play, but he is a BEAST when he's played well. Also, the arranged Goodbye ESAKA is my favorite track in XIII's OST. Generally I prefer EX Kyo over XIII Kyo, simply because I'm more comfortable with his move set and I don't mind having to work hard to get in. It's absolutely worth it when he does get in anyways. I have this same problem every now and again. It happens to a lot of people that worry too much about the first impression they make on an opponent. I've gotten better at controlling myself with it though. I just kinda watch how they move around for the first match and I tend to play footsies until I can determine how to fight them. Every match after that is just trial and error on offense. Usually I have a player figured out within a few matches, but there's definitely some exceptions (AyaImmortal, a tough one to crack). Anything else I'm losing to is just a matter of not knowing how to deal with it. That's the best joke I've heard all day. Your only overheads with Athena are her jump normals. She's not a mix-up heavy rushdown character, she's a zoner.

AyaImmortal posting more than once on DustLoop within the last couple of weeks? What the fuck? As for you, I would say that as many times as I've changed characters throughout KoF, you are much better off just picking characters you like and then sticking to them, no matter what. Aside from the fact I entered KoF lacking a grasp of basic fundamentals, one of the biggest killing factors for me when I came into KoF was that I could never stick with all of my characters. I'd have a primary set in stone, but my other two characters would constantly change because I always felt one of them was my weakest link and I would attempt to fix the problem by switching them out for somebody else. For that, I would get my ass beat even harder because I was starting off with 0 match experience AGAIN with this new character being on the team. It wasn't until I started playing '98 and 2K2 on GGPO that I decided "Okay, I'll stick with...Kyo." So for every team I had, Kyo was always there. When XIII came out, Kyo was always on my team, no matter how I changed the team. To this date, Kyo has been on every single one of my teams in KoF XIII (though NESTS Kyo is technically considered a different character, it's still Kyo) and it shows a big difference between my gameplay on day one and now. Kyo was a very hard character for me to pick up and I couldn't play him to save my life at first, but unlike the rest of my ever constantly changing team, I gave him the light of day. I gave him time and allowed progression to kick in as I absorbed information and continued playing the game with him because I absolutely wanted him to click with me. For that, my efforts finally began to pay off no less than a month ago. I'll still change my team a little bit here and there, but the changes always stay within the same 4 characters I've been getting match experience with. As much as I want to play King, I'm waiting on picking her up until I become viable with what I have now. The summary of this giant post is basically what I said in the first paragraph. Just pick characters you like and stick with them, no matter what. Your efforts won't pay off in a day and they sure won't pay off in a week. Hell, they may not even pay off in 3 months. Regardless, your efforts WILL eventually pay off if you just stick to the characters you want to play.

Hm... We'll see where it goes then.

Video worked for me, but I couldn't watch it long enough because I felt like I was watching Battle Fantasia being played on a 15 year old Compaq PC running Windows '98. Fuck, this game has a little potential, but it's so god damn slow and stiff!

GGs to kazukifafner. Yesterday was really one of those days for me in KoF, it was terrible. Hilarious that even when I got a little used to you and won our last two matches, I was still pissed off because I dropped a freaking BnB combo. I woke up this morning and facepalmed at how bad I was really playing yesterday (DP'ing like I'm Ken, not using hops for mixups and pressure, not disrespecting your jump-ins, list goes on). We definitely need to play again not just to redeem myself, but also because I need match experience against your whole team, lol. If there was anything good that came out of yesterday, it was trying K' again and actually managing to grasp his neutral game. Maybe I can actually learn him now! We ran really close, but I did manage to pick up on some places you can improve. For one, you have the same exact problem with patience that I have, which I started fixing as of last week. The problem is that you start patient, but then your patience deteriorates over time. Meanwhile, I was exhibiting the opposite and started impatient, but became increasingly more patient. I don't know Duo Lon at all, but I definitely think you could be less predictable with him and use his zoning tools a little more. On one of my normal days, you don't want me near any of your zoning characters because I'll absolutely prioritize killing them before they get away. Duo Lon is absolutely no exception because I don't know how to deal with him and I hate trying to get in on him. I can't help you with Benimaru, I have no fucking idea what he does or where he should be and in fact, it wasn't until I fought you that I learned he has a command grab. You could space a little more with Daimon because after I started avoiding the command grabs with stance switching, he became kinda free. I should have been anti-airing all of your jump-ins with him, but I wasn't thinking about it at the time. Your Kensou? Hmm... We actually could learn off of each other's Kensous because we both seem to have some kind of tech over each other. I don't know if you're unaware of his fireball pressure game or just don't use it, but it's a really good idea, especially if your opponent has no clue how to deal with it or likes to press buttons. There is obviously a way to beat it, of course, but that's no reason to neglect it's existence as a viable option to open your opponent up and maintain a mid to close range on them. Other than that? I got nothing really. I was paying a little less attention in our matches because I was too busy being salty about my semi-mindless performance. I think you'll become an awesome player if you stick with it. Hopefully we'll both get up there some day.

If you play with people on the same coast, it's not bad at all. My view of KoF's netcode has changed after playing MBAACC, which has some of the most fucked up netcode I've seen (I still find it hilarious I can play with someone from Michigan or western Canada just fine, but everything goes to shit when I try to play someone less than two states away on MBAACC). You benefit from it by getting better at playing your pace. Going against people that are your level or lower helps you improve at applying practices in matches. It's better than going and playing someone who is really good, then flopping because you keep dropping combos that you haven't gotten good at hitconfirming in a match setting. Don't even bother, dude. I never go for that link because cl.C is fast enough on it's own (I only use cr.C for anti-air). The closest thing I use in matches is cr.B > cl.C for frame trap purposes.

Just a heads up to everyone, I'll do a small write-up of NESTS Kyo here in the near future. I had some doubts rising after a conversation with Mightfo a couple of weeks ago about him in XIII, but my doubts went out the door when I finally got my hands on him (PSN ). Despite becoming just a little more unsafe, I think rekka Kyo is still really good this time around and I want to say he's at least A-tier in XIII (but I haven't considered who he'd be competing with in A-tier yet, so it's subject to change). When he's in AyaImmortal's hands, he's the best fucking character in the game, lol. So yeah, I'll do the write-up of him, list a couple "good to knows" and all of that later on.

D is for Daimon. D does everything for Daimon. It's amazing.

I forgot saving replays was possible. I don't even remember how to do it.

Pretty much this.

Of course not. You can learn all of the combos you want and you could have the best execution in the world, but it won't mean anything if you can't hit your opponent.

I never would've guessed... Well that's good to know~

Not to mention she has a basic mix-up game. As I learned from my matches with SoBa today, Dlanor's 6C is an overhead and I've seen videos where it can be followed up with a combo if you have meter. I like Dlanor a lot. I also like George. These are my two characters until LambdaDelta and Will come out.

*sigh* I uninstalled the first Umineko in order to try and install Cross. :c Welp... Guess I'll look for the disc...

What the fuck is this and how do I fix it? I get these messages no matter what when I try to install.

Great, I can't wait for Will. He better have a headbutt super or I'll be sad.

and also learn combos into those supers and max cancels.

I know very well that someone already told you all you need to know about playing Vice. I'm sure if I read that info again, went into training mode and practiced with her for a couple of hours, I could play her decently. Vice is all about making people afraid to jump, but also afraid of getting command grabbed (which they want to jump out of). There's a few characters in KoF that are particularly good at making people too scared to do anything and Vice is definitely one of them. For starters, a universal frame trap in KoF is cr.B > cl.C. I'm pretty sure every character can do it. If you want to find more frame traps, then just go into training mode and do the jump test. If you don't know what the jump test is, it's measuring how much advantage a move has by setting the training dummy to jump after it blocks a move. Thankfully KoF XIII has an option in training mode that sets the dummy to jump after blocking an attack so you don't have to pause and set the dummy to jump after it blocks the attack you're testing. All you have to do is just throw out whatever move you're testing, then hold up. When both characters have jumped, pause the game and compare them. Whoever jumped first determines whether you have the advantage on block or not. NOTE: If it's not obvious, the move is + frames on block if your character jumped first and it's - frames on block if the dummy jumped first. Also I can tell you now that a really easy frame trap with Mature is staggering her rekkas. Keep in mind I said "easy" and not "good." Can't help you with Mai, but I know a good Vice player. Problem is he's on 360. I could take my capture card and record some match videos of him one of these times I go over to his place for casuals (we usually have them weekly). It won't kill you. Nobody there bites or anything.

Kazuki we should play today. I've been out of the game for too long and I need to get back in by playing someone I haven't fought yet. I was going to wait until my iNPiN arrives before I start playing KoF again, but I don't even care now.

Huh. Good to know. On pad, it can be pretty easy to accidentally hit 3 when moving to 6, so that would explain why I sometimes get a DP. It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but it still happens from time to time. Guess I'll practice that input more when I get home. GENOCIDE CUTTAH!

KoF XIII's AI is dumb as hell. Really easy to beat if you ask me (I'm comparing this to the insane AI from the earlier games, of course).