Social's VF5FS Blog

Thanks Fu_unji, every time i play a good jacky i get annoyed all over again.

 

A little help for everyone.


Public Service Announcement:
Do not switch to a costume that is the EXACT same colors as my costume. We are not prom dates. I'm not going to pin a matching corsage to the breast of your dress.

~social ruin

 

Hello all,

It's time for my standard "i'm-out-of-town-at-hotel-with-nothing-to-do-so-may-as-well-make-a-blog-post" blog post.

Sitting here watching the miami v buffalo game, but really just passing time until the miami basketball game. In exciting i'm in alaska news, on my drive home from the gym at 4:30PM it was pitch dark outside!! Soon it will be getting dark at 3:30 PM. It's not so bad really tbh. Kinda neat, albeit it's only my 2nd winter here. Probably gets old after a few years.

Hitbox update:
I haven't even had it for a full week yet and i'd say i'm already back at 90% strength on it. Some parts of my game are stronger, others haven't yet caught back up to where i was at. Namely stagger recovery. I just haven't invested much practice in it yet, but i certainly plan to (need to) soon. There is always this weekend. It's just not natural yet is all--i don't believe there are any inherent disadv to struggling from stagger on hitbox. Actually, i struggled wolf's big chop FTW in ranked at the end of a tight 5 rounder the other night. So it is every bit as viable as joystick for stagger. I think eventually it will be even better. I'm almost certain you can full speed stagger recovery by 'piano-ing' the direction buttons twice and the pkg buttons twice right before red joystick marker. I also believe this would become near automatic with a week or so of 20-30 mins practice per day. Not fun to practice of course, but rewarding to pull off in live play.

The next issue i'm having some trouble with is ECDG. I just started practicing doing this again last night. It's not to bad when evading up into CDG, but going down to CDG is a bit awkward given the button combinations on the direction side. Practice practice.

Lastly, i find 43 or 61 doesn't come out well for me. I somehow manage to not click the buttons simultaneously enough. Same with low throws, i get a lot of standing throws going for my low throws. Sucks.

Ranked:
I've been having a lot of fun playing ranked this week. I finally got up to hunter rank. Naturally there was absolutely no doubt i would reach hunter rank, it was just an unwanted, tedious grind working my way up to hunter. Now that i'm there and playing for real rank points/bar it's very fun and slightly 'addicting'.

I realize 'rank is not important, blah blah blah' but my take is this, if i am playing ranked, then i see no reason to not grind rank and challenge myself with the constraints that it inherently has. I feel like rank and strength are very loosely correlated. It has some value. Just not a lot.

My thing is, i am fortunate enough that when i want to truly test myself i have any number of friends whom i can invite to room sessions and have them destroy me for hours. When i really really want to measure my progress or see if my defense has improved, or push myself to improve on the fly, this is what i do. I then take these small gains back to rank and like to thrash people of my rank until i feel like i reach a 50/50 skill split with others in my rank. Then i go back and spend a few days getting destroyed by luckyGT and incrementally improve, then take it back to rank, and rinse and repeat.

This tact keeps me motivated to play player matches vs better opponents. Keeps me motivated to go into dojo and work on the not so fun parts of the game. And keeps me motivated to play ranked in sorta all or nothing matches. Most importantly, it is the way that i currently enjoy playing the game the most. And by enjoying the game on my terms, it keeps me excited to come back and see what else i can improve on!!

To wit, i cannot wait to get back home and practice movement, ECDG, Fuzzy (particularly on my blocks or my getting p/2p'd)...maybe have flash beat me up for an hour while i focus on double TE vs wolf 4/6 throws. FINALLY get around to beefing up my Oki a bit, and then dive back in ranked over my extended thanksgiving weekend and thrash some noob<--people of same rank as me hahaha.

I've largely accomplished my goal of this past week. When getting my hitbox my goal was to become 100% with it by this weekend, so that i could use my extended weekend to reach new levels of play for myself, and enjoy some ranked/room matches. Not quite 100%, but close. With a solid friday/saturday i think i can do it. BTW, weekend for me is sunday/monday because those are my days off It's tough to force myself to retread the things i've already practiced on stick, but a necessary evil.

I will say that by keeping a blog and stating my goals, plans, and desires, i do believe it has been instrumental on following through with those goals, plans and etc. Putting it in print makes me feel obligated to work on my game, rather than just always going for the cheap thrill jumping into matches.

~social ruin

 

New post upcoming in next 2-3 days. If u like this thread, also read this:
http://virtuafighter.com/threads/airegins-vf5-fs-blog.17032/