#How do you stay calm during matches?

12 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

restive nimbus
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I wasn't really sure if I should make a new thread for this since it feels somewhat related to my previous thread https://discord.com/channels/195518118603390977/1346988068317564998, but I think it's a separate issue that ends up affecting that one. If this is the wrong decision, I apologize.

Anyways, one thing I've consistently had an issue with throughout my time playing fighting games (and really this applies to real life stressful situations too) is that I have a very hard time staying calm and focused under pressure. It's bad enough to the point that I feel like I'm mentally scrambling in matches just to even try to remember what I'm trying to do that I don't have the mental ability to keep track of what my opponent is trying to do. The only times I feel calm enough to make any sort of notes about my opponent are when I get knockdowns and oki.

These problems also lead me to tilt, because despite my best efforts I am pretty prone to getting angry or upset when I'm stressed. So on top of struggling to stay calm in matches, I'm also likely to tilt during sessions very quickly and having to either cut most sessions short or just play while tilted. I'm very much at a loss as to how to proceed and fix these problems.

I also want to say while I understand the sentiment, please do not recommend therapy as I am unable to access it for personal reasons.

ripe yacht
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The more common way is through exposure, the more you are in the situation and the more familiar you are with things the easier it gets but this could take hours to days to weeks to months and so on depending on the person. But getting tilted makes this way kinda hard. So in the end you might need to first fix your mind set which also can be hard and long process depending on how one thinks about things.

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It's hard to give advice on things like these, since others can't read your mind. I would recommend actually going through the steps of figuring out why you tilt, and if there's any good reasons for it and can you fix those emotion states somehow so instead of tilting you channel that into something else

narrow grove
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The best answer to tilt is to inject logic early enough before it turns into anger and affects your play. So it comes down to recognizing your early signs that you’re tilting so you can talk yourself out of it, there’s usually some fallacy tied to it that if you take a moment to reflect on it, you’ll know that it’s just not how you really feel if you’re honestly trying to improve

narrow grove
restive nimbus
# narrow grove Actually, this was talked about prior, if you want to revisit any of those takea...

You're right, I did make that post a while back. Maybe I should have reopened that one instead of making this new one. Being the internet boomer that I am, I am not really sure what the etiquette on necroing an older discord thread would be (on traditional forums it was generally frowned upon). Sorry about that.

Since you are a server mod, I would like to ask you how I should proceed with this subject before I post anything further

narrow grove
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it's ok to keep posting here, as we have the link of the previous for posterity

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my only concern was making sure the advice didn't fall by the wayside

restive nimbus
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I did take what I could to heart (which wasn't necessarily everything that was said) but I haven't had as much progress or success as I was hoping for. I'm not quite as defeated as I was at the time in that thread which I guess is an improvement. We can probably ignore the tilting problem in here for now, since while I still wouldn't call it great, it has improved slightly since I posted that other thread.

One thing I didn't mention in the initial thread that I'm trying to figure out here with a bit more clarity of mind is that even with more awareness of some of my problems discussed previously, I still can't feel calm or relaxed in a match. To be clear, this isn't exclusively because I'm tilting because even when I'm not, I'm just nearly always feeling too panicked and feel like fighting games are just too fast and have too much going on to be able to focus and remain calm to be able to figure out any patterns my opponent might be doing. As I mentioned in my initial post, the only time I really feel calm and relaxed enough to make any kind of headway on reads and understanding my opponent's habits are when my opponent is knocked down and seeing what they do on wake up.

narrow grove
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There's a lot to unpack there. But i think to start, FGs at least to me, are all about uncomfortable situations; you're fighting against free-willed opponents that will push you to do your best.

It's never going to feel that easy unless you have all the cards, so to me the appeal is being able to both gameplan and problem-solve, because no plan is perfect and there's always opponents out to do the same and probably better at it. Not everyone wants that out of their videogames, because it's about enjoying that process.

The rest is kind of taking problems and breaking them down until they're actionable.

If a game moves too fast, figure out what it is you're expected to react to in the given context, or if it's truly an rps scenario where you need a rotation of options already in your muscle memory.

If you're not figuring out what your opponent is trying to do. take a mental snapshot of that scenario and where your focus was and where it probably should have been.

The answers are kinda broad, because as Zok mentioned, you have to go through the steps, and perhaps externalize them so people can continue to provide advice

restive nimbus
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I'm not sure how much this might be useful, but to provide some context on my general gaming background...outside of fighting games (that I've been playing since 2018 and have tried to push more seriously since SF6 came out), most of what I play are single player games (RPGs especially), as well as being a long time MMO player. In those cases, I'm generally pretty decent at problem solving and, but a big thing is that these games I do play tend to be relatively much slower and provide much more time to understand and reason out responses to situations.

Outside of fighting games, the last time I really played competitive-focused games was halo 3 all the way back around 2008, and of course back then I had the reactions of a teenager. That also was also before I suffered a fairly severe concussion that happened around 2014 and while it's hard for anybody (even doctors) to really say how much that may have affected my brain, I do feel like I've had a harder time thinking under pressure since that happened, like my mind just feeling a bit more hazy. This might also simply be confirmation bias though because it's really hard to say for sure.

restive nimbus
# narrow grove There's a lot to unpack there. But i think to start, FGs at least to me, are all...

If you're not figuring out what your opponent is trying to do. take a mental snapshot of that scenario and where your focus was and where it probably should have been.

As for this question, my answer on defence is more or less "focusing on trying not to get hit in the moment and trying to figure out where to take my turn".

In neutral, it's basically "trying to stay at a range where I might be able to react to fireballs and neutral skips".