EPTIts kinda ranty.. and/or preachy, and long, so bear with me. I'm just cross posting this from my multiply, and will probably cross post if I have something remotely interesting (to me at least) that I feel like sharing around these parts.
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I played MvC2 today at SM north and I had the opportunity to bump in to one of the country's top rising stars: Roy. Roy plays Ironman, arguably the Fifth best character in the game, to such an extent that 80% of his clean hits will lead to an infinite wherever you are on the screen to death 90% of the time. And if you do die, your next character coming in will have 50-90% of his life off from him if he doesn't mess up your guard break. He also has a scary Storm and Magneto and pairing his Ironman with Psylocke's Anti-air assist is tremendously powerful. In my opinion, He's Top 5 in the whole country, ez. All in a span of around 6 months prior to this day.
I used a variety of teams on him.
Clockwork: Sentinel/Strider/Doom
Scrub: Cable/Sentinel/Captain Commando
Scrubclops: Cable/Sentinel/Cyclops
MSP: Magneto/Storm/Psylocke
Rowtron: Magneto/Cable/Sentinel
He did win more matches over me, most of them were close. Overall It was around 14-8 in his favor. He never won more than four straight matches against me, but I managed to pull consecutive victories here and there.
This leads me to think about how I started off playing Marvel. It was late 2nd year Highschool/early 3rd year Highschool (mid 2003), I played at Robinson's Ermita then migrated to Times Plaza UN (during its peak of marvel supremacy over the metro) when Robinson's Ermita turned to crap. I started off using Scrub and Duc (Spiral/Cable/Sentinel). I was young, all I knew was that I had to do this and that to win.
Eventually, the regulars took me under their wing, I was taught by people like Joseph G. (They called me Joseph Jr. because I looked a lot like him) who had a very epic sentinel, Erol who taught me (by beating me over and over) how to play trap teams like Clockwork and Duc, Rison and Humanweapon who taught me how to Rush that shit down with Magneto and occasionally, I'd bump into other legends like JR-Recto, Anakaris Curse and, the then undisputed best, Alex. I'd take an occasional game from them but it took all my effort and most of the time I got raped.
Over time, I've improved. My ability to do more complex combos grew and grew, but I still lacked that certain something that made me lose to all the other top players.
Fast forward to early 2007. I hung out at Ali-Mall quantum. There wasn't much competition there often. But there played the most dominant Marvel player in the country then (till now) JR "bata" or "bakoro" as some would call him. I remember playing against him in SM Centerpoint/Sta-mesa a year earlier and I easily destroyed him, and now, everyone's fricking afraid of him. Eventually, we sparred a lot, he'd own me a lot, but on good days then, I could give him a run for his money we traded matches (actually played 6 matches, one wasn't recorded) and it ended up 3-3. It was a casual match, but I felt proud then, to constantly spar with the undisputed best.
I learned more tricks there and polished my skills. It was then where I've finalized my absolute team suitable for my playstyle (Team Scrubclops). I always new how to play a variety of characters which means every now and then, I could switch to MSP if I felt like it and win. But I wasn't really that confident on it, and if faced with a hard counter to my team, I'd likely fail.
But recently, even though I don't play as much, I feel like something new is added to my game. When JR or Roy rushes at me, it seems as if everything slows down, and I have an idea of what's going on in their mind. My blocking has been a lot better and my defense has epically improved. The best player in the world, Justin Wong, once said when asked what you have to learn in the game to be the best, "Blocking. Know how to block, when to block, when to pushblock, when to escape grabs and everything will be a lot easier." Granted I still get caught every now and then, but as Roy had said earlier, "Your Defense improved a lot, I could hit you and kill you, but you've never made me work so hard before."
Partly because I can see how they move, I know how they think at times. I've somewhat started to grasp the concept of Yomi. I'm not limited to "guess blocking" (Since its better to block on reaction than guessing) or "anti-air spamming" (hoping your assist will bail you out of a rush down). I still need to train my reflexes, because at times, I know where they're going, but I couldn't react fast enough.
With that, I Started to apply it to my other teams. Now I'm not limited to being a predictable "scrubclops" player, I have lots of variations, and I can manage to fight off hard matchups. I also added this confidence to my other teams. I play MSP against any team without much fear now because i know that if I hit you (assuming I don't mess up my combos afterwards, which reminds me to tune up my 90% execution rate to flawless) I can kill you and I can bring many mindgames along with it. I now play MSP exclusively against JR's MSP just because of the 50/50 factor that this mirror match brings (most random mirrror matchup ever). I can also play clockwork (a team notable for being incredibly strong, but very hard to play properly, and where one mistake = death) against the best people and use it to force bad matchup (notably against Paul of Megamall when he plays a team without storm or if he plays Storm/Ironman/Psylocke)
As I played against Roy, for the first time, I played watching closely everything that happened, what works and what doesn't, his habits and mine. It was the first time I truly felt I was learning WHILE playing, and not through hindsight. And it felt good.
When Roy left the last time I beat him with MSP. I was facing a barrage of annoying runaway teams (which can occasionally steal a win from MSP because its the least consistent of all the top teams despite it being potentially the deadliest of them all) one of which was a very hard counter to MSP (Blackheart/Storm/Doom, a trap based team. Blackheart is very advantaged against magneto) and when I played this certain guy before with MSP, I usually got destroyed hard.
But today, I was a new kind of player, with all I've learned. I proceeded to destroy the opposing team with conviction. I was breaking my own expectations and my own schema of playing the game. I rode this all the way to a 12 win streak before losing out to one of the other regulars (MSP is VERY tiring to play)
Getting into the opponents mind, I was able to tap my own and unleash my own potential. By chance, one of the people in the arcade earlier was Jason, and old schooler also from Times Plaza. He commended me for improving a lot. I just said "thanks, I guess I'm just lucky." I guess it somewhat felt good to know that you are now destroying someone who used to destroy you for free before (but I respect him a lot though.)
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To paraphrase Sun Tzu, to beat the enemy, you have to know your enemy. Information is a very vital aspect in every war. Your capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, as well as the enemies'. Take Bakoro for instance, his strength is his relentless, near flawless offense which obviously outweighs every one else. Take Paul's patience and defense, which is almost wall-like. JR will expect you to defend and retaliate, Paul will expect you to force your way in. I took a different approach to these things. JR is weaker (but still scary) when he loses his psylocke since it relatively reduces magneto's options, so he tries to protect her as much as possible, Paul needs anything to help his already good defense as well as to force you to making mistakes. He is very reliant on his assists and his Cable.
I on the other hand, chose not to exploit their weaknes, but to attack their strengths. Because that's where people don't expect you to attack. My goal isn't to kill psylocke ASAP, but to have confidence that I CAN kill his magneto first. My goal is to out-play Paul's waiting and pressure game with a better waiting and pressure game so that he can't punish me for doing something rash.
Of course, this doesn't always work. But that's my mindset.
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Carried over into our daily lives. With all the problems that we face each day. Can we manage to actually transcend our normal ways and find the optimal solution? (Let's face it, we don't always think before we do) Are we able to face our fears and take risks just so that we can avoid pain to ourselves and to others and come out a better person? Or are we forever going to be content with who we are right now?
Mediocrity is born out of stagnance, we humans are dynamic, we have to change in order to be better, in order to survive. That means, we should do the right thing so that we can provide ourselves an opportunity to be better. It isn't always easy, sometimes its downright scary (Changing and learning MvC2 teams WILL cost you a lot of tokens from losing T_T), but it has to be done, and its going to be worth it.
Running away and making excuses for your shortcomings will only drag you down. Dragging it any longer will only hamper your growth, perhaps even degenerate your humanity. We are humans, capable of rational thought, so maybe its about time we actively tried our hardest to choose the right choice. Lets not hide behind our own subjectivities and look at the bigger picture, because we're a part of that picture.
We're not expected to be perfect, but we're expected to be a better person, and do the right thing. Our victory may not be perfect, and sometimes, we may flatout lose in humiliating or heart-breaking fashion.
But seeing a well-earned "You Win" looking back over the things you've done is well worth the effort.
EDIT: Youtube matches of me and other Filipino players
(Click Here)
Not the best quality though, 2.0 Megapixel cellphone is all I have.
Hope to get more vids when I get a decent videocam ^^
