Mental Stack in Fighting Games and Why it is Important
HiFight
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Like: 2884
Mental stack is the concept that fighting game players should know. You rarely need to have exceptional reaction speed in order to play fighting games. What’s more important is to learn what you can and cannot react to and prioritize your mental stack. Then, you can create your gameplan around that.
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22.04.2022
Potemkin: Pls jump.
Ky Kiske: Ok
My mental stack is basically nothing. I just go NEYAHHHH and autopilot through everything… which sucks because I know all the things I should be doing but I'm just never mentally present enough in the match enough to do them.
Hey, you have more stuff to react to but don’t worry about it ok?
Yeah but you play Blanka in both games
well said. lots of people focus on being "optimal", but they don't realize people's mental stack have limited resources, choosing where to allocate those resources is what matters the most.
This is one of the best videos on the topic, thank you very much!
U also have a natural inclination towards one kind of playstyle.
For example a high level Alex player might not be able to play a shoto or zoner as they have a natural inclination towards dominating footsies and anti airs in close ranges.
Keeping people out and winning with pokes will be unnatural to those kind of players at first in higher levels.
Assuming u want to reach the highest level means understanding ur weakness, for example I'm a reactionary player and I play guile and zangief.
My natural weakness is zoners and grapplers who play balls to the wall.
My adjustment would be to play keep out but my mental stack is very weak towards grapplers and zoners because I'm more worried about what they're doing instead of keeping out the grappler or slowly whittling down the zoners.
Tilt factor in my opinion is more important than having ur own reactionary flowchart that naturally comes from experience.
lol, you used 5 EX bars at the end there… 2 EX moves and a super! cheeky blanka 😏
This is also where the concept of ‘conditioning’ takes hold. Conditioning is basically about manipulating your opponents mental stack to prioritize watching certain things and using the least predictable option you know you have, although the mind games do go further than that. Characters with more options than their opponent have to watch for less options, but also have to keep their own list of options in mind at the same time to remain unpredictable. The key to adaptation is to stay open minded, pick apart your opponents options, and simply do the best counter options relative to your character, which takes practice if you wanna do it on reaction, but lets you focus on deeper mind games and more creativity then you would trying to keep in mind all of your options at once. If you are by default doing the best counters you have, then you can base your mind games around that and keep information like your opponents playstyle in mind.
Then theres character that can dash check & anti air with the same button 🤢🤢
Excellent video as always, keep it up
you wont find me reacting to any 16 frame dashes online those 16 frames translate into 265ms to react and with most of us probably sitting around 200ms on a pure reaction.unless your looking for the dash its gonna be a tough reaction for the avg person. it also doesnt help with how some of the dashes are animated so even if your hair trigger ready for the dash you will probably have to preemptivley press before you even physically are reacting to it as the movement of the dash that you will reconize may start later then the actual dash nash is pretty good example on that. but there are gods among men with low reaction times out there
Nice vid HiFight!
This is too Good to not have more Views, amazing work
私はまだ日本語を勉強しています。英語から日本語への翻訳が間違っていることをお詫びします。私はあなたが作成したビデオを本当に楽しんでいます。メンタルスタックビデオは大いに役立ちました。詳細なガイドを作成することを検討していただけませんか。初心者として、ニュートラルなゲームの「フッティー」や、シミーやディレイドスローなどの他の概念を理解するのは非常に困難です。ビデオはたくさんありますが、すべての格闘ゲームに適用できる一般的で基本的なものはありません。人々は、キャスト全体ではなく、キャラクターにのみ適用される特定のガイドを作成します。読んでくれてありがとう。
The best option is just to go Unga Bunga and force your opponent to focus on this.
I find that when a video is so well done such as this, it’s an entertaining watch even if most of the info is known to me. Great job, and keep up the good work!
I can’t say I’m a fan of how they changed the lighting in game. Makes everything look like it’s covered in oil.
Everyone is Hakan now.
Amazingly educational video.
My mental stack fell over and broke, so I put a doily on it and use it as a decorative flourish in my mental space.
Bronze: Jump-in city
Silver: *MENTAL STACK*
Gold: Jump-in city
What's the name of the song??
Epic
Unironically the best short tutorial for fighting games
music?
This is why HiFight and Sajam are some of my favorite content creators, they just do such a great job of concisely explaining universal fighting game concepts in ways that people of all skill levels can easily understand.
Love when subconscious concepts like this are explained in clear terms, great vid!
Also is this stage in the game?
Good video!
Use a flow chart. Got it! 🥴
What costume is Karin wearing?
Hey what’s the song being used?
Fundamentals.
this has a lot to do with scenarios : we can react to things which we can predict. One major weakness most players have in fighting games is that they do rely on their natural fighting game experience and instinct. While this has more to do with the ratio risk reward : what can be optimized ? What decisions will lead me to lose more life than another ?
That's why this is very difficult to get better in fighting games, because every fighting game has their own exploit or rules, which you need to perfectly understand in order to progress. Just like chess : the more games you know and understand, the better you become.
Yo, fighting games are kinda sick, no other game has this kind of Trinity. Like, we’re actually fighting, just not physically but everything else is a real fight.
Karin and Blanka, two characters that cause a spike of anxiety when I see them in Ranked. I'm like, "Here we go with THIS bs!"
So yeah, mental stack is important!!
thanks for making your videos text-based, english is not my native language and i struggle alot trying to understand videos commented with audio only, but this way i can understand everything
Karin got the best legs in the industry.
cool video! now please don't use that blanka skin ever again thank you!
To note, Mental stack is more important for certain archetypes (zoners/ grapplers) than others (rushdown/ gorillas)
Why didnt the mental stack effect me much in sf4 or sfxt but is SUPER potent in sf5?
yeah talk about this to all those KOF players with 8 different jump ranges
0:09 block
First time I heard this term was from Sajam. Thank you for giving us a more detailed explanation. It's one of many things that happen in fighting games that still don't have a name.
2:44 shameless plug 😛 4:32 very polite 😀
and then add in tournament pressure and bam you got yourself the shakies
please do a video on air dashes and their utility!!
Thank you for this. I've always struggled with reacting to the opponent and this broke it down for me.
Good music
2:23 YOOOO! That is insane! I never thought of using moves in that context. Thank you for the new perspective.
That’s why I play chars whose neutral buttons double as anti airs 🧠
This helped so much. I'm still practicing Guilty Gear Online and still have a lot to learn. Forgot about footsies cause I focus on other stuff too much. Still learning defense, mix ups, when to bait, mind games ect. I can see why some people don't want to play fighting games. It's a lot to learn and experience.