I’m having a bit of a laugh at myself as I write this. Namely because I never made good on that promise to write about Fighting games more often. It isn’t like I forgot about what I said either. Rather, this series – The Path to Improvement – performs fairly poorly relative to how long each entry takes to write. As such, I usually can’t find the motivation to throw something together.
That said, I’ve wanted to cover today’s subject for over a year now, and I just got the perfect example for it. So, lock in because we’re going to talk about regular practice, and why it’s more important for improving than mindlessly playing the game for a thousand hours.
I suppose we can start with a question: would you believe me if I said I made it into Vanquisher by accident?
For those not in the know, Vanquisher is the highest rank in Guilty Gear Strive’s ranking system. Once players reach it, they’re removed from the normal ranked pool, and their rank points are replaced by an Elo rating. From there, every player that’s qualified will fight other players in Vanquisher, and their Elo will fluctuate depending on how consistently they perform.
It’s not an unfamiliar system to anyone who has spent any time playing a competitive game in an online forum. Even Chess dot Com does this, though I think they use Glicko instead of Elo.
Regardless, saying that I got in by accident might be a bit of a farce. What I mean to convey is that I wasn’t trying to get into Vanquisher when I eventually managed to do so. Instead, it happened as a consequence of how I was playing: short sessions punctuated by practice.
You see, when I first made it into Diamond 3, the majority of my play sessions looked as follows:
- Win a couple matches
- Lose several matches
- Get booted into Diamond 2
- Struggle for enough wins to make it back into Diamond 3
- Shut the game down in frustration
- Avoid playing Strive for several days
This pattern continued for a solid 6 weeks, and was very frustrating. Basically any time I sat down to play, I was signing up for 2 to 3 hours of prolonged frustration. It’s not like I didn’t recognize the pattern, but I really wanted to make some headway in Diamond 3 as opposed to being stuck in the dredges where I’d repeatedly demote down to Diamond 2.
However, the way that I was approaching this was flawed. Fighting games are hard. Playing them well is even harder. As such, most of us can only play at our very best for a small window of time. For me, that’s typically 30 to 60 minutes. After that, I need a long break to let my brain, and fingers recuperate. As such, smashing my head into the wall for 3 fucking hours was completely counter-intuitive if my goal was to actually increase my ranking.
There was also another nasty side-effect of playing this way: the sunk-cost fallacy. Part of my frustration stemmed from how much time I was spending on Strive, but then I wouldn’t have anything to show for it. I’d lose part of my evening, and I’d be exactly where I started. It was hard not to think that I’d have been better off if I hadn’t bothered playing Guilty Gear Strive in the first place.
What made this even worse was that I expected I should’ve been seeing some improvement. Historically, I’ve gotten better at Fighting games by continuing to play them. Heck, that’s true of basically every game that I’ve played. Ergo, if I was spending time with Strive then I should’ve been getting better, right?
Yes, and no.
It is true that spending time with a Fighting game is a great way to improve at playing it. The same logic holds true for basically all skills that we can learn. However, the relationship between time invested, and skill accrued isn’t linear. That is to say, this isn’t like grinding mobs in an RPG. You can’t force yourself to be better at something by simply doing it a lot. The quality of your practice often matters more than the quantity of it.
As such, I languished in the dredges of low Diamond 3 for several weeks while I continued to engage with Strive in the way that I outlined above. I wasn’t getting nothing out of my playtime, but I certainly wasn’t improving in the ways that I’d need to in order to reach Vanquisher.
So what changed?
Well, after a particularly bad ranked session, I decided to uninstall Guilty Gear Strive for a couple of months. I had plenty of other games that I wanted to play, and I was tired of wasting my time with Strive.
However, less than a week after I uninstalled the game, the latest battle pass was announced. Unfortunately, the headline item for the pass was a new skin for Dizzy, and I am weak. As such, I almost immediately reinstalled Strive, so I could begin working on the pass.
Now, that’s not to say that I went right back to blindly grinding Diamond 3. Instead, I decided that I would continue to uphold the spirit of uninstalling Strive. Ergo, I’d pop in every single day to play through my daily quests, but I’d leave shortly after completing them. This would give me an easily achieved goal that I could use to anchor all of my play sessions. My hope was that this would help to keep me from getting sucked down the toilet, since I had an easy way to book-end each of my play sessions.
There were definitely growing pains with this approach, but it seemed to be working most of the time. I won’t deny that I got sucked into an occasional spiral, but, for the most part, I was only playing 2 or 3 matches at most, and then signing off for the day.
Though, something else happened alongside this. With fewer matches played, I could better retain what exactly happened across each of them. This meant that when something stood out as being odd – a combo didn’t work how I thought, or 2 moves collided in an unexpected way – it stuck in my mind. This prompted me to pop over to training mode, so I could figure out exactly what happened. Then I’d journal the information, so I could reference it again before I started my next play session.
Mind you, I didn’t do this for every match that I played. Instead, I focused on things that left a bad taste in my mouth. That way I could address them, record the results of my research, and clear up the space in my brain for something else.
Also, weirdly, writing everything down made it a lot easier to remember. Obviously, I had my notes as a point of reference, but I didn’t find that I needed them all too often. Because I was only learning 1 or 2 new pieces of information with each play session, I was typically able to retain what I’d learned. This stands in stark contrast to longer sessions wherein I wouldn’t retain anything because my brain would be so tired by the time I finished. Never mind the sheer volume of information that I’d be trying to swallow after those longer sessions.
Regardless, the combination of all of these things – shorter sessions, active research, taking notes – saw my online ranking improve. I didn’t end every session ahead on points, but my ranking had a positive trajectory from week to week.
Though, none of this actually mattered to me. Instead, I was laser focused on completing my dailies, so I could eventually earn the new Dizzy skin. As such, the days turned into weeks as I continued plucking away at the battle pass.
That was, until 2 weeks ago when I noticed that I was less than 1000 points from reaching Vanquisher. I was a little surprised, but I didn’t want to invest too much thought into it. I’d managed to climb this high without paying attention to my ranking, and figured that it was for the best if I continued ignoring it.
This would turn out to be the correct strategy because a few days later I was a single game away from getting into Vanquisher, and decided to take my shot on the extra game after I finished my dailies. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how that went.
Regardless, it still feels like I got in by accident. I mean…I was playing to unlock a cosmetic. How could this not be an accident?
That’s the thing though – it wasn’t really an accident. It was all of those tiny investments in learning to play Strive better that eventually added up to my reaching Vanquisher. Playing shorter sessions meant I was actually able to learn something every single time I played. It also meant that I was able to retain what I learned, and, if I didn’t, I had my notes handy to jog my memory. This resulted in slow, but steady improvements across the 7 weeks that it took me to finish the battle pass, which helped me bump into Vanquisher.
So, what exactly was the point of this whole story?
Here it is: how you practice matters more than how much you practice. Basically, quality is better than quantity. For a time, simply smashing my head into the wall was enough to get better at Guilty Gear Strive. However, as I hope my story demonstrated, there is an upper limit to how far you can go with this kind of approach. As such, you might be better served by playing less, but getting more out of your limited play time.
Regardless, I’m happy to have my Dizzy skin. Just look at how pretty she is!
I suppose…I’m also happy with the improvement that I’ve shown over the past several weeks. It felt good to discover new techniques, and employ them against my opponents. Doubly so when these new techniques helped me to cinch out a win against a character that I previously struggled against.
Hopefully, if you’ve read this far, you’ll find that playing in short bursts works well for you too. It isn’t as glamorous as shooting up the ranks in record time, but slowly improving does make a difference in the long-term. Though, the change has to start with you approaching your game of choice with a different mindset – one that allows your brain the space, and time to grow.
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Frostilyte Writes 