drohne said:
i'm closing on 30 and my reflexes have gone to shit. i score at .2 seconds + on those online reflex tests, which is what, 12 frames? so i kind of struggle at basic sf things like punishing and antiairs and hit confirming. i don't play with the serious goal of improving my game, but i doubt i'd get anywhere if i did
I'm 31 myself.
My reflexes are still there. I can still do stuff on reaction (ask some of the people I play with). My execution has gone down a bit, but the rest is there.
One thing I did improve, MASSIVELY, from when I was younger, is pattern recognition. It's a huge strength, but also a big weakness...
See, when you're good at pattern recognition, you "learn" someone's play style. When I played 3s with Makoto, it was also psychic as to when I could do my abare tosonami (anti fireball super, mainly) because I could see those damn hadokens coming. From SUPER FAR AWAY. In SF4, with Abel, it's helped me a lot because using that I could master the d.fp 2nd hit AA and focus on followups to that. I've done rather good locally (I have really good comp) because people underestimate Abel's AA ability since a lot of Abel players kind of suck at doing AA. I can "feel" jumps, just like Haunts said. It's due to a combination of factors, but hey.
Now the problem is I don't have a large enough pool of players. This means I play 3 Sagats, an insanely good Chun who wins all of our freaking tournaments (and is probably one of the best players in Canada overall), etc. I learn those guys. I played one of my buds, who plays Ryu, a shit ton. The problem is whenever I play against Ryu, I play against HIS Ryu, expecting his pattern to pop up, which is almost never the case. If I start playing better Ryus, I grab their patterns, only to get my bud to beat me for a few matches until I "get" his pattern again.
It's kinda weird. Every player I've played has a pattern. Every single one. Even the top tier Chun player. After a few matches, he still beats me, but I do get to see through his mixups and I get to live longer.
As another example - we have another Abel player here. He's clearly better than me overall, does better than me in all the tourneys, etc. We're good buds, so there's no big deal, but whenever we play, we go almost 80-20 in my favor. Why? I've seen him play SO MUCH that I know every little thing he does, every time. I know his pokes inside out. It infuriates him (lol) but it's how it always is.
Seriously, with age, your skillset moves around. We have an Empire Arcadia member (prez), apparently the only one who is outside of NYC, who lives in Montreal. Who regularly plays with us. The dude is about my age. His reaction time is completely INSANE. I've seen him do Sagat's ultra on reaction to Hazan Shou mixups (it's not easy, believe me).
So no worries. Just pick a character, stick to it, learn it inside out, and train with people better than you.
