Once you’ve learned how to use frame data and you’re able to apply the fundamentals of advantage and disadvantage in your matches, you’ll want to learn the extremely vital skill of “reading” opponents. This concept at its core is simply the idea of classifying your opponent (the actual human being on the other end, not the character) into certain categories. In doing so, you’re able to make better decisions in fighting them. For instance, if you’ve gauged your opponent through playing matches with them or by watching them play other players, you might come to the conclusion that they’re a reckless “abare” type of player who will more often than not jump at you from mid range. You can use this information to play more conservatively against said player, using more jump-baiting techniques (such as faking a projectile with a light attack).
While this is a basic example, classifying opponents can be difficult for newer players, especially because of the mechanically demanding nature of fighting games where you have to worry about not making your own executional mistakes. Additionally, some players can be much more difficult to read than others. The highest echelon of elite tournament players are notoriously difficult to categorize, and their habits can be difficult to exploit. Nevertheless, this is a skill that all competitive players should look to actively master. Simplifying and categorizing your opponent results in fewer choices you must consider in your decision-making process in specific situations, freeing up a lot of your mental focus for more important things. For example, instead of worrying about a plethora of paths your opponent can take on their wakeup, you instead plan your next moves in anticipation of their likely defensive patterns. If they’re prone to wake up with a reversal Shoryuken, you already have your punish combo in the back of your mind, and you’ll be able to pull it from muscle memory seamlessly.
After losing a set of matches, you might come out wondering what you’ve been doing wrong, even if your strategy is sound. This kind of classification approach helps you improve by giving you more confidence and less hesitation in your play, while also making it easier to learn from losses because of the simplified thought process behind your actions. The less you second-guess yourself in the heat of a match, the easier it becomes to identify and fix your weaknesses.
There are several types of players, and the more experience you get under your belt playing fighting games, the finer your classifications will become and the easier it will get to classify your opponents. For starters, you’ll want to at least be able to identify between four types: aggressive, defensive, risk-prone, and risk-averse. Of course, there are many more nuances, and some players can even alternate between various styles. Still, learning to categorize players into one of these four early on is crucial, even if you turn out to be wrong in your characterization. Additionally, the character your opponent plays should give you a large clue about their mindset, as well. This is especially true in Street Fighter V since characters are designed with particular traits in mind.
For example, offense-based characters like Cammy and Laura are usually played by aggressive players, while zoning-based ones like Dhalsim and F.A.N.G. are played by defensive players. Since SFV heavily rewards these characters for playing to their strengths, you can bet that players playing them will be predictable in that sense.
To gauge a player’s risk aversion, it may take more than a couple of rounds to exploit the classification of these opponents because you have to bait out or eat certain attacks, cataloging their habits in the back of your mind (colloquially known as “downloading” a player). For example, if you’re up against an elusive Rashid player and you finally manage to catch them with a knockdown, you’ll naturally be eager to attack with a meaty to keep them pinned down. However, there’s no telling if they’ll wake up with EX Spinning Mixer, which completely nullifies your offense if they guess correctly. You can deal with this by taking the risk of attacking or by feigning an attack and then blocking. The latter is obviously safer, but it isn’t as rewarding since they have a chance to slip away. What’s important in this scenario is that you take a mental note of what they did on their wakeup, then classify them appropriately so you can use this information the next time you put them in a similar situation.