I posted this in the AZ thread of SRK just now.

Just got back from a gaming session at Dorion’s. I think in general I haven’t been the biggest participant in local/live play, especially since Ranbats ended. Basically, between Barfights and now, all I’ve been doing is staying at home in training mode or playing online. Training mode yielded some results; When I’m comfortable (as in relaxed, using my stick, and sitting on my couch in front of my laggy HDTV) I can execute some combos I’ve been practicing for the past month. The moment I leave my comfort zone (Using a stick with a looser spring, for example), however, my performance drops greatly. I miss my SJC FADC combos, I miss SJC seismos, I miss CANCELS. And I’m in no way blaming technology for this, but my own failure to adjust. Even when I’m able to correctly emulate this “comfort zone” that I think is so golden, I still screw stuff up. I think Reece put it best when he says that was the jitters. I think the only solution is just to play more with people rather than in my own house alone beating up on online folks, or at Gameworks where I can play Ken and rack up the wins.

That said, multiple games with Eric, Zaine, Reece, and Dorion have really got me convinced that, on a mental level, I’ve been playing the game wrong for the past year. I feel like I enter this trance when I play, where I’m constantly hedging bets with what moves to use next based on the matchup, with random sprinkled everywhere that serves as a series of shortcuts in what is basically a flowchart. Because of this, I lose the mental tug of war that Street Fighter or even fighting games are all about. Rather than catering my style, my attacks, and even my movements to my opponent, I categorize them instead and get my shit kicked in when they do something outside of my flowchart. So, disregarding all that comfort zone crap I was talking about earlier, I still can’t land my combos because I don’t read my opponent well enough to start them. There was an instance where I was playing Juicebox and he walked towards me and correctly predicted that I was going to jump towards him with an attack. He explained to me that his walking forward was actually a way to get me to attack, which is basically a whole ‘nother layer of game that I missed out on. My mind just went “Oh look, he walked forward, I should attack,” rather than thinking why he walked forward. Because of this whole extra layer of play that I’m completely missing out on, I’m a little worried at how exactly I’m supposed to get better at the game. Is this a problem really just solved by playing the game more?

I don’t even feel like this problem is even worthy of being called a plateau. It feels like I was on a certain, fake level of play, and I need to start over at the base of the mountain and get the basics down. To me, the basics were always c.mk xx fireball, but the basics really are just walking backward and walking forward.

That said, I really have no intention of giving up. I’m a little demoralized at the moment, but the reason for this novella of a post is really just to ask for some advice. How should I go about tackling this problem, when the problem is that I flat-out don’t think enough while I play? Does it have to do with not knowing the game well enough, or more to do with the fact that I’ve been practicing alone and online too much? And where should I go from there?