Adaptation in Tekken is the ability to alter your gameplay in order to capitalize on your opponent’s tendencies and bad habits, and thus win the set. It is a very important skill of a solid Tekken player, and separates those who’ve just grinded ranked a lot from the tournament vets. A player with good adaptation is able to mold themselves into the perfect counter of their opponent’s playstyle, and can arrest their momentum, stuff comebacks and seemingly win without doing anything special. They can mystifyingly “download” their opponents, making them fear doing anything at all.
This post is intended to explain how I think about adaptation, and hopefully provide a useful framework for how to train it yourselves.
I see adaptation as having three stages -
- Recognition: noticing a pattern that your opponent is exhibiting in their gameplay
- Analysis: coming up with the ideal response to the observed pattern
- Execution: executing the response you came up with
Let’s talk about each of them in turn.
Recognition
Recognition is the act of noticing that your opponent is exhibiting a pattern. An opponent does not necessarily need to repeat something multiple times for you to be able to notice it. For example, if a less experienced player stuffs your pressure with a rage art, it is likely they will repeat it the next time. Similarly, certain character-specific flowcharts (e.g. Kat 1,1,2 > d/f+4, Hei f+3 > d/f+1,2 at the wall) are commonly used by multiple players, and given prior experience, you can probably predict the flowchart without having seen the player use it in your set.
Patterns in gameplay come in various forms. They can be in the form of move choices in specific situations e.g. using rage arts when under pressure and in rage or just a sequence of moves strung together (aka flowchart). They can be very specific, such as always doing ws4 after getting hit by d4, or they can be highly abstract (e.g. responding to a repeated move after two uses of it, taking risks only when at a healthy life lead) or even somewhat probabilistic (e.g. this player uses a lot of lows).
The ability to recognize such patterns comes with experience and ability. It is difficult to process a sequence of moves that a character uses when you have no idea of the matchup. It is difficult to recognize changes in timing or defensive movement when you aren’t conscious of it in your own gameplay.
The best way to improve your ability to recognize patterns is abstraction. Since one cannot realistically remember every single interaction that occurs between players in a set, one must compartmentalize them using labels and concepts. For example, let’s say I’m up against a Katarina, and I observe two sequences from the neutral -
- I block d/f+1, and they disrespect frames with d+4
- I block d/f+1, and they fish for a CH with 4,4,4
First, notice how I’ve talked about these interactions - I’m using the move notation, indicating I know the moves being used fairly well. I use the label “disrespecting frames”, indicating I know the frame situations on block from these moves. I recognize the use of 4,4,4 in being a CH launcher, thus my description of the player as “fishing for CHs”.
Notice also what I’m not talking about. I’m not talking about when the d/f+1 comes out, indicating I don’t yet have a read on the timing, or perhaps I’m not looking out for it. I’m not talking about other properties of the moves, such as hit-level or steppability. I’m also not talking about how often they’re using these options, and what the relative frequency of each option is.
Thus, the most important ability recognizing and processing patterns quickly and efficiently is awareness of intention. If you understand why something is being done, it is much easier to both retain it in memory, and to formulate a response to it. This applies even to “random” actions. If you eat a random hopkick while dashing in, depending on the context, this might have either been a read on your dash timing, or an uninformed attempt at a launcher. In either case, you can formulate an appropriate response (dash in at different timings for the former, or bait out launchers with tighter forward dashes for the latter).
Another way to improve pattern recognition is developing a wider vocabulary/recognition of concepts and situations. In the situation I talked about with the Kat player, I can recognize that they are attempting to poke and pressure me into retaliating, and thus score counterhits. I know this, because I know that this is how Kat is typically played. Similarly, being able to quickly and correctly process other situations with other characters is best done by experiencing those situations and understanding the intentions of the players behind those decisions.
I’ll be honest, I don’t play with 100% intentionality at all times, and, I suspect, neither do other players. Sometimes, you just have a general feeling of the situation and press buttons accordingly. One example of this is when I have plus frames, I don’t have a clear plan of attack on the offense, I just alternate between random pokes and throw in an occasional low. If 2-3 connect, I attempt to step or CH-launch. Such knee-jerk reactions (autopilot) can also occur under stress.
This also ties into why it’s not really possible to learn from pro matches when you’re not close to their level. Simply put, a less experienced player will rarely be put into similar situations, and will not be able to understand the decision-making behind pro player responses; there’s not much learning to be had. It is better to observe gameplay from opponents a notch above your own skill level (rank is a useful proxy), since you’ll very likely be able to comprehend those situations and understand the responses.
In such cases, as the player trying to adapt, it is important to recognize you can’t fit everything the opponent does into a neat little pattern that you can counter. Some things will be out of your pattern-matching grasp, due to your lack of experience, knowledge or due to just plain unpredictability and speed of the game.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ve restricted discussion to just a pattern initiated by the opponent without taking into account what actions I’ve taken, and what actions they’ve taken in response to me. Patterns which involve the many layers of yomi are complicated, but are merely patterns that can be recognized and adapted to with experience.
Analysis
Analysis is the process of formulating a “good” response to an observed pattern. The ability to do so is primarily determined by your general knowledge of Tekken’s system, such as frame data, move steppability and ranges, as well as mechanical options like KBD, sidestep duck/guard etc. It is also governed by what options you can actually execute, and an understanding of strategy and risk-reward. Let’s talk about all of these in turn.
Since Tekken is governed by deterministic rules, you can simulate for yourself the result of certain actions. Let’s revisit the situation with the Katarina we talked about. If you observe your opponent initiating the same two options multiple times (let’s say you can’t figure out anything else other than what I described). What should you do in this situation? What would you do if you blocked another d/f+1?
Let’s briefly talk about what the ideal outcome is. Ideally, your response to an observed pattern should be something which deals a lot of damage and puts you in a favourable position to take the round (or something more long-term, like the set). Sometimes, you might not be able to directly deal damage, and might only get frame advantage. Sometimes, you might not get any advantage yourself, but instead mitigate a disadvantage. Basically, you should set yourself up for victory as best as you can.
Let’s refocus on that situation. What should you do? First, we must ask - what are we allowed to do? This is where having good knowledge of Tekken’s system helps. It tells you what actions are permitted in a given situation. If you didn’t know you could chicken Asuka’s parry, it becomes a more powerful tool than it has any right to be. If you don’t know to tap forward to escape Negan’s CH low, it becomes a guaranteed launcher every time. If you don’t know that you can ground roll to escape certain oki situations, or the frame situation after a broken throw, or the distance travelled by your character’s backdash, you will be completely oblivious to the best option in certain situations.
This is also why being a character specialist sometimes beats being a multi-character user. It is easy to formulate and execute best responses to the situations arising from a single character, than with multiple characters.
Back to our situation, let’s say we know about our own character’s attacks (Katarina), and some simple defensive options like backdash and low block/parry. An ideal response would be something that covers both of the options you observed simultaneously, because you don’t have to worry about multiple options to execute, thus reducing guesswork/reads and increasing consistency.
If analyzing for ourselves, we can iterate through the moves in our movelist, observe what might happen as a result of our move, and see if the expected consequences are to our liking. In practice, a lot of moves will be rendered obsolete by the slowest move in the mixup. After a blocked df1, we are at +2. The opponent is now doing a d4 (12+2=14) or 4,4,4 (11+2=13). So any move slower than 14 frames will get interrupted.
What if we do our fastest option, a jab? This will certainly interrupt the magic 4, but will get high crushed by the d4 (which is why knowledge of hit levels and crush states/frames is important).
What about our own magic 4? It might get crushed by the d4 for 7 dmg, but if the opponent goes for 4,4,4, we get our own CH instead for a full combo. The risk-reward in this case is in our favour if the opponent uses both at roughly equal rates.
What if we low parry? We could get a low parry combo on d4, and duck the 4,4,4. The string does have a mid though, so we’ll get clipped by the final two hits. What if we can low parry then quickly stand up to block? This requires some timing, so unless you are practiced, it might be difficult to pull off. What if we sidestep right low parry? We could low parry d4 and evade 4,4,4 simultaneously, while not risking anything (other than getting clipped due to scuffy movement). Katarina doesn’t have a movelist option to cover both responses (actually, b3 exists), but if we played Asuka, we could b3 to crush high and low simultaneously, while netting a full launch. In general, there are multiple options to choose from, and which one you deem “best” might come down to personal preference.
Having the knowledge and ability to execute multiple options will give you access to much better outcomes from situations you encounter. If you notice a pattern but are unable to take advantage of it, lab it and test out various option in the manner I described. You might also ask experienced players for advice on what they would do, or look at their gameplay to see their responses in similar situations.
In general, movement is a pretty powerful and universal option that’s good to have in your toolkit. Being comfortable with options like SS~duck, or backdash low parry can mitigate a lot of mixup situations, forcing the opponent to play “off” frames.
Execution
Simply put, execution is the ability to execute on your intended response to an observed pattern. It doesn’t matter if you can formulate the perfectly crafted response of sidestep duck stand block low parry if you cannot put it into practice in a real match. For example, Josie’s SWS stance is technically completely OSable by duck into block into low parry into block, but the timing on it is so strict, it is practically impossible to do this consistently, let alone in a real match while getting mixed up by a dozen other strings. The key is consistency - formulate options you can consistently do. As benchmarks, use what other players at your level (or just slightly above) also can consistently do, and drill them yourself. Examples include movement options like sidestep duck, or responses to attacks like Law f2 > 3+4,4 to OS Lucky Chloe’s Cali roll.
Drilling reflexive reactions to certain “correct” responses is also necessary. These are typically of the duckable/sidesteppable strings, reactable lows variety. For example, if you notice a Lili who always does a df1 > sidestep > 2,4 at the wall to evade your retaliation and wall splat you, you might want to wait for the sidestep and then duck the 2,4. However, if you can’t react in time to the 2 and duck the 4, your recognition of the pattern and analysis to formulate a rewarding+safe response was moot, since you can’t actually execute it. Practice makes perfect. Visualizing what you want to react to also helps.
It’s also impossible to carry out this detailed analysis for a previously unseen situation within the space of a real match, which is why preparation and experience is so important. Play with as many players and against as many characters as you can. Force yourself into situations where you have less experience. Drill your option selects and movement options until you can do them without thinking.