Reacting: Difference between revisions

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'''Reacting''' to what your opponent does and behaving accordingly is one of the most important skills in ''Tekken''. Many moves are balanced around it being possible for a defender to react to them. However, it being ''possible'' doesn't mean it's ''practical'', and the gap between these two can be the gap between a good and a great player.
'''Reacting''' to what your opponent does and behaving accordingly is one of the most important skills in ''Tekken''. Many moves are balanced around it being possible for a defender to react to them. However, it being ''possible'' doesn't mean it's ''practical'', and the gap between these two can make the difference between a good and a great player.


[[wikipedia:Mental chronometry|Mental chronometry]] is the study of reaction times in scientific literature.  
[[wikipedia:Mental chronometry|Mental chronometry]] is the study of reaction times in scientific literature.  
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If an animation is very distinct and a player is gifted and stimmed up, moves as fast as ~18 frames could be occasionally reacted to.
If an animation is very distinct and a player is gifted and stimmed up, moves as fast as ~18 frames could be occasionally reacted to.


However, keep in mind that this is very rough estimation, and mostly an ideal situation. Some moves have less distinction animations; being well-trained against the ~100 moves that 1 of 50 characters can do is not really practical; this is an ''average'' speed and will be slower than that at least half the time. Most importantly, this estimate is only applicable if someone is ''only'' looking for lows. If they also want to react to [[frame advantage]], [[throw]]s, whiffs, stances, or [[string]]s, then the their reactions won't be this fast.
However, keep in mind that this is very rough estimation, and mostly an ideal situation. Some moves have less distinction animations; being well-trained against all ~100 moves that 1 of 50 characters can do is not practical; this is an ''average'' speed and will be slower than that at least half the time. Most importantly, this estimate is only applicable if someone is ''only'' looking for lows. If they also want to react to [[frame advantage]], [[throw]]s, whiffs, stances, or [[string]]s, then the their reactions won't be this fast.


== References ==
== References ==


<references/>
<references/>

Revision as of 03:33, 1 July 2021

Reacting to what your opponent does and behaving accordingly is one of the most important skills in Tekken. Many moves are balanced around it being possible for a defender to react to them. However, it being possible doesn't mean it's practical, and the gap between these two can make the difference between a good and a great player.

Mental chronometry is the study of reaction times in scientific literature.

Types of reaction times

There is usually a distinction made between types of reaction time experiments:

  • Simple reaction time experiments study how fast the subject can react to a single stimulus, such as a light going from off to on.
  • Recognition reaction time experiments study how fast the subject can react to a single stimulus, with the addition of some distracting stimulus that they should not react to, such as a screen showing a coloured dot, and only reacting if it's red.
  • Choice reaction time experiments study how fast the subject can react to multiple stimuli with a different response for each one, such as pressing the right number on a numpad when it appears on the screen.

Average simple reaction times for college-aged persons is ~190ms for visual stimuli and ~150 ms for audio stimuli. This number changes based on a number of factors including age, gender, fatigue, distractions, and psychoactive substances. For age, it peaks at around mid 20's, increases slowly until the 50's and 60's, then increases very quickly. Critically, this cannot be improved via training.[1]

Recognition and choice reaction times are proportional to simple reaction times. Recognition times are longer than simple, and choice times are even longer.

Choice reactions are proportional to log(n), where n is the number of valid choices—not the number of stimuli. This can be substantially improved with practice, but not to the point where it's equivalent to simple reaction times, except when there's only 1 choice.[2]

When is something reactable?

The main factors affecting how reactable a move is are:

  • The player's simple reaction time
  • How much input lag there is
  • How many different choices there are to make
  • Whether the cue being reacted to is a visual or audio cue
  • When the cue becomes distinct
  • How distinct the cue is and how much training the player has with it

Given the variety of factors, there's no clear point at which a move becomes reactable. In addition, even when all of these factors are accounted for, there is still a lot of variation in how quick the response is, i.e., a move can be only occasionally reactable. This is almost always the case—everyone gets hit by Snake Edges sometimes—so a more precise question is, “When is this move reactable enough that relying on it is a bad idea?”

As a rough estimation, if we assume that the cue is visual and that the player's simple reaction time to these is ~190ms, that there is roughly 90ms of input lag (roughly 40ms from Tekken 7 and 50ms from other sources), that the cue becomes distinct at ~70ms (Tekken animations are tweened, so the first few frames are not necessarily distinct), that there is only one choice being made (blocking low if the player sees a low move), and that the player is well-trained, then the cue is reactable at ~350ms or ~21 frames. This is a fair bit more than other fighting games that don't have tweened animations and which have less input lag.

If a move has a distinct audio cue it could be reactable a few frames earlier—not just because audio reaction times are faster, but because animation tweening isn't a concern.

If an animation is very distinct and a player is gifted and stimmed up, moves as fast as ~18 frames could be occasionally reacted to.

However, keep in mind that this is very rough estimation, and mostly an ideal situation. Some moves have less distinction animations; being well-trained against all ~100 moves that 1 of 50 characters can do is not practical; this is an average speed and will be slower than that at least half the time. Most importantly, this estimate is only applicable if someone is only looking for lows. If they also want to react to frame advantage, throws, whiffs, stances, or strings, then the their reactions won't be this fast.

References

  1. ↑ Kosinski, R. J. (2008). "A literature review on reaction time". Clemson University.
  2. ↑ Hick, W. E. (1952). On the Rate of Gain of Information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 4(1), 11–26. doi:10.1080/17470215208416600,