Daudy

They are winning the spam war because there is only one Bob Slay to face them all. Apparently he goes to bed sometimes too.

Pope Callixtus "Hark the herald, angels sing! Glory to your grappling king! Your BJJ belt colour may have been higher than mine, but no one puts the BJ in BJJ better than me. Did I just reach the final? I think I did. My next opponent will learn the true ways of the touchy feely arts."

My understanding is that this is only kinda true in a roundabout way. I think besides the hidden age of decline, it's more to do with total skill points. The softcap for that is another hidden, but obviously faster learners tend to more likely be at their soft cap or close to it so faster learners tend to have more points before decline. Decline seems to be more severe for guys with a high total skillpoints. So say you believe the decline is done by a percentage, like you lose a tiny % every day when in decline, but this is somewhat propped up by training and sparring so it's not as noticeable in some skills or at all early on. Someone with maximum skill points (say 2700, which is definitely on the higher end) would lose more points total in raw numbers each day (and it'd be shaved off everything) than someone with a much lower points total (like 2200). Now I'm not saying it's definitely done by percentage or anything like that, but the proof is the relative longevity of specialist grapplers. My 43 year old grappler should definitely be in decline given his age, but he's dropped a total of 1 point (spread over all skills) in over 10 weeks. However, his total skill points are a relatively low amount, because he's got ONLY grappling and physical skills, and basically nothing at all in the others. Those skills though, are all 147+.... so basically 15++ including physicals. I have no idea how close this is to his actual overall softcap, but this trend of specialist grapplers (aka ones that don't also have a heap of points in striking stuff) being more immune to ageing seems to be fairly consistent and supports the idea that total skillpoints play a factor. This is one of the few reasons why people caution against oversparring early and also especially building 'spreaders'. Couple of misplaced training sessions here and there, and they're all points that go towards your softcap even if you're realistically not actually making use of any of those. It's much easier to go from 1 to 10 accidentally in a skill you aren't focusing on than 141 to 150 in a skill you care about, but it counts the same towards the skillpoint softcap. EDIT: But to address the original question, yes you have to train skills at least once every now and then (including physicals) otherwise it'll start to go down. Even if you don't see depops, it doesn't mean they're dropping due to lack of refreshment, it's just that he hasn't dropped below the threshold to depop. On creation with the max 110 points in a skill, you only JUST hit the wonderful mark, which is why even the slightest decline will show a depop

Pope Callixtus "Do you hear that? The bells of victory ring for the righteous! Our first fight was merely a test from God. We engaged in a bit of clinch clinch to see how our opponent would react. Alas, in our rematch he was overcome with gluttony, greed, and sloth. Terrible sins! It was a clear 2-0 up in the grappling department before we took our foot off the pedal and let our opponent have a consolation round. Let me be clear, nobody is better than a man of God at the finer arts of touchy feely grappling!"

I like this idea, but imo it should also matchup based on a spread of tiers to prevent people waiting forever for a fight when the queue gets quite segregated (particularly at some less popular weights). E.g. A level 1 can only fight a level 1. But a Level 2 might be able to fight a level 2 and 3. A level 3 can be matched with a level 2, 3 or 4. And so on.

To be honest, I probably have more experience with the lanky guys and I feel also aggro/counter tends to follow trends according to weightclass more so. I think the answer depends on what you think your opponent will be doing to be honest.

You'll probably have better luck in the clinch as a shorter guy. Probably one of the most famous shorties in the game is Leif Leifsson Since I've obtained him, I've put him on a small diet to make 205, but he's still very very short for it. He also has a lot of other things going for him like a great chin/heart and some KO power, which let's be honest... gives you a lot of flexibility haha. On the other end of the spectrum, I've also got some really tall HWs (220 to 225cms) that have both made it to P4P #1 or #2 with me. Both have good to great KO power, but awful to ok chin. True lanky glass cannons, who sometimes don't do so well in the clinch. You can see Noah's last fight where I kind of forgot about it, and was not running his usual clinch sliders that emphasise getting out of it. That's what essentially lost him the fight, despite getting off to a good start standing against an opponent he's beaten before.

Playoff bound! Playoff bound!

I'm with you on this - particularly since other pre-fight text DOES correlate strictly with stuff. The both really solid chins one always means both guys are solid/good chin or better and the 'power to get to his chin' one is a definitive statement of one guy's KO power relative to the other guy's chin (so they could both be terrible or great, but his KO power is better than his chin by at least 1 point). Subsequently, with the power of revealing retired fighter hiddens and a long fight history, you can sometimes pinpoint exactly how low a guy's chin value could be based off the exact KO power number of said retired fighter. CK did exactly this with Kjetil Olsen (and shared the info with me to be fair), who everyone knows is a glass jaw but maybe didn't know how much. It's why after ages of joking about it, he finally did actually go accuracy in a HW fight against him. I wanna know also how the Just Bleed Guy keeps getting let into arenas when he keeps attacking fighters! Maybe like Bob suggested it could correlate with good confidence/determination. We'd have to get some sample data. EDIT: Other beliefs or superstitions of mine based on nothing but feels: 1) I like to train at least one session of each 'key' skill in the week leading up to the fight. 2) Knockout Power TOTT on the right hand side (not to be confused with KO power on the left) doesn't actually mean anything for KO hiddens and is related to experience more so. 3) Heart and Chin are kind of interchangeable a bit like intelligence and 'experience' in that there is a lot of crossover between the two (though obviously you can't improve heart and chin like you can with experience). Having great values in both is ideal, having great in one and poor in the other is so-so. 4) Accumulated injury days affect your fighter's chin long term (why else would they track it?!)

Knees and elbows already ARE more effective in relation than punches. Elbows are straight upgrades in terms of cutting power, and tbh, I don't think there's much difference in KO power between them and punches. Knees are devastating if hit, but you have to be wary of spamming. I'm not saying stuff in the fight engine is perfect or shouldn't be changed, but I just don't see how making punches worse achieves anything other than even more boring clinch games (unrealistic or not). I'd actually think doing so might even get people to consider finally using stall tactics to get clinch ref separation because now opponents can't land offence as easily. Then we get the overeager referee ground standup issue introduced to the clinch game too! Like I said, people are already not integrating better clinch weapons like knees in their builds for a reason DESPITE them being a super clinch tool already. Making punches worse doesn't change that fundamental reason. People are still going to train punches and kicks over them because that's all they have time/skill cap for. A better change would be to enable knees/elbows to be used at range to some limited extent (the flying knee flavour finish is actually just a head kick currently). Then people would likely consider swapping out something like kicks for it. Get the better clinch tool that can still be used somewhat at range vs the much better range tool that can't be used in the clinch. Both are viable options, and now you get more people with more diverse clinch builds.

This is exactly why if we're being 'realistic' about an MMA simulator, that effective knees and elbows being thrown being rare is actually correct. Most real fighters don't utilise it at all - just like on tycoon. The thing is, there is a stall function for the clinch sliders which work similar to the control function on ground sliders and you can turn it into a hug fest. The reason you don't see much stalling compared to control on the ground is because there are a lot of defensive minded grapplers who know three successful controls in a row or some control and ineffective offence gets the fight stood up. I don't know if many people actually know this, but it's literally the same thing in a clinch - the ref WILL separate if you get multiple stalls. People just don't use it, because unlike a lot of defensive ground guys, they actually have a way to fight back and people tend to prefer to attempt to break clinch if they're so inclined. I'm not convinced a majority of people even know this is a thing. I'm told by people high level guys like Tosen/Freako Wimp are one of the few who have utilised this successfully, but given he's mostly going through the motions these days I don't think even he does it. So yes, it's definitely possible to stall it out if you don't want to engage too much. However, obviously the guys that want to be in the clinch aren't going to stall, they're going to fire off as much offence as they can get. There's definitely nuances to the clinch game sliders that aren't all just spam punches... otherwise you wouldn't see some fighters/managers that are just way better generally than others in there (Gwad is pretty good, etc). Which brings me to the next point: You don't think decreasing the amount of offence landed in a clinch would make it more boring? Just large spaces of guys swinging and missing? Like I said, people probably ideally WOULD like some knees or elbows (or both) on their fighter but it's currently not being built on a lot of guys for reasons outside of their effectiveness. Making punches worse in the clinch relative to knees/elbows doesn't do anything that addresses WHY people aren't prioritising knees/elbows in their build. It just means that instead of two guys landing offensive punches in the clinch, it's now two guys swinging and mysteriously missing the guy right there. It also means guys who choose to be grapplers are even more stuffed because they already have to cover additional skills and realistically they will never have the points/time to also build out luxury clinch skills. Anecdotal I know, but this is not really my experience particularly at HW where I have a bazillion fighters usually in the mix for the top org belts. Conscious that I usually run with lanky guys who prefer not to clinch, but the meta there is counter damage at distance. I dunno if it's more prevalent at other levels - I've seen some pretty dire situations where all people do is spam aggro break clinch with no clinch skills (and thus are never able to break said clinch and just get mauled). The exception of course is the legendary Leif Leifsson who I have recently inherited. You'll note in this 3 wins so far, twice he's rocked the opponent with an elbow and then in the third the KO blow was also an elbow.... But yeah he sacrifices having no kicks for that - which is a big weakness.

They don't spam knees because that's an easy way to gas yourself or there are other factors (like whether you believe height plays a part). Nerfing punches in the clinch won't really solve the issue. People are still going to prioritise training punches since they can be used more widely. You're not going to see fighters built where they now replace training punches with elbows or knees instead. All you're doing is making the clinch game just worse in general. The whole discussion about making the clinch more realistic by reducing punches is kind of odd to me anyway. Most MMA fights in real life that go to the clinch primarily revolve around dirty boxing? Elbows and knees are thrown now and then and not something that is spammed. Some fighters pretty much never throw elbows or knees, and they don't have some skill point cap that is preventing them from learning it (or throwing said technique outside of the clinch). Some of that is because the upright posture throwing knees non-stop Muay Thai style would just get you taken down and in a disadvantageous position on the ground (where again, unlike the purist sport in BJJ, the ability to throw punches changes the dynamic). Your vision for what the clinch game should look like seems to be entirely based on Muay Thai and not what happens in MMA or even other kickboxing rulesets. Clinching isn't even allowed in a lot of kickboxing rulesets!

Knees are like headkicks and combos to a lesser extent. Hard to land but very, very effective. At bigger weights, one knee with good KO power is almost all it takes to wind your opponent. However, you can also really easily gas yourself throwing an excess of them. High risk, high reward. Elbows I've never entirely been sold on because of the cost to get them unless your opponent has some cuts issues, which punches do just fine against in general. But! There are a few rare guys that are devastating with elbows. I don't think they're weaker than punches to be honest, and they are better at cutting people. It's not that they're bad compared to punches, it's just that they take just as long as any other skill to use and yet they can only be used in one phase of the fight. I think the reason you don't see as many of the clinch only skillsis actually because of 1) Learning taking forever and 2) Skill point caps. You literally can't take both (or even one if the fighter is slow) without big sacrifices in defensive grappling skills or no kicks - much worse tradeoffs. I think dumbing down punches in the clinch without changing anything else wouldn't make people take more knees/elbows, because it doesn't address the reasons why you don't see them as often.

Viper Club (which is practically One Man Wolf Pack Too...2) is in the process of putting together a team. We've got two people semi-dragged into it (myself and another who will both have to fire fighters to join lol) and just finalising a third (between a guy who is even more reluctant than us, a 2nd guy who is even more reluctant than that guy, and a 3rd whose feelings are currently unknown).

Really interesting stuff regarding punches and submissions not appearing to raise the points of coaches. I personally always thought wrestling had nothing to do with subs, and I guess this supports that. I just tend to have the double wrestling/bjj guys also teach it because most other grappling skills require both and it gives me the flexibility to use them for other things. The punching one is really interesting though, because the wiki very explicitly talks about it. It's very black and white, and I suppose a way to test it would be to see if a totally new build benefits at all from a MT only coach teaching punches. Looking at my own gym, I do have a guy who just teaches punches with maxed boxing and ~100 in MT, and just realised this whole time his MT has never gone up either. There's a chance this information and the wiki information can still coexist truthfully together, but that seems really strange and flies in the face of the rest. On a different note, did you notice any difference in how your clinch coach's skills raised up? Like your MT/WR were set at the same level, have they gone up at the same pace? What about boxing? I'm assuming that's gone up too, but the rate of which might not be as comparable since it was lower and 'easier' to train, but it'd be telling if it went up the same number of points as MT/WR for example. Also, reading between the lines, does this mean that your coach teaching GNP had his BJJ go up? That's another one I always thought was wrestling only.