Sonero

The issue with top players is that they can't sort out whether average strength of characters is better so they're running into more mid players with better tools than they used to. Because character parity is getting better, and mid level players are better equipped overall (say people like me running the cast rather than top players but at the top too), then the information you need to succeed becomes larger. That information is making games feel random. Funny enough when I tell people smaller casts are better and they flip, this is what I'm referring to.
 
The situation now too is far more perilous because a mid level player like me has significantly more, and better, practice. I'll have better understanding of match ups, I'll have more practice in them (because online got better), I'll have more access to higher end tech. The skill floor is a lot higher in some ends. That means that when a top player fucks up, they are really going to get railed hard. This wasn't necessarily the case before. Even when SRK was popping, the people who had access to the tech and access to a scene with enough quality players to prepare for match ups was a different issue. Justin is the King in MvC2, Justin also benefitted from being in a hyperbolic time chamber compared to the rest of the country in that game (this is not all dismissive of the GOAT by the way).
 
When it comes to Japan vs USA, there are some things that Japan does better overall. Had a homie who got stationed in Korea and got to play a lot of SF5 online over there. The way he talked about how "low level" players over there played compared to over here was wild. Before that though, Japan had a bigger edge in geography. The world vs Japan was really, for the most part, the world against Tokyo. Tokyo as a city had better facilities to get good at these games while having a higher concentration of players than a lot of the planet. For the older games, that meant a lot. Netplay has done a lot to make the world flourish (Japan included in this too, in respect to Strive, Verix won and the guy is from Africa...fucking wild times in FGs).
 
Yeah, older games are hard. But they're hard because they were trying to figure out how to make these things half the time. The other they were trying wild ideas which sometimes panned out, some times didn't. Games now a days are waaaay better designed overall than older ones. I love the old games too. But like Justin Wong told somebody in some interview: "In older games, a character just sucks because they have no way to combo into super." that situation doesn't really happen now a days.
 
Where things get really weird is when certain tools become too punishing that they warp situations. For better or worse, Marissa is a scrub's best friend. Marissa/Abigail/Etc type of design is basically built to carry people. They may not want to admit it in their souls, but it leads to more fraudulent wins than not. Zero in MvC3 was a career maker. Zero is easily the most fraudulent character in any VS game. There are people who got farther in tournaments playing this character than they probably had any right of doing. But hey, that's what we signed up for. Once a character can disproportionately do damage on common situations, real randomness happens. Marissa did 80% on a reversal, you got outplayed I guess.  Even in MvC2 if you still follow it, GeneralThrillah put in time with Iron Man/War Machine/Cable and grinded it out. But a lot of his wins were from random hit into 300%; that type of stuff is where things truly get random. We know there are people who are carried, we just don't talk about it. The FGC just don't have the vocabulary, insight or wisdom, to kinda talk about those things.
 
So there are a lot of factors. Drive Rush and Drive Parry are still big iffy mechanics. I don't know how you fix Drive Rush because it means reworking a lot of frame data. Don't know if you can fix drive parry at all TBH. But it can't possibly be that the games have gotten easier yet the same people are still on top.

Frame 1, bitch, Its me:
 
 

Frame 1, bitch, Its me:
 
 

Frame 1, bitch, Its me:
 
 

Everyone who disagrees with Ryan on this needs to play Marvel vs Capcom 2. That game is the ultimate slice of humble pie. We have more information than ever before about that game and it still takes so long for a new player to fit into the meta.
 
I know the exception doesn't make the rule, but I think people who never played any of these old games at a higher level are too comfortable to immediately boil down complaints about new games as old guard elitism.

Obligatory Diddy or didn't he?

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

Please no. Can't imagine RSF pressure backed up by drive rushes and drive cancels. It'd be nuts.
 
Also, considering the awesome job they did overall with release roster and season 1, how can anybody say the next four characters are disappointing? We don't know what they're going to do with them.  Odds are great that they'll be awesome to play though.  If there's any company you should give the benefit of the doubt on the positive side, its definitely this one. NRS and ASW is "eh". Like I'm hype for the next character after the one that dropped today, but if we're being real we don't know wtf is going to happen.
 
At least with SF6 I know the character is going to have some type of awesome going for it.

So you're saying there is a chance Rufus could come back 😃

V.Rosso In SF6 would be so sick. Shit, should've copped that game during the Steam sale. I liked the game a lot, unfortunately the way they did their system where you could customize everything was a big downer.
 
I like games where I can just play. Not gonna sit there and lab out super minute stuff on top of having to figure out my character.

It took me awhile to figure out why some were up and arms over my one, simple sentence. Now I know.
 
My bad. Didn't mean to offend anyone here. 😅

The month of May.  Not, you know.... 

V.Rosso In SF6 would be so sick. Shit, should've copped that game during the Steam sale. I liked the game a lot, unfortunately the way they did their system where you could customize everything was a big downer.
 
I like games where I can just play. Not gonna sit there and lab out super minute stuff on top of having to figure out my character.

People thinking i was joking, we already lost Manon

Extra hella random, but I remember in the friend suggestion section on FB, there was a profile with a Lucia image that had "Defund the Police" on it. 
 
I was cryin....