delete_me

I don't think themed DLC is a good idea because, yes, on one hand you make a specific audience really happy, but if someone doesn't care too much for FF, you're basically not selling them anything for an entire year. There's no real common denominator with the first four DLC characters and I'd expect this to continue moving forward. If I had to take a gamble I'd say there's probably one newcomer per season, but other than that it's likely just whoever they feel like adding.

Joke's on Punk, Blanka is a charge character, he has to hold back (= block) at some point. But nice to see him on the complain train already, dude never grows up. From my noobish perspective I think it's a bit dumb that heavy Blanka Ball is completely safe on block unless you Perfect Parry it. But the character is severely underused, meaning nobody has much experience against him, so it's kind of nonsensical to complain about him at this stage.

Something I didn't realise with Modern is that you can still do standard motions and get the special without a damage penalty. That makes them incredibly good for a character like Gief who can use normal SPD inputs during the match but instant Super (with reduced, but still good damage) to punish things you'd otherwise not be able to. Not quite sure how I feel about that, I think it should be a 1 or 2 situation, not a mix. But we'll have to see how it pans out.

The balance between localising and translating has always been a fine one. This isn't a new thing and has been done since the very beginning. Just mentioning Poison for example sends people into a pointless spiral of discussions because different monikers were used to describe her in Japan vs. the United States. I have to do a lot of three-way translations in my job between English, French and German and even those three languages from the same continent, sharing some words and Latin etymology can produce very different meanings if you just translate 1:1. "To each their own" is a perfectly acceptable idiom in English but carries extremely heavy and questionable baggage in Germany because the saying was written in capital letters above the entrance to a concentration camp during WW2. Just to give one of many, many examples you'll come across in those scenarios. Capcom's only mistake here is making this info public and therefore waking up people who have no idea what they're talking about. The fact one of those twitter idiots used the word censorship makes my blood boil.

Yeah, it kind of adapts midway beyond just the rank you're at. I noticed this when doing my placement matches with Lily where I got Gold opponents at the beginning, then it went to Platinum and the last two (which I lost to) were Diamond. It's not a bad system actually, it's as if some invisible mentor was watching you, deciding to put you up against someone stronger and then going "Ah, the noob wasn't ready" before throwing you back where you belong.

It's the mid-combo extensions I dislike and Manon basically has to use those at every opportunity because she has no Medium or Heavy Links. The way I play on controller it's a really uncomfortable motion to use so often, but I'm okay with spending the bar for oki or getting some plus frames in neutral. I just don't want it to be totally omnipresent during gameplay. There's also a chance the game just isn't for me but figuring that out will take a few more weeks. I also don't know what the intermediate rank is right now but I'm 100% convinced I'll never get out of Platinum.

I think I came to the conclusion that I don't really like the Drive system? Not entirely sure yet, but the constant "poke into double-forward" playstyle isn't doing it for me, it's very odd to play a game like this. Obviously that's super subjective but I wonder if there are characters who can still be effective without it. Dhalsim maybe with his strong OD specials?

I also think Chun works better with a slightly more cartoonish look due to her proportions, so I prefer her SFV version. Blanka might be in the same boat, but I don't care too much about that character in general. I'm okay with how everyone else looks.

Same here. I'm okay with the dizzy state when you're in burnout but other than that I feel it makes corner pressure a tad too simple. There's already throw loops and throw baits can lead to so much damage, add that on top of the usual disadvantages when cornered and it seems a bit too much. On the other hand I suppose you could argue that the game has three defensive mechanics that allow you to counter it (or two and a half) but the mental stack when cornered in this game can be massive.

I wonder how many years it'll take until people realise they can skip the win animation.

Just for the heck of it I decided to do my placement matches with Lily and ended up in Platinum 4, which is the highest rank among the three characters I've taken to that mode so far. I can see why she's considered bad in higher ranks because her conversions are a bit odd and you have to find spots to charge her windbuff (which btw. seems impossible to do in the JP matchup) but she's almost Marisa levels of braindead up until low/mid Platinum IMO. Just get the buff, fly in with Condor Spire, mash SPD until they start holding up, then switch to mashing cr.LP until the start blocking, then go back to mashing SPD. It's like playing Mika in Week 1 in SFV when everyone was just blocking her charged HK instead of challenging it. No offense @TWINBLADES, I'm sure you outplayed all your opponents.👨‍🎓

JP is a character where I actually see myself changing opinion on the matchup while playing it, wich probably means it's relatively balanced. Like he does with most characters he completely dominates her from full screen, but if you get to mid-screen you can actually punish him with either light or medium QCB Kick when he tries to go for any of his projectiles, while also having st.HK at your disposal which he can only really contest with jumping HP (oddly, neutral jumps from mid-screen can be very good vs. Manon with a lot of characters). After knockdown the mindgame about whether or not he'll wake up with EX counter starts but if you bait it a few times and ideally use those instances to level up your grabs they will start to panic in later rounds. I think Guile gives her more trouble, as does Dhalsim and, surprisingly, a solid Ryu. I also also have trouble against Blanka, but that's likely more of a player than a character thing.

Further proof that the Gi she's normally wearing is humanity's worst enemy:

Fixed.

I'd take a dick move from Manon over payment every day of the week.

I don't really think she's easy mode. She's a robbery character for sure but you still have to find an opening and an opportunity and capitalise on it, she doesn't really have any "hold that" tools outside of the basic system mechanics everyone has access to. But then again from Platinum onwards the easy mode doesn't really exist anymore anyway. Even Honda has to start working a little at that rank.

Unlike Ryu it's an absolute necessity to use training mode to learn how to deal with some of Ken's stuff, meaning that on lower ranks where people don't do that he has tons of abusable stuff. For example, just constantly doing his Jinrai Kick and alternating between the low and overhead follow-ups pretty much gets you into Gold without using a single brain cell. And I think below Gold is the largest playerbase at the moment.

Does anyone know what you can do with those Buckler Points you earn on https://www.streetfighter.com/6/buckler/ or is that just some sort of highscore that builds up in the background while doing stuff?

It's rather fitting that Ryu and Nina look like they were added at the very last minute after some intern stumbled upon the name Breath of Fire in the archives.

Damn, this is godlike: https://twitter.com/Orion_OG/status/1667715571536871425 Edit: no idea how to embed twitter stuff but it's a custom character that looks like Nightcrawler.

The only slight similarity I can find to 5 is Punish Counter, which is an extremely toned down version of Crush Counter (or rather, better differentiating between punishes and counter hits), but other than that there's really not much overlap.

Yeah, that Premium Pass makes it very easy to just completely ignore it IMO, which is absolutely the best-case scenario I can think of regarding Battlepasses.

I noticed today how much I like fighting Gief as Manon. I don't know if Gief players feel the same way, but there's something about this matchup that makes the whole Medal metagame more impactful than others, because it completely shifts the power balance at close range depending on how many of those Manon has. I think she wins the neutral game, but st.HK is very susceptible to DI, so it's definitely not one-sided either. On the other hand, I absolutely despise facing Lily. Goddamn what a boring character to go up against. Maybe Lily players are more proactive at higher ranks but in Platinum they're just sitting on one side of the screen waiting for you to get into HP range so they can safely buff themselves.

This whole DI situation is starting to sour my enjoyment a bit. I still only can react to it when I have a read and even then it's roughly 50% success. I was willing to accept that it's part of the learning process but basically every opponent I come across counters my attempts every time, t the point where I deliberately tried only using it once par game and even then they did, so it's pure reaction on their part. Some even counter it with Super which blows my mind, I barely register the move by the point it hits and they input a Super motion in that time. Considering how impactful the outcomes of these exchanges can be, particularly in the corner, it sometimes feels like we could just do a reaction test on the VS screen and declare the winner off that. I know this sounds whiny and all, but I've never come across a system mechanic that's purely reaction-based like this, so there's only so much I can do to improve.

I don't know what conditions trigger it, but that alternate soundtrack that sometimes plays in the Fighting Ground when the background pulses is absolutely godlike.