TWINBLADES

This whole podcast makes everybody here look like the worst type of smug asshole.
 
There's some level of zero self awareness from top FG players that's makes me not wanna be involved with the whole scene TBH.

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.

Given all the work they did to put Gato in KOFXV. He's a given.

I can't wait to see Kevin in this new Garou, it's gonna be crazy.

Hmmm
 
 

Garou is on sale for 5 dollars on the steam sale.
 
If you wanna get a head start on dumb degenerate stuff, its a worthwhile investment. Looks like Garou sequel plays very similar to the original. So it wouldn't be bad to start building some muscle memory for feint cancels. They aren't hard but they are tricky.

Where are his detractors now

SF6 AT HOME LETS GO!

SF6 AT HOME LETS GO!

SF6 AT HOME LETS GO!

SF6 AT HOME LETS GO!

SF6 AT HOME LETS GO!

SF6 AT HOME LETS GO!

SF6 AT HOME LETS GO!

SF6 AT HOME LETS GO!

Kaine is gonna be the JP of this game and I'm gonna hate all of the edge lords that are gonna main him.

If make you feel better, 25% of them will pick Evil Remy

 

Kaine is gonna be the JP of this game and I'm gonna hate all of the edge lords that are gonna main him.

Hmm.....