AZ Thread: Lots of events! Read 1st posts for upcoming AZ tourneys/events

Regional Matchmaking Pacific South
3601

likei said earlier. i like what NRS has setup in mk9 with on the fly balance changes. my problem is that they might get way too liberal with it and go batshit crazy with balance changes on a weekly basis before anyone has a chance to figure out a counter strategy. its a great system in place, but i just hope NRS does the right thing and try to wait things out just a little bit, each time, something seemingly overpowered pops up.

capcom has done a tremendous job balancing sf4 series, its the best theyve done for any fighter theyve ever done, by far. i thought ssf4 balance was really good. i dont think AE will be as balanced, but its still pretty good. and the game is more rushdown based, which works for me cuz thats what i prefer anyway

3602

Hey everyone.
Just wanted to let the AZ crowd know that I am at E3 this week and will be uploading all the Street Fighter x Tekken matches I can record on my YouTube account, which I will be linking tomorrow. So far I have gotten footage of Mike Ross, Clockwork and Marn playing, as well as some random players.
The game is on an early build, but its pretty fun so far. Control scheme is street fighter (6 button) layout. And very juggle friendly.

Also to anyone coming for Revelations, bring a,jacket cause its mid 50s at night here in L.A.

Sent from my EVO 4G

3603

I agree with that. I remember pretty recently on WoW, they went batshit insane on balance fixes and started changing shit because they felt like the classes they personally played shouldn’t have to deal with counter class. IMO I don’t think NR is going too crazy with the fixes. Take the Kabal blockstun infinite for example. That broke the game balance. Fixing that was clearly in the best interest. I don’t agree w/ some of them, like the Smoke OTG. He doesn’t really have much, he needed that otg and now it’s gone.

3604

Eastern Fighting Game Philosophy: Play the game and deal you fucking pussies!

So where/when will the AE meet ups start happening? The best DeeJay in AZ wants some live practice…

3605

Okay. Now that I’ve had some time to play Yun in training mode (Though I’m still garbage), he’s too fun. This’ll keep me interested, I think.

3606

they got rid of smoke otg? wtf. guess thats why i havent seen that character at all heh

3607

every replay I’ve noticed has yun in a match.
I hope evo isn’t like it either.

Rufus its a good match up against the twins. I’m still afraid of
Makoto

3608

Fathasha, thanks for the heads up man!

Speaking of Revelations…We have a spot available if anyone wants go last minute. Me, Arnold and Diante so far. We will have two Cali kats roomin w/ us up there as well. Hit me up for details if you can make it 602-565-0831. We will be leaving Friday during the day and heading back Sunday night after finals.

3609

well, you also have to understand that these are new characters, 99% of the people playing havent played ae til today, so they are all messing with the new characters like its a new toy. and the fact they come from a very popular game, and they are solid characters. give it a few weeks and it will even out better. i remember first 2 weeks at mgl, it was all twins. its expected

3610

Wait wait 3sO comes out THIS summer? Why did I sell my stick earlier this year FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

3611

So im playing Tekken 6,MvC3 and AE this week and i have to say that im so confused sometimes playing such diverse games!

3612

arnul, try playing various sf games. that shit is insanely confusing. go play 3s and youll start doing universal overheads when you thought you could focus attack, or do dp fadc, then realize the shit isnt in the game. then you go to sf4 and you try to parry everything haha

3613

Thats because your a scrub :slight_smile:

3614

Although I can see that the NRS, or “Western” game balancing methodologies can be helpful, I think that the way it is being used is really a reflection of poor system/ game mechanics design, and a huge lack of foresight by NRS designers. There is really a sense of apprehensiveness about MK9 that makes it a chore to play. Nothing is really set in stone. For the most part, any strat/technique is going to be closely watched and scrutinized, and when it grows past some arbitrary limit set by NRS, it will be ghost patched. This is freaking absurd. There is no time to see what counter strats are formed, how the meta game grows or what kind of character specific strats are created because of these game play elements. What sucks more is that it ultimately leads to overall character/play style homogenization, as every character stays around, just under or just above this arbitrary ceiling. This ultimately points to the designers deciding for you what you can and can’t handle, what techniques are simply too much for the playerbase to adapt to, which is actually somewhat insulting.

I think that Capcom has a real air or confidence in their design implementation. For the most part, they hit a wall of opposition every time they make balance changes or release new games with new mechanics, but we play the freaking hell out of the games, and the games dominate competitive fighting game scenes. They do all of this without constant updates or second guessing of their design decisions. Best of all, we have time to adapt, and increase our knowledge of the game by being tasked with HAVING to explore our full range of options to deal with a situation, rather than bitching as a collective whole that something is currently hard to deal with and forcing a change.

Fighting game design is like advanced illustration. Capcom makes bold, confident strokes, lays down solid foundational lines and hammers in details, while NRS blasts lines on the paper and erases what doesn’t work, then puts it into photoshop to makes adjustments for proportion/compositional/perspective mistakes which should have been handled in the initial phases of the piece.

3615

I disagree with that. NRS gave plenty of time between tournaments and major tournaments to see where something is causing an issue. I mentioned earlier that they didn’t patch out the Kabal blockstun infinite until AFTER UFGT7. This infinite was even present (and used) in the PDP MK tourney. How are you going to grow a metagame around Kabal and Sonya’s blockstun infinite? You can’t. You have to block sometime, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He can zone you out if you think you’re getting smart.

You can’t patch a strategy unless you are relying on a gimmick that was clearly unbalanced (for example, Kabal blockstun infinite) If they took away an unintended mechanic, you relied on that and you no longer have it, you lose games because of it, that is your problem. You never really learned the character, you learned how to abuse a gimmick. Quan Chi’s mixup was recently nerfed. I believe it is the air stomp that leads into a scary mixup. The mixup itself still works, it’s a valid strategy, however it isn’t as fast as it used to be so that gives a better window to defend against it.

Characters are designed with certain movesets and those movesets make a character play a unique way. That’s never going to change. Look at how homogenized Marvel is. ABCD super or ABC DHC trick ABC Super DHC DHC or Air throw OTG ABC. That’s not important. What’s important is how you like to play and who has what tools that suit your particular style of play. To me, I play characters based on appeal. I like RE, so I play Wesker. I like CMA (chinese martial arts), so Kung Lao appealed a lot to me.

Is that enough to be competitive? Maybe, maybe not. Jill and Chris for example are lower tier but that is supplemented by being combo extensions for Wesker and giving him a teleport mixup. There are better characters that serve this purpose (for example, Spencer’s Armor Piercer and Doom’s Plasma Beam) but this is what I like to play.

I think that people are so used to abusing game mechanics, playing only around top tiers, that people have forgotten how to truly learn to play their character or team. Once a better player comes by, and bring that to a crumble, people go back and see what else they can abuse. Often times completely dropping the character they liked to play.

Capcom games are well designed but they are not immune to imbalance. No fighting game franchise is for that matter. Look at Guilty Gear. We have GGXX, GGXX #Reload, GGXX Slash, GGXX Accent Core and Accent Core+. Then we have BlazBlue Calamity Trigger, Continuum Shift and Continuum Shift 2. If you do not have a way for the game to evolve, it only ends up on it’s death bed. Guilty Gear is the best example of this. They have abused the player-base so much that they had to create a new series. Is this what you really want for the Capcom games you love?

3616

Armando, are you doing Marvel or AE tonight? Or MK? I haven’t seen anyone competent play that game yet.

3617

Frankly I think Guilty Gear is a bad example of this. That game, for the most part, is very well respected and the player base as a whole is pining for a sequel. And again, I am in no way against having access to fixing issues in game play via hot fixes or fixing broken aspects of characters. What I am against is using that system as a safety net for allowing poorly thought out implementation of character specific game play aspects. It is not the run infinite, or any of the other BS that was rampant in MK9 that bothers me, as much as it is the small things that DO homogenize the game play. For example, Baraka has issues, NRS response, add damage to most moves, decrease damage scaling for Baraka, (character specific universal value adjustments are BS btw) and increase the pop up on his low hitting launch chain so it can make combo ops and chain into itself. Boom, suddenly Baraka is not Baraka, but a slightly different version of Kang. That is my issue with this type of BS. It is not well thought out. Baraka players bitched, fixes came in, and nothing was technically fixed for Baraka as much as he was given hit stun, launch height increases to increase damage potential, but no thought was put into How Baraka is SUPPOSED to play. These are fast knee jerk reactions to appease a player base that still doesn’t understand the game. There is nothing of note to compare it to. (MvC3 for example still has a very large base to draw ideas, test cases, character style archetypes in the VS family) MK9 is a hodgepodge of what NRS thinks worked in MK2/MK3 with a chain system from DA/Armagedon, and some half baked stance switching concepts that, for the most part, are barely elaborated on, let alone fully understood by even the advanced player base.

Seriously, I don’t hate this game, and I don’t think that having hooks into the spreadsheets that can control variables associated to move sets as a safe guard against serious balance issues instituted. I have an issue with using that as a way to make constant adjustments without regard for the overall feel of the game play, or for the resourcefulness of your player base.

Then again, this could in-fact, be exactly the way NRS wants MK9 to play out. We play, find broken or slightly unsavory stuff, they fix it, and we, as a collective whole, build the overall competitive landscape of MK9 through micromanagement of our casual and tournament play. It is an interesting idea, and a very interesting social experiment, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it great design, and certainly not a preferable method of balancing for competitive play.

This is NRS’s first shot at this type of game balancing, and frankly, there is a library of SF/VS/KOF/GG/VF/Tekken games that use the tried and true method of designing systems from the ground up with the specific goal of balanced, competitive game play. If MK9 is all we have to show for this “western” fighting game balance theory, it is a pretty questionable and rocky start.

3618

Hey, just wanna spam this out there one more time:

A new hobby shop is running an MvC3 double-elimination tourney tonight and every other Wednesday. Entry is $5, tourney starts at 7. Even if you don’t participate, come by to check it out and tell friends about it. The place doesn’t have a sign yet, but it’s called Manawerx and is at 49th Ave and Thunderbird in Glendale. You can’t miss it. Just follow the smell of nerds (not really, please come).

3619

I might head down there, heads up tho a really old,white,pale, tube sock wearing guy might show up and scare your potential entries away! Do you have some type of age restriction?

3620

Lol