Alright, how about this then… do you guys think Daigo dropped Akuma because he thought Akuma was worse than Ryu? Do you guys think that Daigo would drop Ryu if a character like Juri, Vega, Gen, or maybe Ibuki was buffed to the point where they went 7-3 against Ryu?
I think Daigo dropped Akuma because it didn’t fit his style. Watch some of the matches he played at tournaments using Akuma in early AE2012. He played Akuma almost exactly like he plays Ryu but with a teleport and dive kick. Very fundamentally sound, always go for optimum damage, mostly just zone the opponent but don’t back off.
If a character went 7-3 against Ryu I think that Daigo would still main Ryu but he’d pick up an alt specifically for those matchups just like a number of top players have. Momochi plays Cody, Akuma, and Ken. Bonchan plays Sagat and Akuma. Gamerbee has Cammy as his alt option in Topanga league and has been known to alt Yun (did so at the SF 25th). Justin Wong plays Rufus and Adon. Poongko is running Seth and Cammy in Topanga. ect ect ect
Ryu is 7-3 against Sim and Fei and Daigo still stuck with Ryu.
Pretty sure that was only in AE and that they are both 6-4 now.
Ryu is NOT 7-3 against Fei and Sim. Those are 6-4s at worst, especially Sim since he wins fireballs trades with Sim’s s.fp.
No. Probably just more comfortable playing Ryu.
I think Daigo dropped Akuma because he couldn’t safe shoryu into a comeback mechanic when he was losing…
Japan’s top players are not roughly about the same as the best US players. In tournament settings, you would be led to believe this because of the high variance best of 3 format. They would be beaten in longer sets( not by a huge amount just it would become more evident with increasing sample size) . They are not that far behind but they are not on the same level either . A lot of the US fg community wrongfully judges player strength off of their tournaments. Of course it’s a good indicator but nearly enough data to properly assess things.
There is no proof of this or any statement a Japanese player has made. Also Japan’s biggest tournament (SBO) was single elimination which the players in the US are completely terrible at.
Are there statements of top players both Japanese players and top US players saying their very top players are on the same level? Yes
Eh…there is no statement by a japanese player( that I know of). Daigo once said that they had caught up but I honestly think he was just being a good representative for his sponsor and telling the interviewer what they wanted to hear. There are no long sets between players ( that I know of) that I can reference , but the proof overwhelmingly lies in tournament results. Who won evo 2009,2010,2011? Japanese top players. Since the US fgc likes to base most of their judgement off this tournament ( which is very naive might I add) , then they must clearly see that their top players have not performed to the same standard that the japanese have, despite outnumbering them many times over. If you just look at EVO , you could even say the US have fallen behind after 2010’s evo. There were 5 in top 8 in 2009/2010, 2 in 2011 ( 3 if your counting latif) and 2 in 2012. That’s your main tournament, so there’s a little bit of evidence for you.
Wasn’t it a US player in the finals of those Evo’s?
How many JP players in the top 8 for 2012?
Interesting enough every GF between 2009 and 2011 was one US player and a JP player, neither got to GF in 2012
I’m sorry, Japanese players are not at the top alone anymore, they can only have the series before everyone a year early for so long (they got vanilla one year earlier). People will eventually catch up.
At EVO 2010 and 2012 only Daigo was in the top 8 from Japan and in 2011 again there was the time advantage. There was an arcade cabinet release 6months before AE came out on consoles which given the weak arcade scene in the US and Europe meant Japan had a HUGE headstart with Yun and the balance changes. There was a bunch of road to evo 2011 tournaments that were run using the SSF4 balance version as the console port didn’t come out till just over a month before EVO.
Also at the recent “MCZ Unveiled” tournament Daigo beat Alex Valle 5-3 in a FT5. A pretty close set of matches against a person who isn’t even considered the best of the best anymore (not to knock Valle, he is still an AMAZING player but he spends a lot more of his time now doing stuff like running tournaments and levelup and basically making the FGC much better. I bet if he just concentrated on SF4 and took his old man pills and rubbed bengay on his arthritic hands he’d show all of us whippersnappers a thing or two.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQD3XbJNOJk
Also here is a long set between PR Balrog and Gamerbee (Taiwanese but considered one of the best)
PR Rog wins 5-4 in a VERY close set.
Here is Mago vs Latif in a first to 3 which ends with Latif losing 3-2 in a fairly close set of matches except for the final round where Latif does "YOLO ULTRA"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_n7A8lliOM
Nobody is doubting Japan is top still. But the best of the best on both sides are equal, the difference is that there are only a handful of top US players on par with a much larger pool of Japanese top players and that the mid/upper class of japanese player is above and beyond the level of skill of the mid/upper class US player.
There are no American players on par with Fuudo, Daigo, Momochi, Xian, URyo, Kindevu, Tokido, YHC Mochi, Kazunoko, Sako, etc etc etc etc etc
Just because you point to some matches where they came close to winning the set (or even won the set) doesn’t mean they are suddenly on par. There are definitely players that have improved a great deal…I’m actually pretty impressed with Sanford’s Sagat, for instance…but there’s no doubt they are not on the level quite yet of the players I mentioned. There are many factors that influence how good a player is, beyond just looking at the scores (though if you do look at the scores and tournament results, you will see an overwhelming majority of Japanese over American victories).
Another nonsensical post.
There were very few Japanese players at Evo 2009-2010, they are outnumbered by a factor of like 1:500 or worse. There were a slight bit more players in 2012 and more in 2013, though they ended up eliminating themselves on many occasions. I see a lot of people being selective in a pretty obvious way…you have Japan player X defeating 10 different Americans(good and bad players)…he loses to the 11th and somehow America is on the level of Japan, seriously?
When a country is outnumbered by such a ridiculous scale, and most of their players are placing high (and winning), this itself shows that the skill gap is huge…also “Dieminion: Japan is still way past the American level of play.”
Edit: Seriously, imagine what would happen if Evo was a 1K man tournament where half of the players were Japanese and half were American (compared to what it usually is, which is 1000+ Americans and about 5-10 Japanese players).
This guy is hilarious and stuck in 2011. Haven’t you noticed that several of these Japanese players are not even coming to US tournaments as much as they did in 2011 and before that? They are not guaranteed or easy wins anymore, Momochi got bopped by a Marvel player at NCR and Xian is not even Japanese.
Have you ever thought for a second that the reason you know about these players is because they actually invest to come to the US? Similar to how Justin Wong, Dieminion, Latif etc… all go to Japan?
Guys, it’s very obvious, Emil is either:
1- A troll
2- Has a fetish for Japanese dicks being shoved up his ass
He’s sad either way and people are giving him more attention than he deserves. Top US players can compete with top Japanese players, that’s a fact otherwise no US player would have defeated the Japanese and we know that’s not true. Japanese are overall superior when it comes to below that “top players” level, an average Japanese player is most probably better than your average American player, the great Japanese community (both offline arcades and excellent online access) is the main reason for that.
Rofl? Firstly, more Japanese players have been coming now than in 2011…but once again you miss the very important and obvious detail that it costs $2000+ for them to fly over to the US, money that most of them DO NOT HAVE.
Bopped? Yeah, you’re on my ignore list now based on how utterly delusional you are. Momochi got bopped in the same sense that your Latif got bopped 3-2 last round by Mago in the video linked by Eternal.
Edit: Momochi bopped Fanatiq in Marvel, this is actually a far worse things to happen.
Oh lets not forget Momochi destroying Wong and Ricky in SFxT even though he doesn’t play the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYfMecliSqE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0m42fNk6co
Just throwing around your faulty logic, I don’t actually believe in it.
Yeah because you know I’m not just talking about the Japanese players, obviously.
Lol, this is so contrary to the truth, not even funny? I knew about all of these players before any of them came to the US. I’ve been following the SF4 Japanese scene since the very first release back in 2008, watching every tournament I can find. Also most of the players that I know (and that you probably don’t), never came to the US and probably never will. Learn something about the scene.
You are a flag waving delusional american patriot. Defeating a Japanese player doesn’t mean you are better than them or even on their level. The fact that you are even still stuck on this elementary level of thinking shows you are not worth debating against because your level of understanding is so low.
You also know nothing about culture and how greatly having a different cultural perception affects skill level. You can delude yourself all you want that the Japanese are only better because their country is smaller and their players are more concentrated…the real reason are actually too hard for the typical American to accept, and it relates to their perception of life in general. It’s exactly why the best American players might say “yeah we’re on the level of the best” while the best Japanese players (which are already better) would say “well, there is still a lot more I need to improve”, even coming from grandmaster players like Kazunoko. Their philosophy is based on self improvement, and setting a bar far beyond that they work towards achieving. They’re generally never really satisfied with their level, as they always look for new ways to improve. The general American attitude centers around throwing egos around and “I’m the best” ego wars settled by money matches. The general lack of achievement of the lives of many American players, makes them popoff when they finally achieve something marginally important(because it’s so rare), while for many Japanese players, it’s a very common, not to mention small and insignificant victory in the grand scheme of things. Many Americans fail to see the bigger picture.
You heard it here first fellas: beating a Japanese player doesn’t even put you on their LEVEL, much less being better. Jesus do you even listen to yourself? Why even play the game when the Japanese show up? Clearly their cultural advantage makes them so far ahead of us any wins we might manage are just due to format or luck anyway right?
Fucking ridiculous.
This posts containts a TON of obviously poor thought out processes.
First off 2009 and 2010 last I checked SF4 didn’t even have more than 600-700 entrants at most. So you basically are claiming that only 1 japanese player went to Evo those years.
Second off, Evo is open to all skill levels and players, you can’t use the number of American entrants as a basis of skill as 85% of the entrants at EVO aren’t anywhere close to the top yet. The number of players does increase some of the ‘random’ chance but that is helped to be removed by the best of 3 aspect that helps consistency show through rather than luck more often than not. The number of top japanese compared to top US contenders at EVO most years is probably like 1:5. Still a big gap but not as horrible as you put it. Don’t forget I’ve said that the top of the top, the best like 8-12 players in the entire US are the only ones on par with the top Japanese. Players like Latif, ChrisG, Justin Wong, PR Rog, Ricky Ortiz, Dieminion, and a handful of others. There are some really strong players in the US that I don’t think are on the same level as Daigo or Fuudo or Tokido. I wouldn’t put Juicebox or Mike Ross or FChamp(currently. Maybe if he dropped marvel.), or even Combofiend on the same level as those top players from Japan but they are strong.
If it was a 500vs500 of course Japan would win. Almost everyone here has agreed that the mid level player from Japan is miles ahead of the mid level player from USA and there is certainly not 500 “top” players from EITHER country. At best I could probably gather maybe 50 top Japanese and 40-50 top USA players and have that be considered somewhat equal. But it’d likely be in Japans favor because there is only like 8-12 top US players on par with around the top 30-40 japanese players.