Im sure that Ojisan was playing Abel here. Thats not his main. Tho right now he is top Abel in Japan.
But his Yang is truly godlike.
One of Infiltration’s strengths is that he doesn’t show all his cards. He just finds the simplest strategy that works and spams it until his opponent adapts, and then he switches up. It’s very hard to get a read on him. That said, I think some players may have started to figure him out. I’ve never seen anyone land as many jumps on him as Xian did at NCR.
It’s pretty silly to think the guy who won Evo and the 25th Anniversary tourney is the best?
Like I said, it’s silly to argue he isn’t the best.
Which tournaments did these players win? Clearly not Evo or the 25th anniversary tourney.
I said he is the best, not that he is flawless.
It’s very silly to think this…because the fighting game scene doesn’t revolve around Evo and the 25th Anniversary tournament.
The reality was that Infiltration’s Evo bracket was extremely easy in comparison to the brackets of other top players. If you actually look it up, you will see that the only Japanese player he had to fight was Daigo, and the only international player aside from Daigo he fought, was Gamerbee…and this was all at the very end of the bracket. Compare this to other players like Haitani and others, who had to fight other Japanese players, eventually eliminating themselves. Infiltration was very fortunate in his Evo bracket, he wouldn’t have been able to do it if he had people like Kazunoko, Fuudo, all in his bracket…
Now the 25th Anniversary tournament has more merit, because he actually had to fight more killers there. That said, it was just one tournament so I’m not sure how you can conclude he was the best from this. Why not say Fuudo is the best, since he won Evo a year before as well as SBO AND Topanga League, which overall had much more stacked competition?
Well first of all, they don’t need to be actually winning tournaments…but aside from that, as I said, the fighting game scene doesn’t revolve around Evo or the 25th Anniversary tournament. Most of the top Japanese players have better (and more consistent) competition in their own backyard.
You always have these few amounts of international players (generally outnumbered) struggling to make it out to US tournaments (which they rarely come to anyway). What do you think would happen if Infiltration or say, other top American players, decided to come out to big Japanese tournaments? I don’t think Infiltration will do bad, but he definitely isn’t going to blow through the brackets like he does in the US, the competition is just too fierce. He really needs to spend some of that money to make it out, I think he will get an awakening and level himself much more in the process.
I agree but not showing your cards is something that all true top players do…it’s one of the important qualities of being a top player.
I think it’s silly to conclude anything 100%. Everything is up for debate.
The competitive scene does. I’m not concerned about how much points some dude in an arcade has, or how great somebody is in casuals. Basketball doesn’t revolve around the NBA, but the best basketball teams are the ones who win NBA titles.
Infiltration is the best because he wins the highest tournies under the most pressure.
When you face top players isn’t relevant, just that you do. He beat two of the best players in the world to win Evo.
His track record in the last 12-16 months show he is the best.
Fuudo was the best player in 2011. You don’t stay the best forever. He has been surpassed.
They do actually. Winning is how you prove your level. Somebody who never joins a tourney could be better than everybody else in the world, but we would never know it. So from what we have seen, Infiltration has shown he is the best player right now.
I know you said that, it just isn’t valid to this discussion.
Really?
You think that he would lose against Infiltration if Fei was not nerfed?
The ignorant people think this, sure. Evo and the 25th Anniversary tournament are not the highest level tournaments though, so they don’t compare to the NBA. Your point of view is really closed off from everywhere else.
The highest level tournaments are tourneys like SBO and Godsgarden, in which the average skill level of each player is much higher than that of Evo, not to mention having more god-level players at each event. What generally makes Evo hard to win is the sheer size of the bracket, not the actual skill level (until you get deeper into the brackets of course). But at a tournament like SBO or Godsgarden, almost every play is Momochi/Fuudo/Tokido/Daigo level…this is also mainly why US players that have entered these tournaments have done very poorly…and it’s not because of the random single elim format, because the US has consistently gone out on the first round, very rarely making it out.
Edit: Evo is an open tournament for everyone…this actually hurts it’s integrity as the ultimate tournament because:
- Every random can join, decreasing the average skill level of the tournament
- Takes place in the US, and we all know that the majority of the top competition is outside of the US and
- Doesn’t give free invites (or host many qualifiers) for those top international players outside of the US
SBO on the other hand, requires you to qualify for each spot. The level of play even at each qualifier, is generally higher than Evo itself, nevermind the final SBO tournament when all the spots are filled. What you get is a closed tournament where the average level of play is extremely high…practically every single player is on the level of Daigo, Fuudo, Momochi, etc.
The “highest” tourneys where most of the top competition is absent…
Yes and this doesn’t make someone the best, just like KBrad didn’t become the best by beating Infiltration.
You’d know it by following the scene and watching their matches. Just because they aren’t joining tournaments doesn’t mean “nothing is happening”. And also, they do win their tournaments in Japan, these tournaments just get less exposure usually because of a lack of advertising. Stream monsters generally only know about American tournaments because they get advertised more in the more common american sites, like SRK, Eventhubs, etc. You are missing a huge amount of footage from around the world, and I’m not just talking about Japan. These people just can’t come to Evo.
Edit: I applaud USD’s efforts to stay on top of all the international action going on but he still misses many tournaments and you end up with people not even knowing they existed. For instance, he missed yesterday’s MixupNight…SRK completely missed the KCE Cup for kof13, that happened the day before the V-1 Final (which was announced). Very very few people even knew that KCE Cup occurred, and what happened at KCE Cup was pretty important.
Anyway, I feel your perspective is extremely flawed in determining who the best players are. I don’t have an issue with Infiltration himself…he is pretty godly especially for how little he has played fighters…but saying he is the best is just a greatly misinformed statement that completely ignores everything going on outside of the US.
Evo or the 25th anniversary tourney isn’t the highest level?
It’s obvious at this point that the ignorance in this discussion is all in your court.
SBO is not a singles tourney, so it isn’t possible to use to determine who the best single player is. Godsgarden is similar to the 25th anniversary tourney with less international players.
Japanese players come out to US tournies and fail to make it out of brackets consistently, and they just aren’t losing to other Japanese dudes either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd-MZSw7to
I’m not going to post every Japanese player you mentioned losing to an American player at Evo, (suffice to say it has happened), so the idea that there is less skill or playing more Americans makes it easier is demonstrated as false.
Pretty sure most of the players you listed did not make it to top 8 at Evo or win the 25th anniversary tourney even though they entered. Infiltration has won the biggest tournies with the players you listed in them.
Winning Evo makes him the best and everything you need to win such a tourney. His track record since is keeping him up as the best. Kbrad didn’t become the best because he won a single tourney and hasn’t had the relentless amount of wins since that Infiltration has.
Should be obvious.
Nothing is happening if they aren’t winning tournies as far as establishing the best players is concerned.
But they didn’t win Evo or the 25th anniversary tourney.
You have this nonsense logic that they win local tournies with “more skill level” they must be better than Infiltration, yet when Infiltration wins Evo or the 25th anniversary tourney, tournies where these same players either lost or didn’t even qualify for, it’s because the skill level isn’t quite there?
That is nonsense.
Yeah because winning tournies with the players you listed is obviously meaningless, but winning Japanese locals, that’s the true statement of skill.
LOL exposed.
Well he did play his secondary character from vanilla SF4 back then. He played Abel on the side and mained Sagat. I was shocked he decided to switch away from Yang so close to the tournament. His Yang skills were pretty much the reason why he was invited to the event.
But yeah, he’s definitely not as good as Infiltration. Yes he won SBO but he also happened to have Kazunoko as a team-mate. I mean I’m a huge fan of him and still I don’t think he could ever do what Infiltration is now doing. I’d pay to see a ft10 between them though.
It’s another textbook case of elevating the Japanese playerbase into some pedestal of godlihood. The only thing that makes the Japanese any better than the US is the fact that they have less distance to travel to play each other. If all our top players lived just as close to each other I’m sure we’d be right on the same level as the Japanese in no time.
I just shot down the entire argument that they are the highest level, your response didn’t have any argument.
It doesn’t matter…the point is that it has much higher level.
Well first of all, last year’s EVO had some Japanese players that aren’t known to be SF4 players (or good SF4 players), such as Kiyo, Gyasu, Sange Tenchou (I bet you don’t even know who I’m talking about, with your lack of knowledge displayed so far). These players aren’t really part of the equation here.
For the ones that are top players and don’t make it out, the reason is either that they had to fight other japanese top players (this is how a number of them got sent to the losers bracket) or just the case of the bracket being so large that it is more likely for you to eventually lose at some point. This is why it’s actually pretty hard to determine a winner for a giant tournament like Evo, not because the competition is so high but because the bracket is so large.
No, since Evo is not the highest level tourney.
You’re wrong and I already explained why.
Actually my argument wasn’t based on tournaments at all, I just threw in the tournaments because it is you that value them so much. What does it matter that the tournaments are “local”, when in the end, their average player skill in the tournament is way higher than an American tournament?
You are absolutely clueless about the international scene…you are the typical stream monster that just watches American streams and listens to everything James Chen says (which is about as misinformed as the stuff you’re saying). It’s really the same kind of ignorance that breeds misinformation like Snakeyes being the best Gief, or Dieminion being the best Guile or Ricky/Wong being the best Rufus or FChamp being the best Dhalsim(James Chen doesn’t even know who is Darui or YHC Mochi).
The bottom line is this: American tournaments have an extremely extremely small subset of the world’s top players…almost all of them you will absolutely never see in an American tournament. To actually think that the fighting game scene revolves around what’s going on in America(especially when the world’s best players are absolutely not in America) shows that you are really ignorant and arrogant.
Your typical local Japanese tournament is full of players that are either as good or better(usually) than America’s top/very best players. When you have a tournament like Evo where most of these players are missing, it’s integrity as being the highest level tournament that decides who the best player is in the world, is severely diminished.
Edit: The problem with the 25th Anniversary tournament was that they only had 1 qualifier in Japan. Other players had to travel to other countries to earn their qualifier, and those players just happened to be sponsored. The rest of the players didn’t get that opportunity at all. Strangely enough, the US had 3 quaifiers in the US for AE when the top talent is OBVIOUSLY in Japan, not the US. It just makes no sense.
Look at HD Remix, they didn’t even have one qualifier for it in Japan…it was ABSOLUTELY meaningless in determining the best player in SF2 because absolutely none of the ST gods (Otochun, Yuu Vega, Taira, MAO, Kurahashi, etc etc) were even there.
No, his achievements with his Sagat were far more than with his Yang. He was just a legendary AE player all around.
Huh, so Emil’s in here talking up Japanese players now?
No point in trying to reason with the guy, Japan is always number one in his book.
i actually lean more towards emil’s argument. id like to see how infil would stack up against some of the japanese players that arent exactly household names. i keep thinking back to him getting 2-0’ed by kazunoko at CC2012(EDIT-oh hey on the page a few posts up), and it makes me question calling him the flat out best player. id agree with him being best tournament player tho because the only measuring stick for that is wins, and he has a bunch of those
I think theres truth in both of their arguments.
A lot of the more well known Japanese players come here, so you can make the argument that they are some of the top players there, and Infiltration is doing well against them at Evo.
But on the flip side, theres a ton of lesser known god like players in Japan whose personal play style may give him a ton of trouble. Everyone here does well in certain matchups, and then finds that one person who plays that character a certain way and it brain fucks you.
I’ve heard a lot of people say he struggles against lesser known players too. A very good japanese player who isnt well known is probably the best player to really hurt him.
I don’t know, but his character being nerfed isn’t relevant. Adaptation is a part of being the best.
Infiltration doesn’t have notes on lesser known players I would imagine. Could make a difference.
How is it not relevant?
Both viewpoints here are way too extreme and simple.
He tried that with Yun and it didn’t work out too well. Ryu exemplifies his play style. I am sure he would be good with any toon but he is only “the beast” with Ryu. That’s my opinion.
No you didn’t. The players you listed as the best either failed to qualify or did not win the Evo they attended that Infiltration did.
All you proved is that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Of course it matters, SBO is NOT A SINGLES TOURNEY and therefore is not relevant in determining who the SINGLE BEST PLAYER is
End of that discussion.
Maybe you don’t get it. Those players you listed attended Evo 2012. They did not win. Why didn’t they win? Because they got eliminated, some by American players.
The logic that their local tournies are a superior example of skill level is straight bullshit, because if the competition skill level in Evo was lower they would obviously make further into the tourney. They aren’t getting further into the tourney, they are losing and in many cases to American players, proving that the skill level of Evo is not significantly lower if at all.
Except that it is. If it wasn’t you list of “better players” would make it further at Evo. They don’t.
You explanation based on nonsense logic that local tournies mean more than the premier tourney in the world.
All that explains is how clueless you are.
Why are these Japanese players losing to Americans if they are so accustomed to playing locals who are “higher” skilled?
Because the idea that the locals are “higher” skilled is a myth.
Yep I’m clueless about the International scene lol
Look dude, you just seem like a Japanese fanboy who thinks your zip code is more relevant to skill level than tourney results.