I second this.
Redrapper, great read.
There are 3 archetypes of players:
Casuals: Bought the game and plays online or with friends only
Intermediates: Goes to tournaments but cannot reach finals
Professionals: Consistent top placers
Here’s some expected outcomes:
Casual players may never want to play in the training regimen.
Some intermediate players may never reach Station A.
Some station A players might not handle the pressure.
You can’t tell players what to do, they’re going to have to want it. WNF caters to all player types in which I believe breeds higher competition. In time casual players will want to compare their talents to others and be recognized for it. Intermediate players will play with top players long enough to learn how to break into top 8.
With the above mentioned archetypes, we’re seeing change in the way people play, learn, and enjoy street fighter before our eyes.
In other words, we’re barely a month in on a public training regimen suited for everybody.
Give it time, I think we’re more inclined to help others these days =)
I’m currently planning an extension to WNF.
All qualifying Station A players will be invited to a private session to play amongst themselves.
This event will be at another venue and will be a great opportunity to shape up before their Station A matches at WNF.
The event will take place either Thurs after WNF or the Mon before it.
I’ll fill you guys in when things are finalized.
Discuss plz.
First off it was me… but it wasn’t because I thought I couldn’t jump out of it, I thought the start up was kind of like Geif’s where like it was too late to jump and its too late to back dash. I think I said the damage was ridiculous but I mostly saying I was stupid for getting baited into it. I played another set with that guy with him and was able to beat him with much less problems, but obviously I lost when it counted (in the round robin and was vastly disappointed in myself). Thanks for keeping me nameless, but I plead guilty for being dumb. I felt like yeah every week I’m learning new things and such. Like what not to do and what to do instead. I agree wholeheartedly with you on what you said in your post.
I have something to Zaid’s post. My bit is like, help players who seek help. I usually don’t help anyone unless they come up to me and ask stuff. People who want to take their game to the next level are going to analyze their game and ask for advice. People who are going to sit there and just do everything wrong and lose and say “that character is cheap” as an excuse obviously doesn’t want to learn. I’m no hypocrite to this either. I follow what I say. People who know me/met me, know. There are times when I see players do the wrong thing consistently and I can’t bare to watch so I go up and tell them stuff.
I don’t have much to add right now because I like the way things are set up right now. I haven’t really thought much about how to change/improve things yet because every week I’m learning new things. Only thing I dislike is how overcrowded it gets in there, sometimes its hard to enjoy myself knowing that I have to wait in line. but I know that “if you don’t want to wait, don’t lose” haha. I think the waiting trains people’s consistency.
@Alex: Now that I qualified for “Station A” :wgrin: :rock: I would like to say that I like your idea of an extra trainning day specially now that EVO is around the corner. Monday sounds great since there’s no SSF4 that day any where else and is before WNF.
@Andrew: You are free!
I’ve been here since the beggining of that training regimen valle mentioned.
@Alex
I really wanna commend you on this whole thing. You, shgl, AJ, James, and the rest of the wnf came from a garage and how have a successfully weekly session at a popular venue.
My beef? None. This whole thing is waaaaay more than I thought it was gonna be. Through this it’s a bit more than just upping the playing field, it’s also having a reliable place to come to so that we can enhance our skills and techniques. Valle defenitely covered all the fields (from casual players, to the pros). Not only is this helpful, but entertaining.
@ppl who seek advice. I just wanna say, this crowd is really really intimidating at first glance. (It feels like)EVERYONE knows how to FADC, EVERYONE knows the 1 framers, EVERYONE knows how to play the game. Who can blame someone for not asking questions. The thing is you can see it on alot of pplz faces, that they are truly struggling and they truly want help. Having been in those shoes, nobody wants to feel like they are being a burden or bother to ask someone for help.
@ the usual ppl who come and ppl who truly have good knowledge of the game (Sanchez…). I’m not saying baby these guys, but when they struggle and if you can honestly see that their really trying their hardest, then give out a lending hand.
There’s this couple, the guy uses rog and his gf uses chun. You can see that these 2 really enjoy the game. To me they’re pretty decent, the thing is, once they get stuck on a match up they would turn to each other and ask for advice. The things they BOTH don’t have the answers and knowing the kind of community we are, it’s pretty scary just to ask a question. There are a bunch of theses cases all around the stations. It’s not what you (Alex Valle) has to do, I think it’s the community (as a whole) job to reach out.
That’s just my 2 cents.
Good point, Alex. Also, those are the type of people I usually come up to and offer a little advice.
That’d be great. People who got in Station A earned it.
Those two are awesome, very nice people. I’ve seen that before and I know what you mean.
I know we’re supposed to be giving suggestions, but I just want to say that every since I’ve really tried to immerse myself within this community, there have been two sides of the coin when it comes to very, very skilled individuals: Individuals who offer little help, and little respect to anyone that’s below their skill level, and the individuals who are exceptionally good, but are very willing to throw a “Try this…” during a match, or offer a helping hand to a player who’s trying to learn a tough matchup. I’d say it’s about 15%/85% respectively… but those individuals who just make themselves SEEM intimidating can easily make it difficult for people to ask questions.
I remember my first day at WNF, I was a bit intimidated, yes. Then, that one person (I don’t remember names too well, but he’s an awesome Rose player… I wish I could remember) started talking to me about the Guy/Abel matchup and the things I should do to avoid the elbow. That one moment, and the conversation that came after it, completely changed my attitude at going to live events in the most positive way possible. After that, my time a Fedex was amazing, because there too were individuals who were at semi-equal or better play than me but offered me sound advice and encouragement the entire time. Without that attitude at WNF and FFN, I don’t think I would have seen myself continuing with the fighting scene.
I guess my point here, is that I love this community. The vast majority of individuals are friendly, open, and here to compete but at the same time have fun. If everyone catered to that same attitude, and offered some friendly advice to a novice or intermediate player who doesn’t know an FADC, or how to tick throw, etc, I think we would not only see more players, but see an influx of players who are getting much better and are ready to compete with the big boys.
Gotta let SoCal represent that top 8, right? Right.
Edit: I think the station A “private” event is an awesome idea, despite me never reaching such a height! I think if they make their way there, they deserve the extra training that might take them to the top of tournaments, of course. I’d be a bit jealous myself, but I’ll earn my spot eventually. Wish I had some good suggestions atm, I’ll think of some later. 
Also, ban matches? Anyone care to elaborate? I think I get the general idea from the name… but some clarification might help.
ban matches pit players who go 0-2 on the mini tournaments against each other
The winner of that ban match tournament does not get banned. All the losers of the Ban tournament become instantly banned from attending future events unless he/she places top 8 at a respective tournament.
The idea within itself was flawed partly due to the luck of the draw in the opponents individuals faced.
There were times when good players would run into an extremely terrible match up or simply get outclassed by a better player…
Ban matches since the start of Super has been halted and many casual players of the fighting game community would agree that it was a very barbaric & humiliating (yet entertaining) idea.
The new tournament pool method is extremely efficient in helping every1
It simulates the realities of an actual major tournament.
Players are put inside pools where they will face a wide variety of characters, and there will be 2-3 players in each pool that are potential killers
The winner of each bracket are essentially qualifying to play in a simulated Top 8 tournament
Those that win a spot to station A will face the anxieties and pressures that come with playing on a big stage against high tier players.
Think about it, Level up Wednesday Nights is basically a scrimmage to an actual game
The only closest thing to a real major is the major itself
This is the best idea yet
Thanks Andy.
I think more so than that, at this point Ban matches don’t really help anyone. When we did them, it’s because people weren’t taking this seriously enough. It got everyone to get their shit together. Yes, there are people who kind of give up the win after a loss or two, but banning them isn’t going to make them come back with more ferocity, it’s going to kill their drive.
But Andy pretty much hit the nail on the head. This system is perfect. Plus, we get good food instead of having to run to Taco Bell every time we get hungry. And the Parking is slightly more decent( at least for me.)
Yeah but that’s kind of my point Andy. Is that the info’s wrong. That’s kind of vs Ibuki 101. And I’m glad you beat the guy afterwards, but we can’t be making excuses like “It’s because I thought the move was like this” or “I was trying to do this and I just didn’t execute it properly.” because that lack of knowledge or execution WILL come up in a tournament at some point if you don’t correct it.
But yes, I’m glad you agree with me. Let’s just all study what we need to every week before WnF’s so this kind of stuff doesn’t happen again. 
Everyone should play a ban match against me every week because I’m so good.
So, sooooo good.
My two cents:
First, I LOVE the current format with the mini-tournaments at each station. Normally, when people lose, they are sorta non-chalant about it. But at the station I played at last WNF, I actually saw some fire and saltiness come form players. One player in particular was really bitter when he lost a couple of his matches. I LOVED seeing that. I loved seeing his passion, and the idea of being “knocked into losers” or “being eliminated” seemed to really resonate with some of the players. It was great to see that.
So I like the idea of this more than the Round Robin as well. Because if you lose both games, you’re out, and can’t play for a while, which sucks. It’s a pretty bad punishment in and of itself. So it inspires people to wanna last longer so they can keep playing and not have to wait until the stations open up to being casual stations again.
Secondly, I wanna comment about helping people. This is DEFINITELY a responsibility of the top players out there, and it’s one that I do not take lightly at all. It’s why I do commentary the way I do, ignoring matches for long lengths of time at some points JUST to expound on important concepts that I really need to take the time to explain. I’m less trying to commentate the match and more use the match as a means by which to inspire me to explain certain key things.
Also, when I played at my pool the last WNF, every time I beat someone, I would tell them how to fight me better. I would wait until after I beat them, see if they could figure it out, but after I won, I would always try to give some advice. And after watching other matches, I would just start throwing things out a lot more. “I noticed you got hit by such and such a lot, try to Focus a lot more to bait it and follow-up with this.” “Try not to jump too much against this character.” “You can probably punish that this tactic with that other tactic.” “Try learning plinking more to help make this combo more consistent.” Those were all actual advice given out by myself to the players at the station (with details obviously removed).
If you are a top player at a station, it’s tough to spend your night where you wanna play, have fun, and kick it doing these kinds of things, but I think it’s good if you do. Take the time to watch some matches between casual players and give them advice. Take the time to point out things, give people ideas on how to counter stuff. It’s just… it helps increase the CONCEPT of critical thinking. Sometimes players just lose to stuff, and they never notice that they are losing to stuff. But as soon as you say things like, “Well, if you notice that Rufus has 3 meters and he does EX Messiah Kick, that means he’s most likely gonna Focus Cancel the Razor Kick ender with an FADC backdash if you block it. It actually has delay, try to hit it with THIS move.” It’s not that you’re educating them how to punish Rufus’s EX Messiah Kick, it’s that you’re teaching them that, hey, these are things you think about, things you notice. And that helps them, hopefully, think that way in the future in regards to other situations they run into. It’s VERY hard to learn how to think critically like that. In fact, I only JUST started FOCUSING on thinking that way thanks to Ed Ma’s speech at a recent WNF, so even though I’ve been playing for years, I didn’t think that way enough until just last year.
Thirdly, what actually may be kinda interesting to do is to feature one lopsided match on the big screen and the stream every night. I’m talking get Keno to play random guy on the stream. I forgot who said this to me, but they said that sometimes, watching an expert fight against someone who’s casual can be as educational as watching two experts fight. One, you pick up on what a character is supposed to do and how a match looks when all their shit works (oftentime, with two experts, nothing works so it LOOKS like nothing is happening, which is why you get all those negative ocmments on YouTube). Two, after watching it, we can discuss (even over the speakers or something) the match-up and what the person did wrong and what they need to take from the fight, match-up-wise and just basics-wise. Basically, interview the player and ask him what they were thinking, how they felt, what they were looking for… give them advice LIVE over the stream. Then, maybe after playing the match-up a couple more times later in the night or giving them time to let the advice sink in, have them REPLAY the fight at the end of the night. 
I dunno, just an idea.
- James
P.S. Great post, Zaid. Liked everything you had to say.
I think this is a PHENOMENAL idea. Very educational, exciting, and interesting. I would definitely put down my stick to watch and listen to that.
Its almost here… the weekend we have all been waiting for, Evolution 2010. The countless hours of practice and passion you have all dedicated to SSF4 is hopefully going to pay off. If you haven’t had a chance to battle against the best of SoCal, be sure to clear out your schedule because you need to be at the Fight. The Box Arena and LevelUp have joined forces to bring you one of the best practice sessions you may get before Evo! If you are a competitive player and wish to represent SoCal in Shankar Tablada’s “Road to Evolution” Documentary or simply wish to get in some last minute practice with the best of LA and SD we will see you at the Fight: Calm Before the Storm.
Where:
Frubble
9628 Carlton Hills Boulevard
Santee, CA 92071-1414(619) 270-1230
Date:
July 3, 2010
Time:
Casuals 2pm-4:30pm
Sign-ups close at 4:30pm
Tournament soon after
Fees:
$5 to Prize Pool
Includes 1 raffle ticket
No Tournament/House Fee
Payout:
Variable Based on # of Entrants
View Structure at TheBoxArena.com
Tournament Details:
Please View The Box Arena’s Rules For Regular Singles
Console: PS3
8 Stations all Lag Tested
Singles
Double Elimination
BYOC!!!
2/3 Rounds, 2/3 Games
Grand Finals is 3/5 Games
No Cap
Event will be live streamed - www.justin.tv/theboxarena
Official Website Post
Official SRK Post
Any Questions Please contact:
Info@ThBoxArena.com
Admin@Level-Upseries.com
We appreciate the feedback guys thanks for that.
James,
Your idea sounds really interesting, but this seems more like a feature that can be recorded rather than live. There’s unfortunately just not enough time to add a segment like that during the training regimen. If you have time, maybe we can gather a few heads and give it a try?
Since there’s no more Fed Ex Thurs (Thanks for throwing an awesome farewell party guys!), I’m gonna look for another spot for people to play at.
I’ll update with the lead I have possibly later today.
This isn’t the “Station A private event” you were talking about right? Hopefully you find something! I’m looking forward to it.
I’m down for James’ idea. It’s a chance for the “non pro’s”/ ppl who wanna see how it is at high lvl to face someone with great knowledge of the game. There’s nothing more educational than an amazing ass beating.