in the US most played has to be ken. no one plays chun thats good anyway, some yuns bu most i see is ken and dudley and alex
Judging by tourneys I’ve been to, I see Kens and Dudleys the most, they are the most popular. Then you see alot of Chuns, Ryus, Akumas then you’ll have your Uriens, Makotos, and Yuns. You will probably see a couple Yangs, Alexs, Hugos, Necros, Ibukis also here and there.
Rarely you will see Q, Elena, Oro (unless I am there lol).
You NEVER see Seans, unless someone is fucking around, or Remys or Twelves.
Yun is alot less played then you might think. I saw more Alex players at EVo 2k5 then Yuns, which really shocked me.
Yun’s learning curve is obviously way too high for tons of people to be picking him. He’s top tier but…like Eddie back in GG # Reload…if you don’t know what you’re doing with him you might as well pick someone easier to use in a tournament situation. You have to invest a lot of time into Yun to learn how his Genei Jin works cuz every matchup has different setups/combos. I’ve seen people go into tournaments and fail with Yun because they obviously don’t know their setups against certain characters. You have to get some kind of exposure against just about every character or you’ll fuck up in a tournament and lose. There’s a lot of characters in the game that are flat out better than Yun when he doesn’t have bar so a lot of up and coming Yun players tend to fuck up on that. They get rushed the fuck down when they don’t have bar and never get the chance to use Genei and fall on their face. Which in turn they end up using another character as a back up. Mainly the other two tops.
Yup Yup Yup.
Same thing with Makoto/Urien. Strong fuckin character, steep learning curve.
Err actually on second thought, it might be steep execution curve, or whatever you wanna call it, with those two. I for one have a hell of a hard time executing Uriens charge partitions and Makotos 100% stun combos.
I see plenty of yuns around LA.
In the places I usually play, that is Family Fun and Interface arcades in Los Angeles and the MD/VA/DC, character usage is actually pretty spread out. Ken still probably has the highest individual rate of character usage, but I see lots of Chuns, Yuns, Uriens, Makotos, Alexes, Ryus, and Hugos, and there are also a couple Dudleys, Necros, Ibukis, Oros, Twelves, Qs, and Elenas. The only characters I practically never come across are Yang, Remy, and Sean.
In the US as a whole, it seems to me like Ken runs away with it. In fact, in my experience against UK, French, Dutch, and German players, Ken runs away with it still.
I think an execution curve is one thing for all three characters, but I’d say learning curve goes with it, too, especially with a character like Yun, since he takes extra damage and isn’t very effective without meter, whereas Makoto and Urien can still dish out huge damage without a stock ready. I mean, at lower-level play, simply mixing up high/low/karakusa/hayate mixups will scrub you some wins, and so can simple corner Aegis shenanigans (no unblockable/mixup required!), but I never see stuff like that happen with Yun.
Ken easily would have to be the most used.
I think most of Yun’s learning curve actually comes from learning how to fight WITHOUT genei-jin. When I was first learning 3s I used Ken. I switched to Yun because he was a cool character and I liked his style. During this time I tried out many characters and learn their basics even with the intent of using Yun as my main. Urien, Makoto and ryu really stood out to me. I learned all the Genei-jin shit I needed in about 2 months. I started getting owned by Kens, Chuns, the occasional Urien and even gasp alex for free. Every time I would lose I would switch to Urien, Makoto, Ken, Ryu even a random character to fuck around with and win. I was baffled by this and it brought me to a time where I fealt really shitty about not being able to handle Yun. Well I practiced ALOT and now I would have to say my Yun has gotten pretty solid, but it definately took alot of losses to use as learning experiences.
With Urien it really depends. I never really had any trouble learning Partitions and buffers. I had them down in an hour or so, but none of the other Uriens I ever see/play (a shitload) ever use any of that which is surprising since he is one of the most common character I see besides shotos.
Around Austin it seems to be Ken, Dudley, then Yun. every so often someone will give a nice change of pace to the machine but outside of my friends and I it seems those are the only ones ever played at my local arcade.
i threw a rock in a socal arcade and hit 3 ken players in the head
Here in the UK, Ken, Urien and Dudley are the most popular, fo’ sure.
Around here in the midwest, just got into the game recently so ive just began to meet a good size group of people, most people play as…
Ken, Chun Li, Urien, Yun all equally
than…
a good amount of Makoto’s =), Dudleys, akuma’s, and ryu’s.
than…
everyone else gets played here and there, except twelve. I mean EVERYONE but twelve…its strange huh. Well no gills either but who cares about gill
I think I see, in order: Ken, Chun, Yun, Dudley, Urien, Ryu, Hugo, everyone else… seeing a significant rise in hugos recently, kind of odd
Ken, Dudley, and Denjin-Ryu.
Where I play, there is basically no such thing as a non-Shoto player, save for myself and a handful of others, literally. I know of around five people including myself that don’t play Ken/Ryu/Akuma. Ken ties with Akuma for majority vote at my arcade, followed by Ryu. I know of one Makoto player, an Ibuki/Yang player (me), an old housemate who plays Q, and a couple of players who know how to play about basically everyone.