Power Up 2011 MK9 Stream

i know, right? i don’t know why some people get the idea the players who haven’t touched an MK game in years, if at all, are supposed to walk in and steamroll the long time MK players. haters gonna hate.

well, they should know what’s punishable. if one played an MK game going back as far as MK2. one should know that Kung Lao’s spin is punishable. if guile whiffs a flashkick in SF4 and a player misses a clear opportunity to punish it. should the commentator not comment the player missed what should be an obvious punish going all the way back to WW? blame the player’s ignorance about the franchise not the commentator.

That’s not at all what I was talking about. He said he knows a way out of the cyrax bomb trap but wouldn’t say how to get out in case someone tries it on him.

Anyone who listened to the podcast knows that. Yes, he’ll say vague things like who he thinks is best, but he’ll rarely elaborate or give you something you can use concretely in a match.

The closest thing he did to that say saying that certain moves should be punished. He even chastised players for not punishing things like Lao’s spin. Yet, he hardly ever punished those things himself.

Were you listening to him? He was claiming a lot of specific knowledge about sub-zero, but when anyone asked how to do it he pretty much told them to not bother trying to emulate him. He’s trying to keep the game to himself for sure, but in time he’ll be surpassed.

Stop the dickriding.

[quote=“mr_punk”]

It’s not at all the same in this game. We don’t have frame data, and spin isn’t obviously unsafe. It’s especially noteworthy that the person telling everyone to punish the spins couldn’t punish them himself.

In MK, it’s a lot harder to tell what’s unsafe and what isn’t. That’s why there are so many dropped punishes right now.

Please show me where he said that.
Also you can’t keep things hidden in fighting games as long as you’d like. As soon he fights a Cyrax in a tournament everyone can see what he does. If he wanted to sandbag on specific things before the major @ power up it’s his right and a smart move. You’d bet other people are saving tricks for the PDP tournament, and he probably would have too if he wasn’t banned for being a tester.
After PDP and EVO you’ll see all the information being shared, but for now I doubt it.

He explained all his top tier picks. All of them. If not on the podcast, then on the “ask me” thread on MKU, or on the character specific forums. Show me a place where YOU asked him something and he didn’t want to answer your question.

Then he ate his words in the finals on the stream. You should be happy about it rather than being pissed.
It’s still punishable by dash into full combo, just not as easy under pressure as he made it seem.

"when anyone asked how to do it"
What is “it”?! Can you even describe the so called ‘secret’ that he isn’t sharing about Sub Zero?

Stop being so sensitive and bitter…

I don’t know that the match was fixed, the final round was pretty fishy. The Johnny Cage/Kung Lao/Liu Kang matches were great and seemed honest. But Tom didn’t seem totally at home playing Noob and PerfectLegend seemed to have really come out of left field with Shang, he didn’t seem to know what he was doing with just spamming soul steal and trying to troll with powerup Noob.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been any talk about this considering what just happened with Justin and the EVO Committee.

He did stuff like that several times on the stream. I’m not going to sort through all of it and find the time where he said that. If you want to claim he didn’t do stuff like that, then it’s on you.

Similar situations happened several times throughout the tournament. I’m not here to give you a transcript of it. If you didn’t watch it and then commented about it then that’s your problem.

I’m not saying it’s not smart to do that to win a tournament. I’m saying that everyone who’s praising him for providing knowledge to the community is misplacing their praise. He’s holding the important things back.

I know that. Who cares? It’s not knowledge that we can actually USE, stuff that will actually help the community grow. Any time something like that comes up, he keeps his mouth shut.

Him not answering my specific questions is 100% irrelevant to whether or not he’s acting selfishly and against the growth of the community. Especially since I haven’t asked him anything.

That’s my entire point. The only thing remotely usable that he tried to tell us ended up being not quite so usable after all.

I can’t because he never did. He claims his methods with sub aren’t reproducible by observation, and when we ask why he refuses to answer.

I only fed you the caliber of answer that you gave me. If you don’t like it, don’t dish it out.

It was clearly fixed. Tom and Perfectlegend clearly agreed to split the pot. That’s why Tom threw his first match with PL - he had a better chance of winning the match in losers than PL did, and that way they could split first+second place instead of first+third. Art even commented that that might be what was going on.

It was cool to see the character variety, but I felt no suspense at all during those matches because I knew they were just screwing around. Major buzzkill.

Dude you are crazy and blinded by hatred.

His character guides alone cover more than 95% of whatever you need to know on a character, including the BS that makes some characters top tier.
You say he saves information for himself yet you can’t provide a link to a question in a forum he didn’t want to answer, and you don’t want to ask him questions yourself.
And now you say the tournament was rigged as well.

I have nothing to say to you really.

I’ve been a lurker to SRK for awhile (like the past 5 years?) and decided to respond to this to back him up.

I was personally watching the stream and he did in fact held information back when Arturo Sanchez (Sabin, I’m almost certain) asked Tom Brady somwhere along the lines of getting out of Cyrax’s bomb trap. Tom Brady responded something along the lines of (I’m paraphrasing here) “There is a way out but I don’t want to reveal it yet” and he said this in the context of a player trying to increase his win % without breaking any rules.

Yes I’ll admit Tom Brady share a lot of info (like Cage’s shadow kick not being punishable realistically), but he does hold information back. But be honest who doesn’t? Its not his goal or mission to educate everybody and share all the info in the world. He’s a player just like anybody else.

Now in regards to the tournament being rigged. I wouldn’t say rigged, but it is highly suspicious that PL basically curbstomps Tom Brady in Winner Finals and then at Grand Finals he picked Shang Tsung. And lets be honest he did nothing with Shang Tsung, as if he never played the character in a competitive match before. I’m not saying they colluded and split the earnings (I’m not surprise they would though), I am simply saying it is highly suspicious.

edit

I also felt like Tom Brady came off as a tad bit arrogant, but that is just me. I prefer commentators such as James Chen, Ultradavid, Yipes, Spooky, MarkMan and such. Maybe its that whole laid back thing. Another thing that irritated me was all the shoutouts. Like wtf, how many shoutouts do you need to do and then come back on stream like 3-4 different times to give even more shoutouts?

I pretty much agree with everything here. I think Tom’s done a great job of sharing knowledge especially with his guides on TYM and I saw him at the tournament and he was pretty much helping everyone there. I don’t mind him being arrogant since that’s just kind of part of how it’s always been. At least he’s disseminating some of the info. I even agree with him holding some info back for his own benefit.

On commentary, I found it helpful in a sort of post game play dissection way, but it wasn’t really adding to the hype of the tournament. Nobody wants to watch something to hear about how everyone except the announcer is mediocre. But on further viewings it’s proving useful as a training tool.
Admittedly the game kind of lacks the tools to discover much of this stuff on your own. I’d love to know what’s punishable without having to read Tom’s guides, but the lack of a record in training mode doesn’t help. Still I think he’s done a lot for the MK community and while his shoutouts etc were a bit tiresome, (Especially when he dissed Mike Ross for no reason while he was sitting there) but it’s part of his gaming personality.

On the other hand I feel a little weird about them so publicly questioning the Marvel Losers’ finals when it looks like the MK grand finals were not dissimilar. But I do think Tom and Perfect Legend completely earned their positions of 1 and 2, I just wish the final few matches of the finals hadn’t felt a bit less than perfect.

Also I feel like with the recent question of “Intentionally Underperforming” we’ve kind of entered a slippery slope. When friends/training partners go into a match like that, how much can we read into character choice/etc? Is it okay as Arturo said for them to drop the pretense and “Put on a good show?” I found the Cage stuff extremely exciting to watch, but I’m not sure if that was really Tom’s optimal character, and the question then is, is Justin Wong being punished for throwing a match or putting on a bad show? Is the difference how good a show you provide?

It’s also weird after Justin’s being DQed for pretty much the same thing (using characters he obviously wasn’t maining against a friend of his - and PL and Tom are prolly better friends than Justin and Noel).

Obviously I can’t prove that that’s what happened. But in a tournament setting where admitting splitting the pot and throwing matches can get you DQed, the show they put on is about as blatant as you’re going to get.

Disclaimer: I don’t think that Justin (and by logical extension PL and Tom, even if it didn’t happen) should be infracted. You can’t ever absolutely prove intent, and considering switching characters is a hallmark of Justin’s play, I think they should have at least given him the benefit of the doubt. I’m just saying that perceiving the lack of tension between the players was a hype killer for me.

It’s obvious PL let TB win but now i don’t have any problems with it. They’re good friends And TB been grindin it out for MK so he deserves the #1 spot

Yes and jwong did get in trouble for the same thing but difference is EVO didn’t have any power in MK9

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I don’t either really, aside from it killing my hype in my case since I noticed. MK9 is going to be at evo, so I’d imagine they’re doing a similar seeding deal. They could have penalized them in the exact same way.

I don’t think that PL and TB “fixed” the Grand Finals. I think they were both playing their best, but they were also trying to entertain the viewers. Getting people more interested in MK, while showing, “here are some usuable tactics with other characters.”

What Tom Brady holds back or gives out as info is what he holds back or gives out. He has a job too, and is it possible the people who pay him have told him not to reveal everything just yet?

i still just dont understand the mindset making you think Tom Brady owes you or anyone else shit. find out on your own. thats the idea!

I don’t think this is about Tom owing us anything, Tim. However, it is one hell of an contradiction to say that he is out to educate while he keeps information hidden. Thats like a teacher keeping a math formula from a student just so he can remain dominant in math. I have never heard of such an educator, have you? Also, why in God’s name would anybody pay Tom to keep info on how the game plays secret? People are breaking the game as we speak. It’s not like we won’t find out on our own.

Let me just make myself clear that I do not care what Tom withholds from anybody. I’m of the mindset that if I want info, I will get it from various sources, not one guy.

Yeah I pretty much agree, but considering the lack of working record in training mode and the ultra specific timing to punish some things, it’s a bit annoying, since just knowing what’s safe and what isn’t in the game is fairly tricky.

Tom Brady’s commentary is very similar to Justin’s “oh punish that!”. Yet people criticize TB and JW gets loads of support because this is SRK. He’s droppped knowledge bombs all over and should be applauded for that - brought a lot of players up to basics. Has JW done anything as deep? Probably not. Don’t know if JW still charges for FG lessons either.

Oh yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with STSFN. Being competitive doesn’t mean telling your opponent how to beat you, it’s about applying the tools yourself. MK was the better run tournament by far (even you silly button checks) and it’s a shame that it had to debut at a major this poorly received.

agreed. the guides contain more than enough info to get the non-MK player started. no player should be responsible for hand-holding and spoon feeding new MK players 24/7 who can’t take the time to figure out things on their own.

I don’t feel like he owes anyone anything. He doesn’t have to share a damn thing. Yet, for some reason, people keep going around talking like he’s freely giving away everything he knows. He’s not - he’s holding a lot back, and a lot of what he is saying in commentary is stuff that even he showed an inability to apply.