Sup, I’ve been competing in games since '99 and aok, and have been through many RTS and FPS games, but sc2 is the first fighting game I’ve liked, and am wondering if it’s worth getting competitive.
everything on sc.com is ps2 and arcade, though I happily like my xbox. Anyone hooked up to any xbox sc2 competitions, or is the scene non-existant?
Dude, PS2 is the same as Xbox.
Nobody likes it competitively anymore… step abuse, X whores, etc.
The game really does suck…sorry, but it’s true. i think it might be hard for u to find good comp since most of the people who play SC are scrubs (this is the same with doa, another awful game). Good luck with finding good people though.
ok, then answer me this: what is the premier fighting game as a competitive platform? (aka what Counterstrike is/was for FPS, and Starcraft was for RTS)
SC2 owns DOA. It isn’t that bad.
Anyways, for 3D fighters VF4:Evolution and Tekken4/TTT are the forerunners for most competitive.
For 2D it’s Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike, Guilty Gear XX, and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.
Like… poke around these forums. You’ll learn quick.
I really like SC2. I agree that scrubs do play an ass, however I’m good so owning them is simple.
However, VF4: evo owns all other 3d fighters for free. And yeah, If I could find a SC2 tourney for xbox within an hour of me I’d be there in a second. I’ll just have to throw my own. And buy tourney, I mean gambleing on wins.
Punk Out
I guess thats what you get on a capcom board asking about SC2 lol.
VF4:Evo is $20, but whether it’s competitive or not won’t be really known for the next year or so. I guess a lot of people are into tekken, but I hear they are still deciding which tekken to play.
SC2 could justify a release on all consoles and several arcade revisions and still make money.
PS2 has a head start (and GGXX), and DC has a few years head start, so it’s hard to convince people to buy xboxes cause it really doesn’t have anything people don’t already have. If they released XX#R, and a few SF collections on xbox, tournies would be on there.
X-Box sales will ries when Ninja Guiden comes out. Oh, and with Rainbow Six 3, and with Counter STrike, and Fable, and Halo 2…
But VF4: evo is very competive. The problem is that most american players are casual, and feel that VF is too hard, which mean they cannot mash.
Fucking casual gamer trash.
punk out
Of course VF4 is too hard… :rolleyes:
It’s interesting…I wonder how VF didn’t catch on immediately here like Tekken and SC did.
A couple theories I have:
VF3. I remember this game getting a pronounced negative reception back in its time. IIRC, Tekken 3, which was a substantial improvement over the prior installments of that series, was released around the same time. I’m sure you can see where this is headed.
I think this may have not only reduced VF3’s popularity, but also reduced the base number of hardcore VF players. It’s much easier to build a tourney scene when you have more of said people.
Harder to get into. FMJ, this is indeed true, to an extent. Hell, look at Seth’s interview with John Bailon on this very site; he mentions this as one of the things holding back VF’s popularity in arcades. I’ll give you two specific examples of this, one on the “absolute scrub” level and one on the “tournament player” level.
First, the scrub example: Mashing. Now, you may ask, why am I giving this subject the time of day? Simple: Mashers contribute way more money to arcades as a whole than tournament players do. And here, VF loses out because it has no masher-friendly characters; there are a few who have 4-hit strings that you can get just by mashing, but those won’t do any good against people who have any idea how to play. In Namco games, on the other hand, there have always been characters who can get long strings and flashy moves, and occasionally beat some lower-intermediate-level players, just by mashing; in the Tekken series we’ve had Baek, Hwoarang, Eddy, and Christie, and in both Soul Calibur games there’s Maxi and Kilik. Thus, Namco games are likely to bring in more money than VF (there are other factors here, of course, but this is a fairly important one), and thus more arcades have Namco games than VF machines, and thus it’s harder to find VF competition than Namco competition. As a matter of fact, I think the recent trend of increasing console tournaments is the biggest reason that VF’s finally started to make a comeback in the tourney scene, but that’s a topic for another time.
Now for the tournament example: In VF4 Evo, I am confident, based on experience and observation, that there are no true “scrub” characters (when I say this, I mean in the sense of “easy to use and to win with in above-average tournament competition”; not to be confused with the mashers above). The closest of anyone to this is probably Kage; knowing the Ten-Foot Toss combos, and some basic setups for this throw, will take you far in low- and intermediate-level play. Against above-average players, though, you will lose if you base your whole game around TFT like that, because they can do multiple throw escapes and TFT will ALWAYS be the first escape they input. Additionally, these players will be better at using other methods of stopping throws (i.e. jab, or your best combo starter if you’re feeling really ballsy). Thus, against actual good players, you have to know how to use a lot more of his tools, not just the one throw or throws in general.
When we look at Tekken 4, one word immediately comes to mind: Jin. I don’t think any more needs to be said here.
In SC2, there are a couple “scrub” characters. The most obvious is Xianghua; you can easily do well with her in good tournaments by sticking to a set of 4 or 5 moves. Hell, even the best X players do this; what separates them from the rest is merely a better sense of when and how to use those 4 or 5 moves. The other “scrubby” character is Cervantes; he does have a lot of hidden depth to him that X doesn’t, and you need to take advantage of this depth if you want to be a truly elite Cervy player, but you can still do well against above-average players by keeping things simple and defensive. For proof of this, look no further than JOP; he outright hates this game and isn’t unwilling to let that be known, yet he still made top 16 in it at Evolution. The reason: He plays an efficient, basic Cervy that sticks to a few key moves and always looks for his easy, high-damage combos.
The point of all of this: VF is harder for mashers to enjoy, which means less arcade money, and it doesn’t offer any characters who can win with little effort, which gives it less appeal to some tournament players.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts I have. Anyone more knowledgeable of the VF or Namco scenes than I, feel free to offer your own 2 cents. 
-Josh
if someone doesn’t like a game they will make something sound more scrubby than it is, and people who like a game will make things sound more skilled than they are as well. The whole “my game is better than yours, and you don’t play it cause your scared of da skillz” idea just causes problems. I think people need a better angle if they want people to play their game.
It’s kind of weird to say that people aren’t getting into VF4 cause it’s hard to get into. You would have to be into VF in the first place to even know that. Why can’t every game be then ‘too hard’ for the people that don’t play it? Ok every person that doesn’t play MvC2 doesn’t cause it’s too hard. Now what is the defense for that? Anyone that doesn’t play MvC2 doesn’t know enough to argue, so i win!
It seems that since SF is heading to console, the other console games all want to assimilate our players, the sad thing is that if there’s no new capcom game soon they just might, half to SSBM, half to VF. I think our hopes rest on Hyper SFIIX for now… 
:(. If i see A “SRK bought by nintendo” headline i’m jumping off the roof.
VF2 was not in a lot of arcades, and VF3 was hardly in any arcades.
The biggest difference is VF2 & 3 run on custom hardware, and Tekken runs on Playstation variants. Tekken is just a lot cheaper, and a lot more arcades have it. IMO that’s the single biggest difference. You can’t like a game if you can’t play it anywhere.
**
Yeah there was gonna be a VF3 machine i wanted but i heard the monitor doesn’t even run at 15khz, what is up with that?
FMJ: Definitely understand what you’re saying. I’m not biased here (currently learning both SC2 and VF4 Evo, though I do despise Tekken 4 as much as the next guy), but I was just recording my observations. And frankly, if the game being hard to understand weren’t a factor, why would you think that the former head of SHGL, who probably knows these kinds of things, said just that?
And it is indeed possible to become aware of this without playing the game a whole lot. On the “casual player” level, it doesn’t take long to find out that there’s no masher-friendly character. And for people who try to learn the game, it only requires a look at a (good) general FAQ to see how much there is to know; tech-rolling (knowing when and when not to do it), the throw-escape system, the evade system (half and full-circular attacks, etc.), foot position and its various effects, and so on. I’m sure that many people who showed interest in VF have been discouraged by this.
Again, I’m not saying that this is a good thing. Hell, I myself think that it’s a stupid idea to make the engine this way, for financial reasons. I wouldn’t mind if Sega made things a little simpler, maybe even put in a “masher” character.
margalis: Ah, thanks, that makes a lot of sense.
-Josh