To give my 2 cents after participating in the tournament. I was beaten like hell but I loved it! Left with zero wins, by the way. Not that I had many chances as if I won I would be playing JWong.
All things that were told here are true. People are very polite and enjoy a good handshake after the game. You get to meet all kinds of people and chat and it seems to be the real deal (except for actually fighting in the streets).
I was totally lost in the beginning and didn’t know how things work, so I missed the chance to play a lot of casuals. That’s what I’ll be doing next time as I don’t think $60 were worth 3 minutes of official gameplay.
First game? Screen was closer than my tv, seat was different than my couch, everything seemed wrong :p. I don’t even remember anything from the opponent, couldn’t pay attention to my health bar or the EX gauge bar. My friends told me that I was not even able to defend hadokens (I really don’t remember anything). But you get better and it’s fun.
I hope to go tomorrow and play some more casuals and look forward to the next event. I really have no intention of going back to the online games except for some practice.
The results don’t matter. It’s the experience of getting together with people who can help you, along with getting to know the local members of your scene, that will benefit you the most. You’re not going to learn as much playing online at home as you are grinding it out with the homies offline.
Online is a great source for learning matchups, but only as a supplement to offline training. By and large, there’s a reason why online warriors aren’t making a dent in the competitive scene.
Even if you are an online player, go. And remember rule #1: don’t be afraid to talk to people. That way you’ll meet a lot of new people. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Most people will be eager to answer them for you. I have loads of people that I have met personally on my PSN, it is a way more pleasant experience to play vs them instead of some faceless random guy.
Also, I’ve seen so many people say: “I won’t go now, because i’m not good enough yet and I’ll get stomped 0 - 2”. Chances are you’ll never get good with that mentality. One thing you won’t learn from sitting at home is how to deal with tournament nerves. You can only learn to deal with that by playing in actual tournaments. I’ve seen the best players crack under pressure and I’ve seen people who were much worse win matches because they could get their nerves under control better. The tournament is only one side of the experience. You have to look at the big picture: meeting other people, playing offline casuals with 0-lag and having a good laugh. The people and the laughs are for me the most important thing.
Will you get magically better just by going to a tournament? No. You may get a few matchup pointers or people pointing out some of your mistakes (if you ask), but what you do next with it is up to you. It will enable you to get better though by actually participating in a community instead of considering yourself part of the FGC, yet doing nothing constructive and sit on a stream chat telling people “game X sucks, whens mahvel Kappa” all day. (not intended as a snarky remark to the guy that said “don’t go”, I don’t know him). Going to sessions will help you level up as well btw, more than a tournament IMHO. A tournament is a great way to meet people and find out if they are doing home sessions too!