SRK Front Page, and the Community's Lack of Knowledge

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
21

I know my post date says otherwise, but I’ve actually been lurking SRK for many years now. Here’s my opinion on the community’s apparent lack of FG knowledge:

Rather than take the time to educate themselves and understand the deep and complex history of the scene, many new members instead shoehorn themselves into the community by spewing out shallow views and opinions. They are interested only in “making a reputation” on the forums, yet have nothing of value to contribute because of their distinct lack of knowledge.

Instead of taking a backseat, researching about the FG scene and learning from the veterans who have helped shape it, they resort to churning out scraps of information and jumping on popular bandwagons to “fit in” and hide their inexperience. I realise that I, a mere rookie, have no right to comment on such an issue. Yet I too realise that, in order to gain respect amongst the community, I need to show respect to both those who have paved the way before me and those who have the talent to help it flourish in the future.

22

The crazy thing is that there are a good number of players that are VERY known in Japan, that get no recognition, on the #1 SF site? That makes no sense.

Meanwhile, again… Tokido is more known than a player like -6, the actual #1 ranked Akuma in Japan. I’m not hating on Tokido at all, and I understand why he’s more known… he travels… he markets himself… it makes sense. But as competitive players, we should be focusing on more than that.

23

I don’t know that that’s limited to just video games.

I don’t think 90% of SRK these days actually cares about fighting games in the way they think or say they do. I’m pissed about what happened to this community, a community I once loved and was very active in. It’s like all those “skaters” that came out of the woodwork when Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was popular… just now it’s Street Fighter.

24

This is a no win situation lurking around a valid criticism. “Real play” is an incredibly vague concept. Do you mean watching match videos with good players? I’ve seen that posted on the front page. Do you mean tutorial videos on combos/execution/game mechanics? I’ve seen those posted as well. I’m sure you mean something very specific, but people then latch onto the words “real play” and use it to mean anything they want to see vs. what they are given. Like people that say they want “Real punk rock” or “Real films” or “Real hip-hop” or “Real games”…

I can see your point that there could be more, varied, footage being posted from a larger cast of players. But also keep in mind that there is only so much realestate for the front page. There needs to be room for not only match videos and match commentary, but for FGC related news, interesting FGC related articles and…yes…things that lighten the mood. There is a finesse to the editing process of a main page that people don’t see. Timing, relevance and variety all need to be balanced or else the thing becomes uninteresting to everybody and only valuable to very specific niches of the larger community. From the buffet of the frontpage, hopefully, the forums act as your more concentrated source for good…relevant…information.

25
  1. I’m working wtih a SSF4 channel right now, actually, trying to bring some light to some EXTREMELY good players, that don’t get all that much play. Players like Akame Ryu/Sekiganryu (the #1 Ryu in Japanese arcades), ODIN SIN (#2 Cammy)… among others. I’m not gonna belabor that point, but just look here: Japanese PSN Doesn’t Suck... UYG Uploads

Anyway… I don’t think those channels are the issue. They put top level play at there, the best way they can get it.

  1. I DO think SRK has a large role to play in the general tone of the scene, and I think SRK can do a lot more. I’m not trying to roll on Keits at all. I think he does a decent job, and he has a LOT of responsibility, and doesn’t get a whole lot of help. He also isn’t the biggest SF4 guy… so you can’t expect him to be huge on that side of things.

I just think that somebody should be doing more for the competitive players, and not just the dudes that are around for the surface level shit. SRK has a unique spot in that they still (somehow) have players that care and are willing to work. They also have a LARGE installed base, that makes it so that any effort put in, will be worth the time spent. I’d do it myself, but I think I’ve pissed too many people off for that over the years :rofl:

Still somebody could do something here, and I feel like SRK should do it, in some way, shape or form.

EDIT- Like I said before… even something as small (but just as good) as the old Tournament Report section in Tips and Tricks that DreamTR used to do… that would be amazing. I think a LOT more could be done, but there needs to be something more, in my personal opinion.

26

well. im not so much blaming the channels themselves, they do contribute heavily in being a resource for high level play. more so the types of community members they are creating. maybe thats not fair because stupid people make stupid comments no matter what, but im sick of “i didnt see it on (insert favorite channel here), so it didnt happen”. or, " i saw that guy lose a match on (insert favorite channel here), he sucks"

nice work with the channel too BTW. i hadnt actually seen the #1 arcade ryu play before

27

Fighting games are beginning to be a spectator sport, where a lot of people care more about watching celebrities play than play themselves.
Let them have their fun as long as you remember what YOU are here for- To level up your game.

28

Thirtyfour for example

29

Bringing attention to high level play and explaining it to other players is an admirable goal, for sure. The problem is that there’s a history in this community where a strong player will come out and do something in-depth and it goes ignored, unappreciated, or is met with outright hostility. I know a number of good players that just do not post outside their local threads because they’ve either experienced this or seen someone having their hard work shit on by people more interested in post counts and rep than good content.

30

Nobody is trying to stop that fun. That’s fine. I’m not proposing that people stop putting stuff on the front page that’s already there. Like I said, I completely understand the motivation for putting certain things there, that are there. I totally get it, and support it. I just don’t think that you HAVE to alienate the whole other part of it, to do so… especially when SRK is in unique position to NOT do that.

There can still be posts about silly, less serious stuff… That can still be the majority of posts, for all I care… I just don’t understand why we have to almost entirely abandon the other side of it.

I know all about that. I’ve felt that way a few times. I had articles on the front page… wherein the comments section looked like a pile of shit. People attacking me, despite not knowing shit… I know how it is. I still think people should keep plugging, and I also believe that, the further we go along, the more and more receptive the player base is gonna be to more analytical stuff. That’s just my belief. Either the player base is gonna get more serious eventually, or it’s gonna die out, and I believe that SRK should leverage its advantage, and feed that base. Again… I don’t believe it needs to dominate the site, but it should play a more prominent role.

31

The 700 new impractical combo videos every day is pretty annoying too.

32

Honestly you’ve got to let natural selection weed out all the fucking hipsters who are riding fighting games like it’s the newest thing they can twitch about on facebook, then maybe we can get somewhere. Two years from now I think we’re going to be going into a drought all over again, and the people that came to play fighting games because the enjoy them will still be around, while Captain Trendmaster will have waddled on to something else.

:B

33

I think this is a valuable discussion. I know a lot of players willing to learn ask sometimes smart (sometimes not so smart) questions that don’t get put on a more public platform for different reasons. I feel like a lot of the more successful players that get anywhere have learned to (almost secretly) adapt their fundamentals to the new game. To me it’s always been balancing risk vs reward and then reading and prediction. Delicate scale but it’s changed over time and people don’t get that. As a result all that this kind of discussion fosters in an uncontrolled environment is trash or narrow minded stuff such as the post quoted below.

I hope this comment is tongue in cheek because it honestly doesn’t approach the problem raised. This whole shift in how these games are played is an effort by developers to broaden the community. It’s a business at the end of the day.

Bottom line of all this is that I saw people wake up mashing stuff fairly openly in finals yesterday. I saw players do two consecutive reversals in very unsafe situations. I saw blockstrings punished by reversals. That’s the stuff that should be discussed. The why, when, how. And then the more subtle stuff like specific setups and how important they may be to an overall match. More trees less forest.

But the onus can’t lie on the new player to go out and seek info on who fuudo is or any lesser known player TODAY. It’s difficult for new players to gain knowledge when so much other stuff is more readily available. And that’s okay. But just watching a video doesn’t help one understand differences in style such as why Daigo may have used shoulder pressure while Kindevu focused more on knowckdowns (using evo match as recent example). So I think it’s just up to creating a means of allowing the subtle information to be discussed and then making that discussion as public as possible. Knowledge on lesser known but highly skilled players (by today’s standards) will follow naturally

Straightforward solution that nobody seems to have time for.

34

then some idiot comments on how that character is broken even though the setup is almost impossible and the damage is not worth trying. i knew about fuudo since i somewhat follow VF and im sure even less people know of nekojita who is the #1 abel player in japan.

35

Such is the fan base of SF4. The reason people would rather check crazy combo videos is the same reason they are willing to play SF4 instead of some other games and think it is the best fighter ever, in the very first place. “Poongko hit Daigo with a basilion-hit combo!!!” No, dude. He does a DP, the game makes it hit a number of times and gives confirmation into more hits, but it is still a single attack that has landed. Seth raises his leg, hits once, but the game decides to tell you it was I-do-not-care-how-many-hits, will it fool me? No, but there we have lots of kids saying a few cancels into a special move yielded blah-blah-blah hits when in fact it was just a few actual different attacks. Now props to the guy who won, but don’t come tell me the number of hits on those combos matter, it is how he started those sequences that matters.

It takes years for most players to get a grasp of high level footage, and the games themselves do not last that long: each year, a new version comes out, adds longer combos, removes the harder stuff and nerfs everything. Usually, it brings some new mechanic that is purposely made powerful, just so people can not avoid it. The next year, a game with a new engine and a new universal mechaninc comes out and it starts all over again. More players come, some others leave, and we have more people who need to learn on the scene. They are welcome, sure, but will they improve the overall “FG community”? No, they will add to the flavor-of-the-month game player base, and that’s it. They will not remain playing the popular game they started with, nor they will play the classics, in general. There is no fighting game community, there is the current games’ communities and the older games’ (usually smaller) communities.

Now I say one thing: the developers themselves tried to make things this way, and the community has embraced it. It is actually good that games get a larger player base, but the issue is the games themselves are throwing their culture in the trash bin. A game’s culture is its ins and outs, the hitbox and frame data - even if it is hidden, it is not the numbers, but how they interact - the way to play it. We do not have it. The community itself is guilty of it. When they tried to make previous games better (Alpha 2 update comes to mind), most people didn’t give a shit. One thing is to have HDR, which while fixed some issues, removed half the characters of the cast and brought new issues, even if one will consider they are minor. But other is to really fix what was wrong in a game, and have people complain that it is not arcade perfect. Well, guess what, Alpha 2 is dead.

36

Those statements contradict each other. Rather than say something like that and rant otherwise it would be largely more beneficial to suggest what could be done. Take the thread somewhere positive rather than what’s happened in every other attempt to do something like this in recent history on SRK.

37

I feel like there are some people who hold very different views than me here.

I feel like ssf4 is at a point where its trying to gain momentum, fans and a sense of personalities. For something to gain traction, it needs people to care enough about it. Ssf4 is getting to that point since last year (imho), part in thanks to established players doing well, lending credence to the scene.

As an ‘armchair’ fan, I had watched some matches from 7 of the 8 - fuudo being the only one I hadn’t encountered at all. 7 out of 8 of these players were already household names, seeing as I only read srk, watch cross counter and watch tourney coverage from the easy to find tourneys.

The scene is working, and the great thing is, the world of tournaments is growing, with more players travelling than before.

38

No, they don’t. We have a flavor-of-the-month player base, and separate, other FGs player bases. If you do not care for the combo-heavy games, with the explosions and stuff, you do not need to give a shit about them. They will not help you, and you will not help them. So 10 people started playing vanilla SF4 today. Who the hell cares? 10 other people started playing MK9, and you are a KoF player. So what? It makes no difference, there is no such thing as a united FG community. The SF4 series has not helped the FG community, it has helped Capcom and the people who played the SF4 games, period. HDR, for instance, was completely smashed by SF4. If you like HDR and only HDR, you are screwed. What people need to do is to check which games are good, and play them. That’s how they keep CPS-1 SF and KoF98 alive in China, for instance. Or keep playing new games and accept there will always be many people who got no idea of things and will remain not having any idea about things.

Edit: Another example: SSF4, while worse than other games, was clearly better than 4AE. But 4AE was released, it had new characters, and now SSF4 is dead, just like VSF4. No questions asked. It makes no sense.

39

Umm… you’re going off on some other shit…

40

So you don’t feel that some of the players that were brought into fighting games by SF4 have also been introduced to some of the other games?
Also, there’s a 3S OE coming out now, and you can believe that it wouldn’t have happened without support from the people that bought SF4 et al.
I know quite a few people that were not interested in fighting games before SF4, and have now joined me in playing 3S, GG, and KoF.

They are not the same thing, however I cannot agree that they are mutually exclusive.