This is what happens when players get famous for dancing around like pricks or being a pretty face instead of actually winning.
It’s like SRK needs a strategy front page and a general news front page. I think the release of the Nemo option selects or NeoRay’s Hawk techniques are more important than three angles of Tokido’s Akuma pose and someone playing Guile’s themeon spoons.
SRK has strategy guides for many, many games. It does have guides for AE and MvC3, but the games are sort of new, so it is hard to get match-up advice for it. There are tournament players who could provide advice on the match-ups: if they care to do so there or on the character specific threads/sections, people will have the advice. The point is, it is not being done. On the other hand, check what has just popped for ST, courtesy of my pal Born2SPD. This happens because we love our game, while masses of soul-less people just play SF4AE cos it’s new and SFvT hasn’t been released, yet.
The Super Street Fighter II X/Turbo section is the best one by a mile, simply because people (NKI, VF4, Raisin, ultradavid, etc) worked on it, the game had time to mature and we have high level footage to analyze, amazing community efforts such as Nohoho’s blog and zaspacer’s Street Fighter Dojo brought invaluable information and showed it was worth it for one to dedicate himself to that game. There is more strategy and match-up information at certain ST character articles than in the whole MvC3 and SF4 Strategy Wikis. SRK does have the Strategy sections, people just gotta understand what happens in higher level matches and why some other things do not happen, then disclose the conclusions. But people would rather check stupid people imitating ultra animations, troll about how balance either sucks or is perfect, ride some players’ dicks, throw shit all around about how certain hardware is amazing cos they can get the moves to come out in SF4 and yell at older games cos “they are outdated”. Not to mention people fighting for their egos about what is fine and what is not when it comes to playing the game. It is not a shame to assume you are not a great player, there is no need to pose.
We love ST/X and we will not let it die. Recently, Fighter 101 and Grand Master Challenge appeared, for instance. They may release 10 more versions of SF, we will keep it alive until Capcom decides to bring the classic to a new era, instead of dumbing down the games so you can play without thinking, or adding stupid infinite combos or whatever. Now, will HAV’s suggestions get appreciated by the 4AE community as a whole, if it gets done? And should someone actually bother, as a new patch is coming that should rebalance the whole game? I seriously do not know. But it is true: real strategy knowledge is lacking. I just do not blame Keits at all: he is only one person, he does a fine job. More people can contribute, and, honestly, it does not necessarily need to be SRK. You can make a blog and post anything you want there. I am certain one of the 4AE players understands Japanese and could provide more details about their 4AE scene.
Oh come now.
You sound like an old man telling everyone to get off his lawn.
There’s room for all the fighters at my house.
If they enjoy playing it, there’s nothing wrong with it.
Outside of this attitude, there’s plenty of validity to be found in some of the things you’re saying. Especially about player attitudes.
It comes down to the philosophy of the community leaders; dudes like the Cannons, Seth, Keits. A stand needs to be taken against the spectator mentality, like Seth took 10 years ago, but it appears that those with power are happy for things to persist the way they are, probably because they’re getting paid off it. So long as top players and community leaders are talking about how great it is that people show up to spectate and not even play, we have a problem.
To be fair, there’s some really bad armchair psychology going on in a post dedicated to not being “armchair” about things…
And what exactly might this “stand” be? General dickishness to people who only play the game casually but like to watch the tournaments? I’m unclear what you mean by stand.
I really don’t think there needs to be a stand against anything.
I don’t see why some items can’t cater to spectators, while other cater to the competitors. There is no reason this can’t happen.
Yeah, SRK has been lacking in food for thought. I can’t even get a decent topic going in the Dudley board to discuss why players feel a way about matchups because they’re too lazy or think they’re too good to elaborate on their opinions. I’m sad that the only character I enjoy playing in AE has a board so useless and I’m trying to get it on the right track and make it useful and informational.
During EVO all the Dudley board did was crack jokes about how bad the other Dudley’s were and then you look at the forum and it was like “no wonder”. The board is severely lacking compared to others and is a reflection of its players. I know I’m partly responsible and shouldn’t be discouraged by idiots who can’t say anything beyond “lol no” to my post in there but it really is aggravating.
Alioune gets shit on in the Cammy forum, what are you gonna do? Mods need to be allowed to ban people for being scrubs.
(I’m not going to front. Fuudo’s name didn’t ring a bell until I read the original post here, but that’s more because I’ve hardly kept with fighting games as of late outside of MvC3 and it’s not like I was following EVO, so…)
I kinda agree with Sosage that using “real” as descriptor here probably isn’t that useful here, especially since it often comes off as elitist–however, I’d support elitism if it meant cutting down on the mind-numbing stupidity.
Not that it ultimately matters, though, since I agree with Mr. Chibi completely that we’ll probably just have to ride this wave of “trendiness” out–probably until a year after the new Darkstalkers drops–until most of the people who only spectate/armchair get tired of bitching about how “cheap” or “broken” or whatever something is and move onto Starcraft 3 or something.
Capcom eventually has to stop giving a damn about fighting games again anyway. It’s inevitable.
Well, there will always be more spectators than (viable) competitors, so catering to spectators more than competitors is more…well, you know–Capcom is a company, after all. This seems especially true given that the little “news” ticker up top having limited space since I ultimately wouldn’t otherwise know what’s on the front page at all if it wasn’t for that thing, having long avoided the front page for its rather obvious stupidity. As much as I have nothing against Keits, it does honestly seem more about the quantity of posts rather than the quality of things, sort of like mainstream modern journalism where people just want to get the “scoop” rather than report on things of actual substance.
Sadly (or maybe thankfully), this type of stupidity is hardly particular to SRK, but more just a product of being able to hear more and more of humanity due to that wonderful series of tubes called the Internet, which allows that most stupid of animals, humanity, to project its armchair, anonymous know-nothing-ness on an increasing number of fronts with ease.
HAV I really like the concept of where this is going. I picked Fuudo to make top 8 at evo and I was really surprised that people didn’t know who he was. After he won, someone asked me how I knew about him, and I just told him that he should have known about Fuudo if he is really trying to be good at this game.
When SRK front page had a list of “killers” coming to Evo it had Choco on it who didn’t make it out of pools and was losing to nobodies but she had a measly point from Shadaloo I guess which was really important apparently.
In the comments.
This looks rather silly now 2 weeks later, but it shows how the culture has changed. You put someone on a list and call them a killer and the masses go along.
With the community expanding SRK really needs to step up their game in regards to trying to expand competitive play instead of just being eventhubs 2.0. Hell to be honest Eventhubs does a lot of things better. Full top 32’s for EVO AE/MVC3 including battle logs, why doesn’t SRK have that? It’s literally easier to find there.
SRK needs more contributors, more talk about actual mechanics/matchups, and the front page needs to be redesigned in some way. Categories maybe? I mean hell there isn’t even a link to the AE wiki guide on the front page after 2 months, and the super guide was never completed because James Chen was doing the entire thing himself essentially. It’s just a lot of half assed stuff. The wiki, the front page, the live stream(why doesn’t this have exhibition matches ever?) are all underutilized.
I think the forum needs more moderation(the AE section is a mess, people keep making threads for stupid shit and it pushes good stuff off the front page), and that in general people need to wise up and be more humble but also actually contribute what they do have. When I have people arguing with me about my character’s matchup with a character they don’t play, and the only thing that will change their mind is a video of a japanese player playing the matchup it just gets frustrating especially when said player has contributed jack in terms of strategy for the game. So many simple questions that could be answered without input of others are still asked over and over. I don’t want to even try to count how many times I’ve seen people ask what a character’s frame traps are. Look at the frame data for 10 seconds, and I dunno try stuff out in matches? Dudes just wanna be spoonfed.
I’m digressing a bit, but overall the player base wants to argue about stupid stuff and watch cool moments #47 and not talk about serious competitive play or spend time in the lab coming up with new stuff. Lazy, unimaginative, entitled players want everything handed to them, and don’t want to work, which is why things are how they are.
I’m not an OG player, I’m not a tournament player, and I’m not even that good of a player. That doesn’t mean I’m purely interested in character leaks, insane combo/comeback/crazy videos, or teaser trailers for new games. Hell I’m not really interested in these things at all. They’re nice to read/see every now and again, but not every day. I realize there are a ton of games coming out and there is a lot of info coming out about them daily but I don’t see why these things can’t be broken up a bit more with some tutorials, videos of high level play, USEFUL combo videos, or some more interviews with the players.
If your face isn’t all over streams most people think you can’t possibly be any good. As if there aren’t any good players outside of NY, Cali and Tokyo.
It’s a depressing state of affairs when Kayo Police’s cosplay costume is currently the most popular discussion in the EVO forum and Street Fighter x Tekken threads are hijacked by debates regarding Poison’s anatomy. Not only are these pointless topics preventing the progression of the FG scene, they are bringing embarrassment to the community. How can anybody accept and take fighting games seriously if its supporters are arguing whether a fictional character is pre- or post-operative and speculating about Kayo’s next outfit?
These conversations again highlight how a minority of the community are reluctant to enhance their knowledge of the important aspects of fighting games (strategies, fundamentals etc.), instead latching onto these novelty topics for the purpose of boosting their post count without needing to expose their inexperience.
Sorry if I sound like a miserable curmudgeon. Discovering this amazing scene has given me a hobby, endless entertainment and the opportunity to socialize with players who share my interests. I love being part of a competitive environment that is constantly changing and evolving, I’d just love it slightly more if the insignificant subjects would stop pushing aside the more substantial issues.
Have you tried contacting Keits about this? I like your ideas in this thread and would love to read more about this kind of thing. If you wrote up some articles, maybe you could get them put on the front page. If anything, it’s less work Keits has to do.
Can a community not have a culture beyond competition? I’m definitely only now becoming even acceptable on Marvel after a lot of grinding, and for the longest time the ‘spectator topics’ were really just as interesting to me as grinding mechanics.
The players who are interested in Kayo’s next costume are not the ones who will be inventing new option selects for AE or new B&Bs for Marvel. But you need those people, too, because they bring their friends, and their friends bring /their/ friends. It’s a chain – for every person like that, you’ll probably get one or two who’s legit grinding on competitive. These people are just as vital to the community, and I don’t think they distract the sort of person who actually (invents tech/builds B&Bs/finds team synergy/does 70 hit Tager combos).
Would Evo be quite as enormous and hype if everyone eliminated in the first four rounds simply didn’t compete? The community does not need to exclusively put out top tier players.
Armchair is the buzzword of the week, huh?
What I want to know…
How many of the people that REALLY participated in the Evo discussions actually attended / plan to attend…
That’s fine and dandy to have a culture, but our culture is fighting games. Not cosplay, not anime, not some random otaku schoolgirl yaoi 4chan OMGIWANNABEJAPANESE! bullshit. It’s fighting games.
Derailing a forum related to the biggest event in the community is like attempting to make the Olympics a fashion show.
As players, sure. I’ll drink to that. But the scene doesn’t expand without more than grinding B&Bs.
You use the Olympics as an example. But that’s a singular event, in a lot of different fields, and I’ll bet not everyone watches everything.
As a broader existence, I’d like to counter with football. Football is just as much about pre-game/post-game/halftime spectacle as it is about people moving synthetic pig skin in directions, and football is huge.
Swimming/Gymnastics/etc basically only gets watched at the Olympics except by people who are die-hard into it. Tons of people get hype for football every week.
I’d be OK with being football.
…
Do you even know ANYTHING about the FG scene, or are you trying to make shit up?
Enough with the examples. The point is that the community is about fighting games. The front page should be about fighting games. Tekken Zaibatsu does it right… Why can’t SRK? we used to do this shit right. But after the influx of SF4 jackasses, coming in here thinking everything is about them, turning this place into something like animekraze.com, SRK is going where the popularity is and turning this site into a clusterfuck of glitter.
Fuck it, read these posts I made last week. If you don’t understand it, you’re more of a social idiot than I originally thought.
and then…
I’ll admit I’m somewhat new to this. I am also not in an area that has a strong local scene, so my grasp on the face to face culture is weak; I live in the ass-end of nowhere and am not exactly wealthy, and mostly just grind and attempt to get out to things when I can, which is very, /very/ rare.
I can definitely understand your frustration, even if I myself have come into the online component fairly recently and as such am somewhat charmed by the spectacle almost as much as the mechanics.