That’s pretty much what I figured. Thanks Graham!
Nice stuff :tup: Thanks Kyokuji!
I’d assume a “legit” reason for not picking a top tier character would be to pick a counter character for a single match.
FWIW, when I first asked about the Japanese playing O. Sagat and any version of Ken more than us yanks, it wasn’t to bag on their choice of characters. Quite the contrary. I was more curious if they had some tricks up their sleeves that we’ve largely overlooked.
I recently began wondering about this after someone posted a transcript of an interview with one of the Japanese players(I think Daigo) in some thread(this one?) Anyway, IIRC in the interview the guy said that he was surprised that nobody here was playing N. Sagat, and that he was lucky that we weren’t or he might not have faired as well. Or something like that…I’m too lazy to look it up right now :wgrin: At any rate, the vids that NKI posted with Ani-Ken reminded me about this.
Especially with EVO coming up, I’m curious if either of these characters have some unique advantages that we’re not familiar with. It’d be a shame if a bunch of people got beat down at EVO, just cause they don’t know the matchup.
Just a thought…
In the same way that you take pride in popularizing tactics (like spamming Sagat’s low fierce) and becoming known for innovating, players pick up random low-tier characters and get good with them because they enjoy doing something different at the cost of playing at maximum efficiency. Or maybe they overdo some tactic but still seem to come out ahead (Aniken and that spammed DP). You could argue that it’s not “playing to win” in the purest sense, but including originality while trying to be the best isn’t a terrible way to go.
uh I actually popularized sagat Low Fierce. And Blanka electricity. And holding down/back for 50% of the match. *
- thanks, give me props.
You pick who you think you have the best chance to win with. Anything less wouldn’t be doing your best. The only time you don’t do this is when you are either trying something new as a learning experience, or if you are just messing around(ie not competitive play). That doesn’t mean always picking top tier. Maybe you think a character labled as mid tier is actually top tier, or maybe you just understand and can use a mid tier character better than the top tier characters.
You can replace character with move, strategy, tactic, or whatever else you want and it should still apply.
First off, you’re wrong about those characters. They might not be the best but they are all very powerful. Team shoto i have no idea, im guessing he prolly picked it since he knew he would lose the tournament anyway and to be honest i dont see him entering mvc2 often so i doubt he is a serious player of that game.
What i am talking about too that you failed to respond to was the way they use specific techniques for the sake of doing it. Not the dp style of aniken, i play the same way with my ken and yes that is a legitimate strategy, if you know anything about ken you’d know his highpoint is once you knick someone with a jab dp you get a free jumpin which can lead to immense damage and constant mixups. I mean when they do stupid stuff like repeated upward yogas and teleporting with dhalsim for example, which ive seen outta players. Who knows their reasoning but thats obviously the WRONG way to play dhalsim. There are many other examples i could bring up but thats a pretty clear cut example.
This behavior would be the equivalent of me going into a cvs2 tournament and attempting to taunt every 15 seconds without care if i got punished. Is it possible to still defeat your opponent? yes it is, its much less likely. I’m not saying this is a japanese only behavior, im saying that i see it much more frequently there.
I’m not getting into this debate but I figured I would answer this.
The repeated upward yoga flames is for fast meter building, I guess Sim’s super is worth having so players will take the risk of damage to have access to it.
So yeah, not a wrong way to play Dhalsim at all, just a different way.
Not sure what you mean by the teleporting as i’ve only ever seen Jap’s use it as a reversal to get out of corners. Do you have any matches on your pc where it is used randomly? If so could you upload them? I’m kinda interested to see it.
I like it how the Japan “expert” here is not the person who has played in Japan, but the person who has seen some random videos, doesn’t know any Japanese players and has no idea what the overall skill level in Japan is like.
First of all, don’t be condescending with your Ken DP crap. I am not talking about some vids I saw, am I am talking about PLAYING IN JAPAN. As Ryu. When I played I noticed people using jab DPs a lot more than made sense. Yes, I know that the DP is a good move. That said, doing a DP standing 3 inches away when all I’m doing is holding down/back? Not so good. Doing it five times in a row when I just stood there the first four times and low roundhouses back? Not so good.
I’m telling you that when I was IN JAPAN PLAYING JAPANESE PLAYERS a few of them used DPs way too often. And you are telling me that’s not true because DP is a good move and you saw one video with Ken in it?
Again, it’s not like that happens all the time. Yes, some people do stupid things. It’s not like it’s an epidemic though. You make it sound like you go into an arcade and everyone is doing constant final TAPs and Yoga teleports. The reality is you saw a couple vids where that happened.
Yup you’re right I saw EVERY POSSIBLE DOWNLOADABLE VID, including insanity dvd and have watched various dvds that friends have that they made IN JAPAN of actual play. I guess having every bit of st footage i could possibly download in the last 7 months is a ‘couple vids’. And in these TOURNAMENT matchplay vids, i saw stupid shit happening. Maybe its a normal practice to have 10% of the players play silly in tournament eh? But since i know this ill share it, their tournaments are for ‘fun’, no prize money, the only reward being glory. I guess if nothing but reputation was on the line in this country, maybe we would have some people decide to play stupid or pick the weakest characters on a regular basis. But I just dont understand how these people make it to the ‘grand finals’ of xmania using their gimmicks of stupidity.
Hmm guess you dont get it about ken. I said thats how i play too, yes i get swept 4-5 times maybe more by my brother or whoever i play. Thats how ken, and even ryu sometimes is played. You do realize if ryu gets one crossup he wins the entire round so 4 sweeps is irrelevant. Same with ken, one dp knockdown can end the round vs alot of chars if you are good at mixup when getting in. Risk vs Reward. Sure it might seem stupid to you but it has a purpose. Maybe they were thinking you were actually going to play and not sit there? In my opinion japanese players play very different than us, more aggressive, with the occasional turtler. But if you know sf2 history you’ll know that they used to hang signs in their arcades back in the day that said ‘no turtling.’
As for the Yoga upward flame which i described, you’re right its the fastest way to charge meter, but not when the enemy is standing right in front of you. As for the teleport, same thing. Sims super is decent, but its not nearly worth wasting your own life to obtain especially considering you can force them to block your attacks almost at any time which gives you meter.
As for being a japan expert, i never claimed to be, i only know as much as i can learn online and from talking to many friends (expert players in the US) who’ve gone over there and played against them extensively. But even watching 200-300 hours of footage including recent footage from this year makes me completely oblivious to their skill level right?
seems like you come from the “counter character school of thought” 
I think players like to challenge themselves and not resort to “resort to whatever it takes, even counter-charactering to win”
If a player has only played Q, in his mind, he has the best chance to win with Q.
Way too much theory fighting going on in this thread.
come on Graham, you didn’t even know why japs would block the safe jump-in (not reversible if done right). This is a fundamental strategy in ST. And now you have the japs all figured out from watching all their vids? I’m not saying you don’t but let your skills do the talking (1st place evo west). How many other top players come into a thread and brag and their skills in a serious manner (cole is tight and gets a pass). I never see valle or choi or even jwong really spend time in a prolonged thread. Even your brother is a lot more low-key than you are from what I can see. He’s not on all the time arguing with everyone.
On the other hand this is building up crazy hype for Evo Maybe that was your whole intention.
Dude, you seriously need to drop the attitude that you are the only guy here who knows how to play SF at all.
What I am saying is that I was in Japan playing a Ryu player and he did DPs WAY too often. Why are you talking about Ken? And are you trying to say that I’m wrong and the guy I played in fact DIDN’T do DPs too often?
Were you there, looking over my shoulder? How exactly do you know? Are you saying that it is absolutely impossible to do too many DPs? I’m really curious how I can win a match by punishing pointless DP after pointless DP, then you can post saying that they guy played right, even though you obviously weren’t there and have no idea.
If he lands a crossup. And how are you going to knock me down with a DP when I’m holding D/B and have been for the past 20 seconds? Do you have a super-secret DP technique similar to your SPD technique that makes the DP unblockable?
Why would I bother doing that when my opponent was gifting me with free damage over and over again? Your theory is that if someone DPs over and over and over again the best strategy is to hold towards on the stick? Or maybe jump at them?
This is just a bizzare conversation. I’m saying that a guy I played did too many DPs and you are lecturing me that DP is a good move (no, really - I had no idea!) and that I must be wrong, in fact he didn’t do too many DPs…
Quite silly really. Again, how do you know exactly? No matter how good you are or how much you know your aren’t psychic. You can analyze a match strategy better than I can when you know nothing about it at all, weren’t there, and didn’t see any part of it.
That’s an impressive talent.
This thread feels like a.g.sf2…
A casual T.Hawk player chiming in. :wonder:
Its common knowledge that N-T.Hawk has shitty normals. I prefer O-T.Hawk due to some of his moves have better properties:
st.RH hits crocuhing characters (can’t confirm all but positively shotos), it can hit whiffed shoto sweeps.
His splash is just as good as Zangief’s.
I’m not sure if it works with both versions but O-T.Hawk cr.fw has good priority, beats Guile’s cr.fw. clean.
Bah, who cares. T-hawk sucks anyway. :rolleyes:
O. Hawk’s far standing strong also hits lower so it forces block on everyone except Chun, Cammy, Guile and Blanka.
Dunno where all this Hawk hate is coming from, everyone knows the worst character award belongs to Cammy, at least Hawk can beat any character from 1 knockdown.
You never retruned my pm about purchasing that guide… I guess I get no love on SRK from graham:sad:
Well like i said before they used to have signs that said no turtling back in the day. I figure since you’re sitting there, they were mocking you by doing this since you were playing ‘dirty’ or whatever you wanna call it in their arcades, they prolly wanted you to be more aggressive… We play different in the US than the japanese, we dont criticize people for turtling as much. Well some do, some dont.
But its a normal part of our play here for many players, we have the mentality of ‘if its in the game, its part of it’. Thats why we use o.sagat etc whereas they kinda lean away from his usage because they feel he limits character choice.
You misunderstand me if you think i think im the only one who knows street fighter. I guess its the style of my posts. Anyway im not here to insult anyone who reads this, i only am posting stuff to give insight into things ive noticed. You think i am trying to downtalk the japanese by posting this stuff? Im glad they still play this game, otherwise there would be nothing for me to look forward to.
Yeah, this discussion is stupid.
Anyway about O. Hawk, I’ve never played O. Hawk but the actual Super version of Hawk had a better stand roundhouse as mentioned, and I think his low forward had better range as well. I certainly remember being surprised by how sucky his low forward was in ST by comparison.
Tick into super is too good to pass up though. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that if you can’t get in your will lose most matches, so you might as well have the best possible way to capitalize once you do get in.
Other than that I’m not sure if any of N. Hawks normals are better, they might be. Once thing that happens a lot if that people notice moves that were downgraded but not moves that were upgraded. Because they naturally rely on the moves that worked well for them in past versions.
Counter pick if you can, as in you actually know a counter character. Picking a counter character that you don’t know how to play isn’t picking the character that gives you the best chance to win. You also might think that you have a better chance of winning a bad matchup than a counter matchup for whatever reason, then counter picking wouldn’t be a good idea.
Letting someone whiff dps and punishing would be counter picking [a gameplan].
If you aren’t doing whatever it takes, you aren’t “playing to win”. If you aren’t playing to win you aren’t playing competitively.
If a player only knows Q, then counter picking isn’t an option and going with Q would be the best…only plan.