you mean checkers?
The way I see it, SFxT is a mix between 3rd Strike and X-men v Street Fighter. Like in 3rd Strike, pretty much everything you do counts in one way or another (even whiffing from far away has an effect as it builds much-needed meter). Since even a jab can lead to all kinds of damage (though not quite TOD silly), it’s extremely important to work on footsies, and it’s ESPECIALLY important to know what buttons are the safest because Counter Hits can register into very obvious and lengthy stun that SFIV’s didn’t. You also have to manage what you use as punishers because of how fast the timer ticks. Since pretty much every character can get in the 350-450s range with a single stock of meter, it’s very important to maximize all meter usage.
As for X-men v SF, there’s the whole chain combo bit and team synergy, since in X-men v SF there wasn’t anything like assists or snapbacks: team synergy worked a lot like it does in SFxT. In my spare time I’ve been plugging away at the XmvSF machine near my apartment and I’ve been noticing a lot of similarities in hindsight between how that game plays and how this game plays. SFxT just has a more SF flavor to it.
As for the Gems, I’ve been enjoying coming up with new setups and now that the nerfs have been put into place with certain Auto-gems, there really isn’t any “pay to win” gems as you can get by fine with the ones that come default (and even then, those of us that stuck with it were finding our way around Auto-tactics. It’s why I’m disappointed by all of these “gentlemen’s agreements” that have been going around in tournaments, because they’re denying themselves the chance to introduce new setups and tech. The way I see it, Gems are Assists in their own right: some of them rely on the partner’s actions for activation and that also adds a layer of team synergy and can spell the difference between who is a good point character and who is a good anchor character.
First of all, I agree with 99% of your post. Only thing I disagree with is that I actually find SFxT fun to watch. :-p
But to that particular quote… I feel the exact same way man. People are just waiting to shit on every game that comes out now. Looking at front page comments has turned into a slower stream monster feed; I can’t even stand to comment any more. There’s a ton of options out right now and instead of broadening their horizons, people instead look for any way to talk shit about every game they can, games they never have and/or probably never will even play!
Tired of that stream monster mentality.
People just need to talk about the games they play and ignore the ones they don’t. I can’t even call the ignorant bastards with the “stream monster” mentality part of the fighting game community because simply put they’re just ignorant bastards.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s fucking noxious on the front page.
That said, I think this profusion of games debuting to the FGC now is ultimately a bad thing. The more games come out, the more the FGC will splinter into smaller communities, and start becoming strangers to each other. Tournaments will get smaller and smaller until they’re no longer even worth it. I’d go to a 100-man SFIV tournament, but I probably wouldn’t hit up a 10-man tournament for 10 different games, you know?
We all have limited amounts of time and money, so we can’t invest in all the games that come out, even if we did like all of them. Most of us can only pick one or two games, specialise in those and follow that community.
One of the reasons CoD is so huge is that it’s so clearly dominant in its genre, with Battlefield, Medal of Honor and Halo providing scant competition. The trend is even more marked in World of Warcraft or Starcraft 2.
It seems like common wisdom that “variety is always good, and we need to be more open to new games”, but that may not always be in the best interests of a large, active, unified FGC. I’m all for being open to every new game that comes out, and giving it a fair chance. As a SFxT mainer, I’ve definitely seen how bad it can be for a community to mindlessly reject a new game. But to be honest, this continuing stream of new games cannot bode well for the FGC as a whole. You need to have one or two clear leaders in order to mobilise a large enough community to make all the things we love about FGCs (hype streams, big events, active online forums, “celebrity” shows like Mike Ross & Gootecks Excellent Adventures) even possible from a logistical point of view.
I think (although I might change my mind on this) that I’d rather have one million people mostly playing 2 or three games, feeding into a large and active FGC culture, even if it was for a game that wasn’t necessarily my favourite ever (as is the case with SF4 and UMvC3) than 3 or 4 million people playing 15 different fighting games in their living rooms, scraping out a couple of matches online a day and staring at two-post-a-week message boards.
I don’t think we can stop this trend from happening, not really. I think we’re going to inevitably see the First Winter of fighting games repeat itself, as game developers see the profits from FGs dividing down as more competitors enter the market, and they’ll move on to greener pastures, leaving us for several years without much support. When we hit that dry spell, many online communities may go into a semi-hibernation, with a few major games like SF4 still sustaining a hardcore community. Those games will keep attracting new members (as indeed I was attracted to SF4 because of the online community for it), and we’ll eventually be ready for another burst of activity, likely when SF5 is announced.
But it won’t be nearly as bad as the pre-SF4 days. The big difference between that winter and the coming one is that now we have a lot more tools and infrastructure with which to sustain hype and community. Streaming and YouTube have done enormous things for the ability of the FGC to sustain itself and enable communal discussion. DLC, as much as it’s been maligned, means that developers can refresh a community more easily and more regularly, providing new balance patches and content at a fraction of the cost of developing a whole new game. Online play is now expected, ubiquitous, and netcode is constantly improving. I marvel at how the FGC managed to survive without online play and without video hosting. Now that we have all this shit, it’s going to be a huge help in sustaining this community.
In short, I have faith in the ability of the FGC to survive (and grow) in the long term, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
In terms of where SFxT stands in all this, I’m not sure. It’s definitely going to remain behind SF4 and UMvC3 for the time being, and most probably will be eclipsed by TTT2. Still, I think its merits as a game are real, and a lot of people see that, whether they choose to admit it or not. I get the impression that it’s kind of becoming an open secret in the tournament community in the US that SFxT is actually a pretty good game that got a rough deal. There will need to be some sort of major stimulus to galvanise the community though, it won’t creep up on its own. Something like an overhaul patch, or a “super” edition, could do it, but I’m not sure how that would work itself out.
TBH, it’s moved passed the hey this top player likes/hates the game (although it’s nice to know some top players like it). It’s now how can the community save this game. I just don’t believe it when people say PR Rog likes the game, if he does then cool, but he needs to put some time into his Kazuya.
I do not believe the community will really go dry spell per Se… It’s a different era. The internet is way more prominent along with internet streaming. The key being internet streaming and broadcasting that is showing support for the game and community. It’s what keeps people in the loop now otherwise it would just be offline scenes. I think more people may have put increased effort into Sfxt if they didn’t have to please the online masses that gives them viewership, donations, and attention.
There may be fewer releases after this year but online will support these games for a long and interactive haul. Online wasn’t prominent during 3s years. All you had was Vhs, vcds, and DVD footage.
I never played 3s seriously, I watched a lot of The Shend’s YouTube clips for it instead and that’s all I had left to associate with regarding fighting games.
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I miss the age of everyone playing SFIV 
SF4 (all it’s bullshit aside) is just so… solid? Played it for a little bit yesterday. If only it had SFxT’s netcode.
What fucking age was this? SFIV didn’t do shit to bring anything together, get that bullshit out of your minds.
The age of where it people in the UK started to play it more. Hell, I remember people who didn’t play fighting games getting into SF4 and enjoying it. So, I wouldn’t call it nonsense.
I don’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think there are too many fighters getting released close together, and I do think some people are just jumping from one hot thing to the next… but personally while I like AE, certainly wouldn’t like it to be the “only” thing people play. What I’d like instead is for more people to be open about other games, for each scene to get at least decent numbers even if SF and Marvel are the “big boys” of the genre.
There certainly needs to be a decrease in vitriol against games that aren’t those two.
Hella people still play SF4 and for good reason. 
People don’t need to drop a game to move onto new ones. That’s the general feeling people are getting. It’s not.
Only “big events” is important out of that list.
I didn’t mean SFIV in particular, I just prefer it when the community isn’t spread so thin. Obviously I would have liked SFxT to just replace AE, so did Capcom probably.
Really disagree. Who here has the time to take on another fighter without dropping another?
I work 9-5, I am playing and learning like 2-3 (TTT2, P4A, bits of SFxT) games right now not including AE2012 which I play mostly offline on cabs.
So why not? Maybe muscle memory is something that’s time consuming but learning, memorizing and stuff shouldn’t be. You learn stuff along the way and it just sticks to you.
I’m kind of in the middle on that one. I agree, for example, that it’s possible to play more than one fighter at a time and be proficient. But at the same time, at the rate they’re coming out now, and then trying to commit to each community of players and such… it is a very hard balancing act.
Personally, I’m trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to balance time between SFxT and TTT2 (currently neglecting TTT2)… aaaaaand then trying to re-learn GGAC next month. O___O
Granted, I kinda’ work like 2.5 jobs lol, so that cuts into my practice time severely.
Struggling to juggle SFxT and TTT2, xT getting neglected somewhat.
TTT2 has definitely cleaned up my inputs though so it has been beneficial to my SF play.
I can’t play SF4 anymore…I do Guy’s Hozanto in SSF4, the character goes airborne for an eternity…I can get out 2 cr.mp before they hit the ground, and it doesn’t connect. It just feels wrong now:rofl:
S’why I had to drop Juri and Cammy in SF4, I kept trying to juggle on every AA and jump cancel stuff, lol.
I can still play SFIV and I usually enter tourneys for it just 'cuz, but I’ve pretty much moved to SFxT as well.