Im still mad, you should have sold me that Egret or at least bring the ST board!
J. Rambo - Let me know if you find an ST board for sale under $150…While your at, see if you can get me a SF EX2 plus, been trying to get that for awhile!
Yep, this would be a great idea. I have never liked the current SRK forum organisation, it’s an inconsistent disorganised mess… much like most other forums then! 
But yes, your organisation would be far better and should be done for almost every game really.
Just found a combo SSFIITurbo with Alpha 3. It sold for 200 dollars on neo-geo.com.
Like I said before you just have to take the time to look and you can at times find candy cabinets in the weirdest places. Just the other day I found an Astro City an hour from me for 450 dollars. I already bought my second one so I couldn’t afford another. At this moment if you’re not patient to find cabs just send ken@thegameroom an email and ask what he has in stock. If you live in the West Coast the price for shipping is going to be a lot cheaper than if it were to be shipped to the East Coast.
Just send him an email and ask him how much shipping is going to be. Do not use the shipping calculator from his ebay store because it’s hella inaccurate.
I got a quote from him awhile back & his shipping is still pricey. $350 I asked him for pics of the cab ill be getting but never responded, i ended up going w/ coin-op instead…
As for the ST, i’ve already posted WTB: On Klov & Neo-geo…I check craigslist & ebay daily but can’t find an ST. There’s one guy in my area is selling an ST for $400 w/ cabinet but i dont need another stand-up cab.
In other news, it looks like the ST scene in Seattle might start picking up again w/ having an ST cab at Pink Gorilla. Hopefully this will have a good following & maybe Afrocoles can start promoting SF2 in his dojo where all those SFIV players are at.
I started playing when I was a teenager with WW in the arcade (yes, I know, I’m old). Played CE and HF at local arcades, pool halls, etc. Never played in a tourney until I was in college and SSf4 and ST came out. Only played in some local ones and some on campus. After college the arcades had pretty much died so basically didn’t play any SF2 until SF2 AE came out on the Xbox1 with online play! I could play other people again! LOL. Didn’t start entering tournies again until right about the time HDR first came out, ImmortalBMW told me about a tourney coming up in my area so I went and got 2nd (to Immortal) and was hooked again. Starting checking the SRK tourney forums for more tournies that were close by.
I’m just happy there is any scene at all in my area now, I really missed playing SF2 between the time arcades died and HDR came out (almost a whole decade of not playing SF2 offline).
What we need to find out is the reasons why online-only players choose to not come out and why they stay online-only. Those are who I want to hear from. What would it take to make them come out? Is it the hassle? Worried about not doing well (worried about their so-called “online rep”)?
Funny thing about the listening to other people’s buttons: I actually use my loud-ass HAPP buttons to my advantage by occasionally mashing like crazy on a kick button or something after a knock-down or trade, trying to bait an opponent into trying to reversal the HHS he thinks is coming, then punishing the wiffed reversal, LOL.
Haha i remember before people would bring shoeboxes to cover their hands haha…
For me the reason why i cant go to tournaments or even local gatherings is just time & responsibility. I have an asian wife w/ 2 kids. Wife works full time & i have full time business that i cant leave.
The other reason is that the scene is lacking over here. SFIV is overwhelming & the OG’s of ST dont really want to bother anymore. its like they gave up on SF2.
The only way i would go to a local tourney, would be a big tourney that comes once a year. We were suppose to have Northwest Majors but it got canceled due to some issues w/ the venue.
that sounds alright, but what this site really needs is a revamp of the local matchmaking threads. Seems like there are many people that want to play offline and be part of a scene but arent finding each other. Maybe the people who are willing to host sessions can be listed somewhere and those that are in those areas and would like to attend can post.
Getting people together offline will help grow any version you prefer and is important to the future of all tournaments. A group of players in one area will be more willing to travel together than a lone online player somewhere out-there. Instead of wondering why people only play online, lets give them a reason not to.
@getting-arcade-stuff-discussion
The main point here is that if you personally want a cps2 setup, its very much available to you.(maybe a few of you “in the know” can make a thread with more info) Yes, it is more difficult and expensive than walking into your crappy local gamestore but it is the best version and way to play sf2 imo.
What would be cool to see is one person in every city getting a setup and holding occasional gatherings. If cost is a major issue then try and get a few of the local players to go in on it together. You have just created an instant scene. You will all learn and improve together, also you will have fun.
Since i made that video which was linked on this thread’s first page, I have received 30-40 messages from people asking either if i knew of any offline events in their area’s or asking how to get cps2 stuff. I’ve also helped 10 new players setup ggpo since then. There is interest out there, lets get the correct info and needed help out to them and each other. I think this thread has morphed into “what is the future of sf2?”, lets keep the ball rolling down positive street.
I can honestly say I don’t go to tournaments because I know I won’t do well. That, and also cause it usually ends up on days that I am working. Wife/job/life all come into play. But if I thought I had a shot at winning, I would make the room in my schedule to be there.
At this point, I would be more interested In some kind of a weekly gathering that I can go to and learn from the people that are better than me. I would prefer to learn face to face, but an organized online training group that anyone can get in on would be nice. Something like character specific lessons that can help beginners as well as intermidiates get to a “pro” level.
Tournaments give people incentive to keep playing and to get better. The addictive thing about the game is trying to better yourself, and beat the players who are better than you. tournaments are naturally the proving grounds and basically the end game. Without them, what would be the point of putting in all this time and effort mastering the game? It is just a game afterall. I can see how that is what has kept ST alive as long as it has.
People from the tournament communities should find more effective ways of bringing in/fostering/encouraging new talent and getting new players up to speed. The forums are an ok place to get info but let’s face it…“newbs” are shunned with terms like scrub or whatever other elitist type lingo is used on the boards. Afterall, people end up coming to the boards to learn things about the game and are expected to read through thousands and thousands of posts before asking questions. And god forbid someone asks what the best stick to use is…simple shit that can be asked to someone directly who knows their shit without the flameage.
That’s actually a pretty good point about the importance of the regional forums. For instance, I definitely know that a number of Montreal guys travel to nearby tournies specifically because we’re traveling as a group, and sharing cars / rooms - and many of the scene’s guys originally met on the regional forums.
MTL has had a fairly well-organized local fighting games scene for the past two years and it’s making a big impact on the number of traveling guys (from something like 1 or 2 a couple years back, to maybe a dozen regulars now). I’m not entirely sure what could really be concretely changed with the regional forums though, beyond trying to keep the first post of each city’s thread updated with actual info.
I have a us superturbo setup and Jpn grandmaster challenge setup. I Would be willing to do exactly this but the question is where and how? I Can’t say I want total strangers coming to my house… This is why arcades used to exist I guess.
i would suggest you come to NEC in philly next month, if you dont want to enter then just spectate and you’ll see that 99.9% of the players are cool people in real life and how tournaments are very un-srk like, in that everyone is respectful of each other for the most part. Say hi to me and ill point you in the direction of people that may be around your area.
if thats not an option, then your gonna have to treat it like online dating, but where the end-game is a nice session of street fighter and not a session of something else hah. Like i said before its kind of difficult to do this presently on this website, but advertise your having the gathering and look for respected srk members that would like to attend or players that respected members recomend. talk to these guys on msn or aim and then decide if you would mind having them in your house or not. Your setup sounds nice and i guarantee theres people that will want to play on it, your just gonna have to jump in the deep end to get it started.
btw you can send me a pm and we’ll figure out how far you are from where we play, that would be a good place to meet some peeps also
Alright, so I’m one of those online-only players and have stayed out of this thread because I kind of agree with Ganelon that I have no business arguing about what version gets used at tournaments. But, since mad possum asked:
The number one reason I don’t go to tournaments is money. I’m currently trying to start a business and it isn’t going well yet, so I can’t afford the combined costs of hotel, travel, and, to a lesser extent, entry fees. PSN online is free, so I can keep playing HDR all I want as long as I keep paying my electric and internet bills.
The other issue is that I’m a pad player and don’t have a converter. If I see a tournament for XBox 360, I’m pretty much instantly out because I can’t use my Dualshock 3. If I played stick I’m sure someone would have one I could borrow and it would be close enough, but a 360 pad (especially first-party) isn’t going to cut it.
Also, there just isn’t a scene in my area. I went to the local forums, asked about HDR players, and a couple people said they would play, then when I showed up I got a little over an hour of people playing before they gave up and went back to SSF4 and BB. It was more of a “Yeah, I know how to play that game,” vibe than anyone actually caring about it. Yeah, I could put in some work to hype local HDR, but I’ve got more personally-important things on my plate right now to worry about and it’s going to be very hard to get anyone to care about some no-name player that wants people to play his favorite game.
I hadn’t heard of GGPO before playing HDR and I had an intense mistrust of fighting game netcode after trying out SC4 and SSBB, so I didn’t even bother with it until I read somewhere about how amazing HDR’s netcode was about a year ago. With no local scene and no online play, there’s no way to practice, so I didn’t even bother with fighting games for a long time even though I really like the competitive aspect of them. I didn’t go to tournaments or even bother looking them up because I knew enough about the games to know I wasn’t any good at them on any reasonable scale and had no way to get better. Now that rollback netcode makes playing online actually worthwhile practice, I probably would go to tournaments if there was any reasonable way for me to.
That’s a fantastic idea! What if we organized it the same way as I did with the SF2 Tourney thread? So basically, we would keep the 1st post updated with a very brief bio of each host along with a link to their “real” thread over in the whatever region matchmaking forum. We could keep this list sorted alphabetically by state/region so that it’s easy to browse.
The nice thing about doing it this way is that it doesn’t really break the forum rules about posting a bunch of matchmaking threads outside of the matchmaking forums. It’s just a quick way to look the ones up that pertain to SF2.
What do you guys all think about the organization I laid out for a re-design of the SF2 forums? I kind of like the notion of being able to keep the specifics for each game separate. And I realize that the WW~SSF2 sections probably won’t get a ton of traffic. And maybe that’s OK. But what do you guys think? Is that too fine grained? Should ST, HDR, and/or AE be grouped together? Should WW~SSF2 be grouped together? Will it get confusing if we group some of those together? If so, any ideas on how to make things less confusing? Should we have more sub-forums for each character, like SF4 does? Any other organizational ideas?
I think that’s a fair point. As I look up at our sticky threads I see a “Strategy Guide” post that links to EventHubs and a “New to the forum?” post that mentions the wiki, but doesn’t link to it. But maybe we should have more than that? Making it easier to get to the wiki would be a start. But I also see how a number of stickied FAQ type threads could be really useful. Just a couple ideas off the top of my head:
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A FAQ that covers the most popular pad/stick options for XBox/PS3, for PC(GGPO, etc), and perhaps a bit about old-school (Dreamcast, PS1/2) controller or adapter options.
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A FAQ with info like Tetsuosan posted about how to get an arcade cab, boards, monitor, as well as a brief coverage of maintainance details (buttons, battery issues, etc).
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A FAQ for getting GGPO set up and fine tuned.
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A FAQ about monitors, display lag, and the most common ones used to avoid those problems.
I realize that some of these are broad topics. And perhaps a link to the Tech forum or whatever for further reading should be included. But, I’m thinking that these could be streamlined for SF2 players.
I’d love to keep brainstorming about ideas like the ones above and how we could organize the forums better to really make SF2 info and discussions on here top shelf. If we can come up with a solid plan that people feel good about, I’ll try to ask around and see if we can get something like this to happen. :wgrin:
Q: What do you guys all think about the organization I laid out for a re-design of the SF2 forums?
A: Great initiative! It would be something well worth it, I believe.
Q: Should ST, HDR, and/or AE be grouped together?
A: No. AE is just a step back in terms of competitive play, so IMHO it does not demand a section. As the times people would pollute the ST forums with AE questions are gone, well, that’s one less reason.
Q: Should WW~SSF2 be grouped together?
A: They can stay in the main SF2 section, I believe. As for SSF2, the DGV bros may have something to say about it. Odds are it will not warrant a section.
I have observed, while trying to get old SF2 fans into ST or HF, that those two games are particularly fondly remembered by casual players, who would not even remotely have contact or worry about competitive play, but perhaps against their brother or cousin. They recall those games from the SNES days and might want to try them again with a computer. Such people often do not know a bunch of things such are tatsus being different among the different versions, reversals, and such, but may eventually like and enjoy some competitive SF2 game such as CE, HF or ST. It is interesting that newbies discuss those games in the main section so as to always have the other game sections just a mouse click away.
Q: Will it get confusing if we group some of those together?
A: I believe SSF2X, HDR, CE and HF are different enough. AE should not be considered, in my view, unless one wants to stick to a single version of the characters (say, HF only so as to avoid GGPO desyncs).
Q: Should we have more sub-forums for each character, like SF4 does?
A: Not enough people, and it discourages interaction: you would have to open 16 different tabs to check all characters of the game for ST and HDR. BTW, I made a ST thread for newbies, I believe it would help if it could get stickied: I lost count of how many times people created “new” threads for characters due to not finding the threads. Also, many do not know how to get all threads to show right away, and it does not hurt to remind them.
Q: Any other organizational ideas?
A: Not exactly, right now. But it would be nice if the original posts on the character threads were edit-able by someone who played the character and would not mind updating it with links to useful posts inside the thread. Also, a link to the appropriate SRK Wiki section would be welcome.
- opening 16 tabs is painful. whenever i go visit the ssf4 forum just to see if there’s anything interesting going on, i never bother enter the character specific subforum because of this.
- this.
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the problem with the wiki is that you don’t get to edit it even you have a srk account. you have to ask mr. wizard to give you permission. just this hassle is enough to stop people from contributing
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the wiki editing is nothing but user unfriendly. it seems like you need to know a programming language to layout your text properly. i did it once and i never bother to do it again.
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random people should not be creating the character specific threads (only mod should do this) because of the reasons that osbr mentioned.
usually the guy who created it eventually lose interest and only visit srk every few months, but no one but only that guy can update the first post, which is the most premium location of every thread.
usually a thread stabilizes after around 5 pages worth of discussion. and that is a good time to have someone summarized what we’ve learned in the 1st post.
that way new comer don’t have to go thru all the discussion and still get a good overview of that thread. it is also easier for people to find information later on.
i don’t know how to fix this. can mod change the ownership of the first post?
i have seen some vBulletin forums using a “community wiki post” plugin so that every thread will have a “community wiki post” right after the 1st post. and that post can be edited by everyone.
i am not a webmaster so i don’t know how easily that is to setup but i have seen it in quite a few places
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yeah definitely we have have a tech talk thread (or sub forum if there are a lot of topics regarding this) that is targeted to sf2 players.
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match making thread / subforum is also a good idea since the sf2 community is not huge like ssf4.
whenever i go to the pacific-west match making forum i’m lost.
- i can’t easily locate the thread targeting my location (because there are too many threads)
- almost every thread is about ssf4
for community of our size, a subforum of our own should make it much easier to find
also you can read about what other part of the country is doing with ST/HDR and steal ideas from them (how to grow your scene).
- regarding the ST forum by default only show 1 page of thread - this must be a forum configuration issue. i don’t see any subforum that behave like this. many people do not know they need to change the drop down on the bottom left corner to see all the threads (myself included)
thus sometime you see people creating new threads even though one already existed.
i hope this could be fixed by the ST mod.
As far as online players not coming out is concerned. I recently talked to someone in the Xanadu stream today about joining the local scene… he was from NorCal. He plays Super Street Fighter IV on pad, so no luck on the “Play SFII front”, but frankly I wasn’t going to encourage him to play SFII when he didn’t even know about how robust the local scene was around him in spite of living in the largest Street Fighter playing state in the nation.
I feel SRK needs to start highlighting the Regional Matchmaking forum more often. Instead of making stupid polls about “Who’s the best coast”, we could be seeing articles about the various regions in Local Matchmaking. Highlighting local spots of the week/month, giving incentive to showcase what scenes have to offer, who’s who and what not. I feel in most cases, people just don’t know about Regional Matchmaking as a tool or just that there are scenes near them to begin with. The player that I helped tonight knew about SRK, but somehow I knew more about “Pacific North” than he did, but he did his research and looked into 707 Tilt and then RAMnation.
I talked to him on AIM eventually and he seemed really happy about my having helped him so I’m hoping he follows through. He’s keeping me posted, but I’ll be at Season’s Beatings this weekend so I can’t really follow up… but getting to the point of all this:
Streams are a big thing, I feel that communication is the one thing we need to be doing. Whether or not that grows Street Fighter II, I feel that’s a matter of just getting people involved in offline play. While many of us do not like Street Fighter IV, I hate to say it but I find it far more useful in terms of getting new players. There are two players in Maryland who picked up the game after they came in playing SFIV because, to me, the games will speak for themselves. If someone sees the blah that is Street Fighter IV for what it is, then maybe they’ll be more receptive to something else. The key for me has just been asking folks “Hey, why are you in this stream? Where are you from?”
I actually thought the person I talked to was trolling me, but he really didn’t know about what was near him. I think one thing we could try doing is just looking at streams. It’s not the entirety of the online player population, but sometimes folks just don’t know. The other thing is that folks sometimes just don’t talk online. I realize we’re all worried about trolls in online play and I rarely play online these days. If there’s anything I’ve observed it is that online doesn’t really replicate offline in terms of communication or contact. That human element is missing in a lot of cases, though maybe when the US doesn’t have a garbage infrastructure for internet that won’t matter. The reality is that for now, it’s not so hot across the board, so I feel like just trying to talk to people is very important. The player I talked to in the stream told me he was intimidated by things like tournament performance and not having a main character in SFIV. Rather than throw the “Playing to Win” book at him, I just told him to go and have fun first and foremost. I stressed not worrying about what other players are thinking and focusing on just playing, having fun, and improving.
Even if you don’t like Super SFIV, try watching a stream, seeing who’s talking and asking questions. I never really considered it until tonight.
Wasn’t there like rankings on SRK awhile back? I think that would be some good incentive to put those in each region/state on who are the top 8 player for SF2. Can motivate OGs & newblood to get that recognition…Maybe even have a player of the year reward/award.
Just some follow-up ideas to some of the responses to why some players don’t play offline:
No time and/or money These are always my issues when I can’t make it out to an event. Most of us are older now with wives and maybe kids so it’s hard. As far as time, most events are held on weekends and are posted about well in advance, everyone should be able to find at least a couple during the year where they can make it out. You just have to keep your eyes open for any coming up and plan ahead a little bit (and helps to have an understanding wife, LOL). I sometimes take some of my kids with me, my oldest son has actually played in some of the smaller, local events in SF4 and HDR.
As far as money goes, if you go to a local event (so don’t need a hotel, lots of gas, etc) then it’s usually only around $10 for a venue fee and then another $5 to $10 to enter ST/HDR. So if you only play ST/HDR it’s usually only going to cost you $15 to $20 (which you can win back if you finish at least top 3). “But what if there is no local scene in my area?” I’ll hit that in a bit.
No pad/stick for 360/PS3 If your a stick player and you don’t have a stick for whatever system is being used I promise you someone there will let you use their stick. If your a pad player and another system is being used I would recommend looking into getting on of the SF4 fighting pads, I hear they are pretty good and you could probably get one pretty cheap if you look around the internet for some deals.
Worried about doing well / Other player’s attitudes Almost all of the players you meet/play against will be very cool and nice. You almost never get the kind of attitudes and acts you get with online play/online forums offline. It’s a totally diiferent, very cool, environment. And don’t worry about how you do, just go to have fun and get some experience. Plus with the way ST/HDR is, where one lucky hit can lead to the end of round, there are always the chance for upsets. Plus you just might surprise yourself!
No scene in my area If you can’t find any tournies or events in your area that have HDR I bet you can find some SSF4 ones. Check the SRK tourney forum, find an event in your area and post in the thread that you’d like to have an HDR side tourney. See how many of the people already going and posting would be interested in playing HDR. Post it in the HDR tourney thread. Talk to people you play online or know in your area about going. If you make a $5 HDR side event at a SSF4 tourney and maybe talk a couple of HDR guys into going you could probably end up with a decent amount.
Edit: One more thing I thought of, if it’s a big tourney with lots of top players for every game I just stick to SF2. If it’s a smaller, more local tourney I try to enter other games and support some of the other games that get swallowed up by SF4, like BlazBlue, CvS2, etc. It’s fun, good for the FG community, and I find that other players are more willing to play SF2 and help support your game if you help support theirs.
Just some ideas, like to hear from some more online only guys, keep the feedback coming!
I think the new SF2 forums should be listed in the Discussion Groups (same as SF4) or in the Strategy Zone (same as ST and HDR). The title should be something like “Street Fighter II Series (WW, CE, HF, SSFII, HSF, AE, ST, HDR)”. In the main page, WW-AE should be grouped together and in the sub-forum have the CE and HF threads from the FGD forums in there as well as any other misc threads I may be unaware of. ST should have it’s own sub-forum as well as HDR. So the main page would look like this:
-WW, CE, HF, SSFII, HSF, AE
-Super Turbo
-HD Remix
-SF2 Tournaments, Wiki Threads, Technical FAQs, etc
The ST and HDR sub-forums should look pretty much like they do now. IDK if stickying each, individual character-specific thread would be a good idea, but maybe a better idea would be if there was a sub-sub-forum or a single thread linking to all the character-specific threads in both the ST and HDR sub-forums.
Great ideas. Also would be nice to add a FAQ on how to use the Wiki, how to get an account, how to edit the pages and use the language, how to upload images, etc. I might work on this.
I would be happy to help in any way I can. = J