Tougeki SBO 2011 - ST

I think as you’ve probably seen on GGPO, it’s mighty hard to be respectful to a lot of folks there. I totally agree that newer players are given a horrible impression by disrespectful people that have only been around marginally longer- and in any case it should not follow that “better at the game” means “I get to be an asshole” but all too often that’s what you see (GGPO, here etc.) so I can totally understand if you don’t want to come back for that reason alone. If you cite America’s biggest flaw being the size of the country, in terms of travel costs in Japan it works out to about the same a lot of the time and believe me, Japan definitely has it’s talent split over large areas as well. There are great players all over the country, well outside of Tokyo. That’s especially true if you remove Daigo from the equation. Actually the Internet is pretty fast, I think it’s the speed of light that isn’t quite fast enough, even with GGPO’s ability to go back in time.

Yeah it seems we can at least agree on more round robin format of tournaments at least. But I’ll just have the last word here and say that there is no new development, even in local American tournaments players show up and don’t lose every single game so they too think they’re “about as good” as the winner of the event too. In any case I’ll just end this by saying the level of ST is (still) notably higher in Japan despite American challengers using Claw/o.Sagat/CE dictator etc.

So in other words, you don’t care how it’s done as long as they win? Honestly I don’t have an issue with Wolfe vs. Otochun match, it was a well-played match by Wolfe but I had a big problem with the match vs. Komoda. It was a perfect example of not being able to do anything even if you knew everything that was coming your way, and had perfect execution.

Regardless of which side has a better record against each other ( Japan does anyway), I think it’s more important to focus on the qualities that make a player good…just because it’s hard to objectively do it doesn’t mean it should be abandoned. You also don’t need to actually play these people to find this out…I really don’t see how you can’t look at some players like Otochun, Taira, Kurahashi, ARG, KKY, Hayase, Seki and so many more and see the obvious gap. Perhaps it’s harder for you to see it because O Sagat can control the match so well?

Also it’s pretty pointless to bring up tournament results from the year 2000 to talk about these players right now…and even then it was Japan coming out on top and having to fight 2 O Sagats.

This is an important point that I’ve been making before and it is being ignored. Japan brings very few players to the US, and faces off against about 100 American players in a tournament, and the Japanese still either win it, or place high. Then US sends their players to Japan and they don’t get anywhere (aside from the Wolfe Brothers). The point is that it’s much harder for Japan to win a tournament when there’s so few of them representing Japan to begin with, and yet they almost always win or place very high. US losing out to Japan in SBO doesn’t mean much by itself, but it illustrates that comparing to the opposite situation as Japan coming to the US, Japan performs incredibly well in comparison.

Another thing I wanted to touch up on is the less significance of win/loss records in ST in comparison to other games…the random factor in ST very high because of the demandingly high execution required to get out of damaging and easy to execute setups. It is much easier for a less skilled player to beat a high skilled player in ST than it is to do that in other games, such as Kof, Blazblue, etc. So even if Japan has an obviously better record against the US, I think it’s more important to focus on the abilities being displayed by the players…the knowledge, the execution, the reactions, the awareness, the metagame.

Yeah, I thought I made that clear earlier but once again, all that matters to me when considering players in a group is a win by one person against another person. ST danisen results (http://www.game-versus.net/x_danisen/grade.html) have already shown that even bottom tier characters can be harnessed well enough to compete at a top level. They may not be even, but they’re still respectable enough to be on the same “hill.” Of course, if we try to determine who’s the best char-for-char player, that’s a different question that can’t be answered via these same means.

I’d like to focus on other qualities besides wins but I’m not omniscient and, even knowing what I know about ST, don’t pretend to know high level play for characters I’m not as familiar with. That forces me to only look at the end results since it’s a clear answer.

Anyway, it almost sounds like you’re not familiar with o.Sagat since he’s not at all trivial to use. You can roughly test for yourself on GGPO. And if you want to test your ST knowledge, I can make up a short quiz on videos of semi-high level techniques I do know is going on behind the scenes and we can both see how clearly you’ll pick up on those. I’d probably do it as a new quiz topic just as a fun exercise for folks to test their understanding. You can have first dibs on giving the answers.

I agree that those 2000 results are old and likely outdated. But that’s a large 20-match set of results and we may barely have that many head-to-head results from Evo in the past decade. And as I mentioned, Japan came out slightly on top in the exhibition, but if we focus on individual results, we had 2 players do great. Yeah, they both used o.Sagat but it’s not like you’ve otherwise seen weak players using o.Sagat and winning against stronger competition.

You’ve clearly skipped past where I already addressed this bias-tinged point. This argument depends on the pools of strong players being the same worldwide when nobody claimed that. If you want the counter-argument I already made in a more colorful analogy form, it’s as if we had 27 teams of 3 Nuki clones each, only one team of which was made in the US and all the rest in Japan. Each Nuki has identical ST skills and goes 5-5 with every other Nuki. We pit the sole US team of 3 Nukis against the 26 JP-manufactured Nuki teams in a single elim tournament. How often do you expect the US Nuki team to win? 1/27 of the time. That’s what Tougeki would be like even if we have 3 top players who can go 5-5 on our side. Meanwhile, at Evo, you’re dealing with a much smaller set of top level players, at most 12 and possible even as low as 3 US players each year. So if 3 separate JP Nukis came to the US and had to play against 3-12 US Nukis as well as an assortment of players-in-training, how often would you expect the 3 JP Nukis to perform after 8 years? Those are Evo odds for the JP players and means they have much higher chances of winning, esp. for Daigo, who seems to perform especially well.

Nobody disagrees that Japan has the much larger top player quantity so this sort of argument is a straw man. It’s like holding a 100-on-100 of the top players in both countries, seeing Japan winning (which nobody would doubt), and then claiming that nobody on the US team stood a chance. But nobody even claimed numerical equality in the first place and since you initiated the disagreement, it falls on you to understand what you’re disagreeing with. All I mentioned is that high level play isn’t exclusive to Japan, meaning there are at least some US players who can compete, which I’ve based on close historical actual matches. Plus, you need to get your facts straight: the US team I was with last year tied for 5th, the same position that the US achieved for AE in 2007, You’re free to value the meanings of tourney placings as part of your own evidence for JP strength, but it’s hardly an important point in this discussion since I could easily say that comparing Tougeki and Evo is akin to comparing apples and oranges based on my above example.

I agree that ST’s high damage does allow slightly more randomness than other games, but entirely disagree on that being a factor of any noticeable significance in results. When have you heard of a random player knocking out a strong ST player in a major? You’re free to pay attention to whatever you want but a lot of what you mention is difficult for players not of that level to see since there are plenty of option selects and side properties in play that aren’t apparent unless you frequently use them or play against them. My quiz stands if you want to put yourself to the test. And like I already mentioned to XSPR, if you think the randomness is such that a top player can lose 40% of the time to someone far inferior, then that’s a fundamental difference in opinion that makes this discussion moot.

I believe it is really hard to really avoid falling for them, cos the risk involved is high, or you are near death, or you just have many options that work against you. For instance, cross-up into overhead. Even if you know your enemy might use that, you just know throw and low attacks are much more common, and those would work anyway, if you are about to get dizzied. I could mention more things, but I honestly do not recall all the stuff. It is one thing to notice something in a match, and something else to really have them in mind because you faced it or know how to execute and apply it. That said, what I wanted to say was that there did not seem to exist a lack of knowledge or execution from Nuki. However, ST is naturally much more than executing combos and tricks. Keishin seems to know most tricks, but the results speak for themselves: Otochun and Nuki win more.

Edit: sorry for the late reply, it is a pain in the ass to post, SRK is really buggy to me.

Edit2: as for the invitational, one can clearly see American players missing many moves. It is just natural that Watson lost most his matches: Ryu is not competitive if he can not obtain his specials when he wants. One blocked jump or wrong move can mean wither game over or missing the chance to win the match. It has happened to D at the SBO, no wonder it happened to Watson at that tournament. Playing balltop + square gate for the first time is not easy, at all.

I thought I already had the last word on this? Guess not. The Japanese players took out HALF the US team completely, winning every game except for Mike’s one win over Otochun. Kurahashi got a perfect round and knee dropped his Ryu’s jab shoryuken TWICE. You know, like, in case anyone thought the first time was a fluke. Did the American team get any perfects? No. Choi lost about half of his matches (by round, that’s winning 8 of 14). Valle’s o.Sagat beat Kurahashi’s Guile, but it came right down to the wire to about 7 pixels. Otochun lost to Valle similarly by a few more pixels. btw Seth almost beat Valle in Evo West 2006 HSF2, Valle using a CE character no less but it was very close, enough to convince OG Alex Wolfe to put the vid on youtube. Just about all the R&D for ST strategy/tactics come out of Japan first, is that any coincidence? We’re still finding out new things fairly often for such an old game. Yet you can look at all of this, and still sum it all up by stating that Ganelon is UNDEFEATED vs. all the games you’ve ever played with Daigo. He’s never beaten you once. Do you really think Daigo got so good in a vacuum? Do you think he got good playing only in the American tournaments a few days out of the year over the past decade? He played against competition in Japan. If you cloned Nuki, they’d all keep drawing 5-5 all day long. In any case please don’t clone Nuki, clone one of the other players. While you don’t DENY Japan has thicker, higher QUANTITY competition, you seem to deny that that’s exactly what has led to the higher quality and to the dominance at Tougeki (with all the Japanese players that never traveled to Evo). The more competition you have, the more you are tested and the better you are.

All I was saying is you can not judge a player by how he performs on hardware he is not used to. I was impressed Choi and Valle won matches, based on how many moves they missed.

Fair enough, but esp. at their level,we can’t assume we know what’s going on in their head and what counters they’re considering preparing for or not to any given trick. So I try to stick with as objective results as possible (ie which wins more or less) and say that Keishin is either not having good enough tricks, or doesn’t execute them consistently enough if they are valid tricks.

Yeah, sorry I was replying to the other guys’ text above. It’s ok if you miss a bunch of moves if you play with o.Sagat. Come on it wasn’t that bad, they had constant practice for a while before that tournament.

I say he is not as good obtaining positions and situations where the tricks can be applied.

Getting used to square and balltop demands months of training, I even made a thread asking for help. If one wanted them to perform as they could, they should have been given Happ parts. The fact that most of them used motion characters makes this even worse: the motions change dramatically depending on the kind of gate. I actually find it strange that one would even dispute that.

It hurts the point he’s making. It says the americans would have done better probably had they been used to the controls.

-trolls suck-

XSPR: I don’t control what others have to say to me and hadn’t addressed my previous post to you. I didn’t mind letting your last comment slide because it’s your opinion but if you want to make another stand over a reiteration of my opinion, I can continue. It’s all good writing practice for me. And even though I don’t agree with the methods you use from your perspective, I do like your focus on empirical evidence much more so than the “murky theory” I often deal with. It’s too bad the exact type of head-to-head evidence I prefer is in such short supply. But it’s nice to hear that if a US team wins Tougeki, then your opinions would shift. And conversely, if top US players fall to weaker comp in Tougeki round 1, my position would change.

OK, so back to the 2000 exhibition, I concur that Japan took out 2 US players almost completely. But what’s that supposed to mean? The other 2 Americans did just fine, with 1 above all of the Japanese and 1 in between, The fact is that Seth wasn’t originally supposed to be there whereas all 5 of the JP players were pre-planned. And I never said he was on equal footing with the Japanese. You lumped him, Watson, and the others together. I agree Seth has done very well in US tourneys but as I said, at most a dozen US players qualify as being on Japan’s high level (the exact number and players would depend on the specific head-to-head records we don’t have much of, specifically those who did the most to prevent JP players from winning at Evo). You’re free to exclude any of the Japanese in that exhibition as non-top players as well, although I think they’ve all proven themselves.

And I don’t care about perfects or individual round results. I didn’t bother counting or commenting on them because I think that’s splitting hairs. Any Blanka can take me down to half my life just doing random blanka balls that I’ll have to block and punish. T.Hawk can near-perfect most of the crew on 1 knockdown at the beginning as much as at the end. And I already mentioned that anyone winning in round 1 is auto-handicapped in round 2. So I think that’s an inconclusive consideration. I’m not even sure individual games matter compared to who ultimately takes the match (so there’s no “gauging the opponent” 1st round/match factor).

Regarding R&D, do you really think folks like Cole, Valle, Choi, and the Wolfe brothers bothered to check out Japanese matches in detail? I do agree that most players nowadays copy the Japanese too much and it shows since they have a great deal of difficulty beating the Japanese using shadows of the original techniques. I’ll admit that when I first started with Guile, I tried to copy from JP match videos as well and just “act” like they did. It didn’t work very well since I had no idea of the reasoning behind what I was doing. When I switched to claw, I very loosely followed the YBH tips, watched videos but only took straightforward techniques I could immediately understand, and developed the rest of my play style by myself starting as a stiff, c.MP mashing and wall dive looping zombie. I still view JP videos to see what other tricks I missed, and NH2 has helpfully pointed a couple of things out for me, but I think at this point, I also see a few situations at times where the JP claws might improve by picking up one of my tricks. How did that come to be? Because I tried to figure out my own solutions for problems instead of referring back all the time to how top JP claws react.

As for a 0-0 record against Daigo, I wouldn’t be surprised if he would beat me with his boxer if we ever played but I see no reason to accept that Daigo wins without even playing. Daigo’s skills originated in Japan but he’s continued to get practice/warmed up playing often in US tourneys and has been exposed to more styles of play than anybody else. I suppose a wild card I have is that I’ve likely played against more people in online ST since 2007 than anybody else in the world. From Kaillera until now, I’ve seen all sorts of styles. That may not be enough compared to the brutal, weekly offline competition in Japan but GGPO and offline practice was enough to help me prepare for a good deal of what I could expect in Japan. I was a bit worried about new techniques from T.Hawk and Cammy that I had no clue how to handle, but incidentally, there was little new and it seemed I was already on solid footing.

The few good US Hawks on GGPO made me learn how to build a good fundamental defense that I only had to add additional caution and timing to in casuals to feel prepared for tourney time. And even though I admit still being unfamiliar to certain other tactics that I didn’t realize before heading to Japan (tactics that aren’t used over here and would likely be weaknesses come tourney time), the tourney proved what I had already felt and experienced for a long time with Hawk. On another note, damdai made a prediction earlier this year that he thought his o.Ken could beat Tokido’s claw in a tourney based on his casuals against me. I liked damdai but wasn’t sure either way given that Tokido had done so well in past US tourneys. But sure enough, damdai proved his word at Evo. Even so, you might say, there’s no comparison to playing highly concentrated top comp all the time. That brings me to my next point.

As for why higher quantity doesn’t necessarily lead to noticeable increases in quality, well, it normally does but there’s a limit to the game at which you can’t escape from the folks chasing you anymore. In this competitive cave, you can climb near the highest point in the ceiling (with no way up from there) but other folks also climbing the ceiling can take potshots at that point. As you said, there’s a difference even amongst high level players but at that point, it’s also not clear who’s always in the best situation at any given time. Shooting D may be overall a more effective Ryu in most matchups but Futachan has a reputation for having the best recent record against boxer, claw, and Dhalsim. And we know that from individual matches rather than solely from their tourney placings.

Beyond competition as a factor for improving, there’s also an individual’s demonstrable interest in striving to become the best and in practicing more. I only know what I do about ST because I’ve scoured SRK and various other sources for every bit on claw, notes on engine design, and tourney player advice that might help me improve. I’ve played 6+ hours a day for weeks at a time at some points to level up faster. All the successful US OG players I know have done the same, and I’m sure the Japanese do it too since Daigo has certainly mentioned doing so. But even that would just be theory on what makes a good player. For example, Taira made a quick jump in just over a year to high level play whereas plenty of other dictator players haven’t gotten that far after numerous years of experience. Overall, I still think results say everything and that once you have a winning or close record against high level players (e.g. a 1-0 win in your only tourney match, or going 4-6 in 10 matches), then that means you’ve also reached a high level.

And I still think reaching high level means at least tying or doing better than the high level, despite all of the random Blanka balls.

But if you are looking at the top of a mountain, you can’t really go higher than that.

If someone still loses to aniken, but they aren’t absolutely destroyed, they aren’t high level?

-trolls suck-

I think it is hard to say how much worse you are, unless you consider some clear criterion, such as win %. The reasons why one loses, say, 70% of his matches against other player may demand a lot of training and insight to make results equal. For instance, one may win 30% with Chun against a shoto, which we assume is of reachable level. Let us also assume the Chun wins by playing defensively, with simple offense such are either walk up throw or walk up cr.Forward. It is not clear to me how much more training this person needs to learn how to properly apply Chun’s other tools, such as punishing and catching limbs with ground normals, neutral RH, stopping random jumps with st.RH or cl.Forward, stop cross-ups with cl.Forward or cl.Jab (hitting on the back), learn to bulldog better, and so on. This means, this person may need a lot of training to “fix” that 20% chance he or she is missing.

I believe the Japanese are, in general, better, but it is really hard to say when you consider a single player. For instance, I do believe they have much superior Blankas, Cammys and Chuns. However, some players such as Choi have showcased extremely strong Ryus and O.Sagats. I do not know why people worry about it so much, anyway. Everyone has his list of top players with their characters.

High damage makes it even harder for less skilled players to win. A single mistake in ST is fatal. You have to play perfectly to win at the highest level, whereas in other games there’s more leniency for error.

Also, there are no “easy to execute” setups in ST. Closest is walldiving Vegas, and even then that shit doesn’t do that well at elite level. Watch Futachan beating ARG / MAO / Opemai at TBC for example.

You think easy to execute has only to do with combos when positioning and timing also require a lot of skill. Do you have any idea how hard it is to gain and keep a favourable position in ST? How it involves not only knowledge on matchups, ranges, etc. but also precise timing, reactions, execution, etc?

It is true that high damage and the brutal nature of ST balances things though, but the reason is that you just have to play perfectly and any tiny mistake will get you killed. That’s not a bad thing at all, by the way.

Anyways, your opinions on ST are worthless since you don’t play nor understand the game (I still remember when you thought Gief was broken because of tick throws lol).

Ladies and gentleman, here is Cronocopio, the ST prophet from Argentina. Great guy!

I know you have to play perfectly to win at highest level, this actually supports my point. In order to bypass the high damage randomness that I mentioned, you need to be extremely skilled, far beyond what is necessary in other games.

Any normal into SPD with Gief.

Any jump attack(preferably crossup on wakeup) into throw. In this situation, pretty much anything can happen because it turns into a mashfest…this adds to the randomness of the results.

No, I don’t. In fact where did I even talk about combos.

Well aware of it…however, one accurately predicted reversal dp can immediately put that player into that favorable position where he can execute those setups.

I understand it more than you do…

And my argument for Gief being broken still stands…this is a different kind of brokenness that doesn’t really have anything to do with the tierlist. The answer to having a character that has trouble getting in against most of the cast, isn’t to give him a near unbeatable wakeup tickthrow game once he does get in. The reason I said he was broken is because he’s one of those characters where even if you 100% know what he will do next (after being knocked down), most of the cast can’t do anything about it…and the other rest of the cast that CAN do something about it, has to take a big risk in order to get out. When this situation calls for the player to have to do rediculous Taira-like achievements (continuously doing reversal headstomps just to gain meter and get damaged more, so that you can eventually reversal super to make up for it all), then something is wrong…this is also precisely why throws have been redone for practically every fighting game since it’s release.

Edit: By no means am I saying Gief is completely brainless to use…aside from the brainless gameplay he has once he does get in, he requires strong footsies to give him that opportunity and this is where the required skill is.

is this nigga joking

Artlu just watch the characters he uses…

And Gief beign broken? C’mon man!

SSF4AE - Yun

And Phoenix? This dude is talking about easy comebacks…

Looking pretty silly right now…

sbo 2011
Keshin (Chun Li), Yoshimura (Dhalsim), YuuVega (dictator) vs Kusumond (E.Honda), Yabu (Cammy), Aniken (Ken)

KKY (Dhalsim), Mattsun (Ken), Kikai (Guile) vs Tsuji (boxer), MAO (claw), Kurahashi (Ryu)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbgJly4Slmg

Keshin (Chun Li), Yoshimura (Dhalsim), YuuVega (dictator) vs Shiki (boxer), Mute (Guile), Nuki (Chun Li)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x5InUFoHfk