Yun is amazing, but he doesn’t wtfbreak the rules of the game like ST Akuma.
Never said he did, he’s just someone that was very commonplace. That’s usually the road to a softban when enough people get fed up with the same characters appearing over and over at the top level.
No one wants to deny players the right to play that character in this case, they just want to spread out the matchups some so people start to frown upon that character’s use so things are more “interesting”.
Personally, I think it’s a load of hooey. I’ve never been in favor of applying “understandings” to fighting games. Frame out the rules for what goes and what doesn’t but don’t expect me to “know” that a character is “not cool” to use.
The way I see it or understand it…
Soft bans are indirect. You don’t say he’s soft banned. Often you notice people aren’t picking a particular character (a really good character or TvC Giants that piss everyone off) and wonder why and it’s like “No one wants to play against that so no one picks it” and that’s when you realize “soft ban”. The collective dislike discourages use lol.
The KoF13 soft ban at SBO example is them saying you get DQ’d if a game breaking glitch happens so people are like might as well not use them then, don’t want to accidentally trigger it thus those characters are soft banned. The TO don’t want the tournament to delay due to avoidable gamebreaking glitches (piss a lot of people off) so DQ anyone that makes the glitch occur, so those characters are discouraged hence they could be considered soft banned.
If you watch the Southtown Arcade streams, no one or very few are picking Raiden in KoF13. I guess this would fall into soft ban on Raiden there right?
Is anyone here actually familiar with how a softban works? I mean, not like guessing, or saying what you read someone else guess on SRK, but actually been in a scene that practiced a soft ban? Cause I’m personally not familiar with how they are actually carried out. I can guess, but I can see plenty of people here are already hard at work on that.
Nope, Petshop is just looked down upon use. To use Petshop you have to really learn how to negative edge. You must really know how to take risks cause Petshop takes damage about as bad as phoenix and Petshop doesn’t have a resurrection, and his damaging combo’s require you to get close which is a bad spot for Petshop.
And no air block.
._. sorry
Softbans only really apply to casuals. You see Claw and O.Sagat in japanese tournaments. Its more of a courtesy than anything. “Softbanning” is kind of a horseshit term anyway, because it has no meaning. Its not a ban…so its…nothing.
I like softbans because they mean I don’t have to follow them and can still use that character.
Shout-outs to Japan almost losing the USA vs. Japan team invitational when Valle and Choi picked O. Sagat in ST and winning because Seth (who wasn’t even supposed to play that day) losing all his matches.
Softbans don’t work with Americans. They’ll be ignored.
As for the Raiden situation- people know that his dropkick is getting nerfed hard in console- so I think that’s part of the reason his usage has gone down.
Oftentimes when a character is nerfed, people abandon the character even if they’re still good, so a nerfed char can end up underrepresented (SSFIV Sagat for example)
Soft ban is a very misleading word that came into existence around a decade ago. The player who coined the term was trying to describe a general sense of characters and styles shunned by locals during casual games for being too easy and good at 1 particular Japanese side arcade. Quite a few more characters from newer games ought to fit that context nowadays but since scrub mentality isn’t as prevalent anymore and few are sure whether the label fits, nobody describes them that way.
I’ve never seen a clean definition of a soft banned character. If it’s just a strong character with overpowering techniques who’s held in derision, 3S Chun Li, SF4 Sagat, and MVC3 Phoenix should all fit but they’re never mentioned as such. If soft ban involves a strong character sometimes held in derision and used by only a few players, AE Yang should count since he wasn’t well represented in the US despite being unanimously considered top tier. But nobody actually thinks of him in that manner so if he isn’t considered soft banned, then how do we know in any other case whether it’s lack of interest or whether it’s lack of wanting to appear overpowered that players don’t choose certain characters?
Now, for those bringing up o.Sagat in ST, please tell me where/when he was “soft banned” besides possibly in 1 local arcade where players didn’t want to spend half a dollar to lose in a minute for fun. There’s been at least 1 o.Sagat in every X-Mania so he was certainly present throughout the entire past decade, and not competitively banned early on as with Gouki. Oh, he’s considered soft banned because he’s not used often? Well, where are all the n.Sagat players then? Surely, n.Sagat isn’t soft banned but there are just as few players. Oh, o.Sagat is considered soft banned because yaya said he was too simple and stopped playing o.Sagat? Then why isn’t boxer also considered soft banned when Aniken gave the same reason as to why he stopped playing boxer? My conclusion is that there’s no sense of consistency to how the term is applied.
Also, the giants of TVC play noticeably different than other characters in the game and PTX is often not considered to be at the highest tier. They’re in a different situation than o.Sagat, who plays like a normal character in ST but is generally disliked because of his more limited optimal strategy combined with top-tier abilities—but not noticeably different from strong characters in other games mentioned above. So does that mean the fact that a character is far out of the ordinary is also a basis for a soft ban? If so, that doesn’t resemble the original intentions of the term at all. With everything said, it’s not really possible to have an opinion on soft bans when there’s no pragmatic definition of what they are and everyone refers to their own differing conceptions.
FYI, regarding the 2000 invitational, while Alex Valle’s o.Sagat was the biggest help to evening up the score, John Choi’s o.Sagat and Mike Watson’s Ryu both won an equal number of matches. o.Sagat was likely a factor for the close ST outcome but it wasn’t the sole reason.
I thought watson almost lost all of his matches with boxer, meanwhile choi won most of his with o.sagat. Watson IIRC later said that he should have used o.sagat too and he would have performed better.
I do not matter, cos I am a bad player, but I refuse to use Old Sagat, even though I instantly get better as soon as I pick him against any charge character. It is extremely hard to beat O.Sagat with Ken, Guile and Dee Jay. Cammy can never beat him. Ever.
That would be against the definition of a soft-ban wouldn’t it? If a scene discretely practiced it? The only example I have is anecdotal and applies to Pakistani arcades. Orochi Iori/Leona were “soft-banned” in KoF97 (formally banned for tournament play) in the sense that you would get dirty looks (or a fight depending on the other party…) if you challenged someone and selected them. There was social impetus to avoid playing these super-powered characters but nothing else, nothing formal.
SolidSonicTH I’m sorry you might get called a scrub or something in this thread a lot, it’s just inevitable 
hahaha, thats what I’m trying to understand, what makes a soft ban distinct from a hard ban, or no ban at all. seems like its an agreement among players but not in tournament rules?
Can I risk being called a scrub and say it’s extremely boring if a huge group of players flocks to a cerain character. Especially a character as dry as o.sagat.
I’m pretty sure the arcade that ganelon mentioned had a bit more fun playing the game running into the occasional o.sagat instead of a crapload of em.
O. Sagat was never banned wtf
That’s just it, nothing makes it distinct at all. It’s a vague understanding that people don’t like to lose to shit they percieve as too strong (or is legitimately a bit strong), you’re showing the other player “respect”. I don’t subscribe to this point of view, but that’s my understanding of it.
I suppose it would start as an agreement between two or three players on a machine in a particular arcade. As the scene builds up, more and more people continue to accept it as an unspoken agreement. It’s probably a very localized phenomenon, at least to start off. Even for my example, there were arcades where every. single. person. would select either Orochi Iori or Orochi Leona in their teams (but never both! that’s disrespect!).
Choi was 3-2 with O. Sagat, while Valle went 4-1 with him. It was Watson losing 1-4 and Seth (who again, wasn’t supposed to play) not winning any of his matches that saved the day for Japan (which is kinda wasted opportunity, since apparently, had USA won, the tiebreaker would have been A2 - a game which Japan apparently doesn’t get).
Still wondering why tataki thought osag was banned?
-women should not be underestimated-
Looking at the match videos, it seems I’m mistaken. I’ve been going by what the official 2000 invitational site, which IIRC was created by Kuni Funada (the liaison between the 2 parties), said: http://www.alpha-net.ne.jp/users2/funara/nitibei/rules.html
But the YouTube vids clearly show that Choi-Aniken was a US win and ShootingD-Watson was a JP win so that page must be incorrect. That’s interesting to know but since X-Mania 2000 was held before this invitational and included 2 o.Sagat players (and zero n.Sagat players), it’s not like the JP players were seeing o.Sagat for the 1st time. But I will agree with you that we relied quite a bit on him for our wins.