I always zone with hawkeye+hidden missiles when I see bullshit characters like hulk, nemesis, sent, and hagger (the damn pipe). sure people may hate it, but I find it better than hulk’s standing H or the range on nemesis’s S. Nothing like good ol’ triple arrow
i do the sam the same thin exept with donte and doom its only the smart way to play against them
Cause they don’t know how to hold that salt.
lol, I don’t remember that…
In my humble opinion, people get angry against zoning strategies because they expect fighting in a fighting game a.k.a. up in your face combat, sick combos and relentless assaults. I mean, I don’t like zoners either. For the same reason I don’t like snipers in FPS games: they have powerful tools to hurt you and they can do it from a distance. In my mind that doesn’t require a lot of skill, but there’s no denying that zoning someone and keeping them out consistently takes some measure of skill and prediction on the zoner’s part. But no matter, that’s why I picked up Abel. So the zoners can whimper like little girls when I roll behind them and then neutral jump, giving me the win pretty much.
There’s a difference between zoning/playing defensive and playing lame (I.e. runaway, teleporting all over the screen to avoid your opponent at all costs.)
I played a guy this morning on KoFXiii who basically held back the entire time. He’d do Kula’s srk which goes about 3/4 distance across the screen) then hang out in the corner walking back until I tried something. At one point a stopped pushing anything and we stared at each other for about 10 seconds. I wasn’t really even rushing down but he’d gotten a life lead about 15 seconds in and just ran away for the rest of the time.
I’m a Guile player so I can definitely appreciate zoning and defensive play. But running away/playing lame is just dull to play against. It may be a legit strategy but that doesn’t mean I have to respect it.
Why in the hell would you be concerned with what your opponent thinks is dull in the middle of a match?
Your feelings aren’t your opponents concern. If something annoys you and throws you off of your game, why wouldn’t your opponent do that MORE?
If you grabbed someone 5 times in a row because they didn’t know how to tech, would you stop because getting grabbed this much can’t be fun for them?
Would you stop going for crossups if your opponent never blocked the right way?
Why would you stop running from someone when its clearly taking them out of their comfort zone and making them play in a way that they aren’t used to, but you are?
I compare this to stomping someone in the nuts. If I stomped you in the nuts and you fell down in agony & pain unable to do anything about successive nut-stompings then why would I stop stomping you in the nuts. I mean if I already have the mindset that stomping you in the nuts is alright in the first place you should be more concerned with defending that basket rather than how people feel about said nut stomping. Because at the end of the day, you’re getting stomped in the nuts regardless. Deal with it or get K.O.'ed
(I do no feel like proofreading this. Sorry for any awkward typos lol)
No one hates defensive players, they only hate it when their defensive playing is actually effective. Of course inexperienced/new players will see no technique behind “spammers.” People in general (casual players mostly) think of combo frenzy-packed action when thinking of a fighting game. That is why if you give someone who doesn’t specialize in fighting games will just mash random buttons, possibly go “WHOA HOW DID I DO THAT?” when they throw a hadoken, etc. When someone really starts getting into the game, newbie-wise, it will take a while to get passed the whole “fireball spamming” era. And I admit when I was new at this game, it was pretty frustrating when I learned a new combo/punish, I would train on it for hours and then try for it online, being (stupidly) way too dependent on it. That is when fireball zoners are most frustrating in the newbie era. When you learn something new, and you can’t even land it because your efforts are interrupted by fireballs. Plus, low level “hadoken spammers” have that “zing” to them, that just screams “PUSSY.” They aren’t zoning. They are senselessly spamming, because it’s the only way they know how to win. That personally used to piss me off. Now of course, I am WAY past this. I honestly think hating zoners is really a process to getting better at the game. I think that is the barrier to getting better. Once you learn some tactics of beating them, that is really the set for your own independent learning. I used to have the 3DS version of Streetfighter, and Guile had no charge in it, AND there was autoblock. It was so FUCKING ANNOYING. Then, instinctively, just by always playing, I learned people’s jumping patterns, and people’s bait patterns. Like, if you kept throwing hadoken to cancel their sonic booms, eventually you would feel a jump coming. I knew he was going to jump, so I just walked forward and waited for it. Guiles were nearly unbeatable at that version of the game, and when I first did this… this is where it all began. I learned that everyone’s bullshit is completely beatable.
So in all honesty, people who complain about zoners is a 99.9999% guaranteed newbie at the game. I think complaining about “spammers” is a stage. Like puberty. lol
TBH, zoners are my least favorite to fight, because I main a char who is badly vulnerable to fireballs and keep away (at times). But that’s really just personal. I just simply like a nice in-fight. 
I guess people dislike zoning characters because it counters their character or person playstyle which makes it alot harder to create offense.
I care less about what playstyle a guy is playing and more about how smart they are playing.
I like watching ChrisG because he plays smart and quickly adapts to new wrinkles in a match. I hate watching MorriDooms doing nothing BUT firing Soul Fist after Soul Fist and failing to adapt when the opponent catches on.
Show me where I said you should be concerned about your opponent’s feelings. You can’t cuz I never said it. Personally, I play the games for my own enjoyment and I’ll play anyone at least once, but I’ll deliberately avoid players who play runaway (NOT zoning or defensive, there IS a difference!) all the time after playing them once.
It’s not that I can’t overcome it, it’s just that it’s such a drag most of the time. I don’t get tons of time to play these days, so when I do, I don’t want to spend it playing a fighting game against someone who doesn’t want to fight. How would it look if a real life boxer just decided to play runaway? What if a runaway style player won the Evo finals playing runaway Akuma? You think the community would respect that player unconditionally?
All I’m saying is, people can play however they want, but that doesn’t mean I have to play against them or even respect the way they play. And again, before someone does a RageQuote, I’m talking about runaway players, not defensive/zoning.
I think another part of it is that its really frustrating to play against and that makes it really easy to call lame. At least for the casual player. Higher level players may appreciate it but still probably find it frustrating to play against
Well if there’s one thing the community has has made clear, it’s that they don’t care what the other player thinks. So who the community respects means nothing
I appreciate it a lot actually, I have a few buds on psn that play that way, it teaches me how to get in and punish unsafe moves. Tbh I would probably still keep losing to cross ups and poke wars if it weren’t for them.
True, but I think if someone were to win Evo playing runaway, they’d get called a lot of things, lame probably being the least of them.
And there the difference, I play fighting games to get better so I’d actively seek out someone who was having success running away, especially if it was rare and I wasn’t used to seeing/playing against it.
Not ever seeing something before is what leaves you screwed and scrambling for answers mid match in a tournament. If everyone in your Area is “above” using Chris G tactics, what do you do when you go to a tournament and have to play Chris G, refuse to play on moral grounds? If someone is really good at running away I would want to play them until I could fully understand and beat that tactic in a casual setting before I had to come up against it in a tournament setting.
Lame being the least and “Best in the country” being the greatest. Think about the actual logistics of EVO you’d have to make it through an entire first day of pools and then Top 32/16 on a stage if none of the other top players can figure out how to stop your runaway with that much time you deserve the title of the best.
Again, I think good players would respect him and bad players would call him a fraud, scrub, coward, whatever.
Look at the question realistically and not as a hypothetical in your head, what would you have had to have done to win EVO this year with a runaway Akuma, you would have had to beat, some combination of Gamerbee, Dieminion, Daigo, Infiltration, Xaiohai, Poongko, PR Rog and HumanBomb (minus whatever player is replaced by runaway Akuma Player). Given the individual play of all of these players do you think that Top level players players wouldn’t respect someone none of them could beat. You’re using the hypothetical of some random online scrub winning EVO and not realizing how much skill it would actually take to make it to and win the EVO finals by running away.
Me personally, its annoying and a scrub friendly tactic. I understand people play to win, and dont knock them for it, but it is the reason im kinda fading away froms FGs. It’s fugging annoying.
…not playing like an idiot is a scrub friendly tactic?