That actually does make sense.
lololololololololololololol the numbers have no context if you cant read the language it’s wrote in!!!
Ol sonf vorsg, goho Iad balt, lansh calz vonpho: sobra z-ol ror i ta Nazpad Graa 421 ta Malprg Ds hol-q Qaa nothoa 63214 63214 zimz Od commah ta nobloh zien: Soba thil gnonp prge aldi Od vrbs oboleh grsam Casarm ohorela caba pir Od zonrensg cab erm Iadnah Pilah farzm zurza adna Ds gono Iadpil Ds hom Od toh Soba Ipam lu Ipamis Ds loholo 236 vep zomd Poamal Od bogpa aai ta piap piamo-i od vaoan ZACARe c-a od ZAMRAM Odo 2369 cicle Qaa Zorge, Lap zirdo Noco MAD Hoath Iaida.
Message a mod, but frankly a mod isn’t going to do anything. Perhaps the post was harsher than it should have been but horrendously bad opinions like calling an input notation commonly used by a significant amount of the community “retarded”, “insanely stupid”, and having “no practicality” deserves to be called out, especially on the Newbie Dojo where people should be coming here to learn and can get the wrong idea from posts like that.
And besides, it’s not like responding with “Get a fucking life” and “you have SERIOUS life problems” was any better/justified. I’d argue that that kind of post is even worse because instead of “shut the fuck up if you don’t know anything” it’s saying “lol you have no life that’s why you care about these things”. Why not report that, too?
You might’ve had a point if it weren’t for the fact that japanese players release tech videos that provide notations for whats going on. Between the video and the notation you are able to decipher things. So yes, the numbers are likely to have context to them in some instances.
Numpad notation is just a different way of learning motions, like how pad and stick are two different ways of controlling characters.
I think the numpad notation is the best way to explain a motion in text by far. It is a standard way of explaining motions to anyone in the world regardless of language. Although if I want to explain something to someone in person, I tend to say QCF, HCB, etc.
Numpad notation didn’t exist pre-internet, riiiight? (I’m curious about what kind of notation the Japanese players used in the old SF2 days for their printed fan guides.)
As far as I figure, numpad notation arose because…
- Written Japanese doesn’t offer an obvious standard method of creating abbreviations. (We get to use stuff like f, b, u, and d pretty naturally. Even things like qcf, hcb, dp, 360, and tk you only ever need to have explained once to memorize them.)
- The 10 digit characters are dedicated buttons on Japanese computer keyboards (same as with ours) and thus are obviously far more convenient to type than writing out whole words. It goes without saying that the entire purpose of this kind of notation is to provide us with a system of accurate shorthand for clarity and concision.
- Some of the fighting games that were hot in Japan during this era (the early days of the internet) featured a lot of (from a SF perspective) unusual command motions and input sequences. Enough that it begins to decrease the value of having canned expressions (nicknames) for every different case. (We have our qcf’s and our hcf’s and stuff, and they are fine and useful by themselves, but you have to question whether they are offering you more help or hinderance when trying to communicate how to execute some the weirder things that fighting games have to offer, such as absurd special moves, complex option selects, bonkers glitches, etc.) Even just double-tapping a diagonal can be written in less keystrokes with numpad.
Of course, the whole point of numpad notation is that–from the perspective of it representing the (joystick) balltop’s actual physical movement–it actually makes much more sense than probably anything else we could be typing. Once you’ve grown accustomed to reading/writing it (I still haven’t!), I imagine it could be more intuitive to translate the notation of a strange new motion into the sequence of movements you need your hand to do to get the job done.
Remember that, as confusing as it seems at first, if you were viewing the internet on a desktop computer (and virtually everyone was in those days), while you were still getting used to the notation, you could always “cheat” and look at your numpad for quick and convenient reference. That is a massive aid in terms of easing you into numpad notation. It’s like your internet machine comes with training wheels for fighting game players attached to it, just you help you get comfortable faster.
I don’t know how Japan rolls (or any other languages that use other alphabets, for that matter), but in the English-speaking world, scenes for fighting games (series) that existed before numpad notation have continued to NOT use numpad notation as their accepted notation. Virtually all of the backlash against numpad notation comes from people who have already become very accustomed to a different form of notation (like English SF or English Tekken notation). Why bother converting to a new system when a perfectly good one already exists? The flipside is that when brand new fighting games get popular, they bring in a lot of brand new players, and they will collectively gradually figure out whatever they feel works best in their language on their communication devices for their game. Easy example, this is why Smash notation is so different from everything else.
For new fighting games in the future (and I hope we keep seeing new ones for years to come!), I wonder if numpad notation will eventually fall out of favour. These days, people are doing more and more of their internet browsing on phones, tablets, and small laptops, all of which do not have numpads on them. Unless we’re talking about courses or jobs that involve a lot of numerical data entry, I would argue that the numpad is becoming less and less commonplace. I love numpads dearly, with all of my heart and fingers and toes, but as far as I know, that specific arrangement is unique to computer keyboards; for example, the classic “keypad” layout is much more ubiquitous (telephones, banking, security panels) and competely different.
Numpad <vs> Keypad
7 8 9 1 2 3
4 5 6 4 5 6
1 2 3 7 8 9
000 . * 0 #
Imagine (against all reason) if 90’s flip phones could surf 2ch as well as our smartphones do today. I’ll bet you two green eggs and a ham roast that qcf would be 896 instead!
Actually what am I even talking about anymore? Why am I writing this???
Numpad just proven to be effective in most form of communication. until a superior method come along I see no reason to change it.
A lot easier that way on games like guilty gear. a lot of the normals have a forward input
I’m not going to lie and say numerical input wasn’t a bit odd to me at first, but it was pretty easy to pick up and I think it makes perfect sense to me. Of course, it fucked with my mind a little bit when I first got into TTT2 since Tekken (and the NRS community) tend to use 1,2,3 and 4 for the attack buttons.
Posting in a deadfrog thread.