MB players in the states can't hog strats because that shit is almost always x-copied from youtube / vids.
And anything that's usually discovered is rarely held for personal use, because hell, what are they going to save it for?
MB's only had a real 'tournament' worthy scene for a little over a year now, so I guess if they're going to be hush hush about anything it'd be to save it for Evo World.
I wasn't specifically referring to MBAC players when I brought up strat hogging as I don't know enough about the community to reach such a conclusion yet.
OK, so MB players don't hog strats, we'll cross that one out.
I don't see being spread out as all that big of a factor. I mean, SoCal's 3S community is relatively bundled up together up at FFA, yet how well has the USA done in SBOs for 3S? Tekken's community is somewhat spread out, yet there are still specific groups of players: Norcal, FFA, Super Arcade/ Riverside, Texas, East Coast and USA doesn't do well in that game either.
So from what I can tell, it boils down to the USA just not having the same spirit and dedication for fighting games that Japan and Korea does.
Now my question is, how many people can honestly say that they dedicate at least four straight hours a day, every single day, or more to Melty Blood AC? Four straight hours of practicing combos so you don't choke during tourney play, learning and re-learning the mechanics so every situation becomes second nature to you, analyzing videos to the core so you pickup strategies from foreign players, going through the trial and error of finding new setups or ideas that haven't been implemented yet, looking for small specific details in people's gameplay that could add up little by little, etc.
How much time and effort do you put in to this game?
Now compare that to how much time and effort someone like say.....Fatal1ty puts into Quake and the various FPSes that he plays.