Messages

1

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: March 09, 2008, 11:05:04 PM »

Curious, anybody willing to put together a group of players solely dedicated to gaming their asses off in MB for SBO?
Playing casuals like it's a money match and stepping your gameplay up another notch during tournies and actual MMs.

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Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Do you get discouraged when you lose alot even after practicing?

« on: March 04, 2008, 08:38:12 PM »

When I lose a lot I keep asking for rematches until the other person doesn't want any more. Practicing against an opponent who is better than you is how you improve, after all. Well... aside from training mode, which I hate.

Though I'm not going to dispute that this does generally make you better, it should be pointed out that improvement can be sped up DRAMATICALLY if you consciously notice your mistakes and make a deliberate effort to correct them. I think this little fact tends to be overlooked by FAR too many people.

Quoted for truth
It helps a lot more if you're able to approach someone who's better than you with the mindset of expecting to lose but in return learning from your matches.  Merely getting your ass kicked grows rather pointless and useless if you're doing the same mistakes over and over again.

Don't be afraid to ask questions or ask for feedback (unless of course the player is a douchebag).

To answer the question though, yes, I DO get discouraged when I lose a lot even after practicing.  Moreso when I can't get past my mental blocks and figure out what I'm doing wrong or what I need to work on and how to progress and improve.

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Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: March 03, 2008, 10:20:06 PM »

I know this may seem like an odd thing to bring into the discussion, but has anyone tried comparing the average technical skill of musicians* from the two countries? It may shed some light on the source of the skill differential with regards to fighting games. As the popularity of music seems to be quite high regardless of the nation you're in, it may be possible that a comparison of the general technical skill of musicians from the two nations could shed light on whether the problem is a question of an under-active scene in the US or whether some other sociological phenomenon, like a strong cultural emphasis on discipline, is at work here.

*Both fighting games and playing a musical instrument require mental and physical dexterity, and technical skill isn't that difficult to measure. 

I'm relatively certain that it's because of an under-active, technically I should say dead or dying, arcade culture here in the USA.
I've seen plenty of "signs" that we have the potential to join the Japanese and the Koreans in the big leagues, just that we don't properly utilize or bring out that potential.
But for now, I think we should aim for something more realistic.  Something along the lines of not getting our asses handed to us cold in the first round.  Then worry about making it to semi-finals, finals, winning, etc later.

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Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: March 03, 2008, 06:23:19 PM »

O.K. you win(can't find a pic of that anywhere)I'm caught. Would you hit a crazy person, because I like to

*Is willing to punch babies, people with glasses, the disabled, the autistic, etc....*

If that's what you're referring to...........

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Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: March 03, 2008, 01:11:09 AM »

IMHO, Tekken is made of FAIL!!! Virtua Fighter was much better. *Running away faster than lightning*

B*tch, you're gonna have to run fast enough to rip a hole in the fabric of time to escape my wrath

lemme rephrase that

You're gonna have to run so fast that the wind friction alone would set you on fire.

You'd have to run like the combined might of Chuck Norris, Jack Bauer, and Vin Diesel were chasing after you with an axe and cleaver.

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Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: March 01, 2008, 11:27:59 PM »

IMHO, Tekken is made of FAIL!!! Virtua Fighter was much better. *Running away faster than lightning*

B*tch, you're gonna have to run fast enough to rip a hole in the fabric of time to escape my wrath

All jokes aside
Virtua Fighter's an excellent game, so I can easily see why people enjoy it more than Tekken.  I grew up with Tekken though so, that'll always be my 3-D fighter of choice......unless Namco does something horrifically stupid like a severely down syndrome afflicted version of Tekken 4 (which wasn't all that bad gameplay-wise, but a bit too big of a leap from traditional mechanics).

So come along now everyone, let's play some DOA4

7

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: March 01, 2008, 11:32:36 AM »

tekken is a terrible game, why would anyone care about being the best in the world at tekken

haha, you're funny

8

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: February 29, 2008, 01:01:10 AM »

Wow, nobody gave the easier answer:
Cause there's a ton of Japanese people in SBO and only one American?

By statistics alone the American most likely wont win.

Then you have to factor everything else in. Why don't girls generally win tourneys? Cause if a girl is there, she's probably completely outnumbered anyways. Being a girl AND being really good is much harder than just being really good or being a girl at a tourney.

Same with SBO. Its hard enough winning SBO for anyone, but to be American and win is way harder.

Pretty much sums it up IMO

Let's analyze things according to your statistics then.
There were 3 American teams entering SBO Japan for Tekken.  MYK/KaNE/ChetChetty and Mr. NAPS/Spero Gin/?? I forget the rest of the teams.
There were 2 Korean teams (I think) for Tekken.  qudans/200won/NIN and Lee Mario/Help Me/G-Unit.
I believe there was only one UK team I think. Ryan Hart/Tissuemon/Cris
And well clearly there's a whole freaking grip of Japanese teams that I'm not even going to bother with trying to list.

So here we go:
All 3 American teams were eliminated first round.
The 2 Korean teams mentioned tied for 3rd.
The single UK team did relatively well and eventually lost to qudan's team.
1st and 2nd went to Japanese teams.

anyone wanna do the honors of finding the results for 3S?  Google search has failed me.

and Thana, you need to chill out and not put words into Dae's mouth.
Nobody issued a challenge to you, so quit beating your gorilla chest and saying you'll smoke him.  You probably would, but that's not what we're here to discuss, so save that for another time.
USA has plenty of potential, but are we using it to it's fullest?
I say no, we can do MUCH better than we're doing now.

9

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Donation Appreciation Thread

« on: February 28, 2008, 12:15:34 AM »

20 dollars via paypal
Keep up the good work Arlieth, the MB community has much potential.
Best of luck to all Melty Blood players, get to SBO, win that title, and show them that USA is a force to be reckoned with.
I'm good gaming it for the most part.  Apologies to Dae for spending his time and effort in trying to teach me.

Peace out

10

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: February 28, 2008, 12:01:24 AM »

@ Arcrenciel:

Dedication?

What are you getting at guy?

We're talking about two entirely different cultures at work here.

I wish you'd stop before you actually end up insulting some of us who have been been dedicated to this game for a good half decade now.

Ok, I'll stop now then.

Darksaint kinda has what I was trying to say, so I'll take his post and run with it.

11

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: February 27, 2008, 02:35:10 PM »

pffft bull
there's nothing more important than games
screw a job and school, making a living off of money matches and tourney prizes ftw

honestly though, I believe Korean and Japanese fighting gamers don't get paid for playing 3S or whatever they play either.  Hell, SBO prize money isn't even all that much if I'm remembering correctly.  They play at SBO for the bragging rights and dedicate their lives to the game because they choose to, they have that passion for it.

qudans and Knee are both now in the military, Jang Iksu (the best Tekken player of all time, period) moved on from Tekken to freestyle inline skating (I doubt he makes a fortune doing that), Souten (best Yoshimitsu in the world) moved on to other things in life, etc.

Forgive all the Tekken references, as you can see, it's my main game.

12

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: February 27, 2008, 11:18:58 AM »

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.

13

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Donation Appreciation Thread

« on: February 26, 2008, 11:44:02 AM »

how about just a mixer? i'm sure among all of our asian households there should be at lease ONE karaoke mic thats not in use.

or we can just use a computer for a mixer...

In possession of a Marshall MXL 990 studio condensor mic (much better than a crap karaoke mic), Behringer Eurorack UB802 mixer, cables and micstand included.  Bother DaeDay and tell him to hit me up over AIM if you need to use them for a tourney or something as I hardly ever use my mic, mixer, etc all that much anymore.

14

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: February 26, 2008, 10:30:30 AM »

There's not a snowball chance in hell that the strat sharing is going to get anything beyond basic stuff in terms of USA players.  Nobody except for a very very very select few are going to be willing to give away game winning strategies, really fine point character match up tips, and just real solid stuff to build off of.
On top of that, I highly doubt that anyone's going to go out of their way to help other players out with getting better.

What do you base that on? There are plenty of detailed guides on Melty Bread and people help others out with everything they know about their character fairly often in IRC. I haven't detected much in the way of holding back on info at all.

Anyway, agree with many of the points mentioned here, primarily those involving lower play level to practice against, lack of motivation to properly practice techniques, and lack of motivation to travel far to practice against different people.

I haven't gone on IRC and DaeDay managed to bug me enough to start playing this game less than a week ago, so I'm basing most of what I'm saying on what I've seen from the various fighting game communities I've been a part of.

The type of strat sharing I'm talking about is literally opening up your playbook and gameplan and showing the dude exactly what goes through your head, what bad habits you have, what you tend to do in matches, what they can abuse against you, etc.  Like I said, you're essentially telling them how to beat you, and forcing yourself to reformulate your strategy for victories.  I'm talking about something a step below practically playing the game for them.

15

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: February 26, 2008, 03:31:35 AM »

I don't believe the problem lies solely in whether or not players are willing to drive an hour to attend a session.  Like I've been saying, it's dedication.  Do they ditch classes, midterms, and labs just to play at the arcade?  Do they take days off work to play?  Are sessions held every single day?  How long do said sessions last?

Actually I've come across quite a few players that majorly hog strats, so you'd be surprised.  A lot of top players in some of the fighting games I play have huge egos and rather than share knowledge, their only concern is winning and proving that they're better than everyone else.
And actually, the Koreans and Japanese do go pretty out of their way to share personal strategies and game winning tactics.  At least from what I know they have done so in the past.  K.O. coaching Pyrolee, Maddogjin and qudans coaching the US in Tekken, etc.

How much effort does the US put into raising our competitive standard as a collective? 
"(keep in mind that we're limited by our player base, so if we have no ____ players, you can't expect any information to be there)"
If we have no ___ players, it's time for people that play other characters to step up, pitch in, and help out, rather than the usual "nobody plays that char, tough shit for you man" treatment.

16

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Steps to anti-scrubbery?

« on: February 26, 2008, 12:53:07 AM »

lol somebody's gonna need to really help DaeDay teach a (not-so-interested) player (me) how to move away from scrubbiness in this game, cause I can see him getting frustrated already.

17

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Convince me not to quit Melty Blood

« on: February 26, 2008, 12:48:00 AM »

To me, fighting game = 80% mind game, 20% execution.

This can be both true and false.

Different fighting games have different elements that factor in differently

Tekken =
40-50% Tekken Fundamentals (spacing, blocking, throw breaking, whiff punishing, poking)
10-20% Mindgames and gimmicks
30-40% Execution

at least that's sorta how i view that game

18

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: February 25, 2008, 10:00:15 PM »

I could agree with all of you about how we don't have easy access to arcades like japan does, we don't play all day, but you got to consider, Japanese players still travel far just to get to an arcade, they walk, take the train, or drive there in any sort of transportation. they wouldn't care less on how far they travel, but get to an arcade and practice. I understand that people live far away, have jobs, family and friends, hell I bet they practice with anybody for at least an hour. The problem I'm seeing is that WE lack communication. Japanese and Korean players share all sorts of strategies, from far across countries through any sort of communication. We can't expect for one player to do good in a SBO tournament, aka Teams, its all the players in that team that must be almost equally good enough to beat everybody. I don't mean to sound offensive to anybody, but we can't be jackasses that has a big ego, think they're the best, or hog all the strats to themselves.

There's not a snowball chance in hell that the strat sharing is going to get anything beyond basic stuff in terms of USA players.  Nobody except for a very very very select few are going to be willing to give away game winning strategies, really fine point character match up tips, and just real solid stuff to build off of.
On top of that, I highly doubt that anyone's going to go out of their way to help other players out with getting better.
No offense but from what I've seen, that's just the mentality of a vast majority of the players here, as it would mean that they just showed their opponent how to beat them and hence that player will now have to try even harder to win games and tournaments.

Nope, no dice.  Rather than rise up to meet the challenge with open arms, it seems that most players in the US would rather "suppress" competition for an easier victory.

19

Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Why can't America win SBO?

« on: February 25, 2008, 12:41:28 AM »

My thoughts are that none of us put in nearly as much time and effort to our respective games as the Koreans or the Japanese or other countries.

Koreans play Starcraft DAILY for at least 10 hours usually averaging 12 or more, and they own that game inside out.  They have literally dedicated their lives to the game.
Balance)qudans, among the best Tekken DR players of his time, plays at least 8 hours a day.  Among him are people like Knee, NIN, Balance)Jiemoon Ace, etc.  Qudans was pulling stuff off at Electric Cancel 6 that none of the US players even thought about trying until they saw it.
Korean players have no qualms about traveling to Japan to play some Tekken DR.
The Japanese and Korean gaming scene in general is just much more dedicated to winning and playing skillfully.  (I dare you to find someone button mashing at Joybox, Green Arcade, or some other well known arcade)

Pyrolee (3rd Strike Yun) is easily willing to drive 1 hour and 10 minutes daily for years at a time just to play 3rd Strike.  His car caught on fire and his only concern was getting to play 3S.  (Yes Arlieth, I listen to Sub-Zero's podcasts, my life is in shambles)  He's comparable to the average Japanese player.

I think if more and more people put in as much, if not more, time and effort as Pyro, I believe we'd start seeing noticeable results within a decent amount of time.

There's other issues on our part too, say for example a lot of players hog strats and don't share, big egos, bad sportsmanship and attitudes, etc.

Hold a shitload more gatherings, record casual matches, analyze gameplay til the damn video is dry heaving nothingness, throw out pages upon pages of advice and suggestions to improving gameplay, give up your wife and child for gaming, stay a virgin, etc.

And most definitely none of that "your char is too low tier, pick someone better" BS.  Nothing kills morale and discourages quite as effectively as something along the lines of "winning is hopeless for your char no matter how good you are".  If advising someone frustrated with their progress is going to take effort and research on your part, then hell, do the research and put in the effort.

Just my 2 cents.