New year, new season, new post...

Arcade Edition!

Season 3 DLC characters: Sakura, Blanka, Falke, Cody, G, Sagat
http://cdn3-www.playstationlifestyle.net/assets/uploads/2017/12/DQu7IoWVoAAEWxn-2-555x312.jpg

Season 3 patch notes - apparently, the Capcom Unity blog post and the PDF file are missing things that the other one has, so here are both:
http://www.capcom-unity.com/strumslinger/blog/2018/01/09/patch-notes-for-street-fighter-v-arcade-edition
https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/pdf/en/adjustmentsaever.pdf

There are tons of individual character changes...wow. I'm not sure that I like having so many changes at once. I feel like there will be a shock period where we have to adjust to many simple interactions behaving differently.

Another couple of great additions are a player 2 rematch option, and in practice mode, you can activate color shading that indicates frame advantage. This really surprised me because I thought part of the Street Fighter mythos was letting the mathmeticians figure out the frames. MK and KI have had frame data and hitboxes in practice mode for years. But better late than never.

Another interesting change is that an extra hit of scaling was added for combos extended by V trigger (I'm looking at you, Laura v trigger combos who seem to have no scaling at all).

And of course, the new V triggers and combo extenders are the real meat of season 3 changes. Feel free to discuss your character's changes (apologies to those who started to on the old thread).

Zeku changed nothing significant. It looks like he was built to be set for season 3, which is logical. For Guile, the only noteworthy things I see are a nerf to bazooka knee, which is/was OP, and an increase in the forward movement of sobat. They also increased the startup of backfist, so this makes it seem like they're forcing the use (aka spam) of sobat over that of backfist, which Guile players should have been doing anyway.

Here we go.
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She got serious nerfs.

St.MK is only a whiff punish button now. A very good one, but it's not going to be the 5 frame terror it was in Season 2.

The system-wide VT combo scaling takes the teeth out of the dreaded Laura Special. That along with her Trigger I being 3 bars now should dead the "robbery character" thing.

Not to mention, most of her frame traps are gone and she got hit with the command throw nerf (an extra 8 frames of recovery on whiff) without receiving any damage or positioning buffs (like Mika).

But she got serious buffs too. St.MP is one of the anti-air buttons to get that system-wide blessing. Canceling claps into Trigger is dope, and clap dash cancels in VT I are going to be nutso (even though they drain 50% of the meter). VT I EX claps are damn near Aegis Reflectors now because they last all day.

VT II looks fun, but hard to use right now.

All in all, they addressed all the things that makes it suck to play against Laura without making her a bad character AND giving her some extra toys to play with.

I've always thought that frame advantage/disadvantage is one of the hardest things to grasp when you start playing people who know what they're doing. making it visually easier to understand is a step.

Ken looks worse but we'll see. hard to tell since the patch notes are so vague -- any hitbox/hurtbox change could be a buff or nerf since they offered no explanation.

fuck Rashid. fuck Abigail. fuck Guile.

I'm worried about that too. But the SRK and Tatsu damage increases are cool. Increased walk speed is always a nice buff

Ryu looks like he's gonna benefit from the system changes and the nerfed characters more than anything else.

He does have Donkey kick, which means I don't have to spend meter to hit confirm on a crouching opponent.

VT2 will put the fear in people, which will allow me to throw fireballs and control space. Or parry and crumple for 250 damage if you feeling froggy.

EX Fireball V-Trigger cancel is nice. Fireballs in VT1 are even better.

He's still too honest for this game but he should be more viable this time around.

Back in season 1 grapplers were complaining about SRKs because they couldn't run their mixups, and Capcom nerfed SRKs system wide. Chickens came home to roost, cause now they got added recovery frames on a whiffed command throw.

It allows punishes off of back jumps, but command throws have always been high risk/high reward. Whiffing them is always a blow up.

The only thing we won’t see now is stuff like Mena baiting Tokido into back jumping and punishing with CA. He won’t be able to recover in time for that.

https://youtu.be/zBTvYRclqtE

It’s 20 minutes long, but there are timestamps for the characters you want to skip to.

Looks like the SFV game we should have got from the jump (at least feature wise). Probably get the S3 pass too and see what the game is hitting for finally. Played more IV in the last year

Shoulda got that damn gigabit internet.

but i had to go to work so i didn't even get to do training mode :(

https://twitter.com/wolfgangfist_/status/953367484350033921

and man, it was so hype. I had seen that intro before on YouTube or whatnot, but watching it at home just made it feel like "damn... this is an event".

From a presentation aspect they've gone all out to embellish things.

using Sakura now. she's kinda... awkward.

The UI layout is basically the same but because of the change in icons/design choices feels easier to read. The character fight screen feels hype; the intro like you mentioned. I am amped to dive right the fuck back in

Hopefully MvC:Infinate can get the same treatment in 2019, lol.

I'll dig in more over the week, especially the arcade mode, but the presentation is quite lovely and the modes make it feel more like a complete game rather than a $60 beta or eSport only title.

Need to recharge my fightstick tonight and get back to it

love the changes to the UI. the character models seem to have additional polish as well but that might be due to me finally getting some time with the PC version after watching matches being played on ps4 via twitch

i think kolin is the character for me. i like her ground oki bc it reminds of my main in guilty gear (ramlethal). not crazy about backdash moves though. i could never master those in any fighting game

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i cannot play this game on DS4 or XOne controllers. can anyone recommend an entry level stick for PC? just looking for something to get the job done but also doesn't feel like mushy with bad, shallow buttons

https://twitter.com/uo_uo_uo/status/953654402442715137

I have a way outdated 360 Hori stick I use on PC -- no fancy Sanwa buttons/levers but it's gotten the job done for 1,000 combined hours between USF4/SFV (and a few light, salty tosses across the room).

the Hori RAP series are cool. I don't like the stock matte buttons but you can get those switched out (Arcade Shock does it for you: https://arcadeshock.com/collections/hori-arcade-sticks/ps4). personally I want to get a Razer Panthera next.

>https://twitter.com/uo_uo_uo/status/953654402442715137

i think oki is currently my favorite thing about fighting games. i'm not great at it but i love it

>I have a way outdated 360 Hori stick I use on PC -- no fancy
>Sanwa buttons/levers but it's gotten the job done for 1,000
>combined hours between USF4/SFV (and a few light, salty tosses
>across the room).

apparently i still own a functioning hori ex2 for the 360 and it just works when you plug it into the pc. game plays much better now

>i cannot play this game on DS4 or XOne controllers. can
>anyone recommend an entry level stick for PC? just looking
>for something to get the job done but also doesn't feel like
>mushy with bad, shallow buttons

back in the day I used to use the X360 SFIV SE + some kind of driver (for X360 controllers... it's been a long while though). HRAP4Kai works on PC (as well as PS3/4)

I have one of those, need to go try it out on MAME

WTF was Capcom doing with this character

I will lose five more matches in a row after that just thinking about it

After poking people with fireballs all day and then landing a donkey kick that sends them back to the other end of the screen?

I know niggas is tight about that lol

he's a tank, like Guile. an old-school shoto wall.

I might mess with him myself. Ken got left behind with his second V-Trigger.

just don’t try to use it as an anti-air because you’ll die.

you could always pop VT1 relatively safely. VT2 has a lot of the same confirms but you actually have to confirm it. the fact you can't AA using VT2 into big damage is a turn-off.

mashing full shinryuken into CA is kinda nice, but that's a lot of resources to sit on. like I said, I got to play with it more but overall I think VT1 is going to be the better choice for most every match-up.

I'm gonna wait and see if someone else can do something with but for now i only use it to punish Guile's booms

Ryu and Abigail are the only characters that have moves that literally bounce the opponent off the edge of the screen back towards you and can allow for further hits, correct? Does R.Mika have that capability? I'm surprised she doesn't have a move where she bounces you off the screen and you can command grab the opponent into a DDT or something to that effect.

>I'm surprised she doesn't have a
>move where she bounces you off the screen and you can command
>grab the opponent into a DDT or something to that effect.

and it was a big pile of bullshit. she can only do it when you're in the corner now.

Why did they nerf all the easy ways to make fight money?

Is Kolin always so annoying to deal with? I say this as someone that mains Ed by the way. HATE on me, I dare you.

Free previewing a character needs to be a thing from now on. What's the verdict on Zeku?

They already got two seasons worth of characters out the gate. Keeping FM the way it was would have basically given seasons 3, 4, and 5 to them free.

I’m not exaggerating. I earned 1.8 million FM, enough for 18 characters, before AE dropped by just doing the story modes and easy survival with all the characters. I only completed normal survival with two characters, and I’ve never completed hard or extreme survival at all. I did all of season 1’s trials, but I didn’t finish the season 2 trials for four characters. So I earned three seasons for free (in two seasons) while leaving a lot of shit on the table.

As it stands now, new players can easily do the easy single player shit and earn enough FM for four characters. Then they can level up those four to earn the other two.

can you only do it out of certain attacks? is it not a true cancel and closer to a string? i'm definitely treating it like a guilty gear roman cancel, which i'm fully aware is a different thing, but old habits die hard

when i'm watching pro matches i generally see the activation/cancel out of a crush counter but i assume they're doing that as a confirm. when i actually play the game and try to activate/cancel v-trigger it seems like i can only do it after certain attacks

still adjusting to the pace of this game. it's very slow but it's still kind of tricky to confirm anything. 3 hit combos take off 33% health. defensive options are pretty weak. i'm trying to re-learn footsies but it's not going well

but only some specials. it depends on the character.

the frame advantage you're at upon activation is also dependent on what you used to cancel into VT. so you might get a true combo afterward or you might just be in a favorable position.

you're using Kolin, right?

i don't think she can VT cancel most of her specials, but she can with her v-skill and her v-skill target combos for the most part.

>but only some specials. it depends on the character.

i think this is my problem. i keep trying to cancel out of specials. i should be looking for confirms from normals into cancels

>the frame advantage you're at upon activation is also
>dependent on what you used to cancel into VT. so you might get
>a true combo afterward or you might just be in a favorable
>position.

right. i'm starting to see how it works. do people VT cancel for frame trapping purposes? edit: i guess the activation animation would defeat the purpose of frame trapping. is there any other non-combo circumstance where one would VT cancel?

>i don't think she can VT cancel most of her specials, but she
>can with her v-skill and her v-skill target combos for the
>most part.

what do you mean by this? she can cancel her specials and target combos in VT mode?

>right. i'm starting to see how it works. do people VT cancel
>for frame trapping purposes? edit: i guess the activation
>animation would defeat the purpose of frame trapping. is
>there any other non-combo circumstance where one would VT
>cancel?

you can VT cancel for combo extensions or to make something that's unsafe on block safe. those are the two most common uses. people are usually fishing for a hit confirm so they can get a big combo with their VT activation.

the activation animation is not a factor because the opponent is frozen during it (you can actually eat an opponent's inputs with a VT activation).

>>i don't think she can VT cancel most of her specials, but
>she
>>can with her v-skill and her v-skill target combos for the
>>most part.
>
>what do you mean by this? she can cancel her specials and
>target combos in VT mode?

No, I'm talking about the activation into V-Trigger. Kolin can't cancel most of her specials into V-Trigger, but I think she can off of her V-Skill parry and her target combos.

I don't know what it is.

Laura's Step Elbow, the f+HP move, used to be very hard to do WITHOUT the follow up. So it was a very risky thing to do on block. The Step Elbow alone is safe, only -2 on block. But the target combo is -8, so you're basically eating heavy buttons every time you miss the confirm.

Since AE, though? I never get the target combo when I don't want it. And my execution is SLOPPY. Other Lauras in the discord are swearing it has something to do with the input latency rumors.

gotten used to S3 pretty quick, but I'm sure they did something

for my messy inputs.

now i just get blown up for my messy neutral game.

I messed around in training and Ken can only dash up throw or CA. neutral jump works but the timing is tight because the hitbox is so huge.

it's dejin + psycho crusher with unlimited armor. move is fucked!

I don’t know about the unblockable set ups yet, though.

coasted up to ultra bronze and now i'm having a lot of trouble making meaningful progress. a lot of it is matchup-specific. i don't know how to fight character x bc i'm encountering x for the first time. i've seen a million ryus and sakuras. 80+ matches in and i've only seen one kolin, and there are probably 15 characters i haven't fought against yet. i'm also being fairly predictable and not playing a good neutral game. once i get a knockdown and my setups going i'm usually good but input errors and wakeup reversals can end that pretty quickly

i forgot how counter-y street fighter is. most of the game seems to be punishing unsafe attacks. there are universal strategies that everyone (at least in bronze) seems to use. there is a a LOT of turtle-ing and running away. ground oki setups are unreliable with the way street fighter handles knock down tech-ing. i'm having fun though

>i don't know how to fight character x bc
>i'm encountering x for the first time.

yeah, most of early ranked is figuring out how to beat the cheap/unknown stuff. I don't like to lab so I get hit by anything that's more advanced than Gold level.

>i've seen a million
>ryus and sakuras. 80+ matches in and i've only seen one
>kolin, and there are probably 15 characters i haven't fought
>against yet.

the newest character always gets a lot of play. Ryu is forever popular; probably the match-up I am most comfortable with aside from a Ken mirror because I've played it the most. Kentards are everywhere as well.

once you get to Silver you'll see a lot more character variety.

>i forgot how counter-y street fighter is. most of the game
>seems to be punishing unsafe attacks. there are universal
>strategies that everyone (at least in bronze) seems to use.

Bronze is about who can not kill themselves first. and you'll get out of Silver just by learning all your punishes.

>there is a a LOT of turtle-ing and running away. ground oki
>setups are unreliable with the way street fighter handles
>knock down tech-ing. i'm having fun though

it's got its flaws (as do most every SF) but I love it nonetheless. it's fun and accessible to me.

>it's got its flaws (as do most every SF) but I love it
>nonetheless. it's fun and accessible to me.

i do like that it's not as intense as something like guilty gear or blazblue. i love playing GG with my main but that game can be mentally and physically draining. SFV offers a lot of the same kinds of problems for me to solve but it's a little less demanding. the mind games are still there. fast reactions are still needed. it's a lighter experience, which is fine

Ryu is effective but he's a lot like Tim Duncan. I get to style on niggas with Ken. And I still get to throw fireballs

but Akuma don't have overhead to tatsu to SRK

>And I still get to throw fireballs

Ken's fireball game is a risky poke/death wish

Ken forever tho

I like outsmarting people in neutral more than winning so I always gravitate to fireball characters. It's the best and the worst poke in the game depending on how well you can place them.

If you place them well they just get frustrated and jump into a SRK, then you broke them. If you don't then you just eat jump in combos all day.

I've been training up on young Zeku ever since we ran into each other on casual matchmaking last week or whenever it was. Damn your fireball game. Lol.
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by just chucking plasma in my face.

i think our set ended up being like 15-5. haha

it's a really interesting concept within Street Fighter. You literally live or die by how well you throw them.

Considering their relative weakness in SFV.

Yeah. The risk-reward of fireball is really bad in V, so the commitment to them is very impressive.
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Was this the second season, when Ryu was one of the weakest tiered characters?

that Monster Hunter is top-level.

>Ryu is effective but he's a lot like Tim Duncan. I get to
>style on niggas with Ken. And I still get to throw fireballs

this is basically the best description of Ryu and Ken ever

- F-Champ may be a shithead but gotdamn his Sim is beautiful to watch. Sim's new VT looks like it has a ton of potential, which is great considering how neutered VT1 became.

- Seth Killian on the mic for SFV!

- Momochi gone to the Karin side...

does poongko still play her?

i would love to see her played by someone who knows what they are doing so i can get a better idea of how to play her effectively

and he played some matches with her yesterday.

From what I saw, his VT2 Kolin is silent murder. I'm sad he dropped Ken but her buttons are a better fit for him.

Poongko's been using her today too.

Over Rashid.

Think about your existence.

Daigo vs. Tokido was a classic too.

young kid getting broken over two sets by the veteran master.

Good match; particularly funny since one of the grips ive been reading post AE is how Juri still sucks, lol

https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/systemfault/132233

already killed Abigail's VT2. .

■Abigail

◇Bug: During the forward movement of the max-charge Metro Crash, Abigail gained an unintended number of armor hits.

◇Fix: Fixed so that Abigail will have two hits of armor during the forward-movement attack portion of max-charge Metro Crash.

I wonder if that'll drop before Sagat is available. I'm guessing Capcom doesn't want any carnage in top level tournaments. Good on them.

i wouldn’t expect Sagat before like October, tho.

Yeah. Bug fixes get released as soon as they're ready. Balance patches have a more calculated release time.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8PjGQuentU

I wish I could play this game so I could pick this character up. Also looks like he'll induce a ton of salt, especially from projectile based characters, outside of Guile since I don't think all of his booms has a long recovery frames, but I could be wrong there.

Also, I could be wrong once again, but did that preview show any of his moves with armor, so does his electricity serve as armor?

Dude seem unbeatable in the right hands, especially if you end up in the corner. I suppose grappling based characters will be a good/great counter against him since he needs to stay close to do substantial damage. And I suppose good Dhalsim and/or Menat players will do work against him as well to keep him at distance.

he’ll probably be a pain online, but he doesn’t look too cheap.

i feel like a lot of the matches are a matter of me getting destroyed by whatever cheesy tactic my opponent is using while trying to find the right punish button. i'm constantly getting matched up with people with several thousand matches under their belt, which seems a little unfair considering i just eclipsed 500 matches total (i think). coming into this game a little late definitely has a lot to do with that but i still feel like i should be facing people of a similar experience level up to a certain point. maybe silver is that point? that said, i marvel at seeing someone with 10k+ matches and a 36% win rate. how does that even happen?

very rarely i will get a good match where my opponent is about the same skill level and/or experience as me and plays like a normal human. mostly the matches are against opponents with way more experience and knowledge of the game or someone who doesn't know what they're doing. sometimes both

i think i'm slowly coming to the conclusion that i really like kolin but i hate street fighter v. maybe i just hate ranked

you don't really come across people trying to play the game until you get to like Ultra Silver or Gold.

or at least that was my experience.

i think a lot of people are still trying to adjust to the new patch too. it's pretty different from the previous season. so people are probably more random than usual.

>i think i'm slowly coming to the conclusion that i really like
>kolin but i hate street fighter v. maybe i just hate ranked

Bronze and Silver in ranked is a looney bin. I went through the same thing when I picked up SFV online. I can't even count how many times I've been hit by a double dash-up sweep, or random low forward cancelled straight into super. It took me something like a year and a half to get out of silver.

One problem I had early on was trying to play reactively/defensively against the random wacko stuff. The problem is that it you can't win doing that - you have to make your own offense. Because if you anti air the guy four times, but he lands a fierce jump in one time for full combo, that's still a net win for him.

So the thing I had to start figuring out is when to throw out my own stuff (not just anti-airs and punishing unsafe stuff). Purist SF strategy says don't random sweep, don't push buttons on wakeup, don't wakeup DP, etc. But you actually need to do those things against the wackos because they're pushing buttons and doing stuff when they don't really have advantage. Aka fake pressure. Is someone doing a double dash up + buttons after knocking you down? Throw out a jab. There's a good chance that they don't really have the frames to do that double dash + buttons. Or is someone relentlessly walking up or dashing up? Throw out a sweep to shut it down. Is someone spamming normals in neutral? Throw out a light DP in neutral. Basically, don't be afraid to challenge their BS. And you'll find out quickly whether it's BS. If you get knocked down, and throw out that wakeup jab and get counterhit, then their pressure is real. If you land the jab, then it's either fake pressure or their timing is shit (either way is a win). You don't need to go full-on Tasmanian devil like your opponent, but you can go a little porcupine.

Another example is how I personally use Young Zeku. I mostly use him against wackos and hyperactive opponents because his stuff is so unsafe, but against an opponent who never blocks, it lands. Sweep, run slide, random shoulder. All unsafe, but they nail hyperactive opponents.

I know you didn't ask for this advice, but bronze and silver is such a madhouse, and I've been there before. I'm still not too far out of it as I'm only in regular gold. But the amount of improvement needed to beat bronzes and silvers 9/10 is not as much as it may seem.

>i feel like a lot of the matches are a matter of me getting
>destroyed by whatever cheesy tactic my opponent is using while
>trying to find the right punish button. i'm constantly
>getting matched up with people with several thousand matches
>under their belt, which seems a little unfair considering i
>just eclipsed 500 matches total (i think). coming into this
>game a little late definitely has a lot to do with that but i
>still feel like i should be facing people of a similar
>experience level up to a certain point. maybe silver is that
>point? that said, i marvel at seeing someone with 10k+
>matches and a 36% win rate. how does that even happen?
>
>very rarely i will get a good match where my opponent is about
>the same skill level and/or experience as me and plays like a
>normal human. mostly the matches are against opponents with
>way more experience and knowledge of the game or someone who
>doesn't know what they're doing. sometimes both
>
>i think i'm slowly coming to the conclusion that i really like
>kolin but i hate street fighter v. maybe i just hate ranked


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the combination of:

• learning the minutiae of various characters' blockstrings (why is everything so fucking safe/+ in this game?) and spacing
• the randomness of insane button mashers
• various blends of cheese
• my trash execution
• my trash ~10 year old hori ex2

was really getting to me and making me think i was very bad at this game instead of just going through growing pains. over the past 3-4 days i regressed from ranked ~89k and almost in super silver to ranked ~160k and in ultra bronze. not a good feeling at all. but reading this:

>Bronze and Silver in ranked is a looney bin. I went through
>the same thing when I picked up SFV online. I can't even
>count how many times I've been hit by a double dash-up sweep,
>or random low forward cancelled straight into super. It took
>me something like a year and a half to get out of silver.

made me feel a little better about struggling with ranked

>One problem I had early on was trying to play
>reactively/defensively against the random wacko stuff. The
>problem is that it you can't win doing that - you have to make
>your own offense. Because if you anti air the guy four times,
>but he lands a fierce jump in one time for full combo, that's
>still a net win for him.

this is my problem. i'm playing way too passively to try to read them and then when i can't read them because they're doing weird shit i get destroyed

>So the thing I had to start figuring out is when to throw out
>my own stuff (not just anti-airs and punishing unsafe stuff).
>Purist SF strategy says don't random sweep, don't push buttons
>on wakeup, don't wakeup DP, etc. But you actually need to do
>those things against the wackos because they're pushing
>buttons and doing stuff when they don't really have advantage.
> Aka fake pressure. Is someone doing a double dash up +
>buttons after knocking you down? Throw out a jab. There's a
>good chance that they don't really have the frames to do that
>double dash + buttons. Or is someone relentlessly walking up
>or dashing up? Throw out a sweep to shut it down. Is someone
>spamming normals in neutral? Throw out a light DP in neutral.
> Basically, don't be afraid to challenge their BS. And you'll
>find out quickly whether it's BS. If you get knocked down,
>and throw out that wakeup jab and get counterhit, then their
>pressure is real. If you land the jab, then it's either fake
>pressure or their timing is shit (either way is a win). You
>don't need to go full-on Tasmanian devil like your opponent,
>but you can go a little porcupine.

generally if i can get my offense going i can win because kolin's setups and mixups are pretty great, even with V-I. i struggle a lot in defense but that extends to all the fighting games i play. my neutral isn't much better, partly due to the last year or so of playing a character in guilty gear with only one good neutral button. kolin's buttons are kind of trash, too. s.MP, c.MP, s.LK, and 4HK are about it, and none of them are particularly good. i'm currently lab'ing confirms off of s.LK and s.HP just to get something consistent going in neutral when i do manage to connect

>Another example is how I personally use Young Zeku. I mostly
>use him against wackos and hyperactive opponents because his
>stuff is so unsafe, but against an opponent who never blocks,
>it lands. Sweep, run slide, random shoulder. All unsafe, but
>they nail hyperactive opponents.
>
>I know you didn't ask for this advice, but bronze and silver
>is such a madhouse, and I've been there before. I'm still not
>too far out of it as I'm only in regular gold. But the amount
>of improvement needed to beat bronzes and silvers 9/10 is not
>as much as it may seem.

the advice is more than welcome. thanks for the empathy and advice

>One problem I had early on was trying to play
>reactively/defensively against the random wacko stuff. The
>problem is that it you can't win doing that - you have to make
>your own offense.

opponent waking up with sweep? dash up dragon punch after a knockdown!

i'm probably not going to continue playing once i hit 1k

currently at ~52% win rate and hovering around the ultra silver mark. i can't seem to get too deep into ultra silver without going on a bad loss streak. i don't feel bad at all about my performance considering this is the first SF game i've played since i stopped playing USFIV several years ago

the main issue i have with this game is the guessing. every reset/wakeup situation is a guessing game with serious consequences if you guess wrong and there are several resets/wakeups per match. i understand why the game is designed like this (it makes for fantastic viewing) but it's too frustrating for me to play at this level. i imagine that if i really put time in and got to gold the experience would be a little better but i'd rather devote that time to a game more suited to my tastes

the ranked matchmaking experience in SFV is easily the one of the worst online video game experiences i've ever had and it's mostly because of how this game rewards risky play. losing a round to someone who is clearly button mashing and doing wild things is maddening because it goes against my 25+ years of playing fighting games. you're not supposed to wakeup tatsu. you're not supposed to wall bounce a 5th time in a row with vega even though i've air thrown you out of the previous 4. but people do it anyway because that one time it hits they can take off more damage off one confirm than i can with 4 air throws. that's ridiculous

some people who play this game are real dirtbags. my blacklist of people who yolo/gimmick their way through a quick two rounds and then refuse a rematch numbers in the hundreds

i still have no idea how to fight several characters because i've only played against them 10-15 times. a good 30% of my matches have been against 4 characters (ryu, akuma, blanka, sakura). that's mind-boggling to me. this roster is huge. why doesn't anyone play weird characters?

i may give up on ranked and just chill in battle lounge for a little while and hope to run into people who actually want to play the game

SFV dice rolls feel worse because the damage + stun are so high. you can outplay someone, eat one random move into 300 damage, then guess right on the knockdown 50/50 or die due to the stun.

I have a lot of fun with it though, because it's otherwise pretty basic. overall it's my favorite SF to play, but won't be for everyone.

just like I love watching Third Strike but don't fuck with it due to the skill barrier (parries, charge partitioning...oh yeah and unblockables). some people hated whiffing normals for meter in Third Strike and the horribly unbalanced roster (talk about playing against the same four characters...). Alpha series was beautiful but it's got some real jacked up systems that are abused at high level. Super Turbo has some SFV bullshit x 50 and it's beloved/hated. IV was known as Sleep Fighter, Knockdown Fighter, etc.

so yeah, SFV is definitely unique in certain ways that some people like and others don't. sounds like you got enough of the experience to find out which side you fall on, which is cool.

assuming a fighting game is given to be "broken" in some way, at least SFV's "broken"-ness ties directly with the mind of the user and isn't some weird exploitable animation or mechanic. it's mostly high (and very very low) level mind games. the roster is fairly balanced for general use as well, even though some characters are highly favored over others at certain skill levels. and the barrier to entry is lower than other games because the execution is easier. it's a good game but i think it's just not for me

What's your CFN ID? I was going to check out a replay or two of yours, but bearfield didn't turn up anything. Only if you care to post it. No problem if not.
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feel free to add me

Will do. I just watched your set of three with the Ryu where you lost the first match and won the second two. In general, you jump a bit much and sometimes give up your space advantage. And the reason it was excessive was that the Ryu wasn't throwing many fireballs, so he could have anti aired you many times. I do think you did a good job of taking the space he'd give. Several times, he walked backward half the stage, and you walked forward (or jumped, which I'd again recommend against there) to take the space he was giving you. You also had him in the corner a few times, and the only major critique I have there is that you jumped in on him a few times when you had him cornered. You give up your space advantage when you do that, and possibly put yourself in the corner. And again, this is while he's not really throwing fireballs. It's okay to jump if a guy is unscrupulously spamming fireballs. If you have any other replays you'd like checked out, please let me know. The dates are on there, so just let me know the opponent and time stamp. I'm trying to up my knowledge of the game as much as I can, and I enjoy looking at footage.
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i do get a little jumpy. i think it's because i practiced crossup lk → target combo → parabellum → ca so many times in training mode waiting for fights. and i love her j.hk. i'm going to try some matches without jumping, or at least only jumping when i know i'm not going to get anti air-ed

my corner control needs work too. often i just go for the above combo because it usually hits but i imagine i'd be way better off backing up a little bit to catch jump ins and controlling space with 2mp and 4hk. it's poor use of an advantageous position to just jump in and assume they won't block the crossup and i won't mess up the fairly strict timing of j.lk → 2lp to start my ca combo

i'm mostly in replays on gg and sfv to see what i did right so i can build on it but that's probably a good way to reinforce bad habits. i'm going to watch more replays of me losing and see if i can pick up on more bad habits of mine. bad habits i already know of are trying to jab anti air when they're too close (i should be using 2hp) and getting into predictable patterns when i'm pressuring. 2mp → 2mp is something i do way too much of because it tends to work but mostly because i can't quite get the spacing correct to follow up 2mp with 5lk → light parabellum, despite my ability to confirm that sequence consistently in training mode

i'll try to find some interesting or noteworthy replays for you

.

3 good sets against opponents of similar skill tonight if you want to check them out:

11.18.18 ~11:00 PM CST

4BBE9CC75 against last_hatian
4BBE9D49C against EdNeddy
4BBE9DD19 against Domyouji

y'alls advice and constructive criticism is helping a lot. i appreciate it

I went into SF4 thinking "oh i been playing SF since i was a kid so I should whip up on everybody." When I started losing I started to blame the game because "them niggas ain't playing REAL street fighter." I had to humble myself and relearn the game cause I been playing it wrong for years before I learned to play it right. It stuff that I don't like about the game (and still don't)

The game can't reward risky play but also at the same time have unfavorable guessing situations where one wrong move will have you face serious consequences. That contradicts itself.

You're gonna play nutty players in Gold. Shit even in Platinum. There are gonna be nutty players in Battle Lounge too. Battle Lounge ain't no Shangri-La. Shit half the time you get niggas that are way better than you joining just to troll or get some easy wins.

If you get hit with a jump in after AA'ing 4 times in a row, then you got outplayed plain and simple. It sucks and it can get frustrating, but you gotta be able to take the L and learn from it so it doesn't happen again. Don't put stock in the leagues, put stock in getting better as a player. Don't play to win, play to learn. The wins will come. You can't blame the game for having bad players. You can't expect everyone to play your game either.


Everybody loses to gimmicks until they learn how to deal with them. It happens. You have to lose to them in order to counter them later on. At the end of the day, let them keep those little bullshit wins, because it's not gonna teach them how to be a better player.


Since you're still in Silver, you won't see a lot of variety between characters. If you wanna grind match ups, you'll have to hit up the character discords.

>The game can't reward risky play but also at the same time
>have unfavorable guessing situations where one wrong move will
>have you face serious consequences. That contradicts itself.

my opponent fishing for a crush counter or command grab on my wakeup is pretty risky and very rewarding if it works. if i guess wrong in that situation i'm screwed. if i guess correctly i can get a punish

>If you get hit with a jump in after AA'ing 4 times in a row,
>then you got outplayed plain and simple. It sucks and it can
>get frustrating, but you gotta be able to take the L and learn
>from it so it doesn't happen again. Don't put stock in the
>leagues, put stock in getting better as a player. Don't play
>to win, play to learn. The wins will come. You can't blame the
>game for having bad players. You can't expect everyone to play
>your game either.

i figured this out when i was picking up guilty gear last year. my goal in playing fighting games is to get better at them and to learn what i can from every matchup. winning is a byproduct of getting better (paraphrasing daigo)

i don't necessarily mind losing if i learned something in the match. the problem is that i don't always feel that i gained usable knowledge when i lose against someone who is playing weird or gimmicky or mashy. i didn't figure out something new about that character, just how that one person plays that character

>Everybody loses to gimmicks until they learn how to deal with
>them. It happens. You have to lose to them in order to counter
>them later on. At the end of the day, let them keep those
>little bullshit wins, because it's not gonna teach them how to
>be a better player.

i realize a lot of this is growing pains stuff and learning the animations and blockstrings of a few dozen characters takes time. it's exacerbated by the fact that i keep playing against ryu and akuma over and over. i know what those characters can do. give me a rashid (6 matches out of 1k+) or juri (~15 matches) so i can learn something new

>i don't necessarily mind losing if i learned something in the
>match. the problem is that i don't always feel that i gained
>usable knowledge when i lose against someone who is playing
>weird or gimmicky or mashy. i didn't figure out something new
>about that character, just how that one person plays that
>character

When this happens, it helps to go back and look at the replay. That's pretty common, I think -- not being able to immediately think back and realize what went wrong.

>i realize a lot of this is growing pains stuff and learning
>the animations and blockstrings of a few dozen characters
>takes time. it's exacerbated by the fact that i keep playing
>against ryu and akuma over and over. i know what those
>characters can do. give me a rashid (6 matches out of 1k+) or
>juri (~15 matches) so i can learn something new

That is pretty frustrating. You pretty much have to seek out someone on a discord, message board etc to fight in order to level up your individual matchup knowledge for lesser-used characters. Youtube videos and reading frame data only goes so far.

Another option is to learn that character yourself and use him or her in matches. That's what I did with Rashid, and I ended up maining him for the better part of a year.


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http://i.imgur.com/v2ye7l2.jpg

http://www.capcom-unity.com/strumslinger/blog/2018/04/01/street-fighter-v-arcade-edition-season-3-balance-update

Abby got hit with the hammer, Rashid got hit with the hammer, Laura got hit with another hammer even though she ain’t recovered from the last time.

people out here posting Ed's face on Dan's body (they need to give us the GOAT in the next season)

I don't really give a shit honestly cause I'm still waiting on Sagat. That and I can't really play as much as I want to because of work and shit.

I'm still gonna stick with Ken until then cause it's not like I'm invested in anyone else besides Sagat

Should be interesting to see how this will affect things for the professional players since they appear to be traveling a lot more with the changes to the pro tour points and all.

Are there any professional players main-ing with Blanka yet? Dude looks like such a fun character since he can literally fly across the screen, but I have to imagine there aren't too many professional players willing to risk their earnings to experiment like that with a new character.

i'm used to dota and guilty gear patches where they mostly lightly buff everyone and only nerf if something is game breaking or exploitable. this 3.5 changelog has a lot of "increased recovery frames" and "reduced active frames." maybe that will make blockstring pressure a little easier to deal with?

I think the general goal at Capcom, even before SFV and late into SFIV, has been to buff the weak and lightly nerf the strong to try to make every character viable.

This is a particularly nerf heavy patch very early into the season.

It’s leaving a lot of people scratching their heads.

I’m not saying the changes are bad, but they are uncharacteristically drastic.

>I think the general goal at Capcom, even before SFV and late
>into SFIV, has been to buff the weak and lightly nerf the
>strong to try to make every character viable.

Capcom SFV patches in general have not made a ton of overall sense. I mean, they actually made FANG worse with the S2 patches.

Not necessarily what they've accomplished.

This patch seems a little extra so soon, though.

this might be Ken's worst match-up now. he literally has no way to get in, and she outclasses all his buttons. you have to play reckless as hell to give yourself any shot.

I might still make diamond by the end of this season, but I'm finna be grayer than Obama.

wait, this isn't the overwatch thread,

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

I should check your replays. I hardly see Lauras anymore.
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Give me another month or two to figure this shit out. haha It's been ugly.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBzUChPwD7c

smh at the animations.

S1 cast is fine, but since then it's been greatness, disasters, and a lot of in-between. Sakura is just painful to watch and Falke looks like she's made out of a cardboard cutout.

they look weird.

hopefully it looks less weird unedited.

it's weirdly stiff and jumpy

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after going through replays and taking mental notes during fights i've found that i generally lose when i find myself in the the knockdown cycle. i get knocked down, then i guess the opponent's wakeup oki. generally i guess/read wrong and have to sit through a few knockdowns until i guess/read correctly and can get back to neutral. usually i'm dead/stunned before i can accomplish that

i know there are almost always 5-6 options on wakeup: 3f/4f button, neutral jump (maybe back jump too), block (usually low), anticipated throw break, reversal (also anticipated), and backdash. my problem is that in a 3 round set against a person i've never played against i'm usually unable to catch their patterns until at least 2 rounds. i'm also still learning the oki setups for many characters since there are a several of them i have <30 matches experience against (out of ~1400!!)

so what are you supposed to do against someone like birdie or alex with great oki buttons and command throws? i feel like i can't 3f because i'll get crush countered. i can't block because i'll get command thrown. jumping gets me tagged out of the air for another reset. backdashing seems like the best bet but it's still a 50/50 situation. even against characters without command throws most wakeup situations feel like the above. i'm guessing (especially in the first 2 rounds) and when i guess wrong i eat 35% damage and a gang of stun. are you supposed to just take the throws? is this why throw looping was nerfed?

Wakeup defense is very hard, so try to not get too discouraged. I think the #1 thing that helps with wakeup defense is knowing what your opponent's options are midscreen. Not that many wakeup situations are true 50-50s where your opponent can meaty throw or strike. I would hazard that most midscreen wakeup situations are not subject to meaty throws. Many are, but I feel like that's not the majority case.

Unfortunately, knowing what your opponent's options are is very character-specific, aka requires broad game knowledge and lab time. For example, Zangief can put you in a true 50-50 after heavy SPD or EX SPD, but not light or medium SPD. That's on you to know because they all look similar, only having slight variations in the altitude of the SPD and slight variations in spacing post-attack. Also, if you get DP'd out of the air vs on the ground, your opponent has more time to get close to you because you're falling from much higher up in the air, for example. So there are also situational things like that. If you don't know whether your opponent has the frames to walkup/dashup meaty throw, then I suggest hitting buttons and see if you eat their attack. To me, it's worth risking the damage to get the knowledge.

You can also go to practice mode and re-create the sequence. Choose the character you went against, set the CPU dummy to do a wakeup 3F, then do the move and try to meaty, dash-in meaty, or whatever was happening to you in the match.

Another thing that helps a lot is to recognize tick throw situations, and this is usually point-blank crouch jab, from my experience (certainly varies). It's whatever has minimal pushback and keeps you in throw range. Get used to processing whether the meaty attack leaves you in throw range, and act accordingly. If you are in throw range, consider late tech. If not, keep blocking and watch for a walkup grab.

Here are my very quick, off-the-top wakeup option rankings -
1. block and let the pushback do the work for you. Possibly eat a throw, but it's better than getting combo'd.
2. late tech if they are in throw range (which again, is not as often as you might think).
3. delayed jab/whatever your fastest move is (although, vulnerable to shimmy just like late tech is)
4. reversal DP, but this is situational. It's best to do it when you can afford to eat the punish, or earlier in the match so that it will mess with your opponent's head more. Also, know the risk-reward. I'm much more likely to wakeup DP or wakeup super if it will win me the round. Especially if it's 0-0 or I'm up a round and I can afford to lose a round.
5. mash your fastest normal

The problem with neutral jumping is that if your opponent has good wakeup pressure, their attack will recover in time to anti air you (AA jab generally works against a point blank NJ), which puts you right back into the oki blender. So you should generally only do this if you're reading command grab. I'll do it when I'm trying to bait Giefs into wakeup super, for example.

The problem with backdashing is that if you get hit, it's a counterhit guaranteed, which means a crush counter if your opponent hits you with a CC normal. I feel like a wakeup 3F/4F is better than backdashing because you at least give yourself the chance to hit them if their timing is off. However, in the corner, the payoff of a backdash is bigger than neutral jumping because, since you have nowhere to go, it puts you at point blank range so you can punish or at least apply your own pressure and fight out of the corner. I see people do this mostly against R. Mikas.

>so what are you supposed to do against someone like birdie or
>alex with great oki buttons and command throws? i feel like i
>can't 3f because i'll get crush countered. i can't block
>because i'll get command thrown. jumping gets me tagged out
>of the air for another reset. backdashing seems like the best
>bet but it's still a 50/50 situation. even against characters
>without command throws most wakeup situations feel like the
>above. i'm guessing (especially in the first 2 rounds) and
>when i guess wrong i eat 35% damage and a gang of stun. are
>you supposed to just take the throws? is this why throw
>looping was nerfed?

I say this with zero sarcasm - step 1 is don't get knocked down. If you're at close spacing and you're afraid to throw out a button, then you should walk back, jump back, whatever (backdash is okay at longer distances) to get yourself out of the situation. Reset the spacing so you can try to start your own offense. If you choose to stand in there and hit a button, you're rolling the dice of possibly getting counterhit, knocked down, etc. You could gain from the situation, but why not reset the spacing and go for something with higher probability than 50-50? That's my outlook on it.

And to answer your last two questions, yes, you're generally better off just taking the throw, and yes, this is why throw loops were nerfed. So even in the corner, most forward throw loops are gone.


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see post 118

Nothing stood out too much on the replays (part of that is my lack of knowledge of Kolin). One thing you could try to hone in is avoid whiffing normals. You didn't do it too much, but it's still one way to reduce taking unnecessary damage.
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>Unfortunately, knowing what your opponent's options are is
>very character-specific, aka requires broad game knowledge and
>lab time.

this is easiest and hardest part about wake-up defense (and higher level fighting games in general, to me). every character has a bunch of variations on what they can and cannot get away with after a knockdown. I hate labwork so I go the hard route and figure things out with experience...but as mentioned, you may be put in certain character-specific situations only a few times out of hundreds of matches.

*lots* of stuff isn't real after a knockdown; you can back-roll, backdash, 3F/4F and jump out of more stuff than you think. unfortunately you just have to do the homework to find out.

SFIV had strong throw tech and backdash options on defense (the first was an option select and the second had lots of invincibility frames due to unblockable focus attacks). SFV was made to neuter those specific defensive tactics, for better or worse.

>However, in the corner, the payoff of a backdash is bigger
>than neutral jumping because, since you have nowhere to go, it
>puts you at point blank range so you can punish or at least
>apply your own pressure and fight out of the corner. I see
>people do this mostly against R. Mikas.

yeah, backdash can save you in the corner because you can get air-reset even when hit, and fuck up their combo.

>I say this with zero sarcasm - step 1 is don't get knocked
>down. If you're at close spacing and you're afraid to throw
>out a button, then you should walk back, jump back, whatever
>(backdash is okay at longer distances) to get yourself out of
>the situation. Reset the spacing so you can try to start your
>own offense. If you choose to stand in there and hit a
>button, you're rolling the dice of possibly getting
>counterhit, knocked down, etc. You could gain from the
>situation, but why not reset the spacing and go for something
>with higher probability than 50-50? That's my outlook on it.

I would add to vary your rises when you do get knocked down. at my level, 90 percent of the time my opponent (and myself) has several go-to set-ups for quick-rises (which is the most common), but less options for normal rise and back-rolls. even if they do have those options covered, they still have to guess/read it, and the timing is usually tougher (my meaties are way easier against quick-rising, and I miss more on normal wake-ups).

...finally Platinum.

I need a long break from ranked now :)

Congrats! That's great. It's quite a grind, so I'd agree that you deserve a rest.

I rarely play ranked... when I do, I usually gain 300-500 points, but the rarely part is that I rarely have the motivation to get on and grind. I'm close to super gold and my win % lately is pretty high.
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>I rarely play ranked... when I do, I usually gain 300-500
>points, but the rarely part is that I rarely have the
>motivation to get on and grind. I'm close to super gold and
>my win % lately is pretty high.

i can go 2-1 with someone on my tier and gain maybe 50-60 points. or i can go 2-1 with someone one tier lower than me and gain only 15-25 points. and this is just based on whatever tier they happen to be in. they could have 17k matches with a 72% win rate and still be in super gold. or they could be one of those weird smurf/fighter ID reset players with 200 wins with a 95% win rate that seem to exist only to take points from you. rematching in ranked is rarely worth the effort imo

I got tired of learning a character only to have to relearn that character when another season comes out, when ultimately I'm just waiting on Sagat anyway. I think I'm Super gold, but I been gold forever.

I haven't even played S3 yet. I don't know any changes or anything.

it for sure is a grind to relearn all the fake/real frame traps and different meaties that other characters can use with every major patch. the minor pushback on Ken's LP in S3 has killed my muscle memory, since LP > TC whiffs half the time now.

you might as well go for it. you've progressed more in five months than I did in 20.

my current goal in SFV is to hear the announcer say, "you are ranked in the top 10,000 players in the world." maybe "5,000"... i basically want to be able to go to a local tournament and not get washed

ranked is a lot of plateauing to me -- to get Platinum (or really any rank) you can't just beat other Ultra/Super Golds, you have to beat Platinums that have 2000-3000 more points than you. that's why it's frustrating/tough getting those last 800 points at every rank level, because you have to adjust to the next rank before you even reach it.

I know it ain’t easy with Ken neither.

Having been down in the gold ranks this season, I know how much of a blood bath it was.

>Having been down in the gold ranks this season, I know how
>much of a blood bath it was.

when you level down and have to rank back up, it's like some kind of hex is cast and you can *never* guess right. of course, when I start winning I'm 10/10 on wake-up dps...

Ken is still OK online but he gets absolutely murdered by a few characters. usually whenever I was close to Platinum I'd get Menat-Sim-Menat-Guile-Guile-Chun as my opponents :(

i'd like to thank, in no particular order

• puffco
• og wax
• hrap hayabusa
• the fine SFV players of high-tech for dispensing invaluable advice on not getting destroyed in the wakeup cycle, constructive criticism, and general encouragement. seriously, guys. thanks. i likely would not have been able to get to this point without this board :D

only took six months from scratch, to boot

Diamond seems impossible (14K) but maybe I'll start the grind over for Super Platinum

That's quite a jump in a short time. Great job!

>i'd like to thank, in no particular order
>
>• puffco
>• og wax
>• hrap hayabusa
>• the fine SFV players of high-tech for dispensing
>invaluable advice on not getting destroyed in the wakeup
>cycle, constructive criticism, and general encouragement.
>seriously, guys. thanks. i likely would not have been able
>to get to this point without this board :D
>
>

As a character I think he has all the tools to be awesome.

>

He’s totally Gill in disguise, right?

But yeah, he seems pretty bossy and dope. I have already seen much evil with him.

https://youtu.be/ZXbA6EeX03s

and then I actually use him and I'm like... "this dude ain't -really- changed"

that everyone who is excited for Sagat is going to remember he's a slow, zoning character who has to be played at perfect distances...and drop him

>that everyone who is excited for Sagat is going to remember
>he's a slow, zoning character who has to be played at perfect
>distances...and drop him

It’s a great trick to have more folks excited about G(ill).

it shouldn't be that easy

The struggle was real, but now it’s over. Probably won’t hit my goal of Diamond this season, but I’ma reach that Ultra Plat, hell or high water. Hopefully I can put a dent into it before Spider-Man comes out.

I think the game is in a great place right now. There are characters who are ass and need buffs (Gief), but this is the least top heavy the game has been. Akuma, Cammy, Menat, and Guile are strong, but they all can get touched.

G and Sagat got the game feeling brand new. GQ is gonna rob fools blind, but I think Sagat is more “real” lowkey, even if he feels too honest for SFV right now.

Hope y’all been good, yo.

I been caught up with studying, TV shows, thotting, and Horizon Zero & Mafia 3.

this game keeps throwing unfavorable ultra gold matchups at me. they're trying to drag me down to ultra gold and i do not want to go back there! there's something about the prospect of losing a bunch of points to a lower ranked player that kills my calm and confidence. also i'm learning that i can generally wash people that have a positive win rate but anyone under 45% i have a lot of trouble beating. it's all those double dash sweeps and wakeup tatsus...

whenever you play a rank lower than you, the salt/craziness is real

of course ultra platinums are probably saying the same about me when I follow up a blocked roundhouse into ex DP ("my turn!")

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1493181366
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1493181267

a lot

related: i hate kolin's buttons. they're all trash. medium punches are kind of ok. i don't really know how to use her standing heavy punch. i know it's a good whiff punish button but i'm not good at whiff punishing. maybe i'm using MP when i should be using HP

would love some feedback on the following matches where i emphasized neutral play:


9.6.18 ~10:40 PM CST

set vs W1NT3RS

replay id 4BFEBE211 and 4BFEBE694


set vs Se7venNin9

replay id 4BFEBF1D7 and 4BFEBF566



please ignore my input errors and failed punish attempts. i know i need to work on my wakeup defense (still). i feel like i'm missing a lot of punishes by not cancelling 2LP into ex parabellum. probably throwing too many unsafe icicles too

>9.6.18 ~10:40 PM CST
>
>set vs W1NT3RS
>
>replay id 4BFEBE211 and 4BFEBE694

I swear, every time it was 2-0. he ranked up over me recently so I don't see him as much, but I crack up playing him because I always guess right and win all the scrambles.

first match he disconnected after 10 seconds

he beat me 2-1 a little later, both down to the last hit

I think it's hilarious

Online desync excuses is still poppin tho.

(It’s about a frame slower than USF4 on 360 and Xrd. A bit faster than Tekken 7 and DBFZ. It’s legit solid now.)

shit, even now there are times when I can't believe I'm stunned so quickly. reduction in lag is good for elite players but if you're still waiting for SFV to play differently, you should try playing USFIV. or 3s.

simple shit like anti-airing, throw teching, and reacting to dash ins are more reliable now.

it's still big boy damage. it's still strong offense and weak defense. crush counters, stun combos, VT robbery, all that. it's not for everybody. i love that shit tho. but i love ST and HF, games with legit touch of death, no mix-up necessary just one jump-in.

my biggest issue with the game is the lack of neutral, and this is a major course correction. SFV might actually have legit footsies now. already: fools doing the classic SFV neutral jump on knockdown? that's fake. shimmies are still there, but they got nerfed. dash cancels across the board is catching Ls (much to my Laura's chargin). the game got cleaner and more honest overnight.

the downside to this is that online might be worse than it's been since season 1. it seems the lag reduction is making the game more likely to desync. i haven't had many smooth matches since the update.

>the downside to this is that online might be worse than it's
>been since season 1. it seems the lag reduction is making the
>game more likely to desync. i haven't had many smooth matches
>since the update.

this is every update for me. can't really say when the most stable time ever was, it just seems to normalize after a while.

they really need to do something about the match distribution in re lower/higher ranks. it's so hard to make meaningful progress when every match is against lower ranked players. i'm in super plat trying to grind up to ultra plat but all my matches seem to be against very low level plat players that happen to have several thousand matches more than me under their belt. it feels like it's been a week since i had a chance to take points of an ultra plat player

i hate this game sometimes. i think i care too much about the points

Super Plat is a weird bottle neck.

I’m in the same grind right now.

and that's why they lost. smug was playing to get better and that's why he won. i'm pretty sure i said something similar in a previous post in this thread. must have lost sight of that when i got to plat. going to play this weekend without regard for points and see how it goes

i wish there was a way to hide notification of casual/ranked matches and opponent rank. like there would just be a "find match" button and it would be functionally the same as turning on ranked and casual match search. you would learn your point loss/gain total at the end of a session/day/week. i feel like i play better when points aren't at stake or if i don't know that points are at stake. then again i might assume that every match is ranked and still get psyched out :D

just play to learn. The points ain't going nowhere. Playing for points is treating the symptom instead of treating the root cause.

Also be willing to take the L to learn how to beat shit. I dropped down a whole two leagues just to learn how to SRK jumps on reaction.

Niggas ain't jumping in on me now.

I'm just now getting back to where I was before the update.

(Me playing VT2 Laura exclusively ain't helping matters either, but I'm playing to have fun and that wack ass VT2 is hella fun to land)

>Also be willing to take the L to learn how to beat shit. I
>dropped down a whole two leagues just to learn how to SRK
>jumps on reaction.

i did this recently. for some reason i could not deal with rashid's non-mashed lp mixer this jerk was spamming so i took my L's, looked up "how to deal with rashid mixer" (hint: don't press anything) and then washed rashid the next time we matched up

this shit is broken. yes i still care about the points. yes i'm salty af

That’s all I really care about. Playing against the highest level players I can. That’s the only reason I got the Diamond goal (which I don’t think I’ll hit til next year).

Before this season started, I was playing against Master ranks. And getting bodied. But I loved it.

>That’s all I really care about. Playing against the highest
>level players I can. That’s the only reason I got the
>Diamond goal (which I don’t think I’ll hit til next
>year).
>
>Before this season started, I was playing against Master
>ranks. And getting bodied. But I loved it.

i can't get that much better playing the nth akuma/cammy in plat using online-friendly rushdown frame trap sequences over and over. the thing i loved most about making it to plat was getting to play more neutral and being forced to get better at it

i think my defense is just too poor to make it out rn. i might need to just ingest a bunch of L's while i learn proper defense to handle the top tier spam

the drops, the lagging, the horrific match-making (region/points)

when it's casual it's just annoying, when you are trying to grind up it's infuriating

after I made Platinum I will probably never get on ranked again :)

Even with the option to turn them off, this shit is gross.

This game deserves all the hate it gets yo.

...

I'm still playing it tho.

it really is annoying how they saddle down a good game with the little things that annoy like this.

just glad them Extra Battles finally are recycling. I went to sleep a couple weeks and missed out

and if that Gold Soldier shows up, it's Rashid time

tournament is in about a month. this will be my first time playing offline and competitively. i might buy SFV on ps4 to get a feel for it even though my understanding is that the lag reduction patch put PC and PS4 on even ground

among us.

talk to people.

Don't beat yourself up if you go 0-2. I thought I was hot shit but my local had Steve H in it. Google him.

Keep going.

didn't consider showing up early though. thanks for the tip

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/348459607
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/348051549

need to get used to the concept of people watching me play. please check out my stream. i'll try to get a schedule going soon

https://www.twitch.tv/ct_5_holy/

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/349348291

kolin is pretty good sometimes :D

He's always whining about some shit but his Ken is the gold standard.

One hit confirms, whiff punishing, pressure, all that shit. He put the work in and it's definitely paid off.

I forgive the dumb stuff because he's just a college kid (I'm old)

Big Bird (when he's using Ken) is also nasty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dhX8H9p6Hc

looks like Evil Ryu bullshit is back

but the character is dope as fuck. mixing that little bit of oni in there did the trick.

them dropping the character and balance changes immediately after capcup was also hella appreciated. they didn’t really tweak much framewise, but everybody seems to have gotten more options (except your boy Ken WTF is they doing?)

what’s NOT appreciated tho? it’s pretty clear they’re abandoning this game now. like we might not even get a full season and that’s some bullshit.

>them dropping the character and balance changes immediately
>after capcup was also hella appreciated. they didn’t really
>tweak much framewise, but everybody seems to have gotten more
>options (except your boy Ken WTF is they doing?)

giving online Ken Army too many options is like giving the Mongols assault rifles; they'll overrun the continent.

>what’s NOT appreciated tho? it’s pretty clear they’re
>abandoning this game now. like we might not even get a full
>season and that’s some bullshit.

you mean competitively? I'll admit I didn't even watch most of Capcom Cup. fuck Menat (the SFV Elena on watchability factor). I thought Sony pulling out basically derailed the FGS -> eSports bullet train.

>you mean competitively? I'll admit I didn't even watch most of
>Capcom Cup. fuck Menat (the SFV Elena on watchability factor).
>I thought Sony pulling out basically derailed the FGS ->
>eSports bullet train.

they’ve confirmed cap cup 2019, but we might not get a full season of characters. looks like capcom is giving up on the game.

that nigga made out.

>(except your boy Ken WTF is they doing?)

standing RH (slow as fuck and his only reliably confirmable poke) is getting nerfed? he builds his THREE-BAR V-TRIGGER TOO FAST so they are taking gauge away from step kick? thunder kick is punishable by everything at -6 (even though the spacing sucked and you would light tatsu wouldn't combo half the time)?

make sense...

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dhX8H9p6Hc
>
>looks like Evil Ryu bullshit is back

I’m over here with the Bugs Bunny ears. Aka I don’t have enough fight money to get him. Hehe.

We will get a season 4 methinks. That just might be it tho. I wonder who they’ll give us on the way out? Sean? Dudley? Gill? Another doll? Abel? Edmond? Fei Long?

the "Gadouken" fireballs and the weird stuff on V-Trigger make the character distinct but ....yeah, "evil Ryu"? I think they're about punting that ball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-eusesuwBA

https://youtu.be/2L0PzI2DbMI

I wasn't buying into the Kage hype. Or at least as a Sagat player I don't. I haven't seen any good tools for him to use in neutral and it's not helping the fact that he's basically free lunch every time I play one.

His block strings and stomps are gimmicky and he don't really have enough life to take risks in the neutral. Once I saw that Dan palette swap that basically solidified how I felt about him. This nigga Dan on paper and in spirit.

But after seeing that shit I'll admit I'll take an L

I think he'll be strong, but not OP because the weaknesses you mentioned are real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M9FDaRwWKY&feature=youtu.be&t=1302

Jibbo is labbing him

https://www.twitch.tv/automattock

https://youtu.be/jOPrJ7NT2QA

Set begins at 19:40.

I was living up to my name and just doing it. I woulda took the set if I didn’t drop my VT combo. That left me cornered and the victim of a Gootecks Shimmy from the creator himself.

i got bodied by jibbo on stream 😢. was way too intimidated to play normally:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/366631653?t=01h15m26s

i woulda got hit by all of that shit.

playing jibbo as kolin must be nerve wracking since he labbed her so hard. i used to get bopped by him a lot back when he was maining Zeku.

is the greatest video game achievement I’ve ever unlocked.

Yipes commentating your matches is the peak online SFV experience

although why does Excellent Adventures look 2008 quality?

Mike Ross and all, but I was sad

There was a long hiatus, and then it was a few Smash episodes.

This was the first SFV one in a while.

I’m guessing Gootecks is trying to see if he can get it going again out in Vegas. He probably doesn’t have the set up he had in LA.

>https://youtu.be/jOPrJ7NT2QA
>
>Set begins at 19:40.
>
>I was living up to my name and just doing it. I woulda took
>the set if I didn’t drop my VT combo. That left me cornered
>and the victim of a Gootecks Shimmy from the creator himself.

That was quite close. He had to Shimmy you twice. And he got openly clowned over it. He was quite shook even afterwards. If you hadn't dropped, that would've been quite close to curtains if not total curtains. He damn got it foot on the ropes style. Excellent set.

It led to him getting clowned for the entire Vega fight after. He basically bodied the Vega.

Good shit lol

You celeb status now

hanging out in casual for a little while until i feel comfortable enough to get bank into ranked and risk my precious LP. the matches already seem better. i don't mind losing to whiff punishes and set play. it feels like i'm running into fewer spammers. ultra platinum is the new ultra gold :D

but i'm hungry for that diamond rank.

good shit!

went through a few good runs and one really bad one until i finally broke through. i actually got up to diamond last friday but lost 500 points the next day and had to put the game down for a little while

you know what it takes to get there since you're the HT Plat Pioneer. just keep at it until you get that run of favorable/reasonable matchups and you'll be back there in no time

i 2-0'd neon... while he was fucking around with menat. lost to jibbo playing sagat. beat the person who most frequently wins my local tourney. still running into rushdown akumas and such but getting to play against folks that are way better than me is making me play better, and those matchups are occurring more often than they were in plat

did better than i thought i would. went 3-2, making it to losers quarterfinals

it would have been a much better experience in a larger venue. street fighter ran 2 hours behind schedule bc smash bros turnout was unexpected and there wasn't enough room for even a SFV casuals setup. the person who appeared to run the tournament (and participate in sets on multiple games!) told me they usually play in a much bigger space. i had fun playing after getting past the initial nerves. i'll be attending the next tourney in a month at the larger venue

playing live (never been in a tournament) is a much different beast, I'm sure

not much of a scene here but there is a monthly tournament:

https://smash.gg/tournament/the-arkansas-special-april-twt-dojo-100-mk11-100-ultimate

at least for the time being

my neutral is getting better but my defense is still trash. i'm still bad at non-mp confirms. my mixups are stale. i feel unmotivated to improve even though i enjoy playing. i'm terrified of ranked because i feel like i'll regress to ultra plat and get knocked into some kind of tilted free fall all the way down to bronze

i'm going to give this a break for a little while and learn under night in-birth exe:latest

How much do you train vs. grinding online?

My plateau has been going on forever.

if i get washed by a tactic i'm unfamiliar with i'll set up that scenario in training mode and learn to punish it

i play late at night so it's almost a 1:1 ratio of time spent in training and matches. i feel like i practice a lot. practicing confirms is a total chore though. maybe i need to practice wakeup defense...

it's usually just combo practice for me. I never set up scenarios or try out responses against frame-traps that kill me every time.

I should do more lobbies against characters I struggle against, but when I get on I just want to casual for 30 minutes or so.

Laura is owning me right now...why is it her turn forever :(

>it's usually just combo practice for me. I never set up
>scenarios or try out responses against frame-traps that kill
>me every time.
>
>I should do more lobbies against characters I struggle
>against, but when I get on I just want to casual for 30
>minutes or so.

this is where i'm at. just get some matches in and some wins. maybe i'm not as interested in improving as i need to be to take my game a step further

>Laura is owning me right now...why is it her turn forever :(

v-reversal usually does the trick. you have ex uppercut too. throw that out early enough and they should think twice about their rushdown strings

lucia seems like cody + sakura with a way worse projectile. the things that are really appealing about lucia to me are her long range links and her combo route possibilities. kolin has neither so it's fun to get to play around with those attributes. her VT1 is awesome but her VT2 doesn't seem that useful other than it being 2 bars (?)

poison has a half screen command throw with VT2 which might be good? it seems very easy to react to. it is novel to command throw someone out of the air from distance during a combo. the VT1 molotovs seem like they can make for cool combo extenders and oki pressure, which i love. poison's buttons are BAD but the range of her specials somewhat offsets them. her v-skill is very strange to me and it seems like a risky move. that also might be bad

honda's special move mechanics seem outdated to me. all the videos i watch of him just make me think of how i'm going to HP parry all his distance closing moves with kolin. also blanka basically does everything honda does and he does it faster. i do like the sumo splash crossups though

I haven't touched SF5 in a few months but he might be my secondary

Well rounded and easy to use.

Honda is going to be a juggernaut in some match ups. VT II corner carry with Honda's pressure game will make quick work of lots of characters, but he's going to have really bad match-ups too. Probably gonna be hard to be consistent with him.

Poison is going to take time. I don't think she's Falke bad, or Fang gimmicky, but she's probably not going to be Menat dangerous either. I see her in that Dhalsim range. Specialists will wreck you, but there probably won't be that many of them.

specifically canceling/linking into hands by pianoing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l7IhrZyQnY

i can't tell if honda's buttons are good enough to have him hang out in neutral fishing for knockdowns and setting up oki. his other specials still seem bad but they're good for getting in if you have the meter

I been in a rut for well over a year, but I feel like I’m finally making progress. Currently got a 69% win rate over my last 100 matches when I’m usually a sub 50% player.

I think it’s from playing Sam Sho.

Never played the Sam Sho series before, but I’m in love with the new game. I love that slow tense shit. I’m playing a low tier in Darli against an army of Genjuros and barely holding on to a 40% win rate, but I think it’s making me a better fighting game player.

>I been in a rut for well over a year, but I feel like I’m
>finally making progress. Currently got a 69% win rate over my
>last 100 matches when I’m usually a sub 50% player.

i dropped from ~60% to less than 30% in casuals over the course of a few weeks about a month back. losing was not fun and i wasn't learning much from it so i decided to take a week or two off. when i came back to it i got my win rate in casuals back up over 50%. i do think that a lot of folks playing new characters helped me get that rate up but taking a break from the game did most of the heavy lifting

>I think it’s from playing Sam Sho.
>
>Never played the Sam Sho series before, but I’m in love with
>the new game. I love that slow tense shit. I’m playing a low
>tier in Darli against an army of Genjuros and barely holding
>on to a 40% win rate, but I think it’s making me a better
>fighting game player.

my understanding is samsho is almost all neutral so playing it is likely improving your overall understanding of footsies, which require a lot of patience and focus, especially in such an offensive game as SFV

i've found that playing several fighting games a great way to get better at fighting games in general, as they all share the same general concepts and mechanics but tend to specialize in a few areas. guilty gear and KOF are useful for execution; blazblue and guilty gear are good for oki; guilty gear and under night are good for combo routing; samsho, soul calibur, tekken are good for neutral, etc. if you're into a deep genre like fighting games it's good to break away every now and then and try your hand on a variant. maybe you can pull something useful from it that you can apply to the game you're taking a break from

but I'm just now understanding through practice.

>i've found that playing several fighting games a great way to
>get better at fighting games in general, as they all share the
>same general concepts and mechanics but tend to specialize in
>a few areas. guilty gear and KOF are useful for execution;
>blazblue and guilty gear are good for oki; guilty gear and
>under night are good for combo routing; samsho, soul calibur,
>tekken are good for neutral, etc. if you're into a deep genre
>like fighting games it's good to break away every now and then
>and try your hand on a variant. maybe you can pull something
>useful from it that you can apply to the game you're taking a
>break from

Your breakdown of how games concentrate on different areas of fundamentals makes a lot of sense to me too.

In the past year I've been branching out. I've grinded up to Black Belt level in 3rd Strike on the SF30th Collection. I've played a lot of SFII online too (Hyper Fighting, Super Turbo, and Ultra), to less success. And now Sam Sho has me hooked.

I'm gonna try to expand even more and give Tekken another shot and I definitely want to get in on the new Guilty Gear from jump.

>In the past year I've been branching out. I've grinded up to
>Black Belt level in 3rd Strike on the SF30th Collection. I've
>played a lot of SFII online too (Hyper Fighting, Super Turbo,
>and Ultra), to less success. And now Sam Sho has me hooked.
>
>I'm gonna try to expand even more and give Tekken another shot
>and I definitely want to get in on the new Guilty Gear from
>jump.

i keep hearing good things about tekken's neutral game but the button assignments flipping on side switches is weird and unnatural to me. if i'm going 3d for neutral i'll probably play soul calibur 6, especially since they finally announced a character i want to play in cassandra

i, too, am all over the next guilty gear. learning and playing GG Xrd Rev 2 in 2017 truly made me a better fighting game player. i think GG Xrd Rev2 has the best combo of mechanics and character design. it's a joy to play once you get the hang of it and it presents a wealth of options for both players in any given scenario, which makes for a layered yomi experience. also the new GG is going to be the first sequel using their revolutionary game engine so literally everything about it should improve. that's extremely promising

granblue fantasy versus is on my radar as well. it seems to be the arc systems take on street fighter and also has amazing character design due to the granblue franchise designs being baked in

it's a great time for fighting games :D

The launch roster size kinda worries me with only 11 characters and nobody catching my eye yet, but the game looks too interesting to pass up.

granblue likely has a similar development pipeline to DBFz in re bringing characters into the game. assuming versus is successful (and it should be since granblue is huge in japan) we should see that roster double (or more!) with the next few character packs. i'm into it. give me my high quality art design fantasy jrpg fix in a fighting game. i think granblue fantasy versus will be what battle fantasia was supposed to be, only viable and successful

>I'm gonna try to expand even more and give Tekken another shot
>and I definitely want to get in on the new Guilty Gear from
>jump.

definitely a good time to get in

https://www.polygon.com/2019/8/9/20798731/guilty-gear-2020-new-details-daisuke-ishiwatari

The core concept this time is unlike those of past titles — it is neither “evolution” nor “returning to the roots”; nor is it an addition or subtraction of elements to the existing title. What we’re pursuing is a brand new experience for Guilty Gear.

To achieve that goal, we’ve disassembled the current franchise into fragments and sifted out the piece that make it unique and charismatic, using those pieces to have a complete reconstruction of the franchise.

What we’re undertaking is a full-frontal confrontation with the essence of the Fighting Game genre, a tremendous challenge for Guilty Gear. It is a high-risk move on our part. However, we have an accumulation of the the plentiful resources and experience, a clear vision of our ideals, and the excitement towards a future of a new possibility. Although we do not know what this path awaits us ahead, we as the development team look forward to the future of this never-ending pursuit. In the process of this journey, we hope that we will be able to share the excitement and joy we’ve encountered with all of you.

--------------------------

i imagine they're going to lose some of the legacy stuff like character weight which i think only affects juggle combos that end up being character-specific, and that's just another x combo routes you have to memorize. ideally they will keep blitz, dead angle (alpha counter), faultless defense, roman cancels, bursts, and how meter doesn't carry over between rounds. just keep the mechanics that GG is known for and lose the things that don't affect gameplay in a meaningful way or are an impediment to learning the game

i hope the changes don’t alienate the GG diehards, and i hope it doesn’t just mean autocombos.

stripping down to the essence is always easier said than done, but it’s something all
devs should be trying to do.

He pretty much plays exactly like you expect since SFII. But that V-II trigger, plus the command throw and the damage it does? Definitely can see abusing that. Not sure how I feel about his special being a QCF based move instead of a charge, but so be it.

https://youtu.be/AKtx4Jn06D8?t=2h9m32s

i feel like this is me playing at my best. confident, patient, the right kind of risky, and thinking about my wakeup defense for once. VT2 is a complementary piecce to my play as opposed to the thing that grants me massive comebacks. i'm mostly winning in neutral, which to me was a highly coveted and seemingly impossible to obtain skill about 16 months ago

the stream host and my opponent is the guy that wins most of my locals. his yt channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/TulpaVision/playlists) is pretty nice. he has some unique tech on lucia and a lot of zeku knowledge and tech. and he's very good at fighting games. check out his read in the rashid match after his match with me. in fact me beating his zeku online was the thing that inspired me to attend my first local

i post this not as a stunt but as testament to the progress i've made over the past 18 months. i have saved replays from very early matches when i was learning the game and kolin and there is marked growth since then. the discussions here helped immensely, as did checking out the kolin discord (bravely ignoring all the pepe emoji contained within), watching a ton of momochi and uosuke matches, and learning some basic frame data from fatonline. throughout all the losses, and the steep learning curve, and the bullshit of ranked gold and platinum matches, and the rage uninstalls, i persisted because i wanted to get better. and i did!

you are really out there grinding...really. congrats!

loved the way you teched them throws and jab checked those dash ins too. i need to work on my defense like that. i haven't played many Lucias, but the last one was getting free run mix-ups on me all day.

i'm like 700 points away from diamond (got as high as 13,700 LP). you got me ready to grind tonight. wanna hit that rank before next week.

i see a lot of instances in that match where i should have been ready with st.HP buffered into ex hands

>i'm like 700 points away from diamond (got as high as 13,700
>LP). you got me ready to grind tonight. wanna hit that rank
>before next week.

this is why i posted that clip and wrote about it :D good luck tonight. you're so close!

I’m 8 months late to this goal, but still relieved.

I’m only 27 LP up, so it’s a good chance I’m gonna drop back down to Ultra Plat next time I play, but I’ll return to ranked anyway. I’m pretty confident I can get a couple thousand deep into Diamond before the end of this season. That’s all I want. No more rank goals after this. I just want a shot at playing the best people online I can.

We in there, for now.

i'll get back to them eventually

i bought sfv on ps4 with the intention of learning characters like sakura and lucia and maybe honda on a clean new account. i don't want to dirty up my pc account with a bunch of learning curve losses and i like that my entire history on that account is 2 losses with balrog then 8k matches with kolin. hopefully most of the matches on ps4 will end up in battle lounge or casuals but i feel like i will need to grind up to at least plat before i start getting good with new characters. i really don't want to be "that person" that takes precious LP off folks who are legit grinding gold and silver because that shit used to get me so upset (still does!), but i think that it has to happen

I watch a lot of Vesper Arcade streams when he’s learning new characters, and he always starts back at Rookie.

He plays to learn, and he’s not just styling, playing with his food, or tea bagging the lower ranks. Even in Bronze his matches tend to be meaningful because he’s taking it seriously.

I think if you do it that way it takes the sting off the player losing the points. It might even be instructive for them, and a sample of what a match feels like when you’re playing somebody who understands the game.

I’m too lazy right now to set up a family account to test new characters out with a fresh account, but I probably should follow suit while the game is still active at the lower ranks.

since AE dropped.

Nobody uses VTII in ranked but me. It's so dumb and useless and her VTI is one of the best triggers in the game, so of course everybody else uses that.

Except me. Because I'm dumb and like to go dumb too.

I'm basically the Idom of VTII.

ya'll beating Masters and shit; I can remember when I could take games off both of you :)

I'm slowly improving, but I'm still the same nut you played last time.

Honestly, I think the real challenge to being successful in ranked is managing stress.

I played so loose in Ultra Plat because the stakes of losing were low, and winning was so rewarding. I gained like 4,000 LP in little over a week.

I was stuck in Super Plat for months tho (and often dropped back to Platinum and even Ultra Gold) because the cost of losing was so high and a couple wins barely offset a single loss. So I was playing tense the whole time. It wasn't until I started to relax that I got over that plateau.

Like we all know the points don't matter, but you still want them damn points, and that distraction really messes with your game.

I was more locked in during ranked matches, which can really help you get better.

but it's about dealing with those losses for me...so many times an 0-2 turns into 1-11, 4-20 streak. there are literally times when you play ranked that every single button you hit is wrong.

it's not quite being on tilt but it's close. i have tried to work through bad loss streaks and that only made it worse. i tend to stop playing if i hit 3-4 losses in a row because i get so frustrated that i'm not thinking clearly, and that doesn't help me win matches. just put the game down for a while, do something else, then come back to it later

I thought they would have had a limited time or announce it by now but nope. I really want to play this too.

at least not this generation.

there's a slim chance it might be on the next Xbox console, but even that is doubtful.

Sony put money down to get the game produced and keep it console exclusive. I can't imagine that deal lasts forever into the future, but it definitely will remain the case for as long as they're selling PS4s.

sucks since it was so fun with IV I had it on every console I had. Just can't justify getting a PS4 this go-round when I have a Switch sucking up most of my time anyway.

not like lag or rollback but frame dropping. there are certain (most?) stages where i'm dropping several frames, to the point where it's nearly unplayable. the training mode stage is fine. every other stage seems to be a crap shoot

you on the base? i wouldn’t be surprised.

but that was in feb 2016. i guess it's still broken? pretty annoying to have to deal with it. i suppose this is why all the online tourneys are on the training mode stage

full screen HK tatsus, wakeup command throws, endless guile sweeps even though i keep punishing them... maybe the matches are as wild as they were when i was learning kolin but my mind has adjusted to higher level play so this low level stuff is really throwing me for a loop. there is a real dearth of in-match adjustments down here. i might be overconsidering my game plan

sakura is fun. having a legit invincible reversal is very convenient and comforting. kolin has her ex backstep but it's only invincible for a handful of frames and it's easy to read and punish. i keep trying to punish everything with kolin buttons instead of sakura buttons so i'm giving away a few matches here and there. my punishes are pretty trash overall but i'll get better. fireballs are fun to use but sakura's have too much windup and recovery for them to be effective. i keep switching between vt1 and vt2 depending on the matchup but i think i need to stick with one to learn all the combos

or is it more relaxing, allowing you just to work on learning your character?

and some folks have 10k matches with akuma yet are still somehow in super silver and toy with you until they can end the round with a raging demon. the variance in skill is way greater down here. i like diamond because most folks are at least competent and know how to play, e.g. punishes, frame traps, oki, etc. the matches are getting better as i get into higher ranks but it's not really an environment conducive to learning. i might have to hit up discord or reddit for some learning-friendly battle lounge matches

it was comedy because it was my first match of the day and as soon as i saw Kolin on the screen i thought to myself, “watch this be Nephew or some shit.” haha

i took a round tho! and i got back to Diamond with my next match, but this is about to be a journey haha

i tend to favorite anyone who is master ranked or above irrespective of the outcome of the match because i'm more likely to get better playing folks that are way better than me. i've taken matches off tauntbutton, shin_aku_ma_lvl2, and neon. idom wrecked me with his poison. it feels great to run into super high level players — the ones you see on SFV highlight vids — and hold your own against them

like UltraDavid, LowTierGod, Nuggy Bunny, and Gootecks, but none of them are really high ranking SFV players.

I think I beat Alex Myers once...or BrenttIsCool. One of them WNF dudes. I was hype at the time, but forgot who it was.

I feel like my set with Nephew was competitive, even though he won 2-0. I've had decent sets like that with AutoMattock too, no wins tho. I gave Arturo a scare once, but he didn't give me my runback.

To this day, the person with the most perfects against me is Danny Pham. Danny Pham is my nemesis, and he don't even know it. If I ever beat him I'm going to do the loneliest popoff.

I took the first game off him with no loss. I guess that put him in his feeling because he proceeded to teabag and body me for the next four rounds straight.

i'm in CST and bc of my work schedule i generally don't get on until after midnight. there are not a lot of folks in this region playing in the first place, much less that late, and the other region i usually get matched with is ET and those folks are even less likely to be up that late. it's tough getting quality matches sometimes, which is why i spend so much time in the training room and fighting weird latin america players with trash connections

but you might be able to get decent matches with even more top players than us, since you’re within range of three major regions.

i think the time slot might be a bigger factor for you than your location. after midnight is crickets even out here, that and casuals is a lot less active at the higher ranks.

i keep getting hit by the following:

• random mashed out supers in the middle of my blockstrings

• reset players with < 100 wins and 95% win rate

• wakeup sweeps

every time i get some momentum going there is this string of matches involving alternating extremely skilled players contrasted with folks like that one sagat who spent half the match jumping and i lose like 500 points. whiff punishes on one end and whiffed supers on the other. the incongruity is dizzying. it's a net bad experience and makes learning overly difficult. you shouldn't have to fight through an unpredictable gang in the streets (silver, gold) when you're just trying to walk to the school (plat and up). spending more time in casuals should help

i think i still like sakura but i can't really play neutral with her. s.HK is great. i have no idea how you whiff punish with b.HP. i need to grind s.LK confirms. i see players using LP and LK confirms with her a lot but i'm not super comfortable in that range with her just yet. sakura does weirdly have a handy cr.MP > s.LK > dp combo that is identical one of kolin's more useful combos. at least that carried over. her VT1 combos are very cool. VT1 is kind of tough to wrap my mind around. players like nauman use it as frame trapping tool but i can't seem replicate that spacing. i'm confident i can be good with sakura but it might require more labbing that i'm comfortable with. we'll see how it goes

maybe playing against players who are more fundamentally solid will help you learn how to strategize with her.

if you’re in silver ranks with her you already have the basics down, it might help to switch it up. lower ranks can be so unpredictable, it might be harder to learn there than just getting blown up by high level players using their mains.

my win rate has dropped significantly since hitting diamond so i’m getting frustrated more too, but the math is so favorable that i’m cruising to super diamond anyway. already at 17k. i’m trying to hit 20k in a couple weeks so i can have almost a couple months at that rank before the next major update in november.

the last few months it's seemed SUPER shitty most of the time

They did server maintenance on Monday, but honestly I haven't seen much of a difference good or bad. People have been complaining about the servers a lot since the big update, but it feels like it always does to me.

the nights I get on now I see the same rotation of people the entire time

Wasn’t expecting that since I’m not playing more (the same 5 or 6 hours a week as normal) and it took me 18 months to hit my first 10,000 LP...

And then I was stuck around 10,000 LP FOR ALMOST TWO DAMN YEARS.

Feels good. Having fun making some of my favorite players salty. Lots of other games I wanna play coming out, so I’m gonna dial back a bit. Also thinking about playing less ranked and actually using training mode for once.

nice work! i might have to go back to kolin on PC to catch up with you

congrats!!!