Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Sweat! (New Date: Saturday, 12th April, 2008!)

[New Era Outlaw]

Game: Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Venue: Playmax, Chaguanas
Time: 11:00 AM onwards

A'ight, youse mugs. Listen up.
I'm heading down to Chaguanas to do battle with whiplash, because I want some ACK-SHUN!!
And, as such, I'm inviting anybody here to head down and join in the royal pwnage.
If Marvel vs. Capcom 1 is there, also, I'll also be playing that.

So, head down there and get your game on!

ORIGINAL POST:

Well, truth be told, this was just something between me and Shin Ultima, but, seeing as how rb wants a piece of the action and there's a  chance that Imperial X might show up, I might as well take a shot.

We are having a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 sweat today at the JAVA Internet Cafe, at around 12 noon.
There's no charge, so anybody who is interested in popping by can jump in.

Just remember, though...as a friend of mine said before, man has a mouth for a reason, so if you didn't speak up about wanting a turn, don't come bawling later on about us hogging the controllers. I, for one, would be happy to pass up the control when my turn is up, although, during the 'war' between me and Shin Ultima, it'd be between me and him, so, just a little heads up.

This is just a little something I'm doing to drum up some attention for the tournament, the announcement of which will come later this week (it was supposed to be last week, but my hands were tied up bad this weekend.)

Also, I'm considering scheduling the next sweat at Kronix in Arima.
For those of you who don't know where that is, it's upstairs Palms Plaza, opposite Hoi Kam and next door to the Chinese Wok. More on that later.

Well, the last time I faced off against Shin Ultima, he royally whipped me into oblivion.
I've improved on myself since then, so here's hoping for the best.

Sweat Report later.
Until then.....ROCK BUSTER!!

 

[Saxito Pau]

We are having a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 sweat today at the JAVA Internet Cafe, at around 12 noon.
Also, I'm considering scheduling the next sweat at Kronix in Arima.
For those of you who don't know where that is, it's upstairs Palms Plaza, opposite Hoi Kam and next door to the Chinese Wok. More on that later.

NEO.. next time you give a place's location... please put the full address!! and a phone number!!!

I honestly do not know where Palms Plaza is...

I drive up the EMR from Arouca to San Juan looking for the place after meeting SPK. I really wanted to take a crack at MvC2 though I'd have probably been pwned with Dhalsim, Zangief and Anubis

[rb]

LOL , java is at campus house st augustine.

expect a rant about java later on.

[disciple]

they still at campus house? i thought they had move up the road??

[New Era Outlaw]

NEO.. next time you give a place's location... please put the full address!! and a phone number!!!

I honestly do not know where Palms Plaza is...

I drive up the EMR from Arouca to San Juan looking for the place after meeting SPK. I really wanted to take a crack at MvC2 though I'd have probably been pwned with Dhalsim, Zangief and Anubis

Damn.....sorry about that.
That's actually the address for Kronix in Arima, which will be the location of the next sweat in May.
I had assumed that everybody knew where JAVA was by now, so I didn't put an address.
Again, my sincerest apologies. The next time I announce a sweat, I'll be sure to put the correct address of the place.

LOL , java is at campus house st augustine.

expect a rant about java later on.

And how. <== Click for RANT.


Anyhoo, without further ado....

SWEAT REPORT

GAME: MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 2
VENUE: JAVA GAMING, CAMPUS HOUSE, ST. AUGUSTINE
DAMAGE: FREE

In Attendance: Rb, Shin Ultima, RedEyesDragon, NewEraOutlaw (that's me)


BEFORE THE TOURNAMENT

A while ago, I had challenged Shin Ultima to a few matches in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, scheduled for the 29th April, 2007. What truly motivated me to do so was, of course, the DOTA All-Stars Challenge Console War held at JAVA a while ago. So, we made arrangements and decided to have a sweat in this game. When I told rb about it, he definitely wanted in to test himself in this game, so I told him he was welcome to do so. (On a side note, this sweat was also done to do a little promotion for the upcoming Marvel vs. Capcom 2 tournament, which will be announced by me this Saturday.)

As I made my way to JAVA, I thought I should bring something to the table.
So I thought, "Green Sands! EVERYBODY LOVES GREEN SANDS! Yay merrily, how we shall divulge in the 1.2% alcoholic plasure."
So, I went to get some Green Sands.
Unfortunately, every place I went to that morning had run out of Green Sands.

A tragedy, you say? Damn right it was. It as probably even more of a tragedy than Operation Anaconda, I kid you not.
But then. I happened to un across this beer garden. And it was open. And I felt several different shades of happy......IN MY PANTS.

....okay, now that we got that blatant Harvey Birdman reference out of the way, let's just get on with it, shall we?

So, I bought like about 10 Green Sands at about a KER-JILLION DOLLARS a bottle.
...okay, so it was actually NINE. But hey, nine, ker-jillion, what's the difference?
But I wasn't in a position to complain. I got my Green Sands, and bolted.

So, I left at around 12:15pm. I told Shin Ultima and rb I'd be there around 1, so I figured that I'd have some time to kill before they came. Perhaps even look around a bit for the place that I had intended to use as my tournament site.

Now....I'm going to just do you guys a small favour and leave out what happened between when I got there, and when the sweat actually got to happen. Long story short, I was severely pissed at what I had to come to, and if I could just get a hold of the person responsible (or irresponsible, I should say) for that level of CRAP, there'd be neatly decorated entrails all over the place. But, I'm going to save that for the rant, the link of which you'll find right here.

THE SWEAT

The sweat finally went underway.
Now, at the time, I was a bit busy (you'll know with what exactly later), so it was rb vs. Shin Ultima.
Basically, the two went at it using the God Tier characters, in particular, MSP, and swapping and discussing strategies with them. I'd have to say, though, that Ultima has some serious mastery of Sentinel's flight manuevers, and it can be a royal pain in the a**, sometimes, I kid you not. I swear, you only drop your guard for a minute, and Sentinel will stomp you so hard, that pygmies and midgets will start givin you the evil eye. rb seemed to have learned some new tricks with Magneto, namely the Slide XX  Hyper Grav XX Magnetic Tempest. However, SU beat him 2-0.

I took my turn afterwards.
I swear to God, it was a severely uphill struggle for me. In 11 matches, I only eked out 2 wins. I swear to God, Sentinel was stomping holes in me like the Plymouth Festival did to Diana Ross, and I admit, it did throw me off a good few times. Some of the characters I toyed around with were the usual gang (Mega Man, Roll and Tron Bonne, although I only used them twice as a team), Omega Red, Blackheart and Silver Samurai. I'd like to go on record as saying that Magneto is one annoying triangle jumper. Not even MM's Donkey Kick could repel it fast enough. Surprisingly, though, Roll actually gave SU's Magneto some degree of trouble.....because of her small size, some of the moves actually missed her, and her double jump did save her from certain death a couple of times.

Next up, it was rb vs. SU again. He  again engaged him in a battle of MSP (and sometimes Cable) vs. MSP. I think, in one word, those battles were chaos in a can, because there were Assists flying here, there, and everywhere. Rb managed to win 1 off of him-

"Yes! I got ONE!"
"Yeah....now try to beat my record of TWO."

...and then, it was me vs. rb. Rb seemed to have mastered the fine art of backing off, especially with Storm and Magneto, who was driving me up a wall with their meter raising madness. Rb also pulled off some very impressive combos against me with Magneto, using his slide and comboing it off of Hyper Grav and Magnetic Tempest, before rinsing and repeating. At one time, during our fights, I used what I deemed, "Viva la Garbage!", using Dan, Roll and Servbot. Yes, they lost (damn Storm and her flying SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEET.) I was a bit amazed at how just well Dan is just flying in with his Uppercut Assist and knocking Magneto senseless, so I used him in a couple of rounds and actually won. Well, how about that.

I won the majority of those matches, but I'd be damned if rb didn't make me earn them this time.

RedEyesDragon also stopped by- and got subsequently creamed. But damn if he wasn't amusing as he was doing so:

"OH GOD!! PLEASE BE ALIVE! LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!"

Still, it was good that he stopped by. Speaking of which, that reminds me that I've got to challenge him in MKA.
He took me for quite a ride the last time.

Afterwards, the guys engaged in games such as 'Fist of the North Star' (a series of matches between rb and SU, which rb won the majority of the time) and 'Guilty Gear XX Slash' (Shin Ultima is just deadly with Potemkin.) Lord knows I can't understand GGXXS at times, seeing as how so much goes on on the screen (Ironic coming from a Marvel player, ain't it?), but, to each his own.

RESULT

I'd have to say, without a doubt, that Shin Ultima ruled this sweat. It pretty much goes without saying, but this guy knows his game. As rb put it, it is definitely going to be a rather interesting tournament this July.

As to how I'd actually rate this sweat, though, I'd say it was pretty much so-so. It was good that the sweat went ahead as scheduled, and all involved were present and accounted for, but bad in terms of what greeted us as we arrived in JAVA.

So, all in all, the sweat was okay. It has me looking forward to the next one at Kronix. My apologies to those who were misled the last time...the next time, I'll put proper directions.

Be on the lookout for the announcement of the tournament, which is this Saturday, as well as the announcement for the next sweat, which will be at Kronix.

This is the New Era Outlaw, over and out (of Green Sands). =(

[Ultima]

Couple notes:

With the exception of maybe one, I lost all the matches at Fist of the Northstar. That's what happens when you play a game for the first time and don't even know the moves, or even what the buttons really do. I think I won one match with Broki, er, Toki. I found his teleport and his launcher and just sorta spammed that and hit buttons. But I really had no clue what I was doing.

I did better at Slash than I was expecting, since I had never played Slash before (only plain XX). Maybe it's because I didn't play Sol, who's been severely de-scrubbified since XX. Pochop's relatively unchanged from game to game, so it wasn't too difficult to do some stuff.

My knowledge of Marvel has been greatly exaggerated. Marvel's skill scale is so vast now, that players like us barely qualify as "beginner", I'm afraid.

Also, NEO would win a lot more matches against me if he played better characters. It's not because of lack of skill. There is no dishonour in getting stomped down by Sentinel when you're playing the likes of Amingo, Roll, and Silver Samurai - Sentinel stomps down on everybody, even the good characters, far less the weaker ones who can't do anything about it. :/

Storm is a similar case. There are too many characters who simply can't hit her if she decides to run. If NEO fought against my old roommate with those teams, he would probably have driven NEO to commit murder since my roommate would just runaway for 95 seconds with Storm (which is a lot harder than it seems; I tried it once or twice and it's exhausting, which is why I don't play Storm), and he wouldn't have been able to hit him. :|

rb, on the other hand, plays better characters, and if he gets his execution down with the ROM infinite with Mags I'll pretty much get left behind in a hurry, but he rushes in blindly too much at the moment. Way too much running into assists. Needs to be more aware of what part of the screen is safe to attack from and what isn't (this comes with practice). Also needs more runaway with Storm. :p

[rb]

controlling space was never one of my strong points , my execution was off for the most part, especially on cr lk cr hk hyper grav i normally never miss that stuff

I'm gonna look into the runaway thing. Downloaded a good bit of vids with Justin's storm gonna study them when I get the chance, runaway isn't my thing as I do wanna get my MSP to at least within a faded shadow of Yipes' rushdown style. Don't think I'll ever really use sentinel until someone can show me how that damn fly unfly works while executing it right in front of me.

I'm gonna try to actually play some more vs human comp but it's hard as time rarely permits for it, but i'll what can happen.

I still think Cable is one of my stronger characters even though I've only been using him for a little under 2 months. AHVB rules

it was fun seeing Ultima get all giddy when saying RAAAOOOOOH, for some reason i was expecting him to sing YOU WA SHOCK.

OH I forgot to say this, to the cowards who wanna duck N.E.O's tourney because of a little top tier action. Go learn the effin game. Top Tiers aren't the easiest of characters to learn, even scrub friendly cable has a learning curve with the other top characters being considerably more difficult to use. As I told Ultima, I only use MSP because I love Magneto's rushdown and overall gameplan, its a bitch to do, but the effort put into learning it is damn well worth it when you own someone.

[New Era Outlaw]

Here, here.

In all honesty, though, after this tournament, I am going to be holding another one, but in the Low-Tier format.
Truth be told.....I want to see if people actually have the gonads to do without the God-tiers for a change, and see if they'll adjust and  pick up some of the other characters, instead. In all honesty, seing Mags and Sentinel all of the time without a true change in pace is getting beyond tedious. Just like in Yu-Gi-Oh!, it'd be interesting to see who'd take up the challenge and alter their strategies to suit, and those who really can't do without their precious (and remarkably cheesy) God tiers.

On the flip side, though, I was disappointed to hear some people chickening out because of the presence of God Tiers. To me, it's just another challenge to overcome, despite their ridiculous priority and advantage (and, in some cases, running ability). This tournament will be interesting, no doubt about that, but if there's one thing that I personally want to see, if who is going to be truly flexible enough to fight against God Tiers, and, on the flip side, come up with alternate strategies when Gods are forbidden to meddle in the affairs of men.


After all, Justin Wong took up that challenge, and, from what I understand, he kicks ass either way. Popular rumour has it that he even whooped a lot of ass with nothing but garbage tiers.

One thing's for certain, either way, I'm going in both formats head first. To me, this should never be a game about 'who has better characters', (although that is a rather sad fact about Traditional Format), but rather, it should become 'who can whip behind with what they've got, regardless.'

[Ultima]

It should be noted that Justin Wong is on a completely different level at MvC2. There have been instances were certain players just "click" with certain games better than everyone else, and nowhere is that more expressed than MvC2 and Wong. Before MvC2, Wong was just Fat Asian Kid #745 in Chinatown Fair. I've beaten him in MvC1. Aside from maybe the very first CTF tournament, Wong has every single MvC2 tournament he has ever been in, with the exception of Evo2K5. Maybe he came second in some random small tournament once, but I'm not sure. I'm definitely sure Evo2K5 was his only major one where he didn't come first.

Anyway, against 98% of the competition, Wong can beat down people with the likes of Team Interpol (Cammy, Guile, Charlie). I think he also plays Marrow. This isn't limited to him - the random schmoes in CTF, for example, could probably beat all our asses with random characters. But Wong beats all of them with random characters as well, cause he's simply that much better than they are. That's the main issue with lower tier characters - you generally only win with them when you're that much better than the competition. When you face players much closer to your level, using weak characters is only putting yourself at a needless disadvantage. That's straight up stupid, especially if there's money on the line. And playing with weak characters and losing proves nothing, since any idiot can do that.

That said, I'm a firm believer in playing characters you like. I play a lot of Mags/Sentinel because Mags and Sentinel are my favourite characters to play. They were my favourite characters to play before everyone realised how stupidly good they are. I've been forced to not use Juggernaut much anymore since he dies to too much nonsense, but I'm fortunate in that I still have Mags/Sent to do stuff with, plus I can throw in a few others that I like into the mix and still get good results, like Tronne, BBHood and Commando. I do have a team that I use that I can barely stand to play - Doom/Blackheart/Sentinel - but I seldom use it.

There are levels of "seriousness" to a fighter when it comes to winning. That is, how serious are you about what it takes to win? Say your favourite character is not top tier and you don't win much. You have three choices about what to do about it:

1) Get more skillful. Practice your character so that your skill level + your weaker character is more than sufficient to overcome the opponent's skill level + better character. I did this in good old SF2 Turbo, which is why I can beat about 90% of the players I come across with Bison, who's the worst character in that game.

2) Pick a better character/team. Sometimes, your favourite characters are so terrible that it's just not possible to overcome the skill gap in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you have players who are on the same level as you, or worse yet, way better than you. So if you're serious about winning, you're going to have to upgrade. I had to do this to an extent for MvC1 and CvS2 (back when I cared about said games), when certain members of my team were just not cutting it, so I swapped them out for better ones. I also did this for MvC2 early on - I developed the aforementioned Doom/BH/Sentinel team specifically to beat one person who was kicking my ass whenever I tried my usual team at the time, Mags/Juggy/Sentinel, though this was more of a counter team thing than picking a "better" team.

3) Quit. This is for when you hate the top tier characters and/or hate how the game plays in general at high level and it playing just makes you sick. It's better to just quit and play something else that you enjoy. I've done this for SFA2 (my very first tournament back in 1998, which swore me off the game forever) and Second Impact (playing any SF3 in CTF will make you quit that game in a hurry).

Of course, many players also choose option 4 - Playing the game and never getting any better at it while continuing to endlessly bitch about how "cheap" the top tiers are. >:\

rb:

MvC2 is all about controlling space. Far more so than its predecessors (which is also why it's the best Vs. game, among other reasons). Even when rushing down seemingly mindlessly with MSP, it's really a very focused form of space control. In my defense, I have a fair knowledge of space control in MvC2 - I just don't have the execution or the knowledge to take advantage of every opportunity. :/

There are people ducking the tournament because of potential top tiers? Sad, but understandable I guess. Not everyone can handle getting stomped down by Sentinel, rushed down by Magneto, hail stormed to death by Storm, or shot up by Cable. :/

(Cable in particular irritates me. He's the main reason why MvC2 is unplayable at the, well I was going to say "intermediate" level, but it's a lot lower than that now. Upper beginner level maybe).

NEO:

I have to warn you: There's a huge slippery slope with a "Low Tier only" tournament. Because even if you ban the Big Four, all that will result in is the next 6 characters (Iron Man, Blackheart, Doom, Strider, Spiral, Cyclops) beating up the rest of the cast almost as badly as Sentinel an Co. I mean, I could run roughshod with Strider/Doom even better in that scenario since I won't have to worry about Storm or Cable frying my entire team at once, and nobody's good enough with Felicia (who was once claimed to be a Strider-Doom killer) for me not to play that team. Ban those 6, and then the next tier - Iceman, Juggernaut, Hulk, etc will take over (Team 100% will be even better in this scenario), etc. So you have to ask yourself, where does it end? How good is too good for Low Tier?

Furthermore, winning in a Low Tier only tournaments doesn't prove anything other than "who's best with crap[pier] characters". It certainly doesn't prove who's "better" at the game, if that is indeed your point, because you're essentially changing the rules of the game by disallowing a huge chunk of the cast and the tactics that they use. It would be like having a football tournament, and only allowing goals scored from headers to count - there are people who could win under those conditions, but you're not winning at "football"; you would be winning at "football where only headers are allowed".

Just some things I thought I'd point out. You're free to run whatever tournament you want. Just make sure you post what is/isn't allowed early o'clock, and don't be surprised if I or someone else brings something that's only slightly less horrible than what the Big Four bastard can do. :p

[New Era Outlaw]

Point taken, although, with regards to the low-tier format, it isn't really just the God-tiers that were banned.

You see, just recently, the official T8 tournament in Canada implemented a new Low-Tier format (as a side event) in this game. As can be expected, the God Tiers are banned from playing at all in the tournament, but there were also some restrictions on some of the other characters as well:

Banned Characters:

Magneto
Sentinel
Storm
Cable
Iron Man
War Machine

....I was a bit curious as to why Iron Man, and even War Machine, was banned alongside the God tiers, but some people (I think rb was one of them, not sure) informed me that IM/WM has some seriously easy/cheesy infinites that can be pulled off in gameplay, only trumped by the presence of the God-tiers.

Here is where things start to get a bit interesting, now.
According to the rules with regards to the remaining characters:


"The teams allowed must follow the 4 ratio system and must have 3 characters on them. If you have a team with 4 ratios or less then it is allowed in the tournament. if your team exceeds 4 ratios then it is not allowed."

With that said, several characters were ranked 'Ratio 2' because of their impact on tournament/gameplay, and all of the others were ranked 'Ratio 1'. Here's the list:

Ratio 2 Characters (combinable with Ratio 1 only):

Cyclops
Psylocke
Captain Commando
Cammy
Blackheart
Dr. Doom
Strider
Megaman
Iceman
Omega Red
Rogue

Ratio 1 Characters:
Every other character in the game.


With that said, if you look at the list, teams such as Strider/Doom aren't possible because both are Ratio 2 characters. Even if you toss in a Ratio 1, it would end up being a Ratio 5 team (2+2+1). As such, the format somewhat restricts use of Ratio 2 characters to 1 per team, which means that if you want to fill up the void to make use of 3 characters, you'd have to select one of the lower tiers to do so.

To be honest, I am considering this as a side event (I'm not 100% certain about a full tournament as yet, but I'm going to test the waters at this point in time.) To me, it's a matter of flexibility, really. If anybody wants to step up to the plate and work around these restrictions, they can do so. My reason is to test the mettle of players and see who can work with what little they have.

Now, I know you're not really a Yu-Gi-Oh! player, Ultima, but I think I should point this out.
The card game has suffered a period in time where certain cards were simply dominating the game. Unless you had the money to afford these cards and run a particular type of deck, you had no chance in hell of winning a tournament.

Marvel is somewhat like that. Unless you had a Sentinel, Magneto or Storm in your team, people just didn't take you seriously.

In the case of the card game, Upperdeck (the company that makes the game) eventually decided to outright ban those cards, primarily because they were creating too much of an advantage situation and muscling other decks out of the game. What were people's reactions? Initially, it was very bad. Some people started to cuss and get on, because they could no longer use their God level cards anymore. Some even quit the game. Others, while frustrated with the idea, just adjusted their decks and kept on playing. Those people who stayed behind are having a lot of fun now because there are more original decks out there than simply one deck stomping the bejesus out of everything else.

With that said, you can pretty much say the same for the God tiers. They are extremely BROKEN. Any character that can persistently run for the entire match and win by default is broken. Any character that has insane defense, super armor, and goes into a hard-to-hit fetal position when launched is broken. As such, does anybody really stand a ghost of a chance playing against them unless they play the same characters or the upper-tiers themselves?

Probably Justin Wong, but I'd think the answer was HELL no.

So, the way I see it, people have a couple of choices available to them at this point. They can attempt to play with those barriers in place, and still show people that they have what it takes without insane flying tactics or advantageous unblockable overheads. Or, they can do what several people in the Yu-Gi-Oh game did. They can shirk away, or cuss and scream till their throat runs ragged because they need Magneto to win a game. To me, if you didn't test yourself by playing with the whole cast (or at least as many characters as you can tolerate) to see what strategies you can build with them and only rely on one or two characters to win, then that's just simply weak, if I do say so myself.

Even I have taken time off from playing the Mega Man team to elarn what God tiers are all about, and some of the Uppers as well. I can actually play Gods (excluding Magneto, because he's a God tier that takes some skill to play good), but I don't want to. The last thing I want is for people to think that the only reason I won at all was because I did what everybody else is doing. Me?  I strive to be different. I want to be that guy who everybody instantly knows just by my own choices. I may fall flat on my face a billion times in doing so, but I'm certainly not going to make a name for myself by picking characters people think I should be playing. As far as I'm concerned, those people (I don't mean you, Ultima...much respect for you for saying that people should choose what they want) can seriously play in traffic with unpinned hand grenades.


That's basically all I've go to say about that.
In any case, it was a good sweat, and I look forward to facing you again some time.

[Ultima]

re: ratio format

Interesting. I know some folks had been trying to iron out something like this for years, but didn't bother with it.

(BTW, yes, Ironman would have to be banned under such a system, and to a lesser extent War Machine, since they have easiest infinites in the game, and have little trouble beating up the rest of the cast. I'm also surprised Juggernaut and Tronne, and to a lesser xtent, Colossus, aren't in the Ratio 2 list. I also just now noticed that Sprial isn't on the list... is that a typo, or are they insane?).

Most [2D?] fighting game players are traditionally very resistant to any alterations to the games they're familiar with, especially with regard to balance. The main reason for that is that the companies have an extremely hit and miss record when it comes to balancing their games. Capcom's most notorious method of balancing their games is "take out anything that's good, and make every character only able to do the same crappy stuff". Not to mention, the infrastructure just wasn't there for constant tweaking. Yugioh and other card manufacturers are in a much better position, and seem to have a much better track record, at tweaking and balancing their products.

(Though it was hilarious what happened with Sentinel. On paper, Sentinel is a much MUCH worse character than his stupidly good form in X-Men: COTA [Note: besides taking away two of his best moves from that game, he also had the ability to block while flying; Capcom was certain Sentinel was going to absolutely suck, so they sorta overloaded him with useful stuff, though really and truly, the only reason why he's in the Big Four is because of the lack of restrictions on his flight mode).

To be honest, though, most of the time the West is afraid to ban anything because they don't want to get left behind by the Japanese, who traditionally have been much more hesitant to ban stuff. The main example of this is with Crouch-Cancel infinites in Street Fighter Alpha 3 - US learned it, didn't like what it saw and didn't bother to learn it, and just banned it outright. Japan saw it, learned it, incorporated it into their playing. As a result, the first time JPN and US clashed in SFA3, Japan mudhole-stomped them something like 23-2.

Some other things:

- The Big Four in MvC2 aren't broken. They're just better than everyone else. It's not so much that they're too good, just that the rest of the cast is not good enough. The Big Four are not only the best characters, but are among the most fun characters (by people who actually play them) to use, mainly because they have the most options and get to actually play the game more. This is another reason why Low Tier tournaments are strictly side things that no one cares about - not only are you changing the game, you're changing the game into something that a lot of players consider to be less fun than the real game.

Furthermore, and much more important, the variety provided by the Big Four is much greater than any other games. With those 4 characters, and a handful of assists, you can get, what, 12 tournament-winning teams out of them? Add in a few more notable characters from the second tier and number of "really good teams" swells to probably 25 or more.

Also, Storm doesn't win by default necessarily with running. Okay, if you pick rubbish characters, she has a 98% chance of victory. Still, running sufficiently to win with consistently is hard work, especially gainst good characters and against good players. It's not as though it's a skill-less process. None of the Big Four characters can you get by with without being skilled at using them. Cable's a skill-less bastard at lower levels, but at lower levels, there are other sorts of rubbish that one could also get away with, and it means nothing at the higher levels. Cable's actually probably the hardest of the Big Four to win with at high levels, because he has more weaknesses and is more 1-dimensional than the other three.

The whole act of "diminishing" players who use top tier characters is a mistake that too many players make - "Oh, he can't win without top tier" = nonsense. Sure, there are a lot of folks who parrot and repeat what they see, but there are a couple things to note here: 1) If you can't beat random Magneto scrub #761786 with your boss team of X/Y/Z, then you're not as good at the game as you think you are, because you can't claim to be better at a game, where the goal is to win, when you can't prove it by winning. And 2), virtually ALL of the top players will destroy lower players with any random characters. As I said, playing the best characters is really mainly used for when they play each other, since they're on each other's level. When facing weaker players, they can go random select and still win.

Personally, I couldn't give a rat's ass about what "other people" think about me, the tactics/characters I use, etc. I don't care if I'm "known" for being "that guy who plays M.Bison in HF" (which I am) or Magneto scrub #7864 in MvC2 (which I also am) or whatever. All I care about is if I win or if I lose. And technically, I don't even concern myself with that anymore, being semi-retired as I am.

Remember, I'm not telling you who to play with or anything, Just that I noted you were keeping track of the wins, and I was letting you know what the situation is. As I said, I'm a firm believer in sticking to characters you like, but if you're at all concerned with winning more against me, you're pretty much going to have to use option 2 (i.e. pick better characters), cause your current menagerie isn't going to cut it. IF you are concerned with getting more wins, that is. :p

[rb]

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=34747

http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPart1.htm

http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPart2.htm

http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPart3.htm

here are a few  links that I've found to be of good use.

[Ultima]

Hah. While the fundamental points in those articles are still true, there is some outdated stuff in them. Like CvS2, much maligned after Evo2K2 because Tokido came in and wrecked everybody with RC-Honda, is now given much more respect and no one who's good at the game thinks anything's really wrong with RC. Not everyone actually likes the game though (me included), but no one who's any good thinks that CvS2 became a worse game because of RC. Also, no one seriously thinks keepaway tactics dominate MvC2 any more.

Sirlin is a real bastard at SFA2. Guy once won an SFA2 tournament by bashing the other guy with nothing but Rose c.MP. You know where he says (paraphrasing) "If you can't stop my 1-dimensional tactic, why should I bother to do something new?"? He practices what he preaches. He fought a guy who was a really good player in general, but didn't have that much experience with SFA2, and especially not against Rose. Thus, even though he picked the best character in the game (Chun-li), he just kept running into c.MP and died. It was hilarious and awful.

BTW, just in case NEO's planning anything soon, I won't be available this weekend. Supposed to be taking the wife and the unofficial adopted nephew to see Spider-man 3 at Cinema 8 in Sunday. I hope to be there a few hours beforehand so [strike]I[strike] the kid can play some games before the movie. Last time we went, I actually ran into the first good Chun-li in HF... shit, ever. He actually *gasp* knew what to do against my Bison, which meant that he read it somewhere, cause there's no way that's common knowledge. I still beat him something like 4-2, but it was a major pain in the ass. I'm actually hoping not to run into him again. I don't need that kind of stress! Give me 192387098 Kens any day, since 99% of the time they suck!

[Ultima]

And hey, to get a taste of this game is like at the highest levels:

Sanford vs. Justin Wong, East Coast Championship X Finals (Second Set)

Note: Sanford is on the left (Mags/Storm/Psylocke), and Justin is on the right (Mags/Cable/Sentinel).

That was in 2005 I believe. This, along with Evo2K5, are the only tournaments Justin has lost at since MvC2 came out in May of 2000. It should also be noted that he has stopped playing Magneto "seriously", and now his "business team" is Storm/Sentinel/CapCom or Cyclops, probably because of the ass-beating he got at those two tourneys (Jesus Christ at that last round!). Mags is SO random.

[rb]

link no work

[Ultima]

Link fixed. Sorry. :p

[New Era Outlaw]

BTW, just in case NEO's planning anything soon, I won't be available this weekend. Supposed to be taking the wife and the unofficial adopted nephew to see Spider-man 3 at Cinema 8 in Sunday. I hope to be there a few hours beforehand so [strike]I[strike] the kid can play some games before the movie. Last time we went, I actually ran into the first good Chun-li in HF... shit, ever. He actually *gasp* knew what to do against my Bison, which meant that he read it somewhere, cause there's no way that's common knowledge. I still beat him something like 4-2, but it was a major pain in the ass. I'm actually hoping not to run into him again. I don't need that kind of stress! Give me 192387098 Kens any day, since 99% of the time they suck!

Argh. You know, I meant to up and announce the tournament since two weeks ago, but that damn Major Project for school put it on hold. Now that it's out of the way, I'll have to use this weekend instead. Sorry, folks. =(

[Ultima]

While we're here:



Note: The bit at the end, is from a US$6000(!!!) MvC2 money match series (albeit not one bet, basically just a ton of small bets by various people) between Sanford "Santhrax" Kelly (the guy who beat Justin Wong in the vid I posted earlier) and Duc Do, the winner of B5 (Evo's name before it became Evo, also the only one where Wong didn't attend) and Evo2K5. That was only the first match that Sanford won. There were 10 more after that I think, with Sanford winning 7-4.

The geeky asian kid at 4:21 is Justin Wong, BTW. Your undisputed MvC2 world champion. =/

And holy CRAP at the Ryu comeback from Daigo "The Beast" Umehara! That's why they call him THE BEAST!

re: gaming

I should be available this weekend, if there's anything going on. But no promises.

[rb]

uh didnt wong win b5 mvc2 ?

I have that somewhere here on a dvd that I downloaded recently.

This weekend I'm supposed to meet Redeyes in Java to play some Melty Blood if anyone is interested.

[Ultima]

Might have been B4 then. Whatever. Whatever the first of the Evo tournies, before it became known as Evo, but after B3*.

BTW, a bit of history: The Evolution tournament series used to be known as the B[N] series. This occurred because there was a tournament in BOston called the Boston Brawl (B2), followed by the Battle By the Bay (B3) in California in the late 90s. This name convention was revived for a major west coast tournament in 2000 I think, and they called it B4 to continue the tradition of the "B" series, though it didn't stand for anything like the first two did. This was followed by B5 in 2001. HOwever, after that, they decided to give it an official name (original code name was !B6, or "Not B6"), so starting in 2002, they started calling it "Evolution".

Melty Blood? Ugh. I saw that in the arcade in CTF. I saw it for about 20 seconds before I lost interest and went to look at something else. >:|

I'd be up for some Slash or maybe MvC2 though. Or hell, I still haven't seen Samurai Shodown Tenka. But if you're having a challenge against someone else, I'll leave that up to you. Send me an e-mail or something.