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[Dahbomb]

What about just plain overall tournament wins, though? ChrisG probably has that?

That's obviously ChrisG without a doubt and that should not even be difficult to figure out as we have the SRK stats for that. However with their system Justin is weighted higher due to winning EVO and having much better recent performance.

Give me a minute before I get the exact stats between Justin and ChrisG when it comes to tournament.

Justin Tournaments won: 27

ChrisG Tournaments won: 36

FChamp tournaments won: 23


After these 3 the drop is pretty huge in terms of wins and points.


Currently Justin is on a 4 win streak as far as tournaments go. ChrisG's longest streak was 7.


Edit: Actually ChrisG's total is lower because SRK for some reason includes some of the winnings of NLBC as tournaments. Taking out the NLBC wins from the SRK list the actual tournament wins of ChrisG are 32.

 

[sf2fanatic]

All time favorite theme is SF 2 Vega(Claw) Stage. Especially near KO the music gets faster

 

[Sayad]

Wouldn't be surprised that PRRog has best record against ChrisG among the top 5 players. After that would probably be Yipes of all people, he recently 3-0'd ChrisG at Winter Brawl.

Isn't Nemo the player with the best record against Chris? ;p

 

[NEO0MJ]

I wonder why Marvel 3 has such a dominant small group of players. I mean, the game is popular and has a large attendance so it seems odd in comparison to other games like SF IV where you have a larger group of strong players.
Maybe it's because the game is only heavily played in one region?

 

[Anne]

I wonder why Marvel 3 has such a dominant small group of players. I mean, the game is popular and has a large attendance so it seems odd in comparison to other games like SF IV where you have a larger group of strong players.
Maybe it's because the game is only heavily played in one region?

Yes, also that region being NA doesn't help.

 

[MikeBreezy92]

I wonder why Marvel 3 has such a dominant small group of players. I mean, the game is popular and has a large attendance so it seems odd in comparison to other games like SF IV where you have a larger group of strong players.
Maybe it's because the game is only heavily played in one region?

Must be a huge gap between mid-level and top level play.

 

[KidA Seven]

I wonder why Marvel 3 has such a dominant small group of players. I mean, the game is popular and has a large attendance so it seems odd in comparison to other games like SF IV where you have a larger group of strong players.
Maybe it's because the game is only heavily played in one region?

Less fighting game talent in the Marvel scene compared to SF. SF has a lot of players that are great at multiple games. Fuudo, Itabashi, Nemo, Kazunoko, Tokido, Kyabetsu, Machabo, RF, Kindevu, etc... Marvel's only really big in the US. To top it off, the online is ass so it's harder to get great practice on it. On the other hand, Japan has the arcades which is really good at raising the overall level of the scene as so many top players constantly play each other and share information. A lot of the asian players outside of Japan also regularly play against the Japanese monsters online so that is how they raise their game without actually being from Japan and coming from a smaller local scene.

How would SF's scene look like if only the US was really into it, online play was shit, and there was no arcade to raise the level of the competition?

 

[rookiejet]

My favorite fg character theme is probably I-No's GGXX theme. Slayer's is tied. (Entirety of GGXX's OST is fantastic, really.)

God, Guilty Gear is so awesome.

 

[Coffeeling]

Gordeau is so boring though man. I'm not all for "THE STRUGGLE" like Mike Ross is or some shit, but some one once taught me that I need to believe in the power of wai-... "wives" when picking mains.

Someone once taught me that I need to believe in the "S" before the character's name in the list :3

 

[petran79]

How would SF's scene look like if only the US was really into it, online play was shit, and there was no arcade to raise the level of the competition?

Mortal Kombat too had not such a strong playerbase in Japan, yet regarding the older games at least, it has dominant players outside the USA.

 

[Parallax Scroll]

honestly at this point i've stopped watching marvel too despite loving it to death simply because of how absolutely fucking boring it is to see dudes just go through the motions at mid/high level play when top level play has some seriously interesting aspects to it
but you basically never get to see it until the parade of real majors because the only dudes who really play at that level are miniscule

Top level marvel owns but it's so rare to see.

 

[pixelish]

http://www.twitch.tv/poongkotv

poongko vs tokido right now

 

[KidA Seven]

http://www.twitch.tv/poongkotv

poongko vs tokido right now

I was about to link that

 

[rocK`]

I was about to link that

then what happened?

 

[kirblar]

Must be a huge gap between mid-level and top level play.

This is pretty much it.

 

[Thomasorus]

so what do you think GG needs to find that balance? (I'm not up to date with modern anime trends/expectations)

I'm not sure to be honest and it's hard to be objective about the series as I'm an old fan and I didn't like Xrd that much. My opinion is maybe a bit harsh but I think the lack of balance comes from a combination of two things: not being limited as they were before + lost/lack of talent/touch.

Anyone that made some creative work knows that having limitations is a good thing. It forces you to go right straight to the point and prevents you from taking the wrong way. Xrd in my opinion didn't put his limitations where they should have been. The visual part lost a lot by going 3D as many small details were lost in the process or even character concepts were simply abandoned for technical or stylish reasons (Millia's arms or Potemkin's collar for example). But at the same time other big "LOOK AT ME" things were added while redesigning characters: giant buckles, cliché patterns, muscles for everyone, giant swords...
GG art was the kind to get straight to the point but Ishiwatari's style evolved in the unfortunate "more is better" that you saw a lot these past years, BlazBlue being one of the best representative (look at GG2 Ouverture to see what I mean). Xrd art is still GG and it's still Ishiwatari but the execution is really poor. The concepts are very cool: a character hooked to a living bed, a savage/feline girl with a living coat, a bride with guns, a king lion-like with swords tied to his hands. That sounds to me as cool as a loser haunted by sadako, a livingdead girl in love with a key or a samurai woman with only one arm.

But for Xrd, the concept of the characters are poorly executed. Bedman is ugly and covered with patterns everywhere, his living bed has a catholic/papal crown for no reason other than being flashy. And his only purpose is to explain plot holes in the story mode when nobody knew how to justify something. Ram is probably the most well done. She has a cool design with great designed leg moves and feline attitude. The coat attacks are cool too. But she carries two giant plastic/neon swords because... no reason. Swords are cool maybe? Oh and she is a kind of "no emotion girl n°100000 you see in every anime". Once again a great idea/concept is wasted by added something that is too much. It's like being modest or efficient is not enough.
Elphelt is the same. Once you get used to her positive attitude the character can be pleasant and her moves are fun to watch. But they added too much things on her, making her design unreadable. Hat with rabbits ears, giants rings and belts on the dress for no reason than filling the design. It's like they are afraid of emptiness. As for Leo his design and attitude is cool but his sprites are so badly done it's a shame. His stance is ridiculous but well why not? Look at zappa! But his moves lacks definition, clarity and originality. It's very hard to animate this kind of character and find good ideas when you start from an idle stance that is so complicated but again... Zappa is here to show they had the talent to do it before.

So again, it's my opinion and I perfectly understand you can like these characters or the redesigns. I just feel, as an old fan of GG and as someone who studied art/design and praised a lot Ishiwatari's works, that they missed it with Xrd even if the starting point is still as great as before. For me they were so free of technical/drawing problems they stopped asking themselves some questions about coherent design and efficiency and went nuts with filler. And sometimes, they lacked the talent to do something great with their concepts. For me they need to calm down a bit and forget about the BB design trend, continue to have great and original concept characters but execute them with more care. They also need to stop doing shitty storymode where everyone is "gentle and sweet and cool but has so many problems that makes life so complicated". GG was precisely the game with very borderline characters and it was toned down too much.

There, a wall of text again. :|
Sorry about pronouns CPS2. :|

Edit : just remembered something. I like a lot UNIEL design and they went an interesting road. Even if French Bread was a more dojin/simple character design style, it seems they took a lot of time thinking about it. They started with simple designs, then added a lot of "cool filler things" and came back to a middle ground between efficiency with only details that matters and a touch of style. This Hyde work in progress explains it very well:

UNIEL character concepts are way less original than Guilty Gear but just from a design balance, they are better done in my opinion.

 

[KidA Seven]

then what happened?

he beat me to it

 

[Coffeeling]

*SNIP*

This and the previous post are amazing.

The lack of definition in moves is a big part of why Leo annoys me so much (and incidentally, Elena in SF4 too, and Fuerte fits this to an extent as well) - his moves just look like aimless flailing around and they're not distinctive. And then you go and add all these odd properties to force the character to be a lottery machine. It's hideous.

Millia and I-No have well-defined, distinctive-looking moves that look like something you intentionally do, and look like what they actually do in terms of the game's overall style. The lottery machine stuff is done using those standard tools and adding one thing (hoverdash, Millia's fast startup on overheads) that forces you to guess. But there's never any confusion about what you got hit by, it's just hard to see coming.

On UNIEL designs, I agree. The way they're animated has a certain coherence to it, even if the character designs are quite dull in and of themselves (though Merkava suffers from the flailing around problem where his stuff kinda blends together and it's hard to identify what he's doing upclose).

 

[kirblar]

A luchadore being annoying and hard to catch & pin down is actually a successful design. It translates the archetype into the game.

 

[bobohoro]

Awesome stuff.

I'm coming out of lurker land just to say I really liked reading your two posts and hope to see some further insights later on. Really interesting stuff.

Spoiler

Oh, and I also like the rest of you posters in here too, highly entertaining to follow.

 

[Thomasorus]

Millia and I-No have well-defined, distinctive-looking moves that look like something you intentionally do, and look like what they actually do in terms of the game's overall style. The lottery machine stuff is done using those standard tools and adding one thing (hoverdash, Millia's fast startup on overheads) that forces you to guess. But there's never any confusion about what you got hit by, it's just hard to see coming.

And Millia in previous GG was better designed. If you remember her idle stance, she had her arms gloved in black and they were wrapped around her body so you would not see them from her silhouette except for one that seemed to balance like a dead thing (a dead member!). This was done on purpose: to remove them from our eyes and from millia's capabilities. By "removing" Millia's arms they implied her hair was a more natural thing to her than using her hands. That was bold and very clever. In Xrd Millia's arms can be seen with her silhouette, her fingers too. Since she has long sleeves with a bright color, your eye will see them for sure and I like her new design globally, she is less a discreet character, she's assuming herself. But it goes against the "hair is a body part" thing that was the most efficient and clever decision they took when creating her. They had to make the hair bigger and sharpen it to make it stand out as the arms are now covering it.

Pic:

 

[rookiejet]

.

I agree completely, Thomasorus. Xrd, for the most part, is analagous to me to how SF4 cheapened SF3's (and 2D SF's) design during its transition to the higher resolution format by /still/ overselling the features of the characters. The more detail they were afforded, the less subtle they seemingly became with their design, which is the exact opposite of what they needed to be.

Funnily enough though, I think Leo is the better designed of the new characters (though, he does have too much hair; we get it, Arcsys, /lion's mane/). I don't like how the faces transitioned either; they, overall, look unnervingly sharp-featured.

 

[Kimosabae]

Thomas, what purpose do Hilde's belt buckles serve on his final design?

 

[Coffeeling]

A luchadore being annoying and hard to catch & pin down is actually a successful design. It translates the archetype into the game.

I don't mean that. That is okay. The problem is that the animations feel like the character is flailing around aimlessly, and stuff just blends into each other instead of being distinctive.

 

[Thomasorus]

Thomas, what purpose do Hilde's belt buckles serve on his final design?

Honestly I think it's completely style oriented to appeal to a kind of BB audience as Hyde is both the hero and one of the chars the most styled in the game. However it's better done than Ragna for simple utilitary reasons.

He's the hero so he's stylish of course! With belts because Japan! But his belts have two utilities: first tighten the waist to keep his coat from dancing and keep the silhouette thin and readable. The second belt is used as the tie: to emphasize his personality with movement. The tie, the coat and the belt are floating in the wind but he stands against the wind (where his opponent is) with a firm attitude. Finally you'll notice that the belts are well integrated in the design with a small thing: color. They are golden and black just as are Hyde's hair and the seams of his jacket. Uniel designs works a lot with 2 or 3 colors that echoes to each others. Here the tie echoes the eyes, the belts echoes the hair. But the sword is the only red thing to clearly show it's different.

I could compare it to Ragna and Sol to show you how Ragna fails to do it properly (mostly because poor ragna was the first char using 3D for BB so he suffers from this). Sol on the other hand is doing it well. It's all in the small details: attitude, colors, movements... Everything has a purpose.

 

[Karsticles]

I can't accept a man with dual hair color as my main character.

I wonder why Marvel 3 has such a dominant small group of players. I mean, the game is popular and has a large attendance so it seems odd in comparison to other games like SF IV where you have a larger group of strong players.
Maybe it's because the game is only heavily played in one region?

Crazy high executional requirements. Only a small subset of people can do what Marvel demands consistently. No other fighting game even vaguely approaches what it demands in terms of buttons per second combines with necessary accuracy.

 

[Kimosabae]

I'd really appreciate a Ragna comparison. That post may have just humbled me.

 

[shaowebb]

Crazy high executional requirements. Only a small subset of people can do what Marvel demands consistently. No other fighting game even vaguely approaches what it demands in terms of buttons per second combines with necessary accuracy.

What about KoF 13? That thing had the craziest execution demands of anything I'd ever played...

 

[QisTopTier]

Not as many people take marvel seriously, lack of thriving growing skilled players, plus high knowledge and execution all lead to the best staying the best.

 

[Karsticles]

What about KoF 13? That thing had the craziest execution demands of anything I'd ever played...

Still not as high in BPM (Buttons Per Minute). It may have a similar degree of precision in the neutral, but the pacing isn't as fast. Though I feel like KoF talent was pretty top-heavy at Evo, too. There were only a few guys there that really knew the game.

 

[Kimosabae]

Crazy high executional requirements. Only a small subset of people can do what Marvel demands consistently. No other fighting game even vaguely approaches what it demands in terms of buttons per second combines with necessary accuracy.

Want to disagree with this so bad... but I can't. Outside Melee, Marvel 3 might be the most execution intensive fighting game of all time.

Pains me to attribute that quality to such a shitty game.

 

[kirblar]

Useless belts/zippers/buttons isn't just a dumb Japanese thing, you see it in US/Euro fashion as well.

 

[Thomasorus]

I'd really appreciate a Ragna comparison. That post may have just humbled me.

There are things to take into account with Ragna: he's a beta test character for the 3D method arc used for BB. After BBCS Arc greatly improved it so it doesn't count for all BB characters.

Some basic mistakes about the silhouette: the trousers are too big and you can't see easily where his legs are. It's also very straight and does not communicate the dynamism you want for that kind of character. The sword is badly positioned. It cuts the waist (and gives ragna a booty :3) straight and falls right behind ragna's hand. As a result you DON'T see Ragna opening and closing his hands like Hyde is doing. Since the gloves are black and the shadows are very dark, you can't even see his hand easily so they added a gem that echoes the red of the jacket... But it does not help that much. The other hand has the same problem: you don't see Ragna opening the hand as it's both black, hidden, and not decomposed enough. The pommel of the sword comes out of nowhere and he has a red belt that falls between his trousers and sword. It's there to give a bit more movement and curves as ragna is straight everywhere!

The colors are ok I guess but not very subtul. Grey from plates echoes the hair, black echoes the trousers but the trousers are not well designed so that's not very smart. And there is two gold bits that serves nothing to be honest. The belts on his torso are also too much but were added probably because the breath movement was not enough visible with the jacket only.

Now look at Sol :

The small space between his ponytail and his neck helps to put a size to his head. Instead of a coat, his arms muscles are round so you guess easily how they are positioned. He carries the sword and moves it so you make a link between the moving arm, the pommel and the straight thing behind him. The black gloves helps to separate his hand from his white trousers. The sword does not hide his hands and his trousers has folds to give you a physical detail. You'll also notice he has a LOT of belts but they are normally sized to not disturb the design and silhouette while giving you a lot of feedback about his attitude and tastes. Also: no cliché pattern on his torso has the full black shirt helps to make a difference between the torso and the left arm. Colors are actually very well used to differentiate parts of his body. The headband does the same.

 

[WarRock]

I'm not sure to be honest and it's hard to be objective about the series as I'm an old fan and I didn't like Xrd that much. My opinion is maybe a bit harsh but I think the lack of balance comes from a combination of two things: not being limited as they were before + lost/lack of talent/touch.

Anyone that made some creative work knows that having limitations is a good thing. It forces you to go right straight to the point and prevents you from taking the wrong way. Xrd in my opinion didn't put his limitations where they should have been. The visual part lost a lot by going 3D as many small details were lost in the process or even character concepts were simply abandoned for technical or stylish reasons (Millia's arms or Potemkin's collar for example).

I was talking with a friend about GG and BB last week and said the same thing. GG designs were clear and on point, and the big sprites really helped with their visual syntax. Characters like Zappa and Millia would have very different shapes and movements in SF2/Alpha size IMO.

Edit : just remembered something. I like a lot UNIEL design and they went an interesting road. Even if French Bread was a more dojin/simple character design style, it seems they took a lot of time thinking about it. They started with simple designs, then added a lot of "cool filler things" and came back to a middle ground between efficiency with only details that matters and a touch of style.

Akira Toriyama, in a "how to draw manga" book, said that's the ideal way to design characters. "Get someone, add stuff", and then proceeded to show how he created Arale from Dr. Slump.

 

[CurlyW]

Video of the KI panel at PAX is up

 

[Zissou]

Want to disagree with this so bad... but I can't. Outside Melee, Marvel 3 might be the most execution intensive fighting game of all time.

Pains me to attribute that quality to such a shitty game.

Shitty game?!

Spoiler

marvel dabess

 

[QisTopTier]

Want to disagree with this so bad... but I can't. Outside Melee, Marvel 3 might be the most execution intensive fighting game of all time.

Pains me to attribute that quality to such a shitty game.

That's not necessarily a good quality.

 

[oneida]

Rob the magician predicts who will win the coin toss after the coin is already tossed :0
he has 2 predictions, 1 in left pocket and 1 in right pocket. if MR won coin toss, he'd have pulled the other prediction out. both predictions say that g&MR both win their matches - for the same reason that they happen to host a room for the same person for those matches. because the guy threw the games.

underwhelmed by rob's magic and i can play SF better than him. worst guest

 

[Kimosabae]

That's not necessarily a good quality.

For me it is. There's key principles of execution that Marvel 3 highlights that feel can make player's FG execution better, generally.

 

[shaowebb]

That's not necessarily a good quality.

This. Being execution heavy is a turn off to very large audiences. I'd have played a shitload more KoF 13 if it wasn't for the amount of homework it takes to perform in that game. The amount of buttons per second involved in a combo being super high and the amount of directional input per second being high is not something I see as a good thing.

Give em options, give em tools, make it fast, but if you make an environment where the combos are too long, or the execution barrier is too wide a gap between the skill levels of players then you really should reconsider a few things IMO. Its hype to see those things done, but I'd rather more people be able to perform the hype stuff than just watch it in a fighter.

 

[Zissou]

I separate higher execution in marvel (faster plinks = proportionally faster movement, i.e, granular rewards for improved execution) vs. higher execution in something like ultra (can't do links, don't bother playing at all).

 

[QisTopTier]

The only thing learning Marvel execution helps you with in the grand scheme of things is Marvel.

 

[Zissou]

Marvel is the most worthy thing of being good at!

 

[Coffeeling]

I can't accept a man with dual hair color as my main character.

Then accept a man with a scythe.

What about KoF 13? That thing had the craziest execution demands of anything I'd ever played...

KOF13 is peanuts. If you want to challenge Marvel, try Melee. (which incidentally also has a small handful of gods that win everything )

 

[shaowebb]

Marvel is the most worthy thing of being good at!

Dude its okay to like things. Just gotta disagree with you is all. I play everything these days. Not a lot of Marvel carries over to other fighters. From footsies to combo rhythms its all pretty much marvel=marvel. The only fighter I've seen that carries over less to other games was NRS stuff like MK9 and IGAU. That shit only applies in other NRS games lol...

Spoiler

Projectiles not cancelling out? Fishing for Fast stands and canceling strings early to acquire armor on other moves? Block dashing? Resets and Instant Air Fireballs being the most powerful tools ever? Vortexes due to weak wakeup game mechanics? lol

 

[alstein]

This. Being execution heavy is a turn off to very large audiences. I'd have played a shitload more KoF 13 if it wasn't for the amount of homework it takes to perform in that game. The amount of buttons per second involved in a combo being super high and the amount of directional input per second being high is not something I see as a good thing.

Give em options, give em tools, make it fast, but if you make an environment where the combos are too long, or the execution barrier is too wide a gap between the skill levels of players then you really should reconsider a few things IMO. Its hype to see those things done, but I'd rather more people be able to perform the hype stuff than just watch it in a fighter.

There needs to be games for both. For the high-execution crowd, give them anime.

That said, the execution barrier pops up in every game, even Divekick had execution. The great fighters delay that barrier until the very end.

 

[MikeBreezy92]

Dude its okay to like things. Just gotta disagree with you is all. I play everything these days. Not a lot of Marvel carries over to other fighters. From footsies to combo rhythms its all pretty much marvel=marvel. The only fighter I've seen that carries over less to other games was NRS stuff like MK9 and IGAU. That shit only applies in other NRS games lol...

Spoiler

Projectiles not cancelling out? Fishing for Fast stands and canceling strings early to acquire armor on other moves? Block dashing? Resets and Instant Air Fireballs being the most powerful tools ever? Vortexes due to weak wakeup game mechanics? lol

Funnily enough, MK had a lot of 3D Fighter Mechanics. That's why you saw quite a large amount of 3D Fighters play MK.

 

[shaowebb]

There needs to be games for both. For the high-execution crowd, give them anime.

That said, the execution barrier pops up in every game, even Divekick had execution. The great fighters delay that barrier until the very end.

I feel that if you make inputs easy to do, and setup proper scaling for combo length in an environment with a large amount of mobility options, defensive/offensive tools, and a carefully laid out list of wakeup and corner options then you can mitigate the execution gaps.

The best will always be the best...not everyone is created equal nor should they be forced to be in a fighter. I believe though if the game is designed properly you can have a fighter that is easy to jump into that isn't so exploitable that you end up in a race that only rewards a very limited audience of players the most. Its on the developer to see to it that they don't over restrict players out there with scaling and execution, but they must insure that they make it so everyone can go out there and have a good time without having to make wide leaps in skill in order to do so.

Its a balancing act. How hard do you reign them in and how much do you let them run free? Let em run too much and they'll run away from the pack and folks will drop out of the race. Reign em in too much and folks feel like they aren't really getting enough excitement because they are just being made to feel held back.

Funnily enough, MK had a lot of 3D Fighter Mechanics. That's why you saw quite a large amount of 3D Fighters play MK.

DOA folks in particular...

 

[Karsticles]

The best FG design is always:
Simple to play and enjoy.
Tech that allows for small, incremental improvement.
The capacity for endless improvement.
The divide between low execution play and high execution play is not massive.

That will get you maximum player interest from a mechanics standpoint.

The only thing learning Marvel execution helps you with in the grand scheme of things is Marvel.

Massive bullshit. Execution carries over between all fighting games in different ways.

I learned to IAD in anime fighters from Firebrand wall cling fireball tech.

Street Fighter uses plinking.

Basic qcf/dp motions.

Other fighting games outside of Marvel were well designed enough to have two-button dashes and air dashes (UNIEL, Skullgirls).

Magic series exists in Xrd and Skullgirls (slightly tuned).

Dash cancel into crouch into grab is in Xrd.

You can play any fighting game, and at least 50% of the execution you master will carry over to any other fighting game. The major outliers are Mortal Kombat games and Smash games. Even then, fundamentals still carry over when execution doesn't.

Tridashing is something other developers just have to get enough guts to implement.

 

[JeTmAn81]

I've been playing MK9 story mode lately. The number of characters with cheap easy teleport attacks in that game seems like it only works if you have a block button available. Comparing that to playing against Scorpion's teleport attack in Injustice, a hold back to block game, it's much harder to switch your block direction quickly than to just hit a button. So that's one thing that definitely doesn't really translate to playing other fighting games.