Plateaued in terms of my understanding of the game and my character. Understanding my character in a few months was understandable but having fully figured out the system by a few months with nothing more left to discover? That just didn't sit right with me.
I had already realized by August/September that CCs were a busted mechanic, that "neutral" was non-existent and that rushdown was king. Reactive play didn't really matter and that fireballs and shoryukens (AAs in general) were clearly not a high priority.
I don't generally agree with the whole "this game is random" angle but if ever there was a game where this statement could KIND OF apply to, it's this game. Games like Marvel 3 at least have the advantage of more defensive options, movement options and just the fact that wackiness and difficult-to-react to situations in that game is sort of the point.
I don't mean plateau in terms of skill but that's mainly because skill ceased to matter after reaching a certain threshold (which was what a LOT of people have been complaining about). As a highly defensive and reactive player, my "skill" and understanding against the opponent didn't matter as most situations ultimately came down to way too many 50/50s for "skill" to make any difference. Again, this was the first SF I started to try and "git gud" at so when I started playing other fighting games more seriously, I started seeing what I was missing out on. Killer Instinct in particular is a game that stole my heart as it allowed for the type of play that I wanted WITH CHARACTER's THAT WEREN'T EVEN DESIGNED FOR IT.
I have said this MANY times before in the SFV OTs that all the problems I have with the game are things that they CAN fix. Sure the combos won't be long in this game, but at least have neutral situations matter more than who jumped in/dashed in first. Sure you're making almost every character offense oriented but that doesn't mean you remove defensive options from the game. But I just know that they aren't going to fix ANY of that because they've had two separate balancing opportunities now and in both of them, they removed/nerfed defensive options.
You complete me...
Also, gonna take your advice and go slow into GG...my copy arrives today!
I still dibble and dabble in SFV. I think it's fairly easy to add some better neutral, but it's nice to see my early gripes come to the surface with more and more people. The game is just too rush-down,
'one mistake and you're dead' focused. And when you can basically die off a blocked DP, I still don't understand those types of changes at all, Ken or Ryu would not be top tier right now if all there DP had invincible startup frames. The shoto play overall is based around neutral (less so for Ken) and neutral is just not that strong. But Nerf DP? it's better now, but still, that was a crazy boneheaded decision that no one was seemingly screaming for. or why V-reversals don't work well on all buttons but lights. But, I'm done theory fighting, it's up to Capcom to make it better, I play it very very casually now and just watch the pros, who are pretty entertaining because they are good enough to where the 50/50 set play isn't as effective, so you do still see the skill come out in tourney scenes some. Some easy fixes IMO are just make most of the cast sweeps more safe (Like Karin for example) and buff V-reverals. Just simple stuff really lol
But Capcom gonna Capcom...Thankfully we actually are finally get true alternatives to Street Fighter, and DBFZ looks like some of the most amazing pieces of carnage I've ever graced in a fighting engine, looking forward to that!
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