Xrd and growing the GG community

[Klaige]

It's possible to be competitive without being a dick. Plenty of scenes have strong players and weak players who play each other and enjoy themselves. It's a matter of having some damn social skills and making the social environment inviting even for the people who aren't going to win a lot. There are a lot of game mechanics in GG and other games that are needlessly difficult, sure, but people still play and enjoy games they're not immediately good at. Trying to shift the blame for people becoming disinterested to the game mechanics makes both worse scenes and worse games.

I wont join the debate on system mechanics or what should stay or go or be made easier/harder because frankly the vast majority of regular posters here either aren't mature enough to do it intelligently or have no idea what the are talking about and just pull things out of their ass. That being said, I will touch on this topic because it involves what will arguably be the single most important thing people need to realize about a brand new guilty gear being given to us: We as players need to be opening and welcome to anyone and everyone of all levels who is taking an interest in the game.

There are not many players who were around when the GG community was trying to gain some relevance and be an accepted part of the fighting game tournament world. Throughout XX and #R the game and it's players were looked upon as black sheep and largely considered a bunch of scrubs by the majority of players from the bigger games at the time. It wasn't the greatest feeling, but the palyer base for the most part did the smart thing: they didn't worry or care about the people who didn't like the game or like the players. They chose to worry about themselves and enjoy their own game and own community, and anytime new blood showed up taking an interest in guilty gear they were pretty much universally welcomed in because all most of the players really wanted was more people to help the game and it's scene grow.

Somewhere along the way the GG playerbase forgot how that all came around, and we started to repeat the same agressive and dickheaded attitudes that we dealt with upon coming into the scene. Instead of trying to help people or ease them over the initial hump of the learning curve the general response to people who cried about the execution or the difficulty was to think of them as lazy scrubs and write them off as a nuisance. This mentality continued on into Blazblues release. GG players chose to forget that we came into the scene with a pretty broken game (XX) and that all those new players were looked down upon as being scrubs who couldnt hang with the real games (Capcom, Namco, etc). The community let the negative and ignorant viewpoint that BB was a dumbed down and weak version of GG bring a new game down. I'm including myself in this story, I said these things and helped contribute to the poor attitude that not only really hurt Blazblue as a franchise getting off the ground in the US, but helped divide the arc-sys player base further and push it deeper into the dead zone of competitive fighting games. I freely admit I was one of those in the wrong, and I am making a point to learn from the mistakes in my attitude towards new players and other games in general, which is exactly what every person who is excited for GGXRD should do as well.

I understand the excitement and the desire to discuss all sorts of things from potential gameplay changes to story tidbits, to the new graphics and character designs. Being excited about a new title will bring all these things to the table, and that's not a bad thing. But if there's one thing every player here can start doing, and I mean right this damn minute, it's that you can work on checking your ego's a bit and broadening your viewpoint about the potential that is being offered up by finally getting a brand new guilty gear and not just a version update. It's easy to take the selfish veteran route, and talk about how the game absolutely shouldn't be dumbed down in any way, and that if the new players can't step to the challenge then too bad for them. That kind of toxic viewpoint does nothing good for the game, literally nothing. We have no idea what GGXRD is going to be yet, we've seen a short tralier that was almost entirely for cinematic purposes. We've been given exactly zero confirmation on any gameplay aspects yet, and while we should all be excited and curious about these things, it's of the utmost importance that every player keep an open mind about things that can (and likely will) change that could help grow the game and it's player base.

By far the best thing anyone who is a GG fan can do is to get rid of the elitest attitude, to embrace the idea that maybe toning down some execution requirements or making the game a bit more simple or accessible could be the best thing that's ever happened to the franchise in terms for become a relevant competitive game in the west again. It's perfectly find to be a critical thinker and to analyze the potential ramifications of changing things about our favorite game, but do it with an open mind, and don't sit there and immediately shit on any idea that might make the game more appealing to a wider range of players. Many of us thought that way about BB, and we all turned out to be dead wrong as that's a game with a ton of depth and has an excellent foundation behind it.

Basically if you feel the need to be a dick or lord your status as an "OG Player" over potential new players because you don't think they deserve a chance to have an easier time learning a new game, then consider that you are in fact one of the biggest parts of the problem, not the new players and certainly not the new game. I'm not directing this at anyone specific nor am I calling out the entire site, this is just a genuine PSA to encourage everyone to be more open minded and to above all be FRIENDLY to the new players that are bound to show up looking to take an interest in the series and looking to learn about it and how to play it. We don't have any information on what to think about gameplay or changes yet, but we do have all the ability to start making this a good community and an inviting place for new players to come be a part of.

It only takes one loudmouth prick to deter an entire group of people from taking real interest in a competitive game. Keep that in mind before you get up on your soapbox and tell everyone why anything that isn't as hard or complicated as the GGXX series is garbage.

I won't deny that the worry that GG could end up a shell of itself by being overly simplified is a possibilty, anything is possible with a brand new game and new engine. I guess my point to this would be, if that is a concern then it's not all that necessary to vocalize it loudly as interest among a new group is starting to grow. Like I said, critical thinking and intelligent analysis of potential changes and information are a good thing and should be encouraged and convincing people to not speak their mind on that level is not the intent of my post. Fans voicing concern over things that may seem leery or potentially a bad change is a natural thing and sometimes devs even listen (albeit rarely) so it's a valid thing to do as long as it's done the right way.

Again my main point here is to keep an open mind. Even if down the road it's discovered something is being changed drastically or something appears overly simplified, that is the time to resist the urge to blow up and cry foul over the situation. Keep an open mind and consider that with every change good, bad, or indifferent things can and will happen. Keeping and open mind and not casting blame towards new or casual players is what i want to see avoided, not good intelligent players voicing what can likely be a valid criticism to a game in development. Like i said, this ins't an indictment of everyone as being elitest assholes, merely a suggestion to consider your viewpoint and attitude and how it might effect the potential growth of arc-sys games.

Again i could give some specific examples of system mechanics or gameplay changes that might simplify or change, but in the end make the game even better, but those discussions tend to devolve into trolling and nonsense around here, so I'm keeping my point simple and general to the attitude of the community. At the end of the day, if the game ends up super dumbed down and a worse game we'll be back where we started playing +R instead with a tiny scene, so in essence, keeping an upbeat and friendly attitude to come off as welcoming to new players is a freeroll here. If it all ends up a trainwreck of a game then we won't have to worry about it, but if things turn out well (and I honestly think they will), the player base will be that much better off for keeping an open mind and being a solid friendly community.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Digital Watches

[Digital Watches]

At Klaige's request, I've moved Klaige's posts on this to a top-level thread so we can have a more focused discussion on this important topic​.

We have a new game announced, and when it hits, I hope that everyone here would want a thriving scene of players. That doesn't happen automagically, and we need to talk about what we, as a community, need to do to make that happen.

[Strife]

As someone who wants to start practicing GG, I really like both of your opnions on the matter. This should apply to any game.

By reading some posts on the other thread, I felt for a moment that most people on this community would either hate the new game (which would have changes) or not give any incentive to BB/P4A players who would start playing it.

I'm glad there are people who think otherwise like you guys. Kudos.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Strife

[Tong]

As someone who wants to start practicing GG, I really like both of your opnions on the matter. This should apply to any game.

By reading some posts on the other thread, I felt for a moment that most people on this community would either hate the new game (which would have changes) or not give any incentive to BB/P4A players who would start playing it.

I'm glad there are people who think otherwise like you guys. Kudos.

Haters will always exist. Some guy here even said that Xrd is a stain because it's meant for casuals.

Xrd will be to +R what SF4 was to 3S.

[Rhannmah]

On this topic, I'd like to point out that complexity and execution are two different things. What I think most OG GG players are afraid of is a reduction in complexity, and I'm one of them. I absolutely do not want any reduction in complexity; actually, i'm hoping for even more complexity added into the game for Xrd. That being said, the execution barrier could definitely go down, and I'm quite in favor of that. I play arguably the hardest character in the game execution-wise, I-No, and i can say that this stuff is hard, too hard. Stuff like that really needs to be toned down in execution so you don't have to spend months of practice before being able to nail it over 50% of the time.

But yeah, don't touch at my complexity. What veteran players CAN do though is help the newer players get accustomed to all this complexity one step at a time so that they don't feel overwhelmed.

[tataki]

IMO don't put all your eggs in the Xrd basket (which may end up sucking in its first iteration) and think about promoting airdashers as a whole. Any hostile attitude of "this ASW game vs that ASW game" has to go. At the end of the day the fundamentals of all these games are extremely similar and you want to promote the fundamentals, doesn't matter if it's Sol or Ragna or whatever.

Edited May 22, 2013 by tataki

[Star-Demon]

No, absolutely not!

GG is my big Penis game full of manly skill and casuals can go play baby BB with their little peepees!

Anyways - I'm just going to stay on course with fairly presenting and repping my games to players and hope they feel they can improve well and have an actual spot in the community where they are legitimate and recognized. I can't control the community they want to join, for sure, but it is what it is and I present it to them clearly and fairly.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Star-Demon

[Aiddon]

Execution should definitely go down. Crap like complaining about things not being hard to get into is why I rolled my eyes when people whined and moaned about MvC3 being "too easy" to play. It's such a snobbish, elitist attitude and let's face it, at the end of the day scrubs are still scrubs and masters are still masters. The status quo will not change in terms of who's good and who's not

[Digital Watches]

Similarly, being caustic to people who are acting poorly and being loudly dismissive for the purpose of making fun of them may make you feel smart (for some values of "smart") and gain you some twitter followers or whatever (people love drama), but it's a poor way to try to change their behavior, and really only manages to make those people resent you.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Digital Watches

[Sym_]

deleteplz

Edited May 23, 2013 by Sym_

[Circuitous]

...but UMvC3 *did* lower basic execution requirements... you seem to be misunderstanding the argument.

Look at a game that's relatively easy to execute on a basic level. Let's say... Smash? Smash is good. At its most basic level, you're inputting moves with a button and a direction. That's a game with a low execution requirement for anything the game offers as an actual mechanic. It does no damage to the high level, it just makes the core easier to get into.

Persona 4 Arena has extremely simple core mechanics, no moves more complicated than a quarter-circle, and it still has remarkable high level play. Easy FRCs wouldn't make good I-No combos any less amazing. It would just make it easier for a new player to make use of that powerful mechanic - actually making GOOD use of it is still on them.

[Klaige]

Guys, again I understand the discussion over gameplay mechanics and what may or may not be better for the game in the long run, but that is NOT what this thread is about. I'm specifically trying to avoid the discussion about things like Why FRC's should stay, or why making certain things easier to execute is good or bad, because that's not the point of all this. The point is that regardless of how GGXRD turns out gameplay wise, eveyone who wants the game to succeed needs to be more open and more flexible about alterations to a game that's been around with the same core mechanics for 10 years. There's a million different arguments for why mechanic X should either be easier or not, but again this is not the thread about those discussions.

All I want is for people to really consider hard and long that even if things change, even if they get simpler, that there's more than a good chance this game will have an AMAZING amount of depth and strategy and still be a great competitive game. The bonus will be that if we the player base are open to these changes and don't act like a bunch of toolsheds and get up on our high horses about how we took the time and grinded our way through the execution barriers or what not, that we'll all be better off in the long run.

If you're one of the people yelling at the top of your lungs "NO FUCK YOU GUYS ANYTHING LESS THAN AC DIFFICULTY IS BULLSHIT AND THOSE SCRUBS SHOULD GO PLAY BB IF THEY WANT EZ MODE LOLOLOLOLOL". Then you are the exact type of moron this thread is being directed at.

If you want to discuss gameplay ramifications or why you think a mechanic should or should not change, go to the discussion thread. I asked for this one to be broken off for just that reason. I'm not trying to keep it separate just so i can have the spotlight, I just genuinely want people to read this, and hopefully at least put a second thought into what kind of attitude they approach this new generation of guilty gear with.

[Digital Watches]

Once again I agree with Klaige. Besides, this argument is too interesting to split up into two threads. We should focus on community building and having some damn social skills here, and arguing about stupid minutia in the general discussion thread.

[Circuitous]

Frankly arguments over execution don't belong in Xrd's thread, either. Might make a new thread for it... at any rate it doesn't belong here.

[Sym_]

Lol I dont think klaige liked my post

Im just going to delete it.

Sorry didn't mean to derail your thread

[Dullyanna]

The opening post should be put on the front page. Good shit Klaige, though it's unfortunate the majority of FG players (Or gamers in general) will never mature to that point. There's always gonna be elitists in this and every other community, we just have to stay better than that and be positive.

[Klaige]

Totally not directed at you actually sym. I know you well enough to know you do good things for the community.

[White Man]

I hope this doesn't come across as though I'm taking a shit all over this thread or the idea of building a better community because that is not my intention, but this whole "we need to make sure more people play GG" mentality seems a little delusional to me. Folks should tell their friends about the game and encourage people to play, definitely, but that's more or less where our power over the health of "the community" ends. Ultimately, whether Plus R or Xrd or any future GG title sinks or sails is up to ASW. How well they make their games, how they treat their customers, and how intelligently they market new titles both in and out of Japan will decide the size and strength of the playerbase. We can all try not to push people away from a game, but our power to lure them in is limited at best—the game itself has to do that.

As for not being an elitist d-bag, what does that even have to do with the GG community? If you're just naturally an antagonistic jerk who gets a thrill from talking down to people who aren't as skilled as you at recreational activities, the knowledge that you're making the fanbase for a particular game look bad isn't going to change your behavior. "Don't be a dick" is a lesson you have to learn early in life and not from people on a message board when you're in your 20s or 30s. You can't just rehabilitate people with bad attitudes for the sake of improving a gaming community's PR.

If someone is always being needlessly confrontational and chasing away newcomers to a scene to make their e-penis look bigger, then kick 'em out of the community. Don't associate with those people, take them off of your gaming contacts list, refuse to play with them, and distance yourself from them however you can. Communities don't get a bad rep because of jerks; they get a bad rep because of people enabling those jerks.

Lastly, the whole GG vs. BB thing strikes me as incredibly melodramatic. People have their favorite games and will take playful jabs at the others, but I've yet to see someone who honestly loved one series and loathed the other (nobody who wasn't trolling at any rate). If some folks maintain a preference for one game over the other for whatever reason, that's okay. We don't need to be one big, happy ASW family. That's just creepy.

[Klaige]

What exactly is delusional about the fact that a series is getting a modern update on the current generation that has a much bigger chance of potentially grabbing the interest of a new base of players? Have you noticed what happened with the releases of SF4, MvC3, and MK9? The last release of guilty gear was in 2006 (vita ports not withstanding), back when fighting games were not exactly peaking with interest. This will be the first time since the fighting game scene has achieved it's massive growth that a brand new guilty gear on a brand new engine is going to come out. I'm not saying it's a given that floods of new people are going to flock to the arc-sys crowd, but you haven't been paying much attention if you think there isn't going to be the opportunity for a lot of new faces to at least consider picking up the game and taking a glimpse into it's competitive scene.

When I talk about being more friendly and open minded about the potential changes and the future of the game, I'm not saying that's how we'll get more people to play guilty gear, you are correct that at the end of the day only the game itself is gonig to be responsible for that. The point im making is that being a jackass and talking down on the idea of change or simplification can (and will) push that same potential group of new players away. I'm not looking to set some elaborate plan to get more guilty gear players through being friendly, I'm merely trying to get people to avoid killing off interest in a game before it even gets off a ground by being an asshole.

Learning not to be an elitest prick does go beyond GG and fighting games, and yes it is a lesson that is more about who you are as a person and what your life is like over one series of fighting games. My point is the fact that when you take a competitive scene, put it on the internet, and then attempt any kind of "discussion" even fairly level headed people can turn into an elitest prick without much effort. I'm not looking to rehabilitate anyone, I am fully aware that a majority of the people who actually take time to read this and act in the manner I'm talking about, won't give two shits about it and won't change. It would take a ridiculous amount of effort to do that, and I nor anyone else is going to wast their time on that. This thread isn't intended to slow down the loudmouth jackass who gets his personal kicks by talking shit on the internet, it's for the people who sometimes get a little overboard and defensive about a game they really care about and post something that can come off wrong to a potential new playerbase. Even if i get only handfull of people to think twice before making a post about how shitty it will be if anything in guilty gear gets dumbed down, then i'll consider this worth my time.

As for distancing ourselves from the people who are toxic and want to shit on other players, yes in theory that's another message id like people to take from this. If someone is your local scene is being a toolshed, call them out on it, tell them it isn't cool, make them at least consider the fact that the people they play with don't like it when that shit happens. Maybe it does something, maybe it doesnt. That being said, you aren't going to get anywhere trying to kick people out of your scene. It takes a lot to get completely blackballed from a fighting game community, so unless you are stealing peoples shit, or threatening people at the venue, odds are you are going to be free to show up and do your thing. Again i'm not expecting that a post on a small message board is going to convince all the people out there who are jerks to stop being jerks, i'm just looking for ways that players who want to see a new game succeed can try and mitigate some of the damage and negative impact those types can have on the new potential.

Also if you really think whole GG vs BB thing wasn't heated enough to cause damage then you weren't paying attention. There was a genuine disdain between more than a few players on both sides of the argument and at the end of the day both games suffered for it in the long run. I brought up the example because it showed an lack of learning from the mistakes that plagued GG players as they were the new kids coming into the scene, and as the old saying goes Those who do not learn from History and doomed to repeat it. I'm not saying every person has to love GG and BB and P4A equally, and no where did I come anywhere close to claiming we need a big happy arc-sys family. I was citing and example of the kind of attitude that people can have that really harms the entire arc-sys scene. A lot of people who said these things felt like they needed to defend their game and in the end they just come off as a jerk and not only do the current player bases for both games get set back from it, but it looks bad and deters new players who might be taking an interest in those games.

I think you are reading way to much into my intent behind this post. I'm not a fool and I don't sit here under the impression that our attitudes as guilty gear players will make or break the potential scene for GGXRD. All I am saying is that this scene is being given a rare opportunity with the chance to have their game get a brand new release in the modern era, a situation where other fighting game series of late have seen a great deal of success and a solid influx of new players. So with that in mind, why not take a minute and encourage people to not be so stubborn and hard headed over what may come with changes and system mechanics. I think you would be genuinely surprised to know how many times newer players to the fighting game scene have considered delving into arc-sys games, only to be off put by the louder members of those games community. It really does happen more than you think, you just don't hear about it because most people see something they don't care to deal with and go back to whatever game they were playing.

[Tong]

Don't worry, the community had worse with P4U.

2 button DP have surely annoyed the hell out of beginners and elitists alike.

[Klein]

Shitting on players and other games is disgustingly toxic to scenes. I started off on a website I enjoyed that regularly shat on SF that turned me away from the SF scene, but now that behaviour has left me resenting the original website for being ignorant assholes.

[Hecatom]

Tell me about it, you will think that after being on the end of people hating on their games the players would stop that kind of attitude.

I remember that one of the reasons why i stopped playing AH3 was that their community keep shitting on BB just because.

[tataki]

Ultimately, whether Plus R or Xrd or any future GG title sinks or sails is up to ASW. How well they make their games, how they treat their customers, and how intelligently they market new titles both in and out of Japan will decide the size and strength of the playerbase. We can all try not to push people away from a game, but our power to lure them in is limited at best—the game itself has to do that.

They do promote their games... to the Japanese arcade goers. As far as the rest of the world goes, it's up to the English speaking community to fill in the blanks if we want more people to play with in the long run. This isn't about "who's job is it" and "shoulda coulda woulda" but about what's going to get actual results.

[Digital Watches]

Yup. Marketing and community building are two different things, and it's our job to do the latter. DL or your local scene or whatever may not have the advertising power to raise awareness about a new game, but they certainly have the power to let people know where people are playing, make them want to come play, and probably most importantly, make them want to come back.

[iora]

Okay, lets go in on a rant. A rant about Xrd, getting more people in GG, changing the bad parts about our scene, and just a bunch of shit thats always bugged me about the 'anime' scene.

(Note: This is my experience. I was not big into BB, but this is what I observed. If this is wrong, feel free to discuss it... but if it felt like this to me, someone whos been into these games as long as I have, I cant be the only one to see things this way.)

Xrd is in my mind the 4th big chance since i joined the scene to get people into our games. BBCT, BBCS2, and P4A being the other 3. We did good with P4, but did less good with the other 2. To understand the concerns I have, we gotta review why I think this happened.

BBCT came out. It was shiny and new, a new IP, a fresh starting point, and it gave us something new to get hype about. My local guys were traveling an hour plus multiple times a week to play this shit in NYC/Philly arcades. Hunger was high. I never quite latched on the same, but I tried to reserve an important attitude about the subject.

"This game just isnt for me."

If i was with my old scene I knew well, I would joke, but to players I didnt know well, and to potential new blood, that's were I kept my opinions. This game had the potential to bring in new players. Balance aside, it gave the anime scene something new, something easier, and really just something less daunting to try and join. I was lucky I loved GG enough to 0-2 every tourney I entered for a long time and not mind it, but most new players cant handle that kinda door being shut in their face.

We supported CT with a lot of community effort. Tons of tutorials, combo videos/guides, some match analysis vids even. It was nice. But flash forward a while to the future. Something changed.

High end players focused more on the games faults than its successes. It seemed to boil into 4 schools of people.

1- Im a great player, and I play this game because I genuinely like it.

2- Im a great player, and I would drop this game until the next version if I wasnt placing high in tourneys right now.

3- Im a bad/average player, and I focus on the games problems more than improving my play. Vocally.

4- Im a bad/average player, and I want to improve to some degree.

Schools 1 and 4 were the ones I saw the least. At least at an outsiders glance. I saw people not giving the help in person i expected from the response online. I saw near-toxic attitudes at tournaments when I listened to conversation about the game. I saw a lot of people 'waiting for the next version/game' instead of playing what they had now and enjoying it.

Why would a new person want to join a scene when the guy who just won the tournament would tell him the game isnt hard, isnt balanced, or would immediately jump to the problems of a game, rather than the things they got hype for in the first place?

* This shit needs to stop. *

BBCS1 and CS2 were the next stops on the train to get more people into our stuff. As a permanent fixture, not a flash in the pan 'why not' kinda player base. The same attitude was carrying over, but admittedly we got some more people in it for the love. Character-love players, the severe CT problems were gone, combos were more swag (to me) so we had more 'flash' to our matches. It was nice to watch. This era, I wasnt into the game. I tried to get back into it to play with a local friend several times, but never kept it until the end of CS2. But i watched a lot. It was cool. Saw a lot of things I wish I could do, but saw myself not having the drive needed to learn it all. At the time anyway.

We still had some of the old problems (and some of them were improving!), but we had a new problem added to the list at this point.

We were content with our scene were it was.

I saw less and less new people join. And I saw less and less people try to get new blood into it. It was like we made our anime cliche and that was fine enough.

I disagree. We should never be 'fine' with the people we have.

Constantly try to get new people into it. Try to play casuals in a spot where non-anime could see it. Try to talk the games up. Try to show people their misconceptions and how wrong they are. We dont need fucking pot bonuses to attract people to try our game.

We just need a few things:

1- People excited about the game, spreading their excitement.

2- People teaching people how to improve, how to understand whats happening, how to understand anything they dont get about the game.

3- People to STOP being toxic about their main game. Next BB players or P4 player I hear say their game is bad (even if its with their own tourney scene with their own players) is getting strangled.

4- People to STOP being toxic about games THEY DONT EVEN PLAY. If you dont like a game, thats fine. I dont like everything. But dont spread your opinion negatively like that just to spread it. If there isnt a real point to saying something negative about a game, just say "It's not my thing, that's all." instead.

Then P4A came. The game had some great design ideas to help with some of the problems listed above. Borrow a well known IP, good tutorials, easy to understand ranking system, easy to level PSR to give the bad-ass feeling about your ranked results, and system mechanics that are easy enough to grasp for most players. All while keeping a lot of the depth we expect from anime.

And it got company backed support, so it got attention. This is a nice time for anime.

I recently had a friend say he should learn P4, because everyone at ECT was playing it. That is the exact thing I wanna hear. A real reason to learn a game, even if the reason had little backing behind it, its a reason thats honest!

When I watched ECTV P4 finals, I had some non-anime people ask questions to each other, and I was more than glad to help them understand it better. This is great to hear, and I was glad to do my part.

But was there something about this time, with P4 being the main game for our scene, that was bad like the others?

Sure was.

People who didn't play the game making a LOT of comments about the game as a whole. A LOT of comments that the game wasnt legit, and thats why they didnt play it. Basically just a LOT of vocal activity where if I didnt play the game, I would hear it and say "Guess I was wrong when I thought this game was worth giving a look."

This, like a lot of the problems mentioned, needs to stop.

Phrase your compliants in a way that come across more that its your personal opinion. And make it sound intelligent.

"I dont like the balance of this game because my character has bad matchups and the general system makes it easy to deal with her mixup." ...vs... "This game sucks becauses I cant do anything. I just get mashed when I try to do anything into oki vortex."

Which sounds a LOT better if you were reading this comments as something who was thinking about giving the game a try, but went to read our forums first to see the public opinion. Exactly.

So... looking forward...

We have plenty of games coming out. +R whenever that hits consoles, BBCP, Xrd in the future, if they ever do a P4 update/sequel... and non-Arc games too. MB got that caster update, UNiB if it ever hits, Chaos code, Arcana 3's update, all sorts of games we can include in the anime scene.

We need to be the staff to our fine hotel of fun times we call anime. Inviting, helpful if you want it, out of your way so you can just have a good time if you want that too.

Stop talking down your own scene. Stop talking down your own games. Stop talking down netplay. Help people at tournaments that struggle (even if they dont ask, offer it). Act like you enjoy these games. If you really have problems, try to present them in an adult manner.

Guh. Fuck.

Just... stop being dumb. Imagine yourself as someone looking to get into this shit now, as an outsider.

How do you think we really look most the time to the non-anime crowd?

Really. Think about it. See if you think your personal actions are good for the scene as a whole.

I'm done with this for now. Just hope this makes some people change their fucking attitude, or at least reflect on it.