Airk

As far as I'm concerned, chip damage is a concept whose time has gone. Back in The Day it was there because blocking was a much stronger strategy than it is today (Basically no grounded overheads, for example.) so they needed some additional way to reduce the effectiveness of just blocking all the time. This really isn't an issue in most modern games. No, truthfully, it's not. It does a fine job of explaining a bunch of mid-level stuff, and talking about what is unique and different about P4A, for example, but even the "general fighting game strategy" section doesn't cover BASIC STUFF like Darlos9D keeps pointing out. This desperately needs an analogy, but I can't think of anything else that so thoroughly obfuscates its most basic mechanics. It's like... Call of Duty not telling you there are multiple weapons, and requiring you press Alt-F1-F10 to change them, but even that still breaks down because you can at least tell that the rocket launcher causes a bigass explosion when it hits.

Yeah, but if you don't even introduce the CONCEPT, people don't even realize they might need to practice it.

Anytime. Sadly, I think our connection is like 1 bar.

The Sonic Hurricane article on tutorials still makes a ton of sense, and no game has come anywhere close to implementing their ideas.

Actually, it doesn't mean that at all - Makoto's 3C has head/body invulnerability, so even if a move comes up out of the ground (Like Lambda's Spike Chaser) her 3C will go right through it unless it has foot property. So it really depends on how they define the properties of the projectile - the shape is pretty much irrelevant. Yes, it would be NICE if things made sense, but Spike Chaser proves that that is not always the case. :P As if anyone has any sort of trouble jumping over projectiles in this game anyway. x.x

In fact, most of us aren't "hardcore fighting gamers"; It usually takes me weeks to learn a new combo.

There's nothing particularly difficult about them - Persona 4 combos are actually a little tougher for me due to the relative lack of hitstop meaning that you really have to input the moves quickly. Maybe you just mash too hard?

Yeah. All the power wave/reppuken/stuff from KOF is exactly like normal projectiles, only with a different visual. IIRC, it wasn't just the Power Wave during this period - '96 or so was when practically everyone got the weird ghetto projectiles for a while. (The whole Kyokogenryu group got Dan-style short fireballs). Having a "normal' projectile was the exception in KOF during that time.

It just lags in general. I do most of my fighting games on the 360, so I've actually moved it to the CRT in the back room, which obviously doesn't lag, but everything looks like ass. =/

Practice more.

I'd say no, unless you have some strange special need for it. Ambidextrous sticks always struck me as kinda silly, but I guess some people must find them useful. And the "programming" features are basically just gimmicks. You won't be allowed to use them in any sort of real event anyway. Of course, I'm sure it's a perfectly fine stick otherwise, but a little shopping can get you a perfectly fine stick for $50 less than that one, or for about the same price, you can get a dual-modded stick. (Also, the link you provided goes to a PS3 stick, which is fine, but it's generally more difficult to dual mod a PS3 stick to work with the Xbox than it is to mod an Xbox stick to work on the PS3, due to Microsoft's peripheral validation scheme actually working. )

Lambda's gag reel made me cry. -_- Tao's was pretty epic though.

The ANSWER, as I have said since Extend was announced, is to do BOTH. That way, people who have already paid them $21-$24 for three new characters don't have to pay them $40 for one. AND That way, people who are just looking to get a 'bargain bundle all-on-one-disc' for laziness, ease of deployment for tournaments, or whatever, can buy the disc. That is how it should've worked. Free patch for balance changes, DLC character at the usual price, and if you want the other "features" you buy the disc. There's never been anything hard about this. The goodwill of their community should be worth more to them than this.

You're not going to get easier execution by picking an easier character - not at the level you're currently performing at. When people say a character is "easy to play" they don't mean "Yeah, you can do fine just by doing your mash A combo." You're going to have to improve your execution regardless of which character you play. None of the ones you've listed are remarkable in their "long combo requirements" - except maybe for Naoto's SMP loop, which is well beyond what you're trying to do right now. So no, I don't think you should play a different character. I think you should be practicing and taking it slow. First, go into training mode. Pick a nice short, easy to remember combo - probably just something out of challenge mode - and do it. Repeatedly. Until you can get it 5 times in a row. At least. On each side. Start with basically the easiest combo you can find that you can't do yet. Second, play against the AI for a bit in arcade mode or training mode - take your combo and just GO for it. This is particularly easy in training mode - just set the dummy for AI mode, set health to regenerating and just fight it out... where the only thing you EVER do is try to get a hit into the combo you're trying to practice. Eventually it'll just start to happen, and presto, you have a combo you can use in a real match. Right now, it just sounds like you're looking for a magic character who will let you do combos without practicing them, and that's not going to happen.

I do have the console P4A, but I've been playing through story mode and mostly still practicing BB. :P

I thought the quote was more along the lines of "compliment each other" not "counter each other"; i.e. they intend to make you pick between your offensive option (Overdrive) and your defensive option (Burst). Which is in keeping with the 'shared burst' meter.

This thread had some pretty decent advice. Other than that...practice. Play arcade mode on increasing difficulty, or mess around in practice mode until you are comfortable that your character does what you want them to do most of the time, then get in there and play people. Edit: Boy, I fail at proofreading. Link fixed.

Looks like I'll pop in on Friday too. I suck at P4A; I don't even have a main yet. Willing to screw around with it, or play BB, whatever.

See here for info about the easy way to mod a stick from 360>Ps3 (works for TE edition sticks only). Pretty straightforward, pretty affordable. I've seen people using a PS3 > 360 converter, but it's kinda weird and awkward, because you actually have to plug in a 360 device as well, so that the 360 sees there's a "legit" 360 peripheral attached. It's sortof clunky, but apparently some of them do work. Not sure which ones or what though.

Well, for whatever it's worth, if you buy used, your money doesn't go to Arc Sys, so you can't be considered to be "encouraging" them to keep making these iterative releases. OTOH, if you want to support them making the game, it's only like $18 new at this point.

First off, pretty much any arcade stick you can buy these days that connects via USB (i.e. anything for a PS3/360) will work on a PC. Macs are iffy, I think, because, drivers, but PC? No problem. For sticks that work on both, your options are: A) Get your current stick dual modded. (If you had a 360 stick, this would be do-it-yourself easy, but since it's a PS3 model, I suggest looking up a reputable modder in your area) B) Purchase some sort of custom dual modded stick C) Purchase a Qanba Eightarc I think that pretty much covers the bases there, but someone will correct me if I missed something.

So I finally have a copy of this game for the PS3 as well. Who wants to remind me how bad my HDTV lags?

Tsubaki isn't really that easy for Hakumen to just rush down; Air approaches require you to be tricky, because her 2C anti-air is very strong, and she's significantly quicker than you on the ground. While it IS a good idea to try to keep the pressure on, since she's much more dangerous with charge than without, you have to do it carefully, because otherwise things can go south in a hurry.

Well, it's a pretty good knockdown, so she's in a position to respond to rolls etc, but it's no different from any other character scoring a corner knockdown, I don't think? You'll mostly need to block if she's just using 5A/2A because 6D doesn't attack fast enough, even if it guardpoints the jab. You MIGHT be able to get out with a wakeup 6D > teleport > firefist or something, but mostly, yeah, you'll need to block.

Sure; There are setups there all the time. It's just a question of whether there will be people interested in playing P4A there all the time, which is a question I have no idea of the answer to. Or, to put it another way: You're free to show up at any time, but it's possible that the people there at that time only want to play SF4/Marvel.