Skubator

I know it. I go there all the time, and give them entirely too much money considering how unstable my income is.

Just curious, what is the venue you have in mind?

Roseville is northeast of Sac, yeah. About 20-30 minutes.

I would definitely go. Depending on the day, I have a couple friends who live around here I could get to go also.

Kijiyama makes a strong point. While we may have some very good players, we also seem to have a very stagnant community. The same 3 or 4 people win every ranbat. The order might change around every week, but overall there's very little movement. You could argue that this means everyone is getting better at the same rate, but I doubt it; I think it means that no one is really learning anything. True story: I have a group of friends I play BlazBlue with on a fairly regular basis (not right now actually; school happened). I used to think I was pretty good. I'd win fairly regularly, and I had a couple decent bread and butters down. I decided to go out to the tournament at Drom's last month because it wasn't ridiculously far away. Long story short: I got wrecked. Hard. It wasn't like I expected to do well, being my first tournament and all, but the degree to which I got destroyed was utterly ridonculus. Playing casuals later in the day my opponent says to me "You should probably start using pokes." Embarrassing, but I can deal with that for the sake of my point: when you only play with the same people, these weaknesses don't occur to you. I guess not using pokes can be indicative of a much deeper level of retardation, but oh well.

My theory is that it's caused by the relative concentration of players. The west coast is very suburban. Especially in California, there's a lot of space between groups of players. East Coast (as I understand it) is more heavily concentrated, and more urban; cities back up to one another for pretty much that entire side of the country. Especially in and around major metropolitan areas (read: New York) there are likely to be many players in close proximity to one another. I of course, could be wrong about this; I don't read the east coast threads, and I've never been there. The same theory applies to Japan, of course. As I'm sure we're all aware, Japan is an extremely dense country. On top of that, Japan also still has a decent arcade scene. How this actually relates to player skill: it's all in who you play with, and who you practice with. If you have a larger pool of players to practice against, you're going to be a better player. Simple as that. That's my thinking, anyway.

Would it be feasible to move NCI to the following weekend? I can't imagine GG/BB players are the only ones with finals to worry about; it might be favorable to multiple parties if NCI were after finals week, as opposed to before it.

That poor HRAP. I think we need a society for all the abused fight sticks in the world.

I think it's been pretty well established that it'll be the first Saturday of every month.

Is this going to be on 360 setups, since Microsoft is sponsoring?

Who in the Sacramento area is planning on going to NCI this weekend?

I'm interested in learning GG, but I don't really know how to play it at all. I guess that's how you learn, right?

Shoutouts to BSing 3 weeks of material during the midterm.

You weren't the only new guy, It was my first tournament as well. I didn't ever have to play on the stream, but at least you didn't get unceremoniously destroyed by Coopa for your first match. Also, major props for having the courage to go on stream playing Rachel.

I'd offer you one; I'm driving right through Sac. I know how midterms are though. I just got done with all of mine this week.

I like how you slip that kitten video in there (to make everyone all warm and fuzzy, I presume), and then bust out the serious shit. In any case: I haven't been to any of these events in person yet, so I can only theorize, but I think any supposed unwillingness to help can be associated with the BB community's age. MB/GG are fairly old, niche games, and the only people keeping the scene alive for those games are fiercely dedicated to doing so. Meanwhile, BB is a relatively new game; many of the people playing BB may be new to fighting games entirely. They might not even realize they're expected to help out. Also, the BB community likely has more people who are less dedicated to the scene, and may have a bad attitude after they showed up and did worse than they expected. Essentially, it's really not fair to apply blanket generalizations to an entire community. I'm sure SOME of the BB players would be happy to help. I imagine they assume that setup and tear-down of the event will be handled by the event organizers; they likely view event organizers as a separate entity, and possibly even feel forbidden from trying to contribute. Or maybe I'm full of shit.

I should be able to come. Do I need to pre-register in any way?

Well, you convinced me. See you at NCI, I guess.

I wanna see if I can make it out to NCI next time. I don't think I'd play in the tournament, since I'm pretty terrible. But I feel like watching the stream from home really doesn't do the hype justice. Are there usually people playing casuals off to the side somewhere, or does that usually not happen? Even if there's none of that, it'd be cool to hang out and watch.

I can understand the argument that people need to develop a thicker skin. That still doesn't absolve some people of a completely caustic attitude. You can say that the world isn't all candy and rainbows, that we need to learn to roll with the punches and take the shit talk or whatever it is you want to say; that doesn't change the fact that the community would be happier and more inviting all around if people could learn not to be such insufferable douchebags. I honestly would like to pick up and learn GG, but when people take that kind of negative attitude it's hardly enticing. Throw on top of that the relative rarity of the game, and various hardware compatibility issues, and you've got a pretty hard time selling your game so to speak. I'm certain I'm not the only person like this. And I can totally understand being a little upset over BB being like GG, but simpler. At the risk of making a pariah of myself: I used to play WoW a lot, and I know I got pissed off every time they dumbed down a raid that wasn't even hard in the first place. I know I got pissed every time they simplified what used to be long and complicated ordeal. I was pissed when they gave warlocks their class mount for free, after I did the quest and everything. I was pissed when they took out attunements for raids. Hell, I was pissed when they increased the amount of time you could stay underwater without coming up for air. I was mad about all that stuff, but it's really not fair to get on people's case just because they started playing the game after you. In short, take the drama back to MvC2 or wherever.

I used to just lurk, but I decided it was time to make an account and start posting. I'd be happy to drive down to Sac/Davis and play some games with people, but my school schedule is kind of wonky. Drom's is on the corner of 3rd and G st.? Is that near the G Street Pub? If so, I'm pretty sure I can find it. If there's a tournament there, I'd be happy to come out and help out. I'm not sure I'd want to enter the tournament just to fluff up the prize pool, but I'd be happy to help and/or play casuals.

That's depressing, but I guess it doesn't surprise me much. Roseville sucks. What's the scene in Davis like? My sister lives there, so I actually go down fairly often. Is there an arcade there, or is it mostly people meeting up and playing at people's houses? I'm new to this, so I don't really know how things go down. I do own the PS3 version of CS and an HRAP3 if that matters.

I'm just getting into the scene (I'm pretty terrible), but I want to get better. Does RGL have a BB cab? Do people play there? I haven't been there in ages; if they have a BB cab I might start going on unlimited Saturdays again. Is there anywhere else people play near Roseville?