Celerity

Ugh. Was really hoping this wouldn't turn out to be true, it's already hard enough for me to convince people to take Injustice seriously.

We need to start a betting pool.

Yes, the DotA community in particular is very insular and clique-ish, and it really drives people away (hell, it drove me away from the NA scene to the point where I only played with Europeans/Singaporeans). The FGC doesn't have nearly as much of that in my limited experience, which is good, but we can always take it as a lesson to be as inclusive as possible.

This argument in general is pretty silly, because "decent" can mean vastly different things to different people. I think most people consider themselves only decent, because they're always looking up. As reaver mentioned, his definition of decent is about where he's at, while a casual player might think another way, and a player in Japan would have an even stricter definition. It's meaningless to argue about who's decent and who isn't. IMO fighting games have a lot more complexity than games like DotA, Starcraft, and Counterstrike. The skill ceiling is basically unattainable due to the number of decisions you need to make in a match. The reason why it seems like eSports games are more difficult is because there are a lot more people playing competitively, for a lot more money, so it takes a longer time to become competitive compared to fighting games. However, I think if the same amount of money and players existed in both scenes, it would become clear that fighting games have a higher potential for skill. Disclaimer: I come from a semi-professional DotA/FPS background, and I'm comparitively terrible at fighting games, so it's possible that I overrate their difficulty at the top level.

FC's can be good for extending combos, but they don't seem to change the overall damage or hitstun scaling. I think FC's are best used either to: 1.) Combo into a hugely damaging move early, before damage is scaled too hard. 2.) Use the FC late to get a ton of untechable time and go for a second air combo. For some reason, the SMP on air normals seems to be way less than ground normals, so the best combos usually have a ton of repeat air moves.

A big problem I assume you are having is, you lose online and then just jump into the next match without thinking. You need to take some time and reflect on your losses. Whenever I play online, I keep a notebook of stuff I want to work on and look out for, and after I play 5-10 sets I'll go into training mode and look over my notes, practice those situations to get them into my reflexes. Even if it's something really, really simple like "I need to react faster when Valk jumps at me", watching your AA connect over and over against him will reinforce your instincts in that situation.

That's true. Of the 4 combinations, GG on XBL definitely has the lowest amount of players as well as the worst netcode. Most people here will tell you that BB is an easier game, but I don't really believe that's true. For a total beginner I actually think GG is easier; the learning curve is a lot more progressive compared to BB's which is like a plateau. Just so you know, the new version of GG, AC+R, is actually being released before BBCP. I think a lot of the Xrd hype will also bring some Capcom players into both games. In the end, I would recommend GG more, but if the netplay is going to be your main source of matches, BB is probably the only real option.

This game is looking really, really good.

It's not really harder to go into, the cards are just more important now whereas previously you only needed meter.

Fortunate, as in it literally costs a fortune now.

Yeah but playing with a flowchart is much better than playing without any plan at all, which is what you'll mostly be doing while you're inexperienced. I wouldn't recommend that you flowchart everything, but focus on one or two things each match that you want to do consistently. "I will always confirm my 5C", "I will not panic on wakeup", etc. Learning the rules is the only way to learn the exceptions.

Awesome explanation, thanks!

I have a few questions about Lilica's 2E guard crush setup. First of all, is it really inescapable, or wouldn't a move with some invincibility be able to go through it? Also: does it only work from the 3rd hit of 5C/6C, or would 5C(1) > 2E also work? 5C(3) doesn't seem to hit against most grounded characters. I'm also a little confused about her EFC combos where I see "5C > 2E (charged)" because I'm not sure whether it's intended to be a normal combo off of 5C(1) and a partially charged 2E, or if it uses the reset. Sorry for the day 1 noob questions, I just picked up this character.

You're right. Removing real combos would indeed infringe on knowledge and not just execution, but my overall point stands. Chess and Go are 100% cerebral, but fighting games aren't. They require some degree of reflexes and manual dexterity. Execution is just another dimension of your play skill. Once you start making a game too execution-friendly, it closes the gap between skilled players and unskilled players to some extent. And again, I agree that widening the FRC window is not the end of the world in this regard, but it's a slippery slope.

All this FRC talk really comes down to a philosophical belief of whether or not execution belongs in fighting games. In theory, we could make the game like Injustice where you can chain moves together as early as you want. We could create an IAD button. We could, eventually, remove every remotely difficult thing about the game's execution so that matches only come down to decision-making. Is that a good or a bad thing? It's really just a matter of opinion, but I think most of us would agree we don't want to see that happen. While I agree that adding a buffer window to FRCs wouldn't affect gameplay too much, it begs the question: why not do more? FRCs aren't even the most difficult thing about the game, after all, and they're one of the last things a new player notices/will mess around with. Why not give each character a bunch of near-optimal auto-combos and simplify all the more difficult inputs (like I-No's HCL)? Would that make the game better? I, personally, support execution requirements in fighting games, and I like the fact that GG has a wide range of characters with easy to difficult execution. You can relax these execution requirements a bit, but I feel like once you start going overboard (yes, extending every FRC window by 5 frames is massively overboard), you're hurting the spirit of the game.

I've found people to be way more helpful and more tolerant of various skill levels in the anime FGC, compared to the Capcom community (and don't even get me started on other games, like DotA and TF2). Part of the reason is because we're probably older/more mature on average, and part of the reason is because we probably care more about getting people into the scene. I do agree that there is a PERCEIVED risk of coming in and getting laughed at for being new, but there's nothing we as a community can do about that perception besides dispelling it through our actions.

Yes, 8D. j.BB > j.8D > 236B > 236B > 214C > 236236D for damage j.BB > j.8D > 5AB for oki You can get to that route from a lot of things, including pretty much any AA.

Jam's execution was tougher for me to learn than Dizzy's, but it's kind of splitting hairs. They're both rather easy.

Between everything I've seen this weekend, I think I've reached maximum hype. It just can't get any better!

Isn't her OD called Elf Lied, like the German word? I think we could just copy the character overview from the BBCSE page, it's already well done. Although it doesn't really give much info about her playstyle.

http://www.twitch.tv/bibiquadium

FYI, not sure what you're using, but the combo thread hasn't been updated since...ever? There are some posts on the last few pages which outline the new best combos, use those. ex: 5B (CH) > 2D > 66 > 5B > 5C > j.C > dj.BB > dj.8D > 5AB

Fighting game experience carries between different games, so it's crazy to suggest that it wouldn't carry between different versions of the same game. Are you trying to say that somebody who has played BlazBlue for 4 years is at a disadvantage vs someone who has never touched BlazBlue until CP, because they've been training in "the wrong game"? Of course not. You get better at fighting games by playing fighting games.

Yeah. Whenever I want to practice my confirms or play through story mode or whatever, I usually set the AI around 60/Hard. The Hell AI reads your inputs basically every time, so you're not even playing a real game anymore. It's better practice to stomp a medium AI with your normal gameplan than play against the Hell AI and need to adjust/exploit certain strategies to win.

To be fair, Killer Frost and Sub-Zero are nothing alike, aside from the fact that they have moves involving ice.