TITANIUM BEAST!!!

Hey MTP, I just realized that I probably copped your UMvC3 by mistake. Opened the case and it had the backwards manual and everything.

Thanks for coming out last night Austin, great to see you again before you head back to Atlanta. GGs last night, sorry I abandoned you guys early on, especially after insisting there be a BB setup. I hope you guys enjoyed getting a crack at Extend, at the very least. I'll probably focus on KOF until February when Extend hits the US. In the meantime, just gotta practice more Ragna stuff. His damage is silly.

Well I'm actually off this coming week, so getting some games in prior to that should be okay. I just thought you might be headed back soon.

Austin, you gonna have any opportunities to play this weekend before headed back to GA?

I got Extend, but KOF is really fun, so I dunno. Need gathering for BB.

It really sucks, cuz pretty much all of my close friends come from the gaming community, but I barely get to see or talk to them anymore. Church folk are very nice, but it takes more than a year to form a close friendship.

Priorities change and it's hard to balance things sometimes. When I was younger and much more irresponsible, it was no big deal spending a bunch of time playing games, watching videos for games, and thinking mostly about games. I probably still think about games more than I should, but finding the time to actually play them is another story. Honestly, I'm pretty close to being done with competitive fighters. I really need to ramp up my efforts in school so I can graduate before I turn 40.

We played BB at Jon's place last night, though it was just me, Frank and Dale. I'm super rusty at that game. But basically, people just need to show up and have a setup for BB. Stick, sorry bro, won't be making it to NEC this year. First year I haven't attended any majors. =(

I wouldn't say proximity. Goldsboro is still a long drive even from Raleigh.

Perfect! Thank you so much, bro.

Dude, I love the Ragna one. You think you could do one with this recolor? I would appreciate it. Thanks!

shrug if you can somehow get myself and Matt into a gathering, produce a PS2 and say "hey, let's play Gear", then Gear will be played. Of course, I'm ghost these days, so whatever.

Depends on which tier list you look at. Plus it's still the same overall tier, regardless of how far "down" the list he is he's still B. The only low tier is Tager.

Ragna was B-tier throughout CS2. I don't believe that qualifies him as low. As far as his rank in Extend, it will, as always, be dependent on matchups. Ragna can have terrible mixup and no good pressure, but if matchups work out such that everyone loses to 5B-5C into 4k combo, then he'll be a good character. And we don't know all the changes yet. Honestly, people shouldn't even be thinking about where he'll sit in the rankings, they should just be focused on what's new with the character.

We usually fly. I think we drove there once, maybe twice, and then after that we decided flying was better.

We'll see how my schedule is looking as the time approaches. I <3 NEC and I haven't been to a major all year, so that may be my only opportunity.

Watching part 1 now. Will have detailed opinions later. I really wish people would just stop using the term 'abare'.

I'm very much up for BB gatherings, provided they happen on a Saturday.

IB on ground in CS2 is -3 frames from blockstun, in air it's -6. Like Austin said, you have to remain aware of your opponent's options regardless, but IBing reduces blockstun and pushout AND gives you free meter. You can also combine it with Barrier to get the benefits of both types of guard, at the expense of only taking off 2 frames of guardstun on the ground and 5 in the air.

shrug I'll play, but I have to make it out to a gathering/tournament first, lol. I'll be busy this weekend, so no Charlotte for me. And yes, I'd rather play GG. But I will still play BB. Most of the scene around here isn't interested, though.

His pokes are way too good given the type of character he is. On their own, they're not amazing, but given the nature of his playstyle, normal poke and zone games don't work on him, which ends up making his pokes way better than they actually are. I'll go into more detail at some point later on. Nerfed 6A is friggin' awesome, if you ask me (hater by admission). Having that move for AA was just overkill and eliminated one of the few ways someone could potentially navigate around his nonsense. Carl's not easy to play, but when played properly, he just seems too good.

Sounds like NC for the past couple of weeks. It's probably karma for leaving us. =P

;_; Sadface

Here's hoping they put Bloodedge in and they hopefully make him super-cheap.

Not true. Tekken is actually pretty defensive, the game is basically ruled by movement and spacing. Offense starts happening when someone gets knocked down because oki in Tekken is strong (walls help too). Soul Calibur is another very defensive game. The only really offensive 3D game I can think of that is popular is Virtua Fighter. There are two common ways to encourage offensive play: oki, or frametraps. Having good mixup is another way. The problem is that all three of these elements have been de-emphasized in recent games. Frametraps are especially more rare now. Think about why IB was nerfed in CS2; with most moves having terrible recovery on block, IB just made it too easy to play defensively and punish people for trying to attack you. As a result, there was a lot more of this ambiguous pokey-footsie play into big combos, into a wakeup setup if your character was fortunate enough to have good oki. You have to have something to compensate, though. I wouldn't mind a weak oki game if I had a strong standing mixup game. Unfortunately, because most of these games are aimed at including newer players, there is more emphasis on designing the game to reward players who "mash out" random attacks. This is why the stand up offensive game is weak, it's generally very difficult to keep players honest or force mixups on them. And since a smart player will take the most effective route to win, you end up with more zoning/turtling/poking and less actual offense. It's not that I don't understand why the developers make games the way they do. I pretty much get why the games are designed the way they are now, and from a business perspective, it's borderline genius. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. It lends a sort of impermanence to the game, where it's just not very rewarding or entertaining to play after a certain point.