TITANIUM BEAST!!!

I highly doubt anyone will ever notice it while playing, it only needs to be recognizable. Lower quality also deters people who rip music directly from the game, and helps to ensure some market for the OST.

I'd say if you're looking for j.D, it's probably quite reactable. j.H though? Good luck.

Oh believe me, I get it. It's just the easiest example I could think of. A more realistic example would be, say, table tennis, another hobby I was briefly into. I did a fair bit of research and practice into it, and while I got much better over a short period of time, the physical requirements to be truly good were a bit beyond me, and it was much more time consuming that fighting games, even without doing a lot of physical conditioning, which would have been a requirement if I desired to get much better at it. Even then, there would be players whose physique and training would have made it much harder for me to compete against them. That's a much better example of talent and genetics interfering with one's ability to be competitive in an activity than fighting games, IMO. Though interestingly enough, my experience in playing fighters allowed me to adapt my approach to beat players who were in better physical shape and had been playing TT longer, simply by applying strategic concepts of pattern recognition and conditioning.

I was being sarcastic. I really do understand this perspective, it's just ultimately useless when you consider that this is supposed to be a forum where people go to try and improve in fighting games. It makes no sense to put so much focus on aspects which you have no control over, which is why I get sick and tired of people continually bringing it up. The original topic was "core skills that every great player has mastered", so what is the point of repeatedly bringing up talent? It's guys like this rubedo777 dude who like to repeatedly bring up stupid shit like "being Japanese > anything else", that exemplify this type of useless thinking. It has nothing to do with "being realistic" or everyone not being a "shounen manga protagonist". It's just more excuses and leads to self-imposed mediocrity and idol worship of top level players. Now, I don't come down on the side of the "you can do anything if you just believe!!!" crowd. There is a real value to understanding yourself and how you learn things in contrast to what skills a particular activity demands of you, but this is purely a personal exercise, and comparing yourself to other players, outside of trying to learn from their example, is largely pointless. The main point, in the end, is that fighting games are far, far more "democratic" of an activity than many other competitive sports where this talent/effort argument exists. I'm 32 years old, clinically obese, and very much out of shape. The idea of me being a professional American football player, for example, would be a pipe dream, and I'm fully aware of that. I could quit everything and push all my focus towards that goal starting today, and even with the best diet and training regimen, even if I were to beat myself into the best physical condition possible, and even if I were to put all of my time and effort towards learning as much as possible about how to play football, the chances of me making it in the pros would be extremely small. But fighting games are not fucking football! All you really need is a working pair of hands (not even that, as cases have shown), a functioning brain, and the desire and opportunity to learn and improve. It may not happen overnight, it may not happen in even a few years, but it is far, far more attainable than most of these talent/genetics pushers would like people to believe. My own personal experience is really all I need to affirm this viewpoint. I grew up with a competitive mindset, but during the days when I would play other people in the arcades as a kid, I don't think anyone would have said that I was particularly talented as a player. I entered my first tournament in 2001, and while I secured a top 3 placing, it was in a game no one was really playing at the time (GGX). Over the years, as GG got more popular, my performance in tournaments dropped, and I was forced to put real effort into improving. By 2010 I was a known competitive player, albeit not the best, but good enough to place well at majors. Fast forward to 2014, and after a 4 year hiatus from traveling, I win my first major. Progress is progress, even if the speed it moves at is pretty glacial.

You're right man, genetics trump all and everyone else is just wasting their time playing these games, we should just give up. =/

Did you read the comment section on that article? I didn't see a single positive or affirmative comment on the subject, and some other interesting points were brought up about how the aspects being tested had little to nothing to do with actual musical ability. I don't like it when people keep flogging this point of 'talent'. All you're doing is creating an excuse for players to use when they don't want to put the effort into getting better. Someone who believes that they are not 'talented' will never be able to attain their maximum potential, at least not without some other extremely strong source of motivation. It just feels like such a useless exercise to keep examining the concept of talent.

I can't argue about actual hitboxes, but damage opportunity off of normals is much greater for Sol in Xrd, for a couple of reasons. The new RC system is the obvious one, since it makes 5S and 5HS convert into massive damage at poking range, something that Sol has never really had before. The second change is that they made j.K jump cancellable, something that initially seems rather innocuous and mundane, but ends up giving him a whole host of new combo routes. The most significant effect of new j.K is that hitting someone with 5K's second hit as anti air leads to better combo outcomes, especially in the corner, which consequently makes 5K much easier to use as an anti air and much stronger as well. It all adds up to Sol being an absolute beast at neutral now, whereas in AC/+R he was pretty lackluster without meter for GF FRC.

This could be equated to opportunity, as Japan still has a very active arcade scene, gets all of the big arcade titles first, and has an extremely dense player population. There is nothing magical about being Japanese, they simply have the best opportunity to improve.

It can eat inputs, or in the case of certain OSes like the throw/6P OS, you slow their 6P down so that they get bodied by your airdash attack and eat a ton of damage.

Matchup drives me nuts, personally, but I guess I just haven't gotten the hang of it yet from Sol's perspective. Too many years of playing HOS.

Sorry for the double post, but: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jul/07/can-science-spot-talent-kaufman Food for thought.

Let's not bring sports into the equation, because sports and fighting games are not equivalent in the sense of required physical aptitude. I know for a fact that no matter how hard I work, outside of taking steroids, I will never match the required physique of an NFL player, and thus I am barred from that realm of competition. But even in that realm, there is such a thing as working hard, and pretty much any professional athlete spends countless hours honing their craft. Natural talent can only take you so far. Now when it comes to video games, the barrier of entry is much smaller, and the skills required to be a high level player are very much attainable for almost anyone. It's why several of the old top US players were ham-handed when it came to execution, yet still compete with no problem. Most people just don't want to put the requisite time in because "it's video games, man." I don't care how "naturally talented" you are at something, if you don't put in the work and someone else does, you will get wrecked eventually.

This is ridiculous. If it weren't for SF, GG wouldn't even exist. Consider how smart this is, that you think your game is the best, and you think everyone should play it, but your way of convincing people of this viewpoint is to diss other games. If I were a SF player, I'd take one look at this thread and think "what a fucking childish scrub, you probably suck ass at SF." Please grow up. Your favorite game != the best game. Just play what you like and leave subjective topics like this alone.

I would think that after blocking Elk Hunt, the situation is probably even or in Sin's favor, because of how slow Faust's normals are. His fastest normal is 6 frames (5P), and his 2P is 7 frames, so being at +2, Sin should have plenty of options there. From farther ranges it may be iffy, since I don't play the matchup enough to be familiar with how their normals interact in close-to-even situations.

You only get proration if you hit during the slowdown. Depending on what you made the opponent whiff with, you may get a massive punish.

Link with info? I just wanna make sure. And yeah, this would definitely fall under a limited and advanced application. Something to use when you're pretty sure of what's going to happen next and you have awesome timing.

I can't find anywhere where this is mentioned in either the Dustloop or the 4gamer wiki. Wonder if it's a glitch?

Yeah, Sol in chaotic style is kinda 50/50. I think it is beneficial to play him in that way sometimes, since he becomes very linear if you play him too "honest", but the risk can be really high since almost all of his moves are either telegraphed and/or unsafe in some way.

Toxicity exists in every community, but when 1. your community is already small in comparison to others, and 2. the main hallmark of your chosen game is that it's "harder" and "takes more skill", not only is this toxicity more damaging, but it's easier for it to spread and become pervasive. SF4 has far more potential for toxicity due to the much larger player base, but consequently, because of how huge it is, some toxicity is not as damaging to it. Likewise with Tekken. But when your game is niche like GG, the last thing you want to do is push people away. Nearly every single person counts. And when GG is known for being "hard", it becomes very easy for players in the GG community to radiate this toxicity by mistakenly taking pride in their favorite game being more hardcore and serious, and subsequently putting down other games when the opportunity arises. I understand this doesn't have anything to do with netcode, but it is relevant to the topic in the sense of how to make the GG community strong and keep it that way. We don't have the luxury to just shit on everything else. It's also just stupid, because pretty much every game has something to bring to the table. SF4 might be a bad Street Fighter game, but it's still Street Fighter, basically the progenitor of 2D fighting as we know it. SF4 will test skills that you may not get to exercise in GG, like how to play your ground game when you can't just run in for free and guard safely, or how to open up an opponent when you don't have free 50/50 high/low mixups off of a knockdown. Tekken requires a baseline level of execution just to be able to move properly at a competitive level; lazy players will get nowhere in that game. Get out of here with that mess. The whole "my game is da best" approach is juvenile and helps no one.

Guilty_X: It's the views of players like you which push away people who might otherwise give GG a fair shake. The perceived elitism of the "anime" community is toxic to growth.

As the late Bob Ross, once said, talent is merely applied interest. Some of the best FG players are old men who have just played way more and are far more experienced.

Funny, I heard that pre-reg for Final Round was pretty big (183 last I checked?). Instead of people doom-and-glooming about the supposed lack of forum activity, maybe people are just too busy actually playing the game?

I was still able to get 214K [6] followups after 6 Drivers. Crazy damage for no meter off of 5D.

Pretty much the same way the Burst OS works. Here's a vid. http://youtu.be/FZ8fs-nEnYM

After some experimenting, I'm surprised this isn't a bigger thing either. I had my suspicions when I saw a Millia player do it in a match (used BS as an anti air, went for 2HS after and YRCed when the other player tried to Return), and after testing it a little more, it's not only legit, but really powerful. Essentially, if you have the right amount of meter, it makes BSing at certain junctions a no-brainer, because you get guaranteed damage either way, and if the opponent attempts a Return, they take a much heavier punish than they would otherwise AND they lose the meter.