Coffeeling

I guess certain phrasings in the vein of "ogawa doesn't know how to play" hurt more than I thought. Ah, fuck. Went and edited the original, preserving the original idiocy in strikethrough. I started the stupidity with my own flippant use of language, might as well stop it.

Would people be less angry if I went and edited the sorry post that started this all to say "suboptimally"? Because that was in the end the point. But bleh. Open season on Coffeelings, feuer frei.

Manners <3, thanks for that. Much nicer to answer "That claim is kinda outrageous, examples please" than "plz show video where ogawa sucks" or "ogawa, so you're wrong". That ogawa relies on Eddie a bit too much is just a feeling built up over watching Zato matches, where the Eddie-heavy style just feels kind of... frail, I guess? Like, it's built up over tons of small snippets of Zato trying to assert control with Eddie and suffering for it, where a button would've been really good. This is Xrd only, mind you. Invincible -P- and more horizontal Mawaru do a ton of work in AC. Watching ogawa's matches from today, an example of the kind of situation that bothers me can be found at: http://www.twitch.tv/joniosan/b/571955704 1:14:08 - 1:14:21. These kinds of exchanges just feel highly troublesome. The sequence just before 1:15:00 also highlights just how much more stable asserting control with buttons and getting the summon off that way feels. And immediately #R shadow does what #Rshadow does best, takes over the game and Ky is in the corner, dead. The start of the second round is also a good contrast - far Slash asserts control immediately and solidly. String into drill, puddle summon. Ky punishes, but Eddie doesn't go into penalty and Ogawa can quickly capitalize with pressure.

Speaking of "Ogawa is pretty good tho", I want to buy altar construction supplies. That Eddie control is absolutely unreal. <3_<3

Ogawa live. I'll glue myself to the screen now.

I'd have to buy Ultra though ;_;

@Ogawa talk I have not once claimed that ogawa sucks. The man is a monster and I said as such in the first post. Playing "wrong" does not preclude one from being a monster. All I have said is that he could (and IMO, should) retool his style to align better with Xrd Zato's strengths to become even more monstrous. Everyone knows Ogawa is the undisputed master of little Eddie use - To illustrate the point: FAB. We all agree Pochumpkin is a suboptimal strategy in Xrd. Yet FAB is a monster and just destroys people. If we applied that same argument to claims of Potemkin being bad, they'd all be invalid because FAB is so good. That doesn't make sense. Second example: Daigo Umehara vs. Infiltration from EVO 2012 top8 to Mad Catz Unveiled. Here we saw an absolute monster, a legend of the genre lose consecutively, over and over, in the same repetitive pattern. Some people - me included - brought up mistakes they thought Daigo was making in the matchup, while others shouted us down because clearly Daigo just knew better and if he played that way that's because he had to and had no choice. The Ryu-Akuma matchup was abundantly clearly lopsided in Akuma's favour, in their minds. Yet those claims just didn't make sense. Ryu and Akuma were evenly enough matched in the areas that mattered in the matchup for those claims to be sensible. Yet Daigo lost, again, again, again. No one he didn't know his character. If anyone knew their way around those two characters in the neutral game, it was Daigo and Infiltration. Then Mad Catz Unveiled rolled around, and Infiltration got torn to shreds in one of the worst curbstomps in the game's history. Why? Because Daigo finally found those things that were wrong in his conception of the match and fixed them. He implemented many things people pointed out would've been beneficial like standing far enough away that Infiltration couldn't just focus dash into combos when he threw fireballs, and threw a couple surprises of his own into the mix, like the way he used DPs to get subjected to less mixups and get chanced to land Ultra without spending meter. The saved meter then did work on further cementing his newfound edge in the footsie game. He had been wrong for months, but now he slew his demon with ease. Would anyone have said "Daigo sucks"? No. Daigo was clearly a monster, and a very knowledgeable monster at that. But even knowledgeable monsters can be wrong, as he himself proved. This is why I don't buy arguments like "Look, idiot, Ogawa is thiiisss much better than your sorry ass so clearly you're wrong". It's an appeal to authority with no reason behind it. It's empty, just shouting someone else down for daring to have an opinion. I have a pair of eyes and a functional brain, and I'm going to use them, sorry.

"How the %¤%/&()U&¤/()/ do I learn Zato?"

Dunno if I agree with ogawa's assessment of Ramlethal. IMO, she seems more solid than Zato does. Better buttons, her Eddies don't die. Instead of controlling time (=endless katame/asynchornous assault) in a 2d game (though she can setup monstrous lockdown in the corner and has great carry juggles), she controls space. I'd easily say she's a more solid character than Zato is for now. I think there's room to develop in Zato play, a lot of room, but atm the chops just aren't there. Zato's only monster is Ogawa, and he's playing the character wrong a bit suboptimally(IMO). He plays with Eddie as the base, Zato as a complement when the current cast is really good at murdering Eddie and when #R/Xrd Zato is about Zato's strong buttons and Eddie-fueled timing lockdown, with Eddie having relatively weak space control tools compared to AC where Zato's buttons were wimpier and Eddie was a space control monster. Ogawa's style is a perfect fit for AC, not for Xrd. Lesser Zato players play with Zato as a base and fill the holes in his game with Eddie - as #R/Xrd Zato is meant to I think, but they aren't there yet as far as level goes. Solid, but not monstrous. Ogawa is a monster but he needs to retool could get more out of Zato by retooling his play.

I was really surprised to see a Zato at Mikado.

Can someone who understands moon runes tell me if Faust's 6P is an actual reversal this time?

Haha! Bomb => 5K 5K 5K 5K :D

I want him to play Zato Kappa That lack of rep is saddening, but hard character is hard I guess.

Top tier =/= easy. Him getting farther with Ky may just be an issue of comfort. Humans have a limited "tank" of willpower usable throughout the day (gets recharged by sleep and/or food) that's consumed by doing willpower-requiring things or locking in decisions. The more you go against your natural urges, the faster the tank depletes. So over the course of a long tournament it can really pay off to play a character where the stuff you do by following your natural impulses is the correct stuff to do, even if you have to play a bit more precisely or have lower damage output. If Machabou's natural style aligns with Ky more than Sol, it helps him stay on point for longer which would probably help in getting deep in long tournaments.

I don't understand that mentality myself. If I have local players who like playing #R, where's the harm? Especially if the purpose of playing is to prep for Xrd. It's like #R is judged by different standards than AC+R. Feels like #R could be near identical to Xrd and people would still be told to play AC+R. Now, if your local scene plays AC+R predominantly? Yes, play AC+R. But I just don't get wtf people have to boo #R as a method of Xrd prep specifically.

#R Eddie and Xrd Eddie are mostly the same character. There are changes to how you use the shadow and how movement feels and such, but they're far closer to each other than +R Eddie is to either one.

Just building off your post and making fun of people who cried about FRC removal and stuff and basically interpreted Ishiwatari saying "slower" and "easier" as "snail-paced" and "purpose-built for drooling morons".

But it's just a dumbed down snail-paced version of the game with interesting metered options just taken out right? Right?

Ishiwatari designed Bedman. It's kind of sad how the game that gets most attention and sponsorship and whatnot overall is a sloppy, bug-ridden mess.

He doesn't understand reality, please stop trying.

The ignore button exists, people. Use it.

You've mixed up the titles in the OP :P ^ ??? Needs a switcheroo I think :P

He's right though. Weak characters to the point you feel they've strewn the parts of a single enjoyable character over 3-4 or so, horrid movement, shoddy system design, wonky hitboxes, bugs and oversights that I don't even know how they managed them, and the list just goes on. I'm an 2012'er, ffs. And if it wasn't for KOF13 and old games, I wouldn't be playing fighting games anymore. It was fucking amazing to realize that hey, actually just doing stuff in a fighting game can be fun. Or that half the roster makes me want to play them instead of it being a struggle to find one that doesn't feel like ass. Or to feel at ease throwing fireballs? You know, that feeling you just don't have in Street Fighter because some tool dials ultra to punish you because you dared to throw a fireball. Fullscreen. And he does that on reaction. Because he got bopped previously. And it's not because KOF and GG are crazy. It literally feels better to play a dry character like Chun or Ken in 3S on a laggy emulator than playing SF4.

RIP Zato, all hail our Ram-chan overwaifus

I want to reiterate that it's just a feeling I get from watching different Zato players play. I can't express the reasons in terms of logic, but that's just a feeling that has developed from watching people play.