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I played Xrd for the first time today. None of my favorite characters made the cut so I just played Ky. It's pretty impressive, actually. I went in almost entirely blind, having not watched any videos or anything, but it still plays the part of a Guilty Gear game. It hasn't been scrubbified (at least not in any immediately obvious way), nor does it feel too different to be called GG. I'll try to make the trip to Akiba more often, but between this, +R, and my recently developed addiction to DOA5... gah, too many games. Sent from my PTL21 using Tapatalk

My ass still hurts from those stools D: But aside from that good times! Nice getting to meet new faces and play and stuff. Kenji's place is the truth. Sent from my PTL21 using Tapatalk

Hi. I'll probably make it for this. Sent from my PTL21 using Tapatalk

Yeah, I mentioned in the Johnny forums that the anti-air alpha counter is stupid strong against any jump-in. Johnny's only real answer in that situation is to immediately KJ FRC and block, since I don't think it's punishable due to the blockstun. Re: Sakura, I took a look at the frame data (didn't know it was translated until now), and it is indeed possible to do Sakura entirely during hitstop. I'll have to do some testing of my own to see exactly how Mid MF beats it, but I have seen it done. Maybe Johnny was just out of range, but it looked like he was in range and possibly moved his hurtbox back via Mist Cancel. Again, to be tested. I guess I should also clarify that Johnny's forward dash isn't just faster, it also travels further. So now you have to worry about dash -> throw at the range Johnny typically likes to 2S at.

I really do think this matchup is awful for Baiken, but you have to watch out, as well. You don't wanna get caught pressing buttons at neutral, because razorcrane is no joke now. You also don't want to be recklessly jumping in, because that new alpha counter beats jump-ins without committing to a typical anti-air. The only way to beat it is to immediately cancel into KJ FRC, but it's not a free punish by any means. In short, this is a Street Fighter matchup. You're gonna be walking back and forth, and she's gonna be figuring out how she wants to approach you. It's up to you to stop her from getting in on you; and now that Mid Mist Finer is ridiculously strong, you can make her respect you at damn near full screen now. If she whiffs anything on the ground, you can punish it with Mid MF and get a chance to reposition yourself for oki. If that isn't the definition of 6-4, I don't know what is.

Hi. I play Johnny, but I fight a lot of Baiken players. I think Baiken struggles pretty bad against Johnny now. I might go as far as to say 6-4 for Johnny. In AC, the match was basically even; Johnny had the advantage of range and the ability to bait counters with good spacing, and Baiken had the advantage of reducing Johnny to one move blockstrings. In +R, however, I feel that the scales have tipped pretty heavily in Johnny's favor. The reasons for this being: - Faster Mist Cancels: Makes baiting counters that much easier. - Faster Forward Dash: Makes throwing you that much easier. - Upcoin: You already had to worry about anti-air coin any time you jumped against Johnny, now you have to worry about another coin arc that beats some otherwise convenient jump-in arcs. - Mid Mist Finer: This really seals the deal. It's a poke, it's an anti-air, it's a way to beat counters, and now it scores knockdown. Just because Johnny didn't immediately Mist Cancel that 5H you just blocked doesn't mean you should feel free to Sakura him for it; you may just eat a Mist Finer to the face. This is and always has been a very spacing specific matchup, so if I were a Baiken player I'd figure out ways to avoid getting hit by Mid MF at every range you can think of (at neutral as well as in blockstrings). This is easier said than done to be sure, since we're talking about a move that hits slightly further than Johnny's f.S and doesn't extend his hurtbox. Figured I'd share my thoughts since I know how scarce discussion like this is lately, and I have a good amount of experience fighting this character now so I feel somewhat qualified to comment.

lol I'll be at Mikado tomorrow if anyone cares to join.

Shit, I work until 4 tomorrow. Work is fucking me up lately lol.

what about them niners www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEWYTHQIBWo

You may find this useful.

Been awhile since I added anything to the playlist, or even had the time to watch matchvids. Enjoy, and pay close attention to how Satou spaces himself; it may save your life.

I'm down. You have a phone?

I'm actually currently writing a post on the key differences between American and Japanese players, as well as the reasons for those differences. The two biggest things by far are Japanese player's ability to change their playstyle immediately (whereas Americans typically change between rounds/matches/sets) and their superior offense. In simplest terms, playing against Americans feels like a well-rehearsed routine, whereas Japanese players will freestyle once the pace of the match is in their favor.

I played against BLEED a few times. He's a pretty fun opponent, though I think I pissed him off the last time we played because I landed an IK on him. :P There's a lot of Johnny players here, as you may expect. I've been complimented on my stepjack ability by most of the ones I've played against, and that's about all I'll claim to have on them. :P Johnny players tend to be more patient than most, which is how they overcome bad matchups (I've seen more than a few Zappas lose to patient Johnny players, which is telling me it may not be as bad as I first thought). Last I heard, Suzume only occasionally plays now. You'd be better off asking someone that plays at a-cho, though.

I'll probably be showing up in Mikado footage over the next few months, so I guess I'll start posting my own videos. This was my first 3v3 back in June. I was pretty nervous, and did as many things right as I did wrong, but I somehow feel satisfied with my performance.

Online play is a necessary evil, even if you live in an area with a decent scene. Like others here have said, you have to supplement what you learn from playing online with offline matches and training mode (more accurately, you should be supplementing offline play with netplay and training mode, but I digress). Specifically, you want to make sure that anything that seems particularly difficult to deal with isn't due to lag; if something seems wrong to you, chances are it is. That's why whenever you're done playing online, you should spend a few minutes in training mode to make sure that whatever you were losing to wasn't bullshit (though, again, it probably is). It'll also help you retain your offline sense of timing, which you should never consciously change in order to be able to play better online, but will sometimes subconsciously happen, anyways.

The first 100 pages of this thread are gold. I'll be back from Jan 14-28, though I may leave a few days earlier.

Ask Brett, he was in Nagoya for awhile. If you can ever make it to Kanagawa, Yokohama Freedom is certifiably The Shit™. Though if you make it that far, you may as well make the pilgrimage to Mikado.

Perhaps our definition of decent differs, or perhaps I give people too much credit. Even so, I've seen people with backgrounds in other games (namely Marvel) pick up GG with relative ease. Not that they become what I would call a strong player overnight, but they learn the game well enough in a short amount of time that it puts my early days of GG to shame. I have, also, noticed a tendency for these same players to hit a wall after their initial progression. This is probably due to them allowing their backgrounds in other games carry them to that point, so I guess it's a double edged sword. While I do agree with your overall point, I also think that focusing on gimmicks at lower levels of play tends to foster an inherently gimmicky playstyle. Which, for a player who has already grasped how the game works, isn't a bad thing at all. But for a player who is starting from a clean slate, it's best to have them focus on the basics. Again, that's not to say that gimmicky play doesn't have its time and place, but the early stages of learning how to play fighting games is not one of them.

I might be inclined to agree that it's too much to ask of beginners, except that Marvel 3 is the second most played fighting game in the US. A decent Marvel 3 player can easily keep up with the pace of Guilty Gear, if you ask me. For someone like that, learning the game is less a matter of fundamentals and more a matter of learning a character and the game's mechanics. It doesn't take very long for most (dedicated) people to get decent at Marvel 3, nor should it take that long to get to intermediate level Guilty Gear, either. Granted, it's easy to become a strong player, and then in hindsight claim that a game isn't that hard to learn, but I'd like to think I can still remember what it was like to first learn the game. It was difficult, and it took a long time for me to get to a level where I could even be considered competitive on a local scale. There were a lot of reasons why I feel it took so long, and one of them you briefly touched upon: a lot of players don't help. But the reasons why those players don't help is where this discussion gets interesting, and quite off topic from this thread (which is somehow still alive).

The crazy thing is that Guilty Gear is really not that different from SF in the sense that you're talking about. Jumping in is still risky, it's just not downright suicidal. You want your SF forward jump? IAD. You want your SF neutral jump? Well, you can have that too, and you can even choose between two normal jumps or a super jump. You want your crouching forward? For most characters it's 2S. You want your fireball? The Slash button will suffice. DP? This game has zero frame air throws for a reason. It's not that the game is unintuitive per se, it's just that it assumes you already have a strong foundation on which to build. If you go in to the game with no fundamentals to speak of, then it seems much more daunting than it actually is. Which is no different from Street Fighter, really.

Indeed, I neglected the most important part of his question. I remember reading about that glitch a long time ago, but I honestly forgot about it until you brought it up.

All the game cares about when you JI is if you hit an upward direction. You don't get more forward momentum by using 9 instead of 8 or anything like that. I kind of touched on this in another thread, but JI KJ is dependent on a lot of factors. Spacing before you hit KJ is one of those things. This is where a lot of people (myself included) misjudge and end up screwing up the combo. The ideal spacing for Enkasu after JI KJ can be achieved by doing the following combo: 2P 2P 5K 8 5HS -> KJFRC Past that, you also have to worry about hitting the other guy after KJ. The rule of thumb is the sooner you get your air normal out, the better. If you want to practice this the hard way, but the way that will really teach you how to do it, try buffering j.H after KJ. You have to strum from P+K+S to H very quickly, but that timing with which you hit H can carry over to any other air normal. Otherwise, you can learn with j.S as well, but you might get some false negatives if you screw something else up later in the combo (timing between j.D and Ensenga, for instance). Alternatively, if you're in the business of spending meter, you can always just do something like j.SK KJ 6FRC6 KPDE, to get the momentum necessary for Enkasu from the airdash.

If you're in Kanagawa, you should definitely make it up to Yokohama. There's a lot of arcades right next to the station, my favorite being Freedom.

Look past his demeanor, and you'll find this to be true. However, it hasn't been as bad in recent times as it has been in the past. 2008-2010 were some seriously dark times for this forum, largely due to what reaVer said above. As I see it, there has been a slight shift. Maybe it's been a gradual change of the old guard thanks to BB and P4U, but the general attitude towards new players has improved from when I first started playing. There's not nearly as much of a leech gang mentality in local scenes anymore, and people are more willing to help, it seems. Are we just getting old and pacifistic? Perhaps, but I see it in the newer players, too. When I went to NEC last year, I was actually impressed at the overall level of US Guilty Gear. There's really no comparison to how it was back in 08; people are actually improving at a steady rate, which leads to stronger competition overall. Some people like the crucible, either because they truly believe it produces better players (which isn't true) or simply because they're assholes. For the rest of us, all we can do is contribute in any way we can.