Hi, I'm primarily a KOF fan. KOF12 being awful made me give BBCT a try, and I was surprised and pleased by its overall quality (I'm not a competitive player so the problems in that game didnt concern me.)
Through BBCT's netcode, I met members of my local scene and got a little bit more involved. So it's the first time I've ever been even vaguely competitive in FGs despite playing since KOF94 and SF2:WW back in the arcades. (I'm kinda old.) Now that KOF13 is out, I'm probably switching to that game, but I'm still interested in the health of BB.
I have some questions and comments. I'd say my reaction is pretty typical of casual players, so it may or may not be relevant or useful.
- Netplay tournaments and events.
BB is probably the closest an officially-released FG can get to being playable online. (until SG comes out with GGPO I guess.)
But the FGC isnt really used to online. How do Starcraft 2, DoTA, Counterstrike, etc, run successful events online? People who are wanting to run online events might want to investigate what those people do, what equipment they use, how they set up their tournaments etc. These are genres and games that have successful competitive scenes despite players being in entirely different continents. How do they do it?
- Getting casual/new players into the community.
I know everyone here compares BB to GG so it's considered an "easy" game. But the truth is, BB is really complicated. The barrier to entry (competitively) is very high.
If you look at match videos of KOF13, the game mostly revolves around poking, long combos are pretty rare. SF4 is more combo-based and has nasty stuff like tight links, but at the very least, when you learn a combo, you can probably use it in most iterations of the game. Also you can probably get by with knowing 3 or 4 short combos in either game, and feel like you can compete at a beginner/intermediate level.
But BB? Going to DL and trying to do stuff on the combo threads, is incredibly discouraging when you see this massive wall of text, and even if you pick out one or two to try, the combos listed are pretty difficult to even remember, let alone perform. Remember, in other games the longest thing you have to remember is normal > special > ultra or something simple like that.
In the past, some of the character sections here on Dustloop made a pretty structured effort to have newcomer-friendly guides. You'd have combos listed by difficulty, so "Beginner Combos", "Intermediate" etc for the character, which made things much less daunting. They also taught you the building blocks along the way, so you can see how the beginner combos are extended into intermediate ones etc.
This gets us to the other problem with BB - every sequel changes the gameplay for many characters quite significantly. Nothing you remembered works anymore. You have to memorise a whole new list of things, unlearn your old reflexes. Sure, hardcore players might enjoy going through the discovery process again, but to people who are time/effort poor, its just far too much work. If we want to attract as many people as possible to BB, we need to help make this process as painless as possible. (I played Taokaka in CT, so maybe I am especially bitter over this.)
Sadly, the trend is the opposite. Every time a new BB comes out, all the old character guide threads get archived, and are replaced with new threads that are less complete, less well-done, less-beginner friendly. I call it "guide fatigue", I think people who write these guides are just getting sick of updating them or something. If we want to reverse the decline of this game, then the community resources really need to be "rebooted". I hope when BBCS:EX has been released on console for a while and people have had a chance to learn it, we can get excellent guides written that match the best from previous BB games, nicely structured to lead people from beginner to expert.
Another barrier to entry (apart from combos) is the gameplay itself. BB (and I assume GG) have a strong focus on momentum and oki and corner damage. In SF or KOF, even when playing a better opponent, the game is in neutral a lot so I have a chance to press buttons and feel like I'm playing the game. In BB, against better players I am stuck in the corner watching them combo me for tens of seconds. Then they do a mixup as I get up, or punish my tech, and suddenly I'm back to watching combo movie again. (I play Lambda in CS2, so maybe I am especially bitter over this.)
I'm not complaining about the game (even though it sounds like I am), but I notice there's not really a lot of advice or gameplay guides on how to deal with this situation. If you want to bring new players to the competitive scene, they will often face better players, and they will often be stuck in the corner watching themselves get comboed over and over. So any guides written will have to pay special attention to how the game works, how to get out of pressure, when and where to tech, etc. I get the feeling most here just assume it's common knowledge since we have GG veterans and so forth.
Anyways, here I am telling people what to do without helping in any way, so maybe it's not good. If BB was a western-developed game, I would be saying these things in the official forums, trying to get the developers to include proper and good tutorials into their game. But since it's not, the community has to take up the slack, so I guess I'm trying to express the needs and problems casual/new players face when trying to become competitive in BB. Remember, regardless of how awesome the atmosphere of an event is, meeting other players, etc, people won't continue to come if the act of playing the game competitively is frustrating and unfun for them.
