posted 04-25-2003 04:36 PM               

You are mostly right, but wrong on roll cancelling. I like the fact that you purposely left out the SBO results, which tell a different tale than EVO, aka "US CVS2 scrubs vs. people who know how to actually play."

Daigo has a very feared Guile, even though RCing is a small part of Guile's game. Roll cancelling barely helps Sak at all, yet a Sak team won SBO.

US players lost at EVO because they weren't very good, end of story. The RCing was a part of that, but only a part. If you jump at Honda you will get hit by a headbutt, whether it is RC'd or not. Pick Ryu and throw slow fireballs from across the screen, that will stop Honda RCing. Choi got frustrated, and his frustation led to mistakes. The fact is, Honda doesn't win for free because of RCs.

Furthermore, "the better player lost" can be said for a lot of games, notably A3 and "my VC beat your all-around game." The better player, minus VCs, can easily lose in A3. But, everyone knows about VCs, they aren't a big secret. RCs in CVS2 weren't a big secret either. The Japanese were just better at using them, and not coincidentally were better at every other aspect of CVS2 as well.

Here is your logic:

1: RCs are too good, because
2: Everyone lost to RC Honda
3: But, other players/chars can use RCs
4: So, RC + Honda is actually too good

Logical conclusion: RC Honda is the best character.

Except he isn't. Oops.

posted 04-28-2003 04:27 PM               

*I'd better not learn to play to win by fighting real players or I'd die too much

posted 04-30-2003 04:11 AM            

Nah, I think Roll Canceling adds a lot to the game. It actually isn't that hard to do in reality, and it adds a lot to the game. Consider this:

Before roll canceling was known, most people complained about Blanka, Sagat and Cammy because of their high priority fierces. While roll canceling was still somewhat new in the US during Evo, if you look at the teams, most of them had either Blanka, Sagat, or both (exception being Ken and Bas with their A groove teams).

Sagat's Fierce in particular was very annoying because it was fast and high priority. A Sagat player could always resort to a c. Fierce whenever he was in a sticky situation. The only "counters" to c. Fierce were what: super/dp (not safe), command counter (not safe), JD (somewhat safe), Parry (not too safe), or CC (waste meter). Basically, a lot of your options against C. Fierce were either too risky or they didn't help the situation much. Thats why I think of Roll Canceling as the "esoteric" counter to C. Fierce.

Now, few people complain about C. Fierce, but many people complain about Roll Canceling now. Is there a counter to roll canceling? Well, results at SBO seem to indicate hope in Just Defense (Ino), and also a guy named Iyo, although his style of play may only work for him. He plays N-Groove Rolento/Maki(2)/Dhalsim, and he doesn't roll cancel, yet he's one of the top players in Japan. Obviously there is a counter to Roll Canceling...perhaps it hasn't been discovered yet.

Also notice what kind of teams qualified for SBO. Wheras the common belief was that Sagat and/or Blanka, (insert top tier here) was necessary to win, almost every character was represented. SBO demonstrated that every character has the potential to be on a championship caliber team, indicating that CvS2 is quite balanced now.

posted 05-02-2003 05:59 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by SWPIGWANG:
5/60 seconds.....

*I'd better not learn to play to win by fighting real players or I'd die too much

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I think you'd be shocked by what the top fighting game players need to do in order to play at their level. In some of the newer fighters (Tekken 4 probably being the primest example), some characters have moves where you must hit a button within a 3/60th, 2/60th, or even 1/60th of a second time window, with no mercy for man's inability to distinguish between "depressing this little button at this exact time" and "depressing this little button at this EXACT time." And most tournament winners will be able to perform these moves with near-perfect accuracy; it's almost a necessity with some characters to be able to do so.

These moves are called "Just Frames," because a *frame* is 1/60th of a second, and you have to hit the button at *just* the right moment, or you will pay (free punishment is guaranteed if you mistime many Just Frames). Most games run at 60 frames per second (FPS), but even a 15-frame drop in FPS is all but imperceptable to the human eye. All this considered, it's scary to think what the future might hold, no?

posted 05-02-2003 11:24 PM            

I submitted the play to win articles to my gaming group back in the day to see their responses. They hated the article. Why? Because to them, Street Fighter is a "game". Games are for fun, for relaxing, and for passing time.

Now Sirlin already addressed that. He already mentioned that those who play for fun shoouldn't even bother with his articles. His stuff was for those interested in higher level play. My gaming group still had a problem with that for several reasons.

1. Sportsmanship. Or lack thereof. By advocating winning at all costs, sportsmanship breaks down. Where do you draw the line? Besides, what is fun for one person, isn't fun for another. This is part of the demise of street fighter in Arcades, as people view street fighter players as anti-social a**holes. My gaming group equated it to PKing in a MMORPG. Basically they felt that playing in such a style was the same as enjoying inducing suffering in others by player killing them at the worst possible times. Higher level play is about the beauty of the game at the highest level. But a little girl coming up to play street fighter isn't about to play at the highest level. There is no beauty in beating her down like that. It's classless. If it only affected yourself, then maybe I could advocate it. But sometimes playing to win means being an a** to people who don't deserve it. Just because you can play to win doesn't necessarily make it right. I might add that those who do the best in street fighter are often very classy people. I've seen John Choi lose games on purpose to be classy. Are you saying John's a scrub?

posted 05-03-2003 08:39 AM            

A scrub is someone who gets beat in competitive play, and whines at the "unfair" tactics, because they don't want to admit that the game they've been playing isn't where the real competition is at.

If you don't care that you aren't playing at that level, then perhaps some might call you a "scrub", but that'd be more an indication of your skill level perhaps, and certainly doesn't carry near the negative connotations (if any at all) that being a scrub because you don't have a clue does.

posted 05-03-2003 05:09 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by scuddman:
1. Sportsmanship. Or lack thereof. By advocating winning at all costs, sportsmanship breaks down. Where do you draw the line? Besides, what is fun for one person, isn't fun for another. This is part of the demise of street fighter in Arcades, as people view street fighter players as anti-social a**holes. My gaming group equated it to PKing in a MMORPG. Basically they felt that playing in such a style was the same as enjoying inducing suffering in others by player killing them at the worst possible times. Higher level play is about the beauty of the game at the highest level. But a little girl coming up to play street fighter isn't about to play at the highest level. There is no beauty in beating her down like that. It's classless. If it only affected yourself, then maybe I could advocate it. But sometimes playing to win means being an a** to people who don't deserve it. Just because you can play to win doesn't necessarily make it right. I might add that those who do the best in street fighter are often very classy people. I've seen John Choi lose games on purpose to be classy. Are you saying John's a scrub?

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I agree with your statement of "what is fun for one person, isn't fun for another." But considering losing to someone who is playing their best "less fun" than losing to someone who is holding back out of pity is just foolish: the game should be fun for you no matter what the outcome, even if someone defeated you with the same tactic repeated ad naseum that you couldn't beat (after all, doesn't that provide you a new challenge?).

Now, a scrub couldn't be expected to overcome most degenerate tactics, as he is so lost in this pathetic, mediocrity-endorsing logic that he'd rather whine than try. As long as the higher-level player's priorities (fun through perfection) differ from the scrub's (fun through imperfection), the expert will be blameless for making the match "less fun" for the scrub, for the simple reason of "it's the scrub's problem." It is foolish to expect a high-level player to embrace hypocrisy and nurture a self-defeating attitude when it is clearly against his beliefs. Are the Yankees "a**es" because they don't do ballet on the field whenever they're up in points?

quote:

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Originally posted by scuddman:
2. Breakdown. Some people consider high level play a good thing. My gaming group considered it a terrible thing. Why? Because of the concept of breakdown. By playing the game at the highest possible level, the game gets broken down into its key, mathematical components. Look at Marvel 2. That game was incredibly popular while people were still designing new teams and strategies. Interest in the game has died down. Why? Because Justin Wong and the other high level players broke the game down into top tier war. The big 4, storm, sentinel, cable, and magneto. Then you see the same crap over and over again. When you play you do the same crap over and over again. Simply put, that's boring. The idea of high level play is that if you come up with a tactic, people come up with countertactics. However, what people forget is that sometimes high level tactics remove other tactics that would otherwise be viable. This breakdown is terrible for the game. You will find that in professional sports the comissioners of sports are always changing the rules to make the game more playable. You don't get that in Street Fighter, so breakdown always occurs. So you change the rules within the gaming group...but you call that scrubby. No, as you see in professional sports and internet gaming, that's called smart.

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posted 05-09-2003 12:25 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by garyamort:
Add General Tommy Franks to your list of historical scrubs, I mean the guy did not use Chemical, Biological, or Nuclear weapons to speed up his victory. Heck, he even followed the Geneva convention's during his war. What a scrub. :-)

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See, the funny thing about a lot of this game theory talk is the fact that games exist within games.

No war is a game by itself; it's part of a larger game that includes prosperity of the powers engaging in the war. Obviously acts of diplomacy (like not violating the Geneva Convention) is playing to win that particular game, since you want to prevent other wars on some level.

Chess tournaments feature matches, not single games. It's possible that you might have two mutually exclusive courses of action, one of which gives you a %40 chance of winning while the other gives you a %50 chance of drawing. If you're playing to win the chess game, you might go with the "win" option. If you're already up on game wins for the match though, you'll likely go with the "draw" option. You're still playing to win, you're just playing to win the greater game.

quote:

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Everyone is a scrub. Those who aren't scrubs waste oxygen. Your not playing at a "higher level" your playing on a different plane, with your own set of informal rules that are still restrictive, just less so.

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No, some people play with no informal rules whatsoever.

posted 05-13-2003 09:17 PM               

I remember reading somewhere a programmer programed his computer to do a search for the traveller's game back in the 80s. The traveller's game is one of those games where people build armies beforehand and fight. He managed to find statistical advantages letting him win two national tourments with unqiue strategies before being banned.

That also reminds me of a joke made about Aok players make a spread sheet for resourcing optimalization taking into account of all random factors in map generation.

posted 05-26-2003 12:07 PM               

After reading your article, I was inspired to become one of the elite, non-scrubs, one of the .1% that does not bow down to scrubitude. Of course, I am probably still a scrub, and I probably always will be. But even simply being aware of Playing to Win has greatly improved my skill at Super Smash Bros. Melee.

posted 07-01-2003 03:25 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by garyamort:
Everyone is a scrub. Those who aren't scrubs waste oxygen. Your not playing at a "higher level" your playing on a different plane, with your own set of informal rules that are still restrictive, just less so.

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About the girlfriend/9-year-old-niece opponent that doesn't play much: should you go easy? That's up to you. Probably you should find some other way to make the game fun for both of you. Of course, as Sirlin said, you wouldn't really be "playing to win" in that case, would you?

- Alan

[EDIT] by "other way to make the game fun" I mean "other than playing below your ability"

[This message has been edited by Itsatrap (edited 07-01-2003).]