Evolution 2007 Finals
I did better than I've ever done before at our world finals event this year, taking 5th place in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I also got to test 18 decks of my Yomi card game, and got to lose Guilty Gear to Yossan, the #1 finisher in that tournament.
I won't say much about Guilty Gear other than having to relearn the strange lesson that my Potemkin gets much worse when I have to play under pressure against unfamiliar opponents, and yet my Chipp gets much better when I have to play under pressure against unfamiliar opponents. I call this the Curse of Chipp.
In ST, I made it to the top 8 without losing a single match. i tried this year to make an effort to "play the opponent" rather than "play the game." In my book, I talk about the player type called Planner. That's how I've always approached things, but the approach has weaknesses.
I've heard Seth off-handedly mention in his match commentary whether certain players "show no respect" for their opponents. He means this in a very particular way. He's not talking about sportsmanship at all, but instead whether a player does things within the game that a really good opponent should be able to counter. Seth isn't even giving an insult by saying this. He's just pointing out when a player is trying to get away with something that he might not try against a player he "respects." To be clear, you *should* do bootleg stuff that's easily counterable *if* you really think the particular opponent you are playing against won't counter it. That is what "playing the opponent" means, rather than "playing the game."
The toughest opponent I beat was Afrolegends. He's a rising star of a player. Determined and in practice. I think it's safe to say that he practiced at least 10 times more than me, if not 100 times. I invested nearly no practice time into ST this year, and instead have focused on designing STHD. Anyway, I didn't rely on practice or on scouting.
Here is what I did. I remember watching the match between Afrolegends's DeeJay and Graham Wolfe's Vega (claw) three weeks ago. I also remember playing the same match against Afrolegends right after that, and losing. Graham got hit by about 90 ducking medium kicks. Three weeks ago I tried very hard to avoid that fate, but still got hit by several. That match is on youtube, but I only watched it maybe 1 or 2 times casually. I'm honestly not trying to be arrogant about this, I'm just trying to point out all the things that I didn't do to prepare hat people probably expect me to do.
I decided to play the same character matchup against Afrolegends this time. I won't be bullied away from Vega just because of a damned ducking medium kick. So instead of trying hard to avoid it, I would just have to try REAL HARD to avoid it. To look into Afrolegend's mind and try to guess when he will do it, so I can slide a bit after. And just as important, try to guess when he will throw his sonic boom thing ("max out") so I know when I can go off the wall. I also factored in that I know he's sitting there waiting for me to go off the wall a lot of the time, so I have to avoid the temptation to do it when he expects me to do it.
I won this match by something like two pixels, so it's not like I dominated at all. It could have gone either way. But my point is that I got more mileage out of focusing on exactly when I think the opponent will do X or Y than I probably would have out of studying match footage or even actual practice. I should also point out that Afrolegends's tons of practice wasn't for nothing. He placed 3rd, which was two places higher than me.
To prove that I'm not just bragging, all this reading the opponent stuff went exactly the other way when I faced Graham Wolfe. After losing a game, I switched to Honda (a crowd pleaser!) and won one round, but in the final round of the match, Graham guessed right something like 4 times in a row. His final move was a ridiculous jumping strong with Balrog (boxer) that clearly proved he knew exactly what I was going to do, and when. Graham soundly beat me in that match, so my hat is off to him. He took 4th place.
My only other loss was to Tokido. I was very sure I would beat him. So sure that I knew overconfidence was probably bad, but I just didn't think he could be Bison (dictator) with Vega (claw). About four years ago, my friend first introduced me to the concept of Meyers-Briggs personality types and after a quick set of questions, he told me I'd be most likely to lose to a player who is capable of executing something in a game that I didn't think was possible or practical, so it wouldn't be in my "systems analysis" of the game. He was exactly describing John Choi's ability to custom-combo my Rose's low strong in SFAlpha 2. And, it turns out, he described Tokido, too.
There's something mysterious about Tokido's ability to go off the wall with Vega. Two different times, I saw his Vega touch the wall, then do the air throw just a bit earlier than I thought was possible. He also sometimes went off the wall then immediately attacked, just a tiny bit earlier than I thought was possible. Maybe more to the point, Bison can beat Vega if he can get close enough to do scissor kicks and stand roundhouses. It didn't really occur to me that Tokido would be able to run away well enough to avoid this for a whole match. I think I was one round away from defeating him, but he came back with his mysteriously good run away and off the wall tactics. He went on to defeat John Choi with similar antics, earning Tokido 1st place. I'm a little salty about it, but oh well.
Before signing off, I'd like to give my awards for strangest counter-character choices in the tournament. DSP was about to face Japanese Dhalsim player KKY. I asked DSP if he was going to win and he said "KKY's Dhalsim cannot beat my Vega." Pretty bold, but amazingly, DSP was right. KKY then switched to Blanka! Unexpected for a Japanese Dhalsim player, but nice move because it's counter-match heavily in Blanka's favor, in my opinion. KKY won game 2, but to DSP's credit, not by much. DSP could now switch to a new character in game 3. Luckily, DSP plays a wide variety of characters who have a big advantage here: Old Sagat, Balrog, and DeeJay for starters. But DSP chose to KEEP Vega, countering himself! I don't get it. It went down to the last hit and as KKY did whiff roll into bite for the final hit, both players physically leaped out of their chairs in excitement.
But this was not as strange as Alex Wolfe's choice. Let me preface this by saying that Alex Wolfe is one of the very best players in the US. He won 1st place at last year's Evo World Finals and just two weeks ago he and his brother Graham got 5th place in Japan. Anyway, his Dhalsim got absolutely destroyed game 1 against someone's Vega. It was really bad, but it happens. then Alex switched to ZANGIEF. Zangief vs Vega is an incredibly hard match and it's pretty damn crazy to intentionally play this match when you're 1 game from losing a tournament match. I guess his idea was that a good Zangief has a big surprise factor (and his Zangief is good), but Vega proved too strong even then.
I hope that gives you a taste of what the Super Turbo tournament was like. It was also a great opportunity for me to get feedback from the Japanese players about STHD...but that's all I'm allowed to say about that.
--Sirlin
August 29th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Another year past. Another year without Yomi. This is the worst part. Anyway, speed of the fox is now way to good. Fix it.
And keep me updated, Yomi is insanely addicting.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Congratulations, Sirlin!
I too am dying to play Yomi… like seriously.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Thanks for letting me get a game of yomi in. Its a very unique concept and, as i told you in person, quite fun once you start playing.
August 30th, 2007 at 1:03 am
Hey Sirlin,
Great to see you at EVO2K7.
Congrats on your great placing in the SF2T finals. I was watching. It was a very interesting match. Tokido and Nuki are great, but I was also amazed by the skill of the American players. I watched Super Turbo matches all day on Saturday, and I’m much more interested in the game now than I’ve ever been. Some of those character traps are seriously brutal (Balrog and Vega come to mind).
Thanks and keep in touch,
-Kenan
August 30th, 2007 at 1:11 am
One more note.
“But this was not as strange as Alex Wolfe’s choice. Let me preface this by saying that Alex Wolfe is one of the very best players in the US. He won 1st place at last year’s Evo World Finals and just two weeks ago he and his brother Graham got 5th place in Japan. Anyway, his Dhalsim got absolutely destroyed game 1 against someone’s Vega. It was really bad, but it happens. then Alex switched to ZANGIEF. Zangief vs Vega is an incredibly hard match and it’s pretty damn crazy to intentionally play this match when you’re 1 game from losing a tournament match. I guess his idea was that a good Zangief has a big surprise factor (and his Zangief is good), but Vega proved too strong even then.”
Actually the Vega player was Itabashi Zangief (Itazan), one of the #1 ranked Virtua Fighter players in the US. I was surprised to see Alex pick Zangief (the character) too, but I think that his surprise factor was ruined from an earlier match that Itazan played against a dedicated Zangief player. He was doing the low roundhouse into piledriver trap too, so I guess Itazan got some good practice against this move before moving into the match with Alex Wolfe. Every time Zangief would come in close, he would just do a short flip backwards with Vega and avoid the trap. Itazan was quite surprised that Wolfe picked Zangief too, what a tough matchup.
August 30th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Graham took 3rd, and Afro took 4th, not the other way around.
August 30th, 2007 at 4:08 am
This was the first year I made it out to EVO and I had an absolute blast! I was the guy that came up and asked you about the ST 3v3 team tourney. I should’ve said “hi” and chatted a bit, but I wanted to find out the scoop on that side tourney. Sadly, it never happened :(
Anyway, congrats on your performance in ST! And a big thanks to you, Wizard, Seth, the Cannons, etc for making EVO happen. It was a really fun event.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:49 am
Congrats, Sirlin. Did you learn anything interesting from the Yomi test runs?
August 31st, 2007 at 11:29 am
Forty: we have long known that the Yomi card game doesn’t quite work with drawing 1 card per turn, but you get too man cards drawing 2 per turn. Instituting a hand size could solve that, but it adds a very unfun element when you have to discard cards all the time for no gain. To solve this, I created a mini-game last year (or was it two years ago? I forget) that let you trade in cards in certain way for coins. Coins can be used for a couple cool things.
This year, I tried junking the mini-game entirely and going back to draw 1 card per turn. The addition that made this feasible was the new rule that if you successfully block, you draw an extra card. For most people, this was fine, simpler, sped the game up, and made it easier to teach. For a few people, they would get into a situation where you spiral into death because they’d have only a couple cards and no block cards left.
I’m pretty sure you can just play better and usually avoid this. But maybe some extra help is needed. Maybe an opening hand of 10 rather than 7 would give people more of a buffer before spiraling to no blocks. Maybe some face cards could have blocks on half the card (strange flavor on that though). Or maybe some other solution, or no change at all. Needs some more testing. Will make more of the game public as soon as I can, but very busy working on STHD right now.
–Sirlin
August 31st, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Sirlin, I don’t think you’ve published the rules of your Yomi game, so I don’t know if that kind of element can be brought in.
From what I understand, each deck is a complete poker deck, so I believe you’re using a specific suit for a given move. Would it be possible, at the start of the game, to instate a rule where the players, given their starting hand, would bid on which suit can be used as a “Block” suit for the duration of the game, for example by bidding “health”?
September 1st, 2007 at 1:04 am
Actually, each card has two moves: one written on top, one one bottom. So the block cards say “block” on them, and have nothing to do with suit. Just wait a while and I’ll make it all public when I have time to write it up.
–Sirlin
September 1st, 2007 at 1:46 am
When i tested, you had us drawing two per turn. I thought it played nice and fast that way, and if you base the ‘game'’ on playing for 2 of 3 rounds, this is a great thing. I tested your OG character with low low hp (65) but the ability to choke my foe’s hand and make him discard. I also suggested trading hits and teching throws.
With rounds taking place making up a game, you could even have team play a-la kof! Think about it! You bring three decks to the table, and you choose an order. If you lose the round, you opponent keeps his hand instead of redrawing, and keeps his reduced HP… while you send in a fresh character. This even yeilds counter character opportunities, and gives a way to market that people should buy more decks.
Consider it! Sorry for any typos,, i am posting from my phone.
September 1st, 2007 at 2:50 am
Thanks for talking a little about your design hurdles and history. Interesting idea about conditional draws.
September 1st, 2007 at 10:41 am
Sirlin, you mentioned the meyers-briggs type personalities and their role on problem solving (more specifically in how people play) and I was wondering if you could point me to a site that could help me get started. I have been searching around for MBTI but it was mostly about work and day to day relationships and had less to do about problem solving or playing.
Also great job at evo 2k7!
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:01 am
“playing the opponent”
Reminded me of something I heard some time ago.
“Never play the board, always the man.
You got to play the man playing the board. Play me.
You have to beat me, not the board.”
10 points to the man who can identify this quote.
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:48 am
Or the similar quote, “The beginner plays the character, the expert plays the game, the master plays the opponent”
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:33 am
Congratulations on your performance! I didn’t try the Yomi game because I have literally never played anything from that genre and there was always stuff going on at Evo…but you’ve got me intrigued enough to give it a shot in the future. =)
Now, this is not at all meant to be inflammatory but an honest question…when did you first become aware of the CCC2 input lag? Are all the ST home versions REALLY that bad, or are the players overly picky?
Thanks,
Josh.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
rashreflection: I am still not aware of any input lag on CCC2. Perhaps you meant speed variation on different stages. If you are experiencing input lag, you probably have the wrong video settings or tv. If you’re playing on an LCD/plasma, you can turn on progressive scan to minimize the input delay, but your tv’s scaler will introduce lag still as it converts 480p to 720 or 1880 (which has nothing to do with CCC2, it has to do with your tv). If you play on a crt, there is no known input lag at all.
–Sirlin
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:58 am
Fantastic post. I always love reading about tournaments you play in.
I don’t know what the etiquette is with typo-noticing, but I’m sure you’d rather these were pointed out and corrected than left in there:
“I’m just trying to point out all the things that I didn’t do to prepare hat people probably expect me to do.”
that*
“but I just didn’t think he could be Bison (dictator) with Vega (claw)”
beat*
September 6th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Hi David,
I think what rashreflection is referring to is what some players have “experienced” as input lag. I’m not too sure myself, but it’s been an on-and-off topic in the SRK forums. A handful of fairly known players swear outright that there’s some kind of input lag. I refer you to NKI’s post here, and the subsequent posts (thread discussing ST results at EVO World):
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showpost.php?p=4236488&postcount=11
September 7th, 2007 at 3:08 am
Congratulations on the placement Sirlin.
I made it down to my first EVO this year and it was an amazing experience. I wanted to say hi but couldnt build up the courage. Maybe next year.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:50 am
BoggleMinds,
NKI’s claims are definitely not confirmed. There is no confirmed input lag, that’s just a hypothesis. There are still no known gameplay differences other than speed. It’s disappointing about the speed difference, but it’s also disappointing how some “top players” seem to have the idea that they will beat your ass at the game and win for free…unless the game is 1% different, then they can’t win anymore. If you are really good enough to win, you’re good enough to win in a game with 1% differences. And you should certainly win in a game with no known differences other than speed. Saying otherwise is just admitting how bad of a player you are. Those are my thoughts as a player.
As a game developer, I’d say the speed issue should have been caught in testing, which would only have been possible with more testing than there was. There should have definitely been more testing, but those things are out of control of the developer. So now we have what we have.
Again, the only known gameplay difference is the speed.
September 8th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Sirlin,
I’m not a “top player”, but FWIW I completely agree with you. I think it’s a little lame how people started complaining about the input after evo. I find it hard to believe that such minor differences could have a devastating affect on your gameplay. For the sake of argument, lets say there is a frame or two of lag compared to the arcade. So now your reversal timing is a little different. Fine. The thing is, people have had almost a year to practice with this new timing. You may have to re-train yourself a bit, but I think there’s been plenty of time to do that.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this problem a bit lately, and I have a couple of theories. People have always bitched about emulators not feeling the same, and I think this problem may be universal. I suspect that the old CPS2 hardware worked differently than the PS2 or the PC. In particular, my guess is that it may have run in a very serial manner. So, each frame would look something like this:
Read Input
Update
Display Frame
…repeat
I’m not intimately familiar with how the PS2 works at the lowest level, but I do know that on the PC things are run in a much more parallel manner, and may not sync up 1:1. For example, the graphics card queues up the next several frames to display and is often drawing a frame that may be up to ~3 frames off of what you’re currently working on. The input also gets queued up by the device driver and is then relayed to you at some point in time. Now, in something like an FPS game or an action platformer, being off by a frame or two probably wouldn’t be noticeable. And more importantly, you’d never be used to playing any other way, so I suspect your brain would just train itself to react appropriately.
If the PS2 does work similarly to the PC, then it may simply be displaying an image or reading input(or both!) that’s a frame or two off from what’s being computed. The code could be exactly the same, and you’d still be a frame or two off. And I suspect this is what may be happening here. If so, I think the only reason people have noticed that things feel a bit off is that their muscle memory is so ingrained from playing the same game for years, that even a slight change is noticeable.
With all that said, if this is the problem, I’m not entirely sure what could be done to compensate for it. Without thinking about it, I’m not even sure if there’s a good way to test to see if this is the case. It may be something that people will just have to learn to adapt to. But perhaps this is something worth looking into for ST:HDR?
September 8th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Sweet Johnny V:
Nice analysis. I think you’re onto something with CPS2 being purely serial instructions.
From the perspective of what expert players would experience with input lag, I’d imagine that (as you say) playing for years and years on an arcade cabinet would ingrain one’s timing down to within a few frames precision. This is ostensibly what the Japanese players felt — keeping in mind that they’re the opposite of us, having a strong arcade fighting game scene and a correspondingly weak (i.e., non-existent) console one. EVO might well have been their first time playing CCC2.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:33 am
5 frames of input lag is immediately noticeable. 4 is detectable. Three would be noticed quickly by experts. I have a build of Street Fighter at work with 2 frames of delay enforced for testing purposes, and I can tell it’s there. So really, that only leaves 1 frame of input delay as a possibility in CCC2. The more likely possibility though, is no frames of input lag.
September 9th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Cmon. Reading a thread on SRK about CCC2 is like being bukkaked with idiocy.
September 9th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Wow that blows my mind, I used to play against afrolegends on the Anniversy Edition of SF they released on Xbox a while back, I think he was ranked quite highly, odd to see him mentioned here
October 13th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Is there a video of Afrolegends vs Graham Wolfe floating around? I’d like to see that medium kick ownage.
November 19th, 2007 at 6:10 am
woah… relating Myers-Briggs to SF. I am not on the level.
I miss the scene.