To me and to him that is majorly their excuse for losing…and he says the same thing..them losing to him saying its random is their main excuse..sad it is…

Pathetic actually..why not get better at the game and quit with the excuses calling it random..

Thats the easy way out..

Basically, Stephen Jay Gould was a world-famous science author who is most well-known for his work relating to Darwinian evolution, as well as a baseball nut. He combined these two interests in an article relating to .400 hitters; for those who don’t know, Ted Williams remains the last major-league player ever to hit .400 in a season, and he did this all the way back in 1941. Thus, many people think the lack of .400 hitters is evidence that the quality of major-league baseball is lower now than it used to be. In Gould’s article, however, he applies the concepts of evolution to baseball to show that the opposite is true - there are no .400 hitters because the average players are closer to the best nowadays, so the overall quality of play is higher. Or, to put it more clearly, pitchers as a whole are better now so nobody can get that high a batting average.

Now, on to Bill James. Bill James has been applying serious intellectual scrutiny to all kinds of baseball ideas for around 30 years now, and he may very well be the most influential figure in the game during this period. He was greatly intrigued by Gould’s theory, and searched for a way to prove whether or not it was actually true. He finally found a method and wrote about his findings in 2000, in the book I mentioned at the beginning.

Here’s the idea: James looked at the following levels of organized baseball:

1. Youth leagues (i.e. 7-year-olds and such)
2. Little League
3. High school
4. College
5. Minor-league
6. Major-league

We all know that with each level, the quality of play increases. So James studied various statistics and facts in all of these leagues, and looked for consistent trends that appear as you move up this ladder. It is unnecessary to list them all here - some include higher fielding percentages, more double plays, weaker hitting from pitchers (a sign that they have to concentrate more on their main job), and…less difference between the best players and the average. So, it looks like Gould may be on to something here.

The final step for James, however, was to look at major-league baseball over time and see if these same trends occur. And guess what? Just about all of them do. And in periods where we can all agree that the quality of major league play decreased, such as World War II (when most of the real major leaguers were in the military), these indicators all went in the opposite direction (fielding percentages were worse, etc.).

Although not absolute proof, this is a very, very strong indication that the quality of play in major-league baseball increases over time. And the same thing applies to other competitive games as well; as the quality improves, the average players get closer to the best.

And that’s about it! So, this is what I was talking about re: Tekken 5’s “random” wins. I do think that part of this randomness comes from the game itself, mostly due to its 50-75% wall combos, but part of it also comes from this effect.

-Josh

Sorry, but it’s hard for me to think of a game as “incredible” when it comes down to Jin vs. Jin in the end. I definitely see the good ideas, but Jin just kills everything and that’s why everyone hated it. Actually though, some of the top players are now saying similar things to you, and that 4 would’ve been better than 5 were it not for Jin.

To some degree I can see DR being more random due to the damage of wall combos, but I still think it’s mostly the increasing quality of play. This is an idea of Stephen Jay Gould (R.I.P.) and Bill James that was written with regards to baseball but applies to almost any competitive game; it would take far too long for me to fully explain here, but I can write a separate comment for it if anyone is interested.

Also, Sirlin, here is perhaps another thing that might explain DOA:

Using the Babylon 5 analogy from your book, there are a couple respected DOA players who behave very much like the Shadows. They constantly attack everyone except themselves, occasionally pretend to be friends with someone and then turn on them, and never give any credit when they do lose. When the last of these things happens, they’ll say that the controllers suck or they don’t have anyone to play and that’s why they lose or DOA4 is just a trash game that they don’t care about anyway.

Might this be a factor in the low offline turnouts? You don’t mention this in the book, but I think the Vorlons’ approach is clearly superior for a game whose community is small and needs to grow. As such, I understand that these guys want to help the community but think that they’re going about it entirely the wrong way. The community is trying to get people to show up to offline events…and then craps all over them when they do come and beat the big names? I’m not so sure I’d really want to be a part of that myself.

Just some idle thoughts…

Ah, what a match. Sorry but that won’t work anymore ;) Thought you played well David, and was suprised you weren’t able to qualify. You had a very tough draw, otherwise I think you could easily have been top 8 no doubt. In any case, I’m positive you’ll qualify at EVO east, EVO west was chalk full of big names, tough matches, and tough draws. Lets practice when you have time, my Zangief is lurking….

- Alex

GGX: TOPZ

GGXX: Top/High

#R Low Mid

Slash High Mid (or just Mid).

He’s awesome in Slash though. Can still deal out retarded damage with style. But I’m not suprised to not see an impressive Johnny tounry showing.

When playing Dhalsim against a decent shoto, I’ve noticed that the shoto’s will often try to abuse the hurricane kick. If you watch for this and smack ‘em out of it a few times, you effectively nullify that tactic.

Having said all that, I wasn’t there. So maybe your 8 hurricanes in a row weren’t as blatantly foolish as I’m picturing them in my head ;-)

Congrats on placing in all the games!

The gameplay was also faster than any other Tekken I’ve played, (I must admit to not playing anything over 4 at this time, I just haven’t had the means…) and characters hadn’t been subjected to the “move cutbacks” they seemed to have suffered in 4.

Don’t get me wrong, 4 is nice, having interactive backgrounds, and corners with which to trap your hapless opponent, and the gameplay feels much “punchier” apparently trying to mimic the hard-hitting feel of the DOA series. But with that comes the trade off of the control being much meatier than before, making combos and special moves feel a bit clunkier and not as smooth in operation.

Honestly, I have never thought of Tekken as being quite as balanced a game as say, the SF series or Virtua Fighter. But for me, that never detracted from the fun. Unfortunately, no one I know ever wants to play against me on Tekken, so I seldom have any chances to really practice.

…wait, no mention of Johnny. What happened to him?

At Tekken…
T4 was a step in the right direction. Despite all the ‘guff’ it got, that game is incredible. T5 got rid of some of the funest stuff I’ve ever utilized in a fighting game and made a ton of way too similar characters. I can see DR as being random because everyone is so similar. Lots of games have balance problems, but I’d rather have the variety of Tag and T4 than the quantity in T5. T4 was a big overhaul, but people hated it despite it being exactly what it needed. Hopefully the next one will be a tag game and hopefully they’ll tone down (read truncate) everyone’s move lists like they have with SC.

At DOA…
Haven’t played them too much, but I can definitely see how 3.1 could be more fun. Seems like they rushed and worried about ‘extra’ content instead of actually developing ‘real’ content. (that thing sirlin mentioned about juggle characters avoiding the stun system seems pretty broken from my experiences, but these games are way too new for me to judge so harshly)

*and if you have some time, Sirlin*
Who did you use in DOA? What worked/didn’t with him/her or overall? What surprised you, especially strat wise that others were doing?