i mentioned in a previous message that I dislike counter-comping. I feel that whenever a player counter-comps they are selecting a character that is not their best character. I've seen most of the tourney, and most counter-comps failed miserably, such as Ed Ma's Gief.
With that said, EVO is a console based tournament that REPLICATES the home play experience in a stadium setting. That means you can change characters especially if you feel helpless against a character. Who hasn't changed their character to a top-tier after getting owned by a shitty Zangief player over and over again? This is the whole purpose of EVO and if people compare this to other competitions, you are hopelessly missing the point.
Not many people know this, but a few months ago Justin was hyping his Balrog to be his anti against Daigo's Ryu. People at SRK laughed at him because Daigo was dominating Japanese Balrog players. Fat kid proved everyone wrong, and he deserves an immense amount of respect for his games.
I agree with Frozen, you just gotta accept counterpicking how lame it gets. Marn picked Jam against Wuku in Guilty Gear Top 8 after Flashmetroid told him how bad his matchup experience was in Testament vs. Jam, and I guarantee you Flash is the only guy who wanted Marn to win. Pretty much everyone booed Marn every game he had on the big screen.
Anyways, here's some picks from my Evo:
Me and the Wong
Me and my mancrush Latif (GGXXAC Winner), EDDIE REPRESENT!
Me and my bestfriend Wuku, before he proceeds to rape the crap out of Justin Wong's Potemkin.
Me and my other bestfriend Dogface as we're getting dinner after Evo.
I really think rules should state you should stay with one character throughout the tournament, but since the rules did allow counter-picking, I'm perfectly fine with it. Players should not be blamed for doing whatever the rules allow to win, however lame it may be.
I had to watch the recorded stream and got spoilered, but the final games were amazing. Whoever said Daigo gave the first set to Wong is an idiot.
I mean the rules also give the players the option to blind pick to prevent counter-picking, you saw it a lot in ST2THDR (god that is a long acronym for a fighting game).
Me and my other bestfriend Dogface as we're getting dinner after Evo.
dude, you know Dogface? that's awesome. How come he didn't provide color commentary for SFIV? I think I heard the commentators looking for him. It would've been epic to hear his "OH MY GOD!!!!" screams in the Daigo vs. Justin match.
On July 21 2009 03:20 ToT)OjKa( wrote: mother fucking hilde
Tell me about it. Funny thing, not long after the game came out, there was a get-together for NorCal players up at KrayzieCD's place. Good, good players participated. BrianHates brought his new Cervantes, Manta brought his wicked Voldo, I was playing Algol, there were about 30 players there or so. Anyway, everybody was surprised when Cedric (Ceirnian) chose Hilde, who was thought at the time to be pretty underpowered. He had already mastered that ring out doom combo, and shocked everyone with all this skill coming out of a total newcomer, I mean nobody had heard of this guy. He won the tournament, and that's when people started realizing that Hilde is pretty fing broken. Now she's gone from bottom tier to S-tier, and everyone cheers when she loses. Funny stuff.
On July 20 2009 15:52 eMbrace wrote: BlazBlue is a great game but the guy who dominated was a complete douchebag IMO -- his interview made me cringe,
this was awhile back but ... the guy who won blazblue was HeartNana from Chicago. u don't even know him, and you are going to call him a douchebag because what? i saw the interview and i didn't hear anything bad he said.
On July 21 2009 05:37 H wrote: I didn't even see that. eMbrace, where you at? Explain why HeartNana is a douchebag plz, 'cuz I'm not seeing it.
Yeah HeartNana is a veteran of the Soulcalibur community, really upstanding guy who does a lot for fighting games. I don't see him as a douchebag at all.
lol heartnana was just saying the truth. never seen him play b4 the finals
training in america is like training in the gravity spaceship but living in japan is like training in the hyperbolic time chamber
lol
edit: i ignored the SC finals but i did catch the interview with the french ivy. he went on to say how admirable it was his opponent beat 2 hildes, as well as questions about anti- hilde strats. my friend's got sc4 so im curois as to what makes hilde so OP? her ringout juggle?
What makes Hilde broken is not actually the character itself, it's when you use binds on a pad that she becomes broken. This is why the Soul Calibur community has been so hesitant in banning her from tournaments, and why people in Evo were booing the players that chose her.
There's a thread somewhere on 8wayrun about banning her, but I dunno where it is.
On July 21 2009 07:41 H wrote: What makes Hilde broken is not actually the character itself, it's when you use binds on a pad that she becomes broken. This is why the Soul Calibur community has been so hesitant in banning her from tournaments, and why people in Evo were booing the players that chose her.
There's a thread somewhere on 8wayrun about banning her, but I dunno where it is.
The commentators said that the bind thing was "fixed" more or less, I think they were implying that the whole thing was kind of done.
The problem with Hilde based on what I saw was that on some stages, especially small ones, you make one mistake and you start preparing for the next match, nobody else in the game does that to you.
Anyways, I was more impressed with Latif's final match against Marn in GG finals, like that block sequence at the end in the corner was like jaw-droppingly insane, like there's psychic and then there's don'tevenbothercauseyouarejustgoingtogetpunished.
On July 21 2009 07:41 H wrote: What makes Hilde broken is not actually the character itself, it's when you use binds on a pad that she becomes broken. This is why the Soul Calibur community has been so hesitant in banning her from tournaments, and why people in Evo were booing the players that chose her.
There's a thread somewhere on 8wayrun about banning her, but I dunno where it is.
The commentators said that the bind thing was "fixed" more or less, I think they were implying that the whole thing was kind of done.
I don't think it is fixed. There's been talk of a POSSIBLE patch by Namco in the winter, and they apparently acknowledged that Hilde is broken.
This means that they can choose to have access to a 170 damage unblockable which is faster than some lows in the game.
That has very little to do with why Hilde is broken, actually. Kinda silly, but it's not a huge deal. For those who don't know, Hilde's cool trick/gimmick is that she can hold down A and/or B and charge up moves, which are all kinds of powerful except you have to hold those buttons down. Those big shiny launchers and flaming sword swipes you might have seen are her charge moves.
With button binds, you can charge up those moves while using the move as usual. This is already kinda silly. Also, with button binds she can break grabs despite charging the button that she would break the grab with. She loses the charge when she breaks, BUT without binds she would have to release the button (and get stuck in an attack animation) then push it again to break throws- pretty tough given that IIRC the throw break window is like 15F, but most command throws are like 8-12F break and some are a 1-4F break. However if you can just keep holding that button down and break throws as usual without having to worry about that, then she is just as good as anybody else at throw breaking, while being better than everybody else at having frame-advantage-launcher-to-ringout-combo moves.
Also about counter-picking, people are drinking the Japan kool-aid without understanding their scene or bothering to understand the US scene. There is nothing wrong with counter-picking, just like there's nothing wrong with sticking to just one character. You do realize that, just like it's hard to learn one character super well against the entire cast (and I doubt many of you are so good that you can say you've reached that point with your character), it's also very difficult to learn many characters to a high level against the entire cast. You're forgetting that counter-picking goes both ways; if they feel comfortable with another character against the character you just used, you might have just gotten counter-picked as well. And if they don't switch and lose, it's their fault for not knowing the matchup better, not your fault for being smart about it.
I find it really funny that, on a site that follows a progaming scene that exists largely because of the strategic play of a certain Emperor, people would be so vehemently against strategy in other games. Then again it's really easy to say that kind of stuff when you've never played with anything on the line besides BP or your online ranking on some meaningless leaderboards.
I'm glad daigo won, it's also great to see Justin not have any excuses about losing to Daigo this time.. Good on Ed Ma for taking 3rd.. That's awesome.
I'm against character swapping personally, the reason Wong did so well against Daigo when he went Balrog was the skill of Wongs rog and the fact Asia doesn't really have any S-Rogs compared to the states..
And also for the whole Sanford using Cammy against Dan.. Sanford must of really wanted that win badly.