SRK Front Page, and the Community's Lack of Knowledge

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
#1

I, personally, find the fact that people didn’t know who Fuudo was, prior to yesterday, a little annoying. Even the announcers talked about Fuudo like he just started playing SF4.

Dude was a Grandmaster Ryu in Vanilla, and he’s been the #2 Fei in Japanese arcades for the past 8 months. Why don’t people know that?

I don’t know if this is the right place for this, but what the hell can we do to make SRK focus more on real play?

It seems like there’s a new post on the front page about “Cool and Funny SF4 Moments #25432534” every other day. There are occasional posts about actual play, but if you looked at that, you’d think there were only 3 players in Japan (Daigo, Mago, Tokido), a few players in the US, and nobody anywhere else.

Why isn’t SRK focused on real play? I understand there’s a whole other aspect to things now, but why can’t SRK have a strong focus on the competitive side also? SRK has always had an advantage over the other SF sites, in that REAL players are involved, and back SRK. Why don’t we have more actual talk about SF on the front page? There was something up last year for like a week, that was really good, where there were a bunch of interviews with top players… but that’s it. Why don’t we have a Tournament Report kinda thing, like Wilson in Tips n Tricks, back in the day (I’m old)?

Anyone agree?

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#2

There’s no reason to when people feel some 8 year old mashing on H that doesn’t call assists can’t be blocked and beaten. How you gonna convince them to do anything else?

#3

A couple of weeks ago on a slow news day a match showing Amiyu using Gen to brutalize Daigo made front page. I rather expect that was the only exposure to Amiyu’s play most SRK readers have had.

It got me thinking it would be nice if there was something like a “Match of the Day” feature on SRK for the top games showing a high level match with a little intro blurb on why the match is interesting. It could be as simple as “Here is [top player X] taking on [top player Y] a great [character] from [place] who might not be well known internationally yet but is making some noise. Note the clever use of [stuff] at [time X:XX] in the video below.”

#4

Sadly the focus is not on real play anymore.I love the fact that streetfighter is big again and Srk is the spot but even at evo u can see that it’s more about fandom then real play. The scene is catering to the masses and the masses don’t care about fundementals and real play. I remember people thought sako was just an online trained cammy player. I do believe in time this will change and knowledge will increase. It would benefit old and new players alike

#5

I just don’t get why SRK doesn’t leverage it’s biggest advantage over all the other sites, it’s strong player base.

There can still be posts about comeback compilations, and whatever other nonsense there usually is; I understand the point of this. I honestly do. There should just be other stuff… real stuff.

#6

To be blunt, the reason nobody knew Fuudo is two-fold: One) SRK is a mainly American populated site, as as such we tend to only keep track of the players in our circles. I don’t remember hearing anything about Fuudo in any of the tournaments lately besides EVO, and I follow fairly closely. It’s a pretty easy misight. Secondly) And I think this has become the problem you are referring to, is that the community at the pro level has tended lately to focus more on personality than substance. This isn’t a bad thing entirely, as it has given events like EVO some great exposure. But, I see your point.

I think the biggest thing is that a lot of the people on SRK are armchair tournament players. They play online only, for the most part. A smaller percentage go to weekly (or more likely, monthly) events to play within their community, and an even smaller percentage follow around the pro scale tournament scene. I would argue that this is because there is a huge jump in game knowledge and ability between the guy who goes to his local events each week and the guy who is entering these larger events are tournaments.

That, and some people just hit that glass ceiling of ability at some point. Not everyone is great. The 1500 or so players that went to EVO is probably the best cross-section representation of how many serious, “legit” players there are currently. Not everyone is going to get exposure, even in the case of someone like Fuudo whom in the past has been a known name. But, our community has selective amnesia, and is very much in the mind-set of “what have you done lately?”.

I was happy to see someone like Fuudo pull it out. He is a great representation of what makes the fighting community great: someone with great skill that wasn’t on anyones radar, taking the prize from the known guys whom were busy trying to one-up one another.

#7

You should write some articles and get them nominated or posted on the front page. I don’t know if that is easy, but it would be awesome to see more poster generated content. Especially if it covers aspects of the scene that aren’t being focused on. I’d read them.

#8

I agree with this.
The community here in general is getting stale, as most new threads are “how do I do this thing that’s already been answered”, “rant about x,y, and z”, and “random theory fighter”.

Why do the same handful of people keep winning? The rest of the community would rather just complain about their character not being buffed up in the latest patch than just learn the matchups they’re losing. They want an easy-out and complain when it doesn’t happen.

#9

Ugh…

He’s not that, at all. Fuudo has been the #2 ranked Fei since AE came out. He’s been in Top 10 overall BP for most of the time… Top 20 the whole time… way above Tokido.

I guarantee you all the real players there knew exactly who he was, and were aware of him… just the people that don’t know much overlooked him.

My point is that he was overlooked because we don’t focus on real play. If there was any real focus on real play here, everyone would be aware of Fuudo.

#10

I did this.

The whole “nominated for article” and “Strategy Corner” shit left with the site redesign though.

#11

Aren’t a lot of the mainpage posts just Keits lifting other’s stuff for his own contrib points?

Edit:

There was talk of Fuudo coming out of Virtua Fighter right? I wish there was more love for that game here on SRK. I fondly remember loads of VF cabs in the Akihabara arcades and how populated with actual players they were. That game is off the chain, shame it gets no love here.

#12

It’s just the same stuff from Eventhubs, mixed with some Keits soapbox shit about Smash and Yellow Cards.

#13

Whenever I need my memory refreshed when it comes to japanese players, I turn to LordAboriginesf4

#14

This seems just like what cross counter is doing.Which is getting top players to come and explain in depth characters,matchups and the game system.
But ya i agree with your general sentiment.

#15

If somebody was to do something similar to what Maj was doing like a year ago on Sonichurricane.com where he was just interviewing random greats, and as people were doing across here, that would be fucking awesome. I would love it if I could find great new players every day.

#16

I guess one part of the problem is most people(I myself can be guilty of this sometimes) expect to be spoonfed everything.

Though there was one time when I tried to get news to be posted on the front page(i think its the kanagawa vs chiba event), sent pms with information to Keits and all, yet nothing happened. Since then I’m like fuck it. lol

#17

The only place to usually get detailed matchup discussion and breakdowns nowadays is in the character subforums. Don’t ever count on the main game sections for anything of any real worth as far as actually discussing the game goes.

Also, whatever happened to that whole “SRK Spotlight” thing? Where there would be an interview with a user here?

#18

We do this on our livestream every now and then where we try to get in touch with certain offline tournament players and ask them to share their insights on tournament level play as well as answering any questions the viewers have.

#19

Almost everything HAV post is real talk. I also liked the SRK Spotlight articles and I don’t know why they are gone. There should definitley be something like that again. One of the problems may be that front page articles tend to only show highlevel WELL KNOWN pros most of the time while excluding the not so known players who are just as good.

#20

I place a lot of blame on the whole youtube dedicated sf4 channels.

its good in the sense that it gets exposure to some high level matches, but its bad in the sense that the people watching only see a certain number of players. if the vids dont show up, then people have no idea who the players are.

then to add to that, the idea that 9/10 dont have a clue what they are supposed to be watching for in the videos, and you end up with a lot of armchair players thinking they know whats up when in fact they have no idea. just look at the comments on youtube sometimes. it will make your head hurt

the youtube channels add to the fluff IMO. they mean good, but without anyone to tell people what to watch for it just makes people say stupid shit, like “who is fuudo?”. but thats besides the real point. the people who maintain the channels cant make the viewers smarter

i agree with you HAV. this site could do a lot better in regard to putting out actual information. but that would require someone willing to take the time out and actually go in depth with analysis of match videos or game mechanics or whatever. i dont really blame kiets. he’s just putting up whatever he can get his hands on. and without anyone taking the time out to do the extra work, all he can get is match videos from a select group of players, and other related fluff items.

on the other side, at this point i cant really place any blame on the top level players that may still lurk around here either. in most cases they would be trying to teach rocket science to a golden retriever. there isnt a high number of people here that can even think the game at a high level IMO. for the most part its blind leading blind in most of the different character sub forums.

in short, the user base here on SRK is going to have to become smart enough to demand more than fluff