Top Japanese players and SRK

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
#1

So I’ve been learning a new Tekken character lately. I went to the character’s forum on TZ and started reading ‘top 10 moves’ lists. The Tekken players among you probably know that most of the top 10 lists posted on TZ are from personal experience of people and they can be really crappy sometimes. So anyways I was going through the posts and suddenly saw a list (+explanations) that made so much sense… it was so by far the best list in the thread.
Then I looked at who posted it- A top Korean Tekken player.

And I started thinking, “why stop here? why not have something like this for other games and more often?”

Imagine having Komoda write some Blanka tips for us, or having Kaqn explain the Ragna-Litchi matchup etc. etc.
I think when people get help from celebrity players who are considered the best of the best, it encourages them to push harder and get better at the games.

Contacting Japanese players and asking them to write stuff seems like an easy task for an organization(SRK) that can bring Daigo for events in the US, and establish an “evo championship” in Japan.
We also have enough Japanese speakers on these forums who can help translating.

What do you think?

#2

DARK posts here in the alpha anthology forum

#3

Well, if they became top players by doing their own research why should we have it spoonfed to us? It’s a really nice idea, but I don’t think players should be actively searching out top players and getting them to tell them what they need to do. Oh, and a good portion of Western top players post in their respective forums/threads anyway.

The West shouldn’t be behind other places in games like SSF4 anyway. I’m seeing too many comments like “I can’t wait for SSF4 to hit Japanese arcades so I can see high level play.”

What? People are really willing to wait until the Japanese do something before they attempt to learn something. Whatever…

Don’t get me wrong I appreciate the videos that get uploaded and the tactics that get translated for the games I play. However, I wouldn’t want to rely on it, because all the time I spend waiting for things to happen could be spent discovering shit in the game anyway.

I don’t play KoF but I really like that those boys at Arcade Infinity are trying to get good at KoF XIII together as opposed to X-Copying Japanese/Chinese/Korean tactics.

#4

The Japanese players freely share info with each other.(a lot more than in western scenes) They even publish it in magazines! I remember an Arcadia issue with an article on the Eddie-Testa matchup written by Ogawa and Shounen. If it’s perfectly fine and common in Japan, how is it wrong if they do the exact same thing here?

I really don’t care how some random SSF4 noob handles it. I think you and I and many others here could benefit a lot from hearing top players’ insights on regular basis.

#5

I just wait for Pherai to post and all my problems are solved.

#6

jap players do post stuff, but on jap forums.

#7

compare it to how it was 10 to 15 years ago. There was no youtube, no SRK (greater than 10 years ago), all people had to go on to improve themselves was goto their arcade and play against the locals. If someone from another arcade came by you’d learn things you never saw before and visa versa. Each arcade was basically its own closed off community, only rarely having instances of interregional play with tournaments or just people who moved from college or something.

Compare that with today and you are being spoonfed by comparison. No one goes to arcades anymore, no one plays they all just wait on SRK and youtube waiting for the newest foreign match to be uploaded because no one has any national pride. and that lack of national pride is whats holding most of you back. Does Floe believe that he’s inferior to foreigners? Ricky Ortiz? Even BigMarcus? No, and they don’t wait to see what japan or anywhere else has developed before us and thus keeping all of us a step behind them.

Play the game, learn from playing, don’t xcopy everything you see and try to innovate your own play style. Those should be your main avenues of learning. If we’re always waiting for someone else to do the work for us we’ll never surpass them.

#8

Read my answer to Helter Skelter.

#9

There are tons of top players in America and Europe. I don’t even follow SSIV that heavily but I know that if I wanted to learn from a good Sakura player I would check Skatan Milla. If I wanted to see a good Fei Long player I would check Starnab. If I wanted to learn a matchup for Rose I would check Louffy. Those people already post.

I think we under estimate the quality of the players around us and are sometimes unappreciative of the work certain players put in for us.

I learnt more from reading Moroha’s stuff about A.B.A than I ever did from watching Dio play. Dio just reminded me that the ceilings in GGAC were way higher than I could ever imagine. Stormlocke pretty much was the most downloaded Robo-Ky outside of Japan.

I also think a lot of players try and emulate their favourite players too much. Sometimes without even realizing it. I don’t want to be caught in that trap.

#10

I have which is what prompted my response. Using videos, foreigner strageties etc… should be used as a supplement of your own learning. Did it ever occur to you that the tips and match up discussion might be outside of your scope? Komoda or whatever can give a deep comprehensive match up guide for every single match that blanka has. You’d eat it all up,assuming that everything that he says is true. Completely forgetting that the ideas that he expresses is based on the opponents that he plays. Not you, if you go applying what he says to another player they won’t respond the same way and any ideas of set ups, match up knowledge goes out the window because he’s not playing your game. Your opponent doesn’t react the same way komoda’s opponent does. So by doing what komoda says your only limiting your own growth as a player.

Think of it this way, do you really think Daigo spends his time watching match videos on youtube? Reading magazines for tips on how to beat so and so player/character? No, he just plays and adapts as the matches goes on. He’s willing to try new things. He doesn’t go and read that so and so is the best block string for ryu and strictly uses that. No he develops his own block strings, his own strageties and you should do the same.

#11

You can’t be serious with those responses…
It’s nice for good western players to drop knowledge, but even more good information is never a bad thing. If you don’t want it, don’t read it, but if other players do want to know more, who are you to tell them not to?
What we do with the information is our problem, not yours.

And what does Daigo do to improve? He lives in Japan and plays with the best. And even then, the Japanese arcade goers who have the same competition as he, still get info from top players.

Maybe it was wrong to post this on the forums, because either you’re interested or you’re not. Nothing to actually discuss about…

#12

His point is that all the “top player information” comes about through a deep understanding of a certain game’s engine and experience against good players. All the information about whatever game you want to learn about is already out there, you just need to work hard enough to become a better player by using that information. That way of learning will be infinitely more useful.

#13

Ok let me rephrase the main question of this thread:
It’s NOT "how is information important for improvement in your opinion?"
The question is only "are you interested in seeing stuff by top JP players tranlated to english?"
Answer that and that only.

#14

I’d definitely love to see something like that. Nohoho’s translations of some of Nekohashi’s Ryu strat articles had stuff I’ve never known about and that helped my game a lot even when I don’t use Ryu. Having a character (or the subtleties of a game’s system) dissected and explained by a top player would help the community a lot. NKI was doing something like that with the ST wiki some years ago and his work was also very beneficial to ST players outside of Japan.

Yeah a lot of scrubs would just X-COPY that shit up without really understanding what they are doing, but it would be immensely helpful for lots of intermediate players with a good understanding of the game that want to go up the next level. Top quality info is never bad, and speeds up the process of making a player better if used right.

#15

The argument posed is one of “Is it better to have a teacher hand pick lessons from a book that are the most important/effective base on their expansive experience, or is it better to take the book yourself and learn what is most effective on your own”. Which is a false dilemma as both can be used, and neither is “better”, the only way you could hinder your own learning with either is to blindly follow the teacher (player) or be too stubborn or prideful to see the virtues in learning from a teacher (player), as to which technique to use, learning styles will always be different.

So the more information that’s out there from dependable sources, and the more people are also encouraged to learn on their own and test what they learn practically the better. People who would hamper their own progress by latching on to a Japanese player’s style would do so by some other means no matter what, discouraging the information from said players to be accessible is not preventative of that process by those players in any way.

And of course Daigo doesn’t watch other players outside of his own sparring matches, he’s at the top of his scene, and in said position self-innovation will always be better than imitation or adaptation of other’s strategies. Unless a person is comparable in station and ability as Daigo, there is still plenty said person could learn and adapt from him, but again a synergy of adaptation and self-innovation would be the best of any player not at the top of their scene, on top of moving up to a tougher scene.

So, tl:dr, the more info from more top players from anywhere (not just Japan), the better I would say.

#16

Info and stuff definitely gets out in the Tekken community. With Avoiding the Puddle, the Level Up Your Game Series and other video/audio/etc of info that gets spread around. Even Rain from Korea took the time to answer questions from fans in these [media=youtube]6rGSk9qCKF0]videos. Even I have done my part in doing what I can with the [url=http://www.tekkenzaibatsu.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=116977[/media] on TZ.

Personally, I feel like you can do this more in a game like Tekken because there is so much more to learn. Anyway, Justin and Daigo I know have written some fascinating reads during SFIV’s lifespan. However, with so many members on SRK the best stuff gets buried in a hurry. You are either on the scene when it gets posted or you sweat bullets trying to dig through all the trolls finding it (I dislike trolls with passion for wasting hours upon hours of my life!).

#17

People say that the best gamers are always the ones who win at tournaments. Normal people don’t care and other people would say its not possible to challenge them conveniently then go figure. Meh, its just a game and nothing more, no real talent is required.

#18

I don’t know how anyone would say that this would be a bad idea.

#19

…what? Almost none of your post makes any sense. “Normal” people are always lame and irrelevant, and I’m assuming “other people” are people who actually play games, but I’ve never heard anyone say that good players should be disregarded because “you can’t challenge them conveniently” or whatever you’re trying to get at. “It’s just a game” and takes “no real talent” also sounds like a cop-out by “normal” people to disregard the accomplishments of people who do play video games.

Gaming takes talent just as anything else, it’s a combination of physical and mental ability, so why anyone would think it’s not a valid form of competitive expression and accomplishment is beyond me aside from them being bad at gaming.

#20

But people just love to be in opposition!