Northwest VF (Pacific NW, North America)

femto:np hope play u and Chanchai,R panda and everyone else soon

 

Just to let everyone know, I don't think I can go to Best Bout on Tuesday this week, but I'm trying really hard to be there on Friday night as well as get a lot of the local VF players there on Friday too.

 

This Friday evening (May 4th) I will be at Best Bout for some VF5 Training Sessions (and good times)!

We had an awesome time last week on Tuesday and I'm looking forward to some more great times.

As a side note, it's now a personal mission of mine to help any competitive VF players in the Northwest become more competitive and get a lot more out of this awesome game!

For people who just want to enjoy VF, I'm happy to help with that too. But I will be spending the most time with players who want to be competitive ^_^

-Chanchai

 

So had some good games with Zass last night, until I got drunk and MM'ed him and lost 9-1. Shit was weak, but I was trying to shut up Axel Kelly, so fucking whatever. I'm looking to run it back again, haha.

This got me thinking that maybe we could do a PNW VF YouTube page? Maybe we could upload matches and split the account, like have a few people have the password and upload vids from Seattle/Portland/Vancouver etc. or maybe just have it separted by state?

The only equipment I have is an iPod Touch, but it can upload video directly to YouTube.

Thoughts?

 

Question for you guys- are there any major FGC events held in the Seattle area in August or September?

Looking for an excuse to hit Seattle (well, I have the reason, I just need another hook to pick a better time)

 

I've got a hauppage video recorder, so I can record/upload matches.

 

I would really like to play some portland players. Chanchai introduced me to a Brad player, and we had some fun matches. Any PDX players up for some games online this weekend?

 

Yes. I can be on Sunday night at around 830. I would love to play you.

 

I'll be online by 830 for anyone who wants to play tonight, maybe for an hour if no one else is online. R Panda



EDIT:
Ha ha oh noooo
I left my copy of VF5 at Best Bout so I'm SOL
ugh I totally forgot, holy shit. ;_;

 

Hey, I'm the Brad you were playing a while back. Next time I see you online I'll invite you for some more games! I've been playing Jacky more recently, but he's similar enough I may be able to give you a challenge again.

 

Usually at the end of the month, we have The Salty Runback down at Spitfire Bar and Grill, it's a nice little venue. We also have Lunchbox Battles, that are held mid-month as well. Bothe these tournaments are on Saturdays.

 

I had an awesome time on Friday night!

I want to thank Yangsing, R_Panda, Jannon, and AJS for a lot of wonderful matches at Best Bout on Friday!

[*]R_Panda definitely improved a lot over the previous week. While there's still a lot to work on (but that's true for EVERYONE), his Brad was picking his moments better. With more experience, his spacing/baiting game will be stronger. Closeup fights improved. However, the blatant errors were over-committing to f+P,K and overusing PK.

Overusing f+PK: Personally, I'm a fan of building up and working on a flowchart to brad's f+P or f+P(G). The kick finisher is just one option and imo, it's rarely the best one. I'm no Brad expert though and I haven't developed a flowchart for Brad, but it just seems to me that's what he does very well. I feel the K finisher is more of a bad habit that can get you into trouble in the long run. If you're whiff punishing, then by all means. But if you're pressuring with the elbow and the end result is not conclusive, then I think that's what flowcharts are for. And I know you have the reflexes to hit check ^_^

PK: I mentioned long ago that PK was good at dealing with people who evade a lot (including ETEG a lot). That doesn't it a go to weapon. You have to use this attack with purpose, and my guess is the two purposes are:
1) When PK is guaranteed (you blocked something big).
2) When your opponent has already shown either reckless evading or a habit of using ETEG. And before using PK, you should have already confirmed whether or not you can predict when your opponent will evade--then you can start using it. Missing with PK is really bad, imo.

Just my thoughts though, and I am not always (or that often) right ^_^

Other notes on R_Panda: I like that your baiting/spacing game is improving and you're moving in the right direction on that. Experience and time with your character will guide you to the best ways to do this (for example, in some situations against Shun, your f+P+K whiffed, and honestly I would have thought to do the same attack so this experience showed us cases where it's not good, maybe then we try using Brad's forward dashing knee attack). Also, if someone is baiting you, you have to tread carefully. Sometimes you want to see if you can bait them first. This also comes with experience with the character. Finally, your stagger game seems like it can improve. The good news is the stagger game is one of the easiest things one can work on in VF once they've set their sights on improving it. Figure out which attacks of your stagger, especially those that stagger a low-blocking opponent. And if the stagger is enough of an advantage for you, treat it like a nitaku situation. If the stagger situation is not so advantageous, apply a pressure game. Anyways, keep it up, you're on the right track!

[*]Yangsing always impresses me with how fast he picks VF back up and improvises answers. Glad he's watching videos, but I hope when FS is out he'll practice a good deal too because he will be very strong in this game and already is strong on the local level. I had a lot of fun fighting against Simon's Shun and Kage. I always look forward to fighting Yangsing!

[*]Jannon still scares me out of nowhere at times. Jannon has been both very humble and very confident at the same time while playing. There are some moments that feel like his Jacky is on autopilot, but he makes adjustments often enough and is watching what's going on that the pressure keeps piling on. Gotta love our Michigan import ^_^ I have not yet watched the video of our matches, I will have to do that soon and see if I notice anything. Other than that, keep it up!

[*]AJS keeps running strong in Portland! He is committed to Jacky now and for good reason. You cannot underestimate Andrew, he's one of the few players who is always forcing himself to play based on what he sees. This does mean that sometimes he might have a streak of losses in a casual practice session against almost ANYONE, but he's investing his time to playing VF the right way and that's why he's pretty much the scariest player by the end of the night. A lot of people underestimate him because of this, while I'm usually the one saying "this guy is the guy to beat."

Anyways, on Friday his Jacky started off with some rust, but was very sharp at the end of the night. My favorite session was the last set of matches with Andrew which began on Part 2 of the videos from Friday at the 32 minute mark. Andrew starts off losing, but he forces himself to deal with Lion's BS instead of complaining about it (the BS including stuff like Lion's from crouch f+P uppercut which can beat out a lot of pokes while defying the frame stats). He made small adjustments to curb that. There is one time where we pause and talk, because he got confused because he thought he saw Lion's b,b+K beat his elbow which shouldn't happen. I explained to him, that it didn't beat it frame wise, but that it was a buffered backdash--his elbow whiffed, I saw the attack animation and so I hit b+K to nail him with Lion's signature launcher. (Tip: if you suggest your opponent is looking for attack animations to whiff punish something, test out K(G) during the baiting games, it might screw them up!).

I really like how Andrew mostly did Okizeme that did not fall to Lion's QCB+P, but I can feel he's frustrated that I can somehow still sense when he's going to do something that will fall to it--because I nailed him almost every time he tried to switchup into a launcher or similar.

Andrew also integrated b,f+K+G in excellent situations when he read I was getting evade-happy or was trying to lean on evade-throw-escape! Excellent reads and he put me down under for that! I need to punish it with Lion's KK though, I did get enough blocks to punish him. But I kept hitting back instinctively which really caused issues. Gotta work on that...

By the end of the evening, I felt Andrew had the mental edge over me despite the overall win/loss count. And I certainly learned quite a bit!

In fact, I'll share the Lion-side notes I wrote down after rewatching the matches with Andrew. These are things that, should have improved my performance in my matches against him if they were applied that night. The last note that I "was not using the best options" has a footnote, because in a session like this I am exploring and trying some non-optimal things out in the matches (but in a very serious environment). So trying for the "best" options isn't my goal for the night. However, if I was training for Evo, then the whole month of June and early July would require that I only allow myself to use the optimal and best options that I know of.

Here are the notes I wrote, that would have improved the matchup (the combos listed come from STL_Tim's max damage combo list for Lion, thanks so much Tim!):

Chanchai's VF Journal: X-Factor Friday Review - Lion vs. Jacky

[*]Chanchai - I started off less sharp than the Tuesday session from the week before. That said, I was still sharp on some things, but I was dropping a lot of combos (truth be told, I dropped a lot of combos on Friday and misread stance too often).

I feel that I played strong enough to push the Portland Crew to play a lot harder. But there are a lot of things to polish on my end.

- In the matchup against Jacky alone, I've shared my notes with everyone here in the link above.

- I need to do more max damage combos and learn them. I now have targets for practice: Jacky, Brad, Shun, Kage, Pai (Jetay/Shinryujin), El Blaze (Femto), and Wolf (Zass).

- I usually don't have trouble reading stance with Lion except for maybe his throw combo (where it doesn't matter as much since his max damage combos don't require stance focus). But on Friday, under pressure, I misread stance a lot. This means that I need to improve on this because it would certainly happen again in a tournament.

- Optimal play wasn't my focus, so I won't concern myself over it here except to recognize when I was not being optimal and then making a risk/reward assessment to apply later when I really must play as best as possible.

Here are the videos to Friday's session!
X-Factor Fridays 5/04/12 Playlist
Going to YouTube should take you to the playlist where you can also watch the second part (again, my favorite matches are in Part 2, 32 minutes in--the set with Andrew goes for 30 minutes)!

Anyways... Maybe I'll add more notes after I've watched more vids. But I had a superb time, thanks Portland!

 

Good games to AJS! For real hitting the hay right now, but I'll post about El Blaze's RD and what to look forward to on how it's been buffed in FS, tomorrow.

 

So yeah here's the RD breakdown in VF5 and what to expect in FS.

Apologizing ahead of time if you already knew this, since you dealt with it fine, it's just the mix-up is pretty good and even better in FS.

So from RD he has:

: This is his drop-kick and it hits MID. A great tool for opponents when they are crouching. Can be blocked and evaded.

: I like using this for pre-emptive attacks since he is a flying hit box that can hit at all three levels.

: Now this is another drop-kick BUT it's an Unblockable that hits HIGH. It can be ducked and evaded.

: Low Drop Kick that hits low. Can be evaded.


The difference between this and the version are, with you see either his back or stomach and both legs while he is in the air (depending on the stance) and with you see just see his side.

: Then of course you got the HOT DOG. Can't be evaded or broken by a throw. Can be ducked.

Now in Final Showdown he still has all of this, but now

: Is a standing Knee that hits mid and stops right before the knee comes out.

: This a somersault, that hits overhead which THEN leads to...


: elbow that hits mid.

: A jumpking kick that gives a nasty knockdown on hit. When a hit lands or is blocked, guess what?

CAN START RD MADNESS ALL OVER AGAIN OR ANOTHER SOMERSAULT AND THE ATTACKS FOLLOWING IT! YEAH!

I can't remeber the proper punishes for this in the vids I've seen, but I'll be sure to post them when I see them



So yeah, when I go into RD what seems to work most at stopping it are and Dick Punch. Gonna go over some drills with Zass, to help him with it.

 

Thanks for the run down! I was having a rough go trying to figure out what was what, as I rely a lot on what I see to guide me on how to defend certain moves. I knew there was a flying kick that was high and unblockable, but had NO IDEA there was a mid flying kick, haha. That would have saved many a swear words of confusion. Also, I don't know why but my natural reaction to seeing the run was always to block. Guess I should work on getting that habit eliminated now that I'm playing Jacky.

Also, really fun games to Zass. That Wolf is scary as hell and I really like how you mixed in the HC attack to make me guess on which side to evade.

 

As a side note to the above, does anyone know if FS training mode has a record feature? It feels like VF above many other games really needs this as it's a pain to practice defensive situations otherwise. I think Nick told me it would have it, but I don't remember.

 

Thanks for the great games! Your Jacky threw me nonstop, haha. Yeaaaaah!
Are you going to get a new xbox so we can play again?

 

If I'm not mistaken, it was stated at one of the promo tournaments that the training mode will have a record feature. And I think on a Gamespot interview, Syzygy (Patrick) said that there would also be a VF4 Evo style trial/tutorial mode.

But I agree, the current VF Training is only convenient for practicing combos, fuzzy guard, and option selects; which is really good, but there are special situation cases that would benefit from recording (things like practicing against Lion's fc, f+P which has special properties in beating pokes that should normally win from that frame situation).

That said, I think just about every player Patrick interviewed at PAX said that they felt VF5 FS really needed a recording feature in the training mode.

When I talked to him then (September) about things I'd like to see, we talked about the training mode. He asked what are people looking for in the training mode, what they mean when they say they want an advanced training mode. I listed the following things:

* Recording Mode - I told him this was absolutely #1 on the list.

* Advantage/Disadvantage display - this is a feature for Final Showdown replays. I really want this in there too, though I will keep looking up frame stats online anyways.

* Hit Box display - I have doubts this will be in VF and I don't even think it uses "hit boxes" the way that a lot of popular fighters do anyways. From the talk, it sounded like there's just no consideration of this. And I can live with that because VF feels very natural to me as it is.

* VF4 Evolution Style Tutorial - I practically gave him a verbal essay on how this tutorial, while not something used by the mainstream, got so much of the fighting game community from other games to really get into Virtua Fighter. I felt it was a factor in the exodus from Tekken 4 to VF4 that we saw in the US (though Tekken 4 was a big factor lol). Considering FS's marketing being aimed at people who already play fighting games, I'm guessing this tutorial will go over very well.

* As part of the Evo Style Tutorial - I told him it was the drills that mode had that was just great for fighting game enthusiasts. Gave them a definite answer to their practice/training.

BTW, I'm really glad you three all got to practice! Keep it up!

 

Well, that's good to know. I read something from Patrick (I think) recently where he mentioned part of pitching the game to the team in Japan was mentioning the need to build a VF4:Evo style tutorial system for the Western players. I assume this is already locked into the game in someway. I guess now the game is just waiting on MS certification so hopefully we get a run down soon of what all to expect from FS. Really hoping it releases sooner rather than later.

Also, about the frame advantage displays, I hope if they do that the readings are dynamic. What I mean by that is the frame advantage of P varies based on normal/CH/side hit/side CH/back hit/wall hit/etc. and the advantage display should show the appropriate amounts for each possible situation. Otherwise, for me at least, it's a wasted opportunity. I imagine something like that would be really difficult to implement, so I'll keep my expectations low for now haha.

 

I believe you've seen it before, but just in case...

Here's how it looks on replay videos from Sega. I figure if it's in the home version, it'll look similar to this.



I think it's awesome that now the game flat out tells you the adv/dis, attack level, and damage stats!