Catching up...

I've been stupid busy as of late, and haven't had much free time to write, play, or think.

I suppose that is probably the biggest obstacle when it comes to mastering ST. Time. I want to believe that I'm starting just too late in my years to be reasonably decent, but I know that it's just a cop out excuse for not trying hard enough. Even though some of the points are very valid: I'm not a kid anymore. Learning is still easy, but the process is different... more time consuming. I also have a job, family, and friends; not to say others don't have those things, or that I didn't have them before, but those things have become a higher priority. Back in the old days, most of my friends played 3rd Strike, so it was a twofer to hang out. That isn't the case anymore.

The worst part is I wasn't even conscious that a week had passed since I had last logged into GGPO. It flew by so fast, and just didn't register. On my way home from another 13 hour work day it dawned on me: "Holy Shit, I need to practice for 2 old 2 furious." I reluctantly logged in and played a quick session. Did pretty decently, but couldn't focus. I'm just too tired.

Before I go, I want to say that the responses I got on No Honor Crew about my GGPO question last time were astounding. The opinions were all over the place. I was able to extract some very good points about the service. Mainly for matchup practice. What's interesting is that there is about equal part love and hate for GGPO, but most have just accepted it as a necessary accessory, even if it doesn't function quite as well as they'd like.

I've been trying to work out time on GGPO to train with Damdai, but given our schedules it hasn't worked out yet. I'm excited to report how it goes, once it's happened. but honestly, I don't know when that will be. Work for me won't be letting up for quite a while... but I'll try my best to make time for him.

-Faka

GGPO: FRIEND or FOE? Part 1

I'll elaborate on this more after I'm done being PISSED FUCKING OFF BECAUSE YOU CAN'T FUCKING DO ANYTHING ON GGPO!!!!! 

RAWR!!!!!

In the meantime, what are your thoughts about GGPO/Online play? Do you think its a suitable training tool, or do the inherit input flaws make it more of a hindrance to being a good player. I'd like to hear them.

-Faka

Do you have what it takes?

So I guess the appropriate place to start any journey is with a bit of a self assessment. I mean before tackling any great feat, you should have an idea of where you're at and where you want to be. That's like training 101. At least that's what gym coaches say...

I've been trying to conjure up a strategic road map plotting the easiest course possible to success. I'm fortunate; I do possess some minimal knowledge of fighting games, as well as I'm no stranger to the competitive environment. I would consider those positives. On the other hand, I've probably got the worst execution imaginable. To help conquer this step I've decided to list some positives and negatives I've come up with. They are as follows:

Positives:

• I have experience playing fighting games. I understand game mechanics and terminology. 
• I'm patient (this could be also be a negative)
• I'm comfortable asking others for help

Negatives:

• EXECUTION: (seriously, it's awful)
• Reaction skills are sub-par: Kuroppi recently pointed out that I use standing short/forward as an anti-air far too often. I agreed with him and then explained that I can't DP on reaction to jump in's. Partly because I can't execute DP's consistently (see above) and partly because I don't process the fact that I need to DP until I've been hit in the face by something.  
• Visual impairments: This is an interesting environmental variable. I struggle to see things on certain stages. Generally one's with high contrasting colors. Fei Long's stage immediately comes to mind, but also Boxers stage and a few others. My brain focuses on the the background and not the foreground where the action is. 
• Visual impairments II': I actually cannot see Ken's fireball sometimes. I thought this was specific to Emulators/GGPO at first, but it's happened when playing in arcades and even the redrawn sprites in HDRemix. I think it is actually designed to disappear on some frames, and perhaps that's when my brain is processing the image. Does anyone else experience this? 
• Spacing: While I understand this concept from other games, I seem to have trouble applying it to ST. I never know when I'm in range or out of range for things. I'm also afraid to walk in between recovery frames (of an opponents whiffed move) to throw or punish or gain ground. 
• Time: Always a factor in life. I barely have any time to play, or practice or learn. Therefore, I must make the most of the time I do dedicate. 

Match-ups I'm comfortable with:

• Sagat
• Zangief
• Boxer
• Ryu
• DeeJay

Match-ups I'm fair with:

• Honda
• Dictator
• T.Hawk
• Cammy
• Guile

Match-ups I'm uncomfortable with:

• Ken (invisible fireball??)
• Blanka
• Fei Long (sometimes)
• Dhalsim

Match-ups that make me want to cry:

• CLAW!!! 
• Chun-Li

With 2 OLD 2 FURIOUS: CE just around the corner I could really use some help with spacing/reaction/character match-ups. If anyone out there has any tips, or is willing to type-tutor me via GGPO, please let me know. 

-Faka

Humble Beginnings...

grand mas·ter

noun

noun: grandmaster

1.

a Super Turbo player of the highest class, esp. one who has won an international tournament.

Greetings, and welcome to The Road to Grandmaster. The purpose of this blog is to document my progression as an ST player; as I (hopefully) move up the ranks and improve in skill, becoming a notable ST player in the US. Before we get started, I want to give some insight as to what you can expect from this blog...

Nothing. That's right. Nothing. Don't expect anything.

That being said, I plan to keep this updated with progress as much as possible. I also want to use some of my community connections to get to talk to players and post my findings. One of the most interesting things about ST to me is that there is a vast amount of knowledge out there, and almost all of it is shared, and while some of it may seem repetitive to a seasoned player, to a new player looking for information this could in the future become a great resource... which leads me to my next topic:

What do I want to get out of this?

While the purpose of the blog is to document my progression, I hope that more comes from this than just a written log of the wins and losses I will acquire from GGPO, or US tournaments. I intend to be completely open and really showcasing just what goes on in the mind of a learning and growing player. The successes, the failures, the challenges, all of those things, and more! I'm no Justin Wong, or Gamerbee, I am not even sure I have natural talent. I consider myself nothing more than an average player, just like most of the people in the fighting game community. Maybe someone is interested in ST and feels that the barrier of entry is too strong with there being players with decades of knowledge and play time. That's how I felt before I started, so I hope maybe this could show that person that they should still give the game a shot, who knows? Maybe you'll be the next Damdai.

So let's get started shall we? First off, I LOVE origin stories, so this first entry is going to cover who I am, how I ended up playing ST, and some miscellaneous information like why I like the ST community. This will be a brief (Update: After writing it all, I realize it is NOT at all brief) introduction, but some of topics will be revisited in greater depth as we move along.

So about me:

Here's the basic rundown information that you'll get from the ST Revival player bio page (whenever it get's updated.)

Name: Faka

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Current Location: Phoenix, AZ

Debut: 2013

Main Character: Ryu

Alt Characters: Ryu

Ryu

Reserved (maybe DeeJay)

Twitter: @nfg.faka

XBL: GT Faka

PSN: djfaka

GGPO: djfaka

My name is Tristan, but in the online world I go by Faka. I’m originally from Southern California: I was born and raised in San Diego, and attended college in Los Angeles (Cal Poly Pomona--you know, that place where EVO was.) Now I live and work in Phoenix, AZ. My first exposure to fighting games was Street Fighter II for SNES back in 1992. While this info makes me seem like I’m an old school player, in 1992 I was 7 years old, and while I could do the moves (I will never forget when I executed an SPD with Zangief) I never played anyone outside of close family and friends, and I almost always lost. I’ve probably played just about every fighting game post SF2, but for a long time I was on those guys who just liked the games. I was perfectly content with playing dramatic battles in Street Fighter Alpha 3 by myself, and thought that the Z-Combo in Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter was the best thing you could do. I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

My first experience with human competition was shortly after the arcade release of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, I remember when Nickel City got the game… I was playing DDR heavily back then. Since my friends and I would frequent the arcade multiple times a week, there would be a few points with the MVC2 machine wasn’t seeing activity, and my friends and I would sloppily throw down. There was a limited selection of characters back then, but I remember watching players do justice with Ryu/Jill/Iceman. I’m not exactly sure how I ended up transitioning from DDR to MVC2, but I found myself playing MVC2 more and more. One day, I was challenged by another player… this time someone not from my DDR circle. Needless to say I lost badly, but I’m a pretty competitive person, so more and more nickels went into the machine. I never won a single match, but I did get some valuable knowledge from the guy, he taught me some combos. I kept playing but was never good, and I remember talks of B5, and how the SD players were going to represent. I had no idea what a B5 was, or how significant it was, but I get it now.

My MVC2 career, or lack there of, fell flat when I moved from San Diego to Los Angeles to go to college. As luck would have it, my dorm roommate was actually into 3D fighters. He introduced me to Tekken, and more importantly to combo videos. He would share combo videos with me all the time, for every game. Marvel, ST, Tekken, Samurai Shodown, you name it. Though I watched a lot of videos, none changed my life more than a Street Fighter III: Third Strike Parry Exhibition video I saw. Immediately after seeing how cool the parry system was, I decided I wanted to be able to replicate that. Somehow throughout my studies, I found myself with plenty of free time (aka skipping class) so I would head down to the game center and try my hand at 3s.

Bodied. I believe that is the relevant term for what happened to me repeatedly. However, just like with MVC2, with each loss I learned a little more about the game. I remember people warning me not to play this Oro player named Hungbee, or the Dudley player named Vic. Makes sense as when they were around the win streaks were huge. On the days they didn’t play I found myself losing to this blue Urien… all the time. Many of you know him as Gootecks. I practiced and got better, and started winning matches, still losing to that Urien, and a few other players, but I had gained some ground. Someone invited me to come out on Friday evenings to play at Arcade Infinity, and that Super Arcade was the place to go to play 3s when classes were over. I became an AI regular, where at some point my amatuer Necro and wake-up super happy Makoto started making an impact. The players at AI always talked about Ranbats at Family Fun Arcade, and how important of an event they were. It was oddly similar to the talks of B5 I remember from years ago. Something about these showcase events had people stirred, so I figured I’d check it out. Up until my first FFA ranbat, I had never once paid a cent to compete in anything fighting game related. This was my first tournament, and it was the real deal, they had commentators, video, players, everything. I’m pretty sure ST was present, but I didn’t know or care about it back then. I was all about 3s. I played 3s all throughout college, and while I never made top 8 at a ranbat, or even came close to winning a tournament, I considered myself a competitive Street Fighter player, learned fundamentals of fighting games, and made some friends along the way.

It should come as no surprise that moving from the fighting game Mecca known as Southern California to wrong-turn-in-Albuquerque Phoenix, Arizona was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I was having the time of my life playing games… but unfortunately, reality struck and it was time for me to be an adult. It’s now 2008 and I just graduated college, with not a job prospect in sight. To avoid being literally homeless I chose to seek refuge with my parents whom had moved to the Desert Oasis in 2004. Depression set in deep along with the memories of good times with the AI 3s players, times that I would never have again. To my surprise there was some 3s activity going on in Arizona, as discovered via SRK forums. I met up with these guys SabreSRK, Said3s, Rochus and a few others, and quickly proved myself to be a respectable player. Arizona was different. The players here didn’t just play one game, they were decent at many games. I still only played 3s, but it was valuable to me to have the exposure to other games. I was told of some major tournament that was held here, something called Devastation. I didn’t know what it was, but much like before, the idea of a tournament had people stirred.

Being out of work and having ample free time on my hand, I offered my assistance to the Devastation event team. For months we slaved away at organizing the event--I want to sidestep for just a moment to give praise to the efforts of tournament organizers across the world. It’s not easy...trust me, I know. Devastation 2009 was a success, and a year later we were back at it again. For Devastation 2010 we divided up bracket running amongst the organizing staff, since we didn’t much of a volunteer base. It worked out so that we could run the brackets for the games we were most comfortable with, so primarily I was running music game tournaments. I was also originally assigned HD Remix, but was told I wasn’t needed as one of the players opted to run the bracket. After a long day of enduring the same 5 Guitar Hero songs, I met up with the rest of the organizers to discuss the happenings of the day. Mostly everything had died down, with the exception of some first person shooters, and HD Remix. The HD Remix tournament had long ended, but the players were still playing, chatting, and overall having a great time. I walked over to observe…

This was my first exposure to anything ST related. Up until this point I had a very skewed opinion of the game: It was old, played by old players, and matches only last 10 seconds, because everything in the game does 100% damage. While pretty much all of those things are true, I was grabbed by the interaction between the community. You could easily feel the players love for the game as they took turns trying to beat this skilled Ryu. I was offered an opportunity to play, and while I had no idea what I was doing, I figured it was nice to be able to sit down and play something, after a hard day of work. I picked Sagat, having heard stories of Sagat being one of the best characters (don’t judge me! I didn’t know anything back then!) I was pummeled of course, but was allowed to play a few more consecutive sets. I started talking to my opponent asking questions about the game or how to stop his onslaught of moves. To my surprise, he was very forthcoming with information pertinent to the game, and praised me for the few good decisions I made in battle. After our short session, I started speaking to some of the other players about the tournament. I asked who won, and the response was “DGV.” When I asked who that was, about half a dozen fingers pointed the guy on the floor, for whom I was just playing. I wasn’t shocked by this, after watching him play a bit, but I found it so cool that he was willing to talk to me about game mechanics and fundamental information. In fact, everyone was. I got more information about HD Remix in one night than I could handle! I remember asking DGV if he would teach me how to play if I was interested, to which he agreed.

I didn’t follow through with him on the offer. In fact, I don’t think I even played fighting games much the next year. 3s had well died to Street Fighter 4, a game that I just couldn’t get into. I purchased HD Remix at launch, and played a few times online, but after losing badly often, I had pretty much given that up. I practiced a little, but just couldn’t get it. I watched videos and followed ST, but didn’t actually consider myself a player. Fast forward to EVO 2012. The Tournament of Legends. I found myself at EVO to support some friends playing MVC3. I heard there was going to be a big (and free) 32 on 32 event for ST, that was open to anyone who was interested. I eagerly signed up, although I’m not sure why I was so eager, I didn’t even play the game. I suppose I just wanted to be involved in something, since times had changed, and I didn’t find myself well connected to any of the current games. I ran into Ken and Tai of  “DG and V” (over the passing time I did manage to learn that DGV wasn’t just a single person) and like it was yesterday, they greeted me warmly. Tai asked me if I was entering in ST, and I indicated that I would be participating in the 64-man event, but not any of the last chance qualifiers. Shortly after catching up, the event began.

I was on team Damdai. I didn’t know who that was, but he was the team captain. Mao, a japanese claw player was also on our team. Prior to the event I had watched him annihilate everyone who opposed him. Glad he was on our team. My moment of glory (or shame, if you wish) came when it was my turn to represent the team against a resilient Chun player (since identified as MongoloRobokop.) I picked Ryu, a departure from Sagat (by this time I knew O.Sagat was the better of the Sagat’s, but I didn’t know how to pick old characters.) I didn’t win the match, but I almost did, losing primarily do to my lack of knowledge of Chun gimmicks. While my contribution to the team was 0, I still received praise for my showing. I remember thinking “Wow, there’s a lot of support from this community, thats pretty cool!” It was at that moment, literally at that exact moment, that I decided I wanted to be an ST player. Even though I lost, I felt excited, excitement I hadn’t felt since I started playing 3rd Strike some 8 years prior. I again asked Ken if he would teach me how to play Ryu, since that was the character I had progressed the furthest with. Again he agreed, and I told him this time I was serious.

That’s my origin story into the ST world. While it’s not nearly as exciting as it is long to read, it does provide a little insight as to how I came to exist, and will set the basis for some future blog entries. I didn’t know much of anything about the game in 2012, and while I know some things now, it still pales in comparison to that of some of the better players out there. Even worse, I probably didn’t touch ST until 6 months AFTER the Tournament of Legends. I didn’t even take Ken up on his offer for teaching me some things until early 2013 I think. I’ve been playing a lot since then, when time permits that is, and I very much enjoy the game, and do have a desire to improve my knowledge and skill. Which circles back to why I’m here.

I’m pretty awful at concluding things, so take that disclaimer as conclusion to this entry. Be sure to check back periodically to see what ST related topics are hot and fresh in my mind. I’ll be looking for the community to help boost my knowledge of the game (hopefully so I can beat you.)

-Faka