I used to watch KI tournaments any time they came around and they were fun and hype to watch. Now? Players reach top 8 and the matches are a complete mess! These players have barely any understanding of fundamentals and other fighting game mechanics, but escape it due to the amount of crap you can get away with. The sad part is that I’m not the only one who thinks this either. I’ve heard stories and even had people tell me that they too have lost interest in watching KI. At this point I only enjoying watching a select few people because they know the game and mechanics well enough to escape all of the crap. It’s probably because most players are new and anybody extremely good are in other fighters sadly. I hope this isn’t the continuation of the slow painful death of KI, but I can hope for the best.
EDIT: KOMBO KLASH SAN ANTONIO 2016 IS A TOURNAMENT WORTH WATCHING. Good players, strong knowledge(some flawed, but we are only human), great reads, great neutral. This is what KI should be.
When you say ‘escape all of the crap,’ what exactly are you referring to? My gut wants to say you mean flipouts into setups, staggers into resets, juggles, etc.
Care to elaborate? Which players are you referring to? Who else thinks this? What kind of crap are they allegedly getting away with? I only ask because the devil’s in the details, and so far, what you’ve suggested is only hearsay.
From my own experiences, by contrast, most of what I’ve seen is top notch stuff - and I’ve been playing FGs for the better part of my life (I’m 33 years old, in case you were wondering), know how much of it works, and have learned even more besides from this very community. I’ve seen KI players like @F3Sleep, @UABass, @STORM179, and numerous others raise the roof in terms of what’s possible and known while others like @Infilament have helped raise the floor for those who need it.
Sure, there’s the occasional bug every once in a while that can be exploited (what FG doesn’t have this?), but those are often fixed in the very next update for the game (which come almost monthly) since the the developers do such a fantastic job considering their small team and budget constraints.
IMO, you’re either watching and hanging out with the wrong people, or simply have become bored with the game as a whole (which is fine, BTW - everything gets old over time if you stick around long enough) because I can assure you - the understanding of fundamentals and other FG mechanics are indeed still there, as is the support of much of the community and the developers and publishers themselves.
The reason I find tournaments boring to watch is that nobody plays the combo mindgame anymore. You know, long combos, heavy doubles, counter breakers, HALF OF THE DAMN GAME. All we see are the same one chance setups, over and over, because top players are convinced they have to play with as little risk as humanly possible. This is also why we don’t see characters like Mira, who can take a life bar with the right read. Can you imagine how awesome it would be to see that happen in Top 8 of a tournament? But no “counter breakers are broken” and “I’ll just get guess broken” and all that nonsense that just ruins the high level play as a whole.
This is why I appreciate players like Thompxson and Nicky, because they take risks and do well, and as a result are fun for me to watch.
Someone told me the other day, that this is why they are the best. They go for those Risks, and not go for something and make it safe, but like Game Changing Risks.
I agree with this sentiment. What separates very good players from the higher echelon of players like Nicky and Thompson is that they can take those risks but to them it is most likely a very calculated risk. Something that they have developed over a grotesque amount of hours playing matches, time in the dojo, and doing their homework away from the game.
The KI community at large is really bad at risk assessment IMO. They can be fixated on short term results rather than long term benefits, and they don’t use real data to back up their point of view. When someone challenges them on it, they shift blame to the game itself.
Anyway, about the OP, I can agree that our scene is, in general, not to the caliber of other FGs that are played more internationally. That’s not a slight on any of our best players, it’s just the reality of playing a non-mainstream game. KI has some small niggles that it can work out, but at some point, players have to take responsibility for not playing the game optimally and stop saying it’s the game’s fault. The OP says you can “get away with a bunch of stuff” in this game, but at what point is the game being made poorly, and at what point is it just players playing a fluid, creative, interesting game suboptimally?
They’re also playing the best characters in the game. A lot of said risk is being eaten alive and overcompensated by the power of their characters. Thompson and Nicky are great players but that’s just how I feel, beat up on Jago all day long have him pop instinct and then it wasn’t even like you did anything to him. Their are so many momentum characters in the game that losing your turn is kind of a big deal and so taking that risk probably isn’t the best of ideas.
I love seeing mind games and stories being built throughout the course of a set as well, but most top players inlcuding myself just feel short combos into vortex is optimal because that’s what the game encourages through reset/mixup mechanics like flipout, stagger, etc. I play a lot of fighting games and to compare in SFV not playing optimally in SFV is the difference between losing and winning a round by a pixel.
I’m sure people will disagree but that’s fine, I won’t argue about it like I’ve been doing with other topics in these forums…yall know
I have to admit that some of the competitions have lost their luster. I enjoy watching Thompxson, Nicky, Bass, and others. I also still enjoy Bass’ YouTube channel and his matches against players like ShinTristan, but it seems like that is different than some of the stuff from the tournaments that I have seen because of the long sets. And I echo what has been said above.
It sounds bad saying this, but watching characters such as Arbiter and Gargos just isn’t fun. No offense intended to Sleep, who is a much, much better player than I am, but seeing him using characters that have tools that can prevent a match from entering into a true neutral state is frustrating and boring. Even Kan-Ra with his flip-outs, command grabs, and sand traps is overwhelming in the hands of a good player.
To be fair, I was looking at old EVO footage and the first year KI was there and CD jr won with Sadira, much of it was using a bug that allowed him to chain a series of openers for unbreakable damage. That wasn’t much fun either. So the game has always had issues. Yet, it is also weird that a game like SFV, with such abysmally poor sales has a better tournament scene regardless of that franchise’s reputation.
I wasn’t aware that Jago and Fulgore take less damage from a heavy to the face when they miss their counter break.
As ridiculous as his instinct is, acting like that health is free is wrong.
Not many characters even have these mechanics, let alone get much off of them. Besides, having a heavy reset game does not directly discourage doing longer combos before the attempt.
So it seems we all agree that the Ki competitive scene kinda sucks right now. So my question is what can we do to fix it and how do we convince people that taking risks is the more optimal way of playing the game?
Name has a lot to do it with it. See Mortal Kombat X.
I don’t necessarily agree that the current scene sucks. Only that it’s small and there’s little reason to adapt outside of a certain pattern.
If you want to force change in the players force them to adapt to how people play. However, be prepared to be introduced to the very problems they speak of if/when they turn out to be true.
I feel it’s just really hard almost impossible to convince players that their style of play is bad or wrong. Counter breakers and lockouts were suppose to be incentives to encourage players to do long combos because the reward was better, but it seems that’s just not the case in S3 or going forward. Like I said earlier KI is just such a momentum based game and if your character can maintain the vortex play a lot easier than risking a counter breaker then I don’t see this mentality changing sadly.
We’ll have to see how this to PD change will affect the game overall as well.
I think one of the absolute most interesting things about the KI community is its ability to take the concept of “risk” or shenanigans and associate it with a lack of skill or utter randomness.
When watching Capcom Cup and seeing Kazunoko play with marginal respect, DP’ing every frame trap certain players threw at him, the commentators and even the Twitch chat didn’t scream “YOLO” and say Kaz was just playing random and/or getting lucky. They understand that risk and disrespect are a fact of fighting games. When he does Cammy light punch frame traps again and again they don’t talk about how “braindead” that wholly unreactable mixup is or how it’s just a string of bs that the defender has to guess against (which, for the record, is exactly what it is). They understand that fighting games have dirt, that they have disrespect, and that yes, they have unreactable shenanigans.
I think it’s true that some (perhaps even most) of the players who consistently make Top 8 are lacking in certain fundamentals. But “fundamentals” is a vague term that covers a lot of different things. Do you mean that KI players lack safe jump timings? That they are impatient? That they don’t AA well? When you begin to interrogate what exactly you mean, I think you find that KI’s top players, like with any game, have an array of particular things that they are good and bad at. Nicky absolutely does have anti-airs, DaytonJ does have safe jumps, and Thompxson is pretty darn patient in neutral. Great TJ players know how to whiff punish, and good Hisako players don’t mind blocking.
It’s fine if KI doesn’t catch your attention the way it used to - that happens and will happen for all of us at some point. But I think “I’m bored because these guys don’t have fundamentals” is a canard. Some players have zero respect, some players can’t sit still, and others are actually pretty well rounded. A lot of this stuff is just the basic variation from player to player that you see in any FG scene.
And for the record (and not directed at you @EctopicILLusion), I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the players who almost always do really, really, well do NOT rely primarily on one-change into vortex. Those kinds of strings are strong, and they have their place, but it genuinely boggles my mind that we’re still having these conversations about whether or not that playstyle is optimal. Usually in the same breath that someone is complaining that KI doesn’t punish hard…
Counterbreakers are not that easy to use or that good to rely on. Whenever I go for a longer combo I get broken. Then there’s no respect at all from the other player. And I don’t mean their pressure, I mean the way they play. It’s like I’m so stupid that I’m going to eat 5 dps in a row. Flowcharts players are annoying and I’m taking too much time to download them. I can’t believe people play like that and then complain. And they play like this and win, and I feel bad about that, because I know I can do better.
Sometimes I want to teabxg them like crazy! just because the way they play, not because they can’t improve but because they give a dam about myself as another player playing them.
I don’t know how to describe this feelings. It would be better if I play a match and show you.
