Board 8 > ~Official EVO 2018 hype topic (Aug 3rd - Aug 5th) (Pools are up!) (Hype!)~

(+) Yeah! (+)

I just don't see the need

Like, you just had 2-3+ hours of matches. A twenty-thirty minute break shouldn't be a bad thing.
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Need?

Just...don't watch it if you don't want to?

In my experience with a different game (Pokemon), I find winners are usually very happy to do interviews. It's not something they need to force themselves to do.

Downtime filler helps keep people interested. Especially more casual viewers who might just leave rather than wait.
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I'm not sure if mcflubbin still wants to post more about his EVO experience so I'll bump this once.
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Thanks TRE, I'm typing up my post now!
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I've finally recovered from the long EVO weekend, and I have a lot of thoughts to share. First of all, if you ever get the opportunity to attend EVO in the future, you 1000% should, without question. I have a few minor complaints of course, but overall it was an absolute blast, and I hope I'm able to go again next year (and hopefully see some of you lovely folks there!). Everybody's super friendly and there's a ton of stuff to do. There's so much I want to talk about and I don't know how to format this post, so I'm just gonna write random thoughts in bullet points.

Hands-on Thoughts on Upcoming Fighting Games

1) Soul Calibur 6 - The game is awesome. Definitely my #1 most anticipated game right now. The game is gorgeous, and every character seems fun and unique. Movement feels crisp and satisfying, and a lot of the new moves look amazing. I didn't have enough time to figure out all of the new mechanics, but I had a crazy good time playing it regardless. The Astaroth and Mina trailers on Sunday were icing on the cake, I'm pumped about both of them returning. I can't wait to get the game in my hands and figure it out myself. I hope it's popular enough to be on the main stage of EVO next year.

2) SNK Heroines- This game's existence is completely baffling to me. I feel like the target audience for this game is so niche that it's going to flop big time, at least in the United States. There was no line to play it, so I tried it for shits and giggles and...yeah. It's almost more of a party game than an actual fighting game. From what I could tell, there was little depth to the core fighting mechanics. Unless you're some kind of weird sex pervert, I would pass on this one for sure.

3) Dead or Alive 6 - Speaking of weird sex perverts, Dead or Alive 6 was another game at EVO. I didn't get an opportunity to play it, unfortunately, but I watched some of the side tournament. From what I saw, it's mechanically quite similar to DoA5. It seems to be toning down the hypersexuality, which I guess could be seen as either a pro or a con, depending on who you ask. For me, it's a pro. I actually think DoA5's mechanics are actually kind of overlooked and it's a fun game to play, but there's such a stigma attached to DoA in general that I never put any work into it. I'm keeping my eye on this game for sure, and I hope it succeeds. AZ actually has a decent DoA scene, so if the game's good, I might actually put in some effort to get good at it.

4) My Hero Academia- Apparently this exists? I'm mostly unfamiliar with the anime myself, but I got roped into playing a few games of this. It's kind of fun! The guy I was playing against had played a lot of matches already, so he was teaching me the mechanics as we played. It's very similar to those Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games, if you're into those. If you like the anime, I'm sure you'll like this too. I played as the guy with fire and ice powers, he was pretty cool. Apparently there was a Kill la Kill game somewhere too, but I didn't get a chance to try that out.

I didn't get a chance to play Smash Ultimate either, because even though I like Smash as much as the next guy, there was no way in hell I was waiting in that crazy-ass line to play a single game of Smash. The people that I talked to who did play it loved it.

My Pools and Other Convention Center Fun
-Don't have much to say about my SFV pools other than it started way late because the line to pick up badges was still enormous on Friday morning. My pool was at 8, and they didn't officially start DQing people for being late until 9, so it was a lot of standing around twiddling my thumbs and waiting. If you guys ever go to EVO, please try to pick up your badge on Thursday night (you get free Cup Noodles, too!). Anyway, I got bodied but it was still a lot of fun. Both the guys I played complimented my custom Nina-themed PS4 pad, so that was nice. :)
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-My Tekken poolman, that was something. My first match was against a Bryan player. I was up two rounds in the first game and this girl who was talking to the guy running the pool accidentally leaned forward and turned off the monitor while we were playing. Uh, whoops. It was all good though, we just restarted the match and gave me the first two rounds. I didnt feel too bad since I was quite a bit better than my opponent, so I think I definitely would have won even without that hiccup.

-Anyway, immediately after my first match, the pool runner asks me to stay put, so I dont even have time to celebrate my first EVO win before Im thrust right into the next match. The guy picks Dragunov, and hes much better than the first guy. Even though Dragunov is one of the best characters in the game, I really dont mind fighting him that much since I have decent experience in the match-up. So I win the first game pretty handily (I did a goddamn sick combo in that game, I still remember it vividly, Im still so proud of myself haha), but then this dude switches to Claudio. Uh oh. I have very little practice against Claudio, and hes kind of a YOLO character, so hes pretty effective in tournament. He ends up 3-0ing me the second game, but I was somehow able to turn it around in the third game and clutch it out. Holy shit, when I stood up after winning that second match, it was the most exhilarating feeling ever. I dont want to oversell it, but there was so much adrenaline pumping. Such an amazing feeling.

-Nothing too exciting happened after that. I won my third match against a Geese player pretty unremarkably, and then I lost to a really good Eliza player. I have no clue what to do against that character. In losers, I went against the same guy I faced in my second match, and he asked the pool runner to do a blind pick. That was kind of annoying and unnecessary since this dude watched me play Nina in all of my matches and Im not some gormless counterpicker, but whatever. He picked Lars and won. After that he thought he made it out of pools, but he still had one more match to win and then he got bodied in his next match. I know it probably reflects poorly on me, but I got a little bit of satisfaction watching him lose since he was kind of cocky and the blind pick thing really rubbed me the wrong way. Overall, Im very happy with going 3-2. Hell, I would have been happy just winning one, so I definitely exceeded my own expectations. And I did better than the rest of my friends, so Ive got these sick bragging rights. baby.

-I spent a lot of time checking out the artists alley. I was kind of bummed by the lack of Nina related merchandise, or Tekken merchandise in general. There was a lot of Asuka, Lili, and Lucky Chloe, and even some Kazumi and Eliza, but no Nina! Come on you guys, Nina is Tekkens OG bad bitch, show her some love. The most popular franchises represented were easily Overwatch, Persona 5, and My Hero Academia. There was a ton of merch for those 3 in particular. Lots of cool stuff, but I just ended up getting a cool Persona 5 shirt, a Street Fighter poster, and then neat little King Dedede button.

-It was awesome getting to see all my favorite players and personalities out and about. At the convention center I saw JDCR, Qudans, Sako, Infiltration, Xian, Infiltration, Justin Wong, Yipes, Gootecks, Daigo, Rip, Woolie from 2BFP, and a bunch of others Im sure Im forgetting. I even got a picture with Harada-san, who is legitimately kind of my hero, which is so freakin cool.

Sunday in the Arena
So my brother and I did something really stupid on Sunday. We woke up early to see Guilty Gear top 8, and we stayed in the arena pretty much until Street Fighter V top 8 ended. Basically, we were in the arena for 16. Fucking. Hours. Why on earth did we do that? That was pretty fucking dumb of us. Now I know for next year, to, uh, not do that. We were so exhausted by the end of it that we kind of wanted to die.
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At least no one can question our dedication, haha.

So to start, Guilty Gear. There was a decent crowd turnout considering it was at 8am and it was Guilty Gear, but the people that were there were turnt. Now, Im complete trash at anime games in general, but I have a lot of appreciation for them, especially Guilty Gear. I was originally rooting for the Jam player, but Lost Soul, the American player, had the crowd going crazy, so it was impossible not to root for him. Jiyuna was the in house announcer, and he was so blatantly biased towards Lost Soul that it was kind of funny. Any time Lost Soul was doing Elphelts shotgun loops, the crowd was going nuts. At one point this kid, who was probably about 16, sat down next to me and his mom was with him. His mom clearly had no idea what was going on, but any time the crowd the crowd cheered she gave an enthusiastic WOOOOO and would wave a little flag around. That shit had me rollin. Anyway, Lost Souls run was crazy hype (the best an American has ever done in Guilty Gear, I think?) but Omito was incredibly impressive as well.

After Guilty, my group left the venue for a little while to get some lunch because none of us really cared about Melee. So I guess we werent there the full 16 hours, but still. We came back in time for Melee top 4, and it was fine. Im glad Leffen won. Im not 100% sure, but was Plup having a panic attack on stage or something? He really did not seem okay. I legitimately felt really bad for the guy. After the medal ceremony, they revealed Astaroth and Mina, which was awesome.

Finally, it was time for the main event. Let me just say that the Tekken top 8 was phenomenal. I was worried top 8 would be inundated with Jacks and Kazumis and be a real snoozer, so thank god we only had one Jack. I sincerely hope that you all enjoyed that top 8 a tenth as much as I did. Lil Majin, man. Ive been a fan of his for a long ass time. My brother mains King, and Lil Majin is pretty much his hero. We both watch his stream frequently. Hes a really likeable, chill guy and obviously super fun to watch. I would have wagered before EVO that Majin was the American with the best shot to make top 8, and Im so unbelievable glad that he did. That man is hype incarnate. Majin getting bodied 3-0 by JDCR and then opening a can of whoop ass and running it back might have been the most amazing thing Ive ever seen. The crowd was absolutely loving it. Every time King did a running jaguar bomb, the crowd did the powerbomb motion and then yelled a satisfying UHH when he slammed them to the ground. It was fucking great. Its too bad Majin couldnt have gone all the way, but his whole run was god-tier. I completely wrecked my voice from cheering so loud. Ill give it up though, Lowhigh was playing out of his mind and he absolutely deserved the win. He was killing it with the slides and his whiff punishes were hella clean.

And as if the Tekken top 8 wasnt sick enough, Harada comes out and completely blows my mind. I was just expecting maybe a trailer for Lei and thats it. But no, he comes out here and gives me Anna, who is my favorite Tekken character of all time. Yall dont even understand, I was literally shaking in the arena. I was almost in tears. Her new costume is amazing, her new moves look amazing, just everything about her was amazing. And then Lei too? I mean his face kind of looked fucked up, but still, its Lei! Hes awesome. Negan is whack, but there were 3 other characters slots too! The announcement seriously shattered all of my puny expectations. I am so unbelievable pumped for Season 2 of Tekken. I just hope that it comes out relatively soon. It was just so damn cool to be there in person for when my favorite character was revealed. There arent even words to express the ecstasy.
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After that, unfortunately, it was mostly downhill. DBFZ suuuuuuuucked. Im tired right now so I wont go into detail since I feel like theres a lot I want to say about this topic and maybe Ill post it tomorrow, but yeah, watching DBFZ for 4 hours was fucking brutal. Street Fighter V was mostly alright. Im glad Problem X won. His matches were pretty hype. The rest were mostly average, though they seemed like godsends after DBFZ. Still, I left feeling extremely satisfied. Im sure I missed some stuff, but Ill post them if I remember any interesting details.
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Maybe it's because I've dumped hundreds of hours in the game but watching all of dbfz was still the most fun part of Evo for me I was hyped for every match
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Yeah I'd be interested to know why you think DBZ is so boring to watch. Did you enjoy watching Marvel or no?
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DBFZ and Marvel are not the same in terms of spectator experience. Marvel is way more frantic with a lot more going on at once. DB has longer assist cooldowns so a lot of the fight boils down to 1v1. even when an assist gets hit in DB, chances are the damage is insignificant because they recover it back anyway and iirc assists take the same damage as the point unlike in Marvel where assists take increased damage. this can contribute to longer game time. everyone has ridiculously long blockstrings, superdash is safe, etc. so things can get pretty repetitive. and sparking is the fucking worst with the constant healing and how combos do almost no damage during it.

what DB does have going for it is the player storylines and being Dragon Ball so fanservice. if you're not invested in those things, i can see it being boring to watch. it's not an uncommon sentiment at all and players have definitely said things along the lines of it being fun to play but not so fun to watch.

Yeah DBFZ I didn't watch much of but I couldn't get into what little I did watch, and Marvel was by far my favorite thing to watch in Evo, and I like playing DBFZ too. It kinda just has the Blazblue problem when watching it where the combos take far too long relative to the damage they do. Also the setups and pressure strings and stuff seem more repetitive than Marvel-- Marvel's seem far more based on the game state and matchups and DBFZ's seem more "canned" to me.

I'm sure if I was super into playing DBFZ I'd enjoy it a bit more but yeah they're not at all similar as watching experiences really.
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Yeah, kateee summed up my thoughts pretty succinctly. Especially the part about it being fun to play and not fun to watch. I actually like the game a lot. It's amazing both visually and aesthetically, and the story mode is great by fighting game standards. That being said, my biggest problem with the game as a spectator is the character uniformity. The core universal mechanics of the game are so strong that characters barely feel unique. Every character has access to a completely safe super dash that goes through projectiles (which renders characters like Beerus and Frieza almost worthless since it makes keepout playstyles nearly impossible to perform well with), every character has access to a safe vanish, every character's 2H serves the same function as an antiair, etc. Hell, most characters' combo sequences are nearly identical. If you learn the ins and outs of one character, you pretty much know how to play the whole cast, with a few minor adjustments. Almost every character plays has the exact same general gameplan and playstyle. From a casual perspective, this makes a lot of sense since it makes the game much easier to pick up and play. But from a spectator's perspective, the lack of gameplay variety makes the game ungodly boring.

My second gripe with DBFZ is the ridiculous damage scaling. So, okay, you finally managed to score a clean hit and open up your opponent. Great! You hit him the same combo you've practiced in training mode a million times. So after a 15 second combo (the same combo everyone's seen a million times since there's disappointingly little combo variety in this game), you use your level one super and DHC into your next character's level 3, which takes another 10 seconds, and then you look at your opponent's health bar. It barely went down 40%. What the fuck? Why on earth did all of that do so little damage? You have to open up your opponent like 3 times to kill a single character. Honestly, the damage scaling in this game is outrageous. I almost want to say they need to increase the damage by like at least 125%, maybe more, to make the game more watchable. The lack of combo variety combined with the ridiculous amount of time it takes to finish a single game makes watching DBFZ a mind-numbing experience. I swear to god I saw Bardock use his level 3 at least a hundred times in that top 8, and every time it took 10 seconds and and did <15% of his opponent's health. It was awful.

The sparking mechanic only exacerbates this problem. For as much as people shat on X-Factor in MvC3, I think sparking would be so much better if it functioned more like X-Factor. As it stands now, sparking only exists to make excruciatingly long matches even longer, since the health recovery is so crazy and lasts so long. It can be used offensively in combos, but it's rare to see since the burst is incredibly valuable as a defensive option, which brings me to another point: the lack of defensive options in DBFZ. As far as I know, the only real options for defense are the initial burst of sparking, reflecting (which is incredibly risky for very little payoff), and using the armor of a level 3 super. That's it. During one of the matches, Sonic Fox did nearly a 30 second blockstring with Zamasu. What part about watching a blockstring for 30 seconds is exciting? Is it the suspense of seeing if he'll finally open up his opponent? Well, spoilers, he did, because his opponent could do fuck all about it. Shouldn't there be some kind of push block mechanic or something to prevent that kind of nonsense?

Another problem is the lack of comeback potential. Sure, coming back from a 3v1 character deficit is possible, but pretty damn unlikely because damage output is so low. You still need to open up your opponent 7 or 8 times to be able to successfully comeback, which is exceptionally difficult without assists. People got crazy hyped about Shenron showing up, but both times he showed up in top 8 ultimately led to nothing, because overcoming a one to three character deficit is a monumental task.
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I feel like there's some other factors I'm forgetting, but those are the main reasons I was so miserable watching DBFZ. This is all from my perspective of course and I'm probably wrong about a few things, so feel free to call me out on something if you disagree. Overall, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. DBFZ had the most entrants by a decent margin, and IIRC the DBFZ top 8 broke EVO viewership records, which is great. I just wish that I, personally, found the game more exciting to spectate since it has so much widespread appeal and is clearly going to be around for awhile. Hell, at this rate it's probably going to be the main game at EVO next year haha. I'm glad that a lot of people seemed to enjoy it, it's just not my cup of tea in the slightest.
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Yeah that definitely seems to desummarize my thoughts on it pretty well. Damage scaling and combo repetitiveness were a real problem from what I saw. I can't say I was miserable watching it since I didn't watch more than 10-15 minutes, but yeah at a glance it seems down there with Blazblue in terms of viewing enjoyment for me.
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I enjoyed watching it a good bit

I think the only game at EVO this year that I didn't enjoy watching was Melee
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I think the biggest problem with DBFZ is the rate of healing when characters are tagged out & in sparking. People can get washed and rounds can end really fast if they just go down one character at a time. But once people start switching out back and forth, you see the times where three characters have all eaten huge combos, but still are at 90% of their life. And yeah, sparking is just too defensively strong. You shouldn't take a combo and come away with more health than you started with.
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OH, one more minor gripe: the lack of happy birthdays! Happy birthdays are crazy hype and make you think twice about calling an assist, but they're pretty much nonexistent in DBZF. The assist character takes one or two hits, and then falls out of the combo. It's whack.
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Yeah you have a lot of good points about watching DBZF that make sense. I will argue that seeing Zero loops or Doom foot dive combos take 20 seconds every match got pretty old in Marvel even if it did ultimately kill the character.

Marvel definitely has more hype just because of how dynamic it is. DBZ will never match something like Bionic Marn or Justin Akuma comebacks.
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One last bump. Would people be interested in a new fighting game topic series?
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I always would.

Also, you have any other tournaments you're looking at for the future, after Evo?
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mcflubbin posted...

OH, one more minor gripe: the lack of happy birthdays! Happy birthdays are crazy hype and make you think twice about calling an assist, but they're pretty much nonexistent in DBZF. The assist character takes one or two hits, and then falls out of the combo. It's whack.

I'm sure there is some science to keeping them in a combo but it isn't worth the time investment.

I've only ever really managed two decent happy birthdays playing fighterz and i honestly cant tell you how i did it.

Assists arguably are a bit too potent(they are the cause of the long blockstrings).

TheKnightOfNee posted...

I always would.

Also, you have any other tournaments you're looking at for the future, after Evo?

I just registered for the Red Bull Conquest event in Phoenix next Saturday. After that, I don't think there are any other decent sized tournaments in my area for a while.
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