Northwest VF (Pacific NW, North America)

The Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown tournament @ END OF SUMMER 2012 is planned for Sunday morning!

After a lot of consideration, I have asked Shandor to have the VF5FS Tournament on Sunday morning. There are pros and cons to this and I will go over why I felt this was the best decision. This does not represent Shandor's reasoning (it could, but you'd have to ask him) but it represents mine ^_^

First the cons:
1) Not being on Saturday, and more specifically not being in the evening (and Saturday evening was possible) we give up potential exposure and audience.

2) In the past, players have tried to not play casuals with potential opponents before a tournament. I URGE ALL VF PLAYERS NOT TO DO THIS. The reason is, a big part of this is the experience of meeting up regionally to play VF offline with people you do not play with regularly. Also, my experience GREATLY SUGGESTS that the players who play best in a tournament are those who practiced in casuals, even against potential opponents, even against stronger opponents. Denying yourself the practice and sharpening process that happens with serious casual matches on tournament weekend, at least for VF, has more often than not provided unsatisfactory results.

3) Players will have to wake up early and get to the tournament on time. End of Summer is expected to be run as a serious tournament, as if the players were professionals (not to be confused with celebrities). Being one of the first tournaments of any day, the burden falls on that event to run on time and to run smoothly to avoid the cascading effects of an overextending tournament day.

THE PROS:
1) Being a one-day tournament (which the VF tournament was likely to be unless it hit a ridiculously high amount of registered players) really eases the scheduling. The reason I am posting this now is because I want people to get a better sense of the schedule and we can start planning Saturdays and even Fridays.

2) A lot of people are obligated on Saturdays, now that I can tell people "it's on Sunday," there's a chance some more people can make it to this! Spread the word!

3) This is easier to manage for the tournament organizer and Sunday is a far smoother day than Saturday. We could have fought a big mess on Satuday with tons of overlapping tournaments and we could have even had starving gamers on Saturday night. My guess is, when I asked for Sunday, Shandor looked at the schedule and felt this was probably a load off of his back for scheduling!

4) We can now have awesome, awesome regional VF events on Friday and Saturday. We can even talk about team tournaments now!

5) I do not know what the last second tournament jumping policies at EOS are. But if players from say, Tekken Tag 2, decide they want to play in another tournament, this might give them a shot to add Sunday's VF tournament to their ticket--again, I don't know if this is allowed. But it's a possible upside. Not counting on it too much though.

6) Sunday morning makes it easier for people who have to leave Sunday late afternoon and also makes it easier for people coming into town on Saturday and not Friday!

7) This is going to give everyone the chance to get stronger in offline play before the tournament. Overall, this has a tournament strengthening effect for all players! This is especially true for people not used to playing VF offline.

8) This totally opens up Friday and Saturday for awesome VF related events! This also lets people enjoy their Saturday more if they're not playing in the other tournaments, and if they are playing in other tournaments, it frees up their constraints more!

Anyways, there are many more reasons... And this post was crazy long as usual, but I wanted to let you all know this. IT IS POSSIBLE the schedule changes, but I doubt it, I think we're locked in for Sunday, and I think it's a great thing. And I think Saturday casuals are going to be more awesome because of this too.

Also, Shandor has something to add!

 

I am really happy to confirm that MasaRED will be coming to End of Summer 2012!

Masa has been a fixture in North American Online VF, since VF5 on 360. He is consistently around the top of the rankings (and in legit fashion), he is one of the stronger players in North America, and on top of that he is an incredibly nice guy!

It is my pleasure and honor that he will be at End of Summer and I am excited to hang out, play casuals, and compete with him at End of Summer!

And hopefully... he will be participating in at least one of the team battles we are planning!

I am looking forward to announcing more confirmations later. We have a great field coming to End of Summer, I think everyone going to EOS and anyone watching the stream will find it very entertaining!

 

Reading the too of the first post answered my question. I plan on calling out since I couldn't get.the weekends off, just needed to know which day was best.

 

Sorry I didn't fully understand that, which day will you be able to come out and play with us? Are you saying you can't play in the tourney, but maybe you can play in casuals or something?

I really hope you can be in the tourney man....

 

Maybe hes drunk

 

Trying to say I'll be there on Friday and Sunday but not Saturday. Tried posting from my phone during that last post, man that was ugly,lol.

 

Despite being burned out last night from work, I went to Best Bout for some fun sessions!

Last night I was running on averaging 3-4 hours a sleep a night for like 5 days and yesterday I worked 13 hours straight without a break and without eating since 8am until... 1:45am when Dennis and I went to the Original Hotcake and Steak House... love that place...

Anyways, it was quite an active night overall at BB but in my short time there I only got to watch David and Mackinzie play (which was really fun, Mackinzie might feel off but he is actually improving, he'll connect the dots better soon in his game), and then went on to have like 50+ matches with David of Brad vs. Lion.

These were really fun, and I think David is going to improve a lot really soon.

Here's what I think after our matches (and this is going to be very general VF stuff, not specific matchup stuff as much)...

* David is reaching a hurdle (temporarily) in his matchup with AJS and myself. He is still a guy who can beat us but this hurdle is just a temporarily learning curve phase, and he's not really doing stuff "wrong" it's just reconciling different aspects of his game, while at the same time AJS and I have also been making adjustments in our matchup with Panda.

* David should see a growth spurt in his high level play soon, because of this experience. Could happen before EOS even As far as I'm concerned, he's still a really big threat to everyone including me and AJS, but these hurdles happen to almost everyone in VF.

* Last note on the hurdle, it's really just a product of beating A LOT OF PEOPLE with certain things, and trying to use these certain things too much against players that are prepared for them, instead of setting them up to work. I think after last night, David actually knows now where AJS and I are pinpointing our attacks to break his offense.

* I also pointed out to David (he also realized it himself too, I was just reinforcing the idea) that he is used to finding offensive answers to a lot of these situations, but sometimes it is just better to use a "safe" way of neutralizing the situation--avoid it entirely, and basically set your opponent up to over-commit on what has been working for them earlier in the match.

* VF is a game that allows you to play with so many tactics, and probably the big thing to know and a theme to our session is: "Everything in VF has a few answers... INCLUDING THE ANSWERS."

* I definitely have bad attackable habits, but my tactical repertoire in Final Showdown has grown. I can resort to switching up to a lot of different set play/situations if I am comfortable enough in the matchup and especially if I get a read on how you are trying to attack that situation. This is also normal in VF and is a natural progression with the stronger players.

* We have talked about the situations that work well offensively until attacked: Backdash-Baiting, Evade and Punish the Evade-Counterable Moves, Aggressive Poke --> Flowchart, Evasive attacks to beat your opponent's common response, Applying Guard Breaks, Setting up Stagger Situations... And we talk about how to attack these situations once they are well read. What people need to remember is these can be hard to read when the player employing these tactics is constantly switching them up and sprinkling the abuse from these here and there.

* The first way to deal with this, is just know how to neutralize the situation. You do not need to hard-counter everything--you do not need to hop over every low attack or low attack every high attack or evasive hit every predictable attack. You can simply neutralize it, and it is usually easy. Neutralizing, as opposed to hard-countering should actually be the most common response to "tricky stuff." Your game can simply tell your opponent, "I will not play that game with you."

* When you get to a level where you are consistently beating a decent number of players in a scene, auto-pilot habits easily emerge. This is a big hurdle for almost any VF player. And as humans, we will always have some bad habits here or there or tendencies to very particular answer to very particular situations.

* In any case, I love this game because it can be humbling in this way, at virtually all levels of play. It gives you so many situations that can be avoided, opened up, or hammered on.

BTW, it also turns out I missed AJS who made it in super late night after a long long day (and night) of work too.

 

Congratulations to MasaRED on winning Saturday Slugfest III! Also a special congratulations to Shouta for taking 2nd and Duncan T for taking 3rd!

Looks like it was a great tournament, I hope video was captured, and I am looking forward to seeing pretty much everyone on this list at End of Summer next week!

Update: The Copy/Paste Quote bug is really weird....

 

We are only days away from End of Summer 2012 and the VF activities are starting to shape up. The Final Showdown Tournament is scheduled for Sunday morning (10am, DO NOT BE LATE) and we are planning to have awesome VF events Friday & Saturday! Here is a basic sketch of what the schedule will be like, we may be filling it in more as we go along:

FRIDAY
* 7:00pm - Closing: There is an official EOS Meet & Greet at Sega Gameworks which is only 2 blocks away from the tournament! As a bonus, players at EOS can get 3 hour game cards for only $15! I believe this deal is valid all through the weekend

* Casual Sessions & Team Battles: EOS won't be open until Saturday, but we are currently looking at possible options for VF sessions. We also intend to have a team battle event going on for both Friday and Saturday. One of the more likely options right now is for everyone to get together and setup at Kamaiis Ookin & R_Panda's hotel room, which they have generously offered for Friday Night Virtua Fights. More info coming, but we could use more setups including monitors!

SATURDAY
* Noon - 1am: Casuals/Money Matches/Team Battles/Training @ the BYOC Area. This will probably be the hub of all VF activity at EOS, with plenty of fun stuff happening and a lot of training going on. Special Note: Only registered players may bring a console for the BYOC area.

* Group Dinner: This isn't fully planned yet, but I'm putting it up there that we can all head out to dinner as a group and that could be pretty fun. I'll let others chime in on their thoughts about this. Lots of good places around.

SUNDAY
* 10am - Finished: The Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown Tournament is scheduled to happen first thing Sunday morning. Do not be late, we have a tight schedule to run and late players will probably be defaulted swiftly.

* After the Tournament: More BYOC action with casuals, money matches, and whatever the group wants to propose we do!

* Raffles: The prizes at EOS are going to be insane. A ton of raffle prizes are up there and they cover the fighters and the PC gamers. Check out the sponsor list and start imagining some of the donated prizes ^_^

END OF SUMMER IS GOING TO BE AWESOME! This schedule is only a sketch of what we will probably do. Seattle is also a great place and a big part of going to this event is enjoying what's all around it!

We're going to end the Summer of 2012 with a bang!

 

I am happy to announce that AyuFanb0y (from Victoria, Canada) is also confirmed for End of Summer 2012!

AyuFanb0y had a stellar performance at Evo 2012 (including knocking Goat Cheese Blues into the loser's bracket before losing to Itazan and then losing to Goat Cheese Blues in that bracket's loser's finals) and is known as a strong player in online VF5FS. Furthermore, he is knowledgeable and capable of playing a large roster of characters including Akira, El Blaze, Kage, and Jeffry. Not to be taken lightly, he is definitely a top contender at EOS 2012!

 

I am so excited for EoS2012. Can't wait!

Last minute cram training at Best Bout at 7pm tonight, Thursday. I'll be there at seven. Let's play some real Virtua Fighter.

 

Something I should clarify: VF at End of Summer is a tournament, but it is also a gathering!

We have a tournament with the arguable top player(s) from NorCal, BC, Seattle, Portland, and Idaho. It's a true regional in the competitive sense.

However, we also have a lot of open time on Friday and Saturday for the planned Team Battles, Money Matches, Training Matches, Competitive Sets, group dinners, etc! Heck, we might even have workshops for players interested in VF but are at EOS for other games!

Gathering Culture has always been a huge part of the VF experience in North America and I intend to replicate that at End of Summer 2012!

P.S. I'm tempted to run a workshop station with signage in the BYOC area on Saturday to encourage new players to learn VF directly.

Also, tempted to encourage R_Panda and Kamaiis Ookin to setup a "booth" where people not on a NWVF player list (the known competitive VF players in the regions represented) can pay $1.00 (maybe $2.00) to challenge either of the two players in a single game. If the challenger loses, well that's the $1.00 (maybe $2.00) to that player for their time. If the challenger wins, it's $5.00 to the challenger lol. But to troll on both those players, we'll just call it the VF Kissing (Kicking?) Booth.

 

2.5 odds sounds fair to me. :3

 

Three Events in the Northwest Happening TONIGHT (Thursday)!

Eastern Oregon - Fight Night @ Wired Gaming Center (LaGrande, OR)
7pm-10pm free fight night, every Thursday at Wired!
www.wiredlagrande.com

Portland Oregon - All Night Session @ Best Bout Gaming (Portland, OR)
7pm-closing (usually around 2am), $5 for the whole night! Best Bout is hosting a Thursday session this week to help players prepare for EOS! Be there!
www.bestbout.com

Seattle-Area Washington - Thursday Night Fights @ GameClucks (Lynnwood, OR)
5pm-10pm casuals and tournaments. Prepare for EOS, compete, and get some training at this week's Thursday Night FIghts!
www.gameclucks.com

 

Hi All,

I've been having a great time here at End of Summer 2012, so a BIG THANKS to Shandor Collins of Gamebreakerz and SeattleVS for putting this wonderful event together!

HERE IS THE STREAM INFO:

The stream will be handled by Man of The Leaf: http://www.twitch.tv/manoftheleaf

The tournament is targeted to begin sometime between 11:30am and Noon on Sunday morning. This is Pacific Standard time (so sometime between 2:30am and 3pm Eastern Standard time).

About Man of the Leaf:

Chanchai's list of players to look out for (to be honest, this field is pretty competitive overall, but the players I list here should really be looked out for--also, I don't like putting myself on lists that I create):

• MasaRED (Seattle, WA)
• AyuFanb0y (Victoria, BC, Canada)
• Renzo (San Francisco, CA)
• Kamais Ookin (Victoria, BC, Canada)
• Buktooth (Seattle, WA)
• R_Panda (Portland, OR)

Again, in all honesty, there is an exciting field of players (and characters) at End of Summer and quite a few late-registrations. I find pretty much everyone I know of that is playing in this tournament entertaining to fight against and watch.
There is so much to say about all of the players here, but I'll write a quick blurb about some of the ones I have not mentioned yet.
I am very curious to see Afro-Cole in this tournament following some great action (and almost taking out Cid kid) at Summer Jam in Philly! I personally enjoy watching the VF growth of Duncan T, despite a suspect lack of training in VF lately it seems, but he has been on my personal watch list since FS came out (same as Buktooth who I still haven't seen play). Seattle has two El Blaze players that are very much worth watching and should not be underestimated in Mike B (aka Femto) and Shouta. Both are very entertaining and they favor different options from one another with El Blaze's games, both are always a threat. It's also pretty sweet seeing Goatrix show the love of VF from Idaho, coming all the way out to this tournament as well. Zass' Wolf is constantly improving and his mastery of the Hit Box improves--he is also highlighting the next trend in gamer gear--finger tape works really well with the Hit Box. Sorias' Aoi is much stronger offline and he represents Aoi well in this event! OMNE's been putting in the Vanessa training and is ready to take on all comers!

Frankly, I don't have high hopes for my placement in this tournament, but I AM VERY EXCITED TO SEE HOW IT PLAYS OUT!
Cheers!

 

Holy crap, End of Summer! What an amazing gathering. Three days of enjoying the company and games of some of the best of the NW and beyond was exactly what I was hoping for, and exactly what I got. I couldn't have asked for more!
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Talk about a great learning experience. The casuals were fantastic, and the tournament intense, though I admit it sure as hell didn't go the way I was hoping.^^;
My comments on my few tourney matches:
I don't think I've ever played Buktooth in any game before, but I liked his willingness to see if I could be low hunted beginning with the very first action of our set, and a good commitment to the idea until I proved I knew how to block low (which can be hard, even [or especially?] after three lows in a row!) I also realized that I hadn't committed Pai's optimal combos to memory (who has a bit of a wonky hitbox relative to all the other lightweights, as far as Brad is concerned). I don't have much experience against Pai, but I'm glad I fell back to my fundamentals after the first game and stayed solid. My tournament match against Ayufanb0y was exhilarating, and though he put me in loser's I was still pretty happy with the games themselves, and thought I was adapting at an acceptable rate, though not fast enough for one as good as him. I felt ready to adapt to anything else after that, but the irony couldn't be greater, haha.
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I have to give huge props to Sorias and his unbelievably stubborn Aoi! You crazy bastard. I am so thankful for all the sparring and training we did Saturday night, and yet I guess it wasn't quite enough. We'll have to rectify that, maybe online soon. I haven't watched the matches yet, but I know that I had a plan, and then I lost it like immediately haha. I think I became scared/worried after the first match, and went back to what I do with Brad against almost any character except Aoi, using good mid pokes, slight string pressure searching for hitconfirms/CHs to go into ducking safely, and other basic games that unfortunately were not the answer to Aoi and her toolset, at least not the way Sorias was playing her. I've read a little about the Aoi matchup before, but the tournament pressure got to me, and my play just became a little too mindless, and I was having trouble remembering what worked Saturday. Besides creating my own problems, Sorias adapted well! Saturday I felt delayed slipping P+K on oki was working great by the end of the night, but in the tourney Sorias blocked most of them, and it was one of the few tools I actually remembered to use in the second match. Sorias' ring awareness is about twice as fucking good as mine, heh. I was rung out, what, four goddamn times in two games? I didn't change the stage because it was already large and after the first match I committed myself to playing away from the edge if we got close, only to *immediately* forget that idea, lol. And I had just seen Renzo play with a conscious effort to stay away from edges, which made me feel even more foolish. Sorias exposed plenty of holes in my game, and for that, I thank him. I can't wait to face him in tourney again. I only got a little taste of Aoi, and now I'm hungry for more. >:3
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I'm starting to think all of Seattle are crazy bastards. You guys have a really fun and intense playstyle, and I'm going to have to learn your crazy characters if I really want to compete. I got very lucky at Evo not just in who I faced but also what characters they played, but that is a hole in my game that is no longer acceptable if I want to travel and compete outside of my scene.
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Thanks for all of the casuals throughout the weekend. It was great seeing the Seattle crew and really sitting down and playing with ya'll for more than a day. KO and Andisheh were awesome roommates, and hanging around downtown Seattle was fun. Good games and drinks with Femto. Learning how to fight Aoi, El Blaze and others really happened in the casual sessions, and I hope everyone I fought learned something from our matches. I can't wait to face Ayu and Masa on the battlefield again, and thank you both for an exciting end to the team battle! Renzo! Renzo how did we not find time to play each other, lol?!? Next time, man. Come visit the NW anytime.
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Very special thanks to Chanchai (and all those that helped him) for really running and organizing the tournament, and creating an incredibly professional production that ran smoother than any other tournament I've ever seen. Without you I don't know what would have happened, lol.
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Good games, all.
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Adapt or die.

 

Thanks R_Panda. Couldn't have said it better myself, EOS was amazing. Guess I can give a bit of a write-up of my matches as well.

I was put in the unusual situation of literally playing against Brad three time in a row to start out. And it's incredibly noticeable while rewatching how much more comfortable I was getting, and how much better I was playing with each successive match.

vs. Twonney - Was interesting because we were the first match of the tourney, and we'd just finished a huge casual set all morning to warm up. He went into the casual set doing nothing but safe pokes, and I'd been slowly teaching him how much he needs to use lows, throws, and an overall more defensive style with more deliberate attack timing while playing against me. And then in the tourney I basically took the bet that he'd have some jitters and fall back on all his bad habits. I think I did nothing but 66k and holding Tenchi in that match, and just trusted that he'd eventually walk into it. I was prepared to switch it up when I started losing rounds, and I can't help but shake my head rewatching those matches and seeing me just eat 3+ low hits in a row, and just stubbornly re-enter Tenchi every time, but it paid off in the end.

vs. Renzo - It's clear within the first few seconds of this match that I didn't know what Brad's forward throw looks like, and I think he uses it on me about 80 times in a row. I do a lot of my standard BS, like purposely whiffing 66K while buffering in a reversal to catch a late whiff punish, but his timing was perfect, and he always lands guaranteed damage and backs off again. And then I just sort of freeze up and toss out the same stuff over and over to get hit back the same way each time. Really impressive to play someone with that much control over their gameplan, and can only hope I figure it out someday.

vs. R_Panda - Everything just came together for me in this match. Watched by itself on the stream, it probably looks like I'm just throwing out random hits and they connect for no reason. But taken in the context of the weekend, it was more like every bad habit and execution mistake that usually plagues my playstyle just fell away for a moment. I use Ryuka-K after two days of showing Panda to always expect Ryuka-K+G from me, I block the oki attacks he was hitting me with every time before, I use a dash-in sweep after two days of constant dash-in throw. I really think watching this match side-by-side with my match against Renzo looks like some sort of crazy time-lapse of exactly how much better I got this weekend purely from the casuals on saturday.

vs. Shouta - We play all the time, so not much to say. I think I went in realizing that like with R_Panda, Shouta is capable of using combos that do about 2-3x the damage of anything I know, so I fish for ring outs, remembering it worked in my previous match. Instead he outpositions me and uses the lack of walls to kill me even faster.

 

Heads up, Seattle! Thursday Night Fights is at Dante's tonight!

The VF action starts at 7pm and casuals will be going on all evening starting at 5pm!

Zass, Airthrow, Sorias, Mike B are all already confirmed. I'm expecting others like Shouta and Twonny to make it out also. Should be an awesome night of VF in Seattle!

 

Also a reminder for Eastern Oregon!

Wired Gaming in La Grande will be hosting another fight night tonight! Check it out!

 

I don't even have my report yet, but Shandor has just made this announcement today ^_^

BTW, Shandor was quite impressed with Virtua Fighter at EOS so this is what he had to say after that: