Thing is, VF has been a small scene since the days of VF2, and it doesn't enjoy the kind of prestige scenes like SF and KoF have. Folks have had to work hard to keep it going, and with the changing nature of competitive play, it's only gonna get harder. The VF team is trying to meet people in the middle, as is folks like LA Akira, but the way I see it, all scenes break down to a 90-9-1 formula: 90% gawkers and hecklers, 9% regurgitators and remixers, and 1% content generators, in this case 90% stream monsters and forum posters, 9% combo vid and match posting folks, and 1% of players. To get the scene popping, the 1% needs to further increase the appeal of working the inevitable grind it'll take to get Joe Blow to emerge from the 90% and take center stage, and it's the exact same problem scenes elsewhere face, even SF's. The Rising Star was an excellent step, and it needs to lead to further steps, like more sophisticated and pervasive advertising of events, easy entry, and things to enhance the natural appeal of playing a fighting game and proving your mindgames are better than someone else's. There will be a lot of flakers, as there are in every scene, but to maintain consistent growth, folks can't allow the mindset to drift towards just who isn't coming through; they also need to highlight and raise up those who do step up and come through, especially folks who do as much as LA Akira

I am new guy to this game and In my humble view why it not catching fire is simple. Just the style of game. People love the long combos touch of death stuff. I wish I could convince my friends to play this game in Jamaica but they all love marvel or anime style games, and just refuse to play VF. I don't know how to get people to play VF.

It is weird it just seem people love game where options limited after knock down or in marvel case incoming character but games where options are more open like KOF 13 or VF after knock down they slowing move away from even though they complain about the limited options.

What shit The Noobs complaining.. Are you a Noob? Ok then explain how can a noob complain about anything when they have no idea of the fucking system?

In Sega's eyes, what matters is the money they get- and they did get money, so I'm not too worried. I think we've done enough to get VF6 on console.

It takes time and effort to build a game series up, and even more to rebuild, which is what VF has to do. FS did plenty to rebuild the VF name.

VF has two big things working against it: the first is our hardcore playerbase isn't exactly a traveling playerbase. It's the Blazblue problem, but in reverse- whereas the BB folks are often too poor to travel, the VF crowd is professional/doing well IRL and often has other things to do. The other big issue is that it isn't really a game that you can get by in without effort, which turns a lot of people off. Just see how many Jackys quit when their flipkicks get punished.

Another factor was the wide range of options for fighters, and the fact that VF came before DOA and TTT2. The timing was off. Four months earlier or later would have been much better.

There's only so much a person can reasonbly do. All of my time off at work, I spent on VF tournies- MLG, NEC, and a local.

Yeah, I'll support this game when and where I can, but I can only go so far.

LOL I wish I was doing well in IRL, where is that VF shine for me?
Anywho you guys the vets do what you can to show up, which you probably are already doing. I will keep trying on my end to get people who are new to fighting games into VF. I think VF as first fighting game is easier to sell to people than VF as your second fighting game.

n00bs complain that the game is too hard and technical. "Vets" (emphasis on the quotation marks) are complaining tha FS is a shallow VF, but a lot of these guys didn't start playing 'till 5 (which is more "n00b" due to the safe options in that game), but name drop VF4 for e-cred. A lot of VF "vets" dont have a grasp of the VF system either which is a problem, other than liking one VF over another VF.

There isn't a middle ground with this game. The lack of content (guilty of this one here). There aren't too many vids out there with people who know anything, giving out advice from a saids person perspective. It's "Watch the DandyJ vid" with FS, during the VF4 days it was "look at training mode". Now those are both are great options but only a few people can actually articulate the game, that actually play it, and there isn't any alternative voices out there.

There was a "n00b" talking about how defense is hard in this game(in general how "hard" the game was), and I broke it down to him. Block Hit->Fuzzy, Get Hit->CD Fuzzy, Get Counter-Hit->Two Choice. It flew over his head still, even after I explained the notation, but it did sink in eventually. Other places will go over frames off the bat, and not give the player a "In general do this" type of mind set, which is a lot more helpful in the beginning stages.

The core aspect of this game hasn't changed and you can switch between different versions as long as take in account the various changes due to each version. As long as you have strong fundamentals you can get pretty far in any version of the game, no matter what VF title it is.

You all have really good points. I have to say there isn't some method or formula that gets things going...it's the game: people are drawn to the game. I bet a lot of people appreciate the depth of the game, but just don't have the time and/or value the fruits of the labor needed. One thing is, I, like many of us, grew up in the arcades, meaning we were much younger and had all the time in the world to study our game(s). 15-20 years later, we just can't. And to speak of Gen WFT...my son is a Gen WTF, and he has no drive to be the best...He is content with being mediocre, and that is EXACTLY the sh*t the social engineers have been brainwashing our children with at school. If everyone is a winner, even if they lose WHO GIVES A FLYING F*CK?

Look, keep doing what you're all doing. We are who we are. We play Online; we play offline...I play XBL because I have no other choice; so I make the best of it. If you have an active Offline scene, keep supporting it. If you see me on XBL, let's play!

I want to say one last thing to you "Vets." (I say "vets" because I consider myself a vet; not a "VF" vet, but a gamer vet.): Some of you need to lay off a bit. With all the newcomers, it's sad hearing and reading the BULLSH*T some of you "Vets" come up with. I can use myself as an example. I hear through the grapevine negative words written/spoken (I don't care, but if I did, I might not have stayed) and they're written/spoke about me all on assumptions. I THINK THAT WE ALL KNOW THAT NEWCOMERS WHO DON'T KNOW HOW THE GAME WORKS ARE GOING TO DO STUPID, ANNOYING THINGS. HOW ABOUT NOT PUTTING THEM ON BLAST FOR THEIR IGNORANCE. I remember playing with Tim and Shiney, and they taught me to hitcheck. Wow, I didn't know to do that...and now I see it whenever I play a newcomer. Instead of putting newcomers on blast, teach them. Ego is good, but be mature about it...

People come to VFDC because they WANT to take part in this community. Some of them are asses, but I think we should give people the benefit of the doubt. There are personality conflicts, but so what. Be mature about it.

Here's an idea (maybe someone thought of it all ready): post a new thread teaching the basics of the game. VF 101 Online at regularly scheduled days and times...Bring newbs up to speed with the basic mechanics of the game. (This seems like what I do at work LOL--motivate people to perform/behave in a certain way.)

PEACE!

Yeah wanna agree with the point above about teaching the game properly.

If I wanna learn Karate or Aikido etc. I find a club with a good sensei and I can expect to receive structured, thorough training that takes me up to Dan grade level in 4-5 years of regular training. I can expect to 'compete' (although the idea is quite radical in Aikido) against people of my own ability, and if I face a more senior student, I can expect them to hold back and only test me enough to stretch me, not annihilate me.

The analogy with fighting games is more like being asked to step into an MMA tournament with no formal training, and sink or swim on your own. What I call 'arcade attitude' still prevails, and teaching is poor to non-existent because maintaining a competitive edge means holding on to information rather than disseminating it.

If the community here wants people to engage more with VF, then the quality of training materials and teaching needs to improve. With the breadth of fighting games now available to gamers, the existence of a community to teach and not simply to compete is what will mark out a successful game in the future.

I will be taking concrete steps to move things in this direction in London in the new year.

Finally just on a personal note, those who think input complexity is what makes a good fighting game should really go play BB or KOF. Simplicity is the future.

What would you have us do to teach folks though? Like do we need to start up VF schools, and classes? I'll have my students of the Tricky Monkey Kung Fu school and they'll all fight in my online room while I watch and give them a drill or something to work on?

I like the idea of there being a more formalized way of teaching others to learn the game, it's just tricky to figure out what the best way would be.

Well Tricky's your name ain't it?!

I envision there would end up being demand for character specialists, but the imperative now is for generalists who can teach students how best to interact with the breadth of information out there. For instance, what are the top 10 basic attacks/strings/punishes I need to know for each character, and how can I use the Dojo to learn them?

It needs someone who can demonstrate an efficient and easily digestible way to approach the task of learning the whole game.

Those who feel they have 'hit the cap' or whatever, might like to think of the task of creating a decent syllabus as a sort of meta-challenge within the game if they don't feel sufficiently challenged by it any more...

See the thing is there are not a ton of generalists in this game. There are general tactics, but how each person uses it can kinda depend on the character. Like I don't know the top 10 moves for vanessa, but I know how to fight against her.

with all due respect the west is no different than the east in regards to wanting to level up im from NYC and started playin with top NYC players (rodnutz ,shinobifist, denkai , adamyuki) to name a few some i played with reguarly some once in a while

i now live in Norcal and the community here is definantly tryin to level up at this game some more than others but the fact remains that its hard to stay motivated when the community is always downing other regions some get pooped on more than others, personally i dont care i do what i do and keep it movin (but thats just me)

why would people want to travel to play when theyre gonna be called FREE for losin! if thats the case why not just stay local and play with your local scene and just say to hell with the comminity

Vf community has been and probably always be an elitist attitude community and on some levels its fine but to new players it doesn't help when they get blown up and someone says theyre free but dont help them to get better

EVERYBODY that plays this game at one time were FREE a FACT that seems to be forgotten by most if not ALL!!

every fgc has east coast west coast beef, in a rival kinda way. The same reason you give for why folks don't want to travel is the same reason folks would WANT to travel. To prove the haters wrong for calling them FREE. The only way to stop getting called free is to kick the teeth in of those that are calling you out. I'd call that a strong motivator to get better and whip on someone than anything else. If someone called me free you better bet your ass I'd challenge them to an offline duel and I'd study up on that matchup so I put them to shame.

i get what your sayin and i agree but the point i was trying to get across was that the community is made up of old players and new players alike. the problem is not calling someone free then theyll get motivate to play eachother its callin someone free talking major shit to them when theyre brand new to the game and not pointing them in the right direction to get better

heres an example me vs theworstplayer ,he and i were playin online in VF5vanilla in the early days of the game he would murder me (i was only a few weeks into the game,lifetime) at the end of the match he would taunt me everytime we played.
now for me that shit just would not do. i sat in dojo/quest mode and played the hell out of the game to learn whatever i could just in case i played him again online (still i had no idea what i was doing) so i asked him why do you taunt me constantly he said that he did it so i would stop doing the same thing over and over AKA spamming now in my defense i didnt know i was spamming because it was how everyone i was playing online were playin.

then he told me about the shoutbox tournys and that if i wanted to get better i should play and see the game really being played so to speak if it wasnt for someone sayin if you want to play and get better you need to do this or that i probably would have dropped this game completely

so my point is if this communitty is to grow the community needs to keep things in perspective trash talk the vets but guide the new players in the right direction

That's an amazing idea.

Very true but you can still do a general instructional/assessement session and get them some results. I did a little "assessement" session with Kamais_Ookin because despite me playing VF since the beginning it was always a secondary game up to this game due to a lack of offline players. I'm primarily a Tekken player and I'd play Virtua Fighter like Tekken which can work for a bit but will only get you so far which is not far enough lol. After my assessment I found out that I was all abare, I was doing lots of mid/low mixups(very Tekkenish) and not enough throw mixups. It helped me learn what I should not be doing and learning what you should not be doing can go a long way.

@ Tricky: I didn't mean have a player specific program; what I meant was have a game specific program to go over basic tech every player uses (i.e. fuzzy, box-stepping, etc.). I think Holding an Online "class" would be a stretch; it probably would be better to have "the top 10" techs in the Wiki. On the char-specific side, we should probably identify all the moves in the -9 to -5 category and -5 category of frames an below to memorize them. It would be cool to be able to export the moves lists to Excel and then use the Filter command to filter moves by frames--execution/on block/on hit etc. Also, Excel would allow us to graph the info so it would be easy to understand as an illustration.

Dat91Scrub Your analogy was rather brilliant. It goes to core what is a fighting game? Should high execution be a part of Fighting games in the future. I agree that fighting game should be about reading out predicting your opponent, but as I thought about this deeply and I have come to conclusion that it is a necessary evil. Unless you want your fighting game to be as deep as dive kick. The issue being characters in any fighting game including this one would become so deadly. Imagine burning hammer input was just foward p+G. That where I think choice of controller might come into play. I never bought argument that if practice with any controller you can be good with it, I more believe that certain types of people are better with certain types of controllers.

That said everything else you said I agree with. All this hit home as I watch Juice box stream. He is doing good thing teaching people how to play sf4 and Kof13, but him being from arcade and going through survival of fittest it has given him a sense of arrogance he thinks a lot of these player have from the arcade scene have developed. They can't process how some can't figure a game out, also how someone can't execute commands, then either assume people are stupid or lazy, then contempt for newer players is born.

Yes some of FGC fit the lazy stupid slots, but I don't care about that section, I care about section that tries and fails and needs some help. So if you fight an someone on-line that you are way better than instead destroying right away, expose what ever weakness you find in their game plan and attack over and over without killing them. If they are weak to side steps you can side step em and get counter hit crumple but you don't combo till they start reacting to it. Good practice for the pro and newcomer will learn what he is doing wrong hopefully.

.........what is box-stepping? ive never heard of that AT ALL. lol no jk. You said its basic. But is it really necessary basics or just some add on technique that wont make or break you like like ETE.

xx= cancel

44xx2xx66xx8xx44

Its a good movemenet option to use as it keeps in place, or at least in a certain place, but keeps you active, since you can cancel the dashes into your command attacks for a 'surprise attack' or go on to defense->counter since your opponent will see you moving and either a) freeze up, giving you advantage or b) throw out a move and you evade it or cancel the dashes into one of the defensive techniques .

There should be some stuff on it in the Dojo forums.

The only scene we've ever had in Scranton, PA was a SSBM scene. None of my friends have ever had a desire to get decent at fighting games (though one of them was basically a pro at Melee).

Last semester, in Tokyo, I got a friend to play VF, but he never really got good at it, because he refused to go into training mode at all. I'm guilty of neglecting training mode to a degree, but he used Shun, and almost never even drank. It's frustrating...also, everyone who still plays this in the arcades is old, and most of them are scary good, but I did fight one young guy who used Eileen, and he was pretty scary too. Watching him play, he didn't seem like he'd be all that good, but his fundamentals were impeccable. I couldn't touch him.