There's life left in VF5!

I really had no idea what to call this post. Nor did I have an idea of where to put it.

Overall, when I browse the forums, I get the impression that people are moving on from VF. Some of you I will see on these forums when the next iteration comes about, and some I will not. But what if VF5 VerC is the last VF or the series? In my opinion, even if that is the case, this is our game and there's nothing wrong with continueing to play and be enthused about how awesome VF is.

I've just recently come back from Chengdu, China, where I had the priviledge to compete in the VF5 tournament at the World Cyber Games, representing Canada. It was these 6 days of VF that really hit home and snapped me back into the VF world all over again. Meeting new people and some remarkably skilled players was amazing and it's the driving force for why I'm posting my thoughts on VF now, and VF in the new year and beyond.

I've been rejuvenated into playing more VF5 and I think there's a significant opportunity to continue to have great VF5 gatherings and for the level of play outside of Japan to keep rising and getting even more competitive. So, the question I ask many of you - Why leave the game? Why look to another fighting game while theoretically waiting for VF5R, VF6, VFX, etc? It just doesn't make sense. Especially when you look at the World Cyber Games. There were 100,000 people who mulled through the convention centre in Chengdu over the 4 day tournament. And what games were they cheering most for? Starcraft (1998), Warcraft 3 (2002), and Counter Strike 1.6 (2003). So, the largest competitive gaming event in the world is surrounded by people who are playing games between 6 and 11 yrs old? That is truly remarkable. It's clearly not about what is new and flashy, but more to what are the best platforms for competitive gaming.

Virtua Fighter 5 is only 3.5 yrs old and that's if I count the Japanese arcade release. We're way behind and to me that says that there's lots of competitive life left in the our game.

Now, I'm no master of VF5. I do my best and play within the realm of the time I have available to being competitive at VF5. I think I was the weakest of the knowledged players at WCG, but I still managed to hold my own and throughly enjoy every second of VF I got against a group of players that one rarely gets a chance to be part of. It was inspiring to see Fuudo play and even more awesome to play against him. When would I ever get the chance to play for 30mins, Pai v Pai with the best player in the world? I learned a lot, no question about it.

Lasltly, there's something that people need to keep in mind. It takes an enormous amount of time to gain technical mastery of anything. VF included. When you look at the time that someone like Fuudo has invested into mastering VF, it's remarkable. And quite frankly I'd wager none of us have come even close to the amount of games and time. There's so much to still get better at and I know I'm willing to continue to try and improve and be stronger.

Retire? pffft. Now that the jet lag is gone and my workload has leveled off again, I'm ready to plug my Xbox back in. I can't wait - there's years left for the VF5 community to remain a fantastic and competitive environment.

 

Keeping the scene alive is one thing, bringing new players in is another. The worst of this is that in order to keep the scene alive in the long run, new players have to be brought in.

The best opportunity to bring a new player to VF is with the release of a new VF game. God knows that won't be happening for a while. Another option is to take a player from one fighting game to another. With Tekken 6 at the top of the pile at the moment there will be a hell of a lot of casual players playing it. Some will stick with the game, most will move on to the new flavour of the month. The new players that stick with it are potential Virtua Fighter players, we just need to get them to try it.

That's just the way things work with fighting games. It's sad, I know, but that's just the way things are nowadays.

The most difficult part of garnering interest emerges at this point: The VF learning curve. In comparison to other fighting games VF is not an easy game to simply pick up and play. This turns a lot of people away from the game.

There is nothing to remedy that fact however. If you change the game, it's no longer Virtua Fighter.

So, how do we get new players?

 

Hell I haven't even put down Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution yet.

 

Hey Llany! Nice post. I couldn't agree more.

Even though i'm busy, i've tried hard to make a little time to get back into vf5 online. Of course if money and time wasn't an issue, i would be practicing R hardcore. However, i realize that there is so much to learn and improve upon in vanilla 5 - improvements that, for the most part, will carry over to our game in R (if and when it hits consoles). That realization keeps me playing.

I realize it is easy for me to say this because there are still a lot of great players online playing VF in Asia, so nice competition is relatively plentiful. However, i feel for those for whom competition is hard to come by.

So, if you've got good comp around you, keep training!!!

 

The most upsetting thing is that outside japan, no country has an environment for VF which would allow them to progress to a truly high level. Sure there are a few good players in singapore, korea, US, europe, etc but the best players from those countries would get crushed by most of japans top 100 players and I would bet my house on that.

The comp is what drives me and there arent enough players here to challenge me in my honest opinion.

 

I completely agree - the top 100 in Japan are in a different league, no question about it.

I do think that regardless the players outside of the Japanese mecha of VF-environments could still play Quest (you've been an advocate of this, LA), and play offline with only a few friends, and significantly improve the level of skill in NA, Europe, etc. Seriously, outside of DRE, how many of us have clocked 10000 games in Quest Mode? Very few, and I know I'm light years from that figure. You look at cards of good players in Japan and the total number of games eclipses us all. It's a key point to gaining the appropriate automatic skills that expert players have. We simply have not played enough games (online, offline, Quest, whathaveyou) to develop that automated level of expertise.

What I'm saying is that while our environment is highly understacked for people, we can still improve our games and enjoy VF. And in 3 years from now, with no other VF iteration, VF5 can act as a great competitive fighting game platform.

 

I love your post Owen, but I'm gonna have to roll with Gerald here. Originally I had planned on not playing anymore because Adam was leaving, Denkai and Akmal planned on cutting back drastically almost to the point of not playing ever again. Actually Akmal has not played at all since WCG. My old roommate Nelson doesn't play, Andy moved away, Monty lives really far away, his bro moved away, I think you get the idea. All that I have left is me and possible Shag if he is down to play.

After reading the Fuudo interview I'll admit it inspired me to play again and while I have been doing just that for the past week I hate to say the desire to faze out VF is coming again because there just is not enough people playing. Everyone is playing Tekken 6 or some other game. I tried to host about 7-8 times last night for about 1.5 hours and all I got was 2 one bar connections and about 6-7 grey bar connections. This is really depressing for someone who is trying to find a reason to stick around. I know there are tons of great players online, because I can see them on my friends list, but I can't tell them what game to play / enjoy.

Now even if we get people playing we then will be left with another problem. Are people really training to be better at the game? Everyone learns at there own pace, but I have played people recently who are still playing exactly the same way they played almost 2 years ago.

The video Andy just put up really shows a lot of the fine tuning that players including myslef do not take the time out to learn. Really I shake my head to see someone playing 1 character for 2-3 years and they still don't know there max damage combos or when they should apply fuzzy, TEG instead of ETEG or abaring almost every situation.

While online VF is broken, the lack of knowledge makes it even more broken. You have so many players just doing things because it works in the world of lag without even trying to understand whether or not it's a real technique or strategy offline. The worst part for me is when you exploit this weakness for a 10+ win game streak they really think it's cause they are off today or their stick is acting up or some other excuse. No sorry bro your gimmick has just been exploited... time to come up with a new lag abusive strategy.

So how do we get players back into the game is what I would like to ask Owen or anyone who can come up with a good solution. And more importantly how do we get players to actually utilize Dojo mode or do some reading up on VF and the character(s) that they play. Just the other day when I started to play again I was doing some reading up on TE and side TE. Also when I get beat down by a character I am not familiar with I do research. KingofVF4 beat me down like a weak ago so I studied up on my Aoi and next time I did a hell of a lot better. How do you get players to do these types of things? Really I don't think you can enforce or encourage this because to most of the players here VF is just not that serious to them. Sure they like the game, but do they love the game?

 

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">How do you get players to do these types of things? Really I don't think you can enforce or encourage this because to most of the players here VF is just not that serious to them. Sure they like the game, but do they love the game?</div></div>

I done a lot of reading up when I started playing, I also asked a hell of a lot of questions over Xbox live (HOWL got them day in, day out). I think it's all a matter of incentive, everyone would like to be better but with nothing to aim for, why bother?

 

I'm so looking forward to getting my 360 back from being repaired. It's time for more VF.

 

Nothing beats Virtua FIghter 5 game play yet, as a 3D fighter. Except for Virtua fighter 5 R.

 

I agree that vf is hands down the best fighter out there but I feel there isn't enough of an environment for me to take the game where I could IF I lived in japan. Coming from being a top 20 player in the world at the original SF 2 games (SF2,CE, HF), In VF, it annoys me to hear from japanese players "oh, hes really good for an american". It's an insult more than anything as far as im concerned and alot of the players in japan wouldnt be anywhere near the level that they are had they lived somewhere else. Now I am certainly not saying I have more talent than this guy or that guy but what I am saying is, I know without the proper environment, at least 20 of the best VF players outside japan will never reach their full potential no matter how much they practice.
Thats what kills it for me. Yes, I am a competitive person and if you have really tried to be the best you can be at anything, you are too.

 

I totally agree. Your abilities will always be a direct result of the enviroment in which you play.

 

Yep, I totally agree and if I were still playing, I would be questing alot to make up for the lack of comp. However, as good as quest is, it lacks a bit of important stuff such as adequate practice for yomi, habit recognition and conditioning which are staple tools. Also, playing too much quest might cause one to become too robotic, in a bad way.

 

I'm getting the biggest case of deja vu here...

 

I hate to be the party pooper, but Llanfair, what you seriously failed to mention was that of the three games you brought up, they are all played competitively with the latest or most accepted version/revision in their respect to the community.

In this same fashion VF5R should be the competitive game, not VF5. There's really no reason to compete in VF5, aside from the fact that we don't have the latest version. I mean it's great that you want to keep the community alive and excited, but the analogy you used is just poor.

No one actually competes in the "Starcraft" anymore.. they compete in starcraft brood wars.

No one competes in "Warcraft 3" anymore.. they compete in warcraft 3 the frozen throne.

The only exception here is CS because much of the community agrees that 1.6 is more skill based. I quoted this from another source because I'm not a CS player myself and it would be ignorant for me to try to back up any claims with my own words.

"1. you can spray like made against an enemy 50M+ away and still get HS
2. some map remakes from source are different from the orignal 1.6
3. more teamwork in 1.6 (due to skilled shooting)
4. more bugs in 1.6 that made it fun for gameplay like skywalking and fast silencer switching"

No matter how you look at it, once Starcraft 2 comes out, Brood wars will just be a casual or side game UNLESS SC2 is just that bad of a game that it can't be acceptable for competitive play.

 

We don't have R and Sega keep doing this. It was the same with EVO/FT but at least you could actually get your hands on the actual arcade board(Final Tuned). Fuudo already said it best "Instead of thinking how to keep the popularity of Virtua Fighter, the important thing is to find out how to stop everyone from quitting." The funny thing is I haven't even quit VF. If Sega don't want me to play R then so be it. But I'm not playing a beta version of VF5. My lack of desire stems from the fact I don't like 5 as much as 4.

Games like counter strike have had a huge following because the developers haven't decided to kill of their game in other markets. To really create a strong scene we need the same environment that the Japanese have and we don't. Do counter striker players do ? Yup. Do Warcraft players do? Yes.

You were fortunate enough to play really good players, you can't truly let go of VF once you get to a certain level but what good is it if you can't go beyond that level. How can one company hate people for actually playing their game. Jesus!

Good luck to you Owen and everyone. I hope you do create a really strong scene wherever you live. My issue stems solely at Sega.

 

No offense to llanfair but I think he's suffering from some PCVFD or Post Competitive Virtua Fighter Disorder. ^_^

I used to get that when I would come back from japan. All the comp there gets you pumped and you're having so much fun, you just want to keep the dream alive when you get home. For a few weeks you are stronger than you were before you went but sooner or later, you settle back into the level of competition in your surroundings and after a while realize its just not and never will be the same.

It's kinda like using steroids. You get juiced up, cycle on, get big and then stop using. Your body retains some of the muscle you gained when you were using but without the drug, alot of it goes away. Same with VF.

(No, I've never used steroids)

 

Beat me to it...

 

ya it doesnt help that vf5 when it was released had shitty promotion and advertisement compared to vf4

 

Llanfair, you are totally right.

Yeah I wish that R was out but... If my choice was VF4FT online or any other non-VF fighting game, I'd take FT. Same goes for VF4 Evo, VF4, VF3tb, VF3..

I too have had trouble finding matches lately. It's cool because I have played co-op Borderlands and Dragon Age and other stuff, but I miss the comp.

Maybe it would be a good idea to have a thread with the names of people still playing these days. It is sad to see people on my friends list playing Tekken or Irritating Stick. I will stick with VF.