Well, fellow online VFers, the real test arrived this week. We must all step our games up in order to continue any success we've been enjoying since VF5 Online released in October.
The Japanese have arrived.
A lot of players, particularly the most skilled or just the most confident, welcome the deeper and more vast competitive pool. After all, for many of us, regular matches against Japanese players are what we've craved for years. Others may be intimidated by the heightened level of competition, but that only underscores an unfortunate cultural discrepancy.
Too many players over here don't grasp the concept of player development, of starting weak and growing strong. Instead, out of some misguided pride factor, they feel they must either dominate immediately or spare their pride and leave just as quickly. To them, the rewarding long-term sense of having developed into a high quality tournament player is outweighed by the short-term damage to their pride, leading to the then-inevitable "why even try?" mentality. No guts. Disgusting.
This is maddening! It cripples the North American competitive pool permanently, because it makes it nearly impossible to get new players into games. We've barely progressed at all since the Street Fighter Alpha 3 World Championships nine years ago, in which we fielded 62 competitors to Japan's 10,000+!
It's not an absolute. Virtua Fighter 5 Online has done a decent job of pulling already-good players out of the woodwork, but there has already been a distinctive drop in players on the western side since the Japanese got their copies of the game days ago - most of the American players still here appear to be from the VFDC community.
It's truly unfortunate. Something will give; either American players will cowboy up, finally see what a great thing we have going here with Virtua Fighter, and accept how player development actually works, or they'll go back to their first-person shooters and continue pretending this whole fighting thing isn't really a part of the gaming world.
My hopes and expectations are quite opposite in this regard.
See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast
The Japanese have arrived.
A lot of players, particularly the most skilled or just the most confident, welcome the deeper and more vast competitive pool. After all, for many of us, regular matches against Japanese players are what we've craved for years. Others may be intimidated by the heightened level of competition, but that only underscores an unfortunate cultural discrepancy.
Too many players over here don't grasp the concept of player development, of starting weak and growing strong. Instead, out of some misguided pride factor, they feel they must either dominate immediately or spare their pride and leave just as quickly. To them, the rewarding long-term sense of having developed into a high quality tournament player is outweighed by the short-term damage to their pride, leading to the then-inevitable "why even try?" mentality. No guts. Disgusting.
This is maddening! It cripples the North American competitive pool permanently, because it makes it nearly impossible to get new players into games. We've barely progressed at all since the Street Fighter Alpha 3 World Championships nine years ago, in which we fielded 62 competitors to Japan's 10,000+!
It's not an absolute. Virtua Fighter 5 Online has done a decent job of pulling already-good players out of the woodwork, but there has already been a distinctive drop in players on the western side since the Japanese got their copies of the game days ago - most of the American players still here appear to be from the VFDC community.
It's truly unfortunate. Something will give; either American players will cowboy up, finally see what a great thing we have going here with Virtua Fighter, and accept how player development actually works, or they'll go back to their first-person shooters and continue pretending this whole fighting thing isn't really a part of the gaming world.
My hopes and expectations are quite opposite in this regard.
See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast
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