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Monday, February 19, 2018

Picking/Waiting on a Main? + a General Rambling Blog

Well, it's finally happened. Well, finally happened again. (It happened before in Xrd.)

I'm actually at a place where I feel like I'm not 100% satisifed with my main in a game(like, 95% though so it's not bad).

As most know, I'm fairly easy when it comes to picking a main. I look at who I like the appearances of and try them out to see if they fit me. I generally like heavy hitting dudes(anyone who knows me knows this one.) Yes, I do trend slightly toward gorillas one might say(Azrael/Gordeau is going to be too much fun and holy shit Broly. Oh yeah, I'll get around to him.)

So in the time it happened in Xrd, as many know I went into Xrd playing Testament, Sol, Anji, HOS. A little Bridget dabbling. (I was kinda casual though in these years, keep in mind. I played decently but wasn't really looking to go full bore in. Not a lot of time.) Getting stripped down to just Sol felt weird. I love Sol Badguy, mind you-he's one of my favorite GG characters in terms of design and fuck-off attitude, but I'm not sure if I 100% saw myself as a Sol main, so I felt a little lost for awhile. I dabbled around with characters, but didn't really find my 'home' again until Raven dropped, whom I just clicked with. (Yes, I know that his oki is changing. I didn't play him for that. Hell, I love the new design of a more berserker-like higher-damage Raven with lesser oki.) I still love me some Sol! But I had a home.

DBFZ I had heard the Broly rumors and was praying the datamining was true; alas, to my luck, it was! I had characters I liked in that game-but with no Broly or 17(actual playable 17, not Puppet Half of 18 17), I felt a little like I was missing something. Now not only is Broly hitting the game but they're making him a striking powerhouse which is SO MUCH up my alley. Even if there is no 17 ending up in, I'm pretty much fine now with a team with Broly(I'll use probably Black and 16).

Similar things are afoot in Dissidia NT at the moment. While the DLC has not been announced for sure, they have the hints, and one of those hints is leading strongly toward my boy Zenos yae Galvus from FFXIV. It's not for sure, though, of course. (FWIW my mind kinda changed from my last post, and I kinda think they're going to try to fill out the missing numbers, so I kinda think the DLC might run Zenos, Locke, Ashe or Serah, Vayne, Balthier, Cid Raines or Caius, Prishe and then Ardyn, with 3 and 4 depending on each other. I could be wrong, though.)

When I heard the first slot is Male, Late-Series, Villain, Vanguard/Heavy...yeah, that narrows down who it likely will be, IMO. And I sort of have this little itch in the back of my head knowing damn well if my Legatus of the XIIth Legion is in as XIV's Villain slot, I'll be maining the fuck out of him. Right now, I'm really enjoying Warrior of Light, Sephiroth and Kain(the old me would be mocking this me for considering maining the space-germ worshiping momma's boy, but goddamnit Sephiroth is super fun and yes I will pay whatever they want for the shirtless outfit.)

But I am pretty sure I am mentally holding out hope(not a guarantee, just hope!) I get my other boy in. I'm optimistic due to Stormblood's massive success(it's been, that I can see, their most successful expansion to date so far and it's not finished yet), the fact he's moved into a favorite villain spot, and other little things(like it being super-nice if there was another big-body full bore melee in. Golby is a shoot and Exdeath is a mix, Garland is sorta the only one right now). Trends and other things(the fact the mentioned wanting more villains) keep my optimism, though I'm being cautious. But still damn, I don't think I've been this thirsty for a wished main in a LONG time!

I mean why wouldn't I main a dude whose like eight feet tall, four hundred pounds, with what looks to be equally heavy armor, who wields 2h swords in 1 hand and carries three of them in a mechanical holder nearly the size of an probably weight of a man, engineered with super strength and resilience who is also a pretty good tactician, who can make his men piss themselves by looking at them in his helmet without saying a word, who ended up literally crushing the Doman rebellion's best men unarmed, by himself, and making them watch while he did it and is actually terrifying, and also has way prettier eyelashes than any person ever.




(you thought I was lying about the first part.) 


So yeah, I definitely have a wishlist there. Just like I'm really hoping Anji, Testament and HOS in particular still make it to Xrd(though I'm so happy with Raven there they'd be subs.)

"But Azzy, I thought you live to take the piss out of Anna fans who spam Harada with requests!"

Yeah, see, there's a vast fucking distance, like one between here and Alpha Centauri, between "Discussing Wishes" and "Spamming and/or threatening the devs."

By all means, make wishlists. Joke about it. Jokingly say things like 'Damnit, angry badgers unless I get Master Roshi!' Hope, hype, pray, even a human sacrifice is acceptable(so long as it's a full moon, involves an Aztec Death Whistle and is done preferably on the 13th but I'll look the other way on the last thing.)* Nothing wrong there. Make wishlist blogs, talk about it with your friends, and if the devs happen to ask wishlists, by all means drop a friendly line about it. And don't whine, christ. No one likes whining.

So yes, I will continue to mock people who are actively shitty to devs about this.

That said, I do understand and have sympathy for folks waiting on characters, I really do. I know there are some people waiting on mains(I know quite a few Lei fans...), and waiting on other announcements(Soul Calibur VI is releasing announcements bit by bit, and while that game isn't out yet I can see people quite excited to see what's going to happen.)

Anyway, here's hoping we get what we wish for!




*Azzy does not ACTUALLY condone human sacrifice, I feel it necessary that I need to include this as a disclaimer nowadays with what I've seen certain parts of the interwebs get their panties in a wad about. Angry badger armies are cool so long as you treat them humanely.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Prediction Blog: My Guesses for the First Six Dissidia NT DLC characters

Okay, so I did this on my Twitter in a halfassed way, but I decided to do a bigger guessing game on my blog proper. Lots of other blogs did it, so why don't I? I'm bored enough.


So we have hints for the six DLC characters. Only the first one has more detailed hints.

A couple of specifics: Newcomer means 'Never been in a PSP Dissidia', and the 'halves' are separated by 1-7 and 8-15 they specified. So if it says 'First Half', the character will be from somewhere in the 1-7 range.

Also, at the moment the 'classes' are as follows: 7 Vanguard, 8 Assassin, 9 Marksmen, and 5 Unique-so right there I'm going to guess that at least half of these might fall in the 'unique' class. Okay, at least 2. Possibly 3. THAT said, I do think we'll still get one Marksman class in the bunch. (For a rundown, Vanguards are USUALLY 'heavy' types, Assassins are your fast moving high damage, Marksman are ranged and Unique often have some interesting/special traits. THAT said it's not cut and dry; Jecht for example is an Assassin class but has Vanguard-ish stuff about him, while Sephiroth is a Vanguard with Assassin-ish traits, and so on.) But generally that's the gist of it, you can look more into it on the official source material.

There are also a higher volume of heroes over villains; that said, I don't necessarily think most of these picks will be villains(in fact, I'm only banking on two of them, maybe 3.)

So the hints otherwise are as follows!


1. Newcomer Male from a Later Game, Villain Vanguard.

2. Newcomer Male from an Early Game.

3. Newcomer Female from Later Game.

4. Newcomer Male from Later Game.

5. Returning Female from Later Game.

6. Newcomer Male from Later Game.



So for starters, FFVIII. Seifer Almasy wouldn't be a weird pick, to be sure; he matches the 3-way between Squall and Ulty(being Ulty's 'Knight' in a sense), and he could fall into the Vanguard role(though he could also be an Assassin, I feel; he could go either way.) That being said, between Squall and Lightning we have two characters whipping around Gunblades; do they want to add a third so soon? Storywise yes, playstyle wise possibly, though I wonder if his weapon might not push him to a later season(when they won't give as much of a crap.) I'd give him a smaller chance(with a larger chance to appear in a later season.)

IX or X don't really have any villain dudes who would fit the Vanguard role. Seymour Guado would, IMO, be a Unique or Marksman. Steiner was...against Zidane sorta for a point of the game but he's simply *not* a villain.

XI has Shadow Lord or Eald'narche. I don't have too high of chances given I can't really see them tossing in an XI Villain as their VERY FIRST DLC. It would be a very, very weird pick given I feel there is right now more crossover from XIV players-Dissidia than XI players-Dissidia. Plus, we do already have Shantotto, and also see below, we'll be likely getting another XI in this or next season. I mean it's not an impossibility; but I'd by far put them as the smallest chance.

XII has, IMO, the guy who is tied for Most Likely To Get In This Spot would be Vayne Solidor, the main antagonist.


The first is official art, the second is him with his little brother, Larsa. Such a classy motherfucker. 

The only things would be 'against' Vayne for this spot would be that he could just as easily fit an Assassin role as well as a Unique role, and they might decide to put another XII character in instead, in which case they might save him, but I really feel he's got a huge chance. (Hell, I kinda think he has more than once chance. See my guesses below.)

He also had his Obligatory Boss Forms which looked pretty badass(ripped and shirtless, no complaints here), and would tie in pretty nicely and actually give Vaan someone to play off of, given the poor guy doesn't really have anyone yet. Plus, XII is sort of 'In the News' right now with its re-releases; getting Vayne in here might be a great chance.

In any case-if this first slot isn't Vayne, we'll get him later, or we'll get *some* XII character in. But right now, I'm calling Vayne as tied for the most likely for this spot. I think they could Vanguard him pretty easily, despite him being able to work into several roles. He fights as a monk if you're wondering what his weapon was. (Yes, part of this is very much wishful thinking because Vayne was one of my favorite FF Villains, and this guy would be an easy shoe-in for a new main character for me!)


Moving onto XIII here, I feel there are two potential picks(with the first being more likely), Cid Raines or Caius Ballad(the latter from XIII-2.)


Cid's the first guy, Caius is the second. 


While they both played antagonist roles, they ended up in 'FF Spots' of 'Not really Super Evil After All', but they played sorta baddies enough I feel they could fall here for sure.

Cid Raines also fought like a monk(which we lack right now in the game), and could slot into the Vanguard role(however he could possibly be a Unique or Assassin as well, much like Vayne.) With XIII not having a second character, I feel that he's got a pretty strong chance of slipping into the first DLC spot. He'd give XIII a needed 2nd character, too, in the process(but see below.)

Caius was a heavy sword dude, and could slot into a Vanguard role well(or even Assassin.) He sort of also could transform into a dragon though(make that Bahamut), so I'm not exactly sure how they'd figure THAT out. Now keep in mind an interesting bit here; Caius was more popular in the West, and Cid more popular in the East. If that might affect the pick, I'm not sure, but there you go. I sorta think Cid's got the better chance with him being in the base game, but it could go either way here I think.


My personal top pick for XIV, tied for the 1st most likely pick along with Vayne, AND my other personal favorite pick would be Zenos yae Galvus. The posterboy of Stormblood(the CE came with a figure of him), a 100% Vanguard through-and through(he's an eight to nine foot tall wall of armor and muscle), a 'Samurai' class sort of(which the game sort of lacks right now as well as a monk from above), and to boot, one of Yoshi-P himself's top picks to get into Dissidia.



that is a human dude, btw, to his left. Even though he's not directly next to him, he comes to about his waist up close. I wasn't joking about his size. He's basically Beautiful Hulk. 

If he isn't the first DLC character, I feel he's got an incredibly bright future somewhere in Dissidia. He's mostly well-liked too(a little polarizing, but the Garleans in general tend to be, to be fair; plus polarizing didn't stop several characters from getting in. Hell, Tidus is arguably polarizing.) Generally though Zenos was a very well received character and yeah, he'd drop into the Vanguard role extremely snugly; in fact, out of all of these characters listed, he's the only one I feel that's basically 110% Bonafide Vanguard Bully. Arguably the best of all the 3 XIV picks(who could also play as Unique, when you line them up.) His mechanical golf bag of katanas mixed with his massively imposing appearance I think could make him a pretty downright popular pick. (Along with Vayne, this dude could easily become a main for me.)


Gaius van Baelsar is another possible slot-in here. Garleans make for good Vanguard types given their heavy armor, though Gaius uses a gunblade as well-see what I said about Seifer; I'm not sure they're going to want to throw in another gunblade user. (Plus, Lightning technically uses a gunblade, so...yeah, methinks the gunblade brigade-for a 1st DLC-might get a bit crowded here. Later, sure. His other weapon is an arm cannon, as well.) He's popular, though, so he has that going for him, but I'm not sure he'd get in over Zenos at this point(or see below.)


Nero tol Scaeva is, IMO; also a possibility-he's a fairly popular character in XIV, could be a Vanguard with his big ol' hammer(he's also an Engineer-actually its a fucking gunhammer, how cool is that)-but, oddly enough, he's...sorta-kinda no longer a total villain. As in, he's basically like an anti-hero member of Team Warrior of Light(as in, not FF1 WoL but the hero of XIV is called the WoL-don't think about it too hard.) That said, he WAS a villain, and it could be enough to get him in, because mind you, not all of the 'villains' are 100% total baddies in their respective games, too; they often simply played that role at a point(given Materia and Spiritus aren't totally like, 100% Goody-Good and Naughtybad.

All that said, I can see him making it eventually. I mean he looks like Vergil from DMC and uses a gunhammer.




To be honest, I think Nero has a bigger chance than Gaius.

Now-I know what some people might be asking. "What about Estinien Wyrmblood? He's like super-popular and awesome! He might not be a villain anymore but he could maybe count as an ex-villain?"

Well, my only issue with him getting in is two words: Kain Highwind. Estinien is a dragoon. Kain is a dragoon. Yes, they can make dragoons different but I don't think they're going to put in two dragoons so close together. Yes, I love Estinien and would love to eventually see him, but right now I feel the dragoon is much too 'unique' of a class to go throwing in another one of, and I don't think they're going to. I think we might have to wait on this guy.


Okay, and finally that brings us to FFXV, and that's Mr. Ardyn Izunia or perhaps Ravus Nox Fleuret.

Out of these two, Ravus would fit *this particular spot* better due to him being much more of a Vanguard type; Ardyn, I feel, is more Unique, and doesn't slot as comfortably into the Vanguard role. (That said, I mention Ardyn below as likely getting into this season, just not in this particular role.)

I feel Ravus is a possibility-but I feel he's even less of a villain as the others. He wasn't even a *villain*, really, simply playing a bit of an antagonist role at a couple of points in the game(and one of these wasn't even on purpose.) I can definitely see Ravus getting INTO the game, for sure, but I'm not sure he'd be in this spot. I mean, I'd love to see him. I'm just saying he's more unlikely in this first go-around unless they use the term 'villain' even lighter than they do than some of the other 'pretty much only villain by association' types. Still there's a not 0 chance I feel.



yes, I like Ravus a lot.


So essentially for the number 1 spot, in order, I feel it'll be Vayne=Zenos>Cid Raines>Nero=Caius>Seifer=Ravus>Ardyn(remember what I said about one of the other DLC picks though.)

WILD CARD PICK!: Snow technically was sort of an antagonist in XIII-3, you know.


For number 2, I feel this could be several names, but is very much likely one: Locke Cole from FFVI.

Given he was in a recent radio drama with great fanfare sort of keeping him hidden, I sorta-kinda think they may be trying to get him into Dissidia. A longtime fan favorite, he could easily play a role of Assassin or Unique(he was a very fighty rogue type-not a thief though, remember he'll rip your lungs out), and I can't think of too many people who would say no to Locke. Probably an Assassin, to be fair, which would tack another one onto the list-that's no biggie, though. I figured Assassins are a popular 'class.'

some classic Amano art!


So yeah, Locke is probably going to be it here. I mean, I HOPE so. He's one of my favorites from FF! He could utilize some of VI's famous weapons like the Ultima Weapon or the Ragnarock, one of his boomerangs(he could use them as well as melee), and he'd probably have a lot of acrobatic kicks and strikes thrown in as well. They could differentiate him from Zidane nicely I feel.

Backups that this could be are either Vincent Valentine(I'd love to see what they do with his shapeshifting for this, and he'd be a great Unique since he'd be meleeing a lot shifted I think), or Minwu from FF2(a personal favorite of Nomura, also a Unique-he's a white mage with a mace which makes him sort of a clerical type-a melee healer would actually be sort of interesting.)


For number 3, that basically leaves a girl from 8+. The developers have a few times already mentioned Rinoa Heartilly as someone who they would like to see, and I'm heavily leaning toward her as my top guess.

whose a good doggo?!


Mainly because she would add a good dynamic story wise(between Squall and Ulty), and she would be a great 'Unique' pick I think between her pet(I remember the developers mentioning they'd like to see her doggo), her ranged wrist-shooter and her magic. Out of all of the possibilities I do feel Rinoa could drop here.

The second most likely pick I feel could be Serah Farron from XIII/XIII-2. As Lightning's sister, they could have some story bits, and her role as an archer is something that the game doesn't really have yet, so she could definitely be something a bit different for people; a cool style of Marksman not yet portrayed in the game. She's not an unpopular character, either, and XIII only has one character so far.

I like the idea of working in an archer.

So yeah, that's my thoughts for who I *think* will be most likely in this slot.

Other possibilities here I feel could be Quistis Trepe(another fav from VIII), Lulu from FFX, Ashe or Penelo from FFXII(I don't think Fran would be in without Balthier). I think Beatrix from IX is a possibility, though see below on why I feel this is less likely(I feel its sort of dependent on another pick.)


We're going to jump ahead to number 5 for this since it's short, and do 4 and 6 together at the end.

Number 5 is one of two: Yuna or Prishe from FFX and FFXI respectively. It'll be either or, as they're the only gals who were in a later game who aren't in this one. Personally I'm giving this as a bigger chance for Yuna-as the game's only summoner so far, I feel she'd fill a slot well, and they could really make a unique character out of her. (Like, a literal Unique or a marksman.)

if it's so dangerous, Tidus, why are you shirtless again?


It would be really neat to see how her summons could be actually controlled. She could, in a way, be a 'puppet' character almost in this. I see her definitely getting in the game, I'm not sure if she'd be in DLC Season 1 or 2, but I'm going to say I feel she'll be in S1.


Okay, so finally, numbers 4 and 6 are both 'Males from later series.' So take all of the dude guesses for the first one...and put them all here, for starters. Basically any of the dudes that don't make the first spot could end up in one of these spots.

I feel one of them is going to be Ardyn. FFXV is very popular right now, they're coming out with the new edition of it, and Ardyn is a pretty damn popular villain already. I feel, though, as I said, because he's not really a total Vanguard type, he could fit one of these(who have no specification for their 'class.' He could probably fit best in the Unique class, given his grab bag of powers; they could really do a lot with this guy. So unless they were late in getting him started(in which case he'd be in season 2 almost unquestionably), I think one of these guys is going to be Trash Jesus himself.



Yes, Trash Jesus.


As for the other one? Phew. Okay, so again, take the dudes I mentioned in the first one, and it could be them. In addition, though, it could be some non-villains too! Big other potential picks besides that bunch I feel are:

-Zell Dincht, FFVIII. Pretty requested, popular monk of the series. Would be hella fun. Probably Assassin or Vanguard for him.

-Vivi Ornitier, FFIX. Vivi is a very long-requested and well loved character of the IX series. Marksman through and through.

-Balthier, FFXII. if Vayne or Ashe aren't in, I would expect a slot to go to Balthier. He is, after all, the leading man. I'd actually call him Unique before Marksman since he also could have Engineer/Machinist aspects.

-Snow or Sazh, FFXIII. Snow as a Vanguard, Sazh as something not a Vanguard(literally the other three, most likely Marksman or Unique.)


Out of all of these I feel the strongest chances go to Vivi(giving IX a 3rd character in the process, making other IX picks kind of unlikely), Snow(especially if we don't get another XIII pick), or Balthier(again, the leading man, and if Vayne doesn't make it in.)


Okay Azzy, you've gone on about possibilities, so narrow it down already in a nice, neat list!


Okay, fine, but I do think a couple spots are tied. Here goes:


1. Zenos yae Galvus or Vayne Solidor

2. Locke Cole

3. Rinoa Heartilly or Serah Farron

4. Ardyn Izunia

5. Yuna 

6. Vivi Ornitier or Snow Villiers


Those are my guesses! It'll be fun to see how on or off I was. (4 and 6 could be swapped FWIW.)

This was a fun little thing to put together. I always liked speculating on stuff.

Maybe I'l get some more techy stuff up soon. (I've been fighting some winter crud again, ick. Also: going to the US in March, woot!)

Til next time, readers!

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Birthday commentary, Random Blog Stuff

I decided to put together a little birthday blog(look, I'm 40 now <.<) of random thoughts of the week. These will deal with a little of everything, and just be me rambling(or perhaps, sometimes ranting.)

As a side note, I had a lot of fun putting in more time in USFIV again. I think in ways I like it more than V-I think V's roster with some of my 3 favorites+Necalli give me more characters I'd like to mess with(besides my usuals), but USFIV these days is just feeling so much more complete to me. Like V is still going through patch madness, and still, IMO, feels like it's missing a little something even if I DO find AE a definite several steps in the right direction. (That, and I do feel I like the way Claw played in older games a bit more.)

Onto the stuff!

So yeah, we've had a bit of Week-1 Tierlisting. Remember what I said; it's all fun to do for the hell of it, but don't take these things too seriously. I'm not against seeing them, I'm more against taking them too seriously at first until things shake out.(Even the dudes themselves said it was pretty much for fun. It's everyone else that takes these things too damn seriously.)



Too Much Hype?

Next up is a discussion about hype, hype aversion, and what I don't want to see happen with DBFZ.

Okay, so Sajam had a clip from a stream which I'll link here. It's not too long; about five minutes. He starts by going on about twitch haters going into streams just to hate stuff(I don't even get Twitch culture nor can I even pretend to understand it), but when he discusses DBFZ and that he's worried the game may have too much hype about it-I have to agree with him. DBFZ right now is being hoisted up as being the savior of all things Fighting Game, and I reckon it's just going to be another cool fighter. I mean maybe a damned good and popular one-but I don't think it's going to cure world hunger or anything.

And I'm afraid when/if it doesn't end up as the wasp's testicles of fighting games people will feel let down. I don't WANT that to happen. But hype aversion can be quite a strong thing. Here's hoping people's ideas for the game stay realistic. (Oh yeah, and snobs need to stop scaring off the new blood. Jesus, I'm old, cranky, and believe you gotta take some L's to get better, but don't be needlessly cruel in mocking them if they can't complete a goddamn combo challenge. We should be better than that.)

But yeah I think he nailed it. Gameplay wise I'm not too worried(I don't think it's going to be the best balanced fighting game, but it'll be mad fun and be fantastic.) But let's cross our fingers that expectations don't get raised to crazy-high, life-changing levels.


What's with the SFxT talk?

So around twitter lately I've been seeing more and more SFxT talk these days. It's been going for a bit now but it's picked up again. People saying they'd buy it again on PS4, discussing its strengths and discussing how they miss the game despite its flaws.

And I have to wonder how a game that went through a LOT of scrutiny now became more accepted? Hell, I find myself sort of shrugging at Capcom's business practices there. (The P2W gems were a little harsher for me, tbh, but neither thing was *great.*)

I reckon, though-and I had tweeted about this a bit but I can discuss it longer here-that compared to lootboxes and gacha, some on-disc DLC is sort of...tame in comparison. It's kinda lame, yeah, and if it hadn't been on-disc I think people may not have even looked twice at it. But I believe this and the gems-again, the P2W aspect was sort of meh to me(though tournaments can and do ban them understandably) really gave it the bad launch; other things did affect it too(like time-out syndrome at first, where matches would often end in time outs and drag on seemingly forever.)

However, they worked on patching balance bits, again, gems were able to be banned from tournaments and eventually the game became pretty fun! But...the launch sort of already did its damage, trust had been damage, steam and momentum were lost...and yeah.

Years later, now that people can sort of dust off the previous downsides, they're able to see the fun game underneath-and that brings me to why I think this game is starting to get a little hype surrounding it again; I think, between stuff like this, DBFZ and so on, people just want to have some 'fun', over the top fighters in the mix of all of the 'srs' ones they play. The game did have some cool gameplay aspects besides that, but I think a little case of 'don't know what you got' is coming up or something. I don't know the exact reasons, but that's my guess; it's just a case that now that most of the overlaying crap had been cleared away people suddenly say 'Damn, why can't I be playing X/Y again?'

I will say if it popped on PS4? I'd buy it too.


My own personal revisiting of USFIV

So I had gotten the urge to put time into that again. It actually still has a fairly thriving little community(its 200-250 average Steam players is actually better than some newer fighting games, and it filled up its 180 cap at EVO Japan IIRC), and I can understand why; by the time they finally got to Ultra the game played pretty tightly and was decently balanced.

I think there are aspects I like more about IV, and aspects I like more about V(when it comes to the newer games, I will always state my top 3 SFs are in no particular order Alpha 3, 3rd Strike and Super Turbo). Aspects I like more about IV is that as of now it simply feels like a more complete game; it had six years, four expansions, and lots of balance patches, so that's only natural. Also, I admit-I actually like old Claw's design and moveset a bit better overall. (Plus lots more costumes and such from then.) it does have a bigger overall roster with some good stuff(Claw, the Final Fight crew, Rose, others.)

On the other hand, I really don't like how they ignored some very popular characters(Alex, Urien, Nash a couple others), and brought back others just because of easy recycled content(I don't want to hear anything about Nash being dead, they brought him back a million times already, they could have done it again). That had me pretty salty at the time, I admit(I had long since gotten over it; in fact, the me of 2013 even was different than the me even of 2015. I dunno why but I had more roster salt in the early 10s than I did later. I suppose its why I can have some sympathy for people missing characters but have little patience for people who spam developers; I would have never gone that far.) Finally some MUs could get to almost redonk 3S levels too once you got to stuff like Hugo and Sagat(though Valle STILL managed to body Bonchan in '15!) Its balance was pretty decent though. I liked Claw's balance a lot; a solid mid tier(FINALLY, christ he had it rough in the first couple versions), but counterpicked several top tiers.

V has some neat re-imaginings. I straight up love new Nash more than Alpha Nash in terms of gameplay. The arcade mode content is great fun to unlock, and some of the new artwork as I mentioned is fucking beautiful, like this piece:



On the other hand, the gameplay does lend itself to leaning toward characters who can perform a big ol' CRASH comeback, Claw feels like he's fun and has good tools but he's not as 'cohesive' as he used to be in that it feels like the devs aren't sure on how to revamp him like they were say Nash, and I feel the game still is a bit...unfinished in ways. 2nd V-Triggers without 2nd V-Skills, CAs or reversals feels a bit off to me; like the game is almost there, but needs still a little more time in the oven(spoiler alert; this tends to be SF games in general. I mean c'mon how many versions of each one gets released?)

So IV has been providing me with some more entertainment lately. I'm really pumped for the 30th, like I said.


Azzy's Learn Someone New in 2018 Challenge

I also decided to challenge myself a little by learning a new character in a few fighting games. This isn't for a main or anything(just a fun sub type), but it's to broaden my horizons a bit. The only 'rule' I'm keeping for myself is that it has to be a character type I'm not used to maining(hence broadening horizons.)

In Guilty Gear, I've been starting with Zato-1. I've of course fooled with most of the cast but I decided to hunker down with this guy. I don't really play puppet characters, so this seemed like an interesting challenge. It's been pretty fun so far!

Over in Tekken land, I was considering Gigas at first(I usually don't go with low-tier big bodies), but decided on Steve Fox, since I generally don't play boxers. So here's hoping this goes well too! I always liked dabbling with him before, so I figure time to actually learn him.

Finally in SFV I'll go with FANG. Weirdo that he is, he's generally not my style of character which makes him perfect. (I'm experienced with charge characters already so that part isn't too new, but his whole general 'schtick' is.

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ANYWAY I hope you enjoyed my random bit of rambling. I hope to do more of these, maybe as filler when I can't figure out something useful to actually write about.

I also want to thank everyone for dumping a lot of birthday wishes on me. It makes getting older so much easier you guys <3

See ya all soon!

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Jumping the Gun: AKA: The Attack of the Day Zero Tier Lists

You've all seen it.

Early tier lists.

Hell, I've made a few myself...for fun. Just for a giggle and to look back some months later-after the dust has settled(at least somewhat), and the meta to shake out(again, somewhat, I'll get to this), and see how close we all were at our predictions.  I find it a fun exercise in educated guessing and character examination. There's nothing wrong with making an airy, loose and early call on how you think stuff will play out-something like "Rashid is looking pretty evil this season, I think he'll be high", or "I think Rog's nerfs really hit him hard-I think he might have an uphill battle."

That said, there are people-even respected, high level players-who I think are very, very swift nowadays to actually try to seriously predict too much too soon.

I wont' even start to get into the people making serious tier lists for DBFZ...before the beta was released. (There were some making tiers for the FEXL beta too after about five minutes. I am pretty sure there is actually a type of Cordyceps that somehow appears whenever a new patch or expansion comes out, ends up in the bodies of FGC members and systematically controls them to start churning out fully fleshed out and explained day 1 tier lists.) 

So this was brought up by the release of SFV AE. Today I was perusing Twitter and amongst mixes of doom, 'OP' 'dunno' and whatnot, I saw a tweet from Alex Myers, a known Sakura main who was quite excited for her to be back in. Apparently, Momochi and Tokido-two very very high level, very skilled, liked, and respected players-felt that 'she had no future.'

It's been five days. I think that's a bit fast to bury the poor gal. Especially when she's finally possibly gotten Ryu in her sights. (Really, watch the story and arcade modes. XD) I mean, they are hella respected players! But I just think, even with raw data, it's too soon. (Hell, apparently Infiltration and a couple of others aren't convinced of Akuma himself right now and don't feel too hot on him!) Yes-again, these are super-high level players-some of the absolute best in the world-and I generally DO believe their opinions a lot! But even then I don't necessarily think they're right 100% of the time-and sure, I think they can jump the gun too.(Early tier lists at one point in Tekken 7 had Dragunov as a high-mid. He ended up one of the top 3 characters of the game.)

Some players have said she feels like a 'Poor Man's Akuma'-this is fair; it simply states 'This is how she feels right now.' It doesn't quite doom her. All it does is describe how her current state feels for the limited time someone played with her.

Apparently right now Zangief is also DOA, Balrog is DOA yesterday, Ibuki is DOA, Ryu is probably still DOA, Alex didn't get enough buffs, Laura is broken the other way(according to the West, Japan isn't still thrilled with her performance), and Claw players can't make up their mind/are split into three camps-one group thinks he's doomed, another thinks he actually feels better now with new anti-airs and other neutral stuff, and the last think he still feels mid with the nerfs but the buffs equalized him, but needs a playstyle shift. (To be fair, at least this is alright since it allows discussion, though anyone doomcrying about any character right now this early grows tiring.)

Mind you-I don't think it's so bad to lament some of the nerfs a whole lot of us got(to be fair; Karin fans, for example, seem to be happily willing to trade her CC HP back for something that's not -5.) It does suck when you lose something you liked or a playstyle you dug, and especially when a company doesn't explain the changes, it can really make someone feel frustrated, and I get that. And I think some tilt is a given and there's no problem with that(I've complained about nerfs before, I'm not saying just sit back, grin and eat every nerf that gets thrown your way.) But there's a difference between that and like, you know, going into full on DOOOOM mode.

(Funny thing with Zangief, on Day -1 and Day 0 people were lamenting his massive VT2 damage and being terrified. Two days later he was apparently crap. I'm sure someone will pull out the Itabashi Zangief OS at some point.)

As an aside-Claw is a very long played character of mine; if he's in an SF game, I'll play him. Claw, Alex, and Remy(along with the Final Fight crew, so rest assured Cody is going on the list and I really want Sodom back), are constants for me. (I've been enjoying AE btw-as someone who was on the fence about SFV, it pushed me over. I think that vehement SFV naysayers won't be sold, but if you like casual content, AE has LOTS of stuff there now. I feel that besides V-Trigger 2's the game can use 2nd V-Skills, Critical Arts and Reversals as well. Just a mini-review.) I'm on the side of 'He took a couple nerfs from 2.5, but he also gained stuff that I've been getting mileage out of.'

Now-as usual, I will play devil's advocate with myself. I have to at least offer another side. Yes, it's true nowadays that we have ways of getting raw data in front of us. We have programs out the ass, awesome stuff like Toolassisted(or TOOLASSISTED I should say), the games themselves often give us more information, and we have ways of getting frame changes, hitboxes, hurtboxes, and about all raw data you could want, so I do admit, there is at least SOME grounding here to having more of the actual data to work with.

If, say, a character in a game got just nerfs all down the line in patch notes, and nothing but nerfs nerfs nerfs under the radar, yes, I think it's safe to say that they're definitely pretty heftily nerfed. Even THEN, though, we can't make a total prediction of where they'll be. What if six other characters were nerfed heavily? What if there were mechanic changes, a lot universal? What if their worst MUs were ALSO nerfed just as much-if not more-than them? This, and more, are all things that take time to shake out.

We can see what the data tells us and make educated guesses-but I think there's a huge predisposition these days to just immediately declare a character 'dead, pick whoever is being said to be the top tier.'

Hell, the issue with that? What if the top tier ends up being not-so-top two months down the line? Gods know that has happened before. (I can go on a separate rant on how I feel games are, on paper, better balanced than the ones in the old days but there's such a big push to tier whore even mid tier characters get the sideeye anymore. I guess I can blame e-sports money somewhat there.) I've seen instances of presumably 'bad' characters actually being good but then getting buffed to stupid levels because no one put the work in, and also instances of not-so-hot characters being nerfed because everyone cried when they weren't that bad(One word: Nash. In his case, his problems would have probably been over once they fixed the frame issues, but...yeah, we saw what happened there. Hell, this was even a few months after the game's release and it was too soon to nerfhammer him!)

But really, as I'll say again, the meta needs time to shake out. We don't know if an apparent 'doomed' character will be a meta counterpick(won't be the first time a lower tier happens to be good against certain meta picks.) We won't know if all of the OTHER changes everyone got will affect things overall(this is a big thing, because previously bad MUs for some characters can end up not as bad, which can change things.)  We've seen some tournaments of various sizes. It takes much more than a week for a meta to shake out, like I said a few times now.

I think sometimes people are right, of course. Nash being nerfed was easier to tell. I think Nash's case was a little bit different though; they double nerfed him, in a way(in fact, in a funny instance, people SAID that double-nerfing him was unnecessary and Capcom didn't listen!) After fixing the input lag, that alone probably would have been enough to fix some of his issues; by double-hitting him they went too far. (Even then, Bonchan could make him work!)

Also, I think people are on the right track when they say Rashid and Abigail look strong. Sure, I do think some hypothesis-even early! can be correct, I just think that people think they can predict the entire damn meta in the first week far too often, and I think that outright dooming a character usually goes too far, too.

Let's think back to last year and list some examples of stuff that went the other way.

Birdie: Well he's the biggest one. Birdie wasn't on the radar until Capcom Cup when he apparently became the cheapest character in the game and went up three tiers. (IMO, he was just pretty much a decent character that Mena knew how to use really well.)

Rashid: Believe it or not-Rashido-one of the 'cheapest' characters by the end of the year-was seen as not that great for a long time. And then, Oil King happened and he reduced everyone to quivering mounds of QQ. Then Moke came along and continued the tornado rampage. Both Birdie and Rashid took awhile, too, to 'figure out.'

Now let me say I don't always agree with Capcom's balance choices, oh nooo. I don't think Claw needed any nerfs at all going in(no, he didn't get that many non 'universal' changes, where they did a lot of nerfing of light attacks for characters, etc.) They could have given him the other stuff along with what he had though I think. Maybe they were afraid of his VT2? I still think he's going to be pretty solid once the meta shakes out and the new tech comes down the pipes, though-again, just a guess; I don't know either, anymore than someone who says he'll be OP or someone convinced he'll be trash in thirty seconds.(I also think there are times Capcom doesn't quite know what they want to do with him style wise, but that's for a different blog.)

I also think they hit Balrog way, way too hard. Like, one of those Nash feelings. Especially since as strong as he was he wasn't that dominant. I also wonder if maybe Gief didn't get a little much yet. But I'm not going to completely jump the gun on this. I also do think there are times that the game mechanics themselves could use an overhaul, and that would actually help some of the issues.

(Capcom's patch notes were pretty bad, and I would love-absolutely LOVE-if Capcom and ALL companies would take the Killer Instinct route and actually explain why they did the changes they did, along with every change properly listed. It's a pipe dream, I know, but I think it should be something all developers should strive to do.)

But really, in the end, wait a bit. It's fine to guess, it's fine to have some opinions-positive, negative, or neutral-but just remember what Oil King did to everyone with Rashid or Mena did to people with Birdie before actually seriously dooming something.

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PS: Yeah, it's been ages since I've written. I really really want to try to update this more! I have started to scribble a Claw 101 guide for new players out since I like writing guides for new players. I really need to try to put something on this thing weekly.

PPS: People aren't kidding when they said the art is better in the arcade mode. Look at this!