Hate Speech: When Worlds Collide (Revisited)

Ranked is fun when you can find players. Asian matches are tough to find when you are stuck in the middle of nowhere and people stop playing you when they die to mind-games.

Sometimes lag can be a problem, had this disconnection between me and a JP player while I was getting pwned by his Ivy and he thought I pulled, and I thought he pulled because of the lag. Had an ugly message sent to me, to which I replied quite civilly.

Shit happens, but as I stand by what I said in the ranked matches thread, if I lose so be it. I met many scrubs and decent and even good players, and it has been very interesting to learn even more about my character and others and what different play-styles and strategies they have.

Ultimately though I am in agreement - offline play is still the best. But for those who might have to travel far or not have the time to do so, online ranked/player/Colosseo is a great replacement, but not the best. So if anyone else likes ranked/player/Colosseo, losing or winning, then do your best, and try to make it to a tournament offline or to semi-regular sessions offline. I guarantee you it will be worth it once in a while. Cheers.
 
I can relate an experience from yesterday with the "too much credence numbers", and that wasn't even in a ranked match (nor was the reaction by me). My friend and I were practicing and playing for fun in player match. I haven't lost once against him during that session, and then a guy joins in who was able to beat me (though it was a very close match). Because he was able to break my killstreak, seeing as how I didn't lose once, he started bragging about it and calling my friend "noob".

Once or twice is fine (since we are both newbies, him especially since he hasn't played SC3 and SC4), but he kept on with it with a "too familiar" tone. He also started to brag that he's been a player since the first SC. So when my turn came back, I picked my strongest character (that I feel) and destroyed him 3 rounds straight. He was a bit in disbelief and tried finding excuses.

All is to say that even in player matches, some people take those number too much into account. Even so, so far my online experience is pretty nice. I've met some other newbies which we both added each other so we can train together from time to time. I've yet to play a lot of offline VS player games though, which I will soon enough.

EDIT: I forgot to add that whenever I have some connections issue, in SCV it usually just stops the match, while in SCIV, it recovers more often. This is very strange to me so far, but the overall online experience is WAY better than the last game (I've played against 1 bar and even zero bar; it was more playable than 2-3 bars from SCIV).
 
My first measure of the online experience in fighting game, is: Is it fun?

By this first measure SC5 succeeds amazingly. The player matches are the most fun, simply checking out all of the crazy customizations, reading all the crazy stuff that gets said in the the new chat feature, and that split screen where you can see who's next and check out their license is simple great to me. It gives you a much greater connection to people that are in most instances strangers. Great Lobby.


I 'm very satisfied that Namco added stats tracking for all features of the game, the only place they kind-a dropped the ball is in VS. mode. Since there is no real separate license for player 2, its hard to keep track with player vs player, player1 vs CPU as opposed to player2 or player3 vs cpu etc. Stats give you a sense of progress win or lose.. I like to know whether I've passed the 5000 matches played mark regardless of what the win/loss ratio is. I hate to post this old cliche but it is as true or more true now than ever. Its not whether you win or lose its how you play the game. Are you getting the most out of your character? Are you pulling off the moves in a match that you pull off in practice that you think look so awesome? Did you actually employ the strategy that you wanted to during the match.? If the answer to those questions is yes, then it really doesn't matter whether you win or lose, you've accomplished what you set out to accomplish. There will always be someone that you simply cannot beat. The important thing is that you represented your character and your skill to the way you wanted to. Sometimes we are simply out matched. There is no shame in losing, only if losing is handled shamefully. Which causes me to praise Namco for the replay feature! THANK YOU Project Soul THANK YOU Namco for the replay.
Now, I can look back at the matches that I lost or won, and appreciate what I did right, and see what I did wrong(if I did anything wrong). Again, sometimes you don't make any mistakes, it just happens that you run into a superior player (and there's always a superior player). The replay feature allows me to see if I pulled off the moves I wanted to, If I executed the strategy that I had in mind, and if not what happened. Did I represent my character well during the fight? Did I employ what I know about the game well? Once the emotion of the match is over, the replay tells the true story. Normally at the 5000 game mark you are totally able to execute your plan, whatever is (although you still might lose).


The Ranking system E5-E1, D5-D1, combined with the STATS gives you a true picture of who you are really up against. For example a player may have a rank of
say E4, but you look at his stats and he has played 1000 matches offline, 500+ matches in player mode, 100+ matches in Vs mode, and rarely plays ranked matches. Then you know that E4 really does not reflect what you're up against. So Keeping all the Stats (from every mode) is Great and when combined with the ranking system, you truly know whether you are playing somebody at your relative level or not. You also can tell if someone is just levelling up, but has not put in work elsewhere in the game. This is a massive improvement over SC IV online experience.

Having a lot of wins doesn't necessarily mean that you're that good, and having a lot of losses doesn't necessarily meant that you're that bad. The real questions are,
Are you having fun? Are you executing the moves that you want to execute? Are you deploying the strategy you want to deploy? Are you representing your Character well? AFAIC the new netcode for SC5 allows me to do all of the above, within the skill level that I have. I am not prevented in any way by online netcode. Of course it is netcode and its not the same a playing live, but is the next best thing to being there.
 
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