First of all, I'm not accusing anyone of this. I know a lot of people do it, and they have their reasons, but I want to express why I feel it's not a good idea to do so.
Withholding tech, for those that are unaware, is when you purposely don't share some type of tech you've found or learned about. To me, most players do this in order to preserve some type of advantage over the competition. I understand that line of reasoning. It fits along with the playing to win mentality, and the strive to be the best. Because of this, it's not ever really seen as that bad of a thing. How can you condemn someone for wanting to give themselves the best chance at winning? Well, I'm about to.
When you withhold tech, you're only doing a disservice to yourself and the community. I understand holding out on your game plan and I understand holding out for big tournaments. And I also understand that those of you who have or will withhold tech will say, "whatever man, if withholding tech will help me win EVO, that's what I'm going to do". But no matter the reason, to me, withholding tech is a reason the community is as small as it is tournament wise and why we struggle with growth.
You can say, well look at Capcom, those guys withhold tech all the time, they even boast about it. The difference is, their community is much bigger than ours, and older too. It's not like they're done growing, but there's so many players, that tech is found constantly, not just by top players or tech monsters. The NRS community doesn't have this luxury. We're small in comparison, which is why withholding tech is so much more damaging, more so than I think some people realize.
When you share your tech, you immediately level up the entire community. You can say "well, you only level up those who know about the tech", but sharing tech has a domino effect. As more and more people learn about it, it spreads, and it usually spreads quickly. Why would you want to level up the community and not just level up yourself though, you ask? Because it creates more competition you silly goose! But why do you want more competition? Tournaments is why. If we all are constantly sharing tech, this means people are leveling up faster than if we weren't. Which means instead of 5 top players, maybe there's 10. Instead of 20 high level players, maybe there's 40, and so on. This means more competition, which means more people willing to travel to tournaments, because they're more confident that they won't just be another pot monster.
Other than the bad personal drama, the worst aspect of our community is how small the tournament scene is compared to how many people are actually in the community. I mean even here on TYM, we have 25k+ members, and can hardly break 100 at majors. That's an absolute horrible ratio, and TYM isn't the only place where competitive MK players dwell.
Stop withholding tech. It's bad for your health, it's bad for your communities health. If we want to grow, we need to be able to rely on each other. We need to be be a community. As Jack from LOST said, "we either live together... or we're going to die alone".
Withholding tech, for those that are unaware, is when you purposely don't share some type of tech you've found or learned about. To me, most players do this in order to preserve some type of advantage over the competition. I understand that line of reasoning. It fits along with the playing to win mentality, and the strive to be the best. Because of this, it's not ever really seen as that bad of a thing. How can you condemn someone for wanting to give themselves the best chance at winning? Well, I'm about to.
When you withhold tech, you're only doing a disservice to yourself and the community. I understand holding out on your game plan and I understand holding out for big tournaments. And I also understand that those of you who have or will withhold tech will say, "whatever man, if withholding tech will help me win EVO, that's what I'm going to do". But no matter the reason, to me, withholding tech is a reason the community is as small as it is tournament wise and why we struggle with growth.
You can say, well look at Capcom, those guys withhold tech all the time, they even boast about it. The difference is, their community is much bigger than ours, and older too. It's not like they're done growing, but there's so many players, that tech is found constantly, not just by top players or tech monsters. The NRS community doesn't have this luxury. We're small in comparison, which is why withholding tech is so much more damaging, more so than I think some people realize.
When you share your tech, you immediately level up the entire community. You can say "well, you only level up those who know about the tech", but sharing tech has a domino effect. As more and more people learn about it, it spreads, and it usually spreads quickly. Why would you want to level up the community and not just level up yourself though, you ask? Because it creates more competition you silly goose! But why do you want more competition? Tournaments is why. If we all are constantly sharing tech, this means people are leveling up faster than if we weren't. Which means instead of 5 top players, maybe there's 10. Instead of 20 high level players, maybe there's 40, and so on. This means more competition, which means more people willing to travel to tournaments, because they're more confident that they won't just be another pot monster.
Other than the bad personal drama, the worst aspect of our community is how small the tournament scene is compared to how many people are actually in the community. I mean even here on TYM, we have 25k+ members, and can hardly break 100 at majors. That's an absolute horrible ratio, and TYM isn't the only place where competitive MK players dwell.
Stop withholding tech. It's bad for your health, it's bad for your communities health. If we want to grow, we need to be able to rely on each other. We need to be be a community. As Jack from LOST said, "we either live together... or we're going to die alone".