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An analysis of top 8 Evo matches for first year NRS games

GGA Jeremiah

GGA Jeremiah

Sheeva
Evo happens every year, but not every year has a first year fighting game. For our NRS community we get our games released in April and Evo happens in July. In 2011 MK9 was released and our community was at Evo for the first time. Here is a link to our top 8 for MK9 at 2011.


I have watched it twice and took some notes. Here are some of the things I noticed.
  • Some strings that were low hitting, with no mixups were connecting on opponents
  • Non top damage combos were used frequently
  • Many questionable breakers used, sometimes even at the end of the combo
  • I noticed 16bit did block a low string into an overhead showing knowledge of the string and special move follow up
  • Some overheads were constantly hitting the opponent without them adjusting
  • Lots of walking forward without dash blocking
  • Frame traps that could have been used were not used yet
  • Deep jump kick combos not used
  • 2,4 Low hat used a lot.
  • Little counterpoking going on for the most part. However I did notice that 16bit was counterpoking in his Chris G match.
  • A lot of punishes were simple throws.
  • Lots of fatalities used. At least from the NRS guys :) and the crowd loved it
Now with the Injustice release in 2013 we fast forward 2 years.


I took more notes and almost none of them were negative. It seems a lot of leveling has happened in our community since 2011. Here are the things I noticed.

  • Theo was ready for Batman's F3 crossover in the corner
  • KDZ's corner game was extremely well polished, when he landed a hit I don't think he ever dropped the corner combo
  • DJT using preemptive jump 1's for anti-air
  • KDZ interupting GL's b1,2 string with a d1
  • DJT punishes a preemptive j3 with block and full combo punish
  • Chris G showed lack of knowledge of the b1,3 GL rocket shenanigans with his classic look out into the crowd and shaking his head
  • Theo had controller issues, very unfortunate to happen in a top 8
  • The only alt that ever won a match was Chris G's Black Adam, and that was a preemptive alt choice. It was not an "I lose so let me think about who I should switch to" kind of alt
So again, almost everything I noticed in Injustice was a positive. Just to be clear here, I am not talking about reads or choices or anything like that. I am talking about mechanics.

So now looking to the future when MKX comes out and we have our first Evo in July, what do you guys think we should expect to see in the top 8? It really looks like our scene has leveled up a ton since 2011. I know we didn't have frame data yet for MK9 and that could be part of it, but that does not account for most of my notes on MK9.

With 24-32 characters in MKX, and 3 variations per character we are looking around getting 1 day to learn each variation of every character by the time of Evo. How are you guys going to approach that? Also if there is anything I missed about those previous top 8's let me know. I am curious to see what you guys noticed from the previous Evos.
 
GGA Jeremiah

GGA Jeremiah

Sheeva
Fun little things I also noticed.

  • like 15 dropped combos at the end of Slayer vs Chris G fight. It was one of those classic fights were there was so much chaos both players didn't know what to do.
  • Chris G gets super happy when he wins. Really nice to see
  • Super fun watching 16bit win too. He was REALLY into it.
  • On the other hand it looks like DJT was paralyzed from the neck down. He was super calm
  • DJT repping Chicago with that Derrick Rose shirt! And then abandoning us with the UNLV shirt
  • DJT, REO, and Chris G made both 1st year top 8s
  • Ultradavid made commentary for both 1st year games
  • I think when the camera zooms out to the crowd for MK9 you see LoTF and Pig of the Hut cheering like crazy
  • Correct me if I'm wrong but I also think every alt in MK9 lost, showing that so far out of 2 Evos the first year rewards character specialists.
Also for fun

  • MK9 was released April 19th and Evo started July 29th giving 101 days to train
  • Injustice was released April 16th and Evo started July 12th giving 87 days to train
  • MKX will be released April 14th and Evo will start July 17th giving 94 days to train
 
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DarthArma

DarthArma

Noob
I just want to shed some light on chris G's choice of going with black adam vs slayer's superman.

At this time chris G lived in NYC so him and KDZ met very often in tournament for the first 3 months. This is how chris G came to the conclusion that green arrow loses to superman, and started using black adam against KDZ in tournament. So this is a situation where chris G said, fuck that, im gonna lose with arrow, let me pick Black adam.


I love the write up, and I love the effort. You can tell this took you a while, looking forward to finish watching this with the notes.

 
MajinBerserker

MajinBerserker

My power equals yours!
GGA Jeremiah said:
With 24-32 characters in MKX, and 3 variations per character we are looking around getting 1 day to learn each variation of every character by the time of Evo. How are you guys going to approach that?
Click to expand...
I'm going to approach the MKX variations with hope. Hope that I'll be able to remember even the minimal strategy used with all of them, ha!
I'll definitely want to do as much stream monstering and research in the months leading up to EVO that I can. I'm realistic in my thought that I certainly won't have training against EVERY single variation in the game by EVO, so I'm going to do the best homework I can alongside my training.
I also plan on trying to have a good handle on my character's variations, the best I can, before EVO and know my options. I'm not saying I'll be a master of Noxious, Nimble & Deceptive, but I'd like to at least have a solid strategy for each variation and know, at their core, where they're each strong at and what play style (zoning, rushdown, turtle) they can do well against/compete with. Also, I plan on knowing which variation I'm most confident with, at that time, so I can rely on some sort of "main" to take into tournament, regardless of match-up.

I seriously don't believe we'll see MKX anywhere remotely near its potential, play wise, at EVO 2015- and that's fine. What can everyone come up with between April and July- who knows? It'll be fun, fresh, exciting and a great platform to launch our MKX learning experience.
 
Slips

Slips

Feared by dragons. Desired by virgins.
Amplified$hotz said:
Why did it take a while for people to start blocking Batmans stuff when they block really hard stuff in MK9?
Click to expand...
Weekly streams were a lot more abundant in Injustice. A lot of people saw how people play and saw a lot of tech they wouldn't have normally seen like the more primitive days of our community in MK9 where it was mainly online and your local scene to view tech.

EDIT: Nevermind, I thought you said the opposite. According to Jeremiah he said that Batman's f3 actually was blocked in the corner though.
 
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Amplified$hotz

Amplified$hotz

I like Tekken 8
DarthArma said:
I didnt really see Theo not blocking batman strings except for an initial dash up back 113, which I would chalk up to jsut forgetting, or evo nerves.
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Oh no I mean the community as a whole. People coming from games where they have to be really good at blocking were getting opened up by things like overhead arrows. It could be because they weren't familiar with it though.
 
Amplified$hotz

Amplified$hotz

I like Tekken 8
Slips said:
Weekly streams were a lot more abundant in Injustice. A lot of people saw how people play and saw a lot of tech they wouldn't have normally seen like the more primitive days of our community in MK9 where it was mainly online and your local scene to view tech.

EDIT: Nevermind, I thought you said the opposite. According to Jeremiah he said that Batman's f3 actually was blocked in the corner though.
Click to expand...
Yeah I meant that for some time people were getting opened up by things like b2 trait cancels and such. It was later in the game where people learned to just block low.
 
GGA Jeremiah

GGA Jeremiah

Sheeva
Slips said:
According to Jeremiah he said that Batman's f3 actually was blocked in the corner though.
Click to expand...
Well he actually beat it by wakeup breath. Which I guess he could have been trying to do wakeup rising air grab and it option selected into it, but if he did rising grab that would have beat non crossover attacks. A good option select to have so I chalk that up to Theo being ready for the f3 crossup. I could be wrong and he just got lucky though lol.
 
Eric The Scruffy

Eric The Scruffy

Noob
DarthArma said:
I just want to shed some light on chris G's choice of going with black adam vs slayer's superman.

At this time chris G lived in NYC so him and KDZ met very often in tournament for the first 3 months. This is how chris G came to the conclusion that green arrow loses to superman, and started using black adam against KDZ in tournament. So this is a situation where chris G said, fuck that, im gonna lose with arrow, let me pick Black adam.


I love the write up, and I love the effort. You can tell this took you a while, looking forward to finish watching this with the notes.

Click to expand...
Lol....I remember back when the game first came out I'd never tried to play a 2D fighter seriously and ChrisG was basically the only Arrow that you ever saw on stream.....so I pretty much analyzed and rewatched every bit of footage I could find of him over and over an insane amount of times trying to absorb everything I could. One of my biggest frustrations was that there was basically zero footage of the Superman matchup for this exact reason....not a fun match to try and figure out on your own, even post patch.
 
Rude

Rude

You will serve me in The Netherrealm
Something else I find kind of interesting:

JOP's Cage pressure looks very different from what we know Cage can do today. However...Chris G's Reptile kind of...looks the same?
 
DarthArma

DarthArma

Noob
Eric Z19 said:
Lol....I remember back when the game first came out I'd never tried to play a 2D fighter seriously and ChrisG was basically the only Arrow that you ever saw on stream.....so I pretty much analyzed and rewatched every bit of footage I could find of him over and over an insane amount of times trying to absorb everything I could. One of my biggest frustrations was that there was basically zero footage of the Superman matchup for this exact reason....not a fun match to try and figure out on your own, even post patch.
Click to expand...
KDZ double perfected chris G at a tournament like 4 weeks into injustice. This was a very small tournament with no stream, and only 5 or 6 competitors. That was the moment he decided never to pick GA against superman again.




Yo black adams back dash was SO OP pre-patch
 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
GGA Jeremiah said:
It seems a lot of leveling has happened in our community since 2011.
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This is something we've talked about a lot in private conversations. When the MK9 community sprang into existence, the situation was much different than it was now. Although a lot of people gave the game a try, without a lot of devoted followers, the small group of 'hardcore' players was mostly comprised of:

-People who had played a previous 3D MK (MKDA, etc).
-People who mainly played the 2d MKs, but decided to give MK9 a chance (many of whom quit)
-People who had FGC experience in another fighting game, like SF, Tekken, or Marvel

The people with prior high-level FG experience were waaaaay ahead of the rest in terms of basic fundamentals, like spacing, footsies, reactions and speed of play, effective use of mixups, etc. The skill gap was real and it took until late 2012 for it to close significantly.

Heading into MKX, we're in a situation where we have a bunch of people in the core community now with several years high-level tournament experience. In addition, people have grown accustomed to how NRS' engines work, and understand a lot more options for mining tech. Although MKX is its own animal and will be an adjustment, I'd expect to see the highest level of competition we've every seen in the early stages of a game.
 
Barrogh

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
Rude said:
Something else I find kind of interesting:

JOP's Cage pressure looks very different from what we know Cage can do today. However...Chris G's Reptile kind of...looks the same?
Click to expand...
Well, either Chris G was so good that he figured out decent stuff in a go, or there was simply nothing else to figure in Reptile's design :p
 
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