SonicFox, Lil Majin, Punk, etc are top-tier pad players. Tokido, Daigo, Qudans, JDCR, etc are top tier stick players. This thread appears to be discussing the reason for a lesser number of stick users in NRS games. Nowhere does any comment state that pad players are inferior. So quit imagining things and frothing at the mouth. Your imagination might have landed you on the wrong thread.
My response is simply because I've seen this before, and no matter how many ways you choose to phrase the question, it will always devolve into a pad vs. stick debate. You haven't been around long enough to remember the beginnings of these arguments, and no, I'm not going to tell you how long I've been around. I've been around, I've lived this. Take these two responses, they're further proof of what this will devolve into unless both of them just give up posting in this thread.
BTW, neither of them got attacked the same by you for virtually the same thing. What makes me so special in your eyes?
arcade stick > pad
its not even close.
ofc its a matter of preference.
u can play on an pc keyboard if you like.
the truth is most most players never learned to master an arcadestick.
thats because they r pussys - as soon as they lose some matches they continue to play on pad again, lul.
it takes some time to play on arcade stick.
or, they are playing a trash game game with an trash input engine, like most nrs games.
here 1 example what a trash input engine is:
in street fighter when u press down+hk with ruy then you will get nothing but an sweep, no matter how fast you pressed it.
in an nrs game you could get an special attack for it.
somehow this happen less on pad.
Uh pads are becoming more popular nowadays for SF which is why like I said for sfv pad players won 2/3 capcom cups. There’s pad players in every top 8. You can absolutely compete at the highest level in sf with a pad and win, and people do exactly that. Even among the Japanese/Korean players you’re seeing more pads since arcades are getting less popular and people are playing from home.
That all said, IMO the biggest reason why there are fewer stick players in NRS games has to do with history, not only with games, timing, arcade decline, but also stick layout availability.
See, the last real arcades began to close up around 2005, and one of the sole remaining "true" arcades, chinatown fair, closed in 2011, the year MK9 was released.
By the time Mortal Kombat began releasing on home consoles, not only were pads less expensive because they were included with the consoles, but, unlike Street Fighter, there was no readily available equivalent to a Mortal Kombat layout made for home consoles like SNES and Genesis. Street Fighter players had various choices that catered to their layouts with the Capcom Power sticks made for SNES and Genesis to the custom ones like MAS which used american parts but again, only offered in Street Fighter layouts.
Snes pads had the perfect MK layout, but with block and run assigned to the shoulder buttons, so pad play it was.
The next generations of systems, PS2 and Xbox in particular, enjoyed a large release of 3D Mortal Kombat games, however, by this time, the players were so used to using pad to play, and nearly all of the home console 3D games were being played on readily available pads (even when custom sticks, including MK layout were now available).
MKDC had an interesting mechanic where you could hold a button to move in 3D, or you could simply use the analog stick to do so, a mechanic clearly geared for pad play, as (if you know your MKDC history) the 3D button had input delay so 3D movement via the button wasn't as fast as using the analog stick.
It wasn't until MK9 in 2011 that we saw an MK and NRS games being played more consistently on a stick, even though pad play clearly outnumbered stick players at tournaments for this game. We also saw the introduction of alternate controls into the scheme to attempt to make it easier for SF players to transition from SF to MK by making circular motions necessary, unlike standard NRS inputs which rarely require the use of a diagonal.
So, you see, a lot goes into why we don't see as many sticks, and the last reason is that, in today's tournaments, the readily available, and less financial burden of sticks, is an optimal way for a new player to get into a fighting game, and by the time they're hooked, they're used to how they learned the game.