indiefinch

This is huge news for the whole industry. More backers are fantastic, but this shows a bit of an "arms grab" or sorts over the past year. IGN has been throwing lot of weight behind IPL and now we can see Gamespot throwing their influence behind MLG and NASL. It might be a stretch, but this could expand to more of a CBSi and Fox are looking to get a foot into this rapidly expanding space. Hopefully this is what we needed to make that next big step, the next year or so will should be super crazy, also with Dota 2 and Tribes hitting the scene all the pieces are falling into place to have a flagship game for every genre and for every person.

@MonkfishEsq said:

Oh don't worry I've always accepted that I'll never be as good as the pros and I never will be! They operate on a whole other level compared to everyone else that it's pretty hard to actually learn from their matches because they just know so much more I just spend the whole match thinking 'what the [i]hell[/i] is going on? I know that these people are fighting but they might also be wizards.

I'll give a rundown of the matches I played last night. I was matched up against the same 2 guys about 2-3 times each? On account of it being around 1am UK time and picking Europe matches only.

They picked Peacock/Double. I Got fullscreen zoned the entire game by Peacock and had no idea how to deal with it because it was an endless stream of projectiles and assists and I couldn't even get a hit in

Solo Valentine that would just pull off the biggest combo and annihilate me.

The only game I managed to win was against somebody in the US and it was a total fluke at that.

I don't really have anyone to practice with so if anyone wants to play my GT is Monk Esquire. Don't have a PS3 so I'm out of luck there!

Has the match making adjusted your tier yet? Seems like the more you lose it will drop you into lower brackets, but it took quite a bit of ranked losses. Outside of that, I had luck with creating a lobby and setting the title of it to "beginner" or

"casual". I got another guy in there who was similar in skill and we played 20+ matches all of which were really competitive. It was a lot of fun, but also seems like a luck of the draw type of thing.

I can feel your pain. My fighting game interest has really only peaked in the past few months with picking up SF4AE, SFxT, and now Skullgirls, where as most of my gaming experience is fully in Strategy games. The one thing that could suggest is to look at it as a new challenge / something to strive for. Watch the tournaments online, follow the top players, and just accept that you wont be able to compete at that level. However just try to stay within your boundaries and set little goals. If its winning an online match, to beating the AI on a certain difficulty, to even attempting some cool combos you see online. I know for me personally, I was having a rough time on the Normal difficulty. So I finished off the tutorial, set my focus to learning Filia and Valentine. Now after a week or so of really practicing, I can actually brezze through that level of AI. And I actually won a few online matches the other day, it felt damn good.

Just hang in there and try to have fun on what you can have fun with. If your on PSN I would be down to play a whole bunch of practice games sometime. PSN = Indiefinch12

Awesome work, really loving Filia thus far and hopefully I can use some of this as a starting point to get from awful to kind of terrible at fighting games. As far as another combo video, I would really love to see some Valentine stuff. She seems like an all around solid character who could do some really cool stuff.

@slyspider said:

I have been playing LoL at a fairly high lvl for a while now, played DOTA 2 beta and hated it. Might just be my personal preference but man. I never played DOTA on warcraft so i didnt have the history to go back to and it felt needlessly complicated. It's not that I am too dumb to play it but interface was terrible as of a few weeks ago. I was back to playing LoL before i knew it and don't really want to go back to DOTA 2

They are two completely different games. It is like saying if you are good at Chess you will be good at Starcraft. Or if you are good at Super Smash Bros you will be good at Street Fighter. Ok...maybe those are a bit extreme, but LoL and Dota have the same general goal...but how you get there is completely different. If you would be willing to give it another go, PM me and I can show ya the ropes. I never played the original dota, but I did play a TON of LoL. So I know exactly how the transition feels. I loved Dota 2 so much once I made the switch, I really only go back to LoL every bit to check out the new champions.

@scarace360 said:

Still think Captains mode should be the standard mode and not all pick it maybe more complicated but it shows off the balance.

The problem is, unless you have a 5 man team you have a chance of having an awful captain / troll captain. One time I queued for everything and got into a CM game solo. Everyone would talk about who they wanted to play, then the captain proceeded to ban those heros. Needless to say, no one had a good time. I am hopefully for Random Draft though, which is going live today. It should become my mode of choice when solo-queuing, since it will emphasize different team comps rather then people instant locking AM, Invoker, Prophet, Lycan...etc, and it will still have the vibe of a team trying to form a strategy.

@TobbRobb said:

@theuselessgod: Yeah I see what you mean, skill is always the determining factor, no matter who you are playing or who you are playing against. But looking at it through pure game balance, there are definitely heroes that are stronger than others. And no I do not mean counterpicks, just overall stronger. :P

Tldr: I agree with you.

One thing to keep in mind is that Dota is balanced around 5v5 Captains Mode. So if you are not plaing that, then they game might not feel "balanced". The heroes are set in in such a way that if your team wants to play a late game, you can ban out the strong pushers and pick up that Spectre / Faceless Void / Anti Mage. Where as if you see the other team pick this carry early, your team can easily pick up a Shadow Shaman, Chen, Veno...etc and just push and win under 25-30 min. But if you are playing strictly All Pick, I can see where your frustrated. So often the enemy team picks up AM / Lycan and I will tell our team "Ok guys lets use the early advantage and push / gank a ton!" And no one does, then at the 50 min mark their carry kills our whole team and everyone gets angry.

@theuselessgod: Phantom Lancer might be in as soon as next week. Also Chaos Knight, particles and portraits for him started showing up about a month ago. Ogre Magi, Brewmaster, or Phantom Lancer are next to be release...but I am with you and really hoping to see Phantom Lancer soon. Also good write up!

@scarace360 said:

This is one of the sticks http://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblog/6903951066/

Aw man I would love to pick up one of those! Hopefully they sell some sooner or later...if not maybe I will have to go to a local event and pay off Ricky Ortiz or someone to win me one...

@egg said:

onscreen movelists would make sense for this game

Or you can just play each of the 8 characters for a bit and learn the handful of moves. Memorizing 8 characters is a lot easier then learning the full SSF4 cast.

As far as a Vita release, hell yes! It would look amazing on that screen. I doubt we will see one, but we can hold out hope.

Man this thread derailed quickly... As far as Skullgirls go, I am loving it so far. The only valid complaint I have seen anyone have is the lack of move-list, however just jump into training mode with a character for 15 min and you will easily learn which moves they have. The tutorial was all around amazing, it alone justifies the purchase imo. As far as the difficulty complaints, it seems pretty spot on. Normal seems based around you already having the full tutorial completed, which once you can master those last few chapters the AI seems a whole lot easier.

I was expecting this to be built from the ground up as a tournament ready fighter, which I think it has fully achieved. People looking for a mindless button masher are probably better off going somewhere else, but the people who want to actually learn fighting games and get competitive with it, then Skullgirls is where it is at.