Have had zero luck today. Tried for a couple hours this afternoon and been trying for a bit tonight and getting a whole lot of nothing. Looks like they are progressively adding in more players so hopefully tomorrow it won't be too hard to get in.

@starvinggamer: Chun still has her neutral jump fierce kick so there's definitely still at least a few neutral jump moves in the game. I won a match against Nash with her (the only match I've played), and it seems like if you get the opponent in the corner you can just do a bunch lightning leg combo variants, also world's easiest super confirm.

Seems like her main combo that goes on for longer than a few hits is legs into crouching light punch into legs or spinning bird kick but you have to be right on top of the opponent for it to work. Meanwhile crouching medium kick into legs does a lot of work and V Skill (which is a good anti air but also hits on the ground) into stomps does a ton of damage. Back fierce punch (the third strike move) links into light kick but I couldn't find that many normals that link in general. Back fierce kick and regular light kick seem to be pretty amazing anti air buttons and she has her usual good space control with standing fierce.

She definitely has a few links that seem somewhat difficult but that could just be me (Ryu's all seem fairly trivial by comparison).

I think she has a weird crossup normal but I don't know what command it is.

DC'd again, and with that, I go to bed.

Really cannot wait for this beta to be global, stable, and have faster matchmaking. The time I spent in training was very fun and informative. The few matches I played were interesting as well. I got to see what it looks like with a bad connection and BOY is it what you'd expect from rollback netcode. This netcode can't stop bad connections and wifi users, but it helps.

I feel like Ryu's forward dash encapsulates what I want going forward in terms of system tweaks. From full screen you can close the distance in 2 dashes and that feels really good. The pace of the entire game could be sped up just a very tiny bit.

Character balance seems pretty solid so far. Nash may need some help, although he makes up for his faults with his tricks. Bison is ridiculous. GIVE RYU THE DONKEY KICK. WE ALL WANT IT.

I don't know if I can go back to SF4. The invincibility on back-dashes. Focus attacks. Chip kills. Vortex set-play. SFV really is what I want out of Street Fighter right now. I didn't know how much I didn't love SF4 until I met 5 lol.

@fredchuckdave: Yeah, LK legs into cLP seems like a punish sort of thing. I actually used a lot of bHP as an antiair for far jump-ins. Maybe I just got lucky but it seemed to work. Probably just got lucky. The link I primarily use on offense is MP cMK. Also Nash has a unique njHK as well.

@l1ghtn1n: You can hitconfirm off a low with cLK LP MP as well. Also bHK links into cLP I believe. I'm too scared to play Nash. He has so many fucking command normals and target combos and no reversal, even with meter. And his V-Trigger seems really tough to get value out of. Birdie just seems boring and Cammy is totally not my style. I'm probably going to keep going hard on Bison and Chun and maybe sprinkle some Ryu in there to work on my fundamentals.

If I can get back in again.

Fuck 2016 can't come soon enough.

Also kinda shocked how good online felt despite my bunk-ass internet. FiOS in like 3 weeks though hopefully woo!

Retiring for today, I got about 40 minutes in training and a single match out of like 2 hours of pressing any button, pretty sick conversion rate I'm sure.

@l1ghtn1n: Chun Li's charge abilities are largely ancillary now, I mean sometimes you want to use Kikoken but that's not difficult to do and spinning bird kick is alright in certain post stun combos (maybe EX is useful as a reversal? feel like I've heard conflicting things about that). She's all buttons, space control, and short combos.

@l1ghtn1n: I feel like damage is just going to be huge in higher level play, at a simple level the game won't appear completely absurd to start with (though it definitely feels less sluggish than SFIV does on all counts).

Ideally damage is tuned just right so that there's a potential for both players to be at 0 life yet unchippable, leading to hilarious time-out situations.

IIRC someone tested with Ryu and fHP, crHP, DP did less damage in SFV than in SFIV. Damage scaling goes 1x .9x .8x etc instead of 1x 1x .8x like SFIV. Hitconfirms off of lights are significantly worse as well. I feel like characters have access to better damage on average but it's going to be harder to get that damage since all the good combos force you to use slow buttons at point blank range that can be blocked high or low.

@starvinggamer: Interesting, though it doesn't seem like that was their objective.

I meant huge relative to the matches that mere mortals play, difficult to find the right diction. So the emphasis of that sentence is on the just and not on the huge. I suppose only is a better word than just in this case.

A new day, and a new test of patience begins.

2 minutes till we all rage against the machine.

@l1ghtn1n: Don't be silly that won't stop people from pressing X for 14 hours, that's just so much fun.

Oh, I see. I almost feel like it's the opposite. They took away a lot of the defensive options weaker players relied on and reduced the execution barrier to strong combos by a lot. That means that bad players are going to be able to do more damage consistently while getting hit more often.

Top players know how to block even without relying on DP FADC and invincible backdash to get out of situations. Mostly. And now they can't random hit into special into FADC into BLOWUP meaning the damage at footsies range is going to be lower on average. No hard KD makes it significantly more difficult to set up safe jumps or ambiguous crossups. At top level the big damage is only going to come from hard reads and frame-traps.

I feel like once people really get a handle on the systems and their characters, we're going to end up with matches where the pacing is faster, but the actual fights aren't going any longer than a typical SFIV match.

Here's hoping they let the Euros in on the action tomorrow.

Anyone get in today? I'm at work for the new few hours so cant do anything until i get home, really hope we get at least an hour of play in before the inevitable server crash