OK if FLStyle's EVO thread goes up the sixth this thread will still be in use for:

July 4th = Topanga Charity League

July 5th = USFIV x GS2 (featuring Diego, Justin Wong and Ryan Hart)

Worst mechanic in USF4 is invincible back dash. WTF were they thinking?!

So frustrating. ugh.

@hassun: Pre emptive EVO predictions? Mago (10%), Daigo (10%), Kazunoko (8%), Momochi (7%), Infiltration (7%), Nemo (6%), Tokido (6%), Luffy (5%), Bonchan (5%), Xian (5%), Poongko (5%), Gamerbee (4%), Fuudo (4%), and so on; Strider might have moved up from the 1-2% bracket to the hallowed 3-4% ground.

Also GS2 is in the running for weirdest damn tournament ever.

@flstyle Thanks by the way I just think its odd to have it planned out exactly.

@fredchuckdave: There's a number of things to take into consideration before it goes up, so I like to make sure I'm organised.

@zlatko: It came into play quite a lot last night, huh? Especially in deciding rounds.

@hassun: Cool, I'll check those out!

Sonic Fox is going ham on twitter: https://twitter.com/SonicFox5000

@fredchuckdave: Didn't know he self-identified as a furry. Hm.

But yeah, can't say I disagree with him. Tanya disrupts the standard MK game too much. In a vacuum, she's a cool fun character that is exciting to play as. In the context of the longevity of the MKX scene, she's a blighted scourge that needs to be stopped. If nothing changes by EVO the game is going to be at a real risk of going the way of Injustice/SFxT. WB pumping money into tournaments may keep things going for a while, but NRS needs to figure out their design shit quicker than they have in the past.

@zlatko: Invulnerability on (back)dash is not such a weird concept. Plenty of games have mechanics like that.

@fredchuckdave: That sweet sweet cross #Brand™ promotion.

As for EVO predictions, EVO's random factor is so strong I find it very hard to predict. Normally I would say that since the USA impressed at CEO, Japan would go into the lab and deconstruct players who made a big impact like 801 Strider but with the insane tournament schedule that some of the top players have I fear they might not have the time to get in the lab and figure stuff out.

• For a player like Daigo I think it's going to be extremely hard unless he doesn't just play E. Ryu. Same goes for Tokido with Akuma. Characters like that can always be blown up in FT2 sets both by the other player and by themselves for dropping difficult combos and on top of that they have massive targets painted on their backs at all time. Especially Daigo. That being said, if Daigo is on Stunfest form and makes it to top 8 his chances increase dramatically.
• Poongko also plays a character made out of papier-mâché but I feel he is less prone to drops and he does have the Fuerte backup and has a smaller target painted on his back.
• Despite being in the hot seat at the moment, I expect Mago and Kazunoko to do just fine.
• Nemo is an interesting possibility. I think that, unless you are a certain calibre of player and have specific matchup knowledge, you just get absolutely destroyed by Rolento. I see him easily making it out of pools but maybe running into one of those big threats later on.
• I expect players like Momochi, Xian and Infiltration to do well because of their side characters even though both Momochi and Infiltration have been underperforming as of late (at least relative to their immense capabilities).
• Gamerbee has also been underperforming and he seemed really disappointed in himself at CEO. I hope he can make a comeback but I doubt it will happen as early as EVO.
• I expect players like Luffy, Bonchan and Fuudo to do well simply because they are very solid and use characters that are pretty safe. Ideal for a tournament like EVO.
• I don't want to overlook Xiao Hai either. He seems incredibly hungry to get into the Capcom Cup Finals. If he can keep his current form I expect him to go very far again.
• Sako is always a possible threat if he is hungry enough and actually shows up.
• RB made waves at SEAM but I wonder how much US player knowledge he has.
• The chances of lesser-known Japanese players will depend on how well they cope with playing abroad and the massive scale of the tournament.

That brings me to the US players:

I expect quite a lot from them actually. For the nationalistic-minded this is pretty the last chance for the USA to win a USFIV EVO title (that matters) and plenty of top US players seem very invested in making that happen. 4 US players made it to top 16 last year and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a higher number this year.

Players to watch are Justin Wong, a rejuvenated PR_Balrog, 801 Strider, Smug, Dieminion, Nuckledu and Snake_Eyez. Ricki Ortiz has been underperforming as of late but on the other hand she usually seems to do well at EVO. Might be time for a comeback.

My personal/emotional pick to win EVO is Tokido.

Strider has been doing work. I first noticed it at Nor Cal Regionals earlier this year. He should've beat Daigo in that tournament, and finally got him this time. That falling sky OS against PR Rog was legit.

@hippie_genocide: Not so sure he "should have beaten Daigo that tournament". Remember they played against each other at NCR twice.

The match they had at CEO was nearly the same as their second NCR match as well. He went up 1 game and 1 round and Daigo came back to tie it up. I'd love to have seen the stun gauge in that last round too. That was a very scary start for Abel.

@starvinggamer: I agree for the most part but what do you do to nerf her? Give her teleport a 1-2 second cooldown or some ridiculous recovery? CD might not kill the character but a lot of things will, or at the very least cripple her tournament viability. Obviously they have to do something, I mean the game will keep going since it's MK but hopefully they just have a combo breaker/texas showdown caliber top 8 at EVO. I think Yomi is actually an issue too because they almost exclusively play top tiers (except DJT's side characters) and their environment just propels the game forward into whatever "meta" it would be in 6-12 months where all the top tiers are strictly defined so something cool like Droneya becomes a one time thing.

@hassun: I remember thinking Strider dropped a combo at NCR that would've sealed the deal against Daigo, then choked it away. I think it was the second time they played. Strider almost, almost did the same thing against Mago in loser's semis at CEO but held on for the win. He shows nerves at times, but when he's on his game it's real fun to watch.

@starvinggamer: @fredchuckdave: That reminds me, played some MKX again today against a fellow Kotal main (I went 0 - 41) and he used Pyromancy Tanya for a few rounds. Now I am obviously a terrible player and I don't really like tier-talk all that much, especially when it comes to new characters, but Pyromancer Tanya vs Sun God Kotal Kahn just might be near unwinnable. The arcing projectiles are very hard to dodge, they do a lot of chip damage and trying to get close to just results in her teleporting safely to safety. Not to mention her solo metre build reminds me of these terrible days.

Good on SonicFox for pointing out that she is too powerful right now, since he's been using her himself.

@hippie_genocide: I actually think Strider is very good at adapting and keeping it together. Not sure how much of that is iPeru's coaching but damn if he doesn't adapt very well.

CEO impressions video by Chocoblanka:

@fredchuckdave: @hassun: Honestly I don't know how they fix her without breaking her. And yeah, without having played Kotal or Tanya really, I'm still pretty sure that's like a 1-9 for Kotal or something. He's a lonely footsies character in a game full of rushdown and Tanya can circumvent everything Kotal is trying to do without thinking. Don't know what to do about the Yomi boys either. I mean, they're just working 100x harder than any other MK players and it shows. It's not their fault that they're playing to win. The community just isn't big/strong enough to compete with that level of focused grinding.

At least they made yesterday's grand finals a bit interesting. I can't wait for the Tuesday show for Ultradavid to say, "whaaaaaaaat!?" every time they mention that GM Sub won CEO.

@starvinggamer: Well I like Yomi conceptually (like if EG was 5 good Japanese players instead of just Momochi that would be cool) but it might be a little too early in the game's life for that kind of dedication. It is kind of silly seeing traditional MK tournament players do terribly against them though, and even early tournament favorites. Trolling Tom Brady is the classiest of moves. I think the MK tournament community is large (like 5-6 times the size of the marvel community) but not focused anywhere aside from Yomi and the fact that they exist is extremely demoralizing to the other players.

@hassun: Forgot about Sako kind of (remembered him when I thought about it earlier but forgot to remember again), but he's on the periphery; I think he's fairly likely to make top 8 but not very likely to win. Xiao Hai and Dakou will probably finish in the top 32 somewhere but don't think they'll get that much higher than that unless Xiao Hai has an epiphany or they swap out USFIV for KoF XIII at the last minute (which would be pretty hype). Props for picking one of the lesser favorites I suppose.

Shoutouts to Filipinoman making top 16 last year, the legend.

Looks like it's finally going to happen:

@flstyle: An early entry for the EVO thread.

@hassun: Consider it done, thanks!

@hassun: For Luffy's Capcup points no doubt.

@fredchuckdave: For $10k I'm pretty sure. I thought supersatarou backed out of that whole thing a long time ago.

@amafi: IIRC Luffy said that there were legality issues last time.

@starvinggamer: Oh yeah, you're right. That was it. Something about money matches being illegal. Which is easily fixed, just don't tell anyone.

Sorry Tanya!

Gives NRS two weeks to scramble things up even more (especially if they release Predator next week for Kombat Pass owners)

@recspec: Predator to have an instant full screen projectile anti air that also hits on the ground (commonplace in Injustice), 4 predators 4 tanyas top 8 at EVO!

@amafi: Yeah but what's the point of doing a 10k mm and not telling anyone

@fredchuckdave: Also it is a command grab teleport on hit BLOCK.

@starvinggamer: Winning 10k?

@starvinggamer: @thunderslash: Speaking of which, is it clear why Erron Black's grab hits mid string even if the opponent is blocking but Cassie's (in grappler) doesn't?

@fredchuckdave: It's a matter of frames right? Opponent's block stun decays right before the grab becomes active. It's why they nerf/buffed his d3 or whatever it was, so that he couldn't tick you into command grab with it. At least that's what I'm assuming. Other characters like Torr have similar stuff, just gotta find the right attack to cancel.

@starvinggamer: Ah.

Sonic Fox is playing Kitana on stream atm, some pretty sick stuff. Maybe we'll actually have a good kitana in the community!? The mid screen conversion off of EX fan is pretty rad, have to try it.

@flstyle:

EVO side tournament info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EHN7ZgYrAfFLICWRTKjNdYPozj1OCkQD5RBR77Pv98k/pub

Yo we eSports now? http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/instantawesome-GamerEntrance-150630/competitive-gamer-best-entrance-ever-stone-cold-stunner

@starvinggamer: "Unfortunately, Bradley did not end up winning the tournament, but he's a champion in my book."

Mike Ross status confirmed.

So after watching the Ultrachen show it seems like the narrative is the biggest thing going against NRS right now, moreso than anything else. I think they're overstating the impact of patching so far; obviously implementing a patch immediately before CEO was dumb but as far as players refusing to play it or whatever that just seems silly. I think ultimately what hurt the scene is Tyrant completely annihilated everyone at the SCR Prelude and he isn't close to as good as the better Yomis at present; so they had a huge mountain to climb (and probably not enough players to climb it with) if they wanted to "get good" as it were. Additionally the Yomis aren't foreigners or anything so there can't be this weird USA unification effort to destroy the invaders nor can there be a total lack of communication between the sides which eventually ferments reverence. Of course since Marvel doesn't have that much of a shelf life if people don't go to MKX then they'll just be in the massive dogpile of SFV where it will be unbelievably difficult to distinguish yourself. Or they could try Xrd I suppose but I get the impression that aside from KoF people are most frightened of that learning curve.

Tanya is the biggest issue at present no doubt, but if the whole FGC narrative is purely anti NRS then MKX never had a chance to begin with; though the possibility of another smash side crowd sort of thing remains I suppose. The PC version sucking is fairly unremarkable in the grand scheme of things, a whole shitload of PC ports have been terrible and that's not what most people play on (though they may have chosen to given a different result); obviously it's a problem for people that own the game on PC already but as far as crippling the game on the tournament front that's ridiculous.

From what I could watch, CEO was great. Was hoping 801 Strider would take USF4, but noooope. Why don't more people use Yun? He is still really good.

Yo Tekken 7 getting more entrants than KI what?! Is that game's arcade version officially out yet?

Nice to see GG being close to MKX in numbers. Still sad that there is no KoF but I understand why it needed to go, mainly just salty it is gone and there are two smash games. Marvel might be just about dead but damn it still pulls in decent numbers for Evo.

Surprised there aren't more people coming for that easy KI money.

@hassun: Thanks!

@zella: I guess the theory is that marvel was dead last year, but there were still over 1000 entrants then. Maybe if there were 5 EVOs a year Marvel would be alive? Chris Redfield could save the day.

This thread's pretty good. Been a while since I've seen some good old fashioned drama, ah the MMO forum days when non sedate people actually played MMOs.

@hassun:So assuming CDJr doesn't win it does the winner give some money to CDJr for making the road a lot shorter and less arduous? A kind soul no doubt.

@fredchuckdave: Dude the narrative for MKX has been incredibly optimistic until recently, outside of PL bitching about everything all day long. Tons of top SF players were into it, like 801 Strider said he was playing nothing but MK leading up to CEO. The last two patches are where things have really turned. The strength of Tanya and the willingness to arbitrary nerf characters right before a major have confirmed to players that NRS learned nothing from the way they drove Injustice into the ground.

Man evo entries are insane this year. Shoutouts to persona have more entrants then KI.

@hassun: Everyone else knows that KOF13 is where the secret easy big bucks are at.

@fredchuckdave Close to a 50/50 split. Man the people at TYM love to complain. I mean NRS probably isn't helping with all their hotfixes but still... Tanya is enemy number one now that everyone knows that she is a huge threat. She is gonna get studied like crazy. Was the Kabal situation like this? Edit: Oh right prepatch Superman that one time.

always find it interesting when they do stuff like shirts for all entrants. I remember KOF 13 had it for its first year at evo too (and there were a ton of shirt monsters).

@fredchuckdave: I'm curious to see how much the PC release will boost KI's numbers because without a massive increase I don't see how they can justify giving it a premier spot at EVO2K16.

As for MKX, NRS is in a precarious spot right now. The fear of another Injustice scenario is very real and they basically have 1 chance to patch the game before the EVO patch deadline.

@flstyle: That is a ridiculous bonus for a game that is not even out yet.

P.S.

P.P.S.

Yomi gaming MKX tier list right now: http://testyourmight.com/threads/mkx-tier-list-presented-by-yomi-rv1-0.53901/

Since Kotal, Jacqui and Takeda were my main choices for characters it seems like my talent for picking absolute trash is still unchallenged.

@starvinggamer: In general I think interest was waning as a result of SFV and they basically have a chance to recuperate if the top 8 at EVO is hype; which would require another patch by next Tuesday. I wrote up a pretty good response to Ultradavid in the TYM thread. I think there has to be a second fiddle game (that isn't smash) in the FGC it's just a matter of what people pick and a couple of weeks isn't enough to completely destroy MKX (though EVO could of course), no need to be super reactionary about it. If it somehow stayed Marvel I think that would be depressing for everyone involved, including Marvel players and probably pretty damn bad for the FGC as a whole. I'm all for the second game being Xrd but it doesn't seem like that will happen either.

@hassun: I do find myself thinking fighting game phrases whilst playing Bloodborne, i.e. "That was the max punish I could get!" or what have you. Art needs to get in on that action, the true successor to UNIEL. Good for Strider.

@zella: Yeah, two smash games is like four smash games too many. The amount of anime this year is also deeply upsetting. I can only deal with so many pantsu shots before I have to turn the stream off.

@flstyle: another early entry for the EVO thread: Preliminary pool placement!

Again, these are in no way final but I spotted some doozies in there. Xian and Smug in the same pool. Brolylegs, Air and Fuudo in the same pool. Filipinoman and Valmaster. Ricki Ortiz and Marq Teddy. PR_Balrog and Itazan. Latif, Julio and Dieminion. Xiao hai and Haitani. Just to name a few.

KI might have the fewest entrants this year but it has more than 4 of the games that were last year(last year's entrant numbers I mean). I'd like to think the PC port and a possible season 3 will help grow that community cause I like watching it. GG having almost 1K is so crazy, good for that community.

Anybody have predictions on the Sunday games? For me it's, in order:

GG, Sm4sh(I'd rather Melee but with more entrants & possible Nintendo influence I doubt it), MKX, Marvel(ChrisG's last chance to get this title?), USF4.

@tournamentofhate: Is it confirmed that Nintendo is a sponsor for the event? My order would be similar to yours, except I'd bump Marvel down to where Smash 4 is at and shift the rest one up. Maybe make room for Melee and have it right before Smash 4 if it isn't on a separate stream.