@fredchuckdave said:

...what? Are you being serious? You can't understand how someone suddenly finding themselves $6000 poorer could impact their ability to give their mother a vacation?

@starvinggamer said:

I think we have to keep in mind that the real issue here is the theft. Let's say the worst case scenario is that he was extremely irresponsible and just left his stuff out in the open and it was stolen. Even then the problem is still the thievery and not that he left if there. Blaming the victim of theft more than the actual thief is very problematic.

Then of course there are the people who think it is a scam. But what is the basis for this line of thinking? From what I have seen people who know him say he is an honest, stand-up guy. There is very little reason or evidence to suspect wrongdoing on his part.

Wow. He's the only Mahvel "god" not to win an Evo, isn't he? Might've been his last shot. Poor guy.

Egh, victim blaming. Telling the guy to look after his bag after the valuable shit has been stolen from his bag is pretty friggen pointless.

Do people typically use block breakers in MKX? Combo breakers I can understand, because once they have you opened-up you can expect to lose 40% or whatever, so the meter is well worth it.

Anyway, I'm just echoing early impressions from others. I probably won't play SFV until at least launch. But also, I don't know when the last time was that a lot of SF players performed alpha counters, but I'm looking to KI's shadow counters as a kind-of reference point, which, in an offense-heavy game with lots of blockstrings, do decent damage and start combos and still aren't oppressive. I mean, there are other more intricate factors at play, sure, but I think that for how hard that kind of mechanic can be to use well, and especially considering you're forgoing some V-gauge for it, it should probably be a big blowup when it lands.

That said, the first thing I was looking for was maybe the ability to link off of a V-reversal, but I suppose without combo breakers and with critical arts in the game that could be more than half a lifebar guaranteed off of just your opponent reading your blockstring, which is probably stupid, and might just encourage people to clam up once their opponent is fully-stocked on meter. Maybe they could just give you an EX move or something, and take a decent chunk of life, maybe into knockdown. I don't know, they just seem underwhelming now.

Red Bull Eyez

@fnrslvr: I think at an extremely high level block breaker is alright, like it might effect 0.0001% of players or something.

@starvinggamer: Again I'm not saying it did or didn't happen but that the circumstances are questionable aside from maybe the sum is too large for it to be fake (though the number is weird). This is actually kind of fascinating to me if I was a scam artist how would I min/max the targeted sum amount of money to the point that it would be believable; though I think a better approach would be restricting it to a small amount of cash and a large amount of goods.

I have no idea personally but it isn't that far from the standard deviation to question something like this.

Do we know when the SFV beta is going live?

@fredchuckdave: Why is the number weird? Is it too much money? His booth was situated in the main hall so pretty much everyone at Evo walked past it numerous times. How much should he have made for it to be more "believable"?

EDIT: SFV Beta unlocks around 6PM PDT.

@starvinggamer: Well nominally it's just who walks around (or doesn't, as it happens) with $6,000 other than people that got top 3 or 4 in the games that actually paid out. Also it's very round which could be considered specious. The number is so weird it circles back around on itself and my chain of logic sort of eats it's own tail, like the number is too weird to be false but that could just be me overthinking it. I'm just attempting to give a justification as to why other people would question it.

Argh on the Beta front, it might as well have started on the 24th.

@fnrslvr: I'm sure UMVC3 will be at the next EVO but I would be very surprised if it got the same spot. Mr Wizard's claims of it being the most popular game are now well and truly disproven. Even with the best possible timeslot it was beaten handily by Melee and USFIV. I wouldn't even be surprised if Smash 4 would have beaten it if it was actually played on Sunday. They can't keep putting it above Smash any longer.

As for the block breaker. It only has very limited use. A typical useful situation I can think of is when you are near death and stuck in a block string. In MKX everything does non-recoverable chip damage so if you keep blocking you will die. That's a good time to use the block breaker.

Yeah, I think it's lame as shit for a character to be immune to some of the go-to combos for other characters. Everything Capcom/Combofiend seem to be saying about SFV leads me to think that at least they're actively going to try to not make shit like that happen in that game.

I can't wait for the damn SFV beta even though I know I'm not going to win a goddamn match during it. I'm terrible as shit.

@yummytreesap: I think that really just happened because Capcom wanted to cut costs so they copy pasted those SFxT characters into SFIV. The way things are going now I think/hope that kind of thing will not happen again anytime soon.

Got another awesome off-stream match from EVO for y'all. A really tense match between "best Makoto" Misse and Diaphone:

Shoutouts to twitch finally transitioning to HTML5. Hopefully they will have the video portion set for capcom cup.

@fredchuckdave: Now you've got me thinking even the profile pic on the gofundme page is making him seem like a swell guy.

@fnrslvr:It's the comments that aren't actually blaming him but saying it's an outright scam that I'm referring to.

Shoutouts to Ogawa.

Just going through the archive of the Red Bull Salty Suite (SF side) and there are quite a few (great) matches here. Pepeday vs Ryan Hart, Dieminion vs Sabohani, Valmaster vs Sanford Kelly, Imstilldadaddy vs Smug, Snake Eyez vs Xian, Kazunoko vs Latif, Snake Eyez vs Imstilldadaddy, PR_Balrog vs Bonchan, Ryan Hart vs Gackt, iPeru vs Poongko, Wolfkrone vs Valmaster, Bonchan vs Poongko, Glty vs Miss Shinobee and Sherryjenix vs Harumi.

Ryan Hart, Pepeday, iPad DJ, EG manager Antonio Javier, Cameraman, Infiltration, Zhi and more on commentary.

(@fredchuckdave should definitely watch it to assuage his doubts about Valmaster being the best Chun-Li.)

Best $60 I ever spent.

@hassun: Valmaster needs to learn like 40 other characters to truly become the best. Some of those matches seem pretty sweet.

In other news Rocket League is more fun to play than the SFV menu screen and I somehow did okay at the very difficult CVS2 survival ladder with Chun Li, focusing on footsies (I might even have developed hands! Not that it matters anymore).

Listening to the Bombardiers talking about EVO on the Bomb-/Beastcast is both frustrating and quaint. Bless them for trying though.

And kudos to @unastrike, @austin_walker and @alex for watching! Don't hesitate to pay us a visit for the "smaller" tournaments either!

Another EVO article.

Robert Paul has also started to upload his EVO pictures over at http://gallery.rmpaul.com/Esports/Evo-2015

And another set of EVO photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vsmak/sets/72157656029259201 (including a rare shot of Daigo from what appears to be the insane Misse vs Daigo match)

Alex Valle talking about his match against Bonchan: http://www.twitch.tv/leveluplive/v/8356968?t=1h25m00s

@hassun: GamerBee is the best

Looks like Xavier Woods is going to be on The Excellent Adventures: https://instagram.com/p/5kwp2Ks9ak/

Momochi vs Fuudo SFV exhibition matches.

Post-EVO interview with Infiltration.

Tekken Crash is going on in South Korea. There is an English stream as well featuring none other than Laugh.

@hassun: I played against 3 Sun God Kotals today, here's the vaguely skillful match (the other two were funny and incredibly lame respectively), and hey I landed a 4 hit fan combo for the first time in like a month or two; hurray. I played 14 ranked matches today and just had a blast, I know you're supposed to have various matchups that you dread when you play fighting games but I've beaten literally every very hard comp of every non DLC variation in the game so I feel comfortable 100% of the time pretty much; there's a couple variations that people play in the most random fashions and that can be annoying but it's just really fun when you can destroy everyone. Best of all I don't have to press any button for hours on end to play it! Wow. MKX is a great damn game let me tell you.

For example: I had a 0% chance to win against a D'Vorah and I thought "oh hey there's 2 D'Vorahs in the world that I should be scared of, this isn't one of them; free." And so it was.

Note: I felt comfortable when Kitana was supposedly not that good (*cough* she was still pretty good *cough*), too so it's not that either.

Side tournaments! The full Super Turbo 1v1 and 2v2 tournaments are online.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjqLxjAWgCpYwoozhHPCrzHe7NVPipLT-

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjqLxjAWgCpbxKUUxEqcY78Ddy3AoXmAY

@fredchuckdave: Just be sure to post a video when a Sun God or Blood God Kotal beats your Kitana.

@flstyle: Is it just me or does the 2v2 competition have no audio?

Virtua Fighter take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what you did with your life

@hassun: Your wish is my command:

(This is the "funny" one I mentioned earlier). Obviously a fair amount of player error on my part and a lot of luck on the opponent's part, but definitely confirmed 5-5 matchup.

Oh You²
Funny how the Kotal who beat you/Kitana is one without combos.

In other news, the Shanghai CPT Qualifier is going on and it's extremely hard to watch any of it live due to shitty Douyu TV.
The finals are tomorrow and will be between Xian (in winners) and Xiao Hai (in losers).

@hassun: He had that tbag tech down pat though. Bad Lieutenant came in the mail today like 2 days after I ordered it (5-8 business days shipping time ostensibly), must be a sign to watch it but family's still in town for now.

@fredchuckdave: Ladies love the Keitel.

So, when's the next fighting game tournament during which fightsticks will be at sale prices? :O

I've heard that's a thing, but I apparently missed out on buying one during EVO.

Friend of the site Xavier Woods gave a shoutout to GB (specifically @danryckert )in the latest episode of Excellent Adventures.

Edit: Oh someone already made a thread on this! Oops.

@hamst3r: SoCal Regionals is in October, there'll be a bunch of smaller events inbetween now and then, not sure.

@thunderslash: The YT comment exchange on it is great too.

Some small updates:

The CPTA Shanghai Qualifier ranking event results:

1. Xian (Gen) (Qualifies for the CPT Asia finals)
2. Xiao Hai (Evil Ryu)
3. TOKIDO (Akuma)
4. Humanbomb (Sakura)
5. Dakou (Evil Ryu, Akuma)
5. QQEL (El Fuerte)
7. KOK (Sagat, Evil Ryu, Rufus)
7. Fuudo (Fei Long)

Videos will be going up at https://www.youtube.com/user/GameStartAsia/videos

Sino Duel is an invitational (also in China) results:

1. GamerBee (Elena, Adon)
2. Fuudo (Fei Long, Sagat)
3. TOKIDO (Akuma)
4. Xian (Gen, Elena)
5. Xiao Hai (Evil Ryu)
5. Dakou (Akuma, Evil Ryu)
7. Hechi VR (Evil Ryu, Yun)
7. God of Sky (Vega, Seth, Elena)

Archive/videos: ??

Dead or Alive Festival DOA5:LR results:

1. MC Kwiggle (Christie)
2. TeruRock (Leifang) (Qualifies for the BATTLE ROYAL 2015 Grand Finals)
3. Gehaktbal (Rachel, Zack)
3. Uprising Chu (Kasumi)
5. AKA (La Mariposa)
5. XcaliburBladeZ (Helena)
5. TEST (Zack)
5. Furechin (Kokoro)
9. mittii (Hayate)
9. Satoyasu (Pai)
9. Matt Ponton (Bass)
9. Siologica (Gen Fu)
9. Touko (Hitomi)
9. Souma (Marie Rose)
9. Yukkii (Kokoro)
9. Veronica (Nyotengu)

Archive: https://youtu.be/xZhHqOmYcYo

@hassun: I believe with the CPTA events both first and second place qualify for CPT Asia finals.

@fredchuckdave: Really? Do you have confirmation on that? Couldn't find any.

I also found a few matches from the CPTA and Sino Duel:

CPTA Shanghai Qualifeir Grand Final (Xian vs Xiao Hai)

CPTA Shanghai Qualifier (Tokido vs Hechi)

Sino Duel Grand Final (Gamerbee vs Fuudo)

Sino Duel (Gamerbee vs Tokido)

I just realised how terrible of a matchup Gamerbee is for Fuudo these days. Elena beats Fei Long and Adon beats Sagat.

The Capcom Pro Talk from this week (or last week?) with Hellpockets is really fantastic if people haven't seen it, even mentions friend of the site Jared Rea:

Also Hellpockets is actually pretty good, unlike some other guests they've had recently.

HD version of the CPTA Shanghai qualifier grand final: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNP8QoyumfU

Also, Claw (Vega/Balrog) has been confirmed for SFV:

http://www.capcom-unity.com/combofiend/blog/2015/08/03/the-spanish-ninja-claws-his-way-into-street-fighter-v

@l1ghtn1n: They've got to have Boxer. They can't have a fight money currency and not have Boxer. That just wouldn't be right. After that though, yeah give me a couple SF3 characters.

@barrabas: With Claw having a rose throwing move, I think the chances of vanilla SFV having Dudley are a lot lower now. That increases the chances of the game having Boxer quite a bit if you ask me.

So Killer Instinct Season 3 was announced. It and the PC port are coming March of next year, and as of today there is a new character available. Rash from the Battletoads.

Yay!

Aww.

@l1ghtn1n: He normally only makes a new one for certain big events. This is basically Giant Bomb's "fighting games general" thread.

So Vega is no longer a charge character. Huh.

Rash is kind of a hilarious addition. The thing is if they were to make a new Battetoads game it would have to not only be virtually impossible but also completely broken in many ways or all the "fans" would hate it.

I'm probably in the vast minority on this, but I don't really like guest characters in fighting games. I feel like they take away from the game thematically. Even in something like Smash I would have much rather had characters like King K. Rool or Wonder Red instead of Sonic and Mega Man. It won't stop me from buying KI once I finally get my chance with the PC release, but still Rash kind of brings me down a bit.

@westernwizard: It seems like they are removing quite a lot of/most charge moves from the game. My guess is they are considered not user friendly enough.

@l1ghtn1n: Eh, it's just the thread title. Maybe we could add fighting game general to the thread title next time. We've talked about this before, about maybe getting a general thread like the wrestling one. I know NeoGAF has a weekly system. I think we'll probably be fine with the current system for the amount of active users we have.

Might be relevant: SNK Playmore has been bought. http://dreamcancel.com/2015/08/06/snk-playmore-acquired-by-chinese-company/