I've created a separate account to run the challenge so that games with friends don't interfere with the A to Z, and so far I've managed to get through 6 heroes.
I ended up playing a lot more games then I thought I'd have to due to disconnects. A lot of people will just outright leave a game if they give first blood or have a poor early game. I was under the impression that a disconnect of any sort meant that a win would be void. After re-reading the rules, a disconnect is fine as long as the person who disconnected did so as a direct response to your actions.
I.e. If I kill someone repeatidly and they leave, the game is still valid. But if I am mid and two people from top leave the game without me even going over there, then the game is void.
So because of this I actually played a lot more games then I'd have to, specifically with Alchemist.
With that out of the way, here is a breakdown of the events thus far. DotaBuff Profile
Alchemist - 6.78
As I tend to shy away from playing carry, I had never actually played Alchemist before. With the fairly recent reworking of the hero, he has been thrown back into competitive play and regularly picked and banned.
He wasn't too hard to play. Charge up stun, shadow blade, hit, stun, ulti and go nuts. In fact he is incredibly fun to play. Late game with level 3 ulti, Black King Bar, Assault Curass and a Basher or Maelstorm you can just desomate the opposing team.
He is pretty easy to farm on too. His passive, Greevils Greed and a quick Hand of Midas, the gold just keeps coming in.
I believe I actually cleared this hero in the first game, but with the misunderstanding of the rules, I ended up playing 8 games in total.
I queued with a friend, and it only took one game to get the win.
I went for Eul's for the synergy with Cold Feet (Cast Cold Feet, use Eul's on the target so that as they land they are stunned) which is quite nice. But without Eul's, Cold Feet is so unreliable, it's almost a must.
With AA's rework, I wanted to try out an Aghanim's Scepter changes. It was pretty strong, but I don't really have the map awareness to be able to snipe off people across the map yet. I'm sure it will come with more game experience.
Again it took one game to clear, queuing with my friend. I've played Anti-Mage before, so the game wasn't that hard. Just get those last hits and farm the game away.
My K/D was negative despite having BKB, Battlefury and a HoT. This is partially due to my team's composition of Sniper, Bloodseeker, Alchemist, Anti Mage and Disruptor. Team fights were terrible, and my team seemed slow to help. In hindsight, I should have maybe gone for Manta Style before the HoT and not be over commuting in team-fight initiations hoping that my team would back me up.
I suppose my impressions of Anti Mage is that he is a strong late game carry with a great ability to flash farm with a Battlefury. Pretty boring to play though.
I've played a lot of Axe in the past. He is pretty easy to jungle with, and has a nice lane presence. Axe is also incredibly fun to play, and with some early farm he can become pretty tanky.
I played this game with a friend. I went dire jungle, with him playing bristleback solo dire safelane. We got some early kills with Battle Hunger + Snot/Quil spam. I snowballed, got pretty tanky and went into an overconfident mode to just push and finish the game.
I've played a lot of Bane in the past. The Heroes of Newerth port was one of my prefered heroes to play, so playing Bane in DotA2 wasn't any different.
His spells are decent, with a sleep (which Bane can now disable from himself), life steal nuke, damage reduction and a disabling ulti that also inflicts good damage, Bane has some nice aggressive and defensive spells.
I did this hero in solo matchmaking and mostly tried to support. After losing two games by not having a BKB and relying on my team maybe a bit too much, I decided to go for a semi-carry build, getting Force Staff into Dagon for Fiends Grip initiations into Brain Sap and Dagon. The burst is great and you can easily pick off single targets. This build would be pretty terrible for a core support, there are always better items to get over a Dagon; saving up for a BKB or Pipe of Insight would have been better because Fiends Grip also disables Bane whilst the channel is active, and without a BKB you can easily be stunned to cancel the channel. This makes one of your most powerful spells useless without great positioning and some means of survivability.
Games: 3 [ 1, 2, 3 ]
Average K/D/A: 8/7.667/16.333
Batrider - 6.78
Batrider is a hard hero to play. The basic principle is to get a Force Staff and Blink dagger. You then initiate a fight by: Firefly > Blink near opponent > Lasso opponent > Turn around > Force Staff back towards your team.
In practice, if you're not used to the flowchart, a lot can go wrong and you can end up with the worse initiations possible and just throwing yourself at the opposition as a free kill.
In at least one game I went mid, got no rune wards from myself nor my team. I wasn't winning the lane and asked for help, which I got none. When I went to gank my team tended to have their lane pushed which left me no opportunity to actually do anything. So with the lack of farm from losing mid, no supports or help across the map and struggling to get core items, it's a hard hero to do anything with.
Eventually I got a clear playing alongside a friend. We went in the same lane and abused Sticky Napalm.
It's safe to say I am not good at this hero. I understand the potential for him to be devastating and pick apart a team with an awesome initiation, but I definitely need practice to last hit and control mid lane.
The default steam font size is considerably small, especially so on high resolution monitors. After switching to 2560x1440, I found it difficult to read messages sent to me through Streams chat client. I was then suprised that there is no intuitive method to increase the font size.
After asking a few people, putting Google search to good use and a bit of trial and error, I have managed to find out how to increase the font size for Steam's messager chat.
Go to: 'X:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\resource\styles' where X is the drive where you have Steam installed.
Copy the file 'steam.styles'
go to: 'X:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\skins'
Create a folder with any name. I called mine 'LargeFont'.
In your newly created folder, create a folder called 'resource'.
In your newly created resource folder, create a folder called 'styles'.
Paste the 'steam.styles' file which you copied in step 2.
Open the steam.styles file which you just pasted using a text editor such as Notepas++.
Search for the comment '// styles for text used in RichText controls in various places'
.
Underneath that comment, there are several 'font-size' values that we want to change. For the following sections, change the 'font-size=xx' to 'font-size=20'
console_text_error
console_text
friends_chat_text
friends_chat_text_self
friends_chat_history
friends_chat_event
friends_chat_bright_event
friends_chat_url
friends_chat_name_ingame
friends_chat_self
friends_chat_name
friends_chat_accountid
friends_chat_securitylink
Chat_MenuButton_withChrome
Save the file and close your text editor.
In your Steam client, go to: Steam > Settings > Interface.
Under 'Select the skin you wish steam to use', choose the skin you named in step 4, in my case it is 'LargeFont'.
Click OK and restart Steam if prompted.
Congratulations, you should now have increased font size in Steam messenger!
I have friends who like to play DotA2. These friends, like me, played the Warcraft 3 map long before DotA2 was in development. We have all played DotA, Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends. Now we all play DotA2. The problem? The huge skill gap.
One of my friends is outright better than I am. He has played longer and more often and generally is s decent player. On top of his play time, he also watched competitive games and follows the patch notes. I do genuinely feel that doing something as simple as watching competitive play helps you learn and improve as a player.
The second thinks he is better, but his play style is selfish, greedy and sloppy. Unforced errors are in an abundance, from item choices to initiation and positioning decisions. He doesn't listen to advice, doesn't watch competitive games, doesn't really follow patch notes, steals farm as support and will farm for the entire game without making an appearance if he can.
A third is new to DotA2, and you can tell. He likes to pick carry roles but can't last hit properly. Picks support and doesn't stack/pull or ward effectively and builds damage items on support roles to try get kills. Courier? Mekanism? Pipe of Insight? No. Essentially what ever lane he is on is a lost lane (unfortunately he tends to want to lane with me, frustrating). The strange part is that he does watch tutorial videos, but he doesn't practise what he learns. Instead he jumps straight into matchmaking and wonders why we lose.
My fourth friend used to play a bit. He learnt to play Ursa. He'd only pick Ursa. He was probably the mist timid Ursa I've ever seen. But the more he played, the better he got. But he'd never learn to play anything else.
I am 'average'. I can play all roles, but when I pick carry, I usually don't have a decent support. So I'm then fighting for farm, without ward vision or team fight survivability. If I don't snowball then it's a lost game. So I tend to shy away from carry roles, there is an abundance of people willing to play that role in my place.
I watch competitive DotA2 games quite often. It's like watching sport for me. DotA Cinema has an awesome VOD section to catch up on missed games, and Stream DotA2 is a great website which lists the majority of live streams. In watching, you can see how they position, the situational items they pick up, how the supports stack and roam and even how and where you can find farm.
I also practise. I will queue into bot games and practise last hitting, practise heroes with tricky ability combos like Puck and practise new ideas. On 'medium' setting, bot games are actually quite relaxing. Crank it up to 'unfair' and you're competing with a team who is ruthless at last hitting, denying and reaction times in team fights. Quite a lot of my friends would benefit in doing this, but for some reason, they feel it's a waste of time unless you're playing against real opponents.
I also watch the more educational videos like 'Purge Plays' and 'Merlini DotA' to try get a better grasp for individual heroes. I'm also not embarrassed in using the in game hero guides. More often than not they pick items that I'd go for, but it's a lot easier to find them if they are in the suggested tab of the shop. The skill build feature is fantastic for heroes you may not often play.
Recent Team Matchmaking Experience
We lose. A lot.
Friend one listed earlier is a good player. But he gets angry easily. Understandably when we lose the game for reasons out of our control. I would guess that if it's just us two playing, we have a decent win percentage.
Friend two. He just doesn't listen. He will pick Bloodseeker and Nightstalker and get some early kills and feel invincible only to throw the game later on. Otherwise he will pick Doom and farm jungle for 40 minutes. He won't TP to help out, is seldom in team fights, will chase enemies to his own demise, tell you to initiate when he is too far away to help, and just not listen. We currently have a 60^ win ratio on DOTABuff, but we lose a lot when we play together.
My third friend, we just lose. He will always want to lane with me, and we lose the lane. We do better when I support and he tries to carry, because I will harass, stack/pull, ward and buy the proper support items. But he struggles last hitting, so its always an uphill battle. When he 'supports' me, he will stand around the lane, occasionally try to last hit my creeps, and throw a stun out if they try to initiate on me. This essentially saps my exp and gold and just hurts me as a carry later on. Additionally he wont ward, so we are always susceptible to ganks, and because he doesn't help deny or attack allied creeps less than 50% health, the wave just pushes and leaves us vulnerable all the time. I've hinted that he should practise last hitting, but he doesn't. I've shown him videos on stack pulling and creep momentum, but he just doesn't do it.
He does love playing the game too, he is always playing the game. I with he'd put more effort into learning to play.
My fourth friend stopped playing video games in general recently. Real life got in the way. But he had a similar drawback in that he wouldn't practise either.
So when we played, we would queue up. Get put in a game. Friend two would always random and usually not know how to play the hero, but be too proud to ask for advice or re pick. Friend one and I would typically try to win the game, friend two would try to carry it (usually fail). Friend three would do his own thing. There would be a huge lack of communication, not for lack of me trying, but mostly people not listening. It boils down to a group of people getting frustrated with one another for at least 40minutes, often losing.
Solo Matchmaking
8th May 2013 was the date when solo matchmaking was released. I suppose it was released to even the playing field for those who don't queue as a stack or with friends. Having people all together on voice comms and actually putting effort into working together should be rights defeat opponents who don't. When you don't have anyone available to queue with in the standard matchmaking queue, you would still be placed in games with people who have queued together. Sometimes you would be the 5th player in a 4man stack, or sometimes you'd be with two sets of friends, just making up the numbers.
What happens in my experience is that the friends playing together will feel more justified to be abusive, as they have friends to back them up. A sense of false entitlement usually follows. Arguably this can work towards the success of the team; if some of your team members have great synergy with one another and are on voice comms, then that's great! Right?
Unfortunately this is where we see the double edged sword. For every group of partied members on your team, there is one on the opponents team too (i.e. 2+2+1 vs 2+2+1), therefore any advantage you may have had, your opponent has too.
In my experience, this then leads to one side greatly dominating the other. Fingers get pointed, people get angry and low priority follows.
Solo matchmaking however pits 5 individuals against 5 individuals. There is no pre-determined advantage due to synergy beforehand, both teams have to meld once the game starts. So how does this effect the game?
Players tend to be more vocal. Not abusive, but just communicate more. I would venture a guess that when friends play together on Skype, they are more reluctant to talk in game to strangers. But when everyone is a stranger, what have you got to lose?
People call missing, inform you that they are close to finishing a big item (so don't force a team fight), call out runes, ping enemy heroes who just came into vision on the mini map and even TP to help each other out.
It's not revolutionary. But in a 5 vs 5 competitive team game, it makes all the difference.
Another point is that the skill level is more balanced between the two teams. In standard matchmaking, if you are in a party, an algorithm is applied to try to calculate your skill level as a party. It's not quite the average, if I recall they put it slightly higher if the skill gap between players is large. In solo matchmaking however, you don't have to account for these kind of algorithms skewing the skill level, which should result in more even and balanced games.
In my experience, solo matchmaking is awesome. I usually get vocal on the mic and try to call out what is going on. Once I start doing it, others tend to join in. I don't rage, and I'll call out praises on nice plays. Generally this works great. There are occasions where the team just doesn't click, or the lineup is terrible and we are at a huge set back, but the majority of the time I get great games.
Hey guys,
With the International coming up, I thought I'd come up with a way to get revved up and get more engrossed into the world of Dota2. Since, I always seem to keep playing the same heroes, I thought I should at least try each hero once. This led to me thinking, why not win with every hero once?
So I present to you, the A to Z challenge. Starting from Alchemist and ending with Zeus, you have to win with every hero once. After a win, you switch to the next hero. Use the default hero picker, it should give you the order you need to pick in.
Some basic rules/suggestions:
Early Abandonments don't count. Exception is either if your team is winning and its almost late game, and a guys decides to give up. Or if it is early game, you have to be the one that is pwning the guys who rage quits.
Tag yourself as [AtoZ] yourName just to let everyone know that you are on a quest :D
Don't random
Limit your matchmaking to All pick.
Don't have side games with other heroes. That way your stats[1] page should show your progression nicely.
I have taken to changing my name to my Hero's name; so for my NS game I was [AtoZ] Balanar, for Invoker I was [AtoZ] Karl, for AM I was [AtoZ] Mangina etc.
from comments - If your hero gets picked already, ask for a swap. If teammate refuses, just pick the next hero in line. Then go back to the hero the next game.
Tell me what you guys think. Since there are no new heroes coming out until the end of the International, now should be the best time to try this out, as you won't be tempted to go for the flavor of the week hero. For newer players this should be a nice learning experience, while for more experienced players it should keep the game interesting and provide a challenge that needs to be completed.
Notes:
I'm gonna do a follow up thread in 15 days to see if anyone was able to complete it.
We could use Dota 2 Stats[2] to verify our accomplishments
It could lead to interesting discussions about which heroes were the hardest to win with and how that speaks for what kind of player you are (do you suck as a carry? can you not gank?)
I'm gonna contact Valve about maybe adding a badge for people who complete this challenge, or maybe just a badge for people who play every hero, even if it is out of order.
Reddit Thread
I saw this thread when it was first posted, and it did intregue me at the time. The reason I didn't take up the challange when I first read about it was mostly because I used to enjoy playing with friends. When playing with my friends, we would try to pick heroes that complement one another. However, I have recently been playing in solo queue and enjoying the game a lot more as a result.
I have started playing all the game modes apart from 'All Pick'. So I queue for 'All Random', 'Single Draft', 'Least Played', 'Random Draft' and 'Captains Mode'. The result of this forced me to choose heroes I may not necessarily play with my friends. It works, and can be quite a lot of fun. Since playing these different modes and being exposed to more heroes, I have generally improved as a player. That is what made me want to try the 'A to Z' challange.
I've created a new steam account, put on the [AtoZ] tag, grabbed an A to Z avatar and gifted myself a DotA2 key. I'm good to go!
I do think that before I move on to the next hero, I will most likely practice it in 'Co-Op vs AI' games. This way I will be used to the skill set and have an idea of the standard item progressions to aim for. This has the double benefit of not hurting my team with my own lack of knowledge of a specific hero. So before I start this challange, I'm going to run a few 'Co-Op vs AI' games as Alchemist to get to grips with the hero.
Sakura is a character I've always enjoyed watching. At first she appears to be a Shotokan character akin to Ken or Ryu, but look further and you notice how her style of play differs completely from that of other Shoto characters.
The reason for this is due to her fireball being charge able, her shouken not being a true anti-air and her tatsumaki possessing the property of linking into a combo and launching the opponent into to the air with an EX.
I mentioned in my previous post that I'm attending EVO2k13. Well I have decided to change characters from Dhalsim to Sakura. After telling a friend, he asked me why. I've actually wanted to play her since 2009 where I saw her being used in a 5v5 exhibition match where SabrE(Sakura) played against Alex Valle(Ryu).
UStream Link 1 - YouTube Link 2
I saw the game live on stream, it was the first time I saw a Sakura, and SabrE's team was the underdog. It was an awesome match to watch, and I always to pick her up since watching that match. The reason I didn't try sooner was because my execution is really poor, and playing a good Sakura requires you to know a lot of combos and mix-ups as well as being fantastic at spacing and footsies.
As I've now officially entered SSF4AE2012 at EVO2l13, I figured that I have to practice a character, so I may as well practice one that I've wanted to play for a while. In addition to all of that, Sakura's theme music is pretty awesome.
So, with less then a month to go before I fly out to America, it's time to practice!
Fighting games are in what I still consider to be a niche in the video game market. Whilst everyone will be able to recognize the title of the most famous fighting games, I feel that many people will associate them with low level play (button mashing).
I hate this association. When I suggest playing fighting games such as Street Fighter to my friends, the majority will say no and shrug it off as a button mashing luck-fest and instead opt to play FIFA or a side scrolling beat 'em up.
To me, fighting games are about skill, knowledge and execution. In essence, winning a fighting game is about controlling space on the screen, forcing your opponent to make errors and then knowing how to correctly (or optimally) punish your opponent. It is real time chess, with the additional element of hand-to-eye co-ordination and execution of combos thrown into the mix.
Sega Mega Drive (1992)
The first fighting game I tried to play was Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on the Sega Mega Drive (AKA Sega Genesis). I bought it second hand from a friend who was clearing out his video game collection in time for the new generation of consoles; as I got my Mega Drive very late in the consoles life, I snapped it up for a bargain price of ~£5. I bought the game at school, waited the entire day to just go home and boot it up.
Back then my brother and I would struggle to pull off Zangief's command grabs (performed by doing a complete 360degree motion on the directional pad (D-Pad), followed by a punch) and our thumbs would develop blisters only to be riveled years later from Mario Party.
Execution was the main issue we suffered from. Those of you who are old enough may remember the standard Mega Drive controllers only had 3 face buttons (A, B and C), and given that Street Fighter controls consist of light punch, medium punch, heavy punch, light kick, medium kick and heavy kick, there was a clear lack of buttons. The workaround (aside from spending additional money on a 6buttoned controller) was to press select to toggle between punches and kicks. This meant that doing combos, or even crouching medium kick into a hadouken was more difficult that originally intended; high level techniques such as using your chin to press select whilst performing the quater-circle-forward (QCF) motion on the D-Pad.
With the lack of buttons and the sheer difficulty of the game, we didn't play seriously. We beat the single player mode with several of the characters, and used to play verses occasionally, but that was about it. If we wanted to play a fighting game, our "go to" was the WWF Wrestlemania game simply because it was easier to control.
Nintendo 64 (1999)
Super Smash Bros. This is probably the game that really got me into fighting games. It was different from other games, whilst you dealt damage to your opponents by performing normal and special attacks, you didn't have a stamina bar and instead would have to be knocked off the stage. Whats more, it supported up to 4 players, had items and dynamic stages.
Smash Bros was, and unfortunately still is, one of the few games within the fighting game genre that my friends are willing to play. Unlike Street Fighter, you could enjoy the game and have some satisfaction in playing despite not having much exposure to it. Special moves don't require a strong of commands; instead just holding a direction then pressing the B button would unleash a fireball, neutral B could throw out a Falcon Punch and up and B would help you jump higher.
The basic mechanics are so simple that you can go from not knowing anything to have a decent understanding of the game within minutes of playing it. This makes it a great party game. But that is what Smash will always be to me. A party game.
Whilst Smash Bros is still played on a competitive level today, they do so by disabling all items, limiting stages to the static and mostly level ones and even banning characters from competing. Why? Because the game is not balanced.
Items spawn randomly and can give one played an unfair advantage, easily swaying the tide of a game.
Levels change, platforms move/vanish and additional elements such as wind are randomly introduced. Arguably the better player would accommodate for these changes, but in reality random factors shouldn't come into play in competitive games.
Some characters are just outright more powerful than others. Some have better movesets, higher priority normals or just outright have more potential.
The trouble is that in removing all these factors, the game just isn't the same. It's a fun (and sometimes infuriating) party game, and a game I will only play when friends come around.
Gamecube (2002)
This period was some what special. I lived close to my high school, and in the later years, my friends and I would go to my house during lunch break to play video games when the weather was too poor to play football. Whilst Smash Bros Melee (2002) and Mario Kart Double Dash (2003) were the favorite games to play, for a while that changed.
My brother got Soul Caliber 2 (2002) for his birthday the year it was released. Having never owned a Playstation, Soul Caliber 2 was the first 3D fighter I had the chance to really play and get to grips with.
The graphics were stunning. The characters were interesting. There was a pretty fun single player mode. The mechanics of a 3D fighter were new and exciting; juggles, side steps, hops and parrying attacks. Thinking about it, I think it was the first game which introduced me to 'super' special attacks, and un-blockable attacks.
My friends would come over during lunch, and we would play winner stays on. This was a lot of fun for a while. Then I wanted to take the game to the next level. I picked "Yun Sung" as my main character, did some research on combos, went into training mode and put in some time to learn them.
Once I was confident that I could land them, I tried using them against my friends. I didn't take into account that my spacing and blocking game was terrible. I would go up against my friends, and lost to their button mashing - I hated the fact that they could and would pull off juggles by pure ignorance and luck. My friends ont he other hand thought it was hilarious. I could see the funny side, but I lost a lot of respect for that game because I just didn't understand how to reliably start a combo. He had terrible range, some trouble juggling and nothing really stood out for him.
Out of interest I've just looked at a tier list here, and found that Yun Sung is in fact one of the worst characters in the game, alongside the Gamecube exclusive Link. It's nice knowing that my doubt and frustrations were some what justified. Maybe I'd have liked it more if I'd have just chosen another character.
Capcom vs. SNK 2 (2002) was the other fighting game I got for the Gamecube. I didn't love the game, though it was fun. It suffered from similar controller flaws that I mentioned with SF2:CE earlier. The buttons were strange on the Gamecube, and the triggers acted as 'heavy' punch and kick. It did offer an easy input option where you could press the C-Stick in a direction to perform a special move which was okay for new players.
I generally like the Street Fighter games. I feel that they involve skill and the better player will predominantly win. The Capcom vs. SNK titles throw in a 3on3 into the mix. You pick three characters, and your opponent does the same. Once you defeat one character, the second comes in. This continues until one side has all of their characters defeated.
Games which force you to use multiple characters will always make me reluctant to play them. I can say that to this day, I've never mastered or even come close to mastering one character in any fighting game that I've played. I play a mediocre game at best. So then ask me to learn not one, but three characters, their moves, priorities, specials, combos, links and setups... I can't do it. It is a daunting task that just requires too much time investment for me to ever consider.
That being said, I could pick up most of the Shotokan style players and do well. My team was usually Ryu, Ken and Akuma, and I probably won more than I lost verses my friends. Because of this, my friends just refused to play against me, or would opt to play something else instead. Given the choice, they'd rather play Soul Caliber 2 and hit all the buttons on the controller in the hope they'd win, which they found out they couldn't do against me in Capcom vs SNK 2.
MAME (2004)
During college whilst I was studying for my A-levels, we had quite a few free periods during the course of a week. There were also usually free computers. This co-insided around the same time that the 'EVO Moment #37' came out from Evo2k4 in the Losers Bracket Finals of Street Fighter3: Third Strike [Ref].
To this day I still get goosebumps watching that video. After showing it to one of my friends, we started playing Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and Street Fighter and even Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix through MAME.
It was fun. We were competitive, we could go home and practice, and we could play during the week without much hassle. In a few cases, we'd get thrown out of the computer rooms for shouting obscenities at one another or just screaming following a clutch victory. The majority of my friends didn't play, but that one rivalry was more than enough incentive to continue playing. It was just so fun.
We practiced combos, knew some basic match-up knowledge and how to punish (albeit poorly) unforced errors. There was some dirty play thrown in too, one example that stays in memory is where keyboards would lock up if several buttons are held; therefore upon unleashing a super, you could press and hold as many buttons on the keyboard as you could to prevent your opponents buttons from registering, leaving them unable to react.
MAME then transitioned into GGPO, which had the additional feature of amazing net code for online play. Our school sessions of SFA3 could continue remotely.
XBox 360 (2008)
I got my XBox 360 whilst I was living in Hong Kong. 2008 was a good year for fighting games with the announcement of Street Fighter 4 and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix. I bought both of these games as soon as they became available.
What I came to realise was a huge issue from my previous console fighting game experiences still plagued me. The XBox 360 controller just didn't allow em to enjoy playing fighting games. I actually prefered playing on my keyboard during my GGPO sessions then I did with a controller through the XBox 360. Shortly after I bought Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix from the Xbox Live Arcade store, I started looking for alternative controllers. This is where I found out that you can actually get arcade stick replicas for home use. I ordered a Hori EX 2, which had the added benefit of being compatible with my PC as well as the XBox 360, and got down to playing.
I play SSF2THDR almost every day until the release of SF4. I picked up Dhalsim, learnt how to play him semi effectively and had a lot of fun playing online.
Then came Street Fighter 4. This is, to this day, my favorite addition to the series. The graphics are awesome, the game feels great, the machanics are pretty cool. I somewhat disagree with the introduction of Ultra's, which become available when you take a certain threshold of damage, allowing for a comeback. But the Focus to absorb damage, almost replacing the 'parry' from SF3S, is a nice if oversimplified version which allows for additional combo options by Focus Attack Dash Canceling (FADC).
I even played Street Fighter 4 at the local arcades in Hong Kong. That's right, I'd spend additional money on the game despite owning it. It is that good.
I continued playing Dhalsim in Street Fighter 4, as the transition seemed pretty straight forward. His slides were not as strong, and the focus meant that throwing random limb attacks was even more risky, but the basics were the same.
On returning to England, my friend from college and I would have full days of playing, then getting food to eat.
Then along came Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I bought this game, as well as Marvel vs Capcom 2 on the XBox Live Arcade, with the intention to try and learn how to play. I'd seen videos from EVO and even stayed up watching the finals on the live stream, and it looks so fun. The game is over the top flashy, fast and busy. There is little down time where players are trying to land in a 'poke'. There is always something going on.
This might be where I fall out with the MvC series. There are a LOT of characters. You need a team of 3, and the length of the combos can be absurd. I will never ever feasibly be able to play any of the games in this series well, they just require too much time investment, and are notorious for game breaking bugs and character imbalance.
MvC3 is one of those games I love watching, but I just can't play.
There are other notable mentions of Soul Caliber 4, Mortal Kombat 9, Street Fighter x Tekken, Skullgirls and Injustice which have made this generation awesome for fughting games.
Today, 2013
I currently only play Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition v2012 despite having the majority of games mentioned above. The game stands up, has had several updates, and even has another update in the pipeline. I am still really bad at the game, but I really enjoy playing it.
Recently I got diagnosed with Stargadts disease which has a pretty big impact on my vision. I've almost finished my masters dissertation and have booked tickets to attend EVO2k13 to compete and spectate. I decided that having never competed in a tournament despite playing fighting games throughout my life, I should probably do it before my eyesight gets too bad where I am fighting my eyes rather than my opponents.
I have no visions of grandeur. I know that I will most likely lose both of my matches. I am a casual player at best, but I love the game. I have played and spectated it for years, my knowledge outweighs my skill and execution by a large margin and I need to sit down and really practice.
I've played with the idea of going to Dreamhack over in Sweden, and even local(ish) tournaments in Telford and London; but I never had anyone to go with and didn't like the idea of going alone. I invited a bunch of people to come to Vegas, all knowing of my condition and reasons for wanting to go, but no one would or could come - but this time I'm going. I'm going to EVO 2k13 to compete in my first competition, the biggest Street Fighter competition in the world and it is going to be awesome fun.
So I currently live in student accommodation, and in doing so only have access to one Ethernet port which I'd ideally like to share between several devices. Switching the cable comes as both an encumbrance and unnecessary issue without the fact that the university only allows each room to register three MAC addresses to each Ethernet access point.
As I mentioned, I own several devices which I'd like to connect to the Internet - ideally simultaneously. Aside from the fiddly process of buying and configuring a network switch (which would involve spoofing MAC addresses) I decided to explore the option of network sharing with my MacBook and Windows machine.
The university prevents Windows based machines sharing the Ethernet connection by way of scanning the computer to make sure such connection sharing options are disabled, however no such security measures are checked for on the Mac OS. After successfully configuring the Mac (Snow Leopard) to broadcast a WiFi connection, sharing the Ethernet service, I have connected my Windows 7 machine to it. This is how;
Switch on your MacBook.
Plug in the Ethernet cable and ensure that you have Internet connectivity.
Once you get here, come up with a password to use for your wireless network. Ensure it is 13 characters in length. Once you've done this, generate the hex value of your password. This can be done through a website such as [ http://www.string-functions.com/string-hex.aspx ]. Make a note of this code, as you will need it later.
Click Apple > System Preferences.
Select Sharing.
In the left hand pane, highlight Internet Sharing.
Under "Share your connection from", choose Ethernet.
Under "To computers using", choose AirPort.
Next select AirPort Options.
Type in a Network Name as you wish.
Use a channel as you wish. I happened to select 4.
Tick the box to select Enable encryption (using WEP). At the time of writing this, WEP happens to be the best supported means of encryption.
In the Password field, type the 13 character password you came up with earlier (NB not the hex value, the plain text password).
Under WEP Key Length, select 128-bit. Newer versions of Windows will not allow you to easily connect to anything under this.
Click OK.
On the left pane, tick the box next to Internet Sharing to turn the service on.
The first step is over. Your MacBook should now be omitting a wireless signal that allows other devices to connect to it, and use it's Ethernet connection to get access to the Internet.
When connecting devices to the MacBook, find the network using your standard means of wireless discovery, and click connect. When prompted
for a password, enter the hex code you made a note of earlier.
Connecting Via Windows 7
Navigate to Control Panel\Network and Internet\Manage Wireless Networks
Click Add.
Click Manually create network profile.
Under Network Name enter the name you typed into your MacBook earlier.
Under Security Type, select WEP.
In the Security Key, type the hex value you generated for your password.
Click Okay to end the Wizard.
Right click on the network you just created, and select Properties.
Click on the Security tab.
Under Security Type, choose Shared.
Under Encryption Type, choose WEP.
Under Network Security Key, enter the hex value generated for your password.
You can leave the Key Index as 1.
You should now be able to connect to your MacBook, and access the Internet! Congratulations!
