My SCIV Custom characters.

Tom Wilson - Taki
http://tinyurl.com/5dh4s8

Gary - Hilde
http://tinyurl.com/6hr3bb

Samual Peter - Lizardman (yes I realise I spelt 'samual' wrong)
http://tinyurl.com/62q2cr

Clive - Setsuka
http://tinyurl.com/565jua

SCIV update I think

I tried to play Hilde when I first picked up the game but I dropped her and only use her as a backup character now. I consider lizardman as my main. With the lizzy, I've put the most hours reading, watching, note taking in sparring and against people (sometimes) there. I was trying to pick up Sets but I haven't played her enough or put much time into her so I basically don't use her at all against players. I consider yoda to be my not too far off second best character. The main reasons for that are because of the natural advantages he has, a constant crush, unthrowable and almost unjuggle-able. People just don't know how to play against him.

Now as for Nashias. He's pretty much the same as me. As far as I can tell the only difference is that he actually has people to play offline.

In the videos both me and nash haven't played for almost a month but this is just where I'm basically at with the game. I don't have the time to play the game at all so there's a bit of rust. You should be able to pick out some things, so just imagine them things to be consistant and there's where I'm at. It's also online so there's a lot less poking and spacing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvcVQLwYqic&feature=PlayList&p=71FDEB8C4030AAEC&index=0&playnext=1

The first state of me

Here's a quick brake down, at any given point in time I'm focusing on one or more of the following games depending on how much time I've got on my hands and what's got something coming up sooner.

(The newly added) SCIV
DOA
UT3

Over the years of being considered a 'gamer' I've more or less dissosiated myself with it. I'm more or less a geek for competitiveness. Consider what I do, I play(ed) futsal, the industries I've most enjoyed working in (including my current job) are competitive by nature, I do martial arts, I cycle. The video games I play are only played for the sake of being able to beat other people hard. The games I find myself play over and over are either shooters, fighters, or strat games. When I'm bored and afk a game of tetris, metroid hunters or advance wars is used to past time.

But yeah, I've had to basically stop playing videos games because of work.

Also picked myself up another copy of 'Vagrant Story' from ebay for a steal =D.

How to step from scrub to not scrub

After playing soul calibur 4 at Manifest 08 and watching the guys at couch warriors do their bit, come to the conclustion that the majority of players suck. From what I could see during my 45 minute rain at freeplay and at the tournament, the top level of play was nothing more than scrubs with combos. I'm going to do a quick run down of the basics, the things that I didn't see. Get good at these and you'll be more than halfway decent between fighters in general. 

I'm going to use this opportunity to say it out loud; Online destroys fighters. Think about it. How does that one third to half of a second delay affect what's happening. The thing killed is the most important thing in fighters, input delay and it's consistency. This crosses out reaction time, thus punishing, only to leave you with mixups (promoting bad ones at that) and a broken spacing game. Ask any top player in a fighting game that features such as that and they'll give you a run down. 

To sum up what I'm going to go through; if you're playing right your direction tagged with block input to attack input shouldn't be any less than 2:1 or even 3:1. Over time I've come to realise that because of the priority of movement involved that fighting games are best played using an arcade stick.
The orthodox of any Fighter are: Movement, blocking, 'bread and butter' (which can be seen as character knowledge, this also ties into punishing).

Here's the easiest way to look at it, what makes a good player in sports? Good reaction, hand eye co-ordination, technique, intelligence in ones self and intelligence on the opponent, experience, the ability to defend and the ability to attack. Trade technique with bread and butter, and hand-eye co-ordination with distant judgement and there you have it.
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Defence 

Defence is more important than offence due to the nature of fighters. It's simple, after you defend, you punish-- you get to deal damage without a second thought of it coming out with them on top. What makes high level play is consistency. What makes good consistency is a solid defence. Looking to block should be a large part of your game because of this.

A more advance type of defence is spacing. You have to be able to keep both in range and out range of attacks. Try to control the range so you limit your opponent's options as well being able to force whiffs. If you can touch your opponent with very end of your attack while making them miss by the width of a hair than you're doing it right. 

Take it a step further for forcing whiffs and you got side stepping and crushes (Crushes are moves that avoids one or more level of attacks). These are generally easier in practice because they generally don't require you to be a specific distant and can also be tied into your spacing.

This really takes the most times to learn because its dexterity work tag along with game knowledge. Dexterity to so you can input when you want, and game knowledge which allows you to correctly read what's going to happen from what range.

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Offence

Here is were you're bread and butter comes in. Pokes (fast attacks, used to interrupting), launchers (leads to juggles/combos), punishers (it's like having cake and eating it too), mixups and setups. You want to have the ability to fit in all the damage when you can. Punishing depends on the game but in SCIV you punish with attacks after you block an attack, but be careful, throwing is the offence against blocking. 

'Whiff' punishers are a bit more lenient with what you can use. To whiff is to miss, and when you miss there is a large window open for punishment. Thus you can use potentially more damaging attacks depending on just how far you are from the opponent and your character. 

When you attack you do three things, catch them off guard, create windows, and apply mental pressure.

With your offence you want to stay "safe" in most cases. This means that you'll come out without too much of a frame-disadvantage/recovery wise. This takes away some if not all the punishing abilities that can be used against you through just blocking, crushing, dashing or side stepping. What strings do in a game is create true mixups and setups. Say there's a string that has a safe ender, you can easily use that to force the opponent to block the whole string, but instead of finishing the string you end it before the safe finisher and do a throw instead.  Even if they are not blocking, sometimes you can catch them off guard with that throw.

Also don't be scaried to use the stun system in place.
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The best way to deal damage is get guaranteed damage (through punishing, through the juggles, and through the true combos).

The fastest way to learn is by other people. Go online, check out forums, look at a few character specific combo lists, have a few decent reads with the game open and I bet you that you'll see yourself improve. Top 10 movelist threads here and there I find are what you need to know for the bread for your knowledge. If you don't get what I mean just have a look and play around and you'll see. Using the basic knowledge you can actually easily break down matches you spectate. Also spend the time in training mode to absorb things at your own pace.

I believe that solid theories inter-relates, are multi dimensional, one point must be able to meet another point regardless of everything else. This is just a mention of the basics which separates scrubs from decent players. I'm too lazy to write it all up in one because I know how much work it will be. Here's one Dead or alive specific that's not overly complicated but is still a decent read. It goes over what one needs to know but doesn't dive in too deep. Written up by a well known player for his character and game analysis XDes,. http://doa-plus.com/Book%20of%20Destruction.pdf

I'll more than likely post something for the more advanced later.

Yeah that's right, I called all of you scrubs.