This reminds me of my local gym here in the Salt Lake City area. About 15 years ago, I would play basketball at the county rec center once a week. There was one guy who was good. Really good. He was about 6'6" and would only play if needed to balance numbers on teams. Even then, he would only pass the ball around. I watched him take up a challenge once and play 1v5 with a team of regulars and he won 11-7. I talked to him one day and found he was a bench player for the University of Utah 6 years prior. He wasn't good enough to start on a D1 college team, which only produced 3 D-League players and 1 NBA bench player in the 4 years he was on the team. And yet he felt it was unfair to the "guys who were just there to have fun" if he played 100%. That was eye-opening.
What a beautiful person. Truly. He just wanted to get his workouts and not fuck up anyone's fun by posting triple doubles in a pick up game. That kinda shit is discouraging to casuals. However I'm not sure how this reminded you of that. Still thanks for sharing. 🙏🏾
@@JermaineCausticxArmaCrawford Just the perspective of how good “the best” are compared to “good” compared to a common hobbyist. The average player doesn’t really get to experience “very good” let alone “the best” for a comparison.
The one benefit of being away from FGs for almost the last 15 years is that I'm old / far enough removed to just be focused on my own progress. I'm just 250 points away from Diamond and it's exciting not just because of my progress to date but knowing I have so much more room to grow. All the wisdom and guidance from FGC creators like Sajam has made my return to FGs that much easier. Here's to always improving!
"In 2013, in response to criticism over him being in a bench role throughout his career and to claims that many would beat him one-on-one, Scalabrine stated, "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me", suggesting that there is a huge difference between any (active or retired) NBA player and those outside the league. In an event organized by The Toucher and Rich Show selected volunteers had the chance to play one-on-one against Scalabrine (until 11 points with a margin of two). The format was called the "Scallenge" and Scalabrine played four games, one against each of the voluntary contenders. Scalabrine won every game with a combined score of 44-6. In an additional game Scalabrine played against the three hosts of the show and won 11-1." just found this on his wiki
@@KingChewyy This reminds me of my local gym here in the Salt Lake City area. About 15 years ago, I would play basketball at the county rec center once a week. There was one guy who was good. Really good. He was about 6'6" and would only play if needed to balance numbers on teams. Even then, he would only pass the ball around. I watched him take up a challenge once and play 1v5 with a team of regulars and he won 11-7. I talked to him one day and found he was a bench player for the University of Utah 6 years prior. He wasn't good enough to start on a D1 college team, which only produced 3 D-League players and 1 NBA bench player in the 4 years he was on the team. And yet he felt it was unfair to the "guys who were just there to have fun" if he played 100%. That was eye-opening.
This is why I don't like to compare myself to other players, but instead prefer measuring my fighting game growth against myself. There will always be somebody better than me, so instead of focusing on surpassing them, I should focus on surpassing myself from yesterday. I play to defeat myself; defeating others will come naturally as a byproduct.
It's funny, it's not just fighting games this outlook helps with... good on you, self-improvement is an endless path, but ultimately a pretty worthwhile one!
I always told my friends that I think about games like the Olympics, you can be good and not be Olympic level. You can also be Olympic level and not be the best in the Olympics. Usaron Bolt compared to the worst Olympic sprinter is like a full 2 second difference, but sprinting 100m in 11 seconds is still really good.
I remember Brian_F talking about it, and saying people at the top of the ladder online aren't tournament winners - because tournament winners are in tournaments instead of playing ranked.
@@lolilol5346I said this in sfv. MR is the most accurate ranking we've ever had and tournament winners are at the top. MR is an elo based system rewarding good win rate against other good players. Old ranking systems were infinite point inflation systems that rewarded endless grinding vs. Lower rank players. MR is the best system we've ever had.
@@phillipfry8141 its pretty frustrating I feel like im not making much progress. Itd be nice to have people to play with to learn from without focusing on wins and losses
I'm 44, I own a company and I have to deal with all the shit life put us into. I can play this game on late evenings when my head isn't overwhelmed and I'm 4 star plat. In my mind I'm a badass master, I'm super happy of my little improvements and honestly that's all about it. Enjoy the game guys :)
As a fellow grown man with responsibilities I appreciate this comment. I'm pretty much hard stuck at Plat-3, and I'm finding its more bc I only get to play a couple times a week, which means I'm pretty much always rusty, and even then often my mental game is cooked from a long work day. Does it mean I'm trash? Maybe if I compare myself to streamers and pros, people who play games *literally all day for income*. But compared to your average casual fighting game enjoyer, I feel alright about where I'm at.
I'm with you. I played a weekend BH tournament (open bracket) and made top 8. Beat two Diamonds on the way and lost 0-2 to a Master Cammy with 650+ hours played. They won the tourney and never lost a match. I was okay with it. I win some and lose some to Diamonds/Masters, but my improvement is based on the time I have to invest.
People in chat to Sajam: "I find it discouraging that you're taking a character I've trying real hard at and surpassing me so quickly." Meanwhile Punk is moving on to character #5 in his "every character to 2K MR challenge" 🤯 Like bruh Brian_F is still grinding trying to get to 2k, and Punk got his JP to 2k in a few days 😭😭😭
I'm reminded of a different video talking about one of the worst-hitting players in Major League Baseball history, Steve Jeltz. And yeah for a major leaguer he was bad. But making the League in the first place means you're better than something like 99.9% of all players. We're talking about the gap between the top 10% and the top 1%.
Yup. Basketball version of this is when Brian Scalabrine, a NBA player known more as a meme, than for his play, as he was a bench warmer, set up an open challenge for anyone to take him on in a one on one game. Brian washed everyone and stated very simply afterwards, "I'm closer to LeBron, than you are to me."
@@kylefields3951 There's a lot of hype stories like this. Some of the funniest stories were when basketball players, particularly ones who played pretty high level high school or college basketball realized they weren't gonna make the league. Off the top of my head, there's a guy on UA-cam named Ryan The Crash Dummy, a basketball player from Texas who talked about his "I'm not making it to the league moment" was when his high school played Cypress Lakes High School just outside Houston. The school at the time had De'Aaron Fox, recent first time NBA All-Star. Ryan and his team basically spent the whole four quarters chasing De'Aaron around as he used his speed, fitting his last name, to turn the game into the world's most miserable track meet. For Ryan and his team at least🤣.
on the NBA point, Brian Scalabrine, a career role player in the NBA had one of the hardest quotes ever when schooling some loud dude at the gym "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me"
Reminds me of some of your Road to Master VODs where you have to remind chat that just because you're a Master Rank player, that doesn't mean that the Diamond players you play against are actually bad.
Honestly, as someone who left in early SFV and just came back, being told "lmao everything short of master rank is the tutorial" is beyond disheartening when you're struggling in Platinum. Honestly makes you think why even bother continuing to try as a casual player.
As a casual player why do you care what pros are saying? If you enjoy it and want to get better just keep playing. What's pros say should have no bearing at all on your progression in the game.
Stuff like this has unfortunately gotten to me a bit since SF6 has been out. I felt great about myself when I grinded up to Plat when I never made it past Silver in SFV. But people talking about "Bad Master Players" and saying things "Plat is the new Silver" makes me a bit discouraged and like I haven't made any real progress. However, this video and just hearing that Plat is considered about top 30% makes me feel much better and want to get back on the grind now. Very cool, Mr. Jam.
Even if you did just reach the same percentile as in SFV like Sajam said it just means you hit your skill level and now you have to figure out how to level up your game. Basically, the game is done correctly assessing what you can already do compared to other players and now you have to learn to do new stuff to progress from there.
I literally just stopped playing because of all of the ranked trash talk people do. Took me over 100 hours to get Manon to Plat, and that means nothing? Whatever.
Maybe this is the teacher in me talking, but I think any rank is impressive if it's better than your rank last week or last month or yesterday or whenever. Growth is hard to achieve, and should be celebrated, whether you're an EVO finalist or a rookie picking up your first fighting game.
Would be nice if you could switch showing your rank as a graph of progression. Instead of just a number. Although it might get disheartening after a bad day. (my dream game would show, what you could have done better right after every match) Don't know if other games do it like that, but Planetside 2 has graphs for that. Level there is only going up, so it's not a valid measurement. It's nice that they've thought of it, plus achievements.
Man I remember this shit in League of Legends. Early on, you weren't nothing if you weren't at least diamond. Then the joke was "Diamond 4 players are dogs." Then it became diamond 2 players LUL. The amount of times the "good player" goal post moved, you'd think people are running away with them.
The rule in league is, shitlow is any rank or division below challenger, you're in masters? Absolute shitlow dog, anything other than rank 1 challenger is shitlow on the Internet and to toxic pricks
god your videos are always so humbling but at the same time make me content with myself and my personal progress not only in fighting games, but in other aspects of my life as well. Please never stop spreading your wisdom my man your impact on my personal psyche has been insanely positive for me these last few months.
I’m glad to see People that feel like this helps. Learning fighting games has helped me improve other things in my life more than I could have imagined
It's good that feral Honda's are carried to diamond and beyond because that's the portion of the player base that's willing to deal with that playstyle instead of rage quitting and refunding the game
Especially since playing like that is a particular skill. Not everyone can. I sure as shit tried. U have to really have a mentality that matches that playstyle to climb with it. It's part of what makes them so terrifying. These are the kinds of players that can take you out in a tournament if you make a mistake or underestimate them.
3:24 Hi Sajam, long time fan! I know nobody asked for my perspective, but honestly I feel like people shouldn't get mad that top players/content creators are good at their characters. When a high level player picks up your character and makes it to Master rank, it doesn't stop you from achieving the same. If anything, it gives you valuable insight into how to improve your play and make Masters yourself. I'm a Diamond Rashid/Ryu player, and when I see you/punk/neph/ any top player upload content covering my characters I get pumped that I have another resource for learning how to improve. Just crazy to me that anyone has this take.
I think the skill gap amongst the world's best players is very interesting because at that level the gap becomes monumental due to mere percentages of difference in ability. Like, every pro player has mastered the fundamentals of the game to a point where you only need to be like 2% more consistent with something like execution or reads to make other god-tier players into non-obstacles
This same attitude in all FGs. Saw it a lot recently in Strive too. "Everything below celestial is tutorial, then celestial is where beginners learn to play the game" stuff. That tower is clearly skewed, but its the same concept. "You are a beginner until you are in to top 2-3% of players in THE WORLD"....which in any other field would make you an expert. People way too entrenched in online forums and get tunnel vision without the whole picture. Just focus on your own improvement, the journey is the most satisfying part
Ok but logic still doesn't make sense, if an unranked player can win majors and big tournaments it's because they play pro level players in custom rooms all the time. If they decided to hop into ranked they would make 2000MR easily so they still are a 2000MR caliber player so this argument doesn't prove anything. Now if someone was a struggling 1200MR master and just showed up to a tournament and won that's a different story which will almost never happen unless the tournaments competition was super weak.
@@MDToboggan Playing ranked is a different kind of game, a different kind of grind. Ofc it's still 99% street fighter skill, but at this very top where you compete against the other top 100 ranked players, this other 1% means a lot. If you play mainly ft10 and ft20, even against top players, does mean you can consistently pull off 70-80% wr in ranked.
I got master with every character and I still feel a big gap between myself and the best players and it's honestly a weird feeling. I realize I'm like pretty good and lower level players will tell me as much but the mindset in fighting games that's been drilled into me for 10+ years is that if you're not beating everyone you're not good enough.
I used to think that as well but ultimately you have to decide what you want for yourself. My mentality was so bad a number of years ago that I actually had anxiety attacks at tournaments, sometimes before having to play matches. I thought I had to give up fighting games in general but after taking a step back and putting much less pressure on myself and playing similar games to the aspects I was interested in like Monster Hunter for frame data and mechanics and whatnot I was able to progress past those feelings. Only your personal values should determine if you are happy where you are because ultimately if you don't actually enjoy the games you play then there's not much point in playing
Just today i joined your stream and you just hit Diamond on Sim. I've hit Diamond yesterday for the first time since launch on Chun. But I'm not mad - its like you said. Experience with other Fighting Games got you to this level. For someone who only picked up a fighting game (serious) for the first time i think its VERY early to hit Master. I'm fine with hitting it in half a year.
Playing in Master Rank is like Goku going from defeating Piccolo at the World Tournament to running into Raditz at the beginning of Dragon Ball Z. Yes, Goku is the strongest ‘on earth’ but there’s clearly stronger opponents out there, even at the top level. It’s all about keeping a leveled head and pressing forward. Not much to do than be mindful of your own progress lol.
Unfortunately with every competitive game, toxicity will exist, no matter how good the community is, there's always a bad egg. If you're playing ranked and you're slowly improving, then that should be enough. Keep improving, and you'll get up higher. No one is perfect, but you can keep working towards the goal of being as perfect as you can be.
If there's 1 thing I learned from years of playing League it's that whenever someone insults people of a specific ranked bracket that means they themselves are only just above that rank, i.e. "Silver players are scrubs" said the player who just reached Gold. All they have is ego. It would be almost too cruel to take it from them.
Its even more obvious in strive since theres no matchmaking once you get to celestial, once I first got in I had never felt more exposed and square 1 than ever before in the game, I've been there for months and still could never describe myself as more than "mid" (also shows how most beginner brackets allow people in any floor except celestial)
Man I hate the tower system in strive. I got vip pretty much based on luck(everyone who happened to challenge me was doing the 5/6 challenge too) then afterwards everyone would either dodge me or be absolute monsters. Not to mention people who just dodge certain match ups or connection issues. I soon after quit strive because it was really hard to find anyone at my skill level
I think the "worst player in the NBA" metaphor was perfect. The worst player in the NBA is better than anyone you've ever known who played basketball, but he sucks compared to the best person in the NBA, that made a TON of sense when you put it like that.
@shatteredteethofgod "of course they won. Nobody's ever heard of them, so we can't see what their strengths and weaknesses are. So, it's pretty much free."
This has been slapping me in the face in Strive lately. Floor 10 is full of people far better than me (moreso since the start of season 3) and man, the skill gap is *rough*. I can hold on there for a little while before getting kicked back to 9, but it's a bit discouraging. And yes, I know "har har floor 10 is players who are 'just okay' at the game"
I know i shouldn't compare myself to anyone else or care what people say but being barely about to reach diamond whilst apparently master rank is the "beginner" rank i've been feeling really bad about my own skill lately. I really needed this video.
The big trend I've noticed surrounding skill and ranked status in fighting games is a lot of the online FGC is addicted to downplaying their achievements. Any time someone posts ranked distributions data people are like "these numbers can't be right! I'm 'insert rank' and I suck!". Bruh calm down you're in the top 95%. Appreciate yourself.
I'm no expert, but to me, no ranking system's ever topped Tekken 7's. That game looked at its massive player base and measured out exactly how many ranks are enough to adequately describe every level of skill.
Hard disagree lol ranks were way too easy to farm cause you can rematch people as many times as you like, rage quitting never had any penalties until like season 3 and even then it was negligible. and all the names of the ranks are way too arbitrary. After playing T7 for like 4 years I can confidently say that that system is ass.
T7 has a LOT of issues that bubble up after you've engaged with it for long enough. It seems cool at first but the problems mainly kick in around mid ranks. While you generally will find a consistent rank for your skill level, the fact that it doesn't use an MMR system is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it means that any losses aren't actually a big deal (frequently games with MMR will drop it heavily if you get a loss streak, causing you to make much smaller gains on the way back up) since you can guarantee the amount you'll win back, but it also means that it naturally pushes you slightly upwards, and this gets more aggressive if you play against someone who you just happen to hopelessly outclass in some fundamental way, because if they choose to keep rematching for whatever reason, you keep getting the same points over and over again. And because rematching requires that consent from both sides, the "easy" way to climb in T7 is to only take rematches that you 100% know you can win, or at least win in the long run, so that you can just choose to not play against the people who beat you. And because of the game not having any kind of reliable disconnect punishment, it's not even the case that if you get INTO a game you have to take any losses. The save data is all stored locally so any losses can immediately be cancelled out by savescumming, and there are many many players who are too bad to actually get beyond purple ranks so they sit smurfing around orange to claw back a scrap of self-worth. The other thing is that yellow-orange is around the point where you start regularly seeing very high level players working on alt characters. Having separate ranks for separate characters makes sense and I don't generally blame them for going the way they did with it, but it is a little absurd that you can have a character who you played once in like Dans, demoted on, and never touched for 2 years while you played other stuff to TGO, and because of that ONE demotion, that character will never get the same compensation rank all the non-played characters will get. It also doesn't link Kuma/Panda despite them having the exact same kit, which means the rare TGO bear mains get to stomp their way up through blues a second time for free. These aren't super gamebreaking, IMO. The fact is, while prowess doesn't do much, it *does* at least let you know when your opponent is extremely experienced relative to whatever alt they're playing on, and it's completely your choice to play into a smurf over and over again. Hell, you might even find that they suck enough on the character to let you farm them. It's just a little grating that the expectation of playing ranked is that you will play against roughly equal skill opponents, like it's the entire reason that people will avoid sitting on player match (especially when they're newer), and then you just get the most random matchmaking anyway thanks to all these different factors.
I feel like a big part of this is a big loss of nuance in online discussion. Like, there is something to be said for the idea that the skill gap between the top and lower high-ranks is immense, but I also think it is kinda ridiculous to call them "beginners" as well? Like, there are degrees of good that exist and I feel like the "everyone below masters top 100 is garbage" is losing that thread a bit.
I see this in a lot of competitive game scenes. People in League will call you trash for being Diamond despite that being the top 3% of the entire playerbase.
Same thing happened in Overwatch. At the top of the ladder, every 100ish rating represents the same gap in skill as entire leagues of the lower ranks. So a gold player is as far from a silver as a 4200 player is from 4100.
JabhiM was kind enough to play me during the final beta through 15 sets - that was eye opening. I got all kinds of wiggety-washed, but I had so much fun just seeing what is possible and how good you can get.
If you take this to the extreme you get strive’s celestial “rank” which ranges from people who literally have no idea what the hell they’re doing to nbnhmr
The skill level is definitely all over the place even including the other ranks. Ive played diamonds that were good and masters that honestly im surprised got there. Ive played plats that were harder to beat then some masters ive played
As somebody who plays too many goddamn games across a shitton of genres, I tend to go for the max rank and then stop-if I make it that far, which I often don't! But I appreciate that there's a lot of room to grow at the max rank, because to me that's for *career* players. I don't stake my life and livelihood on the game, I'm happy just being at a sufficiently impressive-sounding percentile 😂 But yeah it's a bit disingenuous to call anyone at that level a beginner just because there are technically better players. The ceiling keeps going up, not the floor.
With a masters rank that does not demote, top rank inflation is a absolutely a thing. But under no circumstances is a masters player a beginner lol, they will still have to learn the game and put in the work to get to such a rank
Something I've always believed... Ranking systems are measures or progression rather than skill. Sure, it takes skill to rank higher, but being higher ranked doesn't mean you are more skilled. In Street Fighter, an easy example of this is Sakonoko who does not push his rank, but is guaranteed to be stronger than most players. (I don't think his SFV rank ever went pass Rookie)
I think this rank elitism is what alienates players from the FGC. They talk about the community needing to grow as the player base starts to age, pros getting older, but still look down on weaker players who maybe have families or jobs or school. Maybe they only have a couple hours or a weekend to try and improve. Their work is valid and their rank is valid. I say that having just got to platinum last week coming from never playing a fighting game seriously ever. It sucks to here the community thinks that effort doesn’t even matter. I can only imagine what it feels like to someone even more casual who was inspired to pick up SF6 or any fighting game.
To be fair, this isn't really just fighting games. It's most games. I recall trying to pick up Teamfight Tactics a few years ago, got to Platinum far faster than I imagined, and when I commented that "hey I did this, this was cool", the immediate response was that I should uninstall the game because "good players would get to at least diamond by that time". And TFT is overall a pretty chill game compared to, say, the game it was built on.
I've played SF for years. I have 2 chatacters at master rank but I'm nowhere near as good as top players. I'm an average player and I don't care if pros say I'm trash. I want to get better at the game so I play it regardless of what others say about my skill level. Knowing your own flaws is the only way to get better. If someone saying your trash makes you feel sad then I'm sorry but you don't have the mentality to be a top player.
Just wanna say this to whoever wrote that tweet. "Who the F is that guy?" Who made you judge of who are beginners and who are not. AFAIK if master is reached you already have good fundamentals and understand the game. Far from beginners. WTF is that guy smokin lol.
Why are a bunch of people in comments trying to cope that rank has no meaning which is just the converse of the opinion that is the subject of this discussion but equally as unhelpful? Rank has meaning getting to masters requires progression. Then the mmr system is more about a traditional skill placement. There are pros that dont participate in this system but they are outliers as they have the resources and network to play with other pros There’s nuance in this discussion, its not a “feel good” of my competitive merits. Honestly if the original tweet had some better wording it’d have a point. And unless youre a pro already established in the field, it is very very unlikely you are participating in the game at a high competitive level and if youre ok with that, awesome.
This is my first fighting game and I think this is the first video I've seen that understands how ranking systems like glicko2 or elo are supposed to work. Are you guys used to just grinding points all the time?
It's ultimately a time vs skill argument tbh, if we value positive(or even slightly negative) win rate then that then that definitely cuts down the amount of time needed and lowers the skill gap but as someone who used to ladder Pokemon Showdown that ranking system just shows positive win rate as well because rather than a specific percentage it's just points so you can get to the 1400's by having +30 or 40 wins, it doesn't matter whether that's 30-0 or 550-520 the result is a similar ranking. It's why I absolutely hate laddering in basically every game because it's just a time sink that I ultimately don't care about
Gaming culture loves making "good" synonymous with "the absolute best" lol. I think it's a really unhealthy mindset for a community to gatekeep validation/acknowledgment of their progress so hard.
Even the people who ARE the absolute best get downplayed. "They just grind games. Not impressive." FGC brainrot has no cure. You just have to ignore them.
Honestly this is true of a lot of other communities too. With skateboarding, the bar has been raised so much that when it first got popular in the 80s and early 90s, only a handful of people in the world were doing things like Ollies. Now Ollies, pop-shuvits, and even kickflips are seen as standard if you wanna be considered a “real” skater. In reality these things are hard as fuck and take a ton of practice, and all the crazy skate videos you see are such an incredibly small portion of the very best
Also, a big part of the problem is that high level players are so far from the bottom / it's been so long since they were an actual beginner that they really have no frame of reference for it anymore. They're playing against lower ranked Master players and beating them easily, so they must be new to this. When was the last time they played against am actual bronze or silver, lmao.
Difference between 100th percentile and 99th percentile in any endeavor is gomna be disproportionately massive. Thats just how normal distributions work.
I have improved like crazy in SF6 in the last 2 months, but I'm still kilometers away from master. I'm still not that good with antiairs or drive impact reversal, I barely use drive rush and still don't know how to correclty use my super level 2 or the blanka-chan setups. I lose a lot. Yet I still manage to keep afloat around plat5 and diam1. Since I'm not worried about getting to master soon, but busy learning and improving, my time playing the game have been simply awesome.
I play this game for maybe an hour once every week or two. I hold my own against diamond players right now. I remember when beating a Gold player was a huge accomplishment for me. There's too many good games this year for me to play SF every day.
It's just statistics. Almost every way of measuring a population is going to produce a normal distribution (what's commonly called a "bell curve"). So the same number of people are going to be in a very narrow band near the average as are in the entire long tail off from top 5% to infinity.
this is my first time comfortably reaching diamond ranks and i fully expected diamond players to start having like solid gameplans, but theyre just as all over the place as platinum players. just maybe a bit more solid combos and flow charts. still shit neuch in diamond.
We should know better than to attach tooo much value to rankings in fighting games or any online game for that matter. It just gives you a pretty good idea of how you rank relative to other players based on the system.
I’m just happy I got my main cammy master before sajam got his dirty hands on her 😂😭 do like the crazy difficulty of the MR system because I definitely planned to get cammy there then move on but now theres a valid reason to keep grinding with the character you started with/ are more intrigued in instead of switching or burning out completely until DLC
I'm a "bad" master player and whenever I'm feeling too overwhelmed playing with other master players in casuals or ranked, I go the battle hub for some rest and its astonishing how much better I am than the average non master players there lol. Being good or bad is all about perspective. You could be the 100th player in the world and still get dead last in a tournament where only the top 100 players in the world would compete. Think about that.
I remember hearing from a well known league caster that the difference in skill between the challenger player with the lowest lp and the rank 1 in the server is almost the same as going from gold to master
The issue with this type of "engagement tweet" (because I'm not sure I'm buying the detachment being that severe) is that when you do these contextual categorizations, first you need to establish that context and second, even with that said, there's a general meaning to terms such as "basic", "average", "mediocre", "good" and so on. If you tell me you got the basics of chess, my conclusion isn't that you lose convincingly to Kasparov, but beat everyone at every park ever, my conclusion is that you don't move your rooks diagonally. And this type of circle jerking creates the well known situation where people who, say, climbed from gold to plat after practicing and grinding, quite literally feel there's something wrong with them, because "surely if they focused on it in those two months, if their body and brain worked normally, they'd at least hit mid-master".
This is something that most people that have never played professionally in well... Anything... Don't know. But games given the stats is much easier to track than anything else. In every single game/sport, the highest skill gap is ALWAYS at the highest rank. The gap between the top 1% players and the top 0.01% players is ENORMOUS. The top 1% of players includes the the best in the world.... and people that just play casually but don't have the time to really study the game and develop it at the highest level. You might think there is a huge skill gap between gold and platinum ranks because now players seem to have a lot more match up knowledge, or do more optimal combos etc etc. There are very noticeable tangible improvements you can make at that level of skill. But that guy that just reached the highest rank and now gets queued with actual pros and is getting completely destroyed at every aspect of the game, there is nothing he can look at specifically as a way to improve. He literally needs to get better at every single aspect of his gameplay in a way that is often times something that you can't practice. For e.g, in FPS games a big aspect is "game sense" as in reading your opponents, knowing how to outplay in a 1vX environment. Understanding the timings on pushes, knowing when to push etc etc. Now imagine I said "yeah your game sense sucks, you need to get better at it", how do you improve it? What steps can you take to check your game sense is better and what can you do to even develop it? That's what the guy playing with pros is stuck thinking. However If I said "your aim sucks, get better" then he can just sit in deathmatch or an aim map and get better because that's a mechanical skill, At the top level of FPS games, everyone has godlike aim. Sure there are "slightly more godlike aimers" but what really sets the difference between the absolute best player and just another pro in a top 20 team in the world is the thinking. Fighting game (especially new ones) ranks aren't a very accurate representation of skill when there are characters that are knowledge checks. It's not impossible to knowledge check your way to the highest rank with decent (but inferior) other mechanics to people at the same skill.
It's so much better than SFV though, Sajam. I'm a Diamond and the match making feels skill-based. I don't have many non-competitive matches. In SFV matches varied WILDLY in terms of the matchup competitiveness. SF6 is on point at least for Plat-Diamond.
I’m close to master but don’t really want to get there. The skill range experience at low diamond 5 is probably closer to my actual skill than who I would play in Master. I have always been someone who is like an entry level gatekeeper at locals. I don’t need master rank to know that top players will body me consistently. I almost wish MR had ranges and placement matches. I don’t think I would mind being 12-1300 MR if I didn’t have to lose my way there from the starting rank. I’m not going to have fun playing people capable of winning locals/regionals knowing I’m going to just get mostly destroyed. They really need to widen the matchmaking regions so they can match make people via MR more closely. People like punk should really never be matched with Diamond 5 players or anyone less than 300 MR from them ideally.
2:50 right now I just gotta find some confidence in being in a similar position to this theoretical Honda (not in SF6), from there it's all gonna work out.
The best reason why the new system is so good is that my feeble, 10 year-old brain gets pumped full of dopamine any time someone says "it's time to master rate, i just love to master rate all day."
The way people talk about how "good" players are based on rank in games always confused me because it's completely arbitrary. I remember having discussions about games like Siege or Rocket League where people would say that placing in any rank outside of the top two tiers meant you're "a beginner." If Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum -- or whatever other ranks you have -- all mean the same thing, then what's the point of having different ranks? And by what criteria are you deciding that someone is a "beginner?" By looking at their skill level compared to the people in the top ranks? Of course the people in the top ranks are going to be better! That doesn't mean someone is a "beginner," and it doesn't mean someone who ranks gold in a game isn't "good." Have them play against someone who just picked up the game, and they're going to look like a top-tier player. Different ranks exist to categorize different levels of experience because there are skill gaps. Not everyone is "a beginner" or "bad at a game" just because they're not in the top 10% of players. That's just goofy.
I mean 143 potential tournament winners does sound pretty normal to me, probably even high. Though I know a lot of them are also alt accounts/characters.
So the new ranking system is FINALLY GETTING CLOSER TO WHAT EVERY REAL SPORT (Basketball, Football, ⚽️ ect.) Have been doing for um-teenth years. Glad they finally figured out that when you win again good players you should gain Points-Respect-Standing & move up the ranking and down when you take losses.... especially bad losses.
Alot of people are hanging in casual match now. Youll fight plats that fight like high diamonds and silvers that fight like diamond. Unranked players are usually crazy fucking good.
I wish the master MR system was how the whole ranked ladder worked. I'm not saying that I haven't improved but I find it hard to believe I've truly grown that much in skill since the game's release to go from Bronze 1 to Plat 2 and feel more that I'm just kinda failing upwards
The good news is that one of two things will happen now: either you'll keep winning and eventually get to Master or you will plateau. You ain't getting to Master any time soon unless you're winning close to 50%, as the number of matches increases greatly the more you fall below that threshold.
Upper level gate keepers are some of the worst. I hover around 1400-1500 MR and consistently place top 4 atleast at a a fair amount of locals with 30-50 people signed up. I have to go to a hella renown local where i KNOW a few pro players or hidden bosses are gonna be before im even worried about not making it to top 8 and a major tourney with crappy seeding before i have to worry about going 0-2 like a “beginner”. These dudes need to touch grass. Daigo aint even out here coming out with these arbitrary “youre a beginner till youre at this MR” bullshit cause he doesnt care about you unless youre a threat to knock him of a chance at winning a major. If youre in the top percent youre hella good, if youre in the top 50 percent till youre doing alright and just have fun and you’ll get there at your own pace.
I won Evo, finally can play the tutorial.
grats bro
Because of your avatar , i imagined Mugi going to Evo.
@emperormegaman3856 i could see her making it far tbh
As ‘jam says, “I love that for you”
@@scottv5587"Love to hear it"
This reminds me of my local gym here in the Salt Lake City area. About 15 years ago, I would play basketball at the county rec center once a week. There was one guy who was good. Really good. He was about 6'6" and would only play if needed to balance numbers on teams. Even then, he would only pass the ball around. I watched him take up a challenge once and play 1v5 with a team of regulars and he won 11-7. I talked to him one day and found he was a bench player for the University of Utah 6 years prior. He wasn't good enough to start on a D1 college team, which only produced 3 D-League players and 1 NBA bench player in the 4 years he was on the team. And yet he felt it was unfair to the "guys who were just there to have fun" if he played 100%. That was eye-opening.
What a beautiful person. Truly. He just wanted to get his workouts and not fuck up anyone's fun by posting triple doubles in a pick up game. That kinda shit is discouraging to casuals.
However I'm not sure how this reminded you of that. Still thanks for sharing. 🙏🏾
@@JermaineCausticxArmaCrawford Just the perspective of how good “the best” are compared to “good” compared to a common hobbyist. The average player doesn’t really get to experience “very good” let alone “the best” for a comparison.
Thats why whenever you see these pros vs regular people hoop vids, the pros aren't even defending at all, they feel it will be unfair lol
Do you come to locals here in SLC?!
@@Timmcd wrong coast friend. 🙏🏾
The one benefit of being away from FGs for almost the last 15 years is that I'm old / far enough removed to just be focused on my own progress. I'm just 250 points away from Diamond and it's exciting not just because of my progress to date but knowing I have so much more room to grow. All the wisdom and guidance from FGC creators like Sajam has made my return to FGs that much easier. Here's to always improving!
This needs to be on a shirt. Every now and then I need to be reminded that growth and enjoying myself are more important than a win streak.
@Bushidoblacc it especially is above platinum.
Because win streaks don't get you more points
Reminds me of one of the best quotes ever.... “I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me.” - Brian Scalabrine
"In 2013, in response to criticism over him being in a bench role throughout his career and to claims that many would beat him one-on-one, Scalabrine stated, "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me", suggesting that there is a huge difference between any (active or retired) NBA player and those outside the league. In an event organized by The Toucher and Rich Show selected volunteers had the chance to play one-on-one against Scalabrine (until 11 points with a margin of two). The format was called the "Scallenge" and Scalabrine played four games, one against each of the voluntary contenders. Scalabrine won every game with a combined score of 44-6. In an additional game Scalabrine played against the three hosts of the show and won 11-1."
just found this on his wiki
@@KingChewyy This reminds me of my local gym here in the Salt Lake City area. About 15 years ago, I would play basketball at the county rec center once a week. There was one guy who was good. Really good. He was about 6'6" and would only play if needed to balance numbers on teams. Even then, he would only pass the ball around. I watched him take up a challenge once and play 1v5 with a team of regulars and he won 11-7. I talked to him one day and found he was a bench player for the University of Utah 6 years prior. He wasn't good enough to start on a D1 college team, which only produced 3 D-League players and 1 NBA bench player in the 4 years he was on the team. And yet he felt it was unfair to the "guys who were just there to have fun" if he played 100%. That was eye-opening.
@@JCintheBCCinteresting story! And good on the guy for not smurfing lol
Who?
The dude drinking the champagne is me whenever I actually get a win off the player who bodies me 30-0
and you earned it 🥂
@@user-et3xn2jm1ufacts only, drink til you pass out, bruv
Exactly! I won a single time in a 15 match set which means I officially beat the game
30-1 time to quit the set and brag about it
@@hands-ongaming7180 Actually I'll usually lose one more time AND THEN I'll quit and brag about it 🍾
This is why I don't like to compare myself to other players, but instead prefer measuring my fighting game growth against myself. There will always be somebody better than me, so instead of focusing on surpassing them, I should focus on surpassing myself from yesterday. I play to defeat myself; defeating others will come naturally as a byproduct.
Huh that...
I'll try that. Thanks.
*This
the most satisfying thing of fighting games for me is seeing progress doing shit that I wasnt able to do before
But if I don't compare how better/ worse I am from others how can I determine how happy I am
It's funny, it's not just fighting games this outlook helps with... good on you, self-improvement is an endless path, but ultimately a pretty worthwhile one!
Most correctest take, honestly a life lesson in general
I always told my friends that I think about games like the Olympics, you can be good and not be Olympic level. You can also be Olympic level and not be the best in the Olympics. Usaron Bolt compared to the worst Olympic sprinter is like a full 2 second difference, but sprinting 100m in 11 seconds is still really good.
I remember Brian_F talking about it, and saying people at the top of the ladder online aren't tournament winners - because tournament winners are in tournaments instead of playing ranked.
Aka nuckledu.
Sits around ~ 1800 mr. Yet i see him in multiple grand finals or top 4s weekly
Having a mix of long sets and ranked play are both beneficial to grow as a player
I dont really agree , i mean the top 20 mr is litteraly almost only tournament players .
Brian_F's comment was regarding LP, I believe. The new MR system is a zero-sum metric and more reflective of relative skill.@@lolilol5346
@@lolilol5346I said this in sfv. MR is the most accurate ranking we've ever had and tournament winners are at the top. MR is an elo based system rewarding good win rate against other good players. Old ranking systems were infinite point inflation systems that rewarded endless grinding vs. Lower rank players. MR is the best system we've ever had.
Ive solidified my role as the platinum gate keeper. All gold 5s must face me because im constantly on the verge of demotion
that's actually something to be oddly proud of :D
@@phillipfry8141 its pretty frustrating I feel like im not making much progress. Itd be nice to have people to play with to learn from without focusing on wins and losses
Please don't be a Honda player, please don't be a Honda player.
@@t3hmaniac rashid 🤣
Same except I’m the gatekeeper that only shows up once every two weeks
I'm 44, I own a company and I have to deal with all the shit life put us into. I can play this game on late evenings when my head isn't overwhelmed and I'm 4 star plat. In my mind I'm a badass master, I'm super happy of my little improvements and honestly that's all about it. Enjoy the game guys :)
As a fellow grown man with responsibilities I appreciate this comment. I'm pretty much hard stuck at Plat-3, and I'm finding its more bc I only get to play a couple times a week, which means I'm pretty much always rusty, and even then often my mental game is cooked from a long work day.
Does it mean I'm trash? Maybe if I compare myself to streamers and pros, people who play games *literally all day for income*. But compared to your average casual fighting game enjoyer, I feel alright about where I'm at.
I'm with you. I played a weekend BH tournament (open bracket) and made top 8. Beat two Diamonds on the way and lost 0-2 to a Master Cammy with 650+ hours played. They won the tourney and never lost a match. I was okay with it.
I win some and lose some to Diamonds/Masters, but my improvement is based on the time I have to invest.
People in chat to Sajam: "I find it discouraging that you're taking a character I've trying real hard at and surpassing me so quickly."
Meanwhile Punk is moving on to character #5 in his "every character to 2K MR challenge" 🤯
Like bruh Brian_F is still grinding trying to get to 2k, and Punk got his JP to 2k in a few days 😭😭😭
I'm reminded of a different video talking about one of the worst-hitting players in Major League Baseball history, Steve Jeltz. And yeah for a major leaguer he was bad. But making the League in the first place means you're better than something like 99.9% of all players. We're talking about the gap between the top 10% and the top 1%.
Yup. Basketball version of this is when Brian Scalabrine, a NBA player known more as a meme, than for his play, as he was a bench warmer, set up an open challenge for anyone to take him on in a one on one game. Brian washed everyone and stated very simply afterwards, "I'm closer to LeBron, than you are to me."
@@KiraDaBeastNY Hype as FUCK. Sick story
Jon Bois ❤❤
@@kylefields3951 There's a lot of hype stories like this. Some of the funniest stories were when basketball players, particularly ones who played pretty high level high school or college basketball realized they weren't gonna make the league. Off the top of my head, there's a guy on UA-cam named Ryan The Crash Dummy, a basketball player from Texas who talked about his "I'm not making it to the league moment" was when his high school played Cypress Lakes High School just outside Houston. The school at the time had De'Aaron Fox, recent first time NBA All-Star. Ryan and his team basically spent the whole four quarters chasing De'Aaron around as he used his speed, fitting his last name, to turn the game into the world's most miserable track meet. For Ryan and his team at least🤣.
More like a gap between the top 1% and top .01%.
on the NBA point, Brian Scalabrine, a career role player in the NBA had one of the hardest quotes ever when schooling some loud dude at the gym
"I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me"
Reminds me of some of your Road to Master VODs where you have to remind chat that just because you're a Master Rank player, that doesn't mean that the Diamond players you play against are actually bad.
Honestly, as someone who left in early SFV and just came back, being told "lmao everything short of master rank is the tutorial" is beyond disheartening when you're struggling in Platinum. Honestly makes you think why even bother continuing to try as a casual player.
As a casual player why do you care what pros are saying? If you enjoy it and want to get better just keep playing. What's pros say should have no bearing at all on your progression in the game.
Stuff like this has unfortunately gotten to me a bit since SF6 has been out. I felt great about myself when I grinded up to Plat when I never made it past Silver in SFV. But people talking about "Bad Master Players" and saying things "Plat is the new Silver" makes me a bit discouraged and like I haven't made any real progress. However, this video and just hearing that Plat is considered about top 30% makes me feel much better and want to get back on the grind now. Very cool, Mr. Jam.
That is with plat 1 included. If you manage to go to plat 2 you are already in the top 20%.
@@Genesys1040 All the more reason to get back to grinding.
Gold was top 20% or something ridiculous in sfv
Even if you did just reach the same percentile as in SFV like Sajam said it just means you hit your skill level and now you have to figure out how to level up your game. Basically, the game is done correctly assessing what you can already do compared to other players and now you have to learn to do new stuff to progress from there.
I literally just stopped playing because of all of the ranked trash talk people do. Took me over 100 hours to get Manon to Plat, and that means nothing? Whatever.
Maybe this is the teacher in me talking, but I think any rank is impressive if it's better than your rank last week or last month or yesterday or whenever. Growth is hard to achieve, and should be celebrated, whether you're an EVO finalist or a rookie picking up your first fighting game.
Would be nice if you could switch showing your rank as a graph of progression. Instead of just a number. Although it might get disheartening after a bad day.
(my dream game would show, what you could have done better right after every match)
Don't know if other games do it like that, but Planetside 2 has graphs for that. Level there is only going up, so it's not a valid measurement. It's nice that they've thought of it, plus achievements.
Man I remember this shit in League of Legends. Early on, you weren't nothing if you weren't at least diamond. Then the joke was "Diamond 4 players are dogs." Then it became diamond 2 players LUL. The amount of times the "good player" goal post moved, you'd think people are running away with them.
The rule in league is, shitlow is any rank or division below challenger, you're in masters? Absolute shitlow dog, anything other than rank 1 challenger is shitlow on the Internet and to toxic pricks
god your videos are always so humbling but at the same time make me content with myself and my personal progress not only in fighting games, but in other aspects of my life as well. Please never stop spreading your wisdom my man your impact on my personal psyche has been insanely positive for me these last few months.
I’m glad to see People that feel like this helps. Learning fighting games has helped me improve other things in my life more than I could have imagined
It's good that feral Honda's are carried to diamond and beyond because that's the portion of the player base that's willing to deal with that playstyle instead of rage quitting and refunding the game
Especially since playing like that is a particular skill. Not everyone can.
I sure as shit tried. U have to really have a mentality that matches that playstyle to climb with it. It's part of what makes them so terrifying. These are the kinds of players that can take you out in a tournament if you make a mistake or underestimate them.
3:24 Hi Sajam, long time fan! I know nobody asked for my perspective, but honestly I feel like people shouldn't get mad that top players/content creators are good at their characters. When a high level player picks up your character and makes it to Master rank, it doesn't stop you from achieving the same. If anything, it gives you valuable insight into how to improve your play and make Masters yourself. I'm a Diamond Rashid/Ryu player, and when I see you/punk/neph/ any top player upload content covering my characters I get pumped that I have another resource for learning how to improve. Just crazy to me that anyone has this take.
Good outlook on the situation. You have the right attitude that will see you consistently improve at the game.
I think the skill gap amongst the world's best players is very interesting because at that level the gap becomes monumental due to mere percentages of difference in ability. Like, every pro player has mastered the fundamentals of the game to a point where you only need to be like 2% more consistent with something like execution or reads to make other god-tier players into non-obstacles
This same attitude in all FGs. Saw it a lot recently in Strive too. "Everything below celestial is tutorial, then celestial is where beginners learn to play the game" stuff. That tower is clearly skewed, but its the same concept. "You are a beginner until you are in to top 2-3% of players in THE WORLD"....which in any other field would make you an expert. People way too entrenched in online forums and get tunnel vision without the whole picture. Just focus on your own improvement, the journey is the most satisfying part
I need an unranked player to win a CPT event to shut these people up specifically
Angry bird is unranked - won EVO, second place at gamers8. Big bird is like diamond 1 and won red bull kumite and went pretty far at EVO.
An unranked player won evo tbf lmao
Ok but logic still doesn't make sense, if an unranked player can win majors and big tournaments it's because they play pro level players in custom rooms all the time. If they decided to hop into ranked they would make 2000MR easily so they still are a 2000MR caliber player so this argument doesn't prove anything. Now if someone was a struggling 1200MR master and just showed up to a tournament and won that's a different story which will almost never happen unless the tournaments competition was super weak.
Unranked players play pros
@@MDToboggan Playing ranked is a different kind of game, a different kind of grind. Ofc it's still 99% street fighter skill, but at this very top where you compete against the other top 100 ranked players, this other 1% means a lot.
If you play mainly ft10 and ft20, even against top players, does mean you can consistently pull off 70-80% wr in ranked.
I got master with every character and I still feel a big gap between myself and the best players and it's honestly a weird feeling. I realize I'm like pretty good and lower level players will tell me as much but the mindset in fighting games that's been drilled into me for 10+ years is that if you're not beating everyone you're not good enough.
I used to think that as well but ultimately you have to decide what you want for yourself. My mentality was so bad a number of years ago that I actually had anxiety attacks at tournaments, sometimes before having to play matches. I thought I had to give up fighting games in general but after taking a step back and putting much less pressure on myself and playing similar games to the aspects I was interested in like Monster Hunter for frame data and mechanics and whatnot I was able to progress past those feelings. Only your personal values should determine if you are happy where you are because ultimately if you don't actually enjoy the games you play then there's not much point in playing
@Brian_F would never say talk about such heresy Sajam! Ty for the honest and thoughtful video.
Just today i joined your stream and you just hit Diamond on Sim. I've hit Diamond yesterday for the first time since launch on Chun. But I'm not mad - its like you said. Experience with other Fighting Games got you to this level. For someone who only picked up a fighting game (serious) for the first time i think its VERY early to hit Master. I'm fine with hitting it in half a year.
"What, you think confetti's gonna shoot out from the sky and everyone's gonna be doing cartwheels and shit?"
Well, NOW I don't
Playing in Master Rank is like Goku going from defeating Piccolo at the World Tournament to running into Raditz at the beginning of Dragon Ball Z. Yes, Goku is the strongest ‘on earth’ but there’s clearly stronger opponents out there, even at the top level.
It’s all about keeping a leveled head and pressing forward. Not much to do than be mindful of your own progress lol.
I mean not everyone can be Cristiano Ronaldo, but playing in the Serie A it's still a big achievement.
Unfortunately with every competitive game, toxicity will exist, no matter how good the community is, there's always a bad egg. If you're playing ranked and you're slowly improving, then that should be enough. Keep improving, and you'll get up higher. No one is perfect, but you can keep working towards the goal of being as perfect as you can be.
You can keep improving and stay the same rank also. Everyone else is improving too.
If there's 1 thing I learned from years of playing League it's that whenever someone insults people of a specific ranked bracket that means they themselves are only just above that rank, i.e. "Silver players are scrubs" said the player who just reached Gold. All they have is ego. It would be almost too cruel to take it from them.
@@snowys4168 That's saying that everyone would stay the same rank you as you forever too. Eventually you WILL get a rank up
"sounds like a horoscope" 😂got me good
Its even more obvious in strive since theres no matchmaking once you get to celestial, once I first got in I had never felt more exposed and square 1 than ever before in the game, I've been there for months and still could never describe myself as more than "mid" (also shows how most beginner brackets allow people in any floor except celestial)
Man I hate the tower system in strive. I got vip pretty much based on luck(everyone who happened to challenge me was doing the 5/6 challenge too) then afterwards everyone would either dodge me or be absolute monsters. Not to mention people who just dodge certain match ups or connection issues. I soon after quit strive because it was really hard to find anyone at my skill level
I think the "worst player in the NBA" metaphor was perfect. The worst player in the NBA is better than anyone you've ever known who played basketball, but he sucks compared to the best person in the NBA, that made a TON of sense when you put it like that.
Bro I really hope some random ass Lilly player who doesn't have any socials win Capcom cup so everyone can really start tripping.
@shatteredteethofgod "of course they won. Nobody's ever heard of them, so we can't see what their strengths and weaknesses are. So, it's pretty much free."
FGC needs to use its words better.
This has been slapping me in the face in Strive lately. Floor 10 is full of people far better than me (moreso since the start of season 3) and man, the skill gap is *rough*. I can hold on there for a little while before getting kicked back to 9, but it's a bit discouraging.
And yes, I know "har har floor 10 is players who are 'just okay' at the game"
I know i shouldn't compare myself to anyone else or care what people say but being barely about to reach diamond whilst apparently master rank is the "beginner" rank i've been feeling really bad about my own skill lately. I really needed this video.
The big trend I've noticed surrounding skill and ranked status in fighting games is a lot of the online FGC is addicted to downplaying their achievements. Any time someone posts ranked distributions data people are like "these numbers can't be right! I'm 'insert rank' and I suck!". Bruh calm down you're in the top 95%. Appreciate yourself.
I'm no expert, but to me, no ranking system's ever topped Tekken 7's. That game looked at its massive player base and measured out exactly how many ranks are enough to adequately describe every level of skill.
Hard disagree lol ranks were way too easy to farm cause you can rematch people as many times as you like, rage quitting never had any penalties until like season 3 and even then it was negligible. and all the names of the ranks are way too arbitrary. After playing T7 for like 4 years I can confidently say that that system is ass.
T7 has a LOT of issues that bubble up after you've engaged with it for long enough. It seems cool at first but the problems mainly kick in around mid ranks. While you generally will find a consistent rank for your skill level, the fact that it doesn't use an MMR system is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it means that any losses aren't actually a big deal (frequently games with MMR will drop it heavily if you get a loss streak, causing you to make much smaller gains on the way back up) since you can guarantee the amount you'll win back, but it also means that it naturally pushes you slightly upwards, and this gets more aggressive if you play against someone who you just happen to hopelessly outclass in some fundamental way, because if they choose to keep rematching for whatever reason, you keep getting the same points over and over again. And because rematching requires that consent from both sides, the "easy" way to climb in T7 is to only take rematches that you 100% know you can win, or at least win in the long run, so that you can just choose to not play against the people who beat you.
And because of the game not having any kind of reliable disconnect punishment, it's not even the case that if you get INTO a game you have to take any losses. The save data is all stored locally so any losses can immediately be cancelled out by savescumming, and there are many many players who are too bad to actually get beyond purple ranks so they sit smurfing around orange to claw back a scrap of self-worth.
The other thing is that yellow-orange is around the point where you start regularly seeing very high level players working on alt characters. Having separate ranks for separate characters makes sense and I don't generally blame them for going the way they did with it, but it is a little absurd that you can have a character who you played once in like Dans, demoted on, and never touched for 2 years while you played other stuff to TGO, and because of that ONE demotion, that character will never get the same compensation rank all the non-played characters will get. It also doesn't link Kuma/Panda despite them having the exact same kit, which means the rare TGO bear mains get to stomp their way up through blues a second time for free.
These aren't super gamebreaking, IMO. The fact is, while prowess doesn't do much, it *does* at least let you know when your opponent is extremely experienced relative to whatever alt they're playing on, and it's completely your choice to play into a smurf over and over again. Hell, you might even find that they suck enough on the character to let you farm them. It's just a little grating that the expectation of playing ranked is that you will play against roughly equal skill opponents, like it's the entire reason that people will avoid sitting on player match (especially when they're newer), and then you just get the most random matchmaking anyway thanks to all these different factors.
0:30 least obvious fgc engagement bait
For me it just comes down to a good game. If there's a back and forth and some good moments, even when I loose it was fun.
I feel like a big part of this is a big loss of nuance in online discussion. Like, there is something to be said for the idea that the skill gap between the top and lower high-ranks is immense, but I also think it is kinda ridiculous to call them "beginners" as well? Like, there are degrees of good that exist and I feel like the "everyone below masters top 100 is garbage" is losing that thread a bit.
I see this in a lot of competitive game scenes. People in League will call you trash for being Diamond despite that being the top 3% of the entire playerbase.
Same thing happened in Overwatch. At the top of the ladder, every 100ish rating represents the same gap in skill as entire leagues of the lower ranks. So a gold player is as far from a silver as a 4200 player is from 4100.
Always good to see the 3rd place guy meme, it's a big favorite
“I’m way closer to LeBron James than you are to me”
-The goat
JabhiM was kind enough to play me during the final beta through 15 sets - that was eye opening. I got all kinds of wiggety-washed, but I had so much fun just seeing what is possible and how good you can get.
If you take this to the extreme you get strive’s celestial “rank” which ranges from people who literally have no idea what the hell they’re doing to nbnhmr
"beginner with good fundamentals" feels like an oxymoron
I think that's previous fgc experience, but less time with sf6
Anyone lacking specific matchup knowledge is that.
The skill level is definitely all over the place even including the other ranks. Ive played diamonds that were good and masters that honestly im surprised got there. Ive played plats that were harder to beat then some masters ive played
As somebody who plays too many goddamn games across a shitton of genres, I tend to go for the max rank and then stop-if I make it that far, which I often don't! But I appreciate that there's a lot of room to grow at the max rank, because to me that's for *career* players. I don't stake my life and livelihood on the game, I'm happy just being at a sufficiently impressive-sounding percentile 😂 But yeah it's a bit disingenuous to call anyone at that level a beginner just because there are technically better players. The ceiling keeps going up, not the floor.
"Honda players not blocking = Shaq not hitting free throws" is such a great analogy
With a masters rank that does not demote, top rank inflation is a absolutely a thing. But under no circumstances is a masters player a beginner lol, they will still have to learn the game and put in the work to get to such a rank
Something I've always believed... Ranking systems are measures or progression rather than skill. Sure, it takes skill to rank higher, but being higher ranked doesn't mean you are more skilled. In Street Fighter, an easy example of this is Sakonoko who does not push his rank, but is guaranteed to be stronger than most players. (I don't think his SFV rank ever went pass Rookie)
I think this rank elitism is what alienates players from the FGC. They talk about the community needing to grow as the player base starts to age, pros getting older, but still look down on weaker players who maybe have families or jobs or school. Maybe they only have a couple hours or a weekend to try and improve. Their work is valid and their rank is valid. I say that having just got to platinum last week coming from never playing a fighting game seriously ever. It sucks to here the community thinks that effort doesn’t even matter. I can only imagine what it feels like to someone even more casual who was inspired to pick up SF6 or any fighting game.
To be fair, this isn't really just fighting games. It's most games. I recall trying to pick up Teamfight Tactics a few years ago, got to Platinum far faster than I imagined, and when I commented that "hey I did this, this was cool", the immediate response was that I should uninstall the game because "good players would get to at least diamond by that time". And TFT is overall a pretty chill game compared to, say, the game it was built on.
This is why Guilty Gear Strive made the mmr invisible and ranking system something to be cheese around instead of an objective score of value
That’s not exclusive to the fgc. Go to an overwatch, rocket league or valorant thread and you’ll see people using rank as a social credit score
I've played SF for years. I have 2 chatacters at master rank but I'm nowhere near as good as top players. I'm an average player and I don't care if pros say I'm trash. I want to get better at the game so I play it regardless of what others say about my skill level. Knowing your own flaws is the only way to get better. If someone saying your trash makes you feel sad then I'm sorry but you don't have the mentality to be a top player.
god, that "they regressed" after you read "animals" got me so good and i dont know why
Just wanna say this to whoever wrote that tweet.
"Who the F is that guy?"
Who made you judge of who are beginners and who are not. AFAIK if master is reached you already have good fundamentals and understand the game. Far from beginners. WTF is that guy smokin lol.
Why are a bunch of people in comments trying to cope that rank has no meaning which is just the converse of the opinion that is the subject of this discussion but equally as unhelpful?
Rank has meaning getting to masters requires progression. Then the mmr system is more about a traditional skill placement. There are pros that dont participate in this system but they are outliers as they have the resources and network to play with other pros
There’s nuance in this discussion, its not a “feel good” of my competitive merits.
Honestly if the original tweet had some better wording it’d have a point. And unless youre a pro already established in the field, it is very very unlikely you are participating in the game at a high competitive level and if youre ok with that, awesome.
bless james and his content farm
This is my first fighting game and I think this is the first video I've seen that understands how ranking systems like glicko2 or elo are supposed to work. Are you guys used to just grinding points all the time?
It's ultimately a time vs skill argument tbh, if we value positive(or even slightly negative) win rate then that then that definitely cuts down the amount of time needed and lowers the skill gap but as someone who used to ladder Pokemon Showdown that ranking system just shows positive win rate as well because rather than a specific percentage it's just points so you can get to the 1400's by having +30 or 40 wins, it doesn't matter whether that's 30-0 or 550-520 the result is a similar ranking. It's why I absolutely hate laddering in basically every game because it's just a time sink that I ultimately don't care about
Gaming culture loves making "good" synonymous with "the absolute best" lol. I think it's a really unhealthy mindset for a community to gatekeep validation/acknowledgment of their progress so hard.
Even the people who ARE the absolute best get downplayed. "They just grind games. Not impressive."
FGC brainrot has no cure. You just have to ignore them.
Honestly this is true of a lot of other communities too. With skateboarding, the bar has been raised so much that when it first got popular in the 80s and early 90s, only a handful of people in the world were doing things like Ollies. Now Ollies, pop-shuvits, and even kickflips are seen as standard if you wanna be considered a “real” skater. In reality these things are hard as fuck and take a ton of practice, and all the crazy skate videos you see are such an incredibly small portion of the very best
1:29 the idea of ever calling daigo that is absurd
Also, a big part of the problem is that high level players are so far from the bottom / it's been so long since they were an actual beginner that they really have no frame of reference for it anymore.
They're playing against lower ranked Master players and beating them easily, so they must be new to this. When was the last time they played against am actual bronze or silver, lmao.
Difference between 100th percentile and 99th percentile in any endeavor is gomna be disproportionately massive. Thats just how normal distributions work.
I have improved like crazy in SF6 in the last 2 months, but I'm still kilometers away from master.
I'm still not that good with antiairs or drive impact reversal, I barely use drive rush and still don't know how to correclty use my super level 2 or the blanka-chan setups.
I lose a lot. Yet I still manage to keep afloat around plat5 and diam1.
Since I'm not worried about getting to master soon, but busy learning and improving, my time playing the game have been simply awesome.
I play this game for maybe an hour once every week or two. I hold my own against diamond players right now. I remember when beating a Gold player was a huge accomplishment for me. There's too many good games this year for me to play SF every day.
If DSP can get Master, anyone can.
And LTG
I’m just not built for it unfortunately
FGC Don't be PoS People on Twitter for a Day Challenge (Impossible Mode)
It's just statistics. Almost every way of measuring a population is going to produce a normal distribution (what's commonly called a "bell curve"). So the same number of people are going to be in a very narrow band near the average as are in the entire long tail off from top 5% to infinity.
this is my first time comfortably reaching diamond ranks and i fully expected diamond players to start having like solid gameplans, but theyre just as all over the place as platinum players. just maybe a bit more solid combos and flow charts. still shit neuch in diamond.
We should know better than to attach tooo much value to rankings in fighting games or any online game for that matter. It just gives you a pretty good idea of how you rank relative to other players based on the system.
sajam look like the kind of dude who orders his burgers plain
This is why Strive had such a nebulous rank system. Dickwaving contests have never been good.
I’m just happy I got my main cammy master before sajam got his dirty hands on her 😂😭 do like the crazy difficulty of the MR system because I definitely planned to get cammy there then move on but now theres a valid reason to keep grinding with the character you started with/ are more intrigued in instead of switching or burning out completely until DLC
I'm a "bad" master player and whenever I'm feeling too overwhelmed playing with other master players in casuals or ranked, I go the battle hub for some rest and its astonishing how much better I am than the average non master players there lol. Being good or bad is all about perspective. You could be the 100th player in the world and still get dead last in a tournament where only the top 100 players in the world would compete. Think about that.
It's like comparing the hanma's mushiro and pickle. To the rest of the cast in the Baki anime.
I remember hearing from a well known league caster that the difference in skill between the challenger player with the lowest lp and the rank 1 in the server is almost the same as going from gold to master
The issue with this type of "engagement tweet" (because I'm not sure I'm buying the detachment being that severe) is that when you do these contextual categorizations, first you need to establish that context and second, even with that said, there's a general meaning to terms such as "basic", "average", "mediocre", "good" and so on.
If you tell me you got the basics of chess, my conclusion isn't that you lose convincingly to Kasparov, but beat everyone at every park ever, my conclusion is that you don't move your rooks diagonally.
And this type of circle jerking creates the well known situation where people who, say, climbed from gold to plat after practicing and grinding, quite literally feel there's something wrong with them, because "surely if they focused on it in those two months, if their body and brain worked normally, they'd at least hit mid-master".
This is something that most people that have never played professionally in well... Anything... Don't know. But games given the stats is much easier to track than anything else.
In every single game/sport, the highest skill gap is ALWAYS at the highest rank. The gap between the top 1% players and the top 0.01% players is ENORMOUS. The top 1% of players includes the the best in the world.... and people that just play casually but don't have the time to really study the game and develop it at the highest level. You might think there is a huge skill gap between gold and platinum ranks because now players seem to have a lot more match up knowledge, or do more optimal combos etc etc. There are very noticeable tangible improvements you can make at that level of skill. But that guy that just reached the highest rank and now gets queued with actual pros and is getting completely destroyed at every aspect of the game, there is nothing he can look at specifically as a way to improve. He literally needs to get better at every single aspect of his gameplay in a way that is often times something that you can't practice.
For e.g, in FPS games a big aspect is "game sense" as in reading your opponents, knowing how to outplay in a 1vX environment. Understanding the timings on pushes, knowing when to push etc etc. Now imagine I said "yeah your game sense sucks, you need to get better at it", how do you improve it? What steps can you take to check your game sense is better and what can you do to even develop it? That's what the guy playing with pros is stuck thinking. However If I said "your aim sucks, get better" then he can just sit in deathmatch or an aim map and get better because that's a mechanical skill,
At the top level of FPS games, everyone has godlike aim. Sure there are "slightly more godlike aimers" but what really sets the difference between the absolute best player and just another pro in a top 20 team in the world is the thinking.
Fighting game (especially new ones) ranks aren't a very accurate representation of skill when there are characters that are knowledge checks. It's not impossible to knowledge check your way to the highest rank with decent (but inferior) other mechanics to people at the same skill.
It's so much better than SFV though, Sajam. I'm a Diamond and the match making feels skill-based. I don't have many non-competitive matches. In SFV matches varied WILDLY in terms of the matchup competitiveness. SF6 is on point at least for Plat-Diamond.
You didn't hear it from me, but word on the street fighter is there's a tape between Blanka and Juri called Jungle Dfeet.
No matter who you are there will always be someone who will say you are trash. You could win EVO and people would whine that you were "carried".
I’m close to master but don’t really want to get there. The skill range experience at low diamond 5 is probably closer to my actual skill than who I would play in Master. I have always been someone who is like an entry level gatekeeper at locals. I don’t need master rank to know that top players will body me consistently. I almost wish MR had ranges and placement matches. I don’t think I would mind being 12-1300 MR if I didn’t have to lose my way there from the starting rank. I’m not going to have fun playing people capable of winning locals/regionals knowing I’m going to just get mostly destroyed. They really need to widen the matchmaking regions so they can match make people via MR more closely. People like punk should really never be matched with Diamond 5 players or anyone less than 300 MR from them ideally.
All I know when snake eyez plays players around 1500 he experiments a lot
So basically 1500 mr is the first hunter exam. And 1900+ is the real hunter exam
2:50 right now I just gotta find some confidence in being in a similar position to this theoretical Honda (not in SF6), from there it's all gonna work out.
The best reason why the new system is so good is that my feeble, 10 year-old brain gets pumped full of dopamine any time someone says "it's time to master rate, i just love to master rate all day."
The way people talk about how "good" players are based on rank in games always confused me because it's completely arbitrary. I remember having discussions about games like Siege or Rocket League where people would say that placing in any rank outside of the top two tiers meant you're "a beginner." If Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum -- or whatever other ranks you have -- all mean the same thing, then what's the point of having different ranks? And by what criteria are you deciding that someone is a "beginner?" By looking at their skill level compared to the people in the top ranks? Of course the people in the top ranks are going to be better! That doesn't mean someone is a "beginner," and it doesn't mean someone who ranks gold in a game isn't "good." Have them play against someone who just picked up the game, and they're going to look like a top-tier player. Different ranks exist to categorize different levels of experience because there are skill gaps. Not everyone is "a beginner" or "bad at a game" just because they're not in the top 10% of players. That's just goofy.
Now I feel inadequate after just hitting master like yesterday 🙃
At least you can
I love this type of videos
When DarksydePhil and LTG are master rank, you know there’s a problem
Seems very similar to chess elo. You aren't really "playing chess" until you hit like 12-1300 elo
The worst of the best is still far away from the best of the worst, the best of the good and likely the best of the excellent.
I mean 143 potential tournament winners does sound pretty normal to me, probably even high. Though I know a lot of them are also alt accounts/characters.
So the new ranking system is FINALLY GETTING CLOSER TO WHAT EVERY REAL SPORT (Basketball, Football, ⚽️ ect.) Have been doing for um-teenth years.
Glad they finally figured out that when you win again good players you should gain Points-Respect-Standing & move up the ranking and down when you take losses.... especially bad losses.
Alot of people are hanging in casual match now. Youll fight plats that fight like high diamonds and silvers that fight like diamond. Unranked players are usually crazy fucking good.
Love me some Sajam
1500 Mr here, I just ran into Kilzyou 33rd evo online yesterday and took a round, beginner tho.
I wish the master MR system was how the whole ranked ladder worked. I'm not saying that I haven't improved but I find it hard to believe I've truly grown that much in skill since the game's release to go from Bronze 1 to Plat 2 and feel more that I'm just kinda failing upwards
The good news is that one of two things will happen now: either you'll keep winning and eventually get to Master or you will plateau. You ain't getting to Master any time soon unless you're winning close to 50%, as the number of matches increases greatly the more you fall below that threshold.
Upper level gate keepers are some of the worst. I hover around 1400-1500 MR and consistently place top 4 atleast at a a fair amount of locals with 30-50 people signed up. I have to go to a hella renown local where i KNOW a few pro players or hidden bosses are gonna be before im even worried about not making it to top 8 and a major tourney with crappy seeding before i have to worry about going 0-2 like a “beginner”. These dudes need to touch grass. Daigo aint even out here coming out with these arbitrary “youre a beginner till youre at this MR” bullshit cause he doesnt care about you unless youre a threat to knock him of a chance at winning a major. If youre in the top percent youre hella good, if youre in the top 50 percent till youre doing alright and just have fun and you’ll get there at your own pace.