State of Japanese vs US players in Xrd and why?

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It's no question that Japan is better than the US when it comes to GGXrd. You can debate how much better Japan is, but Japan is undoubtedly better than the US. I went to Mikado and got beaten down considerably, but that experience was enlightening.


- Why or how is Japan better?
1.) Environment. Mikado in particular is a highly competitive environment. Anyone familiar with an arcade setting knows how it can be. If you see a guy with a win streak, you will want to end it. If you are the guy with a win streak, you want to keep the win count going. The environment allows for rapid grinding and cycling between players and people can get immediate feedback and to talk about things. The culture in Japan is also highly accepting of video games. Those who frequent Mikado are either people who just want to press buttons after work or those who want to be top players. Both of those people could easily kick my ass.

2.) Density. Japan is highly condensed. This is an issue that US can never solve geographically. In Japan, if you want to go to Mikado and get the most competitive GGXrd experience, then just buy a 170 yen ticket and go (that's around $1). US is highly spread out, meaning the players are segregated to. USA's top players are usually multiple states apart. Japan rarely suffers the issue of "I don't have a scene where I play", and that's really fucking huge. There are plenty of motivated or aspiring people in the US (or even Europe and around the world) who are passionate to compete in GGXrd, but will never be able to for geographical reasons.

3.) Players. For the two reasons above, Japan has a lot more better players than us. When you have good players leveling up each other, well... You have a stronger community. Their mentality is also quite dedicated and humble.

Now, I think US players potentially can be as good as Japanese players, but there's a lot of difficult problems to overcome. I have some ideas on how to approach my training room time now and what to look for in the game. I am convinced by LordKnight and SKD that it's possible to become as good as a top Japanese player WITHOUT having to be in Japan, but it's really fucking hard of course.


-Some starters:

1.) Lab up each match-up and study many block strings. This is the EASIEST way to get better. Karinchu and Fab were exposing things in my Bedman strings that I never knew was possible. They knew how to fight Bedman. I still managed okay (despite losing) against them, but I won't be beating them anytime soon until I study more on how to expose their strings. This is the most explicit way to get better, since you're essentially just solving puzzles and finding guaranteed answers for things.

2.) Watch match footage. It can be of Japanese or American players, but always question when things work and when things don't. "What is the goal of this player?" or "Why does he/she do that?" You want to question these things at key moments (not constantly since you will get overwhelmed).

3.) Play a lot. Playing will put you in a lot of scenarios. All of these situations have answers of some sort, so being prepared for that requires you to be exposed to the game a lot. Fab has like... many thousands of games. I'm sure he's pretty much seen it all at this point.

That's all I can think of for now. Pretty general stuff that you might know already anyways.

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