The Consequences of Constantly Complaining About Characters 

I think Jamie is extremely overpowered. He drinks a bunch and becomes so powerful and difficult to deal with. I drink a bunch and it's "Oh we're concerned for your health" or "Sir have you been drinking tonight? License and registration"

It feels like the more balanced a fighting game becomes the more unhinged the discourse about who's the best character becomes.

There was this literal Kid (13 years old) from the Southamerica West region who got to top 8, an amazing feat indeed, BUT he was using Ken, and there was this crowd of people saying "but he was using Ken tho" "even a Kid can win with Ken" and i was like... "Then do it yourself bro, if its so easy go for it CPT Champion in the making". ffs

God, I'm so excited for Project L to have League character complaining meet FGC character complaining. We'll have enough tears and salt to make a new fucking ocean. Thank you for always suggesting that every one just calm the fuck down, Sajam. Also, as an Anji player, respectfully: if you wanna complain about Midare, you can chew on gravel, my character is finally good and you will NOT ruin that for me.

Ima be real wid ya'll; I play fighting games to fight; to fight the opponent, to fight the opponent's character, to fight my own character, to fight own ineptitude at the whole thing. I am here to literally throw hands with everything in existence when I play. Not to make peace that I'm bad and the opponent knowledge checked me for the 100th time while I refuse to go into training room to expediently figure out an appropriate solution. Though for all that there's one big diff tho between me and others I think; and it's that I don't go on social media to propagate my filth like it's some kind of injustice.

That's why I play Manon, I get both the grappler OS AND the low tier character OS all at once. Every win's a win and every loss doesn't count.

The most frustrating thing about top players donwplaying their characters/complaining about other characters is that, because of their skill level, they're the people casual and intermediate players would want to rely on for tech/gameplan/matchup knowledge; but then you go to some of their "analysis" content and it's thinly-veiled lobbying for buffs/nerfs. You can actually become more ignorant and a worse player for listening to some of the advice out there.

The Peacock blood in me compels me to inform everyone that Sage won the set the clip at 11:00 is from. Almost every character in skullgirls looks that broken when they're winning, the only difference is peacock can do it from Fullscreen.

i honestly think, on the more casual level, that the reason character discourse becomes so toxic is because of the way prominent community members tend to talk about ranked on sf6. people get sick of hearing "you dont even have to be good to get master" or "diamond players suck" when thats the level theyre at, so they look for excuses. they look for excuses because their skill is being insulted and it feels shitty. so many of these creators make their audience feel like theyre dogwater at the game when in reality plat is like top 15% of ranked players. youre doing fine.

Legends tell of a downplayer so determined he's commented on every lord knight video since the strive beta on a crusade to expose the shadow cabal of conspirators who dare suggest Ky is anything more than Servebot or Neco Arc tier.

Wise words! There's a lot of negativity around... players invalidating the wins of others, etc. It's tiring.

I'm imagining a world where Snake Eyez wins the Capcom cup finals and suddenly everyone is complaining about Zangief despite the grappler GOAT playing him. Next thing you know everyone is playing Zangief and saying he's the reason they can't get out of Gold/Plat. War never changes

We need more people who blindly upplay their character. Just pure love and enthusiasm for their main and you cant convince them otherwise, they're hopeless. But a quaint, adorable kind of hopeless.

Hey you, the person reading this, congrats on those matches you won. I don't care what character you played, I'm proud of you.

Every day that Sajam has to make another "Stop whining and learn the matchup" video makes me more thankful that I never made a Twitter account.

Another prime example of "Social media was a mistake"

It's funny, the only character meme I'll throw around is when you see the (Dante) coloured Ken on the versus screen. You know this man's about to pull all the lab combos on you, it's unavoidable.

I used to play Krillin, Beerus, and Zamasu during the beginning of DBFZ’s lifespan. I still heard people bitch at me when they got any specific buff that made them slightly playable because “of course you pick them, they just got buffed!” And if I ever dared to play a better character “of course you picked them, they’re mid-high tier!”

The fragility of EGO can often be the greatest foe of the FGC.

I loved this as a Manon player when the game launched. Everyone was convinced she was S-tier just 'cause 5 medals

I like Shine's approach to this whole thing. Someone comes and wants to complain about your character and downplay their character? Ask for specifics on why their character sucks against yours, let them pratte on about what makes their character weak against yours. Now use it against them, ruthlessly. They're the ones giving you absolutely free information with nothing in return.

"Am I the cause of my losses? No, it's the state of the game that is wrong." - Seymour Skinner, noted Honda onetrick

I think the last few minutes of the clip are really important to the conversation. Sajam spends the first 9 minutes explaining why the discourse is silly, and then chat just comes in with the anvil-brained takes of "at least ken follows the rules" and "jp is not a street fighter character." Sajam's ability to calmly but firmly make those people sound like fools is why he's one of, if not the best, the most important educational forces in the FGC.

Thank goodness my favorite game character the tweet button never gets nerfed. The infinite stun lock my character of endlessly regurgitating what my favorite content creator says never gets old.

I can’t get over “It’s time to get in” and peacock immediately swaps sides

I'll always remember Sentinel getting nerfed hard in Marvel Vs Capcom 3 early on partly because of complaining, when even without the nerfs he wouldn't have even been top 5. Street Fighter 6 is still a pretty new game. Everyone needs to just relax

Crazy to me that game discourse is so stale on the subject of character strength that sajam gets to make the same video using the same peacock video and it's still so funny every time

I think there's a legitimate case to say that a character "breaks the rules" of a game, but I think the way most people use that phrase is dumb and not worth listening to because they actually do just mean "character stinky." But like, most games have a general structure and way that they design characters, what their frame data is generally going to be, what sort of limitations characters have, etc. Like in Strive, the gatlings are intentionally limited and most characters are forced to do very basic simple strings if they start from a P or a K normal, and even if they have a command normal the routes are generally restricted to being like P and K only chain into command normals that launch or knock down or something like that, they don't lead to longer strings. Then you have Happy Chaos, who at launch got to ignore a lot of Gatling and string restrictions because he has a gun and got extended string pressure and combos that other characters couldn't really do. Strive characters are [generally] designed in a specific way, but Happy Chaos is designed to "break the rules" of those designs as his character trait. I don't think breaking the rules is inherently a good or bad thing, I think it's just a way to make a character feel particularly unique in the game's systems, and it especially makes sense for a character like Happy Chaos who is a near omnipotent godlike entity to not be bound to the same restrictions as everyone else is. I think the idea of a character that is "playing a different game" than everyone else is can be really interesting, but those are also the characters who are often the most contentious. Obviously in this example Happy Chaos is literally a character in Strive and thus he is playing Strive like everyone else, but his design doesn't follow the general design philosophy that they keep mostly true for everyone else, and I think there's value in pointing that out even if just in the sense of character classification.

I just want a gaming community that enjoys playing the game the community is about. Why is it so hard!?

>People complaining about JP and Ken in SF6. >Sajam, frame 1: That new Anji move kinda busted.

Sajam's advice and mentality is the only answer for this. There's not any other avenue. You either learn to fight against these characters or you suffer.

Please talk about this more - remake this video constantly... actually just straight up reupload this video every month - we need to be good at the game by playing it not changing it every week so we can be good at it

The true downplay Olympics of fighting games

Yeyeyeyeye. MORE alliteration.

This rant is so good i had to listen to it twice.

the timing on this is a bit funny. last night i played a few games with a friend and she plays Ken. sf6 is my first ever fighting game and im REALLY ass. i swapped between Luke and Marisa and after 19 games of getting my ass beat, i finally learned how to block that Jinrai kick shit. i have never felt a greater feeling than BARELY grasping victory from defeat like that. all i had to do was learn! hopefully others are able to adapt a mindset like that and be able to enjoy the game without tearing each other down.

If I lose as a Zangief player I knew who I picked and I knew who I'd fight so it's my own fault. If I win I remind myself that my damage output is phenomenal. I don't play Zangief for the ego boost when I win or so I have an excuse when I lose. I just like Zangief.

As an Anji player, yeah the fish is stupid. My guess is that they wanted to buff spin, without altering other aspects of it. For those who don’t know, you can PRC an attack that activates spin and Anji can’t do the same. The fish basically gives him answer to that and baiting spin with jabs. As far as I’m aware, best options are to either attack from the air or PRC backdash to avoid it.

We got the Button Check talk show on one end of RU-vid and the Reality Check talk show on this end.

For every fighting game I liked since I was a kid, I would look at the cast looked at who I liked and pick them. They always happened to be considered high tier. Melee? Marth / Sheik Smash 4 Cloud Smash ultimate joker / byleth FighterZ Gohan, Black, Cell GGST Ram / Ky Sf6 Ken What frustrates me as someone trying to get into these games is because I like these characters, picked them not knowing they were top tier my practice, my results, and my losses are all viewed in a different light. I just want to play the game and get better, but because I am picking better characters my skill and room for improvement get ignored. It's the biggest issue with tier lists at a low to mid tier level. We are not optimal enough or know enough to bring out what makes these characters amazing, if we did we wouldn't be low to mid tier players.

Like 10 years ago, I had this same mindset about League of Legends. Lee Sin had just come out (have checked; it was 13 years ago, wtf) and was dominant. And the entire community was like "this shit is busted, he is so easy to win with." To a degree, this was true because no one knew how to play against him. So I bought him expecting free elo ... all I did was feed. I had never played any character that had such a mechanically complex kit (which is funny to type, given how mechanically complex new LoL are) or had so many crazy movement options (ward hopping back in the day was mindblowing), so I lost constantly and got flamed over and over in matches because everyone perceived that the character was just free wins and required zero skill. Ever since then, any time someone tells me that a character is "free" or has "no counterplay", I ask if they've actually played the character. The answer, 90% of the time, is "No, I'd never play a bullshit character like that." And they proceed to play a character was was considered bullshit by the rest of the community back when the character was new.

I am mentally already Master Tier, its just that your character holds me back.

I love how this concept has to be re-explained every single time a new (popular) fighting game comes out. There's just something about a pure skill-based 1v1 experience that seems to obliterate everyone's personal accountability.

Best part about that Skullgirls clip is that Dekillsage (the Beowulf) won the set

12:25 Thanos, alive on a pixel: "You should have gone for the head."

I agree with every word said here and I really really needed to hear it from someone at least a few folks might listen to. Thank you sajam. Thank you very very much. Seriously.

All I'm gonna say is Jiren's EX counter in S4 of DBFZ works exactly like OD Amnesia (beats strikes and throws) and they nerfed that midseason because they knew it was a mistake. OD Amnesia is even better than that, Jiren gets a smalll chunk of damage and no natural followup. JP gets a fat combo if he gets a punish combo, or two layers of mixup if he didn't.

I think what people mean when they say a character "doesn't play by the rules of the game," it's that the character can do something they don't like that no other character in the game, or often in pretty much any game, can do. JP having a counter that beats throws goes against what most people feel is the "correct" RPS around counter moves, which is that they should lose to throws. Happy Chaos having a gun that can shoot on frame one, cover whiffs, and allows for meterless combos off of uncharged Dust (which Zato can do as well, but it's still not the "norm" in the game) feels like it's "against the rules" because whiffed buttons are "supposed" to be punishable, and uncharged Dust is "supposed" to be a difficult to react to overhead at the cost of not leading to a combo without also spending meter. Obviously, the devs can allow the characters they design to do whatever they want them to do. And they're probably not going to change these things unless they're WAY too strong, regardless of how much complaining people do on twitter. I think what people want is a consistent set of "rules" that none of the characters in the game "break". But once you start going down the line, lots of characters "break rules" in one way or another, it's just not as frustrating as with JP or HC. So it's hard to know where to draw the line, because "breaking the rules" can often be what makes a character unique and fun.

You know what, you're right. Still gonna call every JP carried regardless if I win or lose.

The point of "balance doesn't matter at their level" hits hard because the game is SO well balanced right now that your local intermediate can make goddamn lily look broken More often when intermediate players complain, they use pro-play as a escape goat to hide behind their hurt egos

Sajam talking about everyone being salty will never not be the funniest thing to me this is my 2nd serious FG and it's so funny to observe the cycle happening all over again coming from SFV to 6

I have a suggestion! Lets all just play mirror Luke v Luke every tournament so there's no BS like this that comes out of people everytime. Oh? You wouldn't want that? Why? Cuz it would be boring? Well stfu and accept losses like a real man. AT this point hearing this from players is so tiring tbh. Lets look at the facts here, game is more balanced than any Vanilla SF game ever. Every character's viable but still people downplay players because they think they got outplayed by the character and not the player. Grow the f up people. EDIT: To add, even then people would still moan about a mirror match cuz the losing player will moan about the other player having more experience than themselves on a mirror match. You cant make this sh* up lol.

As a Ky main who fluctuates floors 7-9, I legit lose a game and go "Dang, if I could DP while blocking better, I could've stopped that pressure." or "Idk what to do against that option... Let's look at dustloop/RU-vid to see if there's a solution." like I've just developed a mind set of "If what I tried to do didn't work, or didn't happen, it's my bad. I thought this would go one way, and the game disagreed." and I will always be thankful for that mentality cause it saves me a lot of salt.

Thumbnail on point as usual.

Sajam dropping that wisdom again. Go off, king

I'm gonna be really bummed out if Ken and JP are nerfed to the point that they aren't much fun to play anymore due to hyperbolized criticism being taken as legitimate feedback by Capcom. I have played Ken in previous games so I knew I'd be playing him in 6 mostly at the start to get a handle on things, and was super interested in JP from his artwork/trailers. Turned out that both are really sick and stupid fun to play. I get some nerfs are warranted/justifiable for both (and I honestly hope they nerf OD Amnesia lol), but some people are just out for fuckin blood and want the characters to play like dog shit. Its so wack

the real fighting game is the comments section and each social media platform is a different game

I have to say, not for the first time and not for the last time, your thumbnails are some of my favourite on RU-vid

For me, I can tell SF6 is well balanced because pretty much every character has something that makes me say 'this is bullshit' when I get hit with it

The whole "carried" thing has always bothered me because everybody has to pick a character to play the game, inherently. It's not like a traditional sport where it's purely about athletic ability. a fighting game requires both your skills as a player and the power of the character you're playing, no matter who that is.

this is so real. there's something about this kind of behavior that sucks the goodness out of everything. fighting games are at their prime rn but I do worry what players learning this kind of negativity cycle could do to everyone. how long until people recognize FGC for these kinds of things, yknow. because if it ever gets to that point it's gonna become league of legends. I dont know who's to blame for how people think about other characters, and how this cycle of complaining and toxicity is able to persist. all I can do is hope people can bring themselves above that, identify it and become willing to get themselves & others out of it. we'd all be stronger for it, I think.

I like how people will clamour for their character leading up to patch day. Like they believe the devs are gonna make last minute changes for them specifically.

My favourite thing about Sajam is that he actually complains about Strive Faust. It makes me feel very validated as someone who plays him.

Ouch, that Peacock clip was brutal!

All I can ever say for sure is that I suck *I'm* not good enough I'm garbage and slow and can't react to DI and lose to the same drive rush buffer over and over

Its funny how your FG specific content is so applicable to other games I just start linking your vids as my argument

My brother in christ you are picking the character If someone is so broken and easy to win with then play them yourself And if you don't like them and that's why you don't want to play them, that's a choice you are making yourself. Let people play what they want to

I truly never got this. My mentality has always been of believing that the character I play is good, regardless if he's top tier or not. If I believe in the potential of the character, I can make it work. But the FGC always seemed to go the complete oposite way. 99% of the messages you read anywhere are downplaying their main and complaining about X. Not to mention the fact that, regardless of what you play, you are attacked for it, as it somehow makes you an inferior human being, either for choosing a bad character or an OP one, no inbetweens.

Bro, this thumbnail is truly next level, haha

I only learned the bedman matchup, now I’m in the sin corner grinder

People just don't bother learning anymore

Honestly I’m just happy the Street Fighter discourse is back with such intensity. Near the end of SF5 it felt like the community didn’t care anymore. Like no one enjoyed the game and were just waiting for SF6.

Talk about the consequences of complaining about the netcode

I’ve never resonated with the last second of a video Sighs, contemplates life, I feel great

2:45 everyone prays for peace, but none can let go of the chains of salt.

Sorry if this is unrelated, but I have a question. As a pretty casual GGST enjoyer (bought the game at launch, played it a bit over 60 hrs in the last couple of years, never made it past floor 8 and never really chose a definite main), I was wondering something about the patch. Isn't the change to nago's 2nd hit dp and slide completely absurd? The character is already a crazy good mid despenser, doesn't easy access to high/low kind of break him? Especially because of how much he can delay either option from dp. I don't know, I'm just curious how other people are feeling about this.

The only reason I hate obviously strong characters (or at least perceived as such) is because everybody starts to play them which leads to a less interesting tournament watch. That is one of the reasons I do not like to watch UMvC3 tournaments. It´s basically the same 5 characters in a game where you have 6 characters in every match. Yes tournaments aren´t just about the characters but for me it´s just not enjoyable to see the same characters with the same playstyles every second match of if not more in top 16.

I straight up never even SAW a Bedman player before last patch.

That dekillsage clip is one of the greatest of all time. Happy to see it again lmao

"No one wants to win a fair fight."

This isnt a problem for gief mains, we just say, "nicely done!" and wait for the next lvl 3.

Snake Eyes wins a cup and nobody bats an eye. JP wins a set, *and everyone loses their minds!*

Moste has got to be stopped at this point, that thumbnail has me crying from laughter

It's just the Modern discourse condensed into a single character. People in my group were whining about Modern making it easy, and I said "Then play Modern if it's so much of an advantage" and they tend to shut up.

Guy at my local really humbled me recently in my outlook for this game. He just has a 100% positive outlook on everything, even my matchups. Always saying shit like “I wonder if I can do this?” And even curious about my character and their matchups. Zero salt whatsoever just vibing and accepting the game for what it is. I think if your mental is trash for good and bad matchups you just let defeatism take over. You might as well milly rock and try your best.

I beat another player on Modern Controls and he couldn’t stop complaining about how I was playing the game wrong. If they don’t complain about the character, it’s the fault of the controls.

I agree with your video and overall sentiments. HOWEVER, JP players are carried. Ken players are carried. If you have a projectile youre carried. If you have a command grab, youre carried. If you have whatEVER helps you win matches, youre carried. Except blanka, who is my main, therefore he is the best.

Lol love the thumbnail

Thank you so much for this.

was that skullgirls example supposed to support your point? if anything that says there needs need to be alot more ending lag or cooldown on peacocks moves.

i love that peacock clip so much, almost forgot to watch it this week

In my opinion I feel SF6 is one of the most balanced fighting games I've played on launch. I've been having a great time with it.

man i love sajam, the man consistently sounds just as over this nonsense as I am, on pretty much any topic xD

My advice to Ken and JP players is to just own it. SF6 is balanced enough that your skill matters infinitely more than your character. In Strive I picked Ram day 1 because "cool sword girl with dog (wholesome)" and vibed with her midrange control plus strong pressure. Turns out she's pretty good, and a lot of people downright hate her. That bothered me for a while, but ultimately now I just find it kind of amusing how universally disliked she is. All that matters to me is that I vibe with her, and that in the two years I've been playing Strive I have learned SO MUCH about fighting games and improved a thousand times over. And there are still players out there a thousand times better than me that beat my ass, which means I still have an incredible amount to learn.

I always worry about playing overpowered or top tier characters because of that level of salt. I pick up Nagoriyuki cause I think he's cool and played Sin in Rev2, and then whoops he's one of the best characters. I decide to learn Honda before even the tiniest footage of him comes out, and now he's reviled. I can't win! But Sajam helps me say "fuck the haters" and just play what I want to, so that's neato.

Nice thumbnails Mr Magic Moste

I’m glad you made a video about this. People complaining about their characters being bad or how good other characters are can just really be fun-draining and toxic. I think the strive community is so bad at this, and Street Fighter might be even worse at this now than with Luke in SFV I feel. I think CapCom will patch the game eventually and make the game more balanced since I do think Ken and jp are real good, but I don’t know how close the community is to being able to know that they are good and not complain and whine about it constantly.

That Skullgirls clip is lowkey some of the funniest shit I've ever seen

The problem with tier lists in general is that it's largely a numbers thing: Frames, damage, hitboxes, etc. And sure, if you imagine the game being played "perfectly", or "optimally", at all times, then you can rank characters like that. But so much of fighting games, or any competitive game, is a players mood, mindset, adaptability, etc. Things you can't really quantify. And sometimes a player just *gets it* with a "low-tier"; they understand the rhythm of the character. Like Snake Eyes's Zangief, or Amsa's Yoshi in ssbm.

All I heard was facts, all top tiers are bullshit, in fact all the characters are bullshit fuck this game, can't wait to see more of your guile to master on stream I love watching sf6.