God, fighting game locals are so good, especially the people and sense of community that arises out of them. Went and played GBVS at weekly seattle locals all night last night after picking the game up just a week ago and feel like I’ve leveled up so much in the last 24 hours off of last night plus some play today to put things into place.
I definitely had fun the first couple times I went to locals and played Strive, but really appreciate how much tighter knit the Seattle GBVS scene feels. Most of the folks at the granblue setups last night I’d gotten to know ahead of time just from the last week of playing online lobbies together during the week, and going in already knowing most of the folks there made things so much more approachable in terms of chatting to people, asking questions, and discussing the game.
Partway through the night I stepped outside to eat some pizza and have a cider, and had a 10 minute conversation with one of the scene regulars while I ate that gave me an entirely new perspective on resource management, neutral, and corner pressure, and trying some of that out helped me a ton in a set I played vs a friend today. It was also really helpful being able to watch a more intermediate Vira player play a few of their matches. Specatating their play gave me a handful of new tricks I hadn’t thought about with the character before, and it was also really valuable cycling off the station after a long set vs a Ferry where I really struggled to get in in neutral, handing my seat off to them, and watching how they approached.
And damn, it was real satisfying closing out the night by playing 15ish games vs a pretty good local Strive player who used to play some Granblue but hadn’t touched it in quite a while, and going something like 12-3 against him. Was super satisfying after a week of mostly getting bodied by much more experienced players. It was a huge confidence boost seeing that oh yeah, I’ve put some decent work into this game in just the last week, and can apparently actually show it pretty well vs. people who don’t have as much recent experience with it, even if they’re likely a stronger overall fighting game player than me. It’s real cool having the beginning of a sense of it being “my game”.