Guilty Gear Strive launched in June 2021 and has already led to many tournament organizers hosting large online events for the title. While the fighting game community looks towards the future of offline tournaments with Summer Jam, NEC and CEO 2021 on the horizon, players have still been able to enjoy the game’s smooth online experience for the sake of learning and competing. Thanks to ArcSystemWorks’ efforts in implementing rollback netcode, the Guilty Gear community has been able to come together in numerous weekly tournaments and exhibitions.
Guilty Gear Strive at WNF. Source: Level|Up
Every week since launch, the production crew at Level|Up have hosted Wednesday Night Fights Guilty Gear Strive tournaments. Many community members may remember WNF as a popular weekly event in Southern California. The shift to all-online has caused the team to run online brackets for the region’s most popular fighting games. With Strive now in the mix, WNF continues its legacy of showcasing SoCal’s finest players on a weekly basis.
Guilty Gear Strive at NLBC. Source: Team Spooky
Hopping from SoCal to the East Coast, Team Spooky keeps New York’s spirits alive with weekly NLBC tournaments. While offline events were held at Next Level in Brooklyn, New York, the online competition has been expanded to all 48 continental states. Because of this, the first NLBC Strive bracket featured standout names like Panda’s Kizzie Kay and Punk, as well as strong anime competitors like SQ, Rikir and Ferno.
While Punk took first place over SQ in Guilty Gear Strive’s debut at NLBC, the excitement around Strive’s debut even called for an 89-player waiting list alongside the massive 128-player bracket. After the first tournament reached its 128-player cap in under two hours, expect to see similar numbers from NLBC in the coming weeks.
Guilty Gear Strive at ICFC. Source: ten/o media
Presented by ten/o media, ICFC expands into Guilty Gear Strive after two exciting Tekken 7 seasons. While ICFC pre-season tournaments began on June 24, season one is scheduled to start on July 1, 2021.
ICFC runs separate tournaments for North America, Europe and Asia so players around the world can have a chance to compete. Based on the popularity of ICFC’s Tekken brackets, expect to see many of the world’s greatest players joining the events.
Legendary fighting game player Justin Wong won the first pre-season ICFC tournament. While Justin Wong used May, the top 8 featured a variety of characters including Ramlethal, Giovanna, Nagoriyuki and Zato-1.
Despite not hosting an offline tournament this year, Evolution Championship Series returns with Evo 2021 Online. Featuring Guilty Gear Strive tournaments alongside Tekken 7, Street Fighter V and Mortal Kombat 11, Evo Online will be perhaps one of the largest online stages for Strive this year.
Running from August 6-8 and August 13-15, Evo Online will host tournaments for North America, Latin America and Europe. Though not an offline major, the prestige behind the Evo name will certainly gather many of the world’s strongest competitors for an exciting two weekends of Guilty Gear Strive action.
ApologyMan’s 10v10 Guilty Gear Strive exhibition. Source: @ApologyMan
Aside from open brackets, many exhibition events are already in the works for Guilty Gear Strive. Recently, beastcoast’s ApologyMan hosted a 10v10 event featuring some of North America and Japan’s best competitors. Top-level American competitors like SonicFox, DEB and Kizzie Kay were pitted against Japan’s finest such as GO1, Dogura and FAB.
Since the inclusion of rollback netcode in Strive, events like this are able to test the limits of the game’s online functionality while spectators are able to see how top players are adapting to a new title. Though connections were not perfect, the event ran smoothly and was an early glimpse at top-level metagame in Strive. ApologyMan provided individual replays of every match on his YouTube channel.
While Guilty Gear Strive is still young, competitors and fighting game fans are eager to see how the game develops. Though the game currently features just 15 characters, more are already planned as DLC that will surely shake up tier lists and tournament results. Strive gives the community plenty of reasons to be excited for the future now that Guilty Gear is back in the spotlight.
Featured image courtesy of ArcSystemWorks
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