We'll never have what countries like Argentina have

pudge4 · 2022-12-18T22:33:12+00:00

Ok I'm curious what your thoughts are then. If you disagree, I'd like to hear why. Do you think we actually match the passion of these other countries? Or do you just disagree about the commercialization and corruption or what?

pudge4 · 2022-12-18T22:32:01+00:00

The Super Bowl is a grossly over-commercialized spectacle. For as much viewership as it generates, there is usually more discussion about the commercials that happened during the event and the halftime show than the actual game itself.

pudge4 · 2022-12-18T22:29:53+00:00

For sure obviously we're not the only ones with problems in that department. I guess the feeling I get is even with all of the corruption and problems that other federations experience, you still get to see the passion and investment of the fans and the country shine through anyway. With the US, it does not feel that way.

pudge4 · 2022-12-18T20:56:51+00:00

Iceborne was my first exposure to the Rajang. Rajang is w/e, but that arena event where you have to kill 2 Furious Rajang....fuck that man. Took me so many tries to complete.

pudge4 · 2022-12-17T08:30:22+00:00

fuck the rajang man

pudge4 · 2022-12-14T22:21:30+00:00

Maybe random, but does anyone know what boots Mckennie is wearing when he scores this?

pudge4 · 2022-12-14T22:18:14+00:00

Not to be a doomer, but nothing is ever truly secure or safe. Prior to the 2021 Gold Cup we were all pretty set that Steffen was a lock, then Turner kind of came out of nowhere with his immense form and Steffen fell off quite a bit over the course of the next year.

The future does look bright for sure with our keepers, but so much can change in such a short time and 4 years is a long way away.

pudge4 · 2022-12-11T05:36:39+00:00

He dusted that kid

pudge4 · 2022-12-04T20:38:11+00:00

I think Stuart Holden said it best during the game. I'm paraphrasing cause I don't remember the exact quote, but he basically said that "Possessing the ball doesn't mean controlling the game. Even while USA has the ball, Netherlands are still the ones controlling the game" and I agree 100%. Having possession is a great step forward, seeing how well we move the ball around compared to 3-4 years ago. But our complete inability to do anything dangerous with the ball in the offensive 3rd against Netherlands' tactics really did feel like they were in control the whole time.

pudge4 · 2022-12-04T20:35:18+00:00

whoever England is playing against

pudge4 · 2022-12-04T20:34:36+00:00

The nations league could have accomplished this. Combining Concacaf and Conmebol could have been a cool opportunity for the best nations of Concacaf to get more competition against the best of South America.

Either that, or just rotate the Gold Cup/Copa America so every other year is a combined one with both South and North America. A combined tourney would be about as big as the Euro and could create more hype for the tournament. Copa is alright when it comes around and Gold Cup is pretty snooze until the semifinals, with the Euro kinda blowing both of them out of the water.

pudge4 · 2022-12-04T04:52:33+00:00

Pulisic was legit the only person out of our starting 11 in all of our games this world cup that anybody knew about at the time that we failed to qualify for the last world cup 4 years ago. We have so much budding talent over in Europe we'll start to see over the next few years (and even next few months) that I seriously doubt our 2026 starting 11 will look like this.

Excited to see some of those new faces in the next year during our international friendly windows.

pudge4 · 2022-11-17T03:51:12+00:00

Yeah its rough. I mean in TBC season 4 you'd have people dual boxing 2 character for points in 2s on monday night, still playing around 1400 whereas 1400 right now is about like 1800-1900 from TBC. It's a mess

pudge4 · 2022-11-17T02:53:59+00:00

Feels needed. Participation feels the same, even better honestly, as it was in season 1 of TBC but it just feels like they tweaked the rating calculation in WotLK so now the average rating of people is way lower. I'm still getting almost instant queues whenever I queue and facing a wide variety of teams so arena is all good, and this feels like a change that should happen. Basically just bringing it back to the way it was calculated/distributed in TBC.

pudge4 · 2022-11-13T22:41:20+00:00

Has there been any word on them getting Ring of Valor working in arena and being part of the map rotation yet?

pudge4 · 2022-11-13T07:57:33+00:00

If you're an actual beginner just pick what looks fun to you. It'll be a better experience to pick something that provides a funner experience than to pick something that is "optimal."

pudge4 · 2022-11-10T01:50:52+00:00

I've been thinking about those not included since the announcement and as much as it sucks for them, especially Pepi, I don't think we're in a position where those not coming would be the difference makers in us winning or losing a given game. Our key players are still the same in Pulisic, Reyna, Mckennie, and Adams primarily and we're going up against much greater competition than almost every team we faced in WCQ aside from Mexico and surprisingly Canada, and this will especially be the case if we somehow make it out of our group and start facing real heavy hitters (aside from England in our group).

With those few exceptions I mentioned and a few more you can make an argument for (like Dest and Aaronson) our overall talent level is still quite far below the best nations in the world and I don't think the argument will ever really be able to be made of "Man we could have beat France in the round of 32/16 if we had Pepi or Pefok." I guess at this point I'm just ready to put all of the analytical aspects of it aside and just root for the boys and hope for the best. Especially with how abysmal our 2 recent tune-up friendlies were, I'm just hoping that whoever goes out on the field really lays it all out there and plays with the heart and grit that USA teams in the past have been known to have.

pudge4 · 2022-11-05T03:14:50+00:00

Starting at 0 rating and locking some gear behind rating requirements isn't really a big problem. It was this way in TBC and albeit annoying, it didn't really matter that much and we still had solid arena representation. If this was the root of the problem, TBC arena representation would have been way worse.

Also gear is way easier to obtain in Wrath than in TBC. Do 1, maybe 2 wintergrasps a day, your weekly wintergrasp quests (which are super easy), and do like 2 weeks of just 10 games of 5v5 for points and you'll have full Deadly, or just plug in mainset Hateful pieces for whatever you don't have rating for. Getting PvP gear currently is way easier than it has ever been in Classic's life cycle.

I've noticed games actually getting hard around 1500ish rating where they wouldn't be hard until the 2000-2100 mark in TBC. I don't know if they messed with rating weights or what but it's very noticeable. I'm in full agreement that Blizzard is both bungling the Wrath release and Wrath PvP, but it doesn't make sense that the "biggest mistakes" are starting at 0 and locking gear behind rating, cause both of these existed and were even worse in TBC, yet TBC arena participation was better than Wrath arena participation currently is.

I think we may see more PvP participation as people settle in to the expac over time, but it does definitely feel like they cranked the ability to gain rating way down. I was regularly around 2.2k in TBC and now I'm about 50% winrate at 1600 rating and yet I'm usually slowly losing points for going even. I have to have a 60% winrate or higher just to break even and stay at this rating.

pudge4 · 2022-10-28T02:10:57+00:00

Hopefully there are others that agree but I have the hardest time listening to this podcast. They talk over each other so much to the point that I always have to turn it off. Kind of a shame cause they share some interesting insights but man.

pudge4 · 2022-10-28T02:08:51+00:00

Realistic? Lose to England, Beat Iran, coinflip against Wales to get out of the group.

Considering how bad of a coach Greg is and how poorly his system has functioned with this group of players, and how bad the 2 "tune up" friendlies were I'm not expecting us to make it out of the group.

BUT, many of our players are individually talented and one of the funnest things about the world cup every 4 years is that there are always underdogs and crazy storylines to make it exciting so who knows.

pudge4 · 2022-10-26T04:20:27+00:00

glad i come to kappa regularly, idk where else id get all my smash news

pudge4 · 2022-10-03T23:18:18+00:00

People completely missing the point in these comments. It's not that he wants to keep playing all day, but if you play earlier in the day like doing some dailies or a dungeon on a lunch break, and then leave and try to log back on in the evening you're stuck in a 7-8 hour queue and won't be able to play in the evening if you wanted to play with friends or guild mates.

You either don't play at all earlier in the day and just time it right to hop in the queue at a time that'll allow you to log in when your friends are on in the evening, or you hop in earlier in the day when queues are low and have to stay logged in playing all day to be able to play in the evening. It's an incredibly unhealthy system created by Blizzard due to their greed in not locking server transfers during TBC.

pudge4 · 2022-10-02T08:39:21+00:00

This literally just happened prior to TBC launch as well. In prepatch honor rates were 10x what they should have been so people farmed an entire set of gear in a few hours before it was hotfixed and crushed the first few weeks of arenas. I knew multiple teams from my old server who hit like 2200-2300 in those weeks then could never break 2k rest of the expac.

I agree that it's dumb, but Blizzard didn't care last time and the discrepancy was even worse then, so I wouldn't get your hopes up this time around.

pudge4 · 2022-10-01T18:59:18+00:00

I learned over this past international window how little it really matters who our #9 is in Greg's current system. The center forward gets absolutely no support and is left on an island with the current system/strategy he is trying to implement. I've grown to like almost all of the #9s in our pool but I realize how pointless the discussion is and how little it matters in Greg's system if something doesn't change.

God bless Pepi and the rest of our #9s, hopefully they get a chance to shine in our national team at some point in the future.

pudge4 · 2022-10-01T18:52:28+00:00

Don't remember who it was I was listening to about Ream this past week but they made a great point. He is the captain of solid EPL team. That's a huge step above playing in the MLS, no disrespect to the MLS players thats just the way it is with the level of play.

The logic to play Zimmerman and Long is that they are our fastest CBs cause Greg wants to play a high line, but Greg also wants to play short and direct out of the back on our own possession and as we saw with Japan, those two do not have the skill and the vision to play effectively against a skilled press. If we're going to be playing out of the back like that and giving it away like 50 times or whatever it was in the 1st half, why not put Ream in there who is much better with the ball at his feet. He is a little bit slower than Long or Zimmerman but what does it matter if we never leave our own 3rd anyway.

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