My Evolution West 2007 Performance
Evolution West was at Comicon this year. I'll talk mostly about the Super Turbo tournament because it was a great tournament. Here's the results:
1) John Choi (Ryu, Old Sagat)
2) Afrolegends (Dee Jay, Balrog)
3) Jason Cole (Dhalsim)
4) David Sirlin (Vega, Honda, Bison)
5) Alex Wolfe (Dhalsim)
5) DSP (Dee Jay, Blanka, Vega, Balrog)
7) Antonio Diaz (Blanka)
7) Viscant (Vega)
My very first match of the tournament was against Jason Cole, two-time Evolution World Champion in Super Turbo. But more to the point, Cole and I were the #1 and #2 finishers at Evolution North, so it was weird to fight him straight off the bat, but we didn't complain, it's all good. Cole would definitely play Dhalsim, and I decided to pick Vega. I think I've played Vega vs. Dhalsim against Cole about 20 games or so over the last couple years. During the "normal fighting" part of the match, I have the advantage (I think). But eventually during each game, there is a part called "Dhalsim does noogie over and over and I die." This is especially hard for Vega to get out of. Counterthrowing is, for some reason, very hard for Vega in this situation. Jumping out is literally not possible if Dhalsim does a correct sequence. Vega can flip kick out (charge db, f+kick) but this is a tough thing to do. First, you only get one shot per loop because it's a charge move and worse, if you are charging you aren't shaking out of the noogie. This means a) you take full damage from the noogie and b) you telegraph that you are going to try to reversal flip kick out.
After losing game 1, I said out loud "fuck this match" and switched to Bison. Cole is too damn good at noogie trap on Vega. Bison in theory is just as screwed, but in practice he can reversal throw out more easily for some strange reason. Anyway, Cole beat me.
I went on to beat everyone else I faced that Saturday, including James Chen who I reminded the
hard way that you can't jump out of Honda's Ochio throw. I advanced to top 8. Meanwhile, Afrolegends ran the gauntlet facing Graham Wolfe, Buktooth, Valle, Choi, Graham again, and Watson. He had to beat all of them (except Choi) to advance to top 8. That's quite a string of top players, and that was just to get to the top 8.
The top 8 finals took place the next day on stage in a boxing ring in Capcom's booth at Comicon. There were hundreds of excited fans equipped with noise-makers and everything. It was a really great atmosphere to compete in. Looking back, I guess that could make someone nervous but I didn't even think to be nervous. I love being on stage.
My first match was against Viscant, a Vega player. I asked Choi if I should play Honda or something. He asked how the match goes and I said whoever gets ahead can mostly sit there or run away and it's hard for either character to make a comeback. He said it's too risky to play a match like that on purpose, so don't pick Honda. I asked about Vega and he said yeah, I have good experience with Vega so I should be ok. I sat down to play and the Ghost of Super Turbo told me to play Bison. Bison has like three ways to beat Vega pretty bad unless the Vega knows exactly what to do. I figured I'd be able to get away with at least one or two of those and it mostly worked. I won.
I then fought DSP (who had just lost to Choi, even though he beat both Valle and Watson earlier in the tournament). Given which characters DSP plays, I figured I'd be best off with Vega overall. DSP had a different way of thinking about his character selection though. I think he started by considering who *I* would think is my best chance overall given his characters and he also figured Vega would be my best bet overall. So he started with Blanka specifically to counter my Vega. Remember, these character picks are double blind, so he had to guess all that. I think he was one yomi layer above me there, and he got to play game 1 with a counter match in his favor. (Note to self: learn how to play Vega vs. Blanka.) Anyway, he won game 1.
I had a tough choice now. Vega was not working, so I needed someone else. I could play Bison, but Bison's scissor kicks don't quite work right against Blanka because of Blanka's hitbox while ducking. Also, Bison can't do anything once Blanka starts crossing him up with jump short. The match is probably in Bison's favor (I think), but there are a lot of ways to lose. I had a bad feeling about it (even though I won this exact same match (Bison vs. Blanka) against DSP in a previous tournament years ago.) I could be a little crazy and try Blanka vs. Blanka, but there's too many things I don't know about the match and I figured I should at least play someone I know what I'm doing with when hundreds of people are watching. Honda could work, though. Honda is good against Blanka but not so good against "excellent Blanka" who knows every detail of the match. I could probably pull it off though. But then I might be faced with Honda vs. Dee Jay in game 3, a very bad match for me. By this time I had to make a decision, so I decided to suck it up and win it with Honda.
DSP completely destroyed me first round. I think this confirmed everyone's fears that I had no idea what I was doing and that Honda was a terrible choice. Furthermore, I got hit by whiffed roll into bite and hop into bite. I think this must have looked like I was too old and had too bad of reaction time to stop it. Actually, this is not at all true. I knew he would jab roll into bite. I knew he would hop into bite. I can prove I knew because if you pause the game, then quit out to the main menu (of Capcom Classics Collection 2) then go to Street Fighter tips, you'll see these exact two maneuvers listed there, and I wrote it and took screenshots. Maybe DSP looked it up there! Ha. Anyway, I'm sitting there waiting for it, see it coming, and I have stored Ochio throw ready, and I mash on punches. And somehow, he got all the bites anyway. Ochio throw beats almost anything in the game, but Blanak's bite is so damn good that it actually beat the Ochio throw.
After the first round, I thought to myself "Hey, WAKE UP! You are one round away from being eliminated in a match you have every right to win! Don't just play mindlessly on instinct, THINK about it. Counter jump ins with jab headbutt. Jump or flying butt into Ochio, then mixup!" So I did. I turned off auto-pilot and did all those things and won. As expected, DSP then switched to Dee Jay and used the first round to demonstrate exactly what you do to practically perfect Honda. Ouch. I knew I had to break out of this pattern of being trapped at full screen by his projectiles, I did my best to get those next rounds off to a different start. That match is hard enough that I think I'll keep to myself what few tips I know about winning it.
I then faced Afrolegends, a man forged in fire. Now, I saw Afrolegends beat Graham Wolfe's Vega the day before. Afrolegends had magic powers with Dee Jay's low forward kick and probably did 50% of his damage against Graham with that move alone. Graham kept doing Vega's low strong, perhaps not believing that it could *really* lose to that stupid low forward kick, but it kept losing again and again. Armed with this knowledge, I was extremely careful to not get hit by it, and I did once right at the start of round 1! Then, ready for it, I tried to slide against it and I think I got hit by it anyway. I then even more carefully slid and actually hit him and carefully low stronged and actually hit him. But somewhere, things went really wrong and I lost big time. I turned to Choi, gesturing that I didn't know who to pick. Choi said "No more Vega," after seeing how soundly I was beaten. I agreed and switched to Bison (Even I'm not crazy enough to try Honda versus Dee Jay two times in a row). Game 2 was 1 round to 1 round and during the 3rd round, Afrolegends accidentally paused the game just as he was starting a crossup attempt. This foul means I win the round, and thus the game. Ouch. Afrolegends stuck with Dee Jay and showed superior knowledge of the match, and he won, eliminating me.
My two losses were to afrolegends (the #2 finisher) and Jason Cole (#3 finisher). Choi was #1.
Other highlights of the top 8. TWO people played Blanka (normally would be 0). TWO people played Dee Jay (normally would be 0). Someone played Honda. There were 3 double KOs, 2 in one game! This is more double KOs than I've seen in the last 5 years or so in ST. The two in one game was Jason Cole (Dhalsim) vs. Alex Wolfe (Dhalsim). First round, double KO. Second round, Cole won. Third round, double KO. In this situation (final round), the game automatically gives each player one round win total, meaning Alex Wolfe got a win marker even though he hadn't won a round yet! This was crazy stuff.
The tournament was topped off nicely with Choi pulling of several miracles versus Afrolegends, then Choi transforming into some kind of Korean Inferno against Jason Cole. By the end, Cole was completely thrown off his game and Choi dominated in a scary way. Later, Cole said to me "I can't believe he uppercuts at such risky times! Doesn't he know how risky it is! And he always hits. He's the luckiest mother fucker around, haha." Then Cole theorized that Choi actually conditions his opponents to act a certain way, then does his "risky" stuff only when he gets to a high pressure situation when the opponent is likely to play on instinct rather than thought. Later, James Chen theorized that Choi can "smell fear like a dog." Actually those were my words but Chen's idea. Anyway, he meant that if you make a mistake against Choi, Choi then puts pressure on you and tries to pressure you into making more mistakes. Maybe both theories are right. I had an alternate theory that if we could look into his mind, we'd see a rainbow, a floating panda and a Hello Kitty.
One last note about Guilty Gear: I hate team tournaments a lot and hope we're done with them.
--Sirlin
July 31st, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Ahoy Sirlin it’s me the guy who emailed you to join our Guilty Gear team. Likewise we did pretty bad as well. I think it was mainly due to the fact our team was very unprepared because one guy forgot his stick and the other needed an xbox controller. Well i’ll see you at world again!
July 31st, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Hey Sirlin I was the guy who emailed you to join our GGXX team. We got beat mostly due to us being unprepared. One guy forgot his stick and the other didnt have a xbox controller converter. Well i’ll see you at world.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I’d throw my hat into the “Sirlin and two other random people” team if it’s still open, but my execution is tested to it’s very limits by card games.
I’m a superstar.
July 31st, 2007 at 9:09 pm
I don’t have too much experience with ST, so could someone give a short overview over the advantages Vega (claw) has over Blanka? I always though it was the other way round for, especially since if Vega blocks a roll he can slightly walk forward and punish Blanka with st. fierce.. (I know that Blanka can reliably anti air Vegas dives, but that can’t be all there is to it..)
July 31st, 2007 at 9:23 pm
The internet.. a million new ways to let yourself look like a complete idiot :(.. Of course I meant the advantages of “Blanka over Vega” and sorry for the typing errors..
July 31st, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Interesting summary. Are there any match videos from this event?
August 1st, 2007 at 2:41 am
Grats, Sirlin. (Nothing to add)
August 1st, 2007 at 3:11 am
I was at Comic-Con on saturday at the Capcom booth, tried RE:UC and DMC4, I read the finals were the next day but went anyway to see if I could see you guys on the matches, only thing I saw was puzzle fighter, wish I could have seen you in action and sign my playing to win book. Oh well, maybe next year.
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:10 am
Sad to here that you’re sick of team tournaments, but they won’t be going away anytime soon with Guilty Gear. Especially now that its Accent Core and matchup specific like hell.
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:04 am
I urge you to protest team tournaments, especially in Guilty Gear. A game being “matchup specific” is no excuse to test who you’re friends with rather than test who can win. ST is matchup specific, too. So is any decent fighting game.
–Sirlin
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:43 am
team tournaments suck ass.
only thing it does is save time by having 6 people play best of one which in affect is like a 2/3. instead of 6 people potentially playing 9 matches to get 3 people to advance, they play at most 5.
or maybe it is 2/3 insead of best of one and i’m talking out of my ass.
if there is indeed a team tournament, at least allow one person to play as all 3 members so that i have three lives. i’m paying 30 fucking bucks anyways.
i don’t want to depend on anyone else other than myself in a ONE on ONE video game. sure, i might get further if i knew people. sure i might even win the fucking thing if somehow i became BFFFFF with the japanese. i rather tie for 7th on my own.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:44 am
Team tournaments are one of the dumbest ideas around. Nothing about these games involves a team in any way, it’s entirely artificial.
About Blanka vs. Vega - Blanka has a good crossup, a fast jump and some downward angled moves, while Vega has no effective anti-air other than his special. That’s one big advantage Blanka has. Vega is also susceptible to throw ticks, something Blanka does well. At Blanka can neutralize wall dives pretty well.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:56 am
Wow I can’t believe the ignorance of the last 2 comments. Ofcourse Guilty Gear is a team game. Why else would the biggest promotional event for it be Tougeki, which is a team event? These games are not developed without the knowledge they are going to be used for team events. You guys seem to be clueless or just ignoring the relationship between the game publishers, developers and Tougeki.
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:09 pm
In theory, team tournaments are a wonderful experience. You get to team up with your best buddies, get in a van and roadtrip to EVO. You gaze at the stars, roast marshmellows, and rape face.
In reality, this is what happens.
3 months before EVO: Man, I need a team. Better ask one of maybe 20 GOOD players and see if they have a team!
2 months before EVO: Ugh. No luck, they are all teaming with EACH OTHER! Well, I guess I can team up with lower level players…
1 months before EVO: Well, one of them decided that attending the tournament was optional, and I’m stuck with only two teammates. Oh hey, one of those magical top players who might help me win is available, and he wants to be on my team! I LOVE TEAM TOURNAMENTS!
5 minutes before tournament begins: … So… my magic top player found a better team, and dropped me. My other team mate has been playing Guilty Gear for 2 days, and might be mentally retarded. Well, I guess this will be fun.
20 minutes after tournament, eliminated.
August 4th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Team tournies were actually the reason why I gave up playing Guilty Gear seriously, even before I longer had any free time to play competitively. When you think about it, it really does boil down to a contest of “Can I find anyone who’s really good at this game and is willing to team up with me?” As a consequence, all of the top players will congregate together, and any riff-raff upstarts that might’ve had good chances to upset a lot of people are nullified.
Here’s a geeky math proof to demonstrate why. Lets suppose you are a very strong player, but you have nobody to team with, so you decide to enter by yourself. Your first encounter is a 3 man team of casual players of friends who are decent, but not nearly as good as you. However, since you play a character that has the high potential to die randomly (say, Chipp :o), lets say you can beat the first two players 80% of the time and their captain maybe 70% of the time, which is still extremely good when stuff like counter-matchups and fatigue are factored in.
Your chances of beating the team of casual but decent players and advancing to the next round is 0.8*0.8*0.7 = 44.8% since it’s single elimination. Less than a coin flip. Furthermore, you have to survive lots of these to make it to the finals.
“But wait!”, you may ask. “Why not find two random people who know nothing about the game and put them on the team? Maybe they’ll win randomly!” Well, not quite.
Suppose you can find two players at the very last minute, but they have barely touched the game. Lets assume generously that each of them have a 20% of beating the first two players and a 10% of beating the last guy, even though they have no idea what’s going on. If you sum up the probability tables, you get something like this:
P of your team sweeping: 0.4%
P of your team winning 3-1: 1.2%
P of your team winning 3-2: ~51%
Hence, even if you stick two beginners on your team, it only improves your chances to slightly better than a coin flip against the hypoethtical casual but decent team. You are thereby forced to seek out better players for your team to have better than coinflip chances to beat a CASUAL team. So it really does become a game of “Who do I know?”
Hell, even if the strong player in that hypothetical is Ogawa with an absurd 95% chance of beating any hypothetical casual player, the winning chances would still only be an 85% by himself and a 92% chance with two random beginners versus that casual team of friends. That presumes, of course, that Ogawa is stuck in that situation, which would be unlikely as he’d probably most likely team up with two other Japanese players of comparable strength.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:32 am
Zinac: wow, that’s some stupid fucking shit to say as you accuse me of being ignorant. i bet you are probably retarded and drooling at the moment. ok jk. but yeah, you said some stupid shit.
first of all, tougeki does not PROMOTE sammy or guilty gear. if you think that’s the case, then i guess that’s like thinking CNN promoting murders. just because GGXX is one of the many games PLAYED at the event, what the fuck makes you think that they have some sort of an interlaced connection where tougeki promotes it? hey, look at me. there’s someone who shot 60 innocent people on CNN. i’m sure the murders have a working relationship with CNN and they are getting tons of exposure. hey, fuck, maybe i should go kill some people too! way cool! no.
second of all, you think sammy made a video game, knowing that it’s going to be played in one, or maybe two major video game tournaments by AT MOST a thousand people, and fucked up the game just to entertain that idea? hahahahaha. get fucking real. who the fuck do you think you are? you really think a company will willingly break balance so that there might be a chance that a team tournament would make the game “more fair”? oh ok. then give me someone who has a winning record vs eddie. what? none you say? oh ok. i guess that means having two other fucking members in the team doesn’t really fix balance either, now does it?
third of all, let’s assume you are right. the game was INTENTIONALLY developed as a team game (hey, but it fucking says it’s for 1-2 players on the back of the cover. maybe that’s just in case people like you have no friends). let’s assume tougeki is the #1 promoter of a video game, and that the game publishers marketed the game as a TEAM VIDEO GAME (…. hahah get the fuck out). WHO GIVES A FUCK. you know, roll cancels were never intended to be put in cvs2. hey, but everyone uses it now. WE ARE SUPPOSED TO FOLLOW DEVELOPERS ORIGINAL INTENTIONS. BANNED IN ALL TOURNEYS. hey, there are ’secret’ characters in super turbo. HEY YOU CAN’T FUCKING USE THEM. THEY ARE SECRET! BANNED FROM TOURNAMENT.
no. just because a game was made with a specific intention, to follow it blindly is stupid. i bet you’d be one of those pussies who cower at work and do whatever your boss tells you to even if it was stupid and inefficient. no. you do what’s right, and you do what’s better.
if you don’t want to read any of the arguments that were brought up, that’s fine. your opinion is your opinion, and my opinion is my opinion. it just turns out that you are fucking blind. that’s it. hey, maybe i’m wrong. prove it.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:56 am
If it was designed as a team game the arcade cabinets would have 4 or 6 sticks on them.
1v1 fighting games are not more team oriented than any other 1v1 sport - not at all. Team tourneys are fun, sure, but fun in a casual psuedo-serious sort of way, not as the only game in town.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:59 am
oops, i was too aggressive. i’m working on 10 hours of sleep since last friday and i kind of went off. apologies about excessive curse words (even though that’s how i normally speak) and whatever that was overly offensive.
however, the content still stands.
thanks and sorry.
August 4th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Don’t really want to respond to flame bait, but I want to make my point more clear.
I did not intend to say that “you must follow the developers intentions.” Ofcourse you use whatever tools the game manifests. Any other way would not be “playing to win.”
Secondly, I merely posted as a counter-argument to all misplaced anti-team tournament discussion. I don’t believe I stated that there should never be Guilty Gear singles.
Sirlin, and a few others, seem to have placed their person misfortunes ahead of any practical discussion. It would be more useful to hear gameplay reasons, rather than your issue with friends’ team loyality, as why why team tournaments are “bad.”
August 5th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Guilty Gear is a 1vs1 game. It’s not a team game. The developers did not “intend” it to be a team game, and claiming this just makes you look silly. I can’t even believe someone would seriously claim this, so it’s hard to refute such a farcical statement.
All fighting games have character specific matchups: ggxx, #r, slash, ac all do. Super Turbo SF and Hyper Fighting SF do too. Not a single one of these games was designed with team tournaments in mind.
Team tournaments are popular in Japan, a fact that is neither here nor there. The team format allow tournaments to run faster because fewer matches are needed and they are slightly less objectionable in Japan due to the larger pool of competent players. That they are culturally accepted there is no free pass to explaining why an inherently 1v1 game is testing your ability to make friends.
It’s actually offensive that you think my “personal misfortunes” have anything whatsoever to do with this. I have been anti-team tournament since day 1 (unless you mean fun side events, which are fine). The only misfortune here is that Evolution held an absolutely amazing ST tournament at Comicon and the thread is now ruined with outlandish ideas regarding an offhanded statement in the last 1% of the post about such an amazing event.
–Sirlin
August 5th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Guilty was never intended to be a team based tournament. In fact many Japanese GG tourney are still one on one. Team tournament are used because unlike in the US where our largest tournament might have 200 players, in Japan can have up to 5000 player.
Team format has three major downfalls:
One - everyone always wants to team up with someone better, no one wants to be the best member in his team. Course there is always the exception of friends teaming up because they know no one else, they know they have no chance in winning, so why not team with your friends. But going to Evo, the players attending all have the intention of winning the big prize and therefore is looking for the best possible team. As a result, even though u might crew with some good players chances are they wont team with you because they probably are going to team with other top players to have a better shot at winning the top prize.
Second - You gotta know people to be in teams. Say you’re a great player in fact probably a top player but you hardly go to any of the major tournament because lack of funds, work, family whutever, but you do have the money for Evolution because its a once a year event that you’ve saved up for. But since you might not have proven yourself thorughout the year its difficult to find a team that will have a good shot at winning. In fact you might have to settle for your firends because they’ll be the only persons that are willing to team with you. So reputation has a big deal.
Finally - In team tourney, no one ever carries their fair share. We tend to lean on our best player and hope that he can clutch a win for the team if we fail. We actually dont try to improve the matchups we arent good against because… well ruin- plays eddie he counters potemkin i dont have to worry if i lose. This defeats the purpose of trying to be the best player in the game.
I agree with Sirlin, every fighting games have their counter matchups, I cant honestly think of a game balance enough to say everyone and anyone can win any matchup and its all based on skillz. The ability to learn those difficult matchups and overcoming them is what makes the fighting game experince different from other games. Who wants to play a game where u can just skip over hard matches and just focuse on the easy ones… boring
I personally hope GG next year will be 1v1 so that we can actually see who the top players are in GG. Its been a long time not since #r if i remember.
No other games at Evo are team based… the only reason I think is because one of two reasons… one the fans seems to want to try it out because its a big hit in japan without realizing why they do it… and/or two because GG is the only import game each year thats at Evo so getting imported systems and games is costly and a hassle so there is a lack of equipment avaliable for Evo.
1v1 FOREvER!!!
RenoROB
August 5th, 2007 at 3:42 am
If I recall the original desire for a team tournament was for the variety — so the top 10 in Slash wasn’t all Sols and Kys blahblahblahblahblah. Guilty Gear is a pretty diverse game of course and I think most people were pretty bored of seeing the same few top tier characters in the finals. That and a character like say… Slash Potemkin do very well against a good number of the cast and very poorly against the rest. Not viable alone generally, Potemkin can work real well in Team Format. So it encourages character diversity.
I think this can also be paired with the fact that, in general, I think theres less counter picking going on in Guilty Gear for various reasons.
(We’re a bunch of weeaboos and are more prone to character loyalty, very difficult to learn the basics of a character confidently, spread out competition that makes it extra difficult to even know all the matchups of your main, let alone a secondary, and the fact that the really good players are going to just be wlel off with Eddie or whatever lower top tier characters are in use).
Also: It increases the chance of US players finishing in the money. :D
I’m pretty neutral on this either way, but figured someone should list off some of the other benefits of team tournaments.
August 5th, 2007 at 5:10 am
i highly suggest we vote immediately after EVO this year for GG to be a single player event. i know that they hate the GG community in general, and want to drop the game.
i mean, either way, lower level players will lose, higher level players will advance. just that your teammates won’t drag you to events you don’t want to go to in the future.
August 5th, 2007 at 5:44 am
another thought, sorry for spamming with 2 posts back to back.
in japan, there are countless top players. almost 4-5 top players per character. yet, tougeki is a CAPPED tournament, meaning that in order to get in, you must win tournaments and there is a very low number of actual players in a 1v1 tournament. I believe it’s 64. Anyway~~~
A team tournament gives the opportunity for 3 top players to join forces, and reck other top players, while still allowing for more overall players to go. I believe that there were enough players last year for the last call qualifier, that they had 100 teams?
And yet, in America, there are maybe 50 teams total? Maybe 45% of which are random people teaming together with no real reason why, other than they couldn’t find a team mate?
August 6th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
There is WAY too much talk about GG in here, didn’t this start as a ST review? I’m a hardcore tekken/SC player and trying to get into the 2D world. ST has really captured my interest and would love to read more of what happened at EVO west or opinions on sirlin’s post? Damn, he only made 1 comment about GG teams…
August 7th, 2007 at 3:27 am
Somehow, I compeltely believe that we’ll see rainbows and Hello Kitty in Choi’s mind. It makes too much sense. And I hate that Oicho Throw. I let victory slip through my fingers in our match. ^_^ You even asked me after our match, “What happened?”
And koogychan says: “i highly suggest we vote immediately after EVO this year for GG to be a single player event. i know that they hate the GG community in general, and want to drop the game.”
Don’t worry. I’ll continue to fight for GG’s survival. I still love the game. And remember: Evo Staff hates EVERY game according to each community. We hate Smash, we hate CvS2, we hate Marvel, we hate 3rd Strike, and we hate Guilty Gear. We are equal opportunity haters. ^_^
August 9th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Only game at evo which needs be a team tourney is 3s. You’ll still get alot of yuns, chuns and kens occupying top spots, but at least theres more of a chance of seeing some mid tier characters up there.
Guilty Gear might work better as a 2on2, spread out those top players abit more. Although its def at its best when its 1on1, for many reasons said above already.
Contrary to what alot of you here may think. I believe ST to be a very good team game. You can get some very interesting teams indeed. Definitely would promote more variety. Thing i’ve noticed when watching American tournaments is that players try to either tier whore, or counter pick there way to victory. Which is all good, as your giving yourself the best chance of winning. But this can become stale. At least with a team tournament where teammates can’t choose the same characters, you can get some very strategical teams, which attempt to cover other teammates character’s weaknesses. This is true for all team tournies, but even more prominent in ST, where theres quite a few “bad” matchups. Makes for some exciting games, don’t believe me? Check out the x-mania team tournaments.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:03 am
I think the crowd had a better time seeing me play 3 characters during Evo West finals than if I had been stuck playing only 1. You wouldn’t never have seen that Honda vs. DeeJay match if I had to commit to Honda the entire tournament.
Another example was last year’s Guilty Gear tournament (team, boo). I was debating between playing Chipp or Potemkin, and because I did slightly better with Potemkin in casuals, I went with him in the tournament. I faced a Baiken player who I had beat several times with Chipp, but not at all with Potemkin. Instead of everyone seeing a more interesting Chipp vs. Baiken match, they got to see me lose really bad in Potemkin vs. Baiken. No one was served by this rule, and I don’t even think it lead to a legit result in the case where this other guy couldn’t beat my Chipp.
A third example is SFA2. In a real SFA2 tournament, I would play Zangief when I could, Ryu against most people, and Rose only in certain cases. In a team tournament, I would have no real choice other than playing Rose the whole time.
Team tournaments REDUCE character variety in these examples above. They prevent the competitors from showing off multiple characters and the prevent the crowd from enjoying all those interesting matches that never happened.
It’s really sad that some people here are actually taking team tournaments seriously (in the USA), as if they are real tournaments. Japan has a different culture and a different situation that makes team tournaments less objectionable there, but most of these points still stand even there.
More to the point of my original post, can you imagine how much worse Evo West top 8 would have been to watch if we all had to keep our same characters?
–Sirlin
August 10th, 2007 at 12:25 am
I think team tournaments can be good fun, but are not to be taken seriously in the least. It’s pretty much like any other gimmick tourney, where the focus is more on exploiting the gimmick the best rather than actually winning by being good at the game.
The idea of a serious tournament is to eliminate as many random factors as possible, and in a team tournament the biggest random factor is the grouping of the players themselves. An otherwise great player could end up getting stuck on a shitty team and end up losing to a team of three equally great players, whereas he might have actually won in a 1v1 tournament. God help you if teams are created randomly. Swear to god, I’ve seen this happen (and it was pretty much a total surprise, not advertised, sprung on everyone at the last minute) and it was such a goddamn trainwreck that I decided it would be a better idea to try and get my entry fee back than to end up with two fucknuts who didn’t know what the hell. But then, I think that tournament would have been a trainwreck regardless, but that’s a different story.
August 10th, 2007 at 5:02 am
I saw that match vs DSP from SRK frontpage. Nice comeback there with honda.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Interesting to read your thoughts on our match, especially the character selection process. Since I play Vega in 95% (probably closer to 99% if we’re being honest about it) of my matches in tournament I was relatively sure I’d be seeing Honda or Bison in the first game. I had no idea you would even consider Vega/Vega and giving me a chance to steal a game in a match I might have a fair shot at. You learn something new every day.
Anyways, this match sucks. People can see/hear that I’m just mashing half the time out of desperation. I hate how often I have to guess in that fight.
August 13th, 2007 at 10:29 am
I don’t play with counter matching too much in mind. I know certain characters do better against others (in ST, fireballs = honda baine). I try to get very good with a specific character, and have one or too at the side just incase my main guy or team gets completely destroyed (for ST, my main character is Boxer, then ryu or guile if i fail bad with him.) I feel that the counter matching gives you a good advantage, but it doesn’t make the match impossible to win.
I think that daigo and Muteki are good examples of what im trying to point out. Now, daigo is one of the best players in the world (you said so yourself) and he generally sticks with shotos (st ryu). He dominates many matches that would be considered mismatches to most other players (look a a couple of fights between him and Gian and tsuji, or him beating you). And muteki sticks with guile like white on rice. He has won matches against crazy mismatches (guile vs blanka, guile vs vega, etc). Its nice to have the advantage of a counter character once in a while, but don’t depend on it too much. Thats what i have to say about that.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Team tournaments are an artificial way to encourage variety. The finalists are forced to have at least 3 different characters. We could do this with ST too. If we draw pieces if paper from a hat with the name of each character, a 32 man tourney would have 32 different characters, artificially. Obviously, the players are not playing at their best.
Team tourneys, being single character only for each individual player, do not encourage real diversity. Real diversity is forged when the top players have to learn more than a single character to improve their chances. They need to learn more about the game, knowing matchups and forming a roster. Sirlin does that at ST, for instance. When you force people to play just one character, there is no need for them to learn variety.
So yeah, team tourneys actually reduces variety 9except when the variety is fake) or, when this is not the case, team tourneys reduces the level of gameplay, since the players are not well versed in multiple matchups.
More than that, as already stated, team tourneys are tourneys to determine which grup of best friends is better than which other group of best friends. Even though the game is one-on-one, it is impossible to bet an accurate measurement of who the best player is. IMO, that’s the #1 reaosn why official team tourneys are a complete waste of time anywhere in the world. If its not possible to show who’s the best, why not just forget it and play casuals altogether?