Serge2HOT4U
[09] Warrior
Ok, now that I have your attention, here's my breakdown of all this ban nonsense that's been happening. Kind of a long rant
First of all, in order to get into a mindset, i want you guys to read this:
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Tourneyfag
Aah, the tourneyfag, one who makes every attempt to play fair, bless his heart.
The trouble with smash, as stated by the creator himself, is that he never meant this to be a tournament game, so all of those bans were implemented by the smashers. Did they make sense? Maybe, but it is not my place to speak on the topic as i have never been an avid smasher (outside of "yooooo, lets party.... ICE CLIMBERS!!!").
Now, we move on to SC4, easily accepted as a competitive fighting game. To prove this to us further, Namco actually released a patch to balance things out - which shows us that they are at least committed to the gamers in some way.
Now, lets look at the structure of the characters by first grouping them:
Regular characters,
Star Wars characters,
Bonus characters,
Custom characters,
Algol
1. The Regular characters is what the game is centered around and balanced around. These are the guys that received numerous patches, and the balance of the game was based and designed around them.
2. Star Wars characters, in my opinion, should be counted with the regular characters. Sure, they are "guests" and "might not fit in", but they have been advertised as a selling point of the game since day 1, so they too get the similar balance treatment. As an example - look at The Apprentice, who received a boost to his force throw break to make him more competitive (but not broken), and on the other hand - Yoda, who cant be thrown BUT takes soul gauge like noones business, moves slow, and needs to make JUST FRAME BLOCKS to compete. And Vader, who deals massive damage, is mostly safe, but slow as fuck and his combos take a LOT of force. Intended advantages and disadvantages - why, isnt that balance?
3. Now we get to the tough part. I was honestly for the bonus characters for a while, but after playing a bit, i changed my mind. These characters all have someone else moves, which means they were added as an afterthought, yet their size completely skewers the balance issue because their balance is solely dependent on their "parent" characters. Example: Amy was designed and balanced to be fast, but mostly short range - Charizard is Amy without her range weakness. So whatever change was made to Amy reflected on Charizard, so balance was inadvertently affected.
4. Same as above. A character's size is built in to their balance. Amy needs a few 5 dollar footlongs, while nightmare doesn't, etc. This once again screws with the original balance of the game as applies to normal characters.
5. Algol.... Yes he is a boss, and depending on the game a boss can be overpowered or not. But lets look at it another way, the same way I've been looking at the other issues - character balance. Was Algol factored into the balance of the game (regular and star wars characters)? Is a high level Algol beatable by a high level ((insert character here))? Is there any point of using ((Insert Character here)) when Algol is available? My honest answer is no.
So what's my honest opinion?
In short: Don't ban star wars, don't ban Hilde, ban bonus chars, custom chars, Algol.
Star wars characters are a feature of the game and are regular characters. Hilde is a great character, but relies heavily on ringouts, but can be beaten by any character (and this is coming from a Xianghua player who, according to France, shouldn't stand much of a chance)
Now, we could unban Algol (and some places are doing that), and be all well and good as a fighting game community. Yet his power means that all the players that are on top will have no choice but to use him in order to keep up, and then these great players would basically have their fame up, but not as much as if they were known as, lets say, a great Cassandra player, a great Kilik player, a great Lizardman player, and so on.
We are already seeing two top players - KDZ from NJ and OOFMATIC from Canada, rely on counter picking, which made them fantastic in many tough matchups and has won them large tournaments. However, with Algol, that twiddles down the character roster counterpicks so much that a person wont be able to get their name up with a different character with algol around. Simply put, like Tekken 4 had a top roster of great Jin players (and 2-3 people that could counterpick each other), and the challenge of innovation was not present because 95% of the innovation would prove worthless.
Ban the obviously unbalanced, and we are good to go.
The flip side is emerging of course, of "Ban hilde, ban stages, ban dirty looks, etc". That, of course, comes from newer and medium tier players who have not realized or do not want to deal with relatively minor challenges. That is the Smash tourneyfag cry, lets not have it spread to such a level. plz ok
And to close out, lets compare this shit to UFC:
I give you Frank Mir (Asta) and Brock Lesnar (Voldo) ((ignore the size differences lol))
Frank Mir has great BJJ (ring out skills) while Brock Lesnar rushes the fuck down.
Did frank mir rush down lesnar? no, that would be silly.
Ring out
Now Mir is about to face Big Nog (Hilde):
Now Nog has even better BJJ (ringouts) than Mir(Lets imagine that the doom combo works on Asta lol), Does Mir go for a Ringout? Hardly, he keeps it standing and knocks Nog the fuck out.
Mir makes his Mir face
And now we have this guy:
Notice, he is a random guy with a gun. He can probably beat Mir by shooting him (there is a chance that Mir can disarm the man, but small)..... Unless Mir himself has a gun.
"Oh shit son, Frank Mir got a gun!!!"
And then the UFC becomes a bunch of people shooting each other. ((Algol users))
EDIT:
Or Dick Punchers (legal in earlier UFC's), but banned so we can focus on the kicking, BJJ, Boxing, Wrestling that make the sport great
[Youtube=UFC Before Bans]57Mva-3n7TY[/youtube]
First of all, in order to get into a mindset, i want you guys to read this:
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Tourneyfag
Aah, the tourneyfag, one who makes every attempt to play fair, bless his heart.
The trouble with smash, as stated by the creator himself, is that he never meant this to be a tournament game, so all of those bans were implemented by the smashers. Did they make sense? Maybe, but it is not my place to speak on the topic as i have never been an avid smasher (outside of "yooooo, lets party.... ICE CLIMBERS!!!").
Now, we move on to SC4, easily accepted as a competitive fighting game. To prove this to us further, Namco actually released a patch to balance things out - which shows us that they are at least committed to the gamers in some way.
Now, lets look at the structure of the characters by first grouping them:
Regular characters,
Star Wars characters,
Bonus characters,
Custom characters,
Algol
1. The Regular characters is what the game is centered around and balanced around. These are the guys that received numerous patches, and the balance of the game was based and designed around them.
2. Star Wars characters, in my opinion, should be counted with the regular characters. Sure, they are "guests" and "might not fit in", but they have been advertised as a selling point of the game since day 1, so they too get the similar balance treatment. As an example - look at The Apprentice, who received a boost to his force throw break to make him more competitive (but not broken), and on the other hand - Yoda, who cant be thrown BUT takes soul gauge like noones business, moves slow, and needs to make JUST FRAME BLOCKS to compete. And Vader, who deals massive damage, is mostly safe, but slow as fuck and his combos take a LOT of force. Intended advantages and disadvantages - why, isnt that balance?
3. Now we get to the tough part. I was honestly for the bonus characters for a while, but after playing a bit, i changed my mind. These characters all have someone else moves, which means they were added as an afterthought, yet their size completely skewers the balance issue because their balance is solely dependent on their "parent" characters. Example: Amy was designed and balanced to be fast, but mostly short range - Charizard is Amy without her range weakness. So whatever change was made to Amy reflected on Charizard, so balance was inadvertently affected.
4. Same as above. A character's size is built in to their balance. Amy needs a few 5 dollar footlongs, while nightmare doesn't, etc. This once again screws with the original balance of the game as applies to normal characters.
5. Algol.... Yes he is a boss, and depending on the game a boss can be overpowered or not. But lets look at it another way, the same way I've been looking at the other issues - character balance. Was Algol factored into the balance of the game (regular and star wars characters)? Is a high level Algol beatable by a high level ((insert character here))? Is there any point of using ((Insert Character here)) when Algol is available? My honest answer is no.
So what's my honest opinion?
In short: Don't ban star wars, don't ban Hilde, ban bonus chars, custom chars, Algol.
Star wars characters are a feature of the game and are regular characters. Hilde is a great character, but relies heavily on ringouts, but can be beaten by any character (and this is coming from a Xianghua player who, according to France, shouldn't stand much of a chance)
Now, we could unban Algol (and some places are doing that), and be all well and good as a fighting game community. Yet his power means that all the players that are on top will have no choice but to use him in order to keep up, and then these great players would basically have their fame up, but not as much as if they were known as, lets say, a great Cassandra player, a great Kilik player, a great Lizardman player, and so on.
We are already seeing two top players - KDZ from NJ and OOFMATIC from Canada, rely on counter picking, which made them fantastic in many tough matchups and has won them large tournaments. However, with Algol, that twiddles down the character roster counterpicks so much that a person wont be able to get their name up with a different character with algol around. Simply put, like Tekken 4 had a top roster of great Jin players (and 2-3 people that could counterpick each other), and the challenge of innovation was not present because 95% of the innovation would prove worthless.
Ban the obviously unbalanced, and we are good to go.
The flip side is emerging of course, of "Ban hilde, ban stages, ban dirty looks, etc". That, of course, comes from newer and medium tier players who have not realized or do not want to deal with relatively minor challenges. That is the Smash tourneyfag cry, lets not have it spread to such a level. plz ok
And to close out, lets compare this shit to UFC:
I give you Frank Mir (Asta) and Brock Lesnar (Voldo) ((ignore the size differences lol))
Frank Mir has great BJJ (ring out skills) while Brock Lesnar rushes the fuck down.
Did frank mir rush down lesnar? no, that would be silly.
Ring out
Now Mir is about to face Big Nog (Hilde):
Now Nog has even better BJJ (ringouts) than Mir(Lets imagine that the doom combo works on Asta lol), Does Mir go for a Ringout? Hardly, he keeps it standing and knocks Nog the fuck out.
Mir makes his Mir face
And now we have this guy:
Notice, he is a random guy with a gun. He can probably beat Mir by shooting him (there is a chance that Mir can disarm the man, but small)..... Unless Mir himself has a gun.
"Oh shit son, Frank Mir got a gun!!!"
And then the UFC becomes a bunch of people shooting each other. ((Algol users))
EDIT:
Or Dick Punchers (legal in earlier UFC's), but banned so we can focus on the kicking, BJJ, Boxing, Wrestling that make the sport great
[Youtube=UFC Before Bans]57Mva-3n7TY[/youtube]
