stages in tournaments

I think Genzen pretty much laid it out logically. It's a pity that it had to take a wall o' text to do it, but I guess sometimes things have to be spelled out.

KiwE, correct me if necessary but I think the underlying basis of your stance is that "random is fair (so tough it out)." See, therein lies the problem. Random is not fair.

Current tournament format is each match is decided by 3 out of 5 rounds. With such a small number, even true randomness can throw a curveball at an unlucky competitor. Only when numbers become signficant, does randomness truly obey a bell curve.

And that's assuming the randomizer of VF's stage select is actually good at being random. I've seen plenty of crap "random" code in other games.

 

Dude I have no problem with taco stages, quit making assumptions about what I prefer man. We are just discussing what the rule should be.

 

I think it was the anonymous 'you' (the more grammatical approach would be to use 'one', but it's somewhat archaic now). Could be wrong, but I don't think he was attacking you personally or anything.

 

I think all matches should be on taco stages.

 

My bad Kiwe, mistook the 'you' in that statement cuz of the quotes.

In regards to having time to figure out what stage an opponent likes, you can totally figure that out in a tournament setting. I watch my opponent's matches when I'm not playing, especially guys I expect to be playing against later on, and just genrally know some player's styles. It is reasonable to expect that by the time you reach winners finals or grand finals you've had sufficient time to watch your opponent play on a variety of stages and see how well they utilize them.

BTW Genzen I love your argument.

 

Yes it is. I don't give a shit what character you pick and if you find that character has a disadvantage on an open stage due to ring outs or a walled stage due to worse wall stagger setups. Change your character and fuck you for thinking I should be adapt to you wanting to play a Loli or whatever while listening to Naruto. It's your choice at the select screen.


First match will always be random. What happens next? The player loosing gets to pick his stage. This is an advantage for him and, in turn, penalizing the winner of the match. What this mean is you're creating an artificial comeback mechanic in a game that has none. It's as simple as that.

 

By saying 'you're penalizing the winner of the [first] match', you must then concede that the stages do have an effect on the outcome (else changing the stage will be of no consequence). You're saying that the stage shouldn't be changed to reduce the effect that the stage has on the outcome of the matches? You see it as 'the stage was randomly picked and if it benefits one player more than the other then so be it'? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that outlook, and random is definitely fair in the sense that no one has the advantage prior to stage select, though personally I think it's counter-productive simply to use one randomly selected stage for the entirety of the session, because it doesn't strive to remove/reduce the effect of the stage when trying to find the 'more skilled' player through competition.

By allowing a diverse range of stages to be used, we can limit the weight placed on them when considering skill differences. Another, equally viable option would be to have the players play a game on an equal amount of the same types of stages.

Simplified Example:

Players agree to 12 games. Imagine only four types of stages (for simplicity's sake).

Play three games on stage type 1
Play three games on stage type 2
Play three games on stage type 3
Play three games on stage type 4

Now, we've had matches across all the types of stages, and so, again, the winner should be the more skilled player, not the one whom the randomly-selected stage favours the most.

The advantage of this method is that it's not a back and forth of 'Player A wins on stage he selected' then 'Player B wins on stage she selected' etc - we utilise all the stages rather than just playing on two types that each benefit one of the two players.

The disadvantage of this method is that it's quite complicated and requires people to keep track of which games and which stages have been played (exacerbated by the fact that there are actually a lot of stage-types), and also that it locks the players into a large set of matches, and could ultimately lead to a tie, requiring a final 'sudden death' match which would then be subject to the random stage select.

 

...or we just play on random stages instead of creating problems where there are none.

 

Haha at Jeneric. Wish I could 'like' both of his last posts. Goddamn it could remain so simple right?

And continuing to agree with KiWe to the FULLEST.


Also, fuck any of you trying to make this game have SF4 Ultras. Artificial ones in this case. The only 'comeback factor' should be your mental. Honestly though, you have to be a special kind of person to full on have unshakeable faith that a damn manual stage change will save you if you got massacred first match. Especially in this game. If you do win second match with manual stage change, it's most likely 99% attributed to the fact that you man'd up and got your shit together. That other 1% is made up of possible occurences to be considered, mostly not to offend people who want to be obvious and stress that they exist. Moreover, that 1% is for the person who has patented secret technology that is inescapable on his manually chose stage.

Sweet.

 

I remember when I used to switch characters at tournaments all the time and people told me that wasn't fair. So which one is it? Switching characters is fair but switching stage isn't? The whole argument of "if your character is weak on stages switch characters" I feel is a lazy way of trying to win the argument and it doesn't really prove that what you're saying is true (not that I disagree with you Kiwe).

My personal opinion is that the loser should be able to switch stage to random if he doesn't like it and hope for the best. However, it's not like whats Tricky is proposing would make a tournament unfair

 

Stage selection == X factor or Ultras? Are you insane?

No one is saying stage selection will save you from being massacred. It's an extremely simple, trivial addition. It's a matter of preference and control. It doesn't make sense to me that you're allowed to change stage, but you have to roll the dice, and possibly get one that you--for whatever reason, legitimate or not--like even less than the first.

Regarding the argument that stage selection punishes the winner of the first match. That is a specious argument. Even if that winner is, as you say, at a disadvantage second match and loses, then by the same token he will have the advantage on the deciding game, and will therefore have the advantage overall.

The logic behind stage selection is the same logic behind allowing character changes; the same reason sets are best of 3 instead of a single game: to account for and normalize all variables in a game.

 

Denkai, we don't think it's unfair, we think it's silly.

I think KiWe made the argument of, "If your character is weak on certain stages, switch characters" just to hush all this overbearing talk of characters being so weak on certain stages. He wasn't flatout endorsing for people to switch characters. Yea it's a bit of truth to character capabilities in certain sutuations, but not like how guys here are making it. It's kinda laughable to me really.

But bottomline, you think loser should go random. Us too. How we both get to that point is a beaten horse corpse. What Tricky is proposing isn't dumb, but the argument of why it should be standard is sort of petty and scrubalicious. I'm more comfortable to just say, "Because Japs are doing it", then have to tell people who play other fgs that in VF loser manually picks stages because of ____ and witness them laugh like the first time I did when I realized guys were totally serious on putting so much weight on this argument.

 

you compare stage stage to sf4 ultras and then say a win after a stage change woulve had nothing to do with the stage in the same paragraph.

which one is it.

 

Wow. Way to totally miss the mark.

I was comparing the PRINCIPAL of wanting, or needing, a MANUAL stage change to the whole dynamic of SF4 Ultras and why they were implemented in the IV series in the first place by the developers personally.

Lol, yea I'm about done with this discussion. I can respect all arguments and points up until it gets tedious and redundant. I can see that VF might be the only fg some of you play, and casually at that. The need to theorize to this extent is slick ridiculous and I wonder if it's only out of boredom or something else. Competitive ethics and the standards it has possessed for YEARS do not seem to exist in this topic though. Just equations and twisted words for an astoundingly simple subject.

Later guys. Holy shit...

 

And that is precisely why I say it was a lazy argument. Either you mean that or you don't. And if he didn't, why say it? You can tell a guy that hates his job at Burger shack to just switch jobs at Microsoft but we all know that doesn't actually solves the predicament he's in. It takes a lot of work to switch characters, especially in VF. Switching characters will and should never be a way out to solve a solution and this is coming from the Switchnationer himself.

 

Ha ha, it's such a strange sensation when I jump between forums. I go to a forum connected to a webcomic, and everyone is touchy-feely and writing walls of text. I surf back to VFDC, and everyone (well, some ppl) is itchin' for a fight and calling ppl they disagree with scrubs even when personal skill is irrelevant in the discussion.

Well, if you think Starcraft tournament players are all whiny scrubs who can't man up to a fair fight, I guess end of discussion.

P.S. Just want to say I still respect everyone as players. But again this thread really isn't about individual player skill.

 

I fail to see where everyone is calling everyone scrubs or where this discussion even has gone non-civil at all. Sure, people might have a purposely abrasive tone, but nobody is doing any real personal attacks as far as I can see.

 

yea uh i wasn't trying to twist your words. and it is a simply topic, untill you and a few others got extremely worked up for no reason.

screw the competitive standards talk, it's an option on the damn rematch screen and I was wondering what the rule should be in a tournament.

 

I really don't agree on a lot of conclusions you draw out of a hat almost using circular arguments Genzen. Even if I thought that stages doesn't matter why would I let the opponent pick something he is comfortable with / want? That's not a contradiction (wtf?). If my opponent was to choose a specific stage, even though I didn't think stages mattered, I wouldn't rematch on the stage he selected if a match really mattered out of principle. He might not like walled/open stages even though it's beneficial to his character of psychological reasons. If he's only comfortable on 2p side or only practices on a specific stage his combos or he's not comfortable playing Brad - these are all his problems. I will exploit every single one if money or big prestige is on the line.

Certain characters are better at ring outs, certain characters are better at walls, some again better at RO's over low walls. Are you in actuality advocating that all character differences should be nullified?. Also; I think that certain characters are better at CH launchers (Akira) and certain characters are better at poking (Pai) or have better lows (Lion). Why not limit these as well and change the rules of the game to adapt to this? A good way would be to only allow a single character in the game and call it Aki-Fighter-Evolution or Lion could only use low's every second round. Who decides these things though? Who (definitely in the west) have a good enough understanding to even begin doing this? You and Mlai? After having the game for one month?

I don't know what kind of crack you and Mlai for instance are on but repeated random pickings, regardless of game, reduces variance (and gives a bigger samplesize). This is statistics 101. It really feels like you are arguing that it doesn't. If you wanted to reduce variance you should be arguing for that every VF match was FT3 wins instead of two. That would be the sane thing to do. For instance there's a movement in marvel right now for this very thing to reduce "luck" in the game.

However, I would want you, or Mlai, to mathematically prove to me under the following premisses in a FT2:

1) First stage random
2) Second stage looser picks
3) If the game is not over - loser picks
4) Game ends

I want you to prove to me under those premisses, assuming it is not idiots playing, that stage selection will be LESS important and/or the occurrence of problematic stages will be LESSER than 3 games of random pick.

You will not. But still you keep arguing for it. Why, I have no idea. I want you to REALLY think through before answering also to maybe get some insight. Hint: That the first selection is still random is key.

This is really everything that should be said:

1) You're creating comeback mechanics.
2) There are other 3d games where stages matter. To my knowledge SC5 and T6 both use random select at new stage:
http://8wayrun.com/wiki/tournament-ruleset/
http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?thr...n-event.132002/
3) It will lead to retards doing mistakes at tournaments in the end picking the first stage and what not.
4) It's unnecessary - everyone will still be raped by a low tier Blaze from JP. When the Asian players were at Evo they didn't really seem to give two fucks about it being random anyways.