Pros and Customs on tour: Please don't knee-jerk ban it!

[KDZaster]

I really, really want the tour to be pros AND customs.


Hi, you don't know me yet. My name is KDZ, and I come from a fighting game tournament community. In this setting balance is a much bigger concern because we play this game at high-stakes for thousands of dollars. There are teams, sponsors, rivalries, world tournaments, etc. So obviously the issue of balance and fairness is a prominent issue.

This game is basically a fighting game with a ball.

In this community, where something called a "tier list" exists. It's the amount and regularity that one character matches up to every character, individually, in the game and then. A "Top Tier" character is a character that has the most "favorable matchups" and the least "unfavorable matchups". This is usually done on a scale of 10 matches, how many should one character win vs another if both players are truly perfect (human error is a non-issue). An VERY unfavorable matchup is 7-3.

EVERY fighting game... hell, every competitive game with a character selection has a top tier, and a bottom tier. They exist. If you want to use the bottom tier and try to win, you can try to be that hero. Same as this game. There will be a top tier. There will be a bottom tier. EVEN IF YOU CREATE A CREATE A CHARACTER THAT FACT WILL EXIST. Top tier in that might be people with high power + strokes, or some unforseen combination. But regardless, tier lists exists no matter what you try to do.

So why not play with the pros?

Some people dont care about the quirky trinkets they can put onto their character, or naming it after themselves like a surrogate child.

Some of us want to play in the tour while not having the time to micro-level a character and continually tweak them.

To say that a created character has a disadvantage just because they have less skills or slightly less points isnt true at all, because you also get skill combinations that no standard character has!!

I played someone with highish power, forehand, backhand, decent speed, MONSTER Defense and Topsin Invasion. The damn character was hitting every line and short angle consecutively, regardless of what state whether or not he barely stretched for the shot. I am not exaggerating. I got winners, but never got him to hit a shot anywhere near middle court and lost pathetically. I don't think it's cheap at all! The opposite, it shows that this character can compete evenly with my Pro.

That skill combination does not exist with any character and created a totally new character that CAN compete with the normal pros.

It's the FIRST TWO WEEKS OF THE GAME. I want to play in your ladder! Please make it Pros, or at least allow for a combination of Pros and Customs. Let the real tour decide if things are broken and need to be banned, rather than jumping the gun and banning stuff on the first two weeks. Other communities has suffered a lot by making the same mistake you guys are making.

[TomBs]

I agree with you, although seperate tours for created characters and pros wouldn't hurt. I really would like to be able to use pros too. But why can't this fit in the other topic?

[Hawkeye Miihawk]

The pros with the most points, Fed/rafa/djoker/agassi/etc, are custom killers in the right hands. Unless ofcourse your custom is a mutant. Also, all pros are not made equal (tomic, wawrinka, etc). Whereas all customs are very close to each other in points, and they only have 2 skills. Some pros have 2 skills, while some have 3.

We can also come up with rules to, hopefully, balance the customs and try to make them more realistic. Pros are fixed, and, unless all the customs are mutants, they will dominate the pro/custom tour. The points disparity between customs and the pros with the most points is too much.

Imo, a pro and custom tour should not exist. If there is a pro tour, it should be separate.

[djarvik]

The pros with the most points, Fed/rafa/djoker/agassi/etc, are custom killers in the right hands. Unless ofcourse your custom is a mutant. Also, all pros are not made equal (tomic, wawrinka, etc). Whereas all customs are very close to each other in points, and they only have 2 skills. Some pros have 2 skills, while some have 3.

We can also come up with rules to, hopefully, balance the customs and try to make them more realistic. Pros are fixed, and, unless all the customs are mutants, they will dominate the pro/custom tour. The points disparity between customs and the pros with the most points is too much.

Imo, a pro and custom tour should not exist. If there is a pro tour, it should be separate.

I agree with this.

[KDZaster]

Custom Killers in the right hands just means that your custom has a bad matchup against those characters. That's a NORMAL THING in a competitive fighting game.

One of the craziest things I've heard on this site is that if two people have two different play styles and customs with different strengths, while having equal skill, they should split 10 games 5-5.

That makes no sense.

Bad matchups are bad matchups.

Is it fair that in REAL life Andy Roddick is 2-20 against Federer
while he's 3-3 against Rafael Nadal,
5-3 against Djokovic,
and 3-5 against Murray.

Some people, some characters are going to match up badly against others, regardless if their "skill" is equal, but neither the fact that Wawrinka/Tomic MAY end up being bottom tier, nor that Customs MAY not end up being able to compete matter right now, the game is too fresh.

Before we separate these people, remember that this game is TWO WEEKS OLD for petes sake.

Don't separate / ban before something has been proven somewhere other than practice matches. Those were for nothing, no stakes at all.

So many game communities have made the mistake of banning shit early in competitive play in the past that it diminishes their community as a whole.

The way any good tournament community has always worked is to ALLOW EVERYTHING and then ban what PROVES to be out of hand! Not make a solitary judgement for the WHOLE COMMUNITY based on two weeks of practice matches.

Allow everything in the league (except for gamebreaking glitches).
And if it ends up being a complete clustermuck, figure out what can be done to fix it!
And if THAT doesn't work then separate them!

[ItaStallion]

i agree with KDZaster i have played street fighter games my whole life as well...

With the introduction of Street Fighter 4 everything was legal at the start of the games lifespan... Then players started disputing tiers for players and match ups... Sagat was deemed as too powerful and very short frames of recovery and attack so he was banned from competition.

This is actually the right way to look at a game make everything legal till something or someone is to good for competition and dominates it and then ban it from tournaments to keep a level playing field.

Hopefully we all see this is the correct way to sort out what is and isn't overpowered in a game

[JJ_DUBZ_87]

I suggested something similar to this in another forum, but more on an individual player basis. I.e. if I played with Chang and got to the Semis or better of 3-4 top tier tournaments (masters, 500s, what have you...) then I'd have to switch characters. Maybe that can be tweaked to if I WIN the tournaments with Chang but I can see you guys' point and it's a valid one.

What some of us see developing though in TS4 is a repeat of what killed so many of us in the TS3 main tour - Stacked Syndrome - where a player just grabs the most offensive setup possible because the other stats (speed, stamina, volley) are irrelevant and don't play that much of an effect. The result was that EVERYONE in the MS Tour had the same setup - Maxed out FH, BH, Serve, Power; little to no speed, stamina, and volley.

The SIM tour was created to combat this and to create a more balanced field of players aside from Baseline Bashers (admins correct me if I'm wrong).

The reason why some of us are already OK with a pro tour and a separate custom tour is because that's how TS3 was, with the MS tour (your own created player) and the SIM tour (created fake characters that everyone had to choose from and play separate tournaments with).

I don't feel it's a bad thing to have both tours in TS4 (custom tour and pro's tour)... nobody's obligating you to play one or the other so I don't really see it as a turn-off, and in the long run it's more matches for the ITST competitors to play.

[ItaStallion]

what KDZaster is putting forward is a proposal to be able to use any player or custom until something is deemed overpowered...

This makes for a much broader community of players as there is no limiting until proven that something is overpowered. Then of course limiting/banning and perhaps seperating is needed in that case.

Pokemon is very similar to this with tier battles. In pokemon there is tiers and all pokemon are classed on their tiers.

an example of this is an OU pokemon tier team is overpowered against a NU pokemon tier team yet underpowered against an Uber poker tiert team. It is all to keep it fair and even playing field.

But i'm sure TS4 will not result in that but im showing you how people make games balanced

[djarvik]

This makes for a much broader community of players as there is no limiting until proven that something is overpowered. Then of course limiting/banning and perhaps seperating is needed in that case.

That I have a problem with. As far as I am concerned, this is already proven. But your opinion differs. See the problem?


...therefore - the tour will be custom only for now. Options for additional tours will be reviewed as well, but for now we are going forward as we did since 2003 - Customs only.

[Rob ITST]

Except there was no tour in 2003.

IMO, the players who everyone thinks are overpowered, are actually the weakest. They're noob cannons. Easy to play with, but with major weaknesses that can be exploited.

[ItaStallion]

Question when has this been proven?

i still see no evidence

[KDZaster]

As far as I am concerned, this is already proven.


Options for additional tours will be reviewed as well, but for now we are going forward as we did since 2003 - Customs only.

How can you be so closed minded? This isn't 2003 or TS2. This is a brand new game!

It's not only a difference in opinion, it's the idea of "Guilty until proven innocent" that you're throwing around here.

That's like not hiring a colored person because back in 2003 one robbed your store. Since then, you've only hired whites and voila, no thefts. You even hired a new white guy in 2008 and that worked out too. So now in 2011, it's time to hire a new guy. IN YOUR OPINION another colored guy would just rob you.

It's less an opinion, and more a decision thats familiar and comfortable. Why can a couple people's problems with change affect the entire ladder system?

[ItaStallion]

Im with KDZaster this game needs to be completely open for atleast a month before we can decide on banning things so to speak...

I'm sure within the month we will get polls running and such and see everyone's decisions on whether or not they should be banned rather than just banning them?

if the majority vote on pro's and customs instead of just customs it would be a more enjoyable experience for all IMO

btw KDZaster good games Federer is a beast. Glad to get a few past him

[JJ_DUBZ_87]

There already has been a poll dealing with this topic to some degree...

http://www.intertopspintour.net/forum/v ... hp?t=14350

Majority likes the idea of having an additional pro tour as well as a custom tour (which is the way it's been at the ITST). The problem with doing polls here, however, is for the amount of members and views per topic, the results are pretty womp-ish in terms of votes.

In addition we are playing the warm-up tourneys and there have been people using created players and people using pro's. Maybe it's worth looking into the results there to see who's winning over whom... The admins did say that the warmup tourneys would be a test to gauge the strength of the pros versus the created players.

The changes you guys are suggesting are BIG changes for the ITST admins to simply say "yeah that's great!... let's do it asap..." You gotta give it time to sink in especially taking into account the way things have been being ran here in TS2, and TS3 (because there were NO pros allowed there either...).

Also, if you guys want to set up your own polls aside from the post above, I don't see anyone stopping you. Worst case scenario it gets locked if it's off-base or unruly

[JJ_DUBZ_87]

p.s. the colored analogy was kind of weird... what popped into my head from that was a case I heard about Hooters...

Apparently Hooters would only hire busty blondes and brunettes and the less attractive chicks were mad and sued them...so Hooters had to start hiring less "ideal" Hooters gals.

I know that's random but I'm kinda tired; and I'm really trying to see how the colored thing relates...maybe it's just me...? there's SO many angles to that...

But the best and maybe clear-cut solution would be for you guys to do the polls. That way you get direct feedback from the members.