Isn’t the idea that chun winz and a team tournament gives more opportunities for other characters?
I honestly have no idea, just a theory: I think the “1 credit per play, winner stays on” mentality is incredibly strong for Japanese players, and they put that into their FG tournaments. It may be a tradition from having to organise tournaments on CPS1 / CPS2 hardware without event mode.
Of course, that would mean FT1, single elimination tournaments. High stakes, as it’s just one match that decides whether you go forward or not. So in order to allow people to have more chances to get towards the finals (and winning the tournament), they keep the same rules but have team tournaments instead; if you lose, your team-mates may still keep you in the running.
Note VSGC is a format designed so that 3S players can have 1v1 games while still playing “FT1” matches. Of course there’s also the reason jblair gave, which is to increase character variety (although I think that’s more of a side effect than a reason).
Yeah I’m tempted to cite reasons that aren’t 3s specific as team single elim formats seem popular in japan for all fighting games.
Teams are more fun and exciting. They give people who might have no chance of winning a single match a possibility of advancing to the next round. It’s great fun cheering for your teammates.
Tournaments in Japan are more for fun.
If they held a double elim tourney, no one would come. Why? Because double elim tourneys take fucking FOREVER. That means weekday tourneys are out because most people don’t finish work until around 7-8pm and have to wake up early the next day. Weekend tourneys would have low turnouts because not many people want to spend their entire day and night waiting around for their match.
Anyone that has been to a large arcade double elim tourney will tell you that they amount to about 10 minutes of actually playing and 6-11 hours of standing around.
yeah good points^
I think we take it for granted that major tourneys must be 8-12 hour affairs, especially with these modern games where a single match takes 4-5 times as long as a single ST match. I’m sure a long tournament seems like a small price to pay for having a second shot, thus giving this extra sense of the tournament deciding the TRUE best player, but having a tournament over with promptly is pretty sweet if you’ve never experienced it. people are more apt to grind out casual games afterward, or even run another tournament. I also think getting used to single elim/single game makes you a better player overall. american players seem to struggle to adjust to that format a lot more than japanese players struggle in double elim, 2/3 style tournament.
and I think the ideal of finding the TRUE best player from a tournament to be foolish. its always going to be the best person of that day. if that person happens to be Izu so be it!
100% agree on the time element.
I think most of us simply don’t have the time to go somewhere and play for that many hours other than on special occasions.
We did when we were in highschool/college probably but I think most of us are 25+ with some kind of job/relationship/etc.
Team events just seem more fun too. You get to rep something other than yourself. I don’t have the willpower at this point to fight everyone just for myself. Double elim when it isn’t a very small or very big (like you set aside a weekend) event is just crazy.
pherai you are wise. i also absolutely agree on the ‘true best player’ shit. you can make it best of 55, it still won’t mean the winner is the absolute superior player. just the better player at that moment.
As long as I get a set of kara palms on someone I’m dandy
That was my welcome gift to The Shend when he came to chinatown fair lmao
Never thought about the time argument, or the even the CPS1/2 history. Thanks for the opinions.
Feels like there’s a loophole here. I don’t think one tournament is ever looking for the best player ever. And with ft2 double elimination, you’re still doing a more thorough job of determining the best player of that day / the moment, compared to single elim. You determine what ‘the moment’ means with your format.
I think Double Elim is fine for around 30-40 players and you have at *least * 5 setups, i really like team tournaments and single elim, i hope one day we can get enough players at Gutter Trash to do a 3v3
I hope we do a team tourney at next Evo!
I get you but imo it’s just too much. No matter what it’s still just at that time, so why spend all day?
When you make the event long what happens is that by the end no one is sharp anymore. Everyone is a little more sloppy and the people who win are more often the type who win events, not just who win in one off fights. So it really just favors a certain type of player imo.
It’s like a sprint vs a marathon. You can only run a marathon a few times a year. You can sprint every day. Would you rather get in some dope games twice a week for a few hours or once every 3 months for 2 days. For me it’s the ‘sprint’ style event.
Those are some great points Tebbo, never really considered it from that point of view. I always assumed that being able to maintain your focus and not get sloppy over time was simply something you had to learn to do in order to win tournaments (hell s-kill wrote an article about it, which I read rather recently).
I still think that double elimination is good as it gives players more chances and reduces the factor that random events play in deciding which player goes through, as well as giving players who aren’t near the top level another game in the tournament to prove themselves. In Gutter Trash 3 I lost my first game, as I was paired off against Cyrox. Now I’m probably never going to win that match any time soon, but I did get matched up in Loser’s Bracket against a guy who was even worse than me, so I won. In single elim there wouldn’t have been anything separating me from the guy I just beat - we both would have lost our first games. Double elim allows us to draw a finer distinction in skill (and allowed me to keep a shred of dignity, before I lost to Crimeinal).
However, Ryan said that there’s “10 minutes of actually playing and 6-11 hours of standing around”, and while GT3 wasn’t that big, I did feel that the games didn’t really progress quickly. This is pretty irritating, and I also don’t doubt what Tebbo says with regards to burnout (which I suffer really badly from). Having single elim keeps the pace up and keeps it exciting, especially as the players realise that they may be 1 game away from losing it all.
That would be a lot of fun if we could organize teams somewhere beforehand
I have been meaning to ask about this actually. Ryan and others who have played in tokyo and stuff: Do people wait in line to go next when you lose? In Okinawa this actually doesn’t happen. People like to watch two really strong players fight each other over and over.
Singles and single elim seems really brutal but fun as a pick-up tournament of some kind. So yeah I get that for singles it doesn’t make too much sense.
I haven’t played on a team for a fighting game, but I have in other games and I think teams help turn some of that intensity into fun. It’s easier to deal with losses on a team than by yourself. so it being single elim, I imagine it doesn’t sting quite as much because it IS a team event so other people are expected to contribute. Even if your team is eliminated you still get to share the loss as opposed to sitting silently wondering what you should/n’t have done.
In my tokyo experience its not much different than American game center etiquette, but less formal. theres nothing analogous to lining up quarters on the cab. everyone just kind of keeps track of the order in their head.
I guess western players just don’t like ‘random’ players, or aggressive players. second chances favor turtles. of course my own bias is towards aggressive play. I’ve had many tournament losses from losing 2 games after winning the first. so like tebbo says, I think more forgiving formats favor a certain kind of player than just the overall best player.
the biggest disadvantage to double elim/best of 3 type of tournaments though, and this should resonate with any 3s player, is that it makes bad matchups worse. beating chun with Q twice is so much harder than beating her once. best examples of this are evo results. the one year evo 3s was one game you had much better character variety in top 8.
team play is sick cause certain types of players are MUCH more valuable than in singles. I think of Jiro who doesn’t do fantastic as a singles player, but can pull out huge wins against dudes like MOV in a clutch situation cause he takes bigger risks. or even just a character/player with one glaringly bad matchup gets stronger when teammates can cover the matchup. and team synergy seems like it might just be kinda BS but its totally a factor. whenever I team with Bean (YU) I play better.
Alright, I can agree to all the stuff above. 
@Deemo make the next gt teams only! 
I agree with nothing!!