Each year I’ve been to EVO I’ve had one thing that has always been an issue. Whenever there’s a new game demo on display the lines are long and they’re made longer by the arcade style “Winner Stays” rule. Now normally I’m all for competition but this creates huge issues that make it a terrible experience for MANY people.
Demo’s are meant to be tested. They aren’t about pride wins. In some cases like with vanilla MvC3 people were getting stomped by players who had tested it prior. The new people couldn’t even get there bearings on the mechanics or controls before they lost. Meaning there long wait to the line often ended in gaining nothing from the experience.
It doubles the line. We want to test the game! Most of us don’t even care if we win, we just want to fuck around and figure out what to expect. This means every time you feel the need to test, you risk losing and have to wait all over again.
It encourages players to be competitive with very basic tactics and not explore the game. UMvC3 had a special brood of assholes that made a LOT of people mad. People wanting to test the new characters were often thwarted testing out the new stuff because people were running their vanilla MvC competitive teams just to stomp them. They weren’t even testing out the new balances and it was extremely aggravating wanting to test Hawkeye and get taken in seconds by someone trying to just get the win. You could see how this affected people because their were complaints until someone finally stepped up played their team to wipe them off and for a few rounds you would see people pausing, testing moves, asking questions as they played, and trying the game out (you know, the point of the demo)…then the competitive guy would come back and you had to hope he didn’t reset things. This was EVERYWHERE.
4.It’s a new game and a win doesn’t mean anything. The mechanics are unexplored, the pad/stick may not be set for everyone’s taste (seriously poor pad players trying out UMvC3 this year), most people are playing it to experiment.
So please can we make a rule winner DOES NOT stay. It benefits no one. There’s no pride in winning a match with ahead of the curve info on a game most people haven’t touched. A lot of people wanted this but a few individuals with their own agenda made most of the crowd very urked by this. If you want to play for respect points, grab a console and duke it out there. Why are people running the EVO teams in UMvC3 demos when there’s MvC consoles everywhere with heavier competition?!? And once again this has happened 3 years in a row for me and I do this to promote giving the community a chance to play the demo, I’m all for competitive play (I’m at fucking EVO).
I’d rather have a 5 game win limit instituted on the demo units, personally. Make the win mean something, but not at the expense of everyone else in the line.
I disagree. The winners are usually bloggers and the more they win, the longer they have to test out the game and share that information with the public. I’d much rather have someone spend an hour with the game and then talk about it online then have every Joe Shmoe get their full 99 seconds worth.
It’s alright for the guy on there for a long ass time, but when you have a line out the door, giving as many people experience does a lot more than giving one person experience.
I’d personally love to see a two-game rule. One to test out whatever they want, and then a serious game. Both getting booted from the machine after the second game.
I would 100% much prefer to play the game myself. After all , I (Joe Schmoe) will be the one shelling out the dough to play the game, and I won’t shell out the price of a new game just because of blogger X went on a 10 match winning streak and said “wow that was totally awesome”. If someone wants to write a review for a game, then they should really organize it with the company. The more people who get their hands on the game, the more potential sales are available.
For a demo booth, I say 3 streak win limit machine, so that more people get competitive games (keep the line moving too), and an additional machine for those who wanna play with the mechanics over competition. Second machine would get 2 games with the standard time setting per round. 2 Separate lines: No issues involved.
It benefits the winner, this reminds me of when there’s a stream running for a update of a game. Like when super came out or UMVC3 is on. There’s a tournament running and the stream monster are going ape shit cause THEY want to see the new character. Not watch the guys on stream try to win whatever is being given out to the winner.
I would just ask the person yourself if you could test some things out. That’s what I did and the guy was on a big win streak and he let me test out Doom’s changes. Don’t expect to stay on the station though after you spend a entire match testing shit out.
I’m reminded of the stories of the guy at E3 who was playing to win on the sole TTT2 cabinet and more or less preventing anybody else from getting to try out any new stuff.
Seriously, anyone who is that obsessed with winning in a game that isn’t out and nobody knows how to play has some insecurity issues, you won’t be betraying David Sirlin when you tell them to fuck off and go 2-2 in the actual tournament.
I paid my way to EVO from Hawaii last year to give MvC3 a try. People wanted me off the demo after just playing it once because they said I had no clue on how to play the game. I didn’t know the button configuration and i obviously won’t learn how this game is played after one try so I stayed on for another game.
After my third game, I got the hang of how the game plays but was confronted by a certain EVO commentator. This unamed person said I should get off the game so he could play the demo with his friends. I got off and they played the game for a long time which is complete bullshit.
I played a little more on the second day but people kept on hugging the demos and ignoring the people in line waiting to play so I said fuck it. I left EVO with getting less than 10 games on the MvC3 demo total.
well you sort of have to keep an arcade mentality about that and be aggressive for your turn. I remember at powerup this year, a top player was in our casual rotation and he made sure everyone understood in was 2/3 games and then refused to get off when I beat him until he won a game after three or four losses. Everyone was too busy dickriding to push him off the console.
I remember someone getting angry with me when I beat him with my team, but I was using my vanilla team to test the changes on all the characters as well as get a feel for how it plays out. I got a few win streaks, lost a few to random players, but I was trying to stay on because I was trying to get as much as I could before I had to go to pools/panels/eat/etc. But I was legitimately testing stuff.
The prizes being handed out for people winning didn’t help either. So it’s really tough when there are more than a couple of incentives involved to win, but tbh if you were really wanting to try certain games I would just go on the biggest HDTVs since they’re the most likely to lag hard, and no one competitive would want to get on those. I know I didn’t.
I definitely agree to certain stations being regulated to certain win streaks, it’ll definitely weed out the people who are trying to win stuff versus the people who just want to try things out.
