I’m more than a bit tired of seeing the same subset of characters used over and over in the top tournaments, and another subset of characters completely absent in the top tournaments.
So, I decided to look at the mechanic and behavior considerations of tournaments and figure out what variations in tournament formats could produce a diverse character usage.
In addition to putting forth my own ideas for discussion/scrutiny, I would love to open this up to anyone who has ideas in this realm.
In addition, the idea of setting up a format to encourage a wider base of characters used is only one type of thing to consider.
I’d love to have other people put forth what other types of tournament behavior they would like to see so that we can analyze mechanic and behavior considerations to make those happen.
Anyway, enough gab, here’s the tournament format idea.:
MATCHUP WEIGHTED TOURNAMENT
Each round, players play a #matches against their opponent until one of them wins 1 more match than their character is supposed to win according to the character tier list.
I propose using the tier list here:
(here is an older version of this chart in English: http://streetfighterdojo.com/sf4/data/charactermatchup.html)
… until a BETTER/UPDATED tier list comes out from the results of the tournaments themselves.
You want to play Sagat? Ryu? Rufus?
Fine, but you are gonna have to beat a Dan/Sakura/Vega player 8 matches and they only have to beat you 4.
What if the format makes tournies require too many matches?
Then divide the tier number by 2 (rounded up): Now Sagat has to win 4 and Vega has to win 2.
Still too long?
Divide by 3, or count number of rounds instead of matches.
I expect most people to still play their mains, which will be high ranked chars.
But you should see a lot more participation (and success) from people who main or use the off characters.