Hum… You made a point here.
Gems are going to ruin this game’s community just like how items split the Smash community and fucked everything up
Mark my words
the gem system is okay for fun but me personally i won’t join a tourney that will allow gems. Ban that shit and hope dear god there a option to let search for non gem matches online.
Yep, you’re either going to have people having run around with all their customized characters on a X360 memory card or flash drive (more stuff for tourney monsters to steal), or people will have to set up their characters pre-battle, and waste a ton of time, more than anyone complaining that fatalities in MK should be banned in tournament play for time restraints could even imagine.
Moreover, people will gripe about not being able to use DLC gems. “Well, Blazblue doesn’t ban Makoto, Valkenhayn OR Platinum…” And I can agree with them. But then depending on the route the game takes with Gems, SFxT would denigrate into a FG version of Magic the Gathering where whoever spends the most on their character gems or “netdecks” a customization has the advantage. I won’t say wins because player skill still plays out, but it does in Magic too, but TCGs suffer from those two problems invariably. Do we really want FGs to go down that road?
I say just ban them outright. Not because of what potential depth they could bring to the table, but just because of the hassles they will bring to the table will most likely far outweigh the benefit they could bring by using them.
SC4’s customization of stats could’ve provided depth as well. I say that hypothetically, but no one can say for sure. Doesn’t matter, since they were banned because of the time it would’ve wasted at tournaments, the time investment or money investment it would’ve taken to unlock all the customization features (even if you bought all items, you would still have to play substantially with each character to level up their styles to get all of their statuses), and all the potential that all we would’ve seen at high level play was Auto Impact A Hilde or Amy.
I personally don’t feel they should be banned outright. To me it would feel as if they banned changing assists in Marvel. It’s true certain combinations of assists with certain teams are crazy good, but it’s just part of the game.
As for picking things from the menu, while true it will tack on a couple of seconds, I still don’t think it’s a valid argument. Once people know their builds they’ll be on autopilot and have everything selected super fast. Again, in Marvel, you don’t usually sit there debating your assists, you know your build and just pick 'em right away. It’s true there are a lot of gems so it will require a few more menu clicks, but you would most likely have to take the time to pick “no gem” anyways.
No way, man!!! Because if it’s bad we can hack the game to make our own version with ACTUALLY good gems.
Here is what I think, you ban them now, they never become a problem, you don’t ban them right off the bat people will start to argue over what gems should be banned, what gem combinations should be banned, and then eventually down the road you might have found out all too late that gems should have been banned like Hilde and Meta-Knight but they’ve already killed the game’s scene.
BAN THAT SHIT
I was thinking ban DLC gems but point 3 that you bring up is a valid point and something that could foreseeably be a nightmare. I suppose it depends on how they display or the screen where you pick them.
Still though… TOs would have to know all (what 45?) gems and watch each match…
Banning them seems to be the only legitimate option unless the gems are all free and the “exclusive” ones are not exclusive.
Edit: there is also the problem that if there is no community wide rule the game mechanics could vary wildly from tournament to tournament which would effectively spell disaster for the scene. I can see it now… “which gems does this tournament allow?” Not good.
I have a feeling cosmetic gems will be available for any mode. If any exist that is.
they should ban them ,theyre stupid and i dont want to have to spend money to get gems.
While i agree on your post, Hilde herself wasn’t the killer for SC4, but the fact that no one ever agreed on a single set of rules. Some banned SW characters, some didn’t, some banned algol, some didn’t, some banned hilde, some didn’t. The confusion did more damage than Hilde did.
Meta was a HUGE oversight by SBR and should’ve been banned early on. Even mediocre Meta players were hard to fight against. Granted I did see one of the best Metas in Illinois be taken by a 12-year-old Ness player consistently before, MK player had to counterpick with Kirby to win GFs against the kid, because the kid didn’t know the Kirby matchup at all. But that’s an extreme situation, usually GFs consisted of Meta.
Graphf brings up a valid point with tournament rule confusion. There needs to be a standard in place, but I would anticipate that Evo rulings will take precedence, so if Evo bans gems, so will most tournaments for this game. If you guys want to prove gems not to be broken or time consuming or difficult to enforce, run “SFxT w/ gems” side tourneys, and post your observations.
The exclusive CEdition/pre-order gems are the bigger issue. Usually these exclusive dlcs are not available as soon as the game is released, so for at least 1st month tournaments, unless TOs have pre-ordered every single copy, there’s no way they’re gonna have them.
As for later DLCs, I agree with who said thet they’re much like DLC characters…and I don’t like dlc characters, but I can live with them, they actually put some time in the development and balancing of a new character so they deserve to be paid (I’m talking about real dlc characters, not day-one-dlc-characters-already-in-game)
With gems I can already see them charging us 320 msp for a few lazy gems done by only adjusting a few values in the code in 15 minutes, like “add 15% more damage to fireballs” , “increase meter gain by 10%”, “double chip dmg on supers” There, 3 new awesome gems.
Also, looks like there’s gonna be a shitload of them…45 are only from pre-ordering and getting the CE, I can only imagine how many will be in-game or added as future dlc…that’s RPGs standars. I don’t wanna jump to conclusions but there’s a high risk that 80% of them will be useless and 15% will be ok and 5% “use them if you care about winning”.
So, in the end, I’m not just thinking “we should ban them”, I hope they get banned cause I don’t want to have to waste my money on dlc gems and I think the game is fine even without them
it seems like a horrible thing to have in a tourney.
the dlc part.
seems ridiculous to ask this before anyone even knows how it works. and after the fact tournament organisers are going to do what they want not base their decisions on a thread on srk.
cant they just have a TOURNEY mode to unlock all gems for us?
I just hope to god theres a non gem option of playing online. Otherwise this gem system alone is going to make me pass on this game…
It would make learning a massive amount of matchups even harder.
I don’t think the gem system as meant for tournament usage. Balancing a game with so many characters + teams is extremely hard even with the help of system restrictions. Once you add gem combinations, it becomes impossible. It looks like more of a casual play option.
It does seem interesting though and I wouldn’t wanna see it go to waste. The game should have a built-in option that restricts DLC/pre-order gems. That way we can still explore it semi-seriously and TOs will still have the option to ban them.
I don’t understand S-Kill’s position though:
Well don’t forget Seth Killian has to sell this thing. Of course he’s going to say tournament players will want to use it. Do you think he’s going to talk poorly about a game mechanic they probably spend quite a bit of time working on at all and in particular in a public setting? No, that’s bad for business and that’s what gets “Special Advisors” fired. And maybe in some sense the meta game of SFxT will be spending time finding the best gem combinations for your team. Certain gem combinations may be able to make teams that appear low tier on the surface and make them competitive etc.
With all that being said… I think I would personally lean towards banning gems for tournament play at this point (and as some people have mentioned we havne’t even seen it or gotten our hands on it yet so this is why I lean but am open to the possibility). But another factor that goes together is practice and learning the game. If many people who don’t have access to local gatherings and are forced to do the majority of their play online don’t have an option to play without gems, then learning to play without gems for competitive play while their opponents online then maybe learning gems won’t not be an option…
However with that said, I immediately agree that all pre-order gems unless they’re available as day one DLC need to be immeidately banned in the pursuit of fairness. I mean if AE could add the option to add subtitles to lobbies even so that you could put the title “NO GEMS” on your lobby I think that might go far enough for me but we’ll see. This is the first thing that has really been offputting to me about SFxT so I’ll take the wait and see approach.
A Basic Summary of this thread
(OMG BAN PANDORA AND GEMS!!! I CANT HANDLE NEW MECHANICS MY BRAIN MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO HANDLE THEM 
)
so sad,