Ideas to help revive the HDR scene

[zaspacer]

Deeper payouts can make sense in larger tourneys, but in the average 16-player tourney, it’s probably best to stick to top 3 payout, or it kind of becomes meaningless.

The WSOP only pays out to the top 10%.
They have a much larger field.

With 30 players, having a top 8 get paid is at 27%.
To satisfy a formulaic payout system, you could always specify payout schedules for tourneys in sizes that are smaller.
Example:
Top 10% (tourneys with > 250)
Top 20% (tourneys with 40 - 250)
Top 8 (tourneys with 25 - 39)
Top 4 (tourneys with 16 - 24)
Top 3 (tourneys with 11 - 15)
Top 2. (tourneys with 6-10)
1st place only. (tourneys < 6)

Or whatever you want the numbers to be.
The concept of deep payouts is that it recognizes and rewards for finishing well but not winning.
And a (the?) key factor in deciding whether to use it is whether it is desired by whoever the tournament is for. (in this case the players)

What payout could get each player to enter a tourney?
Likewise, what entry fee, play format, elimination format, etc would get players motivated.

I might go to EVO, but I (currently) won’t play if it’s on PS3.
But I also won’t enter with the cost to enter + current payout scale. (I do not expect to finish in the top 8, and being able to cash is a big factor in my spending big $ to register + enter)
I WOULD go and enter the smaller side tourneys since they are more for fun and don’t involve much money (don’t need to regi$ter).

But these are just things that influence me.
There are a LOT of people who are more than happy to pay big $ with no expectation to win just to have been a part of it. (you see this with WSOP and gambling in Vegas in general)

The key would be to figure out a system that maximizes the combination of stuff that gets the tournament organizer what they want: lotta players entering, top players showing, lotta people watching, name recognition of event, maybe lotta profit for the tourney runner (maybe just potential to break even), etc.

Travel is huge for a lot of people.
I think the Japanese hold some tournaments on the eve of others, which would be great since people going to the one can then also go to the other.

About higher entry fees, it seems polarizing. People who think they really have a chance at the money tend to be all for it, while more casual guys tend to dislike it.

Well, deeper payouts would get more players thinking they could cash, so they’d likely be more up for paying.

Also, if you can get more people in a tourney, then the prize pool you’re playing with will be bigger.
Having deeper payouts might result in more players, so maybe the top player makes more money in the end (smaller % of much larger pool).

I’m not saying deep payout is the way to got, but it’s something we can see done in other tourneys and should be something to consider.

I’ve seen many, many times some guys being on the fence at entering a tourney based on whether it would be 5$ or 10$ entry! Meanwhile I’d personally enter a HD Remix tourney that had a 100$ entry fee anytime.

It all depends on what you want from the tourney.

If you want to run a “high stakes” tourney, then you’ll probably draw a smaller pool.
But you’ll also probably get some great media buzz, a lot of interest from rich and top players, and a lot of viewers.

SF and Magic have the problem of a lot of its players are not loaded with $.
Magic is STILL able to get mega payout tourneys with cash poor players by having all the prize money be gathered from the tourney qualification process.
Players pay to take on much less skilled pools of players to get into the “big tourney”, then they don’t have to pay for the big tourney itself and the big tourney has deep payouts: all gravy.
And, top players in those big tourneys also get a free ticket to the next big tourney.

Edit: Okay, with my example of 3rd place in a 13-person tourney and zaspacer’s example distributions, I guess I still wouldn’t be in the red, since the money is mostly taken off the champion’s prize. Then the champion of that tourney could get 52$, instead of the 70/20/10 distribution’s 91$. Hmm, I don’t know.

I don’t think you should look at deep payouts as some fixed variable that you either accept or reject on the basis of its universal merit.

Rather, it’s just another format variation to consider with regards to what you want out of a specific tourney.
Swiss vs. Single elimination?
Winner-takes-all vs. deep payouts?
Solo vs. team tourneys?
Vegas vs. LA location?
Low scale event at local venue vs. big scale event at rented hotel space?
Counterpicking vs. stick with what you choose?
High stakes entry vs. low?
People who enter get a shirt? Have their match broadcast on a stream? Have their name on a website?

What combo of stuff interest players?
What combo of stuff would attract top talent?
What combo of stuff would attract viewers?
What combo of stuff would make the tourney runner a profit? (or whatever reward is motivating them: happy community, name recognition, celebrate the game, etc.)

[zaspacer]

If you want to make a competition starter-friendly, it would probably also be better to use a format like swiss that gets weaker players more matches. 2&out is not a fun experience and doesn’t really help people get better.

About swiss, the good part of having weaker players play more matches is kind of offset by the bad part of having more matches at all. It takes more time, and time is often a luxury. I guess swiss can work in tournies with really few entrants.

Regarding Swiss:

1. it takes more time, but this is only a not-enough-time problem if logistics don’t account for that time properly. (# set-ups, time budgeted to run it, etc.)
2. it takes more time, which might be a deal breaker for players who don’t want to have to spend their whole day playing.

So what I’m hearing is I should host a total old school tournament with HDR as the feature event with some HF love, some OG ST, some UMK3, a lil KI, maybe a little Alpha 3 and Third Strike thrown into the mix, DG already said he’s flying out to Indianapolis, and we should charge Thelo 70000.00 to enter the HDR tournament for the prize money… Sound good?

Depends what you want.

I think almost any larger size, offline tourney would be silly not to run SF4.

As far as top players, I think you could just obtain their contact info individually and find out from them what would get them to come out to a specific event.

I think it would be nice if some of the top level players contributed more to the character strategy threads. I think Sirlin was defending how HDR Fei was better than ST Fei in the old Fei Long thread. But then someone asked him how to beat Boxer with Fei, and he said “I don’t know”.

It seems like a lot of characters are getting new threads that try to cover matchups and other areas with help from people like Shari and Thelo.

My website streetfighterdojo.com should help with a lot of areas with its ST, but it really is gonna be lacking in terms of addressing major changes from ST in HDR.
You’d also do well to search for top HDR players on youtube, though a lot of that is hit and miss.

Sites like http://www.pedantic.org/~nate/HDR are great for getting a better understanding of what weapons and weaknesses each character has.

Some characters get more love than others.
Are your needs specifically regarding Fei Long?

[Rufus]

What combo of stuff interest players?
What combo of stuff would attract top talent?
What combo of stuff would attract viewers?
What combo of stuff would make the tourney runner a profit? (or whatever reward is motivating them: happy community, name recognition, celebrate the game, etc.)

What combination of stuff would make people play the game the next day and the next year?

[Rufus]

Double post

[zaspacer]

What combination of stuff would make people play the game the next day and the next year?

As a game designer, one element I discussed with my peers in game design that fosters active playing and long term addiction is the “MMO” feature set.

Basically, its a time reward system tacked onto a game that gives players rewards for investing time in the game.
This system moves away from skill, and more toward time as a condition for receiving reward. (though often the time required can be reduced through skill, short-cut knowledge, etc.)

The trick is to move players into a lifestyle of budgeting their time to play the game.
You get them set-up with easy access to play the game.
Then you set-up a reward system that they buy into and is celebrated/shared in the game and game community.
Then you tune the reward system delivery rate so that it provides reliable, consistent rewards at a rate which keeps the player periodically satisfied yet hungry.
The rewards should be a mix of things (items, stats, play experiences, etc.) that the player can easily reference, value on a objective shared scale, compare and comunmicate to similar users about, and easily figure out how to improve. (in fact, “improving” should be the default track for all players just for playing the game, logging on, having an account, etc.)

This “MMO” concept of player time addiction can be set-up through things outside the standard way MMO’s do it.
Message Boards are a way that players develop a time budgeted lifestyle with a game: they start checking boards as a routine, and they can communicate/share “rewards” (game knowledge, game success/failures, etc.) from playing with other players giving them a sense of accomplishment or growth.

Bottom line.
If you want to develop a group of people that perform an acitivity frequently and over time, find a way to make that thing addictive.

And don’t think this is done by simply “asking” players what they want.
You need to find out what they want, not what they THINK they want.
I’ve often said: “don’t ask a fish if it’s hungry, put food in the water and see if it eats”

[Remy77077]

Great post zaspacer. The trouble is, a lot of the ‘MMO structure’ tends to break or at least hinder a competitive game. How would you go into applying this in a game like Street Fighter 2 without spoiling the game? I’d absolutely hate to have to “level up” my SF characters in a way something like Modern Warfare 2 makes you grind time to even compete. In fact I wrote an article about this issue that I got a surprising amount of positive feedback on. I’d love to know your thoughts! I personally think there’d be some great ways to do it in competitive games that would work - StarCraft II seems to be taking the lead on this (I’m currently in the beta and seeing how they do it exactly).

[IrrepressibleGuile]

interesting idea there, what about having a certain amount of control of ur chosen characters functions, say forexample, slightly increases in throw range after a certain amount of wins. Being able manipulate hitboxes, kinda like classes in mw2 where you can make one part of ur character stronger but another part gets weaker.

or say for ryu, you could choose to have a wider DP (like kens) but at the expense of a slower fireball.

to be honest though I dont think a leveling up system can work in an old fighting game like SF

[Remy77077]

Cheers Irrepressible I personally don’t even think it really works for a game like MW2! It definitely keeps people playing it and grinding away, but it actually spoils it in terms of its structure as a competitive game, and really puts people like me off.

I definitely don’t think it’s a good idea for a competitive fighting game; although you can argue that any fighting game that makes you play to unlock characters, like SFIV for example, is using a similar grinding thing to unlock ‘options’ in the competitive part of the game.

[Rufus]

Unlocking moves or modifications is terrible. Extras that don’t affect gameplay like alternative colors might be nice though.

[Thelo]

zaspacer’s concept of a “MMO-style” fighter where time = power and losing is rewarded horrifies me.

[Coth_X]

zaspacer’s concept of a “MMO-style” fighter where time = power and losing is rewarded horrifies me.

Still though, it works, how many people do you think play SFIV’s championship mode. As bullshit grind as it is.

[KAOSPIDER]

As a game designer, one element I discussed with my peers in game design that fosters active playing and long term addiction is the “MMO” feature set.

Basically, its a time reward system tacked onto a game that gives players rewards for investing time in the game.
This system moves away from skill, and more toward time as a condition for receiving reward. (though often the time required can be reduced through skill, short-cut knowledge, etc.)

The trick is to move players into a lifestyle of budgeting their time to play the game.
You get them set-up with easy access to play the game.
Then you set-up a reward system that they buy into and is celebrated/shared in the game and game community.
Then you tune the reward system delivery rate so that it provides reliable, consistent rewards at a rate which keeps the player periodically satisfied yet hungry.
The rewards should be a mix of things (items, stats, play experiences, etc.) that the player can easily reference, value on a objective shared scale, compare and comunmicate to similar users about, and easily figure out how to improve. (in fact, “improving” should be the default track for all players just for playing the game, logging on, having an account, etc.)

This “MMO” concept of player time addiction can be set-up through things outside the standard way MMO’s do it.
Message Boards are a way that players develop a time budgeted lifestyle with a game: they start checking boards as a routine, and they can communicate/share “rewards” (game knowledge, game success/failures, etc.) from playing with other players giving them a sense of accomplishment or growth.

Bottom line.
If you want to develop a group of people that perform an acitivity frequently and over time, find a way to make that thing addictive.

And don’t think this is done by simply “asking” players what they want.
You need to find out what they want, not what they THINK they want.
I’ve often said: “don’t ask a fish if it’s hungry, put food in the water and see if it eats”

Hey zaspacer, you could always just mind rape people:

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted

[Remy77077]

Still though, it works, how many people do you think play SFIV’s championship mode. As bullshit grind as it is.

Totally agree with you and thelo.

StarCraft II seems to have found something interesting though. They are using concepts from MMOs of rested points and bonus points so that winning = power, but there are gains to be made by playing more or less. The nice thing is though, if you don’t win you still don’t get a thing, yet the system still encourages a lot more play. The killer thing is good matchmaking; something which all fighting games are completely useless at - and HDR didn’t even try.

[Zero1]

interesting idea there, what about having a certain amount of control of ur chosen characters functions, say forexample, slightly increases in throw range after a certain amount of wins. Being able manipulate hitboxes, kinda like classes in mw2 where you can make one part of ur character stronger but another part gets weaker.

or say for ryu, you could choose to have a wider DP (like kens) but at the expense of a slower fireball.

to be honest though I dont think a leveling up system can work in an old fighting game like SF

I’d like this so much, but in reality it would make for such a random and broken game. I mean you face one Ken who has good fireballs and shit dragon punch, but the next one can fierce DP you from fullscreen, and you only find out when it’s too late! Remixing a character for yourself would be awesome. For Ken I’d reduce the arc on his fierce DP, and as a result, use those points to give him a short huricane kick like Ryu. I’d sacrifice normal throw range for extra knee bash range and I’d totally give up my strong fireball for a faster fierce fireball.

[CzarFighter]

HDR is probably beyond saving. There is a new game out and Capcom can make more money supporting that instead of this. The ranking system is glitched past a certain amount of games. There is a divide over which SF2 is the best version. Local tournaments usually don’t happen for it or is usually a low turn out. Most of the top players play SF4 or play ST still. It reminds me of Halo 2 how it died. Sometimes you just have to cherish your memories and move on. You can still have fun but it is hard to take HDR seriously anymore. Most of the good players are enemies on xbox live so its hard to improve because it is lose one or two matches and leave. The other thing is the net code in HDR I hate for distance play which hurts the community.

[Silver_Rain_007]

HDR is probably beyond saving. There is a new game out and Capcom can make more money supporting that instead of this. The ranking system is glitched past a certain amount of games. There is a divide over which SF2 is the best version. Local tournaments usually don’t happen for it or is usually a low turn out. Most of the top players play SF4 or play ST still. It reminds me of Halo 2 how it died. Sometimes you just have to cherish your memories and move on. You can still have fun but it is hard to take HDR seriously anymore. Most of the good players are enemies on xbox live so its hard to improve because it is lose one or two matches and leave. The other thing is the net code in HDR I hate for distance play which hurts the community.

You know… I have never, not once on this forum, attacked someone for their comments. I have disagreed, I have been vocal in my opinions, back in ye olden days I had been neg repped, but I have never attacked anyone… I am sorry to break this rule today, BUT CAN YOU READ???

Thread title = “Ideas to help revive the HDR scene” I.E. Not needed = Stupid trolls to say “HDR is dead, go play Focus Fighter 4”. No, no thank you. Now troll, now that you’ve been called out, lets once again, debunk your myths one by one to encourage your retarded kind from annoying us with your presence again shall we?

1.) HDR is not beyond saving. In comparison to most every game that is not SF4, HDR has a decent, committed following. The goal of this thread is to make it bigger. Have you ever had problems getting a game at 3 a.m. on HDR? I haven’t…

2.) Who the hell cares about the ranking system? And what are you comparing it to? Who has the most BP on SF4? The ranking system is a gimmick, you know it, we know it, Capcom knows it, Backbone knows it. Whatever, who the hell cares? But you know what is nice about HDR Ranking mode? You get to play alot of different people very quickly. Oh YEAH! And you don’t have to wait for 5 minutes to get a match with 3 bars…

3.) Not take HDR seriously? EVO 2009, HDR has 300+ entries if I’m not mistaken… will it be down some this year? Probably. Will it be down significantly? I doubt it! Why? Because there’s big money at EVO and Old Schoolers will still enter the promoted version of SF2 which means there will be significant entries… oh yeah and I think there’s just as much new talent playing HDR and learning HDR as there is in SF4 that’s really making a difference… To prove my point, I’ll take Damdai, Thelo, and whoever else and I’ll put them against any other three people in HDR from whatever era you want, and I’ll feel DAMN GOOD about my chances. When was the last time a major SF4 tournament (in the US) wassn’t won by either Justin Wong, Sanford Kelly, or Daigo? Thank you.

4.) NET CODE IN HDR? ARE YOU SERIOUS??? COMPARED TO SF4 NET CODE YOU SHOULD SIT YOUR ASS DOWN AND WORSHIP THE NETCODE OF HDR AND BEG AND PLEAD CAPCOM TO DO HALF AS WELL WITH SSF4. It was this comment that proved you are a useless troll.

Now, I am going to pray for forgivness for the anger I have just displayed, because I know it is inappropriate… but just remember next time you want to come over here with your join date of… 03-22-2010… (YESTERDAY FOR THE MENTALLY INCAPABLE) and talk a bunch of crap of which you clearly know nothing, please remember to remove the foot from your mouth, do us a favor and shove it in your own ass to save us the trouble.

SO BACK ON TOPIC:

WWL Season 2 is starting on Friday, would love to see people hit the website, register, it’ll be a good time!

[Grog]

You’re fucking deluding yourself if you think HDR netcode is good.

[Rufus]

You’re fucking deluding yourself if you think HDR netcode is good.

Aside from GGPO, are there similar games with better netcode?

[Ganelon]

shove it

I appreciate that you carefully avoided attacking ST in such a long rant.

[CzarFighter]

Really uncalled for Silver Rain 007 that attack. I have played late in HDR and have had problems finding a game on some occasions before where I was the only one on. I care about the ranking system because all player matches gets old and a good ranking system shows ranks to match you with similarly skilled players where both can take the match seriously to avoid losing rank or not gaining rank.

HDR is popular at evo I am guessing because the community is larger or back to the scene and it is the new SF2 for the new community.

The net code is terrible and teleports everything around constantly. Fireballs skip all over the place and I can go on.

I also don’t get how you are acting like you are so high and mighty silver rain. I beat you with your own character cammy not once but twice in a row and I don’t play cammy. Your cammy isn’t good.

I also hear the WWL hardly announces the results of winners. It is almost a mystery who places high. I don’t like the WWL either mostly because of the person who runs it. Geneijin should run it and it would actually be decent because you have no clue what you are doing. You started the attacks.