SkullGirls Needs a Set Amount of Rounds Regardless of Team Size

Classic Fighting Games Skullgirls
1

I’ve been thinking about this since launch day.

Basically, if 1v1 is two rounds then why aren’t 2v2 or 3v3? I know it’s tradition for a tag game like Marvel to be one round but it doesn’t really make sense in this game. Sure, if we were all doing 3v3, then yeah, go Marvel-style. But switching between one round and two rounds seems awkward and frankly, unnecessary when you really think about it.

Of course it’s tradition, but break it down this way.

1Character = X Health
2Characters = X Health
3characters = X Health
Thus…

1v1 = X Health x 2 Rounds = 2X Health
Teamsvanything = X Health x 1 Round = X Health.

The game has two different playing formats and this split favors those who know from the CS screen they will be playing one round, while the one character player can’t know this until the character’s are picked.

And imagine you were in a tournament: You play 1v1 all day and then in the final (hyperbole here) you play a guy who goes teams. That’s fine, but now you have to figure out all his teams cheap shit in one round. If it was always one round, then OK. But now, by the virtue of him picking a team, you now get deprived that second round - an extremely helpful opportunity to learn someone’s tricks, especially if they’re using a Parasoul/Double assist reset trap.

Imagine if a game like Halo allowed 15 minute games, but then, if someone picks an elite skin, the whole game is now 8 minutes. You’d be like, “WTF game, figure out your time and stick to it!”

I understand Mike and Team wanted to make Marvel and SFII/GG fans happy, but splitting the game’s framework between the two hurts the games competitive potential. This is why sports like football host their biggest tournaments on neutral fields. Sure, money is a factor in planning, but from a competitve stand point it’s to avoid any hometeam advantage from competition. And right now, teams seem to have that homefield advantage by already knowing the round total prior to playing.

To put it another way, by not making the executive decision on how many rounds, it feels like Reverge have pulled a David Chase. Chase knew that by killing Tony Soprano in “The Soprano’s” series finale he would piss of half his fans. But by not killing Tony, he risks pissing off the other half that wants him to die. Now, instead of making that call, he chose to do neither and thus, no one was satisfied. Now, I won’t say no one is satisfied with SkullGirls because that’s just not true. But by not picking one format the competitive heights of SkullGirls is severely impaired. And that’s a goddamn shame.

I know this isn’t a widely discussed topic, but I say, “Take the risk” Reverge! Give your game one, set structure and (IMO) make it always 2 rounds. It makes competitve sense and the whole system is made to make 1v3 possible, so why shuffle the framework? There’s no reason (outside of tradition) on why 3v3 can’t be 2 rounds, especially in this game where all team options are already balanced against one another.

Or hell, make it one round regardless. I don’t care. Just pick!

Thoughts?

2

I like the way they’ve handled it, it makes sense for balancing TOD combos. If it is a big problem for you, perhaps you’d be better served adding it to the suggestions thread.

3

There is an option to have local vs multiple rounds regardless of team size and you might be able to do that on unranked (havent checked) but this game is designed as a 3V3 game which are all one round due to the length of the fights. From KOF to MVC it’s all a goal to eliminate the other team and the first team down loses. In games where one fighter goes at a time like KOF there is a round for each fighter. In a game where all team mates are on at once like Marvel there is one round to see which team falls first. When you choose a solo character in this game you’re playing as a solo character in a team-based game. The game only auto-changes its format of one round if both players go solo- since there isnt a team on either side. The team vs solo doesn’t really give the team any additional benefits because if you chose a team you would still need to learn the opposing teams side in one round just the same.
You can try switching the multi-round team setting to see just how long a 3 vs 3 would last if it got to a 3rd round- then a 1 vs 3 for three rounds. Then think- what if you selected the wrong assist and are stuck for all 3 rounds and have to just go with it. Then in tournaments would it be 3 sets of 3 rounds? So one match could last 9 team rounds?>
If you want to rematch someone you could send them an unranked invitation after the match.

4

Thanks. I’ll leave this here for now (if no one objects) since I’m hoping for some conversation on the matter. But I like your suggestion and I will post over in suggestions with a link.

5

Because the game is balanced around the setup it has now. 1vX is given twice the amount of health than it would from 1v1 and a damage boost that can almost kill a character on a team in one combo. And matches do take a LOT longer in teams than a single 1v1 round.

6

OP makes some good arguments, maybe it should be an option, I don’t see any harm that would do and I couldn’t imagine it being very difficult to implement. Then players and tournies could determine how they wanted to do sets or whatever. Even if you don’t look at it from a competitive perspective, I’ve already encountered people who would want best two out of three when playing 2 v 2.

7

It’s an issue with health

Not “tradition”

1v1 has the lowest health compared to any team composition
To remedy this, they get 2/3 rounds so essentially it becomes close to a 2v2/3v3 in terms of health and match length ignoring recoverable health.

Remember the ratio system?

1v1 is 100% health 100% damage for 2 characters, 2v2 100% health 100% damage for 4 characters ignoring recoverable health

Making 1v1 2/3 can lead to 100% health 100% damage for 2 characters for 2 rounds (4 characters) or 3 rounds (6 characters).

Making 2v2 can lead to 100% health 100% damage for 4 character for 2 rounds (8 characters) or 3 rounds (12 characters). This is ignoring recoverable health.

It will make the difference in health of teams and 1v1 worse

1v1 might be running on a faster timer

8

I honestly agree. Mainly because having a single round to figure out an opponent’s playing style as well as his team’s shenanigans and synergy gives multiple teams an advantage.

Using a solo character’s health as justification doesnt mean too much when you can’t even tell what assists your opponent has picked at the character select screen, which already puts the solo at a disadvantage before the match even starts!

As a solo character, you’re going, “Fuck. He’s picked double and cerabella as his assists, I can predict what double assist might be, but I’m not sure about it. Is he playing keepaway or rushdown?”

So now the match starts and you’re playing, completely unaware of what assists your opponent is using, and if your opponent knows what he’s doing, getting opened up by an assist means around 20% damage being done. Minimum. And that’s just one assist. The other can mean the same thing. And you not knowing what assists are being used from the start makes it that much easier for them to open you up, especially if they use an assist that’s not commonly used.

So assuming you’ve only gotten hit once by each assist, took the minimum of 20% from each and have immediately adapted and avoided everything. He tags out, and now the point character is an assist which of which you dont what assist that is.

Like do you see where I’m going with this? Even if the ratio systems are technically balanced, teams still have this inherent advantage because it’s far easier for them to suprise you when you have no clue what’s coming, and have only 1 round to figure it all out, adapt to it, get around it, and get in multiple times to win.

And yea, it’s technically a 2 way street, as they only have 1 round to adapt to your playstyle and if you get it, it’s a lot worse for them, but the scale is tipped heavily in their favor even when taking this into consideration, cuz unless you’re a better player, they’ll figure you out before you figure them out cuz they only have 1 character to worry about. The pros outweight the cons.

So if teams had multiple rounds, the pros I’ve mentioned above are significantly reduced. Solo’s can throw away that 1st round so to speak in order to learn the opponent in the same sense that tourney players feel each out in the 1st round or even the 1st match of a set. I feel this would be a lot more reasonable.

9

Is there a round select? I haven’t seen one. If there isn’t, I think being able to choose the number of rounds would be best. Best of 3, 5, 7, whatever.

10

There is. In the settings from the main menu.

Hopefully online lobbies will have that feature.

11

My problem is with the 1v1 timer still being 99 “Marvel” seconds. It’s a lot more difficult to open someone up in 1v1 and, if one character is either Peacock or Cera (or, worse, one of each), there’s a good chance you’ll see a time out. So, think of that for a second.

3 possible rounds, all time-outs, over 3 minutes (200 seconds) per round, 3 possible matches = possible 27 minutes PER SET. 45 for a Finals match, and 90 for Grand Finals.

There’s something wrong with this in a game designed for tournament play. :frowning: I’d honestly rather the game was set to 1 round all the time.

12

I think that we should wait until after evo and the rest of the tourney season to decide whether or not to change the default settings. The game was designed to be played with this ruleset in mind, so let that rock until it has been determined **with evidence from tourney results **that it inherently favors one team size over another, or as hogosha puts it for the flipside, might be detrimental to time constraints of a tourney.

Honestly, if this or anything like it is your reasoning for wanting more rounds, then too bad. If you are playing this game competitively, then you are trying to be the better player. It is not a good reason **at all **to change competitive rules to even the score between two differently abled players. Just as well, if you are the worse player, those extra rounds ain’t gonna help.

13

That’s assuming the maximum time is used and every match results in a time out lol. this also assumes that one side doesn’t switch team size or characters in order to stop the other player from consistently running the clock. which is incredibly unlikely. extremes like that shouldnt be taken with more than a grain of salt, considering how rare and unlikely it’ll be. shit like that should only be taken into consideration ONCE it becomes a common occurrence, and from my standpoints, the amount of 1v1 times outs i’ve gotten i can count on 1 finger.

And even then, the game still takes less time than KOF 13. Soo no complaints from me in the time aspect.

Except, I was assuming equal skill aka top level play where all the top players are relatively around the same level of skill, in which my complaints are valid, as design and balanced choices are aimed at the highest level of play.

At the highest level of play, no single player is that much stronger than the rest to the point where choices at the screen do not matter. So in a double blind pick situations for characters AND assists, a high level solo player is going in blind not only on what characters he is fighting and what assists he has to worry about, which the teams player only has to what character he’s fighting against. And at high level of play, these players already know the ins and outs of the 8 characters, so the teams player already has a way to deal with the single character, and while the solo knows how to deal with the characters on the team, he still doesn’t know the assist and is still going in partially blind.

14

Rounds in this game are nothing more than glorified sets. Meter doesn’t carry over, it’s no different from beating the guy in a round and picking Rematch.

The game does not “need” a set amount of rounds. You guys say “Oh, I don’t have time to adapt”. You have the health of two combined characters. If you can’t adapt with that, what would change if you had two characters instead? You’ll be killed just as fast if you got opened up - not to mention you’d still end up with 1v2 or 1v3 if you lost a character.

No, it would be even worse. They have one character to learn and no assists to care about. You give them one round to get used to your strategies and find a way to deal with you and you’re done.

15

It’s an issue with health

Not “tradition”

1v1 has the lowest health compared to any team composition
To remedy this, they get 2/3 rounds so essentially it becomes close to a 2v2/3v3 in terms of health and match length ignoring recoverable health.

Remember the ratio system?

1v1 is 100% health 100% damage for 2 characters, 2v2 100% health 100% damage for 4 characters ignoring recoverable health

Making 1v1 2/3 can lead to 100% health 100% damage for 2 characters for 2 rounds (4 characters) or 3 rounds (6 characters).

Making 2v2 can lead to 100% health 100% damage for 4 character for 2 rounds (8 characters) or 3 rounds (12 characters). This is ignoring recoverable health.

It will make the difference in health of teams and 1v1 worse

1v1 might be running on a faster timer

16

I don’t think I ever saw more than one time over in 1v1.

17

How would it even be worse, when they are disadvantaged at the select screen because they lack information. It’s not like marvel where you know there are 3 assists and can come up with counters for 3 assists. No. You can use a whole moveset pool to pick an assist from. You can’t create counter strats for every move. Only so many.

That shit is silly.

EDIT: Health is not a proper justification either. At high levels of play, getting opened up by an assist means a damaging combo and a potential damaging reset. Off 1 assist. A team can have up to 3 assists that are unknown to you until they get called out. That’s 3 chances of getting hit by an assist that are higher than normal, which is an advantage that I think is dumb.

18

They lack information, yes. But what do you think it’s faster to figure out, a single character’s strategies or a whole team’s?

Having rounds Vs Teams contradicts what you want to address. You want that the solo characters to have more time to learn and adapt, but at the same time you’re giving the same time to the team player, not to mention he takes less time to do so. So you can throw a round to figure out a 3 man team, but chances are you’ll be shut down before you get the chance to do so because you’ll have been figured out as well.

That’s the whole point of the ratio system, for crying out loud! It’s a trade off, you want more damage or more options?

You think it’s dumb? Don’t play solo characters! You talk as if the solo player doesn’t know the kind of shit he’s getting into. I play a solo character, I work my ass off to make that extra damage count, but if I lose it’s not because the system was against me, it was because I made the choice of playing like this.

19

The thing about the ratio system is that the tradeoff is more damage/health for less options.

Not less options AND information.

And I know that adding more rounds gives the team player more time to adapt, but since he adapts sooner due to having to deal with less, in the long run the Solo player benefits from it a lot more than the teams player. Which is something I’m perfectly fine with.

I just do not want one side or another to have an inherent disadvantage due to factors that are not in-game. I’m fine with the trade offs of Solo or Teams. I’m not fine with a side being able to open up the other side easier because of hidden tricks up their sleeve because the game wants to hide information from them.

20

If it’s not hurting anyone, why isn’t it an option?
It sounds totally doable to me. Both players choose if they want multiple rounds in a match, if both say yes then the matches have multiple rounds. If either one says no then the matches are default length.

EDIT: FOR ONLINE.

Tournament standards should remain untouched.