In WoW character customization is vastly more complex than SFxT, yet 99% of good players play the exact same setup for their given class.
yeah, MORE complex. I’m saying gems are very simple. And that there might be optimal gems for each team in each match-up, but there’s over 5 million combinations, so who cares? 
the thing is that that means gems’ system goal to bring diversity fails. to use ono’s example, “my” ryu will be exactly like “your” ryu, making the gems obsolete in the end.
Yes. I just see them as combo making tools, nothing more.
I don’t know if agree. For the most part everything is so linear that every spec has like 5 choices of any consequence. Anyway, the main reason that we could avoid this situation in a fighting game is that outcomes aren’t so cut and dry. We have to be fairly holistic in our assessment of gems, so figuring out which ones are the best is much tougher than in WoW where for the most part you can just throw math at it and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. It’s also entirely possible that the system just can’t be simplified that way. I don’t think there are any ambitious mathematicians/computer scientists in the FGC who would feel compelled to attempt a proof of that, though.
Compare/contrast Guild Wars, where every class has a number of actually different builds that see real play.
Fighting games aren’t the same. People can’t even make up their minds what ultra to use in some matchups, and that’s a binary decision.
Also, whoever was talking about League of Legends way back was pretty far off. Everything that matters in that game, you can get by playing it. The only thing you can’t get without spending money is cosmetic changes. People who actually play the game seriously play often enough that they can get new content as it comes out without any special effort, and on the tournament client, everything is automatically unlocked anyway.
What Capcom seems to be doing is worse. If it were at least possible to get DLC gems by playing the game enough, then it would fix some problems with their approach, but that doesn’t appear to be the case as of yet.
I was checking out the Gems on the official SFxT site and one has stuck out to me:
[LIST]
[*]Immense Power Lv.3 - Attack + 30% - Activate Pandora Mode
[/LIST]
30% attack increase for going into pandora. We know you can go into Pandora mid combo so this gem looks like it could be really powerful. If your playing against a low stamina character then that could be it very early on. Does Pandora mode increase attack or is it just as many EX and Super arts as you want?
It’s both, I believe
You still need to have 25% health or less to activate pandora though. BUt yeah, they used that gem in the pandora combo example with Ryu and Ken.
World warrior pack from gamestop has this same gem only 1 slot 10 seconds 30% attack increase. Requirements is connecting 2 launchers, why wouldnt I stack 3 of these and save my second launcher for a kill combo?? Not sure if you can stack the same gems though. Wouldnt that be 30% increase for 30 seconds or 90%? Also you could use second launcher > ex wall bounce > pandora and do about more than half life me thinks.
If you could actually get a 90% attack boost, a simple punish combo into super would kill a lot of characters.
I know I was just hoping for a lil brokeness heh
<@MrWizard> lol @ capcom sfxt dlc
<@MrWizard> wait till you see the rest
<@MrWizard> there is a gem
<@MrWizard> for auto canned combos
^ We’ve known about this. It’s nothing special and the combos themselves cost one bar each.
I remember Ono comparing the gem system to Magic the Gathering. As a former yugioh player myself, comparing gems to TCGs is a pretty good comparison. I think what will happen is that we may boil it down to the top 20 gems for each character or something and form our “decks” and “side decks” from there. At the very least, that’s what I’m going to do for my team(s).
Comparing Gems to YuGiOh? Sure.
Comparing it to MTG? Uneducated opinion.
What a pleasant comparison.
Booster pack of random gems for 50 cents
Every few months your old gems are rotated out of the tournament legal set
I believe your missing the point, beyond that Gems are players choice, you make the choice in what gems you want to use(even if its the standard sets) you have at least that much freedom. you can even decide not to use them at all, completely up to you.
its obvious that after the initial bitching and moaning, everyone who plays this competitively will get all the gemsets and any that come out in the future. for better or worse, more gems give you more options, which is good, however there is this issue when it comes to a leveled playing field but in the end…like with KOF, or Blazblue…you were going to get those characters anyway(even if you dont use them…so you know how to fight against them) its the same with Gems…its just people are not seeing it.
I have a question.
What happens when a player’s gem is activated but he is tagged out. Does the time on the gem run down in the background or only when he is in play?
How do you figure that? Why would players purchase gems, practice with those gems, and craft strategies around them when there is a decent chance that the tournament manager may not have purchased all the gems?
Keep in mind, for a tournament owner he will need to purchase all DLC on every system that is being used in a tournament (and that also means connecting each system to Live/PSN so that he can download the content. So on top of the cash there is also the TIME factor.)
With that being said, does the Gem system even make the Special Edition worth buying? I heard they take up 2 slots.