I didn’t say stream monsters were the cause of the problem. I mentioned stream monsters and spectators to reference everyone who’s watching the event. The players are not there to amuse them, they’re there to compete. If people are paying money to go to evo just to watch, that’s their prerogative.
This rule doesn’t solve the problem, and TOs know that. It’s only there so TOs can maintain their bang for buck. They don’t care who is or isn’t trying as long as they can provide matches people are willing to pay for. That’s how they keep their sponsors.
If they want to help discourage collusion, they need to do what the MK guys did and give huge incentives for 1st place. You can’t split an all-paid trip for one to the islands.
Also, random select can be a means to win since the opponent doesn’t know what character the player will end up with so they can’t counterpick. If you’re comfortable with all the characters, why not use it to potentially gain an advantage?
I didn’t watch VxG (didn’t even know about it till recently) but I heard it was really bad. Will watch it today.
Texas Showdown GFs (literally picked all random for the first match) made me want to hit Chris G & Justin in the face with my stick. They basically gave everyone who entered, watched, sponsored, or otherwise participated in the tournament the middle finger while taking their money and there was nothing we could do about it.
Do you know how stupid someone would have to be to use random select as an answer to counter picking when there already exists an answer to counter picking, called blind picking, that almost no one uses, even though its always available to them. Also if you random select first even the counter pick argument goes out the window.
If you are going to try to defend random select in a final you’re going to need a much better argument than it being anti counter pick. Also in the case of marvel your getting random assists too, do you really want to make the argument that there is a strategic reason for choosing random assists?
I actually shut off the stream when that started because I had better shit to do than watch 15-20 minutes of sandbagging. I’ve said it before but if people want to see this community keep growing and (more importantly) becoming more lucrative then stuff like coming down like the fist of an angry god of those who compromise the integrity of results is something that needs to happen. If 2-3 years from now some top player is wondering where all the money went and why there aren’t any more pot bonuses they’ll have shit like this to look back on. It’ll be because all the sponsors saw this shit and packed it up and all the stream monsters got bored of fixed finals and left (i.e. no more ad revenue for streamers). I remember the hilariously short sighted comment from ChrisG after this event that we should let him know when he had a chance of taking home 10K for every major he attended without realizing that getting to that point requires the community to grow AND more importantly bigger and more invested sponsors AND that none of that happens if every grand finals is fixed.
If the final two players agree to split the pot, what stops that from happening? I mean, if the dudes decide not to clown around in the finals and play serious (with the knowledge that the pot will be split anyway) what’s stopping that? If anything this will go a ways to hide collusion rather than stop it.
The reason people play like ass when they agree to split the pot is if they win legitimately there’s nothing that stops them from keeping the money for themselves. It’s like that already, but it’s harder to part with money you’ve actually earned. If you have it as a rule that people shouldn’t throw matches, that in itself dissuades people from pot-splitting.
No one is even trying to stop that, there is nothing you can do about it. If two players decide to split the money in their hotel room after the event is over there is nothing anyone can do about that. You can’t even police splitting during the event since it can’t actually happen until after the tournament is over and people have been paid. What you can combat is fake matches that give the finger to everyone who entered the tournament, everyone watching in the venue, everyone watching at home, everyone who is sponsoring the event, and everyone who spent time planning the event. It is a blatantly disrespectful act, and TOs should be punishing people who do it.
think of it this way - for most other competitive games, grand finals is the finale of a great event. in the fighting game scene, grand finals is the biggest sham and waste of time at a great event
its disgusting. if you want to split the pot after, go ahead. but at least try and hide the fact that you dont give a fuck
It’s easy to tell when someone is clearly sandbagging, whether they intentionally drop combos for no reason, not block simple things, etc. It’s easier to tell if you’re playing the guy but nonetheless. What’s harder to detect is when they try to hide it by maybe dropping a crucial combo and acting like their flustered. The thing is though, to hide that their sandbagging means they’re playing serious for the most part, in which case they might as well just play serious the whole time.
But even if there is no definitive way to tell if someone is sandbagging, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go after it, which is why I’m happy to see this new rule. It looks bad for the entire community when you have multiple grand finals of guys just playing casuals, and especially when afterwards, said players will complain about payout being low.
They should just ban ChrisG & Flocker from future tournaments. If someone’s willing to take part in that, it’s no different from a boxer throwing a fight so that bookies could clean up, except in this case G & Flocker kept the money.
And why is it that when someone happens that’s bad for the community, 9/10 it involves Marvel or Marvel players in some way? I’m only half kidding…
I don’t think banning is necessary. Forfeiting the prize money is punishment enough, as well as any consequences that arise as a result, like losing sponsors.
For doing this once? Probably not. But the threat of being banned from future events needs to be there. There’s a reason that every sports league in the world has a pretty well spelled out set of rules about what is and is not acceptable behavior along with accompanying fines and/or suspensions. I’m not sure (nor as someone who is not a TO is it really my place to figure this out) what king of bans would actually hammer the point home but I’d be willing to bet that if someone went up to ChrisG and said if you do something like this again you’re banned from entry into Evo Championship Series events for the next year that he’d never sandbag a grand finals again.
I think everyone is well aware this is a difficult thing to police but at least TO’s and sponsors have some teeth when dealing with this issue since its pretty much been something everyone accepted and did nothing about until now.