So for a quick analysis of the GFs Capcom Cup 2016(since a busy time prevented me from really watching huge amounts of it, though spoiler alert: Many brackets were ruined, I think that's already been discussed enough that I don't need to go too far into it here):
I had put Du to win it after the top 8 in my heart, even though I called Du vs. Haitani, but Kazunoko's Temporary Door Power Up was too stronk. But after he was out, I had felt Du would do it. Had Kazunoko hadn't burned out(and I agree with a Twitter chat that he may have just burned out there that last losers finals), I don't think he'd have been able to take six full sets against Du.
While Ricki played probably her best she ever did, and truly impressive overall, Du was just more consistent throughout the tournament. Most of Ricki's wins, with the sole exception of the decisive win against Kazunoko at thevery end, were 'Skin of her teeth' wins when you go back(tight comebacks, match points, low health, etc), and I felt that Du's consistency would play into this(Du's wins were dominant the entire time with 3-0's and 3-1's.) I also felt Du was more consistent throughout the year, as well(though with this tournament anyone could tell you that meant almost nothing.)
Finally, Ricki's record vs. R. Mika, as great as she is, is not too good. Like I guess we all have that 'character weakness', that kryptonite if you will, and hers seems to be Mika(particularly Du's Mika when you look over old tournaments.) Her tweets said she trained a lot vs. Necalli(which paid off, but even then they were very close 3-2s and you could see the mad relief after the matches), and you could tell she put time into Chun mirrors as well(good thing because there were a lot of Chuns) but the Mika matchup just wasn't working out. Still, again, damned fine play!
But yeah, we had 'murica up there! And Du's on total fire in SF right now. Well fought and well deserved.
So moving on, I'd like to get to the discussion of how grueling this tournament was to be best of 3 the entire time. I saw some comments saying it was great, others saying it started to wear out its welcome, and others yet that said they were interested at first and then lost that interest.
So what do I think? I think the 32-person ft3 has it's upsides and downsides.
Upsides include a lot of hype, a lot of epic comebacks, and generally a better chance for folks to show their stuff. It also helps in a game like SF where matches(ft2) are over rather quickly. As we saw the brackets would have looked much differently if it was ft2.
Downsides? The biggest is time. Sheer time. There's no way this could be done at EVO I feel; it needed a specialized tournament for SFV only. I don't think it could be done at something like CEO or anything else for that matter, without some serious planning or an extra day. Plus it can exhaust players on top of it. Exhausted players don't play to their best and can burn out. They can end up with lack of sleep which isn't great for one's health or mindset, and sometimes those 4 hour waits in between matches can be pretty terrible as well.
My personal thoughts would be something in between. Top 8 I think should be ft3. I feel that, while it takes time, is probably doable under most tournament rules so long as stuff is solidly planned. Top 8 should give that extra set to prove oneself or make a comeback. Makes things epic, as said.
Before that, though, there ARE more options than a generic ft2 for, say, top 32. These include:
-maybe making the actual matches best ft3 rounds instead. It works nicely for Tekken, and I wish Guilty Gear was like this as well.
-Round Robin. This is probably my first pick. Divide the top 32 into groups(8 groups of 4 for a clean top 8, four groups of 8, taking the 1st and 2nd place of each pool into the top 8), and everyone has to fight everyone else. It takes some time, but in a game like SFV where matches can go quick, even a ft2 in a round robin pool shouldn't take more than an hour each(and eight hours total to get to a top 8 is actually very reasonable, especially since SF tends to run pools one day and top 8 the next.) Even stretching things out, it should be doable, with again, planning, to conduct pools in this way.
Now why do I like Round Robin? One aspect to traditional single or double elimination is the saying 'It's not always who you fight, but who you don't fight.' Meaning that there could be someone who you know could take you out, but someone else takes them out instead, but you happen to be decent against them...and so on. It happens; some folks are good at fighting some, but not others, some have character weaknesses. Round Robin gets rid of this somewhat. While you might be lucky in your particular pool, you need to fight every single person in that pool. You need to really show your stuff, having to fight a wide variety of playstyles, characters, and people. IMO it's a great way to fill out that top 8.
Others' mileage may vary, of course. This is just my humble opinion.
In any case I think this could keep the hype, while still making the top 8 3/5 but actually making it a viable tournament option for situations that you can't spend 30 hours actually fighting in one game.
And finally, there was an interesting tweet! I screencapped the tweet, for a reason(this is from my FB):
So this tweet was deleted. They were showing apparent line-ups with the shadows. These seem to match up fairly nicely, truth be told; at first I thought the guy at the end looked like Garuda, but he's too slender; Garuda is pretty big. Same with Sodom.
Of course I saved the bigger picture, so here you go(can click to expand):
Okay, so first off, let me make clear: These are rumors. I'll say again: These are rumors. We don't have any guarantee that these are the people in the pictures; they're someone's guess, but I'm willing to allow myself to get a little hype here, because the tweet was taken down, without any 'Lol JK' or anything like that. Which sort of sets off a small flag, so to speak.
Now across the board we have(their names can be found on various SRK posts who posted teasers of this art in the first place some time back):
Helena: The girl from the DLC story. Don't want to go too much into her but I can easily see her being in the game. No idea of style or whatnot.
Goutetsu: Akuma and Gouken's trainer. This guy actually would have some point, too, being Akuma is in. Would actually make some sense.
McCoy: This fella is on Cammy's Delta Red team. Not much is known about him, he appeared in a picture with her and some others. I heard a couple of rumors he might be an engineer type but that's ALL I've heard, I have zero conformation(it might be people just taking a stab guessing the bombs and weaponry he has on him.) Could be interesting to have a big, heavy zoner?
Satsuki: One of the dolls. She looks like a ninja type. I wonder if she could be for someone who wants a less-technical ninja(Ibuki is pretty technical, plus is a negative edge character.)
Rook: Probably the most fleshed out of the bunch-okay, it's still thin, but there's something. Rook was in Capcom Fighting Allstars, and he actually has some gameplay as you can see here in a couple of places(note: this game was very rough, in beta, and probably cancelled because it wasn't too great, but thankfully they're looking at salvaging some of the characters):
He has a heavily kick-based style as it says in his background. Has some awesome moves like a much more brutal variant of Kim Kaphwan's diving air multi stomp.
This guy will easily become a highly played character of mine if he's in.
So yeah, like, here's hoping? I would be plenty okay with this lineup. It's pretty diverse in terms of design and there could be some nice playstyle variety here too. Will keep an eye on things and see how they pan out.
All of that being said I kinda wish Capcom had done some patching of the game this year. I know some people favor less patching; I'm not saying go NRS with it, but I feel Bamco gets it right. If they see something going haywire, they balance it. (See Akuma.) Somewhere in the middle. There's a middle ground to a lot of things. Hopefully S2 sees more overall variety in tournaments. I think by knocking down the top pegs a little and buffing the lower, plus adding this bunch, we'll see just that, one can hope.
Anyhow that's enough for me for now! I'll return again to chat soon about some other fighting game stuff! And maybe even some NON fighting game stuff for FFXV. Since I'm totally hooked on that right now.
Oh yeah, Garou: Mark of the Wolves is like 15 bucks on PSN right now and has netplay. So like, get it.
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