Those who can consistently win random select tournaments will gain my respect.

^^^^that would be me!!!!

I say yes to custom fighters.I mean why wouldnt you.This is going to be fun all the new
fighters.Not the same ones you know.This will
make even more challanging.A person will have to be on top of there game.Truly kombat.Long Live Johnny Cage.

^^^ I agree.

You have to understand that a tournament isn't exactly a bunch of guys playing just for fun. Of course it's supposed to be fun, it is a game, but a competitor needs to have at least a little bit of seriousness in order to perform well. Athletes don't go into the playoffs without getting serious about it. If you were competing in a tournament with some kind of reward at the end, would you be fine with losing because you were unfamiliar with a custom fighter? Maybe you got hit with a really crappy move that Ermac has but had you been fighting Ermac you'd have been aware of that move and not been hit by it. Everyone should technically be on the same playing field in a tournament. Meaning, have the right to know the arsenal of the fighter you'd be facing. Imagine how horrible a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament would be if items were turned on? "What! I lost because a star fell on his head! Oh well, I had fun."

i dont think that someone is capable of doing a super fighter so i dont see whats the problem if its cuz u cant kmow what attacks or figthing syles is gonna use, i dont think that thats a problem cuz it makes more challenging the fight.IMO

"i dont think that someone is capable of doing a super fighter"

Give people enough time and eventually they will.

We don't even know how the custom character system works? How can you already know it is or isn't absolutely retarded?

I say no ban, unless there's some extremely game breaking stuff going on.

Yeah, eventually people are going to flock to the 3 best styles and the best special moves or whatever the mb's say is #1, but that's no different from everybody flocking to the absolute best normal character if they are banned, which is bound to happen either way. That's just the way tourney play works.

At least with customs you can expect to see a lot of unique shit in addition to the stuff that's already in the game from the people who DO want to mix it up.

-F.

fenix Wrote: We don't even know how the custom character system works? How can you already know it is or isn't absolutely retarded? I say no ban, unless there's some extremely game breaking stuff going on. Yeah, eventually people are going to flock to the 3 best styles and the best special moves or whatever the mb's say is #1, but that's no different from everybody flocking to the absolute best normal character if they are banned, which is bound to happen either way. That's just the way tourney play works. -F.

However, not everyone is going to use the top character. The majority? Yes, but even then you KNOW the character even though they are superior to yours. Say Sub is the best. Even tho he OWNS Kabal, you have faced TONS of Sub-Zeros in non tournament play and have invented different counters with Kabal to his shit. The battle would still be up hill, but not impossible. However, what will you do vs.....say...Nikodemus' RaiderZabari? Do you know what stances he has? What if he uses once stance the whole time it's crunch time then he switches to something you never knew about? What if he busts out a hell fire when you have very little health left and you didn't know he had it. Just think about it guys. I know 90% of you have absolutely no tournament experience..afterall this is the MK community, but it's not that hard to comprehend that it's a bad idea for LEGIT tournaments with MASSIVE players in them.

I think it would be awesome to hold little "just for fun" Custom only tournaments, but for the real deal tourmaments, where perhaps money is on the line or there is a massive count of people your custom character should be banned. Think about it. We need to come to some conclusion or else people are only to want to enter some tournaments because their rules aren't adjacent to what you desire, which would basically put a rift between us players. Just compare the two opposing sides and be honest to yourself and say who you think is right in this debate.

It all depends on the tournament..

Some tournaments may only involve MK characters..

Some may involve both created and MK characters.. or only created characters!

I'm down to whoop any characters ass..

How about we all just settle down now.
Message added: If you're worried that a certain character can't beat another certain character.. or if you're worred in general about the opponents you will face online - you shouldn't be playing MK.

wingsofredemption Wrote: Message added: If you're worried that a certain character can't beat another certain character.. or if you're worred in general about the opponents you will face online - you shouldn't be playing MK.

Nah, im worried about characters ive never heard of till the semi finals and I get owned because I have no idea of the moves they have.

Adaptability is very important in MK. Custom characters could be just the foil for the players who know far too much about the game.

I agree with Versatile that they should be banned in a tournament setting. While I have no MK tournament experience whatsoever and am only a rare casual player when I play MK, I do participate in tournaments for games like Guilty Gear X2. All I have to say is if someone put together a mesh between Sol, Eddy, and Baiken and I didn't know about it, I'd be pissed off. Especially in Versatile's example where some characters/players can literally stay in one dominating stances or certain specials and at the last moment, do an entire change on you due to stances or specials that weren't used before.

On the flip side, the limitations of the built-in system for character creation might be its balancing factor. Whether its a point based-buy system on stances (ex. certain stances cost more than others) or maybe created characters can't get specials at all, it's all subjective. Maybe created characters will become Mokaps and Blazes with no/fewer specials at all and/or no weapon or one/two/three required weapon stances.

We gotta look at the upside of creation also though. Maybe Deception will be the worst balanced game yet in the MK series and one character is top/high tier while the rest are mid and low. Maybe two-three characters, who knows, with MK's history, that isn't an impossibility. If that is the case, maybe custom characters are the only thing that will provide character counters to these characters.

So I agree with Versatile 100% initially that they should be banned, but we just have to see how limiting the system is or how broken the next MK is (ex. how few chars we can really use) to make an all-encompassing decision.

I'd never make a character named RaiderZabari! All I'm saying is everytime you talk about MK its all about win win win. I used to go to tounaments a lot when I was younger. I just grew out of them... I think the made characters will piss off the people that care about winning more then having fun, and to me a game is about fun not about winning every freaking time.

Versatile Wrote: However, not everyone is going to use the top character. The majority? Yes, but even then you KNOW the character even though they are superior to yours. Say Sub is the best. Even tho he OWNS Kabal, you have faced TONS of Sub-Zeros in non tournament play and have invented different counters with Kabal to his shit. The battle would still be up hill, but not impossible. However, what will you do vs.....say...Nikodemus' RaiderZabari? Do you know what stances he has? What if he uses once stance the whole time it's crunch time then he switches to something you never knew about? What if he busts out a hell fire when you have very little health left and you didn't know he had it. Just think about it guys. I know 90% of you have absolutely no tournament experience..afterall this is the MK community, but it's not that hard to comprehend that it's a bad idea for LEGIT tournaments with MASSIVE players in them. I think it would be awesome to hold little "just for fun" Custom only tournaments, but for the real deal tourmaments, where perhaps money is on the line or there is a massive count of people your custom character should be banned. Think about it. We need to come to some conclusion or else people are only to want to enter some tournaments because their rules aren't adjacent to what you desire, which would basically put a rift between us players. Just compare the two opposing sides and be honest to yourself and say who you think is right in this debate.

Tournaments are in itself, innately about winning. Think about it, brackets, winner brackets and loser brackets. Who's first, second, etc. No one is saying that you shouldn't have fun in a videogame, this post is exclusively to tournament play. A few people here want MK to be at a level I think it will never reach, but still people want it to be a competitively high-level and vastly played game. For it to be that, standard rules and fair play should be used.

The banning of custom characters does not limit fun, it merely creates an even playing field where players who have played the game extensively can test their knowledge of the game against others without worrying about random tricks. Even so, tournament play is innately about winning, learning, and oftentimes money.

No one on this thread is adamant about not allowing custom characters for casual play, which is where all fighting games are mostly played and where most characters see usage. However when it's tourney time, you can't truly test your knowledge of the game if the tournament system itself fosters random factors.

I think Vers has a good point here.

Maybe they should rank fighting styles as much as they possibly can, let's say that your custom character has 10 'style-points' you can use them with the styles you choose, example: Pi Gua is a high listed style; it will use 4 points, now you have 6 points left to choose 'weaker' styles. Maybe they can integrate the same type of system with special moves.

Wow tourny's are about winning thx for clearing that up... doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to have fun while you play. If you lose to someone because you don't see something comming or because you don't know what the character is capable of to freaking bad. It sucks knowing exactly what your oponent can do and how to defend against it. I'd rather see a few surprises. Of course thats just me...

HDTran Wrote: Tournaments are in itself, innately about winning. Think about it, brackets, winner brackets and loser brackets. Who's first, second, etc. No one is saying that you shouldn't have fun in a videogame, this post is exclusively to tournament play. A few people here want MK to be at a level I think it will never reach, but still people want it to be a competitively high-level and vastly played game. For it to be that, standard rules and fair play should be used. The banning of custom characters does not limit fun, it merely creates an even playing field where players who have played the game extensively can test their knowledge of the game against others without worrying about random tricks. Even so, tournament play is innately about winning, learning, and oftentimes money. No one on this thread is adamant about not allowing custom characters for casual play, which is where all fighting games are mostly played and where most characters see usage. However when it's tourney time, you can't truly test your knowledge of the game if the tournament system itself fosters random factors.

Nikodemus Wrote: Wow tourny's are about winning thx for clearing that up... doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to have fun while you play. If you lose to someone because you don't see something comming or because you don't know what the character is capable of to freaking bad. It sucks knowing exactly what your oponent can do and how to defend against it. I'd rather see a few surprises. Of course thats just me...

You're welcome :) Just kidding, but seriously, you were still going on about the "fun" banning thing even though the main purpose of tournaments is to win. Anyhow, there is no player who plays at a tournament level and participates in tournaments for a certain game without having fun (unless they are professionals being paid). As you pointed out yourself before that you entered tournaments awhile ago and I'm sure its because you had fun doing it. Everyone does. Regardless, an even playing field still needs to be created. The question of banning characters in tourney play is not a question of fun or not fun, but a question of fair play and fostering a high-level play community for MK. Something I don't particularly care about nor believe is possible, but obviously people hosting tournaments for MK believe is possible.

Tournaments are used to determine which players are better. Surprises for other fighting games generally amount to a good mixup game. Surprises in the name of randomness does not show whether a player is good or not overall, but is more subjective to well.. randomness. I mean do you think some of the top tourney players for fighting games can consider themselves good if they won due to the randomness of themselves or their opponents outside of the match (not knowing the character's capabilities) rather than mindgames and mixup?

I certainly don't. What's the purpose of a tournament if winning it isn't on equal footing? A lot of people want to push MK to be a premier fighting game and to do that, random surprises done outside the match that are brought in should not be a factor.

Now I don't care either way really as I never plan to play MK to that point since I don't think it would ever amount to a game with a lot of high level play. Sure there will be like say.. 20-50 people that can play high level, but that may be it. For me, that is not enough to warrant real competitive play. But in a tournament scene, where player knowledge and skill is tested, random factors outside of battle should never be a factor.

Otherwise tournaments would end up always have factors and/or excuses of players saying they didn't expect X on X's character. Whether that random brought in-surprise leading to the win is true or not in that particular match will always be up in debate and subjective. For the people that do want MK to have that sort and amount of high level play though, removing created characters just seem like a must.

Just think of these examples for a moment and consider them.

Say you play Marvel vs Capcom 2. The equivalent of stances and options would be your entire team. Okay, so you go with the famous MSP (Magneto, Psylocke and Storm). Your opponent uses a custom character, equivalent to hiding his other stances and options. The only character you can see on his team is Cable. Now on the versus screen you have you (Magneto, Psylocke, and Storm) vs. opponent (Cable, ?, ?). Do you seriously think that this isn't a huge advantage? Knowing when to charge, which characters to pull in for cover, which assists to look out for, how you are going to execute traps, etc. are all part of MvC2. If he knows your entire team, he knows every aspect you are capable of, you know nothing of his until he uses it. To me, that is mighty unfair in a tourney situation.

Likewise, what if you play Deception and you pick a standard character like Scorpion. You have money on the line and you want to win first because you know that out of the people that are playing you, you are good enough for first. Of course everyone has fun doing the thing, so you start winning against other people that use standard characters. Now you are finally in the finals and someone plays a custom. You win the first round and they stayed only in one stance and revealed to you that they had hellfire, easy enough. Then in the second round they pull out a stance you didn't expected and a move you didn't think they had. Then in the third round they pull out something else that changes their character's strategy entirely and shuts you down. Now, do you personally think that they won because they were better, or because you didn't know their capabilities? Surprises are nice, mixups are nice, but randomness that is brought-in from out of the match is not.

See where I'm getting at? Tournaments are used to decide winners as well as to teach and to prove who is better at X game. I don't particularly care much for MK's case, but tournament-wise and for those that want a larger amount of high-level play associated with MK, it just seems like a must.
On a side note: If the versus screen listed all of the character's stances as well as special moves, then I think there would be almost no reason to ban custom characters except perhaps unfamiliarity. But since you get their potentially devastating abilities given to you pre-battle, it isn't as bad.

i dont think that i would be that lopsided ok look the kustom kombatants dont have unique fighting styles they are like blaze and mokap the use other peoples moves and styles and people that play in tournaments would probably played through the game so they would be used to the fighting styles so it would make the person using a real kombatant have to be more strategic making them a more talented player so if any pussy want to use them let the for my im stickin with one of the ninjas

I see where you're coming from scorpionspupil, but the question of skill really isn't relevant when it comes to an unfair play-field where your entire abilities are known, but your opponent's is not. Whether their character is built devastating or not is of little issue. I mean what if you are close to beating your opponent on round 3, you know that you are about to win since you are controlling the flow of the match, even though you've taken a lot of damage. He hasn't revealed to you that he has hellfire. He forces you to block and you know that you can block and interrupt this chain easily. Out of nowhere, shoves you into a hellfire and you lose.

Now that wasn't at all a question of whether you were good or not. That was just randomness created outside of the battle, brought in and winning the match.

On a side note: If on the versus screen, characters stances and specials were listed, that would alleviate a lot of the problems with custom characters as a good player can quickly ascertain what those combination of stances and moves are trying to achieve and are capable of.

Note how many strategy game players choose Random over certain sides/races/etc. Why do they choose random? Because when they face the opponent, they know what the opponent is capable of at the get-go, but the opponent doesn't know what they are capable of. Luckily, you can just scout and see early on from one unit and what side it belongs to. But unlike that, Deception allows you to basically mask all of that. So imagine playing a strategy game where players could modify their tech tree and you would know nothing about it. In a tournament scene, do you think that tournaments will be regarded very highly?

HDtran is the fucking man. I wanna be just like you when I get older.

I don't see anything wrong with using custom characters.

Each fighting style has its own strengths and weaknesses, And aside from that, It still comes down to the person using those styles. So there is no "Superior" styles. Just the styles each individual is good with. Like in MK:DA. I couldn't use characters like Li Mei for shit!! But there's people out there that ranged from Bad - Ok - Good.

And even the weapon styles. Even though they dish out extra damage while you use them, You also recieve extra damage whie you're using them. So really people using two weapons would be considered either "Really Good" or "Novices who think they'll do better"

And people are talking about not knowing what styles you're opponent are using. You can see when people are using weapons, lol. And doesn't the game have the styles displayed in the corner of the screen?

And as for special moves. I'm sure you'll only be allowed to have maybe three. And after your opponent uses one for the first time... No more suprise. And you'll also have the same "Suprise" for them because your opponent also won't have any idea what you can throw out.

A player that is able to deal with a surprise and adapt is a great player. Someone who plays for hours on end just to figure out a certain attack always counters another attack or special move in a certain fighting style isn't a good player. He has just played so much that he realized certain attacks can be countered by other attacks. I am always more impressed with someone when they beat me with something unexpected. Also I've noticed in tourny play that it usually is something random that ends the fight. I've been in a few mk touraments in my area and when playing against someone at the same skill level as myself the fights are usually not very pretty near the end most of the time it's a stupid mistake and an odd move put out at the right time that ends the fight. Making rules about characters is lame. It's like banning Cervantes from SCII tourny's because he's to powerful. Let's do that to make it fair for the losers using Yunsung.

HDTran Wrote: Tournaments are used to determine which players are better. Surprises for other fighting games generally amount to a good mixup game. Surprises in the name of randomness does not show whether a player is good or not overall, but is more subjective to well.. randomness. I mean do you think some of the top tourney players for fighting games can consider themselves good if they won due to the randomness of themselves or their opponents outside of the match (not knowing the character's capabilities) rather than mindgames and mixup?.

Then what would be the point of playing as a real character? Just to give my opponent the advantage to "prove" I'm better? Tournaments are not the place to take risks. If Ermac is my guy then I may as well construct a custom to play exactly like Ermac. This way I get to play as my guy but aren't at a disadvantage because now my opponent doesn't know my arsenal any more than I know his.

If I get into a real boxing match and put a blindfold on but lose the fight, does that mean I'm not as good as the guy I was fighting? Possibly, but the blindfold will always make it a tainted fight. Why do NFL teams study plays run by other teams before the game? Why do boxers study up on their opponents past fights weeks prior to their match? Was George Foreman a worse boxer because he studied how Muhammed Ali fought rather than going into the fight blind? Muhammed Ali had the best footwork in boxing history. Possibly some of the best for any martial artist. Don't you think Foreman would have been at a huge disadvantage if he didn't know that but Ali knew how Foreman fought?

It's not cool or skillful for a trainer to tell their boxer, "You know what? You trained hard enough and you're good enough to be the heavyweight champ. I think to prove how good you really are we shouldn't watch any of the reigning champs past work and then when you win you can brag about it." It's not cool, it's stupid.

raise your hand if you've actually been to a national mk tournament. there goes 99.9% of the mk community including me and everyone else in this thread. but it doesn't take much knowledge to realize universal characters are a must for tournaments and "exclusive" characters are banned. this situation is really no different than sc2 and it's platform exclusive characters like spawn and link. you won't be able to determine who's the best at mk6 by playing your created character. it will just turn into luck on who wins.