i would allow costums cuz i want a challenege i want to see some one beat me...

the custom chars are like shinnok in mk4, cuz u cant know for sure wich attacks will he use. so why banning the customs?

You're right guys.... This is a one sided discussion. Anyone on the other side that thinks custom characters should be in tournaments is a moron. Fuck what those guys think. They are the reason mk is the way it is.

FANBOYS!!!! I want scorpion with a sub slide and freeze! That would own so much!!1!11111!!!

scoot-magee Wrote: You're right guys.... This is a one sided discussion. Anyone on the other side that thinks custom characters should be in tournaments is a moron. Fuck what those guys think. They are the reason mk is the way it is. FANBOYS!!!! I want scorpion with a sub slide and freeze! That would own so much!!1!11111!!!

I would agree so much with you, but that was a little harsh no? LOL!

But really..continue on with this debate lol.

Versatile Wrote: People act like I am against custom characters, and I am not. I look forward to creating my ultimate character, but I would not want to win with him in a tournament, and on the flipside I woudln't want to lose to someones character just because I had no idea what the character was made of. The argument isn't one sided one bit. We want to encounter different characters just as much as we do, but you all seem to be forgetting that this is about what we will be doing in a TOURNAMENT atmosphere. If this was "Are we going to ban custom characters for online play" then I would be the one of nikodemus and gravedigger's sides because that would be dumb. But like i've said atleast 5 times already, shit is different in tournament atmosphere. You come to win, and you don't want to lose by anything except the fact that your opponent bested you on EQUAL GROUNDS. Nuff said.

Yes, but you're missing the point of a tournament. A tournament is a measure of a player's skill, not a measure of who has spent the most time calculating frame data and practicing combos. And yes, for the record, I'm in local tournaments all the time, well, I used to.

If we ban all custom characters, the winnner of the tournament is ALWAYS the player who has gotten most proficient at using the most successful tactics, which means the player who picks the top character and uses the top moves best. That's the way it is now, that's the way it always has been.

However, if we allow custom characters it WILL come down to skill because we will ALL have to adapt. You're saying you may get blown away because you get to the semi finals and have to fight a character you've eseentially never fought before. By the same token, he's fighting (provided you're using a custom) a player he's never fought before. Therefore, the winner of the fight will truly be whichever one of you is better at the game. Who can read the other guy, regardless of what moves he's pulling out, and react accordingly. The playing field is still even, it's not like he's got some super secret weapon on his memory card.

In reality, it's not like you're pulling moves out of thin air. We're all going to be on the same page, and we will all know what moves to be ready for. Granted, the configurations will be different, but lets face it, if you're of any REAL skill and actually intend to win a tournament, you better know some stuff about the game anyways.

Yeah, you may get surprised once or twice because you didn't know he had, say scorpion's hellfire summon or something else, but the playing field is still even, the other guy is not going to have any weapons that he invented on his own, that's for sure. If you can honestly say you stand no chance of winning because this guy has say, Sub Zero's freeze and you didn't expect it, you don't deserve to win anyways.

And another thing, if a move is really THAT effective, then most people's customs will have it, and you will know to be prepared for it. Lets say Tang Soo Do turns out to be the lord jesus christ in this game, you know from the second he switches into that stance to be prepared for that bread and butter X,X,O,O,R1,O (example, not truth) combo, and if he doesn't have it, more power to you.

So, like I say, if there is some unbelievably broken tactic or exploit that customs can trigger, then fine, ban them. But if your excuse is that you'll have to learn to be on the watch for a wider array of moves, I'm sorry you deserve to lose.

Characters should get banned at tournaments because they are game breaking or unfair, no more, no less. Not because "they have moves we aren't expecting" that's just like saying I'm not good enough to handle x, so you're not allowed to do that.

Try telling that to any serious MvC2 player, the game where ANYTHING goes.

-F.

"1. Player 1 owns an XBox, Player 2 owns a PS2. Their custom characters can't even fight against each other so the problem doesn't even exist there."

Now VQ you know you're my boy, but what does that have to do with anything? PS2 posse will still have the same issues as Xbox Posse will with this debate, so why not settle it once and for all for both consoles?

"2.Custom characters will be composed of moves and styles that are in the game and thus, not unknown."

That is not the point man. What I am trying to say is that the characters are built into the game. Now say TKD,Pi Gua and Dragon are the 3 best stances in MKD. Now they all have their own weaknesses and work better against certain characters, but what if one character had all 3? You would have the ultimate stance set to handle any type of character. Not to mention any specials you want, and we all know MKD is going to have atleast 5 or more broken specials, all MKs do. Do you really want someone rocking you up with hell fire, puke, ground pound, kiss of death AND ice shaker?



"3. Restrictions on the use of custom characters could be placed without banning them altogether."

Why not just ban them all period? No fighting game that has create a character allows them in TOURNAMENTS. Look at WWF No Mercy, a deep wrestling game that can very well be called a fighting game. Created Wrestlers were not allowed for obvious reasons.


"4. In DA, an "equal" fight was certainly not always possible. Should we have banned Scorpion, Bo', Reptile, Sonya, Hsu Hao, Drahmin and Shang Tsung for being too broken?""

While an equal fight almost never possible, an equal understanding of each other's character always was. It was your fault if you didnt know what to expect from a Scorpion or Bo Rai Cho, and it was your opponents fault for not knowing what's up with Sub-Zero and Cage. Who's fault is it when you have no clue why you just lost till the match is over. Custom Chararacters is just itching broken man.

You got to be harsh man.

"Yes, but you're missing the point of a tournament. A tournament is a measure of a player's skill, not a measure of who has spent the most time calculating frame data and practicing combos."

That is easy for you to say considering the tournaments you attend don't have custom characters in it. Skill is a lot of things. Skill is knowing how to react to certain frame disadvantages and advantages and being able to consistantly pull off certain combos. So knowing frame data and practicing combos is a part of the "skill package" in my opinion.


If we ban all custom characters, the winnner of the tournament is ALWAYS the player who has gotten most proficient at using the most successful tactics, which means the player who picks the top character and uses the top moves best. That's the way it is now, that's the way it always has been.

"However, if we allow custom characters it WILL come down to skill because we will ALL have to adapt."

Adapting is another part of skill, and does NOT require custom characters to be of importance. My Sub-Zero in MKDA is much different from Konqrr's Sub-Zero in MKDA. Two different ways of playing the characters. Now lets say in MKD Sub-Zero is the same and you're facing me in the semi finals and you win. Now you go on to face Konqrr in the finals and you lose. You probably adapted better to my style of playing Sub-Zero than his style of playing Sub-Zero. Adaptation is in every fighting game because no one plays any character the same. No matter how subtle or noticable the flavor is the different there is always something.

"You're saying you may get blown away because you get to the semi finals and have to fight a character you've eseentially never fought before. By the same token, he's fighting (provided you're using a custom) a player he's never fought before."

Still to me that's silly. It's already enough that you may have never faced the person before, but the fact that you both know nothing about each other because you can "hide stances" and save specials for certain times. You can't do that with non custom, but there is still this same feeling that you are describing nonetheless. Picture this scenario...

You're up 1-0 in a double elimination semi finals match and you use Bo Rai Cho and your opponent uses his custom. You guys are neck and neck(both got 1 skull a piece and its final round) and you both have very little health left. You don't know what specials move he might have buzzing but he knows EVERYTHING that Bo Rai Cho is capable of. So BAM hell fire in your grill and you had no idea he had that. Fair win right? Oh you should of adapted and you should of had more skill..lol.


"Yeah, you may get surprised once or twice because you didn't know he had, say scorpion's hellfire summon or something else, but the playing field is still even, the other guy is not going to have any weapons that he invented on his own, that's for sure."

No, but he will have a character he invented on his own. Also, the playing field is not even when its custom vs default. It never is.

"If you can honestly say you stand no chance of winning because this guy has say, Sub Zero's freeze and you didn't expect it, you don't deserve to win anyways."

How easy it is for you to use a terrible special as an example. Should of said something along the lines of a puke or hellfire.

"And another thing, if a move is really THAT effective, then most people's customs will have it, and you will know to be prepared for it. Lets say Tang Soo Do turns out to be the lord jesus christ in this game, you know from the second he switches into that stance to be prepared for that bread and butter X,X,O,O,R1,O (example, not truth) combo, and if he doesn't have it, more power to you."

Oh boy thats not the point. The point is that no matter what, no matter how subtle or mild there is not balance on the field. You should only lose because your skill at that point in time is not on par with your opponent. There should be no guessing factor unless you're guessing what is known. How do you know they'll switch to Tang Soo Do whenever. If I was rocking a custom with TSD I would switch to it when its key and Im either down or up by a lot. I would not intentionally let them know any earlier.


"So, like I say, if there is some unbelievably broken tactic or exploit that customs can trigger, then fine, ban them. But if your excuse is that you'll have to learn to be on the watch for a wider array of moves, I'm sorry you deserve to lose."

It's not that im worried about a wider array of moves, its just that I don't want to win through bull shit that I dont know about. Surprize factor should be from something that is not known but could be known, not from something that is not known by anyone unless they choose to let you know about it or not..understand? Your condition for banning only strengthens my opinion on the matter.

"Characters should get banned at tournaments because they are game breaking or unfair, no more, no less. Not because "they have moves we aren't expecting" that's just like saying I'm not good enough to handle x, so you're not allowed to do that."

In SC2 you can't create a character that has X's 3B, Astaroth's throws and Ivy's Summon Suffering. Nuff said.

"Try telling that to any serious MvC2 player, the game where ANYTHING goes."

Do I have to use the same example that I did with SC2 homie? LOL..nah didn't think so.

This was not meant to be offensive in anyway lol. Don't need another Versatile vs Menthol around here now do we? Haha that was fun. I'm gonna go reread that flame war....

Why use Bo' Rai Cho when you could use a custom character too? lol.

As for fighting tyles. Like i said, And like you said(your sub-zero/konqrr's sub-zero). Everyone uses fighting styles differently. Say Lui He Ba Fa and Xing Yi might be your best styles, You may find them to be the best but someone else thinks they suck (i.e me, lol). And you'll know what your opponent has because of the style indicators.

As for special moves, I see the dilemma there. So i came up with the solution, You have to list your character's special moves or you cannot participate in the tounament. And if you lie about the special moves, You will be booted.

I like that idea Gravedigger.

Also, okay, I see your points, Vers. Still, it's going to be a little difficult to make all tournaments worldwide adopt the same rules... in fact, that will probably prove to be impossible.

Cheers,
VQ

"This was not meant to be offensive in anyway lol. Don't need another Versatile vs Menthol around here now do we? Haha that was fun. I'm gonna go reread that flame war...."

hahaha i re-read that the other day. good times. we're still the same people. only now we teamed up. speaking of which, when do we get jiggy sigs to hype our clan which will probably fail? speaking of which, i say we get a couple months practice before we start the tournaments online, yes (clan or single)?

I say we have Clan tourneys and Singles. Clans should just be a kinda "tourney prep" thing where clans just chill and compete. It happens in fighting communities all the time. Singles should be for serious tournaments.

Heh, clans eh? Sounds fun. I hope that *both* XBox Live and PS2 online will support clan systems. That would rawk.

VQ

Vers,
That is easy for you to say considering the tournaments you attend don't have custom characters in it. Skill is a lot of things. Skill is knowing how to react to certain frame disadvantages and advantages and being able to consistantly pull off certain combos. So knowing frame data and practicing combos is a part of the "skill package" in my opinion.

You call it skill, I don't. Fact is, nine times out of ten you can call what character / team / moves are going to be in the top three of a tournament. When it comes to winning, you pick what WINS and not what you have learned or what may require the most skill. Even if Gen, or Lion, or Hayato, or Lei, or anybody is really complicated and requires a great deal of skill or prowess to operate efficiently, no one is going to pick him if there's another character who you can mash and win with. That's not the tournament mindset / philosophy, and to me, once you set your sights on "what works regardless of complexity" skill is gone, and it becomes a game of "who knows the best techs best".

Adapting is another part of skill, and does NOT require custom characters to be of importance. My Sub-Zero in MKDA is much different from Konqrr's Sub-Zero in MKDA. Two different ways of playing the characters. Now lets say in MKD Sub-Zero is the same and you're facing me in the semi finals and you win. Now you go on to face Konqrr in the finals and you lose. You probably adapted better to my style of playing Sub-Zero than his style of playing Sub-Zero. Adaptation is in every fighting game because no one plays any character the same. No matter how subtle or noticable the flavor is the different there is always something.

So, if you'll admit that you have to adapt between two diferent people playing the EXACT SAME character, how is this any different from two completely different characters? You're still going to have to adapt, the field of adaptation is just larger, therefore requiring more research and practice on your part, therefore requiring more "skill" by both of our definitions.

Long before any tournament happens, we're going to know all of sub zero's moves, and probably a great deal of his combos, and yet you could still be surprised in a quarter final match against "SubZ3r0Lvr64". By the same token, long before a tournament happens we will know what moves can be equipped in konquest, and more importantly we will know the most deadly of them. So if you come across a custom in the SEMIs in a tourney full of skilled people, you better damned well know he's got an unblockable trap, or Cyrax's blade, or some shit like that. This isn't Virtua fighter where he could have any one of a hundred different reversals or combo strings with obscure unexpected low hits or any of that junk. Anticipation is not rocket science especially when you know all the angles.

You're up 1-0 in a double elimination semi finals match and you use Bo Rai Cho and your opponent uses his custom. You guys are neck and neck(both got 1 skull a piece and its final round) and you both have very little health left. You don't know what specials move he might have buzzing but he knows EVERYTHING that Bo Rai Cho is capable of. So BAM hell fire in your grill and you had no idea he had that. Fair win right? Oh you should of adapted and you should of had more skill..lol.

Your example is even sillier than mine. You're implying that this guy not only beat you a round, and got beat a round without using this bread and butter move one time, but even let the match get all the way down to the WIRE before busting it out. Let's be realistic here Vers, in the semi finals nobody lets the match get all the way down to the wire if they could've won long before (which you would have at least tried with hellfire), and more importantly than that, if the match actaully gets down to that situation, and you're fighting a custom, why are you in a position for this to happen? You would already know to beware for stuff like that because you already know how dangerous that move is. No matter what game you're playing, no matter what character, no matter what round of the tournament, if it comes down to the wire and you're both at no health, and he's zoning you, some ill turtle shit is about to happen.

No, but he will have a character he invented on his own. Also, the playing field is not even when its custom vs default. It never is.

Perhaps if you didn't know every possible move he could equip, but even then, you could very well just use a custom yourself. The playing field is only uneven if you're unwilling to change.

If I was rocking a custom with TSD I would switch to it when its key and Im either down or up by a lot. I would not intentionally let them know any earlier.

Unless you HAD to, which would be the case if your opponent had any skill which is the point. You're still going to have to go to your moves when you need them, just because you're custom doesn't mean you're going to have an infinite amount of options and thus can afford to hide something in the shadows until the bitter end. If we assume every character (including Customs) has 3 stances, and 6 specials, the odds that you're going to go two rounds without seeing all the stances and at least half the specials is impossible. Let's take a custom but use scorp as an example. (Pi Gua, Hapkido, Sword)

How far am I going to get if I stick to Pi Gua? or Hapkido? Or just sword? If I can honestly beat you with just one of my stances, then it would have been no different had I just chosen the default character with that stance. And if I have to use TWO stances, then there's no way I can ever go back to the first without revealing my third.

Now, as for specials, we do have a quandry, I could technically hide special numbers 4,5, and /or 6 until the very end of the mathc, and then bust them out of nowhere, but like I said above, why would I deliberately put myself in that situation? Why would I deliberately give you a chance to win? If special #5 works (say, the flip kick) in the first round, I'm going to use it, as opposed to letting you rush me down and win for free. In a tournament, nobody is going to give you a round, you're lucky if they'll even give you half a lifebar because you're playing to win.

If you're honestly playing against someone, and at the very end of the third round in the semi finals you've got nothing to show him, and he's still got something to show you, you deserve to lose, wether he's a default or a custom.

It's not that im worried about a wider array of moves, its just that I don't want to win through bull shit that I dont know about. Surprize factor should be from something that is not known but could be known, not from something that is not known by anyone unless they choose to let you know about it or not..understand? Your condition for banning only strengthens my opinion on the matter.

Like I said, first round, first couple blows thrown, yeah, you're going to be surprised. But you said yourself, Konqrr's subzero is diff from my subzero is diff from your subzero, so even if the tournament was just 16 people using nothing but subzero, you're still going to be surprised every round. How is this any different from Custom A vs Custom B? You know what all moves a Sub Zero user can pick from, and you know what all moves the custom can pick from, the only difference is the Custom has a lot more options. So you just make yourself more flexible (ie: more skill). You have to make yourself prepared for anything, you can't use the same exact tactics every time, because your opponent could be different every time.

In SC2 you can't create a character that has X's 3B, Astaroth's throws and Ivy's Summon Suffering. Nuff said.

But if you could, then every match you would make CERTAIN to be ready for all three of those moves, all the time. A harder task, yes, but also, more skill.

And yet, regardless there are still broken characters in SC2 allowed at the tournaments. Everyone KNOWS X is the lord jesus christ, and Night and Kilik aren't too far off, but nobody says ban them.

Like I said, if it breaks the game, then by all means, ban customs. I don't want any broken characters in my tournament. Customs are banned in most games because they break the game and are cheap. A character that cheats the system is not a character that should be involved in a tournament. If in MKDe there's a custom config that gives you some sort of easy infinite, or cheap MvC2 esque unblockable trap, or undefeatetable stage fatality, I don't wanna play against that stuff, that ain't fun. Ban it.

But if the only reasoning you're coming up with is "it's too much for me to keep track of" then you're just not trying hard enough, that's no excuse.

This was not meant to be offensive in anyway lol. Don't need another Versatile vs Menthol around here now do we? Haha that was fun. I'm gonna go reread that flame war....

This ain't no flame war, and I got no beef wit you. You asked if customs should be banned and I'm telling you why they shouldn't.

-F.

there's one reason everyone who's for it keeps avoiding. WHAT ABOUT THE PS2/XBOX PROBLEM? ps2 players can't bring their memory card to an xbox tournament and vice versa with xbox players. but both groups will be able to use whatever controller they want because most arcade sticks are universal and you can use adaptors to use ps2 controllers on xbox. therefore custom characters should be banned. just like sc2 and every other fighting game with exclusive/custom characters. not even sure why it's being argued or is an issue. they WILL be banned. it's a fact.

If the idea has anything to do with custom characters i dont like it. I really hope they have a mode that allows only the original characters.

Its like ex grooves on the console versions of cvs2. They are retarded. Basically anyone who uses thos custom grooves in cvs2 gets no respect. This is online cvs2 though. In the arcade you dont need to worry about that shit.

Im just trying to keep mk as close to the arcade scene as i can. Fuck all that custom character shit. Its already bad enough we are going to have to deal with lag online.

Ok..we'll see what happens. Of all the people here on your side with this you've brought up the most points that make sense, and I will be replying to you more in depth later, but right now I am rather busy.