Overswarm
is laughing at you
- Joined
- May 4, 2005
- Messages
- 21,181
For those of you who are unaware, an "Iron Man" event is basically a one-player crew match, with characters replacing people. It is something I started doing in the Melee era that got more and more popular as a side event or especially for money matches. It involves choosing multiple characters rather than a single character and competing with that in mind.
Example: Overswarm vs. Kel
At the start of the tournament, I would have three characters chosen and Kel would have three characters chosen. These characters would never change.
Overswarm picks Megaman, Little Mac, and Diddy.
Kel picks Megaman, Sonic, and Marth
We would each know the other players character list and would choose our first character as normal (double blind or just choosing).
I pick Diddy, Kel picks Megaman, we both start with 4 stocks.
Kel beats me with two stocks remaining.
Kel would then be forced to stay Megaman no matter what. I would then pick my counter-pick stage and character from my remaining characters (Megaman, Little Mac).
We start the match and then Kel would remove stocks until he had the same stocks as at the end of the previous match (2).
At the end of the match, I win with three stocks remaining.
The contest would continue until someone had exhausted all their characters.
This tournament style has many advantages and a few disadvantages to be considered. It's great as a side event, but would require consideration for a main event.
Advantages:
Disadvantages: not as many as advantages, but more severe
I'd suggest you all give it a shot and see how it goes. Vote when you can! This is a really fun way to play and I"ve love to see it take off.
Example: Overswarm vs. Kel
At the start of the tournament, I would have three characters chosen and Kel would have three characters chosen. These characters would never change.
Overswarm picks Megaman, Little Mac, and Diddy.
Kel picks Megaman, Sonic, and Marth
We would each know the other players character list and would choose our first character as normal (double blind or just choosing).
I pick Diddy, Kel picks Megaman, we both start with 4 stocks.
Kel beats me with two stocks remaining.
Kel would then be forced to stay Megaman no matter what. I would then pick my counter-pick stage and character from my remaining characters (Megaman, Little Mac).
We start the match and then Kel would remove stocks until he had the same stocks as at the end of the previous match (2).
At the end of the match, I win with three stocks remaining.
The contest would continue until someone had exhausted all their characters.
This tournament style has many advantages and a few disadvantages to be considered. It's great as a side event, but would require consideration for a main event.
Advantages:
- It's more balanced. It's difficult to have an "MK centric metagame" or anything of the sort when everyone has to pick three characters.
- It demands more character variety. Character variety is good for observers AND players. Not only can people play more characters they like, but niche characters come into play more. You like playing Dedede, but he doesn't fit as a solo main? Now he's only one of three.
- It allows for very strategic character compilations that aren't limited by individual strength. If the "top three" characters in the game all happen to be weak against similar characters, it makes them weaker in a group. This prevents over-centralization. Imagine playing Melee and wanting to play a character like Yoshi. Yoshi's not very good, but he DOES have a surprisingly good matchup vs. Marth. Marth is a popular character, and this could result in Yoshi becoming a strategic character choice specifically to CP Marth. Like DK, but only vs. Marth or Falco, not Fox or Sheik? Now you can!
- It makes sets more hype. "Oh boo, MK vs. MK, Fox vs. Fox, IC vs. MK" doesn't exist in a vacuum anymore. Now it's always followed up by a different matchup and the possibility of unique matchups are almost demanded.
- It allows for characters to be discovered faster. Let's say Little Mac ends up sucking because of an awful recovery and requires a ton of finesse to play right (think ZSS in Brawl or Jiggs in Melee). It took YEARS for those kinds of characters to come into the limelight. With this Iron Man format, weaker characters can be used exclusively for CPing without as much of a disadvantage and gives them more exposure.
- It allows for matchups to be discovered faster. No brainer.
- It lets us figure out a correct staglist faster. If Diddy is absolutely broken on stage X, all Diddy mains will CP to stage X and get a huge advantage and it will be shown almost immediately. In current games it typically takes "that one guy" to figure it out or super broad strokes that ban stages that don't need to be banned.
- It demands more talented players. So you are an IC main who is REALLY good at the MK matchup, so most tournaments are a breeze to the top 3? Suddenly you need two more characters and at least two more matchups for your character in every matchup.
- It allows more flexibility for future balance changes. Imagine you are an IC main and then they patch the IC infinite. Suddenly your world is destroyed! Not so much if you also know Marth and Olimar, then you just have one more slot to fill.
- It's more fun! Everyone has more fun with Iron Man. Try it, it's awesome fun.
- It's faster. You might not think so, but it is! There's no more "I pick stage. You switching?", no more "who do I CP...", it's all pre-decided. This is especially true when combined with.....
- It eliminates timeouts. "When the timer reaches 0, each player simultaneously loses a stock until one or neither character remains. In the event that both die simultaneously due to timeout, the match continues as if it is just starting". Ta da! You have 3 stocks and are camping on the ledge? Okay, I'll let you. We both lose our characters. Best case scenario is you win one stock ahead!
- It allows you to alter stock and time more aggressively. "Matches take too long". So? Lower the time limit to 5 minutes. Lower the stock count to 2 so you have to take a total of 6 stocks to win (same as traditional in Brawl).
- It makes your previous performance impact your current match. This is probably the most important overall. Our current system is designed around CPs because there's no "true neutral" stage we've ever seen. This gives a kind of awkward push and pull gameplay where you often see equal players fight and have more swingy results. 1 stock victory on first stage, 3 stock loss on the last stage, 1 stock victory on the last stage. You win the set despite having a worse performance; you got owned on the CP in the 2nd round and barely eek by in the other two you won, but you won all the same. In an Iron Man, a strong performance in any match carries over to the next match in that series so EVERY stock is important.
Disadvantages: not as many as advantages, but more severe
- Not universal. This is the biggest hurdle. It could be universal if everyone adopted it, but it'd be something people would have to work for; eventually you'd have to convince certain TOs, even if they are a minority. This is much larger than "oh, we have 3 more stages than you do" and is something that'd need to be addressed early. That said we would have several months of 3DS before the Wii U version came out!
- Bottleneck matchups. Let's use Brawl as an example and say DK was top tier, the best of the best. If EVERYONE had a DK, what character would you pick? Obviously D3! You'd just grab and infinite him over and over again, so if anyone ever chose DK they'd likely lose all tohse stocks. So now everyone has a DK and a D3 and a 3rd character, likely chosen that does at least okay against DK and D3 both. This would naturally fix itself over time, but with extreme matchups it can occur for some time(see: Marvel vs. Capcom 2)
- It's new, and therefore could be confusing. Basically how anything new can be.
- It's hard. How many people can even play one character well, let alone 3? It could be discouraging. What if you don't even LIKE 3 characters?
- It can be disconcerting to newcomers. This hasn't been my experience (most actually love it), but occasionally you'll find one guy who says "Uh... I just play Marth. He's my character." and they don't want to learn another character. This is similar to finding someone who says "I only play with items" or "I only play on flat stages with platforms that don't move at all". They're relatively rare but it happens.
- It CAN be longer. While it's typically faster, it has the possibility to be longer. Imagine 3 top level characters fighting another 3 top level characters going down to the wire... unless you alter stock or time count from traditional, it can be rough!
I'd suggest you all give it a shot and see how it goes. Vote when you can! This is a really fun way to play and I"ve love to see it take off.
