So, TOs, what are we gonna do about Gems?

#1

Now that SFxT is upon us, I would be interested in hearing the thoughts of fellow Tournament Organizers on Gems and all the issues that come with them.

  1. Do we have to guarantee that every tournament console has all DLC?
  2. What about pre-order exclusive gems? For example, the Special Edition of SFxT is already coming with a boatload of exclusive gems that not everybody is going to have access to.
  3. How do we efficiently run a tournament where players have to spend extra time every single match configuring Gem loadouts?
  4. Losers of a game can obviously switch anything for the next game, but what about winners? Can they switch their character order? Can they switch their gem loadouts? Or are they locked into everything?
#2

They’re releasing a tournament patch soon after the game get’s released tomorrow

#3

Next major is ufgt right?
1&2) Keits twitted that he they should ban all dlc, but that’s probably just all that rage talking. Most likely the biiiig tournies will have all dlc but most small tournaments won’t or only in a few stations.
3) There’s a patch incoming that uses usb for quick loadout.
4) I think gems are minor like ultras (which aren’t in this game) so the winner can switch them but is char locked. Loser can switch everything.

#4

I’m considering the idea of character lock (a well balanced team can’t be outright counterpicked), so that each player presets their gems once and then they’re ready to go. Lots of time-saving this way.

#5

I’m doing a small tourney in May: I’ll be locking characters but not gems for the winner and the loser can change everything.

Haven’t given much thought to what to do with the DLC gems just yet. I will likely have setups that have all DLC gems on them but this remains to be seen.

#6

I think the tournament patch will allow someone who has the DLC gems to load them from his/her console. Think about it, its all on the disc right? What’s tournament mode gonna say if I (who clearly has the gems at home) put my USB stick in? No?

I think this is the case because they likened gems to having different sports equipment and last I checked you can bring sports equipment with you.

#7

Too much time and effort and even with the preloaded USB there are going to be issues. Not everyone plays with certain gems, so unless you state it well in advance in all your flyers/ads that it’ll be default or no gems, people are going to be pissed when they come to your tournament and can’t use a setup they’ve been playing with for weeks/months.

WNF said they were banning gems because they take too long. Even with limiting gem choosing to 2 minutes, 2 minutes could be a whole match played or close to it. When you do the math, it all adds up… 40 players (1 match) 80 minutes… for the 1st Round of the tourney! And there are twice as many matches in losers than in winners. It’ll be a nightmare until the patch gets released and TOs start doing some timing tests with USB setups, but I feel that this isn’t going to make it any faster.

@Rotendo

#8

I’m banning all gems for south west warzone in the UK in May. After discussions with fellow organisers it just seemed like too much rigmarol trying to keep everyone happy so we’ve just gone for a blanket ban.

#9

What about taking turns picking?
Player 1 picks first fighter + gems
Player 2 picks boths his fighters and gems
Player 1 picks his last fighter+gems
The loser of a round may repick 1 char+gems.

After some time there may be some cool counter-picking going on, and to keep control of time you might put restraints on how long you can do over each pick.

#10

I’ve just now realized how much fucking work it is to even ban gems. It takes sooo long to go through every single character, turn off all gems on one of the preset slots, then repeat for multiple console. Ugh. I just hope that upcoming patch (supposedly dated to early April now) will be good.