NorCal KOF!

[Tone]

yo how do i play this game :<

[no really, ive had a little bit of training mode grind but putting things together is still beyond me at this point, i wish i could play more often]

i had fun guys

[tastylumpia]

Tourney was sick. I was playing in the Marvel tourney and falling asleep lol, the PHOENIX shouts were keeping me awake. Props to Haunts and IPW for helping the EXPOSURE for our local scene. Seeing salty Isaiah was hilarious. KoF is really hype, I swear I'll learn it properly after EVO.

[cHuCo_]

This weekends ranbats were fuckin hype. Skill level was not that bad within the top 8. No major issues on the stream. Commentary was hilarious, can someone tell me who was the guy who said "If you drop the soap twice, You Get Shanked!" that was funny as hell. I was laghing so hard to that, but there were moments where it was suddenly all quiet, other then that mad props!
Props to Giovanni for winning this weekend and gaining major fanbase withing the stream chat. But how cant he? He does it for the people after all...

[THE ANSWER]

Good shit NorCal! I really enjoyed the stream, the quality was superb and the skill level not bad. I really hope I can go to NorCal one of this days and play with you guys.

[Tone]

I am honestly very surprised at how much the Norcal scene for KOF has grown with XIII being accessible. Full brackets now, a year or so ago, I could barely find a handful of people in the whole bay area to play with!

Really wish we had a cab in the North though, no consistent access to the game is putting me far behind. 

[Reiki.Kito]

You can always get in that practice on weekends. Save up to get prepped for the 24th! I'm just glad a lot of people saw the tournament and a lot of people enjoyed it. Wasn't expecting it to be this long as I estimated 3 1/2 hours, but with double the people, that's still a fair estimate.

[Demoninja]

Haha that was a perfect estimate James. You expected 8 people so if you double it to 16 and double your guess then it fits perfectly.

[Reiki.Kito]

Wasn't easy. I factored in the possibility at max. So, 99 seconds per round in a match. Multiplied that by 5 (max is 5 rounds), multiplied that by 3 (max is 3 matches in a set), and multiplied that by the amount of matches that would have been in the brackets which was 15. I gave 30 minutes for go-between times and seating.

All and all, we clocked 6 hours since we began at 2 PM and ended at 8 PM. We had 31 fights too! It's not ReLAvation, but I think we did good. If you ever want to practice together, DNinja, let me know.

[davidkong07]

hey just curious, i noticed you guys had the clock set to 99 secs per round. is that the way you normally play up there?

as far as i'm aware, 60 seconds is standard, isn't it?

[DJMirror949]

ah who's from Socal that went to Norcal?

[Reiki.Kito]

It's set to 99 seconds to avoid time out victories. So far, nobody has ever won from time out after it was changed and nobody seems to complain, casuals or otherwise.

Though, provided a good argument, I don't see why changes couldn't be made.

[Demoninja]

Yeah I was wondering about that too. I'd prefer it to be 60 seconds as that seems to be the standard but Isaiah said Japanese tournaments have switched over to 99 second tournament matches. I haven't watched any videos in a while so I don't know whether or not it's true. Howeber switching just to avoid time outs is a bad reason. Time outs no matter how "lame" they are are a part of the game. Some time outs I've seen have been incredibly intense and hype.

[Reiki.Kito]

We've also seen hype and amazing fights that didn't end in time out. At 60 seconds, it's not enough time to play a match. It's enough to attempt to, but it gives some characters chances to turtle and win/lose for ridiculous reasons. Fine example is Raiden. For 16 seconds, he's turtling to charge dropkick. That's a little over 1/4th of an entire match done turtling.

If he screws up or whiffs it, there's no chance to come back from it as you'd have to waste one half the match in total turtling to get dropkick again. Athena does not have a lot of tools to be combo intensive, but she's an excellent turtle. Leona, Goro, Clark, Maxima, Vice, Mature, and a good portion of the cast benefit from being 99 seconds. In the same breath, nobody loses anything. Athena and Leona do not lose their turtle game and neither does Raiden. Not only that, but many fighting games, even MvC3 (being a game of resets, juggles, and the Phoenix) is set to 99 seconds. You can go down the list and you'll find most choose the maximum allotted time for play because it allows them to actually play the match. It just makes sense.

[Demoninja]

We've also seen hype and amazing fights that didn't end in time out. At 60 seconds, it's not enough time to play a match. It's enough to attempt to, but it gives some characters chances to turtle and win/lose for ridiculous reasons. Fine example is Raiden. For 16 seconds, he's turtling to charge dropkick. That's a little over 1/4th of an entire match done turtling.

60 seconds is definitely enough time seeing how it hasn't changed in years. I rarely see time outs when I watch videos as is. There have only been a handful of timeouts I can remember even at our "lower and slower" level of play. Winning by turtling and losing because you couldn't get in on someone who's turtling is not ridiculous at all. There's an obvious reason why you did/didn't win.

If he screws up or whiffs it, there's no chance to come back from it as you'd have to waste one half the match in total turtling to get dropkick again. Athena does not have a lot of tools to be combo intensive, but she's an excellent turtle. Leona, Goro, Clark, Maxima, Vice, Mature, and a good portion of the cast benefit from being 99 seconds. In the same breath, nobody loses anything. Athena and Leona do not lose their turtle game and neither does Raiden. Not only that, but many fighting games, even MvC3 (being a game of resets, juggles, and the Phoenix) is set to 99 seconds. You can go down the list and you'll find most choose the maximum allotted time for play because it allows them to actually play the match. It just makes sense.

If Raiden fucks up his drop kick then that's on him, there shouldn't be any messing with the standard settings to try and give people another go at their strategy. Also if I want to turtle for a full 60 seconds every time I play why shouldn't I be able to? Turtling is just as important as rushing down. Changing things from the standard to try and influence play style is not a good mentality at all. in MvC1 the timer was set to 99. In MvC2 the timer is 99. In MvC3 the timer is 99. In KOF 94 it was 60. in KOF 95 it was 60. In KOF 97 it was 60. Do you see where I'm going with this? Deviating from the standard almost never makes sense when you're trying to run a tournament.

[Reiki.Kito]

KoF 94, 95, 2002UM, are faster than KoF XIII and have completely different systems. That just seems to be an issue with deviating from tradition rather than actual gameplay mechanics being lost. If matches are finished in less than 60 seconds in high level play as you stated, then there should not be a problem whether the limit is higher than 60 seconds if a majority of matches in higher level play finish quickly anyway. You're also right, by the way, that recent tournaments still have the game on default.

I agree that it's a valid argument. Not many people set the timer to 99 because the games usually didn't last that long to begin with. It's what the game's default is. If I remember correctly, MvC3 is not defaulted to 99 seconds and neither is Tekken, CvS2, SFIV, etc. They're usually north of 60, like 75. However, for tournament play, nobody benefits from the timer being 60 seconds except maybe people who prefer rushdown or juggling characters. Everybody benefits from the timer as there's more time to play in general. It's also not that timeouts are impossible, but they're just not as likely or frequent.

So as far as I can tell, it stands that:

Pros:
Allows for longer matches to be done.
Follows every other game's standard

Cons:
Breaks tradition
Makes timeouts unlikely