KSB2015 recap/writeup/rant

I'm gonna write this out in English cause I'm tired and the Japanese Marvel community is already aware of what I'm gonna say here.



KSB was a huge opportunity to rejuvenate the Japanese Marvel scene. The tournament itself had a lot of hype moments that you wouldn't get to see at most majors; a Tron player managed to knock RF into losers, and then a Spiderman player eliminated him. A godlike point Shuma player got to 4th place with some intense matches of his own. Nemo lost both to Mabushin and the relatively unknown smmt in extremely exciting matches. There was amazing character variety as one expects of Japanese Marvel. No questions asked it was an amazing tournament.



Marvel is far from dead in Japan, but if this tournament had been on the main stage and thus onstream, it would have generated even more interest in the game and provided for several Halls of Hype moments. But sadly stage and stream time were dominated by Ultra Street Fighter 4. USF4, a 64-man bracket, was on the main projector from start to finish and was even 3 out of 5 from Top 8 onward, maybe earlier. Marvel, which had over 200 entrants and 12 qualifiers in the months leading up to the main tournament, had ONLY top 3 on stage and the ENTIRE tournament was 2 out of 3. To exacerbate things there was no time or room for casuals, so all of these amazing players who had never played each other before ended up not getting the chance after all.



Large Ultra tournaments can and do happen all the time in Japan. The chance to get almost all of Japan's strongest Marvel players in one room is incredibly rare. As far as Marvel majors go in Japan, KVO is really the only one, and pretty much everyone is disappointed that it turned out the way it did.



I'm not sure what a reasonable solution would have been. As has been said it's difficult balancing everyone's interests and of course I think that every game should get equal stream time as much as possible. KSB being a Capcom Pro Tour event basically guaranteed that it would dominate the stream (who's not subscribed to the CapcomFighters twitch?) and that top 8 would be 3 out of 5 (as is dictated by Pro Tour rules). Some people were saying the games could have been run on different days to assure equal stream time. Some said Ultra shouldn't have been at the event at all. I just think it would have made sense to stream less of SF and have less of it on stage. It would have made sense for the crowd at KSB. Ultra got golf claps, Marvel and Smash got thunderous ovation, cause that's what the majority of people were there for.



That the world's most popular fighting game should take stream time from "lesser" titles doesn't really surprise me. But it hurts a lot right now to think that it cost us the biggest, no, the ONLY big Marvel tournament most of the players here will ever get a chance to compete in. Both the organizers and the players worked themselves overtime. Even though they might not read this, I cannot stress enough how much respect and admiration I have for the event staff who had to work through unfortunate circumstances and still managed to make the tournament run on time with barely any logistical hiccups. It's a shame that their effort ended up mostly going towards an event that ended up being a bit of a letdown.



Having lived here for two years now and knowing how hard the players trained and how far they traveled just to play in a 2 out of 3 tournament with no casuals and barely any stream time, I know how bad this must sting for some of the players. For me personally, having gone to 3 different qualifiers and devoting maybe too much of my time grinding, I feel like I got shortchanged on the tournament format, the lack of casuals, and the lack of stage time.



Anyway, I'm still glad we got pretty much all of Japanese Marvel in one room to hang out and play as much as we could. It was grest seeing old friends again and meeting guys I'd only ever seen on PSN and twitter. White House, you crackers are a goddamn blast. Let's hang out again soon.



As for the future of Marvel here, I hope people keep playing and getting better as we had been for the months leading up to KSB. The tournament may have been a bummer, but it wasn't a setback. There's still EVO and the last six years of TEN MORE YEARS left to kick ass at Marvel 3!

Reply · Report Post