The Fighting Game topic

I imagine at this point it's just a licensing issue holding back Battle for the Grid from EVO. Sucks, but it is what it is.

The licensing rights for Power Rangers anything are probably a freaking nightmare. I dont think its allowed to have any overlap with Super Sentai, so there are likely a lot of unseen barriers for the license.

Smash not being at EVO this year is odd, given that it was all set to be at EVO last year.

But thinking about it more, it's probably because of Sony. Nintendo did make it clear back when Sony acquired EVO that they weren't happy about it.

This is what a lot of people were worried about with Sony buying EVO: Sony controlling and restricting which games can be at EVO and turning EVO into a Sony-brand event.

I wouldn't say just quite yet, but this definitely doesn't alleviate fears either. If anything else it probably reinforces it.

That can't be right. I've seen tournies hosting BFTG before. Granted it wasn't an event like EVO & Covid is still a thing, but it can't be to the extent it can't be streamed.

It could be an issue if its expected to stream outside of the US

A few of the games are running on PC, actually, so it’s not a blanket case of Sony not allowing anything not on their hardware.

While I can see where those fears are coming from, and I certainly share them, I don't think the lack of Smash Bros is actually on Sony.

If I remember right, when they first bought EVO Sony said they'd be happy to host Smash Bros it was Nintendo who wanted to wait and "assess the situation". Although, Nintendo's hesitance was probably due to the fact that they'd had a bit of a frosty relationship with the competitive scene for a while by that point.

Edited by PhoenixAct on Jun 10th 2021 at 2:52:17 PM

Smash, as far as I understand it, has never had a frosty relationship with EVO. What Nintendo did that was "against the competitive scene" recently was, specifically, taking down a fan-tournament that was utilizing a modified version of one of their games, none of which applies to EVO.

Sony being magnanimous about letting other companies into EVO doesn't mean Nintendo has to be happy about putting their product into an event that's hosted by a main competitor. Again, Nintendo pretty much pulled out of EVO immediately after hearing the news, but gave a vague "we'll think about it" at the time that made us think they were going to come back in later - but it looks like they didn't.

Huh, the way I'd heard it was that Nintendo was being a little leery of the competitive seen after the scandals last yeah.

As to your second point, yeah, I'm aware. There's nothing saying Nintendo has to put their game in EVO if they don't want to, and I don't blame them for not wanting their game in a tournament run by one of their competitors. However, the discussion seemed to be implying that it was Sony who was deliberately excluding Smash Bros from the event, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Edited by PhoenixAct on Jun 10th 2021 at 5:16:13 PM

Smash fans have been heavily trying to push the rhetoric that Nintendo just hates the competitive scene because of their actions last year, even though those actions weren't ever actually directed at the competitive scene specifically.

It's one of those things that probably didn't make sense from a Western perspective (since we're used to stuff like modding or abandonware and such here) - hence people jumping to conclusions like "Nintendo hates competitive!" - but does from an Eastern perspective. Modifying and disseminating someone's creation without them is a big cultural no-no over in Japan, and while a lot of companies have become more accepting of modding scenes and such over time, Nintendo is an highly traditionalist, old fashioned company who is very set in their ways.

Nintendo's never had a problem with their products being used in competitive mediums in itself. They are, however, infamous for being rigid and unpleasable in how those products are presented in how those mediums - and it's very in character for them to perceive entering into something like this year's EVO as them putting their own product into an advertisement for the competition.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 10th 2021 at 9:52:20 AM

I'm gonna reiterate from the previous page that 2021's iteration of EVO is once again all-online, and when 2020's version was still in the cards that didn't have Smash at all either for that reason.

Not only is the netcode notoriously bad for Ultimate but its lobby system is clunky and requires a lot of coordination between each round due to how stage selection works. Even if EVO weren't owned by Sony, Smash would still be a no-show due to those factors making it a headache to schedule remotely.

I'm also pretty sure people would mostly watch Smash Ultimate for the shits & giggle if it was at EVO.

That makes more sense. *sigh*

I can't believe the likes of the Avengers & Justice League can show up at tournies events, but something like Power Rangers can't. Copyright can be so infuriating.

Why do you say that? Do you mean people wouldn't watch online play or play in general?

How's the new Guilty Gear? How does it fare compared to Skullgirls?

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on Jun 10th 2021 at 2:21:49 PM

It's notoriously bad, although I've seen tournies online matches before, they were mostly playing for fun. At least that's what I remember.

"Notoriously?" I haven't heard a lot of buzz about it being poorly received. AFAIK, it's doing decently well reception-wise.

Smash's online tournament scene is bad.

The buzz on Strive is glowing. Some people feel let down by the story for various reasons, but the game is good.

I think agent-trunks was talking about Smash's online, and it's not like half of the games in the smaller tournaments at EVO have any better netcode.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jun 11th 2021 at 12:04:08 PM

Is that not what I said?

I need to work on my grammar. :/

People thought you were talking about the new Guilty Gear.

@Zeromaeus How good is Guilty Gear's storytelling on average?

Eh... decent enough. Strive had a number of conclusions regarding ongoing storylines, and some people saw it as anticlimactic in how it played out. It's not stuff that came out of nowhere. It's the conclusion the story was building to, but not necessarily what long running fans wanted.

Daisuke and co. are very much bad writers with big ideas.

x4

Re-reading it now, that makes sense.

Blazblue gave me one of my favorite moments in playing a video game, even if it was undermined what in the next few scenes.

Ya know, since Sony owns EVO now, I've had a very small glimmer of hope they'd return to the concept of Playstation All-Stars. With a different gameplay style of course, I feel a Sony crossover game would lend itself better to either a traditional 2D fighter (familiar gameplay for the competitive scene), or maybe an arena fighter (since most of their IPs recently are third-person action games).

Edited by Rinsankajugin on Jun 11th 2021 at 7:35:35 AM