The Super Street Fighter IV Match of the Year, to me, came down to three matches. I was able to eliminate one of them right away (PR Balrog defeats Tokido). So, it was down to a championship vs. a semifinals.

The reason I thought Team Utah winning over John Choi and Hsien Chang in the Super Battle Opera South Qualifier Championship was a contender was because it had all of the elements of a great match. It was a championship. There was a ton on the line (the right to represent the United States at Super Battle Opera), it featured a comeback, and the winning team was able to defeat the overpowering character.

It ended up second on my list.

There wasn’t enough to overcome what Wolfkrone did at Canada Cup. There might have been some rumbling before the tournament about who was the Player of the Year, but not after what happened. Add to it that he made this unbelievable feat on his 21st birthday, and it's a story to be remembered for a long time.

The match of the year is …

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Out of all five honors, the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 series Match of the Year for 2011 was probably the hardest to decide. It came down to this: Do we honor an everlasting moment or a match that had several great moments?

That everlasting moment, known today as “Bionic Marn,” was second on my list. It reminded me of Super Bowl XXXIV. Most people don’t remember what happened for the majority of the game; they just know that the Titans were stopped at the 1-yard line on the final play of the game.

The more I watch the Match of the Year, the more I believe it truly is one of the greatest matches around. Start off by matching two of the best players in North America. Add in a Phoenix team against an anti-Phoenix team with a championship on the line, and there’s a recipe for some great viewing. There was also a Bionic Marn moment.

Here’s some stats on the match:

• These guys played nine games in two sets. Only twice did more than one character survive in a game (and each guy had one of those moments).
• The survival rate combined for both guys was 22.2 percent, way below the tournament average (although, Phoenix’s survival rate was double at 44.4 percent)
• The guy that lost the first character overall in the game won five of the nine games.
• In six games, the guy that was down to his final character first came back to win.
• There were two comebacks at 0-2 (yup, both with Phoenix).
• The losers bracket representative was down 2-1 and then down to his final character before rallying to force a second finals match.
• Overall, the champion won 5 of the final 6 games played. However, that one game he didn’t win will be remembered for a very long time.

The match of the year is …

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2011 was filled with so many highlights and lowlights, a book could be written about all of it. But that would take nearly all of 2012 to do. So in that case, I’ll just mention the top five stories of 2011. Some of them are specific to a tournament or a match, while others are very broad.

There were a lot of stories that did not make the cut, and I’ll mention some of them here:

• OnlineTony wins seven tournaments in a row
• Japan’s unsuccessful attempt to overtake the United States in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 at Evolution 2011
• Daigo Umehara’s Super Street Fighter IV title reign at Evolution ends
• The struggle against top-tier characters
• Perfect Legend wins at Evolution 2011

That’s just a handful. Here’s the top five going back to forward:

5. Filipino Champ wins Northwest Majors 3 and Canada Cup: You might hear from one of these matches later in the week. For all that Ryan "Filipino Champ" Ramirez had to go through this year, including bad breaks and unbelievable losses, there were a couple of shots remaining to get a major win before the game switched to Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. He made it all the way to the finals of both tourneys and prevailed.

At Canada Cup, in one of the more unbelievable moments of the year, Justin rallied to defeat Filipino Champ and stay alive in the finals. If this were any other part of the year, Filipino Champ probably folds up and loses. But he didn’t this time around, and that’s what made the win at Canada Cup so special. It was his moment and his major championship.

4. Majors for Team Spooky: Victor “Spooky” Fontanez is beloved by a lot of followers in the competitive gaming scene because of his broadcasting. He also made his mark by going to nearly every major tournament this year. He had his share of ups (Evolution) and downs (comments at Final Round XIV), but most of his supporters have stood by him no matter what the situation. If it was a big event, he was likely there. There was a random poll made after Spooky made his case to stream Evolution, and hundreds of people put their name on it. It was somewhat publicized and it got that much attention. Imagine if it had been heavily advertised.

3. Wolfkrone and Latif burn through opponents: Again, you might hear about these two guys later in the week as we give out awards. These guys not only were two of the top contenders in the nation, but they mowed down opponents with their C.Viper.

2. Canada Cup steals the show: Canada Cup was one of the most memorable tournaments of 2011, but it wasn’t all positive. While Wolfkrone seemed to seal his fate as the best North American player, the tournament was marred by a constant stream of advertisements, some which affected the matches. The ending of the main event was struck by a commercial. Not only that, the plan to charge for a premium version of the broadcast was hit with technical difficulties.

Those are four of the top five. And the top story of the year is …

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With the three Goodbye Phoenix, Hello Phoenix Invitational Tournaments over, it's time to look at how all 24 players stacked up. How did all of the players do when it come to wins and survival rates? Also, how did they do on defense?

First off, let's take a look at the offense. Obviously, wins matter (and this is how the chart is sorted). But how did they perform when it came to survival rates? It was varied across the board.

And the winner is ...

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Five years ago, I had this crazy idea. Why not start reporting about tournaments? And thus, Get Your Tournament was born.

It has been a crazy five years, and I can't believe I'm still talking about tournaments today. Obviously, I'm not able to do it the way I was back then, but my hope is that I've been able to bring something of interest to the communities that I follow. And if you're wondering, I do watch a lot of tournaments but not in M.O.D.O.K fashion (ha ha).

I want to thank everyone for coming to the site, whether you've been here one time or more than that.

As part of my thanks, here's a small contest. Everyone that comments will be entered into a drawing for one of two MadCatz TE keychains. The drawing will take place Sunday at 5 p.m. PT.

Thanks again, and here's to five more years!  no comments

 
With only 24 days to the end of the year, obviously the Player of the Year honors are going to start coming up. I think there might be more debate in terms of who is the Super Street Fighter IV Player of the Year outside of North America.

As for the North American Player of the Year, is there a debate about who it will go to? To me, I really don't think there is. There might be more of a debate as to who is second, third, etc.

I'll bring it up again before the end of the year because maybe I'm in the minority on saying the honor is all but locked up.

Picture by Michael Yu no comments

 

There's been three Big Two tournaments for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and I think it's time to start looking at some of the teams and how they're formed. In this post, I'm going to look at the point guards in the three tournaments. All of the numbers come from Top 8 matches that have been streamed (and go to Team Spooky's portal to see the matches). There's been more diversity in this tournament series than any others I've seen so far. So let's break this down.

First off, here's the win rate when these characters are the PG.

(GW: Games won; GP: Games played; WR: Win rate)

Character	GW	GP	WR
Storm	6	6	1.000
Hawkeye	8	10	.800
Viewtiful Joe	22	36	.611
Vergil	3	5	.600
Wolverine	8	15	.533
Ryu	14	28	.500
Iron Fist	3	6	.500
Nova	2	4	.500
Amaterasu	5	11	.455
Phoenix Wright	2	5	.400
Dante	4	11	.364
Frank West	2	6	.333
Dormammu	1	3	.333
Magneto	1	3	.333
Firebrand	1	3	.333
Zero	4	16	.250
Hulk	1	4	.250
Doctor Strange	0	1	.000
Ghost Rider	0	1	.000

If you're wondering, Masta CJ is the reason why Storm is at the top. He didn't lose a match in the Top 8 using her.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that there isn't a Wesker that's been used as a PG. I've had a lot of people cry to me about how Wesker is overpowered and he is the best character in the game. But I've been telling people that we can't make that conclusion yet, especially since the game is about a month old and Wesker gets eliminated first in a match nearly half the time.

Let's look at the survival rate for these PGs.

(GS: Games survived; GP: Games played; SR: Survival rate)

Character	GS	GP	SR
Hawkeye	5	10	.500
Nova	2	4	.500
Storm	2	6	.333
Iron Fist	2	6	.333
Dormammu	1	3	.333
Magneto	1	3	.333
Ryu	9	28	.321
Viewtiful Joe	10	36	.278
Vergil	1	5	.200
Zero	3	16	.188
Wolverine	2	15	.133
Amaterasu	1	11	.091
Phoenix Wright	0	5	.000
Dante	0	11	.000
Firebrand	0	3	.000
Frank West	0	6	.000
Hulk	0	4	.000
Doctor Strange	0	1	.000
Ghost Rider	0	1	.000

The survival rate for a PG is .224 in this tournament series. If I include all of the tournaments in my database, it is .235. Are the PGs on a team just there for initial damage or to get the whole job done. In most cases I've seen, it's just to get one elimination, if that.

Finally, here's the survival rate for the PG's assist characters:

(CS: Characters survived; GP: Games played; SR: Survival rate)

Character	CS	GP	SR
Storm	10	12	.833
Vergil	6	10	.600
Nova	4	8	.500
Hawkeye	9	20	.450
Viewtiful Joe	29	72	.403
Wolverine	12	30	.400
Ryu	21	56	.375
Amaterasu	8	22	.364
Iron Fist	4	12	.333
Dormammu	2	6	.333
Firebrand	2	6	.333
Dante	6	22	.273
Phoenix Wright	2	10	.200
Zero	6	32	.188
Frank West	2	12	.167
Magneto	1	6	.167
Hulk	1	8	.125
Doctor Strange	0	2	.000
Ghost Rider	0	2	.000

I look at this list to tell me how much the assist characters are pulling their weight. Turns out, this is the case for a lot of the characters in the top third.
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Before you check out the list, try to think about what you've seen in the past week. I've created my Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 database, and my goal isn't to break down everything that happens in a match; I'm going to save all of those minute details for Super Street Fighter IV.

Instead, my plan is to find THE best team and how it stacks up with possible counter teams. As we saw with regular Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the goal was to create a team that could either do best with Phoenix or a team that could counter Phoenix. Many people predicted that a Phoenix would make the finals of several major tournaments, so the idea was to either beat them or join them.

If you've seen the site Basketball Value, what they do over there is stack up on-court teams and players and find out how they have done against other on-court teams. That way, we can put values to players and see whether they are holding up their weight while playing.

So what you will see in this list is just the beginning of the statistical journey for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

In regard to this list, let's just keep in mind that it's been used in tournaments for just a week. Things will definitely change as the weeks pass. We've seen that with other games, and this will be no different.

I recorded the characters used in every match played in the following tournaments. Not every match was streamed, but I got all of them within the time frame that were streamed.

• Big Two (Top 8, 10 matches)
• Wednesday Night Fights Arcade Edition 3.3 (Top 8, 8 matches)
• Starbase 11/16 (Top 6, 6 matches)
• Thursday Night Throwdown: We Know Drama (Top 8, 11 matches)
• Cross Counter Open (Top 6, 9 matches including the second finals)

In terms of being the point, if a character was used as a point at any point in the match, it counted. So it's possible for one team to have two point characters. It rarely happened, though.

In total, there were 44 matches charted in this analysis.

And the winner is ...

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Want to know your chances of winning a 5-game series in a Super Street Fighter IV tournament at any point in the match? Click the flowchart.

 
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I had a feeling that fighting game fans would wake up on Monday not to talk about the great action from the weekend, but rather the overwhelming amount of advertisements that came up during the broadcast.

I plan to talk about it later in the week, either here or somewhere else. But for now, enjoy some commentary from other people, who popped off right after the tournament was over.

From Darry at iPLAYWINNER:

I feel absolutely no sympathy for what may befall Vesper Arcade in the aftermath of this tournament. They may be fortunate. Stream Monster Nation has a notoriously-short memory. Perhaps next year, when another Canada Cup is announced, we’ll all settle down in front of our monitors like a shuffling mass of Alzheimer’s victims. I hope not. 

What we witnessed today is sunlight in a dark corner that has concerned some of us working along the edge of new media within the fighting game community. What you spent the weekend consuming was a product engineered by a group eagerly exploiting both its audience and its participating talent in the name of simple, potent greed. The team responsible for casting this event extorted everyone involved, spectators and fighters alike.

From Paul aka SouperFX:

Is this what we really want to move onto as a community? While I agree that it certainly is a great way to force people into buying your premium stream, it’s also a great way to convince me to never support your bullshit business practices. And I am someone who fully supports paid viewing as a way to reward streaming groups for all their hard work and help recoup the money they put into their equipment. Even if it is not the direct fault of the streaming group because of delay issues between what they see and what viewers see, it’s just another issue that should have been dealt with from the start. Never have I seen such problems from Spooky or anyone else who runs ads.

Someone started a thread on the JustinTV forums:

Canada Cup's stream was already terrible before this, but they're just making it worse and giving a bad reputation to Twitch as a whole. It's actions like these that make me want to say you guys should stay away from Fighting Game Streams and stick to Starcraft if you're going to turn the internet into a Communist nation. Right before I typed this thread, one staff member set slow mode to 5 minutes. Our stream chat's slow modes usually don't go over 30 seconds to a minute. Also, Markyochoa set a macro to ban anyone typing in caps or the phrase "$8.95". This isn't golf, it's the most hype fighting game at a major international tournament. People are going to get excited, and a 5 minute slow mode defeats the purpose of the chat. "Well, I was going to type about Justin Wong losing to Leslie, but so much time has passed that it's not relevant anymore." JTV community leaders, please tell your staff to stop abusing their power. They're ruining everything we enjoy about our streams.

And I'll end it by mentioning what I said on Google Plus (I put it there because it wasn't directly stat related, but oh well, it's relevant now):

I mentioned it on Twitter, and it was copied here, but for everyone bitching about what seemed to be an overabundance of advertisements on today's broadcast, I did some number crunching this morning and double checked them just now. 

They seemed to run a 30-second ad after every match save the team tourney (FULL DISCLOSURE: I watched a lot of the HD Remix tourney where this was happening, and I had to work the rest of the day, so I dunno if it continued through the day; I'm guessing it did based on the reaction on Twitter). 

If an average match was 3 minutes, and a 30-second commercial aired after that, then there were 16 blocs of commercials an hour. So in total, that's 8 minutes of commercials and 52 minutes of "game" time.

Compare that to MLB, which averages about 3 hours a game. If there are no in-game pitching changes, then there's an average of 5 blocs an hour. 10 minutes commercials, 50 minutes game.

NFL's average game is 3 hours. They're required to do 20 commercials a game. Could be anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Let's say it's 2 minutes and they add one extra, to make it even. So that's 7 blocs, 14 minutes commercials, 46 minutes game.

NBA is about 2 1/2 hours, with about 5 mandatory commercials per half. So if coaches don't go nucking futs, then it's 5 blocs, 10 minutes commercials, 50 minutes game.

CONCLUSION: Today's broadcast still had LESS commercial time on average than any pro event. Bottom line is, perception diluted reality, because it's obvious the amount of blocs was way over the average of a pro event, nearing triple the amount.

I said on Twitter that pay walls can work, but it's got to be spot on. Perhaps if there was a way to have less blocs of more time (8 of 1 minute each, or 4 of 2 minutes), then it won't be a problem. 30 seconds, you have to stay or else you miss the next match. 

At least, with 2 minutes, I can do something like hit up the fridge, go to the bathroom, etc.

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