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I think there's always going to be people who do that. But at the same time, if you say "Here, look, this is a pretty good outline of what we're looking for", I think a lot of people will also try to pre-emptively balance towards that in order to get in as fast as possible.

I doubt most people create characters from scratch for no other purpose than entering the tournament, but if you hand them a good guideline beforehand, you can at least hope that they TRY to follow it before they submit a profile, and if they don't, they have something to look at to try and help them in tandem with the judges comments.

Also my internet is going berserk. Goddammit.

Still need an explanation for the power cap.

Like "Ryu or Ken are cool. Akuma.. not so much."

Because Akuma is OP as s**t in the story.

Irrelevant. Street Fighter is a linear fighting game with a health bar and button combos, none of which translates to freeform RP as we do it in tournaments. What we draw from the game mechanics is also what we draw from the story - that they're martial artists of varying power levels capable of doing some supernatural stuff. That has nothing to do with how the characters are balanced in the game, it has to do with the themes, visuals, and approach to fighting that the game uses.

You can't wholesale translate game mechanics, nor use them as a basis for judgement because again, different mediums. In the game, as long as you hit your combos you can just SHORYUKENSHORYUKENSHORYUKEN as much as you want. There's no prep, no charge, no time, not system like what we look for in powersets for roleplay. Entirely different mechanics for different mediums.

That's why using the actual game mechanics as a basis doesn't work. It never works. When we say "Use Street Fighter", we're not saying use it verbatim, we're saying look at how most of the characters are, they're martial artists with a few superhuman abilities like shooting energy blasts.

Asking "is the character op in the game y/n" is entirely irrelevant because our basis isn't derived from game mechanics, it's from the characters as they're portrayed in the story, and visually in combat, rather than the hard mechanics (combos, health bars, move-lists). I mean, even in game, if you look at their movelists, someone like Akuma can fill the screen with Hadoken blasts. But because the game operates on entirely different mechanics, that ability might not be too great in game.. but might be overpowered in roleplay. Again, you can't rely on game mechanics because, beyond the superficial, they become irrelevant to how things are done in freeform roleplay.

That's why you need actual explanations instead of vague statements. If you give someone a vague statement, don't be surprised if the answers you receive vary.. because you're not giving them a lot of information. You're leaving it open to interpretation.

I came back to see Darth replied to me but stayed because KB argued my point for me.


You growing on me Bro... and I think I like it. lol

All of that information is present in the Rules and Regulations posts between abilities and the restricted moves.

For weapons/abilities Street Fighter is listed for interpretation, as well as a general bit on not using OP weapons like Death Rays. All weapons have to be approved by judges.

In Restricted Abilities or whatever its called they have callouts on all the kinds of s**t you can't do. The guideline listed is a "moderate" amount of control of the elements and ki and s**t like that. Moderate is a pretty safe word to use when it comes to setting the bar, especially with that other information. It also states all moves will be reviewed by judges.


The only people having any difficulty determining power level appropriateness is going to be those that:

a) didn't read the rules
b) are trying to jam a freakishly OP character into a moderate power level tournament

I remember talking about power levels, including Street Fighter and Guilty Gear, in-depth, more than once.

Actually, I'm usually the only person that ever argues that people making tournaments don't know anything about the power levels of the characters they say they want to use. I always loved going into HoH and mocking how none of them never even played KoF, let alone actually paid attention to the story.

You can do a mage right. I'm just waiting for someone to enter what I expect would be the perfect kind of battle mage for this tournament, which I already have in my head. I figure people would figure it out with the way we balance stuff, but no one has caught on yet, so that's good.

I think the Indian is right. For next year we should probably work on developing that section of the rulebook.

And by we, I mean whoever the ******** the judging staff is. I might try to put down some groundwork before this year is over. We'll see.