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And then UMA, this player who had only participated in a few events and never done better than top 16 at regional offline events, just swept in and took the whole thing.
Part of this is that the group phase was brutal with some pools just being stacked with very strong players. And this year it's not much different. Like in Group A, ItaZan, Phenom and Punk are grouped together, at least one of these isn't making it to main stage. And another one will be forced to start in the lower bracket. Similarly group C features Tokido, Kakeru and Dual Kevin, at least one of these isn't making it to top 16.
All it takes is one of the online qualifier winners having a great day and one of the established powerhouses having a bad day to upset everyone's fantasy brackets.
So sure, I could tell you "Yeah Punk is most likely to win" but there is absolutely zero guarantee he'll even make it to top 8. It is after all, a prediction, not a guarantee. And I'm just telling you to be realistic in expecting there to be at least a few upsets this Capcom Cup, like there are at every Capcom Cup. And one upset loss might be for the person you voted on.
And I'm sure last year a few people were laughing very heartily because they YOLO voted for UMA.
Online qualifiers are incredibly dumb because it’s a lot easier to win in a region that’s less competitive. That’s why you end up with players in the tournament you’ve probably never heard of instead of established legends
Then the group stage is nothing but a lottery, some are stacked and some are much easier
Uma won an online qualifier in an easier region then got an easy group, not knocking him but he had a lot of luck
All qualifiers should be offline and free for everyone to travel to. Players should be seeded based on their performances over the year and grouped accordingly in the finals
If they’re going to pony up a million each year, time to be professional in how you go about proceedings because having an online player who’s never been seen since win last year was deeply embarrassing and shows the lack of professionalism in the tournament structure
Upsets are ultimately a good thing for the FGC. Eight years ago MenaRD was the barely 18 year old kid coming in out of nowhere and dethroning legends with a B-tier character. Now he's the legend being dethroned. Punk similarly just came in out of nowhere in 2016 as an 18 year old, taking out the likes of FChamp and Justin Wong before ultimately needing to be stopped by Tokido himself. Now he too is a legend of the scene.
While legacy counts for an awful lot in the FGC, the system shouldn't be built around ensuring the old guard can stick around. And the old system basically worked best for those who already had the money or sponsors to just fly out to every CPT event to scrape together points so it artificially helped the old guard as they were the guys who could easily convince sponsors to foot the bill for their flight and stay.
While I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to a return of the points system to encourage pros to start flying out to events again, but then the prize pools of these events would need to be better because there's several pros who basically say they can make more money staying home and streaming than flying halfway across the planet just to get beached in the top 32. But the regional qualifiers should stay around as well, it is a good method of getting people in underrepresented regions to be part of the scene and get some crucial experience playing against the big players.
Now obviously this isn't entirely altruistic on Capcom's part because an underdog story of someone from a small region doing well at Capcom Cup would obviously cause a spike of sales in that region as all the local gaming sites would cover the event. But at the same time, expanding the appeal of fighting games to new parts of the globe can only be a good thing. Means more people to play with for people who are already invested in fighting games in those regions. They could however do well to streamline some of the regions, there is, in my opinion, little reason to have France & Monaco be its own region, or Germany, or the British isles, those all can just be shoved together into EU West so there's more spots available for people doing well in offline events. But still, I do feel a number of slots should be kept aside for regional qualifiers in the name of getting new blood into the scene.
After all, we wouldn't have had last year's champion otherwise.
This is why professional sports are seeded. If you’re an unseeded tennis player, well you’re going to be facing the big boys in the opening round at Wimbledon. You ain’t getting an easy ride into the business end of the tournament
Punk didn’t qualify last year despite numerous 2nd and 3rd place offline results. You can be the best tennis player in the world not winning a grand slam simply by coming second all the time yet Punk being incredibly consistent didn’t win him a place
The whole top 8 of evo should be given a spot. It’s ridiculous that you have to win the entire thing just for a place
Seeding and offline event prioritising is a must. If they want SF6 to be an esports, it’s time to give it the due diligence it deserves instead of this non structured free for all
If you want to bring fresh blood into the scene it remains crucial to have slots set aside for people who aren't already big names or otherwise can't afford to just travel the globe to every major. The initial appeal of fighting games was that anyone can be a part of it, and that doesn't really vibe with a system where the only people who can thrive in it are those with either enough connections or enough money already in the bank to be able to spend tens of thousands in a year on travelling around and several weeks away from whatever other obligations they might have.
Now Capcom have announced that next season there will be eight offline qualifying events, of which four are in NA, two are in France, one is in Japan, and one is in a yet specified location in Asia.
Now if you're pretty observant you might notice that this selection heavily favours NA. But also that there are three whole continents that have no events at all going their way. So in a world where these eight tournaments are the only ways to get into Capcom Cup, you could be the finest SF player Australia has ever seen, you'd still have to spend obscene amounts of money on very long flights to get to those tournaments because oops, there's not a single Oceania offline event.
As said, I certainly wouldn't object to changes to the format to offer more slots to folks doing well in offline events, but either they'll need to keep setting aside slots for players from remote regions or bring events to those regions as I don't think "too bad you were born in New Zealand" should be a reason to never get to be part of the CPT.
Only 8 qualified from offline tournaments
That’s a big percentage of players coming from online tournaments that are obviously region locked and unbalanced as it would be way harder to win in Japan than a region with barely any top SF6 players
So I don’t think the top 8 of evo (or top 6 as it seems nowadays) placing is a bad idea. Evo is supposed to be the biggest fighting game tournament but it’s becoming less of a draw because the prize money is bad. Punk only won $12k last year which is peanuts compared to Saudi tournaments etc. and obviously nothing compared to capcom cup
And anyone with aspirations to become a professional needs to start from somewhere, which means you have to pay your own way to attend tournaments and produce the results that attract the sponsors.
Sponsors come with success. If someone is not willing to pay for their own travel to begin with, well they were never committed enough to begin with
And personally, I hate online events, they are done out of sheer laziness and convenience because they cost nothing to run. Ask yourself this, would evo moment 37 had been the same if it had been done online in front of no crowd? No, no it wouldn’t
Offline should always be prioritised.
After last Capcom Cup and the Redbull Kumite that came after, I just always support Leshar so that is who I voted for. But I think Tokido has improved so much this year and I am also really hopeful about IDom's progress because I watched him at LFA or something and I never expected that win against Tokido in his prime and getting second place.
That's some very big "just don't be poor" energy right there. "Yeah just magic $3000 out of your pocket to get to Vegas even though you live in a region where the average salary is $500 a month", meanwhile for a player in LA it's just a four hour drive to Evo. I'm sure you see that your idea presents an inequality in opportunity here. Or even someone on the east coast can get a round trip to Evo and back for a hundred bucks (not factoring in hotel bills).
Meanwhile someone from Brazil is looking at over a thousand dollars on the flight alone due to the distance and time of year Evo happens in. And that while on average they earn way less than someone in the US. So you're basically asking them to spend half a year's worth of paychecks on the trip, come into Evo with less offline tournament experience than the competition, and somehow do well enough to attract a sponsor. So realistically they'd have to attend several of those far off tournaments to get the experience needed to get good enough placements to attract sponsors.
So unless global travel becomes dramatically cheaper (it won't), I'll personally remain all in favour to having at least some Capcom Cup slots set aside for players coming in through online qualifiers.