A recent topic that's come up in discussions over both Final Round XV and now MLG Columbus has been the validity of the strategy of counterpicking. A # of posters have come out against this strategy and have been quite.....well, hateful of it. And it was on full display in Grand Finals of MLG Columbus, as well as multiple other matches within that tournament.
But what these posters do not seem to understand is that the usage of counterpicking strategies is a very healthy and good thing for the game, and is something that every player who wishes to compete in tournaments and win* should either learn or prepare to see.
*If you're one of the many players who don't intend to win at tournies but go for fun, you can totally ignore this strategy. Hell, if you want to be a character loyalist and win, you don't have to counterpick. But you can't complain if someone does it to you.
No Fighting Game in EXISTENCE has a cast in which every character has a 5-5 matchup against everyone else. It doesn't happen. If a game has a character with only 5-5 or better matchups, the game is not balanced and you have a problem character (think Yun in Super Street Fighter 4 AE).*
*Note the converse is NOT True. A "Balanced Fighting Game" often has at least 1 character who has no positive matchups better than 5-5 against the entire cast. But a Balanced Game can't have too many of these characters.
But a balanced game has many characters who have a few 5-5 matchups, a few 6-4 matchups (where they have a clear advantage), and a few 4-6 matchups (where they're at a disadvantage). Heck, some characters will have 7-3 and 3-7 matchups (or even one 2-8 or 8-2 matchup, but that's to be avoided if possible). So there will be in a balanced game matchups where even the best player in the world will be the underdog.
Now Consider This:
Why do we have tournaments in the first place, with large money prize pools? The answer (among other reasons): to crown the BEST Player at Mortal Kombat. That's why we often seed tournaments so that the better players are on different sides of the bracket - we want the best players in the tournament to go the farthest and we don't want a poor player to sneak into top 8 because no good players were in his side of the bracket.
But character matchups pose a problem at crowning the best player in a tournament. Let's say a tournament is character locked and that the best player is playing a character who is a good character, but he runs into 3 matches in a row early against 4-6 (or worse 3-7) matchups. Odds are that player won't make it through the gauntlet. This becomes even more evident when you have 3 out of 5 games per round.
So who makes top 8 in these character locked tournaments? Well the best players who don't, by luck of the draw, run into too many bad matchups. In other words, Top 8 and the overall winner of the tournament is determined in great part BECAUSE OF LUCK.
That's a problem. That's a serious problem. In fact it's probably worse than that, because it means that the best players will eventually switch to characters who have the least "bad" matchups possible so as to reduce the chance of them getting bad character draws. The end result: A Top 8 determined by luck and dominated by a few same characters.
This SUCKS.
The Solution to this is simple: Players are allowed to learn multiple characters to switch between whenever they run into "bad matchups." As a result, no character is off limits to any top player - they can even play characters who are crap as long as they have a second character to switch to when they run into bad matchups. The player who wins the tournament becomes the BEST Player who is both the best at the game and the most prepared for any situation he can come across (a fair situation) rather than the player who luckily avoids all the Johnny Cages in the Bracket.
This is why you see Counterpicking. REO has issues beating CD Jr's Jax with his main Kabal. This is essentially a 4.5-5.5 matchup for REO (maybe worse). If we didn't allow character switching, REO may be screwed. He might win sometimes (the matchup is far from 0-10), but most of the time he's going to lose. Is it possible REO might improve his game to the point where the matchup is 5-5? Maybe....but CD Jr. can improve too, and sometimes a matchup is just a matchup.....you can't get around it when both players know the matchup perfectly - it is what it is. So it's just stupid to say REO (and other players) should be stuck into playing over and over a matchup of characters where, due to no fault of REO's, is simply bad for him.
So REO switches to Johnny Cage, giving him a 6-4 edge over CD Jr. CD Jr. switches to Smoke which gives him a 5-5 matchup against REO's Cage. And Hence we get counterpicking.
This isn't a problem. This is a sign that the best player will win a tournament and won't be stopped by running constantly into another good player with the worst matchup for his character. That's what we want.
But what these posters do not seem to understand is that the usage of counterpicking strategies is a very healthy and good thing for the game, and is something that every player who wishes to compete in tournaments and win* should either learn or prepare to see.
*If you're one of the many players who don't intend to win at tournies but go for fun, you can totally ignore this strategy. Hell, if you want to be a character loyalist and win, you don't have to counterpick. But you can't complain if someone does it to you.
No Fighting Game in EXISTENCE has a cast in which every character has a 5-5 matchup against everyone else. It doesn't happen. If a game has a character with only 5-5 or better matchups, the game is not balanced and you have a problem character (think Yun in Super Street Fighter 4 AE).*
*Note the converse is NOT True. A "Balanced Fighting Game" often has at least 1 character who has no positive matchups better than 5-5 against the entire cast. But a Balanced Game can't have too many of these characters.
But a balanced game has many characters who have a few 5-5 matchups, a few 6-4 matchups (where they have a clear advantage), and a few 4-6 matchups (where they're at a disadvantage). Heck, some characters will have 7-3 and 3-7 matchups (or even one 2-8 or 8-2 matchup, but that's to be avoided if possible). So there will be in a balanced game matchups where even the best player in the world will be the underdog.
Now Consider This:
Why do we have tournaments in the first place, with large money prize pools? The answer (among other reasons): to crown the BEST Player at Mortal Kombat. That's why we often seed tournaments so that the better players are on different sides of the bracket - we want the best players in the tournament to go the farthest and we don't want a poor player to sneak into top 8 because no good players were in his side of the bracket.
But character matchups pose a problem at crowning the best player in a tournament. Let's say a tournament is character locked and that the best player is playing a character who is a good character, but he runs into 3 matches in a row early against 4-6 (or worse 3-7) matchups. Odds are that player won't make it through the gauntlet. This becomes even more evident when you have 3 out of 5 games per round.
So who makes top 8 in these character locked tournaments? Well the best players who don't, by luck of the draw, run into too many bad matchups. In other words, Top 8 and the overall winner of the tournament is determined in great part BECAUSE OF LUCK.
That's a problem. That's a serious problem. In fact it's probably worse than that, because it means that the best players will eventually switch to characters who have the least "bad" matchups possible so as to reduce the chance of them getting bad character draws. The end result: A Top 8 determined by luck and dominated by a few same characters.
This SUCKS.
The Solution to this is simple: Players are allowed to learn multiple characters to switch between whenever they run into "bad matchups." As a result, no character is off limits to any top player - they can even play characters who are crap as long as they have a second character to switch to when they run into bad matchups. The player who wins the tournament becomes the BEST Player who is both the best at the game and the most prepared for any situation he can come across (a fair situation) rather than the player who luckily avoids all the Johnny Cages in the Bracket.
This is why you see Counterpicking. REO has issues beating CD Jr's Jax with his main Kabal. This is essentially a 4.5-5.5 matchup for REO (maybe worse). If we didn't allow character switching, REO may be screwed. He might win sometimes (the matchup is far from 0-10), but most of the time he's going to lose. Is it possible REO might improve his game to the point where the matchup is 5-5? Maybe....but CD Jr. can improve too, and sometimes a matchup is just a matchup.....you can't get around it when both players know the matchup perfectly - it is what it is. So it's just stupid to say REO (and other players) should be stuck into playing over and over a matchup of characters where, due to no fault of REO's, is simply bad for him.
So REO switches to Johnny Cage, giving him a 6-4 edge over CD Jr. CD Jr. switches to Smoke which gives him a 5-5 matchup against REO's Cage. And Hence we get counterpicking.
This isn't a problem. This is a sign that the best player will win a tournament and won't be stopped by running constantly into another good player with the worst matchup for his character. That's what we want.
