Does Counterpicking make Yomi more or less balanced?

I think it makes it less balanced. It makes rook much worse. Also anybody who gets cp'd by grave gets alot worse since grave cannot be hard counter picked in return (if you play me you can hard CP grave with Lum but this may not work on everyone).

edit: obviously I mean bo3 or bo5 etc

I agree that it makes things unbalanced (there's a similar discussion going on over on the PS board, about whether CPing gives the first game in a B03 too much significance), but I don't think you can blame CPing if Grave is too strong to be counter picked in turn. After all, you could just pick him as your first character if counter picking wasn't allowed and you'd be in the same situation.

Would Pokemon be more balanced if the team limit was 1 instead of 6?

Plum: Hypothetically assume I can play most chars (I cannot lol)

Say I open grave and win. If you counterpick with Arg I can go to midori. If you counterpick with rook I can go to Lum.

Say I win with Setuski. You can Counterpick with grave. I cannot punish you nearly as hard by going to rook/arg.

I think maybe this affect is stronger in PS since Cping seems more important in that game?

Another question is whether the first game is too important in B03. Still I think the balance issues are involved.

The pokemon analogy really does not make sense. Competitive pokemon does not have an analogy to counterpicking. The analogy would be if I could switch my team after I lose in bo3. This is not done and I do not think it would be a good idea at all.

Yes I agree that Grave is less exposed to being countered than Arg or Midori, but if Arg/Mid give enough of an advantage against Grave that it's worth your opponent counter picking them, then surely it's also worth you picking them? Yes it might not be the huge advantage that Lum has over Rook but the fact that you have *any* advantage, however slight, going into the deciding game is significant.

Yeah that is true. If I knew how to play them I would use them g3. What I was trying to say is that if you lose g2 it seems like switching to arg/rook is a weak strat if your opponent knows the cast.

Yeah that's a fair enough point but the fact that you get any choice at all in the last game gives you the advantage. At worst, you could pick Grave for a mirror match, putting things on a totally even playing field. At best, you can pick a character that gives you an edge against Grave.

If it turns out that Grave doesn't have any decent counter picks while being a great counter pick himself, that's a balance issue with Grave rather than the system though. If he does have decent counter picks and your opponent has spent considerable time practising that/those particular match-up(s) and can neutralise the MU imbalance with experience/skill then I think that just means that his planning and practice was more effective.

I realise I'm playing devil's advocate here - I personally like neither Grave nor the CP system but I do like arguing

I think that personal playing style trumps the "accepted" matchup tables often enough that counterpicking isn't a huge deal. That's not to say its effect is easily ignored, but I think people get too caught up in other people's numbers and spreadsheets and let it affect them negatively. I read matchup tables like, "if X plays his/her generally optimal game and Y plays his/her generally optimal game, who wins and how often do they win?" Spreadsheets do a bad job of reflecting the fact that it's impressionable, adaptive people who are playing the game, not robots.

Even so, counterpicking can be frustrating, so I can understand that sentiment, but the other popular alternative is character lock, which I think is kind of less than awesome. I kind of want to try a tournament format where each player privately chooses three characters at the start and can play and counterpick with only those three. Strikes me as a good medium, I dunno.

Charizard beats Venusaur but loses to Blastoise. If you can have a Venusaur/Pikachu on your team to avenge Charizard's death, you can have a variety of characters. If you are stuck with a single double-blind character selection, the entire game becomes one RPS moment of picking the element that beats the element your opponent picked. In Yomi, that means picking Rook hoping they went Grave instead of Lum, but not having Grave on your team to avenge Rook if you guessed wrong.

Which actually has an extra parallel with gen1, where Psychic was Grave, and Pin Missle wasn't exactly Rook Later games added more counterpicks such as Dark.

Granted it's not a perfect analogy, because in pokemon "switch to a new guy" is one of the ingame RPS options. Main point was removing counterpicks puts more emphasis on the first RPS (character selection), which removes some importance from the ingame RPS and valuation (which changes every turn, rather than the static 10x10 matchup chart). "He blocked twice and just powered up. 3 of his 7's are in his discard, but only one Jack. This guy has a tendency to DP out of crossups. What am I reading?" is more interesting than "Robot beats Green Dragon, spend a couple minutes going through the motions, repeat because you can't switch to Fox Ninja, regret not choosing Blue Dragon".

Might not be explaining myself well here, but I think the game is more "balanced" if the game's outcome depends on more than one player decision, because it allows more opportunities for skill, and self-corrects some of the imbalances that occur when non 5-5 matchups exist.

Yeah I agree Major that playstyle matters a ton. I am probably at least competent. I have much more trouble beating lum than beating rook as grave.

I get what you are saying turbo but pokemon doesn't really work like that.

I think what we're getting at here is that Grave just doesn't have enough usable weaknesses. Generally speaking, I think "soft counters" are good, making strategic character choices that give you a slight advantage going into a game adds flavor, imo. I think with the Rook-Lum matchup, that went too far, and the beta character card for Lum shows a change to balance it.

I personally don't mind any MU in this game (except for rook v val). I have personal problems with some MUs, and other ones that are considered counters are easy for me. I would pick val vs grave of my own choice because I know it's who I'd do the strongest with by a landslide, the same way one of my fav MU's in hdr is zangeif vs dhalsim.

Part of being strong with a char is learning the MUs, and something that watching japanese fighting game players has taught me is that counterpicking isn't the game. Hard MU's are just an entry barrier to playing a character in my opinion.

Here's the thing. Someone famous wrote a book about tournament game play; you might have heard of it. In the book in question, he briefly and indirectly touches on this topic, mentioning Japan's character lock tendencies and that it is possible to master one character enough to win the apparently unwinnable matchups. I'm very much in agreement with this idea, and I don't think counterpicking is the horrible evil thing that deluks has a tendency to present it as.

Having said that, I would argue that counterpicking makes Yomi more balanced for precisely the same reasons it's being argued to be less so. Let's take the Lum/Rook example (a very overrated matchup in my opinion - I've beaten good Lums as Rook and lost to awful Rooks as Lums, as well as everything else on that spectrum). Given character locking and assuming Lum/Rook is the hopeless nightmare it's memetically presented as, why would anyone ever play Rook? Lum is a very viable character in the game, who, as mentioned in another topic, can win entirely without fighting. Based on that rhetorical question, I can conclude that character lock would therefore discourage choosing characters who have such disadvantageous matchups, which makes the game more myopic in terms of who plays what and, more importantly, makes for a more boring experience. Though there is admittedly the issue of "free" counterpicks, at least the entire cast sees use, and that's more important to the game in my opinion.

As for rook thing.

Ok say you predict Lum is 10% of the meta and Grave is 50% of the meta. In a reasonable length tournament odds are you will not see too much Lum. In this hypothetical event Rook is looking like a very good choice.

More realistically given the current state of yomi. Most people in yomi these days just play whatever char they like. In general only 10% of your matches will be against Lum.

Assume you are known as a Rook Guy in current land. There is a very decent chance you will get counter picked in g1. So maybe you will play versus lum quite alot. So maybe rook is not looking so good.

As a geiger player, its kind of annoying that every set follows the same megaman esque counterpicking triangle. If I win game one, sets is coming out game 2, then I go Grave, followed by Arg/Rook counter, back to geiger, back to sets to finish it out. Obviously the counterpicks aren't 100 percent victories but it certainly doesn't hurt. It really makes the game boring to always play the same sequence. In a no counterpick enviroment, I wouldn't get counterpicked every match and I could open Grave occasionally to discourage sets counters.

I think it was Deluks (?) earlier who suggested picking a team or pool before the match? So in a Bo3 you'd pick up to three characters without seeing your opponents counterpicks. You don't *need* to use anyone in your pool but you can't counter pick outside it. I like this idea as it gives you some wiggle room for a bad MU and you can aim for a flexible team that can deal with most things, but you can't absolutely pick the perfect counter to your opponent unless you read that they would pick one of their characters in the first place.

While it's true that most people would probably include Grave as their safe bet and some pools would be 'stronger' than others, it would at least mean that metagames like the one described by the-cap would be less likely unless his opponent is willing to bet a character on him including Geiger.

To the OP I say: yes.

It's about what types of decisions the tournament structure wants to emphasise.

I'd prefer Yomi strived to be a game where any matchup was winnable based on the accurate reading of your opponent's valuation.

I think the game is quite close to this already, but an unwillingness to address the very minor balance problems (I'd almost say limited to Grave, Jokers, Rook/Lum, Midori/Rook) means the game loses credibility as a battle of wills.

Currently, counterpicking is more important than mastering a single character. I agree with the posters who have suggested many common perspectives on matchups disregard the ability to just out-Yomi another, but I do think we should recognise that the range each character has can expand or restrict the room a player has to incorporate effective Yomi into their play. Right now characters like Rook, Midori and DeGrey have matchup weaknesses that a top player will struggle to overcome against only a competent player.

The 6:4/7:3, etc. ratings are unhelpful; I think it's better to think about matchups in terms of how the characters want to influence what gets played in combat, and how as a player you can maneouvre an opponent into an uncomfortable position given a read of their hand and tendencies. Like Chess matchup strategy, it's not about good or bad plays, but consistent pressure applied to an identified point of weakness.

I disagree with this entirely. The tiers and matchups are NOT THAT BAD in Yomi. For crying out loud, you see less talk about counterpicking in games like Street Fighter 4 where there are 8:2 matchups.

You can win even the hardest matchups with a little bit of luck, and some yomi. It doesn't matter how much Lum can spam attacks vs Rook, if he allows you to draw your whole deck and doesn't dodge at the critical moments, you can use Rock Armor to do big damage. And critically timed Special Blocks can be a huge thorn in his side.

Is dealing with Face Card spam a pain in the ass? Yes. But you guys act like a slight disadvantage means it's IMPOSSIBLE for a character to win. If you go into a matchup telling yourself you're going to lose because you're disadvantaged, guess what, you probably will.

I explained in my post that I thought matchups were overstated.

However, you chose to completely ignore that part and quote a single line outside of that context.

The members of this site are incapable of reasonable conversation.

No wonder all the good players left.

I actually agree with your main point but that's a little harsh don't you think?

Clembo, the point isn't that counterpicking makes matches impossible or even improbable, it's that it tilts the balance enough that it's not a level playing field. I regularly get my ass kicked by Rook when I'm playing Lum but that doesn't change the fact that I had an advantage going into the match. My failure to capitalise on it or my opponent's skill in outplaying me doesn't alter that - it wasn't a fair fight.

You could however argue that the size of the advantage is negligible, especially given the random element but it's hard to quantify that size without a huge number of results to crunch.

Equally you could argue that the advantage you might gain in one match would be balanced out by your opponent doing similar in another match and that everything cancels out in the end, though players with a strong preference for a particular character would probably not get that balancing effect.

I've seen some tournaments do something like that. They called it a "stable." You get three guys in your stable for the whole tourney and you can counterpick only from your stable the whole tourney. Kind of like a sideboard in MTG. You also get to know what's in the other guy's stable before making your first blind pick for the first match.

Another alternative to char lock or wide open counterpick is double blind each match. More Yomi!

I guess a real problem is that grave does not have any 4-6 mu. Every other char does (maybe not jaina?) and so counter picking does not hurt him as much.

I will say that I would be alot more willing to enter a tournament as geiger or setsuki if the event was char lock. Especially setsuki.

I would vote for serial blind picks over character lock.

Counterpicking is much easier in Yomi than [random fighting game] since it takes much less effort to learn a character (no execution and stuff that is in fighting games). Like just pick Lum and you probably beat Rook is you are competent at the game.

On the other hand, counterpicking is much less useful in Yomi than [random fighting game] since Yomi doesn't have many matchups worse than 6-4. So I don't care if you counterpick me, I will win anyway if I am better. Totally possible to win a counterpick tournament with any character. (I even won with trash-tier Mid!)

I used to think counterpicking was super annoying and limiting. Now I don't care. Anyway, not really worth discussing since all the good players are gone.

Get out.

This is a very interesting topic that I've wanted to weigh in on for a while now.

In casual play it's super inane to enforce counterpicking. When playing Flash Duel, Puzzle Strike, or Yomi IRL we ALWAYS let both players switch characters after a game. I doubt anyone would dispute that it's lame to enforce counterpicking in casuals, so lets move on.

I like Sirlin's explanation in this thread, and I completely agree that it's a very good thing that you aren't forced to play one character through an entire tournament from start to finish. If I recall correctly, some of the older players actually prefer character lock bo3 mode where you can't switch during a match, but you can switch at different points in the tournament. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

But ApolloAndy mentions yet another way of handling bo3: you can allow both players to do blind pick at the start of every game. I think this would work really well for FD and possibly PS as well because counterpicking is super strong in those games -- so strong that winning game 1 can often dictate the match. I'm not sure if counterpicking is nearly as strong in Yomi as it is in the other two games, so maybe the current format of "loser may change" is alright. I still think it might be ok to let the winner change characters too -- I mean what is the argument for the winner not being able to switch? I'm assuming there is a real answer to this question because the fighting game community has been using this format for a while now and it seems to work for them.

It's also interesting to look at how other games handle bo3 situations. StarCraft tournaments and leagues usually do not allow switching races, though the rules vary quite a bit between different events. (Some allow you to change race between maps, while others don't allow you to change at all throughout an entire tournament!) As mentioned already, fighting game communities have adopted their own standards that vary between different games, but the most common is that the loser may counterpick just like in the FS games. Dota has a draft system at the start of every new game, so both teams are able to pick and ban different heroes. MTG does not allow you to switch your deck, but does allow a sideboard.

From this it seems like the best way to handle bo3 depends entirely on the game. My personal opinion is that in the FS games, blind picking every new game would be better than having only the loser counterpick, but that's probably because I come from an FPS / dota background and I'm used to being able to win a game and still change my character going into game two.

I agree in yomi its not as important. In Fd it is extremely important imo.

I would refrain from posting this because I lost the "war" in the sense that people prefer the (Which I think it's way inferior) counterpicking. And the thread started about if it's more or less balanced with counterpicking, but Sirlin added "Well that's not the most important thing" And I agree. My hate for counterpicking is 1% related to balance though, and I think CP is very damaging to yomi and I will remember people once more why.

CP imo is so damaging, that yomi without CP is one of the top games for my tastes, and yomi with CP is just a good game.

Yomi is a game about psychology, is a game about understanding the other people way of thinking. But of course we can only very partially do that, and that is to the referent of a subset of variables.

Which is one of the reasons BO1 is just pointless to me. You observe things of the player, and compare those with your knowledge of how people think in these situations, and so you can start making a profile of that player way of thinking and thus can predict, based on that, analyzing the future variables, what's his most likely future play. Sadly BO1 time is so short, that most of your profile goes to the trash. Imagine even profiling how that player think at the end game scenarios. Well, maybe you figure it out, sadly it's end game, and what you noted is now useless, because there is no way to apply it.

In resume Yomi should be to me, not only a place to gather information about how the other think, but also a place to apply that knowledge, otherwise why I even bothered getting that information? I think the ideal yomi game is a bo5, said it many times. I can accept bo3, because i understand the time problems, etc. But bo1? is just like a joke version of yomi. It's still fun, it's still good, but it's no-where close to be one of the top games i know, as Yomi bo5.

Of course the question may be "Who is talking about boX discussion?" The CP is very related to this.
Imagine I say, Let's test our yomi skills. Let's play a bo3 of games that test our yomi skills. Then you play the first game on Yomi, the Second a round on Tekken 2, and in round 3 we play a hand of poker.

There is no time to Get information and apply it. Sure there is some universal information, about how aggressive or defensive a player is. And Maybe you can transfer that information somehow, and conclude that since in yomi, the player respond Y to X stuation, in tekken, he will respond Z to A situation.
However for the most part, a lot of the compilation of information skills, as well as the proccessing skills of that information is lost. If we are gonna test yomi skills, I expect it more than that. And I expect we are gonna test yomi skills in a game called...well Yomi.

That's what happens in counterpicking. You are playing different games, you are changing too many variables, when you change the matchup. A lot of information getting, and information applying is lost. Making the game a worst test of yomi skills (since many of those skills lose importance, other deciding factors become more relevant), and less fun at least to some (personally, I feel worse if i know some of the things I'm spotting will have no use in future games).

So I agree balance is the least important of things when it comes to CD, The important thing is that Yomi become a game less about yomi. Personally, that's a terrible thing.

(Protip: If you feel the opponent is getting the best of you or he is just a better player, ALWAYS counterpick, or at least change character, you will definitely reduce the edge advantage.)

That is the most compelling argument I've heard on the subject and that's because it comes down to personal taste. I enjoy the thrill of trying to solve the puzzle. I absolutely adore game one although I do have more to work with on the subsequent games in a set. The fact that your puzzle pieces are shifting and adding more variables for me to keep track of adds to the appeal for me, personally. It means that you cannot draw a bead and blow someone out of the water. I would think it adds more to the process of Yomi because, after a character change, you have to evaluate how your opponent's tendencies will change given the different pay-outs he has for each option. It does not mean that everything you saw is useless in game two.

Throughout the set, they can still only CP if you win, so you are going up, maintaining momentum, and still getting to see how the opponent plays with each character he picks, making it more difficult to go back to a character that he has switched off of.


Beyond that, I still feel that there should be a reward for being able to play multiple characters, even in a game where it is less of an investment of your resources. I do not feel that someone should ever have to be locked into playing Rook, Geiger, DeGrey, or Midori when they have an option that is logically superior for the situation that they simply couldn't apply due to Double Blind. I feel a game with no counterpick system significantly hurts those who wish to continue playing lower tiered characters that have serious problem match-ups that need to be worked around. Blah, blah, low tiers are bad, but unless there is significant gain in a format change, then there's no reason to make them worse.

Switching should be allowed. The game should be balanced around that. Rook is weak to certain matchups, and that is an unfortunate balance issue, but it would have been a much bigger failure to not allow or plan for it at all.

^That post says nothing about why switching should be allowed, so it doesn't particularly accomplish anything. I don't get what you're trying to say. Theoretically, you could balance around a no CP game if you were to "allow and plan for it."

Huge wall of text incoming.

I kicked around making a new thread for this, but because it is a discussion of counterpicking, I will put it here. I think counterpicking is a useful part of the game but currently isn't being implemented effectively. I think Yomi should look to Magic tournaments for how to structure counterpicking. As the card game with by far the most tournament support and community, it makes sense to start from there and adapt as necessary.

In Magic, you attend an event with a locked deck for every first round and both players are allowed to sideboard (counterpick) between rounds. When you start a new match, you must go back to your original deck. Sideboarding allows for both sides to try to tweak their deck by no more than 25% of their size, so they are still playing similar decks. Win or lose, boarding being allowed is a good thing so that the second round is still interesting, instead of one side boarding a ton of hate and rolling over the opponent. Bad deck matchups exist in Magic and are not completely mitigated by boarding better options in.

The tournament standard thus far has been opening double blind deck selection followed by loser being able to counterpick. Secondly, there is no limit to which deck you can counterpick. It would be like if Magic sideboards were the entire legal card pool and only the losing side got to change. Yomi players have no continuity between rounds and can always pick the winning deck's worst matchup. Ask a Magic player what deck they played at a tournament and they will tell you exactly what it was: UB storm, Dredge, Zoo, etc. Ask a Yomi player who he played in a tournament and the answer would be "Well Grave, Lum, Sets, Rook, and Arg". Spectators enjoy seeing players use their favorite character, but when everyone constantly switches it is hard to follow who is actually using their favorite.

Furthermore, too many "counterpick triangles" exist that result in boring, repetitive gameplay. Example, if you play Grave, every one of your matches will follow some sort of Grave-Rook-Lum triangle or Grave-Arg-Rook-Lum Square. Geiger will always see a Geiger-Sets-Jaina/Grave-Arg square. Game one is the only time you might play a different matchup, and afterwards a boring Megaman-style sequence begins. (In megaman one boss will give you the weapon to fight the next and everyone plays the game using the same sequence of levels.)

The "stable of characters" idea that has been mentioned would go a long way to solving this problem, and should be the tournament standard, in my opinion. Your opponent cannot have the perfect answer to every one of your characters, because it isn't possible. One or two sideboard characters and a main deck would allow for switching to a better matchup but probably not an amazing one unless you dedicated board space to it. Also, locking the opening choice would help to give identity to players for spectators and would limit outside-of-game decisions about which character to choose. A player's stable would represent them, and it would feel more like you are playing a person instead of a counterpicking robot. As a peripheral bonus, in RL tournaments, players would be more likely to loan decks because they do not need allof theirs creating a more friendly and inviting environment.

TL;DR- The stable of characters makes Yomi a better game.

Sirlin, do you actually play mtg? Why are you under the impression many of the mus in tournament mtg are 8-2? In standard out of the maybe top10 decks there are 0 8-2 and probably also 0 7-3 mus. Modern and Leagacy are worse but no where near what you are suggesting.

Magic has had problems in the past but current standard is nothing like what you suggest. The last several years of standard actually (they had problems that some decks were overall too strong not mus in general were unbalanced).

I think 2 character stable is a good thing to try. 3 is alot of chars. In practice 3 char is enough to cp freely. Most people would not use more than 3. CC ran a 3 person cp thing and the impression I got was that it was basically the same as free cp.

I also like the idea of cp but round1 choice is locked.

I like the idea of a draft where each person bans 1 character, then they draft in a 1-2-2-1 format, there's a blind pick to start it off, and then the loser picks from the remaining "not ko'd" characters (so it's technically bo5). In theory it leads to some interesting situations, and I'm looking forward to testing it out with friends when my set arrives.

Yeah when I said stable of 3, that was a total of three including your locked opening character. The question that must be asked is, what is the goal of counterpicking? If the objective is to not have people be forced into bad matchups for a whole set, then a stable of 1 or 2 characters would accomplish that. If the goal of counterpicking is to always allow the losing player to choose the best possible matchup, then the current format is the one to use. I think the former is superior because it encourages character diversity and helps identify players by the characters they play. (Free counterpick encourages characters with mostly even matchups, aka grave.)

2 seems enough imo to not play any really bad mus

Best 2 character stable = Graves/Rook. If you're fancy, you might try Rook/Lump. Not seeing a real strong reason to play other characters.

That's my worry about 2 character counterpick, the emphasis is on picking the safest matchups, not the strongest ones. I feel like everyone will bring graves and their favorite slugger. 3 would be a bit more flexible.

2= 2 total, 3 =3 total btw.

Grave is almost as good as rook/grave anyway.

The point of this really is for people who do not want to play grave (i.e. most people)

I am inventing an awesome new counterpick method called BodPick, here's how it works:

1. Game 1 would still be blind pick and both players can choose anyone.
2. The winner of a game may choose to make a new, non-blind character selection.
3. After the winner has selected, the loser may then choose to select a new character.

So basically, it works exactly like counterpicking does already, except the winner of game 1 can pick someone new before they are counterpicked.

"But Bodknocks, why is this better? It's barely any different than current counterpick rules."

In the very first post in this thread, deluks said, "It makes rook much worse." This is true, as Scarbo points out: "Like just pick Lum and you probably beat Rook if you are competent at the game." With BodPick method, you could play Rook game one, win the game, then switch off him if you're afraid of going up against Lum. Sure, the new person you select could just as easily be countered, but the point is that someone like Rook is a LOT more viable as a game 1 blind pick, or even a game 2 counter pick! Also, the loser of game 1 is never forced into an even worse match up (which is the alleged problem with blind picking every single game).

Is BodPick awesome Y/N? Discuss.

I'd really like to see both players can switch, like in QM, but this seems good, too.

Ok I admit I misunderstood. I agree full deck switch would obviously completely ruin mtg. Though to be clear there are many decks that it is probably not possible to beat 8-2. Many blue aggro control type decks are just not beatable to that extent by anything. It is debatable if it was even possible to get to .55 against stock Caw blade even if you knew the other guy's list (assuming you don't play caw).

Bodpick seems like a good idea.

What are people's views on serial blind counterpick?

Also what about blind pick between rounds and lock in set (to increase yomi)?

This is baffling to me. I enjoy playing the same one matchup pretty much endlessly. I can't imagine finding an entire series of matchups boring. I feel like you're focusing too much on matchups and not enough on the actual gameplay.