Why FGC tournaments run best-of-three pools on consoles

Or, why you don’t always have to give Leffen the time of day

Good for him, but I couldn’t believe he runs best-of-five for brackets with over a thousand players.

It’s easy to understand and recognize the impact that Leffen has had, not only on the Melee community, but on the broader FGC. He’s a storied and accomplished competitor and he’s branched out to fighting games like Dragon Ball FighterZ and, of course, Guilty Gear Strive. It’s not like he doesn’t have experience or that he doesn’t know what he’s doing or saying- he’s been around the block for over a decade. His ability to host and help organize major online events like LEVO also lends him credibility, because of course he couldn’t run a tournament with over 1000 entrants without being able to collaborate with a large team of TOs and auxiliary staff, in and out of his community. It’s clear that he’s capable of communicating with players and TOs and listening to their concerns.

Of course, that’s not mutually exclusive with him being kind of an asshole and still not totally understanding some things. GGST is currently an extremely popular and accessible game, with a lot of new players and perspectives from outside of the core Guilty Gear fanbase. As we make a slow and steady return to offline bracket formats, this means there are also differing opinions on how the game should be run in tournament. Since many of these suggestions are from people who have only recently picked up the game, these perspectives, while well-intentioned, are not fully formed and are missing a substantial amount of context. These opinions are then amplified by a player with a notoriously abrasive personality (even after having mellowed out) and a diehard fanbase, so you can see where this sort of thing leads.

It should be said that while Leffen is not the only one to propagate these arguments, he’s probably one of the loudest and most cited due to his audience and broad platform across multiple games and scenes. This can make it sound like these viewpoints and suggestions for tournament setups are held widely by the community, but the reality is these opinions are in a growing minority. That being said, it’s still important to contextualize why these positions are held, and why tournaments haven’t adopted these formats. This helps us understand the problems each format faces and what needs to change in the future before FGC events can adopt them.

Best-of-three versus best-of-five pools

(Addendum: best-of-three is the same as first-to-two, and best-of-five is the same as first-to-three. I’ll try to stick to ‘best-of’ for the sake of clarity.)

Ever since the first version of GGST was playable, we’ve all been talking about how high the damage is. It’s been toned down a bit since then- compare early footage of Wild Throw to now- but some players believe that it still leads to explosive rounds that end far earlier than prior Guilty Gear titles. Because rounds, and thus whole games and sets, seem to go by very quickly in tournament settings, the idea is that expanding the game count in a set would give players more time to play.

Expanding sets to best-of-five would have several advantages.

• Subjectively, it would be fairer for both players. Playing in a longer set allows for more opportunities for adaptation between opponents. The extra games also means that straight wins are more definitive. Comebacks earned in a best-of-five, while harder to earn, would likewise be decisive for the underdog. More importantly, in a high-damage game like GGST, providing those comebacks via the bracket format would make sets feel less one-sided overall.
• Best-of-five also gives spectators more gameplay to watch, which benefits a wide variety of people: spectators who are either studying the match or simply enjoying the show, players who want to watch their games back with commentary after bracket, top players who are content creators and want additional match footage, and the streamers themselves who host the VODs and match analyses on their channels.

Of course, best-of-five is not without its detractors.

• For starters, there is an argument that it’s too soon to tell if matches are ending faster than they did in past Guilty Gears. While damage is certainly high, combos overall are shorter for most characters. Longer combos tend to require meter via Roman Cancelling, which also prorates damage and stunts Tension Pulse. Furthermore, at higher levels of play, opponents are optimizing their defensive strategies just as well as their offense, and thus living longer. There’s little evidence right now that best-of-five has the desired impact on competitive integrity: according to this rudimentary data sheet, only 8% of pools matches were significantly impacted by best-of-five.
• Beyond that, arguments for best-of-five that compare GGST to titles like Blazblue Cross Tag Battle or Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 are missing a great deal of context. Not only do BBTAG and UMvC3 not even have in-game round counts, but whole games can end in two or three touches. While there are also strong comeback mechanics in these games (Resonance Blaze and X-Factor,) they don’t replenish like Burst does and function completely differently, behaving more like second winds than combo breakers. In general, the survivability of characters in games that run best-of-five formats tends to be extremely low, but GGST characters have lots of health and longevity.
• There’s also the fact that best-of-five simply takes a long time. Not every set will play out all five games, but every additional game makes the tournament last longer. As the bracket progresses, this means TOs are working more for the same number of players, and the players are also forced to wait longer to play, especially for stream matches. This ironically means there’s fewer total sets on stream, even though each set is longer. Especially in an offline format, making players wait around for their sets leads to lots of issues, especially as the day goes on.

The most important factor when deciding whether to adopt best-of-five for pools is time. While it’s in the best interests of the TOs to guarantee the competitive integrity of their event, it’s also up to them to make sure everything runs efficiently. Players can’t be forced to wait for their games longer than necessary; stream production and commentary need to present matches as often as possible; brackets can’t run overtime or collide with each other, especially if they’re running multiple games. If best-of-five for a particular game can be reasonably implemented with no substantial hiccups in the schedule, and it’s proven to be healthier for the metagame, then TOs should absolutely implement it. On the other hand, if bracket results are generally unchanged by the format, and it takes an unreasonable amount of time to run, then best-of-five will ultimately do more harm than good.

Running events on consoles versus PCs

With few exceptions, games run at FGC events are played on consoles. Most fighting games are published on PS4- again, with only a handful of exceptions, such as Smash Bros. or Killer Instinct- and will thus be played on PS4 at events, even if they have a PC version on Steam or another platform. We can get even more specific for some legacy games like Third Strike or Capcom vs. SNK 2 that may be run either on original console hardware, a certain re-release, or even the original arcade board, depending on which version runs better, is cheaper, or is more accessible. (You would think a Melee player of all people would know this- even after alternatives have been developed, Melee tournaments are still run using original hardware and CRTs.) With recent discoveries about the differences in performance between the PS4, PS5, and Steam versions of GGST, a new debate about whether PC hardware should be the offline tournament standard has arisen again.

This is a little harder to dissect compared to a ruleset format, so we’ll have to go over the pros and cons of both types of hardware. For the sake of brevity, we’re specifically going to be looking at PS4s (which supports most popular tournament games) versus PCs. Just know that the logistics become exponentially more difficult when trying to use older consoles or arcade hardware.

The pros of running tournaments on PS4:

• The fact that most games are published on PS4 is in itself a major reason why events use the console. The same PS4 can be switched between, say, a Street Fighter V and a Tekken 7 bracket with ease. Even with the next generation of hardware, games like GGST and Melty Blood Type Lumina are still being released for PS4, so TOs don’t have to shell out a lot of money on expensive and hard-to-find hardware.
• On that note, PS4s are both plentiful in circulation and relatively affordable. Depending on the model and whether it’s new, a PS4 can run you around $300–400. This makes it easy for TOs to gather equipment for events, and most players also have PS4s of their own. Because of these factors, PS4s are easier to obtain than both gaming PC builds and PS5s.
• Most peripherals that players use are directly compatible with PS4s. This includes the standard (or even custom) DualShock 4 gamepads, specialized gamepads, and most fightsticks and hitbox controllers. Any more esoteric control types can usually be made compatible with a hardware adapter. This makes using your personal controller easy and reliable when attending an event.

The cons of running tournaments on PS4:

• The biggest one is the input delay. While the graphical output of a PS4 is high, it takes a certain amount of time to render the image. This render time is practically nothing and varies from game to game, but precision inputs and having those inputs be consistent is crucial. GGST, for instance, has an additional input delay of 3–4 frames (roughly 50–67ms) on a standard PS4, whereas the delay on PC is around 1f (16.67ms.)
• On a similar note, since PS4s require an individual user profile to sign in for each controller, it can be a pain to hotswap controllers on a new setup. This is compounded if someone on a wireless controller, like a DualShock, forgets to desync and turn their controller off from the menu. Since the controller itself has no off switch or desync button, any random nudge in a player’s backpack can make it accidentally resync with a long-forgotten setup while other people are on it. This has invariably happened at least once on stream for as long as people have been running tournaments.

The pros of running tournaments on PC:

• You can basically play anything on PC. Most games are published on Steam, but some are on other platforms, and you can attempt to emulate the rest of them. If some game is no longer available on a modern console, or if it doesn’t have parity between platforms (like, say, the different console versions of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R) you can make it work on PC. This naturally includes some console exclusives that might have PC ports, like KI.
• PCs can potentially use any control scheme as well. While PS4s naturally are only compatible with PS4-approved hardware, you can use an even wider variety of input devices on PC, such as Xbox or Nintendo controllers, and keyboards. Hotswapping controllers is also often much easier than it is on PS4.
• You can run PCs at a higher fidelity than you can on most consoles- as previously mentioned, this also keeps the input delay lower on most games’ PC ports. This is also important for players who play exclusively on PC or at the very least practice frequently on it, so that they don’t switch to a platform with higher input delay in tournament.

The cons of running tournaments on PC:

• PC setups are expensive, and the necessary parts and peripherals can be difficult to obtain. Unlike most esports that run games on PCs, FGC tournaments and their organizers rarely get the hookup from sponsorships for tournament-ready high-end PCs, and acquiring that hardware is way harder than getting consoles. Compare the cost of a gaming PC, either a pre-build or something you put together yourself, with that of a PS4. (I used PC Part Picker and looked at their guidelines for an entry level build, which runs around $900 at the time of writing.) While it’s true that some games don’t need highly optimal setups, those are often the exception rather than the norm.
• PC software is a house of cards. Everything required to run a viable PC setup for a fighting game- the launcher, various controller drivers, the graphics settings, even the OS- is difficult to set up and maintain parity for across the entire lifespan of use. Literally any update to any part of the PC or any incorrect installation can bring the whole thing down, and troubleshooting is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. Some things might simply not work inexplicably. It’s especially difficult to figure this out on the fly mid-tournament, whereas a new PS4 can be reliably swapped in should an old one suddenly fail.

Your favorite TO probably has a story about trying to run a tournament for some game on PC and how it ended up being a total failure for X or Y reason. I remember a particular Wednesday Night Fights where we didn’t have enough setups, so we tried to run our Under Night In-Birth bracket on the Esports Arena’s PCs, and we needed to install everything necessary and even then some people couldn’t get their sticks to work properly. While PS4s aren’t as versatile as gaming PCs, they are generally cheaper and more reliable for grassroots events. Not every TO or event organization can afford a fleet of PC setups, nor the cost of dedicated IT to make sure they’re always up to date and working properly.

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It’s not that TOs run everything at their tournaments because they’re boomers or because ‘that’s the way it is.’ There’s almost always a reason for the particular way a tournament is run, and it’s usually developed after lots of iteration and experimentation. While there’s no rule that says further experimentation can’t be attempted later, you can’t fault TOs for returning to their tried-and-true methodology. Perhaps more locals and even some major events will experiment with a best-of-five pools format for GGST, and after getting data and feedback from organizers and players, the community can decide whether it’s a healthy ruleset. Maybe more wealthy sponsors will also be willing to provide events with PCs down the line, but until then the cost and inconvenience will make consoles the default for fighting game setups. (This is especially true now that EVO is a Sony-sponsored event.) Players will have to get used to swapping back and forth between the minute differences in input delay, but that’s what pre-bracket warmups are for anyway. In conclusion, Leffen is a big nerd.