Also I just have to add that part of the reason Ultra tournaments were/are hype is competitors had been playing since SFIV launch and a lot of the tournament players were very near or at the skill cap for the game. You had dudes like Itazan, Snake Eyez, Bonchan, Infiltration (he played half the fucking cast at tourney level), kazunoko and Smug (playing low-mid Dudley) as well as character specialists playing Viper, Gen and Rolento. Tournaments were hype because the cast was massive and balance was breddy gudd even at tournament level. Only 3-4 characters out of around 40ish really stood out as extremely strong. And "extremely strong" in this case just means they had no bad matchups (Ken, ERyu) and all their matchups were 5-5.Poonoo wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2018 5:32 amhttps://www.esportsearnings.com/gamesrabidtictac wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2018 2:52 amThat's why SFV even has a player base still. Capcom dumped massive money into SF after SFV launched. The money was good in SFIV era but it's crazy big now because they NEED the fgc shilling their game.
The pros all talk about how they'd rather not play SFV compared to previous games, but the money is good so there you go.
This list shows total prize money given out for a game in it's lifetime. Look at SF5, nearly $1.9 million total over about 2 years. Ultra SF4 has $738K and Super SF4 AE has only $343K in their total lifetime. Super came out in 2011 so for 5 years there was just over a million bucks in prize money, while in SF5 they have nearly doubled that in 2 years. Also, Super had 202 tournaments, Ultra had 213, while SF5 only has 91. Keep in mind that Ultra was only released in 2014 so it's fairly recent, and $250k of that $738k was from Capcom Cup 2015 alone.
The only thing more forced is fucking Overwatch. 10th biggest eSport of all time in terms of prize money in less than 2 years. Fuck right off.
I know that eSports have grown recently so prize money will go up, but this is ridiculous, especially when you consider that EVO prize money for SF5 decreased in 2017.
Ultra wasn't that long ago. They still run ultra tournaments. Not so much for money, but because of the love of the game. Ultra was like a big style exhibition for the best in the world to show what the top tier of skill looked like. With 1-2 frame links, it was extremely possible casual players would never reach that skill ceiling and never see people playing at those levels outside of tournament.
Hell, that match I talked about of Infiltration playing Hugo against a Gief? He was playing against one of the best Gief players in the world and he picked a character he never uses. He was just that good at USFIV.
With SFV, pro players complain everyone can do the shit they do. There's no skill gap to showcase in tournament because everything is easy to do. Every character does everything optimal because it's easy to do.
But the money you just mentioned is what keeps tournaments for SFV going. Take away the money and you'd only be left with a few diehard SFV fans like Bafael still playing it.
