Idle curiosity: question about team battle mode

Why is it required to select 3 different characters for the FS Team Battle mode? Would something be degenerate if a player could pick 3x Grave?

This is just to assuage my curiosity, it’s not going to affect my lack of participation in any way.

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The idea is that you will get a greater range of match ups from having to pick three different characters. Especially at lower ranks, if you allowed people to only pick 3 of 1 character, you would only gain experience playing as one characters, against a much smaller roster of other characters. It would be very possible to play for an extended time without encountering particular match ups.

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Continuing from what Professor P said, variety allows for us to get more experience against matchups we might otherwise have counter-picked away. Geiger has a fairly noticable advantage over Rook, but who knows if that matchup will even happen? And if it does (and you’re Rook) you get the experience of going against the odds in a matchup you wouldn’t see without the ranked system FS uses.

Here’s the official developer update that explains a lot of the reasoning behind it: Developer Update | Ranked Mode | Fantasy Strike - YouTube

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Those reasons seem circular? Like, you need to get experience with different characters because the official play system requires 3 characters, so the system should require you to pick 3 characters.

Is the underlying reason that more players believe “Playing many different matchups is more fun than playing as one character all the time?” than the reverse?

The underlying reason is that most matchups that are played in the competitive realm are the most unfair matchups that people can get. Even if most matchups in the game are 5-5, most competitive games will be played with the most unfair matchups 6-4, 7-3, 8-2, etc. because that is what will give you a greater chance of securing a high placement in a tournament. Thus, the vast majority of matchups in the game are not seen in competitive play. The current team battle mode is a proposed solution to help alleviate that problem. Instead of only seeing the most unfair matchups in competitive play, you will see a much greater spread of matchups. This also has the added benefit that a character that has otherwise decent matchup spread but one bad matchup is now a viable character to play in a tournament setting.

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Correct. But given an ecosystem of “team battle mode” if one player chooses to field 3x Grave (or whoever is the “best”) are they at an unfair advantage over someone who picks 3 different characters? Or, conversely, are they at so much of a disadvantage that the game should prohibit newbs from making that mistake? Or would things just degenerate into all single-character players, at which point you might end up in a bad matchup, and not be able to get out of it, which was the original issue?

It would probably degenerate into single-character matchup because you are now incentivized to picking the unfair matchups again.

Good insights.
Funny thing is I’ve enjoyed having a main & at least two subs in every fighter I play.

Even games like Guilty Gear w/those character nuances encouraging specialization.
And Them’s Fightin Herds, w/a cast of six. :racehorse: