CEO 2013 Preview (June 28 - 30) plus E3 Round-up, new Divekick character, KI is not F2P & FGC News

Schedule

Friday

2PM SFxT Pools Soul Calibur V Pools Mortal Kombat Pools Skullgirls Pools

3PM AE and Marvel 3v3 Teams Single Elimination $15 per team (Signups start at 2 pm for Teams, Captain must Sign up Team with Players and Team Name 32 Team Cap)

6PM Skullgirls Final 3

6:45 PM Soul Calibur V Final 3

7:30 PM Mortal Kombat Final 3

8:30 PM Until the end of the night... CEO FighterMania!

Saturday

10am- 6pm Pools Begin for KOF/AE/Marvel/TTT2/Injustice/Divekick/Persona 4 Arena Throughout the day in 2 hour increments.

6 PM AE Semi Finals Top 32 to Top 16

6 PM TTT2 Final 4

7 PM Persona 4 Arena Final 4

8 PM Dive Kick Top 8

9 PM

UMvC3 Semi Finals

Midnight til Security kicks us out. 24 Hour Pool Party!

Sunday

10 am

Doors Open

Casuals will still be happening all day until 5pm on all available stations

Noon

Kof Final 4

1PM

Injustice Top 8

3PM

SFxT Final 4

4PM

Marvel Top 12

6PM

AE Top 16

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Links

http://www.twitch.tv/capcomfighters

http://www.twitch.tv/ceogaming

http://ceogaming.org/

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It's time for the final event on the Road to EVO 2013! Community Effort Orlando is easily the youngest of the EVO tournament circuit events, CEO 2013 marks its 4th year. Ran by Alex Jebailey, CEO has quickly risen to become one of the must-see events of the FGC calendar and now it has the backing of Capcom and Microsoft (Capcom games will be run on 360, so no infamous PS3 slow-down).

http://ceogaming.org/about has a full history of CEO.

The Boxing Ring will return as the main stage from last year. and the second spectacle will be the pro wrestling steel cage, used for CEO FighterMania on Friday night, recording off-stream matches and other shenanigans during the weekend.

If that doesn't get you fiending for CEO 2013, how about letting Yoshinori Ono try to (sort of) convince you.

Say what...?

"Hello everyone, Ono-san here! The Road to EVO tournament season has almost come to an end but you can't give up now! CEO2013 is the last Road to EVO event so you must attend and test your Street Fighter skills against the best in the world!

The tournament is in Orlando, Florida but it might not be as sunny as usual because of Alex Jebailey's big head blocking the sun!

If you can't make it to the tournament be sure to watch it live on Capcom Fighters! All Capcom games all weekend! Yeah!"

E3 Round-up

Since the last time we spoke, E3 2013 happened and while Capcom and NetherRealm had nothing new to show at the event, Microsoft revealed a new Killer Instinct (which isn't Free to Play, despite what IGN might tell you, check the Maximilian videos at the bottom for clarification), the full list of Injustice DLC has been revealed and released in the form of Lobo, Batgirl, General Zod and Scorpion, Namco sneaked out Tekken Revolution and Giant Bomb's own Jeff Gerstmann entered and lost a charity press and developers Divekick tournament on the Sony stage.

Speaking of Zod, I thought Man of Steel was pretty awesome, you should go watch it.

People seem excited for a new KI, even with only three confirmed characters, (Jago, Sabrewulf and Glacius), one crowd in particular at the ScrewAttack Gaming Convention this weekend went crazy as Rich 'Fithierich' Bantegui (who recently left Namco) to join Double Helix to work on KI, revealed KI as the final game in their Iron Man competition.

Scorpion is now out for Injustice: Gods Among Us, he seems to be quite powerful too, some are calling for his immediate ban from all tournaments until NetherRealm nerf him. The problem seems to revolve around his EX (officially "MB") Teleport Punch, which serves as a launcher. 3-time EVO World Champion (2 for MK9, 1 for DOA4) Carl 'Perfect Legend' White has a lengthy post about how Scorpion can be dealt with by players rather than the developers.

"I feel its best to block it yea its +9 on block but scorpion literally doesn’t have any mixups he can do while you are crouching and in this position. He could do a jump attack but you can hit him out of the air before he is able to hit you since you are crouching."

Carl 'Perfect Legend' White - http://theperfectlegend.com/2013/06/24/helping-you-all-deal-with-scorpion-2-0/

The Free to Play Tekken game, Tekken Revolution is out. It takes a lot of stages, UI, music and animations from Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and gives the gameplay a Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection feel, plus some special moves that help against Tekken's unique brand of rush-down (and keep down) play.

Jeff and Brad did a Quick Look and while their comments about the issues they have with the Tekken team's choice of free to play model are spot on, TR's gameplay is absolutely an easier entry into modern Tekken for people who may have not touched Tekken since 2 or 3 on the PS1 (which I assume is the target audience for this game). I would not recommend jumping straight onto Tekken Tag Tournament 2. I say try out TR if you're interested in some less complicated Tekken, what's there to lose? It's free after all.

Finally, If you missed the Divekick action during E3 as presented by Seth Killian (and indeed the new character that was revealed last Monday), check out Jeff battling on-stage using Kick and Dave Lang and Keits introducing the world to Kenny.

We still don't have a release date for Divekick yet but an announcement is coming soon, in the meantime please go to http://greenlightdivekick.com and vote YES!

I love the concept of Kenny, who copies the rest of the cast yet has his own special moves, looking forward to trying him out.

Other Random FGC-related stuff AKA the Maximilian Hour

Assist Me Season 3 Premier at EVO 2013

Maximilian clears up the misconceptions on whether Killer Instinct is actually Free to Play or not (Spoilers: It isn't).

Reaction to Mega Man announced in New Super Smash Bros.

Thanks for reading, enjoy CEO and see you at the EVO 2013 Preview blog in 2 weeks time on Monday July 8th.

I love you OnoChin <3

Great post as always, HYPE

I'm looking forward to seeing if I can find my friend on stream. I told him to enter Divekick, he is going in blind so his mind should be appropriately blown. Or disappointed, I may have hyped it up too much... Nah.

Great work as always! I don't mean to alarm anyone, but EVO is only 17 days away.

oooooo The EVO guys just released their schedule for EVO 2013.

Friday - Mortal Kombat, Tekken Tag 2 and Persona 4 Arena Finals

Saturday - Street Fighter X Tekken Finals

Sunday - AE, UMVC3, KOF, Injustice and Smash Finals

Well my predictions were wrong.

Loved the UFGT blog and enjoyed the hell out of this one. Divekick got me interested in fighting games again and because of the last blog I started watching tournaments occasionally. After UFGT I bought my first arcade stick and now I'm waiting on parts to upgrade it.

All of that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the UFGT blog, so thanks.

@starvinggamer: I hope he makes the trip to more tournaments, his presence is missed!

@mikefightnight: Until today I had completely forgotten that CEO and EVO are so close to each other this year, looking forward to both!

@recspec: Glad to do my bit to spread the word of fighting games, good luck with the stick mods!

So hype for CEO this weekend!!! Pretty happy to see some more Divekick, Persona and KOF (among the others). One last tournament before EVO, GET HYPE AND STAY HYPE!!!

And I have to say I don't understand why Injustice is getting so much support / love. Unless they have changed some things in terms of level balance since UFGT9 (which I don't think they have) I'm not interested in watching it. Seeing gadget characters get blown up by Power characters on Metropolis got really old really quick.

Hopefully the economy recovers and Bipson Bank returns for EVO.

So excited for this weekend. CEO was by far the most exciting of the non-EVO tournaments last year and hopefully this year can live up to that.

i fucking hate max.

Thanks for the archive of the Divekick charity tournament. I completely missed it and couldn't find it anywhere.

@hadoken101: Agreed!

@dolphin_butter: No problem!

@casper_: Is it because he looks like Nicholas Cage?

I might get to see the Divekick tournament, which is probably the one I really want to see. Will there be players playing as Jefailey to win an extra $500 from Jebailey himself? I heard about that in one of the Divekick streams.

Going to watch what I can of this. Can't believe EVO is 2 weeks away.

Looks like Scorpion is getting big changes in the next update:

• Shroud of Flames (Character Power) no longer starts it’s cool down if it gets interrupted before it is activated.
• Flip Kick (Down + Forward + 2) is now -10 on block (up from -1).
• Teleport Punch (Down + Back + 3) now has more recovery time when blocked.
• Slightly adjusted the Teleport Punch (Down+Back+3) speed
• The Teleport Punch is now a High attack and has slightly more recovery when it misses.
• Increased Welcome to the Netherrealm (Supermove) damage to 37 (from33.75)
• Slightly adjusted his Jumping Light and Jumping Hard hit-boxes.
• The Teleport Punch (Down + Back + 3) on block is now -8 and slightly pushes back farther.

Full change list in Injustice 1.05

With CEO being so close to EVO, wouldn't players not reveal all their tech and secrets at CEO and hold onto them for EVO? I wonder if it's such a good idea to have a tournament so close to EVO.

I'm still hype for CEO, but it's just been something that I've been wondering.

Is the Jebonus still in effect at CEO?

@bisonhero: Damn right it is!

I think it's a player by player scenario, some may want to use it at CEO to test it in tournament play, some may indeed hold it back to use it at its fullest at EVO, we'll see.

What's CEO?

CEO stands for Community Effort Orlando, it's a yearly fighting game tournament event. It's the last big one before the EVO world championships in 2 weeks time.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy do I have to be working 1pm -8pm all fucking weekend? GAWD damn it.

@groin: Hahaha where did you find that?

https://twitter.com/CEOJebailey/status/349726971825094659

So wait, KI isn't free to play, it's just a game that you can get for free and play it with one free character while also having the choice to purchase more characters (or the entire roster) at any time. What exactly is the distinction?

As I understand it, it's more comparable to a demo, whereas the retail game that will go into stores will have a lot more features that can't be bought in the demo, F2P style.

Superb coverage as always good sir!

@rebgav: Pricing. In almost all character-based F2P games, regardless of genre, the only way to get the entire roster is to buy them piecemeal. With a typical cost of $7-10 per character, this would price most modern fighting games at $200+ for the full experience.

EDIT: So the distinction is that KI is going to be a regular-ass fighting game. Pay $60 (or so) and get the full experience, but if you only want to dabble, then buy a character or two and have fun.

Yep, this. At least it seems to me it's less "SCUMMY" than Tekken Revolution, while you are still given the option to be able to just play what you want and not have to play for full price instead of the "token" or "energy" model that most F2P games utilize.

It seems to me that the pricing and mechanics of the F2P structure are dictated/limited by co-existing with a boxed version. I'd expect both versions to be supported with a robust and pricey suite of customization microtransactions for costumes, effects and playercard stuff, like any other F2P game.

@gaspower: The token/energy model is pretty archaic at this point, that they're using it in Tekken is mindblowing to me. I think that most F2P games use the "Microsoft Points" model these days, where multiple fictional currencies are bought with real money before you can spend them in a horribly expensive in-game store.

Not necessarily. The two pricing structures seem to be targeting two distinctly different markets. For casual players that would never use the full roster, I'd imagine that paying $10-20 for a handful of characters would be significantly more attractive than having to drop a full $60 on a game with swathes of content they would never take advantage of.

Of course there will still be DLC/microtransactions for cosmetic stuff, but that's just videogames regardless of F2P models.

I believe that's the idea, whether casuals will go for it is another thing. I'm not sure how they'd stumble upon it, either in the XBone store or looking at it on websites. You'd have to have a certain level of interest beforehand to bother I would've thought.

Fucking Tekken only on Friday. :(

That's the one I'm a little surprised about, this is it's debut year and it's sharing Friday with two other games while Cross Tekken gets Saturday all to itself. Very strange.

CEO 2013 starts tomorrow!

@flstyle So I'm sitting here going "oh crap CEO starts tomorrow!" and I have no idea what time or streams anything is on. So I think hey maybe FLStyle made another thread like the one for UFGT, and here it is! Much thanks for all the info! So hyped for more Divekick and other fighting game action.

Have you seen the arcade cabinet that Iron Galaxy Orlando made for Divekick?!

https://vine.co/v/hzVeXJzUZOt

Speaking of EVO events, has EVO confirmed who is going to stream EVO this year?

Hey guys, just wanted to say THIS IS TODAY!!! And I may be a hipster, but SFxT pools, Skullgirls finals, and MK9 finals makes me a HYPE ass Panda. Kinda wish they would show more than just the Final 3, but at least they're present at this event. I'm not as hype for SCV but I'm sure I'll watch it. (And if these times are all EST like I assume they are then this is an early ass tournament for West Coasters).

@davidwitten22: As a UKer I'm always happy when tourneys are on EST because I actually get to see the end without having to watch the archive on Saturday/Sunday/Monday afternoon! I've actually taken a liking to watching SFxT matches myself, Version. 2013 is pretty cool.

@jjor64: I was hoping we would get some kind of announcement of an announcement like "check out CEO for a new EVO trailer!" But I've heard nothing, it could be any combination of Haunts and his Capcom Fighters crew, Team Spooky, Level|Up and the remaining IPW guys at this point. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, in an ideal world they'd all get together to form a 20-man production group.

@tournamentofhate: I'm totally putting a picture of the cabinet on the Divekick GB wiki page!

CEO day 1 LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOO! Check the schedule and stream links, if you spot any secondary streams make sure to post the link here in the comments. I will arrive home at 5PM EST today (10PM my time) and from that point on I'll be free all weekend, excite!

CEO Day 1 is live. I guess its just casuals right now as there's no commentary or anything.

I'm off today too, nice. That Divekick cab is fantastic. Now all I want is the Saturn and Dreamcast port.

SFxT over on Capcom Fighters right now.

http://www.twitch.tv/capcomfighters

WTF Twitch is broken for me. My internet is fine, but I can't load any twitch channels off of any device I have.

I hope for some SC5 before top 3.

I am here! What's happened so far?

Use this to view all the streams

http://www.multitwitch.tv/capcomfighters/CEOgaming/FunkyP

@starvinggamer: Twitch is such fucking garbage.

Mike Ross you goof! That cage is supposed to last all weekend!

Alex Jebailey‏@CEOJebailey22m

Divekick then kof then injustice then ae then marvel for #Fightermania on.twitch.tv/ceogaming

Man, fuck Twitch so much. I hate trying to watch anything on here. 20mb/s connection down and still getting stuttering because of how shit that site is.