This isn't as much based on parts and regulation, but it kind of ties in with the topic here and some recent events.
Wall of text inbound, prepare thy eyeballs
I see Beyblade as having 3 major factors of skill:
- Designing
- Picking
- Launching
Design is the process of coming up with customizations and adapting them to suit your needs, whether it's as an individual Beyblade, part of a set you carry to a tournament, or a specific deck configuration for Deck Format rules. Although the "Build Me A Combo" and top-tier list threads can partially remove the need for this skill, experienced Bladers who know how to improvise on the fly or build counters to probable opponents will have an edge over anyone using standard "cookie-cutter" combos. But knowing how to build combos does you no good if you don't know when to use them or how to launch them!
Picking encompasses the whole tournament-day mess of scouting and predicting your opponents, and knowing how to apply that knowledge to ensure the best possible chance of victory. Picking skills are incredibly important, because they influence how you will design your combos in preparation and how you will launch them in battle. However, all the scouting, prediction, and sheer luck in the world won't help you if you don't have a combo to fit the situation or you don't know how to use it properly.
Launching is probably the most obvious skill involved in competitive Beyblade;
being able to launch in a strong but controlled manner is absolutely critical for any Beyblade with a mobile Bottom, and at higher levels of play becomes important for almost any match, as techniques like weak-launching can turn weak or bad odds into a win. Although there are quite a few records of Attack masters getting KOs in matchups they really shouldn't have, or extremely strong launches leading to unexpected OSes, a good launch needs to be paired with a good combo in the right matchup for it to be effective.
These three things - an opportunity for creativity, a battle of wits, and an element of physical ability - are the reason that I've been so into Beyblade all these years. To me, they are what makes Beyblade a fun, competitive game, and all of them are essential to the experience.
This is where, lately, there have been problems.
I was initially extremely excited for Burst's release last year; the Bursting gimmick seemed like just the cool, fresh kind of game mechanic that would keep the new generation of Beyblade interesting and exciting. The lack of multiple Track heights and the resulting sub-meta worried me, but after years of hiatus, I was willing to give something new a shot. As new releases came and went, though, the new-ness wore off and it became clear that Burst has some serious issues. The most obvious two are Layer wear and Odin, but there is still a lack of meaningful Disk choices (as there are usually just a handful of extremely similar "good" options or the decision is more or less meaningless as long as you don't pick a terrible one) and there's still a constant worry over every new release: "Will Takara bless this Layer with good enough teeth or does it go straight to the garbage bin?"
The latter two problems cause a persistent lack of customization options and freedom to experiment; with Disks, it's almost always a matter of "better or worse" and never "different" when choosing which one to use; differences between competitive Disks are subtle and are more for optimizing based on manufacturing variance than for making significant strategic decisions. You could draw parallels to MFB's Clear Wheel system, but swapping an Aquario out for a Escolpio on a Defense type is a significant and potentially viable decision (giving the combo some Upper Attack to deal with tall opponents), whereas swapping Gravity out for Force does not provide a significant alteration to how the combo plays, and is more than likely just a bad decision.
Regarding the situation with bad teeth on many of Takara's releases,* my problem with it is that it brings the "useless" Layers in Burst to an all-new level of worthlessness. To illustrate with another MFB analogy, consider Poison. Poison is an awful Metal Wheel; it is useless in all formats and always has been. It's recoily, has bad Stamina, and not enough Attack to work in comparison to all the other options available, even in Limited. But even if little Timmy shows up to a Limited tournament with only his one prized Beyblade, Poison Serpent, he could actually have a shot at winning if his opponent chooses the wrong combo. Stock Poison Serpent could conceivably OS a Defense type or KO a Stamina type if Timmy gets lucky and launches right, and he could actually manage to blunder his way to a few wins. If he walked into a Burst event with a stock combo with terrible teeth, there is pretty much no hope for poor Timmy. Storm Spriggan is probably the worst offender; an aggressive shape coupled with some of the flattest teeth in the game makes it practically suicidal. Timmy won't be able to eke out a lucky OS or KO, because his combo will just blow up before he gets close to that chance. Now, obviously we aren't going to cater specifically to newbies using terrible stock combos, but those awful teeth means that those Layers are completely unusable in any kind of well-thought attempt at a competitive combo, either. Wheels like Poison are at least usable as an experimental or "lethal joke" combo, and underused, "bad" wheels like Cyclone and Divine have been seen on the Winning Combos list on rare occasions. On the other hand, in Burst, Takara may as well have shoved a wadded-up ball of damp newspaper into the Layer slot of the package instead of a Layer with bad teeth, because it's practically impossible to use them in any sort of competitive scenario. You will Burst against stronger-toothed opponents, and you will lose. I understand that they want to throw in "filler" to spread out the good parts more, but Burst's bad layers manage to be useless on an unprecedented level. They aren't even worth experimenting with; even if there was some kind of weird undiscovered synergy with another part, it won't fix the Layer's explosive tendencies, and it will remain useless.
As I said a couple paragraphs earlier in this increasingly jumbled mess of a rant,
Burst's issues with uninteresting Disk choices and unusable Layers making up the majority of the release schedule hurts its customizability even beyond its already simple 3-part system. I've become increasingly frustrated with Beyblade Burst, and am desperately hoping that Hasbro's revisions to the system can help solve what I see as glaring issues with the product line as a whole.
*Please note that my complaints about bad teeth are not based on the Chaos layer (which I do like a lot) being weak; giving Chaos terribad teeth makes sense from a game balance point of view and I'm not upset about that. The issue is that the
majority of released Layers aren't suitable for use because of bad teeth, and those bad teeth make them impossible to use, regardless of any other positive qualities that they might have. Again, S2 is an excellent example of the "bad teeth, cool shape" group.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE
caek pls
Takara's poor product design / game balance choices have seriously hurt Burst's "Design" element; but there's something else I'm concerned about that I think could cripple the Burst metagame's "Picking" element: Deck Format. Or, more specifically, this clause:
Deck Rotation Format Wrote:- When a Blader loses a round, they have the option to switch their Beyblade for another Beyblade in their deck.
My problem with this is that the winner is
not allowed to swap out their combos following the round; the winner is a sitting duck strategically; the loser needs only basic knowledge of counter-picking in order to counter the last round's winning combination and win the next round. This means that unless one player or the other intentionally picks a bad matchup, (which would not have to happen if both bladers are knowledgeable enough and have properly constructed decks) whoever wins the first round wins the whole thing. But Bursts and KOs are valued double, which opens the door to exploitation. I covered this in an earlier post in the Deck Format thread, but I'll restate it here. By playing dirty (but legally),and abusing "safe" combos, the doubled-value Attack wins, and the fact that the winner of each round must re-use the same combo, you can game the system to win almost any matchup (assuming your Attack skills are good; given the fact that Attack is so unreliable in the Takara game right now, it's probably not practical... yet).
Here's how:
Rules are first to 5 points, double valued Bursts and KOs.
Our deck will consist of -
* 1 Defense/Stamina hybrid of your choice (must be capable of resisting Attack effectively, more weight to Defense than Stamina)
* 1 Attack type, must be as consistent as possible against Stamina
* 1 Stamina type, just needs to be able to OS Defense types and Def/Sta hybrids
1) Always lead with the hybrid.
2) The goal is to lose to Stamina. If you win against an Attacker, keep using the Defense/Stamina until they switch.
3) Once you've forced your opponent into a Stamina combo, switch to Attack to KO/Burst them. They can't switch off, so 2 easy points for you. Score is at least 2-1 in your favor right now.
4) They will likely switch to counter your Attack type. If you don't think you can win the round, deliberately weak launch or launch out of the stadium to take a 1-point loss instead of risking a Burst. Score is minimum 2-2, you may be leading if you got some early OSes with the hybrid.
5) If they used another Attacker to try and counter, swap to the hybrid, forcing them back into Stamina where you can exploit the double Attack bonus. If they used Defense, counter with Stamina then suicide launch when they pull Attack to counter you, allowing you to revert to the Hybrid for a counter. Either scenario results in a win for you, either 5-3 or 6-4.
To make matters worse, if this kind of "tactical loss" strategy catches on, if both players use the strategy, there is no 2x Attack bonus at all because players will always forfeit the round instead, meaning that we'ere back to "whoever wins first wins it all".
Now, to avoid all this dubiously ethical nastiness, simply removing the "winner must keep the same combo" rule makes the whole system less exploitable (though suicide launching is still an issue that needs to be dealt with). If both players get a chance to swap combos each round, gameplay becomes less of a matter of "What Counters What: the Quiz Show" and more of a typical blind pick, but with less unpredictability. Bladers must consider what they need to pick to counter the opponent's deck, but it retains some of the typical qualifier blind pick decision-making and uncertainty; instead of tailoring their combos to beat specific known combos, Bladers would need to prepare themselves to deal with three different possibilities in each round - not the overwhelming array of choices available in the qualifiers, but not just a simple back-and-forth of counterpicks.
Whew, I spent over two and a half hours writing this... I don't know that I've said everything I want to, or that it's said as well as I want to, but here it is XD
EDIT: Trying to bold some significant points but the haphazard structure of this beast is making it difficult.
EDIT2: I have some thoughts on part bans/how we maintain competitive balance, but I needed to get this out first and I'm still thinking things through after the whole Hasbro reveal. Before the announcement I was interested in a Burst Limited-type format, but now I'm thinking that integrating Hasbro and Takara releases into one big format would be best for the health of the community and the integrity and fun factor of the game. We'll need more tests before I'm sure, though.
Current list of future possible usernames:
Muffin
Pie
Wonderbread Man
The Cake Meister
Cornwalis
Meliodas
bakerycakepies
freshccdumpseuro
gOodCHeepDealzz&dUmppzz
TheCakeIsALie
MY FOOD
Michael Bay
Abe Simpson
Victoria Justice
Carl Carlson
Bae Brad
ccdump.work
Parts and combos
Parts: (Out of date again)
Metal Wheels:
Bakushin
Burn x2
Cyclone
Death
Diablo
Divine
Earth
Fury
Galaxy
Gravity x3
Hell x3
Inferno
Jade
Kries
L-Drago Destroy
Libra
Lightning
Pegasus
Phantom x2
Poison
Screw
Thermal
Vulcan
Clay (all by itself cuz it sux)
Chrome Wheels:
Bahamidia
Balro
Begirados x2
Dragooon
Genbull x2
Girago
Goriem x2
Gryph x2
Ifraid
Killerken
Phoenic
Revizer x2
Saramanda
Wyvang
Clear Wheels:
Aquario
Beelzeb x2
Cancer x2
Capricorn x2
Cetus
Crown
Cygnus
Horogium
Horuseus x2
Jupiter
Kerbecs x2
Lacerta
Leone
Orion x2
Pegasus II
Pegasus III
Pisces
Quetzalcoatl
Sagittario x2
Sagittario II
Scorpio
Virgo
Wolf
Crystal Wheels:
Bandid
Berserker x2
Dark Knight
Gladiator
Guardian
Samurai x2
Shinobi x2
Theif x2
Tracks:
85 x2
90 x2
100 x2
105
CH120
125 x2
T125 x2
D125
130 x2
WA130 x2
S130
145 x3
W145 x2
Ad145
C145
ED145
WD145
UW145
SW145
TR145
GB145
BD145
160 x2
SA165
SR200 x2
230
F230
A230
E230
SP230
Tips:
B
BS
BWD x2
CF x2
CS
D
DS
EDS
EWD
FS
GCF
GF
HF x3
JSB
MF
RB
RDF
RF x2
R2F
RS x3
RSF
S x2
SB x2
SD x2
SWD
TB x2
WB
WD x4
WSF
W2D
XF x3
4D bottoms:
Combos: (Standard)
MSF-H Genbull Genbull 85RSF
Balro Begirados 100RF
Girago Genbull E230CS
MSF-H Wyvang Ifraid GB145RF
Girago Dragooon SA165 (Attack) W2D
Combos: (Limited)
MF-H Lightning L-Drago 85RB (Aggro)
MF-H Jade Horogium 85RSF
MF-H Earth Cygnus TR145RSF
Ronin Genbull (Crystal Up) 85RF
Burn Orion 85MF
Burn Cygnus 85WD
Earth Pegasus II ED145WD
Funny (or just out of context) quotes:
(Oct. 21, 2011 1:59 AM)Hazel Wrote: I am not intelligent, simply capable of memorizing information and vomitting it back up in an eloquent fashion.
BlitzUnicornio3 Wrote:Balro Balro puts up a good fight, it just loses every time.
(Aug. 03, 2013 6:40 PM)Kai Hiwatari Wrote: Yes, but hasbro typically does unexpected things that are bad though.
(Aug. 11, 2013 8:56 AM)DrPepsidew Wrote: Red is an icky color.
(Aug. 23, 2013 9:36 PM)Akio314 Wrote: Kick'm in the shins if you see him again! Both shins 50 times! Violence is the best way to promote peace!
(Aug. 29, 2013 4:33 AM)Ultramarine Wrote: Grab your pitchforks, it's mob time!
(Aug. 29, 2013 4:33 AM)Ultramarine Wrote: I'm going to beat up an innocent XTS top now...
(Aug. 29, 2013 8:42 PM)rkalajian Wrote: So today I just got in the Octogon Battle Set from the BeyWarriors line...
It's just NOT good. The stadium is pretty cool, but I couldn't hate the BeyWarriors more. They spin horribly, and the battles are like to people spinning around while slapping each other with fish. It just doesn't feel as exciting, and has a WAY less powerful feel that regular Beys.
Bleh...
Ultramarine Wrote:Revizer offers as much smash as I do free puppies. There's a reason it's top tier in defence.
(Sep. 28, 2013 10:16 PM)Ultramarine Wrote: On the way back to school after a cross country meet, my friend and I argued for the whole 1 hour 33 minute bus ride. The whole thing.
The argument? Whether this stick I had was called THE stick or A stick. Our arguments took various tangents such as algebra, luck, happiness, and English class. It was the weirdest argument I've had in awhile.
(Sep. 29, 2013 3:19 AM)Ultramarine Wrote: Just a warning, I'm a living freakshow.
(Oct. 01, 2013 10:37 PM)Dark_Mousy Wrote: (Oct. 01, 2013 8:39 PM)Stars Wrote: So Dark why did you use GCF then CF? CF had a better LAD it less likely to Self KO
I uswd cf at the event because it looked pretty on f230.
(Oct. 03, 2013 6:55 AM)OwnageDerp Wrote: Wasn't there text here before?
(Sep. 29, 2013 5:31 PM)Hazel Wrote: Octodad is always watching.
(Feb. 03, 2014 8:19 PM)Dual Wrote: a polar bear smoothie sounds great right about now
(Apr. 02, 2014 2:06 AM)Ray Sagittario Wrote: Your all nuts!
(Apr. 01, 2014 8:40 PM)TheBlackDragon Wrote: You came on the wrong day
(Jun. 20, 2014 11:57 PM)OwnageDerp Wrote: You live in the UK... I thought burglary was only in the US!
(Dec. 12, 2014 4:25 AM)BURGER KING Wrote: If you start craving raw meat and start getting very hairy, your probably being genetically mutated by that ice cream. Better hope it's not a full moon.
(Dec. 28, 2014 11:14 AM)earthwolf1404 Wrote: I was bit by a llama yesterday. I think I'll be okay, as long as I'm not near anyone on a full moon.
(Dec. 19, 2010 12:23 PM)spectrobes geo Wrote: once opon a time a 13 year old boy named masunne.
(Jan. 29, 2015 2:56 AM)Wombat Wrote: (Jan. 29, 2015 2:38 AM)AÉ´É¢Ê€Ê Fᴀᴄᴇ Wrote: @[The Supreme One] Soul Baez V145AS
That's one fine looking Bottom.
(Feb. 01, 2015 1:26 AM)Wizard Wrote: (Jan. 31, 2015 8:22 PM)Leone19 Wrote: With Beyblade going on another hiatus, it's a shame to see remaining active members bicker over small things.
I understand, we're all a little annoyed, so might I enlighten all of you with some holy text written by the wise men of the olden days.
And on the 423rd day there was a flash in the sky, and a legendary bey came down like fire from the heavens. And that bey was called Pegasis, and it meant the end of the terrible hiatus that had plagued our kind for so long. And with that bey came a new hero, and that hero was named Ginga. And with his bey in hand he paved the way into the new era of beyblade. - Takao 3:16
Brothers, just as the wise man of old wrote about a new hero, I promise you that yet another is coming!
(Mar. 21, 2015 10:20 PM)Tri Wrote: idk how to explain it honestly im dumb as mud
(Mar. 23, 2015 4:08 AM)Neo Wrote: i cant wait until bomb some dodongos day
(Jun. 01, 2015 11:52 PM)MissingNo. Wrote: (Jun. 01, 2015 10:26 PM)Bey Brad Wrote: like i'm gonna trust the dude with 11 cancer faces
he'll give you cancer
(Jul. 13, 2015 5:25 AM)Bey Brad Wrote: I can't believe there's a 40 page thread discussing usernames. You're all insane.
(Aug. 13, 2015 7:24 PM)Bey Brad Wrote: Mercury Anubis is strong and will hold you in his muscular metal arms at night
(Sep. 11, 2015 10:33 PM)Tri Wrote: "bruh whats dat gem on ur kicks"
"pegasis 145rf"
(Dec. 05, 2015 3:17 AM)Mega L-Drago 24 Wrote: Have fun and remember from space Earth lookes like a giant beystadium
(Jan. 12, 2016 5:45 AM)Bey Brad Wrote: TAKE THEM OFF
(Jun. 02, 2016 2:46 AM)Neo Wrote: My first Pokemon, my favorite, and easily the most sentimental.
AWEASOME FIRRE CHIKEN MAN ON FIREEFIRE FIGHTS THE DUDES BEATS EM STUPID MONKEY AND PIG TRYNA COPY THIS BA CHIKENN DUDE WITH WRISTS ON FIREEEEEEFIREEEEE
I'm so sorry.
(Jul. 27, 2016 1:33 AM)Hato Wrote: (Jul. 27, 2016 1:27 AM)NEET no Kami Wrote: i definitely don't remember learning about that in religious studies.
But wasn't it in Exodus 14:21?
The Bible Wrote:"Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and L-DRAGO swept the sea back with a strong special move all night and turned the sea into dry land, so the waters were divided"
(Mar. 03, 2017 4:17 PM)Kai-V Wrote: Evil is very bad though... There is just nothing good to do with it.