Online Multiplayer Battle Leagues...?

[Clara Vita (she/her/hers)]

purge

[Salanewt]

May I suggest that you add more games to the possible list of tournaments? I mean, for Pokemon, it can be pretty simple to just steal the best Pokemon from either Battle Factory or to steal from trainers in other places like Battle Tower and to work on them, then remove the cheats when you are done.

Also, for Golden Sun, it would be pretty hard to get away with cheats (considering who could be involved here, and from where they come from), but there is always a way to modify stats to make a character stronger than they should be (and it is much easier with the editor).

Not sure for Kingdom Hearts... Which game are you talking about (or rather, which version in the series)? I am not really a big fan of the games, but happen to have one or two.

What I was thinking when I asked about adding games would be to add games like Fire Emblem, or even non-RPG games (one or two spring into mind). If you do decide to add Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones (just an example), then I will definitely join up in a tournament. The reason why I am not joining for a Golden Sun tournament is because I am not very fond of that tournament system. As for Pokemon, I have already been called a square for having hacked it for an Ubercharizard and Radidash, and few people might believe that I have not cheated again.

Have a nice day.

[Atrius (He/Him)]

From my experience VBA LAN runs at maybe 4 frames per second over long distances, hardly what I would describe as playable.  Unless of course if they've come out with a newer much faster version since the last time I've seen it.

[leaf]

Well, I certainly wouldn't be opposed to the idea. I used to play pokemon competitively, and picking up another game could be fun, too.

For a GS vba link battle tournament... it's an interesting idea, but what about the rules? I think GS actually would be a decently balanced multiplayer game with absolutely no arbitrary limits or bans. However, it's possible that it could become a fair bit deeper if a certain number of bans were made on blatantly centralizing tactics. But... the level rule you mentioned is irrelevant. We can easily fix the parties to be at the same level since this is on an emulator. It's just a matter of deciding what level is most appropriate. 40? 54? 99? Somewhere in between 54 and 99? Whatever allows the most strategies to work would obviously be the level of choice. I think that while 99 would be a convenient level to use, the stats end up being too close to being capped to maximize the number of viable tactics. I'd actually be partial to trying lv60 as a standard, since at that point elemental physicals are starting to become pretty powerful, but iirc they still aren't completely dominating yet, and besides... lv54 is just a weird level to fight at =p

And now... I begin my huge theorywalling.

Without any restrictions, I can pretty much guarantee you that the the metagame would become hyper offensive. You may be thinking to yourself "but what about the barrier djinn?" Yeah, barrier djinn are pretty brokenly powerful, but their brokenness balances out with an even more broken tactic: summoning the absolutely most powerful summons in opening turns of battle. The existence of barrier djinn keep this tactic from being all reward and no risk and turn it into a proper high risk/high reward tactic. If you time your summon rush when your foe uses flash, you just put yourself in a horrible situation. This turns the game largely into being about locking your opponent down with status and timing a summon when they won't be able to do anything about it: a highly offensive metagame. This may not be a bad thing, as if it weren't for the power of summons, you could just heal all day long behind your barrier djinn and no one would ever die. With the absurd power of summons, healing is still viable, but your main priority is exterminating your opponent, rather than keeping yourself alive. It is not a game where you win by not losing. Traditional stall tactics would be confined to alternating between flash and shade or lull (with a higher speed than your opponent for lull, of course), with the occasional pure wish heal, but you can break through this wall with the help of a djinni like ground or especially petra. The stall tactics would also lack any real way to deal damage, mostly confined to relying on instant kill moves like condemn or venom damage from bane/wheeze/poison flow, which can be dealt with by either having multiple revivers (either through the revive psynergy, water of life, a djinni, or even iris) or by carrying cure poison (or one of the many djinn that restore status). Not to say that stall isn't viable, as if you can coax your opponent into summoning at a time when they can't kill you, you would then be able to take the offensive and pick on their weakened state. There is another variant of stall, but I'll get to that later.

The staples would probably be something like... iris/charon/azul/haures (big damage plus powerful secondary effects; tough to set up, but you can bring the djinn into the fight on standby; I may talk down on multi-elemental summons a lot for 1P, but in this case, your foes do not have enough HP to be able to survive so much damage from just a couple of summons; azul+haures makes for a devastating combination, dealing both venom and stun to your opponent; charon could net some insane kills, and obviously would not be used with haures, although azul is a possibility, since leaving a foe in stun is a very powerful asset; iris is of course the single most powerful and most efficient summon in the game, which combined with her healing makes her a huge asset to a summon rushing strat),  flash/shade/granite (the obvious barrier djinn that should be on every team), zephyr/coal (agility rules the game), mud/vine (agility rules the game part 2), lull (used similarly to the barrier djinn, but requires you to be faster), petra/ground (they both take out a foe for a turn 100% of the time, and petra even has priority on the level of the barrier djinn; if you're faster than the foe's barrier user, you could actually prevent a barrier djinni from getting used that turn), pure wish/manticore/mist potion/any multihealing djinni (healing obviously keeps you alive, and group healing is very powerful), pure ply/potion (for concentrated healing... used when a foe is targeting only one of your characters, as opposed to just summoning against everyone), revive/phoenix/water of life/tinder (obviously revival has gotta be staple, although due to most djinn not working 100% of the time they've been excluded), haze (to protect a character likely to get targeted; used for similar reasons as potion/pure ply, but here you're predicting they're going to attack the character, rather than responding to their attacking that character), eddy (allows you to get key djinn back instantly after a summon, and continue pressuring again), break (not only resets their speed, but also everything else... definitely staple), and of course the uber EPAs (these would work both as finishers and a way to pick on foes that have weakened themselves by setting all their djinn or sending them into recovery). If you don't use at least most of those, you probably won't be winning games.

Other things I could see being used (without being strict staples) would be the obvious almost anything that boosts attack (if you're spamming megiddo or call dullahan to pick on your opponent's likely weakened stats, forge/kindle or an impact will let you really put the hurt on them; keep in mind that this eats up a character's turn to boost stats and that a break can remove it easily, which is why I've placed it in this list rather than as a true "staple"; as another note, I think megaera could be excluded from this group, as it's such a small boost and requires you to burn two djinn for it), luff/rime (sealing the foe's healer's psy could be the exact thing you need to finish them, but I place this here because you've also got to worry about mist potions and healing djinn; despite this, it may still become staple quality), moloch/flora/ulysses (disruptive secondary effects that can be brought out fairly frequently; the only reason I don't list them as staple is because they're fairly costly for their effects, and players may opt to simply ignore them), judgment/meteor/thor/boreas (they're the original lv4 summons... they still carry a good bit of power, with the highest efficiency of any summon besides iris, and due to only requiring 4 djinn would probably be the summons of choice in the late game after summon rushes have failed on both sides), serac/whorl/gale(?)/condemn/death card (to pick on characters with low luck), bane/wheeze/poison flow (mainly to make your opponent spend a character's turn to remove the status), anything that either stuns or sleeps a foe, especially fire puppet and sleep card (takes a character out for a round, but isn't guaranteed like petra/ground; fire puppet and sleep card deserve a special mention due to each hitting three targets, though djinn have the advantage of also doing damage and helping you set up a summon), any djinni that restores status/cure poison/antidote (mainly for protecting against venom spam; I guess restore deserves some kind of mention here for helping protect you against being completely vulnerable to the multi-target status moves and grim reaper if for whatever reason you need to dispel that in a match, even though the djinn all already cover that, and heal the whole party at the same time; antidote and cure poison are listed second for a reason: the djinn are clearly superior due to healing all status and all characters), reflux (it's tough to gauge if it'd be useful at all... but it'd be primarily used for when you're healing a character that will probably be targeted), breeze/steam/ward (I originally pegged this as staple, but I think it may actually not be anywhere close, since depending how well you can press your aggressiveness, it might be completely extraneous, and break would also ruin it along with whatever else you may have had; the resist psynergy isn't mentioned since it only boosts half as much; ward would be primarily used as a counter tactic to stuff like the sour djinni, though it could also be used to finish raising one party member's resistance to the max if the other two are both already in good shape from equipment and a single boost), corona/iron (will protect against EPA spammers, but is overall probably less important than resist if you had to choose; like the attack boosts, beware of break), kite (gives slight summon advantage by cycling an extra djinni into standby; it also has the more obvious use to allow you to sacrifice a less important character's movement for a turn to let a more important character go twice), weaken/enfeeble/sour (dropping your foe's resistance could let you dish out the damage you need to do, but probably isn't essential), and haunt (even if it isn't reliable, making your opponent take damage for attacking you could be useful, especially if it activates on a big summon; handy that restore doesn't remove this, but overall I don't expect it to be used much).

Notice the irony of how almost all of the staples are traditionally defensive tactics, but the way they would be used would be highly highly offensive. Agility is the most important stat. Period. If you don't have elven shirt, you will get outspeeded and lose. Luck is the second most important stat. If you don't have high luck, you get raped by charon and other instant kill moves and lose. You will also get raped by general status (and lose). Attack is somewhat important for your EPAs, but no where near as important as elemental power and resistance are for dealing damage with and defending against summons, while defense and PP are almost irrelevant since physicals are not going to be doing the bulk of the damage and it's almost impossible to run out of PP in such short matches. The entire game would revolve around locking down your opponent and hitting them with "unblockable" summons.

I may as well go over the other multi-elemental summons here, which didn't really fit in anywhere... some of them actually are useful, but fit in with different strats than what I outlined above.

One some of you might be interested in having not been mentioned is coatlicue. Well... it will either make stalling broken, or players that use it will just get rolled over by the more powerful rushdown summons. I'm currently leaning toward the latter, though. Let's start by saying that regeneration heals 60% each turn and lasts 5 turns, which is 15 actions. That gives you more than enough time (and safety) to set up another coatlicue summon while you chip away at your foes. The strongest asset a coatlicue strat will have is that it will not have to sacrifice classes to do its damage, and would in fact be able to spam three elemental physicals every turn while being healed. The disadvantages that such a strat would carry, though, is that even with 60% healing, it won't save them from getting hit by a double summon OTK (so the player must still make smart use of barrier djinn), and that if a character is killed, they will not get back the regen until coatlicue is used again. It is also possible to stall out the regeneration if you have a lull user that is faster than the coatlicue player's characters... by performing the combination of lull, jupiter+eddy+mercury, lull, jupiter+eddy+mercury, lull, you can effectively waste the player's turns, giving them only two turns of action, and forcing them to use only wind and water djinn during those two turns if they want to bring coatlicue back out. Since this gives them only 6 total turns of action, by sneaking a petra in on one of the lull turns, they lose the ability to summon coatlicue at the beginning of their 6th turn, and depending on their setup, on their 6th turn at all if they don't have a character with both water and wind djinn, which may allow you to make your strike. Oh... and did I mention? Break kills it. Everything I just said assumes you don't have break available, either due to using too many djinn and losing your class, or because your break user has been rime/luff sealed. Break is the single biggest weakness to a coatlicue strat, and ultimately will end up shutting it down.

Megaera is just bad, costing 2 djinn for a +12.5% atk boost to all party members and minimal damage.

Zagan could actually be usable if you're using EPAs as your primary form of damage, and I may in fact be underestimating the danger of kindle+forge+double zagan to maximize your attack, minimize their defense, and then strike with an onslaught of EPAs. It requires playing around break with luff/rime, and knowing when to barrier to protect yourself from big summons, but the latter holds true for all strats. Zagan spam could be a highly viable way to win, as many of your opponents would likely have terrible stats due to putting so many of their djinn on standby. After a zagan summon, your foe would have to spend a turn using corona/iron to repair their defenses, and with zagan's relatively low cost, I don't think it would be too unreasonable to keep your foe at min def most of a game.

Eclipse is interesting. It has good power, but its effect is sorta awkward: -25% attack. It would put quite the hamper on zagan players if it was brought out, but against summon rush players its effect wouldn't really do much of anything. I could see a summon rush player bringing this guy out to deal with zagan, but it'll almost never show up in either mirror match, due to being useless against an opposing summon rush, and being very difficult for a zagan player to get out. This makes it more of a piece of tech than anything.

Catastrophe is largely a waste of time. It doesn't have a useful secondary effect at all, so it doesn't really fit in anywhere.

Daedalus is kind of a wildcard. It could either be really useful, or trash. A notable weakness it has is that its only effect is to hit twice, which is a weakness in itself... it hits twice. But on the plus side... it hits twice! The foe is gonna know when that missile is coming, so they can guard against it. But, you can use this to your advantage by summoning daedalus as a baiting tactic. Bait their barrier djinni with a daedalus summon, then bring out something even bigger two turns later. Or one turn later and petra the djinni user to trap them taking that all that damage. In a worst case scenario, they just decide to take the hit, which means free damage. And if a foe manages to block both parts of the attack, they'll have taken quite the hit to their resources, and won't be in good shape afterward. I can only imagine how amazing daedalus would be in a non-turn-based system, and how many traps something similar to it would set up. But since this is GS, and it is turn-based, we're left with this. Still, if you're willing to burn the djinn for it, it could pay off. Interesting how so many of the multi-elemental summons use earth...

---

That's my basic impression of how a lv60 game with nothing banned would be played. I may have left out some viable strats, but I think most anything you could do would just end up being a combination of what I've already listed. Feel free to add anything you think I might have missed.

Now... if you wanted to decentralize the game from being based around summons and barrier djinn so much, a few simple restrictions would be made:
1a) Any summon costing 7 or more djinn is banned. This means the strongest things you'd be able to summon would be eclipse and haures. I've already been over coatlicue and how it's totally counterable, so it's allowed to stay.
1b) A more conservative ban would ban anything that uses more than 4 djinn, meaning the strongest summons available would be the mono-elementals, and ulysses would be the strongest multi-elemental summon you could use.
1c) An especially conservative ban would ban all multi-elementals.
2) Limit the barrier djinn to either 1 barrier djinn per team, or 0 per team.
3) Ban consumable items, which includes potions, mist potions, waters of life, and psy crystals (alternatively, allow a certain number of each of the "broken" items per team, and just ban psy crystals altogether, since they're the biggest problem).
4) Ban (certain) PP regeneration equipment.

Since I've outlined two major playstyles in the no-ban game (zagan and summon rush), it's safe to say that a nerf to summon rushing would mean zagan would become a better option in this format. The 1b option would probably make zagan the single most powerful strat one could employ, as his summon rushing counter (eclipse) would be gone. The 1c option of course completely removes zagan from the equation, and makes regular EPA fighting or summon rushing the two main strats. The limit on barrier djinn would both buff and nerf summon rushing tactics, as they lose their defense, but gain the ability to push their offense better. I think it would actually end up decreasing the quality of the game, as then you would just be able to spam three lv4s T1, three lv4s T2, and even if they use flash one of those turns, they're probably dead. Alternatively, back that up by a turn and zephyr/flash/whatever T1. Etc, etc. Healing could negate this, as while lv4s can do a lot of damage over three summons, it's still over three summons, which means the foe can heal in between. That's the other problem you need to take care of when you implement these rules. Healing makes the game very slow and defensive. You would have to place a limit on items of some kind so that matches could end in a reasonable amount of time without psy crystals allowing a healer to work forever and a day. Furthermore, since its possible to have a healer set up with over 20 PP regen, PP regen items would need to be banned or limited in order to prevent healing from lasting forever and three weeks. Without the healing limitations, matches cannot be ended in a reasonable amount of time.

So yeah... that requires a lot of extra work to prevent healing from becoming broken if you're gonna go through with those bans, when the original game wasn't actually that imbalanced to begin with. I'd actually argue that the high risk/high reward nature of having both super strong summons and super defensive barrier djinn in the same game makes it a lot more interesting, and a raw lv60ish version might actually be the deepest playable version of GS multiplayer out there.

@atrius: Ah... that's unfortunate. Here I was sorta looking forward to this, too =p

edit: Cleaned up the post a bit. Added a few things I forgot. Also just noticed this is my 100th post... how appropriate.

[Clara Vita (she/her/hers)]

purge

[Salanewt]

Okay then... I could go for a Pokemon tournament (considering I could use codes to get adequate Pokemon that have not been severely hacked (if not stolen from Battle Factory)) I am more likely to join a Golden Sun or Fire Emblem tournament though, but I only want one right now, so...

If we want to suggest games, can we figure out a system for how to get them to work (like guidelines to follow) to allow them as one of the tournament games? If so, then I can think of one for Fire Emblem some time today (though there are two games, so I can just do some review on them first).

Have a nice day.

[leaf]

I didn't even realize there was a gba fire emblem game with multiplayer. I'd definitely be interested in that.

@AA: I think you misunderstood me. The only rule I actually support for an initial playtest of GS link battles would be the level limitation. Those four rules at the bottom of the post could be used, but at that point it's getting into an excessive number of bans just for a game that may actually be of lower quality than the original source material. The reason I mentioned that was because some people might complain about the "brokenness" of summons and barrier djinn. The problem is, healing is broken, too. And so are EPAs. Everything in GS is broken. Which is why it's balanced. Truly, the only thing that isn't "broken" is base damage psynergy. When you begin removing aspects to "unbreak" the game, you end up breaking it even more, since the checks for other tactics (in this case, heal spam) are gone, and now you need to make more bans to remove an actually overcentralizing tactic, simply because you thought something in the original metagame was too good when in reality it was just fine. I think that absolutely nothing should be banned initially.

As for rules concerning equipment... imo you should be allowed as many of an item as is normally possible to obtain in the original game. That means that yes, you can have as many forges and rare drops as you want. This would make it stupid to not have 30 water of life, 30 potion, 30 mist potion, and 30 psy crystal on each character, but... whatever. Maybe consumables could be limited... since having so many healing items in your arsenal really takes away a lot of the benefit from having a character that can cast revive/pure ply/pure wish; you would never pure ply or revive when you have potions and WOLs available, and pure wish's only saving grace is that it heals (much) more HP than mist potions do. Not only can any character use items regardless of their class, but psynergy can be sealed whereas items cannot. Perhaps something like... "no more than 3 of any item per team (but they can be distributed in any way the player wants)." This ends up having no noticeable effect on non-consumables, but consumables would be restricted, and the player would have to consider the best way to split them between his or her characters. Particularly notable is that if a player has one character with revive, he or she would have to settle with giving one of their other characters only one WOL while the other got two (or giving one to each in the event that the revive user got psy sealed). Obviously, this limitation on items would also solidly bump luff/rime up to staple, as now sealing a character's psynergy would really mean something.

For levels, I've already stated that I think lv60 would be a good place to try it at first, although it may be found that a different level is more preferable. To deal with the stat randomness (which is entirely uncompetitive), we have two options: 1) allow all characters to be hacked to their in game maxes for the given level, or 2) force players to mix and match their stat points while staying within the averages. To expand upon the latter idea... it would be letting players edit their character's stats as long as they stay within normal ranges, their total stats equaling the average, and not exceeding or going under the normal max or min for any given stat. So you could ramp agility for a character right up to the maximum that is normally possible for that character, but then you'd have to lose those points from somewhere else. If you wanted to bottom out a character's PP, you could only drop it as low as the normal minimum they could have at that level, but then you'd get to spend more points elsewhere. And of course, the total stats of a character must equal their average total (I guess you could go below it... but what would be the point of that?). Obviously, the first option is much easier to implement, but the second could add a little more depth to things if we went that route.

OK, so I guess that means I support three rules:
1) Level is set to a specific value for all characters. For testing, we can start with 60.
2) Items are restricted to no more than a certain number of copies of any given item per team. In this case, I think three would be a good number.
3) Stats are permitted to be manipulated as long as they stay within normal bounds. Whether we settle on using the max or average stats as the baseline will have to be decided later.

And that's it.

[Salanewt]

All of that sounds quite nice for a Golden Sun tournament. In fact, I think I am more likely to enter if those rules are used, or at least if they are adopted into the current rules and modified a bit.

Also, yeah, there is multiplayer. However, it is only a pure tournament style version (pretty much no movement, and you only select which unit is to fight against any of the enemy units). I do not think that items can be used, but both GBA Fire Emblems that were released in North America have a very similar tournament system (though I doubt that both games are link compatible). I might as well just list a few ideas for it, and go into detail later.

1. Only use generic characters (eg. no Lynn, Erika, etc.),
2. No hacking (including codes, etc.),
3. No cheating (including scamming/glitch abuse),
4. Units must be at latest class, and must be level 15+.

This is all that I can think of for now. I doubt that both games are compatible with each other, so I will have to try out FE7 (but I do own FE8 (sort of)). I will go into much more detail about these rules later.

Have a nice day.

Edit: Perhaps as a new rule, only one of each type of class allowed (for example, no multiple Sages)?

[leaf]

...so then what's the point of it? The whole draw of fire emblem is that you get to outmaneuver your opponent on the battlefield. I certainly wouldn't bother with it if it was just units facing off against each other.

Also, I just realized there's one more condition (actually two or three more) that would need to be decided for GS battles: how much information you know about the foe's team before you battle, how many battles there should be, and if there should be counterpicking.

For information before battle, there are various levels of information that could be revealed to each player before they fight:
1) Absolutely nothing. Players go blind into the fight not knowing anything about their opponent's team.
2) Characters only. Characters would be selected double blind and then revealed to each player before they select equipment/djinn, which are not revealed to the foe. If the average stat method is chosen instead of the max stat method, there would be two variants of this: one where the characters' base stats before equipment/djinn/classes is revealed, and one where it is not.
3) Characters and equipment. Same as the last one, but now includes equipment. This could either include or exclude unequipped items. Class changing items are not revealed. Equipment can tell you a lot about an opponent's strategy, especially if it includes unequipped items.
4) Characters, equipment, and classes. The same as the last one, but classes are also revealed. The specific djinn used do not get revealed, but what types and what number are set would become very apparent from this. Even if equipment wasn't known, just knowing character+class would be a lot of information, since seeing "wind seer" will obviously cue you in to the foe using summon rushing, whereas seeing "necromage" implies the foe will be using mostly elemental physicals to do their damage. In this case, class changing equipment is revealed.
5) Everything. Full data about each party is disclosed to the opponent before battle begins.

I think all of these are viable options, but I would probably choose something between #1 and #3. I think #4 is probably the most pointless one on there, though, since if you're already revealing that much information, you may as well just disclose everything. I think #3 without knowing unequipped items (or the foe's base stats if average stat method) is my favorite, actually. Equipping some "inferior" equipment could potentially be used deliberately to trick your opponent into thinking you use a different strategy than you actually do. Whether or not this psychological advantage outweighs the stat disadvantage is up to the player to decide. Equipment hints toward the way a character is built, but players are still free to switch things up in the djinn department after finding out about their opponent's team, and they can still decide whether or not to use a class changing item.

Now... for how many matches there should be. If my prediction of how the metagame will unfold is even close to being correct, single games will be fairly short. So I think a best 2/3 system would be quite appropriate. The real question is whether or not there should be counterpicking. Counterpicking would work slightly differently from how it would in a fighter. Normally in counterpicking, the winning player announces their character selection (could be the character they just played or it could be a whole new character), then the losing player selects their character. However, here, just knowing that much wouldn't mean much. And revealing full party data only on counterpicks would be awkward. So... to simplify that confusion a bit... the winning player would just plain not be able to change anything about their team that they just won with. The losing player would be able to change whatever they saw fit, including their characters, and would only have to reveal the same information revealed at the beginning of a match before the next game starts.

edit: @sala: Nah. Repeat classes is fine. There is absolutely no reason for "single entry" clauses. If a player thinks their best bet is to use multiples of a single class, then that's fine. If they think their best bet is to use multiple copies of a certain piece of equipment in their party, that's fine, too (and expected). Forcing variety upon players just means that they have to choose a second-rate option for the situation. For stuff that's fairly universal, it's just dumb. If every character ever uses a running shirt, then so be it. That's just the best shirt. If a player uses multiples of some class, then so be it. That class just so happens to work very well in their strat. If one or two classes end up dominating the game, then you might have some reason to limit it, but until that starts happening, it's just pointlessly limiting options. Note the only reason for the 3 item rule is because consumable items make healing psynergies and luff/rime unnaturally weak, completely overshadowing or bypassing them. Unlimited consumables reduce the number of viable options in the game, and thus reduce its depth. Repeat classes do not.

[Salanewt]

I know. The GBA Fire Emblem multiplayer mode is nothing like the one for the DS Shadow Dragon, and is basically just facing off in battle with any set of units. You can still make teams though, and you have a limit of 5 units. I can not say that I blame you for not showing interest in this type of tournament, but there is still room for a tiny bit of strategy. In fact, I could find a video for you that pretty much summarizes it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYTCaQnnats

That is pretty much it. Up to four teams, one team goes in each side area with the red carpets. There can be anywhere from 1-5 people on one team. The user selects one unit, and one enemy unit to attack. Done.

I know that it is not much, but it could get interesting. It would also be more interesting if users were allowed to create brand new units using codes. This can be done pretty easily, but should only be done earlier in the game. Basically, you use codes to make empty slots have an HP limit (as well as a few more codes), and you can create new units (I do not think they go in battle most of the time though). For example, I once created Vanessa, who looked like Erika, who did not go into battle sequences, and threw Javelines. However, I agree that other tournaments do not use cheats, so neither should Fire Emblem (if others agree to having them).

I will try to think of a set of rules for a Fire Emblem tournament, but I will only do so if people show interest in it.

Have a nice day.

Edit: I forgot to mention that there IS a point system, so it is not purely fighting.

[Clara Vita (she/her/hers)]

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[leaf]

A "local area network" is exactly what it sounds like. It's for computers that are connected locally without the use of the internet.

For the GS battle thing... k. I was mostly just trying to get my ideas down here for it, anyway.

[Atrius (He/Him)]

@Atrius' Cbox statement:  I haven't been able to test the newer, supposedly "improved" server yet, as the only computers that I can test it on SUCK.  They won't connect, at all, (it pops up with some error message), even though they are RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER.  I tried the 2-4 player server, and it did the same thing.  I might be using the wrong version of VBA Link, so I'll update this post with the results of using the other versions...

Also, I knew that LAN stands for "Local Area Network," but I never really knew what that meant.  Is that only for people who are using the same connection?  Say that I'm using two computers for this and both of them are connected to the same wireless network.  Would that be LAN?  Or am I COMPLETELY off, here?

Well, it wouldn't be a very good test if they were right next to each other since that's exactly what VBA LAN was designed for, but not what you're trying to do here.  You'd have to test it against someone who lives on the opposite side of the country, or even in a different country for the results to be representative of what you'll experience.  Leafgreen has it right, if the computers are fairly close to each other, and can connect without going through the internet it's likely a LAN.

[leaf]

Bumping this after lishy brought up the idea of competitive GS play in the cbox.