Me personally i think this would improve the larger tourneys! Last year at worlds i faced roughly 5 of the same evil deck! Different char and a few different tricks here and there but basically the same deck over and over! This year looks like wind is goin to be the big thing with F Spike the big kill card this year compared to Chain Throw or Kasumi-Suzaku for Ibuki. Noted i know everyone is out to win their own character card and i am too, why go to Worlds if your not there to win. It just got so repetitive playing the same thing over and over last year and im sure it kills some of the buzz when you keep losing to the same deck just with a different character card. UFS is so customizable that everyone shouldnt have to use the same cards in every deck. If you put in symbol diversity it only cuts to top 12 instead of 16, but it will make playing the game more fun for the new players and old. Now i love UFS as much as the next person and im totally not griping about the game at all, but since most cards have three or more symbols you could still use the staple cards and such just almost every deck would be different and every symbol will be included in the tops instead of 2 or 3 symbols. Maybe its just me who knows, its at least worth discussing i think! Even though it gets repetitive playing against F Spike and Olcadans and Seal of Cessation everywhere i go i still play because i love the game and the players are really awesome people. I guess what im really trying to say is i would like to see more diversity in the game and not the same thing over and over. So comment as you like, hate this love this i would really like to hear what everyone including the top players and even some FFG staff think about this.

So I've got a deck that has 3 symbols... and chains off of all three symbols

How would you propose that and other multi-symbol decks are handled under diversity?

i guess you could declare when you write your deck list down which symbol you would choose!!

Pick one symbol you want of the three.

ok... I've got Olcadan's Mentoring in my deck, can I chose to represent Infinity?

or...

My main character has air, order, all, however 65% of the cards in my deck have the life symbol. Can I represent life?

Symbol Diversity would be bad.

It'd also be impossible to enforce, especially with tri-symbol decks.

"All right so you came in second in swiss but you use Air/Order/Water and the first guy used Order, so yeah diversified son."

Antigoth said:

Antigoth said:

mind you i don't think that infinity acctualy is a resource symbol since you cannot chain off infinity, but i must aggree that it would be a terrible idea. sooooo every toruny ends with wind and water in the finals and good making a close third, not my idea of fun

yea you would have maybe 2 good players/decks in t8/t16 and then the rest would probably have no shot, this just wouldnt work

There are only 12 symbols, some tourneys end with a top 32. You simpliy could not diversify on symbols.

No keep diversity in characters symbol diversity will be a big headache and a bad idea.

As much as everyone is bagging on the idea, I actually support looking into some way of doing this. Throughout UFS' tenure there has consistently been a dominant symbol. Usually that symbol is attached to a dominating character, but not necessarily. At the beginning of the game void just dominated, you went into your deck box and pulled the 7 or 8 HS void character grabbed your trifecta and shadow banishment and half of the deck was built. If you look at the early game every one of the first 3 characters banned or errata'd had void. It was the characters' abilities, but also the combination with the best symbol in the game. The game then shifted to evil as the absolutely dominant symbol. Once again evil cards started getting the axe. Now the meta has shifted to an order-water based domination.

The symptoms that I see that lead me to believe that symbol diversity however implemented would be good for the game is the lack of diversity seen in the top decks. Routinely at high level tournaments when void was dominant, you would see 5 or 6 of 8 decks running void, the same with evil and now with order water. Look at the top 8's at the regionals so far, Feline Spikes, Mega Spikes, and Irina Spinta's everywhere. Those are great cards, and I'm not saying they should be banned, but it's those cards with the support of their symbols that allow specific people to dominate.

To address some of what people have said:

With regards to multi-symbol decks, you would have to choose a resource symbol on your character that appears most in your deck.

To the infinity people, that's just a silly answer to a serious question. (On a side note I attempted to build a fully infinity deck once. It was awesome! It checked horribly though)

With respect to top cuts at larger events with 16 or more, you would do just like you do with characters after the first 12 symbols then you would go with the next best placing symbol rinse and repeat until the spots are taken.

I don't have all of the answers, but I really think that this is something that should be given some honest consideration because diversity is one of the strongest parts of the UFS system which is itself a strong game.

P.S. How cool would it be in the top 8 to have the famed mirror match with two decks that built the same character but off of different symbols? I personally think it would be very cool because that's something that we debate all the time. "Who's better? Fire Alex or All Alex?"

Interesting thought. Hard to implement properly, but as Baranor points out, definitely worth consideration.

I think I'd prefer it to character diversity.

Of course, I vastly prefer _no_ diversity, because that gives you a more accurate picture of which symbols, characters, and cards are overpowered, and makes it easier to take steps towards a more balanced meta.

ARMed_PIrate said:

Personally, I'm for the collection of data as though no diversity was enforced. Which is why I believe we need Top 8 swiss and Top 8 total. If 3 Chun-Lis make it to Top 8, for example, but 2 get diversified, we should get that information.

Baranor said:

thats the kind of games i want to see in ufs! not the same decks just with differernt chars.

and FenMiHuo:" yea you would have maybe 2 good players/decks in t8/t16 and then the rest would probably have no shot, this just wouldnt work" ...we wouldnt know till we played...thats a bad assumption

I fully support this idea, or at least trying it out. Any sort of questions could be easily sorted out. Top sixteen for example would allow duplicates for some symbols for example. It would also encourage better decks of different symbols, because you wouldn't be willing to play an order deck unless you knew that it could beat all of the other order decks out there (or at least out perform them).

At the very least, it would be interesting to see it attempted somewhere.

As much as i'd like to see something like this I'm just not sure how it would be plausible. If a player is playing a deck where 100% of the cards have two symbols of the same on it, what is he playing? Lots of questions. Personally, I feel the best way for FFG to encourage symbol diversity is make sure resources are balanced in the sets. And so far there seems to be (so far at least) a shift to making more symbols viable. For instance set 8 was def all about fire and evil mostly evil. set 9 was about water and order etc... Looking forward to seeing the new constructed in action.

Baranor said:

Character diversity is terrible as it is, symbol diversity would mean no one goes to anything. I continue to maintain that forcing players to not play the best cards is a huge reason that the game is so small.

Antigoth said:

I agree entirely and another thing... What if I'm playing legacy and my entire deck is Infinity symbol? (playing with Universal Fighter as character) It is impossible to divercify me because im a different symbol every time...