Update on Bandai Namco's Tournament and Meta Guides

The “Dragon Ball Legends Showdown” that will be held in Las Vegas on May 25th is nearing, so Bandai Namco opened a site to publicize it. The site contains the tournament’s bracket, info about the participants, and even some guides about the Meta and how to play effectively in PVP. This article will analyze the site’s content and more specifically, the accuracy of its Meta guides to the game.

Bandai Namco used the eSports formula to make this Tournament in the sense that there will be announcers and the event will be streamed through Youtube. Mike McNamara will be the Stage MC, while Fuuhi, Victory Uchida, and Hinako Sano will be commentators on the Japanese Live Stream. Hellpockets, Alejandro Saab, and Phil Parsons will do the same on the English Live Stream.

The tournament starts from a round of 16, and Matches are best of three, meaning that a Player has to win twice per round to advance. The losers of each round enter into a side bracket that progresses in parallel to the main one. The winners of each bracket will then face off to win the tournament.

The participants are shown on the site and most of them are highly skilled players that have ranked in the very first places of some PVP seasons.

The site also contains a guide for each Meta Team in the Game. The guides are structured in brief paragraphs that explain Team’s choices and strategy together with good and bad matchups for the Team. These matchups are rather interesting. For the most part, their reasoning for those choices is either “ Team A has Fighters whose Unique Abilities permit them to inflict higher Damage to Team B’s Fighters, so it’s a favorable matchup”, or “Team A has high Damage output so it can break through Team B’s high Defense”.

Some of these, like Sagas Warrior and Regeneration, are showcased faithfully to their state in the game, while others like Hybrid Saiyan and Blue Color Counter, present some questionable Team choices.

Also, the good/bad matchups they list are rather interesting. For the most part, their reasoning for those choices is either “Team A has Fighters whose Unique Abilities permit them to inflict higher Damage to Team B’s Fighters, so it’s a favorable matchup”, or “Team A has high Damage output so it can break through Team B’s high Defense”.

In regards to their Team recommendations, they aren’t always accurate or reliable. To dispute something said on their site: Lineage of Evil can’t counter Super Saiyan anymore due to being much weaker overall, and SP Chi-Chi GRN’s stats are too low for her to take advantage of her Anti-Son Family Unique Ability effectively.

Responding to their high Damage output breaking though high Defense Team Build justification where Regeneration and Future were explicitly mentioned for their Defense, their reasoning was also a bit flawed since those Teams are famous for being capable to outlast even highly Offensive Teams their Defense, revive, and Healing toolkits are just that strong.

All in all, the official site’s guides are not bad, but they are more theoretical than practical and don’t take power creep into account as much as they should.

There are also some Video Guides on the Tournament’s site, which explain the basics of the game and some advanced techniques and tips that are useful to rank in PVP. Despite being shot some months ago--which can be noticed when they show their Character List or when the commentator speaks of Sagas Warriors as a good counter to Super Saiyan, which was true a few PVP season ago but is no longer the case now--they give decent advice that can be useful to beginners.  

There are also some very interesting parts, like when here the commentator says that the Team wasn’t aware of the Dash Charge mechanic when they made the Game, so all in all these videos can be informative for everybody.

Bandai Namco has done surprisingly little to publicize the Tournament but more interestingly, they are trying to help the Player base become more competitive through their Meta and Video guides, which indicates they might try to increase the importance of the PVP scene moving forward.

However, there are a few glaring issues with PVP that will need more work than a single esports tournament.

• Cheating is still extremely prevelent in PVP.

• The game lacks dedicated servers, making it even easier for individuals to use lag switching to their advantage during matches.

• Their Meta Guides won’t serve much use for Players in the long run if they do not actively maintain them with each new update, and even now they lack depth and thorough consideration of the Meta, the strength of each Tag, and the effects that power creep can have on a Fighter’s viability in a relatively short amount of time.