Author Topic: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?  (Read 28009 times)

Offline Skrimskraw

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #15 on: July 13, 2014, 03:32:02 am »
If you want capture point create an event

Offline RomanKar

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #16 on: July 13, 2014, 05:54:54 am »
 
If you want capture point create an event
I am looking into that and would appreciate any help anyone can give to me.

I do not want to be someone that just complains and really does nothing to help.  I will try to do a tournament, and have a few ideas, but want to flush some things out first.  If anyone would like to advise, collaborate, send links, take my ideas and run with them, I'd love to discuss it, feel free to PM me, message me in Steam, RomanKar, in game or whatever.  I would like to put my money where my mouth is on this and see what shakes out.

Less QQ, more Pew Pew

Offline Velvet

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #17 on: July 13, 2014, 09:14:26 am »
capture point doesn't work right now. A switch to CP would almost certainly result in an increase in the mean length of matches.
If Muse fixed the point capture mechanics (remove point blocking, or maybe even remove control completely and just tick points based on the number of ships on point) and added a decent number of CP maps... I'd still heavily oppose competitive CP because  I don't think CP is particularly strategic or interesting.
The fight is entirely limited to a single area of the map and the range of strategies for the defender is limited purely to camping. Many  tactics would be marginalised, including both the one you want to marginalise but also pretty much anything based around ranges beyond gat/mortar. Right now the good and interesting matches are mobile and dynamic... I don't really see why you would want to end that for the sake of further discouraging what is already a very niche and unpopular strategy.

The introduction of time limits to some competitive events has worked really well in forcing shorter and more interesting games, I don't really see any need to entirely turn around the competitive scene to serve the same purpose.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2014, 09:18:48 am by Velvet »

Offline Thomas

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #18 on: July 13, 2014, 09:25:19 am »
It'd be interesting. My only concern about the capture points is pretty much the same thing with long range sniper matches. Equally skilled teams causing long and drawn out matches.

This can be caused by teams competing over a neutral point over and over again, and neither one gaining a clear advantage. While this is less likely to happen than one team claiming the point and just being unable to be removed from it (it's incredibly difficult to take a capture point back); leading to extremely one sided matches (at least in the score).


With the options for 2v2 capture point matches being extremely limited, it would almost have to be a 3v3 or 4v4 maps. Needing more ships to compete reduces the number of teams that can compete, as not a lot of clans can guarantee 12 players on a continual basis.


One option could mixing teams. Such as having the usual 8 person team sign up, then splitting the ships between matches. Having half of Team A compete in Match 1 with halves from Team B and D going against halves from C, E, and G, then having the other halves compete in different matches for the day. As long as all teams get an equal number of play sessions throughout the event. Each partial team on the winning team earns a point for their team. The team with the highest score at the end of the event wins. Ties can be broken by having the full teams compete on labyrinth.

Some problems with this method would be the possible number of ties and complexity of setting up the matches in a way that gives all teams an equal opportunity for winning.

-------------------------------
-------------------------------




For example:

We have Teams A-L competing (12 teams)

Match 1:
A1, D2, E1 vs K1, B1, L1

Match 2:
B2, F1, J1 vs C1, H2, I1

Match 3:
A2, C2, G2 vs H1, K2, D1

Match 4:
E2, F2, L2 vs G1, I2, J2

(assuming I didn't mix things up too horribly)

We'll say that the groups on the left won each round, leading to

2 Points to teams: A, E, F
1 Point to teams: B, C, D, G, J, L
0 Points to teams: H, I, K

Do this over a season, and the scores should start to spread out more. With most number of teams, they won't divide up this nicely, so there would need to be some teams sitting out, or perhaps competing in a 2v2 match (mixed or unmixed teams?). It's possible to spread the score out even more by awarding all the ships their end match point value (similar to the Aerodrome). But of course it would have to be ensured that all teams had equal opportunity to earn the same score (different matches have different winning point values).

It leads to a lot of interesting situations where teams have to work with ships they're not at used to flying with, making it harder to practice. Teams should never be paired up with or play against their own halves in the 3v3 matches.

This is of course assuming that a lot of 2v2 CP maps aren't released relatively soon.




----------------------------------------
edit:

Instead of giving them the value of the points they earned for the match, award a score based upon the % of points earned for the match. So the winning team would get 100 points for earning 100% of the maximum score, while the losing team would earn between 0 and 99 points depending upon their performance. This eliminates the complexity of trying to guarantee everyone gets equal opportunity for raw points.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2014, 09:28:59 am by Thomas »

Offline Deltajugg

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #19 on: July 13, 2014, 09:29:05 am »
The issue you have here is lack of pressure on DeathMatch maps to get immediate kills. Usually brawling teams don't have that issue, because they are prepared to take alot of damage while getting the kills, cause that's what the brawling mindset is in the first place. As long as there's at least one side that tries to close distance between two teams, because their strategy includes it, the fire exchange will happen. The problem starts in the situation when you have two teams with their layouts and strategy based on passive sniping. Usually we see sniping builds working and still providing entertainment because, while passive snipe team only defends itself, there's another, much more agressive team that puts pressure and initiates fights, causes the engagements, and their actions decide on whether there will be any kills in this match or not. But the moment when both teams' ships are based on just camping in one point and hoping for good snipe, there's a problem. No team engages, not putting pressure, so both teams just camp, exchange non-lethal amount of inaccurate long-range fire and take cover in case they take more of it, repair, then come back to sniping. Did any ship lose some permahull in this game? I believe armor fell once on one mobula. Should we remove armor or permahull from the game just because it causes the ships to be able to endure enough damage to survive long range exchange? Of course not! But same goes for removing DM maps from the pool and/or getting rid of sniping guns. All teams have certain playstyles and strategies, some of them, like GwTh, can manage to use all kinds of cover on Dunes, making them almost unseen until you're in the range of their close range guns. Rydr have their agressive-sniping approach with Mobulas. There's alot of more examples I'm sure you yourself can come up with, where some team prefers fighting on one map or another, using sniping guns or not, but removing DM maps/sniping guns from the pool during competitive events is not a solution, and neither is making them CP only.

Thing is, to win a CP, you do have one thing that you need in deathmatches - pressure. You're pressured to fight for the point in the middle of the map, and you can't really go passive snipe camping on your spawn and hope for an easy win. But sadly, what CP does is it reduces your ship choices and strategy approach. We probably won't see sniping ships at all anymore, you'd probably prefer some brawling ship to contest the point, especially since there's not enough space around the point on any CP map to effectively keep your distance with it against enemy ships. Furthermore, such things as flanks and making use of the environment, using map cover, getting to know the whole map, those things won't happen. That's a big flaw of CP maps, you're only pinned down to one point at the map, you need to hold it, you need to go for it, you ignore the rest of the big map you're flying on. What's the point of getting to know the names of every single paritan building for your strategical advantages if all you'll care about from now on is The Globe on Lab?

You end up with a problem of having a CP mode, that puts the pressure to act, which you need on DM, but in form of making one point of importance, which cripples the amount of effective ship layouts to ones being useful only close to the point, and by completely ignoring the structure of the rest of the map, which takes away alot of strategical advantages for many teams that worked hard on making them work.
On the other hand you have DM, where you're not pressured to one point on the map, and your ship layouts are dependant solely on your team's playstyle, and possibly with a little bit of dependance on the map type, but, as brawling Dune Thralls already have proven many times, not significantly enough to make your builds not work on certain maps at all. You have no pressure to go straight for one point on the map, giving you freedom of choice for approach and making use of the map's structure. Basically, no pressure at all, which sounds great, until you have no pressure to actually engage the enemy.

That's where the problem is, you either end up with interesting, intense and complex fights, with an occasional situation when no team feels pressured enough and confident with their builds to get any kills, or you get a game that will end at some point, will end quickly, and you'll have significant fire exchange, but for the price of giving away many essential aspects of competitive games, dumbing down the fights to simple "rush in for the point, kill people fast and cap", and you'll reduce the amount of effective layouts to mostly brawling ships. What you need to come up with is a good ruleset (for either tournament or the map) that will put pressure on people to actually kill eachother, or, in CP case, something that will make use of larger part of the map, so hiding between buildings, behind cover etc. would have any point on it, and also something that would allow you to use sniping ships effectively, simply put, we need kill pressure on DM, and playstyle variety on CPs.

As it has been mentioned before, I'd love to see Labyrinth as an additional map to be put in the map pool, under specific rules designed for CP maps to cope with DM ones. I also don't mind seeing some kind of mini tournament, something similar to SCS, that is only oriented around CP. But for a bigger scale, to exclude DeathMatches in every single competitive event that we'll end up with from now on? That I'll never agree on. A misread strategy for two teams during one competitive DeathMatch is not enough of a reason for me to give up all the fun that DM fights provide, just carpe diem next time and our problem is solved there. I thought that neither team would like the idea of ending up with no kills and no win at the end of the day, especially since, as you put it yourself, neither casters, nor audience, nor players themselves enjoyed ending up in such situation.

Offline Queso

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #20 on: July 13, 2014, 10:47:00 am »
Dota suffers a similar fate called rat dodo where teams just push towers and back off whenever a fight is about to happen. It was nearly unbeatable a year ago, but the best team in the game last year just got knocked out of The International this year because people have learned how to deal with it. Boring games happen, even in real sports.

Offline Sammy B. T.

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #21 on: July 13, 2014, 11:50:37 am »
Same disclaimer that Ali put up a bit back, this... is personal.

Competitive labyrinth games are my FAVORITE! However, it is the only 2v2 CP. If there were more 2v2 CP maps then I'd definitely say throw all maps into the pool for a general tournament. However, with only having one, having that slight chance to have to play a game completely different than everyone else is patently unfair. While my old team the Brood was going through major restructuring, we were able to stay pretty high up in Cogs one week as we got Labyrinth and I just got onto the point and didn't die.Valid strategy of course, but completely different skill set than DM.

Offline Imagine

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #22 on: July 13, 2014, 02:36:27 pm »
Dota suffers a similar fate called rat dodo where teams just push towers and back off whenever a fight is about to happen. It was nearly unbeatable a year ago, but the best team in the game last year just got knocked out of The International this year because people have learned how to deal with it. Boring games happen, even in real sports.
This was going to be my point as well.

As the person who had to cast the match which brought this up in the first place, while it was unfortunate, these things happen. I watch an excessive amount of esports, whether it's something like Starcraft or DOTA, and there are times when some matches just make you want to go to sleep. I don't think it's too big of a deal honestly, and in a stretch of 7 weeks, this was the first time it happened. Personally I think if we wanted to make sure that never happened again we should just remove Dunes from the competitive map pool.

Now, if we're talking about making a Capture Point tournament, I'm intrigued by it for sure, just wish there was more than just Labs for 2v2 point.

Offline Thomas

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #23 on: July 13, 2014, 03:10:50 pm »
The map is irrelevant really. We've seen this happen on other maps as well. Including Paritan and Duel at Dawn. Realistically it comes down to the teams and their playstyle.

I don't think this means that DM itself or any particular map is broken/boring when it comes to competitive play. If teams don't want to be aggressive, they're just not going to be aggressive. And this very well could lead to two teams who are less interested in winning than they are with not losing.

Offline Imagine

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #24 on: July 13, 2014, 03:23:21 pm »
The map is irrelevant really. We've seen this happen on other maps as well. Including Paritan and Duel at Dawn. Realistically it comes down to the teams and their playstyle.
Yes, while it can and has happened before, nearly all Dunes matches are of the long drawn out sniping matches which has led to more time limits being reached than any other map.

Offline Sammy B. T.

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #25 on: July 13, 2014, 03:52:12 pm »
Only match I've personally been in that went to the 30 minute mark was a Duel at Dawn game against the Gents, we couldn't kill them because they were repairing too hard but they lacked the fire power because of the same reason. However, there was a constant engagement.

Fault for the longness of that match belongs to the teams. Yesterday BFS and SAC functionally refused to fight. I didn't see any armor breaks and there was definitely no perma hull hits. BFS did some light probing two or three times but hardly pressed and SAC functionally never left the fallen ship. If you don't want to see games like that then don't play like that.

Offline Squidslinger Gilder

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #26 on: July 13, 2014, 06:24:07 pm »
Ummm...you guys do know Aerodrome had 30 min match timers and there was only 1 match in the entire event that came close to it. All the rest ended within 10-20 mins. All of which was intense fighting and action to the point the casters couldn't keep up. Don't go assuming CP battles being the same unless you have real proof to back it up. Fact of the matter is...the changes to CP gametype which lowered the cap points and forced teams to relocate faster, have changed CP to the point that long drawn out battles are extremely rare. The longest battles will potentially only take place on Scrap since it is just 1 point.

Sammy you are so full of it. There was multiple armor breaks and perma was done to both sides. Not much but there was some. Maybe if you and Sunderland weren't preening your corkscrews all the time in the stream chat you'd notice it.

Offline Sammy B. T.

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #27 on: July 13, 2014, 06:43:14 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR5yX_oEQYY#t=2138

Not a pixel missing of perma that I can see Even if there is an invisible perma hull pixel missing, it is very indicative of neither team doing much. I was able to find a few moments of armor break but they were few and far between. However I can't find anything hitting the perma.

Offline Imagine

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #28 on: July 13, 2014, 07:04:03 pm »
Sammy you are so full of it. There was multiple armor breaks and perma was done to both sides. Not much but there was some. Maybe if you and Sunderland weren't preening your corkscrews all the time in the stream chat you'd notice it.
There was zero perma damage done. Perhaps a handful of armor went down, but certainly no permanent damage was done by either ship for 30 minutes.

Offline obliviondoll

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Re: Should Competitive Matches move toward Capture Point?
« Reply #29 on: July 13, 2014, 10:01:58 pm »
So what would happen if a tournament was run where hitting the time limit without a clear winning team resulted in double elimination?

In Armored Core, there's a strategy of playing for "AP lead" which is usually boring to watch. "AP" is "armour points", or your machine's health, and like permahull in GoI, it doesn't regenerate. When a match in Armored Core is decided by time limit, the game defaults to awarding the win to the player with the highest AP.

There have been tournaments in various games in the series where people have done their best to control that particular playstyle. Some tournaments have disallowed AP lead wins, requiring a match that goes over time limit to be replayed, or eliminating both players in the match. Others have penalised players for not playing aggressively, though that tends to be a tougher call to make. I've played in a competition where a win by enemy destruction was a win, and if the timer expired, the win was awarded not to the player with the highest AP, but with the smallest loss of AP, so if you bring a high-durability build, you can end with more AP and still "lose" (even though the in-game stats record it as a win).

It might be interesting to try a similar approach here.

If you're playing 2 vs. 2 Deathmatch, and both teams have the same number of survivors at the end of the match, EITHER the match gets replayed OR both teams are eliminated.