Community > Community Events
Sunday Community Skirmish: New optional blind pick mode
Kamoba:
I actually think that blind picking is more competitive than counter picking.
This way it encourages competitive pilots/captains to research who they're going to be up against. Watch previous streams and make not of the most used builds, play a psychological warfare game where you have to judge what build your opponent would bring, which does give you a high chance of hard countering the team you're observing. Equally, teams renowned for bringing recognisable ships can use this to their tactical advantage, they will know their regular builds biggest weaknesses, assume their enemies intend to counter this weakness and counter their weakness with something else.
Thus adding to the time and effort required of the competitive player, as opposed to now where people can just keep playing counter game until the other accepts the counter. But honestly of all the matches I've been involved in, hard countering and counter of Icarus was a rare occurrence.
Also to resing Caprontos' song, the SCS is a weekly skirmish in which teams are encouraged to practice builds they're not fully familiar with to practice and improve. There are no prizes for winning, no payouts. If there are, I demand my winning be handed over already! :)
Dementio:
--- Quote from: Kamoba on September 14, 2015, 01:47:44 pm ---This way it encourages competitive pilots/captains to research who they're going to be up against. Watch previous streams and make not of the most used builds, play a psychological warfare game where you have to judge what build your opponent would bring, which does give you a high chance of hard countering the team you're observing.
--- End quote ---
People fail at countering even when it isn't blind pick and in many instances I have seen people just take what they want to take.
In the end you don't actually know what your enemy is bringing at all and you are lucky if you countered correctly or unlucky if you get countered yourself and that is what people mean with "less competitive".
Fynx:
--- Quote from: Caprontos on September 14, 2015, 01:39:03 pm ---Personally.. I don't really care if they keep or drop blind pick.. Since I just run in a circle till someone wins anyways.. Doesn't really change anything for me.. I am just happy it doesn't make the SCS take longer..
--- End quote ---
I'm so sorry... I didn't choose squids, they do their own choices. Yes.
--- Quote from: Kamoba on September 14, 2015, 01:47:44 pm ---I actually think that blind picking is more competitive than counter picking.
This way it encourages competitive pilots/captains to research who they're going to be up against. Watch previous streams and make not of the most used builds, play a psychological warfare game where you have to judge what build your opponent would bring, which does give you a high chance of hard countering the team you're observing. Equally, teams renowned for bringing recognisable ships can use this to their tactical advantage, they will know their regular builds biggest weaknesses, assume their enemies intend to counter this weakness and counter their weakness with something else.
--- End quote ---
Well actually no. The comp scene is sooo huge you totally can't expect Daniel to bring a mobula or Keb to bring a squid. You have to watch previous streams a thousand times to be really sure...
So you can safely assume that either mobula or hwachafish will work and of course that the second enemy ship is going for your first ship hardcounter. In fact, you don't really have to think about the second ship in the lobby, unless you intend to hardcounter first enemy. Whatever.
And I forgot, you can't really bring very situational ships as the first choice. Because you'll end up flying a kill squid against two hwachafish. Lobbies of Icarus counterattack on a new brand level.
--- Quote from: Kamoba on September 14, 2015, 01:47:44 pm ---Thus adding to the time and effort required of the competitive player, as opposed to now where people can just keep playing counter game until the other accepts the counter. But honestly of all the matches I've been involved in, hard countering and counter of Icarus was a rare occurrence.
--- End quote ---
Really? I found it far more annoying than current two stage blindpicks. Teams waking up a minute or less before the timeout and deciding to take the hardestest hardcounter possible don't make me happy I'm afraid. Lobbies like that end up in fascinating matches that take forever because I always love to fly double lumberjack galleon and together with hwachafish it's such a good ship combination.
Also do realise that hard countering is a very... doubtful... virtue. Many teams were aiming for that.
Often it ended up in a situation with one team being hardcountered and of course perfectly happy with that fact. Of course.
Often it enforced the other team to change their ships combination and that's annoying when you feel like flying something entertaining and you just can't because you got hardcountered. And if you change the ship you might get hardcountered again. On the other hand it requires some dedication to take an 'entertaining' ship with blindpicks enforcing more meta versatile loadouts.
Now, the blindpicks system makes hardcountering fully legal and fair so it solves that huge countering problem. And sending the loadouts to the ref was not particularly exhausting. Also it makes ship choices easier to make and lobby is less hectic in general. Possible adjustments to the second ship don't take half the time that thinking about both ships and enemy possibly reacting to them take. That's a huge success, too.
Despite the dominance in few previous scses Team Predators were unable to unleash their fury on their opponents...
It was because they lost the lobby game. At least two times in a row. And in my opinion it's not the system's fault. It's because if the enemy can bring loadouts that hardcounter your one and only ships combination then seeing that loadout won't help you. If that's not the issue, and I know that's not the issue, do play the lobby game smarter.
All in all, I think this two stage blindpicks system is rather nice because it both solves the ungentlemanly hard countering problem that tended to drive many people insane and reduces the lobby time issue. And that's more than the cons which are awful amount of metabuilds we're about to see and adding complexity to the lobby game.
I'm not sure what impact it's going to have on teams playing style diversity though.
DJ Logicalia:
I'm too lazy to write a big long in depth analysis of how the blind picks worked for us, but I personally liked them a lot. I thought it added a different, positive, play style.
nanoduckling:
Lue: 'Did you request it for tactical reasons or to test the system?'
Both Lue. We wanted to test out the system so we could all see how it worked. Some of the time it was tactical, for example when it came to T. Pr. we felt confident we could predict a small set of ships for what they would bring based on past SCSs and could work around that. The hwachafish wasn't part of said plan but I wasn't to bothered we ended up stuck with it (plus like I said, we wanted to test the rules and there was a contingency).
I'm somewhat of mixed feelings about this because to answer if we are happy about this system we have to answer a more fundamental question, what is a good GoI team? Is a selection of say five or six well practised builds like T. Pr. or the Romans bring what we are after? Or are we looking for proficiency (but not specialisation) in a large number of ships and builds?
Also how do we feel about luck? Because blind picks introduces a little more. Not as much as some folks think I suspect but a bit. You are playing the odds with each ship pick a little bit.
If, like me, you think small number of practised builds is what defines a strong team it is easy to feel like the blind pick system makes it more likely that 'worse' teams are able to beat better teams. Then again I watch test cricket so I'm clearly a nutter. Of course if you think adaptability is what defines a good team it is easy to think the old system did the same thing in reverse. I can see the latter perspective even if I'm in the former camp.
Then there is the question of what provides better entertainment. The past two weeks have seen some very interesting builds brought to the SCS and succeed. We've had double junker, whatever the heck that mobula Daniel had in that last game and double squid. If variety is what we are going for I think the blind pick system has provided that.
I do like the idea of making it something teams can request if say a team changes load out in the last minute of lobby time. The problem is that makes things take longer. On the other hand I'm not going to be too bothered if folks decide they want to stick with it as is for the SCS, there are advantages either way even if I like some more than others and would rather the old lobby game. I'd rather not see this system copy-pasted into the more serious tournaments we have coming up. We could also experiment with more limited blind picking, like selecting the ships but not the guns which might even speed up lobby times.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version