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20 second round start timer

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Jub Jub:
Typically I don't do much posting on the forums, but 'ere goes~

While I haven't paid much attention to Guns of Icarus competitively anymore, since the topic here is on the opening pause timer that was used in Blood & Brass, something that I helped design/decide, I just thought I'd throw in my input. The timer was originally, and solely, used to allow as many people as possible to fully load into a match to prevent teams who had bad connection issues from getting quickly rushed by the opposing team, which would result in a handicapped engagement. Something that we did want to avoid however, is restricting teams who used the opening soft-cover of a map to change their positions without being spotted as the clouds rolled away, thus giving them a disadvantage. We picked 20 seconds to be as fair to people loading into the match as possible, while also not trying to screw over teams that liked to use the opening cloud cover to make movements. While that isn't such a big deal on quite a few maps, some of the more open ones like Northern Fords and Battle on the Dunes, the opening few moments could be crucial for a team centered around close range builds. At no time in the brainstorming/decision making process were the casters taken into account. Rules centered around making simple things easier for the caster are silly. Competitive rules, matches, tournaments, etc. should be focused on the teams taking part and the players of those teams, not the various people watching.

MightyKeb:

--- Quote from: Jub Jub on April 12, 2016, 08:57:25 am ---Something that we did want to avoid however, is restricting teams who used the opening soft-cover of a map to change their positions without being spotted as the clouds rolled away, thus giving them a disadvantage. We picked 20 seconds to be as fair to people loading into the match as possible, while also not trying to screw over teams that liked to use the opening cloud cover to make movements. While that isn't such a big deal on quite a few maps, some of the more open ones like Northern Fords and Battle on the Dunes, the opening few moments could be crucial for a team centered around close range builds.

--- End quote ---

You make a very good point, if this is implemented we'll have to see how much this is impacted and whether it needs to be scaled accordingly. On the other hand...


--- Quote from: Jub Jub on April 12, 2016, 08:57:25 am ---[/i] Rules centered around making simple things easier for the caster are silly. Competitive rules, matches, tournaments, etc. should be focused on the teams taking part and the players of those teams, not the various people watching.

--- End quote ---

You're right in that tournaments made for teams should be focused for the teams -as aside from the organizers they're the ones with the highest effort-to-contribution ratio in comparison to anyone else that interacts with it, and if it comes down to it the hardest decisions should be made with teams in mind.

However, this doesn't mean we should neglect the spectators entirely. GOIO at it's core is a very competitive game, to this day I continue to be flabbergasted at the devs' lack of appropriate support to this criminally untapped market that could very well boom this game's population to desired amounts. The "simple" things these casters do sacrifice viewtime for an important portion of the game. What would you say to a feature that provided some small benefit to the teams' experience in exchange for making the casters completely unable to stream most of the action? What's the motivation in continously making big tournaments, when nobody is watching it, and less than half a dozen teams join when you could've attracted 4 times the amount by growing in popularity? Let's not de value the subtle support that spectators provide.


On the other hand, part of the reason I came forth with this idea was not just because it had benefits for the casters and spectators, but also teams aswell. I've already stated some of the team based benefits, but I'll bring back some for the earlier argument:

Assume two teams are planning to rush out of spawn. One team plans assuming they'll spawn in a singular place, but ends up spawning in another. This disorients them for a moment before they're able to formulate a plan of action again in a moment's notice, but all the while, the team that opted to rush with no sense of direction, caution or consideration wins the rushing war, thereby taking more ground and forcing the other team to play defensively.


Now you have 10-20 seconds timer after the game starts. Within 10 ,even 5 seconds, teams can determine where they are, plan their moves and get moving. The team that doesn't use this resource well is the one that is countered and the team that is is the one that controls the early game.

My point is that in this instance, adding the timer would encourage and reward intelligent play and consideration of the map, two skills you already need in competitive play - essentially raising the pilot skill ceiling by a marginal amount, which resonates with my earlier small-benefit-to-experience example, yet without the crushing downsides and infact, an upside for both fronts.

nanoduckling:
Thanks for the context and insight Jub. As you say, rules geared towards the sole benefit of casters to the detriment of participants would be pretty asinine, at least in deviation from what we currently have. That said lets not kid ourselves here, the SCS casts have order of magnitude 10-40 viewers at peak times, and a very large fraction of that are participants. Its a service for the players with some side benefits as an educational tool, it is not the Yogscast. The brass tacks question here being asked, at least from my perspective, is "do participants reviewing footage benefit more from having available the first 30 seconds of movement when weighed against the disadvantages of these proposed rules". Keb enthusiastically says yes. I'm a qualified yes, bordering on meh. Guras says no. We're talking here like we are wearing a bunch of different hats ('audience member', 'caster', 'organizer', but I think the truth is what you have here are 4 SCS players debating how much benefit that extra 30 seconds of footage is worth to us. The extra hats just colour our judgement a little bit and add a little bit extra weight to our arguments here and there.

Keb I suspect you aren't going to get your way here, but what I might try is changing how introductions are done, using the 30 second lobby lock to give in depth ship details and then providing a quicker summary at the match start to see if that improves the cast (A quick 3 second zoom on each ship with team, pilot and ship summary, "We have the Ryders with a Brawl mobula pilotted by Daniel"). Should shave a few seconds off the intros.

MightyKeb:

--- Quote from: nanoduckling on April 12, 2016, 10:49:48 am ---Keb I suspect you aren't going to get your way here, but what I might try is changing how introductions are done, using the 30 second lobby lock to give in depth ship details and then providing a quicker summary at the match start to see if that improves the cast (A quick 3 second zoom on each ship with team, pilot and ship summary, "We have the Ryders with a Brawl mobula pilotted by Daniel"). Should shave a few seconds off the intros.

--- End quote ---

That's an interesting one. If anything I'd like to put all these ideas into a cycle and see how each of them work out before making a judgement. The big flaw in your idea however is that competitive youtube channels like Communityesports have been using the same system for years now, and that is to upload the game footage only with no stream backdrop, as the loadouts are already announced. I think this worked when everybody ran sluggish pyras everywhere or took mercs and camped their own spawn. If your idea is implemented, the current tournament uploaders will have to change their uploading style to include the first 2 minutes of stream or however long it takes to announce the loadouts which, depending on the length, could actually be to the detriment of the spectators on video uploads.

nanoduckling:
Hrm, yeah the extra two minutes at the start might not be worth it. The stop gap I suggested wouldn't necessarily have that problem since a quick sweep round the ship will allow folks to visually identify the ships detailed load out while the audio provides a summary description, so the 2 minutes of footage in lobby can be cut off to minimal detriment since you can always just pause and look at the ships if the detailed gun load outs are of interest.

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