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.
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...
[/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.
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.
