Messages

16

Community Events / Re: Titles, who has them, and what they do.

« on: February 01, 2014, 08:51:46 pm »

This saturday Box social 01/02/2014  the Gents beat the Ducks on Duel at Dawn. I think that means we take the title? Could this be updated plz <3

Ignore this i didnt read the link. Excuse me

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Community Events / Re: Titles, who has them, and what they do.

« on: February 01, 2014, 08:14:38 pm »

This saturday Box social 01/02/2014  the Gents beat the Ducks on Duel at Dawn. I think that means we take the title? Could this be updated plz <3

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Community Events / Re: The Saturday Box Social #3 Signups (2/1/14 @ 4pm EST / 9pm UTC)

« on: February 01, 2014, 10:42:51 am »

Gents will be here.

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Community Events / Re: COGS Season Three, REBIRTH

« on: January 16, 2014, 06:21:56 pm »

If it were up to me (though it is not) I would do the competition in the following way:

We want the competition to be community led and so with that in mind we want to keep as much of the community playing as possible each week. So the competition starts off with a round robin. Every team plays every team. This will probably take between 8-12 weeks depending on the number of teams and how many games can be fit into each viewing period. The games would be best of two in this round robin stage. This is an attempt for people not only to win matches but also to play with the minimal loses possible as victory could be down to the number of kills and deaths. If there is a 1-1 situation the winner is determined on the amount of kills that have been achieved in the past two games. If there is a still a draw after kills have been totted up then both teams take a draw. During this period you get 0 points for a loss 1 for a draw and 2 for a win.

After every team has played every team the scores for each team are collected. The points that have been gathered from the round robin stage now seed the teams in an order from 1 to whatever #. The Team in position 1 who had the highest points throughout the round robin period now play the team at the bottom of the table who had the least points. The team in position 2 play the team who were second last and so on and so forth. The downside of this is that there have to be an equal number of teams, so sign ups come on a first come first served basis. Unless somebody can think of a clever way of incorporating an odd number of teams into this system that is fair of course.
This round is a best of 3. So there is a clear winner. The winner of match 1 vs 12 proceed up the table and compete more as does the winner of 2 vs 11 and so on and so forth. The competition now looks more pyramid like with more teams being removed form the running of becoming champion. But it is not over for the teams who lose. The losers of match 1 vs 12 and 2 vs 11 etc etc play each other. And this continuos so you have a pyramid of matches going downwards from the centre line. These run up matches can continue in each bracket meaning that you have more teams competing week in and week out, giving it that feeling  of a community run event still. So hopefully by the end of the competition most teams have been playing consistently, and the whole ranking order is done from the Champions in position 1 to those that didn't do so well at the bottom with everyone in between having been catered for also.

The Final will be a best of 5.

The game time limit will be 20 minutes in the round robin stage. Its a real challenge for teams to win matches but also not concede many deaths and I think is an interesting dynamic especially with this small time constraint. Similarly to the CESports rules if there are not 3 kills before this mark then you have 2 minutes of overtime, afterwards it is a draw in that match if no kills have been achieved and you move on. If there is a kill in this overtime but not reaching 3 then the team with the most kills wins. If 20 minutes expires and you have 3 or more kills then that team is the victor. If it is 3-3 then there is overtime and afterwards the team with the most kills wins.

The second competition stage has a 30 minute running time but the same rules regarding overtime and who wins in scenarios when the full kill limit has not been achieved. The final also has this same running time.

I have thought about this in some detail but not in a huge amount. I really would like some way of keeping people involved throughout the stage so it doesn't just become this very elite model that previous Cogs were. I would like to know any feedback that you have or any questions you may have, or if anything didn't make sense.

Obviously the new competitive scene is not up to me, this is my personal opinion on a format that could work. But if we could agree with something then that would be awesome. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

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Community Events / Re: COGS Season Three, REBIRTH

« on: January 15, 2014, 03:29:42 pm »

Can Cogs truly be reborn as in can we keep the name Cogs? For many this will have some baggage attached to. But I really liked the name and I know that others do to. Just a thought

21

Community Events / Re: COGS Season Three, REBIRTH

« on: January 15, 2014, 02:01:52 pm »

-BIG UPDATE-

We just had a really nice brainstorm session with a few folks, Urz, Gents, Overwatch, Cake, Ducks, and Muse included, and we've decided because there was so much confusion, baggage, and clutter associated with this project that we're going to go ahead and let it pass on, there will not be a S3 of COGS. I'm simply not well known enough in the community yet to flag an event of this size, as much experience or knowledge as there may be on our side, to take this from Qwerty and move forward with it.

Now the good news. In it's place, Urz and I are going to head a new, fresh, constructed from scratch project that will allow everyone to be competative and excited for it. The plan going forward is for Urz to host a few Saturday matches, while we not only put this new, streamlined plan together, as well as gather every major and minor clan lead we can find and present it to you all, then hammer and refine it to a point where we can bring the entire community together over this.

We'll be in contact directly with clan leads and members over what's going on with this project, and we'll post on the forums or somewhere public to notify everyone of the time of the meeting where we all put the finishing touches on this. Urz and I agree that we want this to be the big event that the entire GOIO community can be involved in and never feel excluded or disenfranchised, which is why we're going to be heavily involving the clans and membership in it's creation.

  -- Everyone is going to have a say in how this event is structured, we not only need everyone's support for this, but we want it!--

I personally apologize to have tossed everyone around a bit like this, it's not how I wanted to do things, but that's how things happened and I do feel bad for it. We're going to take the time to get this new event done properly, to make it something really special.

Thank you all for your understanding in this situation, and good flying into the future!

This has made me so happy. Hopefully all our hard work will come together. Thank you for taking this responsibility on. I am sure it is in the right hands with the community but also with Urz and yourself Leto.

22

Gameplay / Re: Art meta is boring

« on: January 14, 2014, 12:22:25 pm »

I strongly feel that the downwards arc on the Artemis is fine, however the logical tactic to countering them is to be above your opponent. As it currently is the Artemis upwards arc is too high and at a only a slight distance Artemis are too easily able to hit targets above them. Nerf the upwards arc please.

Um No. Mattilald clearly points out your error here. You want to remove more of the 10 degree up arc on the artemis. That is completely silly. Doing that will only hurt merc/arti because you will have to be in exactly the right spot to get the no upwards, but no downwards arcs of each gun respectively.

Honestly upwards arcs on the artemis are so heavily nerfed as they are they don't need to be done any further.

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Gameplay / Re: Artemis

« on: December 13, 2013, 12:53:11 am »

To be honest, I feel like the difficulties that teams opposing triple artemis junkers face are rather due to their own poor tactics rather than some inherent overpoweredness of the build. I may come to regret these words, of course.

The concern that I am detecting here is that on the PUG level, where anti-artemis tactics are less known, the slow, grinding, helpless deaths so frequently incurred by triple artemis builds cannot help but cause a lot of frustration for newer players. It's this fact that may be the eventual undoing of the artemis in its current state. I have no doubt that the Gents have fine-tuned the build to a high level of refinement (even simple things can be done well and taken to the next level; gat-mortar is another example), but it's also true that a moderately experienced pub captain can put three noobs with burst on those suckers and cause a lot of frustration, in a much different way than something like gat-mortar, where your armor just drops and you blow up without any prolonged maiming. That may be part of what's fueling the frustration here.

As awkm stated in his discussion of changing the reload dynamic, waiting is the worst for gameplay dynamics - and helplessly waiting for your ship to explode is likely the worst of the worst

Thank goodness you see sense here too. A lot of people here are trying to justify rash actions based on spur of the moment ideas without a real engagement with what is going on. Much easier to nerf what we cannot be bothered to try and understand than to actually work hard at something. It all comes down to tactics and if you are not prepared to adapt or be more ingenious then you will have to be content i guess.

24

Gameplay / Re: Spawn system feedback 1.3.4

« on: December 11, 2013, 06:51:40 pm »

I really feel being able to spawn on an enemies backside a really limiting and detrimental factor in this choosing spawns malarkey. There should be implemented a system where if you are within I dont know around 600 metres of the opponent you cannot spawn in that grid because the proximity to enemies is too great. If in fjords for example if Blue are camping Red's Spawns then it defaults to a tertiary neutral spawn.

In terms of Raid on the Refinery or any crazy king, it killed the game. Being able to spawn 15 seconds away from the point in contest having just died means that the point can never be recaptured once a team has it. Because try wiping an entire team and capturing a point in 15 seconds from the first death on the opposing team. Yah, its not going to happen.  Choosing spawns in this situation ruined that experience on those maps for me. In this situation spawns should be chosen from 3 spawns at least 1.5k away from the contested point otherwise there is no point playing that gamemode since it comes down to first team there that wins the initial engagement wins GG with no ability to fight at a point at contest well.

Edit: Sorry this really riled me up. I love the game and the development, but this patch... Most certainly should not have gone past dev stage.

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Gameplay / Re: Artemis

« on: December 11, 2013, 09:24:07 am »

People want to more clouds when there are so many already? .... ... ... Really bad idea, dont even give Muse that idea, the amount of clouds at the moment are ridiculous especially as beacon flare gun is buggy as heck.

 On my sister junker to Byron since I dont have the hades and instead carronade downstairs I have 3 engi pilot junker with bottom engi with greased for the carro. Upstairs artemis are instructed to bring burst. So there is more killing power downstairs with increased rate of fire but still maintaining the disable power.

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Gameplay / Re: Artemis

« on: December 10, 2013, 10:57:14 am »

Thats your opinion. I have given feedback on my thoughts further up this thread which you ignored. If you know you are going up against 6 artemis, change your tactics?! No use making a plan fully aware of what the enemy have and then cry about the plan not working. I dont want to sound mean but that is exactly what you are doing. I would have assaulted us differently.

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Gameplay / Re: Artemis

« on: December 10, 2013, 10:32:58 am »

Then the plan was flawed?

28

Gameplay / Re: Artemis

« on: December 10, 2013, 07:44:25 am »

If you look at the  Thralls/ Gent games in the last Sunday rumble you will see how effectively they use elevation to completely render the trip artemis useless. It was a very close game that Thralls could have won. If you have a blenderfish or even carronade pyramidion, as soon as you are on top of that junker its the end. I can only guess the Thralls had 2 people on that front carronade all the time at the rate it got rebuilt on Sunday and they were very effective at forcing both Gentlemen boats down splitting the fire whilst one recovered from the balloon disable.

On a separate point both Mattisamo and Chrinus have said the mobula is a good counter, and it truly is. The merc on the top means any attritional war will be won by the mobula since the extra piercing is nice. As Chrinus said and I will reiterate, the fact that the mobula is so spaced out, with components a long way from each; whilst being irritating to fix is invaluable against trip artemis where gunners on the attacking side have to hone in on the guns precisely and they will not be getting multiple component kills with one shot even with the artemis hit box getting bigger the greater the distance that the rocket travels. Mattisamo has is perfected, the question is what can take out the mobula? We saw Sac get ruined by that double gattling on a head on charge. It wins at long and short range. This is the question we should be asking how to kill Mattisamo

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Community Events / Re: Anvalan Conflict Champion: The Gentlemen

« on: November 04, 2013, 10:36:00 pm »

Thank you; our beautiful casters for your dedication and always inspiring commentary at the best of times, your hard work is a shining example to us all so thank you. Urz thank you for organising a great tourney, we hope to participate in future events. You really worked hard and pulled together a great show so thank you very much indeed. The Gentlemen thank you all for organising this. <3 xx

30

Community Events / Re: Game Duration in the Competitive Scene

« on: November 04, 2013, 09:08:15 pm »

Well I would like to throw my thoughts into this melting pot too. Firstly an apology; to the casters, to those spectators who left the stream because it was dull and to the other teams who could not participate because we took so long. It was not our objective to sit and play for over 3 hours without stopping. It was not our goal to break the rumble. But from my perspective the first game felt like it was done in 20 minutes, the one after 30. It was a non stop manoeuvring, tactical battle of brains as much of braun and that was exhilarating, though I can understand it might not have been first class spectating. I haven't seen the cast but I intend to, so I can look at my performance and also analyse tactics. Preparing myself for the 'best' 3 hours of my life....

The consensus as I see it thus far is that most people are in favour of time constraints for multiple reasons. The most compelling reason as I see it has been well articulated by Shinkurex. Long dull matches means no viewers, no viewers means no casters, no casters means fewer matches and the cycle continues down and down and down. But time constraints may not be the most effective way of keeping the match times down to a reasonable length because it will exclude by its very nature the builds that you are able to bring. Personally I like the sniping, we have trained our ass off to try and reach a decent level of sniping play for the competitive scene. It is something reminiscent of the old times, like Brick said and Wundsalz commented. It would be a shame to let that go. Brawling had taken a nerf but I do not think it is as extensive or as crippling as many cry about but it would be a shame to see just brawling which I think is a possibility if harsh time constraints are implemented.

But I would agree something needs to change. If matches are taking a long time lets say pushing the 45 minutes or 50 minutes mark, casters or judges should state that this match becomes the only one if those participating agree. But even this has serious disadvantages. The really great thing about competitive play is that if your first match goes badly, you often adapt, change your tactics, change the loadout. It is great to see and spectate teams coming up with innovative counters to a build. The matches often go to and fro and that is the beauty for me at least to see this happening. I worry that this will be lost and it will be a monumental shame. The way the rhinos came back in that second game with that combination to complete disable us with art / merc combo was brilliant. And for me that is what makes the game so competitive and so ingenious.

So the question is what do we as a community do to find a middle ground? I don't think there is one right answer, but there needs to be a lot of deliberation here to make sure that nobody is suffering and that sunday night's events are not repeated again too often. And lets put this into context, its not every week that something like this happens.