Game Duration in the Competitive Scene

[Wundsalz]

Some facts and opinions regarding the sunday rumble which the design goals of a rule adjustment should revolve around:
1. The sunday rumble can be a large event. It's the only running tournament format which executed up to 7 BO3 matches on a single evening in the past.
2. the event should be executed in a time frame of 2-4h (people have got other stuff to do on weekends and EU-Players want to sleep at some point)
3. matches should be as fair as possible. The effect of rules on the match outcomes should be minimal
4. unlike other events like the cogs or the avalan conflict, I do NOT take the Rumble too seriously. I don't want to win it at all costs. As a result I'd be fine with rules affecting the matches outcome to a certain degree (which contradicts point 2) as long as they help to keep the tournament within the time limit (point 3). I think this is a very essential point - do opinions differ here? What's the opinion of other clans regarding this matter?
5. Watching the live stream should be joyful.

I'd like to highlight two posts as I think they show promising ideas how to approach the problem:

I think I'd be much more in favor of a sudden death mechanic than a straight time limit... say after 45 Min, the next point wins. It doesn't actually restrict sniping matches, but it saves spectators from watching a 1 - 1 score crawl all the way to 5 - 4.

I quite like this. There's something similar that happens at the end of a fencing match (the only sport I really know anything about).

A 15 point match is divided into 3 three-minute periods. If at the end of the third period the score is tied, then a coin is flipped. That coin decides priority: 1 additional minute is given and, if no points are scored during that time, the fencer with priority wins.

So maybe something similar could work here. Something like the following:

Game Time: 45 minutes. Alert players to the remaining time at the 20 minute mark and every 5 minutes thereafter. After 45 minutes, the team that is currently ahead wins. In the case of a tie, the timer is extended by 5-10 minutes, with a team gaining priority as determined by a coin toss. If no tie-breaking kill occurs during that time, the team with priority is declared the winner.

This has the effect of making the team without priority being forced to make a play to force an engagement. It also means that teams who are behind may also force engagements to attempt to tie up and/or win the game, which adds excitement to the end-game.

Thoughts?

Speaking generally of all events, I think at a certain point ones has to put the matches before the stream otherwise one doesn't get to stream anything. During the Flotsam we ran into this problem once when the Gents and the Merry Men ran one of the most brutal sniping matches I have ever seen in Guns of Icarus. It was Battle on the Dunes day so this was something we were aware could easily happen. After 30 minutes we decided to switch the stream and begin the next match. We actually even got to get back to the MM/Gent game and watch their climax and finale. We were lucky things lined up to allow this.

Now I can understand times may be a bit unpredictable with the BO3 system, however I think that would be even more incentive to respect people's time more than the stream. We're all playing a video game so we have to remember that time commitments to this game will be low for most players.

[Urz]

Neither of those posts you've quoted provide acceptable solutions for reasons already pointed out.

Removing Canyon Ambush is just a stop-gap until I've implemented a better fix. It is the standout for not only for being a problem sniper map, but also much longer brawling games on average. Optimally Muse would fix their maps at some point.

[Wundsalz]

Neither of those posts you've quoted provide acceptable solutions for reasons already pointed out.

I agree, but they contain ideas which might possibly be used to form proper solutions.

[Shinkurex]

Urz,

I have to humbly disagree with your thinking that removing Canyons is a stop-gap method. Historically, there have been long matches played on every map in your map pool with the exception of the new paritan rumble. I understand why you've done so, and I do not envy your position, but hopefully we can come up with a real solution soon, so we dont see you're map pool dwindle down to just Paritan

[Sammy B. T.]

If I recall correctly I remember seeing a 45 minute match on Paritan, and one could easily concieve of an insanely long sniper bout where two teams are using one of the narrow alleys as their sniper lanes. Heck one of the longest matches in GOIO was on Duel at Dawn where two sniper teams took over an hour to kill each other. They're aren't really any maps that truly force combat.

[Urz]

Since the Rumble teams seem to universally want Canyon in the pool, I'll leave it in. We'll have to test some kind of game length mitigation for this weekend, though.

This is what I'm considering right now: an X minute game timer, and for the sake of demonstration let's say 30 minutes (I'll run the numbers later). If no team has at least 3 kills when the game timer expires, it's called a draw. Otherwise the game will go into "overtime". Overtime will have a Y minute timer, let's say 2 minutes, that resets every time hull armour goes down. Once the overtime timer expires, the game will be called based on the current score. If the set is tied after three games, we will play a sudden death round to the first kill.

Thoughts?

[zlater75@hotmail.com]

Imo it would be good to have a "extra time / hurry up time" after the time and before calling it a draw to get going with next kill and maybe have a normal match resolution.
Would that be 30 min per round or match?

[Gryphos]

Definitely worth trying out, I guess.

[Orangey]

I may have an idea:
Make it a 30 min per match atleast, inform every 5 minutes how long till its over. The last kill after 30  minutes when its a draw wins. If there is no winner at 45 minutes its a draw, both teams get 1 win (out of the 2 needed for best of 3) so if 1 team has already won 1 match they will advance, or the next team that wins a match will advance. if its a draw on first round and second match is going to be a draw again after 30 minutes (or when both teams have won 1 match), then the team that makes the next kill wins.

Just an idea of how to implement a time limit and how to handle draws.

[Wundsalz]

Since the Rumble teams seem to universally want Canyon in the pool, I'll leave it in. We'll have to test some kind of game length mitigation for this weekend, though.

This is what I'm considering right now: an X minute game timer, and for the sake of demonstration let's say 30 minutes (I'll run the numbers later). If no team has at least 3 kills when the game timer expires, it's called a draw. Otherwise the game will go into "overtime". Overtime will have a Y minute timer, let's say 2 minutes, that resets every time hull armour goes down. Once the overtime timer expires, the game will be called based on the current score. If the set is tied after three games, we will play a sudden death round to the first kill.

Thoughts?

I like the approach. The 2 min overtime seems to be a bit harsh though -it's a time frame which can easily be consumed by reapproaching the enemy after a respawn - especially if the enemy wants to the timer to win the match.
What about the following Overtime system? - If the targeted maximum match time runs up (lets say 25 min) and the game is neither a draw and at least one team has a minimum of 3 kills, the game is finished and evaluated according to the current score. Otherwise an overtime of 10 min is added to allow both teams to decide the match. If the game is still neither a draw and at least one team has a minimum of 3 kills either call the match a draw or let the dynamic time extension you've described kick in.

[Skrimskraw]

I agree we need to test this before anyone can see if its a good idea or a bad idea.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Since the Rumble teams seem to universally want Canyon in the pool, I'll leave it in. We'll have to test some kind of game length mitigation for this weekend, though.

This is what I'm considering right now: an X minute game timer, and for the sake of demonstration let's say 30 minutes (I'll run the numbers later). If no team has at least 3 kills when the game timer expires, it's called a draw. Otherwise the game will go into "overtime". Overtime will have a Y minute timer, let's say 2 minutes, that resets every time hull armour goes down. Once the overtime timer expires, the game will be called based on the current score. If the set is tied after three games, we will play a sudden death round to the first kill.

Thoughts?

So if im reading this right, if a game goes 2-0 in favor of red, and blue decides to run the clock to force a draw, then that's already rage worthy.

The more I think about it, the more I fear timers will just promote sniping to stay safe since they will be so worried about giving up a death, they'd rather just play the timers instead.

[Wundsalz]

Yes, the possibility to sit out matches is an attribute of formats with time limits.
While a lot of competitive team sports work fine with preset match times, I doubt the format really fits the needs of GoI - as it's relatively easy to freeze the score by avoiding engagements.
Unfortunately I (and apparently noone else) can not think of a better practical solution to cap the match time somehow.

[Mr. Ace Rimmer]

Yes, the possibility to sit out matches is an attribute of formats with time limits.
While a lot of competitive team sports work fine with preset match times, I doubt the format really fits the needs of GoI - as it's relatively easy to freeze the score by avoiding engagements.
Unfortunately I (and apparently noone else) can not think of a better practical solution to cap the match time somehow.

Agreed. I don't think any of us can think of a viable way of introducing some sort of limitation without unfairly penalizing certain play styles. We appear to have reached a catch 22 situation since the last thing any of us wants is a set of rules that makes certain teams walk away from the competition.

[Urz]

The addition of a "stalling clause" which allows the referee to give warnings for blatantly playing to the clock is an option if stalling does become an issue.