Sunday Community Skirmish: New optional blind pick mode

[Dementio]

I am not a fan of blind picking, maybe because a few ship loadouts of mine are made purely to counter this or that or are a more efficient version of something, which also only works in certain scenarios.

Although I did not get to test the first version of blind pick, this one with two stages I actually do like. It gets rid of a majority of issues that people addressed when talking about blindpicking everything at once. For those that are not aware of the two step blindpick thing: First ships of both teams get blindpicked, once done they get revealed and based off of that, the second ships will be blindpicked. So you can kinda guess what tactic the enemy is going for and either try to harcounter the shown enemy ship or take a ship that is compatible with your ally while not being at a complete disadvantage.

It also includes a little bit of mindgaming, as it isn't stated the pilot in the first ship slot has to decide what the teams first ship is. As in, this SCS (#68) my ally, Fynx, was in the second ship slot, but chose our first ship, this wasn't actually planned to happen that way. So for people that are worried that they can't specialize in one ship, you can out-mindgame your enemies that way and go your second favourite ship instead of your most favourite ship or something.

What I didn't like was the fact that I didn't get to enjoy one normal lobby of Icarus as apparantly every one of our enemies requested blind pick. If that happens more often, than I might just vote for making blind pick a mandatory thing or remove it. Otherwise I will just hate every single person I play against, because I have to go through the effort to pm the ref all of my unconventional ship loadouts... But that is just because I currently prefer normal lobbies more.

Speaking of writing loadouts down in PMs, I wouldn't mind an external software to make sending the loadout a little bit easier. Or enable the option to send screens through steam/skype or even through the message system of this forum, athough it could end up getting harder to organize for the responsible ref, when said ref has to manage three different platforms just to get a loadout.



Basically: The two step blind pick mode is good, but it is soo much more effort, which isn't that much actual effort, excluding the ref.

[BlackenedPies]

I like two step blind picking. How about it's default and you vote if you don't want it. Red requests no blind picks and Blue accepts. If it's a newer team don't force them to blind pick.

To streamline loadouts, lock in the first loadout that joins. Refs and players screenshot to make sure they don't change, penalty of death. Casters don't show picking. Remember to Save.

The PM step isn't necessary if captains are the only to join. First captains join and leave, then next two. Players joining before both captains voids blind picks for the opposing team. Control via password.

[MightyKeb]

Something I've also noticed about blindpicks: The idea might be good, but so far the only teams that used it seemed to mostly do it to give themselves a chance agains't better teams. This sounds like a good thing right? No. Teams should be rewarded against better teams by getting better, not flipping the coin and hoping for the best. And yes, there would be point in blindpicking if it could be overrid by one team. Two out of four teams blindpicked this SCS, if those two somehow met it'd be fair and square for both of them. On the other hand the teams that don't desire it in the first place and have less than half a year competitive experience will simply be demoralized by the fact that they were defeated by a very confusing phenomenon, no, not the blindpicks, just the result of the blindpicks. So in conclusion, Low tier teams stand a chance against high tier teams, but mid tier teams are the ones getting the worst end of it and you may end up destroying that category, thus making a greater divide between low and high level teams, with lows never advancing and highs never having any fair challenge.

[Extirminator]

My opinion about it is that it comes in to try and fix a problem of a specific side being completely hard-countered, however, getting your team completely hard countered happens only in one of two scenarios: 1. Your team is stupid , 2. Your team is confident enough with their current selection they don't care about being countered.
The 2 stage blind pick system doesn't change anything in my opinion. You could have gotten completely hardcountered before only if you tried to do so, and with the 2 stage blind pick system you can get completely hard countered only if you try to do so as well. Other than not contributing much to the pre-game lobby all it does is making it pretty inconvenient for everyone around.

The run-down of how it went for us in the lobby was to take the ships we will normally take regardless of what the enemy took...

TLDR
I am pretty neutral about it, only downside is it is quite the hassle to deal with without in-game support.

[MightyKeb]

My opinion about it is that it comes in to try and fix a problem of a specific side being completely hard-countered, however, getting your team completely hard countered happens only in one of two scenarios: 1. Your team is stupid , 2. Your team is confident enough with their current selection they don't care about being countered.
The 2 stage blind pick system doesn't change anything in my opinion. You could have gotten completely hardcountered before only if you tried to do so, and with the 2 stage blind pick system you can get completely hard countered only if you try to do so as well. Other than not contributing much to the pre-game lobby all it does is making it pretty inconvenient for everyone around.

The run-down of how it went for us in the lobby was to take the ships we will normally take regardless of what the enemy took...

TLDR
I am pretty neutral about it, only downside is it is quite the hassle to deal with without in-game support.

Purely opinion here, but I liked it when teams kept running the same build and then switched a ship or so later in the game agains't a better/more hardcountering team. It starts off with you recognizing their playstyle and strategy, and then it interests you because you don't know what they'll do that new x ship x loadout theyve just brought this match or if theyve been practicing for it at all. You guys kept bringing your usual builds and it did kill off the variety, despite my praisals of master of one teams, while we happened to get the worst end of it by switching ships around just in case.

[Lueosi]

From the referees point of view the blind pick system worked exceptional well. There were no early joiners, teams picked in two stages, changed ships in time, informative pms about loadouts. And instead of repeating the selected loadout in chat, they were just picked in lobby so I didn't need to type out the loadouts and just could point to the pilot who equipped the picked loadout (with the rule set loadouts are not bound to any particular player/pilot you can change later in the class/equipment phase). One team missed to pick in one picking phase but the rules covered this issue.

To the teams who requested blind picks: Did you request it for tactical reasons or to test the system? If we want to keep the rule, do we want to make it mandatory and have both teams agree to have a normal lobby? Another idea in the SCS chat was to have a normal lobby and if teams keep switching until the end, we change to blind pick mode.

Speaking of writing loadouts down in PMs, I wouldn't mind an external software to make sending the loadout a little bit easier. Or enable the option to send screens through steam/skype or even through the message system of this forum, athough it could end up getting harder to organize for the responsible ref, when said ref has to manage three different platforms just to get a loadout.

Sending screenshots why not, the "work" is still on player side to upload or send the screenshot (it should be up to the player to add the ref on skype or steam or use the forum and inform the ref about it). But even with unconventional builds, ships have at max 6 guns and typing it in chat is faster than sending a screenshot, at least for me.

To streamline loadouts, lock in the first loadout that joins. Refs and players screenshot to make sure they don't change, penalty of death. Casters don't show picking. Remember to Save.

The PM step isn't necessary if captains are the only to join. First captains join and leave, then next two. Players joining before both captains voids blind picks for the opposing team. Control via password.

That's imho too much organizational work by all participants. Timed joining, a lot of screenshots etc. With the current implementation, if players complain they picked something different, the referee can just make a screenshot of the pm and prove he is right (so making screenshots is reduced to a minimum).

To sum my opinion up: The blind pick mode worked well in its execution, it was chosen more often than I expected. It led to one team having difficulties with tactical picks but I think that was caused by a lack of competitive experience. Overthinking the system and trying to solely counter the other team instead of going for team synergy and well practiced builds didn't pay out. In fact the whole point of the blind pick mode is to prevent the issue who picks the hardcounter last, instead both teams pick at the same time. I'd like to keep the rule.

[MightyKeb]

Another idea in the SCS chat was to have a normal lobby and if teams keep switching until the end, we change to blind pick mode.

I actually really like this one. For a while I've been thinking about an incentive or a tie breaker for a lobby for when teams switch around for the entire 4 min timer, a feature that would give it a little more time would simply be like extending the timer and not doing much but this sounds perfect. But I think to balance it out both teams would have to agree on  the current method for blindpicks.

[Dementio]

You guys kept bringing your usual builds and...

This SCS was the first one where I got to use all of those Mobula loadouts, which means I didn't bring my usual builds.

[Newbluud]

In my mind, blind picks should be a result forced if teams continue to play counters of Icarus in the lobbies. That is if both teams continuously change to avoid being hard countered, not just one switching to force the blind pick anyway. That way you still get to oust the "lobby meta", making it more about the game, without outright forcing teams to enter what is essentially a roll of the dice. Whilst luck is always going to be a factor in these things (see Keb dropping connection at two crucial moments during the first match of yesterday's SCS), making it a staple of the tournament I feel redistributes what it takes to win so that there's a slightly larger amount placed on luck.

That being said, yesterday's SCS was a bad time for Toilet Paper clan. And I'm not going to pin that entirely on blind picks. I actually believe blind picks had almost nothing to do with it. But hey, I'm green in the competitive community so take what I say with a pinch of salt. My issue with blind picks is how it pushes the game further away from competitive and makes it feel more casual. Random is bad for competitive. Luck is bad for competitive.

Fact is, this system shouldn't be forced by a higher power, so to speak. It should be a safeguard against the game of counters. If ships switch up more than a set amount of times, blind picks are enforced. If a team holds a build then switches to a hard counter in the last minute, blind picks are enforced. Admittedly, this would be hard to monitor and clunky, but with polish, I feel it would be a far fairer way of executing this than having one team essentially play a joker card and randomise the proceeding match. Doing so forces out teams with distinct play styles and ensures all clans become jacks of all trades.

[Caprontos]

In my mind, blind picks should be a result forced if teams continue to play counters of Icarus in the lobbies. That is if both teams continuously change to avoid being hard countered, not just one switching to force the blind pick anyway. That way you still get to oust the "lobby meta", making it more about the game, without outright forcing teams to enter what is essentially a roll of the dice. Whilst luck is always going to be a factor in these things (see Keb dropping connection at two crucial moments during the first match of yesterday's SCS), making it a staple of the tournament I feel redistributes what it takes to win so that there's a slightly larger amount placed on luck.

That being said, yesterday's SCS was a bad time for Toilet Paper clan. And I'm not going to pin that entirely on blind picks. I actually believe blind picks had almost nothing to do with it. But hey, I'm green in the competitive community so take what I say with a pinch of salt. My issue with blind picks is how it pushes the game further away from competitive and makes it feel more casual. Random is bad for competitive. Luck is bad for competitive.

Fact is, this system shouldn't be forced by a higher power, so to speak. It should be a safeguard against the game of counters. If ships switch up more than a set amount of times, blind picks are enforced. If a team holds a build then switches to a hard counter in the last minute, blind picks are enforced. Admittedly, this would be hard to monitor and clunky, but with polish, I feel it would be a far fairer way of executing this than having one team essentially play a joker card and randomise the proceeding match. Doing so forces out teams with distinct play styles and ensures all clans become jacks of all trades.

But isn't the SCS less "Competitive" then bigger events.. An more something to try things and keep something going when no events are running? Ie not meant to be as serious (more serious then pub matches, less serious then a big event)... So some luck/randomness can be a good thing, if it opens up new possibilities...

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..

But I do support it in the two pick mode, if only cause it does add something different to mix it up..

Another idea on how to add blindpick is perhaps, a team can only pick for a match to be blind pick, once per SCS? This way they can't rely on it, but is an option to use if you want to.. Then if no one has the option for force blindpick, if both teams agree it is blind pick anyway.. Otherwise normal match. Though more things to keep track of.. but an idea.

Also on the bracket page, here:  http://goiocommunity.challonge.com/SCS68 Can you add like a * or something after the team who asked for blind pick ? or someway to know which games are blind picks, if it stays a rule in SCS. Just because I'd personally like to know which games were blind picks + who asked for in the future.. Idk how those pages work, so maybe that isn't a possibility.. Fine if its not or to much effort.

[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]

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.

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]

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..

I'm so sorry... I didn't choose squids, they do their own choices. Yes.

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.

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.

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.

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.