Stopwatch Rework

[bgyoshi]

I’m carrying this conversation in 2 unrelated threads and I’m tired of it, so I’m going to put my thoughts here for discussion. In PUGs and third party tournament play, obviously people aren’t going to abandon a match, so for this purpose I will be ignoring these things. This is solely focused on Stopwatch as it relates to Server Browser/Quick Join, and Ranked public queuing, the two by far most popular and most likely methods people will play.

Current Stopwatch is too slow. In both casual and ranked, there is little incentive to continue a game which is clearly one sided. If your team is on defense and getting run over by the attackers, it’s more enticing to leave and find a more balanced match. If your team is on offense and absolutely cannot get past the defense, it stands to reason the defense will run over you on their attack, so it’s more enticing to leave and find a more balanced match.

Objective mode is/was the most popular mode before it moved to CMM. The main reason, by far, is that it’s fast. Stomps don’t get past the first objective, meaning you only need to wait 7 minutes before a new map and new teams are made.

So it stands to reason: Remove stopwatch as it is currently, and rework it.

The new Stopwatch would function just like Objective mode: 7 minutes to complete the first objective, +5 minutes (on most maps) to complete the second, +3 minutes to complete the third. Obviously, maps with 2 objectives, like Underground, would be a simple +8 minutes after the first objective. This is the standard amount of time for each phase of the game, and each team gets the same amount of time to complete the same objectives.

There is a caveat, though; if the first team completes the entire map in less than the full 15 minutes, then the second team cannot possibly gain more time than that. So in a case where the entire map is completed in 9 minutes, the second team will get 7 minutes to complete the first objective as normal, but will only get +2 for the second objective, and +0 for the third.

Cases: On the map Bridge

• Team 1 completes Obj 1, and fails Obj 2
  In this case, team 2 will get 7 minutes to repair the EV, then +5 minutes to push the EV further than Team 1 did

• Team 1 completes Obj 1, Obj 2, returns 1 final obj
  Team 2 will get 7 minutes, +5, +3, and wins if they return both objectives, but draws if they return only 1

• Team 1 completes the map in 13 minutes
  Team 2 will get 7 minutes, +5, +1, and wins if they complete the map before the timer ends

*Team 1 completes the map in 6 minutes
Team 2 will get 6 minutes, +0, +0, and wins if they complete the map before the timer ends

• Team 1 fails Obj 1
  Team 2 will get 7 minutes and wins if they repair the EV more than Team 1 did.

Cases: On the map Underground

• Team 1 completes Obj 1, fails Obj 2
  Team 2 gets 7 minutes, +8, and wins if they destroy the final Obj (EDIT: Or if they destroy the first obj faster than the first team)

• Team 1 completes the map in 5 minutes
  Team 2 gets 5 minutes, +0, and wins if they complete the map before the timer ends

• Team 1 fails Obj 1
  Team 2 gets 7 minutes to have C4 planted on the main objective for a longer combined time than team 1.

For example, if Team 1 planted C4 5 times:
First plant: Lasted 20 seconds before defuse
Second Plant: Lasted 40 seconds before defuse
Third Plant: Lasted 10 seconds before defuse
Fourth Plant: Lasted 5 seconds before defuse
Fifth Plant: Lasted 5 seconds before defuse

That’s 80 seconds of total planted time

Then Team 2 wins when their combined plant time on the main objective exceeds 80 seconds, or if Obj 1 is destroyed.

If, for some reason, neither team ever repairs a smidgen of the EV, and never gets a C4 plant down… then I don’t know. Maybe run a sudden death mode; first team to lose all players loses? I haven’t thought of what to do in this case. As far as I’m concerned, make it a draw.

In the end, both teams get the same amount of time to do the same amount of work. They fail under the same conditions; they both get a chance to be attacker/defender which means both get to be on the map-biased side; stomps only last 7 minutes per side, meaning the total game time will be less than one game of a stopwatch round; the timers are much more intense and will lead to more clutch games; strategies change depending on map conditions (like prioritizing repair/plant/defuse in cases where team 1 fails Obj 1); and in general the pace of play will speed up.

There are concerns of excessive draws; I think my added win conditions for Obj 1 will alleviate 99.9% of draw possibilities

There are concerns of team 1 having a strong bias for completing Obj 1; I don’t think this is true. If a map is defender biased and Team 1 can punch through Obj 1 in under 7 minutes but Team 2 can’t, Team 2 should lose regardless of how far Team 1 made it after Obj 1. This is especially true considering Team 1 does have an inherent incentive to complete Obj 1, as they have a harsh losing condition if they don’t. And if Team 1 can’t repair half the EV in Obj 1 but Team 2 can, then Team 2 deserves to win.

Post your thoughts below. I hate stopwatch as it stands and I’m really tired of the long drawn out games. I can’t think of a single stopwatch game that I played in the past 5 or 6 months that ended with half of the same starting players. If defenders are losing at the start, the entire team bails out and the first team completes the map in 3 minutes. If the attackers are losing at the start, half the team bails after half the round, and we get an infinitely cycling loop of people joining, seeing how bad the balance is, and then leaving. And no, fixing match balance is not the answer so don’t suggest it. The match is too long, that’s why people leave.

[B_Montiel]

The stopwatch version I exposed in other posts is similar to the version of team objective in Chivalry Medieval Warfare and thats what I’d go for, even for public games.

Just a quick reminder :
Team Attack on round 1 set a time and a completion rate of the map, keeping in mind completion time of each intermediate objective. On first round, the same bonus time is added after each objective as @bgyoshi mentioned. Attackers on round 2 will have to do the last objective faster, or complete it, or push the EV further depending on the case to win.

The big difference lies in the fact that second round will already begin with the total time set by the first attacking team.

Any draw situation (both teams could not complete the last objective, no pushing EV situation) will be solved looking at the last intermediate objective time.

So, in a sense, yes, there’s a bias because second attack can spend more time on doing first objectives. But it still promotes challenge and reward hard working when you’re facing difficulties.

More importantly, the solution @bgyoshi mentioned would definitely promote first objective strong defense learning, to make second attack lose there as much as possible. In my view, if a team takes 15 minutes to complete a map, the second attacking team should also get 15 minutes. 15 minutes rounds are generally a good indicator of fairly balanced games, so I’d prefer to leave a chance to the second round attackers to improve further down this very game.

Playing other games following this rule, I’ve seen heavy tourneys / scrims games facing this situation : First team smashes first objective, then struggle on second and third. Second attacking team struggles on first (first attacking/second defending definitely better trained on first obj), then snowballs the entire rest of the map. Who’s the best team ? In my view, I prefer chosing the ones who have done faster throughout the map, not only one sector.

Either way, we’re quite nitpicking here. So I totally approve your idea. This is some important improvements they should have provided way earlier.

[bgyoshi]

@B_Montiel said:
Either way, we’re quite nitpicking here. So I totally approve your idea. This is some important improvements they should have provided way earlier.

I think you and I just disagree on what is fair in the second half of the game. You think giving team 2 the full time of team 1 is what’s fair, and I think giving both teams the same timers is what’s fair. We’ll never overcome that difference of opinion and I don’t think we really need to.

We simply disagree, nothing wrong with that. Coherent ideas are more important than agreeing completely with my idea, and there’s nothing objectively wrong with yours. Same idea, different execution.

[B_Montiel]

As a side note though : It’s not only about fairness. It’s also about making the game more appealing. In that case, being second attacking team is somewhat harder (opponent know your combat capabilities, how you’ll behave facing some situations, etc). In the end, if you give total equity regarding timers like you logically explain, first attacker team will generally win most of them.

And everyone loves turnaround games with a sudden clutch

But yes, in total fairness, your reasoning is more logical, but I do fear it will promote some kind of “1st obj grinding” which is the worth thing that can happen in team objective based games.

The most important issue we have to face are draws with this solution. On maps with no EV, both team stuck at the same point, the team which completed the last intermediate objective the fastest should win the game. In other words, if team attack 2 is fastest on the last successful C4 plant team 1 did, they should directly win the game. Even though that’s quite awkward of a result in some cases, once people get used to it, I think it could reduce significantly draw situations, that should not even exist in this game, unless the no repair/no first obj completed situation, in which case I do consider draws could happen. Mah this aint good, I just leave the reasoning striked…

[kopyright]

The one thing I don’t like about your suggestion is the “combined C4 plant time” condition. Unless the C4 blows up both teams failed to meet the winning condition for that phase. When two football players miss their penalty shots you wouldn’t award the win to the team whose player got the ball closer to the goal, would you?

[bgyoshi]

@kopyright said:
The one thing I don’t like about your suggestion is the “combined C4 plant time” condition. Unless the C4 blows up both teams failed to meet the winning condition for that phase. When two football players miss their penalty shots you wouldn’t award the win to the team whose player got the ball closer to the goal, would you?

The condition itself is to prevent constant and frequent ties on defender biased 1st Objective maps, like Underground or Bridge (as per my examples). That way teams aren’t just nearly guaranteed to draw those maps every time. There has to be some kind of way to determine a victor in the case where the teams don’t complete the first obj yeah? 7 minutes is a lot less time than the current 15.

As I said, I’m okay with just making them a draw, but other people expressed problems with it.

@B_Montiel said:
On maps with no EV, both team stuck at the same point, the team which completed the last intermediate objective the fastest should win the game.

You are totally correct and this was my intent. I added an edit to the main post above to include this condition.