Stopwatch solution: Last Stand

(Kendle) #21

You’re right in that objective is inherently asymmetrical, and that SW solves that by playing 2 rounds with teams switching between rounds. “fairness” is then further enhanced by playing in ABBA format (to get round the team who attacks first having an advantage).

It’s elegant, it’s simple, and it’s proven, and as you said yourself with the football analogy, it hasn’t changed for a long time, and doesn’t need to.

I think what you want is just a new game mode (and I expect Execution will in fact be a hugely popular competitive mode). There’s no reason why SW as it is and as it has always been needs to be ditched though. I just think you’re on a hiding to nothing if you think SW is going to go away because you personally aren’t a great fan.

(tokamak) #22

There’s nothing elegant about making teams fight the same map four times in a row before fairness is established. Only a small group of traditional players trying to relive the glory days of FPS are into that. The rest of Esports has moved on into games where players decide the ending and outcome.

(Kendle) #23

Again, in your opinion (and it’s not the same map 4 times, it’s 2 maps twice). And in what way do players not decide the outcome in SW?

(trickykungfu) #24

most players moved away from FPS Shooter… Trying to somehow make that dota and lol System working for FPS ist wrong. Something really new has to come to catch people back…

(tokamak) #25

Mobas have a tug of war format which has proven extremely tedious for shooters indeed.

I said ending AND outcome. Right now it’s the timer that decides how the map ends. It’s extremely dull to most people that haven’t been hardcore shooter fanatics in the 90’s. The timer excites you because you respect and you respect it because that’s all you’ve known to play with.

(Kendle) #26

Far from it. Since I got into online gaming in 2001 I’ve spent far less time playing SW than I have any other game mode. By far the majority of my gaming “career” was spent playing DOD (5 years+), which is an area control game mode with fixed length rounds (usually 20 mins). I’ve also played COD in bomb / defuse mode and BF3 in conquest and rush modes (rush being as similar to objective as BF gets). In between I’ve also played a lot of CTF in Urban Terror.

So, I don’t appreciate SW because I’m a died in the wool ET player who can’t grasp other concepts. I appreciate SW because it’s really the only way to play objective.

You may or may not know that RTCW, which pretty much invented the game modes we’re talking about here, was originally played 7-v-7 in objective mode (no switching sides and setting times). SW was a secondary mode the developers just added for the hell of it (along with at least 3 other modes). The comp community switched to SW within 6 months of RTCW’s release because it just made sense.

All I’m hearing from you tokamak is “I don’t like SW, so no-one else does, therefore the game needs to change”. I’m just not buying it I’m afraid.

(tokamak) #27

You’re only illustrating further how we’re playing SW for the lack of a better alternative. Which is what I’m presenting here, a better alternative. It’s still SW but only this time with a soft limit rather than hard limit. From your posts you give me the impression that you think I want to do away with the whole mode entirely.

(stealth6) #28

The only interesting argument I’ve seen raised here is that it’s boring to watch / play a SW match if you know the attackers have run out of time to complete the map. For example it’s going to take 50 seconds to get the EV to the final objective and there’s only 40 seconds left on the clock.

I first thought why not stop the map right there and then, but as has already been said that’s boring. Imo something needs to be added to the game to allow “backdooring” at a cost cough covert ops cough. So the attackers can attempt to finish the map at any time, but they’ll prefer not to unless they really have to, or if they’re just way better than their opponent.

Then the only problem that remains is if the attackers really suck and get stuck on the first objective and it takes 20 seconds to traverse the map by foot. What do you do then? That would be a boring one sided match anyway.

On a personal note I like the fact that SW has a timer. That way I know how long a match will take and can easily plan it into my day. Also if you’re friend / girlfriend / wife starts nagging how much longer you can say X minutes instead of well somewhere between…

EDIT: Also I don’t think any of the football / moba arguments are relevant, because in DB 1 team attacks and the other defends & the maps are not symmetrical. Which obviously implies that I agree that maps play a large part in this.

(tokamak) #29

A soft limit still means a timer. It’s just going to take slightly longer to finish of the last remaining defenders and complete the objective.

(stealth6) #30

I don’t see what it adds, it’s like a participation award: You lost but hey we’ll let you play it out. What happens when the attackers suck and the defenders have medic & fdops?

(tokamak) #31

It brings the round to a meaningful conclusion. It avoids two things:

  • Match ending right in the middle of a session
  • Stalemate

It adds:

  • A narrative and drama

I don’t expect defenders to be able to withstand no respawns for very long, but in the case that some godlike team is still able to hold then there can still be a hard limit or a surrender (vote). I don’t mind some emergency measure if such a thing happens.

(stealth6) #32

[QUOTE=tokamak;503172]It brings the round to a meaningful conclusion. It avoids two things:

  • Match ending right in the middle of a session
  • Stalemate

It adds:

  • A narrative and drama

I don’t expect defenders to be able to withstand no respawns for very long, but in the case that some godlike team is still able to hold then there can still be a hard limit or a surrender (vote). I don’t mind some emergency measure if such a thing happens.[/QUOTE]

For me the session is defined by the timer so the session ends when the time is up. Events happening towards the end will be more exciting since the team is on a time limit. I don’t see how this will avoid a stalemate?

(tokamak) #33

Full holds are impossible with a soft limit. There will always be one team faster than the other in completing the match.

(Kendle) #34

From your posts you give me the impression that SW is boring, last century and anyone who also doesn’t think so is a blinkered unreconstructed dinosaur. :slight_smile:

That’s potentially it’s only advantage, however it won’t stop matches ending abruptly in the middle of a session, and it doesn’t add any narrative or drama beyond what SW already has.

Let’s think this through.

If Team A set a time in round 1, Team B can only ever be allowed Team A’s time to complete the map. They cannot and must not be afforded a single second longer otherwise it’s not fair competition.

If Team A fail to complete the map by the time the hard limit is reached, and go on to complete it in hard limit + ‘n’ seconds, Team B must be afforded exactly hard limit + ‘n’ seconds to also complete the map, otherwise it’s not fair competition. In other words round 1’s soft limit becomes round 2’s hard limit, with round 2 not having a soft limit at all.

The likelihood of Team A setting a time is 100%, which is good. The likelihood of Team B beating it and / or the round ending abruptly is exactly the same as it is now in standard SW. Anything else is not fair competition.

So, yeah, it eliminates full holds. But so does better map design through attacker bias and less / shorter objectives. Again, this proposal is simply papering over the cracks of poor map design IMO.

(tokamak) #35

Thank you, those are the kind objections I was looking for. Evaluating it on it’s merits.

If Team A set a time in round 1, Team B can only ever be allowed Team A’s time to complete the map. They cannot and must not be afforded a single second longer otherwise it’s not fair competition.

You’re right. It’s a weakness. But it’s also a weakness that can be accounted for in many ways.

  • Firstly, the advantage of the second attackers is also a compensation for the disadvantage they suffer from fighting under a tigher time constraint. Something, as you said is what’s being solved now through ABBA. IE four rounds of fighting. Now, this IS a bit of a stretch because none of us have any idea how the two advantages compare. If it levels out then we’ve discovered a way to resolve SW matches in two rounds rather than four. If not, then we stick with ABBA and all is fine again. It’s basically solving the same issue we’ve already solved.

  • Secondly, the first time set can still apply to determine victory even if it tapers off through the soft limit. This turns last stand in an more symbolic part of the game, like Mortal Combat’s fatality. Attackers will know they’ve already lost but they can still save themselves the embarrassment by ending the game as fast as possible. This could even lead to a whole bonus point system for tournaments like the goal saldo in football, who knows. Even if it’s used symbollically like this it still solves the issue of stalemates, anti-climactic endings and it will also give the developers more flexibility in designing their maps.

That’s the biggest advantage this offers. Freedom in map development. Maps can vary more in length and in defender/attacker advantage, can have more or fewer side-objectives. All because the soft limit accommodates for any variation it will cause.

(Kendle) #36

The other side of that coin is it let’s them get away with making bad maps. And if those maps are not played SW with overtime they’re just bad maps, period.

(tokamak) #37

Well that’s the thing, I think SW is forcing SD to make worse maps. Not only do they have to control the median time of completion, they will also have to control the standard deviation of the completion time. The only way to reduce the variation in the map length is to let all attack routes converge on the same thing. That’s the only way to control this stuff.

They had no such limits when making ET maps. That’s why all ET maps are way less linear.

But you’re correct. Maps build around the soft limit will be less fit for hard limits. That’s one more flaw I didn’t account for. The other way around however, hard-limit maps will work just as well as maps that have been made under more artistic freedom.

(montheponies) #38

There are two main problems with stopwatch in DB;

  1. The maps have multiple, serial, objectives. Going back to W:ET (and before that maps like Tram for RTCW) this suited Objective and Campaign mode where you played through the maps serially with no swapping over or time setting. It simply doesn’t suit SW or competition.

  2. The current spawnwave system is based upon symmetrical 20s spawns - combined with stupid spawn distances this is my number one complaint at the moment, because it turns every round into a meat grind and removes and uncertainty or tactics on when to push.

Everything that has been posted about how ‘old and primitive’ SW is comes from players who haven’t got the experience of how it actually can work, so resort to theorycrafting about how it definitely could never work ‘nowadays’ as if 10yrs ago our idea of having fun was so much more limited…

no doubt if i was to demonstrate chess to you, you would explain how it would need to looks something like this;

//youtu.be/nsaAkNXAzak

(tokamak) #39

But it was more limited. Gaming has developed since then. More is possible and we don’t have to stick to the crudest of rules any longer.

(PixelTwitch) #40

[QUOTE=montheponies;503259]so resort to theorycrafting about how it definitely could never work ‘nowadays’ as if 10yrs ago our idea of having fun was so much more limited…
[/QUOTE]

Actually I never said that things where limited…
The truth of the matter is DB is going to need Millions of players “now”. While the other games that used the system you defending were actually very small in comparison to today’s player bases for popular titles. I believe the games were niche even for their time. I honestly do not care what system is in the game… If I do not like it, I wont play it, problem solved lol.