Loading...
  OR  Zero-K Name:    Password:   

No game changes prior to tornaments

29 posts, 771 views
Post comment
Filter:    Player:  
Page of 2 (29 records)
sort

3 years ago
A 3 to 4 week adjustment time for all game changes prior to all tournaments or major events to allow players to learn new play functions . No changes closer to events.
+2 / -0
i never realized the pattern, but rincewind has good observation it seems.
+0 / -0
3 years ago
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
+0 / -0

3 years ago
If tournaments were being played for serious stakes I would agree that you have a point, but since they aren't I think you are getting worked up over something that isn't important.

This probably isn't even the biggest reason why ZK tournaments do not perfectly preserve competitive fairness. Which is fine, since that isn't their main objective. The main objective is for people to have fun, and playing a tournament with a stale metagame is often not much fun.

In any event I do not think this patch has such a significant impact on how the game is played that somebody who did wish to take the tournament more seriously could not wrap their head around the changes in a week.
+7 / -0
The tournament after the superfluid update was wild and no one knew what to do or expect. It was CArankPetTurtle's cloakbot play that came out on top.

If only people knew just what a MONSTER ripper was on that day.
+2 / -0

3 years ago
Tournament after changes is a decent way to rapidly get feedback about the changes, too.
+3 / -0

3 years ago
tournaments are AUrankAdminGoogleFrog 's personal highly professional beta tests, didn't you know?
+8 / -0
USrankrincewind I agree with the sentiment and try to avoid changes within a week of a tournament. I just have to balance this sentiment with the pace at which stables are made, as well as my desire to not play outdated version of Zero-K.

We also have to factor in the seriousness of the tournament. Was anyone practising Kodachi for the tournament and were eager to show off their skill? Perhaps there were one or two people, and it does suck for them, but I feel like the majority of players were more interested in just playing some games in a tournament structure.

In this case I felt like it was a decent amount of time since the last stable, and there was a good volume of changes and testing. I started the process of pushing the stable out the door before hearing about the tournament and decided that if I waited for a week it might be delayed for more than a week. So I tried to get it out as close to a week beforehand as possible.

DErankAdminmojjj's joke has a sliver of truth, in that detailed QA is boring so part of the cost of ZK is that it needs community testing. Luckily this time I managed to get some games on a test host.
+7 / -0
3 years ago
Feel free to reach out to me in the future for testing purposes again, I'm happy to help with that sort of thing if I'm available.
+0 / -0

3 years ago
"If tournaments were being played for serious stakes I would agree that you have a point, but since they aren't I think you are getting worked up over something that isn't important."

it is a bit irritating to me that you think just because there are no serious STAKES, noone would take it serious at all.

plus idk when the last tournament i participated was, but i took it serious because i wanted to push myself since i had nothing else to do. And i relied pretty heavy on practise because i think i am a big lack of "talent".
-> ZK for me was worth putting 4 years of my lifetime into, but i am not willing or able to continue this for every new change. I also do not think your changes are miniscule and have relativly little impact on the meta. at least on the upper spectrum of playing-skill, the meta changes drastically. who was playing kodachi in 1v1 2 or 3 years ago?

i know that i am unimportant, but yes, people like me seem to exist.
+2 / -0
I've paid out monetary prizes for a good number of tournaments, so I think that the stakes are serious enough to warrant this kind of debate.
I think that treating tournament organisation seriously is a good thing for the long term, and we should look to set up a recommended framework for tournaments to follow.
I have a few ideas, please remind me to put my ideas into words and if you see me in the lobpot kick me until I have done so lol!




So far I'm considering the following headings to build a set of guidelines around
Hover over the colors for more info

Tournament format
Tournament rules
Player rules
Funding Policy
Prize policy
+6 / -0

3 years ago
i have said it a few times already, but you need to see that you are not just managing your game but also a community that is so small that individuals do matter way more than in almost every other game.

a comment like "i think you are getting worked up about something that isn`t important" is not necessarily useful. it might not seem important to you, but if it is, just in theory, important to many people playing this game, it is de facto important for the game itself. ZK at its current state needs both the devs and the players that are here right now.
AKA: if involvement with ZK is unactractive from a social point of view, it will hurt the game as much as it being a bad or stale game itself.
+4 / -0
3 years ago
Ideally major patches would come out farther away from tournaments, but not pushing out a new patch that's in the works before the tournament is announced because someone announces a tournament at an awkward timing feels bad too. I think 5 days to get used to "Kodachi no longer breaks the game and is optimal in most maps" and archer/scallop changes is probably mostly good enough in Zero-K. It's not like in Dota where literally everything changes patch to patch.

Specifically for this patch I think it's worth releasing it even if the timing is awkward spefically for Kodachi nerfs because tank mirror for every match in the tournament would have been very boring.
+4 / -0


3 years ago
DErankkatastrophe if I recall your stance correctly, then your central issue is with Zero-K changing at all. In that case the topic of changes before a tournament is related but mostly a proxy argument.

To briefly reiterate the situation with the tournament.
  • I decided it was time to put the required work into factory plates, to fix Kodachi, and act on some dense teamgame feedback.
  • Tournament is announced.
  • The people who were both in the tournament and in the "Nerf Kodachi" thread seemed to be quite in favour of nerfing Kodachi, so I decided to finish up the stable.
  • I released the stable. Five days before the tournament is not great but it is ok given the circumstances.

Note the tradeoffs that you may not be seeing:
  • If I couldn't release the stable when it was done, I may not have finished working on it before the tournament at all.
  • I'm a lot less likely to play a tournament with a stable over a month old that contains issues that were fixed more recently.
  • Perhaps I'll be busy after the tournament and the stable won't have time to come out.

quote:
A 3 to 4 week adjustment time for all game changes prior to all tournaments or major events to allow players to learn new play functions .

quote:
i never realized the pattern, but rincewind has good observation it seems.

DErankkatastrophe you're in danger of being a broken record, piping up to boost anything related to the opinion I already know you hold. I think I know your view (and empathise having played DOTA 2, mostly years ago) but I think for the playerbase as a whole it is healthy if Zero-K doesn't stay completely static. I don't recall you going into much more detail than expressing that change is bad because it invalidates your skills. Being a game that the old vets can come back to needing to adjust how they play has merit, but it doesn't keep the majority of people as engaged. A balance can be struck between keeping old skills applicable and tweaking active player's toys.

GBrank[GBC]HarveyN I don't have the time to write more at the moment, but basically regulations take effort and impose effort on others. If you want to be a significant part of organising a tournament then you could devise and enforce some policies related to it. Having some reasonable policies sounds find as long as you state them well in advance and talk to the relevant people. If you try to impose policies externally they are unlikely to take effect.
+4 / -0
AUrankAdminGoogleFrog that is partially right, partially not.
it seems i am just unable to formulate my points in an understandable way. me being a broken record is a result of never getting my points down, wich is probably the result of my temper as well. (+writing and writing and getting misunderstood all the time is frustrating for me as well, so i tried to just stay away from this stuff for some time)

So, I will try again! I BEG YOU to read this carefully and take my comments literal, I spend 2 hours on this comment and hope that this represents my opinion in an understandable way:

right:
patches tend to invalidate my practise. am i important? no. i don`t have the money and time to make zk my life over years anyway.

wrong:
the game needs to be completely static. that is not my real opinion. and it never has been. i have been accused of this so many times that it began to hurt me personally because i feel people are not listening to me and just write my concerns off by using this simple statement "oh you simply don`t like change". have i ever said this anywhere?
what i think is that there should be an idea what the game should be aiming for in the long term.
there were many things i really liked, aka artillery-movement-nerfs, bertha nerf. racketeers were a pain to get right, but i think they are at a really good spot atm. Superfluid changed fundamental aspects of the game like mex-cost and retreat-advantage for SOME raiders, if i am correct.
This had two problems:
first, it was really hard to exactly evaluate things because it is hard to judge what exact changes were having what effect.
second: at this time, it seemed to me that there were many other things (like pork-arty in teams, spider-fac being quite useless, factory-rps in general) that seemed way more urgent than changes to raiders and mexes. plus i do not think that health- and dps-changes for raiders really did what they were supposed to be. i think raising there LoS was actually what gave you more reaction-time and aquired the desired effect of making the game less punishing.
a more general thing:
your way of making thigs op first to get feedback, than tone them down has a good logic in it and i understand that the community is too small to get good expierience otherwise. the downside of this is that i feel like we are playing wilfully unbalanced game-versions FOR 4 YEARS now, wich at some point became annoying to me. (Bolas-introduction being the example that jumps into my mind first.) so, after those patches, everyone plays the new op-thing, wich is as boring as playing the exact same thing for years and doesn`t feel satisfying in any way.



right:
i would prefer longer times between stables and tournaments. counterplay might take a while to be discovered. running tournaments so close to patches to get feedback might result in wrong feedback.

wrong:
i am completely against making tourneys close to patches. but if i recall, the last few tourneys ALL were direcly after patches? or is my memory tricking me?
also, but this is an absolutely minor point: you and AUrankAdminAquanim are basically the two people that do the majority of work for zk, right? So it shouldn`t be too hard for you two to coordinate your actions.



AUrankAdminAquanim
just to clarify what i meant with my last two posts above:
I think i know you well enough to say that i am 100% sure that this is neither your intention nor your character, but the comment towards USrankrincewind sounded pretty belittling, given that what he asked for was nothing that would require real efford.
i admit that i am not involved in the interpersonal realtions between the dev-team, but from outside it looks there is something going wrong. details are not for this thread, but i am actually concerned that you run out of devs over time and hurt your project via this.
So, what i said about individuals counting more here is really not about me, but about the general interpersonal climate of this community. we need everyone (that isn`t a total dickhead).
+4 / -0
oh and also:

AUrankAdminGoogleFrog
"I'm a lot less likely to play a tournament with a stable over a month old that contains issues that were fixed more recently."

do you actually enjoy simply PLAYING your game or is it pure work for you? I do not know you very well, but from my own projects i learned that one can get pretty ignorant of the fact that there is a huge gap between ones own perception of a project and the perception others have of it.

I do not intend to sound angry or anything. if i do so, i have failed again. i genuinely care for zk and thing you have done amazing work overall. I DO REALLY think you are a genius in game-design. no exaggeration. that just doesn`t mean i automatically agree on all things you do necessarily :) i am sorry if i am just annoying with my repetitive comments.

peace.
+1 / -0
quote:
first, it was really hard to exactly evaluate things because it is hard to judge what exact changes were having what effect.


DErankkatastrophe - The answer to this is so straightforward. Dive in and figure it out. Everyone else shares the same task which is inherent in change. It took a long while and a lot of feedback to adjust to and get slight re-balances done, but it did keep things fresh, surprising and interesting. The mad cycle from rover OP -> hover OP -> GUNSHIP OP -> shield OP was nothing short of assumption invalidating in the most refreshing sense. AUrankAdminGoogleFrog is spot on with his attitude towards keeping it interesting for the community.
+2 / -0
GBrankDregs

yeah, but then i can only say that overall i like it or not. really detailed feedback is a lot harder to give.

+ i prefer (PREFER) getting the variation from my opponents, not the game.

can`t write more atm, but you actually brought me to something i need to formulate precisely later.
preview to think about: is it the game itself that gets stale for you or is it playing the same game against
the same 4 or 5 people on the same 8 maps all the time?
+0 / -0

3 years ago
Is it any solace if it's 1000 different people but they all spam Kodachi?
+3 / -0

3 years ago
quote:
is it the game itself that gets stale for you or is it playing the same game against
the same 4 or 5 people on the same 8 maps all the time?


quote:
Is it any solace if it's 1000 different people but they all spam Kodachi?


These two sentences both resonate entirely with my perspective on ZK's state of balance. Many of the times I've attempted to call in the AUrankAdminGoogleFrog to change something were because I felt that a particular strategy or unit was becoming mandatory or unbeatable, staling the game. Said it before and will say it again: I want to push for a state of balance that maximizes the amount of viable options available across as many situations as possible. As an example, although Shifting Sands didn't become popular, I still feel that it's a map which no particular factory can claim to dominate. Further refinement would result in a map with real replay value.

The reason I take the above perspective is because when lots of options and strategies are viable, the more freedom players have to play to their strengths and compete by excelling in those niches. Commander uniqueness, factory balance, morphable structures, more generic defense turrets and the newly added construction plates all come into this picture.
+2 / -0
Page of 2 (29 records)