Warlocks improvements: timed mode

[loyus]

Let's discuss the improvements Warlocks would benefit from and dream again

This post was originally an answer to the "Why everybody is retiring" thread(s):


There is no such thing as a friendly game in Warlocks. Duelling is the most competitive game mode, whether it'd be in Quake or here, you always need to be at your top against a quality opponent, no weakness allowed.

I retired for the same reasons. It took too much energy and time to focus. I noticed that it was always hard to start a new game.

This game lacks 2 things :
- A timed mode which should be the default official mode (like in chess).
- The ability to play casually on relaxing game modes.

When I was a competitive FPS player, there was a time for practicing and learning (work), a time for relaxing (fun), and a time for competing (goal).

Work : focus and determination to learn new skills and master every single part of a map, sometimes alone on a local server. Watching demos of other players and replicating. The boring part that is vital to keep elvoving.

Fun : the definition could be summed up as : enjoying your skills. Having fun on public servers, casually fragging around with no pressure or whatsoever. A relaxing way to keep your reflexes at the top. You can experiment with no fear of the consequences. You can go the toilet, answer the phone or drink coffee. In the fun part, we can throw some "competitive" games where there are no true stakes.

Competition : adrenaline, intensity, emotions, tactics... The best part sure, but also the most exhausting one. You need to be at your top, your concentration is at its max, you are at your limits. The most interesting part, but also the most exhausting one. True competition (games that matter) is actually the tiniest part in the career of a gamer, but it needs to be rare to be shiny.


In Warlocks, I see work, I see competition, but the casual/fun/relaxing part is missing imo.

- Melee games are the closest to it, and I don't find them very compelling.

- Very Friendly Games are close too, but they feel empty and meaningless, and you must rely on the grace of your opponent to not take it too seriously.

- Friendly games are all but friendly. You will register a win, loss or death, and your ELO will be updated.

- Ladder games : Should be the only competitive games, and they should be timed, just like in chess or everywhere else.

Warlocks should have a clock and managing your time should be a skill. You cannot understand any game if you cannot see the time spent by each player thinking about each move.

I probably have a chance to beat a Warlocks top player if I can spend 3 days thinking about each move. It's like Googling the answers during a quizz game. Or a tennis player taking a 3 days break between earch serve so he can practice. But I won't stand a chance against a much experimented player if I have to manage my time. The only way to reward all the work and experience acquired by a Warlocks player would be to allow him using his autopilot. It should actually be the default tournament mode, while the timeless mode should be "practice mode" only.

Then you would only consider pausing and burning your time for meditation during the critical turns. If you don't manage your time properly, you'll naturally become overwhelmed by a more experiencied player who can play better faster and better than you. It's part of the skill. We have this in Chess (even very fast games with the blitzkrig mode), and actually everywhere else. Your ability and talent are always evaluated with time constraints. It doesn't make sense that Warlocks escapes this.

In the current state of the game, a relatively inexperienced but very focused player can beat a better player quite easily, assuming he will have the ability to concentrate for a lot more time. The famous "autopilot" mode we talk about is actually a real skill, and probably the most interesting skill that we develop. It is a shame that we are unable to use it.

I'm not talking about a true real time game. The implementation of a time management system wouldn't be that hard : as soon as you discover the current turn, your clock starts ticking. In essence, it would necessitate a single additionnal step : when your opponent has played, you would have to confirm by clicking a "Display the next turn" button (example), starting your clock again.

I think it would add one of the critical dimension that is lacking to the game. I'll talk about the "casual and fun" part later in this thread, this post is already long enough ;D

[ellipsis]

You make some really good points, Loyus, and I agree that both of these things would be good features to have in Warlocks. In fact, when I was looking into implementing a Warlocks clone, I was planning to have timed moves. That said, I'm not sure that it's strictly better, or more strategically pure, to have timed moves.

I think the primary reason why chess tournaments involve timed moves is to keep the games going so that they get done in a reasonable amount of time. Certainly, it also changes the strategic dynamics, as you have to budget the time you spend thinking about moves, but it's not clear this leads to "better" games or that having a large amount of time to spend considering a move constitutes an unfair advantage like googling answers in a quiz game would.

Technically, there is a time limit (3 days), but the truth is that most of the time there's a maximal amount of time that's actually useful for planning a move, maybe on the order of one or two hours in a tight, high-level game, and the 3 days allotted for a player to make their move gives them time to find a 2-hour window in which to think out their move, and for most moves 2 hours isn't even necessary. In the really competitive, really high-level games, I think it's fair to assume that BOTH players spend that much time thinking about their important choices, and the fact that one player might find more time to think about it than another doesn't significantly impact play. Meanwhile, if an experienced player is choosing to make less-intensely-considered plays against a less-experienced player, this is just one manifestation of potentially underestimating the less-experienced player, which will invariably happen.

The amount of advanced game theory that gets done on these boards might, indeed, give the impression that there is an obvious "best" move to be found in each situation by just spending hours plotting out the various possible series of moves you might both take next. This AI-like approach to the game, however, runs contrary to my own experience, where strong intuitions about what kind of moves will prove advantageous and what moves your opponent is likely to make guide gameplay. Of couse, in intense matches you DO spend a lot of time considering the various things your opponent might do, but at the end of that you still have to make a single discrete choice about which of these things you think actually WILL happen and how much you want to bring about or avoid the various outcomes, and it is that choice that distinguishes a veteran player from a novice player, not the time spent figuring out what the possibility space looks like. Also, I worry a little that "automatic" play would encourage even more people to parachain, since it significantly cuts down on the amount of time you need to spend planning moves to know that, if it's feasible, you will always go for paralysis.

That all said, I would be interested in playing a version of the game with stricter time limits. In fact, I think it might tie into the casual play you're looking for more than you think. Having a short time limit (say, one or two minutes) drastically changes the dynamic of the game, making it one where you sit down with an opponent and play out the game in one sitting. I think this would actually serve to lift some of the pressure from friendly games, since losing no longer entails the loss of, say, two weeks of strategic planning, but only of a half-hour. If you combined this with a decent AI, you would create a much more relaxed space for messing around with weaves and beating up on an opponent that's only moderately challenging when you feel like having some fun.

[Dubber]

Or you could just consciously agree that each play will make his/her move within 30 seconds of first looking at the game at hand.

I got to 1900+ by playing a lot of vf against Taliesin (who was brutally frank about my (arguably poor, against him) choices) and then "just playing fast" against everyone else (and winning more than losing).

If you're putting more than about 30 seconds of active deliberations in per turn, ur doin it rong imho.

Of course, now that I'm actively choosing what I think are, at most, second-best moves the game play is more challenging, but my internally imposed 30 second *maximum* rule still stands.

[ellipsis]

Well, I have to confess, 30 seconds seems perhaps a little short. I can't count the number of times I made a gut-based decision in 30-90 seconds in this game and then moments before clicking "submit" realized exactly how my opponent would take advantage of that move to murder me. On the other hand, I've had situation where I've made a clear decision about what I wanted to do in about 30 seconds, then spent two hours consider all possible variations anyway, and ultimately went with that initial 30-second plan.

[ourjake]

most of my moves are made in under a minute at most. with coin-flips or many-branch turns taking between 2-5 minutes. but i play at work, so i don't have time to analyze every move for a long time. occasionally there are moments where i take it home and sit and stare at a turn for a while before doing anything, but i think that the extra time spent there has a lot to do with my mind wandering also .

unfortunately after i make a quick move i only realize it's dumb AFTER i submit

[saypin]

Jul 21, 2011 0:40:48 GMT -5 ourjake said:

unfortunately after i make a quick move i only realize it's dumb AFTER i submit

So do I