Alpha Tournament

[GoHsty]

Hey guys,

What do you think about doing something like a first alpha tournament? Probably we could find someone who does some commentarys to it and uploads them on youtube and stuff?

Someone's interested?

[RoekeloosNL]

That could be fun if its done right, And its better if you do it live via Twitch. But first the preformance need to get a little bit better i think.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I Agree with RoekeloosNL. The performance do the game not full attractive yet.

[GoHsty]

I think one of the most important things that have to be changed is the path detection of units, especially if you want to move a larger group of units and they have to pass some obstacles (e.g stones)

[auron2401]

AKA pathfinding.

it's one of the bigger source of performance problems too, so it's being worked on for a17 ( i think )

[Enrique]

Back on topic, I think some kind of tournament close to each alpha release could be worth doing because it will help testing thoroughly the game/new features and find bugs. It may not be very attractive for some people to watch the matches yet for the reasons mentioned above, but surely will help to have cleaner alpha releases (thinking on the syntagma/testudo exploit for example). The tournament of course should be played on SVN version and participants should be willing to report the problems encountered as well as exploits or big unbalances that breaks gameplay. However, organizing the tournaments is a time consuming task that ideally would be done by the community instead of the devs. (to not slow down developement, since free time is even more valuable close to alpha release)

[Lion.Kanzen]

Enrique have right we can see the match as observers or testing before releases.

But how many player and when?

Edited June 18, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen

[agentx]

Great idea! That's fighting bugs literally. What about day one of feature freeze?

[iNcog]

No need to tourney to find bugs, just play the ladder. There are lots of good players out there, try to beat them and you'll find potential imbalance and stuff.

As of right now the game is borderline unplayable in competitive settings.

[auron2401]

On the flip side, however... If we could iron out all the BIG (and i mean big) Problems, running tournaments To help grind out balance problems would be a fantastic idea.

[iNcog]

First thing that needs to be reworked is skirmcav.

Second thing that needs to be reworked are buildings, which are boringly too strong.

It's impossible to get a fun game going these days because you either get skirmcav rushed (which is unethical) or you get a game-winning advantage but can't close out the game because you have to go all the way up to siege to end the game, which is incredibly boring. I straight up leave in both situations, because it's just not fun.

I tend to forget that you're supposed to resign too, which is somewhat annoying; ;/

Edited June 19, 2014 by iNcog

[Lion.Kanzen]

First thing that needs to be reworked is skirmcav.

Second thing that needs to be reworked are buildings, which are boringly too strong.

It's impossible to get a fun game going these days because you either get skirmcav rushed (which is unethical) or you get a game-winning advantage but can't close out the game because you have to go all the way up to siege to end the game, which is incredibly boring. I straight up leave in both situations, because it's just not fun.

I tend to forget that you're supposed to resign too, which is somewhat annoying; ;/

Stay on topic.

[thamlett]

@Lion

Maybe another CoM project? If we iron out the details, maybe it can go along with the A17 release.

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Lion

Maybe another CoM project? If we iron out the details, maybe it can go along with the A17 release.

Uh? what are you talking about?

[iNcog]

Stay on topic.

That is the topic though; a tournament would be meaningless right now because people would just skirmcav rush and wouldn't bother looking into the rest of the game. Tournaments are all about competition and right now the game can't really be played competitively, due to performance issues and design issues.

I still love the game though. ^^

[Enrique]

That is the topic though; a tournament would be meaningless right now because people would just skirmcav rush and wouldn't bother looking into the rest of the game. Tournaments are all about competition and right now the game can't really be played competitively, due to performance issues and design issues.

I still love the game though. ^^

Hey, no one is going to gain anything besides recognition and having fun in the tournaments (and bug reports for the devs which is key here) so meaningless would be for those who want to play in such competitive level, but my suggestion pursued the goal to motivate people to test out the SVN branch so players help the dev team to find critical bugs/exploits just before the release so the alpha version is cleaner and more fun.

And keep in mind, despite there's being work done on the balancing side and there will be changes on the gameplay in the near future, it will not be final. There are still quite some key features to be added to the game (trampling, formation bonuses, charging, capturing, etc) that will change the gameplay again and thus new rebalance will be required. If people is working on rebalancing in alpha stage now is for the community who likes the game to keep having fun playing it even at this stage.

[zzippy]

First thing that needs to be reworked is skirmcav.

If I understood correctly, the thread is about running a bughunting tournament in svn, where skirm cav already are nerfed (20 attack/40 range instead of 25/44 in a16). So this rework/rebalancing already is going on, unfortunately there is atm nearly nobody playing/testing svn, most of the time I am idling alone in svn lobby.

Imho the game urgently needs some rebalancing, to mention here is scythe's rebalance branch, which leads to the right direction. Please have a look at it.

New civs, historically correct stuff for seleucids, eg aso, are nice, but not what the game atm needs. That would be:

A design comittee which collects, publishes, discusses and finally solves the design flaws in gameplay, maybe bundled in 1 thread to discuss with the community.

I do not get why gameplay decisions are made in the dark, eg that blacksmith for certain civs in phase1, a feature that wasn't communicated nor discussed anywhere in the public, a complete surprise.

Edited June 20, 2014 by zzippy

[iNcog]

I responded to actual skirmcav "nerf" in the skirm cav thread so as to not go off topic.

Either way the problem with SVN is that, as you say, no one plays it. Scythe's rebalance branch is a step in the right direction however it has two inherent flaws:

1. It takes 10 minutes of work to set up svn + balance branch, which is more than enough to turn off most potential play testers. Remember that players are lazy by nature, myself included, so the more work it takes to get a balance branch up and working for play-testing, the less actual play testers you're going to get.

2. With balance branch, SVN and A16, you get three different versions of the same game. most people play A16 because that is by far the easiest version to set up. SVN has mostly mods and zzippy, nothing more. I always fire up SVN before going to A16 and I never seen anyone on SVN. Balance branch would be a third version of the game, which dilutes the player base even more.

Why not balance the game in SVN directly?

[zzippy]

Why not balance the game in SVN directly?

Balance branch would be a third version of the game, which dilutes the player base even more.

As mentioned, game is already slightly rebalanced in SVN. Scythe's balance branch is a bit more radical, guess it does not fit the the way of "Design Committee" ?

Do not see the point in diluting player base: just get a 2nd or 3rd account and run the 2,3 lobbies simultanously.

[Radagast.]

If I were to play 0AD, then only SVN the version. (when I looked into the svn-lobby there were 10 people around or even more, I was quite surprised)

In general I see the releases as an unimportant side-action without real significance for the game. Compiling is too easy on Linux (download my shell script for compiling with 1 single command). Wildfire should get paid for packaging releases in my opinion. That 'd help development + be legal. (There is no need for more 0AD players as Philip once said as it would only make his feedback database explode. )

In the current stage of course. Later it may change and of course the releases are a catalysator too. So don't take me too serious, I love those releases.

[auron2401]

@Lion

Maybe another CoM project? If we iron out the details, maybe it can go along with the A17 release.

That's a good point.

Another game, Natural selection 2, has a "Competitive mod" For it's Tiny-as-heck Competitive scene. Maybe something similar here?

We could hold tournaments to make the finer adjustments towards the balance mod.

Edited June 20, 2014 by auron2401

[GoHsty]

@Lion

Maybe another CoM project? If we iron out the details, maybe it can go along with the A17 release.

What exactly is a CoM project?

[niektb]

That is a project for the Council of Modders (which is a modding team around here)

Edited June 20, 2014 by niektb

[Radagast.]

Nothing important, just a semiofficial project that modders tackle if it's not adapted by the main team.

Just like 0AD extended which is 0AD +-2000 years instead of 0AD +-500 years (Iron Age) as it is currently.

The council has essentially

2 game projects: 1 Historical project (0AD extended) + 1 secret project.

2 misc projects: Creating Addons for 0AD Iron Age (Han China/Rise of The East + Lusitanians) + Organizing Modders/Contests.

At least that's my picture of the situation. Others' may differ.

[GoHsty]

Uhm, even if this might be off-topic and sound a bit rude, but why are you not helping to develop the "real" game instead of doing some mods, when the game still is in alpha phase?