time limit misery

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UngeheuerLich
Posts: 319
Joined: February 22nd, 2006, 1:10 pm

Post by UngeheuerLich »

sorry i didn´t read it welle enough, but after you used numbers (2v2 tuned into 2v1) it was clear.

So here is the solution: give a flat time bonus for each owned village, not only the capture, but at the end of each turn as long as it is flagged

the total village number can´t be changed, but the number of villages you have is a good indicator for your army size!


So you should have a slider where you can give a flat bonus (+1 to +5 maybe) for each village you have at the end of your turn...
ozymandias
Posts: 169
Joined: June 9th, 2005, 12:03 am
Location: Kiel, Germany

Post by ozymandias »

I've had a similar experience - 2v2 with other players rather inexperienced, my partner dropping out early, but not after messing up ;) - with the same problem, but I think a more elegant solution would be to apply the timer rules for teams, if it's a 2v2, since the problem is that one side profits doubly from the flat time allocations.

The village time bonus would work too, but it's rather nice to have a time bonus that rewards concentrated play instead of massed armies.
taro
Inactive Developer
Posts: 83
Joined: February 4th, 2007, 9:10 pm

Post by taro »

The timer has two parts, a fixed time per turn to think about your strategy and to move units and a bonus time granted for each action.
telly wrote:The action bonus is the worst idea ever. You can't just recruit extra units or take villages whenever you want extra seconds or just attack randomly either for that matter.
I would like to take villages when ever I want :). The action bonus gives you some additional seconds to plan an attack, which is a good thing. And it's a kind of a bonus system which honors players which are "doing" something (i.e. attack) and not only sit and wait.
telly wrote:The action bonus makes things worse even, as they can just spam level 0 units or whatever and bank even more time each turn.
Which costs them money for recruiting (probably) useless units ..
Imp wrote:Perhaps the extra time should also be scaled based on the unit's cost.
The problem was about the time needed to move units. Moving an expensive unit costs about the same time as moving a cheap unit. To think about your strategy that's what the per turn time bonus is for.
UngeheuerLich wrote:So here is the solution: give a flat time bonus for each owned village, not only the capture, but at the end of each turn as long as it is flagged
To give the player which already has an advantage even more advantages? Not a good idea.
ozymandias wrote:but I think a more elegant solution would be to apply the timer rules for teams, if it's a 2v2, since the problem is that one side profits doubly from the flat time allocations.
But usually 2 players need more (combined) time as a single player as they need to discuss the strategy.

For the 2vs1 situation: It's a team game, it originally was 2vs2, you get punished for the loss of your teammate. You cannot take over his gold, so you cannot take his time .. ;)

Giving one extra bonus second for each unit which has moved (the time you really need to move the unit) may be an option, but for me it's not worth the effort.
telly
Posts: 260
Joined: January 12th, 2004, 5:07 am

Post by telly »

I would like to take villages when ever I want Smile. The action bonus gives you some additional seconds to plan an attack, which is a good thing. And it's a kind of a bonus system which honors players which are "doing" something (i.e. attack) and not only sit and wait.
You only get the action bonus for capturing villages when you capture villages. Which doesn't happen very often beyond the first couple of turns.
It's similar with the bonus for attacking. The wesnoth day and night cycle often means you can only attack effectively half the day. Should players be punished for not fighting undead at night?
UngeheuerLich
Posts: 319
Joined: February 22nd, 2006, 1:10 pm

Post by UngeheuerLich »

@ taro

I don´t think giving a time bonus for each owned village is bad:

the timelimit is mainly to stop people think too long about their moves. Its not like giving an unfair advantage, you earned it soemhow.

If you have more units, you need more time, but giving a time bonus for units seems wrong, because different factions have different unit counts. The only fair option seems to be giving a scalable bonus for the villages you own. More valuable units in fact need more time to move, because if you lose a walking corpse it doesn´t matter a lot, if you lose a firedrake, it hurts a lot.

Also you say in a team game if one of your temmates is killed, you don´t get his time, so i say, if you lose half of your villages, you should also have less time... you don´t need most of it.

And the last is: if there is a slider which you can set from 0 to 10, then you can put it on 0 and i would maybe put it on 3 or 4 and decrease the flat bonus per round a bit.
CIB
Code Contributor
Posts: 625
Joined: November 24th, 2006, 11:26 pm

Post by CIB »

I never have problems with the timer in "normal" scenarios... Actually I only have problems in A New Land, because planting crops doesn't give you time =)
ozymandias
Posts: 169
Joined: June 9th, 2005, 12:03 am
Location: Kiel, Germany

Post by ozymandias »

But usually 2 players need more (combined) time as a single player as they need to discuss the strategy.

For the 2vs1 situation: It's a team game, it originally was 2vs2, you get punished for the loss of your teammate. You cannot take over his gold, so you cannot take his time .. Wink
But you could also say that not being able to use his gold is punishment enough... also, the amount of gold each team gets is mostly determined by the number of villages they hold - starting gold is a one-time thing and base income is very minor on standard settings.

Not so with time, the way it is at the moment. The 2-player team gets nearly double the time the single player has, even if the single player holds the same number of villages with the same number of units. That's a very different situation from timer-less play.

As to the 2-player team discussing strategy: I usually only type messages after/before having done my turn, or keep them very terse. In my experience, there's not all that much discussion going on, and with standard timer settings, you can't afford to take the time during your turn.
UngeheuerLich
Posts: 319
Joined: February 22nd, 2006, 1:10 pm

Post by UngeheuerLich »

ozymandias wrote:

As to the 2-player team discussing strategy: I usually only type messages after/before having done my turn, or keep them very terse. In my experience, there's not all that much discussion going on, and with standard timer settings, you can't afford to take the time during your turn.
...and you shouldn´t!

there IS enough time to discuss strategy at the beginning and when it is opponents turn. Discussing strategy while its your turn slows down the game for all. THIS is exactly one of the reasons for having a time limit in team play.

So you are doing it right ozymandias!
chameleon_effect
Posts: 35
Joined: August 25th, 2006, 6:52 pm

league of speed

Post by chameleon_effect »

I'm glad this is being discussed. I don't see too many players playing lightning games, though. I'd like to find some players who enjoy that style of play. My preferred settings are: 60 seconds initial time increment, +8 seconds per action, +10 seconds per round. Perhaps we could get a little league of blitz players, maybe even have a tournament with these or similar settings.
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