[Feedback] Oozeball Balance Changes

And
Concrete Suggestion #2: I think this suggestion is more complex, but it is potentially more applicable to other leagues.

Basic Description: On Oozeball start players with a 5 minute timer. Each time priority passes to you (if you do a quick step, priority didn't pass), you have a free 10 seconds during which time doesn't count down. After that, it comes out of your timer. If your timer is empty, you auto-pass. After either X rounds or X total time in game(depending on what seems to work best), game ends, high score wins.

Estimated Development Complexity: This is significantly more complex. How does passing during a move/select facing work? (Presumably it leaves you in the same place, without facing change). How does passing during discard phase work? (Discard oldest card?)

Reasoning:
This is more like basketball with a shot clock. You both play out of the same total pool of time, but you can't just sit there with the ball when you're ahead - you must take actions. Your 5 minute pool is kind of like your "timeout" pool. Running out of time is not an auto-lose.
10 seconds is enough time if you already have a plan and just want to execute it. For those complaining about actions taking 2-3 seconds for lag, there's still a reasonable buffer of 7-8 seconds afterwards, and a "timeout" pool after that.
Interesting games don't time out early, but someone who is deliberately stalling will probably run out of time quickly.

 

It is overly complicated and hard to explain to players why their time goes up.

Again, fairly complicated. If the timer is empty it auto passes -- wouldn't that mean you automatically lose because the other player could just take nearly unlimited turns as long as they still have time left? If they still get their "10 free seconds" then the game could last forever in theory and it would be impossible to block out games. Maybe if there 3 times... one for "each turn" one for "auto pass" and one for "game ends" -- but that's even more complicated, hard to explain, and doesn't really solve the problem.

All of these also require development time that doesn't really help improve the game outside of the single league.

 

Without an auto lose condition games could go on forever. Maybe the 10 seconds without it counting down your time might help those with latency issues from playing as fast since there's no benefit to play faster than under 10 seconds. Even then people would still complain about low time overall.

If you can score 1 point more than your opponent and then just play defensively to win by timing out that is a lot more frustrating than simply losing do to not playing fast enough.

 

While I agree suggestion #2 is somewhat complicated, I really don't think "gain 1 minute per round" is too complicated for someone who deals with all the card interactions in Card Hunter.

Both of my suggestions mentioned a forced end of game so they cannot go on forever.

Suggestion 1 basic suggested capping your personal timer at 20 minutes. If it expired, that's it, you lose. Having more points than your opponent doesn't matter.

The "play defensively" problem potentially applies to:
1) Suggestion 1 variant suggested capping it at X rounds independent of time. Game awarded to person with more points. It is possible that this could happen. This can happen in actual sporting events too and seems to be ok. You can only play so defensively - your opponent might find a way to score and now you're in trouble.
2) Suggestion 2 (both options) award the game to the person with the most points at the end. This is again similar to a basketball shot clock though. You will be giving your opponent chances to score.

Also - playing defensively is already very rewarded. It takes much less time to defend than attack - so if you can score the first point quickly enough, you can just keep your opponent off the point - he'll spend more time trying to get on it than it will take you to defend it (since he has to think harder about it) and you'll win. These suggestions may or may not have the problem of playing defensively, but I think they have a SMALLER problem with it than the current game.

 

If the time caps at 20 minutes and if it expires you lose, that is barely any different from just having the basic timer at 20. You're implementing a lot of changes and work for a very minor change.

Yes, playing defensively is already very rewarding -- that's why I think the problem is more related to being able to defend the VP spot with your slimes than with anything else.

Any game that let's you score a single point and then just delay to win is frustrating.

A large vocal minority are complaining about the time. I wonder what the actual time out number is... is it worse than Geomancy or any of the others?

 

I don't think I've had a game go to 10 rounds yet. I had one go to about 9 and then I ran out of time. This would give me extra time.
On shorter games, where one of us played too slowly, we wouldn't have that much time and the game would end earlier (since a lot of people don't like 20 minutes)

Also - this isn't really "a lot of changes". Again, it is certainly possible that this is difficult to implement for one reason or another (I've certainly written code myself where a later feature request that sounds simple turns out to be hard) But it uses existing UI elements, and leagues already have an "explanation of the rules" page to explain anything like a timer. My expectation would be that this is a fairly simple change to make, and that the effect would be larger than you think.

 

What UI elements exist to show added time on the clock? People rarely read the League rules as it stands (how many people ask explanations for tiebreakers?)... if people start seeing time jump up seemingly at random they'd be very confused.

The simple fact is that it brings little gain with a decent amount of development time. It isn't an elegant solution to a problem if it can't be easily explained through UI.

 

No UI shows up to show time is added, true - but the clock shows time remaining. A pop-up from Gary isn't ideal because it would take time to click it away (and you can't let people stall on it), but a message in the battle log and a message at the top of the screen "round end" "player passed" "round begin - 1 minute added" might suffice.

I do agree that I'd like to see statistics of timeout. Timeouts have affected me, both negatively and positively, but never satisfactorily on Oozeball, but maybe I'm in a minority.
I'd like to know what % of games run out the clock vs. end other ways, and of that %, which % had the winner (on points) lose, the loser (on points) lose, or if it was a tie(on points).

 

I support the idea for a change to 20 min each player. Yesterday I was playing a great match that was even in 2 stars and my opponent ran out of time (I think I was on 1-2 minutes) and kind of ruined the game, even though we weren't playing slow. I would understand that running out of time could happen if one player plays incredibly slow or before, when we were not used to the cards in this league, but as I said before, this was not the case, we were both playing fast, and it happened anyway. The fact that you can't finish an even game like this one should be enough to make the devs change the time to 20 minutes. The answer can't be "just play faster". I don't like, and I think most of the players will agree with this, neither to win or lose because of the time. If the time is supposed to be a factor in this league, they should say it in the league description.

 

Here is another story which is against 20 minutes but maybe for further reduction of vp.
A few days ago i had time so i joined Ooozeball and i scored against a player 2 points in the first 4 minutes. His ball was pushed far away in my half of the playfield, so he started to stall. So far so good.
I continued my effords to score my last point but he did a good job defending the center and he did nothing else. With 4 minutes left for me and 5 minutes for him, i saw no way to score a point in the remaining time. So i joined him in playing for time. He resigned after he was under 1 min and i had almost 2 min left. With a timer of 20 minutes this would have been more horrible.

When someone scores 2 the only thing left is to play for time. Of course it happens sometimes that you can still win after your opponent leads with 2 points but the waste of time is simply annoying.
I usually resign after my opponents scores 2 points or sometimes even in the first round if he draws incredibly good and i draw a horrible combination of cards. So should everyone.

 

So, everyone should resign after being 2 stars down and that's ok for you? I understand what you said about stalling, but maybe we should be asking for other measures to prevent that, some of them have been mentioned in this thread, like making the vp lava terrain. That and changing the clock to 20 min each is a reasonable request imo.
By the way, also yesterday, I was losing 0-2 one match and I won it 3-2, so it's not impossible to make a comeback. Therefore, I woudn't suggest throwing a match just because you're 0-2.

 

I have also won 3-2 after being down 0-2.

 

I am not against stalling. What i am against is the possibility to waste 40 minutes on one game. It is already annoying to play against slow players with the 15 minute time limit.
If you have all the time in the world to play a game, then i am happy for you. But not all people have that luxury.