Gameplay Fix: Remove back-and-forth

[Rhox]

Rhox profile:

2. Often gets petulant after losing, blames luck, has a hard time accepting defeat

I'm pretty sure all the top players credit most of their losses to luck. Since the top players don't make a lot of mistakes, usually the only time they lose is when the orbs tilt the advantage in their opponent's favor.

3. Thinks it's reasonable he should win if they can force the enemy to resign from boredom or time constraints

I'm not sure where you got this idea from, but I would much rather win by legitimately beating my opponent than having him resign for some reason.

So it's no surprise to me you're advocating a tool for griefing other players. If you want to play that way, super, but I don't think you should have the option.

If you must know, I've actually given in during back-and-forth situations more than my opponent. I actually just did it yesterday in a game against Mammalman. So perhaps you should get your facts straight first before you go making wild inaccurate assumptions.

Or maybe you've just never encountered a true asshole and a stretch of bad luck where neither side gets an orb that can resolve the situation for 100 turns, with the opponent waiting things out for as long as they can to be a dick.

I've played almost every player there is, and I've only made a few enemies during the game. Maybe you should stop talking so much shit and less opponents would be more inclined to piss you off?

(note that I will also wait an opponent like this out to double the dicks).

Basically you practice what you preach against? Nice, that's a real effective way to stop the problem.

But it's still an inelegant part of the game where the gameplay breaks down, and one player has the ability to force the other to suffer.

Like I said, your opponent can't force you to do anything. If you're in a hurry, give in, lose a valuable piece, and you may or may not lose one game. Big deal.

Thinking about it more, I think that d2s's speedup suggestion has the best chance of being implemented, and thus is probably the suggestion everyone could agree on.

I actually think it has the worse chance of being implemented. I can't see Jimmi agreeing to code in such a solution to fix a problem that isn't even that prominent.

[OncoByte]

Some trolls post short offensive messages.

Others publish extensive treatises designed to push your buttons.

The length of the boner you give them is directly proportional to the response they get out of you.

You Rhox, are Troll Super-Viagra.

[Rhox]

Instead of trying to instigate during a productive debate about a problem within Quadradius, why don't you contribute?

This is why I rarely post in Suggestions anymore, because people like Oncobyte walk into a thread, ignore the topic entirely, and instead call me a troll when all I'm doing is trying to discuss an issue.

[OncoByte]

I am contributing. My contribution is to tell you to ignore personal attacks instead of addressing them point by point in 50-line posts that nobody gives a shit about.

You made your point (which I happen to agree with) that back-and-forth is a non-issue to 99% of people who play the game. It certainly isn't worth tasking Jimmi to "fix" in place of doing something else for the game. My next contribution will be a personal one - to stop reading this thread.

[l0de]

No way in hell I'm wading through that multiquote shit. In short, I'm not particularly focused on trolling rhox here onco (at least not consciously), but it's tough because there's such a clear dichotomy between how rhox perceives himself and how his opponents do.

In any case, working on the gameplay elements only, I assure you, it will only take one or two games where this happens to you to see the light of it. Having a timer speedup isn't even noticeable to players who aren't taking way too long to move in a back and forth situtation. It's one of a couple of small, but I think, important fixes like speeding up multiple casts of the same power, reducing a few animation speeds overall (snakes, bombs, and scrambles could all take about half the time they currently do), that don't hurt the game, and enhance the player experience.

[driven2sin]

this is the round and round we get

l0de says, keep making suggestions - so when there are some things that are small, but still should be talked about, then you get the, "wait we dont need to worry about this, doesn't happen enough, stop wasting time"


then a full blown personal attack breaks out

[l0de]

TAKE COVER

[Handi]

Gay

[TIGHT BROS]

I'm with Handi.


How about this for a new gameplay option: don't be a shit head.

[TWill]

only if that option comes with a 2nd tier.

[CR8TIV]

Should this be fixed...I dont think so, but not for me to say and certainly not now. I think this is a really low priority among the other things that need to be fixed in this game. Does it suck to get into this situation...YES! You can complain about others doing this if you don't stop it yourself; don't be your own worst enemy.

Now having said that...I played a game were niether of us was giving in, it was around 100 rounds later (note: i was actually bluffing but i was also down so was hoping to fill orbs on my side before giving in) when he suggested a truce...

We both agreed to move back in our field 1 title and over 2 in opposite directions without launching an attack until the 6 turns were up. (Turn, walk 5 paces, turn, draw and shoot). Thus ending the dead-lock. Yes, the person you are playing against has to have some integrity for this to work but try to come to an agreement like this before saying that this should be prevented by the game. This is apart of the game and don't want to see it coded out. Now, if you come to an agreement to end a dead-lock like we did and the other party doesn't follow suite, post it on the board so we know who not to play.

Work it out, don't call someone a douche for being in a dead-lock with you when you're being just as douchey. CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG!

[OncoByte]

Maybe that's the solution to this "problem":

If players move back and forth x-number of times, all powers lock out until a different move is made by each side.

[l0de]

Seems pretty reasonable actually.

[OncoByte]

There's been recent controversy about players forcing one another to endlessly move back and forth until orbs spawn in their path to break the deadlock. It doesn't happen every game, but when it does, it's annoying enough that I would like to see a change made to gameplay to inhibit the behavior.

Three major options have been proposed so far:

I must have totally missed this thread when it came through. Some interesting ideas here.

Another option would be to have tiles drop in elevation if they are stepped on repeatedly.

How it would work:
Every time a torus lands on a tile, that tile incurs 1 point of "damage."

Every four turns, one point of damage is repaired as long as a torus has not landed on the tile in the interim and caused additional damage.
----You land on a tile - it incurs 1 point of damage = turn 0
----Opponent moves = turn 1
----You move off of the damaged tile = turn 2
----Opponent moves = turn 3
----you move back onto damage tile - it incurs an additional point of damage OR
-------you move to a different tile and the original tile repairs one point of damage = turn 4

When a tile accumulates 3 or more damage points it glows red.

When a tile accumulates 4 or more damage points, it drops one elevation.

If a tile is at its lowest elevation, it blows out, dropping the torus on it through the floor of the arena.

Consequences:
This algorithm would allow you to do a little back forth before anything happens.
It would warn you when your tile is at risk.
It also deals with situation where pieces make repetitive moves across three tiles instead of just two.
This is easy to keep track of programatically - you (Jimmi) just assign tile damage after each move and repair damage where appropriate on each tile at the start of each move.
Furthermore, it gives an advantage to the player on higher ground - meaning that the person at a disadvatage may recognize their position early and avoid a protracted back and forth fest.
Finally - you could take advantage of this to purposefully lower a tile - it would just cost you 4 turns to do it. If you are restricted to 2 or three tiles, then you are in trouble.

[Handi]

I like that idea Onco.

The only drawback I see is the case where there's a bottleneck with a lot of movement and the feature is activated without any back and forth going on.

This feature must not divert the attention of the players in a normal game, and chances that a hotspot would trigger the script are fairly good. A slight variation to your solution is to make it a per-torus map where a tile gets lowered only if is stepped on consecutively by a single torus. This is a slightly more complicated alternative, but should still be not too hard to integrate.