Season 5 suggestion and discussion thread

[cuulli]

I understand your idea of increasing coremembers, but there is a simple question: where should these people come from? You all think that a team with 14 members will be more active, but this is wrong. We all know that AoS is dying and you cant say "we add some members here and some of them there". Imo all teams had an active 3-4 person core and the rest was sometimes here or partly never. If you make teams bigger, other teams have to die. I think 10 men is a lot place and I dont see the reason why there should be more room. Tbh, most teams had 1 or 2 members who played one match or didnt even play.
Thats why I still think that 3v3 would be a good option. Its very easy to organize matches with small groups like this (tbh, some teams were very unorganized and this easy-going organisation would be good for them). It is better to see "oh look Player22 and player16 are online, lets look around if another 3-person group is online now" and than a match could happen and not this "ok we are 3 now, there might be a 4th one but he is afk, and Player76 has to go eating soon and yeah, lets discuss another 5-10 minutes about a sub".
Anyway, testing 3v3 matches is a good idea imo and sth like a rule that every team can choose one time server+map and the other team chooses these things the other game, this would have sth like a home-guest character and there wouldnt be the drama before every Match.
And once again, I think there could be many interersting 3-men-teams and maybe some new formations (its pretty boring to have always the same teams..) and many matches. I also like at 3v3 that people who were in the same team (e.g. Ohh) are in different teams and can fight each other.

[scrawl]

If the league would change to 3v3 matches, what would the number of members for each team be?
If the 5v5 league has a limit of 10, a 3v3 league would be a limit of 6 players then?

[MrFritz]

I ask that we move into Season 5 as soon as possible. To atleast retain most of the Season 4 teams and players.

3v3 will dramatically decrease the quality of the match.

I agree with this.Though with the suggestions of new maps, I could see this being "enjoyable".

-Only allow changes of the roster once per week

I would have agree to this, many teams have changed there roster right before a match to gain another core member.I wouldn't agree with this during the playoffs since I believe the team who got into the playoffs, should remain the same during the playoffs.

MY suggestion's for this upcoming league are hereof.

1. Let teams have TWO subs, if the opponent team agrees ofcoarse. I've seen many situations when a team is left with only 4 players and clearly outmatches and out-skilled. Then proceeding the match, the admins will vote to see if the match counted. This rule would only to be applied when the match has started with a team of 5 core/4core,1sub.

2. The TEAM Captain who signed up the team is to receive a trusted password to use during the match to communicate with the server and admins more conveniently. Rules with the password would be the same as aloha's. If the password would be spread to other players, the password would be granted to another representative of the team. Ofcoarse if the captain could not attend the match, the admin would appoint a temp-leader during the match with the came privileges of the captain.

3. FIX intel to CP locations to insure the fairness and to increase the quality of the towers and game-play. We've often seen an unfair positions of the intel to CP locations, obviously giving the opponent team a severe advantage.

4. NEW Maps, for gods sake, please update and remove unnecessary and underplayed maps.

5.The team captains have official say when they want to VETO a sub. Also. the team has the power to veto only ONE sub of their choosing during the match so they must be wary of their choice.

6. Discuss match information in IRC, not in game before the match starts. To insure heavy moderation and clarity for map choices and subs.

My personal goal for this season will be running smooth and fair games.

[Roulette]

3v3 will dramatically decrease the quality of the match.

I agree with this.Though with the suggestions of new maps, I could see this being "enjoyable".

It depends. From my experience, most teams take a defensive approach(for the first 20-25 minutes anyway) with like one builder and one defender, which leaves 1v1 from each team actually attacking. Even on a small map, that would be fairly shitty.
I think 5 is just right, no need to change it.

If the league would change to 3v3 matches, what would the number of members for each team be?
If the 5v5 league has a limit of 10, a 3v3 league would be a limit of 6 players then?

If it doesn't happen, I can already picture a team with 10 members fighting over who gets to play. If it does apply, Subs may be required anyway.

[Eraaaaz]

I think 5 is just right, no need to change it.

You are acting like we have a choice. Season 4 showed it really well how many active teams we had. None.

It depends. From my experience, most teams take a defensive approach(for the first 20-25 minutes anyway) with like one builder and one defender, which leaves 1v1 from each team actually attacking. Even on a small map, that would be fairly shitty.

I don't think people would play like that on an 3v3, if you go for an 16v16, do you also think there will be just one builder and one defender?

1. Let teams have TWO subs

Please, I remember Venator saying quite a while ago that if he arranges an match with AK for example that he doesn't want to play half of the komrades. Subs don't make any sense for me in any kind of competitive match since it clearly fakes the result of the game.

I would also like to add to cuulli that 3vs3 would be more friendly/ideal for smaller clans/groups/whatever.

[Roulette]

You may actually have a point there, I never played in this season so I can't really comment on team activity, however I just checked the thread and realised that less teams had taken part and a ton more subs were used. I understand that you may have no choice but to reduce the team sizes. But yeah, I hadn't really noticed how short on players teams were this season. Hopefully more teams will get involved this summer. Maybe reducing mightn't be necessary though,depends on the turnout.

As for point two, I was referring to the previous 5v5 seasons. The approach for 3v3 would depend on the opposition really, so some teams may play like that and since there is less players to play around with on your team stopping a particularly good player will be very hard.
Maybe some will just go with 3 on attack, but it leaves the base very vulnerable. Still, I will stick with my original point on this, that the quality of the match won't be as good, if reduced to 3v3.

If reducing is avoidable, I would stick with 5v5. but yeah, it depends on the turnout.

[Eraaaaz]

Pretty sure that 5v5 is more entertaining in some way, but I wouldn't bet that we get more teams than last season. I mean its worth to try 3v3, changes up quite a lot things.

[Eimis]

5v5 is waaaaay better than 3v3. Make a 3v3 league if you want but don't replace 5v5 with it. Everyone above pretty much said what I wanted to say, but there is one thing left out: colors. Green has a clear advantage over blue on pretty much all of the maps because they are harder to see in the fog and have sort of a camo because of the terrain which is usually green/greenish. In order to fix this we should make green darker or blue less dark (or change green to some other color like purple).

[Eraaaaz]

I would also like to hear the opinion from people who played active in the league :)

@Eimis: With the colors you brought up something, don't know if it matters really that much though.

[Dominis]

orange(dark)/purple are the colors id like to see. we need to get 2 teams that will play 3v3, 4v4 and 5v5. test that stuff asap pls, post the videos of the matches and create polls for everything.(color combinations, team sizes etc.)

[Eimis]

@Eimis: With the colors you brought up something, don't know if it matters really that much though.

It actually matters, because at competitive level every small difference is important. And even in a random server its still annoying when a green guy is shooting you at fog distance and you can't see him.

I would also like to hear the opinion from people who played active in the league :)

Many people have said what I'm about to, but ok :D

First of all, I think the time limit is a bit too long, we should switch sides and have a timeout maybe after 22,5 mins because playing for 45 mins straight is a bit too much imo. This would also nerf the defense and therefore making the gameplay more dynamic. We would probably have less ties, too.

Maybe next league we could remove some of the mainstream maps like standoff, iow, spitfire and add some new ones in order to make things more interesting. I know many people like those maps but what's the fun in playing the same map over and over again? In those maps there should be more ways to reach the enemy base, kinda like the tunnel in spitfire. This is because maps like standoff are basically wider goon assault, and the only way to get the intel there is to rape your way through the enemies and spawnkill them until one of your teammates has the intel. In short, we need more variety. We need maps all sorts and sizes. Maybe more smaller maps like treasure island (small map with a lot of stuff in).

We should enable global chat for the players playing. I never understood why it was disabled in the first place .

Prizes. We need prizes for the 1st-3rd places, not money or anything serious, but something symbolic like badges :D

Increase the core member limit. This would probably fix the inactive players problem, because then more people can be online at the same time.

This is kinda punishing a good team though, since it will take time to build a good tower and the time will feel wasted when it's resett. I do see how it can make the matches more even, but it just seems too cruel to me.

If you would have actually played any matches in this league, you would think the opposite. When the noob teams builds up their huge intel tower and sets up their 5 man defense, it's near impossible to capture their intel without any absolutely crazy plays/terrible mistakes by them. I think at least 15 matches ended up in ties because of this.

[danhezee]

Make map suggestion here.

I like most of venator's suggestions minus automatic advancement to the playoffs and arbitrary score to get to the playoffs.

If we want to use different team colors we can, just make sure they are easy to tell about at the fog range for the colorblind.

We have the league champs badge.



and



I just need to make the groups, ill do that today.

Swapping sides midgame seems like a hassle. We would have to either reload the map or at least reset the intel locations. And get the team to swap in a timely manner.

[Eimis]

Swapping sides midgame seems like a hassle. We would have to either reload the map or at least reset the intel locations. And get the team to swap in a timely manner.

/rollback.
A small break wouldn't hurt.

[Juxta]

I'd like to change how we set the matches up. I propose the team Captains discuss the map and sub choices in IRC and once that is done an admin can go in server and set it up ready to go. Once that is done the teams can join and we can start. Having players around in game while the server is being set up is a big problem and people talking too much means things get missed by admins (easy to do if the message only stays on screen for a micro second before spammed out). Also maybe a standing list of pre-approved subs to also cut down on discussion.

[Skynet]

I'd like to see markers.py added, I think it would help with communication improving the tactics amogst the teams
marker.pk is included in pysnip

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/317 ... cripts.htm

Markers are icons built at the very top of the map, so they show up in the overview M screen. Only your team can see your markers.

This script does a few things which can be enabled or disabled in the script flags:

When your intel is stolen a ghost intel marks where it used to be. This is so useful I sometimes forget it's not a native feature.
The old intel radar reward makes a comeback. Enemy positions are revealed when you capture the enemy's briefcase.
Double-tapping V (the sneak key) spots enemies, marking them on the map and telling teammates via chat. This can be sometimes handy, especially in big maps when you see someone roaming around your base.
Finally, markers can be manually placed with chat triggers. !tunnel makes a giant arrow, !build makes a block icon, and so on. Unfortunately these are utterly worthless.
Some of these features would be better if they had a proper interface. Actual markers were planned for the original 1.0 release :(