Time Limits for Live Tours

[Jellicent]

Cheers, all ^.^

So, Old Gens Tour Nights will be starting up again soon, but using a new point system with 10-week seasons followed by top 8 playoffs. GSC OU live tours will be featured in this, but they can be rather grueling. We've had games in the past last for hours, which is really difficult for live tours. Six-to-eight-player tours tend to take about 2 to 3 hours, so I'm uneasy about kicking off tours with higher turnouts.

I think having some sort of time limit in place would be good. My first instinct is to say 30 minutes, as even 64-player tours would only be 3 hours. I don't foresee us hitting that high of numbers for live GSC OU (16-32 range seems more likely), but keeping these moving along at a decent pace is important (there are 3 tours each night, so two more still have to happen after GSC OU.)

That said, I'm open to different times. Keep in mind we want players to have enough time to get reasonable-length battles completed, but for the sake of other players, we can't just allow them to go on for hours. If you think 40 minutes, or 20 minutes, or some other number is for whatever reason inherently better than 30, feel free to pitch it.

The next problem is how exactly a game is called. Obviously, there are times when one side has a huge advantage, in which case, the game can just be called for the sake of timeliness. However, if both sides seem to have a fairly even match-up, what's the best way to proceed?

We can use hard numbers, like highest % of total Pokemon health, but that can get tricky. A player might opt to stall out the timer if they have the edge with health % and there's not much time left. Players will also potentially start making "worse" moves, like healing up with Rest for no strategic reason outside of gaining an edge before time runs out.

On the polar opposite side, we can just use a coin flip. Again, this can greatly affect how a player actually plays. Perhaps their best shot at beating X user is just stalling for half an hour and hoping the 50/50 goes their way. They might actively avoid somewhat-risky plays that would be beneficial if their goal was to win, since their goal has changed to just comfortably surviving.

I'm not really sure what the best option here is, or if there even is one. That's why I figured I'd ask you guys, since I'm sure there are possibilities I've overlooked and some of you might already have experience with effectively hosting GSC live tours. So, to sum up the questions that need to be answered here:

• What's a reasonable length of time to give for each round of a GSC OU live tour?
• What's the best way to call a close game after the time limit has been reached?

 

[AM]

I'll speak as someone who used to auth OU room and implemented a "time restriction". I think turn limit is more justified than a time limit, obviously correlating to tier from my understanding GSC games can be more lengthy. After certain number of turns the person who has a much more clear advantage wins. This is kind of subjective and even if the game is close calling games via coinflips or another subjective criteria I think ruins the fun out of the tours. Also making your time limit really short, OU room went from 150 to 100 which I don't agree with granted I'm not auth there anymore, isn't great either. People love watching games even if they're lengthy and when it gets closer to finals and everyone is involved in the madness it's more exciting. Turn limit is also implemented alongside a mandatory timer to be put on as the game progresses, so if someone is stalling for the sake of stalling out, react accordingly.

 

[Disaster Area]

I think there should be no turn limit once the semi-final stage is reached, and yeah turn limit sounds much better than time-limit. Everyone's matches in general will be longer in GSC (yeah you get the odd game under 20 turns but it's less frequent) so a higher turn limit than was done in the OU room would be fine, say 200 turns? I think ther shouldn't be a coinflip unless it's incredibly difficult to decide who has the advantage - it should be up the tournament host, taking advice from any other members of the room who the host feels is knowledgeable enough about the tier to make a comment. Also I think the host should have the discretion to allow the players to continue past that turn limit if they feel it is still undecided.

Basically: lots of host control. At 200 turns, the host can decide upon either: a winner, a coinflip, or for the match to continue for a specified or unspecified length of time.

 

[Kingler]

I really disagree w/ the turn limit idea proposed because it's a LIVE tour; it's different from roomtours or w/e that ou conducts for fun etc. These things are supposed to last 2/3 hours TOPS unless we're talking about something as big as a smogon tour, and a turn limit imposition means that ppl can just think slow when playing and take a lot of time regardless meaning that the tour will be rly delayed. I feel like a certain time limit for each round is good enough although there's gonna be like 4 rouns so i guess 30/40 mins is sufficient?

Plus it's basically a long-term timer application.

EDIT- actually just figured that ppl could use this to disadvantage their opponents and stuff by not moving if they're in an advantageous situation, so actually this might have more flaws than upsides. turn limit mite be better.

Edit2 - The host could probably call a game if it came to that, otherwise really don't see how a limit could be set without being exploitable.

 

[Jellicent]

Whether it's a turn or a time limit, there'll always be ways to exploit it because it's adding a new win condition to the game. I'm mostly just looking at the fairest way to call a close match after a reasonable amount of time, for the sake of keeping the tournament as a whole moving as smoothly as possible.

The problem with turn limits is there's no way to ensure they'll be reached in an acceptable amount of time. For instance, 150 turns could go on for over an hour, and that's just not practical for live tournaments.

 

[Lavos]

there is no good objective way to do this so let's reevaluate it under a subjective frame

turn limits would be really bad in a live setting because turns are obviously varying and i could play a 100 turn game faster than someone else plays a 20 turn game, that's just pokemon. time limit is the only reasonable condition. from time of the match start to 30 mins after match starts. i think 30 min is best because most games will be donezo or clearly in one players favor by that time. also if theres a way to implement a faster turn by turn timer for these games that would be great so ppl can't game the system when they are ahead.

if the game is not over by 30 mins then you have to make a subjective judgment call and i think this necessitates a neutral third party who has a good enough grasp on gsc ou to evaluate with 100% accuracy which player has the lead at any given time. and if it's "too close to call" then you coin flip it. sorry, but that's going to be a necessary evil of running gsc live tours.

let me be clear that i fucking hate what this does to the gsc live tour metagame because if we enforce any limit at all it means we see way less stall and way more offense. and then you get metagame mindgames where a couple people bring really specific counters to the playstyles other dudes are being forced into by the restraints we imposed and those comparatively average players score higher because of our meddling.

so if you want a functional solution for live tours, do 30 min games. if you want good gsc, don't impose any limitations. that's all

 

[LightningLord2]

-A 2001 tournament actually has a time limit of a measly 10 minutes until a judge declares a winner. The judge should not only decide on who's better situated in the game state, but also give the other person the win if the opponent did something like getting a quick head start and then stalling out the time.
-Pokémon Stadium 2 has a time limit that can be set for Event Battles - I couldn't find what the game does if you run out of time for the game or turn, though.

 

[Longfellow]

A chess clock could be something to try.

 

[Zowayix]

-Pokémon Stadium 2 has a time limit that can be set for Event Battles - I couldn't find what the game does if you run out of time for the game or turn, though.

If I recall correctly, if you run out of time for the turn you are automatically forced to pick your first move (or second, if the first's out of PP or disabled, etc). If the game runs out of time, then it just does a very simple check on who has more Pokemon remaining, followed by who has more average HP remaining as a tiebreaker.

I might be just remembering the mechanics from later gens, though I'd be surprised if they were much different.

 

[ReshiRampage]

A chess clock could be something to try.

Seconding this. Having played in chess tournaments I know how effective it is. Also agree that time limit is better than turn limit because of the reasons Lavos mentioned.

 

[Jellicent]

Chess clocks are cool when players are alternating between who moves. I guess in theory it could work for concurrent turns, but that would probably require some heavy editing of PS's system that I don't think is a likely option at all...