Ladle 49

[sinewav]

...is it just me, or do any other northern americans feel more comfortable playing in euro servers than US ones?

You're not alone my friend. I think a large percentage of US Fort player prefer EU servers. You come to rely on that tiny bit of extra rubber and it throws off your timing when you want to dig/seal/grind. Why else would we all play in MB's server in the middle of the night with Hoax, the only EU players. And when someone says "oh we should go to a US server" we all just shrug as if to say, "meh, whatever, this is good."

[PokeMaster]

yeah totally. I think in the very first round of the ladle I killed myself by digging to hard and accidentally going into a tunnel that I didn't think I could go in, all because I had 55 ping versus the 160-210 I'm used to.

[DDMJ]

CT USA was abominable. Never again.

I felt like I was at a water park, slippin 'n slidin' all over the place, seriously.

[Desolate]

I was fine there except for a few minor bumps, usually I get lags.

[sinewav]

CT USA was abominable. Never again.

CT USA has been sketchy the last few months. However, we don't really have a choice but to use it. This goes for all server complaints for which there are many. Are all the Ladle servers not performing as good as they used to... or are we all expecting more because the competition is so intense?

How can we secure eight stable servers for future Ladles? It's already difficult to to get the ones we have already every month.

Also, bump on this:

A new rule/guideline that's needed:

If the server you're playing in crashes, then an admin will reset the scores to what they were before the server crashed. The player imbalance, such as 6 players vs 4 players, is not necessary to restore. The round state when the server crashed can not be recreated exactly—restoring the scores is sufficient.

I'm inclined to drop this right into the wiki as is before too long. I think this is generally understood, but it would be nice to document a procedure.

[-*inS*-]

Are all the Ladle servers not performing as good as they used to... or are we all expecting more because the competition is so intense?

With longer rounds, there is more time to lag and die, thus creating a bigger influence on the game. Freako was saying that INW's was 95% good for him, he would just get a big lag once every few minutes and die (which happened to be shorter than an average round). Similar things happened to our other European players (ie. the problem wasn't client side).

Not sure of any ways around this though, and the problem could get even worse as teams start to improve, prolonging each round and match. Personally I love long fights, especially 1v1s, Psy made a good analogy to Chess, 2 grand-masters dueling each other. However I realize that not everyone is as patient as I am . Also it comes with the effect of making the ladle longer overall which causes issues of time commitments for players.

Anyone have any ideas on how to
1. Shorten rounds + matches
2. Reduce lag in games

The obvious solution to me would be to play with less players on a team, but I'm sure that suggestion would be widely frowned upon as people are used to 6v6.

[Desolate]

There's nothing about putting less players on a team that makes the rounds shorter, it could take just as long.

[owned]

A new rule/guideline that's needed:

If the server you're playing in crashes, then an admin will reset the scores to what they were before the server crashed. The player imbalance, such as 6 players vs 4 players, is not necessary to restore. The round state when the server crashed can not be recreated exactly—restoring the scores is sufficient.

I'm inclined to drop this right into the wiki as is before too long. I think this is generally understood, but it would be nice to document a procedure.

I know everyone else who's posted so far agrees with this, but I'd like to push out an argument for the other side because I think the player imbalance should be restored.

When restoring a server after it was shutdown in the middle of a match, you have two goals:
1. Make the match conditions as close to how they were before as possible.
2. Not delay the game too much or cause too much hassle on the players.

These are somewhat contradictory goals. Obviously the score should be restored as it fulfills both goals. On the other hand, players should obviously not be forced to go in the same positions because it completely breaks goal 2. I argue that restoring player imbalance fulfills both goals. Obviously it fulfills the first goal, and as for the second goal, all you need is for an admin to admin kill the dead people at the start of the new round. That doesn't delay the game at all and causes very little hassle on the players.

[-*inS*-]

There's nothing about putting less players on a team that makes the rounds shorter, it could take just as long.

My perception of it was rounds were 3v3 in the middle with 3 players defending = not interacting with anyone else. Why not just get rid of the sweepbox around each defense and make it 4v4? This way there would be interaction with the defense right from the start which would signifcantly reduce round time as the majority of the ladle was spent waiting for sweepboxes to breakdown. Of course it could take longer just as one round, but the average time would be quicker.

[owned]

I seem to remember the 4-player fortress tourney taking so long that we had to move the finals to the next weekend.

[kyle]

CT USA was abominable. Never again.

I felt like I was at a water park, slippin 'n slidin' all over the place, seriously.

I am planning on re-imaging it sometime and starting fresh, if that does not help. only a few more months and i can change providers

I had changed some stuff after the last ladle and I had not had problems all month until yesterday

[-*inS*-]

I seem to remember the 4-player fortress tourney taking so long that we had to move the finals to the next weekend.

Yeah but there's no logical reason for that. Any idea why in particular? I suppose holing (which would also be reduced in 4v4) contributes a bit to match quickness, however the way the game is headed, holing is impractical in the first half of each round, so that benefit is taken away.

[INW]

There was an "era" of holing and NPH's and to prevent that, the "era" of the sweep-box and double def is coming!

[Desolate]

I don't think so, the start of the round with the full 6 players has basically remained the same length. What causes long rounds is the inevitable 2v2 situations where a sweeper and attacker fight it out until one makes a mistake. That's usually the round that takes 7+ minutes. I don't feel like lowering the player limit will change those types of situations.

[sinewav]

I argue that restoring player imbalance fulfills both goals.

Slippery slope. The problem with that is we assume player imbalance always translates to advantage. Imagine 4v3, each team with 2 attackers. You might think the team with 4 has the advantage until you realize that the team with 3 has both attackers in the opponent's zone and are quickly forcing the rest out when the server crashes. I can imagine any number of scenarios like this. That's why this is so tricky, you have to draw a line somewhere (hey, a pun ).

The only time restarting the round fresh becomes an issue is when the game is really close like ours was. Any other time this has happened it was just like "oh well, redo." And that's actually the attitude we need to have because server crashes, like lag, are just something we have to deal with. Besides, starting a round with an imbalance is not at all like an imbalance gained mid-round.

Finally, a single round might determine a match, but it certainly won't determine the outcome of 2 or 3 matches.

[other topic]
Increasing the number of players will probably have more of a shortening effect than reducing.