The New Rules (and why I'm not a Fan)

[CombatEX]

(11-23-2012 06:27 AM):!:CoryMo:!: Wrote:  Almost all of the complaints I've seen about the updates come down to this: "I have to change tactics and I don't like that".
You should be changing and adapting in each and every game depending on the moves of your opponents. One thing I like about this game is that no one technique can produce a win every time. I lost a game a few days ago where my opponent hit me with nothing but runners. I wasn't expecting it and didn't prepare for it. Just yesterday I won a game using nothing but a single soldier a single sniper and bramble.
Every game is different and the updates haven't changed that. I can almost guarantee the top players are adaptive in technique.

Before I begin, I wanted to clarify that you do have a point, it just fails to address a rather significant issue (which I will mention shortly). First things first, however. People who are complaining about the change really should reserve judgement as you suggest. +1 wits has been out for such a short period that one cannot truly assess whether it is beneficial or detrimental. That being said, I feel that it is the wrong approach to fixing turtling and special balance in Outwitters.

Now for the point I feel you miss in your assessment that people are primarily annoyed because they have to change tactics. Let us consider a scenario with chess. I could propose changing the left-most pawn for each player so that it starts 1 space forward from the current setup. Now, undoubtedly people would be outraged if this were implemented. While it is true that players would have to change tactics as a result of this change, it is safe to say that I would be missing the point if I were to propose that the reason people were upset came down to needing to adjust their tactics... In reality, it would be more due to the fact that the game worked well before the change and it just makes the game unnecessarily different. Even if the change isn't for the worse, why make it unless there is a good reason to believe it will make a notable improvement.

Now, there are differences between the chess situation and Outwitters. Outwitters actually does need changes to fix balance issues and turtling while chess does not. However, the point of my analogy was to avoid the notion that people are simply upset because they need to adjust. Rather, there is something to be said about changing a system when the perception is that the old one worked well already. This is the case with chess and is the reason I brought up the analogy. In the case of Outwitters, I would propose that some of the reason people are upset is due to the fact that the fundamental mechanics of Outwitters, like chess, already worked well and as a result makes this change seem superfluous. As with chess, it's not simply players not wanting to have to adapt to new rules, but also players questioning why the rules are being changed and essentially creating a very different game when it isn't clear that there is a benefit.

I propose making incremental changes* with guaranteed long-term success instead of drastic changes with questionable success (+1 wits/kill falling into the latter category).

*I explain what I mean by incremental changes here: Proposed Alternate Change - Note: This is the same link as the one above.