FTA and 2(3) actions on first turn

[yasw]

With more games being played all the time, I guess we will at some point have some good statistics on whether players who start first wins more often. It is a fact that it happens in chess for white, but for this game it is merely speculation so far.

But couldn't this be adressed without changing the number of wits or something within the game? How about the system just making sure that every player gets a 50/50 distribution, to make the leaderboards comperable.

[The430nsT0rn]

I'm sorry if I'm inserting myself in here, I'm hardly a pro, but I have a thought on the subject, and the game in general:
I agree with the one who said that they take their time to set up, so they would be punished. One way or another, it seems, SOMEONE would be punished. For me, though, it's just something to be accepted as-is.

Anyone here familiar with the card game Magic; The Gathering may have heard of a writer on the subject named Mike Flores, who has done tremendous work in theory of playing the game, and all games in general really. One classic piece he has written, titled "Who's the beatdown?" can be applied here and in anyone's games at all times.

The paper itself relies heavily on Magic examples to explain, but basically it stated a Game Player must at all times re-evaluate their own, and opponents board position to conclude "who's the beatdown", or the aggressive player, and who is the "control" or conservative player. Knowing when to play aggressively and when to hold yourself back are extremely important.

For this, imagine your opponent first turn Zerg-rushes you with runners. You can easily see it's your 'role' to play conservative and hold the line until a time more appropriate for a counter attack. This can go back and forth in any given game, until a victor is decided. Of course, a going-first player could try and play conservative, forcing the opponent to make a move, so to speak. In either case, if they don't recognize their role or the situation, your odds of winning go up drastically.

I think Outwitters has a fair distribution of times when one plays first. This is the nature of any competitive game, and is just to be dealt with. Recognize when it's your time to defend, and when to attack, and outwit your opponents.

[Cookie]

(07-10-2012 10:29 PM)yasw Wrote:  With more games being played all the time, I guess we will at some point have some good statistics on whether players who start first wins more often. It is a fact that it happens in chess for white, but for this game it is merely speculation so far.

But couldn't this be adressed without changing the number of wits or something within the game? How about the system just making sure that every player gets a 50/50 distribution, to make the leaderboards comperable.

I am sure there are chess players who enjoy the challenge of playing with black, even against equally matched players. And in chess, the rules are rooted deeply enough that nobody is really looking for a fix (for balance, the best fix might be to let the first player make a move, and then let the second player pick sides).

Chess has a different theoretical problem than Outwitters though. In chess, it is so far impossible to prove that the first player has an advantage or a forced win, because it is not allowed to pass. So, it might be that all first moves are bad for white e.g. because they open up some weakness for the 2nd player (which, from practical evidence, is not true).

In Outwitters, the situation is different. The first player clearly has some advantage, it is just unclear how much it converts to in winning %. If the first player doesn't want to move, he could even save his wits from the first turn for later, and let the 2nd player make the "real" first move. In that sense, the 1st player becomes the real 2nd player, but he has 5 extra wits compared to the current 2nd player.

Probably not the best first move, but a position that is provably better than the one of the current 1st position, the key difference from chess that it is allowed to pass and not do anything, so it is actually provable that the first player can not lose with optimal play (optimal play will be a stalemate because nobody wants to attack, unlikely but possible, or a win for the first player).

Again, with bigger maps, it is not possible that this converts to very much in winning %, and that the skill of the players still matters more (again, compare chess, where a typical game lasts about 40 turns per player) where white gets on average about 0.55 points per game in high-level matches (1 for win, 0.5 for draw and 0 for a loss).

If you want to compare this metric for Outwitters, it is important only to include only fair match-ups, as in any mismatch the better player will "always" win and thus make it look like there is no FTA.

[Kamikaze28]

(07-10-2012 11:21 PM)Cookie Wrote:  If you want to compare this metric for Outwitters, it is important only to include only fair match-ups, as in any mismatch the better player will "always" win and thus make it look like there is no FTA.

And that's the kicker. It will take some time for all active players to be evenly matched. Thank all those pick-up-and-drop players for slowing this process down.

I concur on the theoretical aspect, but there is one thing which hasn't been mentioned yet: moving first also has its risks. On more than one occasion, I was able to completely dismantle the first offensive of P1 and continue into a counter-attack which won me the game - especially on small maps.

[Wenrod]

Maybe I'm not playing it seriously enough. But can't we expect to be P1 and P2 each about 50 % of the time when we play enough games?

In a single game, I can see that FTA can be a problem, but on average this shouldn't influence your ranking too much, or should it?

So far I'm still playing around trying different tactics, but no two games were the same and I never felt I won just because I had the first turn.

[Szei]

2 wits is certainly too few, but I'd be curious to try 3 or 4 wits for player 1. I don't know how hard this is to implement, but maybe we could have a Public Test Realm of sorts like Blizzard with SC2 to test this out? I'm guessing this would be more trouble to set up than it's worth though... Too bad this was never tried in beta (or as far as I know). And for people worrying about new players being confused, I mean come on, people aren't that stupid. It will take them 2 games, 3 games at most to figure it out if they don't bother to read the tutorial and it will take them only 1 game to figure it out if they do.

(07-11-2012 01:12 AM)Wenrod Wrote:  So far I'm still playing around trying different tactics, but no two games were the same and I never felt I won just because I had the first turn.

Maybe I'm not one to judge because I'm still in placements, but so far my placement games have been against 4 masters. I've also played another 10 friendly games. In the games where I start first I feel in control the whole game until I eventually win. In the games where I start second I feel like I'm on the back foot the whole game even if I eventually can turn it around for the win. I'm not sure it's necessarily a problem, but I definitely feel a LOT less comfortable when I'm player 2. The thing is, as the defending player you can make up that wits disadvantage from going second, so if you're player 2 but just defend then you can gradually turn the game around (your opponents spend more wits than you since they have to move across the map to attack). The problem though is map awareness. If you play second and make your game plan about defending aggression, your opponent will have much better map awareness by virtue of being the aggressor and having his units positioned further forward than yours. Eventually you can turn the game around as player 2 but it's just a much less comfortable position to be in because you're options are much more limited and you have less vision of what your opponent. When playing second I often feel that I have to rely on my opponents overextending and then capitalizing on their mistakes rather than doing some brilliant play of my own. It's not a very satisfying feeling because I'm not so much 'outwitting' my opponent as much I'm punishing him/her for a silly move.

[Wenrod]

@Szei: I see. But you can also see this as a benefit. Two different game experiences for the price of one... Most of the time I felt on top of things regardless. But then again I was crushed twice by real pros.

[Harti]

What would you guys think about 4 wit for P1 and a predeployed bonus space for P2?

[Szei]

By predeployed bonus space do you mean P2 starts with a captured wit space? If so this could work. It does bring up a new dynamic though which is not necessarily good or bad. Assuming players capture all possible bonus spaces on their first turn P1 will have 2-3 wits to spend elsewhere while P2 will have 3-4 (depending on the number of bonus spaces on the map). This sounds reasonable but the exact wit numbers aren't what I'm driving.

The new dynamic is the fact that P1 has to commit moving 2 units onto wit spaces whereas P2 only has to commit 1. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to consider. It harms P1's ability to establish as good position on turn 1, but that's kind of the point. The question is would it make P1 too vulnerable to P2?

I'm inclined to believe it would be okay but certainly this would require a fair amount of play-testing.

[Alvendor]

First one point to those who think it doesn't matter as you will be playing 1st and 2nd an equal amount of time. Yes it doesn't matter for the rankings but it does for the fun factor of the game. As the skill level of you and your opponents increases, FTA will become a more and more important factor. Imagine you might only have on average 10% chance to win as second player in a high level game, that is definately not fun.

I'd like to see the second player get for example "3 second player bonus wits". In that way we don't limit the strategic options for the first nor the second player. The second player bonus could even be balanced on a per map level later on.

This is very easy to implement for the developers. But if some extra graphics are needed etc to make it clear for new players, that could be some work. But I would like it to get highest priority after the crashes and game limits have been fixed.