Gauging interest in a gimmick tournament...

[DzNutsKong]

Hey!

So I've mentioned before that I've kinda wanted to run a gimmick tournament and I've recently singled out one idea that stands out to me. Figured I would at least toss out the idea for the sake of getting feedback and the like. Anyways, the idea here is that this would be a 1v1 tournament. No teams of four, just you and your opponent. Makes it way simpler to sign up and play without having to coordinate with a group as opposed to seeing whose fundamentals and adaptation are better. Sounds incredibly awkward and potentially snowbally if not for two other changes...

• The mode is set to Tower Control, BUT the thing that decides the winning player is whichever one dies less times as opposed to who pushes the Tower further. You ignore what the game says about who wins or loses. It all depends on who gets more kills on the other. Also, to avoid overtime, one player should at some point ride the Tower for like half a second.
• This alone would make it very easy to push people back into their spawn since every kill is a full wipe. To combat this, every time one person dies, the other must super jump back to their spawn immediately. This limits the amount of time they spend able to push forward, but they obviously will still get back to mid a little bit more quickly, will get more paint down as a result and will push the match still just a little bit towards the enemy spawn.

These two changes serve to make the format a lot more playable. No more having to balance working around an objective, no having to rely on Turf War to determine a winner. While the game might be playable...it'll be way, WAY less balanced (but this doesn't necessarily mean it won't be fun!).

The most obvious thing with this is that a fair number of anchor weapons will struggle a lot. I have played in a small, invite-only 1v1 tournament where a Ballpoint Splatling player ended up winning, and I could see a Heavy Splatling or possibly even some faster anchors like Wellstring or Douser Dualies doing well. However, weapons that have to wait through lofty charge times to do any meaningful damage like an E-Liter might struggle. Conversely, if your weapon has too little range, it will be a lot more difficult to approach your opponent since most of the time everyone has some idea of where everyone else is.

This much might make you believe that midlines would be dominant. They're very strong for sure, definitely faring better than most other types of weapon, but the big issue those usually have of not painting very well gets exacerbated by the fact that they now are the only weapon on their team. The few midlines that have good painting tend to get rushed down pretty easily for one reason or another. For those that don't, they have to deal with sharking weapons.

Sharking is incredibly strong in this format. The fact that so many less people are painting means that a spot can go completely untouched for a very long time. You can always use location effects like Point Sensor to help with this, but not every weapon will have access to that. If a player gets a lead then there's nothing stopping them from sharking for the rest of the match and turning the game into effectively hide-and-seek where they still have the option to pounce a careless opponent if they get too close.

Some rule genuinely might need to be set in place to prevent time stalling with sharking. I was tempted to put the mode on Clam Blitz since all of the clam spawns do give away your location if the opponent is looking in your direction but this by itself wouldn't be enough and it'd make overtime a bit more of a hassle to deal with. Similarly, someone could sit super high up on a ledge in spawn where it's impossible for the opponent to reach them on some maps. I would need help with deciding stuff with this. Maybe make it so the person who's currently winning has to try to engage with the opponent every 30 seconds? Maybe hope that everyone who joins will be nice and not play like that since the tournament is for fun? I want feedback either way.

Also, specials. Not all of them are created equal for the sake of this format.

If your main has a special in the topmost tier, you could probably form your entire playstyle around using your special provided your weapon has good enough painting for it. Likewise, if your main has a special in the "Too passive" tier, I would consider swapping its kit. Maybe the ones in that tier will have some merit, particularly Big Bubbler as an aid for approaching weapons with more range than you or holding out some space, but I don't see them being nearly as good here. I have no idea how Booyah Bomb or Crab Tank will be.

Also, stages! Funny enough the maplist here will end up looking completely different from a standard tournament. Choke points aren't as big of a concern here and the maps being too small isn't either, so I would likely focus on maps where you have a lot of movement options in mid. Y'know, stuff that has a lot of open room for unique, interesting engagements.

Crazy looking tier list, isn't it? People love maps like Hagglefish Market and Robo ROM-en but these maps are absolutely not the same here. It does help that the TC Tower sits in mid since that creates some cover by default but they really don't have much cover otherwise. They honestly don't seem too far off from maps like Brinewater, Crableg, and Barnacle in this setting. If anything, Sturgeon Shipyard looks like it could be the best choice from that middle tier. It looks super fun here because of the sheer amount of choices you have when approaching mid and how much weaker attacking is.

For the good maps, Um'ami, Mako, and Inkblot are all here for the same reasons as why they're so popular in a tournament setting, but Humpback and Hammerhead might be a bit more surprising. There really is nothing in the game like Humpback Pump Track's mid and while it is a pretty AoE-favored stage, it's not to such a degree where it kills the stage's viability like with Flounder Heights here. Hammerhead Bridge has just as many options for moving around as something like MakoMart or Inkblot Art Academy and most of its problems in standard play stem from choke points being especially rough and backlines being strong there, neither of which are as big of issues here.


That should sum up the idea. What do you think? Any ideas or other input? Please let me know!

 

[sevenleaf]

i would be VERY down for this. i feel like it'd be a good way to test my mechanics in a setting with fewer other variables, like coordination skills in a comp setting and matchmaking quality in solo q. (please don't have it at 1 pm est on a saturday )

about sharking/otherwise stalling, i wonder if you could implement a scoring system where the number of kills you get matters, rather than just winning each individual match by kill count. my logic here is that if you're sharking/sitting out of reach to cheese the win, you'll engage less and kill less, and your 5 kills vs. their 1 kill earns you fewer points in the long run than someone else's 20-11 - so that'd be an incentive to not stall. might work better for some weapons than others, though - like, a liter could theoretically sit on a perch the enemy team can't access all game and still get kills while a carbon who's committed to sharking will only kill if their opponent hasn't put themself in a standoff where both are sharking in wait until the timer runs out happens to walk by. idk though. i've also never been on the TO side of things so i don't know how... practical/possible that'd be in the first place?

 

[OnePotWonder]

While not my first choice for a gimmick, I'd probably be interested in taking part in this. I generally prefer a team vs. team format but I do understand that actually getting a team together isn't necessarily easy. Tower Control is definitely the best choice of mode due to the way the objective could be used for passive special charge.

 

[solz]

This is a really great idea, but I feel like beacon would be a really broken option (Because of the returning to base rule)

 

[Vidknight]

I'm writing all of this down at 10 PM so don't expect anything good here, but I do like the idea somewhat. The idea of a tournament focus more on kills than on objective does sound fun, but I do have some problems with it.

1. The 1v1 format doesn't really sound all to fun to play since some weapons by themselves are self sufficient like splash or n-zap while other weapons like Range blaster or splat roller need some help. This can make some weapons not really feeling all to good to use.

2. There are a good amount of ways to exploit this as you can just kill the enemy player once and proceed to go full Tom & Jerry on them and just run away while they chase you

Not going to lie though this did give me an idea for a tournament although I'm not to sure if I should just create a new thread or post the idea here.

 

[Squid_Boards]

I'd be down to play this!
I like the concept of Sevenleaf's idea of changing the scoring/killing system somewhat to better reflect engagement rather than stalling, but I have no idea how exactly to go about that
And agreed with Solz that beacons would be kinda op. As much as I'd like to play a beacon weapon in this, and as much as I dislike banning a bunch of options to play, maybe it'd be best to not allow beacon weapons to be played. Or, somehow implement a cap on how many beacons are allowed per match?

 

[OnePotWonder]

I think I have a solution to the Beakon dilemma. If a player running Beakons gets a splat, they can't jump to any Beakons placed down before they got the splat. It might be tricky to monitor, though, and it would be on the Beakon user to keep in mind which of their Beakons were placed when. Banning the sub altogether is the simplest solution.

 

[sevenleaf]

something i think we should all keep in mind giving suggestions is that, like... sure it'll be a small tournament, but i feel like we don't wanna have rules that rely either on every match getting spectated and/or scrutinized after the fact by a neutral observer or, like, honor system. if beakons will be a problem i think they should just be outright banned; it sounds like a headache on dz's part to regulate how exactly beakons are used in every match, yknow?

(and even if we all say i prommy i won't cheat with beakons it feels easy to accidentally break some of these rules if you're even moderately used to using a beakon weapon. or if you're not used to it, in the case of setting a limit on how many beakons you use - do you know how many times i've used a bombless weapon and tried to use my very-much-not-a-bomb sub as a bomb out of habit??)

all weapons have two kits, so no main weapon is completely excluded by banning beakons. my apologies to everyone who was dying to place little structures all over this tournament though

 

[solz]

Noooo Not my little Eiffel tower's with cheese grater tops

 

[OnePotWonder]

There might be a small problem with this format. A player can get an early lead of even a single splat and then play extremely passive for the rest of the game, possibly even camping out in their spawn for the rest of the game on maps where part of it is just inaccessible, like Umami Ruins.

In order to combat this you could make knocking out with the tower override splats for a victory. Would probably never happen in the tournament with either the tower rider splatting the camper and having to jump out or the camper splatting the rider, but the threat of losing that way could fix the potential problem of camping.

This might also be too complicated, but it works on paper.

 

[DzNutsKong]

Figured I'd wait a bit before responding to some of the stuff here so I'm not spamming my own thread every time someone replies lmao

about sharking/otherwise stalling, i wonder if you could implement a scoring system where the number of kills you get matters, rather than just winning each individual match by kill count.

Interesting thought that I could definitely try and think about more. I would likely run this as a Swiss bracket and it's entirely possible for me to give more reward to someone who, say, goes 2-2 but averages 5 kills per game than someone who goes 4-0 but stalls the game out for 3 kills per game. The reward here would kind of have to be either something score-based or for the sake of there being placements for a final bracket. I learned last night that it's also entirely possible for someone proficient with Kraken Royale usage to play a heavily campy playstyle where they try to use Kraken as their main way of making progress, which this would punish as well.

However, if I were to use this to determine placements for a final bracket, the problem would pop back up again. If I were to purely reward kills and ignore deaths then there'd be nothing stopping two people from explicitly working together to trade as much as possible with QR or something. Even if not, would we really want to say that someone who goes 10-13 played better than someone who goes 7-4? Maybe you could do something along the lines of counting deaths as taking away half a kill but I don't know how much of that I could do without risking overcomplicating things.

Bottom line is that there might be some balance here and it's worth us all giving some more thought, but it feels like there are issues for a lot of the simpler ways to implement something like this.

This is a really great idea, but I feel like beacon would be a really broken option (Because of the returning to base rule)

And agreed with Solz that beacons would be kinda op. As much as I'd like to play a beacon weapon in this, and as much as I dislike banning a bunch of options to play, maybe it'd be best to not allow beacon weapons to be played. Or, somehow implement a cap on how many beacons are allowed per match?

I think I have a solution to the Beakon dilemma. If a player running Beakons gets a splat, they can't jump to any Beakons placed down before they got the splat. It might be tricky to monitor, though, and it would be on the Beakon user to keep in mind which of their Beakons were placed when. Banning the sub altogether is the simplest solution.

I've thought about this last night as well, but came to the conclusion that it likely wouldn't end up playing out in practice like how it sounds on paper. Maybe it will but I doubt it. On some especially choke point-y maps it could be nice but it would come at a huge cost, that being that most or all of the weapons that can run it are pretty flawed here for one reason or another. Neo Sploosh and Krak-On Roller have no way to threaten space at a mid range, while E-Liter, Dread D, Wiper Deco, CDS, and Octobrush Nouveau have some combination of bad kill time and being somewhat easy to rush down. This leaves exactly two weapons which still might not be perfect. Vanilla Dapple Dualies sound incredibly difficult in a setting like this and for vanilla Tenta Brella I genuinely have no idea how it'd play but it'd probably be better to have Trizooka.

If it were on something like a Slosher, .52 Gal, or Bamboozler I could see it causing issues but here I'm fine letting people work around one of these weapon's faults if they think Beakons would be worth it.

The 1v1 format doesn't really sound all to fun to play since some weapons by themselves are self sufficient like splash or n-zap while other weapons like Range blaster or splat roller need some help. This can make some weapons not really feeling all to good to use.

A lot of people would absolutely need to swap off of their mains for this in favor of weapons that can do a similar job a bit better here. This meta would be a lot more cutthroat for what weapons you can choose, but I wouldn't say it's so bad that someone with a certain playstyle can't find something they'd be able to work with. From my time playing, the game mode is different enough to the point where I could totally see those people competing just fine with those who have mains that are strong here.

Regardless, it's a natural part of gimmick tournaments that certain skills that might make one player a lot better than another in standard play don't matter as much. A year ago I joined a gimmick tournament where you could only sign up individually and were paired three teammates that the TOs tried to make fit as best as possible. Ended up with a team of four support players who could not play aggressively at all. Despite being fairly accomplished players compared to the rest, we didn't do very well. The interest should still come from having to adapt to the different climate and if that doesn't sound fun to you, then I wouldn't blame you at all.

something i think we should all keep in mind giving suggestions is that, like... sure it'll be a small tournament, but i feel like we don't wanna have rules that rely either on every match getting spectated and/or scrutinized after the fact by a neutral observer or, like, honor system. if beakons will be a problem i think they should just be outright banned; it sounds like a headache on dz's part to regulate how exactly beakons are used in every match, yknow?

Usually tournaments like this have a full TO helpdesk to resolve when problems come up, although the community's small enough to the point where I could totally manage something like this. It's not like every game needs to be carefully watched either. If I were to ban Squid Beakon and an opponent sees this rule or some other rule broken, there's nothing stopping them from clipping it and sharing it with me in my helpdesk afterwards if the opponent tries to dispute it.

This is actually how my previous tournaments' Splattercolor Screen bans would have needed to be implemented had it not been for the fact that this is a small community and I have some amount of trust that everyone here would play this for fun. But it's still ideal that a rule is easy to follow, impossible to break by accident, and can be reported to me without much difficulty. That's why we're thinking things over like the stalling issue and stuff as opposed to saying "don't camp people out" and leaving it there. I doubt anyone would play that lame here but you can never be too safe.

In order to combat this you could make knocking out with the tower override splats for a victory.

Funny enough I had completely forgotten about passive special charge until last night where I played in and saw some practice games for this format. First thought was to make it so neither side is allowed to touch the Tower at all so nobody gets passive special charge but I don't know how this will change things to be honest. At minimum it's an interesting thought how camping for long enough has the shorter-term deficit of giving the opponent a little bit of time on tower for the passive special buff, plus the longer-term deficit of possibly desperately needing to force someone off of tower in order for a game not to end. Will need to do some test games of this, it's not a bad idea on paper.


For other stuff -

• In thinking about how to more concretely fix the stalling issue I've thought about making it so the player with more paint or less paint wins if neither side has more than 5 or so kills. I don't think of these work out though. In the former case it's possible to go Aerospray with a bunch of Swim Speed, avoid all combat and paint the map the whole game and in the latter it's still possible to shark in a super small spot of ink if you're in a winning position and go unnoticed for a long time. Oh well.
• I forgot to mention - this would probably be best of 1, maaaaaybe bo3 with Turf War as the mode for shorter matches. Again, still with K/D mattering and objective not. 5 minutes is a long time and you'll get a good feel for who's played better in a match by then although I could see the latter having some merit in case one stage is bad for you or you want to counterpick weapons.
• Sturgeon is definitely the #6 most likely map on that tier list I put above, really cool mid for this setting. Map choice isn't super important here as opposed to just playing well but I will still want to prioritize maps with unique layouts.
• I mentioned before but Kraken might be pretty overbearing if you're at all comfortable using it. Enables an incredibly safe and low-risk playstyle. Another reason the stalling issue might be difficult to solve since you could totally try to win engagements only when you have Kraken online, "starting an engagement" might mean throwing yourself into a weapon that greatly outranges you from where you're way too far away from hitting them, you might be running around the map and outrunning them, you might be sharking, you might be sitting in spawn where they can't reach...it's a lot at once to consider. Plus, what if both players are trying to do one of those things at the same time for one reason or another? Might be a tough issue to solve if the proposed TC idea doesn't work.
• Either way, enough interest has been shown to the point where this is probably something I'll think more about. I still might not run it if I get scared that I can't solve the issue but I'll try my best.

 

[OnePotWonder]

A quick note on how exactly PSC works in Tower Control:

If either team has control of the tower, that team gains 4.5 special points per second.
If neither team has control of the tower, the team with fewer objective points gains 1.5 special points per second.

Using the tower to charge special is risky; after a player touches if for the first time, their opponent will gain passive charge so long as the tower is in neutral. Everyone involved should keep this in mind.