[NASS] North American Seasonal Series Announcement & Sign Up
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Personally, I prefer the longer round timer. Originally, I was excited to try shorter round lengths, since I hoped it would curtail some of the pre-MOTF camping. Unfortunately, IMO, it really just turned most Warband matches into a dead sprint for the predicted MOTF spawn, and removed intelligent/aggressive players' opportunities to make some exciting pre-MOTF plays.
I don't care much about combat speed or gold -- everyone's able to adapt, though I prefer 1500 gold and fastest. I think that as our NA tournaments evolved, they got better in a lot of ways. The shorter round timer is one of the few aspects where I think we took a step in the decidedly wrong direction.
And to those saying that longer round timers just means more camping at the beginning, I'd agree with that criticism. Most clans didn't make use of that time and just spent that extra 30 seconds staring at a wall. And it's a big reason why those clans didn't win.
I don't care much about combat speed or gold -- everyone's able to adapt, though I prefer 1500 gold and fastest. I think that as our NA tournaments evolved, they got better in a lot of ways. The shorter round timer is one of the few aspects where I think we took a step in the decidedly wrong direction.
And to those saying that longer round timers just means more camping at the beginning, I'd agree with that criticism. Most clans didn't make use of that time and just spent that extra 30 seconds staring at a wall. And it's a big reason why those clans didn't win.
Celebrating TW account by diving into one of the oldest debates in NA history.
Medium versus Fastest-
Best comment so far has highlighted on the fact that each setting requires different approaches. One is not necessarily 'better' than the other, but one is more accepted (medium) because it has historically been the default EU setting and has been the mainstay of NA for the last several years. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I want to say the principle argument of why NA changed from fastest to Medium was not because of a definitive argument that medium was superior, it was to try and entice EU teams into signing up for NA tournaments to bulwark an already stagnant NA community.
As a player, I personally enjoy fastest, but nostalgia isn't a great reason for forcing a number of people who never had any experience with the speed (or were very new/unskilled in the scene) to play with it. That's not to say they couldn't, since at this point pretty much everyone in NA is competent enough to handle basic game mechanics on any speed.
On fastest speed, scrim dynamics change in the following ways:
- Infantry play heavily favors aggressive play-styles. Hilt spamming became the default meta in NA competitive while we still used Fastest Speed simply because, in conjunction with weapon stun mechanics, it enabled a decent infantry to kill a weaker opponent in a far shorter amount of time, as opposed to current meta where an inf v inf conflict can turn into an extended fight unless one inf receives support from a teammate. Fastest speed additionally requires, at the risk of sounding arrogant, "high mental processing speeds". You can't always tract the exact location of the enemy blade as they feint, spam, etc (which is one of the big cons of fastest speed), but being able to react quickly and take advantage of opponents weaknesses/mistakes has a much smaller window in fastest speed, thus making capitalizing on those mistakes more difficult (this isn't to say that bad players can't be punished for making bad plays, but that you, as a player, have to be more on the ball about when to punish them for it).
- Cavalry, with the added speed bonus of fastest, both deal more damage and take more damage. Missiles and swings already aided by momentum cause greater damage, while 1b lance hits become a bit more common. Of course, with the current meta of lawlpikes, 1b stabs from cav happen all the time, and on medium speed siege crossbows still 1b Nord and Nid cav.
- Archers benefit significantly from fastest speed, as obviously for those capable of making the shots, the ability to increase dps increases the chances of successful hits/kills. Additionally, archers have a greater chance of doing damage in melee, with their lack of athletics being somewhat evened out by fastest speed (obviously they'll still have less acceleration/speed than inf, but its less noticeable).
Round Timers-
IMO, shorter is better. Perhaps at one point NA had callers who were willing to forego camping and tried to force aggressive plays, but nowadays attempting to do so involves pushing into other teams that camp in strong locations and surrendering flag spawns, which tactically makes little sense. I like to play aggressive, and encourage my team (when calling) to go for early picks if they think they have a chance of being successful, but on any map other than Sandiboush, trying to be aggressive and push your opponent will turn out something like that 1 round of tK versus SG on Vendetta back in like WPL1 (tK abandons all strategic positions and charges an archer in the open, gets kited to the other side of the map, and then loses cause SG just sends a cav to flag).
Gold Amounts-
The more gold available, the more diverse loadouts people will use. With 1k there's almost always an "optimal loadout" that each class has, depending on drops. With 1200, I find there to be more options, i.e. choosing a better polearm, helmet, shield, etc (or it just gives us fashionably-conscious warbanders the ability to get gloves, which is super important). 1500 brings too much diversity, cause now you've got some factions which are horrible unbalanced in terms of armor, dps, and horses.
TLDR: Fastest is a fun novelty, when people complain about it being worse than medium, it just requires smarter play that they may not be experienced with. Still, we're all used to medium, so I'm content with fighting on that speed. Round timers are fine, 1200 gold superior amount.
Medium versus Fastest-
Best comment so far has highlighted on the fact that each setting requires different approaches. One is not necessarily 'better' than the other, but one is more accepted (medium) because it has historically been the default EU setting and has been the mainstay of NA for the last several years. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I want to say the principle argument of why NA changed from fastest to Medium was not because of a definitive argument that medium was superior, it was to try and entice EU teams into signing up for NA tournaments to bulwark an already stagnant NA community.
As a player, I personally enjoy fastest, but nostalgia isn't a great reason for forcing a number of people who never had any experience with the speed (or were very new/unskilled in the scene) to play with it. That's not to say they couldn't, since at this point pretty much everyone in NA is competent enough to handle basic game mechanics on any speed.
On fastest speed, scrim dynamics change in the following ways:
- Infantry play heavily favors aggressive play-styles. Hilt spamming became the default meta in NA competitive while we still used Fastest Speed simply because, in conjunction with weapon stun mechanics, it enabled a decent infantry to kill a weaker opponent in a far shorter amount of time, as opposed to current meta where an inf v inf conflict can turn into an extended fight unless one inf receives support from a teammate. Fastest speed additionally requires, at the risk of sounding arrogant, "high mental processing speeds". You can't always tract the exact location of the enemy blade as they feint, spam, etc (which is one of the big cons of fastest speed), but being able to react quickly and take advantage of opponents weaknesses/mistakes has a much smaller window in fastest speed, thus making capitalizing on those mistakes more difficult (this isn't to say that bad players can't be punished for making bad plays, but that you, as a player, have to be more on the ball about when to punish them for it).
- Cavalry, with the added speed bonus of fastest, both deal more damage and take more damage. Missiles and swings already aided by momentum cause greater damage, while 1b lance hits become a bit more common. Of course, with the current meta of lawlpikes, 1b stabs from cav happen all the time, and on medium speed siege crossbows still 1b Nord and Nid cav.
- Archers benefit significantly from fastest speed, as obviously for those capable of making the shots, the ability to increase dps increases the chances of successful hits/kills. Additionally, archers have a greater chance of doing damage in melee, with their lack of athletics being somewhat evened out by fastest speed (obviously they'll still have less acceleration/speed than inf, but its less noticeable).
Round Timers-
IMO, shorter is better. Perhaps at one point NA had callers who were willing to forego camping and tried to force aggressive plays, but nowadays attempting to do so involves pushing into other teams that camp in strong locations and surrendering flag spawns, which tactically makes little sense. I like to play aggressive, and encourage my team (when calling) to go for early picks if they think they have a chance of being successful, but on any map other than Sandiboush, trying to be aggressive and push your opponent will turn out something like that 1 round of tK versus SG on Vendetta back in like WPL1 (tK abandons all strategic positions and charges an archer in the open, gets kited to the other side of the map, and then loses cause SG just sends a cav to flag).
Gold Amounts-
The more gold available, the more diverse loadouts people will use. With 1k there's almost always an "optimal loadout" that each class has, depending on drops. With 1200, I find there to be more options, i.e. choosing a better polearm, helmet, shield, etc (or it just gives us fashionably-conscious warbanders the ability to get gloves, which is super important). 1500 brings too much diversity, cause now you've got some factions which are horrible unbalanced in terms of armor, dps, and horses.
TLDR: Fastest is a fun novelty, when people complain about it being worse than medium, it just requires smarter play that they may not be experienced with. Still, we're all used to medium, so I'm content with fighting on that speed. Round timers are fine, 1200 gold superior amount.
WilySly said:
^^^
Calling is too easy with shorter round timers you just got to know flag spawns and basically nothing else because there is nothing else to prepare for, although it made scrims alot easier and less time consuming I also think it created a sort of mindless game until flag spawned since there's no point in doing much else until that happened
WilySly said:
Teams camp because neither team wants to push the opponent into their fortified positions; adding an extra 30 seconds does not change that. Good teams make the tactical plays in the 30 seconds after the flag spawns, as it gives an objective with multiple ways to approach it.
I would very much like to see where you get the knowledge from that good teams used the time before flag well. When AE dominated, they did most of the tactical plays after the flag spawned and I recall many of them advocating for reducing round timers.
AgreedClockWise said:
You are welcome.
NateBeSoSavage
Veteran
So i'm going to assume this tournament will not happen and I'll drop my team from the tourney.
And another one bites the dust...
Watly said:
I advocated for it too. Seemed like a good idea, like it would accelerate the pace of matches and reduce camping. To some degree, it did, but it also reduced the time for strategic plays that don't have anything to do with MOTF. So maybe it would work better if there was a larger gap between forced MOTF spawn and the round start, even with a shortened round timer.
Short of looking up a bunch of clips of wK damaging teams prior to MOTF spawns, I'm not sure how you'd like us to illustrate our experience. Up until UNAC S4, teams just fought, by trying to create opportunities via movement or aggression. MOTF was present only if teams were camping or couldn't finish each other off. After UNAC S4, the timer reduced and MOTF took a way bigger precedence in determining how fights would happen and where.
I recognize that many teams benefited from shortened round timers (because they didn't have to worry about doing anything other than zerging at flag now, IMO). In my experience leading wK, we had a lot of success using that pre-MOTF time to generate wins.
Anyways, just my thoughts, but I'm not trying to turn this into another "X vs Y" thread.
Better to lose in the finals than not even make playoffs.Danate said:
Also, didn't you get dumpstered that tourney by GK?
The final season of UNAC ran 3:30 round timers and 2:00 flag spawns: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,348005.msg8331923.html#msg8331923sigi1 said:
That wasn't the end of the world or the death of competitive play, and it's not a throwback to the age of the dinosaurs when round timers were 5 minutes or longer, campfests were the norm, and you sometimes had to reroll random plains half a dozen times to get a playable map. For reference, WPL2 dropped the round timer to 3:00 and bumped the flag spawn to 2:20. The net effect is a loss of less than a minute of pre-MOTF time and a gain of 20 seconds of post-MOTF time. What we're considering right now is just tacking on 30 more seconds to pre-MOTF time. We keep the 2:20 MOTF time and have a little bit more time beforehand which is beneficial for positioning in open maps. This isn't some portent of doom, it's 30 seconds on a round. If every single round is played in a match, you're looking at an additional 10 minutes of match time without a tiebreaker.
Ten minutes maximum, man. I think that's making a mountain out of a molehill.
Aura (Zaffa) said:
You say this like it is an UNEXPECTED RESULT.
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