2009/06/09 - Serious Tuesday Discussion Thread

[FadedOasis]

Captains were chosen randomly to be carbonhyperbole and TheWackyWombat. Wacky won the flip, and chose to pick second. Team picks are below:

Carbon's Picks (Team A)	Wacky's Picks (Team 1)
Rhench - - Sora Pneuma - - cheesecake Scrambles - - Church of Virus	- fex whatsit - - thechurch wrathofbilly - - maximugga career -
- cp_granary	pl_cashworks_b2 -

Map 1: cp_badlands
Team 1: 2
Team A: 0

Map 2: pl_cashworks_b2

Demo of this match here. Thanks, pneuma.

Map 3: cp_granary
Team 1: 4
Team A: 0
Demo of this match here. Thanks, pneuma.

Map 4: cp_steel

Demo of this match here. Thanks, pneuma.

Final Score: Team 1 wins, four maps to zero.

-----

Discuss the event and all its problems below.

[rhench]

Things that are desperately needed before this event happens again:

A mod to the server expressly for this type of event including stopwatch so that someone doesn't have to moderate. Also, Team A frequently was unaware that the first round was beginning. For everything but Steel, but we could blame Carbon for being inattentive if we want. Yeah, let's do that.

Theoretically this would also allow for class limits of 2 per, as well as other such nuances.

Use of a Ventrilo server. Maybe others don't care, but I hate not being able to say what killed me. Something around 15% of my usefulness (not joking) as a Scout is ruined by lack of ability to speak with dead.

---
Other stuff:

I'd like to see the draft, if not have it done live. I'm aware that it takes forever to do live, so good job organizing to Faded and whoever else did that. Just a record of it would be fine by me, but it's hardly necessary.

As far as maps go, I'd like to see a maximum of three. Four was just too much srsbsnss for one night, especially after having done a scrim earlier in the night with my team. If we stick with three, the one by vote, one per captain strategy is a good one. If just two, I'd say captains only.

I'm thinking this could be an every-other week event. It was hella fun, and it's nice to play maps that I'll never play in a league competitively.

Getting teams posted will be easier if we get more people to sign up quickly, but I'd like to have at least a marginal ability to strategy-build, at least as far as who plays what. We needed like fifteen minutes to figure that part out on Team A, maybe more, per map. Except Steel, and that's because I went crazy. Seriously, who plays 4 different classes in a scrim? Oh well. Schizophrenia away.

[pneuma08]

Jun 9, 2009 23:02:01 GMT -5 rhench said:

A mod to the server expressly for this type of event including stopwatch so that someone doesn't have to moderate. Also, Team A frequently was unaware that the first round was beginning. For everything but Steel, but we could blame Carbon for being inattentive if we want. Yeah, let's do that.

- and -

I'd like to have at least a marginal ability to strategy-build, at least as far as who plays what. We needed like fifteen minutes to figure that part out on Team A, maybe more, per map.

Indeed. A common occurrence for Team A was carbon going, "Okay, we'll need at least two soldiers and a demoman, the soldiers should go left with the - wait, we're starting? When did that happen!" The only map we had time to plan was cashworks, and that time was spent going on about how no one really knew any strats for a payload map.

I recall back in my CS days that the servers back then had the ability to fade some colored text into the middle of the screen. Such a thing would be a lot less easy to miss than chat speak and admin-messages. Also perhaps some more communication between the two teams, such as the team captains exchanging a "ready!" before the start would help get everyone on point before the match.

Use of a Ventrilo server. Maybe others don't care, but I hate not being able to say what killed me. Something around 15% of my usefulness (not joking) as a Scout is ruined by lack of ability to speak with dead.

Also very much yes. Even as a soldier my first thought when encountering a bunch of people is to try to deal as much damage as possible (and possibly get away), not warn the team. Being able to warn on death would help so much.

As far as maps go, I'd like to see a maximum of three. Four was just too much srsbsnss for one night, especially after having done a scrim earlier in the night with my team. If we stick with three, the one by vote, one per captain strategy is a good one. If just two, I'd say captains only.

I also support this. The first three were great but the fourth map was definitively dragging after that.

Also, I did record the 2nd-4th maps (forgot to start the first) in .dem format, if people are interested.

[scrambles]

All that sounds good. I agree that a vent server needs to get up, and the starts of rounds need to be more obvious.
Also as for the maps; let's not do a map twice in concurrent weeks.

[carbad]

hey d00ds, it was fun even though I was a scatter brain :D

isn't there just some tournament mode thing you can turn on? when I go PUGing with the CP d00ds they have tourney mode active, and it keeps score across rounds and allows team captains to set their state to ready when they're done discussing pro strats with their team, and the system starts the round automatically when both teams set their status to ready. I was under the impression that it was built in, but at any rate it would be super cool. Then me being unobservant and failing at reading the in game chat wouldn't be an issue, and we wouldn't need someone to keep score and start the round manually, etc.

not being able to talk while dead is a problem. I wish TF2 would just let you change such a setting. I don't know much about vent servers, but they probably cost at least a bit of money. If we want to get super srs about srs tuesdays it might be a good investment, or maybe we could find another system (someone mentioned using Steam chat, would that work?).

edort: i should probably add to my last greedy-sounding statement there that I'd be willing to chip in on a vent server (i'll probably make a donation anyway pretty soon, but a vent server would be super cool if we're gonna do more competitive stuff)

[rhench]

Wacky mentioned that he has one, so long as he's either there or doesn't mind us using his, that could work. Also, I might be able to Shanghai Suzie QQ's spot in the ARS one, since I could call this a practice scrim for her team whenever I'm involved.

[carbad]

my captain only knows me as the guy with a kind of cool user name, so I don't think he'd be super likely to let me use the catface vent channel.

[carbad]

so, I poked around with the built in tourney mode and it's really easy to use. You just set mp_tournament to 1, and it turns off autobalance and puts up a scoreboard. Each team can change the team name and set their status to ready by pressing F4, and the round starts as soon as both teams go to ready. You can change the win conditions just by changing corresponding mp variables. For example, for a cevo style five point ruleset, you just set:

mp_match_end_at_time_limit 1
mp_timelimit 30
mp_winlimit 5

and tourney mode does everything else for you.

For payload and cp attack maps it even times how long it takes a team to capture, so it's basically the best thing ever.

[Whatsit]

First, I'd like to thank FadedOasis for running the event; excellent job, considering all the little hiccups. I'll volunteer to sit on the substitute/timing bench next time so you actually get to play some full games.

It's interesting to hear what team A was up to -- on team 1 we hardly did any strategy before the round, but there was a lot of on-field communication. There was also quite a bit of mid-round class changes, which meant people could just deal with situations as they arose.
We also managed to get most of of the admin notices, though I definitely support some sort of automatic, explicit 'ready' system, if one's available.

I agree that 4 maps is too long, and that it's too much Serious for a weekly event.

Team balance was obviously an issue. Wacky said he picked largely at random and it wouldn't surprise me if carbon did the same, so it could have just been an accident that won't happen again. Heck, it could just have been down to who was having a bad Tuesday. That said, trying to sort out balanced teams manually (i.e. teams are assigned rather than chosen) would be a lot of trouble, and not necessarily any more effective. I'm don't know what the solution to this is, if there even is one.

I liked the one per captain and one popular vote map selection idea, and disallowing the maps from the previous event seems sensible.

Jun 9, 2009 23:02:01 GMT -5 rhench said:

Something around 15% of my usefulness (not joking) as a Scout is ruined by lack of ability to speak with dead.

You'll be wanting the scout/necromancer multi-class option then? :P
Not sure how I feel about ventrillo. From what I hear, they're not trivial to get set up (on the server side) and then everyone has to download and configure clients...
Plus I like the muted-after-death setup, even if I'm in the tiny minority in that regard.

[carbad]

i'm sure everyone was super impressed with my amazing captain skills, esp. the bit where I didn't know the round had started :3

tournament mode would pretty much solve 90% of our problems, and having some external VOIP system, be it ventrilo or steam chat or whatever, would solve the other 10%. There is a team scrambler (like mp_scramble_teams or something) so we could use that to achieve some semblance of team balance, i.e. keep scrambling until it looks like teams are vaguely even, unless people prefer the drafting method.

[FadedOasis]

w.r.t. Frequency of event
This is a once-per-month event.

w.r.t. Ventrilo/dead-speak:
I am actually against the Vent server idea. Valve has explained many times in the blog that you're not *supposed* to be able talk while you're dead. It allows you to give away information on whoever you're dead-spectating, and even the information on who killed you is a lot. You *should* be announcing enemies *before* they kill you anyway, to give your team even more notice.

w.r.t. Draft list
Still have it, will be posting it soon.

w.r.t. Tournament Mode
We will be using it next month. I just need to figure it out.

[FadedOasis]

Event recap is up. See thread starter.

[carbad]

the idea is that when you die in tourney mode, it puts you in first person spectate, so you can't see anything your team mates aren't already aware of anyway. tourney mode has got pretty much everything covered.

Being able to talk while dead might be against valve's wishes, but it's standard for competitive play, and frequently necessary (OMG i just spelled necessary all by myself without help from spell check) when trying to coordinate a team effort.

Only announcing threats while your alive is a bit silly IMO, because in a fast paced match you don't always have time to even notice a threat's presence if you get scout flanked or walk into a demoman's trap. Say you're playing scout and covering flanks, but while you're engaged in battle with the enemy flanking force you take a hit and go down. Even if you announce the presence of the falnk while you were alive, your team needs to know that you're not covering the flank anymore so they can be prepared to deal with scouts sneaking up behind medics and back capping.

Being able to communicate these occurrences and threats, as well as things like when and where you'll be back in action and what your team mates need to do while you're dead (ex. pull back to the last point, push forward because we're up a man, etc.), are both accepted in and critical to competitive play.

PS: no items, fox only, final destination
PPS: I'd like to mention that I mainly drafted people based on whether or not I knew what classes they played. it's not because I don't like any of you ;_____;
PPPS: all in all it was actually really fun and I'd enjoy doing it more often.
PPPPS: having a long string of post scripts is an old meme

[rhench]

Jun 9, 2009 23:39:06 GMT -5 pneuma08 said:

Also, I did record the 2nd-4th maps (forgot to start the first) in .dem format, if people are interested.

I'd like to see that.

[scrambles]

Being able to talk while dead might be against valve's wishes, but it's standard for competitive play, and frequently necessary when trying to coordinate a team effort.

I agree, tourney is different that regular play, and frankly I don't give a damn about valve's wishes.

[Whatsit]

Jun 10, 2009 12:23:22 GMT -5 carbad said:

Being able to talk while dead might be against valve's wishes, but it's standard for competitive play.

I suspect that's a 'we can't stop it so we might as well allow it for everyone' situation.
That said, if tourney mode does remove the killcam and locks the camera into first person spectate right away, that's most of the ghosting advantage taken away.

[carbad]

demos don't record in-game voice, do they? I'll feel mildly embarrassed if my adorably confused and disorganized captaining is witnessed by generations of future TF2 player.

[pneuma08]

Jun 11, 2009 6:46:51 GMT -5 carbad said:

demos don't record in-game voice, do they? I'll feel mildly embarrassed if my adorably confused and disorganized captaining is witnessed by generations of future TF2 player.

Apparently they record everything I see and/or hear....

So it does record voice chat but not the voice of the one recording.

There are also some weird hiccups from time to time, like when I open the inventory screen the person viewing the demo has to manually close it (like when I switch to kritz in granary) and also there was some bug I found with jarate and death in the demo...but that didn't happen in the match, I think.

Also: if people want to see the demos, they will have to pass me their email addy and/or aim address, as I do not have any webspace to my name. (You can contact me via the username pneuma08 perhaps with an at-gmail affixed to the end.)

[FadedOasis]

pneuma, send them to me and I'll upload them to my gmail space.

[FadedOasis]

Pnuema's demos are now posted. They can be found within the thread starter.

[rhench]

Among the many things I don't know how to do is run a demo. What does one do to view it? I have unzipped the file, but I get an error by simply telling it to go.

[carbad]

Put them in this folder:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\****steam logon goes here****\team fortress 2\tf

then open TF2, type playdemo into console and the name of the demo file.

[pneuma08]

Also, to make your own, type into the console "record [name]" where [name] is what you want to name your demo. The game will record your experience into a .dem file until you type "stop" (no parameters) into the console. (Be careful: the command "stopdemo" stops playback of a demo.) When the map switches, it'll automatically stop recording a file and make a new file with "_(n+1)" added to the end (where n is the number of the previous file), which is evidenced in files #2 and 3, above.

I can also make it into actual movie files (.avi or what have you) but that's a bit more annoying, not to mention time consuming. As far as I know, this is the only way to edit your recordings (i.e. I don't know of a way it can be done with .dem).