Poll: Most games are decided in the first 5 minutes.
TK8
Join Date: 2013-03-24 Member: 184327Members
Join Date: 2013-03-24 Member: 184327Members
Poll: Most games are decided in the first 5 minutes.
Agree
Disagree
This poll was motivated by Savant's excellent "Forgiveness" thread.
I am a casual gamer who hangs out in UWE's public EU servers. Whenever a new game starts I find myself keeping a tight track of the game's progress in the first few minutes. "Progress" meaning things like:
How do you feel about this? Is this recognizable?
Agree DisagreeThis poll was motivated by Savant's excellent "Forgiveness" thread.
I am a casual gamer who hangs out in UWE's public EU servers. Whenever a new game starts I find myself keeping a tight track of the game's progress in the first few minutes. "Progress" meaning things like:
- Skirmishes won or lost.
- Team cohesion (group play versus solo play).
- Commanding speed.
- "We got this."
- "We're screwed."
How do you feel about this? Is this recognizable?
Comments
I'd say around 70% are decided by the first five minutes. 90% seems a bit much, but I take your point.
I have rephrased the poll. It's a bit more vague now but it gets the point across.
It's easy to see whether or not a game will be one of those "Oh. We're going to lose." or else a "We got this no problem." games within the first five minutes. If it turns out to be one such game, then yes, the game was decided within the first 5 minutes. But if not, then there's no telling what will happen.
Honestly, the only times the games are decided in the first 5 minutes is when the skill level between the teams is largely different or there is a base rush involved.
- The game is a foregone conclusion because of a disparity in playing strengths between the two teams
- The two teams are relatively evenly matched, but the game is a foregone conclusion because one of them has made enough mistakes in the early game that they are a) behind and b) unlikely to catch up due to the snowballing nature of NS2.
Both cases are common, but they reflect two different underlying problems with NS2 and require different solutions. The first occurs because NS2 has no good way to ensure that teams are balanced; it could be solved with some kind of matchmaking (including the soft matchmaking that I've suggested here). The second occurs because of slippery slope problems common to most RTS games; solutions to that problem are going to be very difficult to find but very valuable once found.If 51% is enough for "most", then the answer is a resounding yes. And the more you play, the more resounding that yes will become.
But I would venture out to say it is slowly improving. (On a timescale of months.) Aliens in specific seem to be able to recover from a 2 RT situation once the 2nd hive is up more often than before. Although marines continue to be sh*t out of luck if they do poorly to begin with. When was the last time you saw a marine ditch effort to rush a hive? I guess we're waiting to have more teamwork...
I don't see why this topic is getting so much attention recently. Unless you can come up with another powernode mechanic, this "problem" isn't going anywhere. Simply because of how RTS works. I haven't read Savants forgiveness, because it looks bloated as hell ("decisions you make affect outcome" bla bla i am a stuffed animal), so gimme some of that 'forgiveness' if I miss points already addressed.
Edit: Savants Forgiveness... Savants Forgiveness, a story about how love conquers all, a story about betrayal, lust, and redemption... A story about Forgiveness. Featuring, Keira Knightley, Conan O'Brien, Snoop Dogg...
Exceptions exist of course..
I agree with CrazyEddie's reply that the underlying problem is two-fold: Team-balance and "fatal mistakes". Personally, I don't mind losing if we made a fatal mistake. These are part of the game and you can learn from your mistakes. Team-balance is a whole different ball park and does bother me at times. You can theorize whether this is a problem at all, and if so what the underlying problems are. Examples of such conjectures ares:
Oh yeah ? What about 7 Marines vs 6 Skulks, then Skulk commander leaves the server after 30 seconds ? And what about all the good players stack Marine side and Alien side has only rookies without microphone ?
Cut the bullshit, please.
Roughly 12% of games are over at the 5 minute mark, so to achieve a simple majority 43% of the remaining games would have to already be decided. This seems a bit far fetched until you remember that the length of games is skewed right meaning 46% of games are finished before the 15 minute mark. And considering how marine turtles can happen pretty early and last pretty long, that 43% number becomes easier to get to.
I think really it comes down to your definition of "decided". Within 5 minutes can you reasonably speculate on the winner of the round? yes, I think that is true in most cases, to speculate with a reasonable amount of certainty. However if you define "decided" as a certainty of victory the number drops considerably more, I would argue that espousing certainty is similar to a chess player calling checkmate in x moves. This type of decision of a match is much lower. You have the 12% of games that end at 5 minutes and then maybe another handful that end in the next 2-3. You are almost never really "out" of the game when most vote concede, other than a perceived skill gap in the ability of the team to work together. (note I said almost never, it is possible to be out with no conceivable chance of getting back in it. But if the other team can't finish you off shortly after you should reach that point, I don't think you were really at that point).
In an example, I was playing on Refinery and we had a Turbine/Flow start. We (aliens) began expanding to smelting and containment. While we were harassing their extractors, they rushed our hive at 3 minute mark. Our skulks were not that great at responding and I was gorging up Smelting. They ended up getting our celerity upgrade and our hive (literally 2 seconds after we were able to drop the second hive). So 5 minutes into the game although we had a lot of Res-Nodes we had lost our only upgrade, had an un-built hive and 1 shift with 3 eggs around it. The Comm and I power-built the hive, and the team came back to win at the 35 minute mark.
So much rage. Were you not hugged enough when you were younger?
I wasn't =(
Now I'm an angry boy.
Anyway, I do agree with you that sweeping statements are almost never correct.
But in my experience, the first 5 minutes of the game do at least have a huuuge affect on the rest of the game.
Enough of a huge affect that it may most likely decide the game.
And Locklear is also correct to a large extent.
So you're both right.
Now kiss.
What if I was?.....Luke
~~~~~~~~ Wavey lines as we drift back to yesterday ~~~~~~~~
I joined an Alien team on veil, they were holding Cargo and Pipeline, had a harvester in Sub-Access. Marines held Control, Skylights, Overlook, and Nano (phasegate + minibase) RT's
It was obvious we didn't have bad players, scores were not that inflated for Marines, they had just managed to truly secure Sub-Access as a phasegate went up as I joined. But the khammander was not commanding, he was just trying to build up his own game and assuming his team would all swarm together magically. A few sporadic votes to concede appear with 1/2 votes going in but no real drive behind one or two disheartened players.
I took it upon myself to provide a squad-leader type approach and informing the commander of expansion opportunities. As marines rushed Cargo instead of going to defence I took a group of rag-tag Skulks all battle hardened and mostly wounded up to Control, we immediately went to work on the powernode thinking this would force a beacon. However the Marine comm had another idea - all in push on Control! We rapidly munched our way through the whole base, however we lost our Crag hive in Cargo, and our Shell upgrade! The remaining marines are easily cleaned up once the power went down in control holding the only Arms lab.
Our two fades now terrified of dying start playing extremely defensively and go purely into a harass strategy stray marines. Our com takes C12, Topo, Control, and re-drops Control almost immediately after we take the Chair. The 4 skulk pack of renegades meets up with the last defenders of cargo and we charge Nano, while the marine team was clearly rebuilding Arms Lab and Other toys in Sub-Access we take down Nano phasegate!
Success, Aliens now hold almost the whole map short of 2 res nodes and the Marines have lost there 2nd Chair and are with out jetpacks. Our first Onos appear on the field due to the sudden influx of res from holding so much map control and we rush head long into the turtling marines. Now they have W3/A3 back up they are a hardened defence. We control and guard overlook to get a forward heal station 1 onos (me) and 1 gorge. The rest of the team is fighting in system-waypointing. Marines are totally pinned! It's only a matter of time. They held out for another few minutes, but the onslaught proved to much and their command chair came crashing down!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An extremely rare game, but massively satisfying. I've been in very few games which felt lost only to be turned, but when they happen - god damn they are some of the best games ever!
In any case, I have to agree that quite frequently one can predict the outcome really early. Imo, increasing some tech costs or decreasing res income from harvesters/extractors (generally slowing down tech acquisition) would give teams a bit more time to adjust strategy, organise themselves, and have a better chance of coming back from a few lost encounters. It won't solve anything if the teams are completely stacked, but it should make early mistakes less punishing in less stacked match-ups.
I probably am repeating myself by now but all of these issues are resolved in Sewlek's balance mod.
Which is exactly what I said - when the skill level is massively different between the two teams.
In regards to the other part..
When the Commander leaves the server that early.. that's not even a real game, why would that even be included in the poll/statistic?
That's just disorganized garbage excuse of a game.
I would wager the first 10 minutes are a bigger marker, because that gauges where the teams are before the typical hit of Fades and higher level weapons/technology for Marines.