Community Input!!

[SteppinRazor]

I can understand having a timer if it was something like 150 minutes.  I would assume no timer would be used on semi games or the finals though

[Peregrine]

yeah a timer that you can VOTE on after the 4th player dies. you shouldnt force these things onto games...and again it still leaves the points problem.

there are players who dont have great micro but they use other time consuming strategies to win, like hoarding and using chims or tanks etc. these players would never win through points and they also would be hurt by a timer. this is why i think its unfair...its helping some players and hurting others... a timer by vote might work, especially if we can figure out the points thing.

Also red posted that the average game length is about 90 minutes...which really isnt so bad at all

[Dovekie]

Timer will benefit battle winners and micro monsters. It will harm players who don't rely on their micro and ability to win every 1v1 fight but cunninges and long time planning. Timer will boost micro aspect of FFA too much and hurt "smart play" aspect too much.

Yeah how dare the people who play better get an advantage, that sounds terrible. And good micro, battle sense, knowledge of army composition, timing on spells, items, understanding of position, etc. is definitely not about "smart play", right? Its definitely also by far the least fun and interesting to watch aspect of games. I much prefer to see who is better at lying or stealing wins through calculated luck, manipulation, and lack of opponents scouting.

And on that note I would prefer like an 80 min timer.

[j33.]

Really good post Dovekie. FFA is unfair gametype. Best players of the gametype  rarely win and worst player of the game type dominate it. Those noobs have no understanding of the game and no skills required to be successful in ffa and still they win most of the games. Very strange. Obviously FFA is broken game mode.

Also rules of soccer should be changed so my favorite team could win more. They are best in that game but rules just suck.

I have solution. Lets play Microwars custom game or lets remake it for 4 players and 100 vs 100, 80 vs 80 armies. It would fix many of our problems.
- Pretty much fixed duration of match
- Noobs can chat and manipulate as much as they want. It won't help.
- Observers could witness constant big battles, the most fun and interesting aspect of FFA
- No more lame and pathetic teaming

I am sorry if I couldn't achieve same level of sarcasm as Dovekie did in his post.

Please ignore all above.

FFA as a game type is what it is. It allows certain things. Superior battle knowledge isn't everything. Go play microwars if u seek game mode where it is.
It is big part of FFA but not everything. Only winning counts. 80 min timer would be a joke, it would change game mode too much.

Timer is not doomed idea. It just shouldn't change FFA too much.

[Dovekie]

Sorry I was being a little harsh. I do enjoy me a good upset and when more intelligent play wins even if it doesn't have good micro, but something in my brain literally ticks off once a game gets to an hour and a half. There is nothing fun about the game type anymore for me, and I feel a lot of people are similar. It is just people purposefully changing warcraft to waitcraft and I will go suicide someone at that point just so that something happens because waitcraft is absurdly stupidly boring to play and watch.  I think it bothers me that someone would actually torture someone else with passive boring do-nothing play just cause they want to win that way.

[FML|WorpeX]

The point of the timer is to speed up the game. Players will see the timer when there is 15minutes left of gameplay and immediately speed up their plans. Sure, a game might end prematurely, but I think the far more likely outcome from this is that most FFA games that get close to the time limit become chaos of the last 15minutes with all players having to accelerate their long-term plans.

Of course, we wont know for sure what will happen until tests are done!

[FML|Renaud]

The way I see it, the timer is actually better for patient/manip type players.

We strive when other players lose their calm, the timer will just accelerate that.

We also need to convince others that whoever has the biggest heroes should be kill, not the most gold... which will be easier to do if it looks like it might go to time

But of course, this is just my theory, there is no way to know until we try it.  So let's at least try it, that way we can either get a new system that everyone loves, or at least gives us some data to have a real argument :)