Time Clause

[Noad]

 Maybe a time clause extension should be worked out, but no time limit is inconsiderate to the average player.

 

This could be a good area to focus discussion on I think, how could an extension system work? Currently we do give out extensions on some matches that hit 45 minutes if the referee feels that the battle will end soon. What are opinions of this?

[Senile]

This could be a good area to focus discussion on I think, how could an extension system work? Currently we do give out extensions on some matches that hit 45 minutes if the referee feels that the battle will end soon. What are opinions of this?

Way too subjective, people are going to uguu about x person getting an extension but not y, or x getting a longer extension than them, or whatever. Plus, it's still exploitable just like the original time clause and fucks over stall, so it doesn't even fix the biggest issues with time clause, it just gives people more things to complain about. Adding an extensions system to try and "fix" time clause is like adding rims to fix a flat tire.

 

Besides, if the purpose of time clause is to make tournaments shorter, offering extensions flies directly in the face of the purpose of it. At that point, it's better to just increase the amount of time before a time clause (which is still a poopy solution imo) or just removing it entirely.

Edited March 16, 2015 by Senile

[Kiliminati]

This would be a good area to focus discussion on I think, how could an extension system work? Currently we do give out extensions on some matches that hit 45 minutes if the referee feels that the battle will end soon. What are opinions of this?

I remember that we specifically had this issue during my Prom Night event, which prompted the staff as a whole to re-evaluate the entire rule itself. Although a referee being able to determine whether or not an extension should be given based on a set criteria of observations is a good start, I feel as if the entire process could still be much more consistent. If specific guidelines were created that remained true for every match no matter what (and did not require a referee to interpret in each instance), then the process in its entirety would work much better... at least in my opinion. The problem is figuring out what these magical guidelines entail, and the best way to enforce them in each and every match.

[DrCraig]

Your argument is coming from the perspective that time clause significantly decreases the length of tournaments, and not having it would significantly increase their length. I don't think this chain of reasoning is correct, and I doubt that not having time clause would change the length of tournaments THAT much. You're also severely exaggerating the use of "PP Stall playstyle", as if that's even a thing. PP stalls happen, but I've never seen a good stall team with the express purpose of turning every match into a PP stall, kek.

Your argument is from the premise that time clause helps with the length of tournaments, and that removing it significantly lengthens them. However, I see this as an imaginary issue; In other words, you're arguing against an actual problem (The limiting of a specific playstyle, the abuse of a rule to unfairly DQ people, even those who aren't running stall themselves) with what could potentially be a problem (MAYBE tournaments will drag on longer). It's ridiculous from my perspective that the best argument against fixing a clause which causes very obvious and known problems is that if we remove it, maybe something negative would happen. I even pointed out earlier that time clause could potentially result in tournaments being artificially lengthened due to people purposely attempting to enact time clause.

Also, you're ignoring the fact that yes, some people do actually enjoy playing stall, and limiting their ability to play also impedes their enjoyment in the game in the same way you argue that longer tournaments can impede the abilities of others to enjoy the game. Some people are going to have their enjoyment of the game limited no matter what we do, but in this case, I think it's better to go with the route that addresses the major and glaring flaws instead of ignoring the flaws because maybe something negative will happen possibly kinda sorta.

I'm retracting myself from the super serious pokemon debating and presenting my point that it is a convenience to most players. I guess I need a fucking title page, opening, middle, closing and bibliography in MLA format to avoid getting swarmed by "your argument is invalid" bullshit. Edited March 16, 2015 by DrCraig

[Kizhaz]

Your argument is coming from the perspective that time clause significantly decreases the length of tournaments, and not having it would significantly increase their length. I don't think this chain of reasoning is correct, and I doubt that not having time clause would change the length of tournaments THAT much.

I just want to ask though, there have been matches that have or have had the potential to go on for over 2 hours.

 

I'm not sure how many people remember tournaments from before time clauses appearance, but I specifically remember one tournament that lasted something like 8-10 hours. It was then that time clause was considered to becoming an official clause. Time clause does prevent stall strategies that take a match to the hour mark and there is no argument I can see that could say otherwise, however removing time clause can make some tournaments last for hours longer than usual as evidence from before its implementation. You could argue that we didn't have the choice band back then (I don't think we did at least) but stall is a strategy that is built to prevent being broken down by a single hard hitter so it doesn't really help much, if at all. I liked OldKeiths original argument (besides lowering the timeout button, that needs an extension imo), nobody want to spend any longer than we currently do in a tournament.

 

Basically Time clause is good because it keeps tournaments accessible to the casual player but is bad because it prevents stall to an extent (being 45mins). Finding the dividing point between these two is going to be the ideal solution and to what this thread should be aiming for.

[Gunthug]

Yes.

I hate to be the " it's just a game, I have a life" type but this clause really effects the volunteer hosts and the dedicated players. Some people have restricted schedules, and I know one can easily throw around "well then don't play" but that's taking away from the player base. Senile you really do not play enough to know the hours people put into this and it would really be a slap in the face if they cannot participate in events where people are "exploiting the pp stall playstyle" and "gotta get that win." It's just a game for some, and to some winning is a little more. Maybe a time clause extension should be worked out, but no time limit is inconsiderate to the average player.

Didn't something inside you go "stop! No!! Don't!!" When you started to type that "senile you really don't play enough to know" line? If it didn't, it should have. This isn't a "casual" argument removed from the "super serious Pokemon debate," as you're trying to paint it. It's just a fucking ad hominem and a weak attempt, at that

Regarding the rest of your post, you're basically suggesting that removing time clause will suddenly cause stall to become popular and encourage a lot of people to go for PP stalls which is ridiculous.

Will tournaments be longer? I honestly don't know. Some might, and others won't. We won't have any more of that double DQ bullshit, which really sped up tournaments but at what cost? You're giving someone a free pass into a late round because a. Someone intentionally stalled till time clause, b. Someone's team was designed to force a long match, or c. It was just a really good match where no one could break the deadlock. Cmon, let's not pretend we haven't seen some incredible matches go ~1 hour before. It's a rare feat, though, and I don't think it would suddenly become common if time clause was removed.

I think this is a tougher issue than it appears on the face, because obviously no one wants 8 hour tournaments. kizhaz makes a good point - it's about finding a balance that suits both casual players and those who legitimately use stall teams - not teams designed to pp stall, but those designed to be unbreakable. Do I have a solution? Not yet, but I'll dream on it tonight and see what I can come up with Edited March 16, 2015 by Gunthug

[fredrichnietze]

my 2 cents is i got DQ for time clause the last 2 tourneys. this one it ended up 100+ minutes long which is because we both brought 5 walls + 1 sweeper which seems to be the best win strat atm in UU. i think 45 minutes and your done does not seem to work well since if both players bring wall teams which seems to be the best way to win, they are likely to be over 45 minutes. if everyone brought sweeper teams but one person the one person would have the best chance at winning, but if some people brought sweepers and some didnt, then it's just a roll of the dice to see who you get paired with. if you get paired with a wall team you get DQ'd and if you dont then you win seems to be less of a competition and more like gambling. i come to play a competition between 2 people where one wins and the other loose based purely off your own intellect and skill, not rolling dice.

sorry for rant. idk how to TL:DR

[DrCraig]

Since we have issues viewing posts as a whole:
I'd like to see the time clause extended and not abolished.

[jayfeatskydd]

I remember that we specifically had this issue during my Prom Night event, which prompted the staff as a whole to re-evaluate the entire rule itself. Although a referee being able to determine whether or not an extension should be given based on a set criteria of observations is a good start, I feel as if the entire process could still be much more consistent. If specific guidelines were created that remained true for every match no matter what (and did not require a referee to interpret in each instance), then the process in its entirety would work much better... at least in my opinion. The problem is figuring out what these magical guidelines entail, and the best way to enforce them in each and every match.

Heard there was quite the shouting match over my set of matches in that tournament. When who ever Frags and I's ref was gave us a time extension and someone else (who was not reefing either of the matches) strongly disagreed with the extension. In fact, that whole argument would just lead us back to Staff consistency, which another problem for another thread I suppose, so I digress.

Showdown tournaments from my experience are barely moderated, in fact I don't remember hearing from the hosts during the tournament itself. If you guys can't ref to the standards of competitive meta-game, perhaps player-managed tournaments would be a good idea and I don't mean the unofricials we already host. I've seen it suggested before.  If I find it, I'll edit the link in.

[PandaJJ]

When I see this post, I see someone flailing around uguuing about stall, and trying desperately to justify a rule which exists to cripple it as a playstyle.

 

That is the same as saying that cars exist to cripple our ability to cross the road safely. Which is just fuckin' stupid.

 

The time clause is obviously a practical solution to prevent tournaments from lasting all night. I will go as far as to say that the majority of players that frequent officials are Europeans, and that even short tournaments last well into the night in Europe. The tournament yesterday ended at 1.30 AM local time. If zeb and fred did not get DQ'd because of time clause, that match alone would have made the tournament one hour longer. And who knows what the next match would've looked like?

 

The game clearly needs automated tournaments in order to justify the removal of time clause. Automated tournaments will also allow a much needed higher amount of tournaments, and make them accessible for more people if they are run at different times.

 

my 2 cents is i got DQ for time clause the last 2 tourneys. this one it ended up 100+ minutes long which is because we both brought 5 walls + 1 sweeper which seems to be the best win strat atm in UU. i think 45 minutes and your done does not seem to work well since if both players bring wall teams which seems to be the best way to win, they are likely to be over 45 minutes. if everyone brought sweeper teams but one person the one person would have the best chance at winning, but if some people brought sweepers and some didnt, then it's just a roll of the dice to see who you get paired with. if you get paired with a wall team you get DQ'd and if you dont then you win seems to be less of a competition and more like gambling. i come to play a competition between 2 people where one wins and the other loose based purely off your own intellect and skill, not rolling dice.

sorry for rant. idk how to TL:DR

 

If your assessment is correct, and there are only two archetypes in UU (sweepers and walls) with the property that you stated (sweepers vs sweepers is fair, sweepers lose to walls, walls vs walls break time clause), then we are in a perfect example of the prisoner's dilemma. The optimal strategy is to bring walls - because no matter what your opponent brings, walls are better. This leads everybody to bring walls. Therefore, everybody lose first round thanks to time clause. The ideal situation would be that all players bring sweepers to make fair games, but this is prevented by the optimal strategy being to bring walls, despite this meaning that everybody will get DQ'd. Prisoner's dilemma is funny.

 

With that said, I don't believe your assesment is correct - wall teams can be beaten without having to reach the stage of pp stalling, and without having bad matchups against everything else.

[Tyrone]

I think Time Clause should remain to exist as long as hosts and refs are required to run Official Tournaments.

Personally speaking, I don't ref or host many events because the timing is almost never optimal for me as European. (Oceanics/Noon are too early and Normal/Night are too late).

So, while technically Time Clause is removing a viable battle strategy, I feel like the risk of such strategies causing a huge time delay is greater than removing than removing Time Clause.

If Time Clause were to be removed, we could see duels take up to twice as long effectively turning a 3h Tournament into a 6h one.

 

Maybe instead of doing something about Time Clause, something can be done about the tiers. For example testing shuckle, umbreon, slowking, miltank.

This could potentially weaken the wall strategy and balance it out vs the sweeper and mixed strategy.

Disclaimer: This hasn't been discussed yet and is just a personal idea.

[OldKeith]

Well Senile had some fair points. So the conclusion this thread would lead to, after reading everyone's input is that Stall play style is not the reason why people want tournaments to take less time, but just the amount of time the hosts, refs and competitors wish to dedicate to an official.

 

So yeah, sacrifice a time consuming play style that can potentially go for 1+hours a match, or sacrifice people's free time or sleep? I think the decision is clear. I doubt that out of the 32 competitiors, the majority want a tournament to last 6+ hours. I strongly doubt it.

 

So my opinion is that despite the exploitability, the time clause should forever remain in the officials, not only for the sake of the hosts, but also for the participants from various time zones across the world.

 

In the future, the exploitability can be ruined by the afk timer limit going down as the time progresses:

first 10 minutes>75 seconds

10-20 minutes>60 seconds

20-30 minutes>45 seconds

30+ minutes>30 seconds

 

This system can stop people from deliberately wasting time, if the AFK timer appears on screen, of course.

[fredrichnietze]

[spoiler]

The game clearly needs automated tournaments in order to justify the removal of time clause. Automated tournaments will also allow a much needed higher amount of tournaments, and make them accessible for more people if they are run at different times.

 

 

If your assessment is correct, and there are only two archetypes in UU (sweepers and walls) with the property that you stated (sweepers vs sweepers is fair, sweepers lose to walls, walls vs walls break time clause), then we are in a perfect example of the prisoner's dilemma. The optimal strategy is to bring walls - because no matter what your opponent brings, walls are better. This leads everybody to bring walls. Therefore, everybody lose first round thanks to time clause. The ideal situation would be that all players bring sweepers to make fair games, but this is prevented by the optimal strategy being to bring walls, despite this meaning that everybody will get DQ'd. Prisoner's dilemma is funny.

 

With that said, I don't believe your assesment is correct - wall teams can be beaten without having to reach the stage of pp stalling, and without having bad matchups against everything else.

[/spoiler]

exactly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

thankyou for this example it fits the situation perfectly. 

and i think the problem is less "nothing can counter these wall" as "why should you stay in with pokemon X and die when pokemon Z can perfectly counter your opponents pokemon?" everything zebra and i had, had healing and we both had clerics. without cloyster/fortress, UU does not have very good spike users to dissuade people from switching to a different wall every other turn. there is no logical reason to stay in with umbreon against hitmonlee when you have slowking and altaria to switch to. without spikes/stealth rocks the continuation of walls switching around between eachother just continues. both zeb and me had counters for every one of each-others pokemon, but none of us had any reason to stay in or any penalty to switch.

 

also i would like to say that both me and zebra are of the opinion that the mods made the right decision in following the rules and DQ'ing us. rules should be changed through discussion in threads like these not spontaneously in a tournament.

[jayfeatskydd]

 

In the future, the exploitability can be ruined by the afk timer limit going down as the time progresses:

first 10 minutes>75 seconds

10-20 minutes>60 seconds

20-30 minutes>45 seconds

30+ minutes>30 seconds

 

This system can stop people from deliberately wasting time, if the AFK timer appears on screen, of course.

 

 

I like the idea of the limit going down. Showdown's format has always been efficient, as you take more and more time with your moves, the limit is reduced gradually. My question is why with half the limit as a start. People who play on Showdown are given roughly twice that amount of time.

 

To this day I still don't follow why we are given a timer that is a)invisible and b) half the time of what most of us are used to Showdown.

[Senile]

I'm not sure how many people remember tournaments from before time clauses appearance, but I specifically remember one tournament that lasted something like 8-10 hours. It was then that time clause was considered to becoming an official clause. Time clause does prevent stall strategies that take a match to the hour mark and there is no argument I can see that could say otherwise, however removing time clause can make some tournaments last for hours longer than usual as evidence from before its implementation. You could argue that we didn't have the choice band back then (I don't think we did at least) but stall is a strategy that is built to prevent being broken down by a single hard hitter so it doesn't really help much, if at all. I liked OldKeiths original argument (besides lowering the timeout button, that needs an extension imo), nobody want to spend any longer than we currently do in a tournament.

 

Basically Time clause is good because it keeps tournaments accessible to the casual player but is bad because it prevents stall to an extent (being 45mins). Finding the dividing point between these two is going to be the ideal solution and to what this thread should be aiming for.

Saying that the old tournaments taking a long time mean that removing time clause will do the same thing isn't necessarily true at all, for several reasons. One reason you skimmed over, that the metagame is distinctly different now than it was before. I don't know why you just kinda grazed that point, since it's kind of a big deal, but I won't harp on it too much as it's both obvious and you already mentioned it.

 

However, you're forgetting a few things; For example, in older tournaments, we didn't have like the entirety of the first round taking place at once. I don't know if you remember the days when tournaments would happen like 3 battles at a time, which was pretty common back then. Not only that, but people would also take like 3 minutes to make a move rather frequently, whether it be to calc, to get coached, to discuss options, or just because "thinking", it wasn't at all uncommon to have battles have their length ridiculously exacerbated due to 5 minute long moves.

 

However, if AFK timeout is allowed, the stupidly long turns aren't an issue anymore anyway, and we are capable of hosting many, many battles at once. There's so many differences from "now" and back then that I think it's not at all valid to argue based on what happened before.

 

I think Time Clause should remain to exist as long as hosts and refs are required to run Official Tournaments.

Personally speaking, I don't ref or host many events because the timing is almost never optimal for me as European. (Oceanics/Noon are too early and Normal/Night are too late).

So, while technically Time Clause is removing a viable battle strategy, I feel like the risk of such strategies causing a huge time delay is greater than removing than removing Time Clause.

If Time Clause were to be removed, we could see duels take up to twice as long effectively turning a 3h Tournament into a 6h one.

 

Maybe instead of doing something about Time Clause, something can be done about the tiers. For example testing shuckle, umbreon, slowking, miltank.

This could potentially weaken the wall strategy and balance it out vs the sweeper and mixed strategy.

Disclaimer: This hasn't been discussed yet and is just a personal idea.

Are you fucking kidding me?

 

No, no, no. That's not a thing. None of this is a thing.

 

Testing random shit out just because they're "wally" and make stall better, and you'd prefer not having stall be very viable, is not at all valid reasoning for testing, much less even attempting to justify a ban of something.

 

I'd expect that kind of logic from a shitpost, not you Tyrone.

 

Well Senile had some fair points. So the conclusion this thread would lead to, after reading everyone's input is that Stall play style is not the reason why people want tournaments to take less time, but just the amount of time the hosts, refs and competitors wish to dedicate to an official.

 

So yeah, sacrifice a time consuming play style that can potentially go for 1+hours a match, or sacrifice people's free time or sleep? I think the decision is clear. I doubt that out of the 32 competitiors, the majority want a tournament to last 6+ hours. I strongly doubt it.

 

So my opinion is that despite the exploitability, the time clause should forever remain in the officials, not only for the sake of the hosts, but also for the participants from various time zones across the world.

 

In the future, the exploitability can be ruined by the afk timer limit going down as the time progresses:

first 10 minutes>75 seconds

10-20 minutes>60 seconds

20-30 minutes>45 seconds

30+ minutes>30 seconds

 

This system can stop people from deliberately wasting time, if the AFK timer appears on screen, of course.

Ignoring the fact that I've already said that lowering the AFK timer is dumb, and I haven't seen anyone other than you actually argue decreasing it to fucking 30 seconds of all things, (kek) and you haven't really given any actual justification for why the timer needs to be lower other than you want it to be, changing it would take an update anyway.

 

You're still ignoring two key points. Number one; Time clause doesn't necessarily significantly increase the length of a tournament. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I don't think removing time clause will actually impact the length of a tournament that much. Why? Because the existence of time clause itself makes time clausing someone a viable strategy in and of itself. It's similar to why matches in Smash Brothers typically have ~8 minute timers, even though a typical match would never last that long; Because if you set the timer to be equal to an average match length, then trying to win the match by timing out your opponent becomes a significantly more valid strategy. We have a time clause at a pretty low time; 45 minutes isn't really THAT uncommon. This means that getting people to time out against good players in a bracket is a very viable strategy, since it's not that difficult to accomplish it. People constantly trying to time each other out in brackets can also, by extension, increase the length of a tournament; If every round takes at least 45 minutes because one asshole is trying to time out someone else, is that not more time than people just fighting normally, without the incentive of going to 45 minutes?

 

I do think it'll increase tournament length, but nowhere near to the degree people are suggesting.

 

And then of course, the second point is that it's just downright unfun to not allow an entire playstyle. People like stall. Some people can't even stop talking about how much they love stall, cough, no names. Your concern is towards the enjoyment of the game by a specific group, while ignoring the negatively affected other group.

 

[spoiler]Worst case scenario, we can enact operation "Senile Wins Official Through Time Clause" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) [/spoiler]

[ThinkNice]

Why don't we have a few tournaments without time clause and see how that goes. Then decide.

[BillionTH]

Time clause or no, I think it is accepted by everyone that 102 minute matches in the first couple rounds of a tournament cannot happen. It slows the tournament down so much that from there on matches will be going one at a time and if a players first or second round match goes 100 minutes, whos to say the next one will not be just as long as well. Not only would it have been another hour to the previous tournament, don't forget the next match wasn't played because a double DQ so it could have been who knows how much longer than that. 

 

Something need to be in place so non-major tournaments are not all day(or night) affairs for the players, and more importantly the staff.

[Hassan]

Why don't we have a few tournaments without time clause and see how that goes. Then decide.

I agree with Thinknice here, and if it doesn't work out just increase the time for the time clause as stated before.

[PandaJJ]

You're still ignoring two key points. Number one; Time clause doesn't necessarily significantly increase the length of a tournament. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I don't think removing time clause will actually impact the length of a tournament that much. Why? Because the existence of time clause itself makes time clausing someone a viable strategy in and of itself. It's similar to why matches in Smash Brothers typically have ~8 minute timers, even though a typical match would never last that long; Because if you set the timer to be equal to an average match length, then trying to win the match by timing out your opponent becomes a significantly more valid strategy. We have a time clause at a pretty low time; 45 minutes isn't really THAT uncommon. This means that getting people to time out against good players in a bracket is a very viable strategy, since it's not that difficult to accomplish it. People constantly trying to time each other out in brackets can also, by extension, increase the length of a tournament; If every round takes at least 45 minutes because one asshole is trying to time out someone else, is that not more time than people just fighting normally, without the incentive of going to 45 minutes?

 

I hope you are aware that timing out your opponent doesn't win you the game - the only motivation to do this is if you are both in a losing position, and a dick. Have we even had this happen in an official yet?

 

Also, you don't even play this game. Arguing for something that will have zero consequence for yourself is really disrespectful.

[RysPicz]

Have we even had this happen in an official yet?

Yes, at least twice from what I'm aware.

[ThinkNice]

Also, you don't even play this game. Arguing for something that will have zero consequence for yourself is really disrespectful.

Politics = direspectful

 

I don't think it has anything to do with respect.

[Vaeldras]

So i guess my "It's annoying xd" argument wasn't really that bad.

 

Every side had it's points, we can only test and see what happens.

[PandaJJ]

Politics = direspectful

 

I don't think it has anything to do with respect.

 

Just because politics are disrespectful doesn't mean that anything disrespectful must be politics - that's flawed logic.

 

He is disrespectful in the sense that he has no regard for players who don't have time to play 8 hour tournaments. I might mix it up because of the expression "regard and respect". Anyways, this is way off topic.

[Blue]

 

lot of shiit

I wouldnt like to be forced to stay awake till 6 am for official.Its bad and unhealthy so NO.Time clause is my friend.

[ThinkNice]

Just because politics are disrespectful doesn't mean that anything disrespectful must be politics - that's flawed logic.

 

He is disrespectful in the sense that he has no regard for players who don't have time to play 8 hour tournaments. I might mix it up because of the expression "regard and respect". Anyways, this is way off topic.

I was saying that as a joke as most politicians argue over things that won't affect them at all too :p

 

I don't see him using any disrespectful terms or his posts being offensive, that he plays or doesn't play the game has not much affect on the way he presents his arguments so IMO it's weird to take a shot at it. Anyways it's off topic indeed so I'll leave it at this.