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Author Topic: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)  (Read 10163 times)

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Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« on: September 05, 2014, 08:07 PM »
What's this and why?

I believe that one of the most important aspects of keeping competitive Worms Armageddon alive and thriving for generations to come is for our community to agree on standard variations of the game types that appear commonly in serious play, whether in leagues, tournaments, challenges or even random casual games in #AnythingGoes. For aspiring new players and returning old ones to feel motivated to continue honing their skills, it really helps if they're able to easily find out precisely what scheme file they're supposed to be using when practicing each scheme, what sort of maps they're supposed to be practicing on, what standard rules they're expected to follow, whether the scheme works only as 1v1/2v2 or in a free for all setting too, etc. This of course doesn't mean that nobody should ever host a game on WormNET using a scheme file or a set of rules that differs from what the community has agreed on, only that their modifications to the core should be explained in relation to what the standard is, making life easier for everyone involved.

How are we going to do this?

To that end, I have decided to come up with an overview of all the competitively played schemes, so that we can gradually fill things in as we agree on them and always know what still needs to be looked at. This information is listed in the Modes, Maps and Rules sections under each scheme title, with all three of these sections very much still open for debate; think of their current contents as just my personal best guesses, don't take something being present or not present there as a sign that the matter has already been decided. I'll upload the scheme files themselves onto TUS so everyone can easily see the individual settings as they are being discussed, or download them and give the proposed standard schemes a try. For each scheme, a link will be provided in the Scheme file section and the files will then be periodically updated to reflect community opinion on what the standard schemes should look like. To help get the ball rolling, I have also attempted to list most of the historical disagreements that have kept this standardisation from happening sooner in the Pointers for discussion section under each scheme, then spiced the section up with some suggestions for improvements and simplifications. Note that these are biased toward how I would personally handle each individual detail, but at least some attempt has already been made to represent general community opinion too, which will only become truly apparent through active debate in replies here. And perhaps elsewhere, if we decide to advertise this attempt at scheme standardisation on Reddit, Steam and a potential new T17 forum. It's of course going to be almost impossible to get the entire WA community to agree on every little aspect of every scheme, but that doesn't mean that the situation can't be improved at all. We can keep this project going for as long as it takes, there's no need to rush any decisions or ever stop debating the proposed standards. As long as this platform for discussion exists, it will at the very least serve as a way for interested players or league staff to measure the current atmosphere in the WA community regarding these matters.

Where are we going with all this and how to help?

If we do end up coming up with a solid set of standard schemes, if community leagues do start adopting the resulting scheme files and rulesets, that's great. But the primary focus and ultimate goal of this project is supposed to be more far-reaching than that. What we want is to eventually end up with something so widely accepted that the WA developers will be able to confidently include it with the game via an update, even base the mythical 4.x version's ranked play around these standardised scheme variants. That's the plan, and the way in which we attempt to agree on these issues should reflect it. Let's get as many people as possible to look at this and state their opinions, really ensure that we're doing our best for the future of the game. Only through compromise, through seeking solutions that benefit everyone, that aren't rejected by any particular group of players, can we hope to achieve a truly long term effect and settle these questions once and for all.

Feel free to not only share your views (and the views of any of your friends who might be too shy to speak up for themselves) regarding the scheme files, scheme rules, map recommendations and so on, but also to propose new dilemmas that you think need to be addressed or talked about. If you believe the format of how we're handling this in the first place could be improved, let me know too and I'll do my best to edit the post with your suggestions in mind. Remember, nothing is set in stone, we can flexibly evolve the process of seeking consensus over time as the attitude of the community shifts, or in case future WA updates change the landscape of what we have to work with (new scheme format with togglable rules is on the horizon). With that out of the way, let's get to work!
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 04:15 PM by KoreanRedDragon »

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2014, 08:07 PM »
BnG (Bazooka & Grenades)

Modes

1v1 (1 worm per player); Best of 1
2v2 (1 worm per player); Best of 1


Maps

Edited random maps (double layer cavern preset with just the top removed to make it into a full width island map; example).
*Ideally, terrain objects are reseeded until there's at least 3 usable hides on each half of the map.
*Unless agreed on beforehand, avoid terrain textures with extremely jagged grass such as -Farm, Jungle, Medieval, Sports and Tribal.


Rules

Stay on your half of the map.
*To avoid arguments regarding where the middle is, it can be approximately marked in the map editor before the game with a line or a little hole; example.

Reaim before every shot.
*Aiming the crosshair all the way up or all the way down before taking your shot is sufficient.

No darksiding.
*Darksiding is hiding your worm in a position where it's impossible for your opponent(s) to hit you with a grenade and at the same time impossible for you to hit your opponent(s) with a grenade.

No sitters.
*Sitters are Grenades that stop moving completely before they explode.

No telecide.
*Teleciding is the act of achieving grave explosion damage on an enemy worm by teleporting your worm above them and having it die from fall damage.

Scheme file

https://www.tus-wa.com/schemes/scheme-1476/


Pointers for discussion

1. Should worm health be set to 250 in 1v1 matches? Between highly skilled players, on slightly more open maps, I feel games can be over very quickly with only 200 health; the additional 50 health makes it take roughly two solid hits more before a worm loses all health, which feels about right to me. For 2v2 matches, 200 health per worm is fine.

2. Should there be rules preventing straight Bazooka shots and the use of Shotgun to damage enemy worms? I feel it's cleaner not to have them because these things can very easily be countered by hiding intelligently and only agreeing to play on at least somewhat complex (not completely flat) maps. It's also somewhat optimistic to hope that everyone's personal definition of what a straight Bazooka shot is would be the same, and I'm not sure an objective definition is even possible to put forward. Can it be and what would it sound like, in terms that the game could enforce on its own, objectively?

3. Should Blow Torch, Girder and Pneumatic Drill be part of the scheme? Having infinite Fire Punch, Shotgun and Teleport seems to replace these in most real life situations almost completely, while keeping scheme rules simpler (no grey area Girder rules, fewer darksiding situations). Currently, only infinite Blow Torch remains in the scheme, largely for reasons of tradition, but I guess it doesn't break anything if the darksiding rule is kept simple and easy to agree on. Torch tunnels are kind of fun to try and aim into (and out of) as well, so I'm inclined to keep Blow Torch in there.

4. Should TestStuff's circular aiming be part of the scheme? Why did TUS start enforcing it for BnG? I find it breaks my normal way of aiming completely so that I have to rely on notching more because of it, not less. Without going into the details of notching, isn't that the opposite of the desired effect? Not to mention that with the current implementation of it, fall damage is actually easier to achieve, making it very hard for players with 10+ years of BnG experience to estimate shot damage, while adding no positive effects that I can think of. TestStuff really has no place in BnG, I feel.

5. Anything else?

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2014, 08:08 PM »
Hysteria

Modes

1v1 (8 worms per player); Best of 1
2v2 (4 worms per player); Best of 1


Maps

Unedited random maps (any island or cavern preset; example1, example2).
*Ideally, maps should be complex enough so that both sides have the opportunity to attain meaningfully valuable hides (on island maps these would usually be high ground hides that aren't entirely exposed to Bazooka attacks from the sides).
*Any terrain texture is fine. Bridges are fine too.


Rules

No climbing on top of the indestructible border when playing on cavern maps.
*Worms Knowledge Base calls this roofing: http://worms2d.info/Roofing

No skipwalking.
*See here for an explanation of what skipwalking and flipwalking are: http://worms2d.info/Skipwalking


Scheme file

https://www.tus-wa.com/schemes/scheme-1477/


Pointers for discussion

1. Why has TUS Hysteria devolved into being played with only 4 or even 3 worms a side? Has anyone ever really thought about this and explained it? Forum thread links please!

2. Is 12 randomly placed Mines too much and should we stick to the old variant with only 8 of them? I find that on complex island maps with 8 worms a side, the early game is more meaningful with slightly more than 8 randomly placed hazards, but 16 has proven too much for competitive play because it usually means that every placement spot available after the worms have spawned is filled with mines; this is particularly unwelcome on simpler maps.

3. Is a round time of 10 seconds working out well in competitive Hysteria? I remember scheme variants that used 7 or 5 seconds instead, but never felt that it made a meaningful enough difference to warrant using a different Hysteria scheme file for competitive play. 10s is fine by me because as far as darksiding and side zooking are concerned, a lot more depends on the map that's being played on anyway. If you're going to force sudden death, you're going to be able to do it either way.

4. What happened to random worm order in Hysteria? Has anyone ever tested it thoroughly in 1v1 matches (preferably with more than 4 worms a side) and what were their findings?

5. Anything else?

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2014, 08:08 PM »
Elite

Modes

1v1 (4 worms per player); Best of 1
2v2 (2 worms per player); Best of 1


Maps

Unedited random maps (any island or cavern preset is generally fine, but highly complex maps are almost a must, so using the double island (top right) and closed cave (bottom left) presets with carefully reseeded objects is the most common; example1, example2).
*Any terrain texture is fine. No, really. Only playing on Fruit and sometimes Cheese is lame and boring for spectators. Bridges are fine too.


Rules

No rope knocking (includes Bungee knocks).
*Competitive games are hosted in #PartyTime or via Direct IP to avoid accidental knocks.

No climbing on top of the indestructible border when playing on cavern maps.
*Worms Knowledge Base calls this roofing: http://worms2d.info/Roofing

No skipwalking.
*See here for an explanation of what skipwalking and flipwalking are: http://worms2d.info/Skipwalking

No bypassing the Longbow and Baseball Bat angle restrictions.
*The Open Intermediate League's rules section calls this "bow/bat/rope angle modifications". Worms Knowledge Base refers to it as "Vertical Longbow and Baseball Bat": http://worms2d.info/Vertical_Longbow_and_Baseball_Bat


Scheme file

https://www.tus-wa.com/schemes/scheme-1478/


Pointers for discussion

1. Should Elite be best of 2 or 3 like Intermediate is? I think one reason it began to be played on stupidly edited maps is that people perhaps felt that being the first to place your worm offered a tangible advantage (I'm sure it doesn't in the grand scheme of things) to the player who gets to start, so making the scheme Bo2/Bo3 would address that fear even better than playing on maps that are 95% terrain. If at the same time, those maps were abolished and forgotten about and Elite became a random map scheme again, average round time would likely decrease a little too, so playing two rounds instead of a single one wouldn't be too bad, time wise.

2. Considering what has happened to the Elite scheme in the past, should edited random maps be accepted at all? If yes, should there be some kind of a threshold for how much editing is allowed? How could such a threshold be defined in such a way that tastefully edited maps were still clearly fine, but monstrosities consisting of 95% terrain and two layers of grass and objects were not?

3. Should the power of Mortar (commonly at 3 stars of power in modern schemes) and Cluster Bomb (commonly at 1 star) be standardised with what they are in the league varaint of the Intermediate scheme (both at 2 stars) or left as they are? Having this be the same between the two ground schemes could make it easier for players to stay in top shape at both of them at the same time, but some people may be too used to being able to (almost) kill 100 health worms with Mortar and grave damage in Elite, and thus be unable to adapt to the change. Cluster Bomb, on the other hand, would be fine at 2 stars of power rather than the current 1 either way, I think. It's used extremely rarely as it is.

4. Does the floating weapon glitch need to be forbidden in Elite, Intermediate and possibly also Team17? The way I see it, it's not really a glitch, it's just one of the instances where players have figured out how to place weapons that normally explode on impact on top of a worm so gently that it doesn't count as a heavy enough collision to cause them to explode. If it happened by accident under different circumstances, would it still count as breaking scheme rules? It's a pretty tricky situation.

5. Does jumping after using Pneumatic Drill and Teleport (during the game, not when initially placing your worms) really have to be forbidden in Elite/Intermediate/Team17? I never really thought of it as a glitch, it's just that the game gives you 0.02s of retreat time after using them, and by mashing a jump key hard, you can get it to sometimes happen. It's probably true that cheaters could write a script that would help them do it more easily, but such cheating is obviously against the rules of any self-respecting competition, so should we really let that spoil this difficult to achieve trick for the rest of us? I really kinda like that it's there.

6. Is anyone at all in favour of reintroducing crates or rope knocking into Elite? No? Didn't think so!

7. Anything else?
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 04:52 PM by KoreanRedDragon »

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2014, 08:09 PM »
Intermediate

Modes

1v1 (8 worms per player); Best of 3 (Bo2 in competition where draws are accepted, Bo5 in very important/prestigeous competition)
2v2 (4 worms per player); Best of 3 (Bo2 in competition where draws are accepted, Bo5 in very important/prestigeous competition)


Maps

Unedited random maps (any island or cavern preset is fine, but highly complex maps are desirable, so reseeding the objects manually can be a good idea; example1, example2).
*In Bo3 matches, it's common practice to play the first two rounds on island maps, then the deciding round in a cave. The important thing is that neither side gets first turn on island maps more times than the other side.
*In Bo5 matches of great importance, it's common practice to play the first two rounds on cave maps, the second two on islands, then the deciding round in a cave again. The important thing is that neither side gets first turn on island maps more times than the other side.
 Any terrain texture is fine. Bridges are fine too.


Rules

No climbing on top of the indestructible border when playing on cavern maps.
*Worms Knowledge Base calls this roofing: http://worms2d.info/Roofing

No skipwalking.
*See here for an explanation of what skipwalking and flipwalking are: http://worms2d.info/Skipwalking

No bypassing the Longbow and Baseball Bat angle restrictions.
*The Open Intermediate League's rules section calls this "bow/bat/rope angle modifications". Worms Knowledge Base refers to it as "Vertical Longbow and Baseball Bat": http://worms2d.info/Vertical_Longbow_and_Baseball_Bat

No using Bungee from Jetpack.
*See here for an explanation of how this glitch is performed: http://worms2d.info/Bungee_from_Jet_Pack


Scheme file

https://www.tus-wa.com/schemes/scheme-1479/


Pointers for discussion

1. Instead of simply making Elite players adapt to the Intermediate scheme's powers for Mortar and Cluster Bomb, we could also seek compromise. Elite could have its Cluster Bomb upgraded to 2 stars of power (like it is in Intermediate), while Intermediate could have its Mortar upgraded to 3 stars of power (bringing it to currently common Elite levels). Not only would this be a middle ground for both Elite and Intermediate specialists (neither of whom understandably want to see changes to only their preferred scheme), it would also keep the weapon power levels between the two schemes consistent. But on the other hand, both weapons would then be upgraded, one in each scheme, and as a result they'd probably see a little more use in competitive play. Considering how rarely they're used, though, that might be a good thing? On the other hand, Mortar at 3 stars of power shot directly down at a worm, in combination with grave explosion damage, can kill a perfectly healthy (100 HP) target worm, which a lot of newer and Intermediate players might consider straight up overpowered.

2. Does the floating weapon glitch need to be forbidden in Elite, Intermediate and possibly also Team17? The way I see it, it's not really a glitch, it's just one of the instances where players have figured out how to place weapons that normally explode on impact on top of a worm so gently that it doesn't count as a heavy enough collision to cause them to explode. If it happened by accident under different circumstances, would it still count as breaking scheme rules? It's a pretty tricky situation.

3. Does jumping after using Pneumatic Drill and Teleport (during the game, not when initially placing your worms) really have to be forbidden in Elite/Intermediate/Team17? I never really thought of it as a glitch, it's just that the game gives you 0.02s of retreat time after using them, and by mashing a jump key hard, you can get it to sometimes happen. It's probably true that cheaters could write a script that would help them do it more easily, but such cheating is obviously against the rules of any self-respecting competition, so should we really let that spoil this difficult to achieve trick for the rest of us? I really kinda like that it's there.

4. Is there anyone left who prefers 0 turns of Jetpack delay instead of the currently widespread variant with 2 turns of delay on this utility? The reason players from the NNN clan and their league got used to 0 delay was that many updates ago, WA didn't allow you to keep the delay on utilities in custom schemes, so when they powered down the Mortar/Cluster Bomb and took the crates out of the intrinsic [ Intermediate ] scheme to create their "luckless" variant, they had no choice but to change the Jetpack delay to 0 turns. When the WA update arrived that made it possible to set utility delay in custom schemes, the NNN/ONL community decided to vote about whether to go back to the 2 turns of delay or keep playing with 0 in a forum poll, but I'm not really sure what the results of that were. I do know that both Darío and I were hugely in favour of going back to 2 turns of delay at the time, though. It doesn't really make sense to me not to do it, the scheme was obviously designed with this delay in mind, but it'd be interesting to hear the reasoning behind making the delay 0 turns instead of 2. I guess first turn mine pushes can be pretty cool, but that's a pretty clear advantage to whoever gets first turn, so I'm not at all convinced it'd be a net positive change.

5. Anything else? This competitive Intermediate variant without crates and with the slightly powered down Mortar and Cluster Bomb is probably just about perfect the way it is now, I feel.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2014, 04:07 PM by KoreanRedDragon »

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2014, 08:09 PM »
Team17

Modes

1v1 (4 worms per player); Best of 1
2v2 (2 worms per player); Best of 1


Maps

Unedited random maps (any island or cavern preset is generally fine, but highly complex maps with a lot of closed-off areas are preferable, with the double layer cavern preset being by far the most common, although the scheme works on island maps well too; example1, example2)
*Any terrain texture is fine. Bridges are great!


Rules

No rope knocking (includes Bungee knocks).
*Competitive games are hosted in #PartyTime or via Direct IP to avoid accidental knocks.

No climbing on top of the indestructible border when playing on cavern maps.
*Worms Knowledge Base calls this roofing: http://worms2d.info/Roofing

No skipwalking.
*See here for an explanation of what skipwalking and flipwalking are: http://worms2d.info/Skipwalking

No bypassing the Longbow and Baseball Bat angle restrictions.
*The Open Intermediate League's rules section calls this "bow/bat/rope angle modifications". Worms Knowledge Base refers to it as "Vertical Longbow and Baseball Bat": http://worms2d.info/Vertical_Longbow_and_Baseball_Bat


Scheme file

https://www.tus-wa.com/schemes/scheme-1480/


Pointers for discussion

1. Should Team17 have any hot seat time? Some old schemes used to have 10 seconds of it, Lex for example feels that it's a good idea to have it, but I think that at least since the times of the CL2K league, competitive variants of the scheme have had no hot seat time. I personally like it this way because it gives players who are quick to think (or are able to do the thinking during their opponent's turn) and quick to make their moves (in so doing preventing their opponent from getting a lot of thinking time during them) a deserved advantage. But there's also an argument to be made that T17 is a naturally slow, tactical scheme and that having enough time to think about what to do during your turns, so that you can utilise all 45 seconds of them optimally, may be preferable.

2. Should the starting hazard objects be half oil barrels and half mines instead of all oil barrels like most players are used to today? Half mines and half barrels used to be the case a very long time ago in some people's Team17 schemes, but seems to have fallen out of favour for no particularly good reason. It was supposedly changed to all barrels so that initial placement couldn't screw you over as badly, but I feel that's counterbalanced by the additional skill and decision making when you're faced with the opportunity of going for a Firepunch/Dragonball-onto-mine move early on, sometimes favouring that even over picking up a crate. It makes early games more diverse and cooler to watch; van and I certainly prefer things this way, with half mines and half barrels!

3. Is the water rise rate during sudden death set in stone in competitive play? There used to be a lot of variance between people's Team17 schemes 10+ years ago, but to me it seems that the community has settled on the middle setting (20 pixels) in recent times. I think this is probably fine and doesn't need changing, but there are probably still players out there who have the water set to rise more slowly in their schemes. Anyone care to explain why that would be an improvement?

4. Would making the round time (the time before sudden death hits) slightly longer make Team17 early game more relevant and the endgame more fair and interesting? Would making the round time 12 instead of the current 10 minutes act as a replacement for making the water rise more slowly once sudden death does hit (so that we might keep that at the current setting)? By extending the time before sudden death this way, we would make it more likely for high damage weapons to be picked up in early and mid game, and those are the best motivation for players to attack rather than turtle and hoard homing weapons for sudden death. In the long run, player habits could change to take this into account, and we could be left with cavern Team17 that's more interesting on the whole.

5. For the longest time, crate probability in Team17 was left to the players to deal with as best they could, with every available weapon having equal probability to show up in a crate (super weapon quirks notwithstanding). I think it was in the First Blood league that Mad Cows had their probability lowered from 3 to 2, simply because getting them in batches of 3 made them too destructive. But this was totally fine by me. It's when people started trying to "balance" individual weapons according to their "usefulness" that things went to hell and now nobody knows what sort of distribution of weapons can be expected from crates anymore. Can we just go back to giving all weapons, including things like air strikes, a probability of 3 (and maybe keep 2 for Mad Cows) again? Please?

6. The power of Mortar (currently 3 stars) and Cluster Bomb (currently 1 star) make very little sense. If one isn't overpowered at a power of 3, why does the other have to be nerfed all the way down to power 1? Just because you get 3 Cluster Bombs in every crate? Isn't Team17 supposed to have all the weapons at standard power so that the knowledge players gain from playing this scheme translates well to WA in general and gets them used to the default behaviour of (almost) every weapon in the game? Alternatively, if we want to keep Cluster Bomb power lower than the standard 3, why not at least synchronise it with that of Elite and Intermediate (probably 2 stars of power) then? At least that would be neat and tidy.

7. Longbow power is a hot point of contention. Most Team17 players these days are extremely used to each Longbow arrow doing 50 damage, but to those (newer players included) who see Longbow as more of a utility weapon rather than a high damage one, this is very confusing. Apart from the 5 star Ninja Rope, Longbow is the only thing in the scheme that's grossly overpowered compared to what a reasonable person might naturally expect, so should it be brought in line with everything else and reduced to the standard 15 damage per arrow? Deadcode thinks that would make it too weak and has therefore had it set to 5 stars of power in his Team17 scheme, making each arrow do 30 damage. Now what do we do? I think I'd probably prefer 15 damage (because then every weapon in the scheme could be made the standard 3 stars of power), but I can live with 30 damage as well. Arrows doing 50 damage each definitely feels a bit insane, but it is how it's always been...

8. Team17 has historically been played with infinite Girders, but the worst case scenario is pretty ugly with that variant. In competitive play, some players literally Girder blocked every single turn until sudden death, and as their opponent, there really was very little you could do about it. The norm these days does seem to be 7 Girders a side, it feels enough for practically every play style except that single dirty one, still allows for a healthy dose of darksiding and so far, it feels nicely balanced. Since this is a change that was introduced back in 2006 or so, there has been plenty of time to find flaws, but so far, the community seems to agree that 7 is a good number. I would keep it this way for competitive games and allow infinite Girders only in funners.

9. Speaking of Girders, should they perhaps appear in crates as well in the 7 Girder variant of the scheme? This way, a player intent on darksiding could specifically look for them, then carry out the evil darkside plan of blocking almost every turn, but they'd have to get lucky or pick a lot of crates up in order to never run out of Girders. At least they'd have to work for it this way, which is still an improvement over infinite Girders, I guess. Apart from the urge to have all the weapons in the game available from crates in the Team17 scheme, I don't really see a pressing need to introduce this change, but it might be interesting to try anyway. Realistically though, people would probably just rage whenever they picked up Girders from a crate.

10. Why is Kamikaze not part of the Team17 scheme as a weapon that you can collect from crates? Should it be? What's the worst that could happen? Again, adding it would mostly only satisfy the requirement that every weapon should be available from crates in this scheme, but I guess Kamikaze would also be a really powerful finisher during sudden death. We definitely lack those in cavern map Team17...

11. Should stockpiling perhaps be set so that you keep your weapons (and get a set of new ones, including the 5 star Ninja Rope and 7 fresh Girders) between rounds and in case of a draw? Team17 is a single round scheme, sure, but in competition where draws are handled by playing a new round instead of reporting the draw, this positive stockpiling could change things a great deal and certainly speed the potential second round after draws up a lot, plus perhaps be more fair because your good crate collecting habits from the previous round would carry over and give you an edge in the rematch. On the other hand, some players might feel that if the first round was a draw, the rematch should reset everything and be played as a completely new game, no advantage to either player.

12. Does anyone still want to argue in favour of reintroducing Worm Select into the Team17 scheme as a utility that you start with? The old variant of the scheme (called 1Percent) gave each player two Worm Selects, which obviously made sudden death very different. But apart from Ropa, I don't think I've seen anyone else show genuine signs of interest in going back to this in recent years...

13. Does the floating weapon glitch need to be forbidden in Elite, Intermediate and possibly also Team17? The way I see it, it's not really a glitch, it's just one of the instances where players have figured out how to place weapons that normally explode on impact on top of a worm so gently that it doesn't count as a heavy enough collision to cause them to explode. If it happened by accident under different circumstances, would it still count as breaking scheme rules? It's a pretty tricky situation.

14. Does jumping after using Pneumatic Drill and Teleport (during the game, not when initially placing your worms) really have to be forbidden in Elite/Intermediate/Team17? I never really thought of it as a glitch, it's just that the game gives you 0.02s of retreat time after using them, and by mashing a jump key hard, you can get it to sometimes happen. It's probably true that cheaters could write a script that would help them do it more easily, but such cheating is obviously against the rules of any self-respecting competition, so should we really let that spoil this difficult to achieve trick for the rest of us? I really kinda like that it's there.

15. There are probably at least a few players out there who perhaps feel that rope and/or bungee knocking wouldn't be such a bad idea in Team17. While I personally feel that it's unlikely that this change would get wide enough acceptance now to make it into a standard variation of the scheme, it's a good idea to keep our options open, so I'm adding this bullet point here anyway.

16. As it turns out, almost every modern Team17 scheme I come across these days has Blow Torch and Pneumatic Drill power set to 5 stars. Although I'm not sure, I think this may have its origins in either the 1Percent scheme that the #Team17 channel on WWP's WormNET used, or in some kind of official tournament scheme that Team17 (the company) had settled on around the time official rankings were taken down on WA... which then must have made sense for future leagues to keep, possibly because they liked the idea of these two utilities doing a bit more damage in situations where no useful weapons had yet been collected from crates. But I feel like there's a big problem with this, namely that the higher power setting makes both Torch and Drill knock a worm harder (farther away) than their 3 star counterparts, which in practice quite often means that the target worm gets damaged fewer times as a result, especially when torching. This is already weird enough on flat, open terrain and on slopes. But when you consider that it also makes it (almost?) impossible to trap a worm inside the torch tunnel that you're digging, which is otherwise a flashy play in other ground schemes such as Elite and Intermediate, I fear that there may just be too little logic and too many downsides to having the two F7 tools set to a power different to what players might be used to from other schemes. So, should we "standardise" their power to 3 stars, where all the rest of the weapons in the scheme are, and keep their knock power consistent with Elite and Intermediate? Back when I was first uploading these scheme proposals to TUS, I didn't even realise I may have been breaking tradition by having them at 3 stars, because that's just how my T17 scheme always was, it's what made sense to me. Am I alone in that? Hmmm.

17. Holy crap, there's so much to try and agree on regarding Team17. Here's a relatively short summary of a long IRC discussion from a while back, in case anyone wants to get into the individual reasons behind coste's/Deadcode's/van's/my opinions on some of these proposed changes:

http://krd.clansfx.co.uk/dump/189761deb541c04408f974973bb6e79d/00000061.txt
« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 04:58 AM by KoreanRedDragon »

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2014, 08:10 PM »
Oh yeah, we're doing ground schemes only first, so we don't overwhelm ourselves and so the discussion is hopefully a little less messy and impossible to keep up with; a new topic for the roping side of things will follow at a later time. If someone who's more into the traditionally non-league schemes like Abnormal and Battle Race and Bungee Race and BnA and Darts and Fort and Mole Shopper and Super Sheep Race and Walk For Weapons and so on wants to open debate on the standard variants of those too, feel free to use this post as a template for it. But let's do competitive ground schemes only in this topic, alright?

Offline Ryan

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2014, 10:57 PM »
I'll reserve a longer reply for tomorrow.

If we are to keep worms competitive, I say we return to "grass roots".

From your list I would personally scrap Intermediate and Hysteria.

Offline TheKaren

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #8 on: September 06, 2014, 12:50 AM »
Yeah I will reply later too I am so tired right now

If we are to keep worms competitive, I say we return to "grass roots".

Why would going backwards help us go forward?

We need something new, something fresh and exciting, take some experience and inspiration from the past and use it for something new!


Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #9 on: September 06, 2014, 01:15 AM »
Hysteria

[...]
Rules

No skipwalking.
*See here for an explanation of what skipwalking and flipwalking are: http://worms2d.info/Skipwalking

I don't understand the need for this rule, when it's much easier to use the jetpack anyway. Unless you removed the jetpack (we can't see your scheme files if you keep them private).

Pointers for discussion
[...]
3. Is a round time of 10 seconds working out well in competitive Hysteria? I remember scheme variants that used 7 or 5 seconds instead, but never felt that it made a meaningful enough difference to warrant using a different Hysteria scheme file for competitive play. 10s is fine by me because as far as darksiding and side zooking are concerned, a lot more depends on the map that's being played on anyway. If you're going to force sudden death, you're going to be able to do it either way.

4. What happened to random worm order in Hysteria? Has anyone ever tested it thoroughly in 1v1 matches (preferably with more than 4 worms a side) and what were their findings?

I hosted 2 cups with random turn order hysteria as well as reduced SD time:
Cup 1
Cup 2

Take a look at some of the games, to see if the entertainment is an improvement over regular hysteria. I felt it was the case for my games.

I feel we don't need 10 seconds, because most players can do their thing in the second they get just fine. I for one haven't played a game where sd was started cause of mistakes alone, except when someone in the game doesn't know hysteria. If you make it 5 seconds, sd can be a legitimate tactic, whereas right now, you give your opponent a lot of time to mash you to bits.

edix: considering the length of your posts, are you going to edit in important thoughts/brain farts in the original posts?
« Last Edit: September 06, 2014, 01:30 AM by DarkOne »

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #10 on: September 06, 2014, 03:19 AM »
If we are to keep worms competitive, I say we return to "grass roots".

From your list I would personally scrap Intermediate and Hysteria.

But Intermediate is the most competitive of them all (maybe on par with elite, its arguable, but for sure more interesting to watch).

I will try to drop something here tomorrow
« Last Edit: September 06, 2014, 03:43 AM by lacoste »
<Ramone> we're just nicknames
<Ramone> isn't that sad..

<Johnny`> !fart
* Johnny` has farted out 0 Scoville units.
<Johnny`> Sonova

My W:A related channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/HighCostage


Offline The Extremist

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #11 on: September 06, 2014, 07:27 AM »
I'm sure Normal No Noobs would have something nasty to say about the suggestion of Intermediate being dropped! :-\

Otherwise, good thread. Finding universal standards for the basic schemes is a worthy task. :)

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #12 on: September 06, 2014, 10:31 AM »
I'll reserve a longer reply for tomorrow.

If we are to keep worms competitive, I say we return to "grass roots".

From your list I would personally scrap Intermediate and Hysteria.

Well, Intermediate and Hysteria are de facto schemes that are played competitively in our current community. They're part of very mainstream leagues, they see tournament play, a lot of casual play and for many new players, they're the first contact with online (and later competitive) play. These were roughly my objective reasons for considering a scheme to be within the scope of what this project is about. Another reason would perhaps be that both of these schemes actually serve as a starting point for the creation of new schemes and scheme variants, so standardising them could also have other, more subtle positive effects in the long run. My less objective reasons would include the fact that Inter has seen the most streaming with commentary, which has to be just about the most brilliant way of promoting the game; I loved every minute of those CWT streams. :-[

If a specific community league wants to make a statement by not supporting a scheme or by using a heavily modified variant of it, that's fine, but I do think the current status of these two schemes warrants their inclusion and hopefully standardisation via discussion in this thread. Remember, the goal here isn't really to determine which of the schemes are worthy of competitive play, it's to come up with optimal variants of them regardless of that, so that individual leagues (or WA devs for 4.x's ranked play) can then make an informed decision regarding whether what the community considers standard is good enough for them. If it isn't, at least they have a base upon which to build their own variant, more suitable to their needs. If that's still not good enough, they can not include the scheme in their league/competition. But by having the community agree on standard scheme variants, I do think we'll be making these decisions easier and quicker, again resulting in a healthier, more active competitive playing field.

Hysteria

[...]
Rules

No skipwalking.
*See here for an explanation of what skipwalking and flipwalking are: http://worms2d.info/Skipwalking

I don't understand the need for this rule, when it's much easier to use the jetpack anyway. Unless you removed the jetpack (we can't see your scheme files if you keep them private).

I put that rule there just in case, for completion and so we don't forget about it. I do think that skipwalking, if we agree that it should be forbidden in other ground schemes, has to probably be forbidden in Hysteria too, just to avoid situations where a player might (however unreasonably) consider themselves cheated out of their victory because their opponent skipwalked (or tried to). When the game itself gives us the ability to allow or disallow skipwalking via a scheme setting, we'll have to decide whether to check that box in the scheme editor or not either way, so we might as well try to agree one way or the other now, right?

Made the scheme files public now!

Pointers for discussion
[...]
3. Is a round time of 10 seconds working out well in competitive Hysteria? I remember scheme variants that used 7 or 5 seconds instead, but never felt that it made a meaningful enough difference to warrant using a different Hysteria scheme file for competitive play. 10s is fine by me because as far as darksiding and side zooking are concerned, a lot more depends on the map that's being played on anyway. If you're going to force sudden death, you're going to be able to do it either way.

4. What happened to random worm order in Hysteria? Has anyone ever tested it thoroughly in 1v1 matches (preferably with more than 4 worms a side) and what were their findings?

I hosted 2 cups with random turn order hysteria as well as reduced SD time:
Cup 1
Cup 2

Take a look at some of the games, to see if the entertainment is an improvement over regular hysteria. I felt it was the case for my games.

I feel we don't need 10 seconds, because most players can do their thing in the second they get just fine. I for one haven't played a game where sd was started cause of mistakes alone, except when someone in the game doesn't know hysteria. If you make it 5 seconds, sd can be a legitimate tactic, whereas right now, you give your opponent a lot of time to mash you to bits.

edix: considering the length of your posts, are you going to edit in important thoughts/brain farts in the original posts?

Sweet, I'll have a look at those cups and so should everyone else interested in Hyst.

As far as 5/7/10 second round time is concerned, one argument for keeping it 10 seconds would be that if we don't, we're likely introducing the need for hosts to keep two variants of the scheme at hand, one for competitive play and one for random #AG games with newbies to the scheme. I do still play a fair share of the latter and it's not uncommon for the more experienced players in my games to get a little annoyed when the water starts rising prematurely because of missed turns, making the outcome of free for all rounds a little too random even for casual play. And that's with 10 second round time; 5 seconds would make things even worse, especially on complex maps where worm damage doesn't necessarily happen every turn to begin with. On the other hand, having to switch between 5s and 10s round time schemes might not be too bad...

Edix: I was going to keep adding bullet points to the Pointers for discussion sections under each scheme as they come up in this thread so that the top posts serve as an overview of everything that remains to be agreed on. Likewise for the Rules sections as we agree on whether some rules can be omitted or need to be added. I'll mention the changes I make to the top posts in a reply too, so that it's more obvious to those who had already read the thread. Good enough?
« Last Edit: September 08, 2014, 12:29 PM by KoreanRedDragon »

Offline Senator

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #13 on: September 06, 2014, 10:37 AM »
Might be better to have own topic for each scheme discussion, or?

As for Team17:
Quote
15. There are probably at least a few players out there who perhaps feel that rope knocking wouldn't be such a bad idea in Team17.

I would consider allowing bungee knocks. According to http://worms2d.info/Team17_(scheme) :
Quote
Team17 is classically played with two rules:
No roofing
No rope knocking (Bungee knocks don't count).

Why is bungee knocking forbidden these days? If it was allowed, we would see some nifty moves by bungee specialists. Nothing wrong with that? I understand why rope knocking is forbidden, for it's easy to execute and you can't really avoid getting knocked. Bungee knocks you can avoid with positioning.
« Last Edit: September 06, 2014, 11:14 AM by Senator »

Re: Standard Scheme Variants (Part 1: Competitive Ground Schemes)
« Reply #14 on: September 06, 2014, 11:13 AM »
Hm, well, the reason Bungee knocking isn't allowed in schemes where Ninja Rope knocking isn't allowed is that historically, WormNet channels that had it disabled (the ones without the Scheme=Pf parameter) had it disabled for both types of knocks. It's currently impossible to systemically forbid one type of knocking but allow the other, although this is something that will likely be made possible in the future, when the WA scheme format is updated next time.

To me, it does make sense to disallow both types of knocking in Team17, especially in competition that supports the Intermediate scheme as well (currently no such competition exists that I'm aware of, save for I guess TFL), so that the two are further differentiated from each other. One scheme is then focused on sheer strategy more clearly (T17), while the other's focus on technical skill gets to be better pronounced (Inter). On the other hand, I'm definitely a sucker for a good Bungee knock as well and very much enjoy watching cool moves performed with the utility. But one could argue that even with knocking out of the picture, there's still room for some very cool Bungee shenanigans in Team17. Dropping off a cliff to pick up a crate, swinging back onto the ledge you were attached to or bouncing to the other side of a cave, then carrying out an attack with the weapon you had just picked up is one such impressive example.

Does the scheme need to allow more than that? Maybe, and I do agree that this is a valid topic for discussion. Although using WKB scheme articles as justification might not be a great idea, many of them are either outdated or plain inconsistent with the sources that they claim to be based upon. I know because it gives me a grey hair every time I look at them and see how much work there's still to be done...
« Last Edit: September 06, 2014, 11:15 AM by KoreanRedDragon »