I'd love to do something like this since I have nothing to tie me down, but I really lack the money needed for such a trip. I'll probably make it to Europe one day, if my music works out for me ;O

Quote from: franz on April 24, 2012, 09:56 PM
I'm sorry, the whole foundation of Intermediate is driving me crazy the more I think about it.

How exactly does Bo3 even fix everything anyway?  Bo3 prolongs the same underlying issues over multiple games.  Has this ever been discussed before?

Worm Placement luck and First luck aren't even eliminated by Bo3.  Awful placements don't disappear just because of Bo3, they can still happen, multiple times in a row.  And going First doesn't just get cancelled out due to Bo3, because someone still gets an advantage of going First twice.


Am I the only one who doesn't understand this about Intermediate?  There has to be something to make Bo1 Intermediate work.  Because I fail to see how Bo3 is the best solution.  It can't be.

Franz, bo1 intermediate does work in my opinion, even though it's not as good as bo3. You simply have to gain a lot of skill to learn how to deal with poor placement, and know what kind of maps are best.

The reason bo3 adds more skill to the scheme is because of mental issues, you have to become more of a 'clutch player', winning rounds when you really need to. And of course, you have to know how to change how safe/risky your move choices are depending on how much you need to win a given round. Players like me, Dario, and Koras often have 60-90 bo3 wins and only a handful of losses in an NNNL season, partly because of this. And partly just because adding more rounds in any scheme means the more skillful players will come out on top more often.

But actually going-first-luck is evened out significantly with bo3, especially since a lot of bo3 games only last 2 rounds. Click on any NNNL player's name here: http://www.normalnonoobs.com/index2.php?func=profilesAll and you'll see that every player (with more than a few games played) will have started on caves and islands at a nearly equal percentage.

TUS isn't 100% about seriousness, which is why it has some of the schemes it does. And yeah I would be fine playing a bo1 intermediate in classic playoffs, it's a hell of a lot better than having to play shoppa or hysteria.

I don't think no attack is a good idea, mainly because inter is not supposed to have any rules. This rule could be violated on accident by activating mines, causing FD, etc., and in addition to that, if you would be able to do things like lay mines, shoot petrol, or girder/block worms; you'd have to have even more explanation for those things. It would quickly become unnecessarily complicated.

And yeah Kayz, I would have fun just playing bo1. Just because bo3 is better doesn't mean bo1 isn't worth playing. Also, like other schemes, people would be free to play it as bo3 whenever they wish.

Quote from: Kayz on April 24, 2012, 11:05 AM
I agree with lacoste, the stats you brought, Mablak, are only because the top of onl mostly plays bo5 and bo3, and have close games like 3-2, 2-1 etc.
If we only played bo1, those stats'd look a lot different.

Imo bo1 is the dumbest thing you can do on Intermediate, everyone will complain about triple kills on islands etc, and you'd have a lot of complains and luck blaming.
I very often had games with Dario, where it was 2-3, or 3-2, depending who started. For example: I start, big advantage, after the first two turns, high chance on win, and vice versa (especially on islands).
On caves this chance is lower, but then I know some people playing regularly on TUS who hate caves, because they consider it boring, though for me epic close cave matches are far more interesting than just island bashing until someone makes a mistake, but that's different for everyone .

As far as I recall the classic league, Intermediate doesn't really fit into it, since it's way more fast-paced.
I don't think that people who don't know Intermediate that well have the motivation to play a bo3 game.

Since I am no TUS league player, I won't vote here, just wanted to show you the point of view of a passionate Intermediate player

I think bo1 being the 'dumbest thing' is far from true, considering people have proposed things like manual placements. The only differences between the way bo1 and bo3 are played are psychological factors, things like players getting warmed up after the first round, or getting used to someone's style, or having a strong urge to come back. There's a difference, but not that huge of one.

And yeah there'll be a lot of complaining about luck, but it'll lessen if people start playing the scheme more. Compared to other schemes, I don't think it would be that bad, people have never stopped complaining about luck in Roper, Hysteria, and Team17.

Avi's tele was correct Shy! Playing the BnG game is for suckers when you've got several worms you can use. Connecting your worms and crawling under to the opponent is often the best strategy once you get a lead, because you can usually do it to get a 100% certain win on maps with a ton of land. It's far better than potentially not hitting your opponent with nades/potentially getting hit yourself. But yeah that rope, ouch.

Guys, please stop considering manual placement as an option for intermediate. It wouldn't be even remotely the same scheme, every single worm would be hidden away and it would be extremely hard to get kills; people would just shotgun almost every turn. Most of the creativity in the scheme comes from dealing with worms in places you'd never intentionally put them. Most importantly, that would suck most of the fun right out of it.

Intermediate should use the NNNL scheme, which is what the most competitive players use. The competition continues to increase year by year with that scheme, so there's really no need to change it; it's already well-tested. I think it could work in the classic league like other schemes, as bo1 with optional bo3. This does change the scheme, because there are certain psychological elements of playing bo3 that you don't need in bo1, but the scheme would be equally fun, and still vastly more skillful/interesting than certain schemes (cough shoppa).

The reason it would have to be bo1 is just to make it playable, bo3 can last over an hour, which is going to be annoying for players who aren't all that interested in the scheme. To get more players to start liking inter, they have to actually play it; people who don't know or care about it might just not want to play if it's a huge time investment. But the level of interest is there, especially among a lot of newer Russian players who host inters constantly. If we could get some Russian-speaking wormers to get those new Russians to check out TUS, I think some might be interested and stick around, if they could play inter.

For people concerned about luck when it's bo1, here are some stats from some of the better players in NNNL (I think this covers the past year, not sure on the time frame):

Player	% cave rounds won	% island rounds won
Mablak	70	74
Dario	67	68
Kayz	59	65
Koras	65	69
FaD	55	59

As you can see, the best players in NNNL typically having winning ratios around 60% or higher in bo1, which in TUS would definitely translate to something like 80-90%, at least until the community gains skill. That seems pretty comparable to elite, where the top players in TUS classic tend to have winning ratios between 70% and 90%. It has the right level of skill, I don't think luck is nearly as big of an issue as some think.

On the idea of forcing caves in bo1, I don't think it's necessary, people will probably agree to them about half the time. Also, caves might be luck-reducing, but they might also be skill-reducing. Good players tend to have more wins on islands. Either way, it wouldn't be good to force one kind of map, since intermediate is about map diversity, and being good on both caves and islands.

TNL would be a decent idea, but only because it would allow inter clanners, the singles league wouldn't be necessary due to NNNL. Some 2v2 action might genuinely get some of the NNN folks over here. Still, it would be nice to see a more default-oriented main league, and inter would definitely raise the skill level, even with bo1.

Double report, please delete this

Somehow I don't think slandering our clan with a bunch of lies is a rational response to Avi's bragging. You haven't made a single logical point Dave; we were playing a league game and not a funner, and you knew how we were going to play, so don't pretend you didn't. And there's nothing wrong with using any legal method to win; that's how it should be, and that's what makes things fun. And stop pretending all of TUS is pissed off at mm just because you are.

I think the problem is that you have no idea what you're talking about. Please, elaborate on all the ways that I'm being lame in other schemes.

Wow Dave, major butthurtness, way to take a shit all over a congratulatory thread. I don't use markings, nor does barman. And he only notched one shot in the BnG we played against you, he's got a knack for memorizing things which would work with or without notching. But I don't have to justify it because it's legal, your problem is with the scheme/game and not us, so don't point fingers.

Also, notching actually got barman into BnG; there are people like that out there who are more interested in a game of memory than a game of feel, not that there isn't still feel required. Notching isn't a bug or anything of the sort at this point, I used to think it was going to get 'fixed' in an update, but that's just not going to happen; it's part of the game. I don't think it's even a good idea to get rid of it if we could, because 'non-notchers' rely on discrete angles as part of their feel, so there's no sensical way to remove it without messing up BnG as we know it. Those awesome LG 1-bar wind shots you do? Yeah, they wouldn't be nearly as accurate without discrete angles, as I'm sure you're aware of.

Methods though, are essential for any form of BnG, and there's no reason to fault someone for that. Your problem is that it seems like your skill is being overlooked, but the kind of BnG you want to play is style BnG; its skill can only be appreciated by certain people and not in a play-to-win league setting, just like roping can only see its true potential in warmers.

And nobody's been hiding me, quite the opposite, we've been annoyed when certain people are less likely to clan when I'm around, which is what you've been hearing us talking about. And I have been teaching players to enjoy WA, I host intermediates for noobs almost every night, this game actually doesn't revolve around BnG. Speaking of which, intermediate utilizes tons of methods involving game physics, and it only gets more and more competitive.

Not gonna bother looking at this replay, but the girder rule is flawed to the point of being useless. Any girder you place will cause protection from some particular shot. Personally I think girders should be removed, even in NRBnG.

Although I don't think hysteria belongs in a purely skill-based all-round league, we definitely need to preserve it while it continues to be popular, the best we can do is figure out some worthwhile change to make it more skillful. As Shyguy said, most of hysteria's weapons are too seldom used, it always devolves into a 1v1 BnG(nPetrol) in the end; ideally we would want to make it a bit more different from BnG, but I don't know if that's really possible.

Limited teles seems like an idea with potential, not sure if it's been tried before. Having something like 5 teles would increase the amount of thinking a fair bit; turn advantage would be mitigated a little, and the end game would require you to have a keener eye to determine where to hide. It couldn't become a game of cat and mouse for too long. On the same note, you could also limit jetpacks, but really, we'd need some hella testing to see what the effects are.

I would never play favorites with you, my dear children. We'll have to do paper scissors rock or something. Shall it be next Saturday 20 GMT?

I feel pretty bad for the cfcers who could've played instead, people should never quit league games, let alone playoff games. I'm open for a replay of this against cfc members who won't quit, if barman is. But time is probably an issue, we're only getting 1-2 games done each time we meet :e.