Timer Clocks? Would they work

[SurreyLee]

Hi All. 

I've been wondering whether or not a clock timer system would work in Malifaux. Guildball tournaments use them with penalties given in the form of point reductions in the event time is exceeded. I'm wondering whether some sort of penalty for slow play would be in order.

Imagine you could win a game (technically) because you've only got to turn three but as a result of a penalty you lose points....perhaps lower VP rather than losing TP. I don't know but thought to throw this out there for discussion as i know there have been instances where slow play has resulted in skewed results. It's also not fun if slow play is done on purpose, but having a clock negates the need for calling anyone out. 

With Smart Phones/tablets being fairly common place, the software is easily accessible. 

Anyway, what are people's thoughts on the matter. 

[Dogmantra]

The difference between Malifaux and Guild Ball is there are a lot more reactions on your opponent's turn. It's theoretically possible, but it would be a pain to flip the clock several times per action while people decide whether to cheat.

[solkan]

I'm still waiting for the Infinity players to figure out a reasonable scheme for timed turns, since that's a lot of a comparable turn structure.

From what I know of Guild Ball, the other things which make timed turns more suitable are:

* Starting out with an equal number of models on each side

* The whole sports theme

To be frank, I think it'd be more effective to establish time trials for players who want to attend tournaments.  Just simple proof of "Have you played a game of this size to seven turns in the time allowed, with the models you're going to use?"  After that, then you can get serious about enforcing game times...

[Four_N_Six]

It's an idea we've considered among my friends that play.  We do well against each other, but once we do tournaments, end up much lower on the list because of the time restriction.  I brought it up as a way to try and keep the game moving, so we're better trained to think quickly and get used to that shorter game time.

[solkan]

Here are some of the issues for using timed turns:

1.  For opposed duel, Flip cards and determine values, both players are doing something.  Whose time is it?  Same issues with the initiative flip.  Keep in mind that flipping a card is usually quick, but will periodically require a deck shuffle.  

Giving players a reason not to thoroughly shuffle their cards is a terrible idea.

2.  Cheating and declaring triggers.  The player doing something changes three to four times, so three to four clock switches.

3.  Trigger and passive ability resolution.  If there's no choices involved in an effect, are you going to switch clocks or require one player to resolved the other players's effects on their time?

4.  The inevitable gaming of every edge case in the timing system, and the inevitable arguments about the gaming of the edge cases.

Saying "We should use timed turns" is a lot like saying "We should eat better food" to a couple.  It sounds like a great idea, but before it happens there's a lot of work, and maybe a lot of arguing, that needs to happen first.

 

[fefe]

Timed turns are used in every tournament in Czech republic and there is no issue with using them.

As per the arguments against using the clock, you can switch the clock to the opponent in any time if you feel he is wasting your playing time during the reactions, cheating, etc.

IMO the change to the Timed Turns is quite healthy to the game as both players have the equal portion of the playing time which is absolutely fair (either summoning crew that eats 3/4 of the time, a crew with a lot of activations,  a player that needs 10 minutes to make one activation).

[valhallan42nd]

I'm opposed to clocks in general. With the back and forth interactive nature of even a single duel between cheating, making the decisions about what card to cheat, etc... It's hard to say who's clock should be running at any one point.

[JDAntoine]

It's absolutely more difficult to apply. However in the general sence of things I do think that an in-between rule could be applied for a tournament setting, which is setting a maximum time to a single model activation and giving opponents a maximum time to respond to specific actions (cheating fate).

For example, you could put the maximum time per activation on 5 minutes and the responce time to a maximum of 30 seconds. If the model has AP left, so be it, it's not too difficult to call last minute 1 AP actions if the time calls for it. It also doesn't significantly put more pressure on players with larger crews. It does pressure the activation time but hardly needs a chess clock. 

[LunarSol]

It's actually not as difficult as you'd think to resolve the interactive nature of duels.  For example, there shouldn't ever be a need to flip the clock on initial flips.  If ever there is, a judge should probably be called for stalling.  Cheating is the more complex interaction, but I've found chess clocks actually assist in formalizing these sort of decision points.  When someone ships the clock over, they've locked in their decision whether or not to cheat.  It actually creates a rather pleasant "after you" sort of moment.  I'm not actually sold on that being the correct way to incorporate better timekeeping into Malifaux, but I think its worth exploring.  If nothing else, I'd be curious if, like Guild Ball, it could interact with the VP system to help ensure games complete on time without being a completely binary win condition on its own.

[Dogmantra]

On 17/10/2016 at 3:46 PM, LunarSol said:

  If nothing else, I'd be curious if, like Guild Ball, it could interact with the VP system to help ensure games complete on time without being a completely binary win condition on its own.

Hm, I rather like the way GB handles it. I think an interesting difference here would be that Guild Ball is timed to a set VP amount, whereas Malifaux is timed to a variable number of turns. The VP "ticking clock" when your timer runs out serves as a way to quickly wrap up the game while allowing a little window if the person running out of time is way ahead on points, so they still have a chance to win.

For Malifaux I think one equivalent would be something along the lines of a chess clock with a set amount of time per turn (possibly variable, with less for turn 1, more on turns 2 & 3), and when you run out of time, you forfeit the rest of your activations. Assuming it was possible to get a fair amount of time for all sizes of crew, particularly summoning-driven crews (something GB doesn't have to worry about since teams are always 6 models), there's still an issue with the punishment here in that it could be gamed for benefit: say I'm playing against a Banjonista who has put Paranoid on one of my models. I have no cards and my model will die if it takes the 2 damage on activation, so it's actually in my best interest to forfeit that model's activation, so that I can have a card to discard next turn.

I suppose there are two ways to go with that punishment (and of course that's just off the top of my head): first is to paralyse models instead of forfeiting their activation, which is less gameable, but probably still has some sort of fringe benefit. The other would be to add a 3rd mandatory scheme for everyone where at the end of the game you earn points equal to the number of turns your opponent ran out of time on, which is not gameable, but that does nothing to actually drive the game to a conclusion.

 

I suppose my point, by way of example, is that I think a good timer system needs to:

• Actually drive the game to a conclusion
• Have no reason for a player to ever be able to benefit from running out of time
• Provide a chance for the winning player to still win even if they time out

and that GB has a much easier time with that than Malifaux, since a game ending is directly controlled by the victory condition.

[LunarSol]

I'm not entirely sold on the need for #3 there (arguably they are winning because of the extra time they've taken) but I'll concede its generally a positive inclusion. The other requirement for a timing system is it has to have a way of ending the game one way or another, so that there's a maximum round time for tournaments. 

In general I like the "death clock" style where I have all my time up front and can freely distribute it across my turns as I see fit.  It feels more organic and closest to the way games play casually.  I'm not sure on the proper punishment for Malifaux though.  I'm not entirely unconvinced Warmachine's "you just lose" answer is wrong.  Ultimately it just says, learn to get your game done; which is the real goal of any timer system anyway

[Dogmantra]

39 minutes ago, LunarSol said:

I'm not entirely sold on the need for #3 there (arguably they are winning because of the extra time they've taken) but I'll concede its generally a positive inclusion. The other requirement for a timing system is it has to have a way of ending the game one way or another, so that there's a maximum round time for tournaments.

Context for the following rambling: I think that the purpose of a tournament should be to determine who the best player of that game is (i.e. who is the best at winning that game). This is the axiom that I base pretty much all of the following on.

I considered noting it as optional, but imo a tournament should adhere as closely to the "real" game rules  (i.e. played exactly to the rulebook, which does not use a timer) as possible. Obviously there is a need for all the games to run in a reasonable amount of time, so you make a concession there, but I think it should aim to preserve the optimal decision making as much as possible. I've had games where both of us brought fairly large crews that ended on turn 3 or 4. I played a 3 game tournament fairly recently where two of my matches were pretty objectively decided by time (one win to me, one tie instead of a win), but the fact there was a time limit impacted on the optimal decision making: score early and big was the way to go, while in a "real" game, that's just one avenue you can win by, and one I tend towards myself. Can a game that shuts down at 2 hours be considered Malifaux? Probably, yeah. But it's not the same Malifaux that's written in the rulebook, it's slightly different both in practical terms (i.e. it has two time limits) but also in decision terms (i.e. the optimal decisions are slightly different).

As long as those differences remain subtle enough, I feel fairly comfortable accepting tournament Malifaux as "close enough" to be an indicator of who's the best at Malifaux (rather than who's the best at House-Rules Malifaux)*. And one of the reasons that I feel like it's close enough is that at the end of the day, you still win if you have more points than your opponent, and the way you get those points doesn't change too dramatically (notable exception of course being Bodyguard), whereas with a "death clock" you also lose (and hand your opponent a win) if you run out of time, which imo impacts the optimal decision making a whole bunch more than a "soft" limit like a scheme that can give up to 3 bonus points. I also think that due to the nature of crew size wildly varying depending on the type of crews brought to the table, it's going to be very difficult - perhaps even impossible - to set a time limit that only hits people who have taken "too much" time, without hurting people who just brought larger crews or giving so much time to people with small crews. I've personally been to tournaments where some games don't finish turn 3, but some are done with half an hour to spare, which is a pretty big discrepancy.

 

btw I'm not like singling you out or anything, I just had a lot of thoughts based on what you wrote, and this sort of stuff is kinda my thing.

 

 

*side note of no real relevance: it's actually kind of a peeve of mine that ties for final placement are typically broken by VP total or VP differential, it changes the win condition of the tournament from "win the most games" which I think is the best indicator of who is good at winning games of Malifaux to "win the most games by the biggest point margin", which I get is a practical concern, we don't have time for 16-person Round Robin tournaments, but eh, I'm still allowed to be bugged by it.

[LunarSol]

I agree with you completely, I just recognize that an event based around multiple concurrent games needs some form of time control to have any chance of resulting in anything.  In reality, the goal of the time control is to be unnecessary and have every game resolved in a timely manner.  

The main advantage of "deathclock" systems is simply that they largely keep the responsibility of time management isolated to the player affected.  I can play a large model count army if I want, but if I do its my responsibility to play that army faster.  It also grants the freedom to determine how I accomplish this by playing the first turn positioning game faster or simply knowing my stats better to resolve duels quickly.  Malifaux actually has an advantage in this regard, as you largely know exactly how many activations you have to resolve over the course of the game and can use that to gauge how quickly you need to resolve them.

I look at it this way.  If I clock out, it has a big impact on my game, but the impact is to me and the responsibility and capability of adjusting to improve is entirely on me.  If a game ends on time and goes to tie breakers... there might not be anything I could have done to improve.  Worse yet, I might win and be rewarded for not keeping up with the rest of the players and being respectful of their time.  The only things that can be done is to avoid things that score later, which is the wrong kind of adjustments players should make for time.  The big big reason "deathclocks" work is that despite having a larger potential impact on the game at the end, they create a game that rewards the exact same play that wins your everyday untimed game.... assuming you can complete an untimed game in the window provided by a tournament of course.

[Four_N_Six]

Instead of saying they're paralyzed for option one, just assume they activate, but pass on both (or all) of their AP.  That way conditions that end based on activation still end, but the model still doesn't get to do anything.