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Over the course of the last week, OTL player JazzyJet found this, Voyager: Ascension by RFLXT, owned by World Enterprises LLC - no link because I can't find any presence of this company on the Internet. It was notable to him because the trailer was, to use JazzyJet's words, "just footage from Overload".

Upon pointing this out, RFLXT replied saying that they have "licensed the game from Revival".

"...for web3 use."

I'm sorry, what?

Turns out, RFLXT is working on some tech called the Digital Double avatar. The long and short of it seems to be that they aim to offer this Digital Double avatar to people, which is essentially an AI that mimics the person. I surmise that their short term goal is to get a somewhat deep game catalog going, and then eventually integrate this avatar into these games somehow. Buzzwords thrown around by RFLXT on their website include "web3", "AI", "blockchain", "metaverse", and "NFT". To quote fellow OTL pilot Doctor Tasty, "we have a royal flush, folks."

Getting back to the game at hand, Voyager: Ascension is essentially a free-to-start, 1 to 1 copy of Overload. There are some differences, including some mysterious currency called V Points for killing bots and collecting some items, a slightly different story, changed voice lines that some believe are done by AI rather than voice actors, a reference to an unimplemented season pass, and the ability to unlock all levels for $9.99 (may also be unimplemented as of this writing). There are also a number of bugs that have been found in Voyager: Ascension that don't exist in the base game. But the levels are the same, and the menus and game look and feel like Overload. In short, it is a very low-effort copy.

Now, I'm not here to shit on this game, and if this ends up being some players' first experience with 6DoF, it's not a bad start into the genre. I'm not going to suggest that you should run out and get this game either, though. What I do want to do, however, is look at this from a neutral perspective and evaulate the chances that something like this has to succeed.

First of all, this is a Six Degrees of Freedom First-Person Shooter. By itself, this is one of my favorite genres. However, when considering whether this is going to be a commercially viable game, you have to look at the genre as a whole, which I did recently in my Six'd Off announcement video. If you're going to do a new 6DoF FPS, it needs to offer something unique in terms of gameplay. Slapping on these royal flush buzzwords - or honestly adding any social features from the past 30 years - is not going to help the game do any better than Overload. The gameplay itself needs to be new, exciting, and offer something different. This game does none of that so far.

Second of all, the fact that this is practically a 1 to 1 copy of Overload means you're not going to get too many players wanting to pay twice for the same game, especially to two different companies. Maybe they have plans to radically change the game, and are just putting out a tech demo of sorts, but there is no indication anywhere that this is what they are doing.

Third, you're associating your game with these royal flush buzzwords that most sensible people on the Internet associate with words like "scam", "grift", and other terms that generally keep smarter people away from ventures such as this. Sure, some people will be excited over this, but these are likely to be the same people who have been rug pulled at least once in their life.

Releasing a game in an unpopular genre, when the game is just a copy of a game already released in said genre, attaching web3 features to it, and then expecting cash to pour in to your business is like multiplying 0.01% by 0.01% by 0.01% and expecting to get 100%. Voyager: Ascension's existence makes absolutely no business sense to me, and I have to imagine that this game is not going to last very long once they figure this out. The company behind it surely won't last long if they don't.

Which leads me to the title of this post. WTF did Revival Productions just do? At best, they've opened the door for web3 to invade the 6DoF space for a quick cash grab. At worst, they've knowingly involved their product and brand with technologies that many consider to be the morally worst technologies on the planet. And this is to speak nothing about what it's done for the modding community. With olmod under an MIT license, all RFLXT would have to do to use olmod code in Voyager: Ascension is to include that license with their product. I know I don't want to be writing software for free for a web3 company, and I imagine most of the other developers on the modding team would agree. This puts us in an extremely tough situation, and I honestly don't know what to do about this. Do we try to license the source code ourselves somehow? Do we change the license on olmod? Do we just close up shop and call it a day and let Revival and RFLXT do whatever they want?

I certainly didn't have "Overload but with web3 features" on my 2024 bingo card.

I think Revival Productions owes the Overload community an explanation here, and what we should expect from both them and RFLXT moving forward.

Update (4/30/2024):

Matt Toschlog posted the following to the Overload Discord. It confirms that they weren't trying to do anything malicious by licensing the code to RFLXT (also, it appears Refactor Games is doing most of the development on Voyager: Ascension) and were simply looking to gain back some of their losses while working on Overload. Unfortunately, I think no amount of statement from Revival is going to unmuddy the waters that is the modding situation. Hopefully it becomes a non-issue, but it is always something we're going to have to kep an eye on in the future. Here is the full statement:

Overload fans,

We've been following the conversation on this server about the release of Voyager Ascension and realized (a little late) that we should make a statement.

Voyager Ascension is, obviously, based on Overload. We licensed the game to RFLXT about a year ago after they approached us about making a Web3 version of the game. (And, as has been surmised, the person who instigated the deal was Alan Pavlish, who was an exec at Interplay when they published Descent.)

We're not experts in Web3 and crypto and don't have much interest in moving into that world. But we did think it was an interesting idea and we were happy to sign the deal. Overload was a labor of love for us, and while it was one of most fun and satisfying projects we've worked on, it was not a financial success. Even with the licensing fees for Voyager Ascension we've lost a significant amount of money on this project. (Which is fine. Embarking on a new project is always a risk.)

When we licensed Overload to RFLXT we insisted that any Web3 version be released under a different name to avoid confusion with the original game. One of the great things to come out of the Overload project is the enthusiastic community that's developed around it, and we didn't want the licensed game to affect that. Voyager Ascension will exist in its world, and Overload can continue with its own dedicated base.

If any of you decide to check out Voyager Ascension we'd be happy to hear what you think. We hope it's successful. And maybe it will even bring some new players to Overload.

Thanks again for your support.

Matt Toschlog & Mike Kulas
Revival Productions

Labels: Gaming, Overload, Revival Productions, RFLXT, Voyager: Ascension, Web3

Monday, February 12, 2024

A Tale of Two Communities
Posted: 3:01:00 AM 0 comments

"If you're a high visibility player, it's on you to move the community in a positive direction." -Jonas Neubauer, 1981-2021, seven-time CTWC champion

This quote by Jonas Neubauer has been engraved on the Classic Tetris World Championship's first and second place trophies since 2021, the year he unexpectedly passed away at the age of 39. I met Jonas and his wife Heather, a Dr. Mario world champion at TwitchCon in 2019. We both happened to cross paths at GDQx 2019. I was doing couch commentary for SpootyBiscuit's Cadence of Hyrule run while Jonas was doing couch commentary for Blink's Tetris 99 run. I got a big hug, a photo I'll cherish forever, and I introduced Jonas and Heather to one of the exhibits on the show floor, which was basically a mind-meld Tetris game. I remember the two of them enjoying themselves and having fun, and their laughter was contageous. Jonas was one of the few people I've met who, online, was pretty much the exact same person he was in real life, one of the most genuine individuals I've ever met. He was graceful in his CTWC defeats, and always worked to build up the community he championed.

Since his last win, there have been 4 other tournament winners. Joseph Saelee won twice. Then, Michael Artiaga (dogplayingtetris), won in back to back years. Eric Tolt (EricICX) defeated Justin Yu (Fractal161), the latter of whom won it a year later. Harry Hong also famously won the tournament back in 2014, interrupting Jonas's seven year streak.

All of these players have made a positive impact on the classic Tetris community in some way. Some have even made contributions to the community, hosting their own events, doing content creation, and genuinely being a good ambassador to the game. I had no idea that one side tournament at SGDQ 2018 would get me involved in a community amazing enough that I now find myself contributing my time to almost every classic Tetris organization. Oh, I suck at the game! But I don't let that stop me from being involved in organizing events, commentating for matches, and playing in the lower tournament levels myself, even if I have taken a bit of a step back from competitive lately to keep my competition anxiety in check.

Sure, Tetris has its bad spots. Players cheat. People get upset at others. People do tasteless things that get them banned. It happens, because people suck. But far and away, the classic Tetris community is wholesome, and I am better for being a part of it.

If only every community was like Tetris.

In the fall of 2021, a player showed up on the Overload Teams League team SpaceCowboys by the name of Zor. He was a pretty decent player. Not quite top 10 in a league of some 60 pilots, but someone seen as dangerous to play against. There was a lot of secrecy around this player. Teammates would often go on mute when talking about Zor's past experience with 6DoF games, or just outright not stream. Someone caught a stream and quickly identified the voice as the Descent pilot - and former OTL pilot - Jediluke. With a DCL record of 5982 wins and 348 losses (1413-117 vs Rethink, 809-33 vs Drakona, and 476-24 vs b2af), Jediluke wasn't just a known quantity, he was the most active competitive player while the DCL was around, between 2013 and 2020. And, as the record indicates, he was pretty good, too: he was ranked first at the end of more DCL seasons (7) than anyone else (Mark392 5, Souljah 3, bahamut 1). What's more, he is unquestionably the most successful D1 pilot on my Twitch series The Observatory, a quarterly tournament open to all Descent 1 pilots where games are broadcast and commentated on, something the community never really had prior to this series, which was founded in 2016. To date, he's won 31 out of 34 seasons, losing only to Mark392 (season 5), Zero (season 12), and Morfod (season 26). We'll talk about Morfod's winning season a bit later. Unfortunately, Jediluke's also got a temper. He gets mad when he loses, and winning your first game over what seems like an impossible opponent usually results in him making you feel like shit, rather than celebrating your momentus victory.

For comparison, here's Jonas's last game at a live CTWC where he was shockingly eliminated in the first round.

Anyway, back to the point, Jediluke decided to compete in the OTL as Zor to "get away" from his Jediluke personality. Thinking it would put less pressure on himself, he adopted the alias and kept his true identity a close secret for a couple weeks. The voice changer was pretty silly, but once the word got out that Zor was Jediluke, he posted something quick in the OTL Discord explaining the name, and barring some critique from some old rivals, that was the end of it. The general vibe was like "yeah, it's weird, but he's got less of an attitude now, so whatever."

Also towards the end of 2021, season 26 of The Observatory occurred. An unknown entrant with the name "Genevieve" (PwnJett in game) showed up for the Finals Tournament as an unqualified player who had to fight from the wildcard anarchy to even get into the knockout bracket. He did so in shocking fashion, taking out Jediluke in the semifinals and Sirius in the finals to win the tournament. And, as the tournament concluded, Morfod revealed that he was in fact Genevieve. It was amusing at the time, and everyone got a good laugh. He had only played under that handle for a couple weeks, enough so that some regulars were aware of the handle. For me, I was kind of kind of amused, but also kind of annoyed that someone would go to such lengths as hide their identity just to gain an advantage. I let it slide, hoping it wouldn't happen again.

Um, remember earlier, when I said that people suck?

Season 35 of The Observatory kicked off this month, and with it Jediluke proclaimed his retirement, supposedly tired of not having a challenge after Mark392 showed up for about a week to play games and then left to become a parent. While Jedi's lack of participation didn't bother me - a more competitive top of the table would benefit the show - a newcomer, Tonka, showed up who had been around since August. Code, a long time Observatory player, did some training with him, and Tonka's skill began to noticeably rise. By the time season 35 began, it was clear that he would be a strong contender, and did in fact win all of his games in the first episode, including against season 34's runner up, terminal.

But something didn't sit right with some pilots, and eventually it was made known to me that he was suspected of cheating. Although there wasn't anything conclusive, and it was later decided that no cheating was involved, it got enough people suspicious that for the second episode, his IP was taken from a game log and compared with some website logs. I noticed that there was a lot of activity with that IP on the Overload game browser that didn't match the player's activity in Overload, which was very low and many months prior. I then decided to compare the IP to logs on the game servers themselves, and that's when the smoking gun was found. That IP was the same IP used by Zor in Overload.

While I had 100% confidence at that point that Tonka was 31-time champion Jediluke, a lot of things didn't add up. This player Tonka showed up in the community about 6 months ago. They were trained on basics like trichording. They had matches with Jediluke. They gave a phone number with a Houston, TX area code. They would chat back and forth with Jediluke, aggressively looking for games. Even now, this whole scheme doesn't make sense to me.

But it was real. Jediluke eventually confessed to the whole thing. And he was totally nonchalant about it. In fact, my current co-commentator, Chillybus, thought it was crazy that he would go through the whole thing. He said on Discord:

"for six months? what do you have to gain against pilots who would take hundreds and hundreds of games to even be competitive with you, let alone take a game? multiboxing discord accounts? faking tracker games? IMO you did competition a disservice and your friends dirty from the sound of it, just chasing shadows of the afternoon someone aliased you to a win. not how a longtime decorated top competitor should compose themselves. it isn't time to go around again, I think it is time to log off. you have shamed yourself here. That's all I'll say in this time and place."

The reply from Jediluke was equally nonchalant: "1 v 1 Chilly?" and "those who don't compete ...commentate".

Is this moving the community in a positive direction? Does he care at all about the community? Is this how a top player is going to treat the community that he represents?

This is literally night and day. In one community, I have players that are leaders, care about the community, and do everything they can to move the community forward. In another, I have players that are selfish, care about themselves, and do everything they can to try to get ahead.

You tell me which community I'm going to put more effort into.

Labels: Descent, Descent Champions Ladder, Gaming, Overload, Overload Teams League, Tetris, The Observatory

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Overload has truth; next it needs balance
Posted: 6:31:00 PM 0 comments

Overload multiplayer was put together in around a month, went through another month of testing, and ended up being rather underwhelming to play. Ranked multiplayer queues died out after the first couple weeks, those that remained were either gaming the system or late to the party. Mercifully, ranked multiplayer did not survive very long.

However, multiplayer soon began to thrive in the form of the Overload Teams League. I founded the OTL in 2019 for pilots who wanted to play team games. It caught on pretty quick with 6 teams by its second month. At first, we dealt with the frustrating limitations of poor server choices, shoddy networking, and always demanding to Bammer "RESTART YOUR SERVERS!!!". But shortly after Revival Productions folded in February of 2019, a glimmer of hope appeared in the form of olproxy, a piece of software that allowed Overload LAN servers to act as Internet servers. For the first time, Internet games were playable without official servers.

Over time, this expanded to olproxy being incorporated into olmod, a collection of mods for Overload with the aim to improve multiplayer game play. A large number of improvements have been included in olmod since then, including larger game sizes, reporting to a tracker, sniper packets, lag compensation, and more. What hasn't been addressed is weapon balance.

Multiplayer weapon balance has not been great since Overload launched. Ammo weapons have been shown to dominate, and the energy weapons are a mixed bag with cyclone being dominant and reflex being weak. Hunters used to be super strong until an early nerf was added to olmod. Creepers and time bombs used to be excessively out of sync between client and server. Despite this, people still played, but bigger issues existed because people couldn't understand what they were seeing. Ship positions were not consistent. People were saying that 50ms in Overload felt worse than 100ms in Descent 3. (While seemingly unbelievable, this was learned to be a true statement since Overload intentally adds a minimum of 83ms of lag to game play; 33ms for processing controls smoothly and 50ms to be able to interpolate ships smoothly.) Slowly over time, the net code was deciphered and unravelled, and we learned some shocking things about how the net code was implemented. In addition to the intentionally added lag, your entire controls are sent to the server every frame for processing server-side. Every button press, mouse movement, or swing of the joystick would be part of that send. But because client and server frames don't match up one to one, this would cause errors in position and rotation, and weapon firing that was often out of phase, meaning what you saw on your screen wasn't what was happening on the server.

First, we fixed the weapons. Sniper packets made it so that every time you fire something client-side, that is what was seen server-side. This also eliminated some super bad parts of the game, such as disagreements as to how many missiles you have, what weapon you're using, what side of the ship you're firing a missile out of, and more.

Second, we fixed most of the intentional lag and made it so that it would try to compensate for lag, predicting where ships will be in the future, making them easy to hit. Then we revisited weapons, also compensating them for lag so that they'd be easier to dodge.

I say "we" because this is a team of developers doing this. Arne de Brujin created olproxy and olmod and showed us what is possible. I've contributed a bunch of code, and Tobias, Whollycow, and derhass have been instrumental in keeping things on track. We even have occasional contributors like terminal, luponix, and D.Cent provide extra quality of life for both players and developers.

And now we're ready to tackle balance.

Players are now seeing the game closer to the truth than ever before, and as a result they have honed in their skills better than ever, showing us that, yeah, there are serious balance problems with the game. It's not like we didn't already know this. However, now that we are seeing closer to the truth, we can begin to understand exactly what these balance problems are, and hopefully start finding common ground in regards to what needs to be balanced.

Labels: Coding, Gaming, olmod, Overload

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

OTL's player disconnection issue
Posted: 5:40:00 PM 0 comments

The Overload Teams League has started off fairly well. We've played 26 games in the first month, completed a small one-day tournament, and have had five teams play each other at least once. But there's one issue that's come up that's been really tough to call. There was a player disconnection issue that recently came up where a player BSOD'd and there was some confusion on what to do. I wanted to put something in writing before this happens again.

First, some background.

In Descent 3, Heat aside, all servers were private. Players could come and go as they pleased, and you could always rejoin a game after crashing out. Game parameters were also much more open. Kill goals and time goals were text entries, not selections from a menu.

Revival confusingly bucked this trend in Overload, removing server browsers and opting for monolithic servers that can run multiple games at once. However, the only way to access these games is if you have the password AND you join before the game starts. There's no way to see what games are running, and even if you had the password you can't join a game in progress.

The Descent 3 Teams League pretty much ignored any issues with disconnections. DCs could simply be met with a substitution (subs were common in D3TL matches!), or by playing shorthanded until the disconnected player returned. Only a full server crash would suspend a match (in the D3TL Tournament, this only happend once ever, but was in the semifinals!), but players would pretty much just restart from the prior score and amount of time left with little fuss.

Disconnections in the OTL cause bigger problems.

Players can't reconnect to a game in progress, leaving their team short-handed.
If you wish to suspend the match, you have limited options to select time parameters in game.
Because of the above, disconnections can be seen as gaming the system, depending on many factors.

In short, in Overload, we as a league have to deal with a situation that's less than ideal. We are aware of the fact that games online are not nearly as flexible as they were with Descent 3, and we have to adjust as a result.

In the OMG/PTMC Terminal match, PuDLeZ BSOD'd and disconnected with approximately 2:30 remaining in the match while his team led by 5. Teams immediately stopped playing and agreed on starting a new game from the current score and time remaining (they had suggested 5 minutes, until I stepped in and asked for 3 to more match the time remaining). The stats from both games were combined for the final match score.

From my standpoint, that was awesome. Both teams came together to finish out the match despite the circumstances. And, this is the kind of model I want to encourage... work out a solution that both teams can agree on. However, teams will have different ideas on how to do this, so I think it's good to have a set of guidelines available along with what to do should teams NOT agree on a way to go forward. Here's what I came up with:

Should a player disconnect or a game end prematurely due to a crash or network outage, every effort should be made to get the current stats from the game up to that point in the match. Teams should then agree on what to do next, within the following guidelines: - Teams can agree to restart a Challenge if 10 minutes or more remained on the clock at the time of the issue, or if multiple issues happen within a single match. - Teams can agree to end a game with the score as is if less than 3 minutes remained on the clock at the time of the issue. - Teams can agree to play a 2nd game, combining the scores of both games for the final score of a single match. The second game's time limit should be as close to one of the time options available in game as possible to the amount of time remaining when the issue occurred. For instance, if there was 6:23 on the clock, teams could agree to play the 2nd game with either a 5 minute or 7 minute time limit. In all cases where a match is suspended and resumed, the same pilots must fly for both teams, as substitutions are not normally supported in Overload games. If teams cannot agree on what to do, an administrator can be asked to decide how to proceed, and they will make the decision. The administrator may also opt to adjudicate the match accordingly in extreme cases. If one player is repeatedly having these kind of issues, they may be suspended from the league until their issues are resolved. If it is deemed that the player is acting maliciously, they may be banned from the league.

I don't want it to feel like I'm ignoring the momentum argument, so I'll address it here. Momentum is a very real thing, and it sucks to have it taken away by an extraordinary circumstance. However, examples of leagues or competitions that put extra time on the clock because of such an issue is exceedingly rare. In fact, more often than not, you end up LOSING time. Here are some examples of what other leagues do, where, surprisingly, many take place in the sport's biggest games of the year.

Generally, MLB games will either be restarted at a later date if 4 1/2 innings haven't been played, end early if one team or the other is in the lead, or be resumed at a later date if tied.
The NHL is somewhat inconsistent. In one case, they cancelled the game after it was 1-0, then restarted the full game but kept the 1-0 score from the prior game. In another, they cancelled the game after it was 3-3, but made the stats from the first game official, however that works, and restarted the full game from 0-0 2 nights later.
The NBA will just end a game should something extraordinary happen.
The NFL doesn't really end games, even though the commissioner has the power to do so in extreme circumstances. The only example I could find that even comes close is one where the final play of the game ran out the clock well after a field goal was scored, denying the other team from fielding a kickoff and possibly scoring a miracle touchdown. The NFL made a rule change the following season in response to this to prevent successful field goals from taking more than 5 seconds off of the clock.
The Overwatch World Cup simply restarts the current game within the match.
League of Legends has something called "Chrono Breaking" that allows them to return to any point in time in the match, should something go wrong such as a game-breaking bug. When "Chrono Breaking" is broken, league officials will either declare a winner if one team is deemed too far ahead for a possible comeback, or restart the match.

I'm sure there are plenty more examples to put forth, but overwhelmingly the concept of momentum is not given much thought in any of these cases. Either they drop the rest of the game, pick up where they left off later, or they start over. Nowhere is something arbitrary like 5 extra minutes given just to facilitate a possible comeback or to restore momentum. And I think this makes sense, especially in an environment like the OTL where we have individual stats and want them to mean something instead of having them skewed by stats where matches were far too short or too long.

In an extraordinary circumstance, you need to make a judgement call that someone somewhere is not going to like. As long as we deal with these circumstances with consistency and with good intentions, that should be all anyone can ask of the league. I also strongly like giving teams options, and them letting them agree on which option to take, only calling in help when they can't agree.

Hopefully this will address the situation, but leave it open to discussion for now over on the OTL Discord. Apologies for not thinking of this sooner... I had a lot of situations planned out, and this was definitely not one of them!

Labels: Gaming, Overload, Overload Teams League

Friday, June 08, 2018

The Overload Teams League
Posted: 6:37:00 PM 0 comments

I wanted to put together a bunch of my thoughts regarding the possibility of creating the Overload Teams League.

Those who played Descent 3 might remember that I took over something called the Descent 3 Teams League from bash and Sirian, and ran it for a number of years. I kept it going until well into the second half of the aughts, with help from Matrix and IceHammer to keep things running smoothly. Eventually the game dried out, and with it the league was retired.

With Overload, the potential for Six Degrees of Freedom competitive team action returns. I've recruited Chilly Bus and MobMessenjah to bounce some ideas off of, and wanted to list out what we've come up with so far.

The Spirit of the OTL

The OTL "spirit" borrows a lot from from the D3TL. Essentially, teams get together to play competitive games against each other, and the system is there to facilitate the games with as little interference from administration as possible. However, we are planning on having a few notable differences for the OTL.

First, seasons are being planned. While there will be lifetime standings, we want to rotate out the standings every 6 months to keep the leaderboards fresh.

Second, we're going to want to keep big rosters down. The D3TL team NT was a unique idea, but we really don't need to have teams with 50+ players on it. This means that large clans would have to enter multiple teams on the D3TL, which means more people will be able to play, and even allow for intra-clan matches. Right now, we're looking at rosters being between 5 and 8 players, although we're leaning towards the higher end of that list.

Third, we're looking to keep the game time down. D3TL games averaged an hour in length. Overload right now only allows a MAXIMUM of 20 minutes, and that's the standard we're looking at adopting. If Revival raises that maximum, I don't think we're going to want to follow suit.

Fourth, we think map, opponent, and mode diversification is unnecessary in 2018. To keep teams from playing the same map over and over, we're likely going to borrow the "home map" concept from The Observatory. To keep teams from not wanting to play other opponents, we want to implement a ranking system that's more than just wins and losses. And, there's only 2 real modes in Overload right now, and both are team anarchy... one with friendly fire off, and one with friendly fire on.

Finally, we want to do frequent events. Three kinds of events we're thinking of:

Regular events, perhaps monthly, that are at different days and times, where people can get together and play a small Swiss tournament for a few hours. Similar to The Observatory's tournaments.
Mid-season events, a top 6-team invitational knockout tournament, perhaps with something on the line like a guaranteed spot in the knockout tournament of the end-of-season tournament.
End-of-season events where we pull out all the stops... qualifiers for people to get into groups, a group stage round robin, and concluding with a knockout tournament. You win this, you're the season champion!

Choosing Maps, Servers, and Colors

I mentioned using The Observatory as a way to determine what map to play, but I wanted to go into more detail on map selection, and other selections that may give advantages to one team and not the other.

First, here's what we're thinking for maps. Teams will have a pool of "home" maps, and when they are the "home" team, their opponent will choose one of those maps. Who gets to be home? That'll alternate every game between the two teams, with the first game being random. What if both teams want to play a map that's not their home map? Teams will be able to agree to play any map available, overriding the home team concept for one game.

Servers will work the same way. One team will be assigned to start the game, which allows them to pick the server of their choice, and the next game between the teams your opponent gets the choice. Every 2 games this resets. However, you can agree to play on a particular server (provided you have access to it) to override this behavior for one game.

Finally, colors will just be assigned in a similar way to servers. Unlike the servers, though, your team color shouldn't be something to agree upon. Sometimes you'll be orange, sometimes you'll be blue.

Game Rules

Overload has a lot of ways to play team games, but we obviously want to standardize them for fair competition. This is what we're thinking:

Time limit: 20 Minutes
Show Enemy Names: Team Only
Respawn Time: 2 to 4 Seconds
Respawn Shield: 2 Seconds
Powerup Overall Frequency: High
Powerup Initial Secondaries: Low
Powerup Super Frequency: Low

All powerups are allowed, largely because we can't disable anything non-weapon.

As for Friendly Fire, we're actually thinking of making that a separate "mode". If you recall, the D3TL had separate rankings for each mode, but there was an overall ranking as well. We'd probably do something similar for this.

The Ranking System

Let me come out and say NO ONE is going to like the ranking system. Regardless of what system we use, nothing's perfect. I am hoping that by using a combination of a ranking system and regular events, any decent ranking system will be accepted as long as it's not the final authority on "who is the best". With that said, I'm going say that naughty word: Elo.

Long story short, I want to have score ratio be a factor in Elo score changes, and have the rankings be somewhat volatile given that these are not lifetime ratings.

First, we have an idea to have the score ratio factor in the Elo "result" calculation. Normally, a win would give you a 1.0 result and a loss would give you a 0.0 result. In our version of the Elo formula, you'd only get 1.0 if you doubled your opponent's score, and 0.0 if your opponent doubled your score, with a logarithmic curve filling in the points in between. I came up with the "double" by examining the history of Team Anarchy scores in the D3TL Tournament. It maxed out at a ratio of 3.27 to 1. If you're beating your opponents 45 to 15, the team with 15 is going to need to improve dramatically to ever have a chance of winning. 45 to 30 feels more like that the team with 30 could eventually win. There's no real solid statistics on what exactly to use, but this feels like a good starting point.

Because we want a decent level volatility, K will need to be high. On top of this, because we're going to be using score ratio as the result, this requires us to have a higher K to keep things a bit volatile. I'm looking at experimenting with a K=50 for the first season.

Finally, we want to use a provisional rating so teams can't play 1 game and be ranked among the top teams. Teams that have 10 games in a season will have their full Elo as their rating. Outside of that, every game a team plays will give them access to 10% of their Elo. So, a team with an Elo of 1500 but has only played 2 games will have 20% of their Elo applied to their rating, so their rating will be 300.

We'll also have individual player stats, like total points, points per game, deaths per game, and efficiency.

Things We Want Revival To Do To Help

Revival has done a great job at making a game people want to play, but there's more that can be done to make this game really shine, as well as help out the OTL with doing what we want to do. To this end, we currently have a small list of ideas we'd like to pass on to them.

Overload NEEDS an observer mode. In 2018, it almost feels like an oversight to not have some kind of observer mode. Even Descent 3 had observing!
To keep games fair, all players need to be able to confirm the selected settings for a private match. Without this, the person starting the match could sneak in some setting that the other team won't be aware of.
Game stats from private games should be output to a text file. No funny key combination required, no UI element, just a way to always output private match results. It should include each players' score line (kills, deaths, assists, suicides), and each players' kills and deaths against each other. Again, something to take away from Descent 3.
Allow the player hosting to pick which region to start their game in. Right now it just defaults as the closest to them, but what if a bunch of US players want to play Germany players on a UK server?
Right now you can select which weapons to allow or disallow. Extend this to other powerups: Ammo, Energy, Armor, Invulnerability, Cloak, Overdrive... everything.
Make an option to disallow players from delaying their spawn in a private game. This would prevent cases where a team is in the lead, but the other team is making a comeback, except the team in the lead just stops spawning.

League Interface

The primary interface for the OTL will most likely be a Discord bot. I have a lot of experience with Discord bots as I've made 3 now, and having a bot to help out with managing things like rosters, game reports, and more will really make it easy to keep the league running without anyone getting involved unless there's a dispute that needs to be resolved.

We'd still have a website, but its primary focus would be to show standings, results, and more. All other communication would take place on Discord.

What's Next?

Discussion, of course! I am posting this on a Friday to give everyone some time to read it over and form their own opinions as to what might be fun in an Overload Team League. On Monday, I'm going to do an Overload stream at http://twitch.tv/roncli and hold an AMA regarding the league. I'm looking for your questions and suggestions, so be sure to add your questions on the Reddit OTL AMA comments thread so that I don't miss them.

Summary

Overload is pretty well-suited for a teams league like this, and I think that having an organized teams league will get people playing multiplayer, and especially team games. Additional support from Revival will allow the league to do more, drawing even more interest from players who would not otherwise play multiplayer.

Labels: Gaming, Overload, Overload Teams League

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Six Degrees of Confusion
Posted: 12:10:00 AM 0 comments

Note: I come down pretty harshly on a few titles here that probably don't deserve it. Every title listed here is a good title in their own right, and deserves to at least be played through. The point is, nothing, yet, compares to Descent.

As you may know, I'm a pretty big Descent fan. I would even go as far as to say I'm a pretty big fan of the whole Six Degrees of Freedom genre. Really, if you want me to buy your game, make it a first person, Six Degrees of Freedom shooter. I'll buy it.

With that said, I have been a bit confused by the rash of 6DoF titles that have come out claiming they want to be as close to Descent as possible, and yet are doing things that... well, aren't very Descenty.

The Pretenders

There's Descent: Underground. This title seems to be doomed with poor net code that micro-repositions your ship just enough to throw your aim off, and a confusing scoring system that they are stubbornly sticking to. They have the name, but in my opinion they seem to be making their own 6DoF game.

There's Geocore, which I can best describe as a project lacking direction. Its single player mode has changed up literally half a dozen times since I've seen I started paying attention to it, and lacks the polish of other titles. It has a slogan of "competition grade", which is shown in its well-done net code, but honestly the original Descent has much better-looking weapons, and the game taxes my GPU like no other.

There's Sol Contingency, the game that originally was going to be Descent but got yanked from under them. While it has a very polished look, there are definitely some contrast issues that make it difficult to see what kind of action is happening in the game. I am also not a fan of the slow startup on its vulcan-like weapon.

There's Overload, the game made by the original Descent developers, who want to give us a modern version of Descent. Except, they have no initial plans for multiplayer, which is very much a core part of the Descent experience to me.

There's Retrovirus, a Descent-like game with a beautiful single player story, but horribly bad multiplayer play. The MOBA game mode was poorly done, and the spaces feel so large that it feels like it's impossible to properly aim. Not to mention the tech trees that let the king of the hill continue to be the king by granting well-performing players extra powers. Descent was a game that already had a wide skill gap, why make it wider?

While each of these titles are very good in their own right, as a fan of the Descent series, all of these titles miss the mark in one way or another. I am beginning to wonder if the experience of Descent can actually be recreated at all. Did Parallax happen upon some kind of magic formula for success that made the original game still the best game of the genre, even 21 years later? Is this 6DoF revival period just a bunch of pretenders trying to recreate the perfect Descent experience?

Or maybe am I overshooting my expectations?

The New Originals

Take Sublevel Zero. I had no expectations that this would be Descent, or anything like it. However, it is probably my favorite of the modern 6DoF games because of its rogue-like replayability, its crafting system that allows you to play the game the way you want to, and some AI that, while it could be smarter, does just enough to be dangerous if you're not paying attention. It has no multiplayer, but it never claimed to be Descent, so I don't expect it.

Take NeonXSZ. One of the few 6DoF games without inertial dampening (in English: your ship continues to move in the direction you moved it even after you stop moving in that direction), this game takes elements from puzzle games, action RPGs, and of course the 6DoF genre and brings it into an engaging environment where, again, you can play the game the way you want to. I didn't expect this to be Descent-like, and therefore was pleased with the polish of the game, as well as the action that came out of it.

And how about little-talked about Kromaia, the 6DoF bullet hell? This is about as far from the original Descent gameplay as you can get, because you want to kill as LITTLE as possible, or else the difficulty ramps up FAST. It's a different way to play a 6DoF, but it was still a fun game.

It seems the games that I have the LEAST expectation of being Descent are the ones I have the MOST fun playing.

Maybe I should cut my expectations short with these new games and take them for what they are, rather than having them try to be the old experience in new clothes, but I tell you what, that can be really hard to do.

Labels: Descent, Descent: Underground, Gaming, Geocore, Kromaia, NeonXSZ, Overload, Retrovirus, Sol Contingency, Sublevel Zero