The Observatory feedback megathread!

[bahamut]

can i cash in my home level tokens now?

[Cyrus]

Lee,

I am sorry you got so upset. I honestly never voiced an opinion on your level or any of your levels (except the level "melvin" - which were positives). I did admittedly chuckle when they brought up the ostrich. I didn't say to myself that it was a terrible level, bad level, or a bad designer was behind it, but you literally have an ostrich in the middle of the level. I thought the intention was to get a laugh from us. Also, I do think it's also hilarious, BUT cool that you added MEGAS to every level that didn't have megas previously. If I express that to you it means no disrespect - trust me.

I think you also have to understand how small the community actually is, and you'll start to realize everyone has their own sets of pluses and minuses. When I get stuck on the negatives about people, it usually doesn't make as much sense as I thought when I start to complain about stupid issues I have with certain individuals.

I am definitely the butt of a lot of the jokes on here, and for some reason I take it in stride - all day, every day, but I know if I voiced my aggravation or the relentlessness of it - people would stop. But, where I'm from, the more you make fun of someone - the more they actually like you (It's a level of comfort).

For example look at me and Luke: I literally thought busting his balls was funny (because if he did the same to me I would think so), but he's from the south and he probably got raised different , instead it literally insulted him.

We talked and we figured out that we didn't really dislike each other, but he couldn't stand me pouncing on him in his very few moments of failure, and I couldn't handle the amount of trash talk during the game - we both chose to cut that out on both ends.

The community is too small to get pissed off over such small stuff. Just voice your opinion, no one here is trying to hurt anyone.




Roncli,

I definitely think you did a ton of good for this community with this tournament. Yeah, I was pissed I had to play wrath and faster. I also lost all control against Sirius because his connection to me is such crap (anyone around the seattle area actually) and I'm so reliant on the vulcan so I need somewhat of a decent connection to have any value (70 ping or less).

We can change the level selection process for the next one - maybe core + 5 maps and just randomly assign it, but I mean the whole premise of this thing was to see if you could take someone down in their home. I signed up knowing that, and my goodness it was all dcl/past dcl players - OF COURSE it's going to be super competitive. I don't want to lose to anybody dcl or not, plus...I mean....people were watching.

I definitely think your intentions were good and I'm so thankful that you do the podcasts AND the first person cockpit view is friggin awesome. I do think some feelings were hurt, but really...I think we need some thicker skin around here sometimes. No one is getting harassed here, nor would any of the admins tolerate it.



Anyhow, I absolutely LOVE the community - I can't even believe there still is one! This is why I haven't left - even though I let my competitive side tell me to do otherwise. I think I've said this a hundred times - Luke being that much better than me eats away at my soul, but I won't give up anytime soon. I feel like this is the attitude of most of the pilots that remain on the DCL. They just want to get better and better. I may have made no sense in this post. I have no clue; I'm too lazy to go back and check for typos or irrelevance... PEACE and I thought I posted this like hours ago - it seems the thread developed a bit.

[birdseye]

Cyrus,

I think you should play some special observatory matches. Since the pain of Cyrus seems to be a popular topic and nobody including you seems upset by the relentless clowning on you, I think it would give everyone a nice shot in the arm to throw on the "Cyrus Pain Experience" where you play a nice 3 round series of June Bug NH vs me, UGH vs. DKH, and Forte NM vs. Mark392. I didn't include Jedi because they are now special buddies again. Aww you two! Then we can all unite again in our hate of you! You'll be a hero for once.

Roncli,

I disagree on a few points -- I do think it was unfair to say Lee picked a certain level due to Pfunk's disability. Lee wouldn't do that, and I certainly can see how he took offense to it. I also can see that you saw it as more of a 'known fact' that shouldn't be a big deal in a highly comeptitive environment, but others don't have the same thinking and would consider leveraging a disability non-sporting. I should have commented on this at the time and to Lee I am sorry. It was actually a lot harder to commentate than I expected, it was a bit overwhelming to try to fill space all the time and make the broadcast as exciting as I could. I was a bit deer in headlights, especially at the start, so sorry I did not defend you Lee I should have.

I'd also say that I did enjoy the Lee-Jedi match, it provided what I called "The Play of the Day" -- and I personally enjoyed it more than watching Cyrus suicide in Ascend, that was about as boring for me as it gets. How about a rule, and this is for ENTERTAINMENT purposes, that if you total 5 suicides you lose an additional point off of your score. This would not penalize anyone doing a reasonable amount of suicides, and prevent people from creating a gigantic snoozer like Cyrus did.

I wasn't really against Megas, part of the problem was that neither announcer was a good Mega player. So our commentary was what was limited, rather than the match which actually was a close see-saw battle that I had fun watching at times. If you had a top Mega player explaining the thought process behind a lot of play, or what would be optimal, I think the mega matches would have more punch. E.g. in the future if you get a Mega battle somehow, if Jediluke or another strong Mega player is available perhaps have him provide the commentary that could spice up a Mega game.

What I would find to be an awesome, exciting format would be to allow the Home level thing but have it be from a list of levels ONLY created after say Dec 2016 when the "level renaissance" started and we had a lot of new levels coming. Then we'd be pushing into new frontiers enjoying a lot of new content. Disallowing remakes of old levels, of course.

Lothar: "competition-grade" is subjective. I can have a "competition grade" match in Ostrich Farm. I actually hate the term "competition grade" because it implies something about the other levels that is unfair.
I actually like Ostrich Farm because it has some incredible 3d skills needed to hang in the Ostrich dog room. Lots of pilots addicted to flat world levels would get roasted just trying to hang in there.

P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome
P.S. Lee is awesome

[Morfod]

Yes, chipped balls, scratched greens, and curved cues all make for a challenging game of pool, and require unique skills to succeed. But barroom pool is hardly considered competition grade.

[roncli]

At this point, I'll just summarize my thoughts on PFunk-Lee... I apologize if it offended, and probably wouldn't make such a comment again, but I don't regret making it in the first place. I can see how it could be considered offensive, but certainly not to the level of the response it got. It's overreacting and other things I won't bring up at risk of being "offensive". The response signaled that there were deeper issues than just one comment, and I have no idea yet what those issues are.

You did really well on commentary. I think the observations you made throughout the broadcast were relevant and enlightening. I'd certainly have you back.

The play of the night with Jedi ding that beat maneuver was fun, but a 20 to 4 drubbing with megas is certainly not a match of the night candidate. It certainly was more exciting than mega Nysa, too, that match was punctuated by a lot of defensive play, which just isn't fun to watch. Cyrus suiciding for 12 minutes isn't great, either, but at least that game got fast paced towards the end.

Limiting level selections to a recent time period would certainly be interesting! What do players think about that idea? Worth pursuing?

[roncli]

Regarding ostrich farm, I also like the level as an anarchy map. Not as a 1v1 map, though, you'd have to remove the upper room to make it what I would consider competition grade. Overall it's not bad, and one of Lee's better levels. And remember that he didn't really intend to use that level, but got locked into it when the tournament started.

[Jediluke]

I prefer the idea of a curated list (chosen by the host of the show....or voted upon by the community or enrolled participants)

There certainly are some good 'new' levels that play well in 1 v 1 situations...but why limit ourselves to levels only made in January & February?

If a level is good and will show case a certain kind of play worth watching....heck it should be in. Just sayin'


I also like the 3 homes and the away guy picks which one to tackle.

[LotharBot]

[Phyrex]

Roncli, for me the tournament was a lot of fun & thank you for putting the time and effort in to run it.
I like the idea of a curated list. The 3 homes thing sounds like it's worth a try too:)
On angling: I definitely was but my angle picks were Swiss cheese & Killbox. Xenocide was mostly because I thought it was a cool level that deserved some "air time" and would be fun to observe because there's almost constant conflict but still plenty of room for some trickery. I'm not very familiar with it (though admittedly still more familiar than most other players I guess) and I'm horrible at ratting with high ping

[Sirius]

OK, first off, I will post my thoughts without reading any of the rest of the feedback, in case it helps hit something that was otherwise missed. Probably won't, but worth a shot.

Swiss system: I liked it. I don't think there's anything wrong with it in principle. I'm not 100% sure we'll need a total of 12 rounds in future tournaments given that it started to become a smaller pool of participants later on, but it doesn't hurt.
But yes, do get your bot working. If you need a tester let me know, I spent a few years breaking stuff.

Home levels: I would probably lean towards a curated level pool (you would probably be the final judge) from which pilots can choose their home level. It wouldn't be impossible to get odd or new levels into that, but they'd have to be submitted in advance, and you'd have to approve them. You may want to require a certain amount of playtesting ahead of time, and maybe a feedback process.

Bracket format: Kind of think you should go full NFL, with the top two seeds getting byes, the next two seeds getting automatic berths, and the last two spots subject to a wildcard match where the top two scorers go through. (Okay, the selection process isn't the same as the NFL, but you get my drift.) That would give you 6 matches to broadcast instead of 8, which would be more manageable. 50% longer than a qualifier, but still, more manageable.

Scoring: From a game management standpoint, yeah, it was kind of interesting. I think if we fixed up the home levels it would possibly become less critical, but at the same time we might have the second match last longer in typical circumstances.
But, I do think we need to think about how to keep the games a little shorter. We've discussed time limits, and while that is the typical approach seen in most televised sports, it's a lot easier to successfully pull keep-away cheese in Descent than it is in those. As long as we don't have "extreme" levels in the home level pool, we can probably avoid the worst of this by default. But I WOULD advocate making suicides count as kills for the opposing pilot - we've already got the home-and-away stuff for strategy, so I don't feel that suicides are an element we really need to spice it up. (No offense to Cyrus, though, you play the rules you're given.)
Yes, to make this easier, you'd probably want a code change. But it shouldn't be an especially complicated one.

Other: If you can do an occasional D2 version, that'd be cool. Most of them can and probably should be D1.