The Observatory feedback megathread!

[roncli]

First of all, thanks a ton for making the first "season" of The Observatory fun. If you had half as much fun as I did, it was a success. The goal was to create a competitive yet relaxed environment where anyone could come in and play whenever they wanted, and those who were truly competitive could compete in a format that I hope they found challenging and refreshing.

With that said, I wanted to go down some of the issues that cropped up during the season, and reach out to the community on how best to resolve them. I have some ideas of my own, and will add them here as we go.

The season consisted of 3 Swiss qualifiers of 4 rounds each, giving each player a chance to play up to 12 games. Participation in each round was optional, and season points were given based on wins and how well your defeated opponents did. The final tournament consisted of a wildcard with players who were on the playoff "bubble", followed by the finals tournament which was an 8-player, single-elimination knockout bracket where players played two matches, one each in their home level of choice, with the winner being determined by final score. Players chose home levels per qualifier throughout the season, and another home level in the finals tournament.

Some issues that became apparent during the course of the tournament:

* Swiss system - The system was meant to be handled via a bot. Unfortunately the bot was less than stable, and I had to manually run a bunch of the tournaments manually. Given this, I'm hesitant to talk about whether the system worked or not, but am open to feedback on it. The plus of a Swiss is that everyone gets to play... it's an inclusive system that lets players on the low end get games, and not just let people on the top end have all the fun.

* Home levels - Let's get straight to the point... players angled HARD on their home levels. Levels that I would include in that list are Faster, Niknak, Megathena, Mega Nysa x4, Ostrich Farm, Xenocide, and Wrath no vulcan x5. There are probably more but I can't really think of them at the moment. However, out of this list of 7, pilots went undefeated in 4 of these levels (Faster, Niknak, Mega Nysa, Wrath no vulcan). We also had two mega missile games, and neither of them were particularly fun to watch, as the first one was a "run and hide and chuck missiles" and the other was Jediluke doing Jediluke things.

The intention was to give players a home level that they feel comfortable in, and give the "away" pilot something to adjust to. This seems to have turned out to have quite the negative effect however, where instead of adjusting to the level, pilots either gave up or played the level in a way they didn't feel comfortable doing. With that said, we did see a few interesting new levels, including Faster, Niknak, and Xenocide (although that one didn't get much air time, sadly).

There seems to be as many ideas on how to improve this as there were people watching, and as of right now I am not sure how to go forward with this. Three ideas I am leaning towards (and some of these can be combined) are no modifications from the original levels, having players pick a level and stick with it throughout the entire season, and restricting levels to a core list (that would likely be significantly larger than DCL core). I'm also not against allowing players to submit levels that would be vetted in advance, and anything too extreme could be booted.

* Finals Tournament format - The Finals was awesome, but let's be real... it went six and a half hours. We can definitely cut this down, and I'm thinking of reducing the field from 8 players to 6, giving seeds 1 and 2 a bye to the semis (and sparing viewers from the 25-4 thrashing we saw in the first round). If 9 players is the number of players we would expect on average to attend the tournament, then we would also get an actually anarchy game for the Wildcard, which I think would be amazing fun for viewers.

* Finals Tournament scoring - I found the way that the Finals Tournament progressed was extremely interesting... Cyrus's comeback on Melvin was about as awesome as his meltdown against Sirius, and Jediluke playing damage control in his first game against Sirius as opposed to trying to outright win it was absolutely the right way to take advantage of the scoring system. I personally enjoyed having a different format for the finals, but I am interested in getting feedback of both viewers and the pilots who played.

* Anything else? - These are the big points I had, but I want to hear from the competitors and the viewers. What did you like most about it? What did you dislike?

[Drakona]

[PFunk]

I have a couple things.

1. The length of the weekly qualifiers was not bad, but the finals was indeed too long. The kill goal of the wildcard should be (pilots * 10, capped at 40) and reducing the number of auto berths to 5 would make sure there is a wildcard game. #1 and #2 seed getting a bye, #4 and #5 play and #3 plays wildcard winner. Reseeding as rounds advance. Keep Final split level format.

2. Levels outside the list of Observatory Core Levels(OCLs) have to be approved by a "Observatory Board of Observers" that will decide if the level is
a. Stream friendly
b. Entertaining; sized to keep the action flowing; Can a game to 20 can be played in 25-30 minutes most of the time.
c. Evaluating weapon restrictions; No "NYSA No Homers, L1s only" for the SLOTH, Sorry!
NOTE: Levels must be submitted at least 1 week prior to the start of the first qualifier. Once started, the OCLs remains locked for that season but you can set your home to any of them weekly.
All approved OCLs can have Secondary X multipliers applied to them. Ex: If Logic is a OCL, you can do Logic X2-X4 as your home level. X5 if you're Jedi!

3. If we can get Roncli free to play, I think we, the viewers, want to see that as well. If there is any way I can make this happen, I will do it!

4. Inside and Chase camera modes rocked! Lastly, I want to see your version modified to allow you, the observer, the ability to send messages to the pilots. I only suggest this because I know you have control of the source and wouldn't allow it to be abused.

There were a lot of good things about the tournament and only a few fixable issues from what I observed.

Thank you so much for running it Roncli.

[melvin]

I think that a lot of the angled levels were really just fair levels that were unfamiliar to most? Why did this happen? There was a large batch of relatively popular new levels made in the month before the tournament, with an unprecedented commitment to play these new levels. Rethink dropped at least 2 competitive levels, lee converted a bunch of old d2 lvls, with two of them seeing significant playtime on the DCL, and then DKH came out of retirement. If you had ran this tournament before the L16 DCL season, probably would not have been an issue.

[Lee]

I really wanted to participate in the tournament having watched some of your old observatory videos and was genuinely excited going into it. I enjoyed the matches I played in but having taken the time to reflect on the experience as a whole, I can't convey just how worse off I feel for having entered it in the first place. I regret entering the tournament and will not participate again in the future.

Admittedly, there were factors beyond your control and I don't blame you for everything, although next time you might want to make the nature of the competition explicitly clear before people decide to enter. My understanding was that it was meant to be a casual exhibition tournament for people to drop in and drop out whenever they pleased, catering for both lower and upper tier players in the process. You even gave us an unrestricted choice of home level to play in for each round of the tournament. Yet, a whole host of people were criticised for simply abiding by the rules you had set before the tournament, had their levels they'd spent hours and hours making bashed by people who didn't even enter the tournament and others that had never attempted to venture out of core themselves never mind having attempted to make their own levels, had an opposing silver tier blind trophy holder (yes you PFunk) complain about having to play levels blind because he never took the time to try anything off the beaten track, were excessively abused over twitch (yes you PFunk) so much so they felt it necessary to retire, were branded as anglers and had their integrity as players questioned for simply choosing levels they wanted to play in to celebrate a 20+ year old computer game for a no stakes competition. And so what if people wanted to play in non-core levels, lord knows they won't get the chance to on the ladder. How can you honestly expect people to get their levels out there if you shoot them down at every opportunity? Answer: they won't and you'll be stuck playing the same ten levels over and over again for the rest of time.

And yes...to say I intentionally picked a certain level because my opponent (yes you PFunk) has nerve damage for me, was by far the worst possible thing you could've said 'about me, not even too me'. How dare you call me an angler? Where the fuck do you get off throwing around statements like that over your broadcast? Maybe you should actually take the time to look at my record on the DCL, the people I played against and where I played them including the two promotion challenges I went through. An angler? A fucking angler? How long ago was it that I was asking you for a D1, D2, D3 DCL series in your home level "June Bug"? Yes even D3 on your own server where I would be at a considerable disadvantage from the start because of the connection. I even gave you the chance to prove your theory or at least tell me in person, but you chose not to like the yellow-belly commentator bitch you really are because lets face it, all you're good for is talking shit about a 20+ year old game and the people that actually play it. Also, fuck you for making me mad enough to post on here again. I just want to be left in peace without feeling like I have to defend myself for doing nothing more than playing one of my all time favourite games. I never asked for your attention. I never asked for anyone to pass comment on the levels I made. I just wanted to play a simple video game but that was obviously far too much to ask for wasn't it?

You can pat yourself on the back as much as you like and call the tournament a total success or you can take the time to analyse everything that was wrong with it. In fact, if you really took the time maybe you'd see everything thats wrong with the DCL, the majority of people that "compete" on it and you're so called community. That tournament should have been a celebration of modern Descent, showcasing all it has to offer in its modern form and the ability of those who play it at all different levels. Instead, it was a slagging match from start to finish, it was wholly unenjoyable and it only helped to promote your image, not that of modern Descent.

(P.S. Please ban me from the forum. I didn't enjoy writing this post, but I was sick and tired of the unjust abuse directed at me and my peers over the last few weeks. I maintain my original reasons for retiring from the ladder, but clearly there are a number of other factors that contributed to my decision. I won't be writing any more posts, so do as you see fit. Take care guys).

[melvin]

Haha. Love you Lee. Who knew the national bird of Great England, the proud ostrich, could cause so many problems?

[Jediluke]

Um........ uhhh.......

I think that one of the things we can improve on next time is being more thoughtful as to how our playful banter can be taken personally and cause major issues.

2ndarily we can also keep in mind that we should perhaps take comments in stride and assume it's not meant with malicious intent....and IF we are getting upset by something that is occurring then take the opportunity to voice it then and there and give people the opportunity to respond appropriately, expediently and with respect... to correct said offense.

I would imagine that no one who attended actually intended to upset people and that these results are unfortunate.

In hindsight ...I am thankful for having made a truce of respect with Cyrus before this event started because I likely would have been tearing him a new one myself.

[melvin]

So what if every match took place in a randomly determined level from a pool of 4-7 new-ish/new-to-us competitive levels? Logic 2, CY6, Xenocide, Droid, Faster etc?

[Morfod]

Untie your nodules. While roncli is not above criticism, he does much more for the community than he let's on, and could give less of a piss over credit or recognition.

Your level is artistic, clever, and amusing. I laughed until my sides nearly split as I watched a pyro cough out of a battered rectum.

But your level was shit for play. You chose it to troll. You got trolled back. Pick yourself up and live with it.

[LotharBot]

I think Lee's latest post makes one thing clear: it's important to set clear expectations before the event. People need to know whether they're expected to select competitively serious levels, or if it's truly "anything goes". How far off the beaten path can we go? Megas? Invulns and cloaks? ("Total Chaos" is core Descent, it even shipped with the game!) Disorientation levels? 4D levels? Lobber levels with shield generators? (There's a Lobber level where you can rack up 50,000+ shields in a couple minutes if you know the right door-trigger sequence, and then just pound your opponent to death, and they can't do enough damage to take you down.) At what point does it start to be considered bad sportsmanship? At what point does it become grounds for admin override or tournament removal? As we all saw, if people have a different understanding of where the line is, we have some people trying to showcase something unique (like Ostrich Farm) and others complaining about it (and, IIRC, Lee asked to change to a different home level and was denied!)

FWIW I think Drakona is right -- we didn't see any serious angling. Nobody selected FRP, Iconia, Octave Pro, or anything by Lobber. Nobody custom-created a level with a secret door combo that allowed them to 20-0 an opponent. The most extreme we got was probably the June Bug / Wrath x5 / Mega-something set, and those are all pretty valid home levels for the pilots who chose them, and there were competitive games in each of them. I don't think it's even remotely fair to claim Lee was angling with mega-NYSA against PFunk, given Lee's willingness to play people in all sorts of crazy stuff. He was just treating it like a non-serious exhibition. And others were treating it somewhere between a little and a lot more seriously, and this created conflict. (FWIW I was frustrated by that game, not because I think mega-NYSA is unfair, but because I invited a bunch of friends from another gaming community to watch, and it didn't really show off what's cool about Descent -- it was almost entirely long-range bombing, with no dogfights or sneaky tricks to get behind someone and ping them with vulcan. Those who stuck around *loved* the Cyrus/Melvin and Drakona/Morfod series, though.)

I also think it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to showcase their own new levels in a setting like this. And I think we did a good job of giving constructive feedback on Faster, but we did kinda just slag Ostrich Farm, instead of saying "well, this is unique, but I think it's too slow for 1v1 because [reasons]" or even "the ostrich is really cool guys!"

I do think we as a group owe apologies to both PFunk and Lee. The criticism both on the stream and in the chat went too far. It was easy to laugh about it in the moment, but it clearly passed the threshold from "a little ribbing" to "over the top" somewhere along the way. Particularly when it comes to claiming Lee was angling specifically against PFunk -- did he even know it was going to be a 1v1 when he chose Mega NYSA? Can that accusation be considered even remotely fair? Lee is consistently a great sport, and he didn't deserve to be trashed like that.

-----

During the qualifiers I really didn't like the home levels. Felt too random. But once it became a home-and-home set, I liked the fact that it generated some variety -- people had to play outside their comfort zone, and try to mitigate the damage. So I like picking home levels, but it needs... something... to make it a little less of a source of controversy. Perhaps instead of selecting a single home, pilots could list 3 (for the whole tourney?) and then the "away" pilot could choose from among the "home" pilot's set. This would at least potentially limit the hardest-core angling, while also allowing people to showcase new or off-the-beaten-path levels, and allowing people to set their own level of risk ("yeah, I want to play that guy's best / brand-new-blind level!" vs "I'll take his third-best".)

I also agree that we need to cut down the time of the finals. Since these are not DCL games (nor is it a DCL-sponsored tournament) perhaps the home-and-home series could be a pair of games to 10, with the same mercy rule? I also like the suggestion to have 5 auto-berths and a 6th-seed wildcard, with byes for the 1/2 seeds.

Also, PFunk's idea that the "special observer mode" should be able to send messages is a good one. You're acting as game referee, after all!