Elimination Vs. Survival

Water warfare game types, ideas, rules, organization, etc.

Elimination Vs. Survival

Elimination - Soaked players must wait out-of-bounds until the game is over
0
No votes
Lives - Players are given a finite number of lives; each soak causes a player to lose a life until eliminated
0
No votes
Re-Spawn Point - Soaked players must return to a specific respawn point, but then can continue
3
19%
Timeout - Soaked players must take a certain timeout from play, but then can continue
4
25%
Re-Spawn + Timeout - Soaker players must return to a respawn point and remain there for a set time
4
25%
Survival - Soaked players mean point for other team, but soaked player can continue playing
3
19%
Other - Something else; please explain
2
13%
 
Total votes: 16

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isoaker
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Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by isoaker » Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:19 am

When it comes to water fights and water warfare, when it comes to going for more organized games, do YOU prefer elimination or survival-type games? Select your preference from the poll choices. If the option you prefer is not covered, let us know how you prefer playing.

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by SSCBen » Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:29 am

I voted for timeout. In general, I think having respawn points would result in spawn-kills, but there might be the same problem with timeouts as well.

This poll might require some experience with all the options to make a good comparison, so I might change my opinion later...

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by HBWW » Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:07 pm

I usuall do respawn and elimination type games. I may add a scoring element to respawn/elimination this summer, requiring respawning players to write down who killed them on a piece of paper at the spawn point. (for elimination, only one name is needed, making it easier) Overall, I'll be using elements from various gametypes, such as respawning time limits, but the 2 most basics I'll do are respawn and elimination.
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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by WaterWolf » Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:10 pm

My team uses a combination of choices 5 and 6 when fighting a OHK game.
If you are hit, the result is a point for the opposing team and you have to go wait at a re-spawning point for a short period of time.

This year, I'm considering doing some testing with a "Revival" system, whereby all teammates can revive each-other, given a certain period of time. (Players will also still be able to re-spawn at designated areas as in the past.)
If you are eliminated, you can chose to wait where you are for X amount of time. After X time has passed and nobody has revived you, you must make your way to a re-spawn point and revive there.
Revival by a teammate does not result in a point for the enemy, while revival at the re-spawn point does result in their earning a point.

This brings about several interesting tactical changes:
For instance, squads of troops will need to make sure they are close enough to revive each other on demand, but far enough apart that they can't all be taken out by a quick ambush.

If two people are defending a strong-point, they can't simply be picked off one by one. Forcing the attackers to put more focus on flanking and multiple angles of fire.

And long, drawn-out confrontations are no longer of any use, each side will need to make decisive attacks and strong maneuvers to emerge victorious.
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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by isoaker » Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:14 pm

Revival! I knew there was an "obvious" option I forgot about! :goofy: Being able to bring a teammate back (though preferably not by soaking as well? :goofy: ) would definitely add a twist onto potential tactics. Of course, with revival, one could theoretically either play until one team is fully eliminated or play based on a time limit, counting points/number-of-soaks to decides which team won.

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by DX » Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:32 pm

I guess the RM used "timeout". We didn't have specific spawn points per se, as our battlefields were huge. The 2 minute spawn counter started immediately, regardless of location, but a player could only clear back in behind friendly lines or in unoccupied neutral areas. To prevent camping, we added the 'breathing room" clause which forced an enemy to give 100ft and unofficially an amount of time. Usually we agreed upon 10 seconds or 30 seconds.

Interesting Revival ideas. God knows what kind of stalemates that could create though. :)
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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by HBWW » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:32 pm

Perhaps another variation of revival is being able to spawn at a "squad leader" (anyone who's played Battlefield 2 knows what I'm talking about), then, with this in place, anyone can spawn at "secured" positions; there are plenty of ideas to be taken from gaming, though some of them don't work that well. (regardless, I am still considering the conquest system used in BF2, without several features such as faster capture of a point with more people, but either way, it could get very complicated, especially with many players) Another game mode I'm considering is seek and destroy / search and rescue, but that's getting off topic. (since basic spawn points or elimination will do for such a gametype)
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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by WaterWolf » Thu Mar 27, 2008 6:04 pm

Interesting Revival ideas. God knows what kind of stalemates that could create though.
Thus, making the different side's need to use strong and decisive tactics to score any points from a battle.
Hit players cannot move while waiting for revival, so if a team is pushed out of an area, they will be leaving their "dead" behind, resulting in points for the victorious side.

I can work on modifying revival-time and other variables to create a game-style that works, for instance:
How long should the dead person remain where they are before truly "Dying" and returning to a re-spawn point?
Do you need to stay in contact with the person you are reviving while they are being "healed"?
How long does it take to revive someone?
Should you be able to carry or drag fallen teammates away from enemy fire?
(This could make for some cool war-stories. :) )
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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by mr. dude » Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:55 pm

I voted Timeout, but it was close between that and Lives (while I've never actually played lives, it's a gametype I've considered).
I've also toyed with a similar revival idea, but I like WaterWolf's better :)

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by isoaker » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:50 am

Lots of great ideas above! As Ben noted, it'd be best to have experience in some of the game styles as opinions on what people prefer may end up changing after trying different systems in practice.

What I'd really like to do with the community is, later this summer, to end up choosing only two or three of the game types above for development into full "official" Water Warfare League games types. While local teams can undoubtedly use whatever they prefer, when having meetings between groups, it'd be nice to have just a handful of standardized systems.

Thusfar, the top two appear to be "Respawn locations" and "Timeout".

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by Evangel » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:10 pm

Survival is how it's always been since we were 10yo kids just going around indiscriminately soaking other little kids, until they got their guns and retaliated against us. lol (*sigh* The level of power we have now... unbelievable... >=D)

I like my wars to be as close to the old days as possible, so when I think of tournament-style rules, I like the idea of
a rating system like the show BattleBots, which actually has a scoring system that I think could easily be adapted for water wars.

In BattleBots, they assess damage not only by how heavy the opposing attacks are, but how much of it is actually getting through (in our case, the amount of wetness the player has sustained and how much is blocked or repelled by defenses such as body armor or shields), as well as level of noticeably decreased functionality -- the degree to which the damage is impairing normal function, in our case the noticeable decrease in performance from the players (i.e. fatigue) caused from soakage. Example, if one player is obviously receiving more damage and becoming more fatigued than the other, then the other player will received the majority of points.

Strategy is also judged, based on how the player adapts to changing conditions and exploits enemy strengths and weaknesses, and whether the player has a specific combat style in mind or if they're just winging it.

Here's the BattleBots Judges' Guide to help:

http://www.battlebots.com/download/Judg ... ev_0.9.pdf

There's a much more detailed judging guide somewhere out there. I'll post it if I can find it.

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by HBWW » Fri Mar 28, 2008 3:44 pm

Fatigue comes from running much more so than from getting soaked lol. Either way, such a system would be impractical and subjective for just about any war, and worse for official wars.

iSoaker, what can probably be done for official wars is create a system around a limited set of variables as opposed to limiting the number of gametypes, then creating a standardized point system around there. (for example, a kill give a player 5 points while a flag capture gives them 15 or 20) In the big picture, will the individual player and his stats matter? Or is it all team? With individual players, their point scores could be kept tracked on a standardized system while still allowing for teams to set game variables appropriately for their field and number of players.

Here's a set of standard variables that should cover most standardizable gametypes:
# of lives
Spawn points
Spawn time (a standard time should probably be agreed upon, but we might have to use a variable time system based on the number of players in a game)
Objective(s) (i.e. flags, or just nothing for normal games, this variable should probably not be present for official wars)
Time limit
Score limit

Now, when both teams agree on these settings, the next possible issue is the points themselves, since some games will reward more points in a given time than others. However, if we're just looking at who won and who lost, then this won't be a problem.

If we truly want to standardize, then there will have to be a standard field setup, standard amount of players per game, etc. along with the standard respawn times, number of lives, etc. and that wouldn't work out. Given the flexibility of team size as well as battlefield settings, the "standardized rules" must be able to adapt to them, as well as the point scale. Example here is a small 4v4 match from the backyard of a moderately sized house to the front, running with a 2 minute spawn time. Such a spawn time may be good for a 40v40, but way too slow for a 4v4, and the game just turns into elimination. Personally, if we had to go with standard spawn times, I would only go for about 10-30 seconds, which has worked fairly well in the gaming world regardless of the number of players.
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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by isoaker » Sat Mar 29, 2008 5:46 am

@Evangel: the system you describe would be truly optimal, but also hardest to actually judge. A game would need to have non-participating observers able to see the whole field and track all players which would just not be very easy to do. If there were a way to overcome the problem inherent in that method of scoring, having true water-delivered amounts and aggression vs. retreat stats would be awesome! Sadly, I cannot think of a good way to objectively track all participants easily to do such scoring.

@C-A_99: having points for achieving specific objectives is a good option as well. However, while I understand members desire to leave options open, I'm just afraid of leaving too many options open makes for comparisons between regions harder. I'm all for providing a flexible rule framework that covers as many game options as the membership can come up with, but I'd also like to see if the membership can come to a consensus on just a few game types that would become the "standard" games played during larger region tournaments. When rules from timeout period of number of spawn points to whether reviving is allowed or not are varied, this can really radically change how a game is played.

In terms of having more standardization, I am also in favour is having a standard field set-up as well in terms of approximate size, specific requirements, etc. sort of how golf courses have different shapes and features, but also need to conform to certain sets of rules to be deemed acceptable for large tournaments. However, I don't want to jump ahead too far as developing too many things at the same time seems to end with not developing anything at all.

IMO, I'm leaning towards wanting to have two primary game types:
- the first should be some sort of elimination or elimination with a fixed number of lives game; this would allow for last-man standing individual games as well as team games with the elimination rule as something being easier to judge in a sense
- the other game type would either use re-spawn points, timeout, or a combination of both; which one of these methods should be decided based on general agreement with the group. Games would be scored based on the number of soaks/kills an individual or a team manages to attain during the fixed duration of the game. Revival could be an option for team games, but doesn't work for individual games for obvious reasons.

I, myself, am still not sure whether respawn points, timeout, or respawn points with a timeout period yields a better overall game. This is where field testing needs to come in. When the weather gets warmer, I'm going to gather up some people and test some of these game ideas out and get their feedback on it as well. I really encourage others here to do the same as the more feedback and experience members have at these different options, the better chance we as a group have at designing a game system more will find truly enjoyable.

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by Croc » Sun Mar 30, 2008 6:07 am

Respawn point and timeout seem most reasonable, because then you go to a set point, and wait a period of time, maybe 30 sec., and then you are back in the game. That seems most reasonable, or, if before your timeout is done, and you soak someone, you can get out of the "jail".

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by isoaker » Sat Apr 12, 2008 5:37 am

After some further thinking and looking at the voting above, it seems that in general, members prefer games with some means of being able to bring a soaked player back into play and that no player should be permanently eliminated for the remainder of a game. This makes sense, but the poll was created to be sure.

However, the preferred method of how to bring a player back still has too many choices. Optimally, for League regulation games, there should only be one method of revival and scoring. Changing methods changes tactics, game dynamics, etc. and makes things harder to optimize. If all participants know what scoring scheme will be used, they can adjust their tactics accordingly.

As for elimination games, I could foresee those used as "sudden death matches" in the case a game ended as a draw.

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by Silence » Sat Apr 12, 2008 10:05 am

Lives work provided there's a time span between each "kill". If you're tap-shooting, each life goes by a lot quicker. Although my opponents never quite figured out the technique, for some reason. :D

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by HBWW » Sat Apr 12, 2008 8:23 pm

Spawn points are a must, regardless of what kind of game you're playing nor where you're playing. If you're playing limited lives, there needs to be a place to go back. (unless the player is supposed to freeze for a given time, but it's impossible to count "hits" due to tap shots vs long streams, unlike in laser tag, nerf, paintball, or airsoft.) Even if its 1HK, 1 life elimination, teams must agree on where they start. In every possible situation, a field must have at least 2 spawn points, 1 for each team.

I'm also against revivals. Using dynamic spawn points or just going normally works the best.
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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by isoaker » Tue Apr 15, 2008 5:48 pm

Is there a general consensus that fixed spawn points could be an aspect of League Tournament games the membership could agree with? I do prefer the idea of spawn points over revival or stationary time-out periods. I also think fixed spawn points as opposed to variable/floating respawning locations would just make it simpler to organize and monitor a game. Being able for a third person to watch the game and be able to follow and/or score would be vital if having unfamiliar teams battling it out for a trophy or prize. Of course, these are just my thoughts and if others have better ideas or interesting alternate suggestions, please share your ideas! The more discussion and feedback there is, the more likely we can build a good water warfare game and scoring system together.

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by twinkiewarrior93 » Tue Jul 29, 2008 9:39 pm

I based this on halo one day because i was bored.

Every hit you take subtracts from an imaginary shield. This decreases usability of a constant stream. Over Time the shield regens, but if you're hit less than ten seconds after an initial hit, you get 1 more damage. Repeat, and based on some one's armor rating, established on game start, if you get hit with depleted shields, you're out. Let's have a scenario.

I shoot my friend khaos, he takes one damage. because he's small and speedy, he has an armor rating of 3, determined pre-game. i have one of 5. Now he can do two things, Run and wait for auto recharge, or continue. He continues, and i peg him again. It's been about 5 seconds, so the recharge timer restarts, this happens until he either gets smart and runs, or gets his shield depleted and gets pWnEd. Also, like halo, if your shield IS depleted, it can still regen. BTW, i normally have the aggressor determine shield time, because if we're not going for points and there's really no point in killing except for fun, nobody wants to have to sit out for an extended period of time. This, I think, increases honesty, because the aggressor has no reason to lie.

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Re: Elimination Vs. Survival

Post by HBWW » Tue Jul 29, 2008 9:56 pm

^ And the reason no one does anything like that is pretty obvious...

If we don't want to go so hardcore as to work with our conventional 1HK (which is quite reminscent of the hardcore mode on Call of Duty 4), the next would be to use tags. But like I said, it takes time for one to determine they're out, and if the tag is on the back, others have to call the out, which is harder than the target calling the out.

Now if players are really good at judging amounts of water shot at them, and if we all had the same sense of endurance, something like that might even be able to work out. Something like, for example, defining a kill as approx. 200mL of water. Otherwise we'll have to stick to varying grids, splotch diameters, etc.

But for the sake of quickly determining if one is dead, I stick to the strict hardcore mode. I might change that and try out other ways of counting kills.
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