1. As a fan of good/competetive GS matches I have to say I was disappointed how the idevice finals were decided(not the guilds fault BTW). I might be wrong, but I believe 2 of 007 wins in the finals were decided by the timer(they had more HP when the time ran out) and not exactly by them beating the other guild.

My suggestion is to increase the time for the semi-finals and finals during the GST, so teams are given a fair opportunity to win or lose.


Congratz to 007 on their win and I'm not trying to diminish their win in any way.


2. the 3rd place matches should be before the finals.


3. not to take anything against the 3rd place matches, but they should be best of 3.  

Sadly I click on users names to see what they are doing so I've been expecting this post for a while.

We don't always agree but I think everything here is a good idea, third place suggestions for sure.

When we faced Immoral for 3rd last GST and we were told it was out of 5 it really made no sense if all the first place match should of been the longer one not the 3rd place, also usually first place is hosted last in tournaments so why they decided to do 1st first was weird.

With the timer thing, I have seen some really nice clutch plays so most HP doesn't always mean that player would win and they can always just run around and stall as well which is a really dumb way to let someone win.  

Posted by GOAT

not to take anything against the 3rd place matches, but they should be best of 3.

I still say the 3rd could be the best 3/5, it's still for a prize of sorts.  

Posted by Colin

With the timer thing, I have seen some really nice clutch plays so most HP doesn't always mean that player would win

yeah me too. one that comes to mind was when mood won against the 3 sage members.

But the one that had me scratching my head in this final was the one where labrats had like 2.0 combined health and 007 had like 3.5. It was a good match until the time ran out.

Posted by Colin

they can always just run around and stall as well which is a really dumb way to let someone win.

true that

Posted by Fulgore

I still say the 3rd could be the best 3/5, it's still for a prize of sorts.

Yeah it could, but my reasoning is based on time and that a 5 rounder should be exclusive to championship matches.  

It wasnt just the finals... OO7 took advantage of the new time out rules several times.

The new rule that gives the win to the team with more HP was added because in the past, the lower hp team would run to cause a tie so they could redo the spar. Past: lower hp team abuses ties to their advantage; current: higher hp abuses ties to their advantage. If you want a fair match, just get rid of the timer period.  

To be fair I think it's better than the old ones. And I won a GST off of the old rule. A laggy sparrer could just run around 1v5 for long enough and tie the match, when they obviously would have lost otherwise. It goes both ways. Eko did this one GST and really clutched a round out of it, and I may have had one less title if this new rule was in place. So it does eliminate some "cheese" strategies.  

I agree about the 3rd place match needing to be before the finals and needing to be BO3.

Now, I will make a long and detailed post explaining why the timeout rule is good for GSing, and then afterwards people will rage at me for no reason, call me a *********, and and insult my guild. Surely the thread will reach 28 pages. Let's get started!

Firstly, let's look back at the rule before it was changed.
Old rule: After 5 minutes and the spar times out, it will be ruled a tie.
New rule: After 5 minutes and the spar times out, the team that was winning wins.

By definition alone, we can see which one makes more sense. Before, it was completely possible for a player in a 1 vs. 5 situation to stall out matches over and over and give his team second, third, fourth chances just by getting a tie they didn't deserve.

Many have made the claim that this rule "benefits laggers." What they're too ignorant to realize is that any rule "benefits" laggers in this situation!
Old rule: Laggers can get infinite retries.
New rule: Laggers can get a hit advantage and then force you to be the aggressor (an actual element of strategy, whoa).
No rule at all: Laggers can drag you out into a 20-minute spar where they have been conditioned to have more patience and you will eventually want to kill yourself and slowly begin to run into their swords out of sheerly wanting the match to end.

Touching more on that, this rule has achieved three things:

• Eliminated a very inferior rule that actually rewarded losing teams
• Prevents GSTs from dragging out to a ridiculous length that would extend the tourney to times that make it inconvenient for hosts and players
• Promotes some level of time management and general strategy

Imagine a game like Street Fighter with a time meter that encourages, "Hey, if you're losing, you should just turtle it out and get a free retry!" It's just not a very sensible or competitive ruleset. Comparing it to a real sport like basketball. There's a shot clock for a reason. Why do teams run out the clock at the end of the game? Well, because it's strategic and intelligent to do. Why should they put themselves at risk of losing? The losing team should have to make a steal or foul them. Imagine how stupid boxing would be without technical knockouts or players using the clock. "We scored you a million points over your opponent, but you didn't knock him out so it's a tie."

People need to realize that the rule forces the losing players to make a spar happen. What happens when there is no consequence of a spar timing out? The losing player can turtle the entire spar, bore you, and force you to initiate the spar. They can spar defensively and wait patiently for you to just grow impatient enough to run into their sword. That is rewarding the losing player, not the winning player. When you start rewarding the loser and giving them the advantages, it starts making less and less sense as a competitive event.

Anyway, onto possible solutions that make sense IMO.

I'm not exactly sure how long the GS timeout is. In singles, it's 5 minutes. I think it may be longer in GS? If not, extending the time limit is a pretty acceptable solution. 8-12 minutes is pretty reasonable. Honestly, 5 minutes is completely reasonable, but the iDevice tourney meta of "only put players who delay on your team" kind of interrupts that.

I also feel like the timer should also be shown in the GST matches. I think most people that complain about the rule getting "abused" (it never gets abused, it gets used) feel that way because they are caught off guard by the tie. I think it'd be pretty good for the GS time to be shown, only in the GST.

The option of removing the rule entirely doesn't sound appealing to me (this coming from someone who has never used the rule to win a match). The GST would be significantly longer and it'd cause issues for people. LRT vs. OO7 would probably still be going on as we speak. However, I'd be completely open to it if that's what everyone wants, because it'd be you guys that suffer from it. Spars will increase in length, no one will will be forced to make an actual spar happen when they are losing, and you'll get to sit around and enjoy 25-minute lag battles.

I feel bad for the iDevice GST participants who don't spar defensively or don't delay or lag at all, because the current state of that tournament probably makes it very unenjoyable for them. We've never had this issue in the Mixed tournament. The second round of Alumni vs. WAR ended in an intense timeout, and it actually resulted in a tie because both players were at 1 HP. That being said, I think what you guys should be bothered about is the actual state of the iDevice tournament and the general strategy surrounding it, not this rule.

Like I said though, things can be done to make the rule work better. The time should be shown in the GST matches and I think extending the length of the time would be pretty reasonable.  

Yes, i had already thought about how long GSTs would drag out with no time limit, but decided not to "inb4" the fact.

Posted by Thallen

People need to realize that the rule forces the losing players to make a spar happen. What happens when there is no consequence of a spar timing out? The losing player can turtle the entire spar, bore you, and force you to initiate the spar. They can spar defensively and wait patiently for you to just grow impatient enough to run into their sword. That is rewarding the losing player, not the winning player. When you start rewarding the loser and giving them the advantages, it starts making less and less sense as a competitive event.

My argument was taking away the timer would take away the loser's advantage of infinite retries, without giving an advantage to the other side. Just because one side has made more hits than the other doesnt determine the outcome of the spar. In many of the OO7 spars that timed out there were still 3-4 people alive on both sides.

Posted by Thallen

I feel bad for the iDevice GST participants who don't spar defensively or don't delay or lag at all, because the current state of that tournament probably makes it very unenjoyable for them. We've never had this issue in the Mixed tournament. The second round of Alumni vs. WAR ended in an intense timeout, and it actually resulted in a tie because both players were at 1 HP. That being said, I think what you guys should be bothered about is the actual state of the iDevice tournament and the general strategy surrounding it, not this rule.

Not sure if this part was sarcastic or not. Im not salty about losing, but I honestly did not even enjoy sparring OO7. They defensively sword spam and move away from you, knowing they cant be hit without giving equal damage.  

Posted by Thallen

Now, I will make a long and detailed post explaining why the timeout rule is good for GSing, and then afterwards people will rage at me for no reason, call me a *********, and and insult my guild. Surely the thread will reach 28 pages. Let's get started!

You were about to get it old man, but it looks like we on the same page.

Posted by GOAT

My suggestion is to increase the time for the semi-finals and finals during the GST, so teams are given a fair opportunity to win or lose.

Posted by Thallen

I'm not exactly sure how long the GS timeout is. In singles, it's 5 minutes. I think it may be longer in GS? If not, extending the time limit is a pretty acceptable solution. 8-12 minutes is pretty reasonable. Honestly, 5 minutes is completely reasonable, but the iDevice tourney meta of "only put players who delay on your team" kind of interrupts that.

Look Fulgore--^ your Dad and your bff agree on something
Let me go get some ice from hell  

Gst is a strategic tournament and the timer is part of the strategy , even if the timer would be increased people would still use it as a tactic to time out win so there is really no point in increasing it.
this system just makes people have to go on the offence which is a good thing as watching 2 teams hugging the wall for the entire match/s would be quite boring where as watching people risk rush hits is more entertaining and more skill based.  

I do agree that the time should be extended.

As an idevice sparer I know firsthand(because I've had to spar against teams like this) that everyone tries to get delayers and laggers so that they can win, extending the timer would give players time to wait out for someone's delay to catch up with them selves and give more time to try to clutch matches.

also I think there should be some sort of rule against people who are on a VPN connection to participate in the GST because people set up a VPN connection and set their location for somewhere across the world so it causes them to delay/lag which is completely unfair, I see this enough in the arena we don't need it in GST too.  

Posted by Drea

also I think there should be some sort of rule against people who are on a VPN connection to participate in the GST because people set up a VPN connection and set their location for somewhere across the world so it causes them to delay/lag which is completely unfair, I see this enough in the arena we don't need it in GST too.

Problem is there isn't a way to do this, really. At least not with a solution that's reasonable in these conditions. For now all we can do is treat it just as we treat other delay.  

Posted by Drea

I think there should be some sort of rule against people who are on a VPN connection to participate in the GST because people set up a VPN connection and set their location for somewhere across the world so it causes them to delay/lag which is completely unfair, I see this enough in the arena we don't need it in GST too.

I've explained before how it can be achieved, but I think the issue is that it is so complex and such a heavy load of work that staff really don't care to do it. There are probably things that are higher up on their list. I'm sure it's not an easy job through GScript.

It'd require keeping some sort of database that logs player IPs on a frequent basis. IPs can be geolocated using multiple different free APIs, which means that you're able to see someone's location (by country) by querying their IP. If someone's IP geolocates to the United States one hour and India (just an example) the next hour, then they need to be kept out of spars and towers.

I've always said, in the case of international players, that their delay is not some unfair advantage, because it generally isn't. When you spar a player well-known in the community that is from Japan, you know what to expect. When you're sparring a player who lives in the US and didn't delay just yesterday, but today is magically from China, then yeah, that's a problem. It's not the delay itself that provides an advantage, it's the unfamiliarity. They know that they delay, which gives them an edge in knowing how they can properly hit you without you knowing how to hit them. By the time you've figured out that they're delaying and using a VPN, they've already cheated enough hits out of you probably.

Again, this is why I've always said that flags in your profile should be locked to whatever country your IP geolocates to. Then, we'd immediately know who is VPNing. You'd have a pretty good idea of what delay to expect from players. It still won't stop people from using 3G (intentionally) or just stressing their connection to lag themselves, but it's a step in the right direction.

Posted by Drea

I do agree that the time should be extended.

If you guys want them to extend the timer for the GST next season, then I don't see any reason why they shouldn't. I strongly believe it won't change anything though. The people who want to use the same strategy will just spar slower and more carefully. If you remove the rule entirely, they'll just turtle it out and make it a dull competition of who has the most patience. TBH, I don't see any way of winning out.

It's kind of like the new sparring leaderboard. Was the old leaderboard better? Yes. Did it better reflect who had more skill? Yes. People in the community ruined it by abusing glitches and using lame strategies to remain ranked high on the leaderboard without actively or fairly participating though. Same situation here, because there shouldn't even need to be a "tie" rule, but because of lameness of the sparring community it has to exist otherwise teams face losing to sheer exhaustion and boredom.

OP said he was disappointed in the way the finals ended, but how hyped would you guys be to see a 20-minute walling contest where eventually someone wins because the other surrenders and is the one to attack into them and put themselves at a disadvantage because they're so bored?  

using a VPN is a major problem in general not just in spar, I've seen people avoid IP bans by using a VPN connection. Maybe there's a way that people on a VPN connection can be kicked off the server? Is there a way to identify when people are on a VPN connection, other then them just lagging/delaying?

just curious, what are the qualifications for a dq? is it just if your ping is too high and/or you're warping?

also I'd rather see teams drag on matches then see teams lose with 3 people still alive.  

Posted by twilit

Not sure if this part was sarcastic or not.

Nah, it wasn't sarcastic. It doesn't look fun to participate in. I don't blame any team for using defensive sparrers, and those are generally international players who delay because it's extremely difficult to be offensive with that ping. I think a strong team needs a few defensive sparrers for it to be balanced. It's not a requirement, but I do think it helps.
Just using my team as an example, Eko and MK are defensive sparrers. People might not think they are higher-tier sparrers like Brett or Dante, but they bring a defensive style that gives the offensive players freedom to rush and do their own thing without the entire team getting wiped out after the first minute.

I just think it's a really boring strategy for any team's criteria to be "you must delay to join this team." Not because delay is some advantage and not because it makes them a better team, but because the strategy of 7 people turtling and boring their opponent to death is just lame to me. It forces the opposing team to initiate the spar and take on all of the risk. A spar isn't a spar if two people refuse to fight each other. It's not a spar if one player is forced to make all of the offensive moves and attack into their opponent, either.

Anyway, it's probably you guys' fault at the end of the day. You guys hated on and flamed people who delayed since forever, and now they actually have the option of joining together and being as boring, defensive, and laggy as they want. No matter how the rule is changed, that won't be prevented. The fact that the community has insulted and mistreated them for something they can't even control brings them together.
iDevices who don't delay aren't nearly as cooperative as that, otherwise good ones like Prime, Kevin, Comyt, Kouji, Fro, Cookie, Noss, Junior, Vlad, and others would have come together a long time ago.