Seeding maps for DBD tournaments (@ScottJund)
Just wanted to quickly make this post because of a discussion that popped up in Umbra's stream last night. @ScottJund
Her argument (and by extension Scott's) was "I won't play DBD tournaments until they allow us to seed maps such that teams can play on EXACTLY the same map". While I understand where this logic comes from it is actually the wrong approach to doing a DBD tournament. Let me explain.
Firstly, by removing RNG from the game you make survivors THAT much stronger. Having +10 years of experience in competitive games, AND YES, even experience playing in a few very low profile DBD tournaments, I can say with certainty that THIS IS A BAD MOVE. You don't want survivors to be stronger than they already are. In our tournament games, most games end in a 3e or 4e. Every team is on comms and well coordinated, imagine the best SWF you ever played, that's basically every game in a tournament. It was exceedingly rare for a match to end with more than a 2k, and the only times it did was when it was a strong killer on a heavily killer favored map (eg. Freddy on Hawkins). By removing RNG now survivors know where every totem, gen, and pallet is. That means that all totem perks are now completely obsolete, teams can always ensure they do the right gens first to split the map in the most efficient way, and they can plan out paths ahead of time such that if you chase them they just run a pattern and you will take ages to catch them. You could argue that killers could know what gens to protect, but let's face it against a 4 man on comms they aren't going to do much to stop them. For tournaments to actually be viable, survivors need to be WEAKER to make it more competitive. You do that by adding RNG, which benefits killers and makes the game more difficult for survivors.
Secondly, yes, you want to avoid situations where one game's RNG has a heavy influence on the outcome of the game. Scott did a video about an Autohaven map (IIRC it was Azarov's) where one variant had 8 pallets on the map and another had like 18. Yes, this is dumb. Agree 100%. However the solution is not to seed the map, the solution is actually... just don't play those maps. Any map that is highly variable like this would just be classed as "not tournament viable". In fact you don't even want to play on every map anyway. Maps like Haddonfield or Ormond greatly favor survivors, while maps like Lery's or Hawkins favor the killer. All these kinds of maps should just be banned. Competitive games that feature a lot of maps in the base game end up only picking a handful of tournament viable maps anyway. Reason being, it just makes sense to pick out the most suitable maps for tournaments and discard the rest. There is no reason to have a lot of maps to play except for variety sake. But variety has a limit, as the more maps you include the harder it becomes for teams to practice those maps in a tournament setting. Gears Of War 3 is the best example of this I can give. Gears 3 has 25 maps, but only 6 or 7 are used in tournaments, for the exact reasons I just went over. It's impossible for teams to legit practice on 25 maps, AND majority of the maps are just god awful in a tournament setting where players are really good and playing to win. The ones that are played are the most balanced (note I didn't say perfectly balanced, this is a pipe dream especially in DBD) but offer enough tactical variability to keep it fresh each time. This is what we would need to do for DBD tournaments, select a handful of maps (8 is probably the best number to aim for) and just play those. The ones most fair to either side that don't have so much RNG that you get wildly different variants each time you play. Church is a good example of this kind of map, it's pretty well balanced and it's pretty consistent with how many pallets are on the map, tile placement, etc. Worst case scenario, you include a rule that allows teams to restart a trial if they got the variant with exceptionally good/bad RNG, whatever the case may be.
Finally, the big problem with seeding maps is IT IS BORING. Yes I used that word. From a spectator perspective, watching teams play the EXACT same maps is boring AF. You can't have a valid eSport without spectators and sometimes when coming up with rules you have to think how entertaining it would be to watch. Like if the game was nothing but Nurse on this exact version of Shelter Woods, no one would watch that. It's too static. RNG introduces a little dynamic to the game that makes it interesting, and if you had good rules regarding killer picks then you can avoid people always picking the strongest killer. The game needs to be interesting as well as competitive for it to become a viable eSport.
Oh and we do sort of have a seeding option with the new blueprint offerings. In my opinion, the only RNG that you should really always account for in a tournament is the placement of basement and hatch. Even on a map as balanced as Church, it can sway one way or another depending on where basement spawns. And forcing hatch to spawn in a specific spot gives more power to the killer to counter hatch escapes, which is what we want anyway. So for some of the RNG that matters most we do actually have a seeding option, albeit a tad janky.
My point here is that, even though we don't have the ability to seed maps for tournaments, we honestly don't need it. You can construct tournament rules around the RNG, and in fact you want to include it to some degree if only to make the game more competitive on the survivor side (else every game would be a 4e, how exciting). It's also more fun to watch.
I know most of you don't care, but I wanted to make this point last night in her chat but couldn't because it was too much and chat moves too fast. I'm sure someone will come in and say "LOL tournaments in DBD?" and make some snarky comment. I've seen more party friendly games become competitive from good rulesets. It can be done, just because YOU do not want tournaments doesn't mean other people don't either. So if that is all you have to say please just don't say it.
Comments
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I think I agree with this. I especially like the thought regarding just banning specific maps, as that is pretty commonplace in tournaments. Even a game like Street Fighter, which has just flat lines for every stage, is not above banning a beach stage because the shoreline obscures characters' feet.
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You could always make survivors weaker by banning comms so they have to play like solo queue... 😉
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Wouldn't an easy solution to this would be just to get multiple map seeds? They don't have to just use one, they can use multiple so it isn't boring for the audience and teams have a harder time predicting which map they'll get. Also for your second point I've gotta disagree with you. I have 1130 hours in the game and from my own experience every single map in the game is heavily influenced by RNG. Even the map that is considered the most balanced in the game, coal tower, can have awful RNG. I once got a coal tower with almost no filler pallets, 2 T and L walls and 3 pallet gyms, likewise I've also gotten coal towers with 6 filler pallets and 3 Jungle gyms.
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You've missed the point entirely. Random seeding means that a vastly inferior team could win based solely off of drawing good map RNG. It has nothing to do with killer vs survivor sided, it has everything to do with consistency between each game. It'd be like if in the World Cup, the size of each goal was entirely random: North Korea could randomly roll a goal the size of a microwave and beat Brazil, but it clearly would have nothing to do with their skill.
Also I don't know how set seeding could possibly be more boring than RNG. I find skill of players in chase interesting, not whether or not there happened to be 21 pallets that spawned in the vicinity of the survivor. And as long as there is map RNG, there will be better and worse seeds, sacrificing the integrity of the game. Not every game would be on the same map 100% of the time, it would just mean that the map would be the same between both sides of two head to head teams.
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This game is a joke for tournaments. It only highlights how strong swf is, i;ve never seen a killer do well.
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No you can't.
Unless it's a live event you have no control over the players. All things considered, every tournament for DBD is going to be online and there is no way for you, as a tournament ref, to verify that I'm not on the phone with my team or something outside of having us stream a facecam which is unreasonable to expect everyone to have the ability to do that.
You have to let all forms of comms because you can't police it. Therefore the rules should be built around knowing that survivors can communicate.
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By doing this, you're not solving the problem, rather just red-shifting it.
You need to understand that when money is on the line normal tactics don't apply. People are playing to win, and the really smart/good ones will memorize each seed.
Furthermore it is impossible for us to say what is and isn't good/bad RNG until we know all the variables. What could be good RNG for Billy on X map could be bad for Trapper. So now you have to factor killers and such into this and it becomes a mess.
The easy solution is to have a rule that says teams can cancel a trial for whatever reason 1 time per round (a round being a full set between 2 teams). Then it's on the players themselves to make that call, and they can use it for whatever reason they want. If they had a bad totem spot, they can do it, or if there was a ungodly loop between shack and this adjacent tile that would cost them the game, they can do it there too.
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I don't think there is a numerical number that can express how low on the priority list this is for the devs. It is an excellent idea and addition to the competitive side of the game, but is never likely to happen.
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"You've missed the point entirely. Random seeding means that a vastly inferior team could win based solely off of drawing good map RNG."
No they can't, not unless that RNG is extremely different than the previous game. Hence why I say to just not play with maps that have a high variability to RNG. You want to pick stable maps. Coal Tower. Church. One of the fair Badham variants. ETC. You don't have this problem you are saying because those maps don't exist in your tournament.
If things are slightly different from game to game, that is entirely fair. Guaranteeing consistency just removes a major component of how DBD works, and you need to keep that component for the game to actually be viable at a tournament level because it's fundamental to the game's design.
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A seeding mechanic is not even necessary is what I'm saying. We can build a ruleset around the RNG and make it all work just fine. Just because the map isn't exactly the same every time isn't a bad thing. I argue it's actually a good thing.
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Literally one small change has a chance to radically change the strength of all of those maps. Window placement on the house of pain in Badham turns it from an easy structure to a massive timesuck. Chapel can spawn a long wall jungle gym window into shack window. Coal tower can have 5 long walls, or 5 TL walls. At tournament level play, the difference between the placement of one vault can mean the difference between a 30 second chase and a 3 minute chase. There are no "stable" maps in DBD because small changes have massive repercussions.
And I don't understand how you can say inconsistency is vital to the games design, when poor map RNG is literally one of the biggest complaints about this game.
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Yes is which why you have a rule that says a team can restart a trial. So that when the killer walks over to shack and goes "oh ######### this sucks" they can do something about it.
Inconsistency is necessary to a degree because RNG ultimately makes survivors weaker. If they don't know where to run or where a gen or totem is, that benefits the killer. Otherwise literally every game will be a 4e because no killer can beat a coordinated 4 man on comms that knows where everything is before the game starts. It's just not possible in a tournament setting.
Also I never said all RNG is good, I said SOME RNG is good and no RNG is bad.
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bold of you think devs are not lazy enough for this feature
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It's a tournament. You can do exactly that. Have face cam up, be able to answer questions live to referees. It's not unreasonable that someone has a method of streaming their face in 2020. Literally every phone you can buy does it if you don't have it for your PC/console.
It would certainly be a thousand times more entertaining as you watch high level players sandbag each other and 3 of them going for a rescue.
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I think scot junds intension with tournament seeding isn't to pick a seed in advance and let tournament players train on it, I think more the intension is they find a balanced map seed at random and make all teams play on it for the first time in the tournament so they can compare how people are on the same map with all the same resources
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Actually he literally said it would be exactly that in Umbra's chat. That players would have the seed beforehand and be able to practice on it.
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then just do my one instead of that, they shouldn't be able to know ahead of time where all the tiles, totems, chests, hooks, gens, and basement are its just too strong
just have it be the tournament organizers find a seed in advance and throw all teams on the same seed without any practice on it boom balanced tournament
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But the second team will know. That's the problem.
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Alright let me break it down a bit more
All matches happen at the same time but are broadcasted at different times
Do a coinflip to see which team plays killer on the map first or survivor on the map first with the winning team of the coinflip being told which map and allowing them to decide based off that then after they decide tell everyone else which map it is
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I don't understand how a DBD tournament goes...
I have seen: Overwatch, R6 Siege, CS:GO pro play
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No the second team as in there will be at least 2 games, killer A v survivors B and killer B v survivors A. It is physically impossible to play both at once, therefore the players in the second game have information the ones of the first did not, and this will always benefit survivors.
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whatever you seem stuck in your ways with this so im just not even gonna bother with it because no matter what compromise I come up with it won't ever be enough for you, good luck
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Dude, he's absolutely right. You're looking for a compromise where there is none because this is simply a bad idea.
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saying that there is no compromise is the easy way out im just too lazy right now to make one
also compromises don't exist because you want them to they exist because people make them and yes looking at this I could probably come up with a compromise for it
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Well, the only compromise I can see that wouldn't favor either side is having the teams play on different maps. In other words, the way it works right now. But maybe you can find a better solution.
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Alright heres 2 minutes of effort
Have the 2 teams play on different maps but map seed so the strength of those two maps is similar, so 1 team isn't having 16 safe pallets and the other has 8 unsafe pallets or something like that
but still use the map seeding so no teams get royally screwed by map gen, for example all places where jungle gyms can spawn aren't LT walls and all places where filler pallets can spawn don't
the teams don't have to play the same variation of the map or even the same map for that matter as long as its seeded so they both play a map of the same strength both teams should have a level playing field, happy?
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You fail to understand the situation.
There are two ways to do this. Either we let the game randomly generate the first trial and then seed the second trial with the same map, or we pick a pre-seed variant and allow both teams to know it before any trial is played.
In the first scenario, the survivor team that plays in the second trial will have a massive advantage.
In the second scenario, you are just making survivors that much more efficient because they can preplan everything. Totems become useless. Gens will always be split. It would be impossible for any killer to get a kill, unless they just face camp the first person they catch with Bubba or something, which is sorry to say NOT good eSport material (both from a spectator POV and from a competitive POV).
I don't see what compromise there is to make. It just doesn't work. You need maps in both trials to be similar enough to be fair but different enough to also be fair. It makes the game both more balanced and competitive.
Like any tournament with a ruleset that says surivovrs/killers must you X builds is already doomed to fail, because you are making it easier for players to plan out what to do and this will always benefit survivors. You need to make the game favor killers anywhere you can to make it a good competitive experience, and one of the ways you do that is through mild RNG.
This is just impractical.
Logistically, how do you plan to do this? Are you going to go through EVERY seed and play it to see which is good and which is bad? I'm betting a single map could have like 1000 seeds. You're crazy if you think you could do that.
Additionally what even constitutes "equal strength"? Because depending on the killer and builds used it can vary, meaning you have to do those 1000 seeds 100 times each.
It just makes a LOT more sense to say, hey let's pick out a handful of the most fair maps, those with the lowest possible chance of spawning god/trash layouts for either side and then allow teams to cancel a match within say 60 seconds if they choose to because of bad RNG. That's actually something you could do in a tournament.
Good luck though if you wanna do it the other way.
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You fail to see the third scenario that I created in the comments below, where I said give both teams seeded maps (that they haven't seen) with a similar power level it doesn't even have to be the same map just have it so both team has around the same potential, that way the only thing the survivors in the second game might gain is slight expectation for how many resources are on the map
boom no planning nothing both teams different maps with all the same potential to win or lose due to seeded maps making both games balanced
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Since you didn't see my edit here ya go...
This is just impractical.
Logistically, how do you plan to do this? Are you going to go through EVERY seed and play it to see which is good and which is bad? I'm betting a single map could have like 1000 seeds. You're crazy if you think you could do that.
Additionally what even constitutes "equal strength"? Because depending on the killer and builds used it can vary, meaning you have to do those 1000 seeds 100 times each.
It just makes a LOT more sense to say, hey let's pick out a handful of the most fair maps, those with the lowest possible chance of spawning god/trash layouts for either side and then allow teams to cancel a match within say 60 seconds if they choose to because of bad RNG. That's actually something you could do in a tournament.
Good luck though if you wanna do it the other way.
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It's no secret that survivors are... Well, overpowered. That's why tournaments are a joke. But that's also why the most logical tournament rules take that into account and have both teams play each side on the same map to see who did better.
Killers do not win tournaments, it's a competition between survivor teams. That's no secret, or at least it shouldn't be.
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True but if you give them the seeds ahead of time then they become even stronger. You want to make killers stronger wherever you can because it makes survivor more competitive.
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You make them stronger equally. I'd say that's pretty fair.
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You probably only have to go through 3-4 map gens each to find 2 map gens with similar power
of course maps have 1000s of seeds thats how procedural generation is meant to work, but that doesn't mean you need to comb through that many
Just because you didn't think of it doesn't mean its wrong and you don't have to knock it why don't you try to build upon other peoples ideas rather than just say no and continue with your own, it would make discussions much more interesting
Seeding it so that teams play on good maps without either side having a massive advantage by playing the same seed is easy to do
just find a few good variants of each map and have it random map and random variant, as long as all of the maps and variants are of similar strengths no team is at a advantage and by the same logic the other team isn't at a disadvantage
for a tournament it should only take probably loading into 30-40 maps to find 10 or so varients they are happy with which for a WHOLE tournament shouldnt be too much work probably 2-3 hours of work
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id like to see some sort of map editor.
being able to place loops where you want them, making the map as large as you want it to be, etc.
there could be some really cool stuff made with this imo
how about one gigantic Mac Millain map with all the main buildings together? possibly with a lot more than 5 players on it. make it a 50 survivors vs 1 killer with a red mori, last man standing wins. why not?
the devs really need to give us more creativity options with the custom game mode.
and for tournaments you can set up a map exactly as you want it to be - plus you can ensure that everyone will be playing on the exact same map layout, seeing who can make the best usage of it.
BHVR PLEASE!
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One more thing to add, seeding would negatively affect some killers more than others.
Pig for example. The devs said that the traps are assigned to a box at the start of the game, which means it will likely be in the seed. If you know exactly what box to go for then traps are worthless.
Trapper too becomes a lot less powerful because survivors will know where all his traps spawn.
So what do you do? Ban all RNG like Pig and Trapper? Do you make an exception for them, and what about when that exception favors one side too much?
It's just a slippery slope to try and force the game to be static. It makes a lot more sense to work around the RNG as best as possible.
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