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Poll
Do you think that timeout:
Should be always called without any warning
13%
 13%  [ 25 ]
Should be always called but never the first time (1 warning max)
17%
 17%  [ 33 ]
Should be called only if happen too often in a game
40%
 40%  [ 77 ]
Should be never called
12%
 12%  [ 23 ]
Each coach should agree before the match how to manage the timeout csll
7%
 7%  [ 15 ]
Pie!!!!
9%
 9%  [ 18 ]
Total Votes : 191


RDaneel



Joined: Feb 24, 2023

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 09:06 Reply with quote Back to top

It happened to me to watch some matches where some coaches called timeout without any warning often during a critical drive.
I find this quite debatable. Is not written anywhere that before timeout I have to warn by opponent, but is a question of playing in gentleman way.

I personally find those coaches who call timeouts without at least giving their opponents one advance notice insolent. I find it even more irritating when this happens maybe on the last turn where your opponent has laboriously built a situation to score is just before moving the last player with the ball is called timeout.

This makes me think that there are coaches who play during the opponent's turn with the mouse arrow pointing to the bottom left and can't wait to see the timeout button come out.

Certainly it is legitimate and they can do it. And there should be a limit in the match time (not all people have 2 hours budget to complete a match) and is totally fair to say your opponent “can you speed up please?”
But whether they call timeout without any warn it in a competitive division or not they lose all my esteem whatever their prowess on the field (indeed I dare say that the higher a player's ranking the less he should need to call timeout)

What do you think?
Joost



Joined: Mar 17, 2014

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 09:24 Reply with quote Back to top

Time out without warning is legal but very poor behaviour I think. At least let your opponent know at the beginning of the game that you will time out asap, so they are warned. Given the fact that most people do warn, you should not assume that people anticipate an immediate time out.
badger89



Joined: Jun 03, 2014

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 09:37 Reply with quote Back to top

I always give a nice message asking not to go over 4min

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HimalayaP1C7



Joined: Feb 03, 2021

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 09:45 Reply with quote Back to top

If you do feel the need to warn people about not going over time, try to make lots of effort to do it in a friendly way. There could be many reasons someone is slow (e.g. health issues or just very new). Also don’t auto warn someone if they went slightly over on one of the ‘key’ turns in the game that require the most thought.
spelledaren



Joined: Mar 06, 2004

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 10:21 Reply with quote Back to top

I don’t think you -need- to warn anyone. Time out is there as a rule, use it how you like.

That said, better to talk and agree. I don’t time people out myself…. I guess I might under extreme circumstances.

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Jan-Erik



Joined: Apr 17, 2011

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 10:36 Reply with quote Back to top

The turn timer is already excessively lenient, 2 minutes is more than enough you need to complete any turn. If you go over, your turn ends.
MerryZ



Joined: Nov 28, 2005

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 10:50 Reply with quote Back to top

Pie.

Also dont think ive ever timeoutted.

Have asked few times to speed up tho.

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RDaneel



Joined: Feb 24, 2023

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 10:57 Reply with quote Back to top

Jan-Erik wrote:
The turn timer is already excessively lenient, 2 minutes is more than enough you need to complete any turn. If you go over, your turn ends.


I find myself compelled to disagree here. Often the turn can be completed in 2 minutes, expecially in the very beginning, but especially in the final turns of the drive it is sometimes necessary to spend more time and sometime more than 4 mins (little bit more...): time is a resource. All of it must be used, and it should not be wasted

Also consider that because of the possibility of some terrifying missclicks (where there is no going back possibility which is very different from the board game) it is important NOT to play in a hurry. Because bad missclick will change the game.
Personally, even in easy turns I tend to try to use all the time available.
'Slow and steady wins the race' Wink

IMHO the good player is not seen by how fast he plays but by what solutions he can find and what strategic-tactical choices he implements. Obviously, he should try to play with respect for the time.

But Blood Bowl does not lend itself - like chess - to 'blitz play'. There are no standard openings! Wink
koadah



Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 10:59 Reply with quote Back to top

An option to superimpose the clock on the pitch would help some people.

But, you have to play to the rules that you have.
If you don't like them, get new ones.

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MattDakka



Joined: Oct 09, 2007

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 11:45 Reply with quote Back to top

In the past I warned before enforcing the time out but warning sometimes created situations in which the opponent deliberately stopped playing or slowed down the game (for example, by not deciding to use Stand Firm, Side Step and other skills requiring opponent's decision).
Other opponents griefed by refusing to keep on playing at Kick-Off (there is no timer during set up).
In other games I didn't time out my opponent and he performed an incredible sequence or he injured a player of mine by throwing secondary blocks and I regretted it.
So, now my policy is time out without warning, because, according to my experience, it's better.
The elephant in the room is that there should be automatic time out, that way everybody would expect to be timed out, and the burden of rule enforcement would be on the client, not on the opponent. The fact that the time out must be enforced by the opponent creates frustration when people don't expect it. If they always expected the time out they would not be pissed off by the enforcement.

The best coach is the guy who can find the best solution for a turn in the shortest time.
When algorithms run by computers to do a task are evalued, the time is an important factor to decide which algorithm is the most efficient (thus, the best). Time is not the only factor, but one of the important ones.
If you have 6 minutes to find a solution to play a turn it's easier than if you have to find a solution in 4 minutes.
Since it's a Competitive division, with CR to win/lose, (thus an evaluation of coach's skill), it's important that the coach's skill aspect has an impact on the game, which is already dice-heavy. By enforcing turns of 4 minutes the coach's skill aspect gets more important.
That said, if it's an unranked game vs somebody I know, I don't time him out,
but in Competitive division, I do. Also, I don't want to be locked into a game for more than 1 hour, the longer a game lasts, the more likely some issue could happen to me and/or my opponent. In Cyanide I played with 2 minutes timer, 4 minutes are an eternity.

All in my very humble opinion and from my own particular perspective.


Last edited by MattDakka on May 12, 2023; edited 1 time in total
RDaneel



Joined: Feb 24, 2023

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 11:59 Reply with quote Back to top

koadah wrote:
An option to superimpose the clock on the pitch would help some people.

But, you have to play to the rules that you have.
If you don't like them, get new ones.


Yes could be nice but I repeat the time should not be a game obsession... because during a match maybe it can happen a couple of time to timeout in the drive , very rarely more.

Concerning the rule compliancy I may be wrong, but the BB2020 rulebook manual does not mention any 'hard' rule for timeout. Timeout is a convention, not a rule . It is at the discretion of the admin implementing the division.
It is set at 4 minutes by convention and in 90% of the cases it is more than enough. But there are tournaments where there is no timeout limit for instance, other maybe with hard timeout limit (i do not know): in this case of course you must accept the rule.

So for me the timeout call is not regulated by any rule in the Fumbbl Competitive division (if I am wrong I would thank you to indicate where I can find the rule: in the site rules and code of conduct https://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=help&op=rules the timeout is not strictly regulated)

but maybe I am wrong here...
MattDakka



Joined: Oct 09, 2007

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 12:13 Reply with quote Back to top

I guess that if the time out were not allowed then the client would be changed and the time out button removed.
Call it convention, rule or just practical reason to keep the matches within a reasonable time window. Without time out enforcement a match could last forever.

That said, I'd like an official FUMBBL time out rule written somewhere to show it to people upset by time out. It would be quicker to do that than telling them to ask an admin that time out without warning is legal.
RDaneel



Joined: Feb 24, 2023

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 12:39 Reply with quote Back to top

MattDakka wrote:

The elephant in the room is that there should be automatic time out,


I disagree . Surely it is possible for a tournament or league administrator to define an automatic timeout at 4 minutes. This will define a specific custom tournament for Bloof Bowl (a kind of 'Blitz' tournament). But in the competitive division implementing an automatic timeout at 4 minutes is debatable, and nowhere is it written in the BB2020 manual


MattDakka wrote:


The best coach is the guy who can find the best solution for a turn in the shortest time.


This is your personal opinion. Of course if a coach has been playing the same four-six Tiers1-2 races in the same way for the last 20 years, he can probably develop automatisms. But speed of play does not, in my opinion, means "good" coach . Everyone has his own reaction time, expecially if you are starting to play in Competitive division new team (or if you play Tiers3 team where every single move should be carefully evaluated: I know you do not have any experience in playing BloodBowl with Tiers-3 team so you cannot understand this point).

Time in a game cannot be infinite, but setting a fixed, insurmountable limit is defining a special kind of game. There are chess champions who are very good in "Blitz!" games and maybe in other kinds of tournaments they perform differently. But I repeat the comparison between Chess and Blood Bowl is impractical. There is a game called "blitzbowl" https://www.bloodbowl.com/blitzbowl/ but it has nothing to do with turn time.. (I think)

MattDakka wrote:


When algorithms run by computers to do a task are evalued, the time is an important factor to decide which algorithm is the most efficient (thus, the best). Time is not the only factor, but one of the important ones.


Are you speaking of Human Coach or Machine Coach? I could tell you something about that but my positronic brain has some constraints I can't overcome because the 1st Law Very Happy

MattDakka wrote:

If you have 6 minutes to find a solution to play a turn it's easier than if you have to find a solution in 4 minutes.


So if in chess they give you infinite time to make a move would you be able to win against Carlsen? No way! If you don't see certain moves you don't see them in 4 minutes or 6. Obviously you can't spend 10 or 20 minutes thinking.... But sometimes to execute a tactic you have to be cautious also because remember that there is the missclick lurking

MattDakka wrote:

But in Competitive division, yes. Also, I don't want to be locked into a game for more than 1 hour, the longer a game lasts, the more likely some issue could happen to me and/or my opponent. In Cyanide I played with 2 minutes timer, 4 minutes are an eternity.


Don't play Blood Bowl then and play Blitz! Chess. Blood Bowl belongs to the set of sort of role-playing game if you play the tabletop the games can last up to two hours. Finishing a turn in 4 minutes or 5 minutes is not a tragedy to me. Of course you can ask your opponent to go a bit faster.
I risk to be repetitive but again: Time is not a discriminating factor (or requirement) of the BB Competitive division. Nowhere is written that the time limit is a mandatory rule: it's a movie you make yourself with your own "home rules" like your ideas of 8 face-dices for the blocks or whatever that you can implement in your own home league.
Spence



Joined: Dec 05, 2012

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 12:57 Reply with quote Back to top

If I go over 4, I'd expect opponent to mash the TO button, and self-timeout if they don't.

So, I'm with Matt on option 1 in theory, but in practice I never timeout opponents in random box games. It's the weaker coaches who tend to be extremely slow (4 mins is already an Ice Age). Game preservation concerns prefer us giving them extra time to encourage them to think rather than blame dice for their failings.

For more serious tournament games the best advice I've had on this was from AD and Moorman - just tell the opponent in the scheduling PM that you prefer to play to 4 mins so there's no confusion.
RDaneel



Joined: Feb 24, 2023

Post   Posted: May 12, 2023 - 13:03 Reply with quote Back to top

Spence wrote:
If I go over 4, I'd expect opponent to mash the TO button, and self-timeout if they don't.

.


Self-timeout? Not sure to have understood...
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