4 minutes ago, kris40k said:

No. It only requires additional input by a judge upon a complaint by a player. If no one complains, play moves along nicely without any additional work upon the Judges or Marshal.

Which is why the actual times mentioned in my post are arbitrary and completely up for debate about what is a reasonable amount of time to play. Even if someone uses up every available second, it will be an improvement because we have already established that doing exactly that is an acceptable amount of time to be used.

30 second shot clocks/ play clocks didn't ruin sports. Sure, people run them down to the wire all the time, but they are proven over many years to objectively improve the speed of play.

It doesn't matter what the times are. If they are of any reasonable length that allows a player to make a decision then due to the sheer number of possible interaction they are long enough to be exploited to legally slow play. So it would not be an improvement as rather then eliminating slow play you've just defined slow play as acceptable. I know that's not what you're trying to do but it would be the unintentional result.

Shot/play clocks work because there is only one ball. One team is clearly in control and setting the pace of play with the other team responding so it's easy to regulate. If X-Wing worked at all like that then this would be a very different conversation. But it doesn't, in X-Wing the opportunity for action passes back and forth 100s of times per turn. Technically at any given moment one player or the other is in control but the reality is that most opportunities don't result in an action and so those exchanges of control are often seamless. However if you specify that I can legally take up to X seconds on each opportunity, regardless of what X is, then someone absolutely will not only do so but also be perfectly within their rights to do so. Which will virtually stop the game at that point.

Establishing a time to set dials is tenable, as like the sports examples there is both a clear demarcation of control and a reasonable frequency. It won't actually fix the problem, if someone really wants to slow play they'll just do so the rest of the turn, but it is logistically feasible and wouldn't break the game. Attempting to time other interactions is, given the number of them and the structure of the game, just not realistically possible and doing so would make things so much worse.

You guys should play competitive chess.

Time control is something complex and a thing that you need to work with to win.

Then again, you are matched in a ELO system of people with similar skill, and draws AREA a thing.

The best solution is something in between, like, number of turns.

10 minutes ago, DicesonFire said:

You guys should play competitive chess.

Time control is something complex and a thing that you need to work with to win.

Then again, you are matched in a ELO system of people with similar skill, and draws AREA a thing.

The best solution is something in between, like, number of turns.

A chess clock is insufficient for X-wing, because the clock would be rolling for BOTH players at times.

Even with a 3 state clock (plus off state), managing the interleaving in the middle of turns would be a nightmare. I would like to see someone try it though and report on the results.

Number of turns is impractical, because people need to get home before 6am for regionals. Number of turns will consistently result in many matches going over an hour and a half, probably more like 2 hours.

All of these solutions to try and enforce no slow play are unfortunately examples of the cure being worse than the poison.

1 minute ago, MajorJuggler said:

A chess clock is insufficient for X-wing, because the clock would be rolling for BOTH players at times.

Even with a 3 state clock (plus off state), managing the interleaving in the middle of turns would be a nightmare. I would like to see someone try it though and report on the results.

Number of turns is impractical, because people need to get home before 6am for regionals. Number of turns will consistently result in many matches going over an hour and a half, probably more like 2 hours.

All of these solutions to try and enforce no slow play are unfortunately examples of the cure being worse than the poison.

no arguing that.

Slowplay is the bane of many tabletop miniture wargames, and I agree that the current system rewards slow play.

If there was a simple , quick and dirty solution people already would use it.

28 minutes ago, Makaze said:

It doesn't matter what the times are. If they are of any reasonable length that allows a player to make a decision then due to the sheer number of possible interaction they are long enough to be exploited to legally slow play. So it would not be an improvement as rather then eliminating slow play you've just defined slow play as acceptable. I know that's not what you're trying to do but it would be the unintentional result.

Shot/play clocks work because there is only one ball. One team is clearly in control and setting the pace of play with the other team responding so it's easy to regulate. If X-Wing worked at all like that then this would be a very different conversation. But it doesn't, in X-Wing the opportunity for action passes back and forth 100s of times per turn. Technically at any given moment one player or the other is in control but the reality is that most opportunities don't result in an action and so those exchanges of control are often seamless. However if you specify that I can legally take up to X seconds on each opportunity, regardless of what X is, then someone absolutely will not only do so but also be perfectly within their rights to do so. Which will virtually stop the game at that point.

Establishing a time to set dials is tenable, as like the sports examples there is both a clear demarcation of control and a reasonable frequency. It won't actually fix the problem, if someone really wants to slow play they'll just do so the rest of the turn, but it is logistically feasible and wouldn't break the game. Attempting to time other interactions is, given the number of them and the structure of the game, just not realistically possible and doing so would make things so much worse.

Sure, once you codify the exact amount of time that someone is allowed to use up without penalty, you will see some forms of acceptable stalling of the game. For instance, in American Football, when the leading team has the ball you often see everyone acting like the game is already over with a minute left because everyone knows that they are able to run the clock out legally by running the play clock out and taking a knee. Everyone knows how it works and its just become an accepted part of the game.

Once tournament enforced play/decision times are put in place, and more importantly enforced , there will be acceptable attempts to stall developed, however overall speed of the game will likely improve as players will be aware that their opponent is within their right to have a judge called over and the judge will actually do something . Now, there are many possible situations where someone may attempt to abuse it, such as are we going to allow someone to waste 30 seconds every time their opponent moves a ship and they want to spend half a minute measuring aimlessly for Snap Shot? No, of course not. Marshals and Judges still need (and already have) the ability to penalize for more intuitive infractions like unsportsmanlike conduct witnessed, and they need to use it .

Time-wasting is penalized by Association Football referees for a myriad of reasons that aren't spelled out in exact detail in regulations; delay of game penalties exist all over the competitive sports world. Its not rocket science. This game doesn't need every possible permutation spelled out in detail.

This is going to be an unpopular opinion (really, I love people that volunteer their time to help the community) but the fact that X-Wing Judges act like their hands are tied, that this game is somehow impossibly complicated or they can't make an executive decision is failure on their part (no balls).

Honestly, the reason that the game has a delay of game issue is because nobody ever gets punished for it, and that's on the heads of the Judges and Marshals. They can hand-wave that they haven't been given proper guidance by FFG, but its imperative that they use the leeway they already have via the unsportsmanlike conduct rule to actually curb the behaviors developed so far. They of course can be given more tournament regulations and floor rules to help guide their decisions, but ultimately its the lack of the will to act with what they already have that is to blame for where the game is.

On the idea of turns that some have mentioned, while an easy to implement solution, I agree with MajorJuggler that by not limiting a game by time it can lend itself to running even longer than before and multiple occurrences snowballing the entire event behind schedule and not finishing at reasonable hours. When dealing with people taking time off from work, hotels, travel, etc. you need the event to move on time. While Armada runs on turns, they are still timed (135 minutes I think?) to prevent that type of thing from happening, and gameplay finishes the current turn when time is up. Its not really a fix for slow-playing if you go to tracking turns, but still stop the game after 75 minutes.

42 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Honestly, the reason that the game has a delay of game issue is because nobody ever gets punished for it, and that's on the heads of the Judges and Marshals.

Slow play is pragmatically so difficult to enforce because it's so hard to define. Where do you draw the line, exactly? OK, holding dials for 8 minutes seems pretty obvious, but what about just.... taking a while to do actions and shots etc? How much time is "too much"? This leads to the idea of using a clock.

But then what if someone is running right up against the edge of the limits?

42 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Now, there are many possible situations where someone may attempt to abuse it, such as are we going to allow someone to waste 30 seconds every time their opponent moves a ship and they want to spend half a minute measuring aimlessly for Snap Shot? No, of course not. Marshals and Judges still need (and already have) the ability to penalize for more intuitive infractions like unsportsmanlike conduct witnessed, and they need to use it .

... so, even if there is a method to legally define slow play, that still won't be enough, and we're right back where we started, with subjective tests! And when there's 70 tables going on simultaneously, good luck calling every other opponent out on slow play.

When the scoring changes briefly and your opponent now has a one or two turn window with which to win, and there's 5 minutes left, suddenly now it takes 4 and a half minutes to set dials and execute maneuvers. When that scenario is happening simultaneously on a dozen different tables, what exactly is the TO supposed to do? Even if players are encouraged to bring potential grievances to the TO and he takes 2 minutes per table to sort out slow play allegations (2 minutes is way too optimistic) you're still looking at a 25 minute delay every single round. That's two and a half hours for a 6 round tournament. And that's even assuming that the TO can make an accurate subjective decision that literally determines the winner of each of these games on the basis of "he says vs she says". Both of those players are going to vehemently argue their case, and it doesn't prevent a player from fraudulently claiming that the other was slow playing either.

Subjective decisions about objective board states are just a huge big mess and do nothing to solve the root of the problem, which is this: the scoring system can result in massive instantaneous point changes that suddenly benefits one player if the clock stops. Imagine in football if one team could score field goals (3 points) and touchdowns (7 points), and the other team could only get on the board in 20 point increments and the problems that would cause. That's basically what we have in X-wing right now.

[Edit: I guess we have officially gone totally off topic. Oh well. X-wing forums have their equivalent of Godwin's Law but for slow play.]

2 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Now, there are many possible situations where someone may attempt to abuse it, such as are we going to allow someone to waste 30 seconds every time their opponent moves a ship and they want to spend half a minute measuring aimlessly for Snap Shot? No, of course not. Marshals and Judges still need (and already have) the ability to penalize for more intuitive infractions like unsportsmanlike conduct witnessed, and they need to use it .

So it's the subjective opinion of the judge on what constitutes slow play. In other words exactly the same place we are now...

18 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Its not rocket science. This game doesn't need every possible permutation spelled out in detail.

Uh... yeah. That was my point

20 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Honestly, the reason that the game has a delay of game issue is because nobody ever gets punished for it, and that's on the heads of the Judges and Marshals. They can hand-wave that they haven't been given proper guidance by FFG, but its imperative that they use the leeway they already have via the unsportsmanlike conduct rule to actually curb the behaviors developed so far. They of course can be given more tournament regulations and floor rules to help guide their decisions, but ultimately its the lack of the will to act with what they already have that is to blame for where the game is.

I'm not sure I would apportion the blame for the situation quite the same way. I think a heaping helping needs to be dumped on the fact that slow play is massively incentivized by the scoring system and enabled by hyper defensive ships. It's like the war on drugs, people want drugs and as long as they do then attempting to penalize your way out of the situation rather than address the root problem ends badly for everyone involved. Having said that, I do agree that judges already have the tools they need and should probably be using them a bit more. And furthermore that additional (any) floor rules and timing guidelines would be welcome. I'm just against any attempt to set hard timing thresholds as by doing so you require measurement and implicitly say that anything below that threshold is acceptable which is worse than the common sense standard we have now, not that that's perfect by any means.

As for underenforcement I feel like it has more to do with how busy judges are and the strict timing schedule tournaments operate under than lack of will. Most slow players I've seen quit doing it when the judge is hanging around, but judges are constantly being called away and having them wander around keeping an overall eye on things is also beneficial so it's not feasible for them to stay chained to a table monitoring it. And their preferred remedy, especially when the game is further delayed by calling them over, is to allocate more time but that's not always possible due to the event schedule. Not to say that some of them don't cower pathetically behind RAW, in regards to the Genius/Trajectory Simulator change that was blatantly telegraphed in the equivalent of flashing neon one TO told me "fun be damned" that wasn't his job. But i'm sympathetic to the rock and a hard place they're in on slow play since by the time they get involved it's often too late to even witness it what's more fix it.

43 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

Slow play is pragmatically so difficult to enforce because it's so hard to define. Where do you draw the line, exactly? OK, holding dials for 8 minutes seems pretty obvious, but what about just.... taking a while to do actions and shots etc? How much time is "too much"? This leads to the idea of using a clock.

But then what if someone is running right up against the edge of the limits?

<snip>

... so, even if there is a method to legally define slow play, that still won't be enough, and we're right back where we started, with subjective tests! And when there's 70 tables going on simultaneously, good luck calling every other opponent out on slow play.

Just because slow play is difficult to define in a manner that will cover 100% of cases that may occur does not mean that it is not worth pursuing, especially if reasoning that its not penalized is because of Judges claiming lack of guidance on how to judge it. You have two three options:

1. Agree and give them guidance (floor rules!)
2. Disagree, give no guidance, and effectively leave the judges out to dry (current situation)
3. Claim "Its to difficult! X-Wing is so complicated that no one in the history of competitive gaming has properly adjudicated slow playing in a way that could be adapted here!", throw your hands up in the air and walk away from the idea (the feeling I'm getting from some in this thread)

I also disagree with your assertion that if tournament regulations against slow playing were instituted, that the tournaments would suddenly seize up as an enormous amount of complaints occur every round, and that it would devolve into a he said/ she said situation for the TO's once a few people actually get punished. The reason is we already have televised proof that people cheat by changing dials. Judges have awarded a game loss due to it. Why aren't the tournaments grinding to a halt with a huge swarm of he said/ she said claims that someone's opponent changed their dial?

Because X-Wing players don't act that way in practice.

Few players actually cheat, and few players cheat by levying false claims of cheating. Putting in new rules isn't going to suddenly change that.

Now, there will be an increase in complaints once rules are in place and Judges actually start enforcing it (God forbid!) , because actual enforcement will encourage people to do something about what is going on instead of just gritting their teeth when their opponent slow plays, since in the current situation Judges rarely do anything about slow playing (why complain when the Judges do nothing about it). Will there be a non-zero number of false claims? Yes. But it won't be the disaster that you suspect.

As well, my apologies if I helped drag this off topic. To be fair, the original topic was about the FFG article, not about point scoring. Also, I'm not against the idea of altering point scoring; I just spoke up against the idea that slow play is impossible to effectively combat/punish.

1 hour ago, Makaze said:

I'm just against any attempt to set hard timing thresholds as by doing so you require measurement and implicitly say that anything below that threshold is acceptable which is worse than the common sense standard we have now, not that that's perfect by any means.

That is understandable.

Not wanting to encourage bad behavior by legalizing some accepted form of it (like using every possible second allotted by proposed rule changes) is a good idea. I personally feel that some standardized time in steps can be beneficial to actively moving things along, but I'm not married to the concept. Perhaps another form of guidance could be offered to Judges and Marshals to better motivate enforcement.

I will also agree that Judges, Marshals, and TOs are overworked, and I am thankful those guys do what they do.

16 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Not wanting to encourage bad behavior by legalizing some accepted form of it (like using every possible second allotted by proposed rule changes) is a good idea. I personally feel that some standardized time in steps can be beneficial to actively moving things along, but I'm not married to the concept.

The rules could easily say something to the effect that "this is the extreme limit; most instances should not go near or to this limit, and abusing the limit will still be subject to adjudication by the TOs." So you've got something similar to, but better, than exists now.

The thing that perplexes me is that, generally speaking, it's the people that are most blustery and apoplectic about the pervasiveness and evils of slow play that are so entrenched against doing anything about it. I'm just like, " ... Huh. Interesting."

4 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

The rules could easily say something to the effect that "this is the extreme limit; most instances should not go near or to this limit, and abusing the limit will still be subject to adjudication by the TOs." So you've got something similar to, but better, than exists now.

The thing that perplexes me is that, generally speaking, it's the people that are most blustery and apoplectic about the pervasiveness and evils of slow play that are so entrenched against doing anything about it. I'm just like, " ... Huh. Interesting."

I've got zero issues with guidelines, I just don't think they're any kind of silver bullet as the problem isn't judges not knowing how long a given set of actions should reasonably take.

Slow play is already against the rules, making it even more against the rules doesn't accomplish much of anything. Enforcement resources, ie. judge eyeball time, are static and not going to change. So instead of trying to ineffectually increase negative pressure against the behavior the better tact is to decrease positive pressure for it. Disincentivize it, make it not (or at least less) a winning strategy and you'll see a commiserate decrease in occurrence. If you hear any resistance from this direction it's not resistance to fixing the issue, it's to fixing it the wrong way thus both failing to solve the problem and creating externalities around the failed solution.

I've only experienced an obvious slow playing opponent once. it was sooooo severe. but it was the last game of a fan run event that I did terrible at, we were way at the bottom tables and it seemed out right lame to call a judge over it because nothing was on the line. I did mention it and they said " it's a slow list". The player ultimately conceded when I killed his e-wing.

Going back to the topic at hand, if FFG is trying to use this as a deflection from the disgustingness that is Rebel synergy, or goes anywhere near an Imperial nerf, I will freaking riot. I swear that will probably be the end of my support for Xwing. The game I wanted, with balanced design will probably be dead, and there's no point for me to play it anymore.