kevlargolem wrote:The reason there shouldnt be a player-controlled sliding scale so they can pick their own times, has less to do with segmenting the playerbase, and more to do with people's sleeping patterns and the time tables in which they like to play games.
Actually I wouldn't mind if this featured was only implemented in unrated games. I was going to suggest that in rated games there are set timescales which you can play to make leaderboards easier to manage. However I think in unrated there should be the option to make it however fast/slow you want to suit your needs. However I still do think that x100 and x400 have very different environments, and as such I think both should still be implemented as different timescales when choosing unrated games to play. (the key is variety remember?)
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Also, I want you to think about this:
Suppose it is 1874. Imagine that you have been playing standard chess for your whole life. Chess clocks have just been invented, and their use was only in official tournaments to make games quicker (and not 14 hours long). Living in a wealthy part of your country, there are a few thousand who play chess competitively, much more than many other areas. You are one of the top players in your country, and you have just been to your first chess tournament in which chess clocks were used. You weren't used to the time limit, so your results aren't as good as they usually are.
A few years later what you think of as a devil's addition to chess is conjured. Fast chess. You think that it will completely destroy the atmosphere of slow chess, and that people will no longer think of 'chess' as an intellectual game as much, because 'fast chess' will become so popular and won't reflect the deep thinking needed in standard chess well.
At the time, it was completely controversial. Many people liked it, many people disliked it. But at the end of the day, the people who liked playing standard chess weren't affected, and many more students (and adults) became interested in chess, looking at it as a fun board game, instead of something only the rich can afford to play.
The point I am trying to make is that, radical changes will always be met by some as positive and some as negative, but all new and brilliant ideas spring from a moment of pure genius. In my example: "What if we used chess clocks to play a really fast game of chess?". For many years no-one dared to create something so different, something that would completely change the atmosphere of chess. But once it was done, chess became infinitely more accepted and played across the world. The Devs are in a somewhat concerning situation right now, and we need something radical to solve it. Some situations aren't just fixed by a series of small changes, but rather a major revolution (and history can teach us well regarding this subject).
Imagine if Subterfuge already contained adjustable/'more variety of pre-set timescales' on launch. Would such an idea seem absurd or revolutionary anymore? Of course not! Humans tend to become confined to their little boxes of beliefs, things they are used to. Some people don't like change, because humans are engineered for order. It is for this reason that many people oppose the idea of fast time scales. The best way to get around this is to look at things from different people's perspective: If Subterfuge started out with 40 minute games, how do you think the community then would feel about week-long games?
It will add something that can be used to completely change the game, sure. But what does that have to do with how you play the game? YOU can still play it however you want. (As I have already extensively argued)
I have even asked all my friends whom I introduced Subterfuge to, and they all said that they would not play a 3 hour version, and would instead want a 40 minute version. Some even told me that they would however play a 40-30 minute game without me asking them! Most of them said that spending 3 hours on a 'board game' (even if digital) is still too long. All 3 also agreed with me that 90% of quick games would be played with complete strangers..... I don't know which games you have been playing in which 90% of all quick games are played with people in the same room....
