ShadowVisions' Competitive Gem Hunt Guide

Hey everyone! Wanted to share a multiplayer guide I've been working on this week, catered towards tournament level play. You can check it out on my blog below:
Link to Guide

Would be happy to hear any questions or comments. Hope to see you all in game!
 

Aside from the copious amount of helpful detail and insight (especially for being relatively newer to the scene), that was just a great read altogether; I've peeked at the other stuff on your blog and enjoyed the rest too, you're a wonderful written voice.

I don't have a great deal of new input, since the time I took Hunt far more seriously was mostly before people (Jean) really started try-harding, but I've been sitting on the thought for a bit now that singleplayer speedrunning ability plays in more than I originally thought. Tactically, Hunt is obviously a way different beast, but I've been impressed with myself at how well I still navigate the older maps and how quickly I pick up on the newer ones because my basics are still fantastic. There's definitely a parallel to this idea to a football player dribbling through cones (or any other equivalent in sports). So while I'm not saying specifically to play singleplayer to improve in Hunt, it's probably a good alternative to solo hunt play if you need the change of scenery.

Thanks for the time you spent writing this.

That's a great read, lots of information and insights, some of which people may have unknowingly known - but it's good to have them all written down in one place

I'm curious about your opinions on how multiplayer would play differently in MBU, or when the netcode is more correctly done - similar to how it is in every other competitive multiplayer games - than what we have in PQ. I can list out the differences in the netcode and some of its effects that I have observed:
- Marble physics is server authoritative, the clients send their input keys to the host, which moves their marble on the host side, and they receive back their new marble position, to which the client rolls back to - and then re-applies their own inputs that aren't yet acknowledged by the host. In other words, it's just standard rollback netcode. The consequences of this implies that ping and network jitter will play a factor into how playable the game is. On the other hand in PQ, it is still playable even if your network is very jittery.
- Because of rollback netcode, players will always see future positions of other player's marbles, with their own ping to the host taken into account. This is in contrast to PQ where the marbles you see are much behind where they actually are in real time, the other player needs to send their marble position to the host, and then the host needs to send *that* position to you. By the time you receive that position, the other player is far ahead of what you see.
- Marble collisions exist and they matter, even more so if the marble is bigger (in MBU). Colliding with marbles usually causes a desync on both players ends because of server side physics (Happens in MIU as well). Mega Marbles are properly implemented and are satisfying to use. Even for regular sized marbles, Newton's second law is very much unforgiving, given how easy it is to accelerate your marble quickly.
- Stronger blast, this is especially true in MBU and also it is yet another factor for causing rollback artifacts. Using a fully charged blast basically guarantees everyone near you gets desynced to oblivion.

Thanks for the kind words about the guide, I appreciate it.

I had a decently long reply written out, but when posting the forums decided to log me out and delete everything, so I'll keep it brief.

- I can't make too many assumptions about the netcode differences other than you would be even more favored the better ping you have compared to PQ, which isn't actionable advice
- Assuming megas are still 10s, they should be the most important powerup in MBU and far more prioritized in your pathing and defaults except on more navigation heavy maps (Bowl, Spires, Horizon to an extent, etc)
- If two way collision is enabled you should look for opportunities to knock your opponents of edges of maps especially when super speeding in as the second party to a spawn
- Without competitive mode, camping would be even more prominent- don't want to advise it since it would be really boring without the comp timer. But it would drastically favor the leader, who should always camp when ahead by even 5-10 points, as your opponent is forced to go pick it up and you can always prepare better for the next spawn than them, and every second they don't pick it up is you running out the clock with an advantage.

Hope this helps.

Well, I'm generally not a fan of Competitive Mode, but the one thing I do appreciate about it is the gem timer. I hate camping and seeing people camp, so I only play casually with people who I know won't camp or be annoying like that. But I never even thought about just how advantageous it is to do that. I never thought about how you're actually running down the clock with an advantage while camping, I just thought it was an annoying thing people did to help them get to the next spawn faster than their opponent. That kind of makes me hate it even more. So I do think the gem timer is a good idea (not that it should be implemented permanently), but I still cannot wrap my head around why the gems continue to stay there after the gem timer runs out. Plus the black beam is just so ugly, why does it have to be there? Could you not just get one gem, wait for the timer to run out, then do the same thing on the next spawn, etc., to fill the map with gems? That feels like it goes against the spirit of gem hunt if the gems end up everywhere.

I'm not sure how much competitive mode you've played recently (meaning how familiar you are with the spawn timer), but the amount of time left in a spawn is determined by how many gems are left too - I don't remember myself if the timer starts immediately when the first gem is picked up in a spawn or if it's by a set number/percentage remaining, but the timer will automatically skip to 10 seconds with two gems left, and five seconds with one, for instance.
As I've become more accustomed with the spawn timer, it's so obvious how much better it is than when it wasn't in the game. One player leaving a single gem (or two) doesn't have nearly the, frankly, infuriating effect as it used to, as the other player can simply prepare for the next spawn in positioning, powerup, and blast. The only time it seems to consistently come into play (in a close game) is if a player intentionally winds down the timer as the game is about to end, which I've definitely been a victim of (and maybe there is a viable solution if people feel that should change) - it can be pretty annoying, but strangely something within me is a little more willing to accept it.
I can't say I've thought about the remaining gems simply disappearing when the timer runs out before, and I'm intrigued to see what that would be like. Admittedly I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make though, since generally I don't tend to see more than 3-5 reds remaining at the end of a game, depending on the map size. The black beams definitely look stupid though lol

Yes Nockess, I agree that the gem timer is a good thing, and if we were to separate out competitive mode into its own game mode alongside Hunt, Collection, etc. as discussed earlier today, maybe we'd consider the gem timer being its own toggle in the server settings.

Nockess wrote: Admittedly I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make though

That's precisely why I'm so confused about why it's here at all. It just doesn't seem like it makes a difference at all in the long run. Yeah, maybe someone will sometimes miss gems unluckily if they get to one right after the gem timer runs out, but you could argue that's just part of the game in the same way that blasting your opponents or barely missing gems is.