Generally speaking, I watched how people played in Kyiv... to be honest, I was a bit horrified... almost everyone has too many redundant movements.. almost no one knows how to split off single units using Shift... and in general, they hardly use the keyboard at all.
If they knew how to use all the possibilities, they could easily play on 2-minute timers even in standard SoD )
The ones who use the keyboard most effectively are those who played on 2-minute timers in the past, and who generally keep the timer readings (not just current, but potential future ones) in their field of attention.
Among the regular Alaska players, I've observed good device control and speed of thought in Alex, Kral, and Term. It was interesting to watch all of Kral's games against Alex. Starting from the 2nd week (occasionally the 3rd), both usually hit zeitnot (the time limit on fixes is stricter), yet they almost never ran out of time, and even the efficiency of their actions didn't suffer much.
Meanwhile, guys like Mike click pointedly slowly, searching for keys before pressing them; often the left hand isn't even on the keyboard, but somewhere else. Sometimes even commands like Defense are executed via mouse or, which is even stranger, using the 'D' key instead of the spacebar.
Added after 28 minutes
A copy of a Chinese program? ;)
imho this is a blow to TE )
splitting off singles is the main argument TE players have against SoD :)
This raises the general level of technical literacy and reduces dependence on one or two developers. Because developers, like players, have a tendency to lose interest in the game.
For example, the TE code is currently being dug into mainly by asm and Ivor, partially by SAG and myself. This is all a new wave that arrived after the old developers retired.
And naturally, along with making mistakes in programming, similar mistakes are made in implementation methods. I've spoken with many players; almost everyone (both SoD and TE players) is bothered by the variety of different rules and settings. Many would gladly agree to play one specific version—almost any version—if there truly were only one.
In this regard, my personal position is this: since it's impossible to force everyone into one specific version anyway, it makes sense to concentrate the spread around 2-3 main options, minimizing the difference in rules within each of them as much as possible.
One is, naturally, SoD, with the position of changing nothing in it. It would be good to synchronize the rules for HW, HP, and offline tournaments. As I understand it, the bottlenecks are resting upon meeting, the starting hero for Necropolis, and resource gathering past shifted guards.
The second center is TE with gradual evolution. Lately, the active flame wars have almost stopped; players take improvements more lightly. Or maybe the improvements are just being made more competently, who knows.
And then there's the intermediate option—Lite. Moreover, a certain standard of settings should be developed for it as well. For example, judging by reports, I see that people prefer to check the box for building a second dwelling. A script for setting road types is also often used. In Kingisepp, they used replacing scrolls with gold (to speed up the game). The time limit also varies. Perhaps the Moscow and St. Petersburg qualifiers, as well as the Grand Final, will show which set of Lite settings should be settled on. And the remaining bugs will be caught, naturally.
By the way, lately I've noticed an increase in tolerance toward the version of rules/settings—people just play however the organizer says and don't stress about it. Apparently, they've gained enough experience playing under different rules that the brain switches between them without difficulty.
