FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

WhatBall

Joined: Aug 21, 2008

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:06

With Christer's recent announcement that [B[ will be the first transition to the new FFB client, I thought it might be good to discuss what changes and additions to the current Box might hep make it better.

Having never played any [B] games I am a bit in the dark about how it currently works, so I am putting it out to others as to how best to update the Box.

The things I can think of off hand to consider are:
- TV range. It would be good to allow individual teams to set TV ranges they wish to play within the Box. This would be more beneficial to teams such as Halfling who may only wish to play up x amount of TV. Obviously there would have to be limits on minimum and maximum ranges to avoid people trying to pick with the system.

- a system that considers coach rankings to help place coaches of closer ability against each other and more importantly avoid huge mismatches in skill. I think this is what is called an ELO system, but not sure.

- a super-easy way to 'activate' in the Box. I think it is through IRC right now, but am not 100%. Ideally you should be able to go to gamefinder and add all your Box teams you want to play with and let the Box do its thing, sending you a PM, chat message, or a pop-up from Fumbbl that tells you a game has been chosen, click to begin, and it takes you to the match. At this point conceding (not accepting/playing the match) would be a game concession.

I'm looking forward to trying the new client in the Box scenario. I admit to being a bit of a pixelhugger and this will force me to just play and enjoy the games I get.

Carnis

Joined: Feb 03, 2009

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:10

You dont need irc to schedule box games.. Can be done on the mainpage by pressing the "activate" button. Could not be simpler.

shadow46x2

Joined: Nov 22, 2003

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:10

i think it should look purple...i always liked purple...

--j

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Diddyboy

Joined: Dec 29, 2007

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:11

im abit of a pixelhugger myself but the best part i see about B in FFB is the journymens. even if you take a hard hit in a game against loads of mb/po monsters you will have 11players to the next game. for this reason alone i might start to play abit in the box. ranked will always bee my number one place tho but i think this is a huge improvment

Flix

Joined: Oct 26, 2003

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:13

I think you have to share a gamename with your opponent before, it would be nice if the gamename will be autogenerated

shadow46x2

Joined: Nov 22, 2003

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:16

carnis, the problem with using the website, exclusively, to schedule matches is the website is a static image...it doesn't have a constant ticker to tell people that the box is opening for activations, it doesn't refresh to do that, etc etc....coaches may miss the window, activate before or after, and potentially miss getting scheduled altogether...

additionally, while our PM system is fabulous, it still relies on two parties to communicate, and with the web-based static status, you don't see when you get a message until you refresh the screen, and sometimes it gets missed, therefore increasing the amount of time it takes to get a scheduled match going....

with the irc channel in place, people can get live updates on when the window is open, who their opponent is, if they're scheduled, and they can also start communication with their opponent, and start a match pretty quickly....while the website communication is great, it's *very* slow and tedious for setting up matches, and that's not a fault of the PM system at all, it's simply a problem with that type of communication, as opposed to real-time IRC chat

--j

_________________

origami wrote:

There is no god but Nuffle, and Shadow is his prophet.

WhatBall

Joined: Aug 21, 2008

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:18

Carnis wrote:

You dont need irc to schedule box games.. Can be done on the mainpage by pressing the "activate" button. Could not be simpler.

Can you activate multiple teams or one? I think you should be able to add multiple if not already. Sorry for my ignorance on Box, just trying to start some positive discussion.

shadow46x2 wrote:

i think it should look purple...i always liked purple...

Now I have a mental image of Shadow as the Purple Pieman.

shadow46x2

Joined: Nov 22, 2003

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:20

clarification: my comments were strictly based on current systems in place, not on future applications or a wishlist....

if it were down to a wishlist, a automated web system would be phenomenal...but i'm sure the work to implement that would be pretty extraordinary...

--j

_________________

origami wrote:

There is no god but Nuffle, and Shadow is his prophet.

WhatBall

Joined: Aug 21, 2008

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:21

shadow46x2 wrote:

carnis, the problem with using the website, exclusively, to schedule matches is the website is a static image...it doesn't have a constant ticker to tell people that the box is opening for activations, it doesn't refresh to do that, etc etc....coaches may miss the window, activate before or after, and potentially miss getting scheduled altogether...

additionally, while our PM system is fabulous, it still relies on two parties to communicate, and with the web-based static status, you don't see when you get a message until you refresh the screen, and sometimes it gets missed, therefore increasing the amount of time it takes to get a scheduled match going....

with the irc channel in place, people can get live updates on when the window is open, who their opponent is, if they're scheduled, and they can also start communication with their opponent, and start a match pretty quickly....while the website communication is great, it's *very* slow and tedious for setting up matches, and that's not a fault of the PM system at all, it's simply a problem with that type of communication, as opposed to real-time IRC chat

--j

Is the 'window' then the issue? Perhaps the Box should just always accept activations and once it has enough it picks the games and sends out the matches. Then add a time limit (say 15 minutes) where your teams are active to avoid a game being scheduled for you much later than when you activated. To make Box viable to all I think set windows might be too much of a pain.

asharak

Joined: Nov 27, 2007

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:26

Aye, at the moment its a single 'activate' button on your normal home page. You then check which teams you want to activate, [B] does its thing and you get a scheduled opponent. No idea what happens if you then don't play, I've never done it nor has an opponent. I'm not so sure about the TV range idea though - makes it overly complicated to generate matchups and can be very picky. Every dorf who has a deathroller will want to play 100TV down for a bribe etc. Not just flings can abuse it and team builders can play 100TV down for extra apo etc. Rather against the spirit of the box. Instead if petty cash gets implemented then as well as activating you pick how much petty cash you want to use, pre-scheduler. So the dorfs can choose to spend 100k so they can get the bribe even if they are up TV.

Edit: And aye, its a lot clunkier is people are just using the website. IRC makes it so much quicker and easier! Yes, it can work on website alone but it is far from pleasant :/

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Last edited by asharak on %b %15, %2010 - %19:%Nov; edited 1 time in total

Carnis

Joined: Feb 03, 2009

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:26

shadow46x2 wrote:

clarification: my comments were strictly based on current systems in place, not on future applications or a wishlist....

if it were down to a wishlist, a automated web system would be phenomenal...but i'm sure the work to implement that would be pretty extraordinary...

--j

Actually implementing an autogamename generator once the teams are scheduled agaisnt each wouldn't seem to me like a big issue at all (sort of like pressing a spectate link now).

It's true you get less "meta" info about the players in the box at the time of your activation, if you activate staticly from the web, but I always thought that was the point of "black" box Wink

- you don't always know what you get.

Jester_Spirit

Joined: Sep 19, 2008

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:34

OK... this is sort of a "dream-how-awesome-it-would-be-to-have" but I post it anyway.
Activate a number of teams -> the client opens automatically as soon as the matchups are calculated by the box.
This would bypass the irc...

shadow46x2

Joined: Nov 22, 2003

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:35

well...as far as the 'meta' info is concerned....that's the fault of the users....i never was a fan of people who announced they were activating, and thought it should be squelched...kinda defeats the blind system if you have an idea of who & what teams are taking part..

--j

_________________

origami wrote:

There is no god but Nuffle, and Shadow is his prophet.

freak_in_a_frock

Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:39

Quote:

TV range. It would be good to allow individual teams to set TV ranges they wish to play within the Box. This would be more beneficial to teams such as Halfling who may only wish to play up x amount of TV. Obviously there would have to be limits on minimum and maximum ranges to avoid people trying to pick with the system.

- a system that considers coach rankings to help place coaches of closer ability against each other and more importantly avoid huge mismatches in skill. I think this is what is called an ELO system, but not sure.

This sort of goes against the whole point of the box. It is meant to be random. Every player should have the same chance of getting a good or bad draw as every other coach. Making a system that allows you to pick to only play up etc means that people will start trying to pick easy games, taking the risk that they won't get a game. Also it isn't right that top coaches should be penalised, it would only discourage top coaches using the division.

And as has been pointed out already, you activate within the site. Choosing which teams you wish to be in the draw. The draw is made and bowlbot announces the draw. You can also use your team page to see who you are scheduled against. If you opponent doesn't show up you can either treat it as a disconnect or ask to e unscheduled and move on.

maysrill

Joined: Dec 29, 2008

Posted: Nov 15, 2010 - 19:39

If the auto-generation of game names worked, you could cut out IRC for the game setup. Not sure how many people are bothered by IRC, but it would make things easier, and IRC would still be there in the background for pre-game and post-game chat.

I like the idea of a 15-minute window to get the game started.

(then again, I liked the idea of Ranked and Box being merged, and the scheduler available to anyone who wants to use it)

My take on the ranges: Make it so that anyone can play anyone, but heavily weight it towards a fairly tight TV range (say, under 200k). That way, if there are 2 people, they get a game, but if there are options, the closer matches are preferred.

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