FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

gjopie

Joined: Oct 27, 2009

Posted: Mar 07, 2013 - 12:44

This is the place to discuss rules changes for the OWCC.

Current topic: Kislev Conference TV Caps. See first post here.

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Last edited by gjopie on %b %31, %2013 - %16:%Oct; edited 3 times in total

Anzelak

Joined: Nov 26, 2009

Posted: Mar 07, 2013 - 13:35

1. I would seed the first game by TV or coach rating, rather than randomly.

2. Make the switch so that the league tables are accurate and you know where you stand at-a-glance.

3. Personally, I think 4 games is good as it is.

Lastly, I prefer round robin to Swiss and I always have. So I'd prefer a situation where there are X amount of conferences (say four conferences of four teams) and you must play everyone in your conference. But that's a personal thing - and the way you've set up the OWCC is great as far as I'm concerned.

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GAZZATROT

Joined: Apr 26, 2009

Posted: Mar 07, 2013 - 13:52

I don't like Swiss. Much prefer to play all teams in my division.

Keep up the good work. Thank you.

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gjopie

Joined: Oct 27, 2009

Posted: Mar 07, 2013 - 15:21

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Just to be clear, we're keeping Swiss, at least for the time being.

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Smeat

Joined: Nov 19, 2006

Posted: Mar 07, 2013 - 21:43

o Seeding, definitely. Inducements help, but they don't truly balance, esp not w/ new teams and/or large TV diffs.

o Problem with Swiss in a small group is that if 2 teams dominate or flail early they end up playing each other twice (and maybe more!).

o Tie breakers - another problem w/ Swiss - guaranteed that not every team will have gone head-to-head. Not crazy about your suggested formula, but it's the BB default and better than many.

o When we are offered to play up to 16 games in the "off season", a 4-game season seems very short. I'm not sure I'd want to play all 7 other teams in one conference, but most, and definitely more than 4 games. Is there some variation of swiss that could be applied, so the winning teams rise and the losing slide, but you still don't play all?

(I'll think about this more, maybe come up w/ something arcane but workable.)

(Optimally, what I prefer is this: a couple/few quick rounds to help create a rough seed, then a double-elim tourney format. This means that any team could still win until well into the season, that new teams have a few "building" games before it gets real, and that an early fluke loss or three doesn't shut you out (but does make it a harder road). Not sure if BB could even support that, but that's my ideal.)

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gjopie

Joined: Oct 27, 2009

Posted: Mar 07, 2013 - 21:47

Smeat wrote:

o When we are offered to play up to 16 games in the "off season", a 4-game season seems very short. I'm not sure I'd want to play all 7 other teams in one conference, but most, and definitely more than 4 games. Is there some variation of swiss that could be applied, so the winning teams rise and the losing slide, but you still don't play all?

Well, Vesikannu raised an interesting point during our game that the Wildcard Tournament is too long in comparison to the regular season. I suggested perhaps limiting the "off season" to a max of 4 games each as an alternative?

(I'm not sure what you mean by "the winning teams rise and the losing slide, but you still don't play all" - sorry)

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gjopie

Joined: Oct 27, 2009

Posted: Mar 08, 2013 - 11:44

Ok, so I've been thinking about how to address some of the issues people have with the Wildcard Tournament. Here is my proposal for next season:

4. Wildcard Tournament
The issues seem to be that it is too long relative to the regular season, and that there doesn't feel like there is enough to play for. So, this is what I suggest happens next season:

Same open round robin format, but every team may play up to a maximum of 4 games. Anyone who plays more games than this is disqualified from the tournament.
Scoring for games is as follows: 1 "base" point for a win or a draw. 0 base points for a loss. Then, plus 2 points for every TD scored, minus 1 point for every TD allowed; with the minimum and maximum number of points you can get from each game being 0 and 10 respectively.

Eg. A 3-2 win gets you 5 points (1+(3x2)-2). A 2-2 draw gets you 3 points (1+(2x2)-2). A 5-3 loss gets you 1 point (0+(3x2)-5). To get the perfect 10 points, you could win 5-1.

The limited number of games means every game counts and ensures it is shorter than the regular season. The TD-dependent score helps give a different focus to the games.

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uzkulak

Joined: Mar 30, 2004

Posted: Mar 08, 2013 - 21:05

I did find last season a suprisingly big gap in team development when I played the semi-final given that I had only played 3 games to get there and my opponent had played 5 (22tv). I think these gaps will get bigger if we allow some teams to play a lot more games than others, and that wont be good for the league. So, I would suggest that teams over a certain tv (changes per season) are limited to only 2 games in the wildcard - hopefully allowing the wildcard to do what it was intended to - bring everyone to a level playing field - and not allow 1 or 2 teams to get a jump on everyone else before the start of the season.

Chainsaw

Joined: Aug 31, 2005

Posted: Mar 12, 2013 - 17:00

uzkulak wrote:

I did find last season a suprisingly big gap in team development when I played the semi-final given that I had only played 3 games to get there and my opponent had played 5 (22tv). I think these gaps will get bigger if we allow some teams to play a lot more games than others, and that wont be good for the league. So, I would suggest that teams over a certain tv (changes per season) are limited to only 2 games in the wildcard - hopefully allowing the wildcard to do what it was intended to - bring everyone to a level playing field - and not allow 1 or 2 teams to get a jump on everyone else before the start of the season.

Not a bad idea at all.

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gjopie

Joined: Oct 27, 2009

Posted: Mar 12, 2013 - 17:14

Nope, that's not a bad idea. We were discussing this in the IRC channel the other day, and another suggestion that came up was this:

We scrap the Wildcard altogether. The Royal Pardon goes to one of the winners of the inter-conference shield games (randomly decided). Then, after the cup games, we divide the group up by TV/TW (not sure which yet). Either we divide by two, with the top half allowed to play 1 friendly, and the bottom half 2 friendlies, or we divide by four, with the top to the bottom quarters allowed 0, 1, 2 and 3 friendlies respectively.

I quite like this suggestion, as it adds extra incentive to the IC shield games, and the Wildcard round has proved contentious.

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Chainsaw

Joined: Aug 31, 2005

Posted: Mar 12, 2013 - 17:20

Might I suggest that all teams get a final 'training' game before each season starts? That is, a filler 'training' team that concedes, to allow any MNG players to return, and the 2 MVPs representing post-season training and winnings pre-season investment.

Any friendlies would take place before this training game.

Might I also suggest that the easiest way to schedule the friendlies is to make them as teams go out of competitions. That way they get played concurrently, and the teams that go out play each other.

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gjopie

Joined: Oct 27, 2009

Posted: Apr 24, 2013 - 10:47

I think the format this season has so far worked just fine, but the key thing that needs to be dealt with in my opinion is the recruitment of new teams in to the league.

At the moment, teams that are recruited in are rookies, and are therefore at a disadvantage against some of the bigger teams that are in the league already. What would help is to have a "recruitment division", which we draw teams from when we need them.

Here is my proposal (I'd welcome feedback):

We found the OWCC Minor League. It is a scheduled round robin of unlimited size, which runs continuously in the background of the main league. When one "season" ends, we carry over the scores from the previous season and repeat the league. It is populated by two categories of team: teams trying to join the main league, and optional "second teams" for coaches currently in the main division (restricted to Goblin, Halfling, Ogre or Vampire teams only).

New teams can join at any time, and will replace one of the "second teams" if there is no room. Whenever a space opens up in the main league, a team from the minor league is promoted. To ensure that there is a regular turnover, one team from the main league would be relegated each season - the team who finished bottom in their conference and lost their Inter-Conference Shield match.

I have two ideas about how we could decide how to promote teams:

The Simple Way

The Less Simple Way

Thoughts?

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Smeat

Joined: Nov 19, 2006

Posted: May 01, 2013 - 00:24

I think that a "less simple" lottery would need to become even more "less simple" - that is, more complicated still. It's too easy for the dice to screw a coach already - being "the best" team season after season and missing repeatedly at the lottery would be too painful. So, if we go that way, some sort of additional "weight" for teams that were in the lottery last time, but didn't get promoted. (But only for teams that stay in the top X number of teams - if you stay there, you get a bonus (and that bonus could grow), but if you are in and out of the lead there's no mercy shown.)

And a lottery keeps things more interesting for those "not quite in the hunt" (altho' it also means that the "best" coaches might not be promoted, which is not as good for the league in general).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

However...

I'd rather see a sort of combination, where the "top" teams have a shot, but they also get weighted for staying at the top.

At any point in time (regardless if the feeder league has "finished their season/tourney" or not, be able to look at the mix and determine who is currently "the best" to promote.

This could be done via something like this:

two

low-point

don't

additional

+2

+3

This means that a win is good, but a win toward the top is better - and even a loss at the top is better than a win at the bottom.

So "winning" both gets you fewer points and moves you up the ladder to where there are fewer points to earn - those who stay at/near the top would have significantly fewer points vs. someone with a similar W/L record who is bottom-feeding - but shifts in ranking could happen very quickly for new coaches who prove themselves, or for lucky coaches whose luck runs out.

o Promotion: When it's time to promote a team, count up the "points" for the last X number of games (maybe the last 5 games?)- low point total is promoted to the main League, and then the games continue from Step 1 (as the teams are already self-seeeded to continue).

So for teams/races/coaches that start slow, their early record gets continually erased, and only their "recent" performance counts toward the evaluation. The math isn't really any harder - points for W/L/T + Tier of Game for each game, low points win.

Note several interesting features:

1) With a lot of teams, newcomers (seeded at the bottom) will have to fight their way up toward the top before they stand a chance of being promoted - too many "Tier" points earned even for wins. But...

2) Weaker teams rarely play dominating teams - no "gotta survive the mangler" until you've proven you're ready to coach toward that Tier.

3) If there are only a few dominant coaches, they will play each other repeatedly, and not rely on 1 (un)lucky game to determine who is "better" to be promoted.

(I think a FUMBBL "King of the Hill" tourney format would work w/ this, but I'm not sure.)

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gjopie

Joined: Oct 27, 2009

Posted: May 01, 2013 - 10:09

Thanks for the reply Smeat. I like your ideas. I think they could be a lot of work (but it looks like you've volunteered yourself to be the overlord of the Minor Leagues Wink

).

I think what you've suggested could be achieved like this:

-) Set up a never-ending Swiss league.
-) Don't give "tier points" for the first couple of games.
-) A win gets 2 points, draw 1, loss 0 (can't change this, unfortunately).
-) After each round, manually add tier points - bottom ranked match gets 0, second bottom 1, etc - and remove the points earned 6 games ago, so you have just the latest 5 games score.
-) Highest score is good.

The trouble with Swiss is that it tries to avoid repeat match-ups, so the natural "top tier" match might be 1st vs 6th. Someone would have to judge what was the highest tier match each round.

Another way to do it would be to have a normal round robin, but again, manually edit scores each round. It wouldn't naturally match the highest against each other, though.

You could have several smaller groups of round robins (say, 4 groups of 4) with promotion between them each time.

Unfortunately, "King of the Hill" format on fumbbl doesn't really mean "King of the Hill" - it is simply a cup format with each round drawn randomly (like the FA cup).

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Smeat

Joined: Nov 19, 2006

Posted: May 01, 2013 - 20:31

Ah - yeah, the descriptions under the Tourney formats are more than a little vague for some.

gjopie wrote:

Thanks for the reply Smeat. I like your ideas. I think they could be a lot of work (but it looks like you've volunteered yourself to be the overlord of the Minor Leagues Wink

).

Ehhhhh.... m'okay, I'll put my pixels where my mouth is - I volunteer and/or accept.

gjopie wrote:

The trouble with Swiss is that it tries to avoid repeat match-ups, so the natural "top tier" match might be 1st vs 6th. Someone would have to judge what was the highest tier match each round.

Yeah, that could get ugly, the same sort of thing we're trying to avoid in the main league, with new teams facing veteran maulers.

There are a lot of Races that are too fragile/fail early that simply can't survive if put into an environment containing certain veteran races.

Quote:

Another way to do it would be to have a normal round robin, but again, manually edit scores each round. It wouldn't naturally match the highest against each other, though.

Or - screw it, I could just do it manually each round, and have a schedule page that gets updated. Cat Herding is annoying, but it would also show who is up for the League pace and who is not.

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Let's go A.P.E.!

(...and what exactly do you think they do with all those dead players?...)