FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

Purplegoo

Joined: Mar 23, 2006

Posted: Dec 29, 2008 - 20:52

JanMattys wrote:

ps: Hellfshes are at 690 games. How about serving them a purplen00b dessert for the 700 milestone? Razz

Sure.

Haxtor

Joined: Aug 16, 2008

Posted: Dec 29, 2008 - 21:26

I am just going to throw this out there even though I know people aren't going to like it.
This entire petition to me reads like it has a different opinion of what [B] should be than what it actually is. From what I can gather from posts in various forum topics is that [B] is trying to evolve into a "truely competitive" division. In that regard it is developing into a division in which a coach like myself, a better coach, and a worse coach can come into and play x number of games with various teams and all have similar amounts of difficulty winning each and every game. In the end after x becomes large enough if the scheduler is working correctly all 3 of those coaches should roughly have the same number of wins/ties/losses as the other coaches.

To be honest having a strictly TS based scheduler may be more "competitive" for the worse coaches but the more experience/games played you have the less competitive the average game will be for you. I do read this petition as the "better" coaches asking for easier games for themselves. If you want real competition victories should be equally difficult and losses should not be infrequent. If you get into a division or league like this and the competition is equal on paper terms only, aka TS without other variables accounted for, it is competitive also only on that level.

I believe the vision of the blackbox in Christer's was originally and still is to develop the first situation. Some Teams here and there maybe will walk out with 10 or 20 game winning streaks if the coach is duffing games with other teams, but overall it should be extremely hard for anyone to walk away with a long consecutive coach winning streak. This is all opinion based of course but that in my mind is what competition is, to say that skill or experience should not take a place in matchmaking is trying to give an advantage to one side which inherently would make the division less competitive than it's current form.

CircularLogic

Joined: Aug 22, 2003

Posted: Dec 29, 2008 - 21:42

Dear Haxtor,
this has been discussed in a few other threads, so I`ll keep this off-topic short. If your idea of 'truely competitive' is that every participant of a competition has the same shot at winning, then you must be horrified at the current state of professional sports. If I play tennis vs Agassi, sprint vs Bolt or play soccer with my buddies against Real Madrid, then for sure I don`t have a chance (if my opponents really go for the win). Is tennis/100m dash/soccer uncompetitive? NO! It`s people competing on even terms for the same goal - the better one wins. Is your idea of a 'truely competitive match' me vs Agassi, just that he has a tabletennis racket where I have top notch tennis gear?
Also why do you want to have a competition, when everyone ends up with the same result? If everyone has the same wins/ties/losses after a sufficient amount of games, why on earth do I need to play?
So is that REALLY your opinion on what competition is? You don`t do alot of sports, do you? Or do you claim the title of the boxing champ. because you have beaten Mike Tyson when he had both hands tied behind his back?

spelledaren

Joined: Mar 06, 2004

Posted: Dec 29, 2008 - 22:53

What Circ said.

And I think Mike Tyson would kick my butt with his hands tied behind his back.

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Draxus

Joined: Nov 14, 2004

Posted: Dec 29, 2008 - 23:18

If Tiger Woods was to play a round of golf against 100 random guys from the fumbbl site what kind of handicap would make that game "competitive?"

Same thing with the most skilled fumbbl coaches, vs 100 random guys from fumbbl.

koadah

Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Posted: Dec 29, 2008 - 23:42

CircularLogic wrote:

Dear Haxtor,
this has been discussed in a few other threads, so I`ll keep this off-topic short. If your idea of 'truely competitive' is that every participant of a competition has the same shot at winning, then you must be horrified at the current state of professional sports. If I play tennis vs Agassi, sprint vs Bolt or play soccer with my buddies against Real Madrid, then for sure I don`t have a chance (if my opponents really go for the win). Is tennis/100m dash/soccer uncompetitive? NO! It`s people competing on even terms for the same goal - the better one wins. Is your idea of a 'truely competitive match' me vs Agassi, just that he has a tabletennis racket where I have top notch tennis gear?
Also why do you want to have a competition, when everyone ends up with the same result? If everyone has the same wins/ties/losses after a sufficient amount of games, why on earth do I need to play?
So is that REALLY your opinion on what competition is? You don`t do alot of sports, do you? Or do you claim the title of the boxing champ. because you have beaten Mike Tyson when he had both hands tied behind his back?

In a competitive environment how would you get to play vs Agassi/Bolt/Real etc?

You would have to go through a gruelling qualification process just to make it into the draw. If you make it that far then you have earned the right to play them.
Otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time.

You probably need to be in the top 150-200 in the world just to earn the chance to get thrashed.
In Fumbbl terms that is around CR170.

Personally I prefer the NFL where 16 games unbeaten makes you a legend compared to the Premiership where 30+ games undeafeated is a minimum requirement for some teams.

I prefer the UFC where 10 unbeaten fights has not even been achieved compared to boxing 30 fights unbeaten is just good business sense.

Nadal doesn't get his win streak without beating Federer.

Tournaments work OK matching only on TR. If you keep winning you eventually end up playing to top coach/team combination.
In an open-ended division building win streaks against teams that didn't really have much of a chance seems pointless to me.
It sounds more like relying on the luck of the draw.

I think that we have agreed in the past that the current formula isn't the greatest but 'TS only' doesn't sound very competetive to me.

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Eddy

Joined: Aug 04, 2004

Posted: Dec 29, 2008 - 23:56

I don't understand the kind of opposition put up by koalah and others.

Don't get me wrong, i largely agree with you, i think. And i also agree with CircularLogic =P

In my opinion, there should be a BR (or CR or WhateveR) in the box. But that doesn't mean that you'd get easier or harder match-ups. Teams would be paired by TS only. And if you won against a player with a low CR, then you'd gain a small amount, if you won against a player with a high CR, you'd get a big amount. At the end of the day, after a good amount of time, the rankings would show who's better than average.

Of course, the problem is that you wouldn't necessarily get to play against your rivals. Maybe there could be a secondary option that, given, say, a 5 TS window, would prioritize coaches within the same CR neighbourhood.

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Haxtor

Joined: Aug 16, 2008

Posted: Dec 30, 2008 - 00:05

Circ,
There is not a professional sport in this world where competition is the goal of individual teams. Every team wants to have as much of an advantage going into a match/game or whatever you want to call it as possible. Hence the introduction of things like Salary Caps to force them, even if they have the resources to go above and beyond, to start each season on a more even footing.

This is definitely not off topic as the premise behind creating a scheduler going off purely TS to encourage more competition to me seems completely backwards.

Your generic example of tennis/100m dash/soccer being uncompetitive is correct they for the most part aren't, but yes if you specifically participated in any of your examples I would say those, even with a huge headstart, or better gear would not be competitive matches because your skill level is probably very subpar when compared to a professional athlete.

I am probably about an average coach, and for the sake of argument lets say I played 50 games with even TS teams against Synn and walk away with 5-7 wins. At the start of any of these matches I doubt I would be favored to win-if people are betting they may even give Synn a spread to beat if he wants to bet on himself. At the end of the day I would be surprised if more than 20 of these games were close, including however many I win and those would be all that I would consider competitive. If Synn is coming in with one or many advantages in areas that aren't taken into consideration when matching teams up that means I am less competitive of an opponent for him than if I were given handicaps in other areas to compensate for my general lack of bloodbowl knowledge or my awful blocking scheme or my poor lack of skill selection. The closer those games get to 25-25 split between us the more competitive the games actually were.

edited for page breaks

Haxtor

Joined: Aug 16, 2008

Posted: Dec 30, 2008 - 00:09

Forgot to throw in there with the NFL season recently getting over it may be interesting to see how many teams actually felt like they were competing against the Lions.

JanMattys

Joined: Feb 29, 2004

Posted: Dec 30, 2008 - 02:08

Haxtor, just some quick things before I go to bed:

1- If you play Synn 50 times with even teams and an open enough mind not to care only about the final result, at the end of game 50 you are almost certainly a better coach than you are now, and you will probably pull off 4-8 very satisfying wins in the process. If you play Synn 50 times with a +30 TS advantage, on the other hand, I'm not sure you will get much better by the end of game 50. You might win 10-15 games that way, but you will be as crappy (or as good) as you were at game 1.

2- I largely agree with what you say in theory, but the thing is that even the most skilled Fumbbler is not immune to mistakes and can be forced to roll more dice than necessary. I think that every coach "consistently above" CR 165 can be considered a fair challenge for anyone from his level onwards. The differences between a poor coach and an average coach are huge on fumbbl, while the differences between a good coach and a great coach are, if not minimal, at least "much less important". I think I can beat a n00b whenever I want with even dice, but I'm quite sure PeteW can't state "I will beat JanMattys whenever I want" the same way. The differences between Bolt and the fastest guy in your town are much greater than the difference between the BB world champion and the average CR 160 guy.
This is partially due to the fact that BB is a game of dice, and partially because it takes far less training to be "reasonably proficient at BB" than what it takes to be reasonably proficient at any professional level in any sport today.

3 and most important - Ranked is still the main COMPETITIVE division of Fumbbl. Why should blackbox replicate its pattern? In R you can pick the opponent level you feel appropriate for you if you want to. Can we PLEASE have an hardcore division where only skills matter? I admit I can see the reasons for the "ts only" argument, which I back up, and for the "include br in the pairing" argument, which I oppose. Both have merits and both make sense. BUT those who oppose a blackbox entirely based on teams, forget that there's R already. It's not like R has become a joke division or a unpopulated one all of a sudden, just because Blackbox was introduced... People want two divisions that just do the same thing... R and B now are largely the same thing, the only difference is that in B you can make killer khemri and find games, and you can find them in a few seconds. But the principle behind the pairing formula follows the same patterns that every coach uses in picking his R games. What I say is: PLEASE let B be something different, create a place where skill is the only thing that matters. Because, as it is now, Blackbox is just a Ranked with Quickgame and it doesn't even offer what would be a nice prize: a w/t/l record that MEANS something.

What's the point in DivB, if the only thing it does is to have a bot choose the game for me? I'm not a cherrypicker, and I can find a decent pairing for my teams much more accurately than ANY formula Christer will ever manage to create. As it is now, DivB has just become the heaven of the pickers, who get refused when they offer themselves to another person in R, but have now found a friendly bot people can't say "no" to. I have teams in DivB, because I want to feel superior to those who try to just exploit this great new toy, and I have the utmost respect for the handful of coaches who do the same (DukeTyrion and Jaim come to mind). But playing in a uninteresting division just to prove a point gets old fast.

ps: sorry if this rant doesn't make sense. It's 2 am and I need sleep. Very Happy

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Pirigin

Joined: Apr 12, 2007

Posted: Dec 30, 2008 - 03:15

/signed

Snorri

Joined: Jun 07, 2004

Posted: Dec 30, 2008 - 05:12

I'm inclined to think along the lines of Haxtor here - wondering really whether there's any decent motivation for this.

The practical spinoff in ignoring BR is the good players will get more easy games. How is this so significantly different that thrashing TR130 coaches makes it more interesting or challenging to your skills? It doesn't sound like a very worthy environment for a competitive coach in a competitive division.

Which leads back to the implication that it means good players will get more easy games. Sorry, I can't see this application as resulting in anything other than this. If you wanted something different than R, surely there's got to be better (more competitive) options than that.

If you really want a hardcore division where only skills matter - why not have a visible BR rating and revel in the fact that you are at the top of the BR pyramid, consistently winning against the best coaches. That certainly would be alot more skillful than playing more than 60% of your games against TR130 coaches on a level playing field.

Snorri

Joined: Jun 07, 2004

Posted: Dec 30, 2008 - 05:21

Just a question, given that availability of the teams A, B, C and D below

1) TS(A) = TS(B), BR(A) = BR(B) - everything equal.
2) TS(A) > TS(B), BR(A) < BR(B) - offsets in both, but suppose the scheduler (in its current form) balances these.

which one gets preference in the scheduler?

ChrisB

Joined: Nov 28, 2003

Posted: Dec 30, 2008 - 05:36

JanMatty - the later your posts the more they make sense. B and R should be different!

Irgy

Joined: Feb 21, 2007

Posted: Dec 30, 2008 - 05:55

Snorri wrote:

Just a question, given that availability of the teams A, B, C and D below

1) TS(A) = TS(B), BR(A) = BR(B) - everything equal.
2) TS(A) > TS(B), BR(A) < BR(B) - offsets in both, but suppose the scheduler (in its current form) balances these.

which one gets preference in the scheduler?

As far as I understand, neither gets a preference, it will come down to minor factors like other pairings available and what order they were put in to the scheduler and so on. That's part of (although not the core of) the problem - most people would agree that (1) is much better than (2).