| Poll |
| Do you like it that you can now choose which teams are activated? |
| Yes |
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76% |
[ 99 ] |
| No |
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23% |
[ 31 ] |
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| Total Votes : 130 |
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CircularLogic
Joined: Aug 22, 2003
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 Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 11:00 |
 
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I also really dislike this. Why? Because it decreases the scheduling quality by decreasing the number of teams in the pool. And that just sucks. I am all for an incentive to activate more teams and I really think that slightly easier matchups are a good way to go.
It seems like the majority of the coaches think, that having control over the team that gets activated is a good thing. Hence the coach who activates only one team has an advantage over the coach that activates more than one team. This means it`s just fair, if the advantage of control is balanced with a minor disadvantage.
As an alternative there could also be the suggestion, that a coach has to activate at least 3 teams each time. |
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Pulpo_Fiction
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 11:06 |
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I would do just the opposite way... select 1 team u dont want to play (sometimes u r tired of playing it) but activating jsut what u want would hurt the original Box idea IMHO.
Perhaps if u have 6+ teams u could not activate a couple of them instead of just 1... just an idea, but the fact is i dont like the change. |
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Fela
Joined: Dec 27, 2004
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 11:09 |
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| CircularLogic wrote: | | I also really dislike this. Why? Because it decreases the scheduling quality by decreasing the number of teams in the pool. |
You're assuming here that
- the amount of coaches with only one [B] team and
- the amount of coaches that were not active in [B] before the change
are both neglibile compared to the amount of active [B] coaches.
I'm not convinced that's a valid assumption. |
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Fela
Joined: Dec 27, 2004
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 11:27 |
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| Pulpo_Fiction wrote: | | I would do just the opposite way... select 1 team u dont want to play (sometimes u r tired of playing it) but activating jsut what u want would hurt the original Box idea IMHO. |
Question is, what is the original box idea?
I always thought of the idea more of playing random (yet mostly fairly matched) opponents, less than about playing totally random matchups. |
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CircularLogic
Joined: Aug 22, 2003
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 11:28 |
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So you say, that there are more teams coming into [B] from new coaches then teams not being activated due to the new procedure? I don`t believe it.
1) Alot of existing [B] coaches have expressed a wish to put teams on 'sleep'. This means that those [B] coaches will activate less teams than before. There are probably also coaches like me, that need an extra nudge to activate their fragile elves. I have no problem playing them, but it`s more stressful than just plain old bashers. Before I had no choice but to put all teams in. Now I might remove an elven team or both from the activation, even though I think it`s wrong. This leads to fewer teams in the scheduling pool from existing [B] coaches.
2) Existing [B] coaches with only one team might make another team, BUT they won`t activate more than one at a time. If they restricted themselves to 1 team before, then the desire for control over what they play is so strong that they won`t give it up. This means not additional teams in the pool from existing [B] coaches.
3) The only increase in the team pool can come from the coaches that join [B] because of that change. Guess how many teams they will be activating... in the vast majority of the cases exactly 1. Because they were absent from the box because they wanted complete control over what they play and wanted to select their team from a pool of teams they have. Now why should they suddenly activate more teams? So yes - new coaches will increase the team pool, but only by a low number.
So in the end the question is - how many new coaches do we need to maintain our teampool per activation. I guess that as explained under 1) we will see on average between 0.5 and 1 team less for every activating coach in a round. That means that where we had 6 coaches before, we now need 9 coaches to have the same team pool. Do you think that the number of active coaches will grow by 50% from this change alone? I seriously doubt it. So from all this, I come to the conclusion, that the team pool of each scheduling round is reduced compared to pre-change and with that, the matchup quality is reduced, too.
As I come to the box to play fair matchups teamwise, I don`t like this change. |
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Astarael
Joined: Aug 14, 2005
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 11:55 |
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I like the choice. |
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Were_M_Eye
Joined: Sep 24, 2007
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:00 |
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I like this change. Seen to many coaches that delete all teams except one.
It will also be good if there will be a tournament in B. Then you can still play in the box without risking your tournament-team geting smashed up just before the tournament starts.
And think about the silly teams that can come, like "As Drunk AS I Can [B]" (only played drunk). |
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Christer
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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Look at it from this perspective:
A coach has three teams in the blackbox. Elves, Norse and Khemri. She figures that "Hmm, I really don't feel like playing my khemri today". Under the old system, she has two options:
1. Don't risk activating because that'd risk the Khemri being drawn.
2. Retire the Khemri and play.
Either of these options are bad, and will create a negative trend in the number of matches. Sure, people will activate fewer teams on average, but the fact is that for a number of people, the alternative would be to not activate at all.
Sure, people might avoid to play the agile teams but from my perspective it's better to allow people to play with the teams they like. If that means Blackbox is a harsh environment then so be it. The game is designed the way it is.
Another aspect of this is that even if you have less teams to choose from, but more coaches, it'll increase the number of games overall due to the minimum number of coaches needed to start a round. |
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fly
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:30 |
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nice, finally i can play box and not fear having to play another game with my lame amazons. or just activate them and pile on some groins!
i'll play more box soon, i really like this change. |
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Hogshine
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:42 |
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| Fela wrote: | | I always thought of the idea more of playing random (yet mostly fairly matched) opponents, less than about playing totally random matchups. |
I totally agree here (and with your previous post that I didn't quote). I like this change, and it makes me far more likely to start playing in [B] again.
When entering the Blackbox, it's usually because my R teams have been on Gamefinder for a while and not found anything, so I put B teams in the box and hope I get scheduled. If not, I just go back to gamefinder until the next round starts.
I don't think people will only activate one team each round with these new rules. I for one will activate in the same way that I'd choose teams to put on Gamefinder. Unless I'm trying to build a team for a tournament, I'll normally put three or four teams up, trying to spread them across as large a TS range as possible. I see no reason why I wouldn't do this in B as well. |
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clarkin
Joined: Oct 15, 2007
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:49 |
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I've retired several viable & fun B teams just because I wanted a break from them being scheduled. From that point of view this is a good move as I can just not activate them for a while and go back to them when I'm ready again. That's good. |
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CircularLogic
Joined: Aug 22, 2003
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:56 |
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| Christer wrote: | Look at it from this perspective:
A coach has three teams in the blackbox. Elves, Norse and Khemri. She figures that "Hmm, I really don't feel like playing my khemri today". Under the old system, she has two options:
1. Don't risk activating because that'd risk the Khemri being drawn.
2. Retire the Khemri and play.
Either of these options are bad, and will create a negative trend in the number of matches. Sure, people will activate fewer teams on average, but the fact is that for a number of people, the alternative would be to not activate at all. |
So you expect that many more coaches activating, that the number of teams in an activation round stays even?
| Christer wrote: | | Sure, people might avoid to play the agile teams but from my perspective it's better to allow people to play with the teams they like. If that means Blackbox is a harsh environment then so be it. The game is designed the way it is. |
I think that the change alters the racial spread, but not by much. That wasn`t my main point - I could live with more bashers. It`s more that I rather have no temptation to select my bashers only. A minor thing.
| Christer wrote: | | Another aspect of this is that even if you have less teams to choose from, but more coaches, it'll increase the number of games overall due to the minimum number of coaches needed to start a round. |
Yes - the number of games will increase. But that wasn`t my point. I rather play no game at all than a mismatched one. I don`t get scheduled, I fire up an episode of southpark or write mails/forumposts etc and join the next round. I get a shitty matchup, I have an hour that is not that fun.
I`m not against the option to select teams - I want better matchups and therefore more teams in the pool for each round. So there might be three options:
1) Enforce a minimum number (e.g. 3) of teams to be activated per round. If a coach has less than this minimum number, he submits all. I guess that is not that good of a thing, but it would do.
2) Give an incentive to activate more teams. This could be a minor TS modification (e.g. +3/+1.5/0/0/-1 for activating 1/2/3/4/5+ teams) before scheduling to give coaches that add more to the teampool a slight edge over coaches that don`t. I think that is a very good solution. You want the advantage of team-control, you pay for it. As an alternative, you could also apply a TS modification not to the scheduling, but to the BWR/BBR modification. A coach that selects only one team for activation gains less BWR on a win.
3) Give coaches the option to tie their activation to the teampool size. So I can say, that I`ll only submit my teams, if there are at least 20 other teams in the pool. That way coaches can choose to stay out of rounds with low matchup quality.
As an alternative, stricter rules for matchmaking (decreasing the maximum allowed TS difference for example, disallowing 15TS difference BEFORE handicap adjustment etc.) could be applied to offset the reduction in the teampool.
In the end I resent the change because I don`t need the choice, but I`m hit by the bad side effects. Hopefully an additional rule restores the old balance between matchup quality and number of matches again. |
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Rijssiej
Joined: Jan 04, 2005
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 13:07 |
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I like this change.
Until now I only created 1 blackbox team because I want to decide what I play with. For a while I didn't feel like playing with that team so now I have an option to play more in blackbox by creating a second team. The only reason I have now to not play in blackbox is that my teams and the official tourneys are stuck in ranked. I would prefer to play all my non-tourney games in a blackbox way but I don't like to retire all my ranked teams and I really enjoy playing in the official tourneys. |
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Reisender
Joined: Sep 29, 2007
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 13:13 |
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| CircularLogic wrote: |
It seems like the majority of the coaches think, that having control over the team that gets activated is a good thing. Hence the coach who activates only one team has an advantage over the coach that activates more than one team. This means it`s just fair, if the advantage of control is balanced with a minor disadvantage.
. |
Circ your logic doesnt work here. People think it is a good thing does not mean they have an advantage over other coaches (iterms of TS matchups or chances to win in general). they just enjoy playing a certain team at a time or NOT playing a certain team at a time (e.g. i like my BB rats, but i dont feel like getting smahed on the pitch every time so its great to be able to let them sit out)
i will play more box games for the reasons christer stated - sometimes with one team, sometimes with more teams activated.... it is even a reason for me to create more blackboxteams.... since what i personally like about blackbox is not that it creates single fair matchups, but a "fair" environment where the aexpected matchup for all coaches is the same ... and even better when it has tourneys and the like
before sby jumps in...ranked also is fair in the terms that it has the same "match market" for everybody, but that is a different concept of making fair matches, personally i prefer the box.... (althoug i like ranked also...) |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
Jun 19, 2009 - 13:25 |
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When I look at game finder a lot of coaches seem to put many teams up. So some of those coaches now put 8 teams up instead of 10. Big deal.
| Circ wrote: | | It`s more that I rather have no temptation to select my bashers only. A minor thing. |
Not a minor thing to me. Using teams that I don't want to use is a chore. That is not the way to a thriving division.
IMO it is better to get more coaches involved than to keep it as a cosy little club. Even if the match up quality does fall a little.
You only have three teams. The way you were talking I thought you would have at least 10. 
Two of your teams have very similar TR/TS so don't know how much you are really helping things.
| Circ wrote: | | I get a shitty matchup, I have an hour that is not that fun. |
How many games do you play where you really have no chance?
Looking at your active teams you have 1 defeat in about around 50 games
If you are complaining that the games are too easy... oh never mind  |
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