FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

Hitonagashi

Joined: Apr 09, 2006

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 19:35

licker wrote:

The problem is still one of over all diversity, not really one of the power of cpomb.

Unless you're talking about the power of cpomb to kill diversity because it's so easy and lazy to do.

Yet the 'easy' solution still is not to change the rules, it's to force diversity in the box.

A lot of people don't like that idea for bad reasons, still, there's nothing stopping anyone who agrees on some level to correct this themselves.

Make 3+ teams with different play styles, skill access and activate them all every time you activate it. I've done that, though in perhaps the cheesiest way possible from Grues point of view, yet if everyone did this it would address the overriding issue of lack of diversity.

If you don't want to do this, then don't complain about diversity ever.

Make 3 teams. Clawbombers United, Necromatic Clawfest and DisturbingPresenceWithClawBombers.

Woop!

Diversity SOLVED.

_________________
http://www.calculateyour.tv - an easy way to work out specific team builds.

DukeTyrion

Joined: Feb 18, 2004

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 19:40

pizzamogul wrote:

koadah wrote:

I'm seeing a lot of 'not enough teams' or 4 team draws. I would have thought that the chances of drawing a big killer have increased for your older teams.

If you look at the stats for the last 30 months, the noticeable downward slope to the box matches is a bit concerning. What the heck happened in July 2013? Hey, it's even more pronounced since the scheduler change! Is "minmax" therapy killing the patient???

I no longer activate if I am going to be the 4th activation, because I like balanced games.

With the min-max solution fix there is now no TV limit on matches, so if you have played enough games and are 1200 TV, but the second highest TV in the draw, you can quite easily draw a 2300 TV team.

Just look at the recent matches for this Chaos team for example;

https://fumbbl.com/p/team?op=view&showmatches=1&team_id=715248

(BTW, this is nothing against Khor_Varik, on the contrary I have a lot of respect for the coach, but I played him recently and I knew if was an example of what I wanted to quote)

harvestmouse

Joined: May 13, 2007

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 19:41

pizzamogul wrote:

koadah wrote:

I'm seeing a lot of 'not enough teams' or 4 team draws. I would have thought that the chances of drawing a big killer have increased for your older teams.

If you look at the stats for the last 30 months, the noticeable downward slope to the box matches is a bit concerning. What the heck happened in July 2013?

I believe (a bit before this, but it took time to show) it was that blackbox stopped being the default division for making teams.

Before, it was done alphabetically, which meant new coaches were making teams for blackbox, without realising what blackbox was.

So a small change was made where Ranked became the default division for making teams (meaning if you want to make a stunty, box or league team, you have to switch it manually).

Also a small advisory note was put on the blackbox division. Something like 'It isn't advised for new coaches to make teams here'.

So, without the small fry, a lot of the leachers lost interest in box and followed the small fry back to ranked. This of course had an effect on the rest of the food chain.

Now, I don't think the division really has enough usage to run at optimum. Ranked probably could do with more traffic also. Combining them, would help them out and versatile teams that can find games easily either way.

As for the PO debate. To me it's quite clear. There was a lot of negativity towards houseruling and an alternative was added (namely changes to the scheduler). So we're in a suck it and see era, before the subject of the house rule changes would be brought up again.

pythrr

Joined: Mar 07, 2006

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 19:44

DukeTyrion wrote:

pizzamogul wrote:

koadah wrote:

I'm seeing a lot of 'not enough teams' or 4 team draws. I would have thought that the chances of drawing a big killer have increased for your older teams.

If you look at the stats for the last 30 months, the noticeable downward slope to the box matches is a bit concerning. What the heck happened in July 2013? Hey, it's even more pronounced since the scheduler change! Is "minmax" therapy killing the patient???

I no longer activate if I am going to be the 4th activation, because I like balanced games.

With the min-max solution fix there is now no TV limit on matches, so if you have played enough games and are 1200 TV, but the second highest TV in the draw, you can quite easily draw a 2300 TV team.

Just look at the recent matches for this Chaos team for example;

https://fumbbl.com/p/team?op=view&showmatches=1&team_id=715248

(BTW, this is nothing against Khor_Varik, on the contrary I have a lot of respect for the coach, but I played him recently and I knew if was an example of what I wanted to quote)

Agreed. I've played a couple of these, and had really unenjoyable games. Not KV's fault, but still really not fun.

_________________

SzieberthAdam

Joined: Aug 31, 2008

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 19:56

Nothing is bad with those matchups.

_________________

Chainsaw

Joined: Aug 31, 2005

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 19:57

Quote:

With the min-max solution fix there is now no TV limit on matches, so if you have played enough games and are 1200 TV, but the second highest TV in the draw, you can quite easily draw a 2300 TV team.

But isn't that the point? I mean, smallkosp draw the WMDs, nobody would shed a tear. Are you advocating tweaking the limits i.e. require more games before being fed to the wolves? If your team is destroyed at 1200TV then it's bad luck, but if you want to roll 0 reroll 10 guard dwarves or multi-legend clawpomb pact and prey on people - then why would anybody be upset that you run into a stacked opponent? Said 'victims' weren't upset when they could maul rookie teams and coaches over and over again.

Also don't underestimate the power of the defaults. For some time, when you went to create a new team, the default division was Blackbox. Now it is Ranked. To us addicts that won't mean much but many games are played by less regular members and they will almost always go into the default division.

_________________
Coach Chainsaw's Dugout
Free Gamer - blog - community

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 20:00

Hitonagashi wrote:

licker wrote:

The problem is still one of over all diversity, not really one of the power of cpomb.

Unless you're talking about the power of cpomb to kill diversity because it's so easy and lazy to do.

Yet the 'easy' solution still is not to change the rules, it's to force diversity in the box.

A lot of people don't like that idea for bad reasons, still, there's nothing stopping anyone who agrees on some level to correct this themselves.

Make 3+ teams with different play styles, skill access and activate them all every time you activate it. I've done that, though in perhaps the cheesiest way possible from Grues point of view, yet if everyone did this it would address the overriding issue of lack of diversity.

If you don't want to do this, then don't complain about diversity ever.

Make 3 teams. Clawbombers United, Necromatic Clawfest and DisturbingPresenceWithClawBombers.

Woop!

Diversity SOLVED.

I think you are well aware of the breakdown I have given in the past.

But if you want to pretend you have a solution to the issue by attacking other solutions that's entirely your prerogative.

Quote:

With the min-max solution fix there is now no TV limit on matches, so if you have played enough games and are 1200 TV, but the second highest TV in the draw, you can quite easily draw a 2300 TV team.

Then activate more than one team, ideally one high TV team that can soak up that matchup you want to avoid.

Chainsaw

Joined: Aug 31, 2005

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 20:00

SzieberthAdam wrote:

Nothing is bad with those matchups.

QFT. In fact he's not won in 7... I bet because his derp team and derp tactics gets sliced open by a good wizard, babes, or a bribe or two.

_________________
Coach Chainsaw's Dugout
Free Gamer - blog - community

boruppeter

Joined: Sep 11, 2003

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 20:05

Why don't we have the scheduler schedule all the ClawPOMB teams against themselves?

Like:
- your team has 1 ClawPOMBer - no restrictions
- your team has 2 ClawPOMBers - scheduled against a team with 1 ClawPOMBer, 2 ClawPOMBers or 3 ClawPOMBers
- your team has 3+ ClawPOMBers - scheduled against a team with 3+ ClawPOMBers

Wouldn't that kind of solve the problem that (almost) nobody plays a non-bashy team in [B], as you wouldn't have to fear the killstack anymore?

DukeTyrion

Joined: Feb 18, 2004

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 20:15

Chainsaw wrote:

SzieberthAdam wrote:

Nothing is bad with those matchups.

QFT. In fact he's not won in 7... I bet because his derp team and derp tactics gets sliced open by a good wizard, babes, or a bribe or two.

You missed the point. It was not about that specific team, it was just showing an example of the extreem TV differences in play.

Espionage

Joined: Jun 08, 2005

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 20:22

It doesn't really matter if you activate 1 underplayed race or 3 extremely common (but differently styled) races, if everybody just thinks a little about what they are activating, this "problem" will go away.

Or am I overly optimistic?

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 20:30

Espionage wrote:

It doesn't really matter if you activate 1 underplayed race or 3 extremely common (but differently styled) races, if everybody just thinks a little about what they are activating, this "problem" will go away.

Or am I overly optimistic?

I don't see how the problem goes away. What you suggest seems to be what currently happens. People get fixated on the one team they are playing so they activate only that team.

If everyone had to activate one elf, one bash, and one tweener then there would be more diversity in the kinds of teams everyone would see.

Purplegoo

Joined: Mar 23, 2006

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 20:51

Garion wrote:

Personally i think this thread should be temporarily locked. considering - there is a new client release coming soon with a number of BIG changes, plus Christer has intimated there will be BIG league changes in the future and that this is taking most of his free time. I think it is very safe to assume attention of the important 2 people are well and truly placed elsewhere at the moment. A lock of the thread would put an end to this thread for the time being and everyone will know that there are no changes coming to box soon.

Then in a year or two it can be unlocked if thats what the powers that be want to discuss again.

Just my 2 cents.

I might agree. But who's going to lock Christer's thread? Wink

Plus, only he knows what his plans are. Whilst you might be right, only he knows.

On the 'default' point, I think the user guide for new coaches (what I originally wrote, but several have since made excellent contributions) was very B biased (it was CRP at the time, R wasn't), and is still a bit. Don't know how much that affects numbers. But the division has had several leg ups (as mentioned above), so I'm not sure this 'default' point really wipes that out? Tough to say.

Frankenstein

Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 21:08

Purplegoo wrote:

[...] As for losing a division: Ranked always wins in the end, doesn’t it? I mean, Faction, Unranked, Box the first time, LRB4, they all die off eventually as R rolls them over. Blackbox has had a really good run on the back of several leg-ups (it being the first division to cross over to CRP, an attractive (on paper) USP, and a few very dedicated coaches thrashing games out at an amazing rate). I don’t think we should be bemoaning the games reducing, rather be impressed with how well it’s done. But the likelihood is it will always play second fiddle. In these days of fewer games and with Cyanide’s next popular failure on the horizon, I am of the opinion that we’d probably be more resilient with one main division. But we’re so far down the Box road now, I find it hard to see a way of condensing the two into one without putting some noses seriously out of joint. That’s a much trickier road than fixing perceived problems with an updated version of TS or a scheduler tweak or two. We see every time this thread is bumped people are pretty emotive.

I'm not certain that your assumptions are correct. To me, Cyanide's version of Blackbox seems superior to FUMBBL's, especially due to concessions not being houseruled over at Cyanide which means that an activation in the Blackbox would not constitute a pending threat of having to endure 90 minutes of utter boredom against an uberlame 4-minute-turns player minmax or griefer team. I'd not only recommend to allow concessions, but also to make journeymen mandatory in the box (Cyanide does just that and it is pretty cool actually), have FF not count towards TV (a small but significant incentive to make winning worthwhile) and maybe try out the actual tournament rules in 1 Major.

What's not a good idea is the suggested enforced diversity (which is simply theorising as Christer wouldn't even consider such a poorly thought out suggestion anyway). It would alienate players the same way as needless punishments and warnings do (e. g. the Bloodsea Buccaneers, Pow-a-bunga!/Eldred or Frankenstein incidents). To quote Voodomike:

"[...] One of the dumbest things FUMBBL and FOL focus on is trying to punish people. [...] Instead of layering on the hardliner crap, they should be working to create a casual, fun atmosphere where balance doesn't matter because everybody is just having a bit of casual fun... but instead they go in the opposite direction with "lets see how we can force everyone to take things extra seriously [...]"

Incidentally, what helps Ranked even more (apart from FUMBBL's houserules regarding concessions) is the fact that it has traditionally been favoured with regard to tournaments. It would be easily feasible to implement interesting, regularly run fluffy Blackbox tournaments with a distinct but not game-breaking racial bias in order to encourage and reward diversity without coercing players, but that's unfortunately the blind spot of an otherwise smoothly working tournament administration.

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Mar 28, 2014 - 21:23

So your answer to the over prominence of cpomb teams is to be able to ignore them in match making?

Yeah... that's not happening either, and not just because of what it would allow people to do in general.

Box is a place to play games, but you have to play what you get. If the problem is that what you get is always the same thing...

Well I'm not sure what to suggest as a fix to that. Or am I?

The actual beauty of my suggestion is that it doesn't require Christer or anyone elses blessing. The community could just start expecting it, and make it the norm without any required changes to the code or the MM system.

Of course, that's not going to happen either, but if enough people start doing it it will at least make a difference.

Btw... Ranked is the casual atmosphere you are after (and L), Box is clearly designated as competitive. For better or worse, but you know what you're getting into ahead of time.